The Rising Of The Red Man Part 6

"A sweetheart for you, Pepin. A sweetheart, _mon ami_"

answered the big breed, in a conciliatory voice.

Dorothy nearly sank to the ground in horror when she heard this rude jest.

"Bah!" cried the manikin, "it is another female you will want to foist off upon me, is it? Eh? What? But no, _coquin_, Pepin has not been the catch of the Saskatchewan all these years without learning wisdom. Who is she--a prisoner? Eh? Is not that so?"

"That is so, Pepin, she is preesonar, and Riel has ordered her to be detained here. Your house is the only quiet one in the town this night, and that is why we came. Tell Antoine to be so good as to stand back."

Antoine was the bear, which still stood swaying gently from one side to the other with a comical expression of inquiry and gravity on its old-fashioned face.

Pepin surveyed the mob with no friendly scrutiny.

"What you want here, you _canaille, sans-culottes?_" he demanded. And then in no complimentary terms he bade them begone.

The crowd, however, still lingered, with that spirit of curiosity peculiar to most crowds; so the dwarf brought them to their senses. Suddenly poking Antoine in the ribs, he brought him down on all fours, and then, brushing past Dorothy and her captors, and still leading the bear, he charged the mob with surprising agility, scattering it right and left. It was evident that they stood in wholesome dread of Pepin and his methods. Then, coming back with the bear, he put one hand on his heart, and with a bow of grotesque gallantry, bade Dorothy enter the house. The Indian he promptly sent about his business with a sudden blow over the chest that would probably have injured a white man's bones. The red man looked for a moment as if he meditated reprisals, but Pepin merely blinked at the cudgel, and Man-of-might, with a disgusted "Ough! ough!" changed his mind and incontinently fled. Dorothy's captor, Pierre La Chene, and Katie, alone entered the dwarf's abode.

It suddenly occurred to Dorothy that this was the Pepin Quesnelle of whom and of whose tame bear Rory was wont to tell tales. Dorothy noticed that Katie had a brief whispered conference with the truculent Pepin before entering. The result of it was somewhat unexpected; the half-breed girl took Dorothy by the arm and led her into a low room, which was scrupulously clean, at the end of the pa.s.sage. There was no one in it. Katie seemed strangely nervous as she shut the door, and the girl wondered what was about to happen. Then the half-breed turned suddenly and looked into her eyes, at the same time placing one hand upon her wrist.

"Listen," she said, "I thought I loved you, but you have made me mad--so mad this night! Now tell me true--_verite sans peur_--you shall--you must tell me--do you love Pierre?"

If it had not been for the tragic light in the poor girl's eyes, Dorothy would have laughed in her face at the bare idea. As it was, she answered in such an emphatic way that Katie had no more doubts on that point. Then Dorothy asked the latter to send Pierre to her and to be herself present at the interview.

Katie at first demurred. She was afraid that the interview might prove too much for the susceptible frail one. But she brought him in, and when Dorothy had spoken a few words to him, the fickle swain was only too anxious to make it up with his real love. This satisfactory part of the programme completed, Katie packed him off into the next room, and then, with the emotional and demonstrative nature of her people, literally grovelled in the dust before Dorothy. She stooped and kissed her moccasined feet, and called on the girl to forgive her for her treacherous conduct But Dorothy raised her from the ground and comforted her as best she could. To her she was as a child, although perhaps her pa.s.sion was a revelation that as yet she but imperfectly comprehended.

But Katie was to prove the sincerity of her regret in a practical fashion.

"Where are your friends?" she asked. "Tell me everything--yes, you can trust me. By the Blessed Virgin, I swear I will serve you faithfully!" She raised her great dark tear-stained eyes to Dorothy's.

The girl instinctively felt that Katie was to be trusted.

The only question was, could she count upon her discretion?

She felt that she could do that also; she knew that in a matter of intrigue the dusky metis have no equals. The chances were that the others had reached the Fort; if so, no more harm could be done. Briefly she told Katie about those who had started out with her to steal through the rebel lines to the English garrison.

"If Jacques and the women went in the direction you say,"

said Katie, "the chances are they have got to the Fort.

It matters not about the Police and Rory--they can look after themselves. I doubt, however, if your father and the sergeant have got through. You will stay in this house while I go and see. I have many friends among our people; the hearts of some of them not being entirely with Riel, they will help me. I shall take Pierre. Pepin and his mother you need not fear--they are not of the rebels; they have lived too long at Medicine Hat with the whites."

And then she went on briefly to explain how Pepin was a man renowned for his great wisdom and his cunning, as well as for the bodily strength which had once enabled him to strangle a bear. Still, his one great weakness was conceit of his personal appearance, and his belief that every woman was making a dead set at him. He also prided himself upon his manners, which were either absurdly elaborate or rough to a startling degree, as the mood seized him, and as Dorothy had seen for herself. His mother, whom she would see in the next room, was rather an amiable old soul, whose one providentially overpowering delusion was that Pepin was all that he considered himself to be. She regarded most young unengaged women with suspicion, as she fancied they looked upon her son with matrimonial designs. Katie knew that the old lady was at heart a match-maker, but, with the exception of herself, who, however, was engaged, she had found no one good or beautiful enough to aspire to an alliance with the Quesnelle family.

Dorothy felt vastly relieved at hearing all this. Then Katie took her by the hand, and, telling her to be of good courage, as she had nothing to fear led her into the next room.

"A good daughter for you, mother," she said smilingly to the dame who sat by the fire.

The old white-haired woman, who was refreshingly clean and tidy, turned her dark eyes sharply upon the new arrival. Whether it was that Dorothy was prepossessed in her favour and showed it, and that the old lady took it as a personal compliment, or that the physical beauty of the girl appealed to her, is immaterial; but the fact remained that she in her turn was favourably impressed.

She motioned to a seat beside herself.

"Sit hyar, honey," she said. "I will put the kettle on the fire and give you to eat and drink."

But the girl smilingly thanked her, and said that she had not long since finished supper. In no way loth to do so, she then went and sat down next the old dame, who regarded her with considerable curiosity and undisguised favour. Katie, seeing that she could safely leave her charge there, spoke a few words in a strange patois of Cree and French to Pepin, and, calling Pierre, left the house.

Dorothy glanced in wonder round the common sitting-room of this singular family. It was a picturesque interior, decorated with all kinds of odds and ends. There were curios in the way of Indian war weapons, scalping knives, gorgeously beaded moccasins and tobacco pouches, barbaric plumed head-dresses, stuffed birds and rattlesnakes, b.u.t.terflies, strings of birds' eggs, and grinning and truly hideous Indian masks for use in devil and give-away dances. At the far end of the room was a rude cobbler's bench and all the paraphernalia of one who works in boots, moccasins, and harness. Thus was betrayed the calling of Pepin Quesnelle.

But it was the man himself, with his extraordinary personality, who fascinated Dorothy. He was standing with his hands behind his back and his legs apart, talking to the sulky, uncompromising half-breed who had brought her there. He was not more than three feet in height, and he seemed all head and body. His arms were abnormally long and muscular. He had a dark shock head of hair, and his little black moustache was carefully waxed. His forehead was low and broad, and his aquiline nose, like his jet-black, almond-shaped eyes, betrayed an Indian ancestor.

His face betokened intelligence, conceit, and a keen sense of sardonic humour; still, there was nothing in it positively forbidding. To those whom he took a fancy to, he was doubtless loyal and kind, albeit his temperament was of a fiery and volatile nature. In this he showed the Gallic side of his origin. It was very evident that, despite his inconsiderable size, his hulking and sulky neighbour stood in considerable awe of him.

"Pshaw! Idiot! Pudding-head!" he was saying. "But it is like to as many Muskymote dogs you are--let one get down and all the others attack him. What, I ask, did your Riel do for you in '70? Did he not show the soles of the moccasins he had not paid for as soon as he heard that the red-coats were close to Fort Garry, and make for the States? Bah, you fools, and he will do so again--if he gets the chance! But he will not, mark my words, Bastien Lagrange; this time the red-coats will catch him, and he and you--yes, you, you chuckle-head--will hang all in a row at the end of long ropes in the square at Regina until you are dead, dead, dead! Think of it, Lagrange, what a great big ugly bloated corpse you'll make hanging by the neck after your toes have stopped twitching, twitching, and your face is a beautiful blue. Eh? _Bien!_ is not that so, blockhead?"

And the dwarf grinned and chuckled in such a bloodthirsty and antic.i.p.ating fashion that the girl shuddered.

Bastien Lagrange did not seem to relish the prospect, and his shifty eyes roamed round the walls.

"But the red-coats, how can they come?" he weakly asked.

"Where are they, the soldiers of the Great Mother? Riel has said that those stories of the cities over seas and the many red-coats are all lies, and that the Lord will smite the Police and those that are in the country with the anthrax that kills the cattle in the spring. Riel swears to that, for St. Peter appeared to him and told him so. He said so himself!"

"Bah, idiot!" retorted Pepin, "if it is that Riel is on such friendly terms with St. Peter, and the Lord is going to do such wonderful things for him, why does not the Saint give his messengers enough in advance for them to pay the poor men who make for them the moccasins they wear? Why does he suffer them to steal from their own people? Pshaw, it is the same old tale, the same old game from all time, from Mahomet to the present down-at-heel!

But courage, _mon cher_ Bastien! I will come and see you ch-chk, ch-chk!"--he elongated and twisted his neck, at the same time turning his eyes upwards in a horrible fashion--"while your feet go so ... so,"--he described a species of _pas-seul_ with his toes. "Is that not so, Antoine? Eh?--you beauty, you?" and here he gave the great bear, that had been gravely sitting on its haunches watching him like an attendant spirit, a sudden and affectionate kick.

To Dorothy's horror the great brute made a quick snap at him, which, however, only served to intensely amuse Pepin, for he skilfully evaded it, and, seizing his stick, at once began to dance up and down. The cunning little black eyes of the beast watched him apprehensively and resentfully.

"Aha, Antoine!" he cried. "Git up, you lazy one, and dance! Houp-la!"--the huge brute stood up on its hind legs--"Now, then, Bastien, pick up that fiddle and play.

That's it, piff-poum--piff-poum! Houp-la! piff-poum!"

and in another minute the man and the bear were dancing opposite each other. It was a weird and uncanny sight, the grotesque dwarf, with his face flushed and his hair on end, capering about and kicking with his pigmy legs, and the bear with uncouth waddles waltzing round and round, its movements every now and again being accelerated by a judicious dig in the ribs from Pepin's stick.

Bastien Lagrange fiddled away as if for dear life, and the old dame, her face beaming with pride and admiration, clapped her hands in time to the music. Every minute or two she would glance from her son to Dorothy's face to note what impression such a gallant sight had made.

"Is it not _magnifique?_ Is he not splendid?" she asked the girl.

"He is indeed wonderful," replied Dorothy, truthfully enough.

Despite the suggestion of weirdness the goblin-like scene created in her mind, the grimaces and antics of the manikin, and the sulkily responsive movements of the bear, were too absurd for anything. She thought of Rory's story of how the "b'ar" resented being left out of its share in Pepin's castor-oil; and was so tickled by the contrast of their present occupation that, despite herself, she broke out into a fit of laughter. Fearful of betraying the reason of it, she began to clap her hands like the old lady, which action, being attributed by the others to her undisguised admiration, at once found favour in their eyes. Dorothy began to imagine she was getting on famously.

"Honey," cried the old lady, raising her voice and stooping towards the girl, "I like yer face. Barrin' Katie, you're the only gal I'd like for Pepin. I reckon we'll just stow you away quietly like, and then afterwards you kin be his wife."

But the prospect so alarmed Dorothy that her heart seemed to stop beating again. At the same moment Pepin showed signs of fatigue, and the music stopped abruptly. Antoine, however, in a fit of absent-mindedness, kept on waltzing around on his own account, until Pepin gave him a crack over the head and brought him to his senses.

"Come hyar, Pepin," cried the old dame. "Mam'selle is took wid you. I think she'd make you a good wife, my sweet one."

Dorothy grew hot and cold at the very thought of it. She really did not know what these people were capable of.

Pepin approached her with what he evidently intended to be dignified strides. For the first time he honoured her with a searching scrutiny. Poor Dorothy felt as if the black eyes of this self-important dwarf were reading her inmost thoughts. She became sick with apprehension, and her eyes fell before his, In another minute the oracle spoke.

"No, _ma mere_, < p="">

Dorothy breathed again, but, true to the nature of her s.e.x, she resented the disparaging allusions to her nose and eyes--even from Pepin. What a conceited little freak he was, to be sure! And to tell her that she _would not do!_ At the same time she felt vastly relieved to think that the dwarf had resolved not to annex her. The only danger was that he might change his mind. His mother had taken his decision with praiseworthy resignation, and tried in a kindly fashion to lighten what she considered must be the girl's disappointment. Meanwhile Lagrange, judging by his lugubrious countenance, was evidently pondering over the pleasant prospect Pepin had predicted for him. The dwarf himself was engaged in trying to force the fragments of the stick down Antoine's throat, and the latter was angrily resenting the liberty.

Dorothy was becoming sleepy, what with the fatigue she had undergone during the day and the heat of the fire, when suddenly there came three distinct taps at one of the windows.

CHAPTER X