The Log School-House on the Columbia Part 5

"What have you been doing to my boy?" he said to the master. "Has he not been good?"

"Very good; I like him," said Mr. Mann. "He is trying to be good here,"

pointing to his heart. "The good in him will grow. I will help him."

The old chief and the boy walked away slowly out of the shadows of the great trees and up the cool trail. The tall master followed them with his eye. In the departing forms he saw a picture of the disappearing race. He knew history well, and how it would repeat itself on the great plateau and amid the giant forests of the Oregon. He felt that the old man was probably one of the last great chiefs of the Umatillas.

On one of the peninsulas of the Oregon, the so-called Islands of the Dead, the old warriors of the tribes were being gathered by the plagues that had come to the territories and tribal regions ever since the Hudson Bay Company established its posts on the west of the mountains, and Astoria had been planted on the great river, and settlers had gathered in the mountain-domed valley of the Willamette. Wherever the white sail went in the glorious rivers, pestilence came to the native tribes. The Indian race was perceptibly vanis.h.i.+ng. Only one son of seven was left to Umatilla. What would be the fate of this boy?

The master went home troubled over the event of the afternoon. He was asking the Indian to be better than his opponent, and she was a well-meaning woman and nominally a Christian.

His first thought was to go to Mrs. Woods and ask her to wholly change her spirit and manners, and, in fact, preach to her the same simple doctrine of following only one's better self that he had taught to the young prince. But he well knew that she had not a teachable mind. He resolved to try to reach the same result through Gretchen, whom she upbraided with her tongue but loved in her heart.

Mrs. Woods had come to regard it as her appointed mission to abuse people for their good. She thought it tended toward their spiritual progress and development. She often said that she felt "called to set things right, and not let two or three people have their own way in everything"--a view of life not uncommon among people of larger opportunities and better education.

Benjamin came to school the next morning silent and sullen, and the master went to him again in the same spirit as before.

"She say I no right here," he said. "She suffer for it. She wah-wah. Look out for the October moon."

"No, you are a better Indian now."

"Yes; sometimes."

"The better Indian harms no one--one's good self never does evil. You are to be your good self, and please me."

The young Indian was silent for a time. He at last said, slowly:

"But me know who will."

"Do what, Benjamin?"

"Make her suffer--punish."

"Who?"

"I know a bad Indian who will. He say so."

"You must not let him. You are son of a chief."

"I will try. I no wah-wah now."

At noon Benjamin was light-hearted, and led the sports and games. He was very strong, and one of his lively feats was to let three or four children climb upon his back and run away with them until they tumbled off. He seemed perfectly happy when he was making the others happy, and nothing so delighted him as to be commended. He longed to be popular, not from any selfish reason, but because to be liked by others was his atmosphere of contentment. He was kindly above most Indians, a trait for which his father was famous. He was even kindly above many of the white people.

The next morning he came to school in good humor, and a curious incident occurred soon after the school began. A little black bear ventured down the trail toward the open door, stopping at times and lifting up its head curiously and cautiously. It at last ventured up to the door, put its fore feet on the door-sill, and looked into the room.

"Kill it!" cried one of the boys, a recent emigrant, in the alarm. "Kill it!"

"What harm it do?" said the Indian boy. "Me drive it away."

The young Indian started toward the door as at play, and shook his head at the young bear, which was of the harmless kind so well known in the Northwest, and the bear turned and ran, while the Indian followed it toward the wood. The odd event was quite excusable on any ground of rule and propriety in the primitive school.

"It no harm; let it go," said the boy on his return; and the spirit of the incident was good and educational in the hearts of the school.

The charm of his life was Gretchen's violin. It transfigured him; it changed the world to him. His father was a forest philosopher; the boy caught a like spirit, and often said things that were a revelation to Mr.

Mann.

"Why do you like the violin so much?" said the latter to him one day.

"It brings to me the thing longed for--the thing I long to know."

"Why, what is that?"

"I can't tell it--I feel it here--I sense it--I shall know--something better--yonder--the thing we long for, but do not know. Don't you long for it? Don't you feel it?"

The tall schoolmaster said "Yes," and was thoughtful. The poor Indian had tried to express that something beyond his self of which he could only now have a dim conception, and about which even science is dumb. Mr. Mann understood it, but he could hardly have expressed it better.

The boy learned the alphabet quickly, and began to demand constant attention in his eagerness to learn. Mr. Mann found that he was giving more than the allotted time to him. To meet the case, he appointed from time to time members of the school "monitors," as he called them, to sit beside him and help him.

One day he asked Gretchen to do this work. The boy was delighted to be instructed by the mistress of the violin, and she was as pleased with the honor of such monitorial duties to the son of a chief. But an unexpected episode grew out of all this mutual good-will and helpful kindness.

Benjamin was so grateful to Gretchen for the pains that she took with his studies that he wished to repay her. He had a pretty little Cayuse pony which he used to ride; one day after school he caused it to be brought to the school-house, and, setting Gretchen upon it, he led it by the mane up the trail toward her home, a number of the pupils following them. On the way the merry-making party met Mrs. Woods. She was as astonished as though she had encountered an elephant, and there came into her face a look of displeasure and anger.

"What kind of doings are these, I would like to know?" she exclaimed, in a sharp tone, standing in the middle of the way and scanning every face.

"Riding out with an Injun, Gretchen, are you? That's what you are doing.

Girl, get off that horse and come with me! That is the kind of propriety that they teach out in these parts, is it? and the master came from Harvard College, too! One would think that this world was just made to enjoy one's self in, just like a sheep pasture, where the lambs go hopping and skipping, not knowing that they were born to be fleeced."

She hurried Gretchen away excitedly, and the school turned back. Benjamin was disappointed, and looked more hurt than ever before. On the way he met his old father, who had come out to look for him, and the rest of the scholars dispersed to their homes.

That evening, after a long, vivid twilight, such as throws its splendor over the mountain ranges in these northern lat.i.tudes, Mrs. Woods and Gretchen were sitting in their log-house just within the open door. Mr.

Woods was at the block-house at Walla Walla, and the cabin was unprotected. The light was fading in the tall pines of the valleys, and there was a deep silence everywhere, undisturbed by so much as a whisper of the Chinook winds. Mrs. Woods's thoughts seemed far away--doubtless among the old meadows, orchards, and farm-fields of New England. Gretchen was playing the musical gla.s.ses.

Suddenly Mrs. Woods's thoughts came back from their far-away journeys. She had seen something that disturbed her. She sat peering into a tract of trees which were some three hundred feet high--one of the great tree cathedrals of the Northwestern forests. Suddenly she said:

"Gretchen, there are Injuns in the pines. Watch!"

Gretchen looked out, but saw nothing.

The shadows deepened.

"I have twice seen Injuns pa.s.sing from tree to tree and hiding. Why are they there? There--look!"

A sinewy form in the shadows of the pines appeared and disappeared.

Gretchen saw it.

"They mean evil, or they would not hide. Gretchen, what shall we do?"

Mrs. Woods closed the door and barred it, took down the rifle from the side of the room, and looked out through a crevice in the split shutter.

There was a silence for a time; then Mrs. Woods moved and said: "They are coming toward the house, pa.s.sing from one tree to another. They mean revenge--I feel it--revenge on me, and Benjamin--he is the leader of it."