Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/49

 the Indians might swoop down and capture the caravan! But they will not the trader is the Indian's best friend, on the lookout, however, with a loaded gun. The brigade wound up the old trail to Whitman's. In two years that had become a favorite halting spot for Tom McKay.

Jason Lee and Tom McKay found the mission gardens green on the Walla Walla. Here and there irrigating ditches intersected the squares, and ran back into the Indian fields, where, in the absence of almost every necessary tool, the Indians had plantations of two and three acres in wheat, peas, corn, and potatoes. An orchard of seedling apple sprouts nodded its tender twigs, and a grist-mill hummed across the river.

The heads of the two missions had a long conference, and Jason Lee passed on to visit Spalding in the upper country. The horse he rode was a gift from his pupil Elijah, son of the great Walla Walla, Pio-pio-mox-mox.

"What are you going to do with William? "inquired Dr. Whitman, patting the dark locks of McKay's little son, the "Billy-boy "of Fort Vancouver.

"I am sending him to Scotland to study medicine. He starts to-morrow to join Dr. McLoughlin at Colvile."

"Thomas, why don't you educate the boy in America? Oregon is Uncle Sam's territory, and it won't be long before he takes possession. Take my advice, Thomas. Give the boy a Yankee education, make an American of him."

"I used to think of sending him to John Jacob Astor," said McKay, recalling the time when he himself, a lad of Billy's age, accompanied his father in a birch canoe down the Hudson to join the Astor expedition to the Columbia. "But I have no money. All