CHAPTER XV.
THE OLD HUNTER’S IDEA.
There was a touching plaintiveness to the tone of the Multuomah’s voice as he pronounced these words, and his hearers could but sympathize with him in his bereavement.
“Why, this is a kind of turn-about affair,” observed Glyndon. “First, you take the girl from the Yakimas, and then they retake her, and then the Prophet puts his finger in the pie. But is the girl really a Yakima?”
“No, I think not.”
“I’m glad of that, for I like you, and I don’t like the Yakimas. They’re mean cusses, and I’d like to see ’em all wiped out. What nation do you think the girl did belong to?”
“Her face was so white that I have often thought she was a daughter of the pale-faces,” answered Multuomah.
This reply surprised them all.
“How can that be?” demanded Glyndon.
“She may have been made a captive when a child by the Yakimas in one of their expeditions, either from a settler’s cabin or from some emigrant train,” rejoined Multuomah. “She understood English when she was brought into our village, and she taught it to me when we were children together.”
“That accounts for the ease with which you speak it,” remarked Lieutenant Gardiner.