e Willamettes
shall rule the tribes as long as the bridge shall stand; and how can
it fall when it is a mountain of stone?"

A strange expression crossed Tohomish's sullen face.

"Multnomah, beware how you rest on the prophecy of the bridge. Lean
not your hand on it, for it is as if you put it forth to lean it on a
coiled rattlesnake."

"Your sayings are dark," replied the chief impatiently. "Speak
plainly."

Tohomish shook his head, and the gloomy look habitual to him came
back.

"I cannot. Dreams and omens I can tell, but the secret of the bridge
is the secret of the Great Spirit; and I cannot tell it lest he become
angry and take from me my power of moving men with burning words."

"The secret of the Great Spirit! What black thing is it you are hiding
and covering up with words? Bring it forth into the light, that I may
see it."

"No, it is my _tomanowos_. Were I to tell it the gift of eloquence
would go from me, the fire would die from my heart and the words from
my lips, and my life would wither up within me."

Multnomah was silent. Massive and commanding as was his character he
was still an Indian, and the words of the seer had touched the latent
superstition in his nature. They referred to that strongest and most
powerful of all the strange beliefs of the Oregon savages,--the spirit
possession or devil worship of the _tomanowos_.

As soon as an Oregon Indian was old enough to aspire to a place among
the braves, he was sent into the hills alone. There he fasted, prayed,
and danced, chanted the medicine-chant, and cut himself with knife or
thorn till he fell exhausted to the ground. Whatever he saw then, in
waking delirium or feverish sleep, was the charm that was to control
his future. Be it bird or beast, dream or mystic revelation, it was
his _totem_ or _tomanowos_, and gave him strength, cunning, or
swiftness, sometimes knowledge of the future, imparting to him its own
characteristics. But _what_ it was, its name or nature, was the one
secret that must go with him to his grave. Woe unto him if he told the
name of his _totem_. In that moment it would desert him, taking from
him all strength and power, leaving him a shattered wreck, an outcast
from camp and war-party.

"Multnomah says well that it is a black secret, but it is my _totem_
and may not be told. For many winters Tohomish has carried it in his
breast, till its poisoned sap has filled his heart with bitterness,
till for him gladness and wa