d Indians, glistening like snakes with oil and vermilion,
squatted around us, but they held themselves as lifeless as
marionettes. It was so still that I heard the snore of a sleeping dog
and the gulls in the harbor squawking over a floating fish. Father
Nouvel spoke very slowly. This was a real marriage, a sacrament, to
him.

As we turned from the ceremony, Onanguisse came forward. He was not
painted, but he wore a mantle of embroidered buffalo skin, and his
hair, which was dressed high with eagle's feathers, was powdered with
down from the breasts of white gulls. He stood in front of the woman.

"Listen," he said. "I speak to the white thrush. She cannot
understand my words, but her heart has called to my heart, and that
will teach her to know my meaning. Brethren, bear witness. An eagle
cares naught for a partridge, but an eagle calls to an eagle though
there be much water and many high rocks between. You know the lodge of
Onanguisse. It has fire, but no warmth. I am old, and age needs love
to warm it, but I am alone. First my wife, then my two sons, last of
all, at the time the chestnuts were in blossom, my daughter Mimi,--the
Master of Life called them one by one. I have washed my face, and I
have combed my hair, yet who can say I have not mourned? My life has
been as dead as the dried grass that thatches the muskrat's lodges.
When have any of you seen Onanguisse smile? Yet think not that I
stretch out my hands to the country of souls. I will live, and sit at
the council fire till many of you who are before me have evaporated
like smoke from a pipe. For I am of the race of the bear, and the bear
never yields while one drop of blood is left. And the Master of Life
has been kind. He has brought me at last a woman who has an eagle's
eyesight and a bear's endurance. She is worthy to be of my family. I
have waited for such an one. Her speech is strange, but her blood
answers mine. It is idle to mourn. I will replace the dead with the
living. This woman shall be no more the white thrush. She shall be
Mimi, the turtle dove, the daughter of Onanguisse. Brethren, bear
witness. Mimi is no longer dead. She stands here." He stepped closer
to the woman. "I give you this cloak that you may wrap me in your
memory," he went on. "I hereby confirm my words;" and thereupon, he
threw over her shoulders a long, shining mantle made of the small skins
of the white hare. It was a robe for an empress.