The Bridge of the Gods Part 10

There was no reply. This white man, coming from far eastern lands lying they knew not where, who told them G.o.d had sent him to warn them to be better, had a singular influence over them. There was none of his hearers who did not dimly feel that he had done wrong in burning and scarring the poor ma.s.s of humanity before him, and that the Great Spirit was angry with him for it.

Back in the crowd, some of the children, young demons hungering for blood, began to clamor again for the death of the surviving Bannock.

Cecil Grey looked at him pityingly.

"At least you can let him go."

There was no answer. Better impulses, better desires, were struggling in their degraded minds; but cruelty was deeply rooted within them, the vague shame and misgiving his words had roused was not so strong as the dark animalism of their natures.

Cecil turned to Snoqualmie.

"I saved your life once, will you not give me his?"

The chief regarded him coldly.

"Take it," he said after a pause. Cecil stooped over and untied the thongs that bound the captive, who rose to his feet amid a low angry murmur from those around. Snoqualmie silenced it with an imperious gesture. Then he turned to the young Bannock.

"Dog, one of a race of dogs! go back to your people and tell them what you have seen to-day. Tell them how we burned and tortured their messenger, and that we let you go only to tell the tale. Tell them, too, that Snoqualmie knows his sister died by their hand last winter, and that for every hair upon her head he will burn a Bannock warrior at the stake. Go, and be quick, lest my war-party overtake you on the trail."

The Bannock left without a word, taking the trail across the prairie toward the land of his tribe.

"The gift was given, but there was that given with it that made it bitter. And now may I bury this dead body?"

"It is only a Bannock; who cares what is done with it?" replied Snoqualmie. "But remember, my debt is paid. Ask of me no more gifts,"

and the chief turned abruptly away.

"Who will help me bury this man?" asked Cecil. No one replied; and he went alone and cut the thongs that bound the body to the stake. But as he stooped to raise it, a tall fine-looking man, a renegade from the Shoshones, who had taken no part in the torture, came forward to help him. Together they bore the corpse away from the camp to the hillside; together they hollowed out a shallow grave and stretched the body in it, covering it with earth and heaping stones on top, that the cayote might not disturb the last sleep of the dead.

When they returned to the camp, they found a war-party already in the saddle, with Snoqualmie at their head, ready to take the Bannock trail. But before they left the camp, a runner entered it with a summons from Multnomah calling them to the great council of the tribes on Wappatto Island, for which they must start on the morrow.

[3] See Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. i., p. 270.

[4] See Ross c.o.x's "Adventures on the Columbia River" for a description of torture among the Columbia tribes.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL.

They arrived at the village of Wishram.

IRVING: _Astoria_.

The camp was all astir at dawn, for sunset must see them far on the way. They must first cross the prairies to the northward till they struck the Columbia, then take the great trail leading down it to the Willamette valley. It was a two days' journey at the least.

Squaws were preparing a hurried meal; lodge-poles were being taken down and the mats that covered them rolled up and strapped on the backs of horses; Indians, yelling and vociferating, were driving up bands of horses from which pack and riding ponies were to be selected; unbroken animals were rearing and plunging beneath their first burdens, while mongrel curs ran barking at their heels. Here and there unskilful hands were throwing the la.s.so amid the jeers and laughter of the spectators. All was tumult and excitement.

At length they were under way. First rode the squaws, driving before them pack-horses and ponies, for the herds and entire movable property of the tribe accompanied it in all its marches. The squaws rode astride, like men, in the rude wooden saddles that one yet sees used by the wilder Indians of eastern Oregon and Idaho,--very high, both before and behind, looking like exaggerated pack-saddles. A hair rope, tied around the lower jaw of the horse, answered for a bridle. To this must be added the quirt, a short double-lashed whip fastened into a hollow and curiously carved handle. The application of this whip was so constant as to keep the right arm in continual motion; so that even to-day on the frontier an Indian rider can be distinguished from a white man, at a distance, by the constant rising and falling of the whip arm. With the squaws were the children, some of whom, not over four, five, and six years of age, rode alone on horseback, tied in the high saddles; managing their steeds with instinctive skill, and when the journey became fatiguing, going to sleep, secured by their fastenings from falling off.

Next came the men, on the best horses, unenc.u.mbered by weight of any kind and armed with bow and arrow. Here and there a lance pointed with flint, a stone knife or hatchet, or a heavy war-club, hung at the saddle; but the bow and arrow const.i.tuted their chief weapon.

The men formed a kind of rear-guard, protecting the migrating tribe from any sudden a.s.sault on the part of the Bannocks. There were perhaps two hundred fighting-men in all. Snoqualmie was at their head, and beside him rode the young Willamette runner who had brought the summons from Multnomah the day before. The Willamette was on horseback for the first time in his life. The inland or prairie tribes of eastern Oregon, coming as they did in contact with tribes whose neighbors bordered on Mexico, had owned horses for perhaps a generation; but the sea-board tribes owned very few, and there were tribes on Puget Sound and at the mouth of the Columbia who had never seen them. Even the Willamettes, sovereign tribe of the confederacy though they were, had but few horses.

This morning the young Willamette had bought a colt, giving for it a whole string of _hiagua_ sh.e.l.ls. It was a pretty, delicate thing, and he was proud of it, and had shown his pride by slitting its ears and cutting off its tail, as was the barbarous custom with many of the Indians. He sat on the little creature now; and loaded as it was with the double weight of himself and the heavy wooden saddle, it could hardly keep pace with the older and stronger horses.

In the rear of all rode Cecil Grey and the Shoshone renegade who had helped him bury the dead Bannock the evening before. Cecil's form was as slight and graceful in its Indian garb as in days gone by, and his face was still the handsome, sensitive face it had been eight years before. It was stronger now, more resolute and mature, and from long intercourse with the Indians there had come into it something grave and Indian-like; but it only gave more of dignity to his mien. His brown beard swept his breast, and his face was bronzed; but the lips quivered under the beard, and the cheek flushed and paled under the bronze.

What had he been doing in the eight years that had elapsed since he left his New England home? Let us listen to his story in his own words as he tells it to the Shoshone renegade by his side.

"I lived in a land far to the east, beside a great water. My people were white like myself. I was one of an order of men whom the Great Spirit had appointed to preach of goodness, mercy, and truth, and to explain to the people the sayings of a mighty book which he had given to the fathers,--a book that told how men should live in this world, and said that a beautiful place in the next would be given those who are good and true in this. But by and by the Great Spirit began to whisper to me of the Indians in the wilderness who knew nothing of the book or the hope within it, and a longing rose within me to go and tell them; but there were ties that held me to my own people, and I knew not what to do. Death cut those ties; and in my hour of grief there came to me a vision of a great bridge far in the west, and of Indians pa.s.sing over it, and a voice spoke to me and bade me go and seek the land of the bridge, for the Great Spirit had a mission for me there; and I went forth into the wilderness. I met many tribes and tarried with them, telling them of G.o.d. Many were evil and treated me harshly, others were kind and listened. Some loved me and wished me to abide always in their lodges and be one of them. But even while they spoke the Great Spirit whispered to me to go on, and an unrest rose within me, and I could not stay.

"So the years went by, and I wandered farther and farther to the west, across rivers and deserts, till I reached this tribe; and they said that farther on, toward the land of the Willamettes, a great river flowed through the mountains, and across it was a bridge of stone built by the G.o.ds when the world was young. Then I knew that it was the bridge of my vision, and the unrest came back and I arose to go.

But the tribe kept me, half as guest and half as prisoner, and would not let me depart; until last night the runner came summoning them to the council. Now they go, taking me with them. I shall see the land of the bridge and perform the work the Great Spirit has given me to do."

The old grand enthusiasm shone in his look as he closed. The Shoshone regarded him with grave attention.

"What became of the book that told of G.o.d?" he asked earnestly.

"A chief took it from me and burned it; but its words were written on my heart, and they could not be destroyed."

They rode on for a time in silence. The way was rugged, the country a succession of canyons and ridges covered with green and waving gra.s.s but bare of trees. Behind them, the Blue Mountains were receding in the distance. To the west, Mt. Hood, the great white "Witch Mountain"

of the Indians, towered over the prairie, streaking the sky with a long floating wreath of volcanic smoke. Before them, as they journeyed northward toward the Columbia, stretched out the endless prairie. Now they descended into a deep ravine, now they toiled up a steep hillside. The country literally rolled, undulating in immense ridges around and over which the long file of squaws and warriors, herds and pack-horses, wound like a serpent. From the bands ahead came shouts and outcries,--the sounds of rude merriment; and above all the long-drawn intonation so familiar to those who have been much with Indian hors.e.m.e.n,--the endlessly repeated "ho-ha, ho-ha, ho-ha," a kind of crude riding-song.

After a while Cecil said, "I have told you the story of my life, will you not tell me the story of yours?"

"Yes," said the renegade, after a moment's thought; "you have shown me your heart as if you were my brother. Now I will show you mine.

"I was a Shoshone warrior.[5] There was a girl in our village whom I had loved from childhood. We played together; we talked of how, when I became a man and a warrior, she should become my wife; she should keep my wigwam; we would always love one another. She grew up, and the chief offered many horses for her. Her father took them. She became the chief's wife, and all my heart withered up. Everything grew dark.

I sat in my wigwam or wandered in the forest, caring for nothing.

"When I met her, she turned her face aside, for was she not the wife of another? Yet I knew her heart hungered for me. The chief knew it too, and when he spoke to her a cloud was ever on his brow and sharp lightning on his tongue. But she was true. Whose lodge was as clean as his? The wood was always carried, the water at hand, the meat cooked.

She searched the very thought that was in his heart to save him the trouble of speaking. He could never say, 'Why is it not done?' But her heart was mine, and he knew it; and he treated her like a dog and not like a wife.

"Me too he tried to tread under foot. One day we a.s.sembled to hunt the buffalo. Our horses were all collected. Mine stood before my tent, and he came and took them away, saying that they were his. What could I do? He was a chief.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Great "Witch Mountain" of the Indians._]

"I came no more to the council, I shared no more in the hunt and the war-dance. I was unhorsed, degraded, dishonored. He told his wife what he had done, and when she wept he beat her.

"One evening I stood on a knoll overlooking the meadow where the horses were feeding; the chief's horses were there, and mine with them. I saw _him_ walking among them. The sight maddened me; my blood burned; I leaped on him; with two blows I laid him dead at my feet. I covered him with earth and strewed leaves over the place. Then I went to _her_ and told her what I had done, and urged her to fly with me.

She answered only with tears. I reminded her of all she had suffered, and told her I had done only what was just. I urged her again to fly.

She only wept the more, and bade me go. My heart was heavy but my eyes were dry.

"'It is well,' I said, 'I will go alone to the desert. None but the wild beasts of the wilderness will be with me. The seekers of blood will follow on my trail; they may come on me while I am asleep and slay me, but you will be safe. I will go alone.'