Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/164

 purely imaginative selection included, not by choice but by necessity, and the difficulty of finding others indicates how fiction writers have shied away from tender love stories involving white men and Indian girls.

Cecil Gray remained in the almost deserted camp. He tried in vain to talk with the few chiefs who had not gone out to join the hunt. Missionary work was utterly impossible that day. Wallulah and the problem of his love filled his thoughts. His mind, aroused and burning, searched and analyzed the question upon every side.

Should he tell Multnomah of Snoqualmie's cruelty, representing his unfitness to be the husband of the gentle Wallulah?

To the stern war-chief that very cruelty would be an argument in Snoqualmie's favor. Should he himself become a suitor for her hand? He knew full well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain; or, were he to consent, it would involve the Willamettes in a war with the haughty and vindictive Cayuse. Finally, should he attempt to fly With her to some other land? Impossible. All the tribes of the Northwest were held in the iron grip of Multnomah. They could never escape; and even if they could, the good he had done among the Indians, the good he hoped would grow from generation to generation, would be all destroyed if it were told among them that he who claimed to come to them with a message from God had ended by stealing the chief's daughter. And had he a right to love anyone?—had he a right to love at all? God had sent him to do a work among the Indians; was it not wicked for him to so much as look either to the right or to the left till that work was done?

Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and the old pain at his heart grew sharp and deadly.

Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out among the