A CLOSE CALL
As the would-be priest and originator of two rebellions
approached Pasmore, the ragged, wild-eyed, clamorous
crowd made way for him. It was ludicrous to note the air
of superiority and braggadocio that this inordinately
vain and ambitious man adopted. The prisoner was standing
surrounded by his now largely augmented guard, who,
forgetful of one another's contiguity, had their many
wonderfully and fearfully made blunderbusses levelled at
him, ready to blow him into little pieces at a moment's
notice if he made the slightest attempt to resist or
escape. Great would have been the slaughter amongst the
metis if this had happened.
"Prisoner," said Riel, with a decided French accent, "you
are a spy." He fixed his dark grey eyes upon Pasmore
angrily, and jerked out what he had to say.
"I fail to see how one who wears the Queen's uniform can
be a spy," said Pasmore, undoing the leather tags of his
long buffalo coat and showing a serge jacket with the
regimental brass button on it.
"Ah, that is enough--one of the Mounted Police! What
are you doing in this camp?"
"It is I who should be asking you that question. What
are _you_ doing under arms? Another rebellion? Be warned
by me, Monsieur Riel, and stop this bloodshed as you
value your immortal soul."
He knew that through the fanatic's religion lay the only
way of reaching him at all.
But the only effect these words had upon Riel was to
further incense the arch rebel.
"Bind him, and search him," he cried.
Pasmore knew that resistance was hopeless, so quietly
submitted. Their mode of tying him was unique. They put
a rope round his waist, leaving his arms free, while the
two ends were held on either side by a couple of men.
His late guard, the big breed, who could not have been
such a bad fellow, discovered his pipe, tobacco, and
matches in one pocket, but withdrew his hand quickly.
"Nozing thar," he declared.
Whether or not he thought the prisoner might soon require
them on his way to the Happy Hunting Grounds is a matter
of speculation.
They took his pocket-knife and keys, and in the inner
pocket of his jacket they found the usual regimental
papers and weekly reports pertaining to the Police
Detachment. These are alike as peas throughout the
Territories, and not of the slightest value or interest,
save to those directly concerned, but to Riel it was a
great find. He spread them out, scanned a few lines here
and there, opened his eyes wide, pursed his lips, and
then, as if it were superfluous pursuing the matter
further, waved his hand in a melodramatic fashion, and
cried--
"It is enough! He is of the Police. He has also been
found spying in camp, and the penalty for that is death.
I hear he is one of the men who ran down and shot Heinault,
who was one of the people. Let him be taken to the same
spot and shot also. He took the blood of the metis--let
the metis now take his! Away with him!"
Such a wild yelling, whooping, and brandishing of guns
took place at these words that Pasmore thought there
would be little necessity to take him to the spot where
"Wild Joe" of tender memory slept. When an antiquated
fowling-piece actually did go off, and shot an Indian in
the legs, the uproar was inconceivable. Pasmore thought
of Rory's dogs having a sporting five minutes, and smiled,
despite the gravity of the situation. But order was
restored, and with Riel and two of his so-called "generals"
in the lead, and a straggling crowd of human beings and
dogs following, the prisoner was led slowly towards the
spot fixed for his execution.
Past the piles of smouldering ashes, and tracks strewn,
with all sorts of destroyed merchandise, they went. They
had looted the stores to their hearts' content, and were
now rioting in an excess of what to them was good living;
but where those short-sighted creatures expected to get
fresh supplies from is a question they probably never
once put to themselves.
Silent and powerless in King Frost's embrace lay the
great river. How like beautiful filagree work some of
the pine-boughs looked against the snow banks and the
pale blue sky! How lovely seemed the whole world! Pasmore
was thinking about many things, but most he was thinking
of some one whom he hoped was now making her way over
the snow, and for whose sake he was now here. No, he did
not grudge his life, but it was a strange way to die
after all his hopes--mostly shattered ones; to be led
like a brute beast amongst a crowd of jeering half-breeds
who, only a few days before, were ready to doff their
caps at sight of him; and to be shot dead by them with
such short shrift, and because he had only done his
duty!...
They were coming to the rise now. How like a gallows that
tall, dead, scraggy pine looked against the pale grey!
How the hound-like mob alongside yelled and jeered! One
of them--he knew him well--he of the evil Mongolian-like
eyes and snaky locks--whom he had spoken a timely word
to a year ago and saved from prison--from some little
distance took the opportunity of throwing a piece of
frozen snow at Pasmore. It struck the policeman behind
the ear, causing him to feel sick and dizzy. He felt the
hot blood trickling down his neck, and he heard one or
two of the pack laughing.
"He will be plenty dead soon," said one. "What does it
matter?"
But the big breed, with a touch of that humanity which
beats down prejudice and makes us all akin, turned upon
the now unpleasantly demonstrative rabble, and swore at
them roundly. In another moment Pasmore was himself again,
and he could see that gallows-like tree right in front
of him... And what was that hulking brute alongside
saying about skulking shermoganish? Was he going to his
death hearing the uniform he wore insulted by cowardly
brutes without making a resistance of some sort? He knew
he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would
be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting
short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and
he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement,
but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his
ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the
Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to
those who tempted. It was not so much the hope these few
words carried with them, as the spirit in which they were
uttered, that stayed Pasmore's precipitate action. He
knew that no help would come from the invested Fort, but
God at times brought about many wonderful things.
As they led him up the rough, conical mound he breathed
a prayer for Divine aid. It would be nothing short of a
miracle now if in a few minutes he were not dead. They
faced him about and tied him to the tree; and now he
looked down upon the upturned faces of the wild-eyed,
fiery-natured rebels.
Riel stepped forward with the papers in his hand.
"Prisoner," he said, "you have been caught red-handed,
and the metis will it that you must die. Is it not so?"
He turned to the crowd. "On the spot where he now stands
he spilt the blood of the metis. What say you?"
There was a hoarse yell of assent from the followers of
the fanatic.
Riel turned to one of his generals, who cried to some
one in the crowd. It was the next of kin to Heinault,
who had been shot on that very spot, and in very truth
he looked a fit representative of the man who had perished
for his crimes. He was indeed an ill-looking scoundrel.
There was a gratified grin upon his evil face. He knew
Pasmore of old, and Pasmore had very good reason to know
him. Their eyes met.
"Now you will nevare, nevare threaten me one, two, three
times again," he cried.
Pasmore looked into the cruel, eager face of the breed,
and he knew that no hope lay there. Then he caught the
gleam of snow on the crest of the opposite ridge--it was
scintillating as if set with diamonds. How beautiful
was that bit of blue seen through the pillar-like stems
of the pines!
Pasmore's thoughts were now elsewhere than with his
executioners, when unexpectedly there came an interruption.
There was a hurried scattering of the crowd at the foot
of the mound, and Pepin Quesnelle, leading his bear,
appeared upon the scene. That his short legs had been
sorely tried in reaching the spot there could be little
doubt, for his face was very red, and it was evident he
had wrought himself into something very nearly approaching
a passion.
Riel, who had at first turned round with an angry
exclamation on his lips, seemed somewhat startled when
he saw the weird figures before him, for he, too, like
the breeds and Indians, was not without a species of
superstitious dread of the manikin and his strange
attendant. The executioner glared at the intruder angrily.
"Wait, you just wait one bit--_coquin_, rascal, fool!"
gasped Pepin, pulling up within a few yards of him, and
shaking his stick. "You will not kill that man, I say
you will not! I know you, Leon Heinault; it is because
this man will stop you from doing as your vile cousin
did that you want to shoot him." He turned to Riel. "Tell
him to put down that gun!"
But Riel had the dignity of his position to maintain
before the crowd, and although he would not meet the
black, bead-like eyes of the dwarf, with no little bluster,
he said--
"This man is a spy, and he must die. He is of the hated
English, and it is the will of the Lord that His people,
the metis, inherit the land."
"And I say, Louis Riel, that it is the will of the Lord
that this man shall not die!" reiterated the dwarf,
emphasising his words with a flourish of his stick.
Then an uncanny thing happened that to this day the metis
speak about with bated breath, and the Indians are afraid
to mention at all. Heinault, who during the wrangle had
concluded that his quarry was about to slip through his
hands, took the opportunity of raising his gun to the
shoulder. But ere he could pull the trigger there was
the whistle of a bullet, and he fell dead in the snow.
Then, somewhere from the wooded bluffs--for the echoes
deceived one--there came the distant ring of a rifle.
The perspiration was standing in beads on Pasmore's
forehead, for he would have been more than human had not
the strain of the terrible ordeal told upon him. From
a dogged abandonment to his fate, a ray of hope lit up
the darkness that seemed to have closed over him. It
filtered through his being, but he feared to let it grow,
knowing the bitterness of hope's extinction. But the blue
through the pines seemed more beautiful, and the snow on
the crest of the ridge scintillated more cheerily.
As the would-be executioner fell, something like a moan
of consternation ran through the crowd. The dwarf was
the only one who seemed to take the tragedy as a matter
of course. He was quick to seize the opportunity.
"It is as the Lord has willed," he said simply, pointing
to the body.
But Riel, visibly taken aback by this sudden _contretemps_,
knew only too well that his cause and influence would be
imperilled if he allowed this manikin, of whom his people
stood so much in awe, to get the better of him; and he
was too quick-witted not to know exactly what to do. He
turned to his officers, and immediately a number of breeds
started out to scour the bluffs. Then he called upon five
breeds and Indians by name to step forward, and to see
that their rifles were charged. Pepin waited quietly
until his arrangements were completed, and then, looking
round upon the crowd with his dark eyes, and finally
fixing them upon the arch rebel, he spoke with such
strength and earnestness that his hearers stood breathless
and spellbound. The file of men which had been drawn up
to act as executioners, and the condemned man himself,
hung upon his words. It was significant that, after the
fatal shot had been fired, no one seemed to be apprehensive
of a second.
"Louis Riel," he began, "you are one bigger fool than I
did take you for!"
Riel started forward angrily, and was about to speak when
the dwarf stopped him with a motion of his hand.
"You are a fool because you cannot see where you are
going," he continued.
"Can't I, Mr. Hop-o'-my-thumb?" broke out the rebel in
a white heat, shouldering his rifle.
But the dwarf raised his stick warningly, and catching
Riel's shifty gaze, held it as if by some spell until
the rifle barrel sunk lower inch by inch.
"If you do, Louis Riel, if you do, the Lord will give
you short shrift!" he said. "Now, I will tell you what
I see, and to you it ought to be plain, for you have been
in Montreal and Quebec, and know much more than is known
to the metis. I see--and it will come to pass long before
the ice that is in one great mass in this river is carried
down and melts in the big lakes, whose waters drain into
the Bay of Hudson--I see the soldiers of the great Queen
swarming all over the land in numbers like the gophers
on the prairie. They have wrested from you Battleford,
Prince Albert, and Batoche. I see a battlefield, and the
soldiers of the Queen have the great guns--as big as Red
River carts--that shoot high into the air as flies the
kite, and rain down bullets and jagged iron like unto
the hailstorms that sweep the land in summer time. I see
the bodies of the metis lying dead upon the ground as
thick as the sheaves of wheat upon the harvest-field.
Many I see that crawl away into the woods to die, like
to the timber-wolves when they have eaten of the poison.
I see the metis scattered and homeless. I see you, Louis
Riel, who have misled them, skulking alone in the woods
like a hunted coyote, without rest night and day, with
nothing to eat, and with no moccasins to your feet. But
the red-coats will catch you, for there is no trail too
long or too broken for the Riders of the Plains to follow.
And, above all, and take heed, Louis Riel, I see the
great beams of the gallows-tree looming up blackly against
the grey of a weary dawn; and that will be your portion
if you shoot this man. Put him in prison if you will,
and keep him as a hostage; but if you spill innocent
blood wantonly, as the Lord liveth, you shall swing in
mid-air. And now I have spoken, and you have all seen
how the hand of the Lord directed the bullet that laid
that thing low. Remember this--there are more bullets!"
The dwarf paused, and there was a death-like stillness.
Riel stood motionless, glaring into space, as if he still
saw that picture of the gallows. While as for Pasmore,
his heart was thumping against his ribs, for the spark
of Hope within him had burst into flame, and he saw how
beautiful was the blue between the columns of the pines.