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Although, according to the superstitious custom of the Willamettes, he never spoke the name of Sea-Flower or alluded to her in any way, he loved his lost wife with a deep and unchanging affection. She had been a fair frail thing whose grace and refinement perplexed and fascinated him, moving him to unwonted tenderness and yearning. He had brought to her the spoils of the chase and of battle.
The fall of the magic Bridge, the death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of Multnomah had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs stayed their followers only till they knew that he was dead. But the grand old war-chief seemed determined that he would not die.
The spokesman of the runners, the runner to the Chopponish, stepped forward. With gestures of perfect grace, and in a voice that rang like a silver trumpet, he repeated the ancient oath of the Willamettes, the oath used by the Shoshones to-day. "The earth hears us, the sun sees us. Shall we fail in fidelity to our chief?" There was a pause.
It was the death-song of the Willamettes, solemnly rendered by the last and greatest orator of the race. At length he spoke of Multnomah and of the power of the confederacy in his time, but spoke of it as of old time, seen dimly through the lapse of years.
"Shall we choose another war-chief to sit in Multnomah's place? We may; but will he be Multnomah? The glory of the Willamettes is dead! Talk no more of war, when our war-strength is gone from us. The Bridge is fallen, the Great Spirit is against us. Let those who are to live talk of war. It is time for us to learn how to die." He sunk flushed and exhausted upon the ground.
Beyond the circle of Willamettes, who were still indifferent and unconcerned, the discontented bands had thrown aside all concealment, and stood with bared weapons in their hands; all murmurs had ceased; there was a deathlike silence in the dense mob, which seemed gathering itself together for a forward rush, the commencement of a fearful massacre.
Haggard, starved, bound, his eyes gleamed deathless and unconquerable hate on council and war-chief alike. There were dark and menacing looks among the malcontents; in the captive they saw personified their own loss of freedom and the hated domination of the Willamettes. "Speak! You that were a chief, you whose people sleep in the dust, what have you to say in your defence?
Such a council, with the terrible warning of the rebel's death enacted before it, would awe the malcontents into submission or drive them into open revolt. Long enough had the allies spoken with two tongues; long enough had they smoked the peace-pipe with both the Willamettes and their enemies. They must come now to peace that should be peace, or to open war.
And then I knew that I had heard no human voice lamenting the dead, but that it was the Spirit Indian-of-the-Wood wailing for the living whose feet go down to the darkness and whose faces the sun shall soon see no more. Then my heart grew heavy and bitter, for I knew that woe had come to the Willamettes.
Then rose an aged chief, so old that it seemed as if a century of time had passed over him. His hair was a dirty gray, his eyes dull and sunken, his face withered. He supported himself with tremulous bony hands upon his staff. His voice was feeble, and seemed like an echo from the long-perished past. "I am old, the oldest of all the Willamettes.
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