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CHAPTER II
THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD

 
I seek a sail that never looms from out the purple haze
At rosy dawn, or fading eve, or in the noontide’s blaze.
 

Celia Thaxter.

Cecil walked listlessly on through the wood. He was worn out by the day’s efforts, though it was as yet but the middle of the afternoon. There was a feeling of exhaustion in his lungs, a fluttering pain about his heart, the result of years of over-work upon a delicate frame. With this feeling of physical weakness came always the fear that his strength might give way ere his work was done. Nor was this all. In these times of depression, the longing to see again the faces of his friends, to have again the sweet graceful things of the life that was forever closed to him, rushed over him in a bitter flood.

The trail led him to the bank of the Columbia, some distance below the encampment. He looked out over the blue river sweeping majestically on, the white snow-peaks, the canyons deep in the shadows of afternoon, the dense forest beyond the river extending away to the unknown and silent North as far as his eyes could reach.

“It is wonderful, wonderful!” he thought. “But I would give it all to look upon one white face.”

So musing, he passed on down the bank of the river. He was now perhaps two miles from the camp and seemingly in complete solitude. After a little the path turned away from the beach and led toward the interior. As he entered the woodland he came upon several Indian sentinels who lay, bow in hand, beside the path. They sprang up, as if to intercept his passage; but seeing that it was the white shaman whom Multnomah had honored, and who had sat at the council with the great sachems, they let him go on. Cecil indistinctly remembered having heard from some of the Indians that this part of the island was strictly guarded; he had forgotten why. So absorbed was he in his gloomy reflections that he did not stop to question the sentinels, but went on, not thinking that he might be treading on forbidden ground. By and by the path emerged from the wood upon a little prairie; the cottonwoods shut out the Indians from him, and he was again alone. The sunshine lay warm and golden on the little meadow, and he strolled forward mechanically, thinking how like it was to some of the sylvan lawns of his own New England forests. Again the shade of trees fell over the path. He looked up, his mind full of New England memories, and saw something that made his heart stand still. For there, not far from him, stood a girl clad in soft flowing drapery, the dress of a white woman. In Massachusetts a woman’s dress would have been the last thing Cecil would have noticed. Now, so long accustomed to the Indian squaws’ rough garments of skin or plaited bark, the sight of that graceful woven cloth sent through him an indescribable thrill.

He went on, his eager eyes drinking in the welcome sight, yet scarcely believing what he saw.

She had not yet observed him. The profile of her half-averted face was very sweet and feminine; her form was rounded, and her hair fell in long black ringlets to the shoulders. He was in the presence of a young and beautiful woman, – a white woman! All this he noted at a glance; noted, too, the drooping lashes, the wistful lines about the lips, the mournful expression that shadowed the beauty of her face.

Who was she? Where could she have come from?

She heard the approaching footsteps and turned toward him. Absolute bewilderment was on her face for a moment, and then it glowed with light and joy. Her dark, sad eyes sparkled. She was radiant, as if some great, long-looked for happiness had come to her. She came eagerly toward him, holding out her hands in impetuous welcome; saying something in a language he did not understand, but which he felt could not be Indian, so refined and pleasing were the tones.

He answered he knew not what, in his own tongue, and she paused perplexed. Then he spoke again, this time in Willamette.

She shrank back involuntarily.

“That language?” she replied in the same tongue, but with a tremor of disappointment in her voice. “I thought you were of my mother’s race and spoke her language. But you are white, like her people?”

She had given him both her hands, and he stood holding them; looking down into her eager, lifted face, where a great hope and a great doubt in mingled light and shadow strove together.

“I am a white man. I came from a land far to the East. But who are you, and how came you here?”

She did not seem to hear the last words, only the first.

“No, no,” she protested eagerly, “you came not from the East but from the West, the land across the sea that my mother came from in the ship that was wrecked.” And she withdrew one hand and pointed toward the wooded range beyond which lay the Pacific.

He shook his head. “No, there are white people in those lands too, but I never saw them. I came from the East,” he said, beginning to surmise that she must be an Asiatic. She drew away the hand that he still held in his, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I thought you were one of my mother’s people,” she murmured; and he felt that the pang of an exceeding disappointment was rilling her heart.

“Who are you?” he asked gently.

“The daughter of Multnomah.”

Cecil remembered now what he had heard of the dead white wife of Multnomah, and of her daughter, who, it was understood among the tribes, was to be given to Snoqualmie. He noticed, too, for the first time the trace of the Indian in her expression, as the light faded from it and it settled back into the despondent look habitual to it. All that was chivalrous in his nature went out to the fair young creature; all his being responded to the sting of her disappointment.

“I am not what you hoped I was, but your face is like the face of the women of my own land. Shall we not be friends?”

She looked up wistfully at the handsome and noble countenance above her, so different from the stolid visages she had known so long.

“Yes; you are not Indian.”

In that one expression she unconsciously told Cecil how her sensitive nature shrank from the barbarism around her; how the tastes and aspirations she had inherited from her mother reached out for better and higher things.

In a little while they were seated on a grassy bank in the shade of the trees, talking together. She bade him tell her of his people. She listened intently; the bright, beautiful look came back as she heard the tale.

“They are kind to women, instead of making them mere burden-bearers; they have pleasant homes; they dwell in cities? Then they are like my mother’s people.”

“They are gentle, kind, humane. They have all the arts that light up life and make it beautiful, – not like the tribes of this grim, bloodstained land.”

“This land!” Her face darkened and she lifted her hand in a quick, repelling gesture. “This land is a grave. The clouds lie black and heavy on the spirit that longs for the sunlight and cannot reach it.” She turned to him again. “Go on, your words are music.”

He continued, and she listened till the story of his country and his wanderings was done. When he ended, she drew a glad, deep breath; her eyes were sparkling with joy.

“I am content,” she said, in a voice in which there was a deep heart-thrill of happiness. “Since my mother died I have been alone, all alone; and I longed, oh so often, for some one who talked and felt as she did to come to me, and now you have come. I sat cold and shivering in the night a long time, but the light and warmth have come at last. Truly, Allah is good!”

“Allah!”

“Yes; he was my mother’s God, as the Great Spirit is my father’s.”

“They are both names for the same All Father,” replied Cecil. “They mean the same thing, even as the sun is called by many names by many tribes, yet there is but the one sun.”

“Then I am glad. It is good to learn that both prayed to the one God, though they did not know it. But my mother taught me to use the name of Allah, and not the other. And while my father and the tribes call me by my Indian name, ‘Wallulah,’ she gave me another, a secret name, that I was never to forget.”

“What is it?”

“I have never told it, but I will tell you, for you can understand.”

And she gave him a singularly melodious name, of a character entirely different from any he had ever heard, but which he guessed to be Arabic or Hindu.

“It means, ‘She who watches for the morning.’ My mother told me never to forget it, and to remember that I was not to let myself grow to be like the Indians, but to pray to Allah, and to watch and hope, and that sometime the morning would come and I would be saved from the things around me. And now you have come and the dawn comes with you.”

Her glad, thankful glance met his; the latent grace and mobility of her nature, all roused and vivid under his influence, transfigured her face, making it delicately lovely. A great pang of longing surged through him.

“Oh,” he thought, “had I not become a missionary, I might have met and loved some one like her! I might have filled my life with much that is now gone from it forever!”

For eight years he had seen only the faces of savage women and still more savage men; for eight years his life had been steeped in bitterness, and all that was tender or romantic in his nature had been cramped, as in iron fetters, by the coarseness and stolidity around him. Now, after all that dreary time, he met one who had the beauty and the refinement of his own race. Was it any wonder that her glance, the touch of her dress or hair, the soft tones of her voice, had for him an indescribable charm? Was it any wonder that his heart went out to her in a yearning tenderness that although not love was dangerously akin to it?

He was startled at the sweet and burning tumult of emotion she was kindling within him. What was he thinking of? He must shake these feelings off, or leave her. Leave her! The gloom of the savagery that awaited him at the camp grew tenfold blacker than ever. All the light earth held for him seemed gathered into the presence of this dark-eyed girl who sat talking so musically, so happily, by his side.

“I must go,” he forced himself to say at length, “The sun is almost down.”

“Must you go so soon?”

“I will come again if you wish.”

“But you must not go yet; wait till the sun reaches the mountain-tops yonder. I want you to tell me more about your own land.”

So he lingered and talked while the sun sank lower and lower in the west. It seemed to him that it had never gone down so fast before.

“I must go now,” he said, rising as the sun’s red disk sank behind the mountains.

“It is not late; see, the sun is shining yet on the brow of the snow mountains.”

Both looked at the peaks that towered grandly in the light of the sunken sun while all the world below lay in shadow. Together they watched the mighty miracle of the afterglow on Mount Tacoma, the soft rose-flush that transfigured the mountain till it grew transparent, delicate, wonderful.

“That is what my life is now, – since you have brought the light to the ‘watcher for the morning;’” and she looked up at him with a bright, trustful smile.

“Alas?” thought Cecil, “it is not the light of morning but of sunset.”

Slowly the radiance faded, the rose tint passed; the mountain grew white and cold under their gaze, like the face of death. Wallulah shuddered as if it were a prophecy.

“You will come back to-morrow?” she said, looking at him with her large, appealing eyes.

“I will come,” he said.

“It will seem long till your return, yet I have lived so many years waiting for that which has come at last that I have learned to be patient.”

“Ask God to help you in your hours of loneliness and they will not seem so long and dark,” said Cecil, whose soul was one tumultuous self-reproach that he had let the time go by without telling her more of God.

“Ah!” she said in a strange, wistful way, “I have prayed to him so much, but he could not fill all my heart. I wanted so to touch a hand and look on a face like my mother’s. But God has sent you, and so I know he must be good.”

They parted, and he went back to the camp.

“Is my mission a failure?” he thought, as he walked along, clinching his hands in furious anger with himself. “Why do I let a girl’s beauty move me thus, and she the promised wife of another? How dare I think of aught beside the work God has sent me here to do? Oh, the shame and guilt of such weakness! I will be faithful. I will never look upon her face again!”

He emerged from the wood into the camp; its multitudinous sounds were all around him, and never had the coarseness and savagery of Indian life seemed so repellent as now, when he came back to it with his mind full of Wallulah’s grace and loveliness. It was harsh discord after music.

Stripped and painted barbarians were hallooing, feasting, dancing; the whole camp was alive with boisterous hilarity, the result of a day of good fellowship. Mothers were calling their children in the dusk and young men were sportively answering, “Here I am, mother.” Here and there, Indians who had been feasting all day lay like gorged anacondas beside the remnant of their meal; others, who had been gambling, were talking loudly of the results of the game.

Through it all the white man walked with swift footsteps, looking neither to the right nor the left, till he gained his lodge. He flung himself on his bed and lay there, his fingers strained together convulsively, his nerves throbbing with pain; vainly struggling with regret, vainly repeating to himself that he cared nothing for love and home, that he had put all those things from him, that he was engrossed now only in his work.

“Never, never! It can never be.”

And the English exploring-ship in Yaquina Bay was to weigh anchor on the morrow, and sail up nearer along the unknown coast. The Indians had all deserted the sea-board for the council. Would Cecil hear? Would any one see the sail and bring the news?

CHAPTER III
CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF

Children of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue.

Young.

On the next day came the races, the great diversion of the Indians. Each tribe ran only one horse, – the best it had. There were thirty tribes or bands, each with its choicest racer on the track. The Puget Sound and lower Columbia Indians, being destitute of horses, were not represented. There had been races every day on a small scale, but they were only private trials of speed, while to-day was the great day of racing for all the tribes, the day when the head chiefs ran their horses.

The competition was close, but Snoqualmie the Cayuse won the day. He rode the fine black horse he had taken from the Bannock he had tortured to death. Multnomah and the chiefs were present, and the victory was won under the eyes of all the tribes. The haughty, insolent Cayuse felt that he had gained a splendid success. Only, as in the elation of victory his glance swept over the crowd, he met the sad, unapplauding gaze of Cecil, and it made his ever burning resentment grow hotter still.

“I hate that man,” he thought. “I tried to thrust him down into slavery, and Multnomah made him a chief. My heart tells me that he is an enemy. I hate him. I will kill him.”

“Poor Wallulah!” Cecil was thinking. “What a terrible future is before her as the wife of that inhuman torturer of men!”

And his sympathies went out to the lonely girl, the golden thread of whose life was to be interwoven with the bloodstained warp and woof of Snoqualmie’s. But he tried hard not to think of her; he strove resolutely that day to absorb himself in his work, and the effort was not unsuccessful.

After the races were over, a solemn council was held in the grove and some important questions discussed and decided. Cecil took part, endeavoring in a quiet way to set before the chiefs a higher ideal of justice and mercy than their own. He was heard with grave attention, and saw that more than one chief seemed impressed by his words. Only Snoqualmie was sullen and inattentive, and Mishlah the Cougar was watchful and suspicious.

After the council was over Cecil went to his lodge. On the way he found the young Willamette runner sitting on a log by the path, looking even more woebegone than he had the day before. Cecil stopped to inquire how he was.

“Cultus [bad],” was grunted in response.

“Did you see the races?”

“Races bad. What do I care?”

“I hope you will be better soon.”

“Yes, better or worse by and by. What do I care?”

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Go.”

And he dropped his hand upon his knees, doubled himself together, and refused to say another word. As Cecil turned to go he found Multnomah standing close by, watching him.

“Come,” said the stern despot, briefly. “I want to talk with you.”

He led the way back through the noisy encampment to the now deserted grove of council. Everything there was quiet and solitary; the thick circle of trees hid them from the camp, though its various sounds floated faintly to them. They were quite alone. Multnomah seated himself on the stone covered with furs, that was his place in the council. Cecil remained standing before him, wondering what was on his mind. Was the war-chief aware of his interview with Wallulah? If so, what then? Multnomah fixed on him the gaze which few men met without shrinking.

“Tell me,” he said, while it seemed to Cecil as if that eagle glance read every secret of his innermost heart, “tell me where your land is, and why you left it, and the reason for your coming among us. Keep no thought covered, for Multnomah will see it if you do.”

Cecil’s eye kindled, his cheek flushed. Wallulah was forgotten; his mission, and his mission only, was remembered. He stood before one who held over the many tribes of the Wauna the authority of a prince: if he could but be won for Christ, what vast results might follow!

He told it all, – the story of his home and his work, his call of God to go to the Indians, his long wanderings, the message he had to deliver, how it had been received by some and rejected by many; now he was here, a messenger sent by the Great Spirit to tell the tribes of the Wauna the true way of life. He told it all, and never had he been so eloquent. It was a striking contrast, the grim Indian sitting there leaning on his bow, his sharp, treacherous gaze bent like a bird of prey on the delicately moulded man pleading before him.

He listened till Cecil began to talk of love and forgiveness as duties enjoined by the Great Spirit. Then he spoke abruptly.

“When you stood up in the council the day the bad chief was tried, and told of the weakness and the wars that would come if the confederacy was broken up, you talked wisely and like a great chief and warrior; now you talk like a woman. Love! forgiveness!” He repeated the words, looking at Cecil with a kind of wondering scorn, as if he could not comprehend such weakness in one who looked like a brave man. “War and hate are the life of the Indian. They are the strength of his heart. Take them away, and you drain the blood from his veins; you break his spirit; he becomes a squaw.”

“But my people love and forgive, yet they are not squaws. They are brave and hardy in battle; their towns are great; their country is like a garden.”

And he told Multnomah of the laws, the towns, the schools, the settled habits and industry of New England. The chief listened with growing impatience. At length he threw his arm up with an indescribable gesture of freedom, like a man rejecting a fetter.

“How can they breathe, shut in, bound down like that? How can they live, so tied and burdened?”

“Is not that better than tribe forever warring against tribe? Is it not better to live like men than to lurk in dens and feed on roots like beasts? Yet we will fight, too; the white man does not love war, but he will go to battle when his cause is just and war must be.”

“So will the deer and the cayote fight when they can flee no longer. The Indian loves battle. He loves to seek out his enemy, to grapple with him, and to tread him down. That is a man’s life!”

There was a wild grandeur in the chief’s tone. All the tameless spirit of his race seemed to speak through him, the spirit that has met defeat and extermination rather than bow its neck to the yoke of civilization. Cecil realized that on the iron fibre of the war-chief’s nature his pleading made no impression whatever, and his heart sank within him.

Again he tried to speak of the ways of peace, but the chief checked him impatiently.

“That is talk for squaws and old men. Multnomah does not understand it. Talk like a man, if you wish him to listen. Multnomah does not forgive; Multnomah wants no peace with his enemies. If they are weak he tramples on them and makes them slaves; if they are strong he fights them. When the Shoshones take from Multnomah, he takes from them; if they give him war he gives them war; if they torture one Willamette at the stake, Multnomah stretches two Shoshones upon red-hot stones. Multnomah gives hate for hate and war for war. This is the law the Great Spirit has given the Indian. What law he has given the white man, Multnomah knows not nor cares!”

Baffled in his attempt, Cecil resorted to another line of persuasion. He set before Multnomah the arts, the intelligence, the splendor of the white race.

“The Indian has his laws and customs, and that is well; but why not council with the white people, even as chiefs council together? Send an embassy to ask that wise white men be sent you, so that you may learn of their arts and laws; and what seems wise and good you can accept, what seems not so can be set aside. I know the ways that lead back to the land of the white man; I myself would lead the embassy.”

It was a noble conception, – that of making a treaty between this magnificent Indian confederacy and New England for the purpose of introducing civilization and religion; and for a moment he lost sight of the insurmountable obstacles in the way.

“No,” replied the chief, “neither alone nor as leader of a peace party will your feet ever tread again the path that leads back to the land of the white man. We want not upon our shoulders the burden of his arts and laws. We want not his teachers to tell us how to be women. If the white man wants us, let him find his way over the desert and through the mountains, and we will grapple with him and see which is the strongest.”

So saying, the war-chief rose and left him.

“He says that I shall never be allowed to go back,” thought Cecil, with a bitter consciousness of defeat. “Then my mission ends here in the land of the Bridge, even as I have so often dreamed that it would. So be it; I shall work the harder now that I see the end approaching. I shall gather the chiefs in my own lodge this evening and preach to them.”

While he was forming his resolution, there came the recollection that Wallulah would look for him, would be expecting him to come to her.

“I cannot,” he thought, though he yearned to go to her. “I cannot go; I must be faithful to my mission.”

Many chiefs came that night to his lodge; among them, to his surprise, Tohomish the seer. Long and animated was Cecil’s talk; beautiful and full of spiritual fervor were the words in which he pointed them to a better life. Tohomish was impassive, listening in his usual brooding way. The others seemed interested; but when he was done they all rose up and went away without a word, – all except the Shoshone renegade who had helped him bury the dead Bannock. He came to Cecil before leaving the lodge.

“Sometime,” he said, “when it will be easier for me to be good than it is now, I will try to live the life you talked about to-night.”

Then he turned and went out before Cecil could reply.

“There is one at least seeking to get nearer God,” thought Cecil, joyfully. After awhile his enthusiasm faded away, and he remembered how anxiously Wallulah must have waited for him, and how bitterly she must have been disappointed. Her face, pale and stained with tears, rose plainly before him. A deep remorse filled his heart.

“Poor child! I am the first white person she has seen since her mother died; no wonder she longs for my presence! I must go to her to-morrow. After all, there is no danger of my caring for her. To me my work is all in all.”