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The Deer-killer had promised, day after day, that he would make her his wife, but he ever found a ready excuse; and now he was going on a long hunt, and she and her parents were to return to their village. His quiver was full of arrows, and his leggins were tightly girded upon him. Wenona's full heart was nigh bursting as she heard that the party were to leave to-morrow.
Wenona's face is pale, and her eyes are red like blood from weeping. The Deer-killer promised to make her his wife, and now that he has broken his word to her, he tells Wanska that he will never take another wife, but she cannot trust him." "Wanska was well named the Merry Heart," the warrior replied; "she laughs at Wenona and calls her a fool, and then she wishes me to marry her.
And her mother for once does not scold, for she remembers how she used to love to wander on the prairies, when her heart was as light and happy as her child's. When Wanska was told that the Deer-killer loved Wenona, no one heard her sighs, and for tears, she was too proud to shed any. Wenona's fault had met with ridicule and contempt; there was neither sympathy nor excuse found for her.
Now Wenona's party is getting on bravely, but the ball has been caught and thrown back by the other party. But at last it is decided. In the struggle for the ball, Harpstenah received a blow from an old squaw as dismal looking as herself, and Wenona catches the ball and throws it into the appointed place. The game is ended, and the medicine man comes forward to distribute the prizes.
But as the beauty and warmth of summer passed away, so did Wenona's strength begin to fail; the autumn wind, that swept rudely over the prairie flowers, so that they could not lift their heads above the tall grass, seemed to pass in anger over the wigwam of the old man for the eye of the Dahcotah maiden was losing its brightness, and her step was less firm, as she wandered with her brother in her native woods.
They might have noticed, however, that Wenona's face was pale, and her eyes red with weeping. She was idle too, while the others plaited busily, and there was a subdued look of sadness about her countenance, contrasting strangely with the merry faces of the others. "Why did you not tell Shah-co-pee what we were laughing at, Wenona?" said Wanska. "Your secret is known now.
I There are more high rocks than one on the banks of the Mississippi, and my heart is as strong as Wenona's. If you torment me so, to marry the Bear, I will do as she did in the house of spirits I shall have no more trouble." This threat silenced the grandmother for the time.
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff, still thinking more of the future than of the past or present, I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff, still thinking more of the future than of the past or present, I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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