The red feathers

Jumping Wolf stumbled around the margin of the lake, felt the touch of a guiding hand on his arm, and saw, suddenly, the glowing windows of the magic lodge. Next moment, as the thing would happen in a dream, he stood within the bright room, staring at the living pictures on the walls and the lamps that burned so steadily and yet exhaled no smoke. He uttered an exclamation of wonder, happiness. Surely he had entered the lodge of the gods! Then he felt a light touch against his knee, and looking down beheld Run-all-day’s littlest baby smiling up at him.

“What is the message, friend, that you bring from the honest Run-all-day?” inquired the magician, who stood close at his elbow.

“I had forgotten it,” whispered the youth. “It seems a small matter, a thing to snap one’s fingers over, in this beautiful place,” and straightway his eyes began to wander along the walls again and up at the starlit roof.

“You have come a long journey,” said Wise-as-a-she-wolf, gently.

The young man sighed and withdrew his gaze from the picture of a battle.

“The red feathers are gone from the chief’s lodge, O mighty one,” he said. “They were stolen in the night, from the robes of the chief’s couch, by a stranger named Spotted Seal. We gave chase to the thief, for a matter of several miles, but he flew like a hawk. And Run-all-day could not leave the village, so he trusted me to bring you the word, mighty chief.”

The magician looked thoughtful, but not greatly disturbed. With Bright Robe reduced to harmlessness, he did not foresee any serious difficulty in recovering possession of the feathers.

“In which direction did Spotted Seal fly?” he asked.

“He started southward, master,” replied the youth.

“It is well that you arrived to-night,” said the magician, “for I intended to set out on a journey early in the morning.”

Jumping Wolf thought of how nearly he had given himself to slumber one noontime, and of how a few hours’ rest then would have delayed him so that he would not have reached the pine wood until after the magician’s departure, and so would not have found the magic lodge at all. But he said nothing of this.

“You go on a journey? Then what of the child?” he said.

“He will be safe and happy,” replied Wise-as-a-she-wolf. “Everything that he may require is at his hand, and he will not know that I am gone from him. But he will know well when I return, and will be glad of it.”

“I can believe that readily, great chief, for I myself could spend an hundred years in the contemplation of these wonderful pictures,” replied the young man.

“And yet,” said the other, thoughtfully, “this lodge was never so wonderful to me as it has become since I brought the baby to it. Now I find it hard to cross the threshold and go about my business in the world.”

But this was all lost upon Jumping Wolf, who was again intent on the contemplation of the pictures of life. There was a girl that reminded him of Singing Bird; and at last he caught sight of the newest picture, and beheld, with pride and wonder, himself on the sodden ice-cake, and the big canoe paddled by Run-all-day, and Singing Bird in the bow, slim and glowing as in her living flesh. Before that picture he stood fascinated, forgetful of the magician and his surroundings.

“Nowhere in the whole world is there such another as little Singing Bird,” he cried, very low, but with a quaver in his voice.

“And nowhere, north, east, south, or west, is there so great a magician as Youth,” said Wise-as-a-she-wolf, smiling somewhat pathetically.

The other looked at him swiftly; and though he did not understand, he felt a vague stirring of pity for the mighty one.

Early in the morning, the magician guided Jumping Wolf out of the forest of pines and faced him on his way. He gave him a store of food to last him three days.

“Tell the mother that all is well with the littlest warrior,” he said, “and say to the chief that I do not hold the loss of the feathers against him; but that, with the knowledge of them abroad among the people, I must keep them myself should I win them back, until such time as the child is ready to use them. Be guarded in your talk about this lodge of mine, and the way to it,” he added.

“May I not speak of its wonders to any one?” asked the young man.

“You need not sit with a silent tongue before the maid,” replied Wise-as-a-she-wolf. “I have been young, also,” he added, and turned upon the other a face as boyish as the warrior’s own.

Then they parted, one going southward and one eastward, and the silence of the wilderness fell again upon wood and barren. The magician walked like any common traveller, for a mile or more, pondering deeply. His thoughts were not of the red feathers, but of the little child playing by itself in the magic house. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” he murmured. “How he grows, day by day. And he loves me. My eyes require no magic keenness to see that he loves me.” He sat down on a mossy stone, and his mind was not on his affairs as the guardian of a nation. He thought of the child whom he had taken into his care; and he thought how happy a man might be, a chief of a little village, or even a fisher of cod, with a woman and children in his lodge. “I must not lead him too far in the knowledge of hidden things,” he reflected, “or else, in his power, he will miss the happiness that is his birthright.”

At last he got to his feet. “I must find those red feathers,” he said. “I must hasten in the search of Spotted Seal; and perhaps I can return to the littlest warrior before night.”

Then he hid himself in his magic and sprang into the air on the moccasins of the wind.

Wise-as-a-she-wolf flew fast and far, scanning the woods and hills and open places beneath his feet. He flashed, invisible, southward, eastward, and westward, and descended into many camps and villages, to look closely at their unsuspecting inhabitants. But nowhere did he find a man answering to Jumping Wolf’s description of Spotted Seal. Just before the time of sunset, he turned his face toward home, and flew with more eagerness than he had as yet exhibited during the day. He would continue his search for Spotted Seal in the morning; but now it was time for him to tell the story of one or other of the pictures to the littlest warrior. He felt no great anxiety concerning the feathers. He was sure to find them in a day or two, before the thief could accomplish much harm with them, even if he were so minded.

Wise-as-a-she-wolf spent the next day in a fruitless search for the red feathers. He sought far and wide, and made inquiries for Spotted Seal at several widely separated villages; but all this without any success. It was not until the fifth day of his search that an old fisherman, who lived on the coast of the Narrow Sea, told of how days before, he had been amazed to see a man running in the air, high above the salt water, running westward toward the hazy line of that distant shore.

The magician crossed the water without delay, flying unseen from under the very eyes of the astonished fisherman. He descended to the ground and took on his visible form, near the camp of a party of Mountain People. He walked into the camp, a modest, undersized youth, and in a second a dozen great wolf-dogs had sprung toward him, followed by several warriors. The dogs were huge beasts, more savage and fearless than their brothers, the timber wolves, and as strong of jaw and limb. But under the mild regard of the stranger’s clear eyes, they halted in their rush, turned and slunk away. The warriors were also savage in appearance, and long of limb and hair. They were dark of skin, and black of eye, like Spotted Seal. The truth is, Spotted Seal had the blood of these Mountain People strong in his veins; but how this thing had come about is apart from our story. The warriors, more courageous than the dogs, continued their advance upon the helpless-looking stranger.

“I would speak with Black Eagle,” said the magician, for these people were well known to him. At that they halted, eyeing him distrustfully.

“Black Eagle is our chief,” said one, an angular fellow, with sinister eyes, a scar on his chin, and a spear in his hand. He seemed to be watching, hungrily, for something to serve as an excuse for an attack on the visitor.

“Yes, he is your chief. I want to speak with him,” said the stranger, quietly.

“He is a mighty chief,” said the fellow with the scar on his chin. “He does not come to every one’s bidding. I will call an old woman to take your message.”

“Tell him that Wise-as-a-she-wolf is waiting to talk to him,” said the magician.

At that name the warriors were visibly disturbed, and several of them slunk away in much the same manner as the dogs had done a few minutes before.

But he of the scarred chin was of tougher courage. “It is not a difficult thing to mention a great name,” he said, sneering and alert.

“I must teach you caution,” said the magician, who, despite the goodness of his heart, could not bring himself to love these dark and bloodthirsty people. So, in a flash, he vanished from their sight. They uttered a shout of consternation, and the warrior with the sinister eyes and disfigured chin hurled his spear at the place where the stranger had stood. In the same instant of time he received a buffet on the head that laid him flat on the moss.

Black Eagle was soon brought to the magician, who now stood quietly, in his mild and visible form, calm as if nothing unusual had taken place. The chief greeted his visitor respectfully, for he knew him of old.

“Have you seen a man running on the air, as if he had the moccasins of the wind on his feet?” asked Wise-as-a-she-wolf.

“I saw such an one but two days ago. He was flying northward and westward, toward the Land of Giants,” replied the chief of the mountaineers.

Wise-as-a-she-wolf continued his journey immediately, and soon came to the borders of that desolate region known as the Land of Giants. Its inhabitants were people of tremendous stature and physical strength. They were stupidly savage, and so dull of wit that no argument, save that of heavier clubs than their own, could move them. And as they had never met with heavier clubs than their own, no man could remember that their darkened opinions had ever been changed by outside influence. The biggest and strongest man was always their chief; and he remained their chief for just so long as he continued to be bigger and stronger than any of his people. When illness or old age weakened him then his chieftainship ended, and perhaps his life, into the bargain. Wise-as-a-she-wolf knew these people well, though not favourably; so he paused in his flight and descended to the ground at some distance from the first of the great lodges. Still invisible, he advanced cautiously on foot toward the untidy and tremendous structure of tree-trunks in which dwelt the giant who had been chief of the people at the time of his last visit to the country. He had not gone more than a dozen paces before he was halted by the sight of a human body, a lifeless body, lying face-downward on the moss and stones. At first he thought it was the body of one of the Mountain People; but, upon drawing nearer, he saw that the garments of dressed leather, blood-stained and wrinkled on that stiffened form, were of the pattern common among the warriors of his own country beyond the Narrow Sea. The feet were bare, but one of the moccasins lay close by. Very gently he turned the body over; and the face of the dead man was that of Spotted Seal, as Jumping Wolf had described it to him.

Wise-as-a-she-wolf turned away from the pitiful thing and went on in the direction of the great lodge, the shapeless roof of which loomed above a grove of spruces on the summit of a hill. At last he issued from the grove and stood in front of, and at a safe distance away from, the entrance to the giant’s abode. This entrance was nearly half the height of the structure and wide in proportion. It looked more like the mouth of a den than the doorway of a human retreat. Bones of caribou and moose lay white on the trampled ground; but there was no sign of a cooking-fire to be seen. The giants ate their meat raw, and were never known to use fire even in winter, for the sake of its warmth. In the dusky interior, Wise-as-a-she-wolf detected the outline of a bulky figure.