“That is my country,” he said, looking across the river.  “This is the country of your father, and of your brothers; they are my enemies.  I return to my own shore to-night.  Will you come with me?”

She looked up into his handsome young face.  So this was her father’s foe—­the dreaded Tulameen!

“Will you come?” he repeated.

“I will come,” she whispered.

It was in the dark of the moon and through the kindly night he led her far up the rocky shores to the narrow belt of quiet waters, where they crossed in silence into his own country.  A week, a month, a long golden summer, slipped by, but the insulted old chief and his enraged sons failed to find her.

Then, one morning, as the lovers walked together on the heights above the far upper reaches of the river, even the ever-watchful eyes of the Tulameen failed to detect the lurking enemy.  Across the narrow canyon crouched and crept the two outwitted brothers of the girl-wife at his side; their arrows were on their bow-strings, their hearts on fire with hatred and vengeance.  Like two evil-winged birds of prey those arrows sped across the laughing river, but before they found their mark in the breast of the victorious Tulameen the girl had unconsciously stepped before him.  With a little sigh, she slipped into his arms, her brothers’ arrows buried into her soft, brown flesh.

It was many a moon before his avenging hand succeeded in slaying the old chief and those two hated sons of his.  But when this was finally done the handsome young Tulameen left his people, his tribe, his country, and went into the far north.  “For,” he said, as he sang his farewell war-song, “my heart lies dead in the Tulameen River.”

* * * * *

But the spirit of his girl-wife still sings through the canyon, its song blending with the music of that sweetest-voiced river in all the great valleys of the Dry Belt.  That is why this laughter, the sobbing murmur of the beautiful Tulameen, will haunt for evermore the ear that has once listened to its song.

THE GREY ARCHWAY

The steamer, like a huge shuttle, wove in and out among the countless small islands; its long trailing scarf of grey smoke hung heavily along the uncertain shores, casting a shadow over the pearly waters of the Pacific, which swung lazily from rock to rock in indescribable beauty.

After dinner I wandered astern with the traveller’s ever-present hope of seeing the beauties of a typical Northern sunset, and by some happy chance I placed my deck-stool near an old tillicum, who was leaning on the rail, his pipe between his thin, curved lips, his brown hands clasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea, as though they searched the future—­or was it that they were seeing the past?

“Kla-how-ya, tillicum!” I greeted.

He glanced round, and half smiled.