THE HACKBERRY TREE TELLS HIS STORY 73 



successful lunge at him, when he drove his hunting 

 knife deep into the lithe body of the hunter. 



"With his life-blood mingling with the turbid 

 waters of the river, he released his hold on the spray 

 of flowers. This the warrior quickly seized and 

 swam back with it to the waiting Indian maiden. 

 As she saw this man returning to her with the token 

 of victory, when she had seen her lover climb the 

 opposite bank in the dim moonlight and cut it from 

 the tree, she knew at once that the commotion in 

 the water at the farther edge of the stream and the 

 fact that only one came back, meant that something 

 terrible had happened. So walking out into the 

 water knee-deep, she met the warrior, who gave her 

 the spray of dogwood blossoms, and, quick as a flash 

 of avenging lightning, she drew from her buckskin 

 tunic her own hunting knife, and drove it deep into 

 the warrior's treacherous heart. 



"Thinking that possibly she might find her lover, 

 she followed the stream down beyond the big bend, 

 and there, lodged against a log drift, she found him, 

 more dead than alive. With the blood of the hunter 

 and the warrior mingling with the moonlit waters 

 of the stream, the Indian maiden proclaimed the 

 name of the river to be the Vermilion, a name which 



