"Shall we stay here to die?" thundered the wild chief, as he stood leaning on his stick, his sunken eyes sweeping the assembly with a glance of fire. "Shall we stand and tremble till the pestilence slays us all with its arrows, even as a herd of deer, driven into a deep gulch and surrounded, stand till they are shot down by the hunters? Shall we stay in our lodges, and die without lifting a hand? Shall disease burn out the life of our warriors, when they might fall in battle? No! Let us slay the women and children, cross the mountains, and die fighting the rebels! Is it not better to fall in battle like warriors than to perish of disease like dogs?" The chief looked from face to face, but saw no responsive flash in the eyes that met his own. The settled apathy of despair was on every countenance. Then the medicine-man answered,-- "_You_ could never cross the mountains, even if we did this thing. Your breath is hot with disease; the mark of death is on your face; the snake of the pestilence has bitten you. If we went out to battle, you would fall by the wayside to die. Your time is short. To-day you die." The grim Mollalie met the speaker's glance, and for a moment wavered. He felt within himself that the words were true, that the plague had sapped his life, that his hour was near at hand. Then his hesitation passed, and he lifted his head with scornful defiance. "So be it! Mishlah accepts his doom. Come, you that were once the warriors of Multnomah, but whose hearts are become the hearts of women; come and learn from a Mollalie how to die!" Again his glance swept the circle of chiefs as if summoning them to follow him,--then, with weak and staggering footsteps, he left the grove; and it was as if the last hope of the Willamettes went with him. The dense atmosphere of smoke soon shut his form from view. Silence fell on the council. The hearts of the Indians were dead within them. Amid their portentous surroundings,--the appalling signs of the wrath of the Great Spirit,--the fatal apathy which is the curse of their race crept over them. Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a wild and debasing superstition, reverenced as one through whom the dead spoke to the living. "Break up your council!" he said with fearful look and gesture. "Councils are for those who expect to live! and you!--the dead call you to them. Choose no chief, for who will be left for him to rule? You talk of plans for the future. Would you know what that future will be? I will show you; listen!" He flung up his hand as if imposing silence; and, taken by surprise, they listened eagerly, expecting to hear some supernatural voice or message prophetic of the future. On their strained hearing fell only the labored breathing of the sick chiefs in the council, the ominous muttering of the far-off volcano, and loud and shrill above all the desolate cry of the women wailing their dead.