IN THE JUDGMENT HALL
Now that Dorothy knew the worst was about to happen, she,
strangely enough, felt more self-possessed than she had
done before. These rebels might kill her, or not, just
as the mood swayed them, but she would let them see that
the daughter of a white man was not afraid.
In that short walk to the chapel she reviewed her position.
She hoped that by this time the others had managed to
reach the Fort. If they had, then she could face with
comparative equanimity what might happen to herself. Her
only fear was what her father, in his distress on hearing
of her capture, might do.
Fortunately it was not far to the chapel which Riel had
converted into his headquarters. Indeed, he was only
paying a hurried visit there to exhort the faithful and
long-suffering metis and Indians to prompt and decisive
action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to
Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only
those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture
of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were
too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot.
A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each
with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the
Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel,
"stickit priest," and now malcontent and political agitator
by profession. This worthy gentleman had already cost
the Government a rebellion, but why he should have been
allowed to run to a second is one of those seeming
mysteries that can only be accounted for by the too
clement policy of a British Government.
Dorothy and her captors entered the small porch of the
chapel and passed into the sacred edifice. For one like
Riel, who had been educated for the priesthood in Lower
Canada, it was a strange use to put such a place to. The
scene when they entered almost defies description. It
was crowded with breeds and Indians armed to the teeth
with all manner of antiquated weapons. Most of them wore
blue copotes and kept on their unplucked beaver caps or
long red tuques. Haranguing them close to the altar was
the great Riel himself, the terror of the Saskatchewan.
He did not look the dangerous, religious fanatic that he
was in reality. He was about five feet seven in height,
with red hair and beard. His face was pale and flabby,
and his dark grey eyes, set close together, glowed when
he spoke and were very restless. His nose was slightly
aquiline, his neck long, and his lips thick. His voice,
though low and gentle in ordinary conversation, was loud
and abrupt now that he was excited.
He was so carried away by the exuberance of his own
eloquence when Dorothy and her captors entered, that he
still kept on in a state of rapt ecstasy. His semi-mystical
oration was a weird jumble of religion and lawlessness,
devout exhortation, riot, plunder, prayer, and pillage.
He extolled the virtues of the murderous Poundmaker and
Big Bear. He said that Mistawasis and Chicastafasin, the
chiefs, and some others, were feeble of heart and
backsliders, for they had left their reserves to escape
being drawn into the trouble. Crowfoot, head chief of
the Blackfoot nation, was protesting his loyalty to the
Lieutenant-Governor, and his squaws would one day stone
him to death as a judgment. Fort Pitt, Battleford and
Prince Albert must shortly capitulate to them, and then
the squaws would receive the white women of those places
as their private prisoners to do with as their sweet
wills suggested. Already many of the accursed whites had
been slaughtered, as at Duck Lake, for instance, but many
more had yet to die. They must be utterly exterminated,
so that the elect might possess the land undisturbed.
At this point he caught sight of the newcomers. At a
sign from him they approached.
"Ha!" he said, with an unctuous accent in his voice, and
rubbing his hands like a miserable old Fagin, "Truly the
Lord is delivering them into our hands. What are you,
woman?"
But beyond her name Dorothy would at first tell him
nothing. Her captors briefly stated the little they knew
concerning her presence in the town. The self-constituted
dictator tried bombast, threats and flattery to gain
information from her, but they were of no avail. His
authority being thus disputed by a woman, and his absurd
self-esteem ruffled, he gave way to a torrent of abuse,
but Dorothy was as if she heard it not. It was only when
Riel was about to give instructions to his "General,"
Gabriel Dumont, and more of the members of his staff and
"government" to instantly cause a search to be made in
the camp for those who might have been with the girl,
that she said he might do so if he chose, but it would
be useless, as her friends must have entered the Fort an
hour ago.
"Hear to her, hear to this shameless woman!" cried the
fanatical and self-constituted saviour of the metis,
gesticulating and trying, as he always did, to work upon
the easily-roused feelings of his semi-savage following.
"She convicts herself out of her own mouth; she must
suffer. She is young and fair to look upon, but she is
the daughter of Douglas, the great friend of the English,
and therefore evil of heart. Moreover, she defies me,
even me, to whom St Peter himself appeared in the Church
of St. James at Washington, Columbia! Take her hence and
keep her as a prisoner until we decide what fate shall
be hers. In the days of the old prophets the dogs licked
the blood of a woman from the stones--of a woman who
deserved better than she."
With a wave of his hand the arch rebel, who was yet to
pay the penalty of his inordinate vanity and scheming
with his life, dismissed the prisoner and her captors.
He instructed an Irish renegade and member of his cabinet,
called Nolin, to see to it that the prisoner was kept
under close arrest until her fate was decided upon--which
would probably be before morning. Nolin told some of
Katie's relatives to take charge of Dorothy. He himself,
to tell the truth, did not particularly care what became
of her one way or the other. Already this gentleman was
trying to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare.
Dorothy looked around the improvised court-house in the
vague hope of finding some one whom she might have known
in the days of peace, and whose intervention would count
for something. But alas! the vision of dark, cruel and
uncompromising faces that met her gaze, gave her no hope.
They had all been wrought up to such a high pitch of
excitement that murder itself was but an item in their
programme. Her heart sank within her, but still her mind
was active. She was not one of the sort who submit tamely
to what appears to be the inevitable. She came of a
fighting stock--of a race that had struggled much, and
prevailed.
Katie's male kinsman, the huge half-breed and the officious
redskin, again seized Dorothy and hurried her away,
followed by the curious, straggling mob. Arrived, at
length, at a long, low log-house on the outskirts of the
town, they hammered on the closed door for admittance.