the heroic wife left the side of her dying husband, and her safe
retreat, going from one to another trying to comfort and soothe them.
As she walked past a window, a bullet struck her in the breast; she
grasped the window-sill to keep from falling, and recognized her
murderer as Tahamas, for whom she had done so much. She exclaimed,
"Oh, Joe, is it you!" It was like the dying cry of Cæsar, when he
saw his old-time friend in the mob about him, "Thou, too, Brutus!"
and a sharper pang than her wound gave entered that tender heart. She
was carried back to her room. A few hours later the Indians sent word
to her that if she would come out they would not harm her, but would
go away after they had seen her. She was then too weak from loss of
blood to walk, but she asked Mr. Rogers, one of their helpers, and
Miss Beulah, a friend, to carry her into the next room, where the
Indians had gathered. They had hardly entered it when a volley of
shots were fired, and both she and Rogers were pierced by many balls.
Some one now in authority gave an order not to shoot the women and
children. The little ones were all gathered in one corner, witnessing
the whole terrible scene, but one Indian more humane picked up some
blankets and screened it all from their view. One of the men, a guest
at the mission, raised a board in the floor and hid himself, wife,
and three children beneath. They suffered agony in their
imprisonment, with the blood of the murdered ones trickling through
the floor upon them. On a visit to Walla Walla and out to the old
mission farm, two years ago, we met a very intelligent and
interesting lady, who, in the course of conversation, told us that
she was one of the three children hidden under the floor during that
terrible day and that she was then but a little child the remembrance
had never left her, nor could she see an Indian without a shudder.
The Indians went at their work leisurely, and seemed anxious to
prolong the torture. They knew it was two hundred and fifty miles to
Vancouver, and they had no fear of molestation from any other source.
For five days they kept up their orgies, guarding against escape of
their victims. At the end of that time they began to be anxious for
their own safety, and gathering the women and children, forty in
number, they started for a friendly tribe to wait for developments.
[Illustration: D. K PEARSONS, M. D., LL. D]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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