Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/207

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On the Walla Walla, that fateful day.

It was September, forty-three—

Little less than a year, you see—

When the woman who waited thought she heard

The clatter of foot-beats that she knew

On the Walla Walla again. "What word

From Whitman?" Whitman himself! And see!

What do her glad eyes look upon?

The first of two hundred wagons rolls

Into the valley before her. He

Who, a year ago, had left her side,

Had brought them over the Great Divide—

Men, women and children, a thousand souls—

The army to occupy Oregon.

You know the rest. In the books you have read

That the British were not a year ahead.

The United States have kept Oregon,

Because of one Marcus Whitman. He

Rode eight thousand miles, and was not too late!

In a single hand, not a Nation's fate,

Perhaps; but a gift for the Nation, she

Would hardly part with it to-day, if we

May believe what the papers say upon

This great Northwest, that was Oregon.

And Whitman? Ah! my children, he

And his wife sleep now in a martyr's grave!

Murdered! Murdered, both he and she,

By the Indian souls they went West to save!