The Bridge of the Gods Part 25

Then he drew his robe close around him, and went out into the night.

BOOK V.

_THE SHADOW OF THE END._

CHAPTER I.

THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.

"We view as one who hath an evil sight,"

He answered, "plainly objects far remote."

CAREY: _Dante_.

The night came to an end at last,--a night not soon forgotten by the Oregon Indians, and destined to be remembered in tale and _tomanowos_ lore long after that generation had pa.s.sed away. The sky was thick with clouds; the atmosphere was heavy with smoke, which, dense and low-hanging in the still weather, shut out the entire horizon. The volcano was invisible in the smoky air, but its low mutterings came to them from time to time.

The chiefs met early in the grove of council. Multnomah's countenance told nothing of the night before, but almost all the rest showed something yet of superst.i.tious fear. Mishlah's face was haggard, his air startled and uneasy, like that of some forest animal that had been terribly frightened; and even Snoqualmie looked worn. But the greatest change of all was in Tohomish. His face was as ghastly as that of a corpse, and he came into the council walking in a dull lifeless way, as if hardly aware of what he was doing. Those nearest to him shrank away, whispering to one another that the seer looked like a dead man.

Cecil came last. The severe mental conflict of the past night had told almost fatally on a frame already worn out by years of toil and sickness. His cheek was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and faltering like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The pain at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, was sharp and piercing.

He looked agitated and restless; he had tried hard to give Wallulah into the hands of G.o.d and feel that she was safe, but he could not.

For himself he had no thought; but his whole soul was wrung with pain for her. By virtue of his own keen sympathies, he antic.i.p.ated and felt all that the years had in store for her,--the loneliness, the heartache, the trying to care for one she loathed; until he shrank from her desolate and hopeless future as if it had been his own. All his soul went out to her in yearning tenderness, in pa.s.sionate desire to shield her and to take away her burden.

But his resolution never wavered. Below the ebb and flow of feeling, the decision to make their separation final was as unchanging as granite. He could not bear to look upon her face again; he could not bear to see her wedded to Snoqualmie. He intended to make one last appeal to the Indians this morning to accept the gospel of peace; then he would leave the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So he sat there now, waiting for the "talk" to begin.

The bands gathered around the grove were smaller than usual. Many had fled from the valley at dawn to escape from the dreaded vicinity of the smoking mountains; many hundreds remained, but they were awed and frightened. No war could have appalled them as they were appalled by the shaking of the solid earth under their feet. All the abject, superst.i.tion of their natures was roused. They looked like men who felt themselves caught in the grasp of some supernatural power.

Multnomah opened the council by saying that two runners had arrived with news that morning; the one from the sea-coast, the other from up the Columbia. They would come before the council and tell the news they had brought.

The runner from the upper Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent forward eagerly to hear.

"_The Great Spirit has shaken the earth, and the Bridge of the G.o.ds has fallen!_"

There was the silence of amazement; then through the tribes pa.s.sed in many tongues the wild and wondering murmur, "The Bridge of the G.o.ds has fallen! The Bridge of the G.o.ds has fallen!" With it, too, went the recollection of the ancient prophecy that when the Bridge fell the power of the Willamettes would also fall. Now the Bridge was broken, and the dominion of the Willamettes was broken forever with it. At another time the slumbering jealousy of the tribes would have burst forth in terrific vengeance on the doomed race. But they were dejected and afraid. In the fall of the Bridge they saw the hand of the Great Spirit, a visitation of G.o.d. And so Willamette and tributary alike heard the news with fear and apprehension. Only Multnomah, who knew the message before it was spoken, listened with his wonted composure.

"It is well," he said, with more than Indian duplicity; "the daughter of Multnomah is to become the wife of Snoqualmie the Cayuse, and the new line that commences with their children will give new chiefs to head the confederacy of the Wauna. The old gives way to the new. That is the sign that the Great Spirit gives in the fall of the Bridge.

Think you it means that the war-strength is gone from us, that we shall no longer prevail in battle? No, no! who thinks it?"

The proud old sachem rose to his feet; his giant form towered over the mult.i.tude, and every eye fell before the haughty and scornful glance that swept council and audience like a challenge to battle.

"Is there a chief here that thinks it? Let him step out, let him grapple with Multnomah in the death-grapple, and see. Is there a tribe that thinks it? We reach out our arms to them; we are ready. Let them meet us in battle now, to-day, and know if our hearts have become the hearts of women. Will you come? We will give you dark and b.l.o.o.d.y proof that our tomahawks are still sharp and our arms are strong."

He stood with outstretched arms, from which the robe of fur had fallen back. A thrill of dread went through the a.s.sembly at the grim defiance; then Snoqualmie spoke.

"The heart of all the tribes is as the heart of Multnomah. Let there be peace."

The chief resumed his seat. His force of will had wrung one last victory from fate itself. Instantly, and with consummate address, Multnomah preoccupied the attention of the council before anything could be said or done to impair the effect of his challenge. He bade the other runner, the one from the sea-coast, deliver his message.

It was, in effect, this:--

A large canoe, with great white wings like a bird, had come gliding over the waters to the coast near the mouth of the Wauna. Whence it came no one could tell; but its crew were pale of skin like the great white _shaman_ there in the council, and seemed of his race. Some of them came ash.o.r.e in a small canoe to trade with the Indians, but trouble rose between them and there was a battle. The strangers slew many Indians with their magic, darting fire at them from long black tubes. Then they escaped to the great canoe, which spread its wings and pa.s.sed away from sight into the sea. Many of the Indians were killed, but none of the pale-faced intruders. Now the band who had suffered demanded that the white man of whom they had heard--the white chief at the council--be put to death to pay the blood-debt.

All eyes turned on Cecil, and he felt that his hour was come. Weak, exhausted in body and mind, wearied almost to death, a sudden and awful peril was on him. For a moment his heart sank, his brain grew dizzy. How _could_ he meet this emergency? All his soul went out to G.o.d with a dumb prayer for help, with an overwhelming sense of weakness. Then he heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard tones.

"The white man has heard the words of the runner. What has he to say why his life should not pay the blood-debt?"

Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put Wallulah, himself, his mission, into the hands of G.o.d; with one last effort he forced himself to speak.

Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring out of an exhausted body an energy, an outburst of final and intense effort, of which those of stronger physique do not seem capable. But it drains the remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. Was it this flaming-up of the almost burned-out embers of life that animated Cecil now? Or was it the Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer?

Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, all the power of his consecration came back; physical weakness and mental anxiety left him; he felt that Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite Compa.s.sion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearning to help them, to bring them to G.o.d, rekindling within him; and never had he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.

In pa.s.sionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in living force and power of delivery, it was the supreme effort of his life. He did not plead for himself; he ignored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger; but he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own system of retaliation and revenge; he showed them how it overshadowed their lives and lay like a deadening weight on their better natures. The horror, the cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood-thirst, the war-l.u.s.t, was set over against the love and forgiveness to which the Great Spirit called them.

The hearts of the Indians were shaken within them. The barbarism which was the outcome of centuries of strife and revenge, the dark and c.u.mulative growth of ages, was stirred to its core by the strong and tender eloquence of this one man. As he spoke, there came to all those swarthy listeners, in dim beauty, a glimpse of a better life; there came to them a moment's fleeting revelation of something above their own vindictiveness and ferocity. That vague longing, that indefinable wistfulness which he had so often seen on the faces of his savage audiences was on nearly every face when he closed.

As he took his seat, the tide of inspiration went from him, and a deadly faintness came over him. It seemed as if in that awful reaction the last spark of vitality was dying out; but somehow, through it all, he felt at peace with G.o.d and man. A great quiet was upon him; he was anxious for nothing, he cared for nothing, he simply rested as on the living presence of the Father.

Upon the sweet and lingering spell of his closing words came Multnomah's tones in stern contrast.

"What is the word of the council? Shall the white man live or die?"

Snoqualmie was on his feet in an instant.

"Blood for blood. Let the white man die at the torture-stake."

One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. Shaken for but a moment, the ancient inherited barbarism which was their very life rea.s.serted itself, and they could decide no other way. One, two, three of the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence. They were men whose hearts had been touched before by Cecil, and who were already desiring the better life They could not condemn their teacher.

At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His face, always repulsive, was pallid now in the extreme. The swathed corpses on _mimaluse_ island looked not more sunken and ghastly.

He essayed to speak; thrice the words faltered on his lips; and when at last he spoke, it was in a weary, lifeless way. His tones startled the audience like an electric shock. The marvellous power and sweetness were gone from his voice; its accents were discordant, uncertain. Could the death's head before them be that of Tohomish?

Could those harsh and broken tones be those of the Pine Voice? He seemed like a man whose animal life still survived, but whose soul was dead.

What he said at first had no relation to the matter before the council. Every Indian had his _tomanowos_ appointed him by the Great Spirit from his birth, and that _tomanowos_ was the strength of his life. Its influence grew with his growth; the roots of his being were fed in it; it imparted its characteristics to him. But the name and nature of his _tomanowos_ was the one secret that must go with him to the grave. If it was told, the charm was lost and the _tomanowos_ deserted him.

Tohomish's _tomanowos_ was the Bridge and the foreknowledge of its fall: a black secret that had darkened his whole life, and imparted the strange and mournful mystery to his eloquence. Now that the Bridge was fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish's heart, the music from his words.

"Tohomish has no voice now," he continued; "he is as one dead. He desires to say only this, then his words shall be heard no more among men. The fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willamettes but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and pa.s.s away. Another people shall take our place, another race shall reign in our stead, and the Indian shall be forgotten, or remembered only as a dim memory of the past.

"And who are they who bring us our doom? Look on the face of the white wanderer there; listen to the story of your brethren slain at the sea-coast by the white men in the canoe, and you will know. They come; they that are stronger, and push us out into the dark. The white wanderer talks of peace; but the Great Spirit has put death between the Indian and the white man, and where he has put death there can be no peace.

"Slay the white man as the white race will slay your children in the time that is to come. Peace? love? There can be only war and hate.

Striking back blow for blow like a wounded rattlesnake, shall the red man pa.s.s; and when the bones of the last Indian of the Wauna lie bleaching on the prairie far from the _mimaluse_ island of his fathers, then there will be peace.