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us are against us. The passes are kept by many warriors; and could we fight our way through them to another land, the sickness would go with us. Why fly from the disease here, to die with it in some far-off land?"
"We cannot leave our own land," said a dreamer, or medicine-man. "The Great Spirit gave it to us, the bones of our fathers are in it. It is our land," he repeated with touching emphasis. "The Wil lamette cannot leave his old home, though the world is breaking up all around him. The bones of our people are here. Our brothers lie in the death-huts on mimaluse island; how can we leave them? Here is the place where we must live; here, if death comes, must we die!"
A murmur of assent came from the listeners. It voiced the decision of the council. With stubborn Indian fatalism, they would await the end; fighting the rebels if attacked, and sullenly facing the disease if unmolested. Now a voice was heard that never had been heard in accents of despair, a voice that was still fierce and warlike in its resentment of the course the council was taking. It was the voice of Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. He, too, had the plague, and had just reached the grove, walking with slow and tottering steps, unlike the Mishlah of other days. But his eyes glittered with all the old ferocity that had given him the name of Cougar. Alas, he was but a dying cougar now.
"Shall we stay here to die?" thundered the wild chief, as he stood leaning on his stick, his sunken eyes sweeping the assembly with a glance of fire. "Shall we stand and tremble till the pestilence slay
