The Rising of the Red Man | Page 4

Injuns and bad Injuns," said Rory doggedly," but more
bad nor good. The Injun's a queer animile when he's on the war-path;
he's like Pepin Quesnelle's tame b'ar at Medicine Hat that one day
chawed up Pepin, who had been like a father to 'im, 'cos he wouldn't go
stares wid a dose of castor-oil he was a-swallerin' for the good of his
health. You see, the b'ar an' Pepin used allus to go whacks like."

The girl laughed, but still she was uneasy in her mind. She
mechanically watched the tidy half-breed woman and the elderly
Scotchwoman who had been her mother's servant in the old Ontario
days, as the two silently went on, at the far end of the long room, with
the folding and putting away of linen. Her eyes wandered with an
unwonted wistfulness over the picturesque brown slabs of pine that
constituted the walls, the heavy, rudely-dressed tie-beams of the roof
over which were stacked various trim bundles of dried herbs, roots and
furs, and from which hung substantial hams of bacon and bear's meat.
As she looked over the heads of the little group on the broad benches
round the fire, she saw the firelight and lamplight glint cheerfully on
the old-fashioned muskets and flintlock pistols that decorated the
walls--relics of the old romantic days when the two companies of
French and English adventurers traded into Hudson's Bay.
She had an idea. She would ask the sergeant of Mounted Police in
charge of the detachment of four men, whose little post was within
half-a-mile of the homestead, what he thought of the situation, and he
would have to tell her. Sergeant Pasmore was one of those men of few
words who somehow seemed to know everything. A man of rare
courage she knew him to be, for had he not gained his promotion by
capturing the dangerous renegade Indian, Thunder-child, single-handed?
She knew that Thunderchild had lately broken prison, and was
somewhere in the neighbourhood waiting to have his revenge upon the
sergeant. Sergeant Pasmore was a man both feared and respected by all
with whom he came in contact. He was the embodiment of the law; he
carried it, in fact, on the horn of his saddle in the shape of his
Winchester rifle; a man who was supposed to be utterly devoid of
sentiment, but who had been known to perform more than one kindly
action. Her father liked him, and many a time he had spent a long
evening by the rancher's great fireside.
As she thought of these things, she was suddenly startled by three firm
knocks at the door. Jacques rose from his seat, and opening it a few
inches, looked out into the clear moonlight. He paused a moment, then
asked--

"Who are you, and what you want?"
"How!" [Footnote: Form of salutation in common use among the
Indians and half-breeds.] responded a strange-voice.
"Aha! Child-of-Light!" exclaimed Jacques.
And into the room strode a splendid specimen of a red man in all the
glory of war paint and feathers.

CHAPTER II
TIDINGS OF ILL
"Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow'd livery of the
burnished sun." _Merchant of Venice._
"How! How!" said the rancher, looking up at the tall Indian. "You are
welcome to my fireside, Child-of-Light. Sit down."
He rose and gave him his hand. With a simple dignity the fine-looking
savage returned his salutation.
"The master is good," he said. "Child-of-Light still remembers how in
that bad winter so many years ago, when the cotton-tails and rabbits
had died from the disease that takes them in the throat, and the wild
animals that live upon them died also because there was nought to eat,
and how when disease and famine tapped at the buffalo robe that
screens the doorways of the tepees, he who is the brother of the white
man and the red man had compassion and filled the hungry mouths."
"Ah, well, that's all right, Child-of-Light," lightly said Douglas,
wondering what the chief had come to say. He understood the red
man's ways, and knew he would learn all in good time.
But the chief would not eat or drink. He would, however, smoke, and
helped himself from the pouch that Douglas offered. He let his blanket

fall from his shoulders, and underneath there showed a richly-wrought
shirt of true barbaric grandeur. On a groundwork of crimson flannel
was wrought a rare and striking mosaic in beads of blue and yellow and
red. The sun glowed from his breast, countless showy ermine tails
dangled from his shoulders, his arms and his sides like a gorgeous
fringe, and numerous tiny bells tinkled all over him as he moved. His
features were large and marked, his forehead, high, and his nose
aquiline. His Mongolian set eyes were