Dead, dead, her lover was dead! That was all she could grasp. Snoqualmie's insulting command passed unheeded. She sat looking at the Indian with bright, dazed eyes that saw nothing. All the world seemed blotted out.
"I tell you that he is dead, and I slew him. Are you asleep that you stare at me so? Awaken and do as I bid you; wash your lover's blood off my tomahawk."
At first she had been stunned by the terrible shock, and she could realize only that Cecil was dead. Now it came to her, dimly at first, then like a flash of fire, that Snoqualmie had slain him. All her spirit leaped up in uncontrollable hatred. For once, she was the war-chief's daughter. She drew her skirts away from the tomahawk in unutterable horror; her eyes blazed into Snoqualmie's a defiance and scorn before which his own sunk for the instant.
"You killed him! I hate you. I will never be your wife. You have thrown the tomahawk between us; it shall be between us forever. Murderer! You have killed the one I love. Yes, I loved him; and I hate you and will hate you till I die."
The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an instant, taken utterly by surprise.
Then the wild impulse of defiance passed, and the awful sense of bereavement came back like the falling of darkness over a sinking flame. Cecil was gone from her, gone for all time. The world seemed unreal, empty. She sunk among the furs like one stricken down. Snoqualmie, recovering from his momentary rebuff, heaped bitter epithets and scornful words upon her; but she neither saw nor heard, and lay with wide, bright, staring eyes. Her seeming indifference maddened him still more, and he hurled at her the fiercest abuse. She looked at him vaguely. He saw that she did not even know what he was saying, and relapsed into sullen silence. She lay mute and still, with a strained expression of pain in her eyes. The canoe sped swiftly on.
One desolating thought repeated itself again and again,--the thought of hopeless and irreparable loss. By it past and present were blotted out. By and by, when she awoke from the stupor of despair and realized her future, destined to be passed with the murderer of her lover, what then? But now she was stunned with the shock of a grief that was mercy compared with the awakening that must come.