The volunteers found only a heap of burned adobes on the site of the Whitman mission. Torn letters, shattered glass and china lay among the trampled poppies. Even the orchard was tomahawked away. Wolves had uncovered the shallow graves, and the remains of the martyr-missionary and his household lay scattered on the wintry plain. Tresses of tangled gold identified the disfigured brow of the queenly Joan of the West.
The bodies were gathered up and reinterred, and above the mound of his little Helen Mar the old trapper, Joe Meek, swore vengeance as he hastened on to Washington. Six weeks later he met his old comrade, Captain Bridger, in a mountain pass.
"And my little Mary Ann?" he asked.
"She, too, is dead," said the trapper by the camp-fire.
Poor old Sticcas! evading the gibes and threats of his countrymen, he hunted up the doctor's cattle, and collecting what he could of the stolen property, delivered them to the volunteers, money, watches, books, and then with Tauitau left for the mountains to wait till the war was over.
"Stay a moment," cried the colonel. "Before you go, tell me, where are the murderers? "
With a frightened look to see that he was unobserved by his people, old Sticcas waved his hand and whispered, " Fleeing up the Tucanon."
Colonel Gilliam had thrown up a fort out of the burned adobes. Leaving his wounded there, he continued the pursuit. On the fifth day, after an all-night march, he surprised a camp at the mouth of the Tucanon. An old man came out with one hand on his head and one on his heart.
"We are the people of Pio-pio-mox-mox," he said in bad Chinook; "we are friends."
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