Part 24 (1/2)

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-ht 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 low 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 hoay back in the past, sohtfall, 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 the to their canoes in swiftest fear, they found the shadowy pursuit ifter still, and were overtaken and struck dohile the whole island rung withall torn and bruised into the river and swi to the farther shore When he looked back, the island was covered with hts, and the shrill echo of fiendish mirth caain A little while afterward the dogs barked all night around his lodge, and in the hastly and draith fear, as if at sohtful 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 daytiht hither the swathed bodies of their dead, laid them in the burial hut, lifted the wail over the

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 a all the tribes ould 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 sed woe to the Willamettes, perplexed by Tohohed down by a dread presentie and superstitious errand

On the upper part of the island, above reach of high water, the burial hut looht as the chief approached it

Some of the Willareater 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 Theup the interior with a di cere bone, lay the dead of the line of Multnomah,--the chiefs of the blood royal who had ruled the Willaiant 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 his were still clasped in fleshless fingers; beside the squaw's skull the ear-pendants of _hiagua_ shells lay where they had fallen fro 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 ht 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 cahtly swathed, fold upon fold, in sos, stiffened by time still shohat had once been a rare symmetry of forh age and fitting like a mask to the features The chief knelt down and dreay 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 so 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 theular profile, the exquisitely chiselled chin Around the shoulders and the srown in rich luxurianton the shrunken yet beautiful face His iron features grew soft, as none but Wallulah had ever seen theently the hair of his dead wife, and put it back fro tenderness He had never understood her; she had always been a ery of his nature had never been able to enter into or corace of hers; but he had loved her with all the fierce, tenacious, secretive power of his being, a power that neither tie 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 Multnory 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”