Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1941-01-23
CHAPTER VII


George away and that was done !;
so when the white men returned to
the landing, he had been borne to
safety.
When they were gone, Jarambo
and the other old men decided what
to do to these white men who had
hurt the child. So by and by many of
the strongest girls swan off to the
schooner, with flowers in their hair,
laughing.
.'.And it was night" Jarambo told
Mary, squatting at her feet. "In the
dark, many canoes went quietly on
the water, and many young men.
The white men on the ship were
busy with our girls; and then we
came aboard in the dark, the girls
held them lovingly while our war
clubs cracked their skulls"
''That was a bad thing, Jarambo, !"
Mary said.
He answered, cit is done" He
said slowly, intoning an ancient tale:
'"The white men came in old times
and killed my woman, and my moth
er, and my father, and my two sons.
Also they took my daughter. Be
fore that, I was a man. Now 1 am
a man again"
When she could speak, her senses
clearing, she asked: laramie, did
the white man with the talking bird
help you kill those mem"
He answered, with a shrewd CLINT
in his eyes: s'No one knows what a
white man will do about killing white
men. That white man with the bird
which talks was given sleep to drink,
and he sleeps now. He did not see
the ship come. He will not see it
60. Soon it was never here"
His eyes as he spoke looked down
at the schooner in the roads; and
Mary saw that some sort of sail was
set on her, and that she now moved
slowly toward the sea.
When the schooner was now out
side the bay, little skein of blue
smoke had begun to rise from her
hatch. 1t became black and grow
ing cloud.
She whispered: 'tThey're burning
her!"
laramie brushed his hand, fiat,
the palm down, across rock He
said again as he had said before:
''That ship was never here!"
The pillar of smoke rose slowly
above the schooner. Mary watched
it rise higher and higher between
her and the blue saucer of the sea,
her eyes following the tip of that
black cloud till like pointing finger
it reached the saucer's rim, the hori-
ION there, where the smoke-fnger
pointed, the square topgallant sails
of full-rigged ship, the rest of her
still below the horizon.
The canvas of those sails was
dark, blackened by the SCOT of
many fires. She was a whaler! The
Venturer, so long expected, was
coming at last to Gilead.
Somewhere along the mountain far
away voice sounded in a long cry,
and nearer another, and then others.
The sound spread like ripples in a
pond, flowing down the mountain
side, reaching them and going on.
Jarambo at her feet looked up and
spoke.
"Your man wakes" he said, and
watched her warily. ,"He calls you"
She turned to 60 to George, but
she paused again and said, after a
moment, in careful explanation:
laramie, the ship that comes there
is my fathers" She could not re-
member the native word for "un-
Gle" if there was one. "My man
and 1 will go away in her" She
looked down at him and saw his
eyes waver. "Better we co." she
said gently. my man will die
here"
He muttered: "Ship sees smoke. -
She understood that he was sullen
with fear that the ship now APP.
preaching would punish the Island
ers for the killing done last night
and she told him, reassuringly
pointing to the burning schooner
using his own words: "That ship
was never here"
Mary told Jarambo: "My mar
must be carried to the house. We
60 to him now"
When they came to the lodge deer
in the forest where they had bidder
George, she found that he hac
walked fretful and hot with fever.
She spoke quickly to old Itaui
''We shall take him home"
Mary went ahead, to make his bee
ready. In the house she saw thai
rough hands had been here rummag
ing; saw her own garments pulled
out and strewn around; saw all he1
possessions in disorder.
| She had come swiftly down the
trail, and she had time to remove
the more obvious traces of their in
vasion before George, muttering il
half delirium, was brought home
On his own bed, he sighed ane
seemed to sink and grow small ane
weak and helpless; and he slept
Mary covered him, and laramie
came to her side. She thought the
old man chung to her as though fol
protection from the punishment O.
his sins; but no one else came near