The Rising Of The Red Man Part 5

For the moment a horrible sickening fear took possession of Dorothy when she found herself thrust into such a very prominent position. It was quite bad enough to have to pa.s.s through that scene of pillage and riot, but to pose as the partner of an excitable half-breed in the execution of the Red River jig was more than the girl had bargained for. The fantastic shuffling and capering of the long-legged metis were wonderful to behold. The ta.s.sel of his long red tuque dangled and bobbed behind him like the pigtail of a Chinaman trying to imitate a dancing Dervish. His flushed face, long snaky black locks, and flashing eyes all spoke of the wild fever in his blood and his Gallic origin. Still, the girl noted he was not what might be termed an ill-looking fellow; he did not look bad-natured, nor was he in drink. He was merely an excited irresponsible.

The barbaric, musical rhyme on the cat-gut took a fresh lease of life; the delighted spectators clapped their hands in time, and supplemented the music with the regulation dog-like yelps. The Red River jig consists of two persons of opposite s.e.x standing facing each other, each possessed with the laudable ambition of dancing his or her partner down. As may readily be imagined, it is a dance necessitating considerable powers of endurance.

When one of the dancers sinks exhausted and vanquished, another steps into the breach. When Dorothy had made her appearance, a slim and by no means bad-looking half-breed girl had been unwillingly obliged to drop out of the dance. The bright eyes of the new arrival had caught Pierre La Chene's fancy, and, after the manner of his kind, he had made haste to secure her as a partner. Pierre was a philanderer and an inconstant swain. The dark eyes of Katie the Belle flushed with anger as she saw this strange girl take her place. She noticed with jealous eyes the elegant fur coat which the other wore, the dainty silk-sewn moccasins, the natty beaver cap, and felt that she, herself a leader of fashion among her people, had yet much to learn.

Dorothy stood stock still for a moment while her partner and the spectators shouted to her to begin. A wrinkled old dame remarked, in the flowery language of her people, that, as the figure of the girl was slender as the willow, and her feet small and light as those of the wood spirits that return to the land in the spring, surely she could out-dance Pierre La Chene, who had already out-worn the light-footed Jeanette and the beautiful Katie. Pierre shouted to his partner to make a start. Surely now she must be discovered and undone!

Then something that, when one comes to think of it, was not strange, happened--Dorothy rose to the occasion. She had danced the very same fantasia many a time out of sheer exuberance of spirits, and the love of dancing itself. She must dance and gain the sympathy of that rough crowd, in the event of her ident.i.ty being discovered.

There was nothing so terrible about this particular group after all. They were merely dancing while the others were going in for riot and pillage. There was something so incongruous and ludicrous in the whole affair that the odd, wayward, fun-loving spirit of the girl, of late held in abeyance, a.s.serted itself, and she forgot all else save the fact that she must do her best to dance her partner down.

Her feet caught the rhythm of the "Arkansaw Traveller"

--that stirring, foot-catching melody without beginning or ending--and in another minute Dorothy was dancing opposite the delighted and capering half-breed, and almost enjoying it. With hands on hips, with head thrown back, and with feet tremulous with motion, she kept time to the music. She was a good dancer, and realised what is meant by the poetry of motion. The fiddler played fairly well, and Pierre La Chene, if somewhat p.r.o.nounced in his movements, was at least a picturesque figure, whose soul was in the dance. So amusing, were his antics that the girl laughed heartily, despite the danger of her position.

It was evident that Pierre was vastly taken with his partner. He rolled his eyes about in a languishing and alarming fashion; he twisted and wriggled like a contortionist, and occasionally varied the lightning-like shuffle of his own feet by kicking a good deal higher than his own head. He called upon his partner to "stay with it" in almost inarticulate gasps. "Whoop her up!"

he yelled. "Git thar, Jean! Bravo, ma belle! Whoo-sh!"

It was a very nightmare of grotesqueness to Dorothy. The moonlight night, the black houses and pines looming up against the snowy landscape, the red glare in the immediate foreground caused by the burning buildings, the gesticulating figure of her half-breed partner, the excited, picturesque onlookers, the vagaries of the fiddler and the never-ceasing sound of the Indian drum, all tinged with an air of unreality and a sense of the danger that menaced, made up a situation that could not easily be eclipsed. And she was dancing and trying to make herself believe she was enjoying it, opposite a crazy half-breed rebel! She recognised him now as the dandy Pierre, the admiration of the fair s.e.x in his own particular world on the Saskatchewan. If only any of her people could see her now, what would they think of her?

But was this wild dance to go on for ever? Already she was becoming warm in her fur coat, despite the lowness of the temperature. There was a limit to her powers of endurance, albeit she was stronger than the average girl.

The onlookers, charmed with the grace of this unknown dancer, were noisy in their applause. She must feign fatigue and drop out, letting some one else take her place.

With an inclination of her head to her partner she did so, but he, doubtless captivated by the dark, laughing eyes he saw gazing at him above the deep fur collar, did not care to continue the dance with some one whose eyes might not be so bewitching, and dropped out also. The half-breed girl, his former partner, who up till now had contented herself by gazing sulkily from lowering brows upon this strange rival, was at last stirred by still deeper feeling. She came close up to Dorothy, and gazed searchingly into her face. At the same moment they recognised each other, for often had Dorothy admired the full, wildflower beauty, the delicate olive skin, and the dark, soulful eyes of this part descendant of a n.o.ble Gallic race and a barbaric people, and spoken kindly to her. The half-savage Katie had looked upon her white sister as a superior being from another world, and had almost made up her mind that she loved her, but she loved Pierre La Chene in a different way, and when that sort of love comes into one's life, all else has to give place to it With a quick movement she drew down Dorothy's fur collar, exposing her face.

"_Voila!_" she cried; "_one of the enemy--the daughter of Douglas!_"

It was as if the rebels had suddenly detected an embodied spirit that had worked evil in their midst, for the music stopped, and the excited crew rushed upon her. But Pierre La Chene kept them back. Those proud, defiant eyes had exercised a singular charm over him, and when he saw her face he almost felt ready to fight the whole crowd--almost ready, for, like a good many other lady-killers, Pierre had a very tender regard for his own personal safety.

Still, he cried--

"_Prenez garde_--tek caar! _Ma foi_, but she can dance it! Let us tek her to Louis Riel. He is at the chapel.

We may learn much."

With her keen instincts, Katie saw the ruse.

"She has the evil eye, and has bewitched Pierre!" she cried, and made as if to lead her old lover away.

But Pierre's response was to thrust her violently from him. Katie would have fallen but that Dorothy caught her.

"Oh, Katie, poor Katie!" was all she said.

And then the half-breed girl realised the evil she had wrought, and shrunk from the kindly arms of the sister she had betrayed.

"To Riel with her!--to Riel with her!" was the cry of the fickle malcontents, and, with a yelling following at her heels, Dorothy was led away.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE JUDGMENT HALL

Now that Dorothy knew the worst was about to happen, she, strangely enough, felt more self-possessed than she had done before. These rebels might kill her, or not, just as the mood swayed them, but she would let them see that the daughter of a white man was not afraid.

In that short walk to the chapel she reviewed her position.

She hoped that by this time the others had managed to reach the Fort. If they had, then she could face with comparative equanimity what might happen to herself. Her only fear was what her father, in his distress on hearing of her capture, might do.

Fortunately it was not far to the chapel which Riel had converted into his headquarters. Indeed, he was only paying a hurried visit there to exhort the faithful and long-suffering metis and Indians to prompt and decisive action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot.

A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel, "stickit priest," and now malcontent and political agitator by profession. This worthy gentleman had already cost the Government a rebellion, but why he should have been allowed to run to a second is one of those seeming mysteries that can only be accounted for by the too clement policy of a British Government.

Dorothy and her captors entered the small porch of the chapel and pa.s.sed into the sacred edifice. For one like Riel, who had been educated for the priesthood in Lower Canada, it was a strange use to put such a place to. The scene when they entered almost defies description. It was crowded with breeds and Indians armed to the teeth with all manner of antiquated weapons. Most of them wore blue copotes and kept on their unplucked beaver caps or long red tuques. Haranguing them close to the altar was the great Riel himself, the terror of the Saskatchewan.

He did not look the dangerous, religious fanatic that he was in reality. He was about five feet seven in height, with red hair and beard. His face was pale and flabby, and his dark grey eyes, set close together, glowed when he spoke and were very restless. His nose was slightly aquiline, his neck long, and his lips thick. His voice, though low and gentle in ordinary conversation, was loud and abrupt now that he was excited.

He was so carried away by the exuberance of his own eloquence when Dorothy and her captors entered, that he still kept on in a state of rapt ecstasy. His semi-mystical oration was a weird jumble of religion and lawlessness, devout exhortation, riot, plunder, prayer, and pillage.

He extolled the virtues of the murderous Poundmaker and Big Bear. He said that Mistawasis and Chicastafasin, the chiefs, and some others, were feeble of heart and backsliders, for they had left their reserves to escape being drawn into the trouble. Crowfoot, head chief of the Blackfoot nation, was protesting his loyalty to the Lieutenant-Governor, and his squaws would one day stone him to death as a judgment. Fort Pitt, Battleford and Prince Albert must shortly capitulate to them, and then the squaws would receive the white women of those places as their private prisoners to do with as their sweet wills suggested. Already many of the accursed whites had been slaughtered, as at Duck Lake, for instance, but many more had yet to die. They must be utterly exterminated, so that the elect might possess the land undisturbed.

At this point he caught sight of the newcomers. At a sign from him they approached.

"Ha!" he said, with an unctuous accent in his voice, and rubbing his hands like a miserable old f.a.gin, "Truly the Lord is delivering them into our hands. What are you, woman?"

But beyond her name Dorothy would at first tell him nothing. Her captors briefly stated the little they knew concerning her presence in the town. The self-const.i.tuted dictator tried bombast, threats and flattery to gain information from her, but they were of no avail. His authority being thus disputed by a woman, and his absurd self-esteem ruffled, he gave way to a torrent of abuse, but Dorothy was as if she heard it not. It was only when Riel was about to give instructions to his "General,"

Gabriel Dumont, and more of the members of his staff and "government" to instantly cause a search to be made in the camp for those who might have been with the girl, that she said he might do so if he chose, but it would be useless, as her friends must have entered the Fort an hour ago.

"Hear to her, hear to this shameless woman!" cried the fanatical and self-const.i.tuted saviour of the metis, gesticulating and trying, as he always did, to work upon the easily-roused feelings of his semi-savage following.

"She convicts herself out of her own mouth; she must suffer. She is young and fair to look upon, but she is the daughter of Douglas, the great friend of the English, and therefore evil of heart. Moreover, she defies me, even me, to whom St Peter himself appeared in the Church of St. James at Washington, Columbia! Take her hence and keep her as a prisoner until we decide what fate shall be hers. In the days of the old prophets the dogs licked the blood of a woman from the stones--of a woman who deserved better than she."

With a wave of his hand the arch rebel, who was yet to pay the penalty of his inordinate vanity and scheming with his life, dismissed the prisoner and her captors.

He instructed an Irish renegade and member of his cabinet, called Nolin, to see to it that the prisoner was kept under close arrest until her fate was decided upon--which would probably be before morning. Nolin told some of Katie's relatives to take charge of Dorothy. He himself, to tell the truth, did not particularly care what became of her one way or the other. Already this gentleman was trying to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare.

Dorothy looked around the improvised court-house in the vague hope of finding some one whom she might have known in the days of peace, and whose intervention would count for something. But alas! the vision of dark, cruel and uncompromising faces that met her gaze, gave her no hope.

They had all been wrought up to such a high pitch of excitement that murder itself was but an item in their programme. Her heart sank within her, but still her mind was active. She was not one of the sort who submit tamely to what appears to be the inevitable. She came of a fighting stock--of a race that had struggled much, and prevailed.

Katie's male kinsman, the huge half-breed and the officious redskin, again seized Dorothy and hurried her away, followed by the curious, straggling mob. Arrived, at length, at a long, low log-house on the outskirts of the town, they hammered on the closed door for admittance.

CHAPTER IX

THE DWARF AND THE BEAR

Dorothy noticed that there was a light in the windows of this house, and wondered how it was that the occupants seemed to be quietly staying at home while evidently all the half-breed inhabitants of the town were making a night of it. She also noticed that when her guides had knocked they drew somewhat back from the doorway, and that the motley crowd which had been pressing close behind followed their example. They also ceased their noisy talk and laughter while they waited for the door to be opened.

Only Katie, the flouted belle who had been following them up, did not seem to possess the same diffidence as the others, but stood with one hand on the door, listening.

Dorothy became strangely curious as to the inmates of this isolated house.

A strange shuffling and peculiar deep breathing were heard in the pa.s.sage; a bolt was withdrawn, Katie drew quickly back, and next moment the door was thrown open.

A flood of light streamed out, and two weird and startling figures were outlined sharply against it. Instinctively Dorothy shrank backwards with a sense of wonder and fear.

Standing on its hind legs in the doorway was a bear, and by its side a dwarf with an immense head covered with a great crop of hair, and with long arms and a broad chest which indicated great strength.

"Whur-r! What you want here and at this hour of night, you cut-throats, you?" asked the outspoken manikin in a voice of sufficient volume to have equipped half-a-dozen men.