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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 tonight. 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.