By day a spray of eagle's feathers waved over his
tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a sentry
at the doorway of a monarch.
It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of
subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel
Druse was a self-ordained exile.
These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn
together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the
West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the
springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the
ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of hunters
who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of wild animals
and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had seized
the comely women of their foes and made them their own. No thrill of the
hunter's trail now drew off the overflow of desire. In the days of rising
sap, there were only the young maidens or wives of their own tribe to
pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the springtime, Tekewani himself
had his own trials, for in his blood the old medicine stirred. His face
turned towards the prairie North and the mountain West where yet remained
the hunter's quarry; and he longed to be away with rifle and gun, with
his squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp-followers, to eat the
fruits of victory.
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