Page:Bridge of the Gods (Balch).djvu/283



floor; exquisite folds of velvet and damask swept the leaves and dust, so that all men might see how rich the chief still was, though he had given away so much. And with his ostentation was mixed a secret pride and tenderness that his dead wife had indirectly given him this wealth. The war-chiefs woman had brought him these treasures out of the sea; and now that he had given away his all, even to the bare poles of his lodge, she filled it with fine things and made him rich again, she who had been sleeping for years in the death-hut on mimaluse island. Those treasures, ere the vessel that carried them was wrecked, had been sent as a present from one ori ental prince to another. Could it be that they had been purposely impregnated with disease, so that while the prince that sent them seemed to bestow a graceful gift, he was in reality taking a treacherous and terrible revenge? Such things were not infre quent in Asiatic history; and even the history of Europe, in the middle ages, tells us of poisoned masks, of gloves and scarfs charged with disease.

Certain it is that shortly after the cases were opened, a strange and fatal disease broke out among Multnomah s attendants. The howling of medicine men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or mimaluse island. And no concoction of herbs, however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle, no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the mortality.

At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed strange to the Indians that the war-chief sh