"You know--you conjure.

Make sick--make well!" He drew his blanket again around him and strode away with an injured look in his face, and vanished into the forests.
"I am sorry for this joke," said the missionary; "it bodes no good." November came.

The nights were long, and there was a perceptible coolness in the air, even in this climate of April days.
Joe Stanfield, a half-breed Canadian and a member of Whitman's family, was observed to spend many of the lengthening evenings with the Cayuses in their lodges.

He had been given a home by Whitman, to whom he had seemed for a time devoted.
Joe Lewis, an Indian who had come to Whitman sick and half-clad, and had received shelter and work from him, seems to have been on intimate terms with Stanfield, and the two became bitter enemies to the mission and sought to turn the Cayuses against it, contrary to all the traditions of Indian gratitude.
In these bright autumn days of 1847 a great calamity fell upon the Indians of the Columbia.

It was the plague.