een expected; because
such a person commonly mistakes brutality for bravery.

Oddly enough, Tempest offered no resistance to the red man's plan, and
allowed himself to be burdened by the helpless Gaspar and led slowly
to the Indian village. There the party aroused less interest than the
Man-Who-Kills had anticipated, for other prisoners had already been
brought in and, besides this, something had occurred that seemed to
the women far more important.

This was the fresh grief of Wahneenah as she roamed from wigwam to
wigwam, searching for her adopted daughter and imploring help to find
her. For again the Sun Maid had disappeared, as suddenly and more
completely than on the previous day though after much the same manner.

The child had been attending her injured squirrel and giving her bowls
of orchids fresh drinks, upon the threshold mat of her new home, and
her indulgent foster-mother had gone to fetch from the stream the
water needed for the latter purpose. At the brook's edge she had
stopped, "just for a moment," to discuss with the other squaws the
news of the massacre that was fast coming to them by the straggling
bands of returning braves.

But the brief absence was long enough to have worked the mischief. The
small runaway had left her posies and her squirrel and departed,
nobody could guess whither.

Till at last again came Osceolo, the mischievous, and remarked,
indifferently:

"The Woman-Who-Mourns may save her steps. The White Papoose and the
Snowbird are far over the prairie while the women search."

"Osceolo! You are the son of the evil spirit! You bring distress in
your hand as a gift! But take care what you say now. You know, as I
know, that nobody can mount the White Snowbird and live. Or if one
could succeed and pass beyond the village borders, it would be a ride
to some far land whence there is no return. What is the mare,
Snowbird, but a creature bewitched? or the home of the soul of a dead
maiden, who would rather live thus with her people than without them
as a spirit in the Great Beyond? You know all this, and yet you tell
me----"

"That the Sun Maid is flying now on the Snowbird's back toward the
setting sun, who is her father."

"How do you know this?"

"I saw it."

"Who took her to the Snowbird's corral? Who? Osceolo, torment of our
tribe, it was you! It was you! Boy, do you know what you have done? Do
you know that out there, on the prairie where you have sent her, the
spirit of