Part 11 (1/2)
”I turned to go She sprang after o I will go: you shall never part fro, one who had seen me slay the chief and had roused the ca the door, and knew that death cae, but they saw us and their arrows flew She fell, and I caught her in my arms and fled into the wood When ere safe I looked at her I carried, and she was dead An arrow had pierced her heart I buried her that night beneath a heap of stones, and fled to the Cayuses That is my story”
”What will you do now?” asked Cecil, deeply touched
”I shall live a o on the war-trail, and say strong words in the council And when ht coo forth into the darkness, I know I shall find her I love waiting for me beside the death-trail that leads to the spirit-land”
The tears came into Cecil's eyes
”I too have known sorrow,” he said, ”and like you I aether into an unknown land, knowing not what may befall us Let us be friends”
And he held out his hand The Indian took it,--aardly, as an Indian always takes the hand of a white man, but warmly, heartily
”We are brothers,” he said simply And as Cecil rode on with the wild troop into the unknoorld before him, he felt that there was one beside hi day wore on; the sun rose to the zenith and sunk, and still the Indians pushed forward It was a long, forced ued when at last one of the Indians told hi river where they would caht
”One sunin the west, ”and you will see the Bridge of the Gods”
The news re-animated Cecil, and he hurried on A shout rose fro train of horses and riders pause and look doard and the Indians at the rear gallop forward Cecil and his friend followed and joined them
”The river! the river!” cried the Indians, as they rode up The scene beloas one of gloonificent beauty Beneath them opened an ireat canyon of the Colu doard fro precipices or steep slopes At the bottom, more than a thousand feet beloound a wide blue river, the gathered waters of half a continent Beneath the low precipice with a roar that filled the canyon for miles Farther on, the flat banks encroached upon the strea rocks Still farther, it widened again, swept grandly around a bend in the distance, and passed froht
”_Tuum, tuum_,” said the Indians to Cecil, in tones that imitated the roar of the cataract It was the ”Tum” of Lewis and Clark, the ”Tumwater” of more recent times; and the place belohere the co the flat black rocks, was the far-famed Dalles of the Colu profoundly lonely and desolate about it,--the s, shut in by mountain and desert, wrapped in an awful solitude where froe scarce a sound was heard save the cry of wild beasts or wilder men
”It is the very river of death and of desolation,” thought Cecil ”It looks lonely, forsaken, as if no eye had beheld it froain at the falls, he sahat he had not before noticed, a large ca across the river, he descried on a knoll on the opposite bank--what? Houses! He could not believe his eyes; could it be possible? Yes, they certainly were long, low houses, roofed as the white rew dizzy He turned to one of the Indians
”Who built those houses?” he exclaimed; ”white men like me?”
The other shook his head
”No, Indians”
Cecil's heart died within him ”After all,” he murmured, ”it was absurd to expect to find a settlement of white men here How could I think that any but Indians had built those houses?”
Still, as they descended the steep zigzag pathway leading down to the river, he could not help gazing again and again at the buildings that so ree of the falls, whose brave and insolent inhabitants, more than a century later, were the dread of the early explorers and fur traders of the Coluhest fishery on the Columbia, for the salmon could not at that ti tribes of the Upper Columbia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the Wishram fishers There too the Indians of the Lower Coluua_ shells, the dried berries, and _wappatto_ of their country for the bear claws and buffalo robes of the interior It was a rendezvous where buying, selling, ga took the place of war and the chase; though the ever burning enmities of the tribes soround not infrequently became a field of battle
The houses of Wishra below the surface of the ground, so that they were virtually half cellar At a distance, the log walls and arched roofs gave them very much the appearance of a frontier town of the whites
As they descended to the river-side, Cecil looked again and again at the village, so different froes of the Rocky Mountain tribes he had been with so long But the broad and sweeping river flowed between, and his gaze told hilance had done