At sundown, fagged in mind and body, Rising Wolf lay down in the guest lodge bidding the squaws keep quiet while he had a nap. Afterwards he swore that he went down to the bathing pool, where Rain came behind him, placing her forefinger just between his eyes, and bidding him look at the light on the still water. "We never moved an inch." So he told the woman. "And all the time I could hear the roar of the falls. Only the sound through the pines was more like the sough of wind. It was lifting the snow as it drove across the rocks, a sort of whirling blizzard, so it was only between the gusts that I saw the old fellow up on top of the crag. The young chap was close by, small, frail, with the fringes of his buckskin shirt snapping like whip crackers. He was blown off his feet once or twice, but he scrambled up at last with a little bundle which he reached out to the man on top. It blew out on the wind, a flag, the Yankee flag, and the man waved it, shouting. Both of 'em were cheering like mad."
"Who are they?" asked Rising Wolf.
"The boy," said Rain, "is called Kit, Kit Carson, I think. The man's name is Fremont. They're sent by the Big Father to find a trail to the Oregon; but they've climbed up a peak of the World Spine to plant—they call it Old Glory! Say a prayer with me, Rising Wolf, for these men and for their flag."
"Why should I?"
"It helps them."
"To steal Oregon, eh? I'll see 'em damned first."
"Oregon," said Rain, "is here."
The snow had vanished, and they looked down at the Columbia, all flame red, snaking through lava fields. Up beyond the broken brown hills loomed blue forest, and high above that was a volcano blazing, whose immense eruption filled the sky with light, as of a burning world.
"Storm likes that," said the priestess. "So I thought it might please you. He calls the mountain Saint Helens. I don't like it at all. I think it's dreadful. The tribes on the coast are packing up smoked salmon, for a move to the next world, poor things. My man says that even the Stonehearts at Fort Vancouver are getting frightened. They call it 'Day-of-judgment.'"
"Ah! That's it," the white man was thinking; "she's got a professional manner, just like a medicine man or a war chief teaching. I wonder if the angels have a professional manner."