The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief
by Joseph Edmond Collins

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Title: The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief

Author: Joseph Edmond Collins

Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10399]

Language: English

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The Story of Louis Riel
The Rebel Chief


by Joseph Edmond Collins

Toronto, 1885




CHAPTER I.

Along the banks of the Red River, over those fruitful
plains brightened with wild flowers in summer, and swept
with fierce storms in the winter-time, is written the
life story of Louis Riel. Chance was not blind when she
gave as a field to this man's ambition the plains whereon
vengeful Chippewas and ferocious Sioux had waged their
battles for so many centuries; a country dyed so often
with blood that at last Red River came to be its name.
But while our task is to present the career of this
apostle of insurrection and unrest; stirred as we may be
to feelings of horror for the misery, the tumult, the
terror and the blood of which he has been the author, we
must not neglect to do him, even him, the justice which
is his right.

He is not, as so many suppose, a half-breed, moved by
the vengeful, irresponsible, savage blood in his veins.
Mr. Edward Jack, [Footnote: I cannot make out what Mr.
Jack's views are respecting Riel. When I asked him, he
simply turned his face toward the sky and made some remark
about the weather, I know that he has strong French
proclivities, though the blood of a Scottish bailie is
in his veins.] of New Brunswick, who is well informed on
all Canadian matters, hands me some passages which he
has translated from M. Tasse's book on Canadians in the
North West; and from these I learn that Riel's father,
whose name also was Louis, was born at the island of
La Crosse, in the North-West Territories. This parent was
the son of Jean Baptiste Riel, who was a French Canadian
and a native of Berthier (_en haut_). His mother, that
is the rebel's grandmother, was a Franco-Montagnaise
Metis. From this it will be seen that instead of being
a "half breed," Louis Riel is only one-eighth Indian, or
is, if we might use the phrase employed in describing a
mixture of Ethiopian and Caucasian blood, an Octoroon.

Nay, more than this, we have it shown that our rebel can
lay claim to no small share of respectability, as that
word goes. During the summer of 1822, Riel's father, then
in his fifth year, was brought to Canada by his parents,
who caused the ceremony of baptism to be performed with
much show at Berthier. In 1838 M. Riel _pere_ entered
the service of the Hudson Bay Company, and left Lower
Canada, where he had been attending school, for the
North-West. He was stationed at Rainy Lake, but did not
care for his occupation. He returned, therefore, to
civilization and entered as a novice in the community of
the Oblat Fathers, where he remained for two years. There
was a strong yearning for the free, wild life of the
boundless prairies in this man, and Red River, with its
herds of roaming buffalo, its myriads of duck, and geese
and prairie hens, began to beckon him home again. He
followed his impulse and departed; joining the Metis
hunters in their great biennial campaigns against the
herds, over the rolling prairie. Many a buffalo fell upon
the plain with Louis Riel's arrow quivering in his flank;
many a feast was held around the giant pot at which no
hunter received honours so marked as stolid male, and
olive-skinned, bright-eyed, supple female, accorded him.
Surfeited for the time of the luxury of the limitless
plain, Riel took rest; and then a girl with the lustrous
eyes of Normandy began to smile upon him, and to besiege
his heart with all her mysterious force of coquetry. He
was not proof; and the hunter soon lay entangled in the
meshes of the brown girl of the plains. In the autumn of
1843 he married her. Her name was Julie de Lagimodiere,
a daughter of Jean Baptiste de Lagimodiere.

Louis _pere_ was now engaged as a carder of wool; and
having much ability in contrivance he constructed a little
model of a carding mill which, with much enthusiasm, he
exhibited to some officers of the Hudson Bay Company.
But the Company, though having a great body, possessed
no soul, and the disappointed inventor returned to his
waiting wife with sorrow in his eyes. He next betook
himself to the cultivation of a farm upon the banks of
the little Seine; and his good, patient wife, when the
autumn came, toiled with him all day, with her sickle
among the sheaves.

Tilling the soil proved too laborious, and he determined
to erect a grist mill; but the stream that ran through
the clayey channel of the _Seine petite_ was too feeble
to turn the ponderous wheels. So he was obliged to move
twelve miles to the east, where flowed another small
stream bearing the aesthetic name "Grease River." This
was not large enough either for his purposes, so with
stupendous enterprise he cut a canal nine miles long,
and through it decoyed the waters of the little Seine
into the arms of the "Greasy" paramour. At this mill was
ground the grain that grew for many a mile around; and
in a little while Louis Riel became known as the most
enterprising and important settler in Red River. But he
was not through all his career a man of peace. The most
deadly feud had grown up through many long years between
the Hudson Bay Company and the Metis settled upon their
territory; and it is only bald justice to say that the,
reprisals of the half-breeds, the revolts, the hatred of
everything in official shape, were not altogether
undeserved. Louis Riel was at the head of many a jarring
discord. How such an unfortunate condition grew we shall
see later on, and we may also be able to determine if
there are any shoulders upon which we can lay blame for
the murder and misery that since have blighted one of
the fairest portions of Canada.

Louis Riel the elder was in due time blessed with a son,
the same about whom it is our painful duty to write this
little book. Estimating at its fullest the value of
education, the father was keenly anxious for an opportunity
to send _Louis fils_ to a school; but fortune had not
been liberal with him in later years, though the sweat
was constantly upon his brow, and his good wife's fingers
were never still. This son had unusual precocity, and
strangers who looked upon him used to say that a great
fire slumbered in his eye. He was bright, quick and
piquant; and it is said that it was impossible to know
the lad and not be pleased with his person and manners.
One important eye had observed him many a time; and this
was the great ecclesiastical dignitary of Red River,
Monseigneur Tache. He conceived a strong affection for
the lad and resolved to secure for him a sound education.
His own purse was limited, but there was a lady whom he
knew upon whose bounty he could count. I give the following
extract, which I translate from M. Tasse's book, and I
write it in italics that it may be the more clearly
impressed upon the reader's mind when he comes to peruse
the first story of blood which shall be related: _The
father's resources did not permit him to undertake the
expense of this education, but His Grace Archbishop Tache
having been struck with the intellectual precocity of
Louis, found a generous protector of proverbial munificence
for him in the person of Madame Masson, of Terrebonne._
In later years it was reserved to the same bishop to go
out as a mediator between Government and a band of rebels
which had at its head a man whose hands were reddened
with the blood of a settler. This rebel and murderer was
the same lad upon whom the bishop had lavished his
affection and his interest.

Louis, the elder, was travelling upon the plain, when he
met his son, bound for the civilized East, to enter upon
his studies. He had pride in the lad, and said to his
companions that one day he knew he would have occasion
to glory in him. They said good-bye, the father seasoning
the parting with wholesome words of advice, the son with
filial submission receiving them, and storing them away
in his heart. This was their last parting, and their last
speaking. Before the son had been long at his studies he
learned that his father was dead. His nature was deeply
affectionate, and the painful intelligence overwhelmed
him for many days. At school he was not distinguished
for brilliancy, but his tutors observed that he had solid
parts, and much intellectual subtlety. He was not a great
favourite among his class-mates generally, because his
manners were shy and reserved, and he shrank from, rather
than courted, the popularity and leadership which are
the darling aims of so many lads in their school-days.
Yet he had many friends who were warmly attached to him;
and to these he returned an equal affection. One of his
comrades was stricken down with a loathsome and fatal
malady, and all his comrades fled in fear away from his
presence. But Louis Riel, the "half-breed," as the boys
knew him, bravely went to the couch of his stricken
friend, nursing, and bestowing all his attention and
affection upon him, and offering consoling words. It is
related that when the last moments came, the sufferer
arose, and flinging his arms around Louis' neck, poured
out his thanks and besought heaven to reward him. Then
he fell backwards and died.

Frequently young Riel's school-mates would ask him, "What
do you intend doing when you leave school? Will you stay
here, or do you go out again into the wilderness among
the savages?"

His eye would lighten with indignation at hearing the
word "savages" applied to his people. "I will go out to
the Red River," he would reply, to follow in the footsteps
of my father. He has been a benefactor of our people,
and I shall seek to be their benefactor too. When I tire
of work, I can take my gun and go out for herds upon the
plains with our people, whom you call "savages." I know
not what you mean when you say "savages." We speak French
as you do; our hearts are as kind, as noble, and as true
as yours. When one of our people is in affliction the
others give him sympathy and help. We are bound together
by strong ties of fraternity; there is no jealousy among
us, no tyranny of caste, but we all live in peace and
love as the sisters and brothers in one great household.
My eye deceives me if like this live you. You are divided
into envious, brawling factions, each one of which tries
to injure, and blight the reputation of the other. If
one of you fall upon evil times he is left without the
sympathy and succour of the others. In politics and in
social grades you are divided, and in every respect you
are such that I should mourn the day when our peaceable,
simple, contented people on the banks of the Red River
should in any respect choose your civilization for their
model.

He often spoke of a burning desire which he had to be a
political as well as a social leader in the Colony of
Red River. He frequently, likewise, muttered dark threats
against the overbearing policy and dark injustice of "The
Great Monopoly," as he used to characterize the Hudson
Bay Company. Occasionally he would burst out into passionate
words like these:

"They treat us as they would blood thirsty savages upon
the plains. They spurn us with their feet as dogs, and
then they spit upon us. They mock at our customs, they
regard with contempt that which to us is sacred and above
price. They are not even deterred by the virtue of our
women. Now witness, you God who made all men, the white
man and the savage, I will, if the propitious day ever
come, strike in vengeance, and my blow will be with an
iron hand, whose one smiting shall wipe out all the
injustice and the dishonour."

Filled with these sentiments, when his school days came
to an end, he packed his portmanteaus and took his way
by stage and boat for the region that not many years
hence was to ring and shudder with his name.




CHAPTER II.

Long before the vision of a confederation of the British
Provinces entered into the brain of any man, Lord Selkirk,
coming to the wilds of North America, found a tract of
country fertile in soil, and fair to look upon. He arrived
in this unknown wilderness when it was summer, and all
the prairie extending over illimitable stretches till it
was lost in the tranquil horizon, was burning with the
blooms of a hundred varieties of flowers. Here the "tiger
rose," like some savage queen of beauty, rose to his
knees and breathed her sultry balm in his face. Aloof
stood the shy wild rose, shedding its scent with delicate
reserve; but the wild pea, and the convolvulus, and the
augur flower, and the insipid daisy, ran riot through
all the grass land, and surfeited his nostrils with their
sweets. Here and there upon the mellow level stood a
clump of poplars or white oaks, prim, like virgins without
suitors, with their robes drawn close about them; but
when over the unmeasured plain the wind blew, they bowed
their heads: as if saluting the stranger who came to
found a colony in the wilderness of which they were
sentinels. Here too, in the hush, for the first time,
the planter's ear heard a far-off, nigh indistinct, sound
of galloping thunder. He knew not what it meant, and his
followers surmised that it might be the tumult of some
distant waterfall, borne hither now because a storm was
at hand, and the denser air was a better carrier of the
sound. And while they remained wondering what it could
be, for the thunder was ever becoming louder, and,

   "Nearer clearer, deadlier than before"

Lo! out of the west came what seemed as a dim shadow
moving across the plain. With bated breath they watched
the dark mass moving along like some destroying tempest
with ten thousand devils at its core. Chained to the
ground with a terrible awe they stood fast for many
minutes till at last in the dim light, for the gloaming
had come upon the plains, they see eye-balls that blaze
like fire, heads crested with rugged, uncouth horns and
shaggy manes; and then snouts thrust down, flaring
nostrils, and rearing tails.

My God, a buffalo herd, and we'll be trampled to death,"
almost shrieked one of the Earl's followers.

"Peace! keep cool! Up, up instantly into these trees!"
and the word was obeyed as if each man was an instrument
of the leader's will. Beyond, in the south-east, a full
moon, luscious seeming as some ripened, mellow fruit,
was rising, and the yellow light was all over the plain.
Then the tremendous mass, headed by maddened bulls, with
blazing eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward
the south, like an unchained hurricane. Some of the
terrified beasts ran against the trees, crushing horns
and skull, and fell prone upon the plain, to be trampled
into jelly by the hundreds of thousands in the rear. The
tree upon which the earl had taken refuge received many
a shock from a crazed bull; and it seemed to the party
from the tree-branches as if all the face of the plains
was being hurled toward the south in a condition of the
wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no
such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping
over the lonely plain under the wan, elfin light of the
new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing itself into
spectral shapes of sullen aspect, rose from the dusky,
writhing mass, and the flaming of more than ten thousand
eyeballs in the gloom presented a picture more terrible
than ever came into the imagination of the writer of the
Inferno. The spectacle, as observed by those some twenty
feet from the ground, might be likened somewhat to a
turbulent sea when a sturdy tide sets against the storm,
and the mad waves tumble hither and thither, foiled, and
impelled, yet for all the confusion and obstruction moving
in one direction with a sweep and a force that no power
could chain. Circling among and around the strange, dusk
clouds of steam that went up from the herd were scores
of turkey buzzards, their obscene heads bent downward,
their sodden eyes gleaming with expectancy. Well they
knew that many a gorgeous feast awaited them wherever
boulder, tree, or swamp lay in the path of the mighty
herd. At last the face of the prairie had ceased its
surging; no lurid eyeball-light gleamed out of the dusk;
and the tempest of cattle had passed the _voyageurs_ and
went rolling out into the unbounded stretches of the dim,
yellow plain.

The morrow's sun revealed a strange spectacle. The great
amplitude of rich, green grasses, warmed and beautified
by the petals of flowers was as a ploughed field. The
herbage had been literally crushed into mire, and this
the innumerable hoofs had churned up with the soft, rich,
dark soil of the prairie. The leguminous odours from
decaying clover, and rank, matted masses of wild pease,
the feverish exhalations of the tiger-lily, and of the
rich blooded "buffalo lilac," together with the dank,
earthy smell from the broken sod, were disagreeable and
oppressive. Lord Selkirk's heart sank within him at seeing
the ruin.

"I fear me," he said, "to plant a colony here. A herd of
these beasts coming upon a settlement would be worse than
ten thousand spears." But some of his guides had before
seen the impetuous rushing of the herds, and they assured
him that this might not occur again in this portion of
the prairie for a quarter of a century to come.

"At any rate," they persisted, "the buffalo keeps away
from regions that send up chimney-smoke. The chief regret
by-and-by will be that the herds will not come near enough
to us." And the Earl was reassured and proceeded with
the steps preliminary to founding the colony. It need
not be said that the place we have been describing was
the prairie on the banks of the Red River.

In a little while ships bearing numbers of sturdy Scotchmen
began to cross the sea bound for this famous colony,
where the land was ready for the plough, and mighty herds
of wild cattle grazed knee-deep among gorgeous flowers
and sweet grasses. They brought few white women with
them, the larger number being young men who had bade
their "Heeland" lassies good-bye with warm kisses,
promising to come back for them when they had built
homesteads for themselves in the far away wilds of the
West.

But when Lord Selkirk planted here his sturdy Scotchmen,
wild beasts and game were not the only inhabitants of
the plains. The Crees, a well-built, active, war-loving
race, had from ages long forgotten roamed over these
interminable meadows, fishing in the streams, and hunting
buffalo. Here and there was to be found one of their
"towns," a straggling congregation of tents made of the
skins of the buffalo. Beautiful, dark-skinned girls, in
bare brown, little feet, sat through the cool of evening
in the summer days sewing beads upon the moccasins of
their lovers, while the wrinkled dame limped about,
forever quarrelling with the dogs, performing the household
duties.

But the Crees liked not the encroachment upon their
territories by these foreign men with pale faces; and
they held loud pow-wows, and brandished spears, and swept
their knives about their heads till their sheen gleamed
many miles over the prairie. Then preparing their paint
they set out to learn from the pale-faced chief what was
his justification for the invasion.

"You cannot take lands without war and conquest," were
the words of a young chief with a nose like a hawk's
beak, and an eye like the eagle's, to Lord Selkirk. "You
did not fight us; therefore you did not conquer us. How
comes it then that you have our lands?"

"Are you the owners of this territory?" calmly enquired
the nobleman.

"We are; no one else is the owner."

"But I shall shew you that from two standpoints, first
from my own, and afterwards from yours, it belongs not
to you. Firstly, it belongs to our common Sovereign, the
King of England. You belong to him; so likewise do the
buffalo that graze upon the plains, and the fishes that
swim in the rivers. Therefore our great and good Sovereign
sayeth unto me, his devoted subject, 'Go you forth into
my territories in the North of America, and select there
a colony whereon to plant any of my faithful children
who choose to go thither.' I have done so. Then, since
you hold possession of these plains only by the bounty
and sufferance of our good father the King, how can you
object to your white brethren coming when they were
permitted so to do?"

Ugh; that was only the oily-tongued talk of the pale-faces.
While seeming to speak fair, and smooth, and wise, their
tongues were as crooked as the horn of the mountain-goat.
Yet no chief could answer the Earl's contention, and they
looked from one to another with some traces of confusion
and defeat upon their faces.

"But," continued Lord Selkirk, in the same grave and firm
voice, "from your own standpoint you are not the proprietors
of this territory. The Saulteux, with whom you wage your
constant wars, have been upon these plains as long as
you. In times of peace you have intermarried with them,
and I now find in your wigwams many a squaw obtained from
among the villages of your rivals."

Ugh! They could not deny this. It was evident from their
silence and the abject way in which they glanced from
one to another that the case had gone against them.

"But there is no reason for your jealousy or your
hostility," Lord Selkirk continued; "our people come
among you, not as conquerors, but as brothers. They shall
not molest you but quietly till the fields and raise
their crops. Instead of showing unfriendliness, I think
you should take them by the hand and welcome them as
brothers." These words at last prevailed, and the Crees
put by their war paint, and came among the whites and
offered them fish and buffalo steak.

Thus was the colony founded. The grain grew well, and
there was abundance in the new settlement, save that at
intervals an army of locusts would come out of the west
and destroy every green leaf. Then the settlers' needs
were sore, and they were obliged to subsist upon roots
and what fell to them from the chase.

Many years rolled on, and the sturdy Scotch settlers had
driven their roots fast into the ground. One alone of
all the number who had kissed good-bye to his Scottish
sweetheart returned to redeem his pledge. For the rest
they soon forgot the rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes
that they had left behind them, in the pleasures of the
chase upon the plain, and the interest in their wide
acres. But these perhaps were not the only reasons why
they had forgotten their vows to the Scottish girls.
Among the Crees were many beautiful maidens, with large,
velvety eyes, black as the night when no moon is over
the prairie, and shy as a fawn's. When first the white
man came amongst them the girls were bashful; and when
he went into the Crees' tent they would shrink away hiding
their faces. But it soon became apparent that the shyness
was not indifference; indeed many a time when the Scotch
hunter passed a red man's tent he saw a pair of eyes
looking languishingly after him. Little by little the
timidity began to disappear, and sometimes the brown-skinned
girls came in numbers to the white man's dwelling, and
submitted themselves to be taught how to dance the
cotillion and the eight-hand reel. Then followed the
wooing among the flowery prairies; and the white men
began to pledge their troths to the dusky girls. Many a
brave hunter who had a score of scalps to dangle from
his belt, sought, but sought in vain, a kind glance from
some beautiful maiden of his tribe, who before the pale
faces came would have deemed great indeed the honour of
becoming the spouse of a warrior so distinguished. Jealousy
began to fill the hearts of the Crees, but the mothers
and wives, and the daughters too, were constant mediators,
and never ceased to exert themselves for peace.

"When," said they, "the white-faces first came among us,
our chiefs and our young men all cried out, 'O they deem
themselves to be a better race than we; they think their
white blood is better than our red blood. They will not
mingle with us although they will join with us in hunting
our wild meat, or eating it after it has fallen to our
arrow or spear. They will not consider one of our daughters
fit for marriage with one of them; because it would blend
their blood with our blood.' Now, O you chiefs and young
men, that which you at the first considered a hardship
if it did not come to pass, has come to pass, and yet
you complain. 'The whites are above marrying our daughters,'
you first cry; now you plan revenge because they want to
marry, and do marry them." The arguments used by the
women were too strong, and the brawny, eagle-eyed hunters
were compelled to mate themselves with the ugly girls of
the tents. It is asserted by some writers on the North-West
that the beauty observed in the Metis women in after
years was in great part to be attributed to the fact that
the English settlers took to wife only the most beautiful
of the Indian girls. Now and again too, the canny Scotch
lad, with his gun on his shoulder and his retriever at
his heel, would walk through a Saulteux settlement. The
girls here were still shyer than their Cree cousins, but
they were not a whit less lovely. They were not dumpy
like so many Indian girls, but were slight of build, and
willowy of motion. Their hair was long and black, but it
was as fine as silk, and shone like the plumage of a
blackbird. There was not that oily swarthiness in the
complexion, which makes so many Indian women hideous in
the eyes of a connoisseur of beauty; but the cheeks of
these girls were a pale olive, and sometimes, when they
were excited, a faint tinge of rose came out like the
delicate pink flush that appears in the olive-grey of
the morning. And these maidens, too, began to cast
languishing eyes upon the pale-faced stranger; and sighed
all the day while they sewed fringe upon their skirts
and beads upon their moccasins. Their affections now were
not for him who showed the largest number of wolves'
tongues or enemies' scalps, but for the gracious stranger
with his gentle manners and winning ways. They soon began
to put themselves in his way when he came to shoot chicken
or quail among the grasses; would point out to him passes
leading around the swamps, and inform him where he might
find elk or wild turkey. Then with half shy, yet half
coquettish airs, and a lurking tenderness in their great
dusk hazel eyes, they would twist a sprig off a crown of
golden rod, and with their dainty little brown fingers
pin it upon the hunter's coat. With shy curiosity they
would smoothe the cloth woven in Paisley, forming in
their minds a contrast between its elegance and that of
the coats of their own red gallants made of the rough
skin of the wolf or the bison. So it came to pass that
in due season most of the pretty girls among the Jumping
Indians had gone with triumph and great love in their
hearts from the wigwam of their tribe to be the wives of
the whites in their stately dwellings.

In this way up-grew the settlement of Red River; by such
intermarriages were the affections of the red men all
over the plains, from the cold, gloomy regions of the
North to the mellow plains of the South, won by their
pale-faced neighbours. The savages had not shut their
ears to what their women had so eloquently urged, and
they would say:

"The cause of these pale people is our cause; their
interests are our interests; they have mingled their
flesh and blood with ours; we shall be their faithful
brothers to the death." It was this fact, not the wisdom
of government Indian agents, nor the heaven-born insight
of government itself into the management of tribes that
so long preserved peace and good will throughout our
North-West Territories. It was for this reason that
enemies of government in the Republic could say after
they had revealed the corruption of Red Cloud and Black
Rock agents:

"Observe the Canadian tribes, mighty in number, and
warlike in their nature. They fight not, because they
have been managed with wisdom and humanity. There is no
corruption among the accredited officials; there is no
sinister dealing towards them by the government." We do
not charge our officials with corruption, neither do we
believe that their administration has been feeble;--on
the whole our attitude towards the Indian people has been
fair; our policy has revealed ordinary sense,--and not
much brilliancy. Probably half a dozen level-headed
wood-choppers, endowed with authority to deal with the
tribes, could have acquitted themselves as well; perhaps
they might not have done so well, and it is probable that
they might have exhibited a better showing.

It was in this settlement that in after years appeared
Louis Riel _pere_. For some generations the Hudson Bay
Company had carried on an extensive trade in peltry, and
numbers of their _employes_ were French peasants or
_coureurs de bois_. Thousands of these people were
scattered here and there over the territories; and they
began to turn loving eyes toward the rich meadows along
the banks of the Red River. Some of these had for wives
squaws whom they had wooed and won during their engagement
in the peltry trade. These finding that other whites had
taken Indian girls for brides, felt drawn towards the
new settlement by sentiments stronger than those of mere
interest. Numbers of unmarried French took up farms in
the new colony, and soon fell captive to the charms of
the Cree girls. Now and again the history of the
simple-hearted Scots was repeated; and a _coureur_ was
presently seen to bring a shy, witching Saulteux maiden
from the tents of the Jumping Indians. But the French,
it must be said, were not so _dilettante_ in their taste
for beauty as were their Scottish brethren; yet, as a
rule, their wives were the prettiest girls in the tribes
--after, of course, "braw John" had been satisfied--for
an ugly maiden was content to have an Indian for her lord;
and she tried no arts, plucked no bouquets from the
prairie flowers, beaded no moccasins, and performed no
tender little offices to catch the heart of the white man.

"Pale face gets all the pretty squaws; suppose we must
take 'em ugly ones. Ugh!" This was the speech, and the
true speech of many a chief, or lion-hearted young man
of the tribes under the new order at Red River.

This may seem hard to the poor Indian, but perhaps it
was just as well. It would have, indeed, been worse had
the handsome maiden given her hand to the dusky Red, and
afterwards, wooed by blue eyes, given her heart where
her hand could never go. And the Indian woman is no better
and no worse than her kind, no matter what the colour
be. Happier, then, is the lot of the Indian with his
homely affectionate wife, than with a bride with roses
in her cheek, and sunlight in her eye, who cannot resist
the pleading eye and the outstretched arms of one whose
wooing is unlawful, and the result of which can be nought
but wrong and misery.

The population grew and comforts increased till eighteen
or twenty thousand souls could be reckoned in the colony.
The original whites had disappeared, and no face was to
be seen but that of a Metis in any of the cosy dwellings
in the settlement. These people had not yet learnt that
amongst the whites, whose blood knew no alloy, they were
regarded as a debased sort, and unfit socially to mix
with those who had kept their race free from taint. The
female fruitage of the mixture lost nothing by acquiring
some of the Caucasian stock, but the men, in numerous
cases, seemed to be inferior for the blending. In appearance
they were inane, in speech laconic; they were shy in
manners, and reserved, to boorishness, while in intellectual
alertness they were inferior to the boisterous savage,
or the shrewd, dignified white. But the woman perpetuated
the shy, winning coyness of her red mother, and the arts,
and somewhat of the refinements of her white father. The
eye was not so dusk; it gleamed more: as if the ray from
a star had been shot through it. There was the same olive
cheek; but it was not so tawny, for the dawn of the white
blood had appeared in it. She gained in symmetry too,
being taller than her red mother, while she preserved
the soft, willowy motion of the prairie-elk.

But the women were not good housekeepers; and many a
traveller has gone into the house of a Metis and seen
there a bride witchingly beautiful, with her hair unkempt
and disordered about her shoulders, her boots unlaced, and
her stocking down revealing her bare, exquisitely-turned
ankle.

"A Cinderella!" he would exclaim, "but, by heaven, I
swear, a thousand times more lovely!" If she had a child
it would likely be found sprawling among the coals, and
helping itself to handfuls of ashes. The little creature
would be sure to escape the suspicion of ever having been
washed. Ask the luminous-eyed mother for anything, for
a knife to cut your tobacco, for a cup to get a drink of
water, and the sweet sloven would be obliged to ransack
two-thirds of the articles of the house to find what you
sought.

The dresses worn by herself, as well as by her husband
or her brother, would not be less astonishing to the
unaccustomed eye. The men wear a common blue capote a
red belt and corduroy trousers. This, however, soon became
the costume of every male in Red River, whether Metis or
new-come Canadian. There, is however, a distinction in
the manner of wearing. Lest the Canadian should be taken
for a Metis he wears the red belt over the capote, while
the half-breed wears it beneath. The women are fond of
show, and like to attire themselves in dark skirts, and
crimson bodices. Frequently, if the entire dress be dark,
they tie a crimson or a magenta sash around their handsomely
shapen waists; and they put a cap of some denomination
of red upon their heads. Such colours, it need not be
said, add to their beauty, and it is by no means uncertain
that this is the reason why they adopt these colours.
Some writers say that their love of glaring colours is
derived from the savage side of their natures; but the
Metis women have an artistic instinct of their own, and
being for the greater part coquettes, it may very safely
be said that according to the fitness of things is it
that they attire themselves. But they are not able to
shake off the superstitions of their race. If the young
woman soon to be a mother, sees a hawk while crossing
the fields in the morning, she comes home and tells among
her female friends that her offspring is to be a son;
and they all know that he is to be fleet and enduring in
the chase, and that he will have the eyes of a hunter
chief. But if a shy pigeon circle up from the croft, and
cross her path, she sighs and returns not back to relate
the omen; and it is only in undertones that her nearest
friend learns a week afterwards that the promised addition
to the household is to be a girl. The appearance of other
birds and beasts, under similar circumstances, are likewise
tokens; and though boys would be born, and girls too, if
all the hawks and pigeons, and foxes and wild geese, and
every other presaging bird and beast of the plains had
fallen to the gun of huntsman and "sport," they cling to
the belief; and the superstition will only die with the
civilization that begat it. Many of the customs of their
red mothers they still reverently perpetuate; but they
are for all this deeply overlaid with Canadianism. Of
all the women on the face of the earth, they are the
greatest gossips.

Not in their whole nature is there any impulse so strong
as the love to talk. Therefore, when the morning's meal
is ended, the pretty mother laces the boots around her
shapely little ankles, puts her blanket about her, and
sallies out to one of her friend's houses for the morning's
gossip. In speaking of her dress, I neglected to state
that although the Metis woman had for gown the costliest
fabric ever woven in Cashmere, she would not be content,
on the hottest summer day, in walking twenty paces to
her neighbour's door, unless she had this blanket upon
her. The hateful looking garment is the chief relic of
her barbaric origin, and despite the desire which she
always manifests to exhibit her personal charms at their
best, she has no qualms in converting herself into a
hideous, repulsive squaw, with this covering. If she be
of a shy nature, she will cover her head with this garment
when a stranger enters her abode; and many a curious
visitor who has heard of the bright eyes and olive cheeks
of the half-breed woman is sorely disappointed when
drawing near to her on the prairie path, or in the village
street, to see her pull the hideous blanket over her face
while he passes her by. Not always will she do this, for
the wild women of the plains, and the half breed beauties,
find a strong charm in strange faces; and after she has
received some little attentions, and a few trinkets or
trifles, she will be ready enough to appoint a tryst upon
the flowery prairie, under the mellow moon.

We might forgive her for all this, if she could but
restrain her tongue. From morn to noon, from noon to dewy
eve, this unruly member goes on prattling about every
conceivable thing, especially the affairs of her neighbours.
We have seen that she goes out after she has eaten her
breakfast; and she returns not till her appetite begins
to be oppressive. She will then kiss her dusky little
offspring, who, during her absence, has likely enough
tried to stuff himself with coals, and then played with
the pigs. In the evening one is pretty certain to find
at some house a fiddler and a dancing party, which ends
with a bountiful supper; though frequently, if the
refreshments include whiskey, the party terminates with
a regulation "Irish row." At nearly every such dance
there is a white lad or two, and they are certain to
monopolize the attention and the kisses of the prettiest
girls. As the Indian had to sit by and see the white man
come and take away the most beautiful of the wild girls,
so too must the half-breed bear with meekness the preference
of the Metis belle for the Caucasian stranger.

The morals of the women are not over good, nor can they
be said to be very bad. Amongst each other their virtue
reaches a standard as high as that which prevails in our
Canadian community. It is when the women are brought into
contact with the white men that this standard lowers.
Then comes the temptation, the sin, the domestic
heartburnings, and the hatred towards those who tempted
to the fall.

The half-breed young men are fatally fond of show. The
highest aim of their social existence seems to be to
possess a dashing horse or two, and to drive a cariole.
It is stated, on excellent authority, that a young man
who wishes to figure as a _beau_, and to get the smiles
of the pretty girls, will sometimes sell all his useful
possessions to purchase a horse and cariole.

But it must not be supposed that this sort of spirit
pervades the entire community. A large portion of the
people are thrifty and frugal, and maintain themselves
by continuous, well-directed toil.

The French half breeds profess the Roman Catholic religion,
and they have a number of churches. At the head of the
Roman communion is Archbishop Tache, of St. Boniface.
This is the gentleman who provided the munificence for
Louis Riel's education. He is the same bishop whose name
so many hundreds of thousands of our people cannot recall
without bitterness and indignation.




CHAPTER III.

Such, then, was the condition of Red River before the
person who is the subject of this book appeared upon the
scenes. But perhaps it is as well that I should relate
one occurrence which fanned into bright flame the
smouldering embers of discord between the half-breeds
and their white neighbours. An officer of the Hudson Bay
Company, living at an isolated post, had two daughters.
As they began to arrive toward young-womanhood he was
anxious that they should have an education, in order that
they might, in proper season, be able to take their
position in society. There were good schools at Red River,
and thither the officer sent his daughters, placing them
under the care of a guardian whom he knew would exercise
an authority as judicious as his own. The two girls were
remarkably handsome, and whenever they walked through
the settlement, or drove abroad with their guardian, they
attracted all the attention. Many a half-dusky heart was
smitten of their white skin, which he would compare in
colour to the pure snow that covers the plains. Now had
the faces of the Red River beauties been Parian white,
instead of dusky olive, the young _beaux_ of the settlement
would not have found their hearts beating half so wildly
about the two pale daughters of the Hudson Bay Company's
officer. They would indeed have languished for chestnut
eyes, and complexions of Spain and the southern vineyards
of France. But here amongst their sturdy "tiger blossoms,"
and passionate prairie roses blew two fair cold lilies;
and their hearts bounded beyond measure at the thought
of winning a look or a kindly smile. But the guardian
watched the two pale girls closely, and permitted them
to do little beyond his _surveillance_. There were not
many whites in the circle of their acquaintance, but of
this few, nearly every one was a suitor for one or other
of the girls, yet for all the advances their hearts were
still whole and they moved,

   "In maiden meditation fancy free."

Now in Red River was a young half-breed, almost effeminate
in manners, handsome in face and form, and agreeable and
gentle in his address. He was indeed a sort of Bunthorne
of the plains, just such a person as a romantic, shallow
girl is most apt for a rose's period to sigh out her soul
about. You find his type in fashionable civilised circles,
in the languid dude who displays his dreams in his eyes
to captivate the hearts of the silly girls, and--discreetly
--keeps his mouth shut, to conceal his lack of brains.
The two white daughters of the Company's officer were
girls of ordinary understanding, but one of them had
gotten too much poetry into her sweet head, and stood on
the verge of a dizzy steep that overlooked a gulf, the
name of which was Love. At a party given by one of the
foremost of the half-breed families, this girl met
Alexander, the Scottish half-breed, whose person and
manners have been just described. There was something in
the dreamy, far-away expression of the young Metis' eyes,
which stirred the blood in the veins of the romantic
girl. When they rested upon her, the soul of their owner
seemed to yearn out to her. The voiceless, tender,
passionate appealing in the look she was unable to forget
when she walked along the grassy lanes, or trod the
flower-rimmed path of the prairie.

Coming along in the hush of the summer evening, when only
the lovemaking of the grasshoppers could be heard among
the flowers, Alexander met her, He spoke no word, but
there was the same tender, eloquent appealing in his
eyes. He thought the young lady would not take it amiss
of him, if he were to join her on her way over the fields;
so he had taken the liberty.

There was a flutter at her heart, and a great passion-rose
bloomed in each cheek.

No, she would not take it amiss. The walk was so pleasant!
Indeed it was kind of him to join her.

The dusky lover spake few words; but he indolently left
the path and gathered some sprays of wild flowers, and
offered them to the girl. His eyes had the same, wistful
look, and his brown fingers trembled as he offered the
bouquet. Receiving them, and pinning them under her
throat, she said in a low tone, while her voice trembled
a little,

"When these fade, I shall press the petals in my book,
and keep them always."

"Do you consider the flowers I gave you worth preserving?"
he asked, his low voice likewise trembling.

"I do."

"I would give more than that," he said, tenderly, "to
your keeping."

"Why," she enquired, with an unsuccessful attempt at
displaying wonder, "what is it that you would give to my
keeping?"

"My heart," the young man answered, his indolent eyes
lighting up in the gloaming. She said nothing, but hung
her head. The swarthy lover saw that she took no offence
at his declaration. Indeed he gathered from the quivering
of her red, moist lips, and from the tenderness in her
eye, that the avowal had more than pleased her. She
continued for a few seconds to look bashfully down at
the path; and then she raised her eyes and looked at him.
No more encouragement was needed.

"My beloved," he said, softly, and her head nestled upon
his shoulder. There in the shadow of a small colony of
poplars, on the verge of the boundless plain, shining
under the full, ripe moon, each plighted troth to the
other, and gave and received burning kisses. During the
sweet, fast-fleeting hours on the calm plain, in her
lover's arms, with no witness but the yellow moon, she
took no heed of the barriers that lay between a union
with her beloved; nor had he any foreboding of obstacles,
but heard and declared vows of love, supremely happy.

Woman is a sort of Pandora's Box, the lid whereof is
being forever raised, revealing the secrets within. The
plighted maiden was flushed of cheek and unusually bright
of eye when she returned to her home that evening. She
could give her guardian no satisfactory account of her
long absence, and told a very confused story about two
paths, "you know," that were "very much alike"; but that
"one led away around a poplar wood and out upon a portion
of the prairie" which she did "not know." Here the sweet
pet had got astray, and wandered around, although "it
was so silly," till the sound of the bells of St. Boniface
tolling ten had apprised her of the hour and also let
her know where she was. Her guardian took the explanation,
and contented himself with observing that he hoped it
would be her last evening upon the prairie, straying
around like an elk that had lost her mate.

"Jennie," said her sister, when they were alone, "you
have not been telling the truth. You did not get astray
on the prairie. Somebody has been courting you, and you
are in love with him."

"I am in love; and it is true that some one has been
courting me. I had intended to tell you all about it, my
heart is so full. Now can you tell me who may my lover
be?"

"I hope, Jennie," and the sister's eyes showed a blending
of severity and sorrow, "that it is not Alexander."

"It is Alexander. Why should it not be? Is he not handsome,
and gentle, and good? Wherefore then not he?"

"My God, do you know what such an alliance would cost
you, would cost us all? Marriage with a half-breed would
be a degradation; and a stain upon the whole family that
never could be wiped out. O my poor unfortunate sister,
ruin is what such a marriage would mean. Just that, my
darling sister, and no less."

"I care not for that. I love him with all my heart and
soul, and pledged myself to-night a hundred times to be
his. I never can love another man; and he only shall
possess me. What care I for the degradation of which you
speak, as measured against the crowning misery, or the
supreme happiness of my life? No; when Alexander is ready
to say to me, Come, I shall go to him, and no threat nor
persuasion shall dissuade me."

She spoke like all the heroic girls who afterwards meekly
untie their bonnets just as they were ready to go to the
church to wed against their keeper's will; and then sit
down awaiting orders as to whom they must marry. Jennie
was not the only girl who, in the first flush of passion,
is prepared to go through fire, or die at the stake for
the man she loves. Withal,--but that the proprieties
forbid it--whenever young women make these dramatic
declarations, the most appropriate course would be to
give them a sound spanking, and put an end to the tragic
business.

Nellie thought it her duty, and I suppose it was, to tell
her bear-like guardian what had befallen to her sister.
He was less disturbed on hearing the intelligence than
Nellie supposed, and merely expressed some cold-blooded
surprise at the presumption of the half-breed. He sat
at his desk, and taking a sheet of paper, wrote this
letter:

"To Alexander Saunders:

"DEAR SIR,--Would you be good enough to call at my house
this evening at eight o'clock?

"Yours truly,

"Thomas Brown."

Having sealed and dispatched this note he resumed his
work, without showing or feeling any further concern
about the matter. When it was growing dark over the
prairie that evening, the love-lorn Jennie saw her
pleading-eyed lover pass along in the shadow of the
poplars toward her guardian's house. She heard his ring
at the door, and his step in the hall. Her heart was in
a great flutter; but her sister was at her side giving
her comfort. The doors were wide open, but everything
was so husht, that the girls could plainly hear the
following words spoken in the guardian's library:

"I understand, Mr. Saunders, that you have been taking
the astonishingly presumptuous course of soliciting the
hand of one of my wards. I am not given to severity, or
I do not exactly know how I ought to resent an act which
exhibits such a forgetfulness of what your attitude should
be towards a person in the station of my ward. You are
merely a half-breed; you are half-Indian, and for that
matter might as well be Indian altogether. My ward's
position is such that the bare idea of such a union is
revolting. She is a lady by birth and by education, and
is destined for a social sphere into which you could
never, and ought never, enter. You may now go, sir, but
you must remember that your ignorance is the only palliation
of your presumption. Laurie, show this young man the way
out."

"O, my God, what will become of me?" sobbed poor Jennie.
"I cannot live! O, I will go after him! I will fly with
him! I cannot endure this separation! O, sister, will
you not intercede for my beloved? Tell uncle how noble
and manly, and honourable he is! Can you not do anything
for me? My God, what shall I do?"

In this fashion did poor Jennie's grief find words, and
we leave her alone with her sore heart, while we follow
the rejected suitor. He walked swiftly down the lawn,
turning not his eye, or he might have seen in the window
his lover, stretching imploring arms toward him. All his
blood was running madly in his veins, and it burned like
fire. His heart was hot, and his temples throbbed.

"So I am only a half-breed, and might as well be all
Indian for that matter! O, God! A despised half-breed!
They have shown the fangs at last. We now see how they
regard us." And he went forth among his friends, and told
the story of the insult and humiliation. A thousand
half-breed hearts that night in Red River burned with
vengeance against the white man; French Metis and English
Metis alike had felt the sting of the indignity; and
these two bodies, sundered before through petty cause,
now united in a brotherhood of hate against the white
population. It needs no further words to shew how ready
these dusky people would be to rise and follow a crafty
leader, who cried out:

"We are despised by these white people. We want no social
or political alliance with them. We shall live apart,
rather than in ignominy and union with them." Louis Riel
was not ready the next morning to rise and lead the people
to revolt, for this occurred some years before his bloody
star reached the zenith; but the same hatred was there
years later, when he turned the governor sent to the
colony by the Dominion out of the territories, and set
up an authority of his own. Well might the French historian,
cognisant of the fate of the luckless suitor, and the
consequences of the rejection, cry out with the poet:

   "_Amour tu perdis Troie._"
   [Footnote: Love thou hast conquered even Troy.]

As for poor Jennie, heroic Jennie, who would follow her
lover to death itself, she submitted, after a few sleepless
nights, and days that for her were without a breakfast,
to the mandate of the guardian, and to the philosophy of
her sister. A little later, a tall, ungainly young
Highlander came, offered himself, and took to his home
the poetic and tragic daughter of the Company's officer.

Despite the blizards that sometimes come sweeping across
the prairie, smothering belated travellers, and un-roofing
dwellings, notwithstanding the frequent incursions from
regions in the far west of myriad-hosts of locusts and
grasshoppers, Red River settlement throve in wealth and
population, till, when the period with which I shall now
deal arrived, it numbered no fewer than 15,000 souls.
Upon the completion of the great Act of the Confederation
of the British North American Provinces in 1867, the
attention of Canadian statesmen was turned to this distant
colony, and negotiations were opened for the transfer of
the Territory to the Dominion. The back of great monopolies
had now been broken. In 1858, England had resumed its
great Indian empire and extinguished John Company; and
this act had paved the way for a similar resumption of
the vast prairie domain granted by King Charles to "the
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading
into Hudson Bay." The transfer was to be effected, as
one writer puts it, by a triangular sort of arrangement.
All territorial rights claimed by the Hudson Bay Company
--and Red River lay within the Company's dominions--were
to be annulled on payment of 300,000 pounds by Canada,
and the country would then be handed over by Royal
proclamation to the Dominion Government, the Company
being allowed to retain only certain parcels of land in
the vicinity of its trading posts. I may as well go upon
the authority of the same writer. [Footnote: Captain G.
L. Huyshe.] The transfer was dated for the 1st of December,
1869; but the Dominion Cabinet, eager to secure the rich
prize, appointed its Minister of Public Works, the Honourable
William McDougall, C.B., to be Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-West Territories, and sent him off in the month
of September, with instructions to proceed to Fort Garry
"with all convenient speed" there to assist in the formal
transfer of the Territories, and to "be ready to assume
the Government" as soon as the transfer was completed.
So far so well, but let us pause just here.

There is something to be said even on the side of revolt
and murder, and let us see what it is. Since the foundation
of the colony the people had lived under the government
according to the laws propounded by the Hudson Bay Company.
The people had established a civilization of their own,
and had customs and rules which were always observed with
great reverence. When tidings reached them that they were
to be transferred to the Dominion of Canada, they began
to have some misgivings as to how they should fare under
the new order. Of late years, too, there had come into
prominence among them a man whom early in these pages we
saw bid good-bye to his father upon the plains on his
way to school in the East. The fire seen in young Riel
at the school, and when he turned his face again for the
prairies that he loved, had now reached full flame. He
had never ceased to impress upon the people that the
Hudson Bay Company was a heartless, soulless corporation,
and that the treatment accorded to the Metis was no better
than might have been given to the dogs upon the plains.
There never was public peace after the tongue of this
man had begun to make noise in the settlement.

When, therefore, it became known that the Canadian
Government had determined upon taking the colony to
itself, an ambitious scheme of the highest daring entered
into the brain of Louis Riel. He lost no time in beginning
to sow seeds of discontent.

"Canada," he said, "will absorb your colony, and as a
people you will virtually be blotted out of existence.
White officials will come here and lord it over you; the
tax-gatherer will plunder the land for funds to build
mighty docks, and canals, and bridges, and costly buildings,
and numerous railroads in the East. The poor half-breed
will be looked upon with contempt and curiosity: no
custom that he regards as sacred will be respected; no
right which is inherently his, will be acknowledged.
They will send their own henchmen, who have no sympathy
in common with the half-breeds, to rule over us; no
complaint that the people make to the Central Government
will be regarded; yea, this new rule will fasten itself
upon us as some inexorable tyrant monster, driving deep
its fangs into a soil that has been yours so long. Yes;
you will be of _some_ interest to them. You have some
handsome wives and pretty daughters, and those virtuous
pale-faces from the East have a strong admiration for
lovely women. In this respect, you shall receive their
attention."

The effect of such arguments among these credulous people,
who saw not the wily traitor behind the rich, eloquent
voice, quivering with indignation, was similar to that
which would follow were you to fling a flaming torch upon
the prairie in midsummer after a month of drought. Then
the cunning deceiver went secretly to several of the
leading half-breeds in Red River, and whispered certain
proposals in their ear.

Meanwhile, events were transpiring which furnished
just the very fuel that Riel wanted for his fire. During
the summer of 1869, a surveying party, under Colonel
Dennis, had been engaged surveying the country, and
dividing it into townships, etc., for future allotment by
government. According to good authority, the proceedings
of this party had given great offence to the Metis. The
unsettled state of the half-breeds' land tenure not
unnaturally excited apprehension in the minds of these
poor ignorant people that their lands would be taken from
them, and given to Canadian immigrants. Then they had
the burning words of Louis Riel ringing in their ears
saying that the thing _would_ be done. To lend colour to
the mistrust, some members of the surveying party put up
claims here and there to tracts of land to which they
happened to take a fancy. But this was not all. Some of
these gentlemen had the habit of giving the Indians drink
till they became intoxicated, and then inducing them to
make choice lands over to them. One could not pass through
any superior tract of land without observing the stakes
of some person or other of Colonel Dennis's party.

"I foretold it," cried Riel. "Go out for yourselves and
see the marks they have set up bounding their plunder."
Nor was this the only grievance presented to the
half-breeds. The very survey then being carried on they
looked upon as an act of contempt towards themselves;
for Riel had put it in this light.

"The territory has not yet passed into the hands of the
Canadian government"--and in saying this the Disturber
was accurate--; "what right have they, therefore, to come
here and lay down lines? It is as I have already told
you: You are of as much importance in the eyes of the
Canadian authorities, as would be so many dogs."

Nor were these the only grievances either. A "big man,"
a white, living at the settlement, had made himself
obnoxious to the whole of Red River. He well knew how
the people hated him, and he retorted by saying:

"Your scurvy race is almost run. Presently you will get
into civilized hands, and be put through your facings.
You disrespect me, but my counsels prevail at Ottawa.
Only what I recommend, will the Government do; so that
you see the settlement is very completely in my hands."
This man was a valuable ally to Riel; for almost literally
did he, while portending to speak for the Dominion
authorities, corroborate the allegation of the arch
agitator. Then two officials, Messrs Snow and Mair, sent
out by Mr. McDougall, while he was yet Minister of Public
Works, had established an intimacy with the obnoxious
white man, received his hospitality, and given acquiescent
ear to his advice. These two gentlemen looked upon the
half-breeds as savages. They sent letters to the newspapers,
describing Red River and its people in terms grossly
unjust, and inaccurate. M. Riel got the communications
and read them to the people.

"This," he said, "is the manner in which they describe
our customs, our social life, and the virtue of our
women." The women tossed their heads haughtily.

"We do what is right," they said, "and they can slander
us if they will. We shall not prove, perhaps, so easy a
prey to those white gallants as they seem to suppose."
One high-spirited girl, and very beautiful, vowed that
during the run of her life, she never would speak to a
white man for this insult, or let him see her face. Yet,
if the gossip is to be trusted, before the flowers bloomed
thrice, after that, upon the prairie, she was sighing
her sweet soul away, through her great gazelle eyes, for
love of a sturdy young Englishman, who had taken up his
abode upon the plains. And better than all the young
fellow married her, and she is now one of the happiest,
not to say one of the prettiest, women in Manitoba.
Strong words of determination by a young woman are the
most conclusive evidence that I know of the weakening of
her resolve.

But Messrs Snow and Mair went on with their creditable
work, and to their other good deeds it was alleged they
added that of grabbing choice plots of land.

These two men were, of course, known to be the accredited
agents of the Minister of Public Works; and Riel succeeded
in convincing the credulous people that the Minister,
indeed the whole government, were cognizant of their acts
and approved of the same. "While public indignation was
at its height, it was announced that a Lieutenant-Governor
had been appointed for Red River, and that the man chosen
was the very person through whom the chief indignity had
been put upon the settlement. It was also shown with
burning force by Riel that in a matter so important as
the transfer of fifteen thousand people from one particular
jurisdiction to another, they, the people transferred,
had not been consulted. They had not, he also pointed
out, been even formally apprised of the transfer.

"This Canadian Government take Red River and its half-breeds
over, just as they would take over Red River and fifteen
thousand sheep." And some of the men swore terrible oaths
that this change should not be without resistance, and
resistance to the death.

Riel said that the determination was good.




CHAPTER IV.

Having worked the unreasoning settlers to this pitch,
Riel was satisfied. Public feeling needed but the fuse
of some bold step of his to burst into instant flame. As
the Lieutenant-Governor drew near the territory the
agitator was almost beside himself with excitement. He
neither ate nor slept but on foot or sleigh, was for ever
moving from one to another perfecting plans, or inciting
to tumult. At the house of a prominent half-breed, while
the women sat about stitching, Riel met a number of the
leading agitators, and thus addressed them:

"There are two courses open to us now. One is to continue
as an unorganized band of noisy disturbers; the other,
to league ourselves into an organized body for the defence
and government of our country." This proposal thrilled
the veins of his listeners, and pouting, coral-coloured
female lips, said softly,

   "Brava!"

A sort of fitful reflection followed the first wild burst
of enthusiasm, and one _bois brule_ arose and said:

"Far be it from me to utter one word that might dampen
your ardor, but let us try to take some account of the
cost. Would not such a step be an act of Rebellion? and
is not Rebellion a treasonable offence?" At this point
Riel, foaming with rage, arose and stopped him.

"We want no poltroonery, no alarmist sentiments here,"
he shouted. "Even though such an act were as you describe
it, our duty as men, determined to guard their sacred
rights, is to take the risk. But it would not be treason.
The transfer of a people from one government to another
is not constitutional without the people's consent. The
Hudson's Bay Company have certain rights in the unsold
lands of these regions; but no man, no corporation, no
power, can sell, cede, or transfer that which is not his
or its own property. Therefore the Hudson Bay Company
has not the right to transfer our lands to the Dominion
of Canada. And since we, the people of Red River, are
not the chattels of the Company, they cannot transfer
us. They have sold us to the Canadian government, but
upon the ground between the two authorities will we stand,
and create a province of our own. It may be that the
Dominion Government will have justice enough to agree to
this; if they oppose our rights, then I trust that there
are men on Red River, who are not afraid to stand up for,
yea to die for, their country." This speech was received
with deafening acclamation.

At once a Provisional Government was formed, and at the
instigation of Riel, John Bruce, who was a mere cat's-paw,
was declared President. Riel himself took the Secretaryship;
and very promptly the Secretary raised his voice.

"McDougall who sent his scourges here to plunder our
land, and to ridicule our people, nears our border.
There is no time to lose. _He must not enter_. I, therefore,
move that the following letter be dispatched to him by
a regularly constituted member of our Government:

"St. Nobert, Red River, October 21st, 1869.

"Sir,--The National Parliament of the Metis of Red River,
hereby forbids you to enter the North-West Territories
without a special permit from the National Government."

This motion was carried with enthusiasm. The letter was
signed by the President and Secretary, and dispatched to
Pembina, which was situate on the border, to await the
arrival at that point of the Governor Designate. The pomp
and daring of these proceedings had such an effect upon
the colonists, that little by little they began to grow
blind to the fact that their action was in the face of
Canadian authority, and an invitation to a collision of
arms. If anyone expressed any fear he was either savagely
silenced by Riel, or informed that there were men enough
in Red River to hold the country in the face of any force
that could be sent against them. And the military enthusiasm
of the Metis gave some colour to this latter assertion.
An armed force, sufficient for present necessities, was
established on Scratching River, a place about fifteen
miles from Fort Garry. Here a barrier was put across the
road by which McDougall must travel to reach Fort Garry,
and beyond this the half-breeds swore the pale face
Governor should never pass.

On the 30th day of October, Mr. McDougall arrived at
Pembina. He was already aware that the country was seething
with tumult; that Colonel Dennis had been turned out of
the Territory; that Messrs. Snow & Mair had become hateful
in the eyes of the half-breeds: yet he felt disposed to
do little more than laugh at the whole affair. He had
the assurance of his mischievous envoys that the matter
was a mere temporary ebullition of feeling, and that his
presence in the country would very soon calm the turbulent
waters. So he said:

"I shall take no notice of this impertinent letter. In
fact it is impossible for me to recognise such a piece
of presumption, and deal with a communication which would
be the rankest insolence, but that it is so extremely
ludicrous." So the gallant Lieutenant-Governor, with his
officials, boldly crossed the line and proceeded towards
Fort Garry. But they were met on their triumphant march
by a detachment of fourteen armed half-breeds whose
spokesman said:

"You received an order from the Provisional Government
not to enter these territories. When that order was passed
it was the Government's intention to take care that it
should be carried out. Yet you have forced yourself in
here I give you till to-morrow morning to be clear of
these territories." Mr. McDougall's lip began to hang a
little low. The calm, even polite, tone of the spokesman
of the party had impressed him more than bluster or rage.
With the next morning came the same party. They made no
noise, but quietly taking the horses of the Governor's
party by the head, turned them around, and packed the
whole of them back. In this way, and without so much as
a loud word, was the Governor Designate turned out of
the territories.

Every success, however trivial, was fuel to the courage
and enthusiasm of Riel's party.

"I have begun this matter," the leader said to one of
his followers, "and I do not mean to deal in half measures.
Without stores we can do nothing. Fort Garry is worth
our having just now, but we must move circumspectly in
getting possession of it." So it was ordered that his
followers should proceed in twos and threes, as if on no
special mission, to the desired point. Presently, Governor
McTavish saw in the shadow of the fort the rebel leader
and a number of followers.

"We are desirous of entering," Riel said.

"Wherefore?" enquired the Governor.

"We cannot tell you now," was the reply; "it is enough
for me to say that a great danger threatens the fort."
Without further explanation, the feeble-willed Hudson
Bay officer permitted the rebel and his followers to
enter.

"Huzza!" they all shouted, when they found themselves
inside the stockades, and glanced at tier upon tier of
barrels of flour, and pork, and beef, and molasses; and
upon the sacks of corn, and the warm clothing, and better
than all, upon the arms and ammunition.

"I am at last master in Red River," Riel said to one of
his followers. "My men can fight now, for here we have
at once a fortification and a base of supplies."

Just a few words with reference to Mr. McDougall, and I
shall dismiss him from these pages. He lived quietly at
Pembina between the date of his expulsion from Red River
and the first day of December. The latter date was fixed
for the transfer of the new territory to the Dominion of
Canada. So, towards midnight, on the 30th of November,
the Governor-Designate and his party sallied, forth from
the "line" and took formal possession of the territory
in the name of the Government of Canada. There was no
one stirring about the prairie on the night in question,
for the glass shewed the thermometer to be 20 degrees
below zero: so the gallant Governor was enabled to take
possession without obstruction.

Riel was now fairly intoxicated with success. Some of
his followers would sometimes ask him if he had no fear
that the Canadian Government would send out a large force
of soldiers against him. His invariable reply was:

"They never will do this. The way is too long, and the
march too difficult. They will eventually make up their
mind to let us rule this Province ourselves."

"And do you propose to stand aloof as an independent
colony?"

"Perhaps! And, perhaps, we may, by and by, discuss the
subject of annexation." For all the man's cunning and
courage, he was almost as short-sighted as any savage
upon the plain. And the small measure of Indian blood in
him would assert itself in many ways. The people began
to look upon him as another Napoleon triumphant, and to
give him honour in every way that suggested itself. He
made a great display of his importance, and would boast
among his friends that he was as diplomatic and as able
as any statesman in Canada, and that even his enemies
admitted this. In his earlier days he sought, persistently,
the smiles of the fair girls of the plains, but somehow
or another he was never a very great favourite with the
olive-skinned beauties. Now, however, the case was
different with him. The Red River belles saw in him a
hero and a statesman of the highest order, the ruler of
a colony, and the defiant and triumphant enemy of the
whole Dominion of Canada. So the poor, shallow pets began
to ply their needles, and make for him presents of delicate
things. One sewed gorgeous beads upon his hunting coat,
and another set his jacket spangling with quills of the
porcupine. The good priests of Red River, and their pious
vicar, _pere_ Lestanc, whom Monseigneur had left in charge
of the Diocese while he was attending the Ecumenical
Council in Rome, came forward with their homage. These
worthy gentlemen had been in the habit of reading from
the Catechism ever since the time they were first able
to tell their beads, or to make mud pies, these words:
"He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of
God; and they that (so) resist shall purchase to themselves
damnation." Here was a madly ambitious adventurer "resisting
the power," and, therefore, "resisting the ordinances of
God;" but these precious divines saw no harm whatever in
the act. Indeed, they were the most persistent abettors
in the uprising, counselling their flock to be zealous
and firm, and to follow the advice of their patriotic
and able leader, M. Riel. The great swaggering, windy
_pere_ Richot, took his coarse person from house to house
denouncing the Canadian Government and inciting the
people.

"No harm can come to you," he would say; "you have in
the Canadian Government a good friend in Mr. George E.
Cartier. He will see that no hair of one of your heads
is touched." And Riel went abroad giving the same assurance.
Moreover, it was known to every thinking one of the
fifteen thousand Metis that Riel was a _protege_ of
Monseigneur Tache; that through this pious bishop it was
he had received his education, and that His Lordship
would not alone seek to minimize what his favourite had
done, but would say that the uprising was a justifiable
one. This was how the Catholic Church in Red River
stimulated the diseased vanity and the lawless spirit of
this thrice-dangerous Guiteau of the plains.

I have already said that Bruce was put up by Riel as a
mere figure-head. When the end of the pretence had been
accomplished, this poor scare-crow was thrown down and
Louis Riel assumed the presidency of the Provisional
Government. Now he began to draw to himself all those
men whom he knew would be faithful tools in carrying out
any scheme of villainy, or even of blood that he proposed
to them. The coarse and loud-mouthed O'Donoghue was duly
installed as a confidential attendant with wide powers,
and Lepine was made head of the military part of the
insurrectionary body. It certainly was strange if the
treasonable undertaking should not be successful with
the acquisition of all the fearless and lawless personages
that the half-breed community could produce, and the
vicar-general and the swaggering father Richot offering
up masses that it should prevail.

It must not be supposed that there were no white people
in this Red River region. There were very many indeed,
and some of them held prominent places in the community
through high character or through affluence. Most of
these persons were loyal to the heart's core, and were
of opinion that the rising had nothing justifiable in
it, and regarded it as a criminal and treasonable rebellion.
At meetings, held in the town of Winnipeg, some of these
gentlemen were at no pains to give expression to their
sentiments. But Riel's murderous eye was upon them; and
he was revolving over divers plans of vengeance. There
was no reason why he should hesitate in taking any step
that promised help to the cause, for Holy Church was
praying for its success, and working for it, too. The
shedding of the blood of a few heretics was a matter of
small consequence: indeed, the act would only hallow a
cause that had patriotism under, and religion behind it.
We shall leave Riel glaring with wolfish eyes upon the
good men who raised their voices against lawlessness,
and relate a story which will shed a new light upon the
darkest deed of the dark career of the miscreant Rebel.




CHAPTER V.

Some time before the outbreak, Riel, in company with a
half-breed, had gone in the autumn shooting chicken along
the prairies. The hunting-ground was many miles distant
from Riel's home, so that the intention of the sportsmen
was to trust themselves to the hospitality of some
farm-house in the neighbourhood. The settlers were all,
with two or three exceptions, Metis; and the door of the
half-breed is never shut against traveller or stranger.
One late afternoon, as the two men were passing along
the prairie footpath towards a little settlement, they
heard at some distance over the plain, a girl singing.
The song was exquisitely worded and touching, and the
singer's voice was sweet and limpid as the notes of a
bobolink. M. Riel, like Mohammed, El Mahdi, and other
great patrons of race and religion, is strong of will;
but he is weaker than a shorn Samson when a lovely woman
chooses to essay a conquest. So he marvelled much to his
companion as to who the singer might be, and proposed
that both should leave the path and join the unknown fair
one. A few minutes walk brought the two beyond a small
poplar grove, and there, upon a fallen tree-bole, in the
delicious cool of the autumn evening, they saw the
songstress sitting. She was a maiden of about eighteen
years, and her soft, silky-fine, dark hair was over her
shoulders. In girlish fancy she had woven for herself a
crown of flowers out of marigolds and daisies, and put
it upon her head. She did not hear the footsteps of the
men upon the soft prairie, and they did not at once reveal
themselves, but stood a little way back listening to her.
She had ceased her song, and was gazing beyond intently.
On the naked limb of a desolate, thunder-riven tree that
stood apart from its lush, green-boughed neighbours, sat
a lonely thrush in seeming melancholy. Every few seconds
he would utter a note of song. Sometimes it was low and
sorrowful, then it was louder, with the same sad quality
in it, as if the lonely bird were calling for some
responsive voice from far away over the prairie.

"Dear bird, you have lost your mate, and are crying out
for her," the girl said, stretching out her little brown
hand compassionately toward the low-crouching songster.
"Your companions have gone to the South, and you wait
here trusting that your mate will come back, and not
journey to summer lands without you. Is not that so, my
poor bird? Ah, would that I could go with you where there
are always flowers, and ever can be heard the ripple of
little brooks. Here the leaves will soon fall, ah, me!
and the daisies wither, and instead of the delight of
summer we shall have only the cry of hungry wolves, and
the bellowing of bitter winds above the ghastly plains.
But could I go to the South, there is no one who would
sing over my absence one lamenting note, as you sing, my
bird, for the mate with whom you had so many hours of
sweet lovemaking in these prairie thickets. Nobody loves
me woos me, cares for me, or sings about me. I am not
even as the wild rose here, though it seems to be alone
and is forbidden to take its walk: for it holds up its
bright face and can see its lover; and he breathes back
upon the kind, willing, breeze-puffs, through all the
summer, sweet-scented love messages, tidings of a matrimony
as delicious as that of the angels." She stood up, and
raised her arms above her head yearningly. The autumn
wind was cooing in her hair, and softly swaying its silken
meshes.

"Fare well, my desolate one: may your poor little heart
be gladder soon. Could I but be a bird, arid you would
have me for a companion, your lamenting should not be
for long. We should journey loitering and love-making
all the long sweet way, from here to the South, and have
no repining."

Turning around, she perceived two men standing close
beside her. She became very confused, and clutched for
the blanket to cover her face, but she had strayed away
among the flowers without it. Very deeply she blushed
that the strangers should have heard her; and she spake
not.

"Bon jour, ma belle fille." It was M. Riel who had
addressed her. He drew closer, and she, in a very low
voice, her olive face stained with a faint flush of
crimson, answered,

"Bon jour, Monsieur."

"Be not abashed. We heard what you were saying to the
bird, and I think the sentiments were very pretty."

This but confused the little prairie beauty all the more.
But the gallant stranger took no heed of her embarrassment.

"With part of your declaration I cannot agree. A maiden
with such charms as yours is not left long to sigh for
a lover. Believe me, I should like to be that bird to
whom you said you would, if you could, offer love and
companionship." M. Riel made no disguise of his admiration
for the beautiful girl of the plains. He stepped up by
her side and was about to take her hand after delivering
himself of this gallant speech, but she quickly drew
it away. Passing through a covert as they neared the
little settlement, Riel's sportsman companion walked
ahead, leaving the other two some distance in the rear.
The ravishing beauty of the girl was more than the
amorously-disposed stranger could resist, and suddenly
throwing his arms around her he sought to kiss her. But
the soft-eyed fawn of the desert soon showed herself in
the guise of a petit bete sauvage. With a startling scream
she bounded away from his grasp.

"How do you dare take this liberty with me, Monsieur,"
she said, her eyes kindled with anger and wounded pride.
"You first meanly come and intrude upon my privacy; next
you must turn what knowledge you gain by acting spy and
eavesdropper, into a means of offering me insult. You
have heard me say that I had no lover to sigh for me. I
spoke the truth: I _have_ no such lover. But you I will
not accept as one; your very sight is already hateful
to me." And turning, with flushed cheek and gleaming
eyes, she entered the cosy, cleanly-kept little cottage
of her father. But she soon reflected that she had been
guilty of an unpardonably inhospitable act in not asking
the strangers to enter. Suddenly turning, she walked
rapidly back, and overtook the crest-fallen wooer and
his companion, and said in a voice from which every trace
of her late anger had disappeared.

"Entrez, Messieurs."

M. Riel's countenance speedily lost its gloom, and,
respectfully touching his hat, he said:

"Oui, Mademoiselle, avec le plus grand plaisir." Tripping
lightly ahead she announced the two strangers, and then
returned, going to the bars where the cows were lowing,
waiting to be milked. The persistent sportsman had not
by any means made up his mind to desist in the wooing.

"The colt shies," he murmured, "when she first sees the
halter. Presently she becomes tractable enough." Then,
while he sat waiting for the evening meal, blithely
through the hush of the exquisite evening came the voice
of the girl. She was singing from _La Claire Fontaine_:

   "A la claire fontaine
    Je m'allait promener,
    J'ai trouve l'eau si belle
    Que je me suis baigne."

Her song ended with her work, and as she passed the
strangers, with her two flowing pails of yellow milk,
Riel whispered softly, as he touched her sweet little
hand:

"Ah, ma petite amie!"

The same flash came in her eyes, the same proud blood
mantled through the dusk of her cheek, but she restrained
herself. He was a guest under her father's roof, and she
would suffer the offence to pass. The persistent gallant
was more crest-fallen by this last silent rebuke, than
by the first with its angry words. The first, in his
vanity, he had deemed an outburst of petulance, instead
of an expression of personal dislike, especially as the
girl had so suddenly calmed herself and extended
hospitalities. He gnashed his teeth that a half-breed
girl, in an obscure village, should resent his advances;
he for whom, if his own understanding was to be trusted,
so many bright eyes were languishing. At the evening meal
he received courteous, kindly attention from Marie; but
this was all. He related with much eloquence all that
he had seen in the big world in the East during his school
days, and took good care that his hosts should know how
important a person he was in the colony of Red River. To
his mortification he frequently observed in the midst of
one of his most self-glorifying speeches that the girl's
eyes were abstracted, as if her imagination were wandering.
He was certain she was not interested in him, or in his
exploits.

"Can she have a lover?" he asked himself, a keen arrow
of jealousy entering at his heart, and vibrating through
all his veins. "No, this cannot be. She said in her
musings on the prairie that she had nobody who would sing
a sad song if she were to go to the South. Stop! She
may love, and not find her passion requited. I shall
stay about here some days, upon some pretext, and I shall
see what is in the wind."

The next morning, when breakfast was ended, he perceived
Marie rush to the window, and then hastily, and with a
dainty coyness withdraw her head from the pane.
Simultaneously he heard a sprightly tune whistled, as if
by some glad, young heart that knew no care. Looking now,
he saw a tall, well-formed young whiteman, a gun on his
back, and a dog at his heels, walking along the little
meadow-path toward the cottage.

"This is the lover," he muttered; "curses upon him." From
that moment he hated with all the bitterness of his nature
the man now striding carelessly up toward the cottage
door.

"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 grass,
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 grass, 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
shore. 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 shore
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
mass 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 petite 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 pass 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, assuming 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 passing
   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
pass over to the hands of alien officials. I shall call
upon every true colonist to rise and aid me in asserting
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
petite. 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 entitled to hold them as you are to
maintain yours."

"I am not so certain on this point as ma belle Mademoiselle
seems to be," he retorted with a sneer like the hiss of
a cobra. "This is our country, and any man who opposes
its welfare is a traitor and a common enemy. But now,
Monsieur,"--turning to Marie's father--"you must permit
me to say that I view with strong disapproval the intimacy
of any of our people with aliens and enemies. Therefore
I find it necessary to forbid for the future any further
visit of this young man Scott to your house. Nay, more,
I shall not permit any communication between your family
and him; as I have good reason to believe that he is a
paid spy of Mr. Snow and the Government of Canada."

"Monsieur," quietly retorted Marie, with a curl of infinite
contempt upon her soft, red-ripe, moist lips, "You are
a coward, and a snake."

"Hush, Marie! Monsieur must not take heed of the ready
tongue of my daughter," the poor terrified and
over-credulous father put in with much trepidation.

"Mon pere need not apologize to Monsieur Riel for sa
fille," the girl said, giving her father a glance of mild
reproach. "I think that I am not unaware of the reason
why Monsieur Riel's patriotism and vigilance have taken
their present generous, honourable and manly form. And
as I have now to go out and attend to my work, I would
desire to say before leaving, that Monsieur has addressed
his last words to me. I do not wish to see him ever again
at our house. Should he insist on coming--and I know he
has high spirit and honourable feeling enough to even so
insist and force himself where he is not welcome--it
shall be to my greatest repugnance. I have been to you,
mon pere, a faithful and loving child. I do not think
that I have ever before this day made any important
request of you. But I make one now: it is that you request
this Monsieur Riel to never enter our doors again. Pray,
mon pere," she said going to him and looking into his
face with the intensest pleading in her great eyes, "do
not refuse me this request."

"Monsieur has heard my daughter's request? I cannot deny
it to her."

The only reply from M. Riel was a sneer that sounded like
an envenomed hiss.

"About the matter of visits, Monsieur, I shall consult
my own taste and convenience." Marie went out from the
house as regal in her bearing, and as beautiful as any
princess that has ever trod the court of Caliph. Riel
followed the retreating form of the lovely girl with eyes
that showed the rage and desire of a wild beast. When
she was out of sight he calmed himself, and assuming a
changed mood, turned to her father.

"Monsieur, there is no reason why you and I should quarrel;
is there?"

"No Monsieur; no reason."

"On the contrary, it would be well, if in these troublous
times, when duties so momentous await every loyal heart
in the colony, that we should be friends. Is this not so?"

"Oui, Monsieur."

"Then we can, if you will, be friends. I am prepared to
forgive the indignity put upon, me by your daughter. I
will not hesitate to take your hand, and forgive you for
the insult which you have just offered me. And now hear
what I have to say. Coming yonder through the prairie,
yesterday, I heard your daughter singing. The very sound
of her voice thrilled me as I had never been delighted
in all my life before. But when I saw her, sitting alone,
a d heard her holding converse with a solitary bird which
had lost its mate, I was ravished by her beauty, and made
a vow that I would win her heart. I presently perceived
that the impression I made upon her was not favourable.
I took her hand in mine, but she snatched it away as if
an aspek's tongue had touched it. A moment later, in the
madness of my passion for her, I suddenly strained her
in my arms. After this I knew that she detested me. This
knowledge I could have borne, trusting to time, and to
the aid of fortune, to make her look less indifferently
upon me. Great achievement lies almost ready at my hand;
and my end attained, she would have seen in me one who
stood above all others in Red River in brilliancy of
attainment and strength of character. And while in this
way I was endeavouring to cool the fire that was burning
me, I perceived that her heart was given to another; to
one who, so far as I can judge, does not return her
affection."

"And who, pray Monsieur, may this rival be?"

"The young man who rescued your daughter--Thomas Scott."

"Mon Dieu, I hope that it is not as you say, for I do
not want my daughter, much as I am indebted to this young
man, to give to him her affection. If he be, as you say,
a spy of Government and an enemy of our people, a marriage
with him would be out of the question."

"Bon, bon! Monsieur." And M. Riel, in the exuberance of
his loyalty, having succeeded in the vital point, grasped
the hand of Marie's father and shook and wrung it several
times.

"Now, Monsieur, we agree on the main point. I shall name
the other conditions upon which we may be friends. I
have sworn to overcome your daughter's repugnance to me.
Will you assist me in the direction of accomplishing this
object?"

"Oui, Monsieur, by every _fair_ means."

"C'est bien. By every fair means. Only fair means will
I ask you to employ. I shall now tell you what I desire
you to do. You must keep Mademoiselle under your strictest
surveillance. She must not see Monsieur Scott, or
communicate with him. When his name is introduced into
conversation, you must show that the subject is displeasing
to you. You will be asked why it is so, and you shall
answer that you have indisputable proof, and such proof
you may take my _word_ to be, that the young man is not
in sympathy with the cause of the Metis, and that he is
actually a secret and paid agent of the Canadian Government.
That your course may seem more reasonable, and appear to
be the outcome of your own inclination, you will on such
occasions be able to say that you are under obligation
to him for his readiness and gallantry--always use these
words--when your daughter was in the brimming river; but
that your gratitude can be only a, memory, since he has
leagued himself against a cause so near to the heart,
and so supremely in the interest, of every man and woman
and child in the colony of Red River. You must at the
very first convenient moment, and without letting Marie
perceive that I have prompted you to this step, inform
her that she must banish from her mind at once any tender
fancies regarding the young man which she may possess.
Point out to her that in any case it would be unwise in
her to cherish feelings which very evidently are not
reciprocated. Lastly, you will have to teach her cautiously,
and without the semblance of coercion, but constantly,
to think of me. You must show her how great is the promise
which lies before me; how I am the leader of the people
and ruler-predestined of all the land. Nor must you forget
to show her that if I have seemed rude in her presence,
and given way to anger or bitterness, it was because of
my all-consuming love for her, and that henceforth the
great aim of my life, through all the turbulent deeds
that this tumultous time may have in store for me, shall
be to win her approbation, to hear at the close of the
din, and when achievement shall have crowned me master,
a 'Brava, Monsieur' from her sweet lips.'

"Most faithfully, Monsieur, I swear to you," answered
the old man, taking the Rebel's hand in his, "will your
wishes be carried out. More than this, I can almost
promise you that I shall succeed." And then he went to
fetch a bottle, in which he had some choice old rye.
While he was away, M. Riel, who was alone--for all were
absent in the fields, and his comrade had been abroad
since the grey dawn--began to muse in this wise:

"So he believes that he can triumph--that Marie will
yield!" Then he ground his teeth like a wild beast and
swore a terrible oath. "If she yield--ah! but it is a
feast for me to contemplate my revenge. Raise her to the
dignity of wife to share my social honours and triumph.
No; elle sera ma maitresse; and I shall cast her off
among the worthless and degraded ones of her sex." Then
Marie's father entered with the liquor, and pledged his
fealty to Monsieur with many "salutes" and "bonne santes"
After M. Riel had taken sufficient liquor to make him
thoroughly daring, he said with a sinister tone:

"Although it may not be your honour ever to call me your
son-in-law, your duty in persuading your daughter remains
the same. We have formed a compact of friendship and
mutual understanding; yet I must say to you that your
own personal safety depends upon your compliance; depends"
he repeated, raising his voice till it sounded like the
bellowing of an infuriated bull, "_upon your success_.
Your intimacy with this man Scott, together with the
visit paid to your house by the man Mair, places you
entirely at my mercy. Before many days I shall call again
to see how far you have succeeded. I shall expect a report
of some progress. When I call after that I shall be
satisfied with nothing short of _triumph_. I now go,
leaving my warning to ring in your ears till you see me
again." And with an air of insolent mastery, and a gross
light in his eye, he seized his fowling-piece, and strode
out the door, followed by his dog.

"Mon Dieu!" gasped the terrified half-breed, "I thought
that we had become friends, but he goes from my door like
an enemy, filling my ears with threats of vengeance. May
the Virgin protect my Marie and me from his power."

"Has that terrible man gone, mon pere?" enquired Marie,
who now entered with sorrow and agitation in her face.

"Yes; but you must not speak against him. O, how I fear
him; that is to say, ma petite fille, he is a very powerful
man, a great man, and will one day rule all the people,
and be in eminence like unto one of the Canadian Governors:
therefore, it is that it was unfortunate the young man
Scott should ever have been at our house."

"Ah, mon pere! wherefore? Do you regret having extended
a trifling hospitality, not better than you would accord
to a wandering savage, to a brave, honest, honourable
young man, who, at the risk, of his own life, saved the
life of your child? O, surely you have not received into
your ears the poison of this man's cunning and malice;"
and she threw her arms about her father's neck and sobbed,
and sobbed there as if her heart would burst. Old Jean
was moved to deep grief at the affliction of his daughter,
yet he could offer her no word of comfort.

"Monsieur has poured no poison into my ear, ma chere.
He is a powerful man and a great patriot. The people all
love him; and, although he spoke rudely and bitterly to
you, we must forgive him. This we shall not find difficult
to do, when we remember that his display of ill-feeling
was because of his all-consuming love for you."

"All-consuming _love!_" and her eyes blazed with
indignation. "All-consuming, all debasing, low passion;
not love. No, no; love is a sacred thing, whose divine
name is polluted when uttered by such lips as his."

"Be reasonable, ma Marie; don't suffer hastily formed
dislikes to sway your judgment and good sense. There is
not a girl on all the prairies who would not be proud to
be wooed by Monsieur Riel. Wherefore should you not be?
If you have any other affection in your heart banish it.
It may be that you have cherished a tender regard for
the young man Scott, who is, let me see what he is, who
is ready and gallant--no, that is not it--who is quick,
and brave, yes, I think that is it----."

"Mon Dieu; cease, mon pere. Has this tempter gone so far
as to actually put in your mouth the words to be employed
in winning me to his hateful, loathsome arms. Mon Dieu,
Mon Dieu;" and she pressed her little brown fingers over
her throbbing temples. Has my own father leagued himself
against my happiness and, and--my _honour!_" And, with
a loud, heart-rending cry, she fell to the floor, pale
and motionless.

"Is she dead! Mon Dieu! Ma chere fille, speak to me."
And then raising her death-pale head a little, he poured
some of the spirits into her mouth. This restored her,
but there was an almost vacant look in her eye for many
minutes, which wrung his heart. "Sit up my pet and we
will talk together. I will no longer play the inhuman
monster by disguises and deceit."

"Then you will be frank?" she said, her eyes brightening.

"I swear it. Now this man has conceived a violent passion
for you, and I am to press his suit, to alienate your
affections from Monsieur Scott, if you entertain such
feelings, and to win you over to Monsieur Riel. He is to
visit us within a brief period, and when he comes he will
expect me to be able to report marked progress. He will
make a second visit, and he has sworn that triumph alone
will satisfy him then. If things fall not out in this
wise, I am promised his vengeance. He declares that our
intimacy with young Scott, and the visit paid us by the
homme mauvais Mair, who is an unscrupulous agent of the
Canadian Government, would justify extreme measures
against us; and if I mistake not the man, his intention
is to arm hundreds of our people, proclaim a martial law,
and establish himself as head and judge. I am certain
that he would not hesitate to take the most lawless steps.
Indeed, I should not regard as safe either my own life
or your honour. Such then being the facts, what are we
to do?"

"God is good; let us first of all put our trust in Him.
Then let us examine the means which He has given us to
meet the evil. Now, my plan is that I shall in the first
instance affect to yield with grief to such proposals as
you at first make to me. Let there be a surrender of
Monsieur Scott--" Here she blushed so deeply that all
her sweet-rounded cheek, and her neck, and her delicious
little shell-like ears, became a crimson, deep as her
bodice--"and a consent to entertain as favourably as I
can the suit of M. Riel. Meanwhile we can see what is
the next best step. I do not think that we have much to
dread by leaving Red River. We can go to your brother
who lives across the border, and I am certain that he
will be delighted to harbour us till the tempest blows
over. I believe that this rising will rage for a brief
season only, when it must yield to the arm of the Canadian
authorities. M. Riel is a fanatic, and counts not the
perilousness of his undertaking. He will succeed at the
first, I doubt not. You will hear of slaughtered whites,
and others who have incurred his private vengeance. He
will lord it over all like a tyrant, till he sees the
bayonets from Canada, when he will take good care to get
out of the way." Her father saw that her views were sound,
and consented to take her advice; but who was to acquaint
his brother with their needs, and to learn if he could
afford a harbourage?

"Paul can go. He can take the pony and ride the distance
in twelve hours." So it was agreed, and Marie busied
herself with the linen of her brother, and sewed missing
buttons upon his clothes. In the evening, when all were
seated at supper, a young half-breed who had long been
an intimate friend at the house of Marie's father, and
who cast many a languishing eye upon the piquant Violette,
came in. There was much concern in his face, and it was
some time before he knew how to begin to break the news
which he possessed.

"Monsieur Riel was at my father's house to-day, and he
talked long there. He is not your friend," looking at
Jean. "He declares that you are in league with the
enemies of our colony, and has asked my father to keep
a strict watch on the doings of every member of your
family. I know that he talked in the same strain at every
house he visited; and I think there is no threshold in
our settlement that he hasn't crossed. About twenty-five
young men have declared their willingness to follow him
in any exploit. They met upon a field this afternoon and
drilled for a couple of hours. One of them told me,"--the
speaker now turned his gaze half toward Marie--"not an
hour ago that their first business would be to settle
affairs with Messieurs Mair and Scott, whom they declare
are enemies of Red River, and spies of the Canadian
government. I should not wonder if these two men were
secured to-night; and if this be so, and I am any judge
of human malevolence, Riel will have them shot." The
colour had gone out of Marie's cheek, and there was a
terrified gleam in her eye.

"Can nothing be done," she asked, "to apprise them of
the miscreant's designs?"

"I regret that I can do nothing; you know how gladly I
would were it in my power. Every man between twenty-one
and sixty years in our settlement, has been called out
to attend a meeting to be held during the evening in the
school-house, to discuss the situation. One Lepine, a
bosom friend of Monsieur Riel, is to tell us what we are
to do. I, therefore, will have to be present."

"I shall go," said young Paul. "I can reach Willow grove
long before the moon is up, and give warning to Monsieur
Scott. But Monsieur Mair has to take care of himself. I
would very gladly assist in his capture, or for that
matter be well pleased to be one of a firing party to
dispatch his insolent, insulting life." The young lad's
cheeks were burning with indignation. "I think Monsieur
Riel is an impostor, although the cause which he has
espoused is a holy one. But this Mair, after receiving
our hospitalities turns and holds us up to the ridicule,
contempt and pity of the world. Under obligation must we
ever remain to Monsieur Scott, but beyond this, he is a
true gentleman, and incapable of the remotest sympathy
with the mean unmanliness of this Monsieur Mair."

Paul, was a tall, handsome lad, with large, spirited,
brown eyes. He was in his eighteenth year, but had the
manly address of twenty-one. His sister's gratitude
gleamed in her eyes. When he was ready to go out to saddle
his pony, she put her arms about him and kissed him.

"Que Dieu benisse, mon bon frere. Bon voyage!" and she
watched him, I doubt not praying, though her ruby lips
moved not, for him, and for her lover, till the flitting
figure of himself and his fleet-limbed pony was lost in
the dusk that had already gathered over the plain... That
evening when Paul returned he came not alone. Another
steed and rider were there, and beyond, in the shadow of
a grove of cottonwood stood a party of a dozen horsemen.
Marie heard the double tramp, and with some terror drew
to the window to see who was approaching. But her
apprehensions suddenly vanished, and a flush came over
her face.




CHAPTER VII.

"Mon pere, it is Paul, and there is with him Monsieur
Scott; why, I wonder, has he come?" While the question
yet remained unanswered, Paul entered the room accompanied
by young Scott.

"Monsieur will explain the cause of his visit," Paul said.

"Monsieur and mademoiselle," young Scott began, inclining
his head first to the father and then to the daughter,
"as you may expect, only great urgency brought me here
under these circumstances. A half-breed to whom I did a
kindness since coming to the territories, is one of
Monsieur Riel's agents, and is in the confidence of that
dangerous person. He tells me that this very night,
probably before the rise of the moon, a party is to
surround your house, and make you and your daughter
captives. The charge against you is, that you are both
in league with Canadian spies, and enemies of Red River.
One of the said spies is myself! It appears that you are
to be taken to the common jail; and mademoiselle Marie
is to be lodged in the house of a Metis hag, who is a
depraved instrument of Riel's will. Therefore, I have
brought hither an escort sufficient to accomplish your
safe retreat to some refuge beyond the American frontier.
Paul tells me that you had proposed going to your brother's.
I do not consider this a safe plan. Your malignant
persecutor will very speedily learn from your neighbours
all information respecting the existence of relatives,
and where they reside. You would be no safer from the
vengeance of this monster in adjacent, thinly settled
American territory, than you would be in Red River. Will
you therefore come with me to my uncle's in a town not
far beyond the line?--only too happy will he be to serve
you in your need." The proposal was very gladly accepted.
Tears stood in old Jean's eyes; and I doubt not that they
came there when he began to reflect that, but for Marie,
he should now have been acting in league with his miscreant
persecutor against this noble, generous-hearted young fellow.

Within an hour, most of the little valuables in the dear
old homestead, which neither Jean nor Marie ever again
expected to see, were made up into small packs, each one
to be carried by one of the escorts. With a deep sigh
Marie looked at the home of her happy youth, drowsing in
the deep shadow of the oaks, and then mounted her horse.
All that night she rode by her lover's side, and stole
many a glance of admiring pride at his handsome, manly
figure. When they were a couple of hours out, a dusky
yellow appeared in the south-east, and then the bright,
greenish-yellow rim of the Autumn moon appeared, and
began to flood the illimitable prairie with a thick,
wizard light.

"So this miscreant has been hunting you, Marie?" said
the young man, for both had unconsciously dropped in
rear. "I did not like his glances this morning, and had
resolved to keep my eyes upon him. I suppose, ma petite,
if I had the right to keep you from the fans of water-mills,
that I also hold the right of endeavouring to preserve
you from a man whose arms would be worse than the rending
wheel?" She said nothing, but there was gratitude enough
in her eye to reward for the most daring risk that man
ever run.

"You do not love this sooty persecutor, do you, ma
chere?"--and then, seeing that such a question pained
and confused her, he said, "Hush now, ma petite fille;
I shall not tease you any more." The confusion passed
away, and her little olive face brightened, as does the
moon when the cloud drifts off its disc.

"I am very glad. O, if you only knew how I shudder at
the sound of his name!"

"There now, let us forget about him, I can protect you
from him; can I not?" and he reined his horse closer to
hers, and leaned tenderly over towards the girl. She
said nothing, for she was very much confused. But the
confusion was less embarrassment than a bewildered feeling
of delight. But for the dull thud, thud of the hoofs upon
the sod, her escort might plainly enough have heard the
riotous beating of the little maiden's heart.

"And now, about that flower which I gave you this morning.
What did you do with it?"

"Ah, Monsieur, where were your eyes? I have worn it in
my hair all day. It is there now; it was there when you
came to our cottage this evening."

"Ah, I see. I am concerned with your head,--not with your
heart. Is that it, ma petite bright eye? You know our
white girls wear the flowers we give them under their
throats, or upon their bosom. This they do as a sign that
the donor occupies a place in their heart." He did not
perceive in the dusky moonlight, that he was covering
her with confusion. Upon no point was this little maiden
so sensitive, as when it was revealed to her that a
particular habit or act of hers differed from that of
the civilized white girl. Her dear little heart was almost
bursting with shame, and this thought was running through
her mind.

"Oh! what a savage I must seem in his eyes." Her own
unspoken words seemed to burn through her whole body.
"But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read
in English books that gentle ladies wear them there."
And these lines of Tennyson came running through her
head.

  "She went by dale, and she went by down,
   With a single rose in her hair."

And they gave her some relief, for she thought, after
all, that he might be only joking When the blood had gone
back from her forehead, she turned towards her lover,
who had been looking at her since speaking with somewhat
of a tender expression in his mischievous eyes.

"Do white girls never wear roses in their hair? I thought
they did. Can it be wrong for me to wear mine in the same
place?"

"Ah, my little barbarian, you do not understand me. If
an old bachelor, whose head shone like the moon there in
the sky, were to give to some blithe young belle a rose
or a lily, she would, most likely, twist it in her hair;
but if some other hand had presented the flower, one
whose eye was brighter, whose step was quicker, whose
laugh was cheerier, whose years were fewer; in short, ma
chere Marie, if some one for whom she cared just a little
bit more than for any other man that walked over the face
of creation, had presented it to her, she would not put
it in her hair. No, my little unsophisticated one, she
would feel about with her unerring fingers, for the spot
nearest her heart, and there she would fasten the gift.
Now, ma Marie, suppose you had possessed all this
information this morning when I gave you the flower,
where would you have pinned it?"

"Nobody has ever done so much for me as has Monsieur.
He leaped into the flood, risking his life to save mine.
I would be an ungrateful girl, then, if I did not think
more of him than of any other man; therefore, I would
have pinned your flower on the spot nearest my heart,"
Then, deftly, and before he could determine what her
supple arms and nimble little brown fingers were about,
she had disengaged the lily from her hair, and pinned it
upon her bosom. "There now, Monsieur, is it in the right
place?" and she looked at him with a glance exhibiting
the most curious commingling of innocence and coquetry.

"I cannot answer. I do not think that you understand me
yet. If the act of saving you from drowning were to
determine the place you should wear the rose, then the
head, as you first chose, was the proper spot, Do you
know what the word love means?"

"O, I could guess, perhaps, if I don't know. I have heard
a good deal about it, and Violette, who is desperately
fond of a handsome young Frenchman, has explained it so
fully to me, that I think I know. Yes, Monsieur, I _do_
know."

"Well, you little rogue, it takes one a long time to find
out whether you do or not. In fact I am not yet quite
satisfied on the point. However, let me suppose that you
do know what love is; the all-consuming sort, the kind
that sighs like the very furnace. Well, that part of the
statement is clear. Then, supposing that a flower is worn
over the heart only to express love, of the sort I
mentioned, for the donor, where would you, with full
knowledge of this fact, have pinned the flower that I
plucked for you this morning?"

"Since I do not understand the meaning of the word love
with very great clearness,--I think Monsieur has expressed
the doubt that I do understand it--I would not have known
where to pin the flower. I would not have worn it at all.
I would, Monsieur, have set it in a goblet, and taking
my stitching, would have gazed upon it all the day, and
prayed my guardian angel to give me some hint as to where
I ought to put it on."

"You little savage, you have eluded me again. Do you
remember me telling you that some day, if you found out
for me a couple of good flocks of turkeys, I would bring
you some coppers?"

"I do."

"Well, if you discovered a hundred flocks now, I would
not give you one." And then he leaned towards her again
as if his lips yearned for hers; but his love of mischief
was too strong for every other desire. For her part, she
took him exactly as she should have done. She never
pouted;--If she had done so, I fancy that there would
have been soon an end of the wild, boyish, sunny raillery.

"Hallo! Little one, we are away, away in the rear. Set
your pony going, for we must keep up with our escort."
Away they went over the level plain, through flowers of
every name and dye, the fresh, exquisite, autumn breeze
bearing the scent of the myriad petals upon their faces.
After a sharp gallop over about three miles of plain,
they overtook the main body of the escort.

They now reached the border, and the pavements of the
little town of Pembina rang with the hoofs of their
horses. Away still to the south, they rode through the
glorious autumn night, under the calm, bountiful moon.

"Now, Monsieur Riel, I think we are some distance from
your foul talons," Scott said, as turning in his saddle,
he saw the steeples of Pembina, gloom-wrapped, almost
sunk in the horizon. "I fancy I can hear the curses of
his willing tools in the air, after they swooped down
upon your cottage, Marie, and found the inmates flown."

"What is your uncle's cottage like, Monsieur Scott?"

"It is not unlike your own. It is in a grove of pines,
and a happy brook goes chattering by it all the summer.
Will you come fishing in it with me, ma petite?"

"Oui, avec le plus grand plaisir, Monsieur," and she
looked so happy, there was so much sun in her eyes, so
many divine little dimples in her cheek, in contemplation
of all the promised happiness, that it would not require
much keenness to discover the secret of the dear little
maiden.

"Of course, you shall fish with a pin-hook. I am not
going to see you catch yourself with one of the barbed
hooks, like those which I shall use."

"O, Monsieur Scott! Why will you always treat me as a
baby!" and there was the most delicate, yet an utterly
indescribable sort of reproach in her voice and attitude,
as she spoke these words.

"Then it is not a baby by any means," and he looked with
undisguised admiration upon the maiden, with all the
mystic grace and perfect development of her young womanhood.
"It is a woman, a perfect little woman, a fairer a sweeter,
my own mignonette, than any girl ever seen in this part
of the plains since first appeared here human footprint."

"O, Monsieur is now gone to the other extreme. He is
talking dangerously; for he will make me vain."

"Does the ceaseless wooing of the sweet wild rose by soft
winds, make that blossom vain? or is the moon spoilt
because all the summer night ten thousand streams running
under it sing to it unnumbered praises? As easy, ma Marie,
to make vain the rose or the moon as to turn your head
by telling your perfections."

"Monsieur covers me with confusion!" and the little sweet
told the truth. But it was a confusion very exquisite to
her. It sang like entrancing music through her veins;
and gave her a delightful delirium about the temples,
flow fair all the glorious great round of the night, and
the broad earth lit by the moon, seemed to her now, with
the music of his words coursing through her being.
Everything was transfigured by a holy beauty, for Love
had sanctified it, and clothed it with his own mystic,
wonderful garments. It was with poor Marie, then, as it
has some time or other been with us all: when every bird
that sang, every leaf that whispered, had in its tone a
cadence caught from the one loved voice. I have seen the
steeple strain, and rock, and heard the bells peal out
in all their clangourous melody, and I have fancied that
this delirious ecstasy of sound that bathed the earth
and went up to heaven was the voice of one slim girl with
dimples and sea-green eyes.

The mischievous young Scotchman had grown more serious
than Marie had ever seen him before.

"I hope, my child, that you will be happy here; the
customs of the people differ from yours, but your nature
is receptive to everything good and elevated, so that I
am certain you will soon grow to cherish our civilization."

I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling,
cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never
looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is
always on the search for a flaw, that I send passages
from Tennyson floating through my Marie's brain with good
justification. She had received a very fair education
at a convent in Red River. She could speak and write both
French and English with tolerable accuracy; and she could
with her supple, tawny little fingers, produce a nice
sketch of a prairie tree-clump, upon a sheet of cartridge
paper, or a piece of birch rind.

Young Scott was all the while growing more serious, and
even becoming pathetic, which is a sign of something very
delicious, and not uncommon, when you are travelling
under a bewitching moon, in company with a more bewitching
maiden.

"I wish I could be with you during the early part of your
stay here, for I could do much toward reconciling you to
your new life."

"And are you not going to stay with us?" Her voice sounded
somewhat like a restrained cry of pain.

"No Marie, my child, I have to return to the territories."

"But that wicked man will work his vengeance upon you."

"It is just to meet that wicked man upon his own ground
that I go back. It is to thwart him, to cast in my strength
on the side of peace, in the interest of those fertile
plains, that I return. You do not suppose that this
licentious fanatic can ultimately prevail against the
will of the people of Canada, against the military force
of the Empire of Great Britain. The sovereign of our
mighty realm tolerates in no land any dispute of her
authority, and this mad uprising will be crushed as I
might stamp put the feeble splutter of a bed-room taper.
There are without the intervention of outside force at
all, enough of brave and loyal whitemen to overthrow this
scurvy miscreant; and my immediate task is to do the
little that lies in my power to incite them to their
duty. When my work is done, when the plains are cleared
of the mutinous, blind, unreasoning hordes whom this
cunning, vainglorious upstart has called away from their
peaceful homesteads, I will return, my darling little
girl, with the tidings; and I shall bring you back to
the spot where you grew up pure and artless as the lily
that brightens the pond upon which we have so often
paddled our birch together. What the days after that may
have in store for us I know not."

"Ah, I shall be very dreary in your absence, Monsieur
Scott."

"And I, my dear girl, shall be not less dreary without
you. I believe you have regarded yourself as a mere
plaything in my eyes. Why, ma chere, all of my heart you
have wholly and irrevocably. One of your dear hands is
more precious, more sacred to me, than any other girl
whom mine eyes have ever seen. Do you remember the
definition of love that I tried to give you? Well, I gave
it from my own experience. With such a love, my prairie
flower, do I love you. It is fit now, that we are so soon
to part, that I should tell you this: and you will, know
that every blow I strike, every noble deed I do shall be
for the approbation of the dear heart distant from me in
American territory. I have said that the hours of absence
will be dreary; but there will be beyond the the darkest
of them one hope which shall blaze like a star through
the night, and that is that I shall soon be able to call
my Marie my sweet, sweet bride. Now, my beloved, if that
wished for time had come, and I were to say, 'Will you
be mine, Marie,' what would you answer?"

"I did not think that it would be necessary for Monsieur
to ask me that question," she answered shyly, her beautiful
eyes cast down; "I thought he knew."

"My own little hunted pet!" He checked his horse, and
seized the bridle of Marie's pony, till the two animals
stood close together. Then he kissed the girl upon her
sweet virgin lips, murmuring low,

"My love."

The next morning he was away, and Marie sat sad by the
strange brook that ho had told her about. Old Jean was
very contented, but now that he had nought to do, ha
babbled all day about the wars; and thanked the Virgin
that himself and his child had escaped the clutches of
the Rebel leader. Paul speedily obtained employment
harvesting on a large farm near by, and after a little
old Jean began to be extremely useful to his kind host.
But tying sheaves was not the occupation, at this tumultuous
time, that young Paul's heart would have chosen. For how
he longed to be in the fray! to stand, side by side, with
his young comrade, Luc, fighting for the honour and
independence of Riviere Rouge. It was only, after the
most tedious argument, that he could be prevailed upon
to stay; and it was Thomas Scott, who had so overcome him.

"You know the designs that this monster harbours," that
young man had said to Paul. "You are foolish enough to
count now on his patriotism, and to imagine that he would
welcome you to his ranks. He would act far differently:
he would probably spare you, provided that you lent
yourself to his evil designs. If you refused to do this,
he would very probably shoot you as a traitor to your
country."

As for Riel, it may seem that his conduct in deciding in
one hour, to use Marie's father as a tool, and, during
the next, projecting a plan which defeated the very end
which he had in view, was absolutely illogical, and
unreasonable; and that it is the narrator whose skill is
at fault. But I have been at pains to give this occurrence
at length, for the very purpose of revealing the unstaid,
unreasoning character of Riel, and how far passion and
impulse will carry him away from sound understanding.

As for the Arch-agitator, the spirits taken at the house
of old Jean, had raised the savage part of his blood to
the highest pitch of unreasoning and confident passion.
All obstacles seemed to disappear, and he saw with the
same glance the gratification of his passion and of his
revenge.

"Take the horses," he had said to his confidant, "before
the moon rises. Approach the house softly, and carefully
surround it. The girl must be treated with respect. You
know where to leave her."

"Oui, Monsieur," and the slavish fanatic went to do the
vile bidding.

For some hours M. Riel went among the Metis, perfecting
his plans, but towards midnight he ordered his horse,
and, with a lurid light in his eye, set off for the hut
of the half-breed hag where he expected his ruffianly
emissaries would have placed Marie before his arrival.
But the cabin was desolate, save for the figure of an
ill-featured old woman, who, when she heard hoof-beats
approach, came to the door peering out into the night.

"Has the expected yet arrived?" he asked, a half-puzzled
expression in his face.

"No, Monsieur."

"Curses! What can have happened? They should have been
here two hours ago. It is now three o'clock." Then he
alighted and strode about for half an hour over the
dim-lit sward, thrusting out his head every few seconds,
in the direction from which the party should come. But
still no sound, no sight, of any horseman. He now began
to storm and blaspheme, and would remind anybody who saw
him of some wild beast foiled of his prey. Presently,
he observed a long distance off upon the plain, a figure
which he believed was moving. Was this only a poplar or
a cotton-wood tree? He got upon his knees, and put his
ear to the ground; the soft thud of a horse's hoof vibrated
under his ear, and he was satisfied.

"But there is only one horseman. What can it mean?" He
could not bear the suspense, and flinging himself upon
his horse, he galloped out to meet the advancing stranger.
It was soon told. The inmates had escaped, evidently long
before the party got to the dwelling. The embers were
very low on the hearth. Every article of value had been
removed, and there were the prints of many hoofs near
the cottage.

"Scott has foiled me!" and the outwitted tyrant-libertine
swore the most terrible oaths, that he would be revenged.

"Off," he said to his confidant. "You must scour Red
River over to find these fugitives. Wherever you see the
girl, seize her, and bring her hither. The people must
all know that she is a spy, and leagued with our most
deadly enemies to thwart our cause. As for the father,
catch him too, though I should not fret, if, in the
capture, a stray bullet or two went singing through his
head. Above all, Scott must be captured," and this was
to himself, "let me lay hands upon him!"

The horseman was riding off.

"Stop! This old Jean has relatives in the territory; and
with one of these he may be taking refuge."

"I do not think that this is likely, Monsieur. But I
learnt, and it was the prosecution of these enquiries
among Jean's nearest neighbours, that kept me late in
reaching you, that he has a brother in Pembina. Now in
that direction did the hoof-marks of the party lead."

"I see. He has gone there, counting on safety beyond the
lines; but he leans upon a hollow reed. Let me see:
to-morrow at the convention, next day at the grand parade
of arms. Yes, on Tuesday evening, take with you forty
men to Pembina. Of course, you go there with all speed,
and locate the residence. Then on Tuesday night, when
you enter the city, surround the house by a sortie You
will have nothing to fear from the citizens, they have
no force there to oppose yours, and if they had you could
accomplish your mission so suddenly that you might be on
the prairie with your prize before they had their arms
in their hands." The horseman rode off, and the Rebel
was alone.

We have seen that Mr. McDougall had appointed his Deputy
Colonel Dennis, as Conservator of the peace, and authorized
him to organize a force, and put down the Rebellion.
The English and Scotch settlers, almost to a man,
sympathized with the interdicted governor; yet they did
not care to bring themselves into conflict with men, with
whom, for years past, they had lived in the most friendly
relationship, unless some great necessity arose. As for
Riel, they regarded him as an ambitious, short-sighted
demagogue, who palmed off his low cunning for brilliant
leadership, upon the credulous half-breeds. Nevertheless,
a large number of these settlers declared their readiness
to march under Colonel Dennis, and disperse the nest of
rebels at Fort Garry. I need hardly say that most of
the Irish settlers were heart and soul with Riel. It
was not that they had any particular grievance to resent,
or any grievance at all for that matter. It was as
natural to them to rise in revolt, since the rising meant
resistance to the lawful authority, as it is for the
little duck first cast into the pond, to swim. A red
haired, pug-nosed Irishman, coming to New York, leaped
ashore and asked,

"Is there a guvernment in this counthry?"

"There is."

"Thin I'm opposed to it."

Much the same was it in the North-West, and the violent,
blustering ruffian O'Donoghue was the mouthpiece, the
leader, the type of that class of the people.

A number of loyal Scotch and English, therefore, did
arise, and they were known as the Portage party. This
was some months after the night that we last saw Riel
thwarted upon the prairies. In that connection it only
remains to be said that the mission of the confidant to
Pembina was fruitless; and the Rebel gnashed his teeth
that his desires and his revenge had all been baulked.
He had heard, however, that Thomas Scott was abroad
through his territories; and that he had enlisted under
the banner of Colonel Dennis,--which was the truth. What
galled him most was, that in case he should succeed in
getting Scott into his hands, he had no proofs that would
be regarded as sufficient evidence upon which to proceed
with the extreme of vengeance toward him. Yet his orders
stood unchanged:

"Wherever you find Thomas Scott seize him; and convey
him to Fort Garry." On the sixth of December the confidant
came into the tyrant's presence and said:

"We have caught Scott." [Footnote: I take the following
from Begg's "History of the North-West Rebellion," p.
161: "About this time (6th December), the French arrested
and imprisoned Mr. Thomas Scott, Mr. A. McArthur, and
Mr. Wm. Hallet. Mr. Scott, it appears, had been one of
the party assembled in Schultz's house, but had afterwards
left; and no other reason for his arrest is known, except
his having enrolled under Colonel Dennis. Mr. McArthur,
was, it is said, confined on suspicion of acting secretly
on behalf of Mr. McDougall; and Mr. Hallet, for his
activity in assisting and advising Colonel Dennis." ]
The Rebel leader's eye gleamed with a wolfish light.

"Is he in the Fort?"

"Yes."

"Bon! I shall be there presently." So without any delay
he proceeded to the Fort, and entered the apartment where
young Scott was confined.

"Ah, Monsieur! This is where you are?"

"Yes, you tyrannical ruffian. But I shall not be here
for long." Riel curbed the mad blood which had leaped to
his temples.

"Monsieur shall not be here long, if he chooses to accept
conditions upon which he may be free."

"Come, for curiosity sake, let us hear the proposals; I
am certain that they are foul. Yet, as I say, I am anxious
to hear them."

"Monsieur must be reasonable. There is no good purpose
to be served by railing at me."

"That is true. You are too infamous a miscreant to be
shamed or made better by reproaches."

"Nevertheless, I shall proceed to business, Monsieur.
Do you know where old Jean and his daughter have taken
up their abode?"

"I do."

"So I suspected. If you will let me know their place of
abode, that I may give them my guarantee for their personal
safety if they return to their home--as I understand that
through some unfounded fear of me they fled, and I am anxious
to stand well in the affections of all my people--I shall
permit you forthwith to leave this Fort."

"Contemptible villain, liar and tyrant, I will _not_
reveal to you. Begone. By heaven! if you stand there I
shall bury my hands in your foul, craven throat."

"Take care, Monsieur," was all M. Riel said, as he left
Scott's presence. But his eye burned like a fiend's.
The agitator, with a spirit of the most devilish rage
consuming him, nevertheless went on to forward the general
movement. His first great step was against the followers
of Colonel Dennis, who had banded together and posted
themselves in the house of Dr. Schultz, a very prominent
settler. They had gathered here with arms in their hands,
but they seemed like a lot of little children, without
any purpose. There was no moral cohesion among them, and
there was no force either to lead or to drive them. They
were not long thus ridiculously impounded, when they
began to look at one another, as if to ask:

"_Quis furores o cives?_"

They were not alone unprepared and undetermined to go up
to Fort Garry, and fight the greasy Rebel and his followers,
but they were by no means certain as to what they should
do were the enemy to come against them. And this is just
the very thing that the enterprising Monsieur Riel proposed
to do. It is said that about this time he was often found
reading books describing the sudden and unexpected military
movements of Napoleon. And I have not the remotest doubt
that the diseased vanity of the presumptuous crank enabled
him to see a likeness in himself to the Scourge of Nations.
So he said to his men:

"We shall go down and capture this Dennis' geese-pound.
Better turn out in good force, with your arms, though I
am quite certain that you can capture the whole caboose
with broom-sticks." So the Metis thronged after his heels,
and surrounded the Schultz mansion with its "congregation
of war spirits." Of course there is something to be said
for the gathering together of these loyal people here,
as there is for the issuing of the proclamation by the
citizens of London, per the mouth of the three tailors.
Beyond was Fort Garry, unlawfully seized by Riel, and
now unlawfully invested by his troops. This was, therefore,
a menace to the unlawful combination at the fort. At once
the agitator began to dictate terms. If they would come
out of their ridiculous hive, and surrender their arms,
he would suffer no harm whatever to befall them; but
content himself with merely taking them all in a lump,
and locking them up prisoners in the fort. He would,
however, insist upon other formalities; and, therefore,
exhibited a declaration which he would ask them to sign.
By this document each man would bind himself to rise no
more, but to submit to the authority of the Provisional
Government. There was very little parleying. Each brave
loyalist took the paper, and put his name to it.
[Footnote *] Dr. O'Donnell was the first to sign his
name, and after he had done the rest followed and with
much credit to the celerity of their penmanship. Then
they all moved out and were escorted up to Fort Garry,
where they were held for a considerable period, despite
the prayers of prominent persons who had taken no active
part on either side, for their liberation.

[* Footnote: I take the following from Mr. Begg's History
of the Rebellion: "In the meantime, there were from two
to three hundred armed French half-breeds, as well as a
number of lookers-on, around and outside the building;
and it is said that a couple of mounted cannon (six
pounders) were drawn outside the walls of Fort Garry,
ready to be used in case of an assault upon the besieged
premises.

"When all those in the house had signed, and the surrender
handed to Riel, he said that there were two signatures
not on the list, which ought to be there--and which he
insisted upon having. These were the names of James
Mulligan and Charles Garrett. A guard from the French
party was therefore sent to hunt up those two men; and
in a short time they returned with the individuals they
had been in search of. As soon as this had been done,
the prisoners were taken out and marched to Fort Garry;
and the following ladies, who, during the siege, had
nobly resolved upon remaining by the side of their
husbands, also insisted upon accompanying them to Fort
Garry.

"The following are the names of the ladies: Mrs. Schultz,
Mrs. Mair, Mrs. O'Donnell; and as the first named lady
was ill, probably from the excitement of the past few
days, a sleigh was procured, and Dr. Schultz himself drew
her along in it, behind the rest of the prisoners. When
they reached Fort Garry, Mr. J. H. McTavish, accountant
in the Hudson Bay Company service, kindly offered to give
up his private quarters for the use of the married men
and their families, and thus made things more comfortable
for the ladies."]




CHAPTER VIII.

In the meantime, the Government at Ottawa had convinced
itself that affairs were in a pretty bad mess in the
North-West. Therefore they dispatched, with olive branches,
two commissioners to treat with the malcontents. It is
hardly worth while to mention the names of these two
gentlemen, though I may as well do so. They were
Vicar-General Thibeault, this prelate, I understand,
being a relative of the gentleman who produced the life
of Sir Charles Tupper, and Colonel DeSalaberry. Mr.
Donald A. Smith, the chief officer of the Hudson Bay
Company, was also dispatched. He was instructed to inquire
into and report upon the cause of the disturbances and
also to assist Governor McTavish, or to relieve him,
altogether of duties should ill health have incapacitated
him. Mr. Smith arrived in due season at the settlement,
and sought an interview with the Rebel leader in Fort
Garry. M. Riel very readily admitted him; and then turned
the keys upon him. It was a very great pity that it was
not upon some members of the beautiful government at
Ottawa that he had the opportunity of fastening the locks!
There were now about sixty prisoners in the fort; the
British ensign had been hauled down, and the flag of the
Provisional Government, a combination of fleurs de-lys
and shamrocks, hoisted in its stead. When the news got
abroad that an agent had come from Canada to treat with
the people on behalf of the Canadian Government, that
Mr. McDougall was in disfavour with the Dominion ministry,
and had returned to Ottawa, M. Riel's influence began
to diminish sensibly.

"Let us hear what Donald Smith has to say to us," they
began to cry; and the Arch Rebel was fain to consent. A
monster meeting of 1,100 people was held in the open air,
with the thermometer twenty degrees below zero. Riel and
his followers were not satisfied with the terms of the
Dominion agent; and the arch disturber had made up his
mind not to be satisfied. Yet he was not secure in his
position, for there was much writhing among hosts of his
followers under his tyrannical caprices. Sometimes he
broke loose from all civilized restraint, and acted like
a mad savage. Governor McTavish, who was reaching the
last stages of consumption, for some reason incurred the
ill-will of the autocrat. One might have supposed that
a man tottering on the grave's brink would have been
secure from violence and insult; but the heartless Rebel
ruffian was insensible to every human impulse. Bursting
into the chamber of the sick man, he raged like a wild
bull, stamped upon the floor, and declared that he would
have him shot before midnight. Then telling off a guard
he sent them to invest the house. His rage cooled down
after a little, and the murderous threat was not carried
into execution. I have said that the loyalty and obedience
of his entire followers were, so far, by no means assured.
Hundreds who sympathized with the uprising, and in the
beginning expressed admiration for his courage and daring,
began to be shocked at his tyranny, and to hold aloof.
This was the reason, we may be sure, that some of the
revengeful threats which he, about this time made, were
not carried into effect. He held long counsel with his
military leader, Lepine.

"How does the sentiment of the settlement go now? Do they
disapprove of my severe measures?"

"They do, Monsieur; and I am inclined to think that you
will be obliged to show some generosity, even toward your
worst enemies, to maintain the confidence and sympathy
of your followers."

"Suppose I release these prisoners?"

"I know of nothing more popular that you could do."

"But Scott? He is my deadliest enemy. It is to give a
colour of justification to my attitude towards him that
I have incarcerated the rest."

"Even him, Monsieur, I think it would be advisable now
to let him depart with the rest. I am quite certain that
he will before long, moved by his hatred of yourself,
commit some act that will justify you in according to
him very stern sort of punishment.

"Be it so. I shall let them all go. But remember: you
never must allow this man to pass from under your eye."

Meanwhile poor Marie was far away, sighing all the day
for some word from her lover. She had heard that they
had captured him and locked him in a dungeon. A terrible
fever seized her, and she cried out in her delirium to
take her to her lover. For many days after the fire of
her illness had cooled, she lay between life and death
like some fitful shadow; but when a letter came to her,
in the dear writing that she so well knew, announcing
that he was once more free, the enfeebled blood began to
stir in her veins, and a faint tint of rose began to
appear on the wasted cheek.

"I will run over and see my little love during the first
breathing time that offers," he wrote. "I hope, ma amie,
you are not sorrowing at my absence. No hour passes over
me, whether wake or dreaming, that I do not sigh for my
darling Marie; but I am consoled with the thought that
when the turmoil is ended, when this land of tumult and
tyranny has become a region of peace and fruitful industry,
I will be able to bring my darling back to her dear old
home; and in a little wed her there, and then take her
to my arms for ever."

This was very sweet tidings to the desolate girl. She
read the letter over and over till she could repeat every
word of the eight large pages which it contained. When
she began to grow stronger she would keep it in her lap
all day, and touch it tenderly as a young mother would
her sleeping babe. Before blowing out her lamp in the
night she would kiss the letter, and put it under her
pillow. When she opened her large bright eyes in the
morning she would take it, kiss it, and read it once
again.

During all this time the fire of Riel's two-fold passion
was not burning lower:--nay, it was growing stronger.
His aim now was to make himself such a ruler and master
in the settlement that every word of his should be as
law, and that no man, not all the people, might disobey
his command or censure his action.

"So Thomas Scott is to marry her, when the strife ends,"
he would speculate. "Ah, Monsieur Scott, if to that time
you defer your nuptials, they shall take place in heaven
--or in hell." For the furtherance of his diabolical
personal aims he now began to assume a benignant, fatherly
tone, and when he issued his famous "Proclamation to the
people of the North-West," everybody was struck by the
calmness, the restraint, and even the dignity of its
language. [Footnote *1] He likewise endeavoured to show
that he was not a disturber whose only mission was to
pull down. Through his instrumentality, and at his
suggestion in every one of its details, a Bill of Rights,
[Footnote *2] was drawn up, and published to the people.
This document set forth little more than what would be
regarded as legitimate requests.

[*1 Footnote: This document was as follows:--"Let the
assembly of twenty-eight representatives, which met on
the 9th March, be dear to the people of Red River! That
assembly has shown itself worthy of great confidence. It
has worked in union. The members devoted themselves to
the public interests, and yielded only to sentiments of
good will, duty and generosity. Thanks to that noble
conduct, public authority is now strong. That strength
will be employed to sustain and protect the people of
the country.

"To-day the Government pardons all those whom political
differences led astray only for a time. Amnesty will be
generously accorded to all those who will submit to the
Government; who will discountenance or inform against
dangerous gatherings.

"From this day forth the public highways are open.

"The Hudson Bay Company can now resume business. Themselves
contributing to the public good, they circulate their
money as of old. They pledge themselves to that course.

"The attention of the Government is also directed very
specially to the northern part of the country, in order
that trade there may not receive any serious check, and
peace in the Indian districts may thereby he all the more
securely maintained.

"The disastrous war which at one time threatened us, has
left among us fears and various deplorable results. But
let the people feel reassured.

"Elevated by the Grace of Providence and the suffrages
of my fellow-citizens to the highest position in the
Government of my country, I proclaim that peace reigns
in our midst this day. The Government will take every
precaution to prevent this peace from being disturbed.

"While internally all is thus returning to order,
externally, also, matters are looking favourable. Canada
invites the Red River people to an amicable arrangement.
She offers to guarantee us our rights, and to give us a
place in the Confederation equal to that of any other
Province.

"Identified with the Provisional Government, our national
will, based upon justice, shall be respected.

"Happy country, to have escaped many misfortunes that
were prepared for her! In seeing her children on the
point of a war, she recollects the old friendship which
used to bind them, and by the ties of the same patriotism
she has re-united them again for the sake of preserving
their lives, their liberties, and their happiness.

"Let us remain united and we shall be happy. With strength
of unity we shall retain prosperity.

"O, my fellow-countrymen, without distinction of language,
or without distinction of creed--keep my words in your
hearts! If ever the time should unhappily come when
another division should take place amongst us, such as
foreigners heretofore sought to create, that will be the
signal for all the disasters which we have had the
happiness to avoid.

"In order to prevent similar calamities, the Government
will treat with all the severity of the law those who
will dare again to compromise the public security. It is
ready to act against the disorder of parties as well as
against that of individuals. But let us hope rather that
extreme measures will be unknown and that the lessons of
the past will guide us in the future.

"LOUIS RIEL.

"Government House,

"Fort Garry, April 9th, 1870."]


[*2 Footnote: This document claimed:--

"1st. The right to elect our own Legislature.

"2. The Legislature to have power to pass all laws, local
to the Territory, over the veto of the Executive, by a
two-thirds vote.

"3. No Act of the Dominion Parliament (local to this
Territory) to be binding on the people until sanctioned
by their representatives.

"4. All sheriffs, magistrates, constables, &c., &c., to
be elected by the people--a free homestead pre-emption
law.

"5. A portion of the public lands to be appropriated to
the benefit of schools, the building of roads, bridges,
and parish buildings.

"6. A guarantee to connect Winnipeg by rail with the
nearest line of railroad--the land grant for such road
or roads to be subject to the Legislature of the Territory.

"7. For four years the public expenses of the Territory,
civil, military and municipal, to be paid out of the
Dominion Treasury.

"8. The military to be composed of the people now existing
in the Territory.

"9. The French and English language to be common in the
Legislature and Council, and all public documents and
Acts of Legislature to be published in both languages.

"10. That the Judge of the Superior Court speak French
and English.

"11. Treaties to be concluded and ratified between the
Government and several tribes of Indians of this Territory,
calculated to I insure peace in the future.

"12. That all privileges, customs and usages existing at
the time of the transfer, be respected.

"13. That these rights be guaranteed by Mr. McDougall
before he be admitted into this Territory.

"14. If he have not the power himself to grant them, he
must get an Act of Parliament passed expressly securing
us these rights: and, until such Act be obtained, he
must stay outside the Territory."]

His followers soon began to forget his late manifestation
of tyranny and violence, and his enemies found themselves
silenced by his restraint, and the wisdom of his
declarations. Yet the rebel leader for many reasons, one
of which is very well known to the reader, was one of
the unhappiest of men. Besides the matter at his heart
he lived hourly in mortal dread of bodily harm. In the
dead of night he would waken, start suddenly from his
bed and clutch at some garment hanging upon the wall,
deeming the thing to be an assassin. Mr. Begg says that
one day he went out to call upon one Charles Nolin, for
the purpose of effecting a reconciliation. While he was
sitting in the house eating supper, a man having a gun
passed the window; upon which Riel suddenly threw down
his knife and fork, and declared that he was about to be
shot. Nolin answered that he never would be shot in his
house, and immediately went out to see who the man was.
It appears that he was an Indian, seeking the way to a
comrade's lodge, and perfectly innocent of any murderous
intention. Almost immediately after this had occurred,
about forty men from the Fort arrived, and accompanied
Riel back to his quarters. His terror was so oppressive,
that he was threatened with an attack of brain fever.

Sixty miles from Fort Garry was a settlement known as
Prairie Portage. The inhabitants to a considerable extent
consisted of whitemen, and English and Scotch half-breeds.
When news reached this community that the Disturber had
taken sixty prisoners and locked them up in Fort Garry,
a feeling of the deepest indignation took possession of
all. A number of the settlers called upon Major Boulton,
a gentleman who had at one time been a captain in the
10th Regiment, and spoke to him in this wise:

"We can muster here 400 good fighting men, and if I you
will lead us we shall march against this scoundrel, I
liberate the people whom he has shut up in the Fort, and
put an end to the rebellion."

"You hold out a very fair prospect," Major Boulton
answered, "but I have very grave doubts that the thing
can be accomplished as easily as you imagine."

"We have the arms, and we are determined to move against
that presumptuous nest of domineering banditti. If you
do not lead us, then the command will have to fall upon
one of ourselves, and there is no man amongst us who has
had any experience in leadership."

"How are your numbers made up?"

"We have nearly a hundred immigrants, and about double
that number of English-speaking half-breeds."

"I consent to your request, but you must distinctly know
that I do so altogether against my own judgment. Against
my _judgment_ only, however, not against my inclinations."
Very speedily the force was marshalled together, and
organised in rough shape. Winter now reigned in all its
severity upon the plains. Recently snow had fallen, and
without snow shoes it was next to impossible to march.
The arms of this crudely-disciplined band, as may be
imagined, were not of the most approved pattern. Some
of the half-breeds had flint-locks, and their highest
average of "going-off" capacity was about 33 1/3 per
cent. That is to say, out of three snaps you got the
piece "off" once. The miscarriages were made up of "missing
fire" and "burning prime."

Now, while this dangerous army was marching toward Fort
Garry, Riel, on the advice of his military chief, Lepine,
had liberated the prisoners. Many of the latter tarried
not long on the shadow of the rebel stronghold. Thomas
Scott learned, on leaving the stockade, that a heavy
force was proceeding to the Fort to overthrow the rebels,
and made all haste to join the loyalists.

Major Boulton was not without some definite and even
commendable plan of procedure, much as he has been
criticised by those who always show their wisdom _after_
the event. To young Scott he detailed his programme.

"My ambition is," he said, "to delude the rebels as to
my movements, by affecting a desire to treat with them.
Therefore, I shall halt with my forces a short march from
Fort Garry, and when I have lulled suspicion, I will make
a dash, in the night, trusting to the suddenness and
vigour of the onset for success." Such a proceeding Scott
strongly approved, and Major Boulton found that the young
man's knowledge of the rebels' condition would be of the
greatest value to the enterprise. So with considerable
enthusiasm the force marched on. Now, however, the sky
became a sullen indigo, and flakes of spitting snow began
to drive out of the east.

"I have some fear of that sky," the commander said to
his followers. "If more snow comes, there is an end of
the march." All day, and through the night and during
the next day, the storm raged, covering the prairie with
four feet of soft snow. Riel's scouts had given warning
of the approach of the loyalists, and every man in the
fort seized a fire arm, ready to march instantly upon
the besiegers. The ruffianly O'Donoghue was fairly in
his element.

"Boy hivins and airth," he said, "but it's moyself that's
itching to get at those lick-shpittle loyalists. Veeve
lah Republeekh," he shouted, tossing his filthy hat, "and
God save Oirland."

"We must return, my men," Major Boulton said. "If these
well-armed rebels were to come against us now, they would
butcher us like sheep." With hearts full of disappointment,
the force disbanded, and the men began to retrace their
steps homeward. A portion of it, however, remained
together. Some in sleighs and others on foot verged off
across the prairie from St. John's school-house, in this
way endeavouring to avoid Fort Garry. But Riel's eyes
had been upon them, and big, unwashed O'Donoghue, mounting
his horse, shouted--

"We've got thim. Veeve lah Republeekh; God save Oirland,"
and set out over the plain, followed by a host of little
Frenchmen, bristling like porcupines, with their war-like
inclinations.

"Surround the lick-shpittles, Mounsieurs," shouted the
big, red Irishman. "Veeve lah, Veeve lah!" he screamed,
and beat the flanks of his horse with his monster feet.
The big ruffian was fairly delirious for a fight. "Thim
are the min. Mounsieurs," he shouted, "that robbed my
counthrey of her liberty. Him thim in, Mounsieurs." In
this way he continued to shout, his voice sounding over
the snowy waste like the bellowing of a bull. As he neared
the portage detachment, he perceived Major Boulton, whom
he knew.

"Oha," he bellowed, "Mr. Chief Sassenach. Veeve lah
Republeekh, God save Oirland! Surrender me brave
lick-shpittle. What's this? Tare en nouns, if it isn't
Tom Shkott. Divil resaive me you'll not get off this
time. Lay down your arms, traitors and crown worshippers.
Lay thim down. Drop thim in the shnow. There, don't be
too nice. Down wid thim. Or will ye foight? But it's
meself that would loike a bit of a shindy wid ye."
Thereupon he took his rifle, loaded it, and pointed it
at the head of Major Boulton.

"Major," he shouted, "your eye is covered. Divil resaive
me if I couldn't knock it out quicker nor you could wink."
Then he lowered his piece, waved his greasy hat around
his big sorrel head and yelled,

"Veeve lah! Capture thim all, even to that cratur,"
pointing to a little, thin, spiteful-looking man, with
a face much like a weasel's. His skin was the colour of
the leaf of the silver poplar, his eyes were very quick,
and they snapped and scintillated upon the smallest
provocation. He was one of the most cantankerous,
self-willed men in the whole company, and was under the
impression that his advice was worth the combined wisdom
of all the rest. He had heard the contemptuous reference
made to himself by O'Donoghue, and his little eyes fairly
blazed.

"Yes, me take you also," a big, sodden half-breed said,
advancing close to the little man.

"Take me? damn your impertinence! Take me?" and quick as
thought itself he drew his pistol and snapped it once,
twice, three times in the Metis face. He fairly danced
with rage.

"Take me?" he screamed out once again, and, running at
the Metis, who had grown alarmed and backed off several
paces, he ran the barrel of the pistol down his throat.

"Now, you filthy, red-headed rascal," he said, turning
toward the leader, "if you will come down from your horse,
I will settle you in the same way," and running over, he
stabbed O'Donoghue in the knee with the muzzle of his
pistol, and afterwards punched the horse in the ribs.
O'Donoghue quickly turned his horse around and, with a
sudden movement, squirted a jet of tobacco juice in the
eyes of the tempestuous little loyalist.

"Now, take him up to the fort, my min, wid the rest.
Forward, march. Veeve lah Republeekh, and God save Oirland,
Major Boulton," delivering the latter part of the sentence
close to the ear of the captive leader.

[Footnote: The following description of this ridiculous
episode in the history of the rebellion is given by Mr.
Begg in his history of the troubles:--

"On the morning of the 17th, word was received that the
English settlers had disbanded, and were returning to
their homes. Soon after this, a small party of men--some
in sleighs and others on foot, were seen to verge off
across the prairie, from St. John's school-house, appearing
as if they wished to avoid the town. As soon as this
party was discovered, a body of horsemen emerged from
Fort Garry, and started out for the purpose of intercepting
them. People in the town, crowded every available spot
overlooking the prairie. Faces thronged the windows.
Wood piles and fences were crowded with sightseers, all
expecting to behold a miniature battle. When the Portage
party discovered the French coming out of the Fort they
halted, and appeared to hold a consultation; after which,
they moved slowly on--the depth of snow impeding their
progress. The French, at the head of whom was O'Donoghue,
continued to gallop over the snow drifts, halting now
and again for stragglers. At last the two parties met,
but instead of a fight, they mixed together for some
minutes, and then they all started in the direction of
Fort Garry. They have been taken prisoners, was the
conclusion by the lookers-on, and so, indeed, it turned
out to be. Several of the Portage party refused at first
to give up their arms; but ultimately they consented to
do so, and were all taken to Fort Garry, where they were
imprisoned in the same rooms which had only recently been
vacated by the first lot of prisoners. It is said that
the Portage party gave themselves up, on the understanding
that Riel merely wished to speak to them and explain
matters. If this is the case, they were not justly dealt
by, for immediately upon their arrival at Fort Garry,
they were put in prison, and Major Boulton, their leader,
placed in irons. What a singular change in affairs this
occasioned;--twenty-four prisoners liberated on the
15th,--forty-eight prisoners taken on the 17th."]

Let us now return to the vengeful Riel. Never steady of
purpose, or resting his faith upon logic, he had begun
to curse himself for taking Lepine's advice and suffering
Scott to depart.

"After all, he may elude me, go out of the territory,
and marry the girl. Curses, a thousand curses upon my
own head for following the advice. Malediction upon
Lepine's head for having given it to me." Just at this
moment, the door opened, and Lepine entered.

"I bring Monsieur good news."

"Ah, what is it? Any tidings of Scott?"

"He is at this very moment in the fort; having been caught
among Major Boulton's party. He was most insolent to
myself and O'Donoghue, and used very abusive language
respecting yourself. I think, Monsieur, you have cause
sufficient against him now."

"Bon! bon! Yes,--he shall not escape me this time," and
rising, he began to stride up and down the floor, his
eyes flaming with hate and vengeance.

"Now, Monsieur Lepine, give me your attention. At once
go and put Boulton in irons. I shall attend presently,
and declare that he is to be shot to-morrow. Suppliants
will come beseeching me to spare his life, but at first
I will refuse to do so, and say that I am determined to
carry out my threat. At the last I will yield. So far,
so good. I do not know, now, whether you understand my
methods or not."

[Footnote: The following is Mr. Begg's version of this
part of the affair:--"Riel granted the lives of three,
but Major Boulton, he said, would have to die that night.
It now began to look very serious. Archdeacon McLean
was called upon to attend the condemned man during his
last moments, and a feeling of oppression was felt by
all at the thought of a human being to be thus sent to
his last account on such short notice, at midnight, too
(the hour appointed for the execution)--midnight--the
very thought of a man being brought out in the stillness
of the night to be shot like a dog was horrible in the
extreme. Still there were no lack of interceders, although
little hope was now entertained of Major Boulton being
spared. People retired to their homes that evening with
mingled feelings of hope and Uncertainty, mixed with
horror at the deed about to be committed. And how was
the prisoner during all this time? Calm and resigned to
his fate. After writing a few lines to his friends in
Canada, he called for a basin of water and a towel with
which to wash his face and hands, and a glass of wine to
prevent him, if possible, from shivering when passing
into the cold night air, in case people might attribute
it to fear. He spoke quietly and calmly of the fate before
him, and acted altogether as a soldier should do in the
face of death. In the meantime the French councillors
were sitting in deliberation on Boulton's sentence, the
result being that his life was spared. This was communicated
at once to the prisoner who received the information as
calmly as he had done the sentence of death."]

"I think I do Monsieur," and there was a knowing twinkle
in the eye of the wily scoundrel.

"Well, this Scott has an unbridled tongue, and is pretty
certain to use it. If he does not, a little judicious
goading will soon set him in his most abusive mood. If
possible, it would be well for one of the guards to
provoke him to commit an assault. Could you rely upon
any one of your men for such a bit of business?"

"Oui, Monsieur, I have such a man."

"Bon, let him be so provoked, and after his violence has
been thoroughly trumpeted through the fort, make a
declaration of the same formally to me. I will then direct
you to try him by court martial. You are aware of how I
desire him to be disposed of. When the news gets abroad
that he is to be shot, some will be incredulous, and
others will come to sue for his life. I shall reply to
them: 'This is a matter of discipline. The man has
deserved death, or the court martial would not have
sentenced him. I spared Boulton's life, and already I
have as fruits of my leniency, increased turbulence and
disrespect. The government of this colony must be respected,
and the only way to teach its enemies that it must be,
is to make an example of one of the greatest offenders.'
Lose no time in completing the work. We know not what
chance may work, and rob our hands of the scoundrel. You
understand? I am least of all mixed up in the matter,
being more concerned with weightier affairs."

"Oui, Monsieur," and making an obeisance, the murderous
tool departed. Exactly as it had been planned, it all
fell out. Major Boulton was put in irons, and Riel declared
that for the sake of peace and the prosperity of the
colony, he must be shot. Dozens of people came and implored
him to spare the condemned man's life; but he was
inexorable. At last, however, "at the eleventh hour," as
the newspapers put it, yielding to Mr. Donald A. Smith
he said:

"He is spared."

Lepine presented himself before his leader.

"Monsieur, I think that it will not be at all necessary
to employ any stratagem to work our man into violence.
He has been showering reproaches upon the guards, and
loading your name with every sort of ignominious reproach.
The guards knew my feelings respecting the man, so during
the night they decided to put chains upon him. As the
foremost one advanced with the manacles, the prisoner
raised his arm, and dealt him a blow on the head which
felled him to the ground."

"Bon! Bon!" Riel cried, while he rubbed his hands with
satisfaction. "Without applying the little goad at all,
he fulfils our will."

"Well, not in the strictest sense, Monsieur. Luc had
certain private instructions from me, and he carried them
out in a very skilful manner."

"N'importe, Monsieur, N'importe how the thing came about;
we have the cause against him, and that suffices. What
do you now propose to do, for you are aware Monsieur--"
there was now a tone of diabolical raillery in his words--"
that this is a matter in which I cannot concern myself,
you being the best judge of what is due rebellious military
prisoners?"

"Merci, Monsieur! I shall endeavour to merit your further
regard. My intention is to proceed forthwith to try him.
Already, I have summoned the witnesses of his guilt; and
he and you shall know our decision before another hour
has passed." Then the faithful Monsieur Lepine was gone.

"No, ma Marie. You shall never deck your nuptial chamber
with daisies for Monsieur Thomas Scott. You will find
occupation for your sweet little fingers in putting fresh
roses upon the mound that covers him. For a _feu-de-joie_
and the peal of glad marriage bells, I will give you, ma
petite chere, the sullen toll that calls him to his open
coffin, and the rattle of musketry that stills the tongue
which uttered to you the last love pledge."

For an hour did he pace up and down the floor gloating
over his revenge. Meanwhile I shall leave him, and follow
the "adjutant-general," as M. Lepine was known under the
Provisional Government. He proceeded to the private room
of the military quarters, and entering found his subordinate
officers assembled there.

"Messieurs," he said, "We know what our business is. We
must lose no time in dispatching it. But before commencing,
let me say a few words. Monsieur Riel is so overweighted
with other affairs that the matter of dealing with the
man Scott rests entirely in our hands. I have just left
him, after endeavouring in vain to induce him to be
present at the trial; but he could not spare the time to
come. By skilfully sounding him, however, I discovered
that his sentiment respecting the prisoner are exactly
the same as those entertained by myself. What these are,
I need hardly say. It is now a struggle between the
authority of the Provisional Government and a horde of
rebellious persons of which the defendant is the most
dangerous. The eyes of our followers are upon us; and if
we permit the authority of government to be defied, its
officers reviled, and insult heaped upon us, depend upon
it we shall speedily lose the hold which we have gained
after so many bitter struggles; and become ridiculous,
and a prey to the conspiracy which our enemies are so
actively engaged in promoting against us. The very fact
of this man Scott having leagued himself with our enemies,
within a few hours after his release from confinement,
is in itself an offence worthy of death; but I shall ask
these persons who are here as witnesses to show you that
since his capture he has merited death ten times over at
our hands. With your permission gentlemen, I will proceed:

"Thomas Scott of Red River Settlement stands charged
before this court-martial with treasonable revolt against
the peace and welfare of the colony; with having leagued
himself with an armed party, whose object was the overthrow
of authority as vested in our Provisional Government. He
is likewise charged with having attempted criminal violence
upon lawfully delegated guards appointed over him, during
his incarceration; and likewise with inciting his
fellow-prisoners to insubordination and tumult, contrary
to the order and well being of authority as established
in Red River."

"Luc Lestang."

This person came forward.

"Relate all you know in the conduct of the prisoner Scott
that may be regarded as treasonable and criminal, within
the past fourteen days."

"On the 17th ultimo, I was present at his capture, a
short distance from Fort Garry. He was armed, and was in
company with a number of other armed persons who had
leagued themselves under one Major Boulton, with the
object of capturing Fort Garry, and overthrowing the
Provisional Government as established in this colony."

"Have you seen him since his imprisonment in the Fort?"

"I have seen him every day since."

"Will you please state what have been his demeanour and
conduct as a prisoner?"

"He has been insulting and disorderly in the last degree."

"Will you specify a few particular examples?"

"I have frequently heard him describe the Provisional
Government and its supporters as a band of mongrel
rough-scruffs, a greasy, insolent, nest of traitors; and
a lot of looting, riotous, unwashed savages. He has used
language of this sort ever since his entry into the Fort.
Likewise, I have heard him say, that he would have the
pleasure of assisting in hanging Monsieur Riel to a
prairie poplar; and in putting tar and feathers upon his
unwashed, hungry followers."

"Has he been guilty of any acts of violence?"

"He has been guilty of acts of violence. When he became
unbearably insubordinate I found it to be my duty to put
irons upon him. As I approached him with the handcuffs
he smote me twice in the face, and I yet carry the mark
that he gave me. [Here the precious half-breed pointed
to his right eye, which was a dusky purple.] This black
eye I received from one of his blows."

"That will do, Luc."

Another witness with the movements of a snake, and eyes
as black as sloes, was called; and he gave evidence which
tallied exactly with that sworn to by Luc Lestang. This,
of course, was not a very extraordinary coincidence, for
he had been present while the first miscreant was giving
his evidence. But poor Scott, whose life was the issue
of all the swearing, was not permitted to be present,
but was kept without in a distant room, chained there
like a wild beast.

"The Court," said the adjutant-general, "has heard the
accusation against this man; and its duty now is to
consider whether or not the safety, the peace, the
well-being of the government and the state, demands that
the extreme penalty should be visited upon this common
disturber and enemy both. The question is, whether he is
worthy of Death, or not. You will retire gentlemen,--"
there were four of them, exclusive of witnesses, and the
clerk--"and find your verdict."

They were absent about two minutes. The foreman then
advancing said:

"Monsieur Adjutant, WE FIND THE PRISONER SCOTT, GUILTY."

Then drawing upon his head a black cap, the adjutant
said:

"After due and deliberate trial by this Court, it has
been found that the prisoner Thomas Scott, is 'Guilty.'
_I do, therefore, declare the sentence of this court
martial to be, that the prisoner be taken forth this day,
at one o'clock, and shot._ And may God in His infinite
mercy, have mercy upon his soul."

Monsieur Riel had been all this while pacing up and down
his room. A tap came upon his door.

"Entrez. Ah, it is you, mon adjutant!"

"Oui, mon president."

"What tidings?"

"C'est accompli. The court-martial has found the prisoner
guilty; and he is condemned to be shot at one o'clock
this day."

"Monsieur is expeditious! Monsieur is zealous. C'est bon,
c'est bon; merci, Monsieur." And the miscreant walked
about delirious with the exuberance of his gratification.
Then he came over to where his adjutant stood, and shook
his hand; then he thrust his fingers through his hair,
and half bellowed, his voice resembling that of some foul
beast.

"La patrie has reason to be proud of her zealous son,"
and he again shook the hand of his infamous lieutenant.
Then with a very low bow M. Lepine left the room, saying
as he departed,

"I shall endeavour to merit to the fullest the kindly
eulogy which Monsieur President bestows upon me." The
news of Scott's sentence spread like fire around the
settlement. Some believed that the penalty would not be
carried out, while others declared that they thought
otherwise.

"If this prisoner is pardoned, people will begin to treat
the sentences of the Provisional Authorities as good
jokes. Riel must be aware of this; therefore Scott is
likely to suffer the full penalty." Several persons called
upon the tyrant, and besought him to extend mercy to the
condemned man, but he merely shrugged his shoulders!

"This prisoner has been twice rebellious. He has set bad
example among the prisoners, assaulted his keeper, and
loaded the Provisional Government with opprobrium. I
may say to you, Messieurs, however, that I have really
nothing to do with the man's case. In this time of tumult,
when the operation of all laws is suspended, the
Court-Martial is the only tribunal to which serious
offenders can be referred. This young man, Scott, has
had fair trial, as fair as a British Court-Martial would
have given him, and he has been sentenced to death. I
assume that he would not have received such a sentence
if he had not deserved it. Therefore I shall not interfere.
There is no use, Messieurs, in pressing me upon the
matter. At heart, I shall grieve as much as you to see
the young man cut off, but his death I believe necessary
now, as an example to the hundreds who are desirous of
overthrowing the authority, which we have established in
the colony." The petitioners left the tyrant with sorrowful
faces.

"My God!" one of them exclaimed, "it is frightful to
murder this young man, whose only offence is resistance
to probable insult from his debased, half-breed keeper.
Is there nothing to be done?"

No, there was nothing to be done. The greasy, vindictive
tyrant was lord and master of the situation When Riel
was alone, he began once more to walk up and down the
room, and thus mused aloud:

"I shall go down to his cell. Perhaps, if I pretend that
I will spare his life, he may tell me where resides Marie.

"Yes," he was sure that he would succeed, "I shall get
his secret by promising pardon; then I will spit upon
his face and say 'die dog, I'll not spare you.'" So forth
he sallied, and made his way to the cell where the young
man sat in chains.

"Well, malignant tyrant, what do you here? Whatever your
business is, let it be dispatched quickly, for your
presence stifles me. What dishonourable proposal have
you now to make?"

"Monsieur Scott, it seems to be a positive pleasure to
you to revile me. Yet have I sought to serve you;--Yea,
I would have been, would now be, your friend."

"Peace; let me hear what it is that you now propose?"

"You are aware that it is ordered by Court-Martial, of
which, I was not a member, that you are to be shot at
one o'clock this day? It is now just forty-five minutes
of one. I can spare your life, and I will do it, upon
one condition."

"Pray let me hear what dishonour it is that you propose?
I ask the question now, for the same reason that I made
a similar query during my first incarceration, out of a
curiosity to learn, if possible, a little more of your
meanness and infamy."

"And I reply to you as I answered before, that I shall
take no notice of your revilings, but make my proposal.
I simply ask you to state to me where Jean and his daughter
Marie have taken up their abode?"

"Where you will never find them. That's my answer, villain
and tyrant, and now begone."

"Perhaps you imagine that the sentence will not be carried
out. I ask you to choose between life and liberty, and
an almost immediate ignominious death."

"I care not for your revenge, or your mercy. Once more
I say, get you gone." Then the ruffian turned round,
rushed at the chained prisoner, and dealt him a terrific
kick in the side, after which he spat upon his face.

"She shall be mine!" he hissed, "when your corpse lies
mouldering in a dishonoured traitor's grave." The young
man was chained to a heavy table, but with a sudden
wrench, he freed himself, raised both arms, and was about
bringing down his manacled hands upon the tyrant miscreant
--and that blow would have ended the rebellion at Red
River,--when Luc burst into the room, seized the prisoner,
and threw him. While his brute knee was on the young
man's breast, and his greasy hand held the victim's
throat, Riel made his escape, and turned back to his own
quarters.

As for poor Scott, when the tyrant, and the brutal guard
had left the cell, he began to pace up and down, sorely
disturbed. All along he had cherished the hope that the
tyrant would be induced to commute the sentence to lengthy
imprisonment. But the diabolical vengeance which he had
seen in the tyrant's eye now began to undermine his hope
of life. Some friends were admitted to his cell, and they
informed him that they had pleaded for him, but in vain.

"And do you think that he will really perpetrate this
murderous deed?" he asked.

"Most assuredly he will; and now nothing remains for you
but to prepare to meet your doom like a true man. You
are not the first who has suffered in like manner in a
cause which history will ever associate with your name.
The tyrant who prevails over you, will not triumph for
long. Ignominious will be the atonement that he must pay.
But you have to show that for the sacred cause of loyalty
you know _how_ to die. You have made your peace with God,
and there is nought then that you have to fear. You sorrow
at going alone, leaving all the world after you, but we
go hence too, in a little; and every hour the clock tells,
yields a thousand souls to eternity."

"Ah, my friends, this is all true, but I am young, and
I had cherished one very sweet hope."

"This has been the fate of tens of thousands."

"I should not have shrunk from death six months ago, had
he set me up as a target for his half-breed murderers.
I should have uttered no word of repining, but it is
different now: O God, it is very different."

All hung down their heads. They were vainly trying to
hide their tears.

"And even for myself, under the new condition which has
arisen, I would not care. It is because of _her_--because
of my pure, beautiful love, my Marie, whom this fiend
has so persecuted, that I cannot look upon my doom with
calmness. I had thought that there was such a happy future
in store for us, for her and me, when this tumult was
ended!" Then he took paper and pen and wrote a letter,
which, when he had sealed it, he gave into the hands of
the clergyman.

"That address must be known only to one," he said. "It
is not safe to post the letter anywhere in Canada; but,
as a dying request, I ask that you have it put in the
post at Pembina."

"I shall with my own hand deliver it. I shall set out
to-morrow."

"May God, sir, send you comfort in your affliction. Pray
remain as long as you can with my darling;--tell her,
for it will help her better to bear the blow, that I was
cheerful, and that I said I had no fear but that she and
I would meet it heaven, and that when I went there I
would pray to my God in her behalf every day. She has no
token of mine. Take this ring and give it to her, and my
scarf-pin, which in her sweet, childish fancy she used
so to admire. Tell her that I died--I have told her in
my letter--but repeat it to her, with my heart full, O
so full! of love for her."

There was now a rude bustling at the door; the rusty key
was plied, and with a harsh scream the bolt flew back.
Then the evil-looking Luc entered, followed by five or
six others, all of whom were partially intoxicated.

"Your hour has come, young man," he said, in a brutal
voice. "Let us be going."

"My God, this is a cold-blooded murder," poor Scott said,
turning to Mr. Donald A. Smith and the Rev. Mr. Young.
Then he bade good-bye to the visitors and to his fellow
prisoners, and walked forth with the guard closely
accompanied by Mr. Young. Before they got outside the
prison door the miscreant leader said,

"Stop a moment." Then taking a white handkerchief he tied
it round the victim's eyes. Regarding it for a moment,
he said, "That will do, I guess. Here, two of you men,
take him by the arms." During this time the prisoner was
engaged in deep prayer, and remained so till he reached
the place of execution. This was a few yards distant,
upon the snow, where a coffin had been placed to receive
his body. Addressing Mr. Young, he said:

"Shall I stand or kneel?"

"Kneel," the clergyman answered in a low voice.

"Farewell," [Footnote: I get the details of the execution
from a report of the occurrence by Hon. Donald A. Smith.
The extract is likewise to be found in Captain Huyshe's
Bed River Expedition, pp. 18-19.--The Author.] he said,
to Mr. Young, then "My poor Marie!" While these words
were upon his lips there were several rifle reports, and
this high-spirited, sunny-hearted young fellow, fell
backwards into his coffin, pierced by three bullets. Mr.
Young returned to the body but found the victim was still
alive. He groaned several times and moved his hands;
whereupon one of the party approached with a pistol and
discharged it into the sufferer's face. The bullet entered
at the eye and passed round the head. Then the body was
straightened out in the coffin and the lid nailed down.
The whole affair was so revoltingly cruel that it is with
pain one is obliged to write about it. It is said, and
upon authority that there is little room to question,
that even after the cover had been put upon the coffin,
the young man was still heard to groan, and even to cry.
Mr. Young then asked that he might be permitted to take
the body and give it interment in the burying ground of
the Presbyterian Congregation, but his request was not
granted, and a similar favour was refused to the Bishop
of Rupert's Land. The body was taken inside the Fort
where Lepine declared it was to be buried; and where an
actual burial did take place before a number of spectators.
The coffin, afterwards exhumed, was found to contain only
stones and rubbish. What the fate of the body was no one
has since discovered, but it has been conjectured that
it was taken during the night by Riel's bloodhounds and
dropped through the ice into the river.

Mr. Young was faithful to his pledge. On the following
day he set out over the bitter, snowy wastes for Pembina,
and thence through storm, and over pathless stretches he
held his way till he reached the settlement where abode
Marie and her father.

She was sitting at the window-pane thinking of her lover
when the stranger passed; and she opened the door to the
clergyman's knock. There could be no mistaking who this
girl was, and the clergyman's heart was numb as he looked
upon her.

"Did he send me any message?" And then reflecting that
this man was a stranger who may never have seen her lover,
she blushed deeply. But she recovered herself in a moment.

"Where does Monsieur come from?"

"From Winnipeg."

"O, then," she thought, "he perhaps _does_ know my beloved.
Is there peace there now," she asked, "or is that wicked
man still at his evil deeds?"

"There is not peace at Red River, my child. Come in;--it
is to speak to you about events at Red River that I have
come all the way from that far settlement."

She learnt her doom, and the good clergyman sat by her
trying to afford some consolation. But she seemed not to
understand the meaning of his words, or even to hear
them. The blow had been too overwhelming for mortal tongue
to fashion words that could convey aught of comfort. She
sat there, her face like a stone, her eyes tearless. Yes,
she read his letter and kissed his presents. She would
fold the letter sometimes and lay it away near to her
heart. Then she would open it again, spread it upon her
lap, and sit half the day alternately looking at, and
tenderly handling it. A few days and nights were spent
during which she spake no word, eat no food, nor took
any sleep. At the end of the fourth day they found her
on a little seat beside the door where _he_ had said
good-bye to her. She had his letter in her hand and his
ring upon her finger. But she was dead.




CHAPTER IX.

After the return of Mr. McDougall to Ottawa, and while
the Government press busied itself in laying upon that
gentleman's shoulders the blame which should have been
debited to the blundering of the administration, steps
were being taken to have an armed force sent at once to
the scene of tumult, to restore the authority of the
Queen. Sir Garnet Wolseley, who has since earned distinction
in bush and desert fighting, was the officer put in charge
of the expedition.

Before this step had been taken, however, the government
had set the wheels of a totally different sort of force
in motion. Monseigneur Tache, to whom I have already
referred, was absent in Rome attending the Ecumenical
Council, when the disturbance broke out. Sir John went
to M. George E. Cartier then, and said:

"My idea is that the man who can do more to settle this
matter than all the wisdom of the Government combined,
is Monseigneur Tache. What think you--would it not be
well to represent the case to him by cable, and ask him
to return?"

"Oui, Sir John,--the suggestion is good." So the bishop
was cabled for, and he came home. "Well, Messieurs," he
said, "what function is it with which you would endow
me? With what have I to deal?"

"The people are in open, armed rebellion. They do not
want to come into the confederation; and there is an
extensive desire for annexation. The head of the movement
is Louis Riel, and he is president of the Provisional
Government. He has seized and invested Fort Garry, set
up laws for himself, and is feeding and supplying his
troops with the property of the Hudson's Bay Company."
[Let it be borne in mind that, at this time, the murder
of Scott had not been committed, and Riel and his followers
were only known to be guilty of having risen in armed
revolt, and consumed much of the stores of the Hudson's
Bay Company].

"Well, Messieurs, the case is made plain. Now, with what
authority do you endow me?"

"We authorize you to say to the Rebels, on behalf of the
Government, that if they will peaceably depart to their
homes, and submit to the authority of the Queen, as
represented by the Government of Canada, no harm will
come to them. We authorize you further, to assure them
that the Government will stand between them and the
Hudson's Bay Company, should the latter seek recompense
for stores consumed, or property appropriated. Finally,
for the offences committed--and which we have specified
--you shall, on our behalf, extend pardon to each and all."

Armed with this authority, the bishop set out. Before he
reached Winnipeg the blood-thirsty president had murdered
Scott. I hope the reader has not forgotten that Monseigneur
was the same divine who used to look with delight upon
Louis Riel when a child, and stroke his glossy, black
hair. That he was the same gentleman who found for the
lad a benefactress in the person of Madame Masson.

The stars were fighting for the murderer, and he knew it
when he heard that his personal friend and warm admirer
was coming. His Lordship was not nearly as badly shocked
as most humane people might suppose, when he heard that
Thomas Scott had been butchered like a dog upon the snow.
Indeed, there is some authority to say that he was not
shocked at all. His good priest, Pere Richot, who got
the bishop's ear, took a highly moral and humane view of
the matter.

"Shooting served the fellow right, Monseigneur," [Footnote:
Captain Huyshe and several other writers of high repute,
are my authority for this statement.] he said. "He was
a disturber, and it was good to make an example of him."

In a little, we may be sure, the Monseigneur's opinion
did not differ very widely from that of the "crocmitaine"
priest.

"Let the people all assemble," the bishop proclaimed:
"I have important declarations to make to them." They
obeyed his mandate, and he said:

"I am authorized by the Government of Canada, to inform
you that if you forthwith depart to your lawful habitations
in peace, you will have nothing to fear. Your rebellious
deeds will be forgiven to you; the other unfortunate
event will likewise be overlooked, and the Hudson Bay
Company, whose provisions you have eaten and whose property
you have appropriated, will be indemnified by government,
if they take steps to obtain restitution for the same."

One month later, years afterwards, this precious divine
maintained that the authority with which he had been
clothed by the Government--and I have given that authority
_substantially_--endowed him with the power to grant
pardon for the murder of Scott! Without tiring the reader,
let me say that it was by means of the discussion and
the perplexities which subsequently arose upon this point,
that the miscreant-fiend escaped the vengeance of the
law. _Monseigneur had not lost his interest or affection
yet for the lad for whom he had procured an education!_

The bloody Guiteau, however, did not consider the pardon
a very great act of liberality. On the contrary, he was
inclined to regard the discussion of his guilt, the guilt
of the president of an independent colony! who was
law-maker and law-dispenser in himself, as somewhat of
an impertinence. He still continued to administer the
government, and to live sumptuously in the house of
Governor McTavish. About him here he had gathered some
of his most powerful followers, one of which was the big
fenian, O'Donoghue. These ate and drank to their heart's
content, but from their wallowing and disgusting habits
the residence soon resembled a filthy lair where pigs
lie down. Yet the Rebel Chief had spared no pains to make
it luxurious; conveying thither, with other plunder, the
effects of the house of Dr. Schultz.

When it was at first told Riel that Sir Garnet Wolseley,
at the head of a large force, was marching against him,
he refused to believe it. It was not till he actually
with his own eyes, saw the troops that he was convinced.
Then with hysterical precipitation the greasy murderer
scurried out of the Fort, mounted a horse, and rode away
in mortal terror. Later, he was reduced to the necessity
of walking, and when his boots were worn off his feet,
there was blood in his foot-prints. In this plight he
met a follower who used to tremble before him in the days
of his power, and to be like unto Caius Marius, he said
to this man:

"Go back and tell your friends that you have met Louis
Riel, a fugitive, barefooted, without a roof above his
head, and no where to go." This beastly, murderous tyrant
did actually imagine himself to be a hero!

Later on he was supplied with money by Sir John Macdonald
to keep out of the country. The amount was not paid to
him in a lump, but his good friend, the whilome bishop,
and now archbishop, paid it out whenever the worthless,
vagabond rascal came and represented himself as being
very needy.

He often, in his fallen days, would go about sighing for
Marie, and declaring that, with all his vengeful feelings
towards her, she was the only maiden whom he had ever
really loved. Old Jean came back and settled with a sad
heart, in the little cottage where had grown up his sweet
Marie. It was very desolate for his old heart now. The
ivy wreathed itself about the little wicker house, as
was its wont, but Marie was not there. The cows came as
usual to the bars to be milked, but there was a lamenting
in their lowing call. They missed the small, soft hand
that used to milk them, and never more heard the blithe,
glad voice singing from _La Claire Fontaine_. Paul worked
bravely and strove to cheer his father; and Violette,
with her bright, quick eyes, just a little like Marie's,
would come down and sing to him, and bring him cool,
pink, dew-bathed roses. He thanked them all; but their
love was not sufficient. His heart was across the prairies
by a grave upon which the violets were growing. Before
the leaves fell he was lying by her side. A cypress
marks the graves, and the little brook goes by all the
summer.




CHAPTER X.

We left the murderer upon the plains making speeches like
Marius on the ruins of Carthage. The self-imposed
banishment did not endure for long; and the swarthy face
of Louis Riel was once more seen in Riviere Rouge. When
tidings of the murder got abroad, English-speaking Canada
cried out that the felon should be handed over to justice.
I say English-speaking Canada, for the French people
almost to a man gave their sympathy to the man whose
hands were red with the blood of his fellow creature.
They could not be induced to look upon the slaying as an
act of inhuman, bloody, ferocity, with which the question
of race or religion had not the remotest connection.

"It is because Riel, a Frenchman and a Roman Catholic,
shot Thomas Scott, an Englishman and a Protestant, that
all this crying for vengeance is heard over the land.
Now, had the cases been reversed, we would hear no English
lamentings over a murdered Riel." This was in effect what
they said, impossible, almost, as it might seem for one
to be able to credit it. For illiterate persons, who
could see no treason in the uprising, to condone the
tumult and havoc, and regard even the murder justifiable,
was what might have been expected. But what shall be said
for M. George E. Cartier, the "enlightened statesman,"
for Pere Richot, the "crocmitaine," for Pere Lastanc,
the Vicar-General, and finally, for Monseigneur himself?
Nothing can be said! We can only as Canadians all hang
down our heads in shame, that any section of our common
country should make such an exhibition of itself in the
sight of humanity.

The protege of the Hierarchy was not long to mope about
the plains like another dumb and fallen Saturn. No less
proportions than that of un Dieu hors de combat, a very
God overthrown, would the deluded followers accord to
the overwhelmed chief. The clergy never suffered any
aspersion to be thrown upon "le grand homme" for by no
less appellation was he known.

"He has been your benefactor," the coarse "crocmitaine"
Richot would say. "Had he not risen and compelled Government
to grant you your rights, you would forever have been
down-trodden by Canadian tyrants. When the rage of the
heretics in Ontario shall have cooled down we must send
Le Bienfaiteur to Parliament. And the time did actually
come when the murderer appeared upon the hustings in the
West soliciting the votes of the people. Nor did he appeal
in vain. _He was elected._ Nay, more than this, he set
out for Ottawa, entered that city, and in the open light
of day walked up to the Parliament Buildings, and in the
eyes of officials and of the public subscribed his name
to the Members' roll. Thousands have been in the habit
of denouncing Sir John for permitting an unhung felon to
go about as a free man, but when he came red-handed and
presuming to Ottawa and enrolled his name, the Reformers
were in power."

Before this date, however, the criminal had secured some
official eulogy in the West. And it happened in this
wise. Some time after the appointment of Mr. Archibald
to the Lieutenant-Governorship of Manitoba, several bands
of Fenians threatened to invade the territory, and set
up above the plains a green flag with a harp and a shamrock
upon it. Mr. Archibald had at hand no force to resist
the threatened attack, and he became almost delirious
with alarm. So he sent a messenger to M. Riel, the untried
felon, whose crime was at the time the subject of voluminous
correspondence between Canada and the Colonial Office,
accepting a proposal made by the ex-Rebel to call out
the half-breeds in defence of the new Province. The
Fenians did not carry out their threat, but it was much
the same for the murderer of poor Scott as if they had.
When the danger was blown over the Lieutenant-Governor
walked in front of the ex-Rebel lines, expressed his
gratitude to the men, and warmly shook hands with Riel
and Lepine.

The presence of Riel was yet a standing menace to peace
among the half-breeds beyond the limits of the new
province. The Canadian Government began to devise means
of getting him out of the country. They tried persuasion,
but this was not an effective mode. It was at this juncture
that a sum was put into the hands of Archbishop Tache to
pay the felon in consideration of his withdrawal. All
this time Ontario was crying out for the capture of the
man; and it was while the amount was being placed to the
murderer's credit with the Archbishop, that Sir John
raised his eyes toward heaven and said:

"I wish to God I could catch him!"

So Riel took himself out of Canada, and traversed American
territory till he found a district it Montana, thickly
inhabited by half-breeds. Here he established himself in
a sort of a fashion, sometimes tilling the soil, frequently
hunting, but all the while talking about Red River. He
soon began to forget Marie, and to cast languishing eyes
upon some of the half-breed girls living upon the airy
uplands. [Footnote: It is stated upon certain authority,
how good I don't know, that the brave M. Riel rejoices
in the possession of three wives. One is said to be a
French Metis, the other a Scotch half-breed, and the
third a beautiful Cree squaw with large dusky eyes.] He
was regarded as a great hero by these maidens, for long
before his coming the daring, brilliancy, and great
achievements of Monsieur Riel had been told with enthusiasm
at the fireside of every half-breed in Montana. We shall
leave M. Riel in Montana, sometimes working, sometimes
hunting, always wooing, and take a very brief glance at
the causes which led up to the present outbreak.

Under the new legislation for the territories, only those
half-breeds within the bounds of the new province were
guaranteed secure possession of their land. Under the
principle that all territory not granted in specific form
to individuals by the Ministers of the Crown, is the
property of the Crown, each half-breed who occupied a
lot of land under the Hudson Bay Company's rule, was
regarded as a squatter under the new regime. To make such
holding valid, therefore, the Government issued patents
to _bona fide_ squatters, who then found themselves on
the same footing as the white immigrants. But beyond
Manitoba, and chiefly in Prince Albert, there were large
numbers of half-breeds settled over the prairie. So long
as no immigrant came prying about for choice land the
half-breeds had naught to complain about, but the rapid
influx of population soon altered the whole face of the
matter. Several squatters who had toiled for many a long
year upon holdings, were obliged to make way for strangers
who had "friends at court"--for even in the North West
wilderness there is, in this sense, a court--and who took
a fancy to the particular piece of land upon which "these
lazy half-breeds" were squatting. Newspapers, whose
business it is to keep the skirts of government clean in
the matter, deny this altogether. But, unfortunately,
there is no use in denying it. It is but too true, and
it is with a feeling of very great regret that I myself,
a Conservative, and a warm well-wisher of the
administration, affirm it. It is true that in many and
many a case, in a greater number of instances than even
opponents of the administration suppose, a half-breed
who has toiled for a number of years upon a lot, effecting
improvements and taking pride in his property, has been
dispossessed by an incomer because he could not show a
patent from the Interior Department.

But almost as fruitful a source of dissatisfaction as
these heartless and dishonest displacements has been the
difficulty which the unfortunate squatter has experienced
in obtaining his patent. The mills of the gods in the
Interior Department grind very slowly. The obtaining of
a patent by a deserving squatter as a general rule is
about as difficult, and as worthy of applause when
achieved, as is the task which lies before a farmer's
boy who has decided to become a member of parliament, by
first earning money enough to go to school to prepare
for a third class teachership, by then teaching school
till he has a sufficient competency to study medicine,
and by then practising his profession till he finds
himself able to capture the riding. Of course there is
some excuse, and we must not forget to produce it, for
the Department of the Interior. It would be undignified
if it were to move with any degree of rapidity. According
to etiquette, and the rule is very proper, when the
application of the half-breed comes to the office, it
must remain for at least four weeks in the drawer set
apart for "correspondence to be read." After it has been
read it receives one or two marks with a red-lead pencil,
after which it is deposited in pigeon-hole No. 1. Now
no document ever lodges for a shorter time than a month
in pigeon-hole No. 1; and if at the end of that period
it should happen to be removed, the clerk lays by his
novel or tooth-pick, as the case may be, and puts one or
two blue marks upon the back of it. When we consider that
there are all the way from six to twenty pigeon-holes,
by a simple process of arithmetic we can get approximately
near the period which it takes the poor half-breed's
prayer to get from pigeon-hole Alpha to pigeon-hole Omega.
But during the process the back of the squatter's
application has become a work of art. It is simply
delightful to look upon. It not alone contains memoranda
and hieroglyphics made in red and blue pen-pencil but it
is also beautified by marks made upon it in carmine ink,
in ink "la brillanza," an azure blue ink, in myrtle green
ink, in violette noire; but never, it must be said to
the credit of the department, in common black. But all
these colours are worthless indeed, viewed from any point
of view, compared with its other acquisitions. Solomon
himself in all his glory was never decked out more
gorgeously than this poor half-breed's greasy sheet of
foolscap is at the end of its journey through the
pigeon-holes. The prime minister of the Crown in all his
pomp of imperial orders has not so many ribbons as this
poor vagabond's claim. Sometimes it is swathed in crimson
tyings, sometimes in scarlet, now and again in magenta;
and I am very happy to be able to say that pink and two
very exquisite shades of blue known as birds-egg and
cobalt have lately been introduced.

Of course the half-breed complains when the weeks have
swelled into months, and the months have got out of their
teens, that he has heard no answer to his prayer; but
the rascal should try to consider that his document has
to make its voyage through the pigeon holes.

In this way there has been much heartburning, and many
curses against officialdom and red-tape. While the back
of the application is being turned out a christmas card,
a stray immigrant comes along, and the squatter half-breed
has once more to go back for a new camping-ground.

But there is something to be said--this time I am
serious--for the Department in the matter, though not a
very great deal. A number of the half-breeds, though a
small, a very, very small proportion of the whole, are
restless vagabonds, who squat upon lands with no intention
of remaining permanently, but only with the object of
speculation by selling their scrip, leaving the
neighbourhood, taking up another lot, and receiving in
like manner disposable scrip again. But the officers of
the North-West must know that the half-breed people, _in
general_, are constant-working, and are desirous of
achieving comfort, and of affluence. Yet because of the
acts of a few unprincipled, lazy wanderers, some will
seek to convey the impression that the conduct of the
small few is a type of the methods of all.

There is still, among the many irritating causes, all of
which my limits will not permit me to dwell upon, one
which must not go unnoticed. Mr. Dewdney is not the
gentleman who ought to have the immediate administration
of North-West affairs in his hands. He has neither the
understanding nor the inclination to make him a suitable
administrator. Before all things he is there for himself;
and he has even figured in the respectable role of
land-grabbing. I am sure that if the gentleman is to be
provided for by the public no objection would be raised
if Sir John were to propose that he be recalled, and
receive his salary all the same in consideration of the
position he holds in the regard of the prime-minister,
and of those who are not exactly prime-ministers or
ministers. Mr. Dewdney has not alone got it into his
head that an Indian has no understanding; but he must
also endow himself with the conviction that he has no
nostrils. A friend of Mr. Dewdney got some meat, but the
article stank, and the importer knew not how to dispose
of it.

"O sell it to the Indians," the Governor said; and, "Lo!
to the poor Indian" it was sold; and sold at tenderloin
prices.

"We can't eat em meat. He stinks," the poor savage said.
"Em charge too much. Meat very bad."

"Let Indians eat their meat," the just Mr. Dewdney
retorted; "or starve and be damned." What right has an
Indian to complain of foul meat, and to say that he has
been charged too high a price for it? He is only a savage!

Let Sir John take care.

Well, this was the state of affairs when Louis Riel,
about a year ago, left off his wooing for a little while,
and returned to the old theatre of his crimes. He found
the people chafing under official injustice, and delays
that were almost equivalent to a denial of justice. He
did not care a fig for the condition of "his people!"
but like the long-winged petrel, he is a bad weather
bird, and here was his opportunity. He went abroad among
the people, fomenting the discord, and assuring them that
if all other means failed they would obtain their rights
by rising against the authorities.

But the plain object of this plausible disturber was
cash. The lazy rascal had failed to earn a livelihood
among the half-breeds of Montana; and now was resolved
to get some help from the Dominion Treasury. Presently
intimations began to reach the Canadian Government that
if they made it worth M. Riel's while, he would leave
the disaffected people and return to American territory.
The sum of $5,000, it was learnt, a little later, would
make it "worth his while" to go back. This, if Sir John's
statement in the House of Commons is to be trusted, the
administration refused to pay.

And now some good priests made up their valises, and
travelled out of the North-West, and all the way to
Ottawa, to present the grievances of their people to the
ministry. Archbishop Tache likewise showed himself at
the capital on the same mission.

"For God's sake," these men said, "give earnest, careful,
prompt attention to affairs in the North-West. The people
have sore grievances, and they do not get the redress
which is their due. If you would prevent mischief and
misery, lose no time." And as in duty bound the politicians
said: "The government will give the matter its most
serious consideration."

M. Royal and the priests returned to the North-West
down-spirited enough, and Mr. Macpherson sailed for
England, while the half-breeds were making up their minds
to obtain by force the rights which they had failed to
obtain through peaceable means and persistent prayer.




CHAPTER XI.

The region known as Prince Albert was the chief seat of
the disturbance. It has been already pointed out in these
pages, that the connecting link between the Indian and
the whiteman, is the half-breed. It is not to be wondered
at then, that as soon as the Metis began to mutter
vengeance against the authorities, the Indians began to
hunt up their war paint. The writer is not seeking to
put blame upon the Government, or upon the Department
delegated especially to attend to Indian affairs, with
respect to its management of the tribes. Any one who has
studied the question at all, must know that there is
nothing to be laid at the door of the Government in this
regard.

A very clear statement of the whole question of Indian
management, and of the assumption of the North-West
Territories, may be found in Mr. Henry J. Morgan's Annual
Register for 1878; while the same admirable work, gives
from year to year, a capital _resume_ of the condition
of the tribes.

Some divines, recently in the North-west, have been
discussing the Indian question in some of the religious
newspapers of Toronto, but they have treated the question
in the spirit of inexperienced spinsters. The Government
has been most criminally remiss in their treatment of
the half-breeds, but, let it be repeated, their Indian
policy gives no ground for condemnation.

Yet when the half-breeds of Prince Albert, incited by
Riel, began to collect fire-arms, and to drill in each
others barns, the Indians began to sing and dance, and
to brandish their tomahawks. Their way of living during
late years has been altogether too slow, too dead-and-alive,
too unlike the ways of their ancestors, when once at
least in each year, every warrior returned to his lodge
with scalp locks dangling at his belt. Les Gros-Ventres
for the time, forgot their corporosity, and began to
dance and howl, and declare that they would fight till
all their blood was spilt with M. Riel, or his adjutant
M. Dumont. The Blackfeet began to hold pow-wows, and tell
their squaws that there would soon be good feasts. For
many a day they had been casting covetous eyes upon the
fat cattle of their white neighbours. Along too, came
the feeble remnant of the once agile Salteaux, inquiring
if it was to be war; and if so, would there be big feasts.

"O, big feasts, big feasts," was the reply. "Plenty fat
cattle in the corals; and heaps of mange in the store."
So the Salteaux were happy, and, somewhat in their old
fashion, went vaulting homewards.

Tidings of fight, and feast, and turmoil reached the
Crees, and they sallied out from the tents, while the
large-eyed squaws sat silently reclining, marvelling what
was to come of it all. High into the air the Nez Perce
thrust his nostril; for he had got the scent of the battle
from afar. And last, but not least, came the remnant of
that tribe whose chief had shot Custer, in the Black
Hills. The Sioux only required to be shown where the
enemy lay; but in his enthusiasm he did not lose sight
of the fat cattle grazing upon the prairies.

These, however, were only the first impulses of the
tribes. Many of them now began to remember that the
Government had shown them many kindnesses, given them
tea and tobacco, and blankets; and provided them with
implements to plough the lands, and oxen to draw the
ploughs. And some of the chiefs came forward and said
"You must not fight against the Great Mother. She loves
the Indians. The red man is well treated here better than
away south. Ask the Sioux who lived down there; they tell
you maybe." Such advice served to set the Indians
reflecting; but many hundreds of them preferred to hear
Louis Riel's words, which were:--

"Indians have been badly treated. The Canadian Government
has taken away their lands; the buffalo are nearly all
gone, and Government sees the red men die of starvation
without any concern. If you fight now you will make them
dread you; and then they will be more liberal with you.
Besides, during the war, you can have plenty of feasting
among the fat cattle." A hellish war-whoop of approval
always greeted such words.

At length the rising came. Gabriel Dumont, Riel's
lieutenant, a courageous, skilful half-breed, possessed
of a sound set of brains, had drilled several hundreds
of the Indians and half-breeds. Armed with all sorts of
guns, they collected, and stationed themselves near Duck
Lake.

"My men," Dumont said, "You may not have to fight, for
the officers may agree to the demand which I shall make
of them on behalf of the Indians and the half-breed
people. But if they refuse, and insist on passing, you
know for what purpose you have taken arms into your hands.
Let every shot be fired only after deliberate aim. Look
to it that you fire low. After you have strewn the plain
with their dead, they will go away with some respect for
us. Then they will send out Commissioners to make terms
with us. In the meantime the success of our attack, will
bring hundreds of timid persons to our standard." This
harangue was received with deafening cheers.

So the rebels posted themselves in the woods, and filled
a sturdily built house near by, waiting for the approach
of Major Crosier and his force. At last they were seen
out upon the cold snow-covered prairie. A wild shout went
up from the inmates of the house, and it was answered
from tree to tree through all the wintry wood. In the
exuberance of his delight, one Indian would yelp like a
hungry wolf who sighted his prey; and another would hoot
like an owl in the middle of the night. At last the police
and civilians were close at hand. The meeting took place
in a hollow. Beyond was the dim illimitable prairie, on
either hand were clumps of naked, dismal poplar, and
clusters of white oak. Snow was everywhere, and when a
man moved the crunching of the crust could be heard far
upon the chill air.

Signals were made for a parley, when some of the men from
each side approached the line of demarcation. Joe McKay
was the interpreter, and while he was speaking, an Indian,
named Little Chief, grabbed at his revolver and tried to
wrest it from him. A struggle ensued in which the Indian
was worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the
red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for
battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ringing through
the hollow and over the hills. With perfect regularity
his force spread out over a commanding bluff. Each man
threw himself flat upon the ground, either shielding his
body in the deep snow, or getting behind a tree or boulder.
Major Crozier's force then drew their sleds across the
trail, and the police threw themselves down behind it.
Then came the words "Begin, my men," from the commander;
--and immediately the crackle of rifles startled the hush
of the wilderness. The police were lying down, yet they
were not completely sheltered; but the civilians were
standing.

"My God, I'm shot," said one, and he fell upon the snow,
not moving again. Then, with a cry, another fell, and
another. From the woods on every hand came the whistling
shot, and the rushing slugs of the rebels. Every tree
had behind it a rebel, with deadly aim. But the murderous
bullets seemed to come out of the inanimate wilderness,
for not no much as the hand that pulled the deadly trigger
could be seen. The police had a mountain gun, which Major
Crozier now ordered them to bring to bear on the rebels,
but the policeman who loaded it was so confused that he
put the lead in before the powder. In forty minutes the
bloody fray was ended. Seven of the loyalists were dead
in their blood upon the snow, two lay dying, eleven others
were wounded and bleeding profusely, Then came the word
to retire, when the Major's force drew off. From the
bluff and out of all the woods now came diabolical yells
and jeering shouts. The day belonged to the rebels.

When the police had moved away, the Indians and half-breeds
came out from their ambush and began to hold rejoicings
over the dead. They kicked the bodies, and then began to
plunder them, getting, among other booty, two gold watches.
Two of the fallen loyalists they observed still breathed,
and these they shot through the head. So closely did they
hold the muzzles of their murderous guns that the victims'
faces were afterwards found discoloured with powder.

Then returning to camp, they secured seven prisoners whom
they had captured, and, leading them to the battle-field,
make them look at the stark bodies of the loyalists, at
the same time heaping all manner of savage insult upon
the dead.

A couple of days later the bodies of the victims were
buried upon the plain, by the order of Riel. A little
later the snow fell, and gave the poor fellows' grave a
white, cold, coverlet.

When tidings of the battle, and of the defeat of our men,
reached the east, the wildest excitement prevailed. At
once the Minister of Militia began to take stock of his
forces, and some regiments were ordered out. The volunteers
needed no urging, but promptly offered their services
for the front. Their loyalty was cheered to the echo,
and thousands assembled at every railway station to see
them depart and say "God speed."




CHAPTER XII.

While General Middleton, Colonel Otter, and others of
our military officers, were hastening to the scene of
tumult, tidings of the most startling kind were received
from Frog Lake. Frog Lake is a small settlement, about
forty miles north of Fort Pitt, and here a number of
thrifty settlers had established themselves, tilling the
soil. Latterly, however, some enterprising persons came
there to erect a saw and grist mill, for much lumber
fringes the lake, and a considerable quantity of grain
is produced upon the prairie round about. There were only
a few white settlers here, all the rest being half-breeds.
Not far away lived detachments of various tribes of
Indians, who frequently came into the little settlement,
and smoked their pipes among the inhabitants. Here, as
elsewhere, the most bitter feelings were entertained by
the half-breeds and Indians against the Government, and
chief of all against Governor Dewdney. Every one with
white skin, and all those who in any way were in the
service of the Government, soon came to be regarded as
enemies to the common cause. Therefore, when night came
down upon the settlement, Indians, smeared in hideous,
raw, earthy-smelling paint, would creep about among
dwellings, and peer, with eyes gleaming with hate, through
the window-frames at the innocent and unsuspecting inmates.
At last one chief, with a diabolical face, said,

"Brothers, we must be avenged upon every white man and
woman here. We will shoot them like dogs. No harm can
come to us; for the great man has said so." (Alluding to
Riel.) "When they are all shot the Government will get
a big fright, and give the Indians and half-breeds what
they ask for." The answer to this harangue was the clanking
of barbaric instruments of music, the brandishing of
tomahawks, and the gleam of hunting-knives. Secretly the
Indians went among the half-breeds squatting about, and
revealed their plans; but some of these people shrank
with fear from the proposal. Others, however, said,

"We shall join you. Let us with one blow wipe out the
injustices done to us, and teach the Government that if
they deny us our rights, we will fight for them; and
murder those who are the agents of its will." So the plan
was arranged, and it was not very long before it was
carried out. And now runners were everywhere on the
plains, telling that Dumont had a mighty army made up of
most of the brave Indians of the prairies, and comprising
all the dead shots among the half-breeds; that he had
encountered heavy forces of police and armed civilians,
and overthrown them without losing a single man. They
likewise declared that he had hosts of prisoners, and
that the whole of Canada was trembling with fear at the
mention of the names of Riel and Dumont.

"Now is our time to strike," said the Indian with the
fiendish face, and the wolf-like eyes.

Therefore, the 2nd day of April was fixed for the holding
of the conference between the Indians and the white
settlers. The malignant chief had settled the plan.

"When the white faces come to our lodge, they will expect
no harm. Ugh! Then the red man will have his vengeance."
So every Indian was instructed to have his rifle at hand
in the lodge. The white folk wondered why the Indians
had arranged for a conference.

"We can do nothing to help their case," they said, "we
ourselves find it difficult enough to get the ear of
Government. It will only waste time to go." Many of them,
therefore, remained at home, occupying themselves with
their various duties, while the rest, merely for the sake
of agreeableness, and of shewing the Indians that they
were interested in their affairs, proceeded to the place
appointed for the pow-wow.

"We hope to smoke our pipes before our white brothers go
away from us," was what the treacherous chief, with
wolfish eyes, had said, in order to put the settlers off
their guard.

The morning of the 2nd opened gloomily, as if it could
not look cheerily down upon the bloody events planned in
this distant wilderness. Low, indigo clouds looked down
over the hills, but there was not a stir in all the air.
Nor was any living thing to be seen stirring, save that
troops of blue-jays went scolding from tree to tree before
the settlers as they proceeded to the conference, and
they perceived a few half-famished, yellow, and black
and yellow dogs, with small heads and long scraggy hair,
sculking about the fields and among the wigwams of the
Indians in search for food.

The lodge where the parley was to be held stood in a
hollow. Behind was a tall bluff, crowned with timber;
round about it green poplar, white oak, and some firs,
while in front rolled by a swift stream, which had just
burst its winter fetters. Unsuspecting aught of harm,
two priests of the settlement, Oblat Fathers, named Fafard
and La Marchand, were the first at the spot.

"What a gloomy day," Pere Fafard said, "and this lodge
set here in this desolate spot seems to make it more
gloomy still. What, I wonder, is the nature of the
business?" Then they knocked, and the voice of the chief
was heard to say,

"Entrez." Opening the door, the two good priests
walked in, and turned to look for seats. Ah! what was
the sight presented to them! Eyes like those of wild
beasts, aflame with hate and ferocity, gleamed at them
from the gloom of the back portion of the room. The
priests were amazed. They knew not what all this meant.
Then a wild shriek was given, and the chief cried, "Enemies
to the red man, you have come to your doom." Then raising
his rifle, he fired at Father Marchand. The levelling of
his rifle was the general signal. A dozen other muzzles
were pointed, and in a far briefer space of time than it
takes to relate it, the two priests lay weltering in
their blood, pierced each by half a dozen bullets.

"Clear away these corpses," shouted the chief, "and be
ready for the next." There was soon another knock at the
door, and the same wolfish voice replied as before,
saying,

"Entrez." This time a full, manly-looking young fellow,
named Charles Gowan, opened the door and entered. Always
on the alert for Indian treachery, he had his suspicion
now, before entering he suspected strongly that all was
not right. He had only reached the settlement that morning,
and had he returned sooner he would have counselled the
settlers to pay no heed to the invitation. He was assured
that several had already gone up to the pow-wow, so being
brave and unselfish, he said,

"If there is any danger afoot, and my friends are at the
meeting-lodge, that is the place for me, not here." He
had no sooner entered than his worst convictions were
realized. With one quick glance he saw the bloodpools,
the wolfish eyes, the rows of ready rifles.

"Hell hounds!" he cried, "what bloody work have you on
hand? What means this?" pointing to the floor.

"It means," replied the chief, "that some of your pale-face
brethren have been losing their heart's blood there. It
also means that the same fate awaits you." Resolved to
sell his life as dearly as lay in his power, he sprang
forward with a Colt's revolver, and discharged it twice.
One Indian fell, and another set up a cry like the
bellowing of a bull. But poor Gowan did not fire a third
shot. A tall savage approached him from behind, and
striking him upon the head with his rifle-stock felled
him to the earth. Then the savages fired five or six
shots into him as he lay upon the floor. The body was
dragged away and the blood-thirsty fiends sat waiting
for the approach of another victim. Half an hour passed,
and no other rap came upon the door. An hour went, and
still no sound of foot-fall. All this while the savages
sat mute as stones, each holding his murderous rifle in
readiness for instant use.

"Ugh!" grunted the chief, "no more coming. We go down
and shoot em at em houses." Then the fiend divided his
warriors into four companies, each one of which was
assigned a couple of murders. One party proceeded toward
the house of Mr. Gowanlock, of the firm of Gowanlock &
Laurie, who had a large saw and grist mill in course of
erection; creeping stealthily along, and concealing their
approach by walking among the trees they were within
forty yards of the house without being perceived. Then
Mrs. Gowanlock, a young woman, recently married, walked
out of the house, and gathering some kindling-wood in
her apron, returned again. When the Indians saw her, they
threw themselves upon their faces, and so escaped
observation. Little did the inmates know the deadly danger
that so closely menaced them. They went on talking
cheerfully, dreaming of no harm. Gowanlock, as I have
said, had been recently married, and himself and his
young wife were buoyant with hope, for the future had
already begun to promise them much. Mr. Gowanlock had
gathered the wood with which to make biscuits; and W. C.
Gilchrist, and Williscroft, two fine young men, both in
Mr. Gowanlock's employ, were chatting with him on general
matters. No one happened to be looking out of the window
after Mrs. Gowanlock came in; but about half a minute
afterwards some shadow flitted by the window, and
immediately afterwards six or seven painted Indians, with
rifles cocked, and uttering diabolical yells, burst into
the house. The chief was with this party; and aiming his
rifle, shot poor Gowanlock dead, another aimed at Gilchrist,
but Mrs. Gowanlock heroically seized the savage's arms
from behind, and prevented him for a moment or two; but
the vile murderer shook her off, and falling back a pace
or two, fired at her, killing her instantly. Three had
now fallen, and as the poor young wife fell crying, "my
God!" Croft fell pierced by two or three bullets. Lest
the work might not have been sufficiently done, the
murderers fired once more at the fallen victims, and then
came away from the house.

One of the most deserving of the settlers, but at the
same time one of the most bitterly hated, was Dunn, the
Indian agent. He was a half-breed, and had for a wife a
very pretty Cree woman. For some days past, it is said,
that she had been aware that the massacre had been planned;
but uttered no word of warning. Stealthily the blood-thirsty
band approached the dwelling of Dunn, for they knew him
to be a brave man, who would sell his life very dearly.
They were aware that in the Minnesota massacre which
happened some years ago, that he had fought as if his
life were charmed, and escaped with a few trifling wounds.
The doomed man was alone on this terrible day, his wife
having taken her blanket at an early hour and gone abroad
to "talk" with some Cree maidens. Poor Dunn was busy in
the little yard behind his house, putting handles in some
of his farming implements, and did not perceive the
approach of the murderers at all. There were five Indians
in the party, and they crept up to within a dozen paces
of where the unsuspecting man was at his work. Then,
while he whistled a merry tune, they silently raised
their rifles and took aim. The unfortunate man fell,
pierced with all their bullets and made no stir.

Another detachment of the bloodhounds directed their
steps towards the residence of Barnez Fremoine, the
Belgian rancher. He was a tall, magnificently-built man,
and when the savages got in sight of his house they
perceived that he was engaged oiling the axle of his
waggon.

Aided by the shelter of an outhouse, they approached
within twenty yards of this victim; raised their arms
and arrows and fired. He fell likewise without uttering
a cry, and made no stir. When found afterwards there were
two bullet holes in his head, and an arrow lay lodged in
his breast. [Footnote: This fact I get from correspondence
to the Ottawa _Free Press_, a newspaper which, under the
great journalistic enterprise of Mr. J. T. Hawke, has
kept the people at the Capital well informed from day to
day on affairs at the scene of tumult.] Two other persons
were surprised in the same way, and shot down like dogs,
making a total of eleven slaughtered.

The first official confirmation of the dreadful tragedy
was given in a despatch, sent from Fort Pitt to Sir John
Macdonald, by police inspector Dickens, a son of the
immortal novelist.




CHAPTER XIII.

Perhaps, of all the acts of bravery recorded during this
late Rebellion, not one stands out more prominently than
that of Inspector Dickens, in resisting, with his little
force, a large band of blood-thirsty Crees, till he would,
with advantage and honour, retire from his ground. Fort
Pitt stands in the centre of the Cree country, and was
the scene of the treaty between the Government and the
Crees, Chippewayans, Assinniboines and the Chippewas.
There was great difficulty at the time in concluding the
terms of the treaty. Big Bear, who reigns supreme in the
district, and who was spokesman at the treaty, maintained
that hanging ought to be abolished, and the buffalo
protected. On the whole, he accepted the conditions of
the treaty, but, as his people were not present, he would
not sign it, although he did sign it in the following
year. Big Bear is a noisy, meddlesome savage, who is
never in his glory save when he is the centre of some
disturbance. He has always shown much delight in talking
about war; and he would go without his meals to listen
to a good story about fighting. He has the habit to, when
the reciter of the story has finished, of trying to
discount what he has heard, and to make his auditors
believe that some exploits of his own have been far more
thrilling. When everything is peaceable, even when there
are plenty of buffalo and peltry to be had, this savage
is not satisfied; but still goes around asking if there
is any news about trouble being about to take place
anywhere. If he is told:

"No, everything is quiet; the Indians are all satisfied,
because they are doing well." Big Bear will reply, while
knowingly closing one eye:

"Me know better than that. There will soon be bloody
work. Government break em treaty with Injuns. Lots of
Injuns now ready to go out and scalp servants of the
Government and white men." When, therefore, tidings
reached the land of the Stoney Indians that the half-breeds,
with Louis Riel at their head, had broken into revolt,
Big Bear pulled off his feathered cap and threw it several
times into the air. He went to his wives, a goodly number
of which he is in the habit of keeping, and informed them
that he would soon bring them home some scalps. He was
so elated, that he ordered several of the young men to
go and fetch him several white dogs to make a feast. So
a large fire was built upon the prairie, a short distance
from the chief's lodge, and the huge festival pot was
suspended from a crane over the roaring flames. First,
about fifteen gallons of water were put into this pot;
then Big Bear's wives, some of whom were old and wrinkled,
and others of which were lithe as fawns, plump and
bright-eyed, busied themselves gathering herbs. Some
digged deep into the marsh for roots of the "dog-bane,"
others searched among the knotted roots for the little
nut-like tuber that clings to the root of the flag, while
others brought to the pot wild parsnips, and the dried
stalks of the prairie pusley. A coy little maiden, whom
many a hunter had wooed but failed to win, had in her
sweet little brown hands a tangle of winter-green, and
maiden-hair. Then came striding along the young hunters,
with the dogs. Each dog selected for the feast was white
as the driven snow. If a black hair, or a blue hair, or
a brown hair, was discovered anywhere upon his body he
was taken away; but if he were _sans reproche_ he was
put, just as he was, head, and hide, and paws, and tail
on--his throat simply having been cut--into the pot, Six
dogs were thrown in, and the roots and stalks of the
prairie plants, together with salt, and bunches of the
wild pepper-plant, and of swamp mustard were thrown in
for seasoning. Through the reserves round about for many
miles swarth heralds proclaimed that the great Chief Big
Bear was giving a White Dog feast to his braves before
summoning them to follow him upon the war-path. The feast
was, in Indian experience, a magnificent one, and before
the young men departed they swore to Big Bear that they
returned only for their war-paint and arms, and that
before the set of the next sun they would be back at his
side.

True to their word the Indians came, hideous in their
yellow paint. If you stood to leeward of them upon the
plain a mile away you could clearly get the raw, earthy
smell of the ochre upon their hands and faces. Some had
black bars streaked across their cheeks, and hideous
crimson circles about their eyes. Some, likewise, had
stars in pipe-clay painted upon the forehead.

Now the immediate object of the warlike enthusiasm of
all these young men was the capture of Fort Pitt, an
undertaking which they hardly considered worth shouldering
their rifles for. But when it came to the actual taking
it was a somewhat different matter. There were twenty-one
policemen in the Fort and they had at their head an
intrepid chief, Mr. Inspector Dickens, already referred
to in this chapter. It was useless to fire bullets at
the solid stockades; massacre was out of the question,
for keen eyes peered ever from the Fort. Big Bear now
had grown very ambitious.

"Fort Pitt hardly worth bothering about," he said to his
braves. "Plenty of big fighting everywhere. We'll go with
Monsieur Riel. But we must have guns; good guns; and
plenty of powder and shot and ball. So taking a number
of his braves he approached the Fort and began to bellow
that he wanted to have a talk. Inspector Dickens appeared,
calling out,

"Well, what does Big Bear want?"

"We want guns, and powder, and shot, and ball."

"Pray, what does Big Bear want with them?"

"His young men are suffering of hunger, and they want to
go shoot some elk and bear."

"Big Bear is talking with a crooked tongue. He must not
have any rifles, or powder or shot, or ball. I advise
him to return peaceably to his reserve; and if there is
anything that the Government can do for himself, or his
people, I am sure they will do it. He will only make
matters worse by creating a disturbance."

"Ugh! The great police chief also talks with a crooked
tongue; and if he does not give what the Indians ask for,
they will burn down the fort, and murder himself and his
followers, not sparing either the women or the children."

"If this be your intention, you shall not find us
unprepared." Just at this moment two mounted police, who
had been out upon the plains as scouts, came in sight,
at once Inspector Dickens perceived that the savages
meant mischief. A number of rifles were raised at the
unsuspecting policemen, then several shots were heard.
Constable Cowan fell from his horse dead, pierced by
several bullets; Constable Lousby was hit by a couple of
bullets, but got into the fort before the savages could
prevail.

"Now, my men," shouted Inspector Dickens, "show these
insolent savages that you can defy them." At once a raking
fire was poured into the rebels. Four of the rebels fell
dead, and some scores of others were wounded. The conduct
of some of the savages who received slight wounds was
exceedingly ludicrous. One who had been shot, _in running
away_, began to yell in the most pitiable way; and he
ran about the plain kicking up his heels and grabbing at
the wounded spot, which, it is to be inferred, must have
been stinging him very badly. I must not omit to speak
that before the _recontre_, chief factor MacLean, who
had always been held in high regard among the Indians,
went out of the fort to have a parley with Big Bear.
Arriving at the door of the chief's lodge, he knocked.
Big Bear admitted him with the greatest pleasure, and
after he had done so, said:

"Guess me keep you, since me's get you." So the chief
factor found himself a prisoner. Then Big Bear informed
his captive that if he would write a letter to the rest
of the civilians in the fort, asking them to withdraw,
and enter into the Indian lodge, he would treat them
civilly; but that if they refused, he would set fire to
the fort, and they would perish in the flames. This
MacLean consented to do, and in a little while there went
out from the fort to the Indian prison, Mr. MacLean's
family, consisting of eight, James Simpson, Stanley
Simpson, W. B. Cameron, one Dufresne, Rev. C. Quinn,
and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Mann, with their three
children. Since that date, these people have been prisoners
in Big Bear's camp, and every now and again the tidings
come that they are receiving barbarous, and even brutal,
treatment. After Big Bear had got possession of all
these, he said to his chief young men:

"'Spose we take em in, too, Mounted Police. No harm Get
their guns. Keep them here for a spell, and then let 'em
go." When he coolly presented himself before the stockades
and proposed to Inspector Dickens to come right over to
his lodges, assuring him that he would not allow the hair
of one of his men's heads to be harmed, Inspector Dickens
laughed:

"You are a very presumptuous savage." After the fight
which I have described, Inspector Dickens, studying the
situation, regarded it in this light:

"The civilians have gone to the Indians, so there is now
no object to be attained by keeping my force here. In
the battle with the savages I was successful. Therefore,
may retreat with honour." Fitting up a York boat, he had
it provisioned for the journey, and then destroying
everything in the shape of supplies, arms and ammunition
Which he could not take away, they started down the river,
and after a tedious journey arrived at Battleford, worn
with anxious watching, exposure and fatigue, but otherwise
safe and well, save for the wounded constable. The brave
Inspector was received at Battleford with ringing
acclamations. Here, in a little, he was appointed to the
command of the Police, superseding Lt.-Colonel Morris.
Altogether there is not in the whole campaign an instance
in which good judgment and bravery stand out so prominently
as in this record of the conduct of the son of our great
English novelist.




CHAPTER XIV.

No accident in the whole history of the present rebellion
so ill bears to be written about as does this of the
sacking of Battleford. This is a town of considerable
importance, and it has a strongly-built fort, garrisoned
by mounted police. It stands close to a large Cree reserve,
and the prairie around it being very fertile, the population
latterly had been growing rapidly. When first the
disturbance broke out, it was feared that there would be
trouble with the Stoney Crees in this region; for
Poundmaker, a great brawling Indian chief, is always
ready, like his boastful brother, Big Bear, to join in
any revolt against authority, Poundmaker, for many a
year, has done little save to smoke, drink tea among the
squaws, and tell lies, as long as the Saskatchewan river,
about all the battles he fought when he was a young man,
and how terrible was his name over all the plains.
Poundmaker has always been successful as a boaster, and
there is hardly a squaw on the whole reserve who does
not think him to be one of the most illustrious and mighty
men alive. Therefore he has never sued in vain for the
hand of a pretty maiden without success; and he has now
no fewer than a score of wives, whom he is not able to
support, and who are therefore compelled to go on their
bare brown feet among the marshes in the summer, killing
frogs and muskrats. The lazy rascal never works, but sits
at home drinking strong tea, smoking and telling lies,
while his wives, young ones and old ones, and his brawling
papooses go abroad looking for something to eat.

Now besides Poundmaker, there were among those Stoney
Crees two other mischief-loving half-and-half Chiefs.
One delighted in the name of Lucky Man, and the other of
Little Pine. These two vagabonds leagued themselves with
Poundmaker, when the first tidings of the the outbreak
reached them, and painting their faces, went abroad among
the young men, inciting them to revolt. They reminded
them, that if they arose they would have plenty of big
feasts, for the prairie was full of the white men's
cattle. And Little Pine glanced with snaky eyes toward
the town of Battleford.

"May be by-em-by, get fine things out of stores. Go in
and frighten away 'em people, then take heaps o' nice
things; get squaws, may be, to help 'em to carry 'em
away." This was just the sort of incentive that the young
men wanted; and the Indian girls screamed with delight
at the prospect of red shawls, and heaps of ribbons, and
boxes of brass rings, and pretty red and white stockings,
and boots with buttons on them.

Presently Big Bear, and Little Pine, and Lucky Man began
to get their forces in motion. Armed with bows and arrows,
spears, and tomahawks, shot-guns and flint-muskets, and
followed by gew-gaw-loving girls, squalling pappooses,
and half starved yellow dogs, the Crees, with the three
beauties just mentioned at their head, marched toward
the town. The people, apprised of the intended attack,
had fled to the police barracks; so that when the savages
entered the town, the streets were deserted. Then commenced
the work of pillage. According to a correspondent of the
_Montreal Star_, "house after house was visited in quick
succession, the squaws loudly acclaiming and shouting as
the bucks smashed in the doors with axes. Firearms were
the first things sought for by the braves, while the
females ransacked each dwelling from top to bottom, in
search of such articles as delighted the feminine eye,
Soon the hitherto quiet and peaceful town of Battleford
was transformed into a veritable place of destruction.
Torn carpets, chairs, bedsteads and empty trunks were
thrown into the streets, which were thronged by at least
500 Indians, who, made hideous with war paint, shouted
and discharged their rifles simultaneously, creating a
perfect pandemonium. When the pillagers had accomplished
their work, they commenced the attack on the barracks,
but were repulsed with a trifling loss. Some young bucks
got rolls of carpet, which they extended along the street,
and then mounting their ponies rode up and down over the
aesthetic patterns. The squaws got fineries enough to
deck themselves in for the next year; and the amount of
brass rings that they carried away was enough to make
glad the heart of all Indian-dom. After having surfeited
themselves with destruction, they returned, each one
laden to his and her utmost capacity with booty. Several
places were gutted and demolished; in other cases property
was destroyed, and some establishments were set on fire."

All this while Major Morris and his police, and nearly
two hundred able bodied men, with 200 rifles and plenty
of ammunition were cooped up in the Fort, peeping out at
the squaws pillaging the town. It seems a little illogical
that we should call out our young men from Halifax, from
Quebec, from Montreal, from Kingston, from Ottawa, and
from the other cities that put forces into the field, to
go out into the far wilderness to protect property, when
able-bodied men with arms in their hands stood by and
watched unmoved a body of savages and squaws pillage
their town, and give their property to the flames. It
was to relieve this town that Colonel Otter made the
brilliant march, upon which writers and orators have not
been able to bestow enough of eulogy.




CHAPTER XV.

After the defeat of the police and civilians at Duck
Lake, Riel and Dumont felt thoroughly confident of being
able to deal with the forces which they were apprised
the Canadian Government would send into the field against
them. They held many long consultations together, and
in every case it was Dumont who laid down the details of
the military campaign. "These Canadian soldiers," he
would say, "can not fight us here. We will entrench
ourselves in positions against which they may fire cannon
or gatling guns in vain. They are not used to
bush-fighting, and will all the time expose themselves
to our bullets. Besides, distances here are deceptive;
and in their confusion they will make the wildest sort
of shooting." It was decided that the rebel forces should
make their main stand at an advantageous position, which
Dumont had accidentally observed one day when he was out
elk-stalking three years ago. This place, he assured his
chief seemed to be intended by nature for a post of
defence. It lay a short distance from Batoche's Crossing.

"But my idea is to engage them several times with portions
of my force; gradually to fall back, and then fight at
my final ground the battle which shall decide who is
master in these territories, the half-breeds or the
Canadian volunteers."

All this while General Middleton, with his brave fellows,
had been making one of the most laborious marches recorded
in modern wars. Perhaps the worst portion of the march
was around the dismal reaches of Lake Superior. I take
an extract from correspondence to the Toronto _Mail_.
"But the most severe trial was last night's, in a march
from Red Rock to Nepigon, a distance of only seven miles
across the ice, yet it took nearly five hours to do it.
After leaving the cars the battalion paraded in line. A
couple of camp fires served to make the darkness visible.
All the men were anxious to start, and when the word was
given to march, it was greeted with cheers. It was
impossible to march in fours, therefore an order was
given for left turn, quick march. We turned, obedient to
the order, but the march was anything but quick. Then
into the solemn darkness of the pines and hemlock the
column slowly moved. Each side being snow four feet deep,
it was almost impossible to keep the track, and a misstep
buried the unfortunate individual up to his neck. Then
it began raining, and for three mortal hours there was
a continuous down pour. The lake was reached at last, to
the extreme pleasure of the corps. The wildness of the
afternoon and the rain turned the snow into slush, at
every step the men sank half a foot. All attempts to
preserve distance were soon abandoned by the men, who
clasped hands to prevent falling. The officers struggled
on, arms linked, for the same purpose. Now and then men
would drop in the ranks, the fact only being discovered
by those in the rear stumbling over them. Some actually
fell asleep as they marched. One brave fellow had plodded
on without a murmur for three days. He had been suffering,
but through the fear of being left behind in the hospital
refrained from making his case known. He tramped half-way
across last night's march reeling like a drunken man,
but nature gave out at last, and with a groan he fell on
the snow. There he lay, the pitiless rain beating on a
boyish upturned face, until a passing sleigh stopped
behind him. The driver, flashing his lantern in the
upturned face, said he was dead. 'Not yet, old man,' was
the reply of the youth, as he opened his eyes. 'I'm not
even a candidate for the hospital yet.'"

The following description of the Great Salt Plains, as
given by a _Globe_ correspondent, is also worth reproducing:
"The Great Salt Plains open out like broad, dreary marsh
or arm of the sea, from which the tide has gone out. For
about thirty-five miles the trail stretches in a
north-westerly course across this dismal expanse, and
away to the south-west, as far as the eye can reach,
nothing save marsh grass, flags, bullrushes, and
occasionally clumps of marsh willows can be seen. North-east
of the trail scattering bluffs of stunted grey willows
cluster along the horizon, and at one point along the
trail, about midway of the plain, is found a small,
solitary clump of stoneberry bushes, not more than thirty
yards long, five or six feet in width, and only three or
four feet high." The objective point of Major-General
Middleton's march was Batoche's Crossing, where Riel had
several large pits sunk, and fortifications thrown up,
for a grand and final encounter with our troops. The line
of march lay sometimes along the Saskatchewan's banks,
but more frequently through the open prairie. The position
of the rebels prior to the battle was this: Dumont, with
250 half-breeds and Indians, had been retreating slowly
before General Middleton's right column on the east bank
of the river, their scouts keeping them informed of the
General's movements. Dumont appears to have thought of
waiting for the troops to attack him on Thursday night;
at least that is the belief of the scouts, who saw some
of his mounted men signalling to him all afternoon on
Thursday. However that may be, he lay waiting for our
men at the edge of a big _coulee_ near Fish Creek, early
on Friday morning, his forces being snugly stowed away
behind boulders, or concealed in the dense everglades of
hazel, birch, and poplar. From day to day, almost from
hour to hour, this veteran buffalo hunter had learned
every tidings of the General's troops that keen observation
made from clumps of bush along the prairie could give
him. So when he learnt that the General himself, with
his officers, were near at hand, his eyes fairly gleamed
with enthusiasm.

"My men," he said, as he went from covert to covert, from
bluff to bluff, "you know the work that lies before you;
I need not repeat it to you. Do not expose yourself, and
do not fire unless you have a tolerable target." Then he
arranged a system of signals, chiefly low whistles and
calls, by which the men would be able to know when to
advance, retire, lie close, make a dash, or move from
one part of the ground to another.

"They will at first fall into an ambush," he said, "then,
my men, be nimble. In the panic there will be a rich
harvest for you. Bring down the General if you can.
Wherever an officer is in range, let him have a taste of
your lead in preference to the privates." Then he lay
close and watched, and listened, many times putting his
ear to the ground. At last he gave an exclamation. It
was in a whisper; but the silent rebels who lay there,
mute as the husht trees around them, could well hear the
words, "they come!"

Let me now briefly describe the position which the rebel
had chosen for himself. About five miles from McIntosh's
stand two bluffs, about five hundred yards apart, thickly
wooded on the top. Between these bluffs is a level open
prairie that extends backward about a thousand yards,
across which there runs a deep ravine, thickly timbered
at the bottom.

Now, on the morning of Friday, the twenty-fourth of April,
General Middleton, who was still on the march to Batoche's,
was riding with his staff, well in front. With him was
Major Boulton's Horse, who acted as scouts. As they were
passing the two bluffs named, suddenly the crack of
musketry rang out upon the prairie. Major Boulton now
perceived that he had fallen into an ambush. At the same
time that deadly balls and buck-shot came whistling and
cutting spitefully through the air, there arose from both
bluffs the most diabolical yelling. For miles over the
silent prairies could these murderous yells be heard.
Nor were the rebel balls fired without effect. Captain
Gardner fell bleeding upon the ground, and several of
the men had also fallen.

General Middleton, who had been some little distance in
the rear was speedily apprised of the surprise, and
dashing on toward the rebels' hold he met Boulton's Horse
retiring for reinforcements. Then "A" Battery, the 90th
regiment, and "C" Company, Toronto, with enthusiastic
cheering, began to cry out: "Show us the rebels!"

In a little while the firing became general, and our men
struck out extending their formation as they neared the
edge of the _coulee_, from which puffs of smoke were
already curling up. Twenty of Dumont's men, with
Winchesters, fired over a natural shelf or parapet
protected by big boulders. The column was divided into
two wings, the left consisting of "B" and "F" Companies
of the 90th, with Boulton's mounted corps, and the right
of the rest of the 90th, "A" Battery, and "C" School of
Infantry. The left wing, "F" company leading, came under
fire first. As the men were passing by him; Gen. Middleton
shouted out:

"Men of the 90th, don't bend your heads; you will soon
be there; go in, and I know you'll do your duty."

The men were bending down, partly to avoid the shots and
partly because they were running over the uneven, scrubby
ground. Colour-Sergeant Mitchell, of "F" company (one of
the famous Wimbledon Mitchells), displayed great coolness,
and afterwards did good execution with a rifle when the
troops had entered the bush. "A," "C," and "D" Companies
of the 90th, with "A" Battery and the School of Infantry,
were on the right, the whole force forming a huge half-moon
around the mouth of the _coulee_. The brush was densely
thick, and as rain was falling, the smoke hung in clouds
a few feet off the muzzles of the rifles.

Here the 90th lost heavily. Ferguson was the first to
fall. The bandsmen came up and carried off the injured
to the rear, where Dr. Whiteford and other surgeons had
extemporized a small camp, the men being laid some on
camp-stretchers and some on rude beds of branches and
blankets. "E" company of the 90th, under Capt. Whitla,
guarded the wounded and the ammunition. General Middleton
appeared to be highly pleased with the bearing of the
90th as they pushed on, and repeatedly expressed his
admiration. He seemed to think, however, that the men
exposed themselves unnecessarily. When they got near the
_coulee_ in skirmishing order, they fired while lying
prostrate, but some of them either through nervousness
or a desire to get nearer the unseen enemy, kept rising
to their feet, and the moment they did so Dumont's men
dropped them with bullets or buckshot. The rebels, on
the other hand, kept low. They loaded, most of them having
powder and shot bags below the edge of the ravine or
behind the thicket, and then popped up for an instant
and fired. They had not time to take aim except at the
outset, when the troops were advancing.

Meanwhile the right wing had gone into action also. Two
guns of "A" Battery, under Capt. Peters, dashed up at
10:40 o'clock, and at once opened on the _coulee_. A
couple of old barns far back to the right were knocked
into splinters at the outset, it being supposed that
rebels were concealed there; and three haystacks were
bowled over and subsequently set on fire by the shells
or fuses. Attention was then centred on the ravine. At
first, however, the battery's fire had no effect, as from
the elevation on which the guns stood, the shot went
whizzing over it. Dumont had sent thirty men to a small
bluff, covered with boulder and scrub, within 450 yards
of the battery, and these opened a sharp fire. The battery
could not fire into this bluff without running the risk
of killing some of the 90th, who had worked their way up
towards the right of it. Several men of "A" were struck
here. The rebels saw that their sharpshooters were causing
confusion in this quarter, and about twenty of them ran
clear from the back of the ravine past the fire of "C"
and "D" companies to the bluff, and joined their comrades
in a rattling fusillade on "A." Fortunately, only a few
of them, had Winchesters. "A" moved forward a little,
and soon got the measure of the ravine. The shrapnel
screeched in the air, and burst right in among the brush
and boulders, smashing the scraggy trees, and tearing up
the moss that covered the ground in patches. The rebels
at once saw that the game was up in this quarter, though
they kept up a bold front and seldom stopped firing except
when they were dodging back into new cover. In doing this
they rarely exposed themselves, either creeping on all
fours or else running a few yards in the shelter of the
thicket and then throwing themselves flat on the ground
again, bobbing up only when they raised their heads and
elbows to fire.

The shrapnel was too much for them, and they began to
bolt towards the other side of the ravine, where our left
wing was peppering them. This move was the first symptom
of weakness they had exhibited, and Gen. Middleton at
once took advantage of it and ordered the whole force to
close in upon them, his object apparently being to surround
them. The rebel commander, however, was not to be caught
in that way. Instead of bunching all his forces on the
left away from the fire of the artillery, he sent only
a portion of it there to keep our men busy while the rest
filled off to the north, retiring slowly as our two wings
closed on them. Dumont was evidently on the look-out for
the appearance of Col. Montizambert's force from the
other side of the river.

The general advance began at 11.45 a.m., Major Buchan of
the 90th leading the right wing, and Major Boswell of
the same corps the left. When the rebels saw this a number
of them rushed forward on the left of the ravine, and
the fighting for a time was carried on at close quarters,
the enemy not being over sixty yards away. An old log
hut and a number of barricades, formed by placing old
trees and brushwood between the boulders, enabled them
to make it exceedingly warm for our men for a time. At
this point several of the 90th were wounded, and General
Middleton himself had a narrow escape, a bullet going
through his fur hat. Captains Wise and Doucet, of Montreal,
the General's Aide-de-camps, were wounded about this
time. "C" infantry behaved remarkably well all through,
and bore the brunt of the general advance for some time,
the buckshot from the rebels doing much damage. The rebel
front was soon driven back, but neither here nor at any
other time could the rebels' loss be ascertained. The
Indians among them, who were armed with guns, appeared
to devote themselves mainly to shooting the horses. A
good many Indians were hit, and every time one of them
was struck the others near him raised a loud shout, as
if cheering. The troops pressed on gallantly, and the
rebel fire slackened, and after a time died away, though
now and then their front riflemen made a splurge, while
the others made their way back. Captain Forrest, of the
90th, headed the advance at this point, Lieutenant Hugh
J. Macdonald (son of Sir John Macdonald), of this company,
who had done excellent service all day, kept well up with
Forrest, the two being ahead of their men, and coming in
for a fair share of attention from the retreating rebels.
Macdonald was first reported as killed and then as wounded,
but he was not injured, though struck on the shoulder by
spent buckshot. Forrest's hat was shot off. At 12.50 the
rebels were far out of range, going towards Batoche's,
and the Battle of Fish Creek was practically over.
[Footnote: I am chiefly indebted to the Toronto _Mail_
for the foregoing account of the battle.]

During the battle, many instances of the greatest bravery
are recorded. Private Ainsworth, of the 90th, was seen
to leap upon the shoulders of a savage, who, in company
with another, had endeavoured to cross the flat land and
get shelter, wresting his gun and felling him to the
earth with the butt of it, then securing the rifle firing
at and killing the other Indian. While doing this, he
was exposed to the fire of a score of guns, getting
riddled with buck-shot and being struck with bullets.
But the greatest daring and bravery were exhibited by
Watson, of the Toronto School of Infantry. Finding it
impossible to dislodge the enemy, he rushed headlong for
the ambuscaded half-breeds, followed by a score of his
comrades whom it was impossible to control. The war-cries
of the Indians, the huzzas of the troops, and the rattle
of musketry fairly echoed for miles, as evidenced by the
statements of the west side contingent upon arriving on
the scene. Watson paid the penalty of his daring by death,
while the narrow escape of many others were remarkable.
The utmost bravery all the while was displayed by our
troops. When a man fell his comrade would pause for a
moment, and say:

"I hope you are not badly hurt," and then again look out
for the enemy. Some of the men who received only slight
wounds were anxious to remain in the fight, but their
officers insisted that they should be taken to the rear,
and attended to by the surgeons. Upon couches made of
boughs, and covered with blankets, the brave young fellows
were placed; and many of them submitted to probings and
painful management of wounds without making a murmur.
They seemed not to be concerned for themselves, but went
on all the while enquiring as to how it was "going with
the boys."

General Middleton, himself a veteran soldier, expressed
as I have already stated, his admiration for the bravery
of all the men who were engaged. There was no bolting,
even in the face of heavy fire; no shrinking, although
_one man in every eight_ had been struck by the enemy's
shot or bullets. Major Boulton had many narrow escapes,
while he was standing for a moment, a hail of buckshot
came whistling by his ear, burying itself into his horse,
which was killed instantly. The Scouts, known as Boulton's
Horse, under this brave officer, bore very gallantly
their portion of the battle's brunt. Half-breads and
Indians had orders from their leaders to shoot down horses
as well as men; and Dumont frequently said, that the
mounted men were the only ones of the force of the enemy
for which he cared anything. Several of the horses were
shot, and many of the men were riddled with buck-shot,
but they bravely stood their ground. In the night, when
the weary were sleeping after the hard day's work, dusky
forms could be seen by the light of the moon, creeping
stealthily towards where slept the gallant Scouts. The
Guard heard a crackle, and turning, perceived three pairs
of eyes gleaming with ferocity in the shadow of a clump
of poplars.

"Qui vive?" he cried, and raised his rifle; but before
he could take aim, three shots rang out through the still
night, and he fell dead, pierced by as many bullets.
There was a general alarm through the camp, but no eye
could detect the form of a Rebel. They were safe among
the shadows in the ravine. In the few moments of silent
horror that ensued after the commission of the murder,
three diabolical yells sounded from the ravine, and far
over the moon-lit prairies. Then divers voices were heard
in the bluffs, and down in the gorge. These came from
Dumont's men, who jeered, and cried that they hoped the
soldiers enjoyed the pastime of watching their dead.

On the following day, the bodies of the brave young
fellows who had fallen, after being decently, and decorously
disposed in death, were brought to the graves hollowed
out in this far-away wilderness by the hands of old
comrades. It was a very sad spectacle indeed. The death
of brave soldiers is always mournful to contemplate; but
war is the _trade_ of regulars, and they expect death,
and burials in distant sod. But war is not the trade of
our volunteer soldiers. They are mere young fellows, of
various pursuits of life, and death and burial away from
home lose nothing of their sorrowful surroundings, because
the taking off has been at the hands of rebel murderers.
General Middleton conducted the ceremonies; and here upon
the wide, husht prairie, which will soon deck the graves
with flowers, they were laid away. The brave young fellows
who faced the Rebels' shot and ball without failing,
faltered now, and many of them wept copious tears.

On the following day, General Middleton began to make
ready for his march toward Batoche's, where the Rebels'
stronghold is located. Meanwhile the following sick and
wounded have been left at the hospital at dark's Crossing,
under the care of Dr. Orton: Captain Clark; Privates
Hislop, Harris, Stovel, Matthews, Code Jarvis, Canniff,
Lethbridge, Kemp, Bruce; Captain Gardner; Privates Perrin,
King, Dunn, McDonald, Cummings, Jones, R. Jones, Wilson,
Morrison, Woodman, Imrie, Asseline, Lailor; Sergeant
Mawhinney, Private Wainwright.

The following is a list of the killed and wounded from
the outbreak of the Rebellion to the close of Colonel
Otter's engagement with Pound maker, Big Bear and other
Indian bands:--

Killed at Prince Albert:--

Constable T. G. Gibson; Constable G. P. Arnold; Constable
Garrett; Capt. John Morton; W. Napier; C. Page; James
Blakey; J. Napier Elliott; Robert Middleton; D. Mackenzie;
D. McPhail; Charles Newitt; Joseph Anderson; Alexander
Fisher.

Wounded at Prince Albert:--

Capt. Moore; A. MacNab; Alex. Stewart; Inspector J. Howe;
Corporal Gilchrist; S. F. Gordon; A. W. Smith; J. J.
Moore; A. Miller.

Killed at Frog Lake:--

T. T. Quinn, Indian Agent at Frog Lake; Father Fafard;
Father Marchand; John Delaney, Farm Inspector; J. A.
Gowanlock; Mrs. Gowanlock; Charles Gouin; William Gilchrist;
Two Lay Brothers; John Williscraft; James K. Simpson,
and two Hudson Bay men made prisoners, and probably
murdered by Frog Lake Indians.

Killed at Fort Pitt:--

Constable Cowan, N. W. M. P.

Wounded at Fort Pitt:--

Constable Lonsley, N. W. M. P

Killed at Fish Creek:--

Lieut. Swinford, 90th; Private Hutchinson, No. 1 Company,
90th; Private Ferguson, No. 1 Company, 90th; Private
Ennis, No. 4 Company, 90th; Gunner Demanolly, "A" Battery;
Arthur Watson, School of Infantry; D'Arcy Baker, Mounted
Infantry; Gunner Cook, "A" Battery; Wheeler, 90th;
Ainsworth, "A" Battery,

Wounded at Fish Creek:--

Capt. Clarke, 90th; Capt. Wise, A. D. C.; Lieut. Doucett,
A.D.C; Lieut. Bruce, M. I.; Capt. Gardner, M. I.; Private
C. F. King, M. I.; Private H. P. Porin, M. I.; Private
J. Langford, M. I.; Gunner Asseline, "A" Battery; Gunner
Emeye, "A" Battery; Bombardier Taylor, "A" Battery;
Sergeant-Major Mawhinney, "A" Battery; Driver Harrison;
Private H. P. Wilson; Private E. Mannsell; Private Walter
Woodman; Private R. H. Dunn, School of Infantry; Private
H. Jones, School of Infantry; Private R. Jones, School
of Infantry; Col.-Sergt. Cummings, School of Infantry;
Corporal Lethbridge, 90th; Private Kemp; Corporal Code;
Private Hartop; Private Blackwood; Private Canniff;
Private W. W. Matthews; Private Lovell; Private Cane,
10th Royals; Private Wheeeling, 10th Royals, knee
dislocated; Private Hislop, 90th; Private Chambers, 90th;
Corporal Thecker, 90th; Private Bouchette, 90th; Private
Swan 90th; Corporal Brown.

Killed at Battleford:--

Frank Smart, shot on picket.

Killed by Indians:--

John Walkinshaw and Albert Harkness.

Killings and Woundings elsewhere:--

Sergeant Snyder, injured by explosion at Peterboro; Lieut.
Morrow, accidentally shot; Private Moberley, broken arm;
Kelsey, Midland Battalion, jumped from train, probably
lost; G. H. Douglass, injured by fall from horse; Marwich,
Halifax Battalion, died from exposure, a member of the
9th (Quebec) Battalion, died from exposure; Farm Instructor
Payne; Barnez Fremont, rancher, Achille Blois, 9th Quebec,
died from fever.

Killed at Poundmaker's Reserve:--

Private Arthur Dobbs, Battleford Rifles; Bugler Foulks,
School of Infantry; Corporals Laurie and Sleight, and
Trumpeter Burke, Mounted Police; Privates Rogers and
Osgoode, Governor-General's Foot Guards; Teamster Winder,
of Regina.

Wounded at Poundmaker's Reserve:--

Col-Sergt. Cooper, in the hip, Private G. Varey, in the
shoulder, Private Lloyd, in the shoulder, and Private G.
Watts, in the thigh, Queen's Own Rifles. Lieut. Pelletier,
in the thigh, Sergt. Gaffney, in the arm, Corporal Morton,
in the groin, and Gunner Reynolds, in the arm, "B" Battery.
Sergt. Winters, in the face, Private McQuillan, in the
side, Governor-General's Foot Guards. Sergt. Ward, in
the shoulder, Mounted Police. Sergt.-Major Spackman, in
the arm, Bugler Gilbert, in the arm, Infantry School.

Killed at Batoche:--

Gunner Wm. Phillips, "A" Battery, Quebec; Private T,
Moor, No. 3 company, Royal Grenadiers, Toronto; Capt.
John French, scout; Capt. Brown, scout; Lieut. Fitch,
10th Royal Grenadiers, shot through the heart; W. P.
Krippen, of Perth, a surveyor; Private Haidisty, 90th
Winnipeg Battalion; Private Fraser, 90th Winnipeg Battalion.
Of the foregoing the last six were killed on Monday, the
first on Saturday, and Private Moor on Sunday.

Wounded at Batoche:--

Tenth Royal Grenadiers:--Major Dawson, slightly in the
ankle, able to limp about; Capt. Manley slightly in the
foot; Capt. Mason flesh wound in the thigh; Staff Sergt.
T. M. Mitchell, slight wound in the eye; Private R. Cook
in the arm; Private G. Barbour, slight scratch in the
head; Private G. W, Quigley, flesh wound in the arm;
Private J. Marshall in the calf; Private H. Wilson, slight
wound across the back; Bugler, M. Vaughan, in the finger;
Private Scovell, slight flesh wound; Private Stead, slight
flesh wound; Private Cantwell.

The 90th Battalion:--Corp. Gillies, Sergt.-Major Watson,
Private O. A. Wheeler, Private Young, Sergt. Jackes,
Private M. Erickson, Private Kemp.

Surveyor Scouts:--Lieut Garden.

Capt. French's Scouts:--Trooper Cook.

"A" Battery:--Driver Jas. Stout, Gunner Fairbanks, Gunner
Charpentier, Gunner Twohey.

Midland Battalion:--Lieut. Geo. Laidlaw, Lieut. Helliwell,
Corp. Helliwell, Private Barton.

Meanwhile the campaign goes on, and we know not what
tidings any day may bring forth. There is no use now in
having long discussions as to whose shoulders should bear
the responsibility of all the devastation, terror, misery
and blood; the duty of the hour is to put an end to the
Rebellion. Riel must be captured at any cost; so, too,
must Dumont. Men so strongly a menace to public peace as
Riel and his bad and fearless ally, Dumont, must not be
given the opportunity again of covering the land with
blood. There must be a pretty wholesome hanging in the
North-West, and the gentlemen whom the authorities must
give first attention to are the two villains just named,
Poundmaker, Big Bear, Little Pine, Lucky Man, and those
bloody wolves who perpetrated the butcheries at Frog Lake.

I have said that this is not the place to discuss at
length the question of the Government's responsibility
for this blood, and sorrow, and misery. Neither is it.
Yet one and all believe, though thousands will belie
their convictions, that there has been a criminal
mismanagement of these half-breed people by the authorities
at Ottawa.

I have been obliged to show that in the past, many of
our French co-patriots bestowed a most astonishing and
unjustifiable sympathy for Riel. I am glad to be able to
say that in the present case, while censuring the Government
for its indifference to the grievances of the half-breeds,
they have no word of justification for the murderous
apostle of tumult. Bishop Langevin, brother of the Hon
the Minister of Public Works, issued a pastoral, in which
there was no uncertain sound. He called upon the faithful
sons of the country within his diocese to come forward
and join hands against a cause of tumult, destruction
and murder.




THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF LOUIS RIEL.

On the 20th of July the Court met, when Riel was formally
arraigned, the clerk reading the long indictment. In
reply to the interrogation whether the prisoner pled
guilty to the charge of treason, his counsel rose and
took exception to the jurisdiction of the Court. The plea
entered by the defence was to the affect that the presiding
stipendiary magistrate was incompetent to try a case
involving the death penalty, and urged that Riel should
be tried by one of the duly constituted courts in Ontario
or in British Columbia. Mr. Christopher Robinson, Q.C.,
for the Crown, asked for an adjournment for eight days,
to prepare a reply to the plea, which was granted. The
Court then adjourned to the 28th instant.

On the re-opening of the Court, counsel expressed themselves
ready to proceed. Only a few minutes were taken up in
selecting a jury. Twelve persons were called, five of
whom were peremptorily challenged by the defence, and
one by the Crown. The remaining six were sworn in to
try the prisoner at the bar. Their names are as follows:
--H. J. Painter, E. Everett, E. J. Brooks, J. W.
Merryfield, H. Dean, and F. Crosgrove. During the selection
of the jury, it is observed by a correspondent of _The
Mail_, to whom we shall be indebted for the reports of
the trial, in making the present abstract, "that Riel
anxiously watched the face of every man as he was selected
and sworn, as though he could read their inmost thoughts
as they took the oath."

After reading the indictment to the jury, Mr. B. B. Osler,
Q.C., opened the case for the Crown, in which he explained
the nature of the charge against the prisoner, whose
career he traced through the successive steps of the
rebellion, and indicated the weight and character of the
evidence to be brought against its wicked instigator and
chief leader. The plea of the defence of the incompetence
of the Court to try the case, was first answered by the
learned counsel, who remarked, that the character, and
composition of the Court, as well as the provision for
the trial of capital offences by a jury of six men instead
of twelve, were in harmony with the Dominion Law enacted
for the Government of the Territories, and that the
Dominion Parliament had the right, under the British
North America Act, to make that law. "The absence of
the Grand Jury was explained, on the ground that such
juries were essentially county organizations, and were
impossible in large districts with small and scattered
populations." The same reason explained the limiting of
the jury to half the usual number. It was also stated
that the Crown deemed it unwise, if indeed it were not
impossible, to issue a Special Commission for the trial
of the prisoner.

Mr. Osler proceeding said, that Riel not only aided and
abetted the illegal acts of the rebels, but directed
these acts.

"The testimony he claimed," says a writer in _The
Illustrated War News_, "was abundantly sufficient to
bring home to the prisoner his guilt in the charges
against him. He (Mr. Osler) read the document in Riel's
handwriting to Crozier, in which Riel threatened a war
of extermination against the whites, and traced the
prisoner's conduct afterwards to show that he had tried
to carry out that threat. It was no constructive treason
that was sought to be proved, but treason involving the
shedding of brave men's blood. The accused had been led
on, not by the desire to aid his friends in a lawful
agitation for redress of a grievance, but by his inordinate
vanity and desire for power and wealth."

"The first overt act of treason was committed," continued
Mr. Osler, "when the French half-breeds were requested
by Riel to bring their arms with them to a meeting to be
held at Batoche on March 3rd. This indicated that the
prisoner intended to resort to violence. On the 18th
instant they find him (Riel) sending out armed men and
taking prisoners, including Mr. Lash, the Indian agent
of the St. Lament region, and others, also looting the
stores at and near Batoche, stopping freighters and
appropriating their freight. A few days later the French
half-breeds were under arms, and were joined by the
Indians of the neighbourhood, who were incited to rise
by the prisoner. On the 21st inst. Major Crozier did all
he could to get the armed men to disperse, but directed
by Riel, they refused to do so, and taking their orders
from him, they continued in rebellion. He held a document
in his hands, in the prisoner's handwriting," added Mr.
Osler, "which contained the terms on which Fort Carlton
would be spared attack by the surrender and march out of
Major Crozier and the mounted police. This document was
never delivered, but was found with other papers in the
rebel council chamber after the taking of Batoche. It
was said in this notification to Crozier that the rebels
would attack the police if they did not vacate Carlton,
and would commence a war of extermination of the white
race. This document was direct evidence of the treasonable
intentions of the prisoner. Ten days previously Riel
declared himself determined to rule or perish, and the
declaration was followed by this demand. It would be said
that, at last, when a clash of arms was imminent, Riel
objected to forcible measures; but this document was a
refutation of that assertion. At Duck Lake the prisoner
had taken upon himself the responsibility of ordering
his men to fire on the police. At Fish Creek, if Riel
was not there, he directed the movement, and was therefore
responsible. On the day of the fight he went back to
Batoche to finish the rifle-pits. In the contest at
Batoche the prisoner was seen bearing arms, and giving
such directions as would show that he was the main mover.
His treatment of the prisoners, his letters to Middleton,
and other documents would show Riel's leadership. A letter
found in Poundmaker's camp would show his deliberate
intention of bringing on this country the calamity of an
Indian war. All this would be proven, and it would be
shown that the prisoner had not come here to aid his
friends in the redress of grievances, but in order to
use the half-breeds for his own selfish ends." Mr. Osler
closed with a reference to the death and suffering which
had been caused by the ambition of one man, and impressed
upon the jury the grave responsibility they were charged
with in bringing his crime home to the prisoner.

The first witness called by the Crown was DR. WILLOUGHBY,
of SASKATOON. After having been sworn, witness said that
the prisoner had stated to him that the Fort Garry trouble,
when Scott had been shot, was nothing to what was going
to take place. He said that the Indians only waited for
him to strike the first blow to join him, and that he
had the United States at his back. He seemed greatly
excited, and said:--"It is time, doctor, that the breeds
should assert their rights, and it will be well for those
who have lived good lives." A party of armed men then
drove up, and Riel said, pointing to them, "My people
intend striking a blow for their rights. They have
petitioned the Government over and over again, the only
reply being an increase of the police force each time."
The Indians, he said, had arranged their plans, and when
the first blow was struck they would be joined by the
American Indians. They would issue a proclamation, and
assert that the time had arrived for him to rule the
country or perish in the attempt. He promised to divide
the country into seven equal portions, one of which was
to be the new Ireland of the new North-West. He said the
rebellion of fifteen years ago was not a patch on what
this would be.

THOS. McKAY, a loyal half-breed, was next called, who
testified that he joined the Volunteer contingent from
Prince Albert which formed part of Major Crozier's command
at Duck Lake. Previous to that engagement he accompanied
Mr. Hillyard Mitchell in his mission to Batoche, where
the rebels had their headquarters. His object in going
to Batoche was to point cut to the French half-breeds
the danger they were getting into in taking up arms. On
arriving at the village he was met by an armed guard who
conducted him, with Mr. Mitchell, to the rebel council
room, where he was introduced to Riel "as one of Her
Majesty's soldiers." We here quote part of the examination,
by Mr. Christopher Robinson, of this Witness.

Q.--Who introduced you to the prisoner?

A.--Mr. Mitchell introduced me to Mr. Riel as one of Her
Majesty's soldiers.

Q.--That is Mr. Hillyard Mitchell?

A.--Yes. I shook hands with Mr. Riel and had a talk with
him. I said, "There appears be great excitement here,
Mr. Riel." He said, "No, there is no excitement at all;
it was simply that the people were trying to redress
their grievances, as they had asked repeatedly for their
rights; that they had decided to make a demonstration."
I told him it was a very dangerous thing to resort to
arms. He said he had been waiting fifteen long years and
that they had been imposed upon, and it was time now,
after they had waited patiently that their rights should
be given, as the poor half-breeds had been imposed upon.
I disputed his wisdom and advised him to adopt different
measures.

Q.--Did he speak of himself at all in the matter?

A.--He accused me of having neglected my people. He said
if it was not for men like me their grievances would have
been redressed long ago, that as no one took an interest
in these people he had decided to take the lead in the
matter.

Q.--Well?

A.--He accused me of neglecting them. I told him it was
simply a matter of opinion, that I had certainly taken
an interest in them, and my interest in the country was
the same as theirs, and that I had advised them time and
again, and that I had not neglected them. I also said
that he had neglected them a long time if he took as deep
an interest as he professed to. He became very excited,
and got up and said, "You don't know what we are after--it
is blood, blood; we want blood; it is a war of
extermination. Everybody that is against us is to be
driven out of the country." There were two curses in the
country--the Government and the Hudson Bay Co. He further
said the first blood they wanted was mine. There were
some little dishes on the table, and he got hold of a
spoon and said, "You have no blood, you are a traitor to
your people, your blood is frozen, and all the little
blood you have will be there in five minutes"--putting
the spoon up to my face, and pointing to it. I said, "If
you think you are benefiting your cause by taking my
blood, you are quite welcome to it." He called his people
and the committee, and wanted to put me on trial for my
life, and Garnot got up and went to the table with a
sheet of paper, and Gabriel Dumont took a chair on a
syrup keg, and Riel called up the witnesses against me.

At this juncture Riel was called away to attend a committee
meeting of the rebel government. Subsequently, by the
mediation of Hillyard Mitchell, Riel's wrath at McKay
was placated, and he was allowed to return to Fort Carlton
with his intercessor. Before leaving, Riel apologized to
McKay for what he had said to him, and asked him to join
the insurgents, which witness, of course, would not do,
being a loyal half-breed and a volunteer in the ranks of
the Prince Albert contingent with Crozier at Fort Carlton.

McKay then detailed the incidents of the disastrous
engagement with the rebels at Duck Lake, and gave strong
testimony to criminate Riel, which the counsel for the
defence utterly failed to shake.

The next witness WAS JOHN ASTLEY, surveyor of PRINCE
ALBERT, who was long prisoner of Riel's at Batoche, and
the rebel chief's messenger on the day of the taking of
the village by the loyal forces under Middleton. The
witness gave a vivid description of his capture and
imprisonment by Riel, and his subsequent release by the
volunteers at Batoche. Riel acknowledged to him that he
ordered his men in the name of the Almighty to fire at
Duck Lake. He did not do so, however until, as he thought,
the police had fired. Riel told him he must have another
fight with the soldiers to secure better terms of surrender
from Gen. Middleton.




SECOND DAY OF THE TRIAL.

The second day of the Riel trial brought out sufficient
evidence to incriminate the prisoner, and to lead the
Crown prosecutors to waive the calling of other witnesses.
During the proceedings the prisoner, it is reported,
manifested more interest than he did on the first day of
the trial, and his dark penetrating eye restlessly wandered
from witness to counsel, and from bench to jury. "All
day long a couple of medical men sat watching his actions,
to discover, if possible, whether his mind was affected
or not." His disagreement with his counsel towards the
close of the day, caused an exciting break in the
proceedings.

GEORGE KERR, of Kerr Brothers, BATOCHE, was the first
witness sworn. He testified that on the 18th of March,
Riel, with some fifty armed half-breeds, came to his
store, and demanded, and obtained, all his guns and
ammunition. His store was sacked, and later on he was
himself taken prisoner, but was subsequently released.
Riel, he testified, directed the rebel movements in
concert with Gabriel Dumont.

HARRY WALTERS, another storekeeper at BATOCHE, was then
examined, and gave similar testimony as to the sacking
of his store, and of Riel's demand for arms and ammunition.
On his refusing to accede to the demand of the prisoner
and the breeds with him, Riel said, "You had better do
it quietly. If we succeed, I will pay you; if not, the
Dominion Government will." I refused, said Walters, and
they forced themselves in and took the arms. I was arrested
shortly after. Riel said the movement was for the freedom
of the people. The country, if they succeeded, was to be
divided, giving a seventh to the half-breeds, a seventh
to the Indians, a seventh to church and schools, the
remainder to be Crown Lands. I was kept prisoner three
days, being liberated by Riel. Riel said, God was with
their people, and that if the whites ever struck a blow,
a thunderbolt would destroy them. They took everything
out of my store before morning, the prisoner superintending
the removal of the goods.

HILLYARD MITCHELL sworn, was examined by Mr. Osler. He
said--I am an Indian trader, have a store at Duck Lake;
heard there was an intention by rebels to take my store.
I went to Fort Carlton and saw Major Crozier on the
Thursday prior to the Duck Lake fight; saw prisoner on
that Thursday at Batoche. Saw some people at the river
armed. At the village I saw some English half-breed
freighters who had been taken prisoners by Riel, and
their freight also taken. Philip Garnot took me to the
priest's house. I saw the prisoner there with Charles
Nolin, Guardupuy and others. I think this was on the 19th
of March. I told Riel that I had come to give some advice
to the half-breeds. Riel said the Government had always
answered their demands by sending more police. They were
willing to fight 500 police. He said he had been trampled
on and kept out of the country, and he would bring the
Government and Sir Jonn Macdonald to their knees.

THOMAS E. JACKSON was next examined by Mr. Osler, and
deposed that he was a druggist, at Prince Albert, and a
brother of Wm. Henry Jackson, an insane prisoner of
Riel's. Riel, witness testified, asked him to write to
the eastern papers, placing a favourable construction on
his (Riel's) actions. Riel had made an application to
Government for $35,000 as indemnity for loss of property;
he showed the greatest hatred to the English, and his
motives were those of revenge for ill-treatment at the
time of the Red River rebellion. Having questioned Riel's
present motives and plans, witness was taken prisoner
and placed in close confinement. Riel afterwards accused
me of having advised an English half-breed to desert.
When Middleton was attacking Batoche, Riel came to witness
and told him if Middleton killed any of their women and
children he would massacre the prisoners. He wrote a
message to Middleton to that effect, and I carried it to
the General. (The message was produced and identified
by witness). I did not return to the rebel camp. Saw the
prisoner armed once after the Fish Creek fight. Riel was
in command at Batoche, Dumont being in immediate command
of the men. I know prisoner's handwriting. (The original
summons to Major Crozier to surrender, the letter to
Crozier asking him to come and take away the dead after
Duck Lake fight, a letter to "dear relatives" at Fort
Qu'Appelle, a letter to the half-breeds and Indians about
Battleford, a letter to Poundmaker, and other documents
were put in and identified by witness as being in Riel's
handwriting).

Cross-examined by Mr. Fitzpatrick--The agitation was for
provincial rights and their claims under the Manitoba
treaty, and I was in sympathy with it. Riel was brought
into the country by the French half-breeds. I attended
a meeting at Prince Albert immediately after Riel's
arrival in June, 1884. Riel said what they wanted was a
constitutional agitation, and if they could not accomplish
their ends in five years they would take ten to do it.
Riel was their adviser; was not a member of the Executive
Committee. Up to March last, from all I heard prisoner
say or discovered otherwise, I believed Riel meant simply
a constitutional agitation, as was being carried on by
the other settlers. Riel had told him the priests were
opposed to him, and that they were all wrong. Heard Riel
talk of dividing up the country to be bestowed on the
half-breeds, Poles, Hungarians, Bavarians, etc. When I
was Riel's prisoner I heard him talk of this division,
which I thought meant a division of the proceeds of sale
of lands in a scheme of immigration. This was altogether
different from what he had all along proposed at the
meetings. All the documents Riel signed that I know of
were signed "Exovide" (one of the flock). Riel explained
that his new religion was a liberal form of Roman
Catholicism, and that the Pope had no power in Canada.
Think Riel wanted to exercise the power of the Pope
himself. These expressions were made by Riel after the
rebellious movement was begun.

GENERAL MIDDLETON was now called, and was examined by
Mr. C. Robinson, Q.C. He testified that he was sent by
the Minister of Militia to quell the outbreak on the
Saskatchewan, and gave the well-known details of his
encounter with the rebels at Fish Creek, and of his
subsequent movement on Batoche. He testified to receiving
two letters from Riel on the day of the capture of Batoche,
in one of which Riel threatened to massacre the prisoners
in his possession if he (Middleton) fired upon the
half-breed women and children. The letter was produced
in Court, and identified by the General.

CAPT. GEO. H. YOUNG, of the Winnipeg Field Battery,
deposed that he was present at Batoche as Brigade Major
under the last witness, and was in the charge at the
close. Witness was first in the rebel council chamber
after the capture of the village, and found and took
possession of the rebel archives. A number of documents
were produced, which witness recognised as those he had
secured. After Riel's surrender he was given into
witness's custody and taken to Regina.

MAJOR JARVIS, in command of the Winnipeg Field Battery
during the campaign, and to whom the charge of the papers
found at Batoche was confided, identified the papers
produced in Court.

MAJOR CROZIER, of the N.-W. Mounted Police, was next
sworn, and detailed the fact that he was met by an armed
force of rebels at Duck Lake and fired upon, losing many
of his command in killed and wounded. He testified that,
subsequent to this engagement, a man named Sanderson
brought him a letter from Riel asking him to come and
remove his dead from the field.

CHARLES NOLIN was next called, and was examined by Mr.
Casgrain in French. The deposition of this witness we
take from the Toronto _Globe_. Nolin deposed that he
lived in St. Laurent and formerly in Manitoba. He knew
when Riel came to this country in July, 1884. And met
him many times. Riel showed him a book he had written in
which he said he would destroy England, and also Rome
and the Pope. Riel spoke to him of his plans in December,
expressing his wish for money, a sum between ten and
fifteen thousand dollars. Riel had no plan to get it,
but he wanted to claim an indemnity from the Dominion
Government; that they owed him $100,000. Riel told him
he had had an interview with Father Andre, and at that
time he was at open war with the clergy, but had made
peace with Father Andre in order to gain his ends. Riel
went into the church with Father Andre and other priests,
and promised to do nothing against them, and Father Andre
had promised to use his influence with the Government to
secure an indemnity of $35,000. This was in the beginning
of December, 1884, the agreement being made at St. Laurent.
Between December and February 14th, witness had taken
part in seven meetings. Riel said if he could get the
money from the Government he would go wherever the
Government would send him--to the Province of Quebec or
elsewhere. Otherwise, he said, before the grass was very
long, they would see foreign armies in Canada. He would
begin with subduing Manitoba, and afterwards turn against
the North-West. Prisoner afterwards prepared to go to
the United States, and told the people it would look well
if they attempted to prevent him from going. Riel never
had the intention of leaving the country, but wanted
witness to get the people to tell him not to go. Witness
was chairman of a meeting which was held, and brought
the matter up. On the 2nd March a meeting was held at
the settlement between Riel and Father Andre. There were
seven or eight half-breeds there. Prisoner appeared to
be very excited, and told Father Andre he must give him
permission to proclaim a Provisional Government before
12 o'clock. On the 3rd March a meeting was held for the
English half-breeds. About forty armed French-half-breeds
came there. Riel spoke and said the police wanted to
arrest him, but he had the real police. Witness spoke
also at the meeting on the 5th of March. Riel afterwards
told witness he had decided to take up arms and induce
the people to take up arms for the glory of God, the good
of the Church, and the saving of their souls. About twenty
days before the prisoner took up arms witness broke
entirely from him. On the 19th witness was made prisoner
by four of Riel's men and taken to the church, where he
found some half-breeds and Indians armed. That night he
was taken before the council and was acquitted. Riel
protested against the decision. Witness was condemned to
death, and he was thus forced to join the rebels to save
his life. The conditions of surrender to Crozier were
put in his hands to be delivered to Crozier, but he did
not deliver the letter. Riel was present at the Duck Lake
fight, on the 26th March, and was one of the first to go
out to meet the police, carrying a cross in his hands.

Cross examined by Mr. Lemieux.--I have taken an active
part in political affairs of the country. In 1869 I was
in Manitoba. In 1884 Riel was living in Montana with his
wife and children. I participated in the movement to
bring Riel here; believed Riel would be of advantage in
obtaining redress of the grievances. The clergy had not
taken part in the political movement, but had assisted
them in obtaining their rights. They thought it was
necessary to have Riel as a point to rally round. Delegates
were sent to invite Riel to come, and he came with his
wife and family. A constitutional political movement was
made, in which the half-breeds of all creeds took part,
and the whites, though they were not active promoters,
were sympathizers. Did not believe Riel ever wanted to
return to Montana, although he spoke of it. After the
Government refused to grant the indemnity to Riel witness
did not believe he would be useful as a constitutional
leader. It was after the indemnity was refused that Riel
spoke of going away. Witness denied that in 1869 he
started an agitation with Riel, and then, as in the
present case, abandoned him. He only went as far as was
constitutional. He had heard prisoner say he considered
himself a prophet, and said he had inspiration in his
liver and in every other part of his body. He wrote upon
a piece of paper that he was inspired. He showed witness
a book written with buffalo blood, which was a plan that
after Riel had taken England and Canada, Quebec was to
be given to the Prussians, Ontario to the Irish, and the
North-West to be divided among the various nationalities
of Europe, the Jews, Hungarians, and Bavarians included.
The rebel council had first condemned witness to death,
and afterwards liberated him, and he accepted a position
in the council in order to save his life. Witness said
that whenever the word police was mentioned Riel became
very excited, having heard that the Government had answered
their petitions for redress by sending 500 extra police.

At this part of the cross-examination of Nolin, the
proceedings were interrupted by an excited clamour of
Riel, to be allowed to interrogate the prisoner, and to
assist personally in the conduct of his case. This the
Court could only allow with the consent of prisoner's
counsel. His counsel objected, and urged that such a
proceeding would prejudice their client's case; but Riel
persisted, and the rest of the day was wasted in fruitless
altercation, which neither the Court nor the counsel for
the Crown could allay. The chief cause of Riel's excitement
seemed to be the determination of his counsel to press
the plea of insanity, a plea which, throughout the trial,
Riel strongly objected to be urged on his behalf. The
Court in the midst of the altercation, adjourned.




THIRD DAY OF THE TRIAL.

[Footnote: In preparing this abstract of the day's
proceedings, the writer acknowledges to have drawn from
the reports published in the Toronto _Globe_ and _Mail_,
and the Montreal _Gazette_ And _Star_.]

The Riel trial was resumed at Regina, on the morning of
July 30th, by MR. GREEN SHIELDS' addressing the jury
for the defence. The Court-room was again filled to its
utmost capacity. After referring to the difficulty counsel
had met, in the prisoner's endeavour to obstruct their
conduct of the case, Mr. Greenshields dwelt upon the
history of the Indians and half-breeds in the North-West
Territories, pointing out their rights to the soil. In
this Court they had a different procedure from that in
other parts of the Dominion, and while not desiring to
be understood that the prisoner would not receive as fair
a trial as the machinery provided made possible, he
questioned whether a jury of six men, nominated by the
presiding magistrate, was sufficient to satisfy the
demands of Magna Charta,--the great bulwark of the rights
and liberties of all British subjects. He believed any
of the older Provinces would rebel against such an
encroachment on their rights, and he did not see why such
a condition of things should obtain here. For years the
half-breeds had been making futile efforts to obtain
their rights. All these efforts had been met by rebuffs,
or had received no attention whatever from the Federal
Government, and those very rights for which the half-breeds
were supplicating and petitioning were being handed over
to railway corporations, colonization companies, and like
concerns. He would not say that the action of the Government
justified armed rebellion--the shedding of blood--but it
left in these poor people those smouldering fires of
discontent that were so easily fanned into rebellion by
a madman such as Riel. The prisoner had been invited by
the half-breeds to come among them from a foreign country
to assist them in making a proper representation of their
grievances to the Government. They were unlettered and
required an active sympathizer, with education sufficient
to properly conduct the agitation. Riel was the man they
chose, and there was no evidence to show that when Riel
came to this country he came with any intention of inciting
the people to armed rebellion. His work was begun and
carried on up till January in a perfectly constitutional
manner. After that time, as the jury had seen in the
cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution,
no effort was made by the defence to deny that overt acts
of treason had been committed in the presence of the
prisoner; but evidence would be brought to show that at
the time these acts were countenanced by the prisoner,
he was of unsound mind and not responsible for what he
did. The peculiar disease of the prisoner was called by
men learned in diseases of the mind, "megalomania." This
species of mental disease developed two delusions--one
the desire for and belief that the patient could obtain
great power in political matters to rule or govern,
another his desire to found a great church. That the
prisoner was possessed of these delusions, the evidence
abundantly proved. The jury might consider, with some
grounds for the belief, that the evidence of Charles
Nolin, who swore that the prisoner was willing to leave
the country if he obtained from the Government a gratuity
of $35,000, was inconsistent with the real existence of
such a monomania as the prisoner was afflicted with. But
not one isolated portion, but the whole, of Nolin's
evidence should be considered. Other portions of his
testimony, for instance, prisoner's opinions on religious
matters, and his intention to divide up the country
between various foreign nationalities, were conclusive
proof of the prisoner's insanity. This was a great State
trial, the speaker said, and he warned the jury to throw
aside the influence of heated public opinion, as it was
expressed at present. There were many people executed
for having taken part in the rebellion of 1837, and it
was questionable if there could be found anyone now who
would justify those executions. The beat of private
feeling had died away, and the jury should be careful
that no hasty conclusion in this case should leave
posterity a chance to say that their verdict had been a
wrong one. They should, if possible, look at the case
with the calmness of the historian, throwing aside all
preconceived notions of the case that interfered with
the evidence given in the Court, and build up their
verdict on the testimony brought out here. In the course
of his remarks, Mr. Greenshields said, that he accused
no Government in particular for neglecting the claims of
the breeds; but if the authorities had paid attention to
the petitions which had been addressed to them, the
rebellion would never have occurred. He paid a glowing
tribute to the volunteers, who left their private
occupations and came from all parts of the Dominion to
suppress the outbreak.

At the conclusion of Mr. Greenshield's address, FATHER
ANDRE, Superior of the Oblat Fathers in the district of
Carlton, was called for the defence. He said he had been
intimately associated with the breeds for a quarter of
a century. Riel had been induced to come to this country
by the settlers to assist them. The witness had a thorough
knowledge of what was going on amongst the settlers. He
had no knowledge of petitions having been sent to the
Government during the agitation; but he had himself
indirectly communicated with the Government last December,
with the object of getting the prisoner out of the country.
The pretensions or claims of the breeds changed frequently.
After Riel's arrival the Government had been notified
three or four times of what was transpiring. The Government
had promised to take the matter into consideration. The
Government had replied to one petition by telegram,
conceding the old survey. This was an important concession.
At Batoche three scrips had been issued, and at Duck Lake
forty were given. The witness never liked talking with
the prisoner on religion or politics. On these subjects
Riel's language frightened the witness, who considered
him undoubtedly crazy on these subjects, while on all
other points he was sane enough. Once, at a meeting of
priests, the advisability of allowing such a man to
perform religious duties was discussed, and it was
unanimously agreed that the man was insane. The discussion
of religious or political subjects with him was like
dangling a red flag in front of a bull.

PHILIP GARNEAU, of Batoche, but at present a prisoner in
Regina gaol, was now sworn and deposed as follows:--I
saw Riel at Batoche last fall; had seen him several times
before January. During the trouble I talked with him at
my house on religious matters. He said the spirit of
Elias, the prophet, was in him. He wanted the people to
believe that. He often said the Spirit of God told him
to do this or that. During his stay at my house Riel
prayed aloud all night; never heard such prayers before;
prisoner must have made them up. He could not stand to
be contradicted, and was very irritable. Heard him declare
he was representing St. Peter. Heard him talking of the
country being divided into seven Provinces, and he was
going to bring in seven different nationalities to occupy
them. I did not believe he would succeed in that. He
expected the assistance of the Jews and other nationalities,
to whom he was going to award a Province each for their
aid. Riel said he was sure to succeed, it was a divine
mission, and God was the chief of the movement; only met
him once before the trouble. I thought the man was crazy.

Cross-examined by Mr. Robinson--I followed Riel solely
because he forced me with armed men. He had great influence
over the half-breeds, who listened to and followed his
advice,

FATHER FOURMAND sworn, examined by Mr. Lemieux in French--I
am a priest of St. Laurent; went there in 1875. Have had
conversations with Riel since the time of the rebellion.
Often conversed with him on political and religious
subjects. I was present at the meeting of priests at
which Riel's sanity was questioned. I knew the facts upon
which the question arose. Before the rebellion Riel was
a polite and pleasant man to me. When he was not
contradicted about political affairs he was quiet, but
when opposed he was violent. As soon as the rebellion
commenced he lost all control of himself, and threatened
to burn all the churches. He believed there was only
one God; that Christ the Son was not God, neither was
the Holy Ghost, and in consequence the Virgin Mary was
not the mother of God, but of the Son of God. He changed
the song beginning "Hail Mary, mother of God," to "Hail
Mary, mother of the Son of God." He denied the real
presence of God in the Host, it was a man of six feet.
Riel said he was going to Quebec, France and Italy, and
would overthrow the Pope and choose a Pope or appoint
himself. We finally concluded there was no other way of
explaining his conduct than that he was insane. Noticed
a great change in prisoner as the agitation progressed.
When the fathers opposed him he attacked them. Witness
was brought before the rebel council by the prisoner, to
give an account of his conduct. He called me a little tiger,
being very excited. Never showed me a book of his prophecies
written in buffalo blood, although I heard of it.

Cross-examined by Mr. Casgrain--Most of the half-breeds
followed Riel in his religious views; some opposed them.
The prisoner was relatively sane before the rebellion.
The prisoner proclaimed the rebellion on March 18th. I
promised to occupy a position of neutrality towards the
provisional Government. He could better explain prisoner's
conduct on the ground of insanity than that of great
criminality. Witness naturally had a strong friendship
towards the prisoner.

The afternoon was devoted to expert testimony respecting
the prisoner's sanity.




MEDICAL TESTIMONY.

DR. ROY, of the Beauport Asylum, Quebec, said the prisoner
was an inmate of that institution for nineteen months.
He was discharged in January, 1878. He suffered from
ambitious mania. One of the distinguishing characteristics
of that form of insanity is that, so long as the particular
hobby is not touched, the patient appears perfectly sane.
From what he heard the witnesses say, and from the
prisoner's actions yesterday, he had no hesitation in
pronouncing the man insane, and he believed him not to
be responsible for his acts.

DR. CLARKE, of Toronto, was the next witness. He said he
was the Superintendent of the Toronto Lunatic Asylum. He
has had nine or ten years' experience in treating lunatics.
He examined the prisoner twice yesterday and once this
morning. From what evidence he had heard and from his
own examination, provided the witnesses told the truth
and the prisoner was not malingering, there was no doubt
of his being insane.

Cross-examined by Mr. Osler--It is impossible for any
man to say that a person like Riel, who is sharp and
well-educated, is either insane or sane. He (the witness)
would require to have him under his notice for months to
form an opinion. The man's actions are consistent with
fraud. Thinks he knows the difference between right and
wrong, subject to his delusion.

DR. WALLACE was next called. He said he was Superintendent
of the Insane Asylum at Hamilton. He had listened to the
evidence in this case. He saw the prisoner alone for half
an hour. He has formed the opinion that there is no
indication of insanity about him. He thinks the prisoner
knows the difference between right and wrong. The person
suffering from megalomania often imagines he is a king,
divinely inspired, has the world at his feet--supreme
egotism in fact. It is one of the complications of
paralytic insanity.

DR. JUKES, of the Mounted Police, would not say the
prisoner was not insane. He had seen him daily since
May, and noticed no traces of insanity.

The Court adjourned at five o'clock.




RIEL'S ADDRESS TO THE JURY.

At the outset, writes W. A. H., correspondent of the
Montreal _Star_, Riel spoke in a quiet and low tone, many
of his statements carrying home conviction to his hearers.
"At any rate," was the subsequent comment, "Riel speaks
with the belief that he is right." Gradually as he
proceeded and got fairly launched into his subject, his
eyes sparkled, his body swayed to and fro as if strongly
agitated, and his hands accomplished a series of wonderful
gestures as he warmed up and spoke with impassioned
eloquence. His hearers were spell-bound, and well they
might, as each concluding assertion with terrible
earnestness was uttered with the effect and force of a
trumpet blast. That every soul in Court was impressed is
not untrue, and many ladies were moved to tears. The
following is an epitome of what he said:--

"Your Honour, and gentlemen of the jury--It would be an
easy matter for me to-day, to play the _role_ of a lunatic,
because the circumstances are such as to excite any
ordinary man subject to natural excitement after what
has transpired to-day. The natural excitement, or may
I add anxiety, which my trial causes me is enough to
justify me in acting in the manner of a demented man;
but I hope, with the help of God, that I will maintain
a calm exterior and act with the decorum that suits this
honourable Court. You have, no doubt, seen by the papers
produced by the Crown, that I was not a man disposed to
think of God at the beginning. Gentlemen, I don't want
to play the part of a lunatic.

"Oh, my God, help me through the grace and divine influence
of Jesus. Oh, my God bless me, bless this Court, bless
this jury, and bless my good lawyers, who at great
sacrifice have came nearly 700 leagues to defend me.
Bless the lawyers for the Crown, for they have done what
they considered their duty. God grant that fairness be
shown. Oh, Jesus, change the curiosity of the ladies and
others here to sanctity. The day of my birth I was
helpless, and my mother was helpless. Somebody helped
her. I lived, and although a man I am as helpless to-day
as I was a babe on my mother's breast. But the North-West
is also my mother: although the North-West is sick and
confined, there is some one to take care of her. I am
sure that my mother will not kill me after forty-years
life. My mother cannot take my life. She will be indulgent
and will forget.

"When I came here from Montana, in July, 1884, I found
the Indians starving. The state of affairs was terrible.
The half-breeds were subsisting on the rotten pork of
the Hudson Bay Company. This was the condition, this was
the pride, of responsible Government! What did Louis Riel
do? I did not equally forget the whites. I directed my
attention to assist all classes, irrespective of creed,
colour or nationality. We have made petitions to the
Canadian Government, asking them to relieve the state of
affairs. We took time. Those who know me, know we took
time with the object of uniting all classes, even if I
may speak it, all parties. Those who know me know I have
suffered. I tried to come to an understanding with the
authorities on different points. I believe I have done
my duty. It was said that I was egotistical. A man cannot
generalize himself unless he is imputed with the taint.
After the Canadian Government, through the honourable
under-secretary of state, replied to my letter regarding
the half-breeds, then, and not till then, did I look
after my private affairs. A good deal can be said of the
distribution of land. I don't know if my dignity would
permit me to mention what you term my foreign policy,
but if I was allowed to explain or question certain
witnesses, those things would have looked different. My
lawyers are good, but they don't understand the
circumstances. Be it understood that I appreciate their
services. Were I to go into details, I could safely say
what Captain Young has told you regarding my mission, to
bring about practical results. I have writings; my career,
is perhaps nearly run, but after dissolution my spirit
will still bring about practical results."

Striking his breast he added:

"No one need say that the North-West is not suffering.
The Saskatchewan was especially afflicted, but what have
I done to bring about practical results? For ten years
I have been aware that I had a mission to perform; now
what encourages me is the fact that I still have a mission
to perform. God is with me, He is in this dock, and God
is with my lawyers, the same as he was with me in the
battles of the Saskatchewan. I have not assumed my mission.
In Manitoba, to-day, I have a mission to perform. To-day
I am forgotten by the Manitobans as dead. Did I not obtain
for that province a constitutional government notwithstanding
the opposition of the Ottawa authorities? That was the
cause of my banishment."

I thank the glorious General Middleton for his testimony
that I possess my mental faculties. I felt that God was
blessing me when those words were pronounced. I was in
Beauport Asylum; Dr. Roy over there knows it, but I thank
the Crown for destroying his testimony. I was in the
Lunatic Asylum at Longue Pointe, near Montreal, also;
and would like to see my old friends, Dr. Lachapelle and
Dr. Howard, who treated me so charitably. Even if I am
to die, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I
will not be regarded by all men as an insane person.

TO THE COURT.--"Your honour and gentlemen of the jury,
my reputation, my life, my liberty, are in your hands,
and are at your discretion. I am so confident in your
high sense of duty that I have no anxiety as to the
verdict. My calmness does not arise from the presumption
that you will acquit me. Although you are only half a
jury, only a shred of that proud old British constitution,
I respect you. I can only trust, Judge and gentlemen,
that good and practical results will arise from your
judgment conscientiously rendered. I would call your
attention to one or two points. The first is that the
House of Commons, Senate and Ministry, which make the
laws, do not respect the interests of the North-West. My
second point is that the North-West Council has the defect
of its parent. There are practically no elections, and
it is a sham legislature."

Then, as if wandering from his subject, Riel broke forth
and said:

"I was ready at Batoche; I fired and wounded your soldiers.
Bear in mind, is my crime, committed in self-defence, so
enormous? Oh, Jesus Christ! help me, for they are trying
to tear me into pieces. Jurors, if you support the plea
of insanity, otherwise acquit me all the same. Console
yourselves with the reflection that you will be doing
justice to one who has suffered for fifteen years, to my
family, and to the North-West."

Riel concluded as follows, his language containing a
strange admixture of the words applied to him by the
medical experts, which he ingeniously turned against the
Government:

"Your honours and gentlemen of the jury:--I am taking
the circumstances of my trial as they are. The only thing
to which I would respectfully call your attention before
you retire to deliberate is the irresponsibility of the
Government. It is a fact that the Government possesses
an absolute lack of responsibility, an insanity complicated
with analysis. A monster of irresponsible, insane
government, and its little North-West council, had made
up their minds to answer my petitions by surrounding me,
and by suddenly attempting to jump at me and my people
in the fertile valley of the Saskatchewan. You are
perfectly justified in declaring that having my reason
and sound mind, I acted reasonably and in self-defence,
while the Government, my aggressor, being irresponsible,
and consequently insane, cannot but have acted madly and
wrong; and if high treason there is, it must be on its
side, not on my part."

At the conclusion of Riel's lengthy address, MR. CHRISTOPHER
ROBINSON, Q.C., closed the case for the Crown in a powerful
speech, which went far to counteract the sympathetic
effect produced by Riel's disconnected but eloquent
oration. Mr. Robinson pointed out that no evidence was
produced to show that the prisoner had not committed the
acts he was charged with. From the evidence it was quite
clear the prisoner was neither a patriot nor a lunatic.
If prisoner was not responsible for the rebellion, who
was? The speaker went over the evidence and showed that
Riel's acts were not those of a lunatic, but well considered
in all their bearings, and the deliberate acts of a
particularly sound mind. The evidence as to Riel's
confinement in an asylum nine years ago was not
satisfactory. Why was he sent there under an assumed
name? Why was the record of his case not produced along
with the other papers, and a statement of his condition
when leaving the asylum? Medical men were not always the
best judges of insanity. Taking up the evidence against
the prisoner, Mr. Robinson went over it in detail, and
said no mercy should be shown one who had committed such
acts. He pictured the terrible results if Riel had
succeeded in his effort to rouse the Indians, The reason
the prisoners Poundmaker and Big Bear had not been put
in the witness box, was that they could not be asked to
give evidence that would incriminate themselves.

MR. JUSTICE RICHARDSON then read over the evidence to
the jury, after which the court adjourned.




THIRD DAY'S PROCEEDINGS.

[Footnote: This abstract of the final day's proceedings
we take from the Toronto _Mail_.]

The court resumed its sittings on the morning of the 1st
of August, at the usual hour, and Col. Richardson continued
his charge to the jury He read all the principal evidence,
commenting thereon, and finally charged the jury to do
their duty without fear or favour.




THE VERDICT.

When the jury returned with the verdict at 3.15 p.m.,
after exactly one hour's deliberation, the prisoner, who
had been on his knees in the dock praying incessantly,
rose and stood facing the six men who came in bearing
for him the message of life or death.

The CLERK of the Court, amid a silence so intense that,
like the darkness of Egypt, it could be felt, asked if
the gentlemen of the jury had agreed upon their verdict?

MR. COSGROVE, the foreman, answered in a low tone, but
heard distinctly in the general hush, "We have!"

The CLERK then asked: "Is the prisoner guilty or not
guilty?"

Everyone but the prisoner seemed anxious. He alone of
all those present, eager to hear the message of fate,
was calm.

The Foreman replied: "Guilty, with a recommendation to
mercy!"

Riel smiled as if the sentence in no way affected him,
and bowed gracefully to the jury.




THE PRISONER'S SPEECH.

COL. RICHARDSON asked the prisoner if he had anything to
say why the sentence of the Court should not be passed
upon him?

RIEL replied: Yes, your honour. Then he began, in a low,
calm voice to detail the story of the half-breeds in
Manitoba, and spoke at length of the rebellion of '69.
He said that if he had to die for what had taken place,
it would be a consolation to his wife and to his friends
to know that he had not died in vain. In years to come
people will look at Manitoba and say that Riel helped
the dwellers of those fertile plains to obtain the benefits
they now enjoy. He said it would be an easy thing for
him to make an incendiary speech, but he would refrain.
He said that God had given him a mission to perform, and
if suffering was part of that mission, he bowed respectfully
to the Divine will, and he was ready to accept the task,
even if the end should be death. Like David, he had
suffered, but he lacked two years of the time that David
suffered. The prisoner then went into the history of the
Red River rebellion at great length. He claimed that he
had ruled the country for two months for the Government,
and his only reward was a sentence of exile. The troubles
in the Saskatchewan, he said, were but a continuation of
the troubles of the Red River, and the breeds feel that
they are being robbed by the Government, which has failed
to carry out the treaty promises that had been made to
them. The breeds sustained their rights in '69 by arms,
and the people of Manitoba are enjoying the results
to-day. The people of Saskatchewan only followed the same
precedent, and he trusted that the same results would
follow. He then spoke at great length of the part played
by Sir John Macdonald, Sir George Cartier, and Bishop
Tache in the Red River rebellion. The money that had been
given to him and to Lepine on leaving the country had
been accepted, he said, as part of what was justly their
due. The whites were gradually crowding out the Indians
and the Metis, and what was more natural and just than
for them to take up arms in defence of their rights? He
justified his claims to $35,000 by saying that it was
offered to him to keep out of the country for three years.
The English constitution, he said, had been perfected
for the happiness of the world, and his wish to have the
representatives of the different nations here was to give
people from the countries of the Old World an opportunity
of enjoying the blessings God had given England. God had
given England great glory, but she must work for that
glory or it would surely pass away. The Roman Empire was
four hundred years in declining from its proud pre-eminence,
and England would be in the same position; but before
England faded away a grander England would be built up
in this immense country. His heart, while it beat, would
not abandon the idea of having a new Ireland, a new
Germany, a new France here; and the people of those
countries would enjoy liberties under the British
constitution which they did not obtain at home. If he
must die for his principles, if the brave men who were
with him must die, he hoped the French-Canadians would
come and help the people to get back what was being
unjustly wrenched from them. Peace had always been
uppermost in his thoughts, and it was to save the country
from being deluged with blood later on that they strove
for their rights now. He concluded by objecting to the
jury and the decision of the Court, and asked that he be
not tried for the alleged offences of this season, but
that his whole career be put on trial, and the jury asked
to give a decision as to whether his life and acts have
in any way benefited the country or not.




THE SENTENCE.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON moved for the sentence of the
Court.

Judge RICHARDSON then said: "Louis Riel, you are charged
with treason. You let loose the flood gates of rapine
and bloodshed, and brought ruin and death to many families,
who, if let alone, were in comfort and a fair way of
affluence. For what you did you have been given a fair
and impartial trial. Your remarks are no excuse for your
acts. You committed acts that the law demands an account
for at your hands. The jury coupled with their verdict
a recommendation to mercy. I can hold out no prospect
for you, and I would recommend you to make your peace
with God. For me, only one duty and a painful one to
perform remains. It is to pass sentence upon you. If your
life is spared, no one will feel more gratified than
myself, but I can hold out no hope. The sentence of this
Court upon you, Louis Riel, is that you be taken to the
guard-room of the Mounted Police of Regina, whence you
came, and kept there until September the eighteenth, and
from thence to the place of execution, there to be hanged
by the neck until dead, and may the Lord have mercy upon
your soul!"

Riel never moved a muscle, but, bowing to the Court,
said:--"Is that on Friday, your Honour?"

He was then taken from the Court-room, and a few minutes
after was driven back, under strong escort, to the
guard-room,




AN APPEAL.

After sentence had been passed upon Riel, Mr. Fitzgerald,
one of prisoner's counsel, gave notice of appeal for a
new trial to the Court of Queen's Bench, Manitoba. The
appeal case was heard at Winnipeg on the 3rd and 4th days
of September before Chief Justice Wallbridge and Mr.
Justice T. W. Taylor.

M. LEMIEUX, chief counsel for Riel, raised the old issue
as to informality of the trial before the Stipendiary
Magistrate at Regina, and contended that the magistrate
was incompetent to try the case.

Mr. FITZPATRICK followed. He held that the Treason-Felony
Act was one of Imperial jurisdiction, and he questioned
if it had delegated any power to the colonial authorities
to legislate away any rights enjoyed by the subjects of
the British Empire. He dwelt strongly upon the insanity
question, and said the jury were convinced of the prisoner's
lunacy, hence their recommendation to mercy.

Mr. EWART also strongly questioned the jurisdiction of
the Court at Regina and cited several authorities in
support of his argument.

Mr. ROBINSON, on behalf of the Crown, in an able address,
strongly combated the idea that the Court at Regina was
not legally constituted, and cited cases in support of
his contention. He also dwelt at length on the insanity
plea, showing the absurdity of the contention that Riel
was insane.

Mr. Osler and Mr. Aikens followed on the same side,
supplementing the arguments of the previous speaker as
to the constitutionality of the Court, and cited a number
of authorities adverse to the insanity plea.




NEW TRIAL REFUSED.

At Winnipeg, on the 9th September, at a sitting of the
full Court of the Queen's Bench of the Province of
Manitoba, judgment was delivered in the appeal for a new
trial for the prisoner Riel.

His Lordship Chief Justice Wallbridge first delivered
judgment. He referred briefly to the facts brought before
the Court and the statutes by which the stipendiary
magistrates are appointed in the North-West and to the
powers given them for the trial of the cases before them
alone, and to the cases, including treason, which have
to be tried before a magistrate with a justice of the
peace and a jury of six. His Lordship held that the
constitutionality of the Court is established by the
statutes passed, which he cited. If the Act passed by
the Dominion Parliament was, as claimed by the defence,
_ultra vires_, it was clearly confirmed by the Imperial
Act subsequently passed, which made the Dominion Act
equal to an Imperial Act. The objections were to his
mind purely technical and therefore not valid. His opinion
therefore was that a new trial should be refused, and
the conviction of the Superior Court was therefore
confirmed.

Mr. Justice Taylor followed, dealing fully with the
arguments brought forward by the prisoner's counsel. On
the question of the delegation of the power to legislate
given to the Dominion Parliament, he held that the Dominion
Parliament has plenary powers on all subjects committed
to it. He reviewed fully all the facts relating to the
admission of Rupert's Land to the Dominion, and to the
statutes passed for the government of Rupert's Land and
Manitoba when formed as a province. After a critical
examination of the evidence in the case, he was unable
to come to any other conclusion than that to which the
jury had come. The evidence entirely fails to relieve
the prisoner from responsibility for his acts. A new
trial must be refused and the conviction must be confirmed.

Mr. Justice Killam next followed at some length, concurring
in the views of his brother judges.

With these proceedings the trial of the rebel chief was
concluded, though counsel for Riel has notified the
Executive that they will appeal the case to the Privy
Council in England. Riel will, meantime, be respited.




RIEL'S EXECUTION.

The execution of Louis David Riel took place at Regina,
on the 16th November, 1885. He met his fate bravely, and
displayed more fortitude than had been thought possible.
He abstained from speech-making, and confined himself
entirely, on the advice of Father Andre, who has been
his constant companion throughout, to spiritual matters.
Riel never slept after receiving intelligence that the
execution would take place that morning, and throughout
the night was constant in his devotions. At seven o'clock
he had a light supper, and at five in the morning mass
was celebrated, followed two hours later by the
administration of the last sacrament. Riel, towards the
last, almost entirely dropped his new religious
idiosyncrasies and decided to die a devout catholic.

The hour fixed for the execution was eight o'clock, but
it was fifteen minutes past that hour before those who
had passes from the sheriff were admitted to the guard-room.
Here was found the prisoner, kneeling on the floor of an
upper room, from which he was to step to the gallows, It
was a sad scene. Around him were gathered numbers of
mounted police, Sheriff Chapleau, Deputy-Sheriff Gibson,
and a few others. The room was illuminated by a small
window, covered with a rime of frost through which the
sun, now risen but a few hours, shot a few weak rays.
Riel now knelt beside the open window, through which the
gallows could be seen, and prayed incessantly for fully
half an hour. Fathers McWilliams and Andre conducted the
service for the doomed man in French, Riel repeating the
responses in a clear voice, which could be heard distinctly
above the murmurs of the priests' whispering tones. Riel
wore a loose woollen surtout, grey trousers, and woollen
shirt. On his feet were moccasins, the only feature of
his dress that partook of the Indian that was in him. He
received the notice to proceed to the scaffold in the
same composed manner he had shown the preceding night on
receiving warning of his fate. His face was full of
colour, and he appeared to have complete self-possession,
still responding to the service in a clear tone. The
prisoner decided only a moment before starting for the
scaffold not to make a speech. This was owing to the
earnest solicitations of both the priests attending him.
He displayed an inclination at the last moment to make
an address, but Father Andre reminded him of his promise.

The hangman, who on a former occasion had been in the
hands of Riel as a prisoner, commenced the work of
pinioning the doomed man, and then the melancholy procession
soon began to wend its way toward the scaffold, which
had been erected for Khonnors, the Hebrew, and soon came
in sight of the noose. Deputy-Sheriff Gibson went ahead,
then came Father McWilliams, next Riel, then Father Andre,
Dr. Jukes, and others. As he stood on the trap-door Riel
continued invoking the aid of Jesus, Mary, and the saints,
during his last agonies. "Courage, pere," he said,
addressing Father Andre, and then he addressed Father
McWilliams in the same words. The latter priest kissed
Riel, who said, "I believe still in God."

"To the last," said Father Andre.

"Yes, the very last," answered Riel: "I believe and trust
in Him. Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me."

Dr. Jukes shook hands with the prisoner, who said in
English: "Thank you, doctor." Then he continued: "Jesus,
Marie, Joseph, assistez moi en ce dernier moment."

Deputy-Sheriff Gibson then said, "Louis Riel, have you
anything to say before death?" Riel answered "No." He
was given two minutes to pray, and he repeated the Lord's
prayer, Father McWilliams leading, while the cap was
being drawn over his face and the rope adjusted. At the
words "Lead me not into temptation" the hangman sprang
the bolt, at twenty-eight minutes past eight, and Riel
shot downward with a terrible crash. For a second he did
not move. A slight twitching of the limbs was noticed,
but instantly all was still again. In two minutes after
the fall, Louis Riel was no more. His conduct on the
scaffold was very courageous. He was pale but firm, and
kept up his courage by constant prayer, thus diverting
his thoughts from the terrible death before him. His neck
was broken by the fall; the doctors say he could have
experienced no physical suffering. For a second or two
his limbs twitched slightly, then a convulsive shudder
ran through his frame, and all was over. In less than
three minutes Dr. Dodds pronounced him dead.

Few persons were present. The only people on the scaffold,
besides the condemned man and the hangman, were
Deputy-Sheriff Gibson, Dr. Jukes, of the Mounted Police,
Father Andre, Father McWilliams, and the press
representatives.

After death the coroner's jury was empanelled by Dr Dodds,
and a verdict of death by hanging rendered. The hair of
the deceased was cut off one side of both head and face.
All the buttons torn off the coat, the moccasins removed
from the feet, and even the suspenders cut into pieces
for persons to obtain mementos of the deceased. He was
placed in a plain deal coffin to await the plans of the
Government as to interment. His own wish was to be buried
at St. Boniface, and his friends are particularly anxious
that his wishes in this respect be complied with, as his
father and other friends repose in that place, as all
the bodies of the convicts here have been stolen from
the burying ground in less than a week.







END






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