d
injured itself so severely that it was likely to die. When Waukewa saw
it he was about to drive one of his sharp arrows through its body, for
the passion of the hunter was strong in him, and the eagle plunders many
a fine fish from the Indian's drying-frame. But a gentler impulse came
to him as he saw the young bird quivering with pain and fright at his
feet, and he slowly unbent his bow, put the arrow in his quiver, and
stooped over the panting eaglet. For fully a minute the wild eyes of the
wounded bird and the eyes of the Indian boy, growing gentler and softer
as he gazed, looked into one another. Then the struggling and panting of
the young eagle ceased; the wild, frightened look passed out of its
eyes, and it suffered Waukewa to pass his hand gently over its ruffled
and draggled feathers. The fierce instinct to fight, to defend its
threatened life, yielded to the charm of the tenderness and pity
expressed in the boy's eyes; and from that moment Waukewa and the eagle
were friends.

Waukewa went slowly home to his father's lodge, bearing the wounded
eaglet in his arms. He carried it so gently that the broken wing gave no
twinge of pain, and the bird lay perfectly still, never offering to
strike with its sharp beak the hands that clasped it.

Warming some water over the fire at the lodge, Waukewa bathed the broken
wing of the eagle and bound it up with soft strips of skin. Then he made
a nest of ferns and grass inside the lodge, and laid the bird in it. The
boy's mother looked on with shining eyes. Her heart was very tender.
From girlhood she had loved all the creatures of the woods, and it
pleased her to see some of her own gentle spirit waking in the boy.

When Waukewa's father returned from hunting, he would have caught
up the young eagle and wrung its neck. But the boy pleaded with him so
eagerly, stooping over the captive and defending it with his small
hands, that the stern warrior laughed and called him his "little
squaw-heart." "Keep it, then," he said, "and nurse it until it is well.
But then you must let it go, for we will not raise up a thief in the
lodges." So Waukewa promised that when the eagle's wing was healed and
grown so that it could fly, he would carry it forth and give it its
freedom.

It was a month--or, as the Indians say, a moon--before the young eagle's
wing had fully mended and the bird was old enough and strong enough to
fly. And in the meantime Waukewa cared for it and fed it daily, a