It was the finest old log house on the banks of the mighty Saskatchewan river, and the kitchen with its old-fashioned furniture and ample space was the best room in it. On the long winter nights when the ice cracked on the river, when the stars twinkled coldly in the blue, and Nature slept under the snows, it was the general meeting-place of the Douglas household.
Henry Douglas, widower and rancher, was perhaps, one of the best-to-do men between Battleford and Prince Albert. The number of his cattle and horses ran into four figures, and no one who knew him begrudged his success. He was an upright, cheery man, who only aired his opinions round his own fireside, and these were always charitable. But to-night he did not speak much; he was gazing thoughtfully into the flames that sprang in gusty jets from the logs, dancing fantastically and making strange noises. At length he lifted his head and looked at that great good-natured French Canadian giant, Jacques St Arnaud, who sat opposite him, and said—
"I tell you, Jacques, I don't like it. There's trouble brewing oh the Saskatchewan, and if the half-breeds get the Indians to rise, there'll be—" he glanced sideways at his daughter, and hesitated—"well, considerable unpleasantness."
"That's so," said Jacques, also looking at the fair girl with the strangely dark eyes. "It is all so queer. You warned the Government two, three months ago, did you not, that there was likely to be trouble, but still they did not heed? Is not that so?"
"I did, but I've heard no more about it. And now the Police are beginning to get uneasy. They're a mighty fine body of men, but if the half-breeds and Indians get on the war-path, they'll swamp the lot, and—"
"Shoo!" interrupted the giant, again looking at the girl, but this time with unmistakable alarm on his face. "Them Injuns ain't going to eat us. You've been a good friend to them and to the metis. So!"
Jacques St. Arnaud had been in the rancher's service since before the latter's child had been born down in Ontario, some eighteen years ago, and followed him into the great North-West to help conquer the wilderness and establish his new home. He had a big heart in a large body, and his great ambition was to be considered a rather terrible and knowing fellow, while, as a matter of fact, he was the most inoffensive of mortals, and as simple in some ways as a child.
"Bah!" he continued after a pause, "the metis are ungrateful dogs, and the Indians, they are mad also. I would like to take them one by one and wring their necks—so!"
The rancher tried to conceal the concern he felt. His fifty odd years sat lightly upon him, although his hair was grey. His daughter had only been back from Ontario for two years, but in that time she had bulked so largely in his life that he wondered now how he could ever have got along without her. She reminded him of that helpmate and wife who had gone hence a few years after her daughter was born, and whose name was now a sacred memory. He had sent the girl down East to those whom he knew would look after her properly, and there, amid congenial surroundings, she grew and quickened into a new life. But the spell of the vast, broad prairie lands was upon her, and the love for her father was stronger still, so she went, back to both, and there her mind broadened, and her spirit grew in harmony with the lessons that an unconventional life was for ever working out for itself in those great, unfettered spaces where Nature was in the rough and the world was still young. She grew and blossomed into a beautiful womanhood, as blossoms the vigorous wild-flower of the prairies. When she smiled there was the light and the glamour of the morning star in her dark hazel eyes, and when her soul communed with itself, it was as if one gazed into the shadow of the stream. There was a gleam of gold in her hair that was in keeping with the freshness of her nature, and the hue of perfect health was upon her cheeks. Her eighteen years had brought with them all the promise of the May. That she had inherited the adventure-loving spirit of the old pioneers, as well as the keen appreciation of the humorous side of things, was obvious from the amount of entertainment she seemed to find in the company of Old Rory. He was an old-timer of Irish descent, who had been everywhere from the Red River in the east to the Fraser in the west, and from Pah-ogh-kee Lake in the south to the Great Slave Lake in the north. He had been voyageur, trapper, cowboy, farm-hand in the Great North-West for years, and nothing came amiss to him. Now he was the hired servant of her father, doing what was required of him, and that well. He was spare and wrinkled as an old Indian, and there was hardly an unscarred inch in his body, having been charged by buffaloes, clawed by bears and otherwise resented by wild animals.
"Rory," said the girl after a pause, and the softness of her voice was something to conjure with, "what do you think? Are the half-breeds and Indians going to interfere with us if they do rise?"
"Thar be good Injuns and bad Injuns," said Rory doggedly," but more bad nor good. The Injun's a queer animile when he's on the war-path; he's like Pepin Quesnelle's tame b'ar at Medicine Hat that one day chawed up Pepin, who had been like a father to 'im, 'cos he wouldn't go stares wid a dose of castor-oil he was a-swallerin' for the good of his health. You see, the b'ar an' Pepin used allus to go whacks like."
The girl laughed, but still she was uneasy in her mind. She mechanically watched the tidy half-breed woman and the elderly Scotchwoman who had been her mother's servant in the old Ontario days, as the two silently went on, at the far end of the long room, with the folding and putting away of linen. Her eyes wandered with an unwonted wistfulness over the picturesque brown slabs of pine that constituted the walls, the heavy, rudely-dressed tie-beams of the roof over which were stacked various trim bundles of dried herbs, roots and furs, and from which hung substantial hams of bacon and bear's meat. As she looked over the heads of the little group on the broad benches round the fire, she saw the firelight and lamplight glint cheerfully on the old-fashioned muskets and flintlock pistols that decorated the walls—relics of the old romantic days when the two companies of French and English adventurers traded into Hudson's Bay.
She had an idea. She would ask the sergeant of Mounted Police in charge of the detachment of four men, whose little post was within half-a-mile of the homestead, what he thought of the situation, and he would have to tell her. Sergeant Pasmore was one of those men of few words who somehow seemed to know everything. A man of rare courage she knew him to be, for had he not gained his promotion by capturing the dangerous renegade Indian, Thunder-child, single-handed? She knew that Thunderchild had lately broken prison, and was somewhere in the neighbourhood waiting to have his revenge upon the sergeant. Sergeant Pasmore was a man both feared and respected by all with whom he came in contact. He was the embodiment of the law; he carried it, in fact, on the horn of his saddle in the shape of his Winchester rifle; a man who was supposed to be utterly devoid of sentiment, but who had been known to perform more than one kindly action. Her father liked him, and many a time he had spent a long evening by the rancher's great fireside.
As she thought of these things, she was suddenly startled by three firm knocks at the door. Jacques rose from his seat, and opening it a few inches, looked out into the clear moonlight. He paused a moment, then asked—
"Who are you, and what you want?"
"How!" [Footnote: Form of salutation in common use among the Indians and half-breeds.] responded a strange-voice.
"Aha! Child-of-Light!" exclaimed Jacques.
And into the room strode a splendid specimen of a red man in all the glory of war paint and feathers.
"Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadow'd livery of the burnished sun."
Merchant of Venice.
"How! How!" said the rancher, looking up at the tall
Indian. "You are welcome to my fireside, Child-of-Light.
Sit down."
He rose and gave him his hand. With a simple dignity the fine-looking savage returned his salutation.
"The master is good," he said. "Child-of-Light still remembers how in that bad winter so many years ago, when the cotton-tails and rabbits had died from the disease that takes them in the throat, and the wild animals that live upon them died also because there was nought to eat, and how when disease and famine tapped at the buffalo robe that screens the doorways of the tepees, he who is the brother of the white man and the red man had compassion and filled the hungry mouths."
"Ah, well, that's all right, Child-of-Light," lightly said Douglas, wondering what the chief had come to say. He understood the red man's ways, and knew he would learn all in good time.
But the chief would not eat or drink. He would, however, smoke, and helped himself from the pouch that Douglas offered. He let his blanket fall from his shoulders, and underneath there showed a richly-wrought shirt of true barbaric grandeur. On a groundwork of crimson flannel was wrought a rare and striking mosaic in beads of blue and yellow and red. The sun glowed from his breast, countless showy ermine tails dangled from his shoulders, his arms and his sides like a gorgeous fringe, and numerous tiny bells tinkled all over him as he moved. His features were large and marked, his forehead, high, and his nose aquiline. His Mongolian set eyes were dark and full of intellect, his expression a strange mixture of alertness, conscious power, and dignity. He was a splendid specimen of humanity.
He filled his pipe leisurely, then spoke as if he hardly expected that what he had to say would interest his hearers.
The half-breeds, led by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, had risen, he said, and large numbers of the Indians had joined them. Before twenty-four hours there would hardly be a farmstead or ranche in Saskatchewan that would not be pillaged and burnt to the ground. He, Child-of-Light, had managed to keep his band in check, but there were thousands of Indians in the country, Crees, Salteaus, Chippeywans, Blackfoot, Bloods, Piegans, Sarcees, renegade Siouxs, and Crows who would join the rebels. Colonel Irvine, of the North-West Mounted Police at Fort Carlton, had already destroyed all the stores, and, having set fire to the buildings, was retreating on the main body.
Douglas the rancher had "sat quietly while the chief told his alarming news. He hardly dared look at his daughter.
"I have been a fool!" he said bitterly. "I have tried to
hide the truth from myself, and now it may be too late.
Of course it's not the stock and place I'm thinking about,
Dorothy, but it's you—I had no right—-"
"Oh, hush, dad!" cried the girl, who seemed the least concerned of any. "I don't believe the rebels will interfere with us. Besides, have we not our friend, Child-of-Light?"
"The daughter of my brother Douglas is as my own child," said the chief simply, "and her life I will put before mine. But Indians on the war-path are as the We'h-ti-koo, [Footnote: Indians of unsound mind who become cannibals.] who are possessed of devils, whose onward rush is as the waters of the mighty Saskatchewan river when it has forced the ice jam."
"And so, Child-of-Light, what would you have us do?" asked Douglas. "Do you think if possible for my daughter and the women to reach the Fort at Battleford?"
But a sharp tapping at the door stopped the answer of the chief.
Rory shot back the bolt and threw open the door. A fur-clad figure entered; the white frost glistened on his buffalo-coat and bear-skin cap as if they were tipped with ermine. He walked without a word into the light and looked around—an admirable man, truly, about six feet in height, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, and without a spare ounce of flesh—a typical Rider of the Plains, and a soldier, every inch of him. In the thousands upon thousands of square miles in which these dauntless military police have to enforce law and order, the inhabitants know that never yet has the arm of justice not proved long enough to bring an offender to book. On one occasion a policeman disappeared into the wilderness after some one who was wanted. As in three months he neither came back, nor was heard of, he was struck off the strength of the force. But one day, as the men stood on parade in the barrack square, he came back in rags and on foot, more like a starved tramp than a soldier. But with him he brought his prisoner. That was the man, Sergeant Pasmore, who stood before them.
He inclined his head to Dorothy, and nodded to the men around the fire, but when he saw Child-of-Light he extended his left hand.
The Indian looked straight into the sergeant's eyes.
"What has happened?" he asked. "Ough! Ough! I see; you have met Thunderchild?"
The sergeant nodded.
"Yes," he said, with apparent unconcern, "Thunderchild managed to put a bullet through my arm. You may give me a hand off with my coat, Jacques. Luckily, the wound's not bad enough to prevent my firing a gun."
When they removed his overcoat they found that the sleeve of the tunic had been cut away, and that his arm had been roughly bandaged. The girl was gazing at it in a peculiarly concentrated fashion.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Douglas," he said, hastily turning away from her. "I had forgotten it looked like that, but fortunately the look is the worst part of it. It's only a flesh wound."
The girl had stepped forward to help him, as if resenting the imputation that the sight of blood frightened her, but Jacques had anticipated what was required. She wanted to bring him something to eat and drink, but he thanked her and declined. He had weightier matters on hand.
"Mr. Douglas," he said, quietly, "I've told my men to move over here. You may require their services in the course of the next twenty-four hours. What I apprehended and told you about some time ago has occurred."
"Pasmore," said the rancher, earnestly, "is there any immediate danger? If there is, my daughter and the women had better go into Battleford right now."
"You cannot go now—you must wait till to-morrow morning," was the reply. "It's no use taking your household goods into the Fort—there's no room there. Your best plan is to leave things just as they are, and trust to the rebels being engaged elsewhere. I believe your warriors, Child-of-Light, are in the wood in the deep coulee just above where the two creeks meet?"
"That is right, brother," said the Indian, "but what about Thunderchild, the turncoat?"
And then Pasmore told them how he had gone to Thunderchild's camp that day to arrest the outlaw, and warn his braves against joining the rebels, and how he had been shot through the arm, and only escaped with his life. He had come straight on to warn them. In the meantime he would advise the women to make preparations for an early start on the morrow. Food and clothing would have to be taken, as they might be away for weeks.
Then, while Dorothy Douglas and her two women-servants were already making preparations for a move, a brief council of war was held. Child-of-Light, when asked, advised that the Mounted Police and those present should next day escort the women into Fort Battleford, while he and his braves ran off the rancher's fine herd of horses, so as to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy.
Pasmore said that this was exactly the right thing to do. He also intimated that there was a party of half-breeds, the Racettes and the St. Croixs, coming by trail at that very moment from Battleford to plunder and pillage; they would probably arrive before many hours. He had, however, taken the precaution of stationing men on the look-out on the neighbouring ridges.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Jacques, springing to his feet. "It is the neck of that St. Croix I will want to wring. It is two, three years ago now he say he will wring mine; but very good care he will take to keep away. Ah, well, we shall see, my friend, we shall see!"
Child-of-Light stole out to his men in the coulee, and Jacques and Rory went to the stables and out-houses to make certain preparations so that they might be able to start at any moment. The windows were boarded up, so that if the half-breeds came no signs of life might be observed in the house. Douglas saw that certain loopholes in the walls commanding the lines of approach, which he himself had made by way of precaution when danger from the Indians had threatened in the old days, were reopened and plugged in case of emergency.
As for the sergeant, he had not slept for three days, and was too utterly tired out to be of any assistance. He had done what he could, and had now to await developments. The fire was good, and he had dropped, at the rancher's request, into a comfortable high-backed chair in a corner, where he fell asleep.
Midnight, and the rancher had left the house to assist Rory and Jacques with the sleighs, which had to be packed with certain necessaries such as tea, coffee, sugar, bread and flour, frozen meat, pemmican, culinary articles, snow-shoes, and ammunition.
Dorothy, having made all the preparations she could, had re-entered the kitchen. The first thing that drew her attention was the sleeping figure of the sergeant in the chair. She was filled with self-reproach. Why had she forgotten all about this wounded, tired-out man? Why did she always seem to be holding him at arm's-length when there was, surely, no earthly reason why she should do so? His manner had always been perfectly courteous to her, and even deferential. He had done her father many acts of kindness, without as much as referring to them, and still, with a spice of perversity, she had always shrunk from appearing to notice him. She shrewdly suspected that his present life was not the sort of one he had been accustomed to, that, in fact, he belonged by birth and upbringing to a state of things very different from hers. He looked wretchedly uncomfortable and, doubtless, as his limbs seemed cramped, they were cold. She would find a rug to throw over him.
She picked up one, and, with a strange shyness that she had never experienced before, placed it carefully over him. If he awoke she would die with terror—now that he was asleep and did not know that she was looking after his comfort, she experienced a strange, undefinable pleasure in so doing. It was quite a new feeling—something that filled her with a vague wonder.
And then he suddenly opened his eyes, and looked at her for a few moments without stirring.
"Thank you," he said simply, and closed his eyes again.
She could have cried with vexation. If he had been profuse in his thanks she would have had an opportunity of cutting him short with some commonplace comment.
"Hadn't you better lie on the couch, Mr. Pasmore?" she said. "You don't look as if you fitted that chair, and it makes you snore so."
She had hardly thought herself capable of such perfidy, but she did not want him to think that she could be altogether blind to his faults. He sat bolt upright in an instant, and stammered out an apology.
But she cut it short. She resented the idea that he should imagine she took sufficient interest in him to be put out by a trifle.
At that very moment there rang out a rifle shot from the ridge just above the wood hard by. It was followed by another at a greater distance.
"There!" said the girl, with a finger pressed against her lower lip, and a look as if of relief on her face. "Now you will have some work to do. They have come sooner than you expected."
He scanned her face for a moment as if to note how this quick call to grim tragedy affected her. A man of courage himself, he instantly read there possibilities of a very high order and exceptional nerve. There was nothing neurotic about her. Whatever the wayward imaginings of her heart might be, she was a fresh, wholesome and healthy daughter of the prairie, one whose nerves were in accord with her mind and body, one for whom there were no physical or imaginary bogeys.
"It won't frighten you, will it, if we have to turn this kitchen into a sort of shooting gallery?" he asked.
She smiled at the very familiarity with which he handled his subject.
"It will be unpleasant," she replied simply, "but you know I'm accustomed to rifles."
"You don't seem to realise what a rising means amongst savages," he continued. "You must never lose your head, whatever happens, and you must never trust any one outside your own family circle. You must never let yourself fall into their hands; you understand me?"
"I understand," she said, facing him unflinchingly, "and
I have my rifle in case of emergencies."
"You are stronger than I thought," he said thankfully, looking at her for the first time with unmistakable admiration.
The rancher entered the room. He had always been noted for his coolness in time of danger. He looked quickly at his daughter, and was wonderfully relieved to see her take the situation so quietly. He kissed her, and said—
"Now, my dear, you'd better get into the other room till this affair is over. There's no need to be alarmed."
How he wished he could have believed what he said!'
"I'm not frightened, dad, a little bit, and I'm going to stay right with" you and load the guns."
"Lower the lamp," cried Pasmore, suddenly.
In another minute each man was glancing along the barrel of his rifle out into the clear moonlight. They faced the entrance to the valley up which came the enemy. It was a dimly-defined half-circle, with a deep-blue, star-studded background. A fringe of trees ran up it, bordering the frozen creek alongside the trail. Stealthily stealing up, they could see a number of dark figures. Every now and again, from the heights above on either hand, they could see a little jet of fire spurt, and hear the crack of a Winchester as the Mounted Police on the look-out tried to pick off members of the attacking body from their inaccessible point of vantage. But the half-breeds and Indians contented themselves with firing an odd shot in order to warn them off. They would deal with them later. In the meantime they came nearer.
"Ah, St. Croix, old friend! It is my neck you will want to wring, is it? Eh, bien!" And Jacques chuckled audibly.
"Now, hold hard, and wait until I give you the word," said Pasmore, quietly.
The rebels, of whom there might be some thirty or forty, now came out into the open and approached the house until they were abreast of the out-buildings. In the clear moonlight they could be seen distinctly, clad in their great buffalo coats, with collars up over their ears, and bearskin and beaver-caps pulled well down.
At a signal from their leader they raised their rifles to send a preparatory volley through the windows.
"Now then!" thundered Pasmore.
Four rifles cracked like one, and three rebels dropped where they stood, while a fourth, clapping his hands to the lower part of his body, spun round and round, stamping his feet, reviling the comrades who had brought him there, and blaspheming wildly, while the blood spurted out between his fingers. At the same moment, several bullets embedded themselves in the thick window shutters and in the walls. One only found its way through the dried mud between the logs, and this smashed a bowl that stood on the dresser within two feet of Dorothy's head. She merely glanced at it casually, and picking up the basket of cartridges, prepared to hand them round. With fingers keen and warming to their work, the defenders emptied the contents of their magazines into the astonished half-breeds and Indians. It was more than the latter had bargained for. They made for an open shed that stood hard by, leaving their dead and wounded in the snow.
"What ho! Johnnie Crapaud, you pig!" cried Rory, withdrawing his rifle from the loophole, and applying his mouth to it instead. "It's the Red River jig I've bin dyin' to tache ye for many a long day."
At the same moment Jacques caught sight of his old bete noire, Leopold St. Croix the elder, and, not to be outdone by his friend Rory in the exchange of seasonable civilities with the enemy—although, when he came to think of it afterwards, he might as well have shot his man—he was applying his mouth to, his loophole to shout something in the same vein when the quick-eyed Leopold fired a shot at the spot from which the gun-barrel had just been withdrawn. So lucky or good was his aim that he struck the mud in the immediate neighbourhood of the hole, and sent the debris flying into the French-Canadian's mouth. Jacques spent the rest of his time when in the house watching for a long-haired half-breed with a red sash round his waist, who answered to the name of St. Croix the elder.
Ping, ping, ping, zip—phut—cr-runck! and the bullets played a very devil's tattoo upon the walls and windows. The enemy were still five to one, and if they could only succeed in rushing in and breaking down the doors, victory would be in their hands. But to do that meant death to so many.
Another half-hour, and the firing still continued, though in a more desultory fashion. It was a strange waiting game, and a grim one, that was being played. The defenders had shifted their positions to guard against surprise. Douglas had in vain begged his daughter to leave the room and join the women in an inner apartment, but she had pleaded so hard with him that he allowed her to remain.
As for the sergeant, he was outwardly, at least, his old self. He was silent and watchful, showing neither concern nor elation. He moved from one position to another, and never pulled the trigger of his Winchester without making sure of something. With the help of Douglas he had pulled on his fur coat again, as the fire was going out, and he was beginning to feel the cold in his wound.
"I can't make out why Child-of-Light hasn't come up with his men," he said at length, "but, anyhow, he is sure to turn up—"
He paused, listening. Then all in the room heard the chip-chop of an axe as it steadily cut its way through a post of considerable size. The rebels were evidently busy. Suddenly the sound stopped.
"They're preparing for a rush," observed Rory. "What I'm surprisit at is ther riskin' their ugly carcases as they do."
"Sargain Pasmore—Sargean?" cried some-one from the shed.
"Aha! he has recognised your voice," said Jacques. "He is as the fox, that St. Croix."
"Well, what is it?" shouted the sergeant.
What the half-breed had to say rather took the sergeant aback. It was to the effect that unless they surrendered within a few minutes, they would all most assuredly be killed.
Then for the first time that night Sergeant Pasmore betrayed in his voice any feeling that may have animated him.
"Go home, Leopold St. Croix," he cried, "go home, and those with you before it is too late! Go on to the Fort and ask pardon from those in authority, and it may yet be well with you; For as soon as the red-coated soldiers of the Great Queen come—and, take my word for it, they are in number more than the fishes in the Great Lake—you will be shot like a coyote on the prairie, or hanged by the neck, like a bad Indian, on the gallows-tree. That is our answer, Leopold St Croix; you know me of old, and you also know how I have always kept my word."
There was a dead silence for a minute or two, and whilst it lasted one could hear the embers of the dying fire fall into ashes. On a shelf, an eight-day clock ticked ominously; the girl stood with one hand upon her father's shoulder, motionless and impassive, like some beautiful statue. There was no trace of fear of any impending tragedy to mar the proud serenity of her face. At length the sound of voices came to them from outside. It grew in volume and rose like the angry murmur of the sea. Pasmore was looking through a crack when the noise of the chopping began again. In another minute there was a crash of falling timber.
The sergeant turned to the girl.
"Miss Douglas," he said, "will you kindly go into the other room for a minute! They have cut down one of the large posts in the shed and are going to make a battering-ram of it so as to smash in the door. Come this way, all of you. Two on either side. That is right. Fire into them as they charge!"
The half-breeds and Indians, keen and determined as they were to effect an entrance to the house at any costs, were not without considerable foresight and strategy. But their feint failed, and when they did make a rush with their ram two or three of them were picked off. The survivors dropped the ram, and made a dash across the open for the stable.
Pasmore telling the others to remain at their loopholes, went to a room at the end of the long passage, Dorothy following him.
The rebels must have applied a match to some of the inflammable matter, for in another instant the growing, hissing roar of fire was audible.
"It will spread to the house in a few minutes more," remarked the sergeant, quietly, "and I'm afraid that will be the end of it."
But he had already seized an axe and was opening the door.
"Shut the door after me and go to your father," he exclaimed. "I'll cut down the slabs that connect it with the house. Child-of-Light may come up yet. Good-bye—in case of accidents."
She caught him by the arm and looked into his face.
"You can't do that—you must not do that! You are sure to be shot down."
"And I may be shot if I don't." Forcibly, but with what gentleness the action permitted, he disengaged her firm white hand.
"You can't use an axe with that arm," she pleaded, all her old reserve vanishing.
"I can at a pinch," he replied. "It is good of you to trouble about me."
He slipped out and pulled the door behind him. The look he had seen in her eyes had come as a revelation and given him courage.
She stood for a moment speechless and motionless, with a strained, set expression on her face. It was old Rory who aroused her to the gravity of the situation. He came running along the passage.
"Come hyar, honey, and into the cellar wid ye," he cried. "There's more of the inimy comin' along the trail, but there's still a chanct. Nivir say die, sez I."
As if roused from some horrible dream her feverish energy and readiness of resource returned to her.