He did not belong
to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and
vanishing days.
"Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes
smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in
black beside her.
"How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping
eyes.
"Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, coming close to him. "I
had to do it, and I did it."
"The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with a gesture
of awe.
"I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani."
"But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song
was his name for her.
"I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought hard,
oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was something
singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She spoke to
him as she never spoke to any other.
"Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much
seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to
see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the
rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul,
but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!"
"I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black
water," she urged gently.
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