Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/309

 skins hand savages. But there, now, Hi ham ha good Hamerican, you know," he added with a wink,—so good, indeed, that he was made Colonial Treasurer at the next election.

George Abernethy, the steward of the Methodist mission, an upright man, of smooth face and agreeable manner, became Oregon's colonial governor. On a green point overlooking the Willamette and within sound of the Falls, he built his modest mansion, with gable roof, French windows, wide porch, double parlors, and fireplaces, and the American flag floating above. The streets in Oregon City were only trails, and the new governor whitewashed the stumps that he might find his way home on dark nights through the timber. Here his apple-cheeked wife gave parties in the hospitable days of early Oregon.

The governor's house was on the very spot where old Canemah once shaped his arrow-points. One night Waskema came back. There stood the governor's residence, with its pillared porch and windows of glass. She went around to a favorite Balm-of-Gilead that clapped its silver leaves in the summer night. The white chief had dug him a well, throwing out the sand on countless clippings and fragments of imperfect arrow-heads. Like a lover who looks for a lock of his mistress's hair where he dropped it long ago, so old Waskema had been wont to return to gather broken chips from the arrow-maker's shop; but now they were covered, mixed with the sands, and the brick-walled well seemed not deeper than the grave in her heart. She clutched her hands and looked up at the windows. There were lights in the governor's windows she drew near and saw the ruddy glow of the fire lighting up the fair faces of white boys and girls. Even so in the long