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you ever “holiday” through the valley
lands of the Dry Belt? Ever spend days and days
in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a four-in-hand,
when “Curly” or “Nicola Ned”
held the ribbons, and tooled his knowing little leaders
and wheelers down those horrifying mountain trails that
wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the heights
and depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola and the Similkameen
countries? If so, you have listened to the call of the
Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking,
tumbling streams that sing their way through the canyons
with a music so dulcet, so insistent, that for many
moons the echo of it lingers in your listening ears,
and you will, through all the years to come, hear the
voices of those mountain rivers calling you to return.
But
the most haunting of all the melodies is the warbling
laughter of the Tulameen; its delicate note is far more
powerful, more far-reaching than the throaty thunders
of Niagara. That is why the Indians of the Nicola country
still cling to their old-time story that the Tulameen
carries the spirit of a young girl enmeshed in the wonders
of its winding course; a spirit that can never free
itself from the canyons, to rise above the heights and
follow its fellows to the Happy Hunting Grounds, but
which is contented to entwine its laughter, its sobs,
its lonely whispers, its still lonelier call for companionship,
with the wild music of the waters that sing forever
beneath the western stars.
As your horses plod up and up
the almost perpendicular trail that leads out of the
Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads
at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the
atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulsing of rioting
blood are yours again, until, as you near the heights,
you become strangely calmed by the voiceless silence
[Page 47] of it all, a silence so holy
that it seems the whole world about you is swinging
its censer before an altar in some dim remote cathedral!
The choir voices of the Tulameen are yet very far away
across the summit, but the heights of the Nicola are
the silent prayer that holds the human soul before the
first great chords swell down from the organ loft. In
this first long climb up miles and miles of trail, even
the staccato of the drivers’ long black-snake
whip is hushed. He lets his animals pick their own sure-footed
way, but once across the summit he gathers the reins
in his steely fingers, gives a low, quick whistle, the
whiplash curls about the ears of the leaders and the
plunge down the dip of the mountain begins. Every foot
of the way is done at a gallop. The coach rocks and
swings as it dashes through a trail rough-hewn from
the heart of the forest; at times the angles are so
abrupt that you cannot see the heads of the leaders
as they swing around the grey crags that almost scrape
the tires on the left, while within a foot of the rim
of the trail the right wheels whirl along the edge of
a yawning canyon. The rhymes of the hoof-beats, the
recurrent low whistle and crack of the whiplash, the
occasional rattle of pebbles showering down to the depths,
loosened by rioting wheels, have broken the sacred silence.
Yet above all those nearby sounds there seems to be
an indistinct murmur, which grows sweeter, more musical,
as you gain the base of the mountains, where it rises
above all harsher notes. It is the voice of the restless
Tulameen as it dances and laughs through the rocky throat
of the canyon, three hundred feet below. Then, following
the song, comes a glimpse of the river itself—white
garmented in the film of its countless rapids, its showers
of waterfalls. It is as beautiful to look at as to listen
to, and it is here, where the trail winds about and
above it for leagues, that the Indians say it caught
the spirit of the maiden that is still interlaced in
its loveliness.
It was in one of the terrible
battles that raged between the valley tribes before
the white man’s footprints were seen along these
[Page 48] trails. None can now tell
the cause of this warfare, but the supposition is that
it was merely for tribal supremacy—that primeval
instinct that assails the savage in both man and beast,
that drives the hill men to bloodshed and the leaders
of buffalo herds to conflict. It is the greed to rule;
the one barbarous instinct that civilization has never
yet been able to eradicate from armed nations. This
war of the tribes of the valley lands was of years in
duration; men fought and women mourned, and children
wept, as all have done since time began. It seemed an
unequal battle, for the old experienced war-tried chief
and his two astute sons were pitted against a single
young Tulameen brave. Both factors had their loyal followers,
both were indomitable as to courage and bravery, both
were determined and ambitious, both were skilled fighters.
But on the older man’s
side were experience and two other wary, strategic brains
to help him, while on the younger was but the advantage
of splendid youth and unconquerable persistence. But
at every pitched battle, at every skirmish, at every
single-handed conflict the younger man gained little
by little, the older man lost step by step. The experience
of age was gradually but inevitably giving way to the
strength and enthusiasm of youth. Then one day they
met face to face and alone—the old war-scarred
chief, the young battle-inspired brave. It was an unequal
combat, and at the close of a brief but violent struggle
the younger had brought the older to his knees. Standing
over him with up-poised knife the Tulameen brave laughed
sneeringly, and said:
“Would you, my enemy,
have this victory as your own? If so, I give it to you;
but in return for my submission I demand of you—your
daughter.”
For an instant the old chief
looked in wonderment at his conqueror; he thought of
his daughter only as a child who played about the forest
trails or sat obediently beside her mother in the lodge,
stitching her little moccasins or weaving her little
baskets. [Page 49]
“My daughter!” he
answered sternly. “My daughter—who is barely
out of her own cradle basket—give her to you,
whose hands are blood-dyed with the killing of a score
of my tribe? You ask for this thing?”
“I do not ask it,”
replied the young brave. “I demand it; I have
seen the girl and I shall have her.”
The old chief sprang to his
feet and spat out his refusal. “Keep your victory,
and I keep my girl-child,” though he knew he was
not only defying his enemy, but defying death as well.
The Tulameen laughed lightly,
easily. “I shall not kill the sire of my wife,”
he taunted. “One more battle must we have, but
your girl-child will come to me.”
Then he took his victorious
way up the trail, while the old chief walked with slow
and springless step down into the canyon.
The next morning the chief’s
daughter was loitering along the heights, listening
to the singing river, and sometimes leaning over the
precipice to watch its curling eddies and dancing waterfalls.
Suddenly she heard a slight rustle, as though some passing
bird’s wing had clipt the air. Then at her feet
there fell a slender, delicately shaped arrow. It fell
with spent force, and her Indian woodcraft told her
it had been shot to her, not at her. She started like
a wild animal. Then her quick eye caught the outline
of a handsome, erect figure that stood on the heights
across the river. She did not know him as her father’s
enemy. She only saw him to be young, stalwart and of
extraordinary, manly beauty. The spirit of youth and
of a certain savage coquetry awoke within her. Quickly
she fitted one of her own dainty arrows to the bow string
and sent it winging across the narrow canyon; it fell,
spent, at his feet, and he knew she had shot it to him,
not at him.
Next morning, woman-like, she
crept noiselessly to the brink of the heights. Would
she see him again—that handsome brave? Would he
speed another arrow to her? She had not yet emerged
from the tangle of forest before it fell, its faint-winged
flight heralding its [Page 50] coming.
Near the feathered end was tied a tassel of beautiful
ermine tails. She took from her wrist a string of shell
beads, fastened it to one of her little arrows and winged
it across the canyon, as yesterday.
The following morning before
leaving the lodge she fastened the tassel of ermine
tails in her straight, black hair. Would he see them?
But no arrow fell at her feet that day, but a dearer
message was there on the brink of the precipice. He
himself awaited her coming—he who had never left
her thoughts since that first arrow came to her from
his bow-string. His eyes burned with warm fires, as
she approached, but his lips said simply: “I have
crossed the Tulameen River.” Together they stood,
side by side, and looked down at the depths before them,
watching in silence the little torrent rollicking and
roystering over its boulders and crags.
“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 tonight. 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
[Page 51] 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. [Page 52]
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