The Canoe and the Saddle: A Critical Edition

13. The Dalles—Their Legend

13. The Dalles—Their Legend Klale the ardent, Gubbins the punchy, Antipodes the lubberly, had not stampeded far in their panic when the great pine-tree torch fell crashing through the woods. Fudnun easily recovered them by the light of dawn,—three horses well fed and well rested, three sinewy nags, by no means likely to be scant of breath through Falstaffian fatness, but yet stanch, and able to travel the last thirty or forty miles of my journey before nightfall. Prayerful for sunrise and sun-born ardors in that dull dawn were horses and men. Cold is a bitter foe of courage; hot blood is the only brave blood. All five of us, the grazers three, the snorer one, and the one drowsy watcher, still trembled with the penetrating chill of drizzle on the bleak mountain-top. We might not have the instinctive cheerfulness, child and nursling of sunshine, but we soon, by way of substitute, made an inspiriting discovery,—the trail. Like many an exit from life’s labyrinths, it was hidden only for want of searching with more light. We pounced upon its first faint indica- The Dalles—Their Legend 189 tions, and went at such full speed as a night of damp and cramp permitted, with as much tirra lirra1 in our matin song of march as might ring through the vocal pipes of knights-errant carrying colds in their heads. “Nika klap; find um,” Fudnun had shouted, with a triumphant burst of laughter, when he caught sight of the trail, lurking serpentine in the grass; and now, having recovered his reputation as a path- finder, he would not lose it again. With single-handed accuracy he kept this one object in view. He fairly shamed my powers of observation by his quick, unerring glance. Shrewd detective, he was never at fault wherever that eluding path dodged artfully, and became but a shattered clew of escape. If ever the hooihut disappeared totally, like a rivulet sinking under ground, Fudnun, as if he bore a witchhazel divining-rod, made straight for the spot of its reappearance. Sometimes for a mile there would be no visible way, and I, seeing my guide still galloping on confidently under the pines, over the dry brown carpet of their fallen leaves, would call him, and say,— “Halo mitlite hooihut; here’s no trail.” “Nawitka, closche nika nanitch; yes, I see it well,” Fudnun would reply, pointing where a root had been scraped by a hoof, or a tuft of moss kicked up, or the brown pine-leaves trodden to a yellower tint; and presently, in softer ground, the path would again declare itself distinctly, like a pleasant association reawakening in moments of tenderness. Thus we hastened on through the open pine woods, gaining distance merely. We fled on between tedious ranks of yellow pines, with a raw wind chasing us and growing icier, as we rode out upon the bare, shelterless slopes of the lower regions. And by and by, as the trail disentangled itself from forest and mountain, lo, in houseless wilds, a house! an architectural log cabin. The Dalles—Their Legend 190 “Whose house, Fudnun? What outpost sentry-box of Boston camps to come?” It is the house of Skloo, Telamon of the Yakimaks, as Owhhigh is their Diomed, the horse-thief, and Kamaiakan their great-hearted Agamemnon; no advanced post of Boston men, but a refuge of the siwashes, between two fires of pale-faces advancing westward and eastward. The cabin was deserted. Skloo and the braves of Skloo were gone over moor and fell, gone by canon and prairie, gone after salmon, grasshoppers, berries, kamas,—after all Indian luxuries and wants, including pillage of pasaiooks and foes of their own color, when to be had without peril. The cabin of Telamon Skloo stood, lonely and deserted, in a spot where the world looked large, and yellow prairies rushed out of the forest, billowing broadly southward, toward the desolate ranges, walls of the Columbia. As well, perhaps, that Skloo was an absentee and his house shut; Skloo, with a house on his back and a roof over his head, would have been totally neutralized as a nomad chief. He would have lost Skloo the Klickatat rover, with whatever interest or value he had in that relation, and have been precipitated to the level of any Snooks in Christendom, dweller in villa or box. I...