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This war of the tribes of the valley lands was of years in duration; men fought, and women mourned, and children wept, as all have done since time began. It seemed an unequal battle, for the old, experienced, war-tried chief and his two astute sons were pitted against a single young Tulameen brave.
A week, a month, a long golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old chief and his enraged sons failed to find her. Then one morning as the lovers walked together on the heights above the far upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes of the Tulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy.
That is why this laughter, the sobbing murmur of the beautiful Tulameen, will haunt for evermore the ear that has once listened to its song.
"Keep your victory, and I keep my girl-child," though he knew he was not only defying his enemy, but defying death as well. The Tulameen laughed lightly, easily. "I shall not kill the sire of my wife," he taunted. "One more battle must we have, but your girl-child will come to me."
But the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling laughter of the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more powerful, more far-reaching than the throaty thunders of Niagara.
That is why the Indians of the Nicola country still cling to their old-time story that the Tulameen carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the wonders of its winding course; a spirit that can never free itself from the canyons, to rise above the heights and follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting Grounds, but which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs, its lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship, with the wild music of the waters that sing forever beneath the western stars.
He himself awaited her coming he who had never left her thoughts since that first arrow came to her from his bow-string. His eyes burned with warm fires, as she approached, but his lips said simply: "I have crossed the Tulameen River."
Across the narrow canyon crouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the girl-wife at his side; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their hearts on fire with hatred and vengeance. Like two evil-winged birds of prey those arrows sped across the laughing river, but before they found their mark in the breast of the victorious Tulameen the girl had unconsciously stepped before him.
It is the voice of the restless Tulameen as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat of the canyon, three hundred feet below. Then, following the song, comes a glimpse of the river itself white-garmented in the film of its countless rapids, its showers of waterfalls.
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