That afternoon, a little band of Indians were assembled in Cecil’s lodge. Some of them were already converts; some were only awakened and impressed; but all were men who loved him.
They were gathered, men of huge frame, around a dead body that lay upon a cougar skin. Their faces were sad, their manner was solemn. In the corner 238 sat an aged squaw, her face resting in her hands, her long gray hair falling dishevelled about her shoulders. In that heart-broken attitude she had sat ever since bringing Cecil to the hut. She did not weep or sob but sat motionless, in stoical, dumb despair.
Around the dead the Indians stood or sat in silence, each waiting for the other to say what was in the hearts of all. At length the Shoshone renegade who had so loved Cecil, spoke.
“Our white brother is gone from us, but the Great Spirit lives and dies not. Let us turn from blood and sin and walk in the way our brother showed us. He said, ‘Remember;’ and shall we forget? I choose now, while he can hear me, before he is laid in the cold ground. I put away from me the old heart of hate and revenge. I ask the Great Spirit to give me the new heart of love and peace. I have chosen.”
One by one each told his resolve, the swarthy faces lighting up, the stern lips saying unwonted words of love. Dim and misty, the dawn had come to them; reaching out in the dark, they had got hold of the hand of God and felt that he was a Father. One would have said that their dead teacher lying there heard their vows, so calm and full of peace was the white still face.
That night the first beams of the rising moon fell on a new-made grave under the cottonwoods, not far from the bank of the river. Beneath it, silent in the last sleep, lay the student whose graceful presence had been the pride of far-off Magdalen, the pastor whose memory still lingered in New England, the evangelist whose burning words had thrilled the tribes of the wilderness like the words of some prophet of old.
Beside the grave crouched the old Indian woman, alone and forsaken in her despair,—the one mourner out of all for whom his life had been given.
No, not the only one; for a tall warrior enters the grove; the Shoshone renegade bends over her and touches her gently on the shoulder.
“Come,” he says kindly, “our horses are saddled; we take the trail up the Wauna to-night, I and my friends. We will fly from this fated valley ere the wrath of the Great Spirit falls upon it. Beyond the mountains I will seek a new home with the Spokanes or the Okanogans. Come; my home shall be your home, because you cared for him that is gone.”