The Story of Louis Riel: the Rebel Chief Part 4

"Bon jour, mademoiselle et messieurs" the newcomer said in cheery tones, as he entered, making a low bow.

"Bon jour, Monsieur Scott," was the reply. Louis Riel, intently watching, saw the girl's colour come and go as she spoke to the young man. This was the same Scott, the Thomas Scott, the tidings of whose fate, at the hands of the rebel and murderer, Louis Riel, in later years, sent the blood boiling through the veins of Western Canada.

The young man stayed only for a few moments, and Riel observed that everybody in the house treated him as if in some way he had been the benefactor of all. When he arose to go, young Jean, who knew of every widgeon in the mere beyond the cottonwood grove, and where the last flock of quail had been seen to alight, followed him out the door, and very secretly communicated his knowledge.

Marie had seen a large flock of turkeys upon the prairie a few moments walk south of the poplar grove, and perhaps they had not yet gone away.

"When did you see them, ma chere mademoiselle Marie?

enquired Scott. You know turkeys do not settle down like immigrants in one spot, and wait till we inhabitants of the plains come out and shoot them. Was it last week, or only the day before yesterday that you saw them?" There was a very merry twinkle in his eye as he went on with this banter. Marie affected to pout, but she answered.

"This morning, while the dew was shining upon the gra.s.s, and you, I doubt not, were sleeping soundly, I was abroad on the plains for the cows. It was then I saw them. I am glad, however, that you have pointed out the difference between turkeys and immigrants. I did not know it before."

He handed her a tiger lily which he had plucked on the way, saying,

"There, for your valuable information, I give you that.

Next time I come, if you are able to tell me where I can find several flocks, I shall bring you some coppers." With a world of mischief in his eyes, he disappeared, and Mary, in spite of herself, could not conceal from everybody in the house a quick little sigh at his departure.

"It seems to me this Monsieur Scott is a great favourite with your folk, Monsieur?" Said M. Riel, when the young man had left the cottage. "Now I came with my friend also for sport, but no pretty eyes had seen any flocks to reserve for me." And he gave a somewhat sneering glance at poor Marie, who was pretending to be engaged in examining the petals of the tiger-lilly, although she was all the while thinking of the mischievous, manly, sunny-hearted lad who had given it to her. M. Riel's words and the sneer were lost, so far as she was concerned.

Her ears were where her heart was, out on the plain beyond the cottonwood, where she could see the tall, straight, lithe figure of young Scott, with his dog at his heels, its head now bobbing up from the gra.s.s, and now its tail.

"Oui, Monsieur," returned Marie's father, "Monsieur Scott is a very great favourite with our family. We are under an obligation to him that it will be difficult for us ever to repay."

"Whence comes this benefactor," queried M. Riel, with an ugly sneer, "and how has he placed you under such obligation?" Then, reflecting that he was showing a bitterness respecting the young man which he could just then neither explain nor justify, he said:

"Mais, pardonnez moi. Think me not rude for asking these questions. When pretty eyes are employed to see, and pretty lips to tell of, game for one sportsman in preference to another, the neglected one may be excused for seeking to know in what way fortune has been kind with his rival."

"Shall I tell the whole story, Marie?" enquired the _pere_, "or will you do so?"

"O I know that you will not leave anything out that can show, the bravery of Mr. Scott, so I shall leave you to tell it," replied the girl.

"Well, last spring, Marie was spending some days with her aunt, a few miles up Red River. It was the flood time, and as you remember the river was swollen to a point higher than it had ever reached within the memory of any body in the settlement. Marie is venturesome, and since a child has shown a keen delight in going upon boats, or paddling a canoe; so one day, during the visit which I have mentioned, she got into a birch that swung in a little pond formed behind her uncle's premises by the over-flowing of the stream's channel. Untying the canoe, she seized the blade and began to paddle about in the lazy water. Presently she reached the eddies, which, since a child, she has always called the 'rings of the water-witches,' wherever she learned that term. Her cousin, Violette, was standing in the doorway, as she saw Marie move off, and she cried out to her to beware of the eddies; but my daughter, wayward and reckless, as it is her habit to be in such matters, merely replied with a laugh; and then, as the canoe began to turn round and round in the gurgling circles, she cried out, 'I am in the rings of the water-witches. C'est bon! bon! C'est magnifique! O I wish you were with me, Violette, ma chere.

It is so delightful to go round and round.' A little way beyond, not more than twice the canoe's length, rushed by, roaring, the full tide of the river. 'Beware, Marie, beware, for the love of heaven, of the river. If you get a little further out, and these eddies will drag you out, you will be in the mad current, and no arm can paddle the canoe to land out of the flood. Then, dear, there is the fall below, and the fans of the mill. Come back, won't you!' But my daughter heeded not the words. She only laughed, and began dipping water up from the eddies with the paddle-blade, as if it were a spoon that she held in her hand. 'I am dipping water from the witches rings,' she cried. 'How the drops sparkle! Every one is a glittering jewel of priceless value. I wish you were here with me, Violette!' Suddenly, and in an altered tone, she cried, 'Mon Dieu! My paddle is gone.' The paddle had no sooner glided out into the rushing, turbulent waters than the canoe followed it, and Marie saw herself drifting on to her doom. Half a mile below was the fall, and at the side of the fall, went ever and ever around with tremendous violence, the rending fans of the water-mill. Marie knew full well that any drift boat, or log, or raft, carried down the river at freshet-flow, was always swept into the toils of the inexorable wheels.

Yet, if she were reckless and without heed a few minutes before, I am told that now she was calm. As she is present, I must refrain from too much eulogy of her behaviour.

Violette gave the alarm that Marie was adrift in the river without a paddle, and in a few seconds, every body living near had turned out, and were running down the sh.o.r.e. Several brought paddles, but it took hard running to keep up with the canoe, for the flood was racing at a speed of eight miles an hour. When they did get up in line each one flung out a paddle. But one fell too far out, and another not far enough. About fifteen men were about the banks in violent excitement, and every one of them saw nothing but doom for Marie. As the canoe neared a point about two hundred yards above the fall, a young white man--all the rest were bois-brules--rushed out upon the bank, with a paddle in his hand, and, without a word, leaped into the mad waters. With a few strokes, he was at the side of the canoe, and put the paddle into Marie's hand. 'Here,' he said, 'Keep away from the mill; that is your only danger, and steer sheer over the fall, getting as close as possible to the left bank.' The height of the fall, as you are aware, was not more than fifteen or eighteen feet, and there was plenty of water below, and not very much danger from rocks. 'Go you on sh.o.r.e now, and I will meet my doom, or achieve my safety,'

Marie said; but the young man answered, 'Nay, I will go over the fall too: I can then be of some service to you.'

So he swam along by the canoe's side directing my daughter, and shaping the course of the prow on the very brink of the fall. Then all shot over together. The canoe and Marie, and the young man were buried far under the terrible ma.s.s of water, but they soon came to the surface again, when the heroic stranger saved my daughter, and through the fury of the mad churning waters, landed her safe and unhurt upon the bank. The young man was Thomas Scott, whom you saw here this morning. Is it any wonder, think you, that when Marie sees wild turkeys upon the prairie, she keeps the knowledge of it to herself till she gets the ear of her deliverer? Think you, now, that it is strange he should be looked upon by us as a benefactor?"

"A very brave act, indeed, on the part of this young man," replied the swarthy M. Riel. "He has excellent judgment, I perceive, or he would not so readily have calculated that no harm could come to any one who could swim well by being carried over the falls."

Marie's eyes flashed indignantly at this cold blooded discounting of the generous, uncalculating bravery of her young preserver.

"I doubt, Monsieur, she said, whether if you had been on the bank where Monsieur Scott jumped in, you would have looked upon the going over of the fall as an exploit so free of danger as you describe it now. As a matter of fact, there _were_ many half-breeds there, many of whom, no doubt, were as brave as yourself, but I should have perished in the fans of the mill if I had to depend upon the succour of any one of them."

"Mademoiselle," he retorted with a fierce light in his eye, "I am not a half-breed."

"O, pardonnez mois, I thought from your features and the straightness of your coal-black hair, that you were."

Riel's blood was nigh unto boiling in his veins, but he had craft enough to preserve a tolerably unruffled exterior.

"And in return for this great bravery, ma pet.i.te demoiselle has, I suppose, given her heart to her deliverer?"

"I think Monsieur is impertinent; and I shall ask my father to forbid him to continue to address me in such a manner."

"A thousand pardons; I did not mean to pain, but only to chaff, your brave daughter. I think that Monsieur Scott is most fortunate in having a friend, a beautiful friend, so loyal to him, and so jealous of his fair fame. But to pa.s.s to other matters. Have you had visits from any emissaries of the Canadian government during the autumn?"

"Yes, Monsieur Mair came here one day in company with Monsieur Scott. They were both quail shooting. They stayed only for a little, and I was quite favourably impressed with the agreeableness and politeness of M.

Mair's manners."

"O, indeed! Monsieur Mair was here and with Mr. Scott!

I am glad that you conceive an opinion so favourable of Monsieur Mair, but I regret that I am unable to share in the regard. I think I had better open your eyes somewhat to the character of this agreeable gentleman. Since coming to Red River, his chief occupation has been writing correspondence respecting our colony, and the civilization and morals of our people. I have been preserving carefully some of the communications for future use, and if you will permit me I shall read an extract from a late contribution of his to a newspaper printed in Ontario.

You will, I think, be able to gather from it something of his opinion respecting the Metis women. Indeed, I am surprised that Mademoiselle's great friend and preserver,"

he looked sneeringly at Marie, "should have for so close a companion a person who entertains these views about our people."

"I do not know that Monsieur Scott is so close a companion of Monsieur Mair," put in Marie. "I think Monsieur is now, as he has been doing all along, a.s.suming quite too much."

"I sincerely trust that I am doing so, but I shall read the extract," and he took from his pocket-book a newspaper slip. Smoothing the creases out of the same, he read, with the most malignant glee, the following paragraph, dwelling with emphasis upon every disparaging epithet:--

"Here I am in Red River settlement. What a paradise of a place it is. The mud, which is a beautiful dusky red, like the complexion of the Red River belles, does not rise much beyond my knees; and resembling the brown-skinned beauties in more than complexion, it affectionately clings to me, and do what I will, I cannot get rid of it."

"That is a very flattering description of our Red River young women, I am sure, and from the pen of your great friend's friend, too. Now is it not? But there is more than this," and he proceeded to read further.

"The other evening they had a pow-wow in the settlement, which they called a dance. I was invited, and being considered such a great man here, of course--I do not speak it boastingly--the hearts of all the tallow-complexioned girls throbbed at a great rate when I entered."

"Tallow complexioned girls!" reiterated the reader.

"Very complimentary, indeed, on the part of the friend of your greatest friend."

"Monsieur will either please finish reading his slip, since he wishes to do so, although, for my part, I am not at all interested in it, or put it by. In any case, I must ask that he will cease addressing me in this insolent tone."

"Then, since Mademoiselle wills it so, I shall finish the very truthful and complimentary paragraph without further comment."

"Such a bear garden as that dance was; yet I somewhat enjoyed the languishing glances of the bright-eyed damsels. But, ugh! the savages never can be made to wash themselves. When the dance had continued for three or four hours, the dancers began to pair off like pigeons and in each nook you could observe a half-breed and his girl, sometimes the demoiselle nursing her beau with arms about his neck, or _vice versa_. ... The women are all slatterns, and as a rule they exhibit about as much morality as is found among the female elk of the prairies. A white man here who is at all successful in winning female attention, needs but to whistle, or to raise his finger, to have half a dozen of the dusky beauties running after him.

While I write this letter I see two maidens pa.s.sing under my window. I no longer take pride or fun in the matter. To me they have become a nuisance."

CHAPTER VI.

"Now, Monsieur," said M. Riel, folding his newspaper slip and putting it back again into his greasy pocket-book, "you well perceive that this Monsieur Mair is not exactly the sort of gentleman who ought to be the recipient of your hospitalities. I do not say that Monsieur Scott, who went over the little waterfall with your daughter, holds the same opinion respecting us, as as does his friend Monsieur Mair; I only know that upon matters of this kind bosom friends are very apt to be of the same mind.

"Who, let me ask again, has informed the gallant and generous Monsieur that these two young white men are bosom friends? Monsieur Mair was at this house once, and Monsieur Scott was with him. I understood that they had only met the day before; and it is only a week ago since Monsieur told me that he had not since seen his new friend. Monsieur has been sarcastic in his reference to Monsieur Scott, I think without much excuse."

"Is not this, Monsieur Scott, an employe of the Vampire Snow, who is making surveys through our territories in our despite, and in the face of law and justice?" Marie's father replied:

"Il est, Monsieur."

"So I had been informed. Now Monsieur, I have some serious business to talk to you about. As you are no doubt aware, the authorities at the Canadian Capital are at this moment discussing the project of buying the North-West Territories from the Hudson Bay Company, converting Red River into a Dominion Colony of the Confederation, and setting to rule it a governor and officials chosen from among Canadians, who hold opinions respecting us as a people, quite similar to those entertained by Monsieur Mair, and those who have the honour of being his friend." This with a malignant glance toward Marie, who merely retorted with a scornful flash in her fine, proud eyes.

"Well, Monsieur, I have decided that Red River shall not pa.s.s over to the hands of alien officials. I shall call upon every true colonist to rise and aid me in a.s.serting our rights as free men, and as the proprietors of the soil we have tilled for so many years. As for your friend Mr. Scott, Mademoiselle"--turning with a hideous look toward Marie--"I am very sorry to interfere with his good fortune, but before the set of to-morrow's sun, I intend packing Mr. Snow and his followers out of our territories. Nay more, I shall keep a very sharp look out for this young man who went with you over the chute pet.i.te. Indeed it may be interesting for you to hear that I know something of his antecedents already. He delights to call himself a 'loyalist,' and has declared that the people of Red River have no right to protest against the transfer to the Canadian Government."

"I do not know what Monsieur Scott's views are upon this question," replied the girl. "Whatever they are I presume that he is as much ent.i.tled to hold them as you are to maintain yours."