The red feathers

All went well with the baby in the good magician’s lodge. He remembered nothing of the world and the people that were without the magic walls; and yet, when Run-all-day visited him, he knew him and ran to him. His days were full of quiet play and happy, childish fancies. The wonderful pictures on the walls were his playmates; and he learned their meanings, gradually but without effort. He felt no loneliness or fear, even when Wise-as-a-she-wolf was away from the lodge. But he was seldom alone, for the magician was so happy in the company of his adopted baby that he forgot many of his great affairs in the world. He would lie awake all night, planning games, wonderful, magic games, to play with the little fellow next day. And he painted some more pictures on the walls, thus expanding the great lesson-book. He painted the flight of Jumping Wolf through the wilderness, and the young warrior’s rescue from the ice, all in the magic pigments that made them true as real earth and real water and clear as sunlight. So the baby, toddling from picture to picture, absorbed knowledge of men and beasts, of battles and the chase, of gentleness and honesty, and of the ugliness of evil.

In August, a stranger arrived at Run-all-day’s village and asked to be allowed to remain and become a member of the new clan. He was of darker complexion than was usual among the islanders and his hair was black and straight. He gave his name as Spotted Seal. He said that he had been born far in the west, close to the shore of the Narrow Sea, and had been a lonely warrior all his life. Run-all-day did not accept him at once, but allowed him to fish and hunt with the villagers, so that he might prove himself a safe and worthy man. Spotted Seal soon won the respect of the clansmen, in spite of his black, shifting eyes; for he was a good worker and a strong man with all manner of weapons. He was a cunning and tireless hunter, and skilled in the management of canoes.

Spotted Seal had not been an inmate of the village many days, when he heard some gossip of the red feathers, from old Green Bow. He showed no interest in the subject, indifferently mending a fishing-line while Green Bow told of the wonderful power of the feathers; of how he had seen the chief slip them into his moccasins; of how it was rumoured that Red Willow took care of them and kept them in a leathern bag, along with other of her precious possessions. Spotted Seal looked indifferent, all the while the old man talked, but his heart was thumping madly. He had a slight knowledge of magic, and a great desire to enlarge that knowledge. He was ambitious of power; and this talk of the magic feathers, which carried a man through the air like the wings of a hawk, filled him with a fever of covetousness. But he did not show his emotions by so much as the flicker of an eyelash; and yet it was for this very thing that he had come to the village. He had heard something of Run-all-day’s power of flight, in a vague, roundabout way, and so had travelled many days to investigate the secret of the matter. He had never heard of the chief of the distant village as a magician, and he could not believe that he was possessed of the famous moccasins of the wind. Now he was glad to hear that the wonder lay in two small feathers and not in the chief’s own person, for it would be an easier matter to steal feathers from a man than wisdom out of his brain.

So Spotted Seal began to spy on the chief’s lodge, creeping and peering about at all hours of the night. At last he was rewarded for his exertions by seeing Red Willow take the feathers from the bag, smooth them tenderly between her fingers, and return them to their hiding-place. Then he saw her place the bag under the skins on Run-all-day’s couch. His eager glance took note of the exact spot where she hid the bag. It was a small bag, of white leather, decorated with designs worked in dyed porcupine quills. As the night was still young, he stole away and joined some other men at the fire, and calmly listened to their stories and took part in their talk.

In that darkest hour before the first glimmer of dawn, Spotted Seal crawled to the closed entrance of the chief’s lodge, and lay, for nearly a minute, with his ear at the bottom of the great flap of hide. He heard no sound from within, save the gentle and regular breathing of the sleepers. He raised the flap a little, very cautiously, and thrust his head under it. Inch by inch, and without the slightest sound, he wormed himself beneath the edge of the hide and into the lodge. Then again he lay still for some time, listening, straining his eyes against the blackness, and drawing his breath guardedly. Again he advanced, crawling almost flat, with one hand held in front of him so lightly that, should it touch a sleeper, it would give no shock of contact. At last he felt that he was beside the couch on which lay the chief. He could hear that warrior’s breath, close in his ears, and he trembled. Now his hand touched the furs, and slipped beneath them and encountered the precious bag that contained the red feathers. At that, his heart thumped so heavily that it deafened his ears against the sound of the chief’s breathing. For what seemed a long time to him, he crouched, motionless, beside the couch, with one hand on the bag of leather. But at last he gathered courage to draw it forth. He heard the chief stir uneasily; then lie quiet again. Some one, evidently a child, whimpered in its dreams. He turned and crawled back toward the entrance of the lodge, lifted the flap of hide again and wriggled under it and out to the wider blackness of the open. After moving away from the lodge for a short distance, he seated himself on a boulder, opened the bag and thrust his hand within. He soon discovered the red feathers among needles of bone, trinkets of shell and jasper, and other such trifles. He placed one in the sole of each of his moccasins, and tied them securely to his feet.

Spotted Seal stood up and looked about him. The sky, the forests, and the earth at his feet, were all massed in a vast blackness. A little stirring of wind, but newly arisen, moved around him. He shivered, though the air was mild. Thought of the potent magic against the soles of his feet, and of the terrific flight which he had the power to take, up and across the blackness, shook his heart and unstrung his muscles. For a moment he wished that he had not taken the feathers, and even thought of returning them to the chief’s lodge. But no, he would not again face the danger of entering that lodge and crawling about so near to that strong warrior. And the feathers were a great prize, surely one of the greatest possessions in the world. And now they were his.

“I am a coward,” he whispered, huskily. “I have run the risk of my life in stealing the feathers from the chief’s couch, from under his body; and now I have not the courage to use them. It is so dark; but when daylight comes I shall fly into the air like a bird.”

But he knew that it would not be safe for him to wait, so near the village, for morning. The chief might awake at any moment and discover the absence of the precious feathers; and if that should happen—well, Spotted Seal had been long enough in Run-all-day’s village to learn to fear that big warrior’s displeasure. So he turned his face from the quiet lodges and set out through the darkness. After having travelled for more than a mile, he halted suddenly and uttered an exclamation of disgust. He had come away from the village with no weapons except the short flint knife in his belt. The great undertaking of stealing the bag from the chief’s lodge had driven all thought of bow, spear, and arrows from his mind. The day was breaking now, in a clear, colourless streak along the east. Would he return to the village, and to his own lodge, and arm himself? The people would still be asleep, and the magic feathers were on his feet. Yes, he would go back, for he had left many trusty weapons in his lodge, and fish-hooks of bone, and some good fish-lines. Even if a man can fly like a bird, he reflected, still he must hunt and fish, if he would live.

So Spotted Seal turned back toward the village, from which he had stolen so fearfully but a little while before. The light of day increased swiftly, flooding the eastern sky with crimson and bright gold. Spotted Seal quickened his pace, afraid that the village might be astir by the time he should reach it. Soon he was able to see the lodges in front, between the ranks of the forests, the sunlight gleaming on their peaks. Now he advanced more cautiously, and was about to issue from the trees when a loud cry caused him to halt and crouch like a startled animal.

The cry was from the lips of Run-all-day, who had discovered that the bag in which the magic feathers were kept was gone from beneath the skins on his couch. Next moment, he ran from his lodge, and shouted for the men of the village, old and young, to gather in all haste. They were before him within the minute, wondering but ready. He glanced over them quickly.

“Where is Spotted Seal?” he asked. “Go to his lodge and find him.”

The warriors rushed to the lodge of the stranger, tore it open, and shouted that it was empty; and at the same moment Spotted Seal turned from his contemplation of the scene and started to run. But he had forgotten the feathers in his moccasins. The first stride lifted him from the ground and dashed him among the tree-tops. He uttered a loud scream of amazement and fear, which was answered angrily from the village. The voices of the warriors, lifted in fierce and eager hunting-cries, steadied his wits. He sprang clear of the trees and soared away to the southward. The people of Run-all-day’s village beheld him thus mount into their view and then fly swiftly beyond it; and they sent a howl of rage and a few harmless arrows after him.

Spotted Seal felt like a man in the clutches of an awful dream, during the first few minutes of his flight. The world—river, forest, and hill—sped backward beneath him with sickening velocity. The air sang in his ears, and his breath seemed beaten back against mouth and nostrils. The glory of the morning and the rushing air upon his eyeballs, almost blinded him, and the fear of falling to earth was so strong in him that he continued, for some time, to exert every muscle, like a runner in a race.

But, in time, he slackened his pace, for very weariness, and then he found that he could continue in the air with but little effort and no discomfort. He scarcely moved his feet, and yet sailed pleasantly and safely above the forests. His eyes cleared and his breath came back to him. He swooped gently toward the earth and swerved easily up again, finding this manner of flight to be as pleasant as it was amazing. He circled high; he flew this way and that; he ran across the tops of the forest trees, just touching them with his feet. But he continued to increase the distance between himself and the village.

It was not until noon that Spotted Seal felt the gnawings of hunger, and realized that the knife in his belt was the only weapon in his possession. But now he felt no fear of starving, and cared no more for the loss of his bow and arrow than if meat was to be picked from the ground, like berries. He would hunt as hawks hunt, with the advantage that no cover of brush or branches could cheat him of his quarry. So he flew low, and kept a sharp watch. A covey of grouse flew up from a barren and lit in a thicket of small spruces. He swooped down and beat the tops of the trees with a short stick, hovering above them all the while. Out flew the grouse, in all directions; and in a moment one had received a sharp blow from the stick and lay dead on the ground. Another was soon killed by the same means. Then Spotted Seal chose a nook that suited him, lit a fire, and set to work to cook his belated breakfast.