SAFE!
For two more days we travelled, much against our wishes, eastward,
living on wild carrots dug by the Indians from the prairie sod, on
balls of down—ducklings just out of the shell, driven by waders in the
sloughs ashore and killed with sticks, and on the little flour we had
managed to bring with us. We urged our Indians to free us so that we
might find our way back to the camp of the troops. They refused. Should
Big Bear’s men discover and kill us they would be held responsible,
they argued, and they were unwilling to accompany us. On Sunday, May
31st, the Rev. Mr. Quinney held service. Camp was not moved that day,
and we were overjoyed when at a council later our guards, with no very
good grace, consented to let us go.
Next morning early we were on our way westward. A long hard tramp lay
ahead of us; we had but one flour bannock for a dozen mouths, yet we
stepped out feeling equal to any test of endurance, for at last we were
free!—going to meet “our own people” after this sickening two months
of privation, of unrelieved menace, of soul-racking suspense. We must
have made nearly forty miles. Late afternoon found us almost under the
shadow of Frenchman’s Butte. We had crossed the streams waist deep in
frigid water, but chilled and jaded though we were, Quinney, Dufresne
and I left the women with the others in a bluff beside the Little Red
Deer and toiled on. Before leaving I changed the ragged trousers I wore
for a better pair secured somehow in the camp. It was in the pocket
of these discarded trousers, hanging on a tree, that I left the big
brass key of the store at Frog Lake which I turned in the lock after
the massacre began. One day I hoped I might return to that wild and
lonely spot and endeavour to find it, but I never did. It was all that
remained of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s business at Frog Lake.
Shortly after leaving the bluff the long clear whistle of a steamboat
fell on our startled ears. It came from the Saskatchewan, three or
four miles distant. We could not see the boat, but the familiar,
homely sound was for us the most entrancing music, spurring us on, for
it meant that help, that friends, that relief from a strain that had
become almost unendurable, were almost within hail.
Nightfall was coming on rapidly and we were anxious to reach the summit
of the Butte before dark, for we hoped from this commanding point to
sight the camp of the troops. Aching from head to blistered feet, we
dragged ourselves up the wooded slope and well-nigh exhausted at length
reached the top.
The sun had set but light enough remained to show us something of the
surrounding country. We crept guardedly out on the bald round summit,
for Indian scouts if there were any about—and it will be evident we
knew nothing with certainty as to the location of either troops or
Indians—could see us even more readily from the bottom than could we
them from the top. Under cover of the scrub, I slipped over to the side
whence, six days before, we had decamped on the morning we heard of the
troops’ arrival at Pitt.
There stood the Thirst Dance lodge. It looked brown and deserted, for
the sun had scorched its green roofing of leaves. Suddenly I made out
two mounted men swiftly circling the lodge. I beckoned to Dufresne. He
joined me. I pointed to the riders and the half-breed started.
“Indians!” I whispered. “No Redcoats. See their clothes!”
Dufresne stared. “Sure!” he returned. “Big Bear’s men, I guess. Indians
sure.”
We crept back and told Quinney. All day we had tried to induce him
not to expose himself needlessly, against the possibility of Indian
prowlers in our vicinity, but without success. Now he lost his head
completely.
“They’re white troops, not Indians!” he cried. “We are saved!”
He was deaf to Dufresne and me. He pulled a white handkerchief from his
pocket, rushed out on the bare summit and waved it, shouting like a
madman. Another rider tore along the bushes at the foot of the slope. I
pointed him out to Dufresne.
“Yes,” he muttered. “And see the squad drawn up in the shadow of the
bluff yonder! Just the size—Big Bear’s warriors!”
I looked at Quinney—and I would be ashamed to say with what bitterness
just then. To think that after all we had come through, with safety
almost within our grasp, fate, her tool this madman and his blundering
perversity, should step between us and the goal! We were trapped. We
were under no illusion. We had been told, often enough and bluntly
enough, the penalty that would follow any attempt at escape. And we
were in no doubt, Dufresne, the half-breed, and I, as to the identity
of the men even then, probably, crawling towards us up the slope to
shoot us down.
Dufresne only was armed. He walked to the centre of the open space and
stood with his gun in his hands, waiting. “Well, you can only die
once,” he said grimly.
I went toward him, but he asked me to keep away and I did. He had Cree
blood in his veins. We should surely be killed, but if not too close to
a white man he might be spared.
Quinney continued to shout. Presently an answer came—an Indian yell! I
saw his face pale, but he shouted again, desperately, even louder than
before. Was he actually mad? A pause followed.
It was now too dark to see the group at the foot of the Butte. A voice
came at length through the gloom.
“Who are you?”
Plain Anglo-Saxon!
Quinney fairly danced. Dufresne and I listened, silent, bewildered.
Could they actually be white men and not Indians?
The missionary shouted again. “I’m Mr. Quinney, and here’s Mr. Cameron!”
Again the voice: “Well, if you’re white men, come down!”
So Quinney was right, after all—Dufresne and I wrong. We cheered,
cheered wildly then—yelled like maniacs. The others answered. But it
might easily have been the other way about; the judgment of the native
and myself should have been at least as good as that of the missionary,
and I still maintain that caution, not blind guessing, was what the
situation demanded.
I passed the reverend gentleman, but he was close behind. I made fast
time. Nearing the foot of the Butte, he gasped: “Let me go in ahead,
will you?” I could have guessed what was at the bottom of my clerical
companion’s request, which I granted.
We walked into a detail of scouts under Major Dale, General Strange’s
brigade officer, on their way from the camp of the Alberta Field Force
to the landing of the steamboat we had heard earlier in the day.
General Middleton was aboard, coming from Battledorf with more troops
to reinforce General Strange.
Our reception was overwhelming. I met old acquaintances, mounted
policemen. The major detailed two men to accompany us to camp, now
located in the Little Red Deer valley, a mile north of the battlefield.
The scouts dismounted and made us ride, walking beside the horses. The
sentries safely passed, at eleven o’clock we were ushered into the
presence of General Strange.
“Gunner Jingo” was stretched comfortably under the blankets in his
tent, but he sat up and shook our hands warmly while he expressed his
gratification. He had marched five hundred miles to liberate us and he
looked his satisfaction at the accomplishment of his purpose.
General Strange was a typical British officer of the old school, a
fellow-campaigner of Lord Roberts when both were subalterns in India.
Tall, lank, rugged, brave, outspoken and generous, he was the idol
of his command. His striking figure made him a conspicuous target
at Frenchman’s Butte. To others fell the rewards and honours of the
campaign, but the West knew what was due to General Strange for his
prompt action in organizing his column and for his splendid march from
Calgary to Fort Pitt with the Alberta Field Force. Not always in actual
warfare are the greatest victories gained, and his activity had a moral
effect that possibly prevented all the Indians and half-breeds in the
North-west from being drawn into the rising.
The general ordered his cook to get us up the best the camp
afforded—some meal, that! I was shaking from chill and excitement and
just before we began supper Captain Perry, of the North-West Mounted
Police, came into the tent and stretching himself on the ground
opposite me held out a tin cup.
“Drink it,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”
I took the big cup. It was full of rum.
“Good Lord!” I exclaimed, “do you want to lay me out?”
The captain smiled. “It’s all right. It won’t affect you. You’re too
worked up.”
I drank the rum—all of it. Supper finished, I went with him to his
tent, which I was invited to make my headquarters. Two reverend
gentlemen were also his guests on the expedition, Canon George McKay
and the Rev. Wm. P. McKenzie, both of Macleod, Alberta. I think the
only thing about me affected by the rum was my tongue. I talked
incessantly until three in the morning—lay and talked and shook. It
was like the ague, that shaking, and I could not shake it off at once.
Remember, I had not seen a new face or heard a friendly voice that
dared to say what it felt like saying, or heard a scrap of news from
the outside world—my world—for two long wretched months. I do not
wonder I shook.
Before daylight next morning a detail had brought in Mrs. Quinney,
Halpin and the remainder of our party.
I do not know exactly how we felt just then. There are moments in most
men’s lives that, on their looking back, seem delirious with supreme
joy or supreme horror. The latter I experienced at Frog Lake on the
morning of April 2nd, 1885; the first at Frenchman’s Butte on the night
of June 1st in the same year.