Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/239

 or he is

with them disgraced for ever. I had crossed the Rubicon.

It was the time of the Autumn Feasts, when the Indians meet together on a high oak plain, a sort of hem of the mountain, overlooking the far valley of the Sacramento, to celebrate in dance and song their battles of the summer and recount the virtues of their dead. On this spot, among the oaks, their fathers had met for many and many a generation. Here all were expected to come in rich and gay attire, and to give themselves up to feasting and the dance, and show no care in their faces, no matter how hard fortune had been upon them.

Indian summer, this. A mellowness and balm in the very atmosphere ; a haze hanging over all things, and all things still and weary like, like a summer sunset.

The manzineta-berries were yellow as gold, the rich anther was here, the maple and the dogwood that fringed the edge of the plain were red as scarlet, and set against the wall of firs in their dark, eternal green.

The scene of the feast was a day s ride from the cabin, and the Prince and I were expected to attend. Paquita would of course be there, and who shall say we had not both looked forward to this day with eagerness and delight ?

Gold, in any quantity, except in romance, is the heaviest and hardest thing to carry and keep with you in your wanderings in the mountains you can imagine.