CHAPTER XIII.
BURIAL OF OLENDA.—A DESOLATED VALLEY.—SUSPICIONS AROUSED.—ROBBERY.—PAUL IN PERPLEXING CIRCUMSTANCES.—FREEING A MAN FROM THE STOCKS.—RAVAGES OF THE PLAGUE.
The day of Olenda's burial had come, but there were hardly people enough left to bury him—such had been the devastations of the plague. Not far from the village stood in the prairie a little grove of trees, beneath whose shade the chiefs of the Ademba clan, to which Olenda belonged, were always buried; but it had been long since an interment had taken place there, for Olenda had outlived his brothers a score of years. All the people who could came to the funeral of their chief.
Olenda looked as if he were asleep. They had dressed him in the big coat I had given him, and came to ask me if I would give to my friend Olenda the umbrella I had. It was the only one I had, but I could not well refuse, and I said, "Take it."
They bore Olenda's body to the grove of trees with many manifestations of deep sorrow, shouting, "He will not talk of us any more; he will not speak to us any more. Oh, Olenda, why have you left us? Is it because we are all dying?" I followed the body to the grave, and I saw that they seated him on his big coat, and put over his head the umbrella I had given them for him. By his side was placed a chest containing the presents I had brought for him, and also plates, jugs, cooking utensils, his favorite pipe, and some tobacco; a fire was kindled, which was to be kept up from day to day for a long time, and food and water was brought, which was also to be daily replenished for an indefinite period.
Before dying, Olenda had told his people that he was not to leave them entirely; he would come back from time to time to see how they were getting on; so, for a few days after his death, the people would swear that they saw Olenda in the middle of the night walking in the village, and that he had repeated to them that he had not left them entirely.
The once beautiful Ashira, at the sight of which I had fallen into ecstasies, had now become the valley of death. Crazy men and women, made crazy only by the plague, wandered about till they died on the road-side. Every body was afraid of his neighbor; they had found out, at last, that the disease was contagious, and when one got it he was left to himself, and the poor creature would die of starvation: his wife, his father, his mother, his sister, his brother, if any such relatives had been left to him by the plague, would fly away from him as from the curse of God.
My Commi men did not come back; I wondered why, and began to feel very anxious about them. What had become of them? What a blunder I had made in letting these men go ahead of me! I would have given the world to see them again with me, for I did not know what those far-away people would do to them.