"Do you mock Multnomah? Am I not war-chief of the Willamettes? Though you dwell in shadow and your bodies are dust, you are Willamettes, and I am still your chief. Give up your secret! If the Great Spirit has sealed your lips so that you cannot speak, give me a sign that will tell me. Answer by word or sign; I say it, I, Multnomah, your chief and master."
Silence again. The roar of the volcano had ceased; and an ominous stillness brooded over Nature, as if all things held their breath, anticipating some mighty and imminent catastrophe. Multnomah s hands were clinched, and his strong face had on it now a fierce ness of command that no eye had ever seen before. His indomitable will reached out to lay hold of those unseen presences and compel them to reply.
A moment of strained, commanding expectation : then the answer came; the sign was given. The earth shook beneath him till he staggered, almost fell; the hut creaked and swayed like a storm-driven wreck; and through the crevices on the side toward Mount Hood came a blinding burst of flame. Down from the great gap in the Cascade Range through which flows the Columbia rolled the far-off thundering crash which had so startled Cecil and appalled the tribes. Then, tenfold louder than before, came again the roar of the volcano.
Too well Multnomah knew what had gone down in that crash; too well did he read the sign that had been given. For a moment it seemed as if all the strength of his heart had broken with that which had fallen; then the proud dignity of his character reas serted itself, even in the face of doom.
