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Updated: April 30, 2025
While with shrill cries two or three of the women gathered the little ones together, the rest pulled frantically at the poles holding each tepee in place. Still apparently quite unmoved, Wildenai sought first her father standing surprised but unafraid in the doorway of his lodge. Tall and spare and stern he looked, straight as some lonely pine on the slopes of distant San Jacinto.
"Wildenai will wear them always, senor lord," she answered softly, "for now she knows that truly you did mean to keep your word!" And so, his mission accomplished, her guest rose hastily to his feet. He must return immediately to the ship. "Know you not, then, that it is gone?" exclaimed the girl, amazed. "Gone?" echoed young Harold, and stared at her astounded.
But the flush remained, nevertheless, on the dark cheek of the young nobleman as he strode angrily from the deck. The moonlight had laid a quivering path of light across the water before Wildenai raised her bowed head from the ground.
"Wildenai, little wild rose," he began again, "what thou hast asked of me thou dost well know thyself is an unheard of thing. Much as I owe to thee, and well know I that 'tis so much I never can repay it; still for thine own sweet sake 'tis not in this way thy reward must come. The long journey and the strange new life would kill thee, Wildenai."
Then even such impatience as was his gave way, for the moment at least, to something more chivalric. He stooped and patted awkwardly the smooth black head. "Come, Wildenai, little wild rose, look up and speak to me. I must be going!" But still the maid lay prostrate, clasping close his rough buskins in her little brown hands. Never in all his life had Lord Harold been so sorely uncomfortable.
Wildenai alone made no change except to bind the satin black of her hair still more smoothly within a fillet of silver. In the center of the band, so that it rested just above her brow, a strange device appeared, a circle enclosing many rays, the royal insignia of the tribe which only the daughter of the chief might wear.
Then, perceiving the dark eyes of the princess fixed wistfully upon him, he hesitated and, obeying a sudden impulse, he stepped hastily to her side. "When they return with the gift for thy father," he whispered, "I will come with them," he smiled into her soft eyes shining with pleased surprise, "and I will bring a gift to thee as well, oh Wildenai, fairest of maidens!"
Let but an Englishman set foot again on Punagwandah and, swifter than the arrow leaves the bowstring, he dies!" And at once, without answer, in the silence of suffering which only the wild things of the earth understand, Wildenai crept from the lodge, her heart heavy with its own bitter disappointment. Noiselessly she passed among the tepees where her father's people slept.
"I will catch fish with thee next time thou goest," declared young Harold later as they ate together. "There's no reason I can see why I should stay mewed up forever in this cave. I fear not Indians! No, not even Torquam, thy father, himself." For an instant Wildenai seemed alarmed. Then she laughed. "You are afraid of nothing. I knew it!" she exclaimed with pride. "Nor would there be much danger.
"Doubtest thou then, my motherless one, the judgment of him who loves thee?" he asked. "I doubt it not, my father," answered his daughter. "Yet would I not wed with the Spaniard," she added stubbornly. "The blue-eyed senor from England" there was a hint of humor in his tone, "he it is who steals thy fancy! Is it not so, my Wildenai?"
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