no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer message was there on
the brink of the precipice. 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." Together
they stood, side by side, and looked down at the depths before them,
watching in silence the little torrent rollicking and roystering over
its boulders and crags.

"That is my country," he said, looking across the river. "This is the
country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my enemies. I
return to my own shore tonight. Will you come with me?"

She looked up into his handsome young face. So this was her father's
foe--the dreaded Tulameen!

"Will you come?" he repeated.

"I will come," she whispered.

It was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led her
far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters, where they
crossed in silence into his own country. 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. 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. With a little sigh, she slipped into his arms, her
brothers' arrows buried into her soft, brown flesh.

It was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying the
old chief and those two hated sons of his. But when this was finally
done the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe, his
country, and went into the far north. "For," he said, as he sang his
farewell war song, "my heart lies dead in the Tulameen River."

* * * * *

But the spirit of his girl-wife still sings through the canyon, its
song blending with the music of that sweetest-voiced river in all the
great valleys of the Dry Belt. That is why this laughter, the sobbing
murmur of the beautif