A WARNING.
One evening, as Gretchen was sitting outside of the lodge, she saw the figure of a woman moving cautiously about in the dim openings of the fir-trees. It was not the form of an Indian woman—its movement was mysterious. Gretchen started up and stood looking into the darkening shadows of the firs. Suddenly the form came out of the clearing—it was Mrs. Woods. She waved her hand and beckoned to Gretchen, and then drew back into the forest and disappeared.
Gretchen went toward the openings where Mrs. Woods had so suddenly and strangely appeared. But no one was there. She wondered what the secret of the mysterious episode could be. She returned to the lodge, but said nothing about what she had seen. She passed a sleepless night, and resolved to go to see her foster-mother on the following day.
So, after school the next afternoon, she returned to her old home for a brief visit, and to gain an explanation of the strange event of the evening before.
She found Mrs. Woods very sad, and evidently troubled by some ominous experience.
"So you saw me?" was her first salutation. "I didn't dare to come any further. They did not see me—did they?"
"But, mother, why did you go away—why did you come to the lodge?"
"O Gretchen, husband has been at home from the shingle-mill, and he has told me something dreadful!"
"What, mother?"
"There's a conspiracy!"
"Where?"
"Among the Injuns. A friendly Injun told husband in secret that there would be no more seen of the log school-house after the Potlatch."
"Don't fear, mother; the chief and Benjamin will protect that."
"But that isn't all, Gretchen. Oh, I am so glad that you have come home! There are dark shadows around us everywhere. I can feel 'em—can't you? The atmosphere is all full of dark faces and evil thoughts. I can't bear to sleep alone here now. Gretchen, there's a plot to capture the schoolmaster."
"Don't fear, mother. I know Umatilla—he will never permit it."
"But, Gretchen, the Injun told husband something awful."
"What?"
"That the schoolmaster would one day perish as Dr. Whitman did. Dr. Whitman was stricken down by the Injun whom he regarded as his best friend, and he never knew who dealt the blow. He went out of life like one smitten by lightning. O Gretchen!"
"But, mother, I do not fear. The Indians thought that Dr. Whitman was a conjurer. We make people true, the master says, by putting confidence in them. I believe in the old chief and in Benjamin, and there will no evil ever come to the schoolmaster or the log school-house."
"Gretchen, are you sure? Then I did not bring you away out here for nothing, did I? You may be the angel of deliverance of us all. Who knows? But, Gretchen, I haven't told you all yet."
Mrs. Woods's face clouded again.
"The Injun told husband that some of the warriors had formed a plot against me, and that, if they were to capture me, they would torture me. Gretchen, I am afraid. Don't you pity me?"
"Mother, I know my power over the chief and Benjamin, and I know the power of a chief's sense of honor. I do pity you, you are so distressed. But, mother, no evil will ever come to you where I am, nor the school where I am. I am going to be a teacher among these Indians, if I live; I feel this calling, and my work will somehow begin here."
"A teacher among the Injuns! You? You a teacher? Are anvils going to fly? Here I am, a poor lone woman, away out here three thousand miles from home, and tremblin' all over, at every sound that I hear at night, for fear I shall be attacked by Injuns, and you are dreamin', with your head all full of poetry, of goin' away and leavin' me, the best friend that you ever had on the earth, as good as a mother to you; of goin' away—of leavin' me, to teach a lot of savages! Gretchen, I knew that the world was full of empty heads, but I never realized how empty the human heart is until now! Been a mother to you, too!"
"O mother, I never thought of leavin' you unless you wished it."
"What did you think was goin' to become of me? I never kissed any child but you, and sometimes, when you are real good, I feel just as though I was your mother."
"I thought that you would help me."
"Help you, what doin'?"
"To teach the Indians."
"To teach the Injuns—Indians you call 'em! I'd like to teach one Injun to bring back my saw! I never tried to teach but one Injun—and he was him. You can't make an eagle run around a door-yard like a goose, and you can't teach an Injun to saw wood—the first thing you know, the saw will be missin'.—But how I am runnin' on! I do have a good deal of prejudice against the savages; nevertheless—"
"I knew, mother, that you would say 'nevertheless.' It seems to me that word is your good spirit. I wish you would tell me what thought came to your mind when you said that word."
"'Nevertheless?'"
"Yes."
"Well, the Master—"
"He said—"
"Yes—preach the gospel to every creature! I suppose that meant Injuns and all."
"Yes—he said 'teach'—so the schoolmaster explained it."
"Did he? Well, I ought to obey it in spirit—hadn't I?—or at least not hinder others. I might help you teach it if I could get into the right spirit. But what put that thought into your head?"
"Mrs. Spaulding, the missionary, has been to visit the school. She sang so beautifully! These were the words:
"'In the desert let me labor,
On the mountain let me tell.'
"When she sung that, it all came to me—what I was—what I was sent into the world to do—what was the cause of your loving me and bringing me out here—I saw a plan in it all. Then, too, it came to me that you would at first not see the calling as I do, but that you would say nevertheless, and help me, and that we would work together, and do some good in the world, you and I. Oh! I saw it all."
"Gretchen, did you see all that? Do you think that the spirit has eyes, and that they see true? But how could I begin? The Injuns all hate me."
"Make them love you."
"How?"
"Say nevertheless to them."
"Well, Gretchen, you are a good girl, and I am sorry for the hard things that I have said. I do not feel that I have shown just the right spirit toward Benjamin. But he has said that he will not do me any harm, for the sake of his master, and I am willin' to give up my will for my Master. It is those that give up their desires that have their desires in this world, and anybody who does an injury to another makes for himself a judgment-day of some sort. You may tell Benjamin that I am real sorry for bein' hard to him, and that, if he will come over and see me, I'll give him a carved pipe that husband made. Now, Gretchen, you may go, and I'll sit down and think a spell. I'll be dreadful lonely when you're gone."
Gretchen kissed her foster-mother at the door, and said:
"Your new spirit, mother, will make us both so happy in the future! We'll work together. What the master teaches me, I'll teach you."
"What—books?"
"Yes."
"O Gretchen, your heart is real good! But see here—my hair is gray. Oh, I am sorry—what a woman I might have been!"
Gretchen lay down in the lodge that night beside the dusky wife of the old chief. The folds of the tent were open, and the cool winds came in from the Columbia, under the dim light of the moon and stars.
The tepee, or tent, was made of skins, and was adorned with picture-writing—Indian poetry (if so it might be called). Overhead were clusters of beautiful feathers and wings of birds. The old chief loved to tell her stories of these strange and beautiful wings. There were the wings of the condor, of the bald and the golden eagle, of the duck-hawk, pigeon-hawk, squirrel-hawk, of the sap-sucker, of the eider duck, and a Zenaider-like dove. Higher up were long wings of swans and albatrosses, heads of horned owls, and beaks of the laughing goose. Through the still air, from some dusky shallow of the river came the metallic calls of the river birds, like the trumpeting swan. The girl lay waking, happy in recalling the spirit with which her foster-mother had accepted her plan of life.
Suddenly her sensitive spirit became aware of something unusual and strange at the opening of the tent. There was a soft, light step without, a guarded footfall. Then a tall, dark shadow distinctly appeared, with a glitter of mother-of-pearl ornaments and a waving of plumes. It stood there like a ghost of a vivid fancy, for a time. Gretchen's heart beat. It was not an unusual thing for an Indian to come to the tepee late in the evening; but there was something mysterious and ominous in the bearing and atmosphere of this shadowy visitor. The form stepped within the opening of the tent, and a voice whispered, "Umatilla, awake!"
The old chief raised himself on his elbow with an "Ugh!"
"Come out under the moon."
The old chief arose and went out, and the two shadowy forms disappeared among a column of spruces on the musical banks of the Columbia.
Gretchen could not sleep. The two Indians returned late, and, as they parted, Gretchen heard Umatilla's deep voice say, "No!"
Her fears or instincts told her that the interview had reference to plots which were associated with the great Potlatch, now near at hand. She had heard the strange visitor say, "The moon is growing," and there was something shadowy in the very tone in which the words were spoken.
Mrs. Woods sat down in her home of bark and splints all alone after Gretchen's departure.
"She offers to teach me," she said to herself. "I am so sorry that I was not able to teach her. I never read much, any way, until I came under the influence of the Methody. I might have taught her spiritual things—any one can have spiritual knowledge, and that is the highest of all. But I have loved my own will, and to give vent to my temper and tongue. I will change it all. There are times when I am my better self. I will only talk and decide upon what is best in life at such times as these. That would make my better nature grow. When I am out of sorts I will be silent-like. Heaven help me! it is hard to begin all these things when one's hair is turnin' gray, and I never knew any one's gray hair to turn young again."
She sat in the twilight crying over herself, and at last sang the mournful minor measures of a very quaint old hymn with a peculiar old history:
"From whence doth this union arise
That hatred is conquered by love?
It fastens our souls in such ties
As distance and time can't remove."
The October moon came up larger and larger night by night. It stood on the verge of the horizon now in the late afternoon, as if to see the resplendent setting of the sun. One wandered along the cool roads at the parting of day between the red sun in the west and the golden moon in the east, and felt in the light of the two worlds the melancholy change in the atmospheres of the year. The old volcanoes glistened, for a wintry crust was widening over their long-dead ovens. Mount Saint Helens, as the far range which led up to the relic of the ancient lava-floods that is now known by that name was called by the settlers, was wonderfully beautiful in the twilights of the sun and moon. Mount Hood was a celestial glory, and the shadows of the year softened the glimmering glories of the Columbia. The boatman's call echoed long and far, and the crack of the flint-lock gun leaped in its reverberations from hill to hill as though the air was a succession of hollow chambers. Water-fowl filled the streams and drifted through the air, and the forests seemed filled with young and beautiful animals full of happy life.