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He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to him, as he might have done with a little child. "I wish you would sing, Oachi," he said. For a moment the girl's dark eyes glowed up at him. Then she drew back softly, and seated herself before the fire, with her back turned toward him, close beside her father. A strange quiet filled the tepee.
And each time he said, "I am a man with the other men, Oachi. I would be a woman if I ate." The third time Oachi knelt close down at his side, and when he refused the food again there came a strange light into her eyes, and she said, "If you starve I starve!" It was the first revelation to him. He put up his hands. They touched her face. Some potent spirit in him carried him across all gulfs.
And like a wild thing Oachi was fleeing from him into the darkening depths of the forest. Life leaped into his limbs, and he raced like mad after her, overtaking her with a panting, joyous cry. When she saw that she was caught the girl turned. Her hair had fallen, and swept about her shoulders and her body. She tried to speak, but only bursting sobs came from her breast.
At sight of him, standing up from his bed, she made a quick movement to draw back, but Roscoe reached out his hands with a low cry of pleasure. "Oachi," he cried softly. "Come in!" He spoke in French, and Oachi's face lighted up like sunlight. "I am better," he said. "I am well. I want to thank you and the others." He made a step toward her, and the strength of his left leg gave way.
And then Roscoe spoke of Oachi, his daughter, and for the first time the iron lines of the chief's bronze face seemed to soften, and his head bent over a little, and his shoulders drooped. Not until then did Roscoe learn the depths of sorrow hidden behind the splendid strength of the starving man. Oachi's mother had been a French woman.
In spite of his mightiest effort a tightening fist seemed choking him. "I am coming back some day," he managed. Oachi smiled, with the glory of the morning sun in her eyes and hair. She turned, still smiling, and pointed far to the west. "And some day the Valley of Silent Men will awaken," she said, and reëntered her father's tepee.
He told himself the truth with brutal directness. Before him he saw another work in his books, but of a different kind; and each hour that passed added to the conviction within him that at last that work would prove a failure. He went off alone into the forest when they camped, early in the afternoon, and thought of Oachi, who would mourn him until the end of time. And he could he forget?
She cut it into quarters, and with one of the pieces the elder man went out again into the night. The younger man spoke to the girl. He called her Oachi, and to Roscoe's astonishment spoke in French. "If they do not come back, or if we do not find meat in seven days," he said, "we will die." Roscoe made an effort to rise, and the effort sent a rush of fire into his head.
He saw in Oachi love and life as they might have been for him; but beyond them he also saw, like a grim and threatening hand, a vision of cities, of toiling millions, of a great work just begun a vision of life as it was intended that he should live it; and to shut it out from him he bowed his head in his two hands, overwhelmed by a new grief.
What if he had yielded to temptation, and had taken Oachi with him? She would have come. He knew that. She would have sacrificed herself to him forever, would have gone with him into a life which she could not understand, and would never understand, satisfied to live in his love alone.
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