Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/709

658 the significant information that a decree of outlawry had been passed by the Cayuses against the white people in their country, declining to explain any further. Filled with apprehension, the missionary cast himself upon his couch of skins, but sleep was impossible. On either side of him sat an Indian woman chanting the harsh and melancholy death-song of her people. When asked for whom they mourned, no answer could be obtained. At early dawn Spalding prepared to depart, his mind oppressed with misgivings. At a little distance from the lodge waited a native woman, who, laying her hand on the neck of his horse, in a few hurried words warned him to avoid Waiilatpu. Considering that his daughter was an inmate of that station, this hint was not calculated to ease his mind or to cause him to loiter, though his path lay directly in the way of danger, the road from the Umatilla to Waiilatpu leading past the camp of Tiloukaikt, a chief with whom Whitman had more than once had a serious rupture.

When Whitman reached home late on Sunday night he found things as he had left them. Mrs Osborne, who had lost a child by the measles, and recently been confined, was quite ill. Miss Bewley was down with intermittent fever. One of the Sager lads was partially recovering from measles. Two half-breed girls left with Mrs Whitman to be educated, a half-breed boy adopted by the doctor, Crockett Bewley, brother of Miss Bewley, and a young man named Sales, were all in bed with the epidemic, though convalescing.

During the forenoon of Monday Dr Whitman