The Log School-House on the Columbia Part 10

That night Gretchen told the story of the puma to Mrs. Woods, who had learned the leading incidents of it in the afternoon as she came to meet the girl in the trail, on the way from school.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SMOKE-TALK.

One day in September Mrs. Woods was at work in her cabin, and Gretchen was at school. Mrs. Woods was trying to sing. She had a hard, harsh voice always, and the tune was a battle-cry. The hymn on which she was exercising her limited gifts was not one of the happy tunes of Methodism, which early settlers on the Columbia loved to sing. It was a very censorious rhyme and took a very despondent view of the human heart:

"The pure testimony poured forth from the Spirit Cuts like a two-edged sword; And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented Because they're condemned by the Word."

She made the word "hypocrites" ring through the solitary log-cabin--she seemed to have the view that a large population of the world were of this cla.s.s of people. She paused in her singing and looked out of the door.

"There's one honest woman alive," she remarked to herself. "Thank Heaven, _I_ never yet feared the face of clay!"

A tall, dark form met her eye--a great shadow in the scintillant sunlight.

It was an aged Indian, walking with a staff. He was coming toward the cabin.

"Umatilla!" she said. "What can he want of me?"

The old chief approached, and bowed and sat down on a log that answered for a door-step.

"I walk with a staff now," he said. "My bow has drifted away on the tide of years--it will never come back again. I am old."

"You have been a good man," said Mrs. Woods, yielding to an impulse of her better nature. She presently added, as though she had been too generous, "And there aren't many good Injuns--nor white folks either for that matter."

"I have come to have a smoke-talk with you," said the old chief, taking out his pipe and asking Mrs. Woods to light it. "Listen! I want to go home. When a child is weary, I take him by the hand and point him to the smoke of his wigwam. He goes home and sleeps. I am weary. The Great Spirit has taken me by the hand; he points to the smoke of the wigwam. There comes a time when all want to go home. I want to go home. Umatilla is going home. I have _not_ spoken."

The smoke from his pipe curled over his white head in the pure, clear September air. He was eighty or more years of age. He had heard the traditions of Juan de Fuca, the Greek pilot, who left his name on the straits of the Puget Sea. He had heard of the coming of Vancouver in his boyhood, the English explorer who named the seas and mountains for his lieutenants and friends, Puget, Baker, Ranier, and Townsend. He had known the forest lords of the Hudson Bay Company, and of Astoria; had seen the sail of Gray as it entered the Columbia, and had heard the preaching of Jason Lee. The murder of Whitman had caused him real sorrow. Umatilla was a man of peace. He had loved to travel up and down the Columbia, and visit the great bluffs of the Puget Sea. He lived for a generation at peace with all the tribes, and now that he was old he was venerated by them all.

"You are a good old Injun," said Mrs. Woods, yielding to her better self again. "I don't say it about many people. I do think you have done your best--considering."

"I am not what I want to be," said Umatilla. "It is what we want to be that we shall be one day; don't you think so? The Great Spirit is going to make me what I want to be--he will make us all what we want to be. My desires are better than I--I will be my desires by and by. My staff is in my hand, and I am going home. The old warriors have gone home. They were thick as the flowers of the field, thick as the stars of the night. My boys are gone home--they were swift as the hawks in the air. Benjamin is left to the Umatillas. He is no butcher-bird; no forked tongue--he will remember the shade of his father. My heart is in his heart. I am going home. I have _not_ spoken."

He puffed his pipe again, and watched an eagle skimming along on the great over-sea of September gold. The Indian language is always picturesque, and deals in symbols and figures of speech. It is picture-speaking. The Indians are all poets in their imaginations, like children. This habit of personification grows in the Indian mind with advancing years. Every old Indian speaks in poetic figures. Umatilla had not yet "spoken," as he said; he had been talking in figures, and merely approaching his subject.

There was a long pause. He then laid down his pipe. He was about to speak:

"Woman, open your ears. The Great Spirit lives in women, and old people, and little children. He loves the smoke of the wigwam, and the green fields of the flowers, and the blue gardens of stars. And he loves music--it is his voice, the whisper of the soul.

"He spoke in the pine-tops, on the lips of the seas, in the sh.e.l.l, in the reed and the war-drum. Then _she_ came. He speaks through _her_. I want _her_ to speak for me. My people are angry. There are butcher-birds among them. They hate you--they hate the cabin of the white man. The white men take away their room, overthrow their forests, kill their deer. There is danger in the air.

"The October moon will come. It will grow. It will turn into a sun on the border of the night. Then come Potlatch. My people ask for the Dance of the Evil One. I no consent--it means graves.

"Let me have _her_ a moon--she play on the air. She play at the Potlatch for me. She stand by my side. The Great Spirit speak through her. Indians listen. They will think of little ones, they will think of departed ones, they will think of the hunt--they will see graves. Then the night will pa.s.s. Then the smoke will rise again from white man's cabin. Then I die in peace, and go home to the Great Spirit and rest. Will you let me have her? I _have_ spoken."

Mrs. Woods comprehended the figurative speech. The old chief wished to take Gretchen to his wigwam for a month, and have her play the violin on the great night of the Potlatch. He hoped that the influence of the music would aid him in preventing the Dance of the Evil Spirits, and a ma.s.sacre of the white settlers. What should she say?

"I will talk with Gretchen," she said. "You mean well. I can trust you. We will see."

He rose slowly, leaning on his staff, and emptied his pipe. It required a resolute will now to cause his withered limbs to move. But his steps became free after a little walking, and he moved slowly away. Poor old chief of the Cascades! It was something like another Sermon on the Mount that he had spoken, but he knew not how closely his heart had caught the spirit of the Divine Teacher.

When Gretchen came home from school, Mrs. Woods told her what had happened, and what the old chief had asked.

Mr. Woods had returned from the block-houses. He said: "Gretchen, go!

Your _Traumerei_ will save the colony. Go!"

Gretchen sat in silence for a moment. She then said: "I can trust Umatilla. I will go. I want to go. Something unseen is leading me--I feel it. I do not know the way, but I can trust my guide. I have only one desire, if I am young, and that is to do right. But is it right to leave you, mother?"

"Mother!" how sweet that word sounded to poor Mrs. Woods! She had never been a mother. Tears filled her eyes--she forced them back.

"Yes, Gretchen--go. I've always had to fight my way through the world, and I can continue to do so. I've had some things to harden my heart; but, no matter what you may do, Gretchen, I'll always be a mother to _you_. You'll always find the latch-string on the outside. You ain't the wust girl that ever was, if I did have a hand in bringing you up. Yes--go."

"Your heart is right now," said Gretchen; "and I want to speak to you about Benjamin. He told me a few days ago that he hated you, but that no one should ever harm you, because he loved the Master."

"He did, did he?" said Mrs. Woods, starting up. "Well, I hate him, and I'll never forgive him for tellin' you such a thing as that."

"But, mother, don't you love _the_ Master, and won't you be friendly and forgiving to Benjamin, for _his_ sake? I wish you would. It would give you power; I want you to do so."

"I'll think about it, Gretchen. I don't feel quite right about these things, and I'm goin' to have a good talk with Father Lee. The boy has some good in him."

"I wish you would tell him that."

"Why?"

"Sympathy makes one grow so."

"That's so, Gretchen. Only praise a dog for his one good quality, and it will make a good dog of him. I 'spect 'tis the same with folks. But my nature don't break up easy. I shall come out right some time. I tell you I'm goin' to have a talk with Father Lee. It is his preachin' that has made me what I am, and may be I'll be better by and by."

Mrs. Woods, with all her affected courage, had good reason to fear an Indian outbreak, and to use every influence to prevent it. The very mention of the Potlatch filled her with recent terror. She well knew the story of the destruction of Whitman and a part of his missionary colony.

_That_ was a terrible event, and it was a scene like that that the new settlers feared, at the approaching Potlatch; and the thought of that dreadful day almost weakened the faith of Mr. Mann in the Indians.

We must tell you the old-time history of the tragedy which was now revived in the new settlement.

_THE CONJURED MELONS._

Most people who like history are familiar with the national story of Marcus Whitman's "Ride for Oregon"[A]--that daring horseback trip across the continent, from the Columbia to the Missouri, which enabled him to convince the United States Government not only that Oregon could be reached, but that it was worth possessing. Exact history has robbed this story of some of its romance, but it is still one of the n.o.blest wonder-tales of our own or any nation. Monuments and poetry and art must forever perpetuate it, for it is full of spiritual meaning.

Lovers of missionary lore have read with delight the ideal romance of the two brides who agreed to cross the Rocky Mountains with their husbands, Whitman and Spaulding; how one of them sang, in the little country church on departing, the whole of the hymn--

"Yes, my native land, I love thee,"

when the voices of others failed from emotion. They have read how the whole party knelt down on the Great Divide, beside the open Bible and under the American flag, and took possession of the great empire of the Northwest in faith and in imagination, and how history fulfilled the dream.