Part 24 (2/2)
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 areterrible to cory; the dreas 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 , 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 lipsand coaze The chief leaned closer over her; he called her na 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
”Co the name he had not spoken for six years ”You are my own, you are my wo or dead, are still the wife of Multnoeless cal 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 so always between them, which perhaps must ever be between those of diverse race It had been the one , and it seelide, viewless yet impenetrable, between theain,” he thought, looking down at her , 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 sorapple with!”
And the fierce warrior felt his blood kindle within hi 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 cru relics of humanity around him, the wonted look of command cath of will andThe 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 sorasp after power that, doht 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 reat chief, the master of all the tribes of the Wauna?
He knelt down, and began to sway his body back and forth after the , low, , in which the naain
”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-ns 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 who 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 seehostly presences There was a sense of breathing life all around him He felt that others,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 ca all the force of his nature into the effort, until it seeht must yield to his blended entreaty and co the viewless presences seeather, to look, and to listen; but no reply cahtbones on which the shi+fting moonbeams fell
Multno with anger that he should be so scorned
”Why is this?” said his stern voice in the silence ”You coive 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 seenetic life, of muffled heart-beats, of voiceless, unresponsive, uncommunicative forms that he could almost touch
For perhaps the first tiht His forleamed with the terrible wrath which the tribes dreaded as they dreaded the wrath of the Great Spirit
[Illustration: ”_Come back! Come back!_”]
”Do you h 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 n; I say it,--I, Multnoain The roar of the volcano had ceased; and an os held their breath, anticipating sohty and imminent catastrophe Multno 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 co expectation: then the answer caiven The earth shook beneath hiered, almost fell; the hut creaked and swayed like a storh the crevices on the side toward Mount Hood caap in the Cascade Range through which flows the Colu crash which had so startled Cecil and appalled the tribes Then, tenfold louder than before, caain the roar of the volcano
Too well Multnoone down in that crash; too well did he read the sign that had been given For a th 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 ButLike a war-chief will I meet that which is to coe has fallen, with a crash that will shake the earth, with a ruin that shall crush all beneath hi 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 ive you back tobetween us then; I shall understand you at last”