The Log School-House on the Columbia

by Hezekiah Butterworth

  CHAPTER XIII.

  A WARNING.

  One evening, as Gretchen was sitting outside of the lodge, she saw thefigure of a woman moving cautiously about in the dim openings of thefir-trees. It was not the form of an Indian woman--its movement wasmysterious. Gretchen started up and stood looking into the darkeningshadows of the firs. Suddenly the form came out of the clearing--it wasMrs. Woods. She waved her hand and beckoned to Gretchen, and then drewback into the forest and disappeared.

  Gretchen went toward the openings where Mrs. Woods had so suddenly andstrangely appeared. But no one was there. She wondered what the secret ofthe mysterious episode could be. She returned to the lodge, but saidnothing about what she had seen. She passed a sleepless night, andresolved to go to see her foster-mother on the following day.

  So, after school the next afternoon, she returned to her old home for abrief visit, and to gain an explanation of the strange event of theevening before.

  She found Mrs. Woods very sad, and evidently troubled by some ominousexperience.

  "So you saw me?" was her first salutation. "I didn't dare to come anyfurther. They did not see me--did they?"

  "But, mother, why did you go away--why did you come to the lodge?"

  "O Gretchen, husband has been at home from the shingle-mill, and he hastold me something dreadful!"

  "What, mother?"

  "There's a conspiracy!"

  "Where?"

  "Among the Injuns. A friendly Injun told husband in secret that therewould be no more seen of the log school-house after the Potlatch."

  "Don't fear, mother; the chief and Benjamin will protect that."

  "But that isn't all, Gretchen. Oh, I am so glad that you have come home!There are dark shadows around us everywhere. I can feel 'em--can't you?The atmosphere is all full of dark faces and evil thoughts. I can't bearto sleep alone here now. Gretchen, there's a plot to capture theschoolmaster."

  "Don't fear, mother. I know Umatilla--he will never permit it."

  "But, Gretchen, the Injun told husband something awful."

  "What?"

  "That the schoolmaster would one day perish as Dr. Whitman did. Dr.Whitman was stricken down by the Injun whom he regarded as his bestfriend, and he never knew who dealt the blow. He went out of life like onesmitten by lightning. O Gretchen!"

  "But, mother, I do not fear. The Indians thought that Dr. Whitman was aconjurer. We make people true, the master says, by putting confidence inthem. I believe in the old chief and in Benjamin, and there will no evilever come to the schoolmaster or the log school-house."

  "Gretchen, are you sure? Then I did not bring you away out here fornothing, did I? You may be the angel of deliverance of us all. Who knows?But, Gretchen, I haven't told you all yet."

  Mrs. Woods's face clouded again.

  "The Injun told husband that some of the warriors had formed a plotagainst _me_, and that, if they were to capture me, they would torture me.Gretchen, I am afraid. Don't you pity me?"

  "Mother, I know my power over the chief and Benjamin, and I know the powerof a chief's sense of honor. I do pity you, you are so distressed. But,mother, no evil will ever come to you where I am, nor the school where Iam. I am going to be a teacher among these Indians, if I live; I feel thiscalling, and my work will somehow begin here."

  "A teacher among the Injuns! You? You a teacher? Are anvils going to fly?Here I am, a poor lone woman, away out here three thousand miles fromhome, and tremblin' all over, at every sound that I hear at night, forfear I shall be attacked by Injuns, and you are dreamin', with your headall full of poetry, of goin' away and leavin' me, the best friend that youever had on the earth, as good as a mother to you; of goin' away--ofleavin' me, to teach a lot of savages! Gretchen, I knew that the world wasfull of empty heads, but I never realized how empty the human heart isuntil now! Been a mother to you, too!"

  "O mother, I never thought of leavin' you unless you wished it."

  "What did you think was goin' to become of me? I never kissed any childbut you, and sometimes, when you are real good, I feel just as though Iwas your mother."

  "I thought that you would help me."

  "Help you, what doin'?"

  "To teach the Indians."

  "To teach the Injuns--Indians you call 'em! I'd like to teach one Injun tobring back my saw! I never tried to teach but one Injun--and he was _him_.You can't make an eagle run around a door-yard like a goose, and you can'tteach an Injun to saw wood--the first thing you know, the saw will bemissin'.--But how I am runnin' on! I do have a good deal of prejudiceagainst the savages; nevertheless--"

  "I knew, mother, that you would say 'nevertheless.' It seems to me thatword is your good spirit. I wish you would tell me what thought came toyour mind when you said that word."

  "'Nevertheless?'"

  "Yes."

  "Well, the Master--"

  "He said--"

  "Yes--preach the gospel to every creature! I suppose that meant Injuns andall."

  "Yes--he said '_teach_'--so the schoolmaster explained it."

  "Did he? Well, I ought to obey it in spirit--hadn't I?--or at least nothinder others. I might help you teach it if I could get into the rightspirit. But what put that thought into your head?"

  "Mrs. Spaulding, the missionary, has been to visit the school. She sang sobeautifully! These were the words:

  "'In the desert let me labor, On the mountain let me tell.'

  "When she sung that, it all came to me--what I was--what I was sent intothe world to do--what was the cause of your loving me and bringing me outhere--I saw a plan in it all. Then, too, it came to me that you would atfirst not see the calling as I do, but that you would say _nevertheless_,and help me, and that we would work together, and do some good in theworld, you and I. Oh! I saw it all."

  "Gretchen, did you see all that? Do you think that the spirit has eyes,and that they see true? But how could I begin? The Injuns all hate me."

  "Make them love you."

  "How?"

  "Say _nevertheless_ to them."

  "Well, Gretchen, you are a good girl, and I am sorry for the hard thingsthat I have said. I do not feel that I have shown just the right spirittoward Benjamin. But he has said that he will not do me any harm, for thesake of his master, and I am willin' to give up my will for my Master. Itis those that give up their desires that have their desires in this world,and anybody who does an injury to another makes for himself a judgment-dayof some sort. You may tell Benjamin that I am real sorry for bein' hard tohim, and that, if he will come over and see me, I'll give him a carvedpipe that husband made. Now, Gretchen, you may go, and I'll sit down andthink a spell. I'll be dreadful lonely when you're gone."

  Gretchen kissed her foster-mother at the door, and said:

  "Your new spirit, mother, will make us both so happy in the future! We'llwork together. What the master teaches me, I'll teach you."

  "What--books?"

  "Yes."

  "O Gretchen, your heart is real good! But see here--my hair is gray. Oh, Iam sorry--what a woman I might have been!"

  Gretchen lay down in the lodge that night beside the dusky wife of theold chief. The folds of the tent were open, and the cool winds came infrom the Columbia, under the dim light of the moon and stars.

  The _tepee_, or tent, was made of skins, and was adorned withpicture-writing--Indian poetry (if so it might be called). Overhead wereclusters of beautiful feathers and wings of birds. The old chief loved totell her stories of these strange and beautiful wings. There were thewings of the condor, of the bald and the golden eagle, of the duck-hawk,pigeon-hawk, squirrel-hawk, of the sap-sucker, of the eider duck, and aZenaider-like dove. Higher up were long wings of swans and albatrosses,heads of horned owls, and beaks of the laughing goose. Through the stillair, from some dusky shallow of the river came the metallic calls of theriver birds, like the trumpeting swan. The girl lay waking, happy inrecalling the spirit with which her foster-mother had accepted her plan oflife.

  Suddenly her sensit
ive spirit became aware of something unusual andstrange at the opening of the tent. There was a soft, light step without,a guarded footfall. Then a tall, dark shadow distinctly appeared, with aglitter of mother-of-pearl ornaments and a waving of plumes. It stoodthere like a ghost of a vivid fancy, for a time. Gretchen's heart beat. Itwas not an unusual thing for an Indian to come to the _tepee_ late in theevening; but there was something mysterious and ominous in the bearing andatmosphere of this shadowy visitor. The form stepped within the opening ofthe tent, and a voice whispered, "Umatilla, awake!"

  The old chief raised himself on his elbow with an "Ugh!"

  "Come out under the moon."

  The old chief arose and went out, and the two shadowy forms disappearedamong a column of spruces on the musical banks of the Columbia.

  Gretchen could not sleep. The two Indians returned late, and, as theyparted, Gretchen heard Umatilla's deep voice say, "No!"

  Her fears or instincts told her that the interview had reference to plotswhich were associated with the great Potlatch, now near at hand. She hadheard the strange visitor say, "The moon is growing," and there wassomething shadowy in the very tone in which the words were spoken.

  Mrs. Woods sat down in her home of bark and splints all alone afterGretchen's departure.

  "She offers to teach me," she said to herself. "I am so sorry that I wasnot able to teach her. I never read much, any way, until I came under theinfluence of the Methody. I might have taught her spiritual things--anyone can have spiritual knowledge, and that is the highest of all. But Ihave loved my own will, and to give vent to my temper and tongue. I willchange it all. There are times when I am my better self. I will only talkand decide upon what is best in life at such times as these. That wouldmake my better nature grow. When I am out of sorts I will be silent-like.Heaven help me! it is hard to begin all these things when one's hair isturnin' gray, and I never knew any one's gray hair to turn young again."

  She sat in the twilight crying over herself, and at last sang the mournfulminor measures of a very quaint old hymn with a peculiar old history:

  "From whence doth this union arise That hatred is conquered by love? It fastens our souls in such ties As distance and time can't remove."

  The October moon came up larger and larger night by night. It stood on theverge of the horizon now in the late afternoon, as if to see theresplendent setting of the sun. One wandered along the cool roads at theparting of day between the red sun in the west and the golden moon in theeast, and felt in the light of the two worlds the melancholy change in theatmospheres of the year. The old volcanoes glistened, for a wintry crustwas widening over their long-dead ovens. Mount Saint Helens, as the farrange which led up to the relic of the ancient lava-floods that is nowknown by that name was called by the settlers, was wonderfully beautifulin the twilights of the sun and moon. Mount Hood was a celestial glory,and the shadows of the year softened the glimmering glories of theColumbia. The boatman's call echoed long and far, and the crack of theflint-lock gun leaped in its reverberations from hill to hill as thoughthe air was a succession of hollow chambers. Water-fowl filled the streamsand drifted through the air, and the forests seemed filled with young andbeautiful animals full of happy life.