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Updated: June 15, 2025
The farewell between Wallulah and her father had been sorrowful. It was remembered afterward, by those who were witnesses of it, that the war-chief had shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had seemed reluctant to part with his daughter, and that she had clung to him, pale and tearful, as if he were her last hope on earth.
For Cecil, such an undertaking might be death; it certainly would be contemptuous refusal, and would call down on Wallulah the terrible wrath before which the bravest sachem quailed. Cecil left the grove with the other chiefs and found his way to his lodge. There he flung himself down on his face upon his couch of furs.
His lips murmured something in his own tongue, something into which came the name of Wallulah and the name of God. Then his eyes grew dim and he lay very still. Only the expression of perfect peace still rested on the face. Sachems and warriors gazed in awe upon the beauty, grand in death, of the one whom the Great Spirit had taken from them.
Only his raven tresses, cut close year by year in sign of perpetual mourning, told that he had not forgotten, could never forget. The swans had taken flight, and their long lingering note sounded faint in the distance. "You have frightened away my swans," said Wallulah, looking up at him smilingly. A shadow crossed his brow.
"Wallulah!" said the chief. She sprang to her feet and turned toward him. Her dark face lighted with an expressive flash, her black eyes shone, her features glowed with joy and surprise. It was like the breaking forth of an inner illumination. There was now nothing of the Indian in her face.
Lovely indeed must the mother of Wallulah have been in her life. Withered as her features were, there was a delicate beauty in them still, in the graceful brow, the regular profile, the exquisitely chiselled chin. Around the shoulders and the small shapely head her hair had grown in rich luxuriant masses. The chief gazed long on the shrunken yet beautiful face.
While Cecil was on his way that evening to seek Wallulah, a canoe with but a single occupant was dropping down the Columbia toward one of the many mimaluse, or death-islands, that are washed by its waters. An Indian is always stealthy, but there was an almost more than Indian stealthiness about this canoe-man's movements.
They love to sit in the sun at the door of the wigwam and say to the other women, 'My man is brave; he leads the war party; he has many scalps at his belt. Who is brave like my man?" Wallulah shuddered. He saw it, and the sparkle of malice in his eyes flashed into sudden anger. "Does the young squaw tremble at these things? Then she must get used to them.
The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an instant, taken utterly by surprise.
The runners would rouse them as soon as we were missed. The swiftest riders would be on our trail; ambuscades would lurk for us in every thicket; we could never escape; and even if we should, a whole continent swarming with wild tribes lies between us and my land." She looked at him in anguish, with dim eyes, and her arms slipped from around his neck. "Do you no longer love Wallulah?
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