Chapter 1
THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE.My full defiance, hate, and scorn.
Scott.
It is the day after the departure of the runners to call the
great council,—eight years since Cecil Grey went out into the
wilderness. Smoke is curling slowly upward from an Indian camp on
the prairie not far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon.
Fifteen or twenty cone-shaped lodges, each made of mats stretched
on a frame-work of poles, compose the village. It swarms with
wolfish-looking dogs and dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse,
heads and feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, tainting
the air with their disgusting odor. Here and there an ancient
withered specimen of humanity sits in the sun, absorbing its rays
with a dull animal-like sense of enjoyment, and a group of warriors
lie i
