to her spirit-mother:
"Look down from your _teepee_, O starry spirit.
The cry of Wiwaste. O mother, hear it;
And touch the heart of my cruel father.
He hearkened not to a virgin's words;
He listened not to a daughter's wail.
O give me the wings of the thunder-birds,
For his were wolves[52] follow Wiwaste's trail;
And guide my flight to the far _Hohe_--
To the sheltering lodge of my brave Chaske."

The shadows paled in the hazy east,
And the light of the kindling morn increased.
The pale-faced stars fled one by one,
And hid in the vast from the rising sun.
From woods and waters and welkin soon
Fled the hovering mists of the vanished moon.
The young robins chirped in their feathery beds,
The loon's song shrilled like a winding horn,
And the green hills lifted their dewy heads
To greet the god of the rising morn.
She reached the rim of the rolling prairie--
The boundless ocean of solitude;
She hid in the feathery hazel-wood,
For her heart was sick and her feet were weary;
She fain would rest, and she needed food.
Alone by the billowy, boundless prairies,
She plucked the cones of the scarlet berries;
In feathering copse and the grassy field
She found the bulbs of the young _Tipsanna_,[43]
And the sweet _medo_ [64] that the meadows yield.
With the precious gift of his priceless manna
God fed his fainting and famished child.

At night again to the northward far
She followed the torch of Waziya's star;
For leagues away o'er the prairies green,
On the billowy vast, may a man be seen,
When the sun is high and the stars are low;
And the sable breast of the strutting crow
Looms up like the form of the buffalo.
The Bloody River [40] she reached at last,
And boldly walked in the light of day,
On the level plain of the valley vast;
Nor thought of the terrible Chippeway.
She was safe from the wolves of her father's band,
But she trod on the treacherous "Bloody Land."

[Illustration]

And lo--from afar o'er the level plain--
As far as the sails of a ship at sea
May be seen as they lift from the rolling main--
A band of warriors rode rapidly.
She shadowed her eyes with her sun-browned hand;
All backward streamed on the wind her hair,
And terror spread o'er her visage fair,
As she bent her brow to the far-off band.
For she thought of the terrible Chippeway--
The fiends that the babe and the mother slay;
And yonder they came in their war-array!

She hid like a grouse in the meadow-grass,
And moaned--"I am lost!-