THE STONIES
The icy cold woke Cameron as the grey light came in through the dirty
windows and the cracks between the logs of the grub-house. Already
Little Thunder was awake and busy with the fire in the cracked and rusty
stove. Cameron lay still and watched. Silently, swiftly the Indian moved
about his work till the fire began to roar and the pot of snow on the
top to melt. Then the trader awoke. With a single movement he was out
upon the floor.
“All hands awake!” he shouted. “Aha, Mr. Cameron! Good sleep, eh? Slept
like a bear myself. Now grub, and off! Still blowing, eh? Well, so
much the better. There is a spot thirty miles on where we will be snug
enough. How's breakfast, Little Thunder? This is our only chance to-day,
so don't spare the grub.”
Cameron made but slight reply. He was stiff and sore with the cold and
the long ride of the day before. This, however, he minded but little. If
he could only guess what lay before him. He was torn between anxiety and
indignation. He could hardly make himself believe that he was alive and
in his waking senses. Twenty-four hours ago he was breakfasting with
McIvor and his gang in the camp by The Bow; now he was twenty or thirty
miles away in the heart of the mountains and practically a prisoner in
the hands of as blood-thirsty a looking Indian as he had ever seen, and
a man who remained to him an inexplicable mystery. Who and what was
this man? He scanned his face in the growing light. Strength, daring,
alertness, yes, and kindliness, he read in the handsome, brown, lean
face of this stranger, lit by its grey-brown hazel eyes and set off
with brown wavy hair which the absence of a cap now for the first time
revealed.
“He looks all right,” Cameron said to himself. And yet when he recalled
the smile that had curled these thin lips and half closed these hazel
eyes in the cave the night before, and when he thought of that murderous
attack of his Indian companion, he found it difficult wholly to trust
the man who was at once his rescuer and his captor.
In the days of the early eighties there were weird stories floating
about through the Western country of outlaw Indian traders whose chief
stock for barter was a concoction which passed for whiskey, but the
ingredients of which were principally high wines and tobacco juice, with
a little molasses to sweeten it and a touch of blue stone to give
it bite. Men of reckless daring were these traders, resourceful and
relentless. For a bottle of their “hell-fire fluid” they would buy a
buffalo hide, a pack of beaver skins, or a cayuse from an Indian without
hesitation or remorse. With a keg or two of their deadly brew they would
approach a tribe and strip it bare of a year's catch of furs.
In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and
half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and
many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains
or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail of the whiskey
runners.
In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful.
The giving, selling, or trading of any sort of intoxicant to the Indians
was absolutely prohibited. But it was a land of vast and mighty spaces,
and everywhere were hiding places where armies could be safely disposed,
and therefore there was small chance for the enforcement of the laws of
the Dominion. There was little risk to the whiskey runners; and, indeed,
however great the risk, the immense profits of their trade would have
made them willing to take it.
Hence all through the Western plains the whiskey runners had their way
to the degradation and demoralization of the unhappy natives and to
the rapid decimation of their numbers. Horse thieves, too, and cattle
“rustlers” operating on both sides of “the line” added to the general
confusion and lawlessness that prevailed and rendered the lives and
property of the few pioneer settlers insecure.
It was to deal with this situation that the Dominion Government
organised and despatched the North West Mounted Police to Western
Canada. Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters began
to improve. The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased and these
daring outlaws were forced to carry on their fiendish business by
midnight marches and through the secret trails and coulees of the
foothills. The profits of the trade, however, were still great enough
to tempt the more reckless and daring of these men. Cattle rustling
and horse stealing still continued, but on a much smaller scale. To the
whole country the advent of the police proved an incalculable blessing.
But to the Indian tribes especially was this the case. The natives soon
learned to regard the police officers as their friends. In them they
found protection from the unscrupulous traders who had hitherto cheated
them without mercy or conscience, as well as from the whiskey runners
through whose devilish activities their people had suffered irreparable
loss.
The administration of the law by the officers of the police with firm
and patient justice put an end also to the frequent and bloody wars that
had prevailed previously between the various tribes, till, by these wild
and savage people the red coat came to be regarded with mingled awe and
confidence, a terror to evil-doers and a protection to those that did
well.
To which class did this man belong? This Cameron was utterly unable to
decide.
With this problem vexing his mind he ate his breakfast in almost
complete silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's
cheerful attempts at conversation.
Suddenly, with disconcerting accuracy, the trader seemed to read his
mind.
“Now, Mr. Cameron,” he said, pulling out his pipe, “we will have a smoke
and a chat. Fill up.” He passed Cameron his little bag of tobacco. “Last
night things were somewhat strained,” he continued. “Frankly, I confess,
I took you at first for a whiskey runner and a horse thief, and having
suffered from these gentlemen considerably I was taking no chances.”
“Why force me to go with you, then?” asked Cameron angrily.
“Why? For your good. There is less danger both to you--and to me--with
you under my eye,” replied the trader with a smile.
“Yet your man would have murdered me?”
“Well, you see Little Thunder is one of the Blood Tribe and rather swift
with his knife at times, I confess. Besides, his family has suffered at
the hands of the whiskey runners. He is a chief and he owes it to these
devils that he is out of a job just now. You may imagine he is somewhat
touchy on the point of whiskey traders.
“It was you set him on me,” said Cameron, still wrathful.
“No, no,” said the trader, laughing quietly. “That was merely to startle
you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy. You must believe me
it was the only thing possible that you should accompany us, for if you
were a whiskey runner then it was better for us that you should be under
guard, and if you were a surveyor it was better for you that you should
be in our care. Why, man, this storm may go for three days, and you
would be stiff long before anyone could find you. No, no, I confess our
measures may have seemed somewhat--ah--abrupt, but, believe me, they
were necessary, and in a day or two you will acknowledge that I am in
the right of it. Meantime let's trust each other, and there is my hand
on it, Cameron.”
There was no resisting the frank smile, the open manner of the man, and
Cameron took the offered hand with a lighter heart than he had known for
the last twelve hours.
“Now, then, that's settled,” cried the trader, springing to his feet.
“Cameron, you can pack this stuff together while Little Thunder and I
dig out our bunch of horses. They will be half frozen and it will be
hard to knock any life into them.”
It was half an hour before Cameron had his packs ready, and, there being
no sign of the trader, he put on his heavy coat, mitts, and cap and
fought his way through the blizzard, which was still raging in full
force, to the bunk-house, a log building about thirty feet long and half
as wide, in which were huddled the horses and ponies to the number of
about twenty. Eight of the ponies carried pack saddles, and so busy were
Raven and the Indian with the somewhat delicate operation of assembling
the packs that he was close upon them before they were aware. Boxes and
bags were strewn about in orderly disorder, and on one side were several
small kegs. As Cameron drew near, the Indian, who was the first to
notice him, gave a grunt.
“What the blank blank are you doing here?” cried Raven with a string
of oaths, flinging a buffalo robe over the kegs. “My word! You startled
me,” he added with a short laugh. “I haven't got used to you yet. All
right, Little Thunder, get these boxes together. Bring that grey cayuse
here, Cameron, the one with the rope on near the door.”
This was easier said than done, for the half-broken brute snorted and
plunged till Cameron, taking a turn of the rope round his nose, forced
him up through the trembling, crowding bunch.
“Good!” said the trader. “You are all right. You didn't learn to rope a
cayuse in Edinburgh, I guess. Here's his saddle. Cinch it on.”
While Cameron was engaged in carrying out these orders Little Thunder
and the trader were busy roping boxes and kegs into pack loads with a
skill and dexterity that could only be the result of long practice.
“Now, then, Cameron, we'll load some of this molasses on your pony.”
So saying, Raven picked up one of the kegs.
“Hello, Little Thunder, this keg's leaking. It's lost the plug, as I'm a
sinner.”
Sure enough, from a small auger hole golden syrup was streaming over the
edge of the keg.
“I am certain I put that plug in yesterday,” said Raven. “Must have been
knocked out last night. Fortunately it stood right end up or we should
have lost the whole keg.”
While he was speaking he was shaping a small stick into a small plug,
which he drove tight into the keg.
“That will fix it,” he said. “Now then, put these boxes on the other
side. That will do. Take your pony toward the door and tie him there.
Little Thunder and I will load the rest and bring them up.”
In a very short time all the remaining goods were packed into neat loads
and lashed upon the pack ponies in such a careful manner that neither
box nor keg could be seen outside the cover of blankets and buffalo
skins.
“Now then,” cried Raven. “Boots and saddles! We will give you a better
mount to-day,” he continued, selecting a stout built sorrel pony. “There
you are! And a dandy he is, sure-footed as a goat and easy as a cradle.
Now then, Nighthawk, we shall just clear out this bunch.”
As he spoke he whipped the blanket off his horse. Cameron could not
forbear an exclamation of wonder and admiration as his eyes fell
upon Raven's horse. And not without reason, for Nighthawk was as
near perfection as anything in horse flesh of his size could be. His
coal-black satin skin, his fine flat legs, small delicate head, sloping
hips, round and well ribbed barrel, all showed his breed. Rolling up the
blanket, Raven strapped it to his saddle and, flinging himself astride
his horse, gave a yell that galvanised the wretched, shivering,
dispirited bunch into immediate life and activity.
“Get out the packers there, Little Thunder. Hurry up! Don't be all day.
Cameron, fall behind with me.”
Little Thunder seized the leading line of the first packer, leaped
astride his own pony, and pushed out into the storm. But the rest of the
animals held back and refused to face the blizzard. The traditions of
the cayuse are unheroic in the matter of blizzards and are all in favor
of turning tail to every storm that blows. But Nighthawk soon overcame
their reluctance, whether traditional or otherwise. With a fury nothing
less than demoniacal he fell upon the animals next him and inspired them
with such terror that, plunging forward, they carried the bunch crowding
through the door. It was no small achievement to turn some twenty
shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter
and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail
again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his
encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion
dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without
the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing,
shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce
charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards
through the whirling drifts without pause or falter. Occasionally he
dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of
encouragement or approval.
“How do they ever keep the trail?” asked Cameron on one of these
occasions.
“Little Thunder does the trick. He is the greatest tracker in this
country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound and
will keep the trail through three feet of snow. The rest of the bunch
follow. They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard like this.”
So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time they
were far into the Rockies, and down again through thick standing forests
in the valleys, across ravines and roaring torrents which the warm
weather of the previous days had released from the glaciers, and over
benches of open country, where the grass lay buried deep beneath
the snow, they pounded along. The clouds of snow ever whirling about
Cameron's head and in front of his eyes hid the distant landscape and
engulfed the head of the cavalcade before him. Without initiative and
without volition, but in a dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he
entrusted his life and fortune and waited for the will of his mysterious
companion to develope.
About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped
in beside Cameron's pony.
“A chinook coming,” said Raven. “Getting warmer, don't you notice?”
“No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a
little more comfortable,” replied Cameron.
“Sure thing. Rain in an hour.”
“An hour? In six perhaps.”
“In less than an hour,” replied Raven, “the chinook will be here. We're
riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will
lick up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before
three hours are passed.”
The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible
rapidity the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron
discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket. The wind
dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest,
and before the hour was gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the
snow had changed into a drizzling rain.
The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air
became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from
the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the
rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents
which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them
away.
The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in
high glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.
“We will make it all right!” he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused
for a few moments in a grassy glade. “Can we make the Forks before
dark?”
Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it
expressed doubt.
“On then!” he shouted. “We must make these brutes get a move on. They'll
feed when we camp.”
So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that
were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had
already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip
and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the
trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and
brutal ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved
creatures, till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the
trail. It was a weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of
Nighthawk seemed to have passed into his master, and with an insistence
that knew no mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and
down the long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the
straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.
At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode
to the rear and grunted something to his chief.
“What?” cried Raven in a startled voice. “Stonies! Where?”
Little Thunder pointed.
“Did they see you?” This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice.
“Good!” replied Raven. “Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at
them.”
In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager
gleam in his eyes.
“Stonies!” he exclaimed. “And a big camp. On their way back from their
winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you
know him?”
“I have heard of him,” said Cameron, and his tone indicated his
reverence for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had accomplished
such marvels during his long years of service with his Indian flock and
had gained such a wonderful control over them.
“Yes, he is all right,” replied Raven, answering his tone. “He is a
shrewd old boy, though. Looks mighty close after the trading end. Well,
we will perhaps do a little trade ourselves. But we won't disturb the
old man,” he continued, as if to himself. “Come and take a look at
them.”
Little Thunder had halted at a spot where the trail forked. One part led
to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the other to the left,
gradually climbing toward the top. The Stonies had come by the right
hand trail and were now camped off the trail on a little sheltered bench
further down the side of the mountain and surrounded by a scattering
group of tall pines. Through the misty night their camp fires burned
cheerily, lighting up their lodges. Around the fires could be seen
groups of men squatted on the ground and here and there among the lodges
the squaws were busy, evidently preparing the evening meal. At one side
of the camp could be distinguished a number of tethered ponies and near
them others quietly grazing.
But though the camp lay only a few hundred yards away and on a lower
level, not a sound came up from it to Cameron's ears except the
occasional bark of a dog. The Indians are a silent people and move
noiselessly through Nature's solitudes as if in reverence for her sacred
mysteries.
“We won't disturb them,” said Raven in a low tone. “We will slip past
quietly.”
“They come from Morleyville, don't they?” enquired Cameron.
“Yes.”
“Why not visit the camp?” exclaimed Cameron eagerly. “I am sure Mr.
Macdougall would be glad to see us. And why could not I go back with
him? My camp is right on the trail to Morleyville.”
Raven stood silent, evidently perplexed.
“Well,” he replied hesitatingly, “we shall see later. Meantime let's get
into camp ourselves. And no noise, please.” His voice was low and stern.
Silently, and as swiftly as was consistent with silence, Little Thunder
led his band of pack horses along the upper trail, the trader and
Cameron bringing up the rear with the other ponies. For about half a
mile they proceeded in this direction, then, turning sharply to the
right, they cut across through the straggling woods, and so came upon
the lower trail, beyond the encampment of the Stonies and well out of
sight of it.
“We camp here,” said Raven briefly. “But remember, no noise.”
“What about visiting their camp?” enquired Cameron.
“There is no immediate hurry.”
He spoke a few words to Little Thunder in Indian.
“Little Thunder thinks they may be Blackfeet. We can't be too careful.
Now let's get grub.”
Cameron made no reply. The trader's hesitating manner awakened all his
former suspicions. He was firmly convinced the Indians were Stonies and
he resolved that come what might he would make his escape to their camp.
Without unloading their packs they built their fire upon a large flat
rock and there, crouching about it, for the mists were chilly, they had
their supper.
In undertones Raven and Little Thunder conversed in the Indian speech.
The gay careless air of the trader had given place to one of keen,
purposeful determination. There was evidently serious business on foot.
Immediately after supper Little Thunder vanished into the mist.
“We may as well make ourselves comfortable,” said Raven, pulling a
couple of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron. “Little
Thunder is gone to reconnoiter.” He threw some sticks upon the fire.
“Better go to sleep,” he suggested. “We shall probably visit the camp in
the morning if they should prove to be Stonies.”
Cameron made no reply, but, lying down upon his buffalo skin, pretended
to sleep, though with the firm resolve to keep awake. But he had passed
through an exhausting day and before many minutes had passed he fell
into a doze.
From this he awoke with a start, his ears filled with the sound of
singing. Beyond the fire lay Raven upon his face, apparently sound
asleep. The singing came from the direction of the Indian camp.
Noiselessly he rose and stole up the trail to a point from which the
camp was plainly visible. A wonderful scene lay before his eyes. A great
fire burned in the centre of the camp and round the fire the whole band
of Indians was gathered with their squaws in the background. In the
centre of the circle stood a tall man with a venerable beard, apparently
reading. After he had read the sound of singing once more rose upon the
night air.
“Stonies, all right,” said Cameron exultantly to himself. “And at
evening prayers, too, by Jove.”
He remembered hearing McIvor tell how the Stonies never went on a
hunting expedition without their hymn books and never closed a day
without their evening worship. The voices were high-pitched and thin,
but from that distance they floated up soft and sweet. He could clearly
distinguish the music of the old Methodist hymn, the words of which were
quite familiar to him:
“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
Lose all their guilty stains.”
Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own invention,
the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,
“Lose all their guilty stains.”
Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer. Over all, the misty moon
struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light. It
was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and traditions,
a weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene. Afar beyond the
valley, appeared in dim outline the great mountains, with their heads
thrust up into the sky. Nearer at their bases gathered the pines, at
first in solid gloomy masses, then, as they approached, in straggling
groups, and at last singly, like tall sentinels on guard. On the
grassy glade, surrounded by the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky
worshippers, kneeling about their camp fire, lifted their faces
heavenward and their hearts God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky
faces the firelight fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark
with the superstitions of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams
of the torch held high by the hands of their dauntless ambassador of the
blessed Gospel of the Grace of God.
With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing down
upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to this camp
whose days closed with evening prayer.
“Impressive scene!” said a mocking voice in his ear.
Cameron started. A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.
“Yes,” he said gravely, “an impressive scene, in my eyes at least, and I
should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well.”
“Who knows?” said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the fire.