"It is an abuse of hospitality; it is clandestine, wrong," he thought
bitterly. "And yet she is lonely, she needs me, and I must go to her;
but I will never go again."

Where he had met her before, he found her waiting for him now, a
small, graceful figure, standing in the shadow of the wood. She heard
his footsteps before he saw her, and the melancholy features were
transfigured with joy. She stood hesitating a moment like some shy
creature of the forest, then sprang eagerly forward to meet him.

"I knew you were coming!" she cried rapturously. "I felt your approach
long before I heard your footsteps."

"How is that?" said Cecil, holding her hands and looking down into her
radiant eyes. Something of the wild Indian mysticism flashed in them
as she replied:

"I cannot tell; I knew it! my spirit heard your steps long before my
ears could catch the sound. But oh!" she cried in sudden transition,
her face darkening, her eyes growing large and pathetic, "why did you
not come yesterday? I so longed for you and you did not come. It
seemed as if the day would never end. I thought that perhaps the
Indians had killed you; I thought it might be that I should never see
you again; and all the world grew dark as night, I felt so terribly
alone. Promise me you will never stay away so long again!"

"Never!" exclaimed Cecil, on the impulse of the moment. An instant
later he would have given the world to have recalled the word.

"I am so glad!" she cried, clapping her hands in girlish delight; and
he could not pain her by an explanation.

"After a while I will tell her how impossible it is for me to come
again," he thought. "I cannot tell her now." And he seized upon every
word and look of the lovely unconscious girl, with a hunger of heart
born of eight years' starvation.

"Now you must come with me to my lodge; you are my guest, and I shall
entertain you. I want you to look at my treasures."

Cecil went with her, wondering if they would meet Multnomah at her
lodge, and if so, what he would say. He felt that he was doing wrong,
yet so sweet was it to be in her presence, so much did her beauty fill
the mighty craving of his nature, that it was not possible for him to
tear himself away.

Some fifteen minutes' walk brought them to Wallulah's lodge. It was a
large building, made of bark set upright against a frame-work of
poles, and roofed with cedar boards,--in its external appearance like
all Willamette lodges. Several Indian girls, neatly dressed and of
more than ordinary intelligence, were busied in various employments
about the yard. They looked in surprise at the white man and their
mistress, but said nothing. The two entered the lodge. Cecil muttered
an exclamation of amazement as he crossed the threshold.

The interior was a glow of color, a bower of richness. Silken
tapestries draped and concealed the bark walls; the floor of trodden
earth was covered with a superbly figured carpet. It was like the hall
of some Asiatic palace. Cecil looked at Wallulah, and her eyes
sparkled with merriment at his bewildered expression. "I knew you
would be astonished," she cried. "Is not this as fair as anything in
your own land? No, wait till I show you another room!"

She led the way to an inner apartment, drew back the tapestry that
hung over the doorway, and bade him enter.

Never, not even at St. James or at Versailles, had he seen such
magnificence. The rich many-hued products of Oriental looms covered
the rough walls; the carpet was like a cushion; mirrors sparkling
with gems reflected his figure; luxurious divans invited to repose.
Everywhere his eye met graceful draperies and artistically blended
colors. Silk and gold combined to make up a scene that was like a
dream of fable. Cecil's dazzled eyes wandered over all this splendor,
then came back to Wallulah's face again.

"I have seen nothing like this in my own land, not even in the King's
palace. How came such beautiful things here among the Indians?"

"They were saved from the vessel that was wrecked. They were my
mother's, and she had them arranged thus. This was her lodge. It is
mine now. I have never entered any other. I have never been inside an
Indian wigwam. My mother forbade it, for fear that I might grow like
the savage occupants."

Cecil knew now how she had preserved her grace and refinement amid her
fierce and squalid surroundings. Again her face changed and the
wistful look came back. Her wild delicate nature seemed to change
every moment, to break out in a hundred varying impulses.

"I love beautiful things," she said, drawing a fold of tapestry
against her cheek. "They seem half human. I love to be among them and
feel their influence. These were my mother's, and it seems as if part
of her life was in them. Sometimes, after she died, I used to shut my
eyes and put my cheek against the soft hangings and try to think it
was the touch of her hand; or I would read from her favorite poets and
try to think that I heard her repeating them to me again!"

"Read!" exclaimed Cecil; "then you have books?"

"Oh, yes, I will show you all my treasures."

She went into another apartment and returned with a velvet case and a
richly enchased casket. She opened the case and took out several rolls
of parchment.

"Here they are, my dear old friends, that have told me so many
beautiful things."

Cecil unrolled them with a scholar's tenderness. Their touch thrilled
him; it was touching again some familiar hand parted from years ago.
The parchments were covered with strange characters, in a language
entirely unknown to him. The initial letters were splendidly
illuminated, the margins ornamented with elaborate designs. Cecil
gazed on the scrolls, as one who loves music but who is ignorant of
its technicalities might look at a sonata of Beethoven or an opera of
Wagner, and be moved by its suggested melodies.

"I cannot read it," he said a little sadly.

"Sometime I will teach you," she replied; "and you shall teach me your
own language, and we will talk in it instead of this wretched Indian
tongue."

"Tell me something about it now," asked Cecil, still gazing at the
unknown lines.

"Not now, there is so much else to talk about; but I will to-morrow."

To-morrow! The word pierced him like a knife. For him, a missionary
among barbarians, for her, the betrothed of a savage chief, the morrow
could bring only parting and woe; the sweet, fleeting present was all
they could hope for. For them there could be no to-morrow. Wallulah,
however, did not observe his dejection. She had opened the casket, and
now placed it between them as they sat together on the divan. One by
one, she took out the contents and displayed them. A magnificent
necklace of diamonds, another of pearls; rings, brooches, jewelled
bracelets, flashed their splendor on him. Totally ignorant of their
great value, she showed them only with a true woman's love of
beautiful things, showed them as artlessly as if they were but pretty
shells or flowers.

"Are they not bright?" she would say, holding them up to catch the
light. "How they sparkle!"

One she took up a little reluctantly. It was an opal, a very fine one.
She held it out, turning it in the light, so that he might see the
splendid jewel glow and pale.

"Is it not lovely?" she said; "like sun-tints on the snow. But my
mother said that in her land it is called the stone of misfortune. It
is beautiful, but it brings trouble with it."

He saw her fingers tremble nervously as they held it, and she dropped
it from them hurriedly into the casket, as if it were some bright
poisonous thing she dreaded to touch.

After a while, when Cecil had sufficiently admired the stones, she put
them back into the casket and took it and the parchments away. She
came back with her flute, and seating herself, looked at him closely.

"You are sad; there are heavy thoughts on your mind. How is that? He
who brings me sunshine must not carry a shadow on his own brow. Why
are you troubled?"

The trouble was that he realized now, and was compelled to acknowledge
to himself, that he loved this gentle, clinging girl, with a
passionate love; that he yearned to take her in his arms and shelter
her from the terrible savagery before her; and that he felt it could
not, must not be.

"It is but little," he replied. "Every heart has its burden, and
perhaps I have mine. It is the lot of man."

She looked at him with a vague uneasiness; her susceptible nature
responded dimly to the tumultuous emotions that he was trying by force
of will to shut up in his own heart.

"Trouble? Oh, do I not know how bitter it is! Tell me, what do your
people do when they have trouble? Do they cut off their hair and
blacken their faces, as the Indians do, when they lose one they
love?"

"No, they would scorn to do anything so degrading. He is counted
bravest who makes the least display of grief and yet always cherishes
a tender remembrance of the dead."

"So would I. My mother forbade me to cut off my hair or blacken my
face when she died, and so I did not, though some of the Indians
thought me bad for not doing so. And your people are not afraid to
talk of the dead?"

"Most certainly not. Why should we be? We know that they are in a
better world, and their memories are dear to us. It is very sweet
sometimes to talk of them."

"But the Willamettes never talk of their dead, for fear they may hear
their names spoken and come back. Why should they dread their coming
back? Ah, if my mother only _would_ come back! How I used to long and
pray for it!"

Cecil began to talk to her about the love and goodness of God. If he
could only see her sheltered in the Divine compassion, he could trust
her to slip from him into the unknown darkness of her future. She
listened earnestly.

"Your words are good," she said in her quaint phraseology; "and if
trouble comes to me again I shall remember them. But I am very happy
now."

The warmth and thankfulness of her glance sent through him a great
thrill of blended joy and pain.

"You forget," he said, forcing himself to be calm, "that you are soon
to leave your home and become the wife of Snoqualmie."

Wallulah raised her hand as if to ward off a blow, her features
quivering with pain. She tried to reply, but for an instant the words
faltered on her lips. He saw it, and a fierce delight leaped up in his
heart. "She does not love him, it is I whom she cares for," he
thought; and then he thrust the thought down in indignant
self-reproach.

"I do not care for Snoqualmie; I once thought I did, but--"

She hesitated, the quick color flushed her face; for the first time
she seemed in part, though not altogether, aware of why she had
changed.

For an instant Cecil felt as if he must speak; but the consequences
rose before him while the words were almost on his lips. If he spoke
and won her love, Multnomah would force her into a marriage with
Snoqualmie just the same; and if the iron despot were to consent and
give her to Cecil, the result would be a bloody war with Snoqualmie.

"I cannot, I must not," thought Cecil. He rose to his feet; his one
impulse was to get away, to fight out the battle with himself.
Wallulah grew pale.

"You are going?" she said, rising also. "Something in your face tells
me you are not coming back," and she looked at him with strained, sad,
wistful eyes.

He stood hesitating, torn by conflicting emotions, not knowing what to
do.

"If you do not come back, I shall die," she said simply.

As they stood thus, her flute slipped from her relaxed fingers and
fell upon the floor. He picked it up and gave it to her, partly
through the born instinct of the gentleman, which no familiarity with
barbarism can entirely crush out, partly through the tendency in time
of intense mental strain to relieve the mind by doing any little
thing.

She took it, lifted it to her lips, and, still looking at him, began
to play. The melody, strange, untaught, artless as the song of a
wood-bird, was infinitely sorrowful and full of longing. Her very life
seemed to breathe through the music in fathomless yearning. Cecil
understood the plea, and the tears rushed unbidden into his eyes. All
his heart went out to her in pitying tenderness and love; and yet he
dared not trust himself to speak.

"Promise to come back," said the music, while her dark eyes met his;
"promise to come back. You are my one friend, my light, my all; do not
leave me to perish in the dark. I shall die without you, I shall die,
I shall die!"

Could any man resist the appeal? Could Cecil, of all men, thrilling
through all his sensitive and ardent nature to the music, thrilling
still more to a mighty and resistless love?

"I will come back," he said, and parted from her; he dared not trust
himself to say another word. But the parting was not so abrupt as to
prevent his seeing the swift breaking-forth of light upon the
melancholy face that was becoming so beautiful to him and so dear.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TWILIGHT TALE.

                 That eve I spoke those words again,
                 And then she hearkened what I said.

                                     DANTE ROSSETTI.

The next day the Indians had a great hunt. A circle of men on foot and
on horseback was drawn around a large tract of forest on the western
side of the Willamette River. Gradually, with much shouting,
hallooing, and beating of bushes, the circle closed upon the game
within it, like the folds of a mighty serpent.

There was a prodigious slaughter, a mad scene of butchery, in which
the Indians exulted like fiends. Late in the afternoon they returned
to camp, stained with blood and loaded with the spoils of the chase.
Snoqualmie distinguished himself by killing a large bear, and its
claws, newly severed and bleeding, were added to his already ample
necklace of similar trophies.

Cecil remained in the almost deserted camp. He tried in vain to talk
with the few chiefs who had not gone out to join in the hunt.
Missionary work was utterly impossible that day. Wallulah and the
problem of his love filled his thoughts. His mind, aroused and
burning, searched and analyzed the question upon every side.

Should he tell Multnomah of Snoqualmie's cruelty, representing his
unfitness to be the husband of the gentle Wallulah?

To the stern war-chief that very cruelty would be an argument in
Snoqualmie's favor. Should he himself become a suitor for her hand? He
knew full well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain; or, were
he to consent, it would involve the Willamettes in a war with the
haughty and vindictive Cayuse. Finally, should he attempt to fly with
her to some other land? Impossible. All the tribes of the northwest
were held in the iron grip of Multnomah. They could never escape; and
even if they could, the good he had done among the Indians, the good
he hoped would grow from generation to generation, would be all
destroyed if it were told among them that he who claimed to come to
them with a message from God had ended by stealing the chief's
daughter. And had he a right to love any one?--had he a right to love
at all? God had sent him to do a work among the Indians; was it not
wicked for him to so much as look either to the right or to the left
till that work was done?

Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in
vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge
and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to
madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and the old pain at
his heart grew sharp and deadly.

Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out among the few Indians
who were left in the camp and attempted to do missionary work; but
enthusiasm was lacking, the glow and tenderness was gone from his
words, the grand devotion that had inspired him so long failed him at
last. He was no longer a saintly apostle to the Indians; he was only a
human lover, torn by stormy human doubts and fears.

Even the Indians felt that some intangible change had come over him,
and as they listened their hearts no longer responded to his
eloquence; they felt somehow that the life was gone from his words. He
saw it too, and it gave him a keen pang.

He realized that the energy and concentration of his character was
gone, that a girl's beauty had drawn him aside from the mission on
which God had sent him.

"I will go and see her. I will, without letting her know that I love
her, give her to understand my position and her own. She shall see how
impossible it is for us ever to be aught to each other. And I shall
urge her to cling to God and walk in the path he has appointed for
her, while I go on in mine."

So thinking, he left his lodge that evening and took the path to
Wallulah's home.

Some distance from the encampment he met an Indian funeral procession.
The young Willamette runner had died that morning, and now they were
bearing him to the river, down which a canoe was to waft the body and
the mourners to the nearest _mimaluse_ island. The corpse was swathed
in skins and tied around with thongs; the father bore it on his
shoulder, for the dead had been but a slender lad. Behind them came
the mother and a few Indian women. As they passed, the father chanted
a rude lament.

"Oh, Mox-mox, my son, why did you go away and leave our wigwam empty?
You were not weak nor sickly, and your life was young. Why did you go?
Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!"

Then the women took up the doleful refrain,--

"Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!"

Then the old man again,--

"Oh, Mox-mox, the sun was warm and food was plenty, yet you went away;
and when we reach out for you, you are not there. Oh Mox-mox, dead,
dead, dead!"

Then the women again,--

"Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!"

And so it went on, till they were embarked and the canoe bore them
from sight and hearing. Down on some _mimaluse_ island or rocky point,
they would stretch the corpse out in a canoe, with the bow and arrows
and fishing spear used in life beside it; then turn over it another
canoe like a cover, and so leave the dead to his long sleep.

The sight gave an added bitterness to Cecil's meditations.

"After all," he thought, "life is so short,--a shadow fleeting onward
to the night,--and love is so sweet! Why not open my heart to the
bliss it brings? The black ending comes so soon! Why not fling all
thought of consequences to the winds, and gather into my arms the love
that is offered me? why not know its warmth and thrill for one golden
moment, even though that moment ends in death?"

The blood rushed wildly through his veins, but he resolutely put down
the temptation. No, he would be faithful, he would not allow himself
even to think of such a thing.

Reluctantly, as before, the sentinels made way for him and he went on
through the wood to the trysting-place, for such it had come to be.
She was waiting. But there was no longer the glad illumination of
face, the glad springing forward to meet him. She advanced shyly, a
delicate color in her cheek, a tremulous grace in her manner, that he
had not observed before; the consciousness of love had come to her and
made her a woman. Never had she seemed so fair to Cecil; yet his
resolution did not falter.

"I have come, you see,--come to tell you that I can come no more, and
to talk with you about your future."

Her face grew very pale.

"Are you going away?" she asked sorrowfully, "and shall I never see
you again?"

"I cannot come back," he replied gently. The sight of her suffering
cut him to the heart.

"It has been much to see you," he continued, while she stood before
him, looking downward, without reply. "It has been like meeting one of
my own people. I shall never forget you."

She raised her head and strove to answer, but the words died on her
lips. How he loathed himself, talking so smoothly to her while he
hungered to take her in his arms and tell her how he loved her!

Again he spoke.

"I hope you will be happy with Snoqualmie, and--"

She lifted her eyes with a sudden light flashing in their black
depths.

"Do you want me to hate him? Never speak his name to me again!"

"He is to be your husband; nay, it is the wish of your father, and the
great sachems approve it."

"Can the sachems put love in my heart? Can the sachems make my heart
receive him as its lord? Ah, this bitter custom of the father giving
his daughter to whomsoever he will, as if she were a dog! And your
lips sanction it!"

Her eyes were full of tears. Scarcely realizing what he did, he tried
to take her hand. The slender fingers shrank from his and were drawn
away.

"I do not sanction it, it is a bitter custom; but it is to be, and I
only wished to smooth your pathway. I want to say or do something that
will help you when I am gone."

"Do you know what it would be for me to be an Indian's wife? To cut
the wood, and carry the water, and prepare the food,--that would be
sweet to do for one I loved. But to toil amid dirt and filth for a
savage whom I could only abhor, to feel myself growing coarse and
squalid with my surroundings,--I could not live!"

She shuddered as she spoke, as if the very thought was horrible.

"You hate this degraded Indian life as much as I do, and yet it is the
life you would push me into," she continued, in a tone of mournful
heart-broken reproach. It stung him keenly.

"It is not the life I would push you into. God knows I would give my
life to take one thorn from yours," The mad longing within him rushed
into his voice in spite of himself, making it thrill with a passionate
tenderness that brought the color back into her pallid cheek. "But I
cannot remain," he went on, "I dare not; all that I can do is to say
something that may help you in the future."

She looked at him with dilated eyes full of pain and bewilderment.

"I have no future if you go away. Why must you go? What will be left
me after you are gone? Think how long I was here alone after my mother
died, with no one to understand me, no one to talk to. Then you came,
and I was happy. It was like light shining in the darkness; now it
goes out and I can never hope again. Why must you go away and leave
Wallulah in the dark?"

There was a childlike plaintiveness and simplicity in her tone; and
she came close to him, looking up in his face with wistful, pleading
eyes, the beautiful face wan and drawn with bewilderment and pain, yet
never so beautiful as now.

Cecil felt the unspeakable cruelty of his attitude toward her, and his
face grew white as death in an awful struggle between love and duty.
But he felt that he must leave her or be disloyal to his God.

"I do not wish to go away. But God has called me to a great work, and
I must do it. I dare not turn aside. You cannot know how dear your
presence is to me, or how bitter it is for me to part from you. But
our parting must be, else the work I have done among the tribes will
be scattered to the winds and the curse of God will be on me as a
false and fallen prophet."

He spoke with a kind of fierceness, striving blindly to battle down
the mad longing within, and his tones had a harshness that he was too
agitated to notice. She drew back involuntarily. There came into her
face a dignity he had never seen before. She was but a recluse and a
girl, but she was of royal lineage by right of both her parents, and
his words had roused a spirit worthy the daughter of Multnomah.

"Am I a weight on you? Are you afraid I will bring a curse upon you?
Do not fear, I shall no longer ask you to stay. Wallulah shall take
herself out of your life."

She gave him a look full of despair, as if seeing all hope go from her
forever; then she said simply, "Farewell," and turned away.

But in spite of her dignity there was an anguish written on her sweet
pale face that he could not resist. All his strength of resolve, all
his conviction of duty, crumbled into dust as she turned away; and he
was conscious only that he loved her, that he could not let her go.

How it happened he never knew, but she was clasped in his arms, his
kisses were falling on brow and cheek in a passionate outburst that
could be kept back no longer. At first, she trembled in his arms and
shrank away from him; then she nestled close, as if sheltering herself
in the love that was hers at last. After awhile she lifted a face over
which a shadow of pain yet lingered.

"But you said I would bring you a curse; you feared--"

He stopped her with a caress.

"Even curses would be sweet if they came through you. Forget what I
said, remember only that I love you!"

And she was content.

Around them the twilight darkened into night; the hours came and went
unheeded by these two, wrapped in that golden love-dream which for a
moment brings Eden back again to this gray old earth, all desolate as
it is with centuries of woe and tears.

But while they talked there was on him a vague dread, an indefinable
misgiving, a feeling that he was disloyal to his mission, disloyal to
her; that their love could have but one ending, and that a dark one.

Still he strove hard to forget everything, to shut out all the
world,--drinking to the full the bliss of the present, blinding his
eyes to the pain of the future.

But after they parted, when her presence was withdrawn and he was
alone, he felt like a man faithless and dishonored; like a prophet who
had bartered the salvation of the people to whom he had been sent, in
exchange for a woman's kisses, which could bring him only disgrace and
death.

As he went back to the camp in the stillness of midnight, he was
startled by a distant roar, and saw through the tree-tops flames
bursting from the far-off crater of Mount Hood. The volcano was
beginning one of its periodical outbursts. But to Cecil's mind, imbued
with the gloomy supernaturalism of early New England, and
unconsciously to himself, tinged in later years with the superstition
of the Indians among whom he had lived so long, that ominous roar,
those flames leaping up into the black skies of night, seemed a sign
of the wrath of God.

CHAPTER VII.

ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR.

    The gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the
    forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable
    impression.--GRAY: _History of Oregon_.

The next day all the Indians were gathered around the council grove.
Multnomah presided, and every sachem was in his place.

There was to be a trial of eloquence,--a tourney of orators, to see
which tribe had the best. Only one, the most eloquent of each tribe,
was to speak; and Multnomah was to decide who was victor. The mother
of Wallulah had introduced the custom, and it had become popular among
the Indians.

Cecil was in his place among the chiefs, with worn face and abstracted
air; Snoqualmie was present, with hawk-like glance and imperious mien;
there was Mishlah, with his sullen and brutal features; there, too,
wrapped closely in his robe of fur, sat Tohomish, brooding,
gloomy,--the wild empire's mightiest master of eloquence, and yet the
most repulsive figure of them all.

The Indians were strangely quiet that morning; the hush of a
superstitious awe was upon them. The smoking mountains, Hood and Adams
as the white man calls them, Au-poo-tah and Au-ka-ken in the Indian
tongue, were becoming active of late. The previous night flame had
been seen bursting from the top of Mount Hood and thick black smoke
still puffed upward from it, and on Mount Adams rested a heavy cloud
of volcanic vapors. Were the mountains angry? Aged men told how in the
old time there had been a terrible outburst of flame and ashes from
Mount Hood; a rain of fire and stones had fallen over all the
Willamette valley; the very earth had trembled at the great mountain's
wrath.

As the lower animals feel in the air the signs of a coming storm, so
these savages felt, by some kindred intuition, that a mysterious
convulsion of Nature was at hand. They talked in low tones, they were
subdued in manner; any one coming suddenly upon them would have been
impressed by the air of uneasiness and apprehension that everywhere
prevailed. But the chiefs were stoical, and Multnomah impassive as
ever.

Could it have been that the stormy influences at work in Nature lent
energy to the orators that day? They were unusually animated, at least
for Indians, though a white man would have found them intolerably
bombastic. Each speech was a boastful eulogy of the speaker's tribe,
and an exaggerated account of the wonderful exploits of its warriors.

This was rather dangerous ground; for all the tribes had been at
enmity in days gone by, and some of their most renowned victories had
been won over each other. Every one took it in good part, however,
except Mishlah. When We-math, chief of the Klamaths, recounting the
exploits of his race, told how in ancient times they had lorded it
over the Mollalies, Mishlah glared at him as if tempted to leap upon
him and strike him down. Fortunately the orator passed on to other
things, and the wrath of the Mollalie chief gradually cooled.

Then came Cecil. It was a grand opening. He could speak of his own
people, of their ancient savagery and present splendor, and show how
the gospel of love and justice had been the cause of their elevation.
Then would come the appeal to the Indians to accept this faith as
their own and share in its uplifting power. It was a magnificent
opportunity, the opportunity of a life-time.

But the mental conflict he had just passed through had rent his mind
like a volcanic upheaval. It possessed no longer the intense
concentration which had been the source of its strength. Tenderness,
benevolence, missionary zeal, were still there, but no longer
sovereign. Other passions divided his heart; a hopeless and burning
love consumed his being.

He spoke, but the fire was gone from his delivery and the vividness
from his imagination. His eloquence was not what it had been; his
heart was no longer in his work, and his oration was a failure.

Even the Indians noticed that something was lacking in his oratory,
and it no longer moved them as it had done. Cecil realized it, and
strove to speak with more energy, but in vain; he could not arouse
himself; and it was with a consciousness of failure that he brought
his speech to a close and resumed his seat.

To a man of his morbid conscientiousness only one conclusion was
possible.

"God sent me to proclaim salvation to these children of darkness," he
thought, "and I have turned aside to fill my heart with a woman's
love. His wrath is on me. He has taken his spirit from me. I am a
thing rejected and accursed, and this people will go down to death
because I have failed in my mission."

While he sat absorbed in these bitter, self-accusing thoughts, the
speaking went on. Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat made a strong "talk,"
picturesque in Indian metaphor, full of energy. But the chief that
followed surpassed him. Orator caught fire from orator; thoughts not
unworthy a civilized audience were struck out by the intensity of the
emulation; speakers rose to heights which they had never reached
before, which they were destined never to reach again. In listening to
and admiring their champions, the tribes forgot the smoking mountains
and the feeling of apprehension that had oppressed them. At length
Snoqualmie made a speech breathing his own daring spirit in every
word. It went immeasurably beyond the others; it was the climax of all
the darkly splendid eloquence of the day.

No, not of all. From his place among the chiefs rose a small and
emaciated figure; the blanket that had muffled his face was thrown
aside, and the tribes looked on the mis-shapen and degraded features
of Tohomish the Pine Voice. He stood silent at first, his eyes bent on
the ground, like a man in a trance. For a moment the spectators forgot
the wonderful eloquence of the man in his ignoble appearance. What
could he do against Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat and Snoqualmie the
Cayuse, whose sonorous utterances still rang in their ears, whose
majestic presence still filled their minds!

"The Willamettes are beaten at last,--the Willamette speakers can no
more be called the best," was the one exultant thought of the allies,
and the Willamettes trembled for the fame of their orators. Back in
the shadow of the cottonwoods, an old Willamette warrior put an arrow
on the string and bent his bow unseen on Tohomish.

"He cannot beat them, and it shall never be said that Tohomish
failed," he muttered. At that moment, even as death hung over him, the
orator's voice was heard beginning his "talk;" and the warrior's hand
fell, the bent bow was relaxed, the arrow dropped from the string. For
with the first accents of that soft and lingering voice the tribes
were thrilled as with the beginning of music.

The orator's head was still bent down, his manner abstracted; he spoke
of the legends and the glories of the Willamette tribe, but spoke of
them as if that tribe belonged to the past, as if it had perished from
the earth, and he was telling the tale of a great dead race. His tones
were melodious but indescribably mournful. When at length he lifted
his face, his eyes shone with a misty light, and his brutal features
were illuminated with a weird enthusiasm. A shudder went through the
vast and motley assembly. No boastful rant was this, but a majestic
story of the past, the story of a nation gone forever. It was the
death-song of the Willamettes, solemnly rendered by the last and
greatest orator of the race.

At length he spoke of Multnomah and of the power of the confederacy in
his time, but spoke of it as of old time, seen dimly through the lapse
of years. Then, when as it seemed he was about to go on and tell how
this power came to fall, he hesitated; the words faltered on his lips;
he suddenly broke off, took his seat, and drew his robe again over his
face.

[Illustration: "_It was the Death-song of the Willamettes._"]

The effect was indescribable. The portentous nature of the whole
speech needed only that last touch of mystery. It sent through every
heart a wild and awesome thrill, as at the shadow of approaching
destiny.

The multitude were silent; the spell of the prophet's lofty and
mournful eloquence still lingered over them. Multnomah rose. With him
rested the decision as to who was the greatest orator. But the proud
old war-chief knew that all felt that Tohomish had far surpassed his
competitors, and he was resolved that not his lips but the voice of
the tribes should proclaim their choice.

"Multnomah was to decide who has spoken best, but he leaves the
decision with you. You have heard them all. Declare who is the
greatest, and your word shall be Multnomah's word."

There was an instant's silence; then in a murmur like the rush of the
sea came back the voice of the multitude.

"Tohomish! Tohomish! he is greatest!"

"He is greatest," said Multnomah. But Tohomish, sitting there
dejectedly, seemed neither to see nor hear.

"To-morrow," said the war-chief, "while the sun is new, the chiefs
will meet in council and the great talk shall be ended. And after it
ends, Multnomah's daughter will be given to Snoqualmie, and Multnomah
will bestow a rich _potlatch_ [a giving of gifts] on the people. And
then all will be done."

The gathering broke up. Gradually, as the Indians gazed on the smoking
mountains, the excitement produced by the oratory they had just heard
wore off. Only Tohomish's sombre eloquence, so darkly in unison with
the menacing aspect of Nature, yet lingered in every mind. They were
frightened and startled, apprehensive of something to come. Legends,
superstitious lore of by-gone time connected with the "smoking
mountains," were repeated that afternoon wherever little groups of
Indians had met together. Through all these gathered tribes ran a
dread yet indefinable whisper of apprehension, like the first low
rustle of the leaves that foreruns the coming storm.

Over the valley Mount Adams towered, wrapped in dusky cloud; and from
Mount Hood streamed intermittent bursts of smoke and gleams of fire
that grew plainer as the twilight fell. Louder, as the hush of evening
deepened, came the sullen roar from the crater of Mount Hood. Below
the crater, the ice-fields that had glistened in unbroken whiteness
the previous day were now furrowed with wide black streaks, from which
the vapor of melting snow and burning lava ascended in dense wreaths.
Men wiser than these ignorant savages would have said that some
terrible convulsion was at hand.

Multnomah's announcement in the council was a dreadful blow to Cecil,
though he had expected it. His first thought was of a personal appeal
to the chief, but one glance at the iron features of the autocrat told
him that it would be a hopeless undertaking. No appeal could turn
Multnomah from his purpose. For Cecil, such an undertaking might be
death; it certainly would be contemptuous refusal, and would call down
on Wallulah the terrible wrath before which the bravest sachem
quailed.

Cecil left the grove with the other chiefs and found his way to his
lodge. There he flung himself down on his face upon his couch of furs.
The Indian woman, his old nurse, who still clung to him, was absent,
and for some time he was alone. After a while the flap that hung over
the entrance was lifted, and some one came in with the noiseless tread
of the Indian. Cecil, lying in a maze of bitter thought, became aware
of the presence of another, and raised his head. The Shoshone renegade
stood beside him. His gaze rested compassionately on Cecil's sad, worn
face.

"What is it?" he asked. "Your words were slow and heavy to-day. There
was a weight on your spirit; what is it? You said that we were
friends, so I came to ask if I could help."

"You are good, and like a brother," replied Cecil, gently, "but I
cannot tell you my trouble. Yet this much I can tell,"--and he sat
upon the couch, his whole frame trembling with excitement. "I have
sinned a grievous sin, therefore the Great Spirit took away the words
from my lips to-day. My heart has become evil, and God has punished
me."

It was a relief to his over-burdened conscience to say those harsh
things of himself, yet the relief was bitter. Over the bronzed face of
the Indian came an expression of deep pity.

"The white man tears himself with his own claws like a wounded beast,
but it does not give him peace. Has he done evil? Then let him
remember what he has so often told the Indians: 'Forsake evil, turn
from sin, and the Great Spirit will forgive.' Let my white brother do
this, and it will be well with him."

He gazed at Cecil an instant longer; then, with a forbearance that
more civilized men do not always show, he left the lodge without
another word.

But what he said had its effect. Through Cecil's veins leaped the
impulse of a sudden resolve,--a resolve that was both triumph and
agony. He fell on his knees beside the couch.

"Thou hast shown me my duty by the lips of the Indian, and I will
perform it. I will tear this forbidden love from my heart. Father,
help me. Once before I resolved to do this and failed. Help me that I
fail not now. Give me strength. Give me the mastery over the flesh, O
God! Help me to put this temptation from me. Help me to fulfil my
mission."

The struggle was long and doubtful, but the victory was won at last.
When Cecil arose from his knees, there was the same set and resolute
look upon his face that was there the morning he entered the
wilderness, leaving friends and home behind him forever,--the look
that some martyr of old might have worn, putting from him the clinging
arms of wife or child, going forth to the dungeon and the stake.

"It is done," murmured the white lips. "I have put her from me. My
mission to the Indians alone fills my heart. But God help her! God
help her!"

For the hardest part of it all was that he sacrificed her as well as
himself.

"It must be," he thought; "I must give her up. I will go now and tell
her; then I will never look upon her face again. But oh! what will
become of her?"

And his long fingers were clinched as in acutest pain. But his
sensitive nerves, his intense susceptibilities were held in abeyance
by a will that, once roused, was strong even unto death.

He went out. It was dark. Away to the east Mount Hood lifted its
blazing crater into the heavens like a gigantic torch, and the roar of
the eruption came deep and hoarse through the stillness of night.
Once, twice it seemed to Cecil that the ground trembled slightly under
his feet. The Indians were huddled in groups watching the burning
crest of the volcano. As the far-off flickering light fell on their
faces, it showed them to be full of abject fear.

"It is like the end of the world," thought Cecil. "Would that it were;
then she and I might die together."

He left the camp and took the trail through the wood to the
trysting-place; for, late as it was, he knew that she awaited him.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE DARK.

             There is not one upon life's weariest way,
             Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.

                                               SWINBURNE.

The grim sentinels by the pathway, who had been so reluctant to let
Cecil pass the day before, were still more reluctant this evening. One
of them planted himself in the trail directly in front of Cecil, and
did not offer to let him go on, but stood sullenly blocking the way.
Cecil touched the warrior's arm and bade him stand aside. For an
instant it seemed that he would refuse, but his superstitious respect
for the white _tomanowos_ overcame his obstinacy,--and he stepped
unwillingly back.

But as Cecil went on he felt, and felt rightly, that they would not
let him pass again,--that the last act, be it what it might, in his
love drama, was drawing to a close.

A few moments' walk, and he saw in the dark the little figure awaiting
him under the trees. She came slowly forward to meet him. He saw that
her face was very pale, her eyes large and full of woe. She gave him
her hands; they felt like ice. He bent over her and kissed her with
quivering lips.

"Poor child," he said, putting his arms around her slender form and
drawing it close in his embrace, "how can I ever tell you what I have
to tell you to-night!"

She did not respond to his caress. At length, looking up in a
lifeless, stricken way, she spoke in a mechanical voice, a voice that
did not sound like her own,--

"I know it already. My father came and told me that to-morrow I
must--" She shuddered; her voice broke; then she threw her arms around
his neck and clung to him passionately. "But they can never tear me
away from you; never, never!"

How could he tell her that he came to put her away from him, that he
came to bid her farewell? He clasped her the tighter in his arms. For
an instant his mind swept all the chances of flight with her, only to
realize their utter hopelessness; then he remembered that even to
think of such a thing was treachery to the resolves he had just made.
He shook from head to foot with stormy emotion.

She lifted her head from his breast, where it was pillowed.

"Let us get horses or a canoe, and fly to-night to the desert or the
sea,--anywhere, anywhere, only to be away from here! Let us take the
trail you came on, and find our way to your people."

"Alas," replied Cecil, "how could we escape? Every tribe, far and
near, is tributary to your father. The runners would rouse them as
soon as we were missed. The swiftest riders would be on our trail;
ambuscades would lurk for us in every thicket; we could never escape;
and even if we should, a whole continent swarming with wild tribes
lies between us and my land."

She looked at him in anguish, with dim eyes, and her arms slipped from
around his neck.

"Do you no longer love Wallulah? Something tells me that you would not
wish to fly with me, even if we could escape. There is something you
have not told me."

Clasping her closely to him, he told her how he felt it was the will
of God that they must part. God had sent him on a sacred mission, and
he dared not turn aside. Either her love or the redemption of the
tribes of the Wauna must be given up; and for their sake love must be
sacrificed.

"To-day God took away the words from my lips and the spirit from my
heart. My soul was lead. I felt like one accursed. Then it came to me
that it was because I turned aside from my mission to love you. We
must part. Our ways diverge. I must walk my own pathway alone
wheresoever it leads me. God commands, and I must obey."

The old rapt look came back, the old set, determined expression which
showed that that delicate organization could grow as strong as granite
in its power to endure.

Wallulah shrank away from him, and strove to free herself from his
embrace.

"Let me go," she said, in a low, stifled tone. "Oh, if I could only
die!"

But he held her close, almost crushing the delicate form against his
breast. She felt his heart beat deeply and painfully against her own,
and in some way it came to her that every throb was agony, that he was
in the extremity of mental and physical suffering.

"God help me!" he said; "how can I give you up?"

She realized by woman's intuition that his whole soul was wrung with
pain, with an agony darker and bitterer than her own; and the
exceeding greatness of his suffering gave her strength. A sudden
revulsion of feeling affected her. She looked up at him with infinite
tenderness.

"I wish I could take all the pain away from you and bear it myself."

"It is God's will; we must submit to it."

"His will!" Her voice was full of rebellion. "Why does he give us such
bitter suffering? Doesn't he care? I thought once that God was good,
but it is all dark now."

"Hush, you must not think so. After all, it will be only a little
while till we meet in heaven, and there no one can take you from me."

"Heaven is so far off. The present is all that I can see, and it is as
black as death. Death! it would be sweet to die now with your arms
around me; but to _live_ year after year with him! How can I go to
him, now that I have known you? How can I bear his presence, his
touch?"

She shuddered there in Cecil's arms. All her being shrunk in
repugnance at the thought of Snoqualmie.

"Thank God for death!" said Cecil, brokenly.

"It is so long to wait," she murmured, "and I am so young and
strong."

His kisses fell on cheek and brow. She drew down his head and put her
cheek against his and clung to him as if she would never let him go.

It was a strange scene, the mournful parting of the lovers in the
gloom of the forest and the night. To the east, through the black
net-work of leaves and branches, a dull red glow marked the crater of
Mount Hood, and its intermittent roar came to them through the
silence. It was a night of mystery and horror,--a fitting night for
their tragedy of love and woe. The gloom and terror of their
surroundings seemed to throw a supernatural shadow over their
farewell.

"The burning mountain is angry to-night," said Wallulah, at last.
"Would that it might cover us up with its ashes and stones, as the
Indians say it once did two lovers back in the old time."

"Alas, death never comes to those who wish for it. When the grace and
sweetness are all fled from our lives, and we would be glad to lie
down in the grave and be at rest, then it is that we must go on
living. Now I must go. The longer we delay our parting the harder it
will be."

"Not yet, not yet!" cried Wallulah. "Think how long I must be
alone,--always alone until I die."

"God help us!" said Cecil, setting his teeth. "I will dash my mission
to the winds and fly with you. What if God does forsake us, and our
souls are lost! I would rather be in the outer darkness with you than
in heaven without you."

His resolution had given way at last. But in such cases, is it not
always the woman that is strongest?

"No," she said, "you told me that your God would forsake you if you
did. It must not be."

She withdrew herself from his arms and stood looking at him. He saw in
the moonlight that her pale tear-stained face had upon it a sorrowful
resignation, a mournful strength, born of very hopelessness.

"God keep you, Wallulah!" murmured Cecil, brokenly. "If I could only
feel that he would shelter and shield you!"

"That may be as it will," replied the sweet, patient lips. "I do not
know. I shut my eyes to the future. I only want to take myself away
from you, so that your God will not be angry with you. Up there," she
said, pointing, "I will meet you sometime and be with you forever. God
will not be angry then. Now farewell."

He advanced with outstretched arms. She motioned him back.

"It will make it harder," she said.

For a moment she looked into his eyes, her own dark, dilated, full of
love and sadness; for a moment all that was within him thrilled to the
passionate, yearning tenderness of her gaze; then she turned and went
away without a word.

He could not bear to see her go, and yet he knew it must end thus; he
dared not follow her or call her back. But so intense was his desire
for her to return, so vehemently did his life cry out after her, that
for an instant it seemed to him he _had_ called out, "Come back! come
back!" The cry rose to his lips; but he set his teeth and held it
back. They _must_ part; was it not God's will? The old pain at his
heart returned, a faintness was on him, and he reeled to the ground.

Could it be that her spirit felt that unuttered cry, and that it
brought her back? Be this as it may, while he was recovering from his
deadly swoon he dimly felt her presence beside him, and the soft cool
touch of her fingers on his brow. Then--or did he imagine it?--her
lips, cold as those of the dead, touched his own. But when
consciousness entirely returned, he was alone in the forest.

Blind, dizzy, staggering with weakness, he found his way to the camp.
Suddenly, as he drew near it he felt the earth sway and move beneath
him like a living thing. He caught hold of a tree to escape being
thrown to the ground. There came an awful burst of flame from Mount
Hood. Burning cinders and scoria lit up the eastern horizon like a
fountain of fire. Then down from the great canyon of the Columbia,
from the heart of the Cascade Range, broke a mighty thundering sound,
as if half a mountain had fallen. Drowning for a moment the roar of
the volcano, the deep echo rolled from crag to crag, from hill to
hill. A wild chorus of outcries rang from the startled camp,--the
fierce, wild cry of many tribes mad with fear yet breathing forth
tremulous defiance, the cry of human dread mingling with the last
echoes of that mysterious crash.

CHAPTER IX.

QUESTIONING THE DEAD.

         Then he said: "Cold lips and breast without breath,
         Is there no voice, no language of death?"

                                               EDWIN ARNOLD.

While Cecil was on his way that evening to seek Wallulah, a canoe with
but a single occupant was dropping down the Columbia toward one of the
many _mimaluse_, or death-islands, that are washed by its waters.

An Indian is always stealthy, but there was an almost more than Indian
stealthiness about this canoe-man's movements. Noiselessly, as the
twilight deepened into darkness, the canoe glided out of a secluded
cove not far from the camp; noiselessly the paddle dipped into the
water, and the canoe passed like a shadow into the night.

On the rocky _mimaluse_ island, some distance below the mouth of the
Willamette, the Indian landed and drew his boat up on the beach. He
looked around for a moment, glanced at the red glow that lit the
far-off crest of Mount Hood, then turned and went up the pathway to
the ancient burial hut.

Who was it that had dared to visit the island of the dead after dark?
The bravest warriors were not capable of such temerity. Old men told
how, away back in the past, some braves had ventured upon the island
after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They were struck by
unseen hands. Weapons that had lain for years beside the decaying
corpses of forgotten warriors wounded them in the dark. Fleeing to
their canoes in swiftest fear, they found the shadowy pursuit was
swifter still, and were overtaken and struck down, while the whole
island rung with mocking laughter. One only escaped, plunging all torn
and bruised into the river and swimming to the farther shore. When he
looked back, the island was covered with moving lights, and the shrill
echo of fiendish mirth came to him across the water. His companions
were never seen again. A little while afterward the dogs barked all
night around his lodge, and in the morning he was found lying dead
upon his couch, his face ghastly and drawn with fear, as if at some
frightful apparition.

"He disturbed the _mimaluse tillicums_ [dead people], and they came
for him," said the old medicine men, as they looked at him.

Since then, no one had been on the island except in the daytime.
Little bands of mourners had brought hither the swathed bodies of
their dead, laid them in the burial hut, lifted the wail over them,
and left upon the first approach of evening.

Who, then, was this,--the first for generations to set foot on the
_mimaluse illahee_ after dark?

It could be but one, the only one among all the tribes who would have
dared to come, and to come alone,--Multnomah, the war-chief, who knew
not what it was to fear the living or the dead.

Startled by the outburst of the great smoking mountains, which always
presaged woe to the Willamettes, perplexed by Tohomish's mysterious
hints of some impending calamity, weighed down by a dread
presentiment, he came that night on a strange and superstitious
errand.

On the upper part of the island, above reach of high water, the burial
hut loomed dark and still in the moonlight as the chief approached
it.

Some of the Willamettes, like the Chinooks, practised canoe burial,
but the greater part laid their dead in huts, as did also the
Klickitats and the Cascades.

The war-chief entered the hut. The rude boards that covered the roof
were broken and decayed. The moonlight shone through many openings,
lighting up the interior with a dim and ghostly radiance. There,
swathed in crumbling cerements, ghastly in shrunken flesh and
protruding bone, lay the dead of the line of Multnomah,--the chiefs of
the blood royal who had ruled the Willamettes for many generations.
The giant bones of warriors rested beside the more delicate skeletons
of their women, or the skeletons, slenderer still, of little children
of the ancient race. The warrior's bow lay beside him with rotting
string; the child's playthings were still clasped in fleshless
fingers; beside the squaw's skull the ear-pendants of _hiagua_ shells
lay where they had fallen from the crumbling flesh years before.

Near the door, and where the slanting moonbeams fell full upon it, was
the last who had been borne to the death hut, the mother of Wallulah.
Six years before Multnomah had brought her body,--brought it alone,
with no eye to behold his grief; and since then no human tread had
disturbed the royal burial-place.

He came now and looked down upon the body. It had been tightly
swathed, fold upon fold, in some oriental fabric; and the wrappings,
stiffened by time still showed what had once been a rare symmetry of
form. The face was covered with a linen cloth, yellow now through age
and fitting like a mask to the features. The chief knelt down and drew
away the face-cloth. The countenance, though shrunken, was almost
perfectly preserved. Indeed, so well preserved were many of the
corpses the first white settlers found on these _mimaluse_ islands as
to cause at one time a belief that the Indians had some secret process
of embalming their dead. There was no such process, however,--nothing
save the antiseptic properties of the ocean breeze which daily fanned
the burial islands of the lower Columbia.

Lovely indeed must the mother of Wallulah have been in her life.
Withered as her features were, there was a delicate beauty in them
still,--in the graceful brow, the regular profile, the exquisitely
chiselled chin. Around the shoulders and the small shapely head her
hair had grown in rich luxuriant masses.

The chief gazed long on the shrunken yet beautiful face. His iron
features grew soft, as none but Wallulah had ever seen them grow. He
touched gently the hair of his dead wife, and put it back from her
brow with a wistful, caressing tenderness. He had never understood
her; she had always been a mystery to him; the harsh savagery of his
nature had never been able to enter into or comprehend the refined
grace of hers; but he had loved her with all the fierce, tenacious,
secretive power of his being, a power that neither time nor death
could change. Now he spoke to her, his low tones sounding weird in
that house of the dead,--a strange place for words of love.

"My woman,--mine yet, for death itself cannot take from Multnomah that
which is his own; my bird that came from the sea and made its nest for
a little while in the heart of Multnomah and then flew away and left
it empty,--I have been hungry to see you, to touch your hair and look
upon your face again. Now I am here, and it is sweet to be with you,
but the heart of Multnomah listens to hear you speak."

He still went on stroking her hair softly, reverently. It seemed the
only caress of which he was capable, but it had in it a stern and
mournful tenderness.

"Speak to me! The dead talk to the _tomanowos_ men and the dreamers.
You are mine; talk to me; I am in need. The shadow of something
terrible to come is over the Willamette. The smoking mountains are
angry; the dreamers see only bad signs; there are black things before
Multnomah, and he cannot see what they are. Tell me,--the dead are
wise and know that which comes,--what is this unknown evil which
threatens me and mine?"

He looked down at her with intense craving, intense desire, as if his
imperious will could reanimate that silent clay and force to the mute
lips the words he so desired. But the still lips moved not, and the
face lay cold under his burning and commanding gaze. The chief leaned
closer over her; he called her name aloud,--something that the
Willamette Indians rarely did, for they believed that if the names of
the dead were spoken, even in conversation, it would bring them back;
so they alluded to their lost ones only indirectly, and always
reluctantly and with fear.

"Come back!" said he, repeating the name he had not spoken for six
years. "You are my own, you are my woman. Hear me, speak to me, you
whom I love; you who, living or dead, are still the wife of
Multnomah."

No expression flitted over the changeless calm of the face beneath
him: no sound came back to his straining ears except the low
intermittent roar of the far-off volcano.

A sorrowful look crossed his face. As has been said, there was an
indefinable something always between them, which perhaps must ever be
between those of diverse race. It had been the one mystery that
puzzled him while she was living, and it seemed to glide, viewless yet
impenetrable, between them now. He rose to his feet.

"It comes between us again," he thought, looking down at her
mournfully. "It pushed me back when she was living, and made me feel
that I stood outside her heart even while my arms were around her. It
comes between us now and will not let her speak. If it was only
something I could see and grapple with!"

And the fierce warrior felt his blood kindle within him, that not only
death but something still more mysterious and incomprehensible should
separate him from the one he loved. He turned sadly away and passed on
to the interior of the hut. As he gazed on the crumbling relics of
humanity around him, the wonted look of command came back to his brow.
These _should_ obey; by iron strength of will and mystic charm he
would sway them to his bidding. The withered lips of death, or spirit
voices, should tell him what he wished to know. Abjectly superstitious
as was the idea it involved, there was yet something grand in his
savage despotic grasp after power that, dominating all he knew of
earth, sought to bend to his will even the spirit-land.

The chief believed that the departed could talk to him if they would;
for did they not talk to the medicine men and the dreamers? If so, why
not to him, the great chief, the master of all the tribes of the
Wauna?

He knelt down, and began to sway his body back and forth after the
manner of the Nootka _shamans_, and to chant a long, low, monotonous
song, in which the names of the dead who lay there were repeated over
and over again.

"Kamyah, Tlesco, Che-aqah, come back! come back and tell me the
secret, the black secret, the death secret, the woe that is to come.
Winelah, Sic-mish, Tlaquatin, the land is dark with signs and omens;
the hearts of men are heavy with dread; the dreamers say that the end
is come for Multnomah and his race. Is it true? Come and tell me. I
wait, I listen, I speak your names; come back, come back!"

Tohomish himself would not have dared to repeat those names in the
charnel hut, lest those whom he invoked should spring upon him and
tear him to pieces. No more potent or more perilous charm was known to
the Indians.

Ever as Multnomah chanted, the sullen roar of the volcano came like an
undertone and filled the pauses of the wild incantation. And as he
went on, it seemed to the chief that the air grew thick with ghostly
presences. There was a sense of breathing life all around him. He felt
that others, many others, were with him; yet he saw nothing. When he
paused for some voice, some whisper of reply, this sense of
hyper-physical perception became so acute that he could almost _see_,
almost _hear_, in the thick blackness and the silence; yet no answer
came.

Again he resumed his mystic incantation, putting all the force of his
nature into the effort, until it seemed that even those shadowy things
of the night must yield to his blended entreaty and command. But there
came no response. Thick and thronging the viewless presences seemed to
gather, to look, and to listen; but no reply came to his ears, and no
sight met his eyes save the swathed corpses and the white-gleaming
bones on which the shifting moonbeams fell.

Multnomah rose to his feet, baffled, thwarted, all his soul glowing
with anger that he should be so scorned.

"Why is this?" said his stern voice in the silence. "You come, but you
give no reply; you look, you listen, but you make no sound. Answer me,
you who know the future; tell me this secret!"

Still no response. Yet the air seemed full of dense, magnetic life, of
muffled heart-beats, of voiceless, unresponsive, uncommunicative forms
that he could almost touch.

For perhaps the first time in his life the war-chief found himself set
at naught. His form grew erect; his eyes gleamed with the terrible
wrath which the tribes dreaded as they dreaded the wrath of the Great
Spirit.

[Illustration: "_Come back! Come back!_"]

"Do you mock Multnomah? Am I not war-chief of the Willamettes? Though
you dwell in shadow and your bodies are dust, you are Willamettes, and
I am still your chief. Give up your secret! If the Great Spirit has
sealed your lips so that you cannot speak, give me a sign that will
tell me. Answer by word or sign; I say it,--I, Multnomah, your chief
and master."

Silence again. The roar of the volcano had ceased; and an ominous
stillness brooded over Nature, as if all things held their breath,
anticipating some mighty and imminent catastrophe. Multnomah's hands
were clinched, and his strong face had on it now a fierceness of
command that no eye had ever seen before. His indomitable will reached
out to lay hold of those unseen presences and compel them to reply.

A moment of strained, commanding expectation: then the answer came;
the sign was given. The earth shook beneath him till he staggered,
almost fell; the hut creaked and swayed like a storm-driven wreck; and
through the crevices on the side toward Mount Hood came a blinding
burst of flame. Down from the great gap in the Cascade Range through
which flows the Columbia rolled the far-off thundering crash which had
so startled Cecil and appalled the tribes. Then, tenfold louder than
before, came again the roar of the volcano.

Too well Multnomah knew what had gone down in that crash; too well did
he read the sign that had been given. For a moment it seemed as if all
the strength of his heart had broken with that which had fallen; then
the proud dignity of his character reasserted itself, even in the face
of doom.

"It has come at last, as the wise men of old said it would. The end is
at hand; the Willamettes pass like a shadow from the earth. The Great
Spirit has forsaken us, our _tomanowos_ has failed us. But my own
heart fails me not, and my own arm is strong. Like a war-chief will I
meet that which is to come. Multnomah falls, but he falls as the
Bridge has fallen, with a crash that will shake the earth, with a ruin
that shall crush all beneath him even as he goes down."

Turning away, his eyes fell on the body of his wife as he passed
toward the door. Aroused and desperate as he was, he stopped an
instant and looked down at her with a long, lingering look, a look
that seemed to say, "I shall meet you ere many suns. Death and ruin
but give you back to me the sooner. There will be nothing between us
then; I shall understand you at last."

Then he drew his robe close around him, and went out into the night.

BOOK V.

_THE SHADOW OF THE END._

CHAPTER I.

THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.

              "We view as one who hath an evil sight,"
              He answered, "plainly objects far remote."

                                         CAREY: _Dante_.

The night came to an end at last,--a night not soon forgotten by the
Oregon Indians, and destined to be remembered in tale and _tomanowos_
lore long after that generation had passed away. The sky was thick
with clouds; the atmosphere was heavy with smoke, which, dense and
low-hanging in the still weather, shut out the entire horizon. The
volcano was invisible in the smoky air, but its low mutterings came to
them from time to time.

The chiefs met early in the grove of council. Multnomah's countenance
told nothing of the night before, but almost all the rest showed
something yet of superstitious fear. Mishlah's face was haggard, his
air startled and uneasy, like that of some forest animal that had been
terribly frightened; and even Snoqualmie looked worn. But the greatest
change of all was in Tohomish. His face was as ghastly as that of a
corpse, and he came into the council walking in a dull lifeless way,
as if hardly aware of what he was doing. Those nearest to him shrank
away, whispering to one another that the seer looked like a dead man.

Cecil came last. The severe mental conflict of the past night had told
almost fatally on a frame already worn out by years of toil and
sickness. His cheek was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and
faltering like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The pain
at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, was sharp and
piercing.

He looked agitated and restless; he had tried hard to give Wallulah
into the hands of God and feel that she was safe, but he could not.
For himself he had no thought; but his whole soul was wrung with pain
for her. By virtue of his own keen sympathies, he anticipated and felt
all that the years had in store for her,--the loneliness, the
heartache, the trying to care for one she loathed; until he shrank
from her desolate and hopeless future as if it had been his own. All
his soul went out to her in yearning tenderness, in passionate desire
to shield her and to take away her burden.

But his resolution never wavered. Below the ebb and flow of feeling,
the decision to make their separation final was as unchanging as
granite. He could not bear to look upon her face again; he could not
bear to see her wedded to Snoqualmie. He intended to make one last
appeal to the Indians this morning to accept the gospel of peace; then
he would leave the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So he
sat there now, waiting for the "talk" to begin.

The bands gathered around the grove were smaller than usual. Many had
fled from the valley at dawn to escape from the dreaded vicinity of
the smoking mountains; many hundreds remained, but they were awed and
frightened. No war could have appalled them as they were appalled by
the shaking of the solid earth under their feet. All the abject,
superstition of their natures was roused. They looked like men who
felt themselves caught in the grasp of some supernatural power.

Multnomah opened the council by saying that two runners had arrived
with news that morning; the one from the sea-coast, the other from up
the Columbia. They would come before the council and tell the news
they had brought.

The runner from the upper Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty
miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to
announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent forward
eagerly to hear.

"_The Great Spirit has shaken the earth, and the Bridge of the Gods
has fallen!_"

There was the silence of amazement; then through the tribes passed in
many tongues the wild and wondering murmur, "The Bridge of the Gods
has fallen! The Bridge of the Gods has fallen!" With it, too, went the
recollection of the ancient prophecy that when the Bridge fell the
power of the Willamettes would also fall. Now the Bridge was broken,
and the dominion of the Willamettes was broken forever with it. At
another time the slumbering jealousy of the tribes would have burst
forth in terrific vengeance on the doomed race. But they were dejected
and afraid. In the fall of the Bridge they saw the hand of the Great
Spirit, a visitation of God. And so Willamette and tributary alike
heard the news with fear and apprehension. Only Multnomah, who knew
the message before it was spoken, listened with his wonted composure.

"It is well," he said, with more than Indian duplicity; "the daughter
of Multnomah is to become the wife of Snoqualmie the Cayuse, and the
new line that commences with their children will give new chiefs to
head the confederacy of the Wauna. The old gives way to the new. That
is the sign that the Great Spirit gives in the fall of the Bridge.
Think you it means that the war-strength is gone from us, that we
shall no longer prevail in battle? No, no! who thinks it?"

The proud old sachem rose to his feet; his giant form towered over the
multitude, and every eye fell before the haughty and scornful glance
that swept council and audience like a challenge to battle.

"Is there a chief here that thinks it? Let him step out, let him
grapple with Multnomah in the death-grapple, and see. Is there a tribe
that thinks it? We reach out our arms to them; we are ready. Let them
meet us in battle now, to-day, and know if our hearts have become the
hearts of women. Will you come? We will give you dark and bloody proof
that our tomahawks are still sharp and our arms are strong."

He stood with outstretched arms, from which the robe of fur had fallen
back. A thrill of dread went through the assembly at the grim
defiance; then Snoqualmie spoke.

"The heart of all the tribes is as the heart of Multnomah. Let there
be peace."

The chief resumed his seat. His force of will had wrung one last
victory from fate itself. Instantly, and with consummate address,
Multnomah preoccupied the attention of the council before anything
could be said or done to impair the effect of his challenge. He bade
the other runner, the one from the sea-coast, deliver his message.

It was, in effect, this:--

A large canoe, with great white wings like a bird, had come gliding
over the waters to the coast near the mouth of the Wauna. Whence it
came no one could tell; but its crew were pale of skin like the great
white _shaman_ there in the council, and seemed of his race. Some of
them came ashore in a small canoe to trade with the Indians, but
trouble rose between them and there was a battle. The strangers slew
many Indians with their magic, darting fire at them from long black
tubes. Then they escaped to the great canoe, which spread its wings
and passed away from sight into the sea. Many of the Indians were
killed, but none of the pale-faced intruders. Now the band who had
suffered demanded that the white man of whom they had heard--the white
chief at the council--be put to death to pay the blood-debt.

All eyes turned on Cecil, and he felt that his hour was come. Weak,
exhausted in body and mind, wearied almost to death, a sudden and
awful peril was on him. For a moment his heart sank, his brain grew
dizzy. How _could_ he meet this emergency? All his soul went out to
God with a dumb prayer for help, with an overwhelming sense of
weakness. Then he heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard
tones.

"The white man has heard the words of the runner. What has he to say
why his life should not pay the blood-debt?"

Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put Wallulah, himself,
his mission, into the hands of God; with one last effort he forced
himself to speak.

Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring out of an exhausted
body an energy, an outburst of final and intense effort, of which
those of stronger physique do not seem capable. But it drains the
remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. Was it this
flaming-up of the almost burned-out embers of life that animated Cecil
now? Or was it the Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer?
Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, all the power of
his consecration came back; physical weakness and mental anxiety left
him; he felt that Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite
Compassion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearning to
help them, to bring them to God, rekindling within him; and never had
he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.

In passionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in living force and power
of delivery, it was the supreme effort of his life. He did not plead
for himself; he ignored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger;
but he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own system of
retaliation and revenge; he showed them how it overshadowed their
lives and lay like a deadening weight on their better natures. The
horror, the cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood-thirst, the
war-lust, was set over against the love and forgiveness to which the
Great Spirit called them.

The hearts of the Indians were shaken within them. The barbarism which
was the outcome of centuries of strife and revenge, the dark and
cumulative growth of ages, was stirred to its core by the strong and
tender eloquence of this one man. As he spoke, there came to all those
swarthy listeners, in dim beauty, a glimpse of a better life; there
came to them a moment's fleeting revelation of something above their
own vindictiveness and ferocity. That vague longing, that indefinable
wistfulness which he had so often seen on the faces of his savage
audiences was on nearly every face when he closed.

As he took his seat, the tide of inspiration went from him, and a
deadly faintness came over him. It seemed as if in that awful reaction
the last spark of vitality was dying out; but somehow, through it all,
he felt at peace with God and man. A great quiet was upon him; he was
anxious for nothing, he cared for nothing, he simply rested as on the
living presence of the Father.

Upon the sweet and lingering spell of his closing words came
Multnomah's tones in stern contrast.

"What is the word of the council? Shall the white man live or die?"

Snoqualmie was on his feet in an instant.

"Blood for blood. Let the white man die at the torture-stake."

One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. Shaken for but a
moment, the ancient inherited barbarism which was their very life
reasserted itself, and they could decide no other way. One, two,
three of the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence. They were men
whose hearts had been touched before by Cecil, and who were already
desiring the better life They could not condemn their teacher.

At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His face, always repulsive,
was pallid now in the extreme. The swathed corpses on _mimaluse_
island looked not more sunken and ghastly.

He essayed to speak; thrice the words faltered on his lips; and when
at last he spoke, it was in a weary, lifeless way. His tones startled
the audience like an electric shock. The marvellous power and
sweetness were gone from his voice; its accents were discordant,
uncertain. Could the death's head before them be that of Tohomish?
Could those harsh and broken tones be those of the Pine Voice? He
seemed like a man whose animal life still survived, but whose soul was
dead.

What he said at first had no relation to the matter before the
council. Every Indian had his _tomanowos_ appointed him by the Great
Spirit from his birth, and that _tomanowos_ was the strength of his
life. Its influence grew with his growth; the roots of his being were
fed in it; it imparted its characteristics to him. But the name and
nature of his _tomanowos_ was the one secret that must go with him to
the grave. If it was told, the charm was lost and the _tomanowos_
deserted him.

Tohomish's _tomanowos_ was the Bridge and the foreknowledge of its
fall: a black secret that had darkened his whole life, and imparted
the strange and mournful mystery to his eloquence. Now that the Bridge
was fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish's heart, the music
from his words.

"Tohomish has no voice now," he continued; "he is as one dead. He
desires to say only this, then his words shall be heard no more among
men. The fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willamettes
but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and pass away. Another
people shall take our place, another race shall reign in our stead,
and the Indian shall be forgotten, or remembered only as a dim memory
of the past.

"And who are they who bring us our doom? Look on the face of the white
wanderer there; listen to the story of your brethren slain at the
sea-coast by the white men in the canoe, and you will know. They come;
they that are stronger, and push us out into the dark. The white
wanderer talks of peace; but the Great Spirit has put death between
the Indian and the white man, and where he has put death there can be
no peace.

"Slay the white man as the white race will slay your children in the
time that is to come. Peace? love? There can be only war and hate.
Striking back blow for blow like a wounded rattlesnake, shall the red
man pass; and when the bones of the last Indian of the Wauna lie
bleaching on the prairie far from the _mimaluse_ island of his
fathers, then there will be peace.

"Tohomish has spoken; his words are ended, and ended forever."

The harsh, disjointed tones ceased. All eyes fell again on Cecil, the
representative of the race by which the Willamettes were doomed. The
wrath of all those hundreds, the vengeance of all those gathered
tribes of the Wauna, the hatred of the whole people he had come to
save, seemed to rise up and fall upon him the frail invalid with the
sharp pain throbbing at his heart.

But that strange peace was on him still, and his eyes, dilated and
brilliant in the extremity of physical pain, met those lowering brows
with a look of exceeding pity.

Multnomah rose to pronounce sentence. For him there could be but one
decision, and he gave it,--the clinched hand, the downward gesture,
that said, "There is death between us. We will slay as we shall be
slain."

Cecil was on his feet, though it seemed as if he must fall within the
moment. He fought down the pain that pierced his heart like a knife;
he gathered the last resources of an exhausted frame for one more
effort. The executioners sprang forward with the covering for his eyes
that was to shut out the light forever. His glance, his gesture held
them back; they paused irresolutely, even in the presence of
Multnomah; weak as Cecil was, he was the great white _tomanowos_
still, and they dared not touch him. There was a pause, an intense
silence.

"I gave up all to come and tell you of God, and you have condemned me
to die at the torture-stake," said the soft, low voice, sending
through their stern hearts its thrill and pathos for the last time.
"But you shall not bring this blood-stain upon your souls. The hand of
the Great Spirit is on me; he takes me to himself. Remember--what I
have said. The Great Spirit loves you. Pray--forgive--be at peace.
Remember--"

The quiver of agonizing pain disturbed the gentleness of his look; he
reeled, and sank to the ground. For a moment the slight form shuddered
convulsively and the hands were clinched; then the struggle ceased and
a wonderful brightness shone upon his face. His lips murmured
something in his own tongue, something into which came the name of
Wallulah and the name of God. Then his eyes grew dim and he lay very
still. Only the expression of perfect peace still rested on the face.
Sachems and warriors gazed in awe upon the beauty, grand in death, of
the one whom the Great Spirit had taken from them. Perhaps the iron
heart of the war-chief was the only one that did not feel remorse and
self-reproach.

Ere the silence was broken, an old Indian woman came forward from the
crowd into the circle of chiefs. She looked neither to the right nor
to the left, but advanced among the warrior-sachems, into whose
presence no woman had dared intrude herself, and bent over the dead.
She lifted the wasted body in her arms and bore it away, with shut
lips and downcast eyes, asking no permission, saying no word. The
charm that had been around the white _shaman_ in life seemed to invest
her with its power; for grim chieftains made way, the crowd opened to
let her pass, and even Multnomah looked on in silence.

That afternoon, a little band of Indians were assembled in Cecil's
lodge. Some of them were already converts; some were only awakened and
impressed; but all were men who loved him.

They were gathered, men of huge frame, around a dead body that lay
upon a cougar skin. Their faces were sad, their manner was solemn. In
the corner sat an aged squaw, her face resting in her hands, her long
gray hair falling dishevelled about her shoulders. In that
heart-broken attitude she had sat ever since bringing Cecil to the
hut. She did not weep or sob but sat motionless, in stoical, dumb
despair.

Around the dead the Indians stood or sat in silence, each waiting for
the other to say what was in the hearts of all. At length the Shoshone
renegade who had so loved Cecil, spoke.

"Our white brother is gone from us, but the Great Spirit lives and
dies not. Let us turn from blood and sin and walk in the way our
brother showed us. He said, 'Remember;' and shall we forget? I choose
now, while he can hear me, before he is laid in the cold ground. I put
away from me the old heart of hate and revenge. I ask the Great Spirit
to give me the new heart of love and peace. I have chosen."

One by one each told his resolve, the swarthy faces lighting up, the
stern lips saying unwonted words of love. Dim and misty, the dawn had
come to them; reaching out in the dark, they had got hold of the hand
of God and felt that he was a Father. One would have said that their
dead teacher lying there heard their vows, so calm and full of peace
was the white still face.

That night the first beams of the rising moon fell on a new-made grave
under the cottonwoods, not far from the bank of the river. Beneath it,
silent in the last sleep, lay the student whose graceful presence had
been the pride of far-off Magdalen, the pastor whose memory still
lingered in New England, the evangelist whose burning words had
thrilled the tribes of the wilderness like the words of some prophet
of old.

Beside the grave crouched the old Indian woman, alone and forsaken in
her despair,--the one mourner out of all for whom his life had been
given.

No, not the only one; for a tall warrior enters the grove; the
Shoshone renegade bends over her and touches her gently on the
shoulder.

"Come," he says kindly, "our horses are saddled; we take the trail up
the Wauna to-night, I and my friends. We will fly from this fated
valley ere the wrath of the Great Spirit falls upon it. Beyond the
mountains I will seek a new home with the Spokanes or the Okanogans.
Come; my home shall be your home, because you cared for him that is
gone."

She shook her head and pointed to the grave.

"My heart is there; my life is buried with him. I cannot go."

Again he urged her.

"No, no," she replied, with Indian stubbornness; "I cannot leave him.
Was I not like his mother? How can I go and leave him for others? The
roots of the old tree grow not in new soil. If it is pulled up it
dies."

"Come with me," said the savage, with a gentleness born of his new
faith. "Be _my_ mother. We will talk of him; you shall tell me of him
and his God. Come, the horses wait."

Again she shook her head; then fell forward on the grave, her arms
thrown out, as if to clasp it in her embrace. He tried to lift her;
her head fell back, and she lay relaxed and motionless in his arms.

Another grave was made by Cecil's; and the little band rode through
the mountain pass that night, toward the country of the Okanogans,
without her.

And that same night, an English exploring vessel far out at sea sailed
southward, leaving behind the unknown shores of Oregon,--her crew
never dreaming how near they had been to finding the lost wanderer,
Cecil Grey.

CHAPTER II.

THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP.

            Remembering love and all the dead delight,
            And all that time was sweet with for a space.

                                               SWINBURNE.

After Cecil had been borne from the council-grove, the Indians,
rousing themselves from the spell of the strange scene they had just
witnessed, looked around for Tohomish the seer. He was gone. No one
could remember seeing him go, yet he was missing from his accustomed
place, and never was he seen or heard of more. Upon his fate, lost in
the common ruin that engulfed his race, the legend casts no ray of
light. It is certain that the fall of the Bridge, with which his life
was interwoven, had a disastrous effect upon him, and as he said, that
the strength of his life was broken. It is probable that the
orator-seer, feeling within himself that his power was gone, crept
away into the forest to die. Perhaps, had they searched for him, they
would have found him lying lifeless upon the leaves in some dense
thicket or at the foot of some lonely crag.

Whatever his fate, the Indians never looked upon his face again.

Multnomah made no comment on the death of Cecil, or on the prophecy of
Tohomish, so much at variance with his own interpretation of the fall
of the Bridge. Whatever he had to say was evidently held in reserve
for the closing talk with which he would soon dismiss the council.

"You shall see Multnomah's daughter given to Snoqualmie, and then
Multnomah will open his hand and make you rich."

So said the war-chief; and a runner was dispatched with a summons to
Wallulah. In a little while a band of Indian girls was seen
approaching the grove. Surrounded by the maidens, as if they were a
guard of honor, came Wallulah, all unconscious of the tragedy that had
just been enacted.

Among the chiefs they passed, and stopped before Multnomah. As they
paused, Wallulah looked around for Cecil in one quick glance; then,
not seeing him, she cast down her eyes despondingly. Multnomah rose
and beckoned Snoqualmie to him. He came forward and stood beside the
war-chief. The Indian girls stepped back a little, in involuntary awe
of the two great sachems, and left Wallulah standing alone before
them.

Her face wore a patient look, as of one who is very worn and weary,
tired of the burdens of life, yet going forward without hope, without
thought even, to other and still heavier burdens. She was clad in a
soft oriental fabric; her hair fell in luxuriant tresses upon her
shoulders; her flute hung at her belt by a slender chain of gold.

There was something unspeakably sad and heart-broken in her
appearance, as she stood there, a listless, dejected figure, before
those two grim warriors, awaiting her doom.

Multnomah took her hand; the fingers of the other were clasped around
her beloved flute, pressing it closely, as if seeking help from its
mute companionship. The chief gave her hand into Snoqualmie's; a
shudder passed through her as she felt his touch, and she trembled
from head to foot; then she controlled herself by a strong effort.
Snoqualmie's fierce black eyes searched her face, as if looking
through and through her, and she flushed faintly under their
penetrating gaze.

"She is yours," said the war-chief. "Be kind to her, for though she is
your wife she is the daughter of Multnomah." So much did the Indian
say for love of his child, wondering at her strange, sad look, and
feeling vaguely that she was unhappy. She tried to withdraw her
fingers from Snoqualmie's clasp the moment her father was done
speaking. He held them tightly, however, and bending over her, spoke
in a low tone.

"My band starts for home at mid-day. Be ready to go when I send for
you."

She looked up with startled, piteous eyes.

"To-day?" she asked in a choked voice.

"To-day," came the abrupt reply; too low for the others to hear, yet
harsh enough to sting her through and through. "Do you think
Snoqualmie goes back to his _illahee_ and leaves his woman behind?"

Her spirit kindled in resentment. Never had the chief's daughter been
spoken to so harshly; then all at once it came to her that he
_knew_,--that he must have followed Cecil and witnessed one of their
last interviews. Jealous, revengeful, the Indian was her master now.
She grew pale to the lips. He released her hand, and she shrank away
from him, and left the council with her maidens. No one had heard the
few half-whispered words that passed between them but those who stood
nearest noticed the deadly pallor that came over her face while
Snoqualmie was speaking. Multnomah saw it, and Snoqualmie caught from
him a glance that chilled even his haughty nature--a glance that said,
"Beware; she is the war-chief's daughter."

But even if he had known all, Multnomah would have sacrificed her. His
plans must be carried out even though her heart be crushed.

Now followed the _potlatch_,--the giving of gifts. At a signal from
the war-chief, his slaves appeared, laden with presents. Large heaps
of rich furs and skins were laid on the ground near the chiefs. The
finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers and store of
bow-strings, were brought. Untold treasure of _hiagua_ shells, money
as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the
ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored masses. To the
Indians they represented vast and splendid wealth. Multnomah was the
richest of all the Indians of the Wauna; and the gifts displayed were
the spoil of many wars, treasures garnered during forty years of
sovereignty.

And now they were all given away. The chief kept back nothing, except
some cases of oriental fabrics that had been saved from the wreck when
Wallulah's mother was cast upon the shore. Well would it have been for
him and his race had they been given too; for, little as they dreamed
it, the fate of the Willamettes lay sealed up in those unopened cases
of silk and damask.

Again and again the slaves of Multnomah added their burdens to the
heaps, and went back for more, till a murmur of wonder rose among the
crowd. His riches seemed exhaustless. At length, however, all was
brought. The chief stood up, and, opening his hands to them in the
Indian gesture for giving, said,--

"There is all that was Multnomah's; it is yours; your hands are full
now and mine are empty."

The chiefs and warriors rose up gravely and went among the heaps of
treasure; each selecting from furs and skins, arms and _hiagua_
shells, that which he desired. There was no unseemly haste or
snatching; a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women and
children were excluded from sharing in these gifts, but
provisions--dried meats and berries, and bread of _camas_ or Wappatto
root--were thrown among them on the outskirts of the crowd where they
were gathered. And unlike the men, they scrambled for it like hungry
animals; save where here and there the wife or daughter of a chief
stood looking disdainfully on the food and those who snatched at it.

Such giving of gifts, or _potlatches_, are still known among the
Indians. On Puget Sound and the Okanogan, one occasionally hears of
some rich Indian making a great _potlatch_,--giving away all his
possessions, and gaining nothing but a reputation for disdain of
wealth, a reputation which only Indian stoicism would crave.
Multnomah's object was not that so much as to make, before the
dispersal of the tribes, a last and most favorable impression.

When the presents were all divided, the chiefs resumed their places to
hear the last speech of Multnomah,--the speech that closed the
council.

It was a masterpiece of dignity, subtility, and command. The prophecy
of Tohomish was evaded, the fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen
propitious to the Willamettes; and at last his hearers found
themselves believing as he wished them to believe, without knowing how
or why, so strongly did the overmastering personality of Multnomah
penetrate and sway their lesser natures. He particularly dwelt on the
idea that they were all knit together now and were as one race. Yet
through the smooth words ran a latent threat, a covert warning of the
result of any revolt against his authority based on what plotting
dreamers might say of the fall of the Bridge,--a half-expressed
menace, like the gleam of a sword half drawn from the scabbard. And he
closed by announcing that ere another spring the young men of all the
tribes would go on the war-path against the Shoshones and come back
loaded with spoil. And so, kindling the hatred of the chiefs against
the common enemy, Multnomah closed the great council.

In a little while the camp was all astir with preparation for
departure. Lodges were being taken down, the mats that covered them
rolled up and packed on the backs of horses; all was bustle and
tumult. Troop after troop crossed the river and took the trail toward
the upper Columbia.

But when the bands passed from under the personal influence of
Multnomah, they talked of the ominous things that had just happened;
they said to each other that the Great Spirit had forsaken the
Willamettes, and that when they came into the valley again it would be
to plunder and to slay. Multnomah had stayed the tide but for a
moment. The fall of the ancient _tomanowos_ of the Willamettes had a
tremendous significance to the restless tributaries, and already the
confederacy of the Wauna was crumbling like a rope of sand. Those
tribes would meet no more in peace on the island of council.

CHAPTER III.

AT THE CASCADES.

            Wails on the wind, fades out the sunset quite,
            And in my heart and on the earth is night.

                                    PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

The main body of Snoqualmie's followers crossed to the north bank of
the Columbia and took the trail leading up the river toward the inland
prairies. But Snoqualmie and Wallulah went by canoe as far as the now
ruined Bridge of the Gods. There were three canoes in their train.
Snoqualmie and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden
with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It
stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough
bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its
mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the
canoes like spoil torn from the enemy.

The farewell between Wallulah and her father had been sorrowful. It
was remembered afterward, by those who were witnesses of it, that the
war-chief had shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had seemed
reluctant to part with his daughter, and that she had clung to him,
pale and tearful, as if he were her last hope on earth.

When Snoqualmie took her hand to lead her away, she shuddered,
withdrew her fingers from his clasp, and walked alone to the canoe.
He entered after her: the canoe-men dipped their paddles into the
water, and the vessel glided away from the island.

She sat reclining on a heap of furs, her elbows sunk in them, her
cheek resting on her hand, her eyes turned back toward her island
home. Between it and her the expanse of waters grew ever broader, and
the trail the canoe left behind it sparkled in a thousand silvery
ripples. The island, with its green prairies and its stately woods,
receded fast. She felt as she looked back as if everything was
slipping away from her. Lonely as her life had been before Cecil came
into it, she had still had her music and her beautiful rooms in the
bark lodge; and they seemed infinitely sweet and precious now as she
recalled them. Oh, if she could only have them back again! And those
interviews with Cecil. How love and grief shook the little figure as
she thought! How loathingly she shrunk from the presence of the
barbarian at her side! And all the time the island receded farther and
farther in the distance, and the canoe glided forward like a merciless
fate bearing her on and on toward the savagery of the inland desert.

Snoqualmie sat watching her with glittering, triumphant eyes. To him
she was no more than some lovely animal of which he had become the
owner; and ownership of course brought with it the right to tantalize
and to torture. A malicious smile crossed his lips as he saw how
sorrowfully her gaze rested on her old home.

"Look forward," he said, "not back; look forward to your life with
Snoqualmie and to the lodge that awaits you in the land of the
Cayuses."

She started, and her face flushed painfully; then without looking at
him she replied,--

"Wallulah loves her home, and leaving it saddens her."

A sparkle of vindictive delight came into his eyes.

"Do the women of the Willamette feel sad when they go to live with
their husbands? It is not so with the Cayuse women. They are glad;
_they_ care for the one they belong to. They love to sit in the sun at
the door of the wigwam and say to the other women, 'My man is brave;
he leads the war party; he has many scalps at his belt. Who is brave
like my man?'"

Wallulah shuddered. He saw it, and the sparkle of malice in his eyes
flashed into sudden anger.

"Does the young squaw tremble at these things? Then she must get used
to them. She must learn to bring wood and water for Snoqualmie's
lodge, too. She must learn to wait on him as an Indian's wife ought.
The old wrinkled squaws, who are good for nothing but to be beasts of
burden, shall teach her."

There came before her a picture of the ancient withered hags, the
burden-bearers, the human vampires of the Indian camps, the vile in
word and deed, the first to cry for the blood of captives, the most
eager to give taunts and blows to the helpless; were they to be her
associates, her teachers? Involuntarily she lifted her hand, as if to
push from her a future so dreadful.

"Wallulah will bring the wood and the water. Wallulah will work. The
old women need not teach her."

"That is well. But one thing more you must learn; and that is to hold
up your head and not look like a drooping captive. Smile, laugh, be
gay. Snoqualmie will have no clouded face, no bent head in his
lodge."

She looked at him imploringly. The huge form, the swarthy face, seemed
to dominate her, to crush her down with their barbarian strength and
ferocity. She dropped her eyes again, and lay there on the furs like
some frightened bird shrinking from the glance of a hawk.

"I will work; I will bear burdens," she repeated, in a trembling tone.
"But I cannot smile and laugh when my heart is heavy."

He watched her with a half angry, half malicious regard, a regard that
seemed ruthlessly probing into every secret of her nature.

She knew somehow that he was aware of her love for Cecil, and she
dreaded lest he should taunt her with it. Anything but that. He knew
it, and held it back as his last and most cruel blow. Over his bronzed
face flitted no expression of pity. She was to him like some delicate
wounded creature of the forest, that it was a pleasure to torture. So
he had often treated a maimed bird or fawn,--tantalizing it, delighted
by its fluttering and its pain, till the lust of torture was gratified
and the death-blow was given.

He sat regarding her with a sneering, malicious look for a little
while; then he said,--

"It is hard to smile on Snoqualmie; but the white man whom you met in
the wood, it was not so with him. It was easy to smile and look glad
at him, but it is hard to do so for Snoqualmie."

Wallulah shrunk as if he had struck her a blow; then she looked at him
desperately, pleadingly.

"Do not say such cruel things. I will be a faithful wife to you. I
will never see the white man again."

The sneering malice in his eyes gave way to the gleam of exultant
anger.

"Faithful! You knew you were to be my woman when you let him put his
arms around you and say soft things to you. Faithful! You would leave
Snoqualmie for him now, could it be so. But you say well that you will
never see him again."

She gazed at him in terror.

"What do you mean? Has anything happened to him? Have they harmed
him?"

Over the chief's face came the murderous expression that was there
when he slew the Bannock warrior at the torture stake.

"Harmed him! Do you think that he could meet you alone and say sweet
things to you and caress you,--you who were the same as my squaw,--and
I not harm him? He is dead; I slew him."

False though it was, in so far as Snoqualmie claimed to have himself
slain Cecil, it was thoroughly in keeping with Indian character. White
captives were often told, "I killed your brother," or, "This is your
husband's scalp," when perhaps the person spoken of was alive and
well.

"Dead!"

He threw his tomahawk at her feet.

"His blood is on it. You are Snoqualmie's squaw; wash it off."

Dead, dead, her lover was dead! That was all she could grasp.
Snoqualmie's insulting command passed unheeded. She sat looking at the
Indian with bright, dazed eyes that saw nothing. All the world seemed
blotted out.

"I tell you that he is dead, and I slew him. Are you asleep that you
stare at me so? Awaken and do as I bid you; wash your lover's blood
off my tomahawk."

At first she had been stunned by the terrible shock, and she could
realize only that Cecil was dead. Now it came to her, dimly at first,
then like a flash of fire, that Snoqualmie had slain him. All her
spirit leaped up in uncontrollable hatred. For once, she was the
war-chief's daughter. She drew her skirts away from the tomahawk in
unutterable horror; her eyes blazed into Snoqualmie's a defiance and
scorn before which his own sunk for the instant.

"You killed him! I hate you. I will never be your wife. You have
thrown the tomahawk between us; it shall be between us forever.
Murderer! You have killed the one I love. Yes, I loved him; and I hate
you and will hate you till I die."

The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle
strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not
understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal
tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an instant, taken
utterly by surprise.

Then the wild impulse of defiance passed, and the awful sense of
bereavement came back like the falling of darkness over a sinking
flame. Cecil was gone from her, gone for all time. The world seemed
unreal, empty. She sunk among the furs like one stricken down.
Snoqualmie, recovering from his momentary rebuff, heaped bitter
epithets and scornful words upon her; but she neither saw nor heard,
and lay with wide, bright, staring eyes. Her seeming indifference
maddened him still more, and he hurled at her the fiercest abuse. She
looked at him vaguely. He saw that she did not even know what he was
saying, and relapsed into sullen silence. She lay mute and still, with
a strained expression of pain in her eyes. The canoe sped swiftly on.

One desolating thought repeated itself again and again,--the thought
of hopeless and irreparable loss. By it past and present were blotted
out. By and by, when she awoke from the stupor of despair and realized
her future, destined to be passed with the murderer of her lover, what
then? But now she was stunned with the shock of a grief that was mercy
compared with the awakening that must come.

They were in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, and a low deep roar
began to reach their ears, rousing and startling all but Wallulah. It
was the sound of the cascades, of the new cataract formed by the fall
of the Great Bridge. Rounding a bend in the river they came in sight
of it. The mighty arch, the long low mountain of stone, had fallen in,
damming up the waters of the Columbia, which were pouring over the
sunken mass in an ever-increasing volume. Above, the river, raised by
the enormous dam, had spread out like a lake, almost submerging the
trees that still stood along the former bank. Below the new falls the
river was comparatively shallow, its rocky bed half exposed by the
sudden stoppage of the waters.

The Indians gazed with superstitious awe on the vast barrier over
which the white and foaming waters were pouring. The unwonted roar of
the falls, a roar that seemed to increase every moment as the swelling
waters rushed over the rocks; the sight of the wreck of the mysterious
bridge, foreshadowing the direst calamities,--all this awed the wild
children of the desert. They approached the falls slowly and
cautiously.

A brief command from Snoqualmie, and they landed on the northern side
of the river, not far from the foot of the falls. There they must
disembark, and the canoes be carried around the falls on the shoulders
of Indians and launched above.

The roar of the Cascades roused Wallulah from her stupor. She stepped
ashore and looked in dazed wonder on the strange new world around her.
Snoqualmie told her briefly that she must walk up the bank to the
place where the canoe was to be launched again above the falls. She
listened mutely, and started to go. But the way was steep and rocky;
the bank was strewn with the débris of the ruined bridge; and she was
unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw her stumble and almost fall.
It moved him to a sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to
help her. She pushed his hand from her as if it had been the touch of
a serpent, and went on alone. His eyes flashed: for all this the
reckoning should come, and soon; woe unto her when it came.

The rough rocks bruised her delicately shod feet, the steep ascent
took away her breath. Again and again she felt as if she must fall;
but the bitter scorn and loathing that Snoqualmie's touch had kindled
gave her strength, and at last she completed the ascent.

Above the falls and close to them, she sat down upon a rock; a slight,
drooping figure, whose dejected pose told of a broken heart.

Before her, almost at her feet, the pent-up river was widened to a
vast flood. Here and there a half-submerged pine lifted its crown
above it; the surface was ruffled by the wind, and white-crested waves
were rolling among the green tree-tops. She looked with indifference
upon the scene. She had not heard that the Bridge had fallen, and was,
of course, ignorant of these new cascades; and they did not impress
her as being strange.

Her whole life was broken up; all the world appeared shattered by the
blow that had fallen on her, and nothing could startle her now. She
felt dimly that some stupendous catastrophe had taken place; yet it
did not appear unnatural. A strange sense of unreality possessed her;
everything seemed an illusion, as if she were a shadow in a land of
shadows. The thought came to her that she was dead, and that her
spirit was passing over the dim ghost trail to the shadow-land. She
tried to shake off the fancy, but all was so vague and dreamlike that
she hardly knew where or what she was; yet over it all brooded the
consciousness of dull, heavy, torturing pain, like the dumb agony that
comes to us in fevered sleep, burdening our dreams with a black
oppressing weight of horror.

Her hand, hanging listlessly at her side, touched her flute, which was
still suspended from her belt by the golden chain. She raised it to
her lips, but only a faint inharmonious note came from it. The music
seemed gone from the flute, as hope was gone from her heart. To her
overwrought nerves, it was the last omen of all. The flute dropped
from her fingers; she covered her face with her hands, and the hot
tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.

Some one spoke to her, not ungently, and she looked up. One of the
canoe-men stood beside her. He pointed to the canoe, now launched near
by. Snoqualmie was still below, at the foot of the falls,
superintending the removal of the other.

Slowly and wearily she entered the waiting canoe and resumed her seat.
The Indian paddlers took their places. They told her that the chief
Snoqualmie had bidden them take her on without him. He would follow in
the other canoe. It was a relief to be free from his presence, if only
for a little while; and the sadness on her face lightened for a moment
when they told her.

A few quick paddle-strokes, and the boat shot out into the current
above the cascades and then glided forward. No, _not_ forward. The
canoe-men, unfamiliar with the new cataract, had launched their vessel
too close to the falls; and the mighty current was drawing it back. A
cry of horror burst from their lips as they realized their danger, and
their paddles were dashed into the water with frenzied violence. The
canoe hung quivering through all its slender length between the
desperate strokes that impelled it forward and the tremendous suction
that drew it down. Had they been closer to the bank, they might have
saved themselves; but they were too far out in the current. They felt
the canoe slipping back in spite of their frantic efforts, slowly at
first, then more swiftly; and they knew there was no hope.

The paddles fell from their hands. One boatman leaped from the canoe
with the desperate idea of swimming ashore, but the current instantly
swept him under and out of sight; the other sat motionless in his
place, awaiting the end with Indian stolidity.

The canoe was swept like a leaf to the verge of the fall and downward
into a gulf of mist and spray. As it trembled on the edge of the
cataract, and its horrors opened beneath her, Wallulah realized her
doom for the first time; and in the moment she realised it, it was
upon her. There was a quick terror, a dreamlike glimpse of white
plunging waters, a deafening roar, a sudden terrible shock as the
canoe was splintered on the rocks at the foot of the fall; then all
things were swallowed up in blackness, a blackness that was death.

Below the falls, strong swimmers, leaping into the water, brought the
dead to land. Beneath a pine-tree that grew close by the great
Columbia trail and not far from the falls, the bodies were laid. The
daughter of Multnomah lay in rude state upon a fawn-skin; while at her
feet were extended the brawny forms of the two canoe-men who had died
with her, and who, according to Indian mythology, were to be her
slaves in the Land of the Hereafter. Her face was very lovely, but its
mournfulness remained. Her flute, broken in the shock that had killed
her, was still attached to her belt. The Indians had placed her hand
at her side, resting upon the flute; and they noticed in superstitious
wonder that the cold fingers seemed to half close around it, as if
they would clasp it lovingly, even in death. Indian women knelt beside
her, fanning her face with fragrant boughs of pine. Troop after
troop, returning over the trail to their homes, stopped to hear the
tale, and to gaze at the dead face that was so wonderfully beautiful
yet so sad.

All day long the bands gathered; each stopping, none passing
indifferently by. At length, when evening came and the shadow of the
wood fell long and cool, the burials began. A shallow grave was
scooped at Wallulah's feet for the bodies of the two canoe-men. Then
chiefs--for they only might bury Multnomah's daughter--entombed her in
a cairn; being Upper Columbia Indians, they buried her, after the
manner of their people, under a heap of stone. Rocks and bowlders were
built around and over her body, yet without touching it, until the sad
dead face was shut out from view. And still the stones were piled
above her; higher and higher rose the great rock-heap, till a mighty
cairn marked the last resting-place of Wallulah. And all the time the
women lifted the death-wail, and Snoqualmie stood looking on with
folded arms and sullen baffled brow. At length the work was done. The
wail ceased; the gathering broke up, and the sachems and their bands
rode away, Snoqualmie and his troop departing with them.

Only the roar of the cascades broke the silence, as night fell on the
wild forest and the lonely river. The pine-tree beside the trail
swayed its branches in the wind with a low soft murmur, as if lulling
the sorrow-worn sleeper beneath it into still deeper repose. And she
lay very still in the great cairn,--the sweet and beautiful
dead,--with the grim warriors stretched at her feet, stern guardians
of a slumber never to be broken.

CHAPTER IV.

MULTNOMAH'S DEATH-CANOE.

                                     Gazing alone
                    To him are wild shadows shown.
                    Deep under deep unknown.

                                   DANTE ROSSETTI.

If Multnomah was grieved at his daughter's death, if his heart sunk at
the unforeseen and terrible blow that left his empire without an heir
and withered all his hopes, no one knew it; no eye beheld his woe.
Silent he had ever been, and he was silent to the last. The grand,
strong face only grew grander, stronger, as the shadows darkened
around him; the unconquerable will only grew the fiercer and the more
unflinching. But ere the moon that shone first on Wallulah's new-made
cairn had rounded to the full, there was that upon him before which
even his will bowed and gave way,--death, swift and mysterious. And it
came in this wise.

We have told how at the great _potlatch_ he gave away his all, even to
the bear-skins from his couch, reserving only those cases of Asiatic
textures never yet opened,--all that now remained of the richly laden
ship of the Orient wrecked long ago upon his coast. They were opened
now. His bed was covered with the magnificent fabrics; they were
thrown carelessly over the rude walls and seats, half-trailing on the
floor; exquisite folds of velvet and damask swept the leaves and
dust,--so that all men might see how rich the chief still was, though
he had given away so much. And with his ostentation was mixed a secret
pride and tenderness that his dead wife had indirectly given him this
wealth. The war-chief's woman had brought him these treasures out of
the sea; and now that he had given away his all, even to the bare
poles of his lodge, she filled it with fine things and made him rich
again,--she who had been sleeping for years in the death-hut on
_mimaluse_ island. Those treasures, ere the vessel that carried them
was wrecked, had been sent as a present from one oriental prince to
another. Could it be that they had been purposely impregnated with
disease, so that while the prince that sent them seemed to bestow a
graceful gift, he was in reality taking a treacherous and terrible
revenge? Such things were not infrequent in Asiatic history; and even
the history of Europe, in the middle ages, tells us of poisoned masks,
of gloves and scarfs charged with disease.

Certain it is that shortly after the cases were opened, a strange and
fatal disease broke out among Multnomah's attendants. The howling of
medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw
swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or _mimaluse_ island.
And no concoction of herbs,--however skilfully compounded with stone
mortar and pestle,--no incantation of medicine-men or steaming
atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the mortality.

At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed strange to the
Indians that the war-chief should sicken, that Multnomah should show
any of the weaknesses of common flesh and blood; yet so it was. But
while the body yielded to the inroad of disease, the spirit that for
almost half a century had bent beneath it the tribes of the Wauna
never faltered. He lay for days upon his couch, his system wasting
with the plague, his veins burning with fever, holding death off only
by might of will. He touched no remedies, for he felt them to be
useless; he refused the incantations of the medicine-men; alone and in
his own strength the war-chief contended with his last enemy.

All over the Willamette Valley, through camp and fishery, ran the
whisper that Multnomah was dying; and the hearts of the Indians sunk
within them. Beyond the mountains the whisper passed to the allied
tribes, once more ripe for revolt, and the news rang among them like a
trumpet call; it was of itself a signal for rebellion. The fall of the
magic Bridge, the death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of
Multnomah had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs stayed
their followers only till they knew that he was dead. But the grand
old war-chief seemed determined that he would not die. He struggled
with disease; he crushed down his sufferings; he fought death with the
same silent, indomitable tenacity with which he had overthrown the
obstacles of life.

In all his wasting agony he was the war-chief still, and held his
subjects in his grip. To the tribes that were about to rebel he sent
messages, short, abrupt, but terrible in their threat of
vengeance,--messages that shook and awed the chiefs and pushed back
invasion. To the last, the great chief overawed the tribes; the
generation that had grown up under the shadow of his tyranny, even
when they knew he was dying, still obeyed him.

At length, one summer evening a few weeks after the burial of
Wallulah, there burst forth from the war-chief's lodge that peculiar
wail which was lifted only for the death of one of the royal blood. No
need to ask who it was, for only _one_ remained of the ancient line
that had so long ruled the Willamettes; and for him, the last of his
race, was the wail lifted. It was re-echoed by the inmates of the
surrounding lodges; it rang, foreboding, mournful, through the
encampment on Wappatto Island.

Soon, runners were seen departing in every direction to bear the fatal
news throughout the valley. Twilight fell on them; the stars came out;
the moon rose and sunk; but the runners sped on, from camp to camp,
from village to village. Wherever there was a cluster of Willamette
lodges, by forest, river, or sea, the tale was told, the wail was
lifted. So all that night the death-wail passed through the valley of
the Willamette; and in the morning the trails were thronged with bands
of Indians journeying for the last time to the isle of council, to
attend the obsequies of their chief, and consult as to the choice of
one to take his place.

The pestilence that had so ravaged the household of Multnomah was
spread widely now; and every band as it departed from the camp left
death behind it,--aye, took death with it; for in each company were
those whose haggard, sickly faces told of disease, and in more than
one were those so weakened that they lagged behind and fell at last
beside the trail to die.

The weather was very murky. It was one of the smoky summers of Oregon,
like that of the memorable year 1849, when the smoke of wide-spread
forest fires hung dense and blinding over Western Oregon for days, and
it seemed to the white settlers as if they were never to breathe the
clear air or see the sky again. But even that, the historic "smoky
time" of the white pioneers, was scarcely equal to the smoky period of
more than a century and a half before. The forest fires were raging
with unusual fury; Mount Hood was still in course of eruption; and all
the valley was wrapped in settled cloud. Through the thick atmosphere
the tall firs loomed like spectres, while the far-off roar of flames
in the forest and the intermittent sounds of the volcano came weirdly
to the Indians as they passed on their mournful way. What wonder that
the distant sounds seemed to them wild voices in the air, prophecying
woe; and objects in the forest, half seen through the smoke, grotesque
forms attending them as they marched! And when the bands had all
gathered on the island, the shuddering Indians told of dim and shadowy
phantoms that had followed and preceded them all the way; and of
gigantic shapes in the likeness of men that had loomed through the
smoke, warning them back with outstretched arms. Ominous and unknown
cries had come to them through the gloom; and the spirits of the dead
had seemed to marshal them on their way, or to oppose their
coming,--they knew not which.

So, all day long, troop after troop crossed the river to the island,
emerging like shadows from the smoke that seemed to wrap the
world,--each with its sickly faces, showing the terrible spread of the
pestilence; each helping to swell the great horror that brooded over
all, with its tale of the sick and dead at home, and the wild things
seen on the way. Band after band the tribes gathered, and when the sun
went down the war-chief's obsequies took place.

[Illustration: _Multnomah's Death-canoe._]

It was a strange funeral that they gave Multnomah, yet it was in
keeping with the dark, grand life he had lived.

A large canoe was filled with pitch and with pine-knots,--the most
inflammable materials an Oregon forest could furnish. Upon them was
heaped all that was left of the chief's riches, all the silks and
velvets that remained of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel lost upon
the coast long before. And finally, upon the splendid heap of
textures, upon the laces and the damasks of the East, was laid the
dead body of Multnomah, dressed in buckskin; his moccasins on his
feet, his tomahawk and his pipe by his side, as became a chief
starting on his last journey.

Then as night came on, and the smoky air darkened into deepest gloom,
the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and
fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an
instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set
adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night
with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in
silence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them
forever. Promontory and dusky fir, gleaming water and level beach,
were brought into startling relief against the background of night, as
the burning vessel neared them; then sank into shadow as it passed
onward. Overhead, the playing tongues of fire reddened the smoke that
hung dense over the water, and made it assume distorted and fantastic
shapes, which moved and writhed in the wavering light, and to the
Indians seemed spectres of the dead, hovering over the canoe, reaching
out their arms to receive the soul of Multnomah.

"It is the dead people come for him," the Willamettes whispered to one
another, as they stood upon the bank, watching the canoe drift farther
and farther from them, with the wild play of light and shadow over it.
Down the river, like some giant torch that was to light the war-chief
along the shadowy ways of death, passed the burning canoe. Rounding a
wooded point, it blazed a moment brilliantly beside it, and as it
drifted to the farther side, outlined the intervening trees with fire,
till every branch was clearly relieved against a flaming background;
then, passing slowly on beyond the point, the light waned gradually,
and at last faded quite away.

And not till then was a sound heard among the silent and impassive
throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished
utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water,
the death-wail burst from the Indians with one impulse and one
voice,--a people's cry for its lost chief, a great tribe's lament for
the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never to return.

Among a superstitious race, every fact becomes mingled more or less
with fable; every occurrence, charged with fantastic meanings. And
there sprang up among the Indians, no one could tell how, a prophecy
that some night when the Willamettes were in their direst need, a
great light would be seen moving on the waters of the Columbia, and
the war-chief would come back in a canoe of fire to lead them to
victory as of old.

Dire and awful grew their need as the days went on; swift and sweeping
was the end. Long did the few survivors of his race watch and wait for
his return,--but never more came back Multnomah to his own.

CHAPTER V.

AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE.

             A land of old upheaven from the abyss
             By fire, to sink into the abyss again,
             Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt.

                                               TENNYSON.

And now our tale draws to a close. There remains but to tell how the
last council was held on Wappatto Island; how Mishlah the Cougar,
chief of the Mollalies, died; and how the prophecy of the Bridge was
fulfilled.

The morning after the obsequies of Multnomah, the chiefs met in the
grove where the great council of the tribes had been held only a few
weeks before. The leaves, which had been green and glossy then, were
turning yellow and sickly now in the close hot weather. All Nature
seemed full of decay.

The chiefs were grouped before the vacant seat of Multnomah; and the
Willamette tribe, gathered from canyon and prairie and fishery, looked
on, sole spectators of the proceedings,--for none of the allies were
present. The ravages of the pestilence had been terrible. Many
warriors were missing from the spectators; many chiefs were absent
from the council. And there were some present from whom the others
shrunk away, whose hot breath and livid faces showed that they too
were stricken with the plague. There were emaciated Indians among the
audience, whose gaunt forms and hollow eyes told that they had dragged
themselves to the council-grove to die. The wailing of the women at
the camp, lamenting those just dead; the howling of the medicine-men
in the distance, performing their incantations over the sick; the
mysterious sounds that came from the burning forest and the
volcano,--all these were heard. Round the council the smoke folded
thick and dark, veiling the sun, and shutting out the light of heaven
and the mercy of the Great Spirit.

The chiefs sat long in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.
At length arose a stately warrior famous among the Willamettes for
wisdom and prudence.

"We perish," said the chief, "we melt away before the breath of the
pestilence, like snow before the breath of the warm spring wind. And
while we die of disease in our lodges, war gathers against us beyond
the ranges. Even now the bands of our enemies may be descending the
mountains, and the tomahawk may smite what the disease has spared.
What is to be done? What say the wise chiefs of the Willamettes?
Multnomah's seat is empty: shall we choose another war-chief?"

A pale and ghastly chief rose to reply. It was evident that he was in
the last extremity of disease.

"Shall we choose another war-chief to sit in Multnomah's place? We
may; but will he be Multnomah? The glory of the Willamettes is dead!
Talk no more of war, when our war-strength is gone from us. The Bridge