Did 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 pulse of rioting blood are
yours again, until, as you near the heights, you become strangely
calmed by the voiceless silence 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 rhythm 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
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.
"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
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 to-night. 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 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.