The Bridge of the Gods Part 27

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_ sh.e.l.ls, money as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored ma.s.ses. 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 sh.o.r.e. 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_ sh.e.l.ls, that which he desired. There was no unseemly haste or s.n.a.t.c.hing; 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds. 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 owners.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sociates, 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 l.u.s.t 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!"