Revulsion――Home again――New plans――We depart for the mountains――The Hand
hills――The great range――Home memories――A murderous volley――Donogh sees
“the land beyond the grave”――Vain regrets――We enter the mountains――The
island――A lonely grave――The Indian’s home.
We rode hard for a couple of hours. I led the way towards the place
where, on the previous evening, I had left my three horses. Long ere we
reached it, the Sircies had abandoned their pursuit, and turned back
towards their camp. Now we had time to talk over the past. For many
hours that morning, and all the previous night, I had been moving as
though in a dream. During the past two hours I seemed to have lived an
age; there had been moments of agony so acute, that my brain reeled
when I thought over them. But now all was past; the long night of doubt
and captivity was over, and the fair morning of hope and freedom shone
full upon us.
My heart soon answered the helm of such thoughts, and my spirits rose
in unison with them. Not so with the Sioux. The abstraction of the
flight seemed to be still upon him; for a long time he rode on, looking
vacantly before him. Once or twice I spoke to him, but he did not seem
to hear what I said. At length he roused himself and spoke.
“If you had ever said to me that one day I should have had that man
within my grasp, and that I would have failed to take his life, I
would have told you that it was impossible. And yet,” he went on, “it
is better that he should still live. Had he fallen at the hands of
another, my father’s spirit would have remained unavenged.”
“Live?” I answered. “He fell, when I struck him with my gun, as though
life had left him.”
“For all that he is not dead. Men like him do not die so easily. He was
stunned by the blow; he will be laid up for a week, and then he will be
as well as ever.”
I confess to feeling glad at this. Although I had struck the trader to
save my friend’s life, I cared not to have on my hands his blood. It is
true that had my gun been loaded at the moment when he held the Sioux
tightly locked in his embrace, I would not have hesitated shooting him
dead to set free my friend, but I would always have regretted being
compelled to do so.
It was better as it was; the Sioux was safe. McDermott still lived.
We then spoke of the earlier events of the morning. I heard how Red
Cloud had always counted upon his enemy forming part of the pursuing
force. It was that belief which had induced him first of all to accept
the chance of flight offered by the Blackfoot chief. I asked him how
he had hoped to resist the trader successfully, seeing that he was
without arms of any kind.
“The spirit of his dead father would watch over him,” he said. And when
I told him of my fears and anxieties on the previous day, and how I
had determined to turn back to the rock hill, with a vague purpose of
helping him in his need, he again remarked,――
“It was the spirit of my father that led you.”
Of the loss of his favourite horse he thought much.
“Had I done my work as well as he did his,” he said, “my enemy would
not have escaped me.”
“But you have gained even a better animal,” I said, “than the one lost.”
“No, not better to me,” he replied. “For three years, through every
change of land and season, through danger and difficulty, through fight
and chase, that poor beast bore me――and all only to fall at last by the
bullet of my enemy. Well, it adds another name to the list. It will
perhaps be longer before it is closed.”
We now reached the place where I had left the horses. They were feeding
together almost on the same ground; and without any delay longer
than was necessary to get them together, we started for the _cache_.
Although the events of the morning made the time appear an age, the
day was yet young. I had dry meat sufficient for both our needs, a
lake gave us water; with only a halt of a minute or two we held on
until long after nightfall, and when daylight broke next morning the
woods were in sight. Bearing away to the east we kept in sight of these
woods all day, and at evening drew in towards their shelter, camping
once more amid the pleasant leaves of trees, and enjoying a couple of
partridges for our supper.
We were at a point considerably below where we had left our party less
than three weeks before, but still above the place where the _cache_
was to have been made.
Continuing our course next day, we reached, early in the afternoon,
a spot which commanded a long view of the river valley. Far winding
between partly wooded banks, it lay for many a mile amid the silent
wilderness――the shallows at curves catching the sunlight, the quiet
reaches reflecting the clear blue sky.
How calm and tranquil it all looked! The contrast between its
peacefulness and the strife I had just witnessed struck me with
profound wonder. Here was a bit of the earth as it came from the
Creator’s hands, bright with the glow of summer, decked in the dress of
leaf and blossom, sweet with the perfume of wild flower, fresh with the
breezes of untold distance; and there below the southern horizon, but
two days’ riding away, man’s passion, guilt, and greed ruled rampant in
the land. According to the directions which the Sioux had given as to
the place for the _cache_ to be formed, we must now be near the camp
of our comrades.
So indeed it proved. On the edge of the woods we came suddenly upon
the Iroquois; he had seen us from a lofty look-out point which he had
established on the far side of the river, and had crossed over to meet
us and show the way to the camp. It was formed upon an island in the
river. There we found Donogh, the scout, and the Cree, all well, and
longing for our return. They were amply provided with food; moose were
plentiful, they had trapped several young beavers, and smaller game was
abundant. We sat late that evening talking over our adventures.
The Indians listened with breathless interest to the story of the
capture by the Blackfeet――the pursuit, the fight, and the escape.
Donogh was never tired asking questions about my share in the final
struggle with the trader. Had he been there to help, he said, McDermott
would not have got off so easily.
A week now passed quietly away; the horses wanted rest after their
arduous travel; plans had to be made for future movements. It was not
likely that we should be left long unmolested in this neighbourhood. If
the Sioux was right in the belief that a week or ten days would suffice
to cure the injuries which the trader had suffered, then the Blackfeet,
the Sircies, or Bloods, would soon beat up our quiet camp. Besides,
the life of the wilderness must ever be a life of wandering. The bird
seeks the sunlit atmosphere to try his wings; the horseman on the
prairie roams because he cannot sit down and call a patch of the earth
his home. His home is sky-bound; and when he can no longer wander, his
grave is not far off.
Farther to the west there yet lay a vast region, into which we had
not entered. At its western extremity rose the pine-clad sides and
icy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, whose deep-rent valleys and vast
glaciers fed this stream upon which we were now camped, as well as
countless other streams and rivers, whose waters eventually seek the
far separated seas of Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. To this
region of prairie bordering upon mountain we would direct our course,
and remain until the autumn must again make us think of winter-quarters.
We had four full months of summer before us; we had horses, arms, and
goods; our guns would give us food.
So we were once more on the move. We divided our stores and goods
evenly among the five horses, and being one horse deficient, Donogh,
the Iroquois, and the scout took it in turn to walk. As the weather
was now very fine and warm, we _cached_ the leather tent, and some
other items for which there was no use. We travelled quietly, but by
starting early and camping late managed to make good distances each
day. Our course lay along the line of mixed wooded and prairie country
which bordered the Red Deer river. We kept a sharp look out for hostile
Indians, and took precautions at night to secure the horses from
attack.
As thus we journeyed towards the west, we entered upon a very beautiful
land; grassy hills spread away beyond each other in a constant
succession, long winding lakes came in view as we gained the summits of
ridges, and the valleys and lake shores held groves of mixed cottonwood
and pine-trees, which gave camping grounds of fairy-like beauty amid
the vast stillness of the wilderness. One evening, it was about the end
of June, we gained a range of hills which during two days had bounded
our horizon on the west.
Long ere we reached them, Red Cloud had promised me a view from their
ridges surpassing anything I had yet looked at in the great prairie.
Slowly up the east side of the hill we held our way, while every now
and again a long-eared hare sprang from the grass before us, and
vanished into brake or coppice. At last the top was gained. The sun
yet shone on the bare ridge, but the prairie beneath on either side
was in shadow, and already the blue line of shade was creeping up the
hill to where we stood. Fifty miles away to the west the vast plain
came to an end. A huge rampart mountain rose up into the sunset skies,
poising for a moment the great orb of the sun on its loftiest pinnacles
of snow. Far away to north and south this rampart range was laid along
the horizon, until the edges of mountain tops were only faintly visible
above the plain on the verge of vision to south-west and north-west.
“The Rocky Mountains at last,” I said, half musing, to myself, as thus
I beheld this grand range lying in all the glory of the summer sunset.
“That is the name the first fur-traders gave them,” said Red Cloud;
“but the Indian has better titles for them; ‘The Mountains of the
Setting Sun,’ ‘The Ridge of the World.’ He who would scale the icy
peaks, they say, would see the land beyond the grave.”
As now I looked across the great intervening plain, slowly fading into
twilight, and saw the glittering edge of the long line of mountain top,
clear cut against the lustrous after-glow, the red man’s thought which
would make this giant range the line of separation between life and
death seemed to be no far-fetched fancy. Here ended the great prairie.
There was the shore of that vast wilderness, over which my steps had
wandered through so many varied scenes of toil, tumult, and adventure.
Beyond, all was unknown. And then came back to me a vision of those
well-remembered hill-tops of my early days; the heather-covered slopes
of Seefin, the wild crags of Cooma-sa-harn, the flat rock that marked
the giant’s grave on Coolrue.
The sound of a footstep approaching from behind roused me from my
reverie of home. I turned; Donogh stood beside me; there was a strange
wistful look in his eyes.
“Ah, master!” he said, “it makes me think of the old home again, to
look at those mountains, and the sun going down behind them as he used
to do in Glencar.”
The tone of his voice was sad. I asked him if he felt home-sick?
“No, not home-sick,” he replied; “but I have been dreaming for nights
past of all the old places――the eagle’s nest over Cooma-sa-harn, the
rocks that hung over Lough Cluen, the island in the south end of the
lake. I saw them just as they were in the old times. It was only last
night that I dreamt we were climbing the face of the cliff to the
eagle’s nest, and I thought the old bird came suddenly swooping down,
and that I fell into the lough below.”
“Would you like to be back again in the old glen?” I asked him.
“Not unless you were to come too,” he answered. “This is a lonesome
country sure enough, but I don’t mind it so long as you are near.”
We made our camp that night in a hollow, lower down on the west slope
of the hill. We had killed some hares during the day, and had boiled
them into a thick kind of soup, which, flavoured with wild sage, gave
us an excellent supper. The meal over, we were sitting around the fire
chatting and smoking, when suddenly a volley of musketry rang forth
close at hand, and half a dozen bullets struck around us. In the wild
confusion that followed, I only remember springing to my feet, and
seeing the others spring up too. Not all, alas! for poor Donogh had
fallen forward from the place where he was sitting, and the Cree only
rose, to fall again. Seizing my gun, I sprang to where Donogh was
lying; but at this moment I felt my hand suddenly grasped with iron
strength, and I was dragged forward into the dark.
“Lie down,” hissed Red Cloud in my ear, “or we are all lost. Look at
the fire, and shoot when you see them in the light.”
The whole thing had happened so quickly, that ere I had time to collect
my senses I was lying in darkness, just over the brow of a knoll
fifteen paces from the fire.
I had not long to wait. Suddenly there came a wild war-whoop of savage
triumph, and a dusky group of men swept down into the circle of light
from the outer darkness.
They thought that the first volley had given them undisputed possession
of our camp, and that scalps and spoils had only to be gathered. Now it
was our turn. Quick from our dark shelter the shots rang out; but few
were thrown away. One brawny savage, with knife in hand, had reached
the spot where Donogh was lying, but a bullet from my gun stopped his
deadly purpose, and laid him low beside my poor friend.
[Illustration: One brawny savage had reached the spot where Donogh was
lying.]
Another fell dead near the fire, and we saw two more stagger ’neath our
bullets. This unexpected reception checked the ardour of the attack,
and drove back our assailants.
We took advantage of their repulse to drag our stricken comrades from
the light.
Alas! one had already passed from the light of life to the darkness of
death. The Cree had ceased to breathe, but Donogh was still alive.
When we had breathing time to think of other matters than our lives,
Red Cloud sent the Iroquois and the scout to drive the horses to a
place of safety.
“We have given these Sircies something to occupy them,” he said; “but
after a while they may try to get our horses, since they have failed to
take all our lives.”
Soon the fire burned itself out, and the darkness of the short summer’s
night lay around.
Yet how long it seemed to me, as sitting by poor Donogh’s side, and
with his hand fast in mine, I waited for the dawn. He was quite
conscious, but every now and again a stifled moan broke from his lips,
and as the night wore on I felt the hand growing cold and clammy. When
daylight came I saw that the poor boy’s end was near.
The shot had struck him in the chest, and his life-blood was ebbing
fast.
I could not trust myself to speak. I could only hold his hand in mine,
and try to stanch the red stream from his death-wound.
“Master,” he said to me, in a very faint voice, “I never knew father
nor mother, brother nor sister, and so there’s no one that will miss
me, except it’s yourself. You’ll sometimes think of me, sir, won’t
you――when you see the deer on the hill-top, and the wild ducks on the
pond, and the grouse on the mountain side, all the things that we used
to hunt together? And master,” he went on, “if ever you go back to the
old glen again, you’ll say to the priest that the poor boy he used to
teach of a Sunday didn’t forget the lesson at the end. You’ll bury me
up on the hill-top, where we first saw the mountain from?” he said
again, after a pause. “It’s something like the top of Seefin, where we
used to sit looking out on the world――the big lonesome world.”
Then his voice hushed, and after a time the lips only moved as the poor
boy repeated some prayer of his childhood.
It was the long summer dawn that had looked upon the scene. As the
boy’s life ebbed away the glory of the morning had been growing
brighter; and the sun, whose setting lustre had recalled the home
scenes to his memory on the previous evening, was now close beneath the
horizon on the east. But never more was my faithful Donogh to see the
sun. When its level rays struck upon our camp on the Red Deer hill, he
had gone before us to the icy peaks of the “Mountains of the Setting
Sun”――he had crossed the “Ridge of the World,” and was already in “the
land beyond the grave.”
On the hill-top near at hand we laid the two bodies in a single grave.
With knife and axe we dug a trench in a small clump of cottonwood, and
there the red man and his white brother slept side by side.
Then we made haste to leave the fatal spot; not from fear of pursuit,
as our assailants had suffered too severely to make it likely they
would soon follow us up. An examination of the ground convinced Red
Cloud that the Sircies had not numbered more than seven men. They
had evidently followed us for some time past, and had probably made
their attack as much because we were now within the country of their
enemies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, into which they did not wish
to penetrate, as because of the ground being favourable for a surprise.
At least five out of the seven had suffered from our fire――two had
fallen, and the traces of their retreat showed unmistakable evidence
that three others had been wounded. That they were the hired assassins
of the trader, there was little doubt. The gun and knife belonging to
one of the fallen were similar in pattern to those we had captured from
McDermott in the preceding year. He had evidently outfitted this party,
as probably he had done the same by many others. That the survivors
would fall back upon their main camp, many days’ travel distant, was
now nearly certain.
Nevertheless, although the chances of immediate molestation were
remote, we were in haste to quit a spot that had been so fatal to our
fortunes. As for myself, I literally felt heart-broken at the thought
that I was no more to have in life the companionship and faithful
service of my earliest friend. Never before had I seen death brought
home to me with such vividness. Only yesterday I had spoken to Donogh
in the full pride of his youth and strength. The fire at which he met
his death still smouldered in its ashes; yet he who had gathered its
fuel and set it alight was gone, his flame of life extinguished; his
gun, bullet-bag, and powder-horn, his saddle and bridle, the horse he
used to ride――all were there, yet he had disappeared. My heart was
wrung with grief; I felt as though life had been a long dream, and that
now I had suddenly awakened to its grim realities. Then there came
upon me a thousand bitter thoughts, and unavailing regrets of the long
hours we had spent together. Why had I not made more of my poor friend?
Why had I not treasured those hours when he was with me? It seemed as
though death, in taking him away from me had taken away too all the
mist of selfishness, and that I saw clear and distinctly the worth of
the friendship I had lost.
I had remained for some time sitting by the lonely grave, sunk in these
sad thoughts, when I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder. Red Cloud stood
beside me.
“It is time to go,” he said. “Your poor brother’s name is one more
added to the long list that cry for vengeance.”
Mechanically I obeyed. The horses were already saddled and loaded.
The Indians moved silently about; the light of our little party seemed
to have gone out.
Slowly we filed off from the fatal spot, winding down the long incline
towards the mountains, until the lonely thicket was lost in the
distance.
About three days after this fatal day we entered one of the gorges that
led into the mountains.
The scenery had undergone a complete change. The trail led along the
bank of the Red Deer river, which had now shrunken to the dimensions
of a small and shallow stream; on each side the hills rose steep and
pine-clad, while, as side valleys opened upon the larger gorge along
which we were travelling, the eye caught glimpses of snow-clad summits
far above the world of pine-trees.
Often, as we rode along, my mind kept going back to that fatal night on
the Hand hills. Here we were now amid those mountains whose fastnesses
Donogh had so often wished to reach, while he, poor boy, was lying out
in the great wilderness. But the work of travel, and the rough road our
horses had now to follow, kept my mind engaged, and gave distraction to
my thoughts.
Pursuing our course for a couple of days deeper into the mountains,
we gained at last a beautiful level meadow, set round on all sides
by lofty hills, backed by still loftier mountains. A small clear lake
occupied one end of this level plain.
We had quitted the valley of the Red Deer river, and crossing a
height of land had entered the valley of the parent stream of the
Saskatchewan, which here, after passing through the lake, foamed down
a ledge of rock, precipitating its waters perpendicularly from a great
height into a deep pool, with a roar that was audible at the farther
end of the valley.
Above this fall a small rocky island stood, in the centre of the river.
One end of this island was level with the edge of the cataract, the
other was in smooth water, not very far from where the river issued out
of the lake. As the water approached the edge of the fall it ran in
many eddies and rapids, but at the end nearest to the lake the stream
was smooth enough to permit a canoe to reach the island.
This rocky wedge, set between the lake and the cataract, was covered
with trees, and, excepting at the upper end in the smooth river, its
sides were steep and water-worn. I noticed that as soon as we came in
sight of this wooded isle Red Cloud’s usually passive face wore a look
of unwonted interest.
I inquired if he knew the spot.
“Know it?” he replied. “Yes, it is the only place I can call my home in
all this great wilderness. To-morrow we shall reach it, and then you
will know why I call it my home.”
We camped that evening near the spot where the river came out of the
lake. There was a clump of pine-trees close at hand, and before night
had closed in the well-wielded axes of the Sioux and the Iroquois had
felled some dead trees, and lopped their trunks into lengths of twelve
feet.
Early next morning, they had put together a small raft. Dropping down
stream on this raft, Red Cloud landed alone on the little island. I
had rambled off to the upper end of the lake while the morning was yet
young; when I got back to camp I found the Sioux had returned, and that
a small canoe was moored to the river bank, where the raft had been
built.
Our mid-day meal over, Red Cloud asked me to visit the island with him.
He dropped down the stream as before, and steered dexterously into the
small spot of quiet water which lay at the head of the island. I then
noticed what before I had not seen, that this quiet water was of very
limited extent, and that the current on either side of it ran with a
speed that became momentarily of greater velocity as it drew nearer the
rapid. I saw in fact that it required knowledge of the spot, and skill
in the use of the paddle, to hit off this little eddy of waters.
A small indentation between two rocks gave shelter to our canoe, and
also held the raft which Red Cloud had built during the morning. The
canoe he had found on the island. We landed on the rock, fastened the
canoe to a tree, and struck into the forest that covered the entire
space. I could tell by the increasing sound of the waterfall, that we
were approaching the end of the island which overhung the cataract. We
soon reached this spot; a few old pine-trees grew upon it; the density
of their branches had destroyed the undergrowth, and the ground between
the massive trunks was clear of brushwood. In the centre of this clear
space, shadowed by the sombre arms of these old pines, there was a
solitary mound. Red Cloud stood before it.
“It is my father’s grave,” he said. “Eight years ago I carried his
bones all that long way from where he was killed to this distant
spot. I had intended bearing them with me wherever I wandered as an
ever-present reminder of the oath I had sworn, but on first seeing this
spot I selected it as a resting-place. Here I made my home; hither have
I come when, baffled by my enemy, I have sought for a time rest for
myself and my horses; and again from here have I gone forth to seek my
enemy, only to find him always too strong or too cunning for me.”