THE ALL-POWERFUL EMBLEM.
A loud noise was heard in the skirt of the woodland, of which the outer
brush came gently down to the opening of the vale, where the Piegans
were lodged. As the sound came nearer it assumed the dimensions of a
downright tumult. Besides the clatter of hoofs, there was the banging
of heavy articles against the saplings, which sprang back angrily, the
squealing of mules, and many random shots of pistols and rifles. The
latter made the Indians the more disquieted, as the screen of boughs
long hid the cause.
At Red Knife's order all ran with their arms to the defences, whilst
some got their horses ready at a secret outlet, in case, this being an
attack, they might rush round down upon their camp and pay them back in
their own coin.
Two young men were sent out as scouts, but they had hardly left before
a whole string of persons and animals emerged from the forest with
giddy rapidity. In the van was a mounted man, on a mare, who did not in
the least slacken his furious pace, though turning every little while
to fire his breech-loading rifle. He wore an Indian dress, and it was
reasonably surmised that he was a chief, but the distance and the dust
that sprang up from the alkali stretches among the scrub outside the
forest prevented particulars being defined of his tribe, or even his
nation.
He was followed by a girl in a sort of pannier seat on a large fleet
mule. A mantle enveloped her, but the wind flapped it back, so
that her sex was discernible as far as her attire and her mode of
riding revealed. Behind her, separated by such varied spaces as the
differences in their speed under burdens apportioned, six or eight
beasts of burden rushed. As in their mad course through the woods their
packs had been knocked about, pulled partly off, slewed to one side
or under the bellies, or even trailing after by the lashings, every
now and then one would be brought to a sudden stop, or hurled into
a natural pithole half full of decayed leaves and melting snow. The
squallings would redouble at these disasters.
After these fugitives upwards of a dozen horsemen came racing. Some
waved lariats, or snapped whips, to cow the runaways into a pause, or
to swerve from blindly following the leaders; some were using their
guns at the foremost of this queer procession. But, though they stopped
to take aim, they were not so expert or fortunate as he. The pursuers
were Red River Half-breeds.
The pack animals did not clear the wood; the scrub was more entangling
than the large growth, and they, at all events, were captured as they
struggled after their harness was caught.
The two fugitives, on debouching upon the open ground, were in extreme
peril. They had the river to cross under fire. Nevertheless, they did
not seem discouraged. At least, the dark-complexioned man drove the
lady's mule into the water, and halting himself on the bank crest,
fired five shots almost as quickly as one into the line of pursuers,
of which each emptied a saddle. The remainder howled with rage, and,
forced to stop among the riderless and plunging steeds, discharged all
their guns at the daring coverer of the girl's crossing.
The latter brandished his repeating rifle around his head, as if his
warriorlike exultation was uncontrollable; an act alone denouncing
him as no pure white. He then jabbed his heels into the flanks of the
mare, which leaped in a beautiful curve into the river. In the leap he
uttered a war cry new to that region:
"_Wo!-O-whoo-whoo!_" and it still resounded when he reappeared above
the surface after the plunge.
The mule was floundering, the girl clinging to it with nail and tooth,
so to say. But the mare, being directed to a shelving part of the other
bank, the mule whinnied, and hurried to climb out also.
The two galloped on towards the Piegan encampment at full speed,
letting the muddy water drip off them as it pleased. On seeing the
Indians watching them, the horseman, whose buffalo robe had been washed
away in the stream, shouted in a high, clear voice in Algonquin, the
most generally understood language among the pure Indians north:
"A brother!"
"Ho, ho, ho!" roared the Piegans, clapping their hands joyfully.
Red Knife dashed out of the shelter, having gazed with admiration on
their bold, brave flight, and neat shooting at full speed. At the
announcement of the new arrival, he waved his mantle in the sign of
welcome, and called,
"Come to our bosom!"
The two fugitives dashed up the gentle slope to the camp ingress.
In the meantime, the pursuers, having secured the pack animals and the
riderless horses, as well as seen to the wounded, came on apace, having
momentarily lost sight of their objects. On crossing the frothy stream
they beheld them cantering into the Piegan camp. They were convulsed
with impotent rage as they pulled up smartly. Slowly they continued
their march, only five of them now.
But as fifty Indians mounted and rode out from the entrenchments, they
stopped afresh to consult. At length one rode out of the mass and made
the sign of peace. There was no reply for two or three minutes. But the
Half-breed was not to be so easily disheartened, and making the sign
again, cried out in Chinook that he was a friend of the red man, who
requested a hearing of their rulers.
It was Red Knife, who haughtily demanded the grounds for his request.
"'Tis an important matter for the chief's own ear."
"Good! Let the hunter wait," and measured off on the sky so many
minutes with his forefinger.
The parleyers were forced to submit. But they were galled on perceiving
why the delay was imposed. Some forty of the Piegans, stealing out of
the secret gate, had gone over the river and were about surrounding the
wounded men and the lassoed horses. The Red River Rovers gazed at one
another "like crabs in a net," all eyes protruding; but knowing the
kind of folk they were dealing with, they had to pretend tranquillity.
As soon as Red Knife believed that his instructions were consummated,
he waved his hand to the parleyer, who was eyeing him anxiously.
"My friends are welcome. Let four of them come into the camp unarmed."
All resistance was useless. One solitary Half-breed was left in charge
of the five horses and his comrades' arms on the river brink. All
he could do, if the others were treacherously murdered, was make a
breastwork of the quadrupeds and fire away to his last shot, and then
be slain.
Red Knife and his lieutenants received the crestfallen Canadians
courteously, and conducted them silently to the council fire. There the
Piegans sat down and invited their guests to do likewise. During the
long silence that ensued the entrapped ones looked well about them. The
two fugitives had shaken themselves reasonably dry, exchanged their wet
outer garments for dry ones and were warming themselves at the priests'
holy fire in the medicine lodge, where the totem pole was standing
sentry, so to say, over the tribal ark within.
"Why have the palefaces come into my camp?" inquired the Piegan at
length, in a stern voice. "What is the news for us? There is no common
tie between the palefaces and the Blackfeet."
The tone, like the question, was not amicable. Moreover, the hunters
had noticed that the pipe had not been offered them, so that they knew
they were being treated as enemies, not as mere strangers even.
The leader of the Red River Half-breeds was their captain himself.
He was supported by David Steelder, to whom Kidd has alluded as an
undesirable acquaintance, whilst Margottet was guarding the horses and
weapons as one in a most trustworthy and ticklish post.
Steelder was a stout, herculean fellow, with flaming red hair and
beard, though his eyes were dark. But they so squinted, and shifted
their point of view so frequently, that most would not have remarked
this incompatibility. He alone looked round on the red men with the
idle curiosity of one whose brain was congested or softening.
Dagard was too learned in Indian ways not to appreciate the hostility
of the reception. But he was fearless, cunning, and accustomed to meet
emergencies without flinching.
"I have walked into the Piegan camp to sit at the council fire," he
said, firmly, "and put in a request that my red brothers are not the
fools to throw aside hastily."
"The Piegans are wise, and they can judge anything laid before them,"
responded Red Knife, emphatically.
"I know very well what the Piegans are like," went on Dagard, who
placed no faith whatever in them. "They are wise warriors, and to
claim justice, when prairie law is infringed, is to get it."
The chiefs bowed; it was flattering to be taken for arbitrators, and,
besides, the prairie and mountain arbitrator is entitled to take
payment out of the property in dispute. So l'Embarrasseur continued as
jauntily as if he felt secure now.
"I have so great a confidence in my red brother that I have put aside
all to a toothpick to come right in among ye. Besides, there's no blood
feud between the Half-breeds of Manitoba and the Blackfeet nation that
ever I heard of. The hatchet never was used against either in the
other's hand. Why, then, should I want to sit down with the knife in
my girdle, as you carry yours? If I had been your foe--why, I have a
good crowd left after a hot brush with the Crows that would have been
entirely rubbed out but for the blizzard breaking up the evening's
amusement; but I haven't come in any force. I knew perfectly well that
I was meeting friends."
There was a silence. The Indians were clearly aware that the Canadian
had been a tough bone for Ahnemekee, and that the remainder of his
troop was not despicable. They had not Winchester rifles such as that
which so rapidly disposed of half its owner's pursuers, and hoped no
such rare fortune.
"This is the point," concluded Dagard, with an angry glance at the
girl and her defender at the sacred fire of the sanctuary, "my men and
I, on the open ground, captured that white woman and some stampeded
animals that followed her mule; when in cut this renegade Half-breed,
on a mare that called away her mule, and away went the whole outfit,
helter-skelter. A stampede is fair enough--but not treachery. Either
this Half-breed stands up for one colour or the other--red or white. If
he hunts with the red, why, I am red. The Red River Half-breeds never
yet held for the King George's, or the Yankees. And he should have let
my prizes alone. Or, if he is a friend to the whites, either those gold
seekers or the mountain trappers, he is our foe. I claim the girl, I
claim the mongrel whom no race owns. My brother shall decide. That's my
say."
All eyes were turned towards the fugitive, who was now carelessly
leaning against the totem pole. The girl trembled with cold; he was
steady as the staff itself. The sachem beckoned him thither, and darted
a suspicious glance on him, inasmuch as, Half-breed for Half-breed,
there was nothing to vary the scales between them.
"There is an accusation, brother. What is the defence?" he asked.
The other smiled scornfully, but making an effort over himself, he
answered railingly, "In the land of my forefathers the mockingbird
was often heard, but I little thought to hear its deceitful voice
hereabouts. To what tribe does this patchwork man belong that he dares
class me with such as he? I am a Sagamore! But look at his skin--is it
white, is it red, is it even yellow? Can he name his father among men
renowned in battle? Can he name his mother? Some white thief, kicked
out of the frontier whisky room, and some squaw who hangs round the
ports, these were his progenitors, and they shrank from owning him!
By what right does he raise his voice in a council of dog soldiers,
elders, hallowed men who have been initiated in the inner circle of
secrets handed down from days when, from the White Ridge yonder to
the Blue Ridge (the Alleghenies) there, none but pure red men trod
the warpath, and fished and hunted. Because he commands a string of
curs. My nation is the ghost of what it was, but we can whip the Red
River mongrels any day! We are the Cherokees! I am a first chief among
them--I am _Quorinnah_, the Raven, and I wear the treasured Totem!"
So speaking, with a voice that grew thunderous with pride, Bill
Williams, for this was the man, ripped off the wet woollen shirt
covering his breast to the waist belt. On his bosom was tattooed the
"Great Round O," as the ignorant call it, which, however, by its rays,
signifies the Sun. It was traced in pitch pine soot pricked in and
only the high-class Cherokee, the very inspired one, _Cheer a dagee_,
or "fire filled," are so tattooed. If by chance any foolish or wicked
young man attempted even a rude imitation, the elders would scrub the
marks out of his skin with green corn juice to the very quick, and then
he might think he had got off lightly for the sacrilege.
The sun is an emblem understood and respected almost all over the two
Americas.
"A Son of the Sacred Fire!" cried the chiefs, bowing with reverence.
"Cherokee Bill, the mate of Jim Ridge the mountain man," sneered Dagard.
"Yes, I am the Cherokee. My father was made a chief of the nation
before me. If ever I come to the stake, and I am bled to the last
drop in my body, nothing will have issued but red blood! Well, I am
thousands of miles from the home and graves of my fathers--am I among
brothers or foes?"
Red Knife rose and bowed to the speaker, answering:
"We have heard none but a Cherokee speak. The place of the Sagamore is
in my stead. Let him command at the council fire, and all that here
surround us will obey him to the letter. Wisdom is in the Son of Fire,
and the Great Spirit loves him. To no one need he give an account of
his doings."
With a dignity that struck all beholders, the Cherokee sat in the
place Red Knife vacated, and lifting his hand to entreat silence, said
gravely?
"I thank my brother for not having required any explanation from me;
but my tongue is not forked, and my honour exacts my Piegan sons being
judges between this Canadian and me. The young woman whom you see
yonder was the captive of the gold seekers, commanded by Captain Kidd,
whose name smells bad in the nose of honest Indians on the border.
She escaped on the mule, and fell across the path of these Red River
Rovers. Yes, she would have been their fair capture if they were
independent. But that's not so. They are allied with Captain Kidd, and
this detachment was going to join him when they met the fugitive. Being
one and the same, any enemy had the right to cut in and cut out the
prize. I did so. Who is in the right? He?"
"No!" responded the unanimous voice.
"Will he even deny my statement?"
Dagard, insolently enough and impudently, too, considering he had no
weapons, was chatting with his three adherents.
"He cannot deny."
"Your conduct is right. The traitors are these Red River Half-breed
dogs, for allying themselves with a bandit who respects neither red nor
white, and then comes to a redskin camp and asks help and favour as
being a red man himself."
"Go!" said Cherokee Bill, with scorn so withering that the Indians did
not regret the four scalps thus rejected, and Dagard felt no joy at the
deliverance. "Should your feet take root here, you will be trees cut
down for the night fire! The girl is free! Until you cross that stream,
you are neither foe nor friend, merely dogs kicked out of camp! Go, it
is a chief that speaks."
The Embarrasseur seemed too much embarrassed himself this time to
even lift his head. Steelder squinted horribly as he shrunk past
the Cherokee. The four Canadians hastened to join the lieutenant,
impatiently holding the horses, and, mounting rapidly, they rushed over
the river. The Piegan party had contented themselves with examining the
pack animals, the dead and wounded, under orders in some way signalled
to them by the sun flash code. The Half-breeds put the wounded on the
beasts of burden and dolefully returned to their camp.