Cayuses. They paused, a swaying flood of humanity, caught between two
lines of rock.

CHAPTER V.

SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH.

The other, great of soul, changed not
Countenance stern.

DANTE.

In that momentary pause Multnomah did something that showed the cold
disdainfulness of his character as nothing else could have done. He
had given the death-sign; he had not yet told how or when death was to
be inflicted. He gave the sentence _now_, as if in utter scorn of the
battle-cloud that hung quivering, ready to burst.

"He would have torn the confederacy to pieces; let him be left bound
in the wood of the wolves, and torn limb from limb by them as he would
have rent the tribes asunder."

The two warriors who had brought the criminal into the council came
forward, flung a covering over his head and face, and led him away.
Perhaps no custom of the northwestern Indians was more sombre than
this,--the covering of the culprit's eyes from the time of his
sentence till his death. Never again were those eyes to behold the
sun.

Then, and not till then, did Multnomah turn his gaze on the
malcontents, who stood, desperate but hesitating, hemmed in by the
Willamettes and the Cayuses.

"You have chosen the tomahawk instead of the peace-pipe. Shall
Multnomah choose the tomahawk also? Know you not that Multnomah holds
your lives in his hand, and that he can crush you like an eggshell if
he chooses?"

The war-chief lifted his arm as he spoke, and slowly closed his
fingers till his hand was clinched. The eyes of Willamette and
tributary alike hung on those slowly closing fingers, with their own
strained on their tomahawks. That was half the death-signal! Would he
give the other half,--the downward gesture? The baffled rebels tasted
all the bitterness of death in that agonizing suspense. They felt that
their lives were literally in his grasp; and so the stern autocrat
wished them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson they would never
forget.

At length he spoke.

"Drop your weapons and Multnomah will forget what he has seen, and all
will be well. Strike but a blow, and not one of you will ever go back
over the trail to his home."

Then he turned to the chiefs, and there was that in his tones which
told them to expect no mercy.

"How comes it that your braves lift their tomahawks against Multnomah
in his own council and on his own la