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Updated: June 2, 2025
They came in again at night, when the fire was sending red and yellow lights up and down the tepee walls, and the more he watched Oachi the stronger there grew within him something that seemed to gnaw and gripe with a dull sort of pain. Oachi was beautiful. He had never seen hair like her hair. He had never before seen eyes more beautiful.
Once more there was sound, the pulse and beat of a life that moves in darkness. In the camp the Indian grew restless with the thought that Roscoe had wandered away until he was lost. So at last he fired his rifle. Oachi started in Roscoe's arms. "You should go back alone," she whispered. The old, fluttering love-note was in her voice, sweeter than the sweetest music to Roscoe Cummins.
She looked at him for a moment as though she did not quite understand what he had said, and he repeated the words. Even as he was speaking he marvelled at the fairness of her skin, which shone with a pink flush, and at the softness and beauty of her hair. What he saw impelled him to ask, as she made to rise: "Your father your mother is French. Is that so, Oachi?"
He had ventured farther away than the others, and had found a moose-yard. He had killed two of the animals. The days of famine were over. Oachi brought the first news to Roscoe. Her face was radiant with joy, her eyes burned like stars, and in her excitement she stretched out her arms to him as she cried out the wonderful news. Roscoe took her two hands. "Is it true, Oachi?" he asked.
And it would be a sacrifice. He tried to speak firmly. "Oachi," he said, "I am nearly well enough to travel now. I have spent pleasant weeks with you, weeks which I shall never forget. But it is time for me to go back to my people. They are expecting me. They are waiting for me, and wondering at my absence. I am as you would be if you were down there in a great city. So I must go.
He heard only the soft little note in Oachi's throat that filled him with such an exquisite sensation, and he wondered what music would be if it could find expression through a voice like hers. "Oachi," he asked softly, "why did you never sing?" The girl looked at him in silence for a moment. "We starve," she said. She swept her hand toward the door of the tepee. "We starve die there is no song."
He turned her face up, and held it between his two hands. "If I go there," he said, pointing for a moment into the south, "I go alone. But if I go there " and he pointed into the north "I go with you. Oachi, my beloved, I am going with you." He drew her close again, and asked, almost in a whisper: "And when we awaken in the Valley of Silent Men, how shall it be, my Oachi?"
Its sounds spoke to him still of grief, of the suffering that would never know end; and yet there trembled in them a note of happiness and of content. Beside the campfire it came to him that in this world he had discovered two things a suffering that he had never known, and a peace he had never known. And Oachi stood for them both. He thought of her until drowsiness drew a pale film over his eyes.
In Oachi's hair the firelight glistened with a dull radiance. There was quiet, and yet Roscoe still heard the voice. He knew that he would always hear it, that it would never die. Not until long afterward did he know that Oachi had sung to him the great love song of the Crees. That night and the next day, and the terrible night and day that followed, Roscoe fought with himself.
In her eyes was love such as falls from the heavens. But her face was as white as a mask. "Oachi!" With a cry Roscoe reached out his arms. But Oachi was gone. At last the Cree girl understood. Three days later there came in the passing of a single day and night the splendour of northern spring. The sun rose warm and golden.
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