ao8 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
every inch an Indian king. Already he had been sent to Spirit Hill in the Grande Ronde to learn his destiny; already he led the braves in the buffalo hunt.
In October the Walla Walla-Cayuses came home from the summer hunt laden with spoils of buffalo-beef and hides. The nights were cold and the driftwood fires blazed merrily.
Walking there in the soft twilight with the hum of the lighted lodges around him, Elijah heard the gossip of the Indian village. Here it was the whisper about his uncle, Five Crows, who wanted a white wife. A year ago he had asked the missionaries for one; he had been down to Vancouver to negotiate, and at last dismissing his five present wives he had gone in great state of fine horses and blankets to Fort Walla Walla to propose to Chief Factor Pambrun for the hand of the lovely Maria. To his astonishment, the suit was rejected with a kick, and the discomfited chief returned home and married a Modoc slave to the great scandal of the tribe.
Here the talk was of some trouble at the mission. The Cayuse horses had broken into the mission field and damaged the growing grain. When Dr. Whitman reproved the Indians, Tiloukaikt said: "It is not your grain, it is ours. The land is all ours, and the water and the fuel."
One threw mud on him and pulled his ears, one snapped a gun at him, and another aimed an axe that the doctor dodged.
"What Indians did that? "demanded Elijah, turning sharply.
"The ones that talk so much with Delaware Tom," was the answer.
"And did not Dr. Whitman punish them? "
