"Take that young man and hang him to the nearest tree," cried Pio-pio-mox-mox, in a tone of thunder.
The attendants seized the boaster, and before he realized it was not a jest, the noose tightened about his neck. In a few moments a corpse dangled from the boughs of a rugged old cottonwood.
Five Crows heard the awful tale. Then he rode over to the mission. There was a beautiful girl there, a young school-teacher, with eyes like Mrs. Whitman's. She was just from the East, and sick with a fever. Her rose-and-lily beauty captured the heart of the savage who had tried so long to buy a white wife. They dragged her shrieking to his lodge. The rest were distributed among the Indians.
McKinley had removed to another post. The new man in charge at Fort Walla Walla seemed afraid to assist the Americans in this time of trouble. He turned away the few fleeing fugitives that struggled to his door. He did, however, despatch a messenger to Fort Vancouver.
The thunderbolt had fallen. Douglas at once sent word to Governor Abernethy at Oregon City. Chief Factor Ogden set out the same day with sixteen armed Canadians, in December snow and rain, up the inclement Columbia to ransom the captives.
The colonial legislature was in session when the panting messenger from Fort Vancouver landed at the Falls. All that morning they had been listening to the governor's annual message, treating chiefly of the embarrassments of the Indian question. When at two o'clock Governor Abernethy communicated the fact of an actual massacre, the excitement knew no bounds. Nesmith leaped to his feet with a resolution to despatch fifty riflemen to protect the mission at the Dalles. The
