d it back;
but Snoqualmie received from him a look of scorn so withering, that it
seemed when Cecil's flashing eyes met his own as if he had been
struck, and he grasped his tomahawk. Cecil released the rein and
turned away without a word. Snoqualmie seemed for a moment to
deliberate within himself; then he let go his weapon and passed on.
Order was restored and the march resumed.

"You are strong," said the Shoshone renegade to Cecil. He had seen the
whole of the little drama. "You are strong; you held your anger down,
but your eyes struck him as if he were a dog."

Cecil made no reply, but rode on thinking that he had made an enemy.
He regretted what had happened; and yet, when he recalled the insult,
his blood burned and he half regretted that the blow had not been
given. So, absorbed in painful thought, he rode on, till a murmur
passing down the line roused him.

"The bridge! The bridge!"

He looked up hastily, his whole frame responding to the cry. There it
was before him, and only a short distance away,--a great natural
bridge, a rugged ridge of stone, pierced with a wide arched tunnel
through which the waters flowed, extending across the river. It was
covered with stunted pine and underbrush growing in every nook and
crevice; and on it were Indian horsemen with plumed hair and rude
lances. It was the bridge of the Wauna, the Bridge of the Gods, the
bridge he had seen in his vision eight years before.

For a moment his brain reeled, everything seemed shadowy and unreal,
and he half expected to see the bridge melt, like the vision, into
mist before his eyes.

Like one in a dream, he rode with the others to the place where the
path turned abruptly and led over the bridge to the northern bank of
the Columbia. Like one in a dream he listened, while the young
Willamette told him in a low tone that this bridge had been built by
the gods when the world was young, that it was the _tomanowos_ of the
Willamettes, that while it stood they would be strongest of all the
tribes, and that if it fell they would fall with it. As they crossed
it, he noted how the great arch rung to his horse's hoofs; he noted
the bushes growing low down to the tunnel's edge; he noted how
majestic was the current as it swept into the vast dark opening below,
how stately the trees on either bank. Then the trail turned down the
river-bank again toward the Willamette, and the dense fir forest shut
out the mysterious bridge from Cecil's backward