The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition.Balch, Frederic Homer
General
The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition.
Balch, Frederic Homer
Indians of North America -- Fiction; Oregon -- Fiction
The main body of Snoqualmie's followers crossed to the north bank of
the Columbia and took the trail leading up the river toward the inland
prairies. But Snoqualmie and Wallulah went by canoe as far as the now
ruined Bridge of the Gods. There were three canoes in their train.
Snoqualmie and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden
with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It
stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough
bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its
mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the
canoes like spoil torn from the enemy.
The farewell between Wallulah and her father had been sorrowful. It
was remembered afterward, by those who were witnesses of it, that the
war-chief had shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had seemed
reluctant to part with his daughter, and that she had clung to him,
pale and tearful, as if he were her last hope on earth.
When Snoqualmie took her hand to lead her away, she shuddered,
withdrew her fingers from his clasp, and walked alone to the canoe.
He entered after her: the canoe-men dipped their paddles into the
water, and the vessel glided away from the island.
She sat reclining on a heap of furs, her elbows sunk in them, her
cheek resting on her hand, her eyes turned back toward her island
home. Between it and her the expanse of waters grew ever broader, and
the trail the canoe left behind it sparkled in a thousand silvery
ripples. The island, with its green prairies and its stately woods,
receded fast. She felt as she looked back as if everything was
slipping away from her. Lonely as her life had been before Cecil came
into it, she had still had her music and her beautiful rooms in the
bark lodge; and they seemed infinitely sweet and precious now as she
recalled them. Oh, if she could only have them back again! And those
interviews with Cecil. How love and grief shook the little figure as
she thought! How loathingly she shrunk from the presence of the
barbarian at her side! And all the time the island receded farther and
farther in the distance, and the canoe glided forward like a merciless
fate bearing her on and on toward the savagery of the inland desert.
Snoqualmie sat watching her with glittering, triumphant eyes. To him
she was no more than some lovely animal of which he had become the
owner; and ownership of course brought with it the right to tantalize
and to torture. A malicious smile crossed his lips as he saw how
sorrowfully her gaze rested on her old home.
"Look forward," he said, "not back; look forward to your life with
Snoqualmie and to the lodge that awaits you in the land of the
Cayuses."
She started, and her face flushed painfully; then without looking at
him she replied,--
"Wallulah loves her home, and leaving it saddens her."
A sparkle of vindictive delight came into his eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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