"
"What if she does? She ought to carry a few bird-shot, too. She's got nothing
to mourn about--nobody's died, has there?
"Hiu-hiu-hia-a-a,ah! Hia-a-a-a-ah!" wailed Annie-Many-Ponies in her tent,
because she would never again look upon the face of Wagalexa Conka--or if she
did it would be to see his anger blaze and burn her heart to ashes. To her it
was as though death sat beside her; the death of Wagalexa Conka's friendship
for her. She forgot his harshness because he thought her disobedient and
wicked. She forgot that she loved Ramon Chavez, and that he was rich and would
give her a fine home and much love. She forgot everything but that she had
sworn an oath and that she must keep it though it killed faith and kindness
and friendship as with a knife.
So she wailed, in high-keyed, minor chanting unearthly in its primitive
inarticulateness of sorrow, the chant of the Omaha mourning song. So had her
tribe wailed in the olden days when warriors returned to the villages and told
of their dead. So had her mother wailed when the Great Spirit took away her
first man-child. So had the squaws wailed in their tepees since the land was
young. And the little black dog, sitting on his haunches before her door,
pointed his moist nose into the sunlight and howled in mournful sympathy.
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