BACK TO CAPTIVITY
It was as well for the prisoners that Poundmaker was not
aware of the fact that they had overpowered their guard
and had been in the act of escaping when he came round
the corner. It is only probable to suppose that he was
surprised to find them all alive and unscathed by the
shell-fire, and that he imagined some natural mishap had
occurred to the escort during the progress of the fight
Lucky it was for that same escort that it was the British
troops, and not Poundmaker's men, who afterwards found
them bound hand and foot, for it is safe to say that in
the latter case they would never have had an opportunity
of being surprised again. They would have dangled by
their heels from the bough of some tree while a slow fire
underneath saved them the necessity of ever after requiring
to braid their raven locks.
In point of fact, Poundmaker was in rather a good humour
than otherwise, for the British were now withdrawing to
take up a position on the open prairie, where they knew
the Red men and metis would not attack them. True, the
rebels had suffered severely, but so had the Government
troops. Before the British could make another attack, he
would be off into the wild, inaccessible fastnesses of
the Eagle Hills, where they would have to catch him who
could. He had sense enough to know that the British must
catch him in the long run, but he would have a high old
time till then. Civilisation was a very tame affair, and
a rebellion was a heaven-sent opportunity for resuscitating
a picturesque past with lots of loot and scalps thrown
in. His meditated revenge on the prisoners would keep--there
was nothing like having a card up one's sleeve.
He straightway broke up the party. With a certain rude
sense of the fitness of things, he put Douglas and Pasmore
together. He assured the former that the same young squaw
who had been in attendance on his daughter would continue
to wait upon her in the future. His lieutenant,
"Young-Man-Who-Jumps-Like-a-Frog," a very promising young
man indeed, would be responsible to him for her safety.
If anything happened to her, or she escaped, then Young-Man,
etc., would no longer have eyes to see how he jumped.
It would have been madness for the party to have made
any serious attempt to resist arrest, for they were simply
covered by the muzzles of fire-arms. Still, Pasmore sent
two Indians reeling backwards with two right and left
blows, which made them look so stupid that Poundmaker
was secretly amused, and therefore stopped the pulling
of the trigger of the blunderbuss that an Indian placed
close to the police sergeant's head in order to effect
a thorough and equal distribution of his brains. The grim
and politic chief, who was not without a sense of humour,
ordered that a rope be tied round the waist of the wild
cat--as he was pleased to term Pasmore--and that to the
two braves who had been so stupid as to allow him to
punch their heads, should be allotted the task of leading
him about like a bear. He hinted that if Pasmore
occasionally amused himself by testing the powers of
resistance of their skulls with his hammer-like fists,
no difficulties would be thrown in his way by the others.
Douglas had begged to be allowed to accompany his daughter,
but Poundmaker said that was impossible, and assured him
that no harm would come to her. Dorothy went over to
her father and said good-bye, and then they were forced
apart. To Pasmore she said--
"You need not fear for me. I feel sure that, now they
know the strength of the British, they will take care of
us so as to save themselves. It is madness for you to
resist. If you wish to help me, go quietly with them."
"Yes, you are right," he said. "But it is so hard. Still,
I feel that we shall pull through yet. Good-bye!"
He was too much a man of action and of thought to be
prodigal of words. And she knew that a facility in making
pretty speeches is in nine cases out of ten merely the
refuge of those who desire to conceal indifference or
shallowness of heart.
In another minute the men were hurried away. An Indian
pony with a saddle was brought for Dorothy, and she was
told to mount. The young squaw who had her in charge,
and who was called "The Star that Falls by Night," mounted
another pony and took over a leading-rein from Dorothy's.
Poundmaker, after giving a few instructions, rode off to
direct operations and to see that his sharpshooters were
posted in such a way that it would be impossible for the
British to advance until his main body had made good
their retreat into the more inaccessible country. Of
course, it was only a matter of time before they would
be starved out of those hills, but much might occur before
then.
The middle-aged brave who was handicapped with a name
that suggested froggy agility, proudly took his place at
the head of the little cavalcade, and a few minutes later
they were threading their way through deep, narrow gullies,
crossing from the head of one little creek on to the
source of another, and choosing such places generally
that the first shower of rain would gather there and wash
out their tracks. When they passed the main camp, Dorothy
saw that the lodges had been pulled down, and were being
packed on _travois_, [Footnote: Two crossed poles with
cross pieces trailing from the back of a pony.] preparatory
to a forced march. She noted that the sleighs had been
abandoned, as, of course, there were no wheels there to
take the place of the runners. Her own slender belongings
were secured on the back of a pack-horse, and the squaw
saw to it that she had her full complement of provisions
and camp paraphernalia such as suited the importance of
her prisoner.
Poor Dorothy! There would, however, be no more tea or
sugar, or other things she had been accustomed to, for
many a long day, but, after all, that was of no particular
moment There was pure water in the streams, and there
would soon be any amount of luscious wild berries in the
woods, and plants by the loamy banks of creeks that made
delicious salads and spinaches, and they would bring such
a measure of health with them that she would experience
what the spoilt children of fortune, and the dwellers in
cities, can know little about--the mere physical joy of
being alive--the glorious pulsing of the human machine.
They kept steadily on their way till dusk, and then halted
for a brief space. The party was a small one now, only
some half-dozen braves and a few squaws. Dorothy wandered
with her jailer, whom she had for shortness called the
Falling Star, to a little rise, and looked down upon the
great desolate, purpling land in which evidently Nature
had been amusing herself. There were huge, pillar-like
rocks streaked with every colour of the rainbow, from
pale pink and crimson to slate-blue. There were yawning
canyons, on the scarped sides of which Nature had been
fashioning all manner of grotesqueries--gargoyles and
griffins, suggestions of many-spired cathedrals, the
profile of a face which was that of an angel, and of
another which was so weirdly and horribly ugly--suggesting
as it did all that was evil and sinister--that one shivered
and looked away. All these showed themselves like
phantasmagoria, and startled one with a suggestion of
intelligent design. But it was not with the face of the
cliff alone that Nature had trifled.
The gigantic boulders of coloured clays, strewn about
all higgledy-piggledy, resolved themselves into uncouth
antediluvian monsters, with faces so suggestive of
something human and malign that they were more like the
weird imaginings of some evil dream than inanimate things
of clay. And over all brooded the mysterious dusk and
the silence--the silence as of death that had been from
the beginning, and which haunted one like a living
presence. Only perhaps now and again there was a peculiar
and clearly-defined, trumpet-toned sound caused by the
outstretched wing of a great hawk as it swooped down to
seize its prey. It was the very embodiment of desolation.
It might well have been some dead lunar landscape in
which for aeons no living thing had stirred.
But Dorothy had other things to think of. Her position
was now seemingly more perilous than before. It was so
hard to think that they had all been so near deliverance,
and, in fact, had given themselves over entirely to hope,
and then had been so ruthlessly disappointed.
But there had been compensations. Putting on one side
the shedding of blood, for which nothing could compensate,
there was that new interest which had sprung into glorious
life within her, and had become part of her being--her
love for the man who had more than once put himself in
the power of the enemy so that she and her father might
be saved. Yes, that was something very wonderful and
beautiful indeed.
When the moon got up the party was reformed, and they
started out again. In the pale moonlight the freaks of
Nature's handiwork were more fantastic than ever, and
here and there tall, strangely-fashioned boulders of clay
took on the semblance of threatening, half-human monsters
meditating an attack.
Dorothy had noticed by the stars that the party had
changed its direction. They were now heading due north.
With the exception of one short halt they travelled all
through the night, and in the early grey dawn of the
morning came out upon a great plain of drifting sand that
looked for all the world like an old ocean bed stretching
on and on interminably. It was the dangerous shifting
sands, which the Indians generally avoided, as it contained
spots where, it was said, both man and horse disappeared
if they dared to put foot on it. But Poundmaker's lieutenant
was not without some measure of skill and daring, and
piloted them between the troughs of the waste with unerring
skill.
When the sun gained power in the heavens and a light
breeze sprang up, a strange thing took place. The face
of the wave-like heights and hollows began to move. The
tiny grains of sand were everywhere in motion, and actually
gave out a peculiar singing sound, somewhat resembling
the noise of grain when it falls from the spout of a
winnowing machine into a sack. It was as if the sand were
on the boil. There was no stopping now unless they wanted
to be swallowed up in the quicksand. Dorothy noticed that
the squaws, and even the braves, looked not a little
anxious. But their leader kept steadily on. The sand
was hard enough and offered sufficient resistance to the
broad hoof of a horse, but if one stood still for a minute
or so, it began gradually to silt up and bury it. It was
a horrible place. When at noon that devil's slough resolved
itself into a comparatively narrow strip, and Dorothy
saw that they could easily have left it, she began to
understand their reason for keeping on such dangerous
ground--_they did not wish to leave any tracks behind
them_. In all truth there was absolutely nothing to show
that they had ever been in that part of the country. At
last they came to what looked like a high hill with a
wall-like cliff surmounting it. They stepped on to the
firm clayey soil where the sage-bush waved, and had their
midday meal. As soon as that had been disposed of, they
resumed their journey.
They now went on foot, and steadily climbed the steep
hillside by the bed of an old watercourse. Dorothy
wondered what was behind the sharply-cut outline of the
cliffs, for it gave the impression that nothing lay beyond
save infinite space. They entered a narrow ravine, and
then suddenly it was as if they had reached the jumping-off
place of the world, for they passed, as it were, into
another land. Immediately beneath them lay a broken
shelf of ground shaped like a horseshoe, the sides of
which were sheer cliffs, the gloomy base of which, many
hundred feet below, were swept by the coldly gleaming,
blue waters of the mighty Saskatchewan. Beyond that,
drowsing in a pale blue haze, lay the broad valley, and
beyond that again the vast purpling panorama of rolling
prairie and black pinewoods until earth and sky were
merged in indistinctness and became one. It resembled a
perch on the side of the world, a huge eyrie with cliffs
above and cliffs below, with apparently only that little
passage, the old creek bed, by which one might get there.
Dorothy realised that people might pass and repass at
the foot of the hill on the other side and never dream
there was such a place behind it. Still less would they
imagine that there was a narrow cleft by which one could
get through. Moreover, a couple of Indians stationed at
the narrow track could easily keep two hundred foe-men
at bay. Dorothy realised that she was now as effectually
a prisoner as if she had been hidden away in an impregnable
fortress.
The party descended a gentle slope, and there, in a
saucer-shaped piece of low-lying ground fringed with
saskatoon and choke-cherry trees, they pitched their
camp.
For the first three days Dorothy was almost inclined to
give way to the depression of spirits which her surroundings
and the enforced inaction naturally encouraged. Though
the Red folk were not actually unkind to her, still,
their ways were not such as commended themselves to a
well-brought-up white girl. Fortunately, the Falling Star
was well disposed to her, and did all she could to make
Dorothy feel her captivity as little as possible. The
two would sit together in a shady place on the edge of
the great cliff for hours, gazing out upon the magnificent
prospect that outspread itself far beneath them, and the
Indian girl, to try and woo the spirit of her white sister
from communing too much within itself, would tell her many
of the quaint, beautiful legends of the Indian Long Ago.
On the third day, just as Dorothy was beginning to wonder
if it were not possible to steal out of the wigwam one
night when Falling Star slept soundly, and, by evading
the sentries--who might also chance to be asleep--make
her way out through the narrow pass and so back to freedom,
there was an arrival in camp that exceedingly astonished
her. She was sitting some little distance back from the
edge of the great cliff with Falling Star near at hand,
when some one behind her spoke.
"Ah, Mam'selle," said the voice, "it ees ze good
how-do-you-do I will be wish you."
Dorothy turned, and to her surprise Bastien Lagrange
stood before her.
Despite the jauntiness of his speech, and the evident
desire he evinced to appear perfectly at his ease, Dorothy
at once detected an under-current of shame-facedness and
apprehension in Bastien's manner. His presence urged that
he was no longer a prisoner with Poundmaker's band. What
did it portend?
In her eagerness to learn something of her father, Pasmore,
and the others, Dorothy sprang to her feet and ran towards
Lagrange. But that gentleman gave her such a significant
look of warning that she stopped short. He glanced
meaningly at the Indian woman, Falling Star. Dorothy
understood, and a presentiment that she was about to be
disappointed in the feeble-hearted half-breed took
possession of her.
"You can speak, Bastien," Dorothy said. "Falling Star
will not understand a word. I can see you have come with
a message to Jumping Frog, but first, tell me--what about
my father and the others?"
"_Helas_, I know not!" said Bastien, feeling vastly
relieved that it had not been a more awkward question.
"They haf go 'way South branch of Saskatchewan. They all
right. I tink Poundmaker mooch 'fraid keel them. They--"
"But how is it you are here? Have you joined the enemy
again?"
It had come at last, and Bastien, shrugging his high
shoulders, spread his hands out deprecatingly.
"_Helas_, Mam'selle! What was there for to do? I say I
Eenglish, and they go for to shoot me mooch dead. I say
'Vive Riel!' and they say, 'Zat ees all right, Bastien
Lagrange, you mooch good man.' I tell them that I nevare
lof ze Eenglish, that your father and shermoganish peleece
she was took me pressonar, and I was not able to get
'way, and that I plenty hate the Eenglish, oh! yees, and
haf keel as many as three, four, fife, plenty times. So
they say, 'Bully for you, pardner! and you can go tell
Man-Who-Jumps-Like-a-Frog to sit down here more long and
ozer tings.' _Comprenez?_"
The peculiar and delicate line of policy the unstable
breed was pursuing was obvious. Lagrange was one of those
who wanted to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds
simply because he did not particularly care for either,
and it was incumbent upon him that he should do one or
the other. When the proper time came he certainly wanted
to be with the side that got the best of it, and he had
a shrewd suspicion that that would be the English. He
was delightfully immune from any moral prejudice in the
matter, and already a brilliant scheme was developing in
his plastic brain that promised both safety and
entertainment. He, however, resolved to do whatever lay
in his power to assist this charming young lady and her
father.
"Bastien," observed the girl, after a pause, "you'd better
take good care what you do. Take my word for it that all
the rebels, both half-breeds and Indians, who have done
wrong will have to answer for it. I do not ask you what
message you carry to the Indians here, but it is unlikely
that you will stay with us. Now, I know that Battleford
is not so very far away; will you go and tell Pepin
Quesnelle to come to me? The Indians are all afraid of him,
so he will suffer no harm. See, give him this from me."
She turned and plucked a little bunch of blue flowers
that grew close at hand, which in the Indian language
signify "Come to me." Then she produced a little brooch
which she had worn at her throat that night she had met
the dwarf, and wrapping both In a small piece of silk,
gave them to the half-breed.