“She is the White Lily of our tribe,” answered Multuomah, “and she was my promised bride.”
“One of your race?”
“No; in her childhood she was captured from the Yakimas by one of our chiefs, who reared her as his own daughter. He named her Oneotah, but, from her fair complexion, she was commonly called the White Lily. She grew to the age of seventeen in our village, and among the many suitors who sought her smiles, her heart gave me the preference.”
“I don’t wonder at that. You are just the chap to take a girl’s eye.”
“Our wedding-day was fixed, when she accompanied her adopted father, Owaydotah, upon a hunting expedition. His party was surprised by a band of Yakimas, under the chief Howlish Wampo, and Owaydotah was killed, and Oneotah carried away a captive.”
“That was a bad job for you.”
“I gave her up for lost, for I knew that Howlish Wampo would make her his wife, inflamed by her great beauty. And he would have done so, had not Smoholler taken her from him.”
“What did he do with her?”
Multuomah shook his head sorrowfully.
“I can not tell,” he replied. “What I know was told me by a Yakima warrior whom I captured a week ago; but he could not tell me what has befallen Oneotah since Smoholler seized upon her.”