That night Gretchen told the story of the puma to Mrs. Woods, who had learned the leading incidents of it in the afternoon as she came to meet the girl in the trail, on the way from school.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SMOKE-TALK.

One day in September Mrs. Woods was at work in her cabin, and Gretchen was at school.  Mrs. Woods was trying to sing.  She had a hard, harsh voice always, and the tune was a battle-cry.  The hymn on which she was exercising her limited gifts was not one of the happy tunes of Methodism, which early settlers on the Columbia loved to sing.  It was a very censorious rhyme and took a very despondent view of the human heart: 

    “The pure testimony poured forth from the Spirit
      Cuts like a two-edged sword;
     And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented
      Because they’re condemned by the Word.”

She made the word “hypocrites” ring through the solitary log-cabin—­she seemed to have the view that a large population of the world were of this class of people.  She paused in her singing and looked out of the door.

“There’s one honest woman alive,” she remarked to herself.  “Thank Heaven, I never yet feared the face of clay!”

A tall, dark form met her eye—­a great shadow in the scintillant sunlight.  It was an aged Indian, walking with a staff.  He was coming toward the cabin.

“Umatilla!” she said.  “What can he want of me?”

The old chief approached, and bowed and sat down on a log that answered for a door-step.

“I walk with a staff now,” he said.  “My bow has drifted away on the tide of years—­it will never come back again.  I am old.”

“You have been a good man,” said Mrs. Woods, yielding to an impulse of her better nature.  She presently added, as though she had been too generous, “And there aren’t many good Injuns—­nor white folks either for that matter.”

“I have come to have a smoke-talk with you,” said the old chief, taking out his pipe and asking Mrs. Woods to light it.  “Listen!  I want to go home.  When a child is weary, I take him by the hand and point him to the smoke of his wigwam.  He goes home and sleeps.  I am weary.  The Great Spirit has taken me by the hand; he points to the smoke of the wigwam.  There comes a time when all want to go home.  I want to go home.  Umatilla is going home.  I have not spoken.”

The smoke from his pipe curled over his white head in the pure, clear September air.  He was eighty or more years of age.  He had heard the traditions of Juan de Fuca, the Greek pilot, who left his name on the straits of the Puget Sea.  He had heard of the coming of Vancouver in his boyhood, the English explorer who named the seas and mountains for his lieutenants and friends, Puget, Baker, Ranier, and Townsend.  He had known the forest lords of the Hudson Bay Company, and of Astoria; had seen the sail of Gray as it entered the Columbia, and had heard the preaching of Jason Lee.  The murder of Whitman had caused him real sorrow.  Umatilla was a man of peace.  He had loved to travel up and down the Columbia, and visit the great bluffs of the Puget Sea.  He lived for a generation at peace with all the tribes, and now that he was old he was venerated by them all.