Thunder Rolling in the Mountains

Red Elk allows Swan Necklace and Sound of Running Feet to stay in his tent with his wife Alighting Dove and son Charging Hawk. The tribe gives them clothes and food, and Sound of Running Feet finally allows herself to relax. They leave the next morning. As they walk away, Sound of Running Feet hears a sound behind them. Before she can react, Swan Necklace is on the ground dead from a wound in his neck. Charging Hawk, who has killed him, cleans his knife. Sound of Running Feet feels a noose around her neck, and everything goes black. She wakes in Red Elk’s tent. She does not know why they haven’t killed her. Alighting Dove leads her to the nearby stream and shows her Swan Necklace’s body, so she can bury him. Sound of Running Feet buries her fiancé in their wedding blanket: “I laid him in a shallow grave and chanted a song of mourning. The death of Swan Necklace had taken my heart away. In my breast where my heart once beat was a piece of cold stone” (116).