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Updated: June 15, 2025
He rose to his feet; his one impulse was to get away, to fight out the battle with himself. Wallulah grew pale. "You are going?" she said, rising also. "Something in your face tells me you are not coming back," and she looked at him with strained, sad, wistful eyes. He stood hesitating, torn by conflicting emotions, not knowing what to do. "If you do not come back, I shall die," she said simply.
He came forward and stood beside the war-chief. The Indian girls stepped back a little, in involuntary awe of the two great sachems, and left Wallulah standing alone before them. Her face wore a patient look, as of one who is very worn and weary, tired of the burdens of life, yet going forward without hope, without thought even, to other and still heavier burdens.
Rocks and bowlders were built around and over her body, yet without touching it, until the sad dead face was shut out from view. And still the stones were piled above her; higher and higher rose the great rock-heap, till a mighty cairn marked the last resting-place of Wallulah.
"Wallulah will bring the wood and the water. Wallulah will work. The old women need not teach her." "That is well. But one thing more you must learn; and that is to hold up your head and not look like a drooping captive. Smile, laugh, be gay. Snoqualmie will have no clouded face, no bent head in his lodge." She looked at him imploringly.
She was but a recluse and a girl, but she was of royal lineage by right of both her parents, and his words had roused a spirit worthy the daughter of Multnomah. "Am I a weight on you? Are you afraid I will bring a curse upon you? Do not fear, I shall no longer ask you to stay. Wallulah shall take herself out of your life."
All that there was of gentleness in his nature came out when talking with his daughter. "You have come from the council? Are you not weary and hungry? Come to the lodge, and let Wallulah give you food, and spread a mat for you to rest upon." "No, I am hungry only to see Wallulah and hear her talk. Sit down on the log again."
Snoqualmie and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the canoes like spoil torn from the enemy.
At length, as the sun was setting, one came to tell Multnomah that a runner from a tribe beyond the mountains had come to see him. Then her father left her; but Wallulah still sat on the mossy log, while all the woodland was golden in the glory of sunset.
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 Compassion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearning to help them, to bring them to God, rekindling within him; and never had he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.
His iron features grew soft, as none but Wallulah had ever seen them grow. He touched gently the hair of his dead wife, and put it back from her brow with a wistful, caressing tenderness.
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