He will come; he will come...

He will come; he will come; He will come, for he promised. My White Eagle, he will come; He will come, for he promised ——

My White Eagle. Thus sadly she chanted, and lo — allured by her sorrowful accents — From the dark covert crept a red roe

and wonderingly gazed on Winona. Then swift caught the huntress her bow; from her trembling hand hummed the keen arrow. Up-leaped the red roebuck and fled,

but the white snow was sprinkled with scarlet, And he fell in the oak thicket dead. On the trail ran the eager Winona. Half-famished the raw flesh she ate.

To the hungry maid sweet was her supper Then swift through the night ran her feet, and she trailed the sleek roebuck behind her; And the guide of her steps was a star —

the cold-glinting star of Wazíya — Over meadow and hilltop afar, on the way to the lodge of her father. But hark! on the keen frosty air

wind the shrill hunger-howls of the gray-wolves! And nearer,— still nearer!— the blood of the deer have they scented and follow; Through the thicket, the meadow, the wood,

dash the pack on the trail of Winona. Swift she speeds with her burden, but swift on her track fly the minions of famine; Now they yell on the view from the drift,

in the reeds at the marge of the meadow; Red gleam their wild, ravenous eyes, for they see on the hill-side their supper; The dark forest echoes their cries,

but her heart is the heart of a warrior. From its sheath snatched Winona her knife, and a leg from the roebuck she severed; With the carcass she ran for her life,—

to a low-branching oak ran the maiden; Round the deer's neck her head-strap was tied; swiftly she sprang to the arms of the oak-tree; Quick her burden she drew to her side,

and higher she clomb on the branches, While the maddened wolves battled and bled, dealing death o'er the leg to each other; Their keen fangs devouring the dead,—

yea, devouring the flesh of the living, They raved and they gnashed and they growled, like the fiends in the regions infernal; The wide night re-echoing howled,

and the hoarse North-wind laughed o'er the slaughter. But their ravenous maws unappeased by the blood and the flesh of their fellows, To the cold wind their muzzles they raised,

and the trail to the oak-tree they followed. Round and round it they howled for the prey, madly leaping and snarling and snapping; But the brave maiden's keen arrows slay,

till the dead number more than the living. All the long, dreary night-time, at bay, in the oak sat the shivering Winona; But the sun gleamed at last, and away

skulked the gray cowards down through the forest. Then down dropped the deer and the maid. Ere the sun reached the midst of his journey, Her red, welcome burden she laid

at the feet of her famishing father. Wazíya's wild wrath was appeased, and homeward he turned to his teepee, O'er the plains and the forest-land breezed

from the Islands of Summer the South-wind. From their dens came the coon and the bear; o'er the snow through the woodlands they wandered; On her snow-shoes with stout bow and spear

on their trails ran the huntress Winona. The coon to his den in the tree, and the bear to his burrow she followed; A brave, skillful hunter was she,

and Ta-té-psin's lodge laughed with abundance.