It was true enough, Stone Girl told herself as they went. The earth was swallowing them up. Not even Getanitowit, He Who Is Above All, she thought, could peer down through the darkness and see her being taken away. At this bewitched hour nothing looked familiar. The path was a will-o’-the-wisp, the trees they passed under, phantoms. Strange bushes stood in the form of unknown beasts and opened their mouths at her as she went by. All she knew was that they tramped into the teeth of Lomache, the north wind, which blew from the Place of Dancing Wraiths far from the home village on the Waldhoning, or White Woman’s River.

From the beginning, the omens were not good. When daylight came, they passed old scalps hanging from a tree beside their path. The hair swayed dismally in the breeze. The following day they reached Smashed Head’s village. Dogs tried to tear them apart and nobody called them off. At Smashed Head’s cabin his wife said he was away in council with the Northward Indians and nobody knew, not even he himself, when he would be back. Espan asked for Smashed Head’s brother but he was gone, too. For a time, Espan stood thwarted, flicking no eyelash, waiting, reserved and proud. Then he went through the ceremony with Smashed Head’s wife, presenting his gift of strouding for her husband, telling her of his mission, reciting Stone Girl’s merits as a worker, and at the end announcing he must be back in his own village before the white soldiers came.

Stone Girl felt a sinking when he gave her and Otter Boy farewell. He was going home without them. She stood outside this unaccustomed cabin with her child in her arms and watched his figure depart, moving into the forest until he passed from sight and she could make out nothing more among the trees. But the rest of the day her mind went with him on the path, passing the places they had seen together, lying at night under the same high bank for warmth, all the time coming closer to the home village. At last she could see him on the familiar path climbing the yellow bluffs and now he reached their snug cabin. But their fire would be out, their bed cold, and the cabin lifeless without Otter Boy. Espan would have to go to his brother, Slow Day, for flame to warm him and something to eat.

The night was long and yet when morning came Stone Girl could sing to her son a little tune. The Indian words were meaningless but the air said, “It is all right now, Little Mouse. Night has passed. So will the long winter. The ugly white captain will go. The handsome red father will come. We must only endure like the stone.”

Then Smashed Head arrived home. He looked stern when he found Stone Girl and Otter Boy. As a Shawano his tongue was different but Stone Girl could understand him.