fiercer, and at last the spirits met at the centre of the
arch, and in roar and quake and deluge the great bridge swayed and
cracked. The young man sprang forward. He seized Mentonee in his arms.
There was time for one embrace that cheated death of sorrow. Then, with a
thunder like a bursting world, the miles of masonry crashed down and
buried the two forever. The Columbia leaps the ruins of the bridge in the
rapids that they call the Cascades, and the waters still brawl on, while
the sulky tamanouses watch the whitened floods from their mountain-tops,
knowing that never again will they see so fair a creature as Mentonee.

THE DEATH OF UMATILLA

Umatilla, chief of the Indians at the Cascades of the Columbia, was one
of the few red men of his time who favored peace with the white settlers
and lent no countenance to the fierce revels of the "potlatch." In these
"feasts of gifts" the savages, believing themselves to be "possessed by
the spirit," lashed themselves into a frenzy that on several occasions
was only quieted by the shedding of blood. Black Eagle's Feather--or
Benjamin, as he was called by the settlers--was the only one of the
children of the old chief who survived a summer of plague, and on this
boy Umatilla had put all his hopes and affections.

The lad had formed a great trust in his white teacher, a college-bred man
from the East, who had built a little school-house beside the Columbia
and was teaching the Indian idea how to shoot something beside white
people. This boy and his teacher had hunted together; they had journeyed
in the same canoe; had tramped over the same trail to the great falls of
the Missouri; and at the Giant Spring had seen the Piegans cast in their
gifts, in the belief that the manitou of the place would deliver them in
the hereafter to the sun-god, whom they worshipped. One day Benjamin fell
ill, and the schoolmaster saw that he, too, was to die of the plague. Old
Umatilla received the news with Indian stoicism, but he went into the
forest to be alone for a time.

When he returned day was breaking and a flock of wild-geese trumpeted
overhead. The boy heard them, and said, "Boston tilicum" (white man),
"does the Great Father tell the geese where to go?"

"Yes."

"Then he will tell me, too?"

"Yes."

"We shall never go back to the Missouri together. My father--"

"We will watch over him."

"That is well." And, in a few hours, he had intrusted the guidance of his
soul throu