Part 26

"Surely thou hast named the pride of our nation--thou has described the Swift Foot," replied the prophet. "Call him hither."

They carried the message to the youthful warrior, who came with the speed of foot for which he was so well known, and stood by the side of the beautiful maiden from the Land of Snows. Though it was evident that she liked the young Brave, yet was not her love shown by the signs which usually give evidence of the existence of that tender passion. No blush lit up her snowy cheek, or flushed her lily neck, as it does the cheek and neck of maidens of the earth when pressed to the enraptured bosoms of those they love. No tear bedewed her eye, no trembling seized her frame, no throb of rapture lifted the snowy mantle that hid her bosom. Her body was bent slightly forward, her snowy lips were parted like a water-lily, about to unfold itself to the face of day, and her arms were extended as if they would press to her heart, all icy as it was, the noble warrior who stood at her side.

"Dost thou love me?" she faintly asked.

"Does the dove love his little mate? does the spring bud love the beams of the sun? does a mother love her first-born? does a warrior love the shout of a foe? I love thee more than words can express; let my actions show the deep affection I bear thee. The Swift Foot will make thee the wife of his bosom."

"Dost thou know who it is that thou wouldst wed?"

"A Spirit."

"Dost thou know that when thou shalt take me to thy bosom thou wilt embrace a form of ice? Thou art warm and impassioned, I chilled and chilling as the winds of winter, and frozen as the ice of the bleak Coppermine."

"Still will I dare the union. My love shall kindle in thy bosom a warmth equal to that which possesses mine own."

"My breath is the breath of the northern blast."

"And mine hath the warmth of the breeze which blows in summer from the land of never-failing verdure. Wilt thou, beautiful Spirit! be the wife of a Teton, who has more scalps in his lodge than fingers on his hands, who has struck dead bodies of six different nations, and stolen half the horses upon which his brother warriors ride to the combat?"

"I will--I am thine, brave warrior!"

"Thou art indeed cold, beautiful Spirit!" said the Teton, as he pressed the consenting maiden to his bosom for a moment, and then, shuddering with an icy chill, his teeth shaking like the rattles of a snake, put her from him. "But thou art mine, though it were death to embrace thee."

Again, summoning all his resolution, he held her to his heart. Then calling the women to him, the warrior bade them prepare a bridal feast. The youth and the maiden then went through the Indian form of marriage, and the beautiful spirit of the Laud of Snows became the wife of the Teton warrior.

With the sun of the next day the whole tribe gathered around the bridal cabin, eager to learn if the Spirit of the North still remained to bless the arms of her husband. Soon she appeared with her beloved Teton. But oh how changed! Her cheek and neck were now suffused with blushes as deep as those which stain the cheeks of mortal maidens; her hair had changed from a snowy whiteness to a glossy brown: she had become to all appearance a beautiful mortal. Ever and anon her eyes were fondly turned on the Swift Foot, who repaid her fond glances by pressing her now warm and ardent bosom to his own. The aged Nicanape again approached the pair, and asked the Spirit if she did not regret that she had left the regions of the skies to assume the attributes of mortality. With a fond glance at the object of her love, she replied that a single moon of bliss like that she now enjoyed was worth an eternity of the cold and passionless existence which was hers before she had quitted the skies. Again was she enfolded in the arms of the doating warrior, and the crowd retired to permit the full, and free, and undisturbed, interchange of those fond attentions, which are wont to occupy the first moon of married life.

And thus passed away the first year after the marriage of the Teton Brave with the beautiful Spirit of the frozen North. Ere that year had passed, there was a stranger in their cabin--a little son, with the wondrous beauty of its mother and the fearless soul of its father. Never was there a being so beloved as the Spirit-wife was by the whole nation. Though she now possessed the soul of a human being, her breast was visited only by the softer and purer passions of human nature; anger, revenge, cruelty, jealousy, and the other turbulent passions and emotions, never came near her gentle bosom. Her love for her husband grew with the growth of years, and strengthened with the progress of time; her pity and compassion for the poor, and hungry, and sick, and fainting, knew no bounds. Ever mild and affectionate, and kind, and humane, never prone to break the quiet of her cabin by those querulous complaints and angry invectives wherewith wives destroy the comfort of their husbands, and bring storms and tempests, hail, rain, thunder, and lightning, into the sky of domestic peace, the Teton loved her better than mortal ever before loved another. Her goodness not only brought joy and happiness to her husband, but benefits to the nation, which made their lives pass as pleasantly and glide along as smoothly as a canoe floating down a quiet stream in the time of summer. When the hunters would go to their forest sports and labours, they asked the wife of the Swift Foot if their hunt should be successful, and as she told them ay or no was their expedition undertaken or abandoned. When she bade the women plant the maize, they might be sure of the fair weather without which the task could not be well accomplished; when she cast her bright eyes on the sheaf of arrows rusting on the wall, the warriors without more ado rose, and prepared the corn and pemmican, and examined the condition of their bows and casse-tetes, and painted themselves with the ochre of wrath, and sang with a hollow and sepulchral voice their songs of war, and killed the fat dog, sacred to Areskoui, for they knew that the keen look of the Spirit-wife upon the instruments of death boded victory and glory to those who should employ them in the strife of warriors. On the contrary, if, tired with a long peace, one rose with the string of wampum(1) in his hand, and said to his brothers, "The blood of him whom our foes slew in such or such a moon is not yet wiped away; his corpse remains above the earth unburied; I go to wash the clotted gore from his breast, to give him the rites of sepulture, and to eat up the nation(2) by whom the base wrongs were done him"--if, having spoken thus, the Spirit-wife but cast her meek blue eye upon him, and suffered a sigh to pass her beautiful bosom, the speaker rose, and washed off the black paint, and effaced from his cheeks all traces of the bloody design by which he had been actuated, and declared that a kind bird had whispered in his ear that the "enemy were gone to the mountain streams for sturgeon," or, "to the plains of the Osage to gather bitter snow," or, "to the prairies of the Wisconsan to hunt the buffalo," or, "to the stormy lake of Michabou(3) to take the fish wherewith the god had so plentifully stocked it." The assembled warriors, knowing that he had a sufficient motive for changing his mind, would follow his example, and lay by the weapons of war to resume those of peace, without any inquiry why he had changed his mind. And thus, more by soft persuasion, and kind entreaties, and wise prophecies, than by stern commands, and bitter denunciations, the beautiful Spirit-wife ruled the Burntwood Tetons to their glory and happiness.

Yet, with all her love for her husband, and her children, of whom in ten springs ten stood in their father's cabin, she appeared at times to be far from happy. It was observed that nothing could induce her to go abroad after darkness had veiled the earth. When the robe of night was thrown over the face of things, then the Spirit-wife would be found seated in the darkest corner of her dwelling, nor could entreaties draw her out. Insensible to fear, while the sun shone, the moment it disappeared, her cheek became pallid as death; and if, during the period of darkness, there happened a high wind from the north, and a fall of hail, her agony knew no bounds, and excessive trembling would for awhile deprive her of the power to move, and almost to utter intelligible sounds. Her husband asked her wherefore this trembling, but could gain no answer. And thus time passed away.

The snows of ten winters had fallen to rush to the embrace of the rivers, and black clouds, and cold winds, and falling leaves, were betokening the near approach of the eleventh, when, upon a clear and starry night, a stranger, wearing a garment which glittered like ice upon which the sun is shining, and whose hair was a body of icicles, entered the village of the Tetons. He was of very small stature, being scarcely taller than the child who has seen twelve harvests: and his limbs and features were proportionably small. The colour of his skin, and the robe which he wore, as well as the shape of the latter, so nearly resembled those of the Spirit-wife on the morning she came to the Teton village, that all deemed they were of the same nation, perhaps brother and sister. When they asked the stranger who he was, and why he had come hither, he made no answer, but to the question said, with a voice that sounded like the wind of the Cold Moon:

"Have you seen my wife?"

"Wife?--What wife?" demanded the chief.

"She who yesterday fled from my arms--the beautiful Spirit of Snow."

"Ten seasons have passed," said the chief, "and the eleventh is near at hand, since there came among us a being, exceedingly beautiful, and habited much like him to whom the great chief of the Tetons is now speaking. She has become the wife of one of my Braves. Was she thine ere she was his?"

"Ten of thy seasons are but a day, nay, but an hour, nay, but a minute, in the eyes of spirits. In my computation, it was yesterday that the fair Spirit of Snow left my bosom."

"And who art thou?"

"The Spirit of Tempests--the ruler over the realms of the bleak north; he who harnesses his horses to the east winds, and drives the furious whirlwind and crashing tempest over the lands of the affrighted Tetons and their forest brothers."

"Thou seemest too small of stature to undertake wrathful purposes, and all unfit to represent the mighty winds that rend the stubborn oak, and the fierce tempests that scatter yet wilder desolation," said the Teton chief, surveying, almost contemptuously, the diminutive form of the strange Spirit.

"Tax but my powers--excite but my ire," said the demon, "and the chief of the Burntwood Tetons may rue the hour that gave birth to his doubts of the strength of the master of the northern blast. But why do I waste words upon thee? Bring hither my wicked wife."

Seeing the angry and ireful Spirit determined upon mischief, the chief departed, his bosom filled with sorrow, to summon the beautiful and beloved Spirit of Snow to the presence of the being who claimed her as his wife. He found her not unapprised of the dreadful fate which awaited her. Bathed in tears, her head reclined on the shoulder of the doting Teton, sat the lovely Spirit, her eyes now bent on him she loved so fondly, and now on their beautiful children, who slept all unconscious of the grief which wrung their fond mother's bosom. At length, with sudden resolution, she rose from her seat, and, folding the beloved warrior to her breast in one long and passionate embrace, she left the cabin.

"I have found thee at last," exclaimed the angry ruler of tempests, as the beautiful woman approached him. "Thou, who fledst from my arms to those of an earthly paramour, how dost thou like the exchange?"