"That is enough," he said before I could reply. "I see, your
people do not like them."
"Twin children are almost unknown with us," I hastened. "They are
rare, very rare; but it is true we do not welcome them."
"Why?" he asked abruptly.
I was a little uncertain about telling him. If I said the wrong
thing, the coming tale might die on his lips before it was born
to speech, but we understood each other so well that I finally
ventured the truth:
"We Iroquois say that twin children are as rabbits," I explained.
"The nation always nicknames the parents. 'Tow-wan-da-na-ga.'
That is the Mohawk for rabbit."
"Is that all?" he asked curiously.
"That is all. Is it not enough to render twin children unwelcome?"
I questioned.
He thought a while, then, with evident desire to learn how all races
regarded this occurrence, he said, "You have been much among the
Palefaces, what do they say of twins?"
"Oh! the Palefaces like them. They are--they are--oh! well, they
say they are very proud of having twins," I stammered. Once again I
was hardly sure of my ground. He looked most incredulous, and I was
led to enquire what his own people of the Squamish thought of this
discussed problem.
"It is no pride to us," he said decidedly, "nor yet is it disgrace
of rabbits; but it is a fearsome thing--a sign of coming evil to the
father, and, worse than that, of coming disaster to the tribe."
Then I knew he held in his heart some strange incident that
gave substance to the superstition. "Won't you tell it to me?"
I begged.
He leaned a little backward against a giant boulder, clasping his
thin, brown hands about his knees; his eyes roved up the galloping
river, then swept down the singing waters to where they crowded past
the sudden bend, and during the entire recital of the strange legend
his eyes never left that spot where the stream disappeared in its
hurrying journey to the sea. Without preamble he began:
"It was a grey morning when they told him of this disaster that had
befallen him. He was a great chief, and he ruled many tribes on the
North Pacific Coast; but what was his greatness now? His young wife
had borne him twins, and was sobbing out her anguish in the little
fir-bark lodge near the tidewater.
"Beyond the doorway gathered many old men and women--old in years,
old in wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations. Some
of them wept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes
and happiness, which would never return because of this calamity;
others discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours
their grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two
boy-babies in the bark lodge, the hopeless sobs of the young mother,
the agonized moans of the stricken chief--their father.
"'Something dire will happen to the tribe,' said the old men in
council.
"'Something dire will happen to him, my husband,' wept the young
mother.
"'Something dire will happen to us all,' echoed the unhappy father.
"Then an ancient medicine-man arose, lifting his arms, outstretching
his palms to hush the lamenting throng. His voice shook with the
weight of many winters, but his eyes were yet keen and mirrored the
clear thought and brain behind them, as the still trout-pools in
the Capilano mirror the mountain tops. His words were masterful,
his gestures commanding, his shoulders erect and kindly. His was
a personality and an inspiration that no one dared dispute, and
his judgment was accepted as the words fell slowly, like a doom.
"'It is the olden law of the Squamish that, lest evil befall the
tribe, the sire of twin children must go afar and alone, into the
mountain fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to
prove himself stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat
back the shadow that would otherwise follow him and all his people.
I, therefore, name for him the length of days that he must spend
alone fighting his invisible enemy. He will know by some great sign
in Nature the hour that the evil is conquered, the hour that his
race is saved. He must leave before this sun sets, taking with him
only his strongest bow, his fleetest arrows, and, going up into the
mountain wilderness, remain there ten days--alone, alone.'
"The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the
father arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over
this seemingly brief banishment. He took leave of his sobbing wife,
of the two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow
and arrows, and faced the forest like a warrior. But at the end
of the ten days he did not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten
months.
"'He is dead,' wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys.
'He could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was
stronger than he--he, so strong, so proud, so brave.'
"'He is dead,' echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen. 'Our
strong, brave chief, he is dead.' So they mourned the long year
through, but their chants and their tears but renewed their grief;
he did not return to them.
"Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his
solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what
current of air, what faltering note in the voice of the medicine-man
had deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led
him to understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration,
not ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a
stoic. For if he had refused to do so his belief was that, although
the threatened disaster would be spared him, the evil would fall
upon his tribe. Thus was one more added to the long list of
self-forgetting souls whose creed has been, 'It is fitting that
one should suffer for the people.' It was the world-old heroism
of vicarious sacrifice.
"With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the
bark from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside
the Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared
by arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles. All through
the salmon-run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a
housewife. The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and
cinnamon bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed
deer never returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at
the edge of the stream--their wild hearts, their agile bodies were
stilled when he took aim. Smoked hams and saddles hung in rows from
the cross-poles of his bark lodge, and the magnificent pelts of
animals carpeted his floors, padded his couch, and clothed his body.
He tanned the soft doe-hides, making leggings, moccasins and shirts,
stitching them together with deer sinew as he had seen his mother do
in the long-ago. He gathered the juicy salmon-berries, their acid
a sylvan, healthful change from meat and fish. Month by month
and year by year he sat beside his lonely camp-fire, waiting for
his long term of solitude to end. One comfort alone was his--he
was enduring the disaster, fighting the evil, that his tribe might
go unscathed, that his people be saved from calamity. Slowly,
laboriously the tenth year dawned; day by day it dragged its long
weeks across his waiting heart, for Nature had not yet given the
sign that his long probation was over.
"Then, one hot summer day, the Thunder-bird came crashing through the
mountains about him. Up from the arms of the Pacific rolled the
storm-cloud, and the Thunder-bird, with its eyes of flashing light,
beat its huge vibrating wings on crag and canyon.
"Up-stream, a tall shaft of granite rears its needle-like length. It
is named 'Thunder Rock,' and wise men of the Paleface people say it
is rich in ore--copper, silver, and gold. At the base of this shaft
the Squamish chief crouched when the storm-cloud broke and bellowed
through the ranges, and on its summit the Thunder-bird perched, its
gigantic wings threshing the air into booming sounds, into splitting
terrors, like the crash of a giant cedar hurtling down the mountain-side.
"But when the beating of those black pinions ceased and the echo of
their thunder-waves died down the depths of the canyon, the Squamish
chief arose as a new man. The shadow on his soul had lifted, the
fears of evil were cowed and conquered. In his brain, his blood,
his veins, his sinews, he felt that the poison of melancholy dwelt
no more. He had redeemed his fault of fathering twin children; he
had fulfilled the demands of the law of his tribe.
"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder-bird's wings dying slowly,
faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird,
too, was dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and
presently that soul appeared in the sky. He could see it arching
overhead, before it took its long journey to the Happy Hunting
Grounds, for the soul of the Thunder-bird was a radiant half-circle
of glorious color spanning from peak to peak. He lifted his head
then, for he knew it was the sign the ancient medicine-man had told
him to wait for--the sign that his long banishment was ended.
"And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little
brown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father?
Why have we no father, like other boys?' To be met only with the
oft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more. Your father, the
great chief, is dead.'
"But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire
would some day return. Often they voiced this feeling to their
mother, but she would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft
of the great medicine-man could bring him to them. But when they
were ten years old the two children came to their mother, hand
within hand. They were armed with their little hunting-knives,
their salmon-spears, their tiny bows and arrows.
"'We go to find our father,' they said.
"'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother.
"'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people.
"But the great medicine-man said, 'The heart of a child has
invisible eyes; perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a
child has invisible ears; perhaps the child-ears hear him call.
Let them go.' So the little children went forth into the forest;
their young feet flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts
pointed to the north as does the white man's compass. Day after day
they journeyed up-stream, until, rounding a sudden bend, they beheld
a bark lodge with a thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.
"'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their
childish hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship.
Hand in hand they approached, and entering the lodge, said the
one word, 'Come.'
"The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then
towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.
"'Welcome, my sons!' he said. 'And good-bye, my mountains, my
brothers, my crags, and my canyons!' And with a child clinging to
each hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater."
* * * * *
The legend was ended.
For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the
bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where
the eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of
solitude.
The chief spoke again: "It was here, on this spot we are sitting,
that he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone,
alone."
I nodded silently. The legend was too beautiful to mar with
comments, and, as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through
the underbrush, past the disused logger's camp, and into the trail
that leads citywards.