The Arrow-Maker Part 28

(_Still with her eyes on the_ CHIEF, _ignoring Seegooche._)

CHIEF

Chisera, I am an old man, and I knew your father. We had much good talk together--I am very old--but I am not blind in my judgment as I am in my eyes. In war-time there is but one law for those faithless to the tribal obligation. You know it.

THE CHISERA

(_Drawing her blanket._) I know it.

SEEGOOCHE

(_Dropping to the ground and beating the earth with her palms._) Do not, do not refuse it, wise one, friend of the Friend! What has Simwa done that you should destroy us?

THE CHISERA

_You ask me that, Seegooche?_

SEEGOOCHE

I know--you said--Such a small thing, Chisera. To love you a little before he loved my daughter. Young men do often so--and you were very fair and no doubt beguiled him--Ah, who could withstand you, daughter of the G.o.ds? (_Wheedling._) But your punishment is heavy upon him.

THE CHISERA

Is it so?

SEEGOOCHE

(_Thinking she has gained a point._) It is indeed as you said; he makes no more arrows, and his luck in the hunt is gone from him. And the men mock him. A war leader should not be mocked, Chisera.

THE CHISERA

No more should a friend of the G.o.ds, but Simwa mocked me.

SEEGOOCHE

(_Loosing hope._) He was mad, Chisera, he had eaten rattle-weed. But my daughter did not mock you. Think of my daughter!

THE CHISERA

When does your daughter ever think of me?

SEEGOOCHE

(_Broken and drooping._) Every day she thinks of you. When she is a-hungered, when her man brings her nothing from the hunt--as--you have said, Chisera. When she digs roots with the old women and no one prevents her for the sake of a child to be born.

THE CHISERA

(_With relish._) Does she dig roots?

SEEGOOCHE

With the barren women. Also her beauty goes, she is so thin with the famine.

THE CHISERA

(_Baring her arm._) I also am thin.

(_From this moment some perception of the pervasive misery of the situation enters her mind and begins to color her speech._)

CHIEF

Hunger and sickness and war have come into the camp because you kept not your heart, Chisera. Yet a greater than all these shall come upon you if you forget your tribal obligation.

THE CHISERA

(_Rising on one knee._) What obligation have I owed, Chief Rain Wind, and not remembered it?

CHIEF

That which lies upon all that have power with the Friend of the Soul of Man. Only the G.o.ds can save us, and only you know the true and acceptable road to them.

THE CHISERA

(_Rising and moving toward her hut._) I am overweary for the road; let Simwa find it.

(_An arrow, with a feather and a fragment of bark attached to it, is shot into the camp from the direction of the fighting._ PADAHOON _takes it up and carries it to the_ CHIEF, _the others crowding about._)

CHIEF

What was that?

PADAHOON

A message from the Fighting Men.

CHIEF

Read me the token.

PADAHOON

A vulture's feather and a bark of _whenonabe_. Defeat and flight.

WOMEN

Ai! Ai!

(_They throw up their arms in despair._)