RED CLOUD,
THE SOLITARY SIOUX.

A Story of the Great Prairie.

BY

LIEUT.-COLONEL BUTLER, C.B.

AUTHOR OF “THE GREAT LONE LAND,” “THE WILD NORTH LAND,”
ETC., ETC.

“Like a wind, that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.”

Tennyson.

BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1882.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

RED CLOUD,
THE SOLITARY SIOUX.

[CHAPTER I.]

Our home in Glencar—A glimpse at the outside world—My parents—My schoolmasters—Donogh—Cooma-sa-harn—The eagle’s nest—“The eagle is coming back to the nest”—Alone in the world—I start for the Great Prairie—Good-bye to Glencar.

Far back as I can remember anything I can remember our cottage in Glencar. It was a small thatched house, with plenty of June roses and white jessamine trailing over two sides of it, through wooden trellis-work. The ground rose steeply behind the house, until the trees that covered it gave place to scattered clumps of holly bushes, which finally merged into open mountain, heather-covered, and sprinkled here and there with dwarf furze bushes. In front of the cottage the little lawn sloped downwards to a stream, the bed of which was strewn with great boulders of rock, which were bare and dry in summer, but in winter scarcely showed over the surface. Between the big rocks there were pools and shallows, in which trout rose briskly at the midges in the early summer evenings. Whenever I think of that cottage home now, it seems to me to be always sunshine there. There must have been dark days, and wet ones, too, but I can’t call them to mind. There was a large flat rock in the middle of the lawn half way down to the stream; one end of this rock was imbedded in the earth, the other leant out from the ground, giving shelter underneath. The only dark thing I can remember about the whole place was that hollow under the big stone. I used to sit in there on the very hot days, looking out across the stream upon the one road that led from the outer world into Glencar. When the weather was not too warm I lay on the top of the rock, looking at the same view. The road came into the glen over a hill that was four miles distant from our cottage; you could see the white streak crossing the crest of ridge, flanked on each side by the dark heather mountain. You caught sight of the road again as it came down the hillside, and here and there at turns, as it wound along the valley to the old five-arched bridge over the Carragh river, and then disappeared around the hill on which our cottage stood. When in the summer days I used to lie on the rock, or beneath its shadows, I was always thinking of the country that lay beyond the boundary ridge, the land to which the white road led when it dipped down behind the hill: that was the outside world to me, the glen was the inside one. As I grew older I came to know more of the outside world; I was able to climb higher up the steep hill behind the house, to get beyond the holly bushes out into the heather, and at last one day I reached the mountain-top itself. That was a great event in my life. It took me a long while to get up; the last bit was very steep; I had to sit down often amid the rocks and heather for want of breath. At last I gained the summit, and sank down quite exhausted on an old weather-beaten flat rock; I was just ten years old that day. Thirty years have gone by since then. I have climbed many a lofty mountain, lain down for weeks alone in forests and on prairies, but never have I felt so proudly conscious of success as I did that day. It was my first view of the outside world. How vast it seemed to me. The glen, my world, lay below, winding away amid the hills. All the streams, all the lakes, were unfolded to my sight, and out beyond the boundary ridge was the great open country. That was on one side—the glen side; but as I turned round to look beyond the mountain I had come up, I saw a sight that filled me with utter astonishment. Below me on that side there lay another glen, smaller than ours; then the hill rose again, but not to the height of the ridge on which I stood; and then, beyond the hill, there spread a great, vast waste of blue water—out—out, until I could see no more, where the sky came down upon it—the end of the world. It was the sea!

It was getting dark when I reached home that day. I went straight to my mother. “Mother,” I said, “I have been to the top of Coolrue, and have seen the end of the world.” I was fearfully tired; I had fallen over rocks coming down, and was bruised and torn; but what did it matter?

From that day forth the glen seemed a small place to me, and my mind was ever at work shaping plans for the future. About this time I began to read well. There were many old books in our cottage—books of travel and adventure, books of history, and one large old atlas that had maps of every country in the world in it, and in the corner of each map there was a picture of the people of the land, or of some wonderful mountain, or waterfall in it.

I read all these books in the long winter evenings; and many a time I sat poring over the maps, moving my finger up a long waving line of river, and travelling in fancy from island to island in the ocean.

And now I must say something about the inmates of our home. They were few. There was my mother, one old servant woman, and an old man who kept the garden tilled, drove in the cow at nightfall, and took care of everything. In truth there wasn’t much to be taken care of. We were very poor, and we were all the poorer because we had once been rich—at least my mother had been. My father had died before I could remember him. His picture hung over the fireplace in our little parlour; and I can almost say that I do remember him, because the picture is confused in my mind with the reality, and I have a dim recollection of a man, tall, pale, and dark haired; but I can’t add to it voice or action; it is only a vague kind of shadow. I was four years old when he died.

When I was seven years old my mother began to tell me about him. She used to sit often in the winter evenings looking at his picture; and as I sat at her feet, and she spoke of the old times, and how brave and honourable he was, I remember her voice used to tremble, and sometimes she would stop altogether.

As I grew older I learned more about him. I heard how we had first come to Glencar. It had been a favourite spot with my father in his early days, and whenever he could get leave of absence he used to come to it, for the lakes held plenty of trout, and the mountains had snipe, woodcock, and grouse upon them. After my father’s marriage he had built the cottage. My mother was as fond of the glen as he was, and they used to come here for two or three months every year. When they had been three years married my father’s regiment was ordered to India. My mother went too. I was only two years old at the time. When we reached India the regiment was ordered up country, for war had broken out. At the battle of Moodkee my father was severely wounded. After a while he was able to be moved down to the coast, where my mother had remained when the regiment went on service. From the coast he was invalided to England. The voyage home was a long one. We arrived in England in the end of summer.

The autumn and winter came. The cold told severely upon my father’s weakened state, and when spring arrived it was evident he had but a short time to live. He wished to see Glencar again. With much difficulty he was brought to the cottage, to die.

In the upper end of the glen there was a wild secluded lake called Lough Cluen. A solitary island stood under the shadow of a tall mountain wall which overhangs the lake on one side. The island is little more than a rock, with yew-trees and ivy growing over it. A ruined church, half hidden in the trees, stood on this rock. It was my father’s grave. He had wished to be buried in this lonely island, and his wish was carried out.

The little cottage, a few acres of land, the rugged mountain and the stream—now formed, with my mother’s scanty pension, all our worldly possessions. Here, then, we took up our residence, and here I grew up, as I have already described—the glen my world; the mountain, lake, and stream my daily playground.

About a mile from our cottage there lived an old pensioner, who, forty years earlier, had followed Wellington from the Tagus to Toulouse. He had served his full term of twenty-one years, and being at the time of his discharge a staff-sergeant, his pension was sufficient to secure him a comfortable home for the rest of his days. He had a few acres of land around his cottage. He was the best angler in the glen. He was my earliest friend and guide with rod and gun on river, lake, and mountain side.

[Sergeant MacMahon], formerly of her Majesty’s 40th Regiment, was, when I knew him, a man who had passed his sixtieth year. Yet time, despite a score years of fighting and exposure, had dealt lightly with the old soldier, who still stood as straight as the ramrod he had so often driven home upon the bullet of his firelock. From him I got my first lessons in other things besides fishing and shooting. He taught me the “extension motions,” the “balance step without gaining ground,” the manual and platoon exercises, and the sword exercise. He also showed me the method of attack and defence with the bayonet.

[Sergeant MacMahon.]

He had the battles of the Peninsula by heart, and day after day did he pour forth his descriptions of how Busaco was won, and how Fuentes d’Onore had been decided, and how Lord Wellington had outmarched “Sowlt,” as he used to call him, at Pampeluna, or had out-manœuvred Marmont at Torres Vedras. His personal adventures were told in another style. He had stories of bivouac—“bivoocing” he used to call it—of nights on outlying picquet, of escapes when patrolling, and of incidents in action, that he loved to recount to me as we sat by the river side waiting for a cloud to cross the sun before we tried a cast of flies over some favourite stream.

Once every quarter he set off in his mule-cart for Killarney to draw his pension. On these occasions I used to notice that his voice on his return sounded a little thick, and his face generally appeared flushed. But the next day all would be the same as usual. At the time I fancied that the exertion of the journey had been too much for him, or that the excitement of meeting some old comrades (there were three other Peninsula heroes in the town) had overcome him. He had been a great ally of my poor father’s in earlier days, and to my mother he was equally attached. With all his stories of wars and fighting his heart was true and gentle. He was fond of all animals, knew the notes of every bird, and could tell the names of the trees in the wood, or the wild flowers by the river side. He was my outdoor schoolmaster. I learned from him many a pleasant lesson, and many a useful one too.

But I had another schoolmaster at this time. A mile down the glen from our cottage stood the priest’s house, next to our own cabin-cottage the most comfortable residence in Glencar. In summer the old man was usually to be found in his garden, in winter in his little parlour, always buried in some old volume from his well-stored shelves.

His had been a curious career. His early student days had been passed in an old French city. In middle age he had been a missionary in the East, and at last he had taken charge of the wild district of Glencar, and settled down to the simple life of parish priest. Here he lived in the memory of his past life. Nearly half a century had gone since last his eyes had rested on the vine-clad slopes of the Loire, but it was ever an easy task to him to fling back his thoughts across that gulf of time, and to recall the great names that had risen in the sunrise of the century, and flashed such a glory over Europe that the lustre of succeeding time has shone faint and dim in contrast. He had seen the great emperor review his guards in the courtyard of the Tuileries, and had looked upon a group of horsemen that had in it Murat, Ney, Soult, Lannes, and Massena. How he used to revel in such memories! and what point such experience lent to the theme! He never tired talking of the great campaigns of the Consulate and Empire. I followed him in these reminiscences with rapt eagerness; the intensity of my interest gave increased ardour to his narrative, and many a winter’s night sped rapidly while the old man, seated before his turf fire, rambled on from battle-field to battle-field, now describing to me the wonderful strategy of some early campaign in Italy, now carrying my mind into the snows of Russia, and again taking me back into the plains of France, to that last and most brilliant effort of warlike genius, the campaign of 1814.

At such times, the storm among the mountains would sometimes lend its roar in fitting accompaniment to the old man’s story, and then the scene would change to my mind’s eye as I listened. The little parlour would fade away, the firelight became a bivouac, and I saw in the grim outside darkness of the glen figures dimly moving; the squadrons charged; the cannon rumbled by; and the pine-tops swaying in the storm, were the bearskin caps of the old Guard, looming above smoke and fire!

Such were my schoolmasters; such the lessons they taught me.

The years passed quickly away. Notwithstanding my strong love of outdoor life, I devoted a good many hours every day to reading and study, and by the time I was fifteen years of age I had contrived to master a curious amount of general knowledge, particularly of history and geography, such as does not usually fall to the lot of boys of that age. I had a slight knowledge of Latin, was tolerably well acquainted with French, knew the habits, customs, and limits on every nation and tribe under the sun, and could travel the globe in fancy with few errors of time, distance, and position.

One companion I had in all these years who has not yet been mentioned—poor Donogh Driscoll, a wild and ragged boy, two years my junior.

In every adventure, in every expedition among the hills, Donogh was my attendant. He it was who used to wade into the reeds of Meelagh river to catch gudgeon for the baits for my night-lines in the Carragh; he carried my bag, later on, when my shooting time came; he marked with clear eye the long flight of the grouse pack down the steep slope of Coolrue; he brought me tidings of wild duck feeding on the pools and ponds amid the hills; he knew the coming of the wild geese to the lonely waste that lay beyond Lough Acoose; he would watch the pools in the Carragh river, and knew to a foot where the salmon lay. Faithful companion through all my boyish sports and pastimes, he shared too with me my dreams of enterprise, my hopes of adventure in the big outside world. Often as we sat on some rock high up on the heather-covered side of Seefin, looking out over the vast waste of ocean, he would wonder what it was like over there “beyant the beyant.”

“You wont lave me here alone by myself, when you go away, sir?” he used to say to me. “It’s lonely I’d be thin entirely.”

“You’d have the fishing and shooting, Donogh,” I would reply. “You’d have the hares and the salmon all to yourself when I was gone.”

“What good would they be to me, ave you wasn’t here with them?” he’d answer. “Sure the duck in November above in Cluen, and the salmon in ’Coose in April, and the grouse here on Seefin in August, would only remimber me of the ould days when we hunted thim together.”

I used at such times to promise him that whenever I did set out on my travels I would take him with me; and indeed, in all my plans for the future his companionship was always reckoned upon.

At the upper end of the glen, a narrow pass, or gap between two mountains, led out upon a wild and lonely lake, around the sides of which the mountains rose in a gloomy precipice of rock for many hundreds of feet.

Cooma-sa-harn, the name of the tarn that lay thus encompassed by cliffs, was a place that in my earliest wanderings filled me with feelings of awe and wonder. Strange echoes haunted it. Stones loosened from the impending cliffs rolled down into the lake with reverberating thunder, and their sullen splash into the dark water was heard repeated for many seconds around the encircling walls. On one side only was the margin of the lake approachable on level ground. Here loose stones and shingle, strewn together, formed a little beach, upon which the sullen waters broke in mimic waves; and here, too, the outflow of the lake escaped to descend the mountain side, and finally add its tribute to the many feeders of the Carragh river.

I was about twelve years of age when I first extended my wanderings to this lonely spot. Later on, Donogh and I made frequent expeditions to it. Its waters held no fish, and its shores rose too steep and high for game. But for all these deficiencies, Cooma-sa-harn held one wonder that sufficed to atone for every other shortcoming, and to make it a place of unceasing interest to us. It had an eagle’s nest. There, 600 feet over the lake, in a smooth piece of solid rock, was a shelf or crevice, and in that hollow a golden eagle had built his nest year after year. From the little beach already mentioned we could see the birds at their work. From the top of the encircling cliffs we could look down and across at them too; but the distance in either case was great, and do what we would to obtain a closer view, we were always baffled by the precipitous nature of the mountain. We tried the mountain immediately above the nest, but could see nothing whatever of the smooth rock. We worked our way along the edge of the water, by the foot of the precipice, but were again baffled in the attempt. Projecting rocks hid the whole side of the cliff. We were fairly puzzled.

Many an hour we spent looking up from the shore at the coveted shelf, which it seemed we were never likely to learn more about. The eagles seemed to know our thoughts, for they frequently soared and screamed high above our heads, as though they rejoiced in our discomfiture. It was not alone in the spring and summer that we were reminded of our enemies thus perched on their inaccessible fortress. In the last hour of daylight of winter evenings a solitary speck over the valley would often be seen sailing downwards through space. It was the golden eagle going home to his ledge at Cooma-sa-harn.

It would be idle to deny that we both felt keenly our inability to get to this eagle’s nest. During four years we had looked across the dark waters, had watched the old birds flying in and out, had seen the young ones sitting on the ledge, and had listened to their screams as their mother came down to them with a prey from the surrounding hills. There was in our cottage an old telescope that had belonged to my father in his early days. This I brought out one day, and looking through it, with elbows resting upon knees, and glass directed upon the shelf of rock, I could discern plainly enough the inmates of the rough nest; but all this only made more tantalizing our helplessness to scale the rock, or to descend from above to the projecting ledge. The day on which I brought out the telescope to make a closer survey of the spot, was bright with sunshine. As the hours grew later the sun moving towards the west, cast its light full upon the face of the nest, which had before been in shadow. The inequalities of the surface, and the formation of the cliffs around the large flat rock, became much more apparent than they had ever been before to me. Among other things, I observed that the ledge in which the nest was made was continued in a shallowed state along the face of the cliff until it touched the end at one side. I noticed also that on the top of the smooth-faced rock there was a ridge, or kind of natural parapet, and that this ridge was connected with a deep perpendicular cleft, or chimney, which opened at top upon the accessible part of the mountain. Scanning with the utmost attentiveness all these places, I began to see what I thought might prove a practicable line of approach to the much-desired nest. That it was possible to reach the top of the smooth-faced rock by means of the chimney shaft appeared tolerably clear, but this top ridge or parapet already mentioned, was fully forty feet above the ledge on which the nest stood.

By the time I had fully investigated all these details, so far as they could be examined by means of the telescope, the face of the cliff had become again involved in shadow, and it was time to turn our faces homewards for the evening; but enough had been discovered to give us food for conversation that night, and to raise high hopes that our efforts to reach the nest might yet prove successful.

We started early next morning for the top of the mountain ridge which looked down upon Cooma-sa-harn. On the previous evening I had taken the precaution of fixing the position of the top of the chimney, by getting it in line with two large boulders—one on the beach by the lake, the other some distance back from the shore. Arrived at the upper edge of the encircling basin I had no difficulty in bringing the two boulders, now at the further side from us, in line with each other, and then at the edge of the rocky rim we found a break in the rock, as though water in time of heavy rain had flowed down through it to the lake.

We entered this break, and descending cautiously soon found ourselves on the top of the flat rock. Below us lay the black pool of Cooma-sa-harn; on each side the flat parapet ended in steep mountain side; above us was the mountain top, accessible only by the hollow shaft through which we had descended. So far all had gone as the survey through the telescope had led us to hope—we had reached the top of the smoothed-faced rock; but the nest lay thirty or forty feet below us, still, apparently beyond our reach. We sat down on the top of the rock, reluctant to quit a spot so near to the long-coveted prize. The rock on which we rested was flanked on one side by a broken slant of mountain, down which a descent seemed possible if there was anything at hand to hold fast by; it was, however, bare of vegetation. It occurred to me now that a descent could be made down this slant by means of a rope, held by a second person standing on the ridge where we stood. The ledge which held the nest was situated so perpendicularly underneath as to be hidden altogether from our standpoint; but if my survey through the telescope had been correct, a person descending the slant should be able to reach that end of the ledge which I had seen in the sunlight extending on one side to the extremity of the rock. All that was required to put this theory to the test of practice was a strong rope some fifty feet long, which, held by one at the top, would act as a support to one of us while going down the slanting rock, and would afterwards afford help for a side movement along the narrow ledge to the nest itself. As I sat thinking out this plan one of the birds came soaring on moveless pinion from the mountain downwards towards the nest. He saw us long before he reached the ledge, and his loud and angry screams rang around the steep rock-walls, making strange echoes over the gloomy water.

We went home that evening full of the thought that we had at last discovered a means of getting to the eagle’s nest. It would take a few days to obtain a rope of the length and strength necessary for the undertaking, and then a final effort would be made to solve the long-considered problem. It took me some days to procure the rope. I had consulted Sergeant MacMahon vaguely on the subject, but finding that he was opposed to it as being too dangerous, I had fallen back upon my own resources and those of Donogh. At length all preparations were completed; we had tested the rope by fastening one end of it to the fork of a tree and swinging out on the other end; we had also got an iron stake to fix in a crevice of the rock by which to attach the rope; with these and a few other necessary articles we set out early one morning for Cooma-sa-harn. We struck across the shoulders of Meelagh mountain, dipped into Glentahassig, and breasting up the steep side of Seefin came out on the edge of the cliff which looked down upon the dark lake. Descending the chimney, we were soon in our old position on the parapet rim of the large flat rock. We now set to work to fix the iron stake firmly between two detached rocks; we fastened the rope securely to the stake, letting the loose end fall down the mountain by the edge of the perpendicular cliff. Now came the anxious moment; holding on by the rope, I began to descend the steep slanting face of the mountain. During the first twelve feet of the descent the work was easy enough. I was in sight of Donogh, whom I had directed to remain at the stake to see that all was right there. After a bit the hill side became steeper, a piece of smooth rock occurred, and then there was a drop of about six feet, that hid Donogh from my view. When I had passed this drop the slant became again easier, and without much difficulty I gained the end of the ledge or groove upon which, but still distant from me, stood the nest. The real difficulty of the undertaking was now before me. I had to move along the ledge, a narrow shelf on the face of a perpendicular rock many hundred feet above the lake. It was now Donogh’s work to unfasten the rope from the iron stake, and to move along the top, keeping pace with my progress on the ledge beneath. Everything depended upon his steadiness; but I had full faith in his strength and skill. Up to this time all had been perfectly quiet at the nest; there was no sign of the old bird, nor could we hear the young ones screaming. I began very cautiously to move along the narrow ledge; step by step I went along. As I proceeded forward the ledge became wider, and I found sufficient room for both my feet to stand together upon it. I could not yet see the nest, as the rock curved out towards its centre cutting off the view beyond. Arrived at the bend of the rock, I leant round the projection and peered anxiously forward. There, on the bare shelf of the ledge, lay the eagle’s nest; two young eaglets sat dozing on the rock; around lay fragments of bones, tufts of fur torn from rabbits, feathers, and the dry stems of heather.

Another step and I was round the bend and at the nest. At this spot the shelf deepened considerably into the rock, leaving space sufficient to give standing-room without need of assistance. Intent only upon securing the young birds, I let go my hold of the rope, and seized the nearest eaglet before he was fully awake; the second one, hearing his companion scream, retreated further into the hole. Then it was that, looking outward, I saw the rope hanging, dangling loosely in mid-air. It was beyond my reach. For a moment the fearful position in which I so suddenly found myself caused me to sink upon the shelf. All the reality of my situation rushed full upon my mind. The rope hung fully five or six feet out over the abyss, for the rock above the ledge was formed like the roof of a cavern, projecting outward between me and Donogh’s standpoint, and when I had let go my hold of the line it had swung out to its level fall. That I could get back over the space I had come, and ascend again to the parapet where Donogh stood, I knew to be impossible. To reach the line from the nest seemed quite hopeless. In Donogh lay my sole chance of relief. If by any means he could convey the rope to me, all would be well. If not, there seemed nothing save the awful alternative of death by starvation or the precipice before me. I shouted to Donogh what had happened. I told him that I could not reach the rope by fully three feet—that my sole chance of escape lay in his being able to follow my line of descent and bring the rope to me, leaving it fixed at the other end, in some part of the parapet above which would allow the line to pass from the nest to the end of the ledge.

The minutes now passed in terrible suspense. Donogh shouted to me that he was looking for a secure place to fasten the upper end of the rope to. I remained seated in the hollow, scarcely daring to think what the next few minutes might bring forth. Suddenly Donogh shouted to me, “The eagle is coming back to the nest.” The news roused me from my stupor—the eagle was coming back! I crouched into the inmost recesses of the hollow. I still held one of the young birds in the bag round my waist, the other bird kept on the ledge at the further side from that by which I had approached. I had not much fear as to what the bird could do; I had a knife in my belt, and while an arm was free I knew I was more than a match for any bird. From the spot where I sat I could see out over the lake into the blue and golden sunshine.

All at once a large dark object crossed the line of light—soon recrossing it again as another wheel brought the huge bird nearer to its nest. Loud screams were now audible as the eagle became aware of something being wrong in the nest. Then there was the fierce beating of wings close outside the aperture, and the bird was perched on the edge of the rock, fiercely defiant, and making the echoes wild with her tumult. But amid all these surroundings I was only conscious of one fact. The eagle had struck the rope as it hung down in front of the opening; it had caught in the large outstretched pinion, and it was again within my reach, passing under the flapping wing of the bird as she stood clasping the rock ledge in her talons. There was not a moment to be lost; I thrust the young eagle at full arm’s length towards the mother; she fluttered forward as I did so—[the rope was again within my grasp]. In an instant the eagle had relaxed her hold upon the rock, and clutching her young in her talons she went soaring downward to a lower ledge amid the cliffs. I thought I could never get away fast enough now. A complete change had come over my mind. I had learnt a lesson never to be forgotten; and my life, forfeited in a vain and foolhardy attempt to gain the eagle’s nest at Cooma-sa-harn, was given back to me by the wild bird whose young I had come to rob from her. I now called out to Donogh that all was again right, and that he was to reverse his former practice to enable me to rejoin him. I passed safely back along the ledge, reascended the slant, and gained once more the parapet.

[The rope was again within my grasp.]

“Come, Donogh,” I said when I was again with my companion, “let us leave this spot. Whatever happens, we will never again rob the nest or kill the young of birds or beasts. There is sport enough in the world for us without that.”

On the edge of the mountain side we paused for a moment to look down upon Cooma-sa-harn, and the scene that lay beyond it. One eagle was screaming loudly from the nest, the other was sweeping down on outspread pinion from the purple wastes of Seefin.

I have dwelt long upon this episode in my early career, not so much from its importance, but because it did more to bring home to my mind certain truths that are often realized later on in life than anything that had happened to me up to my sixteenth year. I had soon to learn another, and a more bitter lesson.

The summer passed away; autumn came; the smell of dying leaves was in the woods of Carragh, the wind sighed amid the sedgy grass of Lough Cluen, the pine-trees by the priest’s house moaned in the breeze. Things looked sad in the glen, but they wore even a sadder aspect in our little cottage. My mother was leaving me for ever.

One evening in October I was sitting with her in our little parlour; the flush was bright upon her cheek, her wasted hand was resting upon mine; she spoke to me in a low voice.

“You will soon be alone in the world,” she said. “My life has only a little while to run. It is better that I should go. I could have been of little use to you in life, and I might have held you back in the world. In any case we must have parted soon, for your days could not have been spent here in this distant glen. The mountains and the lakes have been good friends to you, but it is time for you to leave them, and go forth to take your place in the work of the world. I should have wished you in your father’s profession, but that could not be; we are too poor for that. Of one thing I am satisfied, no matter what the future may have in store for you, I feel you will be true to your father’s name and to my memory. When I am gone you will have the world all before you to choose from. Bear well your part in life whatever it may be. Never be ashamed of your God, or of your country. And when the day is over and you kneel down in prayer, do not forget the two graves that lie far away in the little island of Lough Cluen.”

About a week after this she passed quietly away, her hand clasped in mine, pressure still speaking her affection long after the power of utterance had ceased.

When all was over I left the chamber of death, and moved out mechanically into the open air. Night had fallen; the moon was high over the glen. I walked onward, scarcely knowing whither I was going. I saw all things around as though in a dream. I passed through the wood behind the cottage; the moonlight shone bright upon the silver stems of the birch-trees; streaks of vapour lay in the hollows where the trees ended. I saw all these things, and yet my brain seemed unable to move.

I turned back from the end of the wood, passed the garden gate, and entered the little plot of ground in which my mother had been wont to tend flowers. It was now wild and desolate; grass grew on the walks; weeds and dead leaves lay around; only a few chrysanthemums were still in blossom—she had planted them in the past summer, and now their short life had lasted longer than her own—their pale flowers in the moonlight gave forth a sweet fragrance on the night air.

Death had chilled my heart; my eyes had been dry; my brain seemed to have stopped its working; but here the scent of the flowers she had planted seemed all at once to touch some secret sympathy, and bursting into a flood of grief I bowed my head to the cold damp earth, and prayed long and earnestly to God.

A footstep on the walk roused me. The old priest had sought me out. “Weep not, my poor boy,” he said, as he took my arm in his own and led me to the cottage. “You pray for your mother on earth. She is praying for you in heaven.”

My boyhood was over. I was alone in the world. The winter deepened and passed, the spring dawned, and with its returning freshness and sense of life my old dreams of distant travel came again upon me. I determined to seek my fortune abroad, to go forth into the waste wilds of the earth. Glencar had but trained my mind and body to further flights. I must go forth to the struggle. It did not take long to arrange matters for this great change. My worldly possessions were easily realized; the cottage and little farm soon found a purchaser; the few mementoes of my father’s life, the keepsakes which my mother had left me, were put carefully away in charge of the old priest; and I found myself the possessor of a few hundred pounds in money, a gun, my father’s sword, a small case containing miniature portraits of my parents—with which to face the new life that lay before me. What was that life?

It was to be a life of wandering in the great wilderness of Western America. I had formed from books a pretty accurate idea of the great divisions of the Northern Continent of America which yet remained in the domain of untamed nature. I knew that far beyond the last settler’s hut there lay a vast region of meadow, which finally gave place to a still vaster realm of forest, which in time yielded dominion to a wild waste of rock and water, until the verge of the Polar Sea. I knew too that these great divisions held roving and scattered tribes of Indians, sometimes at war with each other, always engaged in the pursuit of the wild beasts and birds whose homes were in those untamed wastes. More I did not need to know. I had trust, firm trust, in this great Nature, her lonely hill-tops, her wild lakes. The sigh of winds across November moors had had for me no sense of dreariness, no kinship with sorrow. Why should I dread to meet this world, whose aspects I loved so well, in the still wilder and grander scenes of an empire where civilized man was a total stranger?

Nor was I to be altogether alone in my travels. Donogh was to continue in his old sphere of companion and attendant. Together we had roamed the hill sides of Glencar; together we would tread the vast prairies, pine forests, and mountains of the American wilderness.

The day of our departure came.

It was a bright morning in early summer. We put our small baggage on Sergeant MacMahon’s mule-cart, said good-bye to all our friends, and set out upon our road. The old sergeant insisted upon accompanying me as far as Killarney, from which place the train would take us to Cork, where the steamer for New York called. As we approached the priest’s house, the old man stood at his gate waiting for us. His voice trembled as he said good-bye, and gave us his blessing. “God is everywhere, my boy,” he said, as he wrung my hand. “Remember Him, and He will not forget you.”

At the crest of the hill where the road left the valley, we stopped a moment to take a last look at the old glen. It lay deep in sunshine, every peak clear and cloudless in the summer heaven.

[CHAPTER II.]

Sunset in the wilds—Our first camp—Outlooks—The solitary Sioux—Losses—The Sioux again—A new departure—The cache at the Souri—The story of Red Cloud—The red man’s offer.

A year passed away.

It was summer again—summer hurrying towards autumn—and the day drawing near the evening.

The scene had changed.

Far away into the west stretched a vast green plain. No hills rose on either side; sky and earth met at the horizon in a line almost as level as though land had been water. Upon one side some scattered clumps of aspens and poplars were visible; save these nothing broke the even surface of the immense circle to the farthest verge of vision.

I stood with Donogh in the centre of this great circle, realizing for the first time the grandeur of space of land. We had travelled all day, and now the evening found us far advanced upon our way into the great plains. It was our first day’s real journey. Early on that morning we had left behind us the last sign of civilized settlement, and now, as evening was approaching, it was time to make our first camp in the silent wilds. The trail which we followed towards the west approached some of those aspen thickets already mentioned. The ground, which at a little distance appeared to be a uniform level, was in reality broken into gentle undulations, and as we gained the summit of a slight ascent we saw that a small sheet of blue water lay between the thickets, offering on its margin a good camping-place for the night.

The sun had now touched the western edge of the prairie; for a moment the straight line of the distant horizon seemed to hold the great ball of crimson fire poised upon its rim; then the black line was drawn across the flaming disc; and then, as though melting into the earth, the last fragment of fire disappeared from sight, leaving the great plain to sink into a blue grey twilight, rapidly darkening into night.

We stood on the ridge watching this glorious going down of day until the last spark of sun had vanished beneath the horizon; then we turned our horses’ heads towards the lake, still shining bright in the after-glow, and made our first camp in the wilds. It was easy work. We unloaded the pack-horse, unsaddled the riding-horses, hobbled the fore-legs, and turned them adrift into the sedgy grass that bordered the lakelet. Donogh had a fire soon going from the aspen branches, the lake gave water for the kettle, and ere darkness had wholly wrapt the scene we were seated before the fire, whose light, circled by the mighty solitude, grew ever brighter in the deepening gloom.

While here we sit before our first camp fire, it will be well that I should say something about our plans and prospects for the future.

Without adventure of any kind, and with only those difficulties to overcome that lie in all undertakings of life where real effort has to be made, we had reached the confines of civilization; a kind of frontier settlement, half wigwam half village, had sprung up to meet the wants of those traders in furs and peltries who form the connecting link between the red man of the wilds and his white brothers in civilization. This settlement marked, as it were, the limits of the two regions—on one side of it lay judge and jury, sheriff, policemen, court-house, and fenced divisions; on the other, the wild justice of revenge held empire, and the earth was all man’s heritage.

I had only delayed long enough in this frontier settlement to procure the necessary means of travel in the wilds. I had purchased four good ponies, two for saddle use and two to act as pack animals for our baggage—arms we already possessed—ammunition, blankets, knives, a couple of copper kettles, a supply of tea, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, and matches, a few awls, and axes. These I had obtained at one of the Indian trading stores, and, keeping all our plans as much as possible to ourselves, we had on this very morning set our faces for the solitude, intent upon holding on steadily into the west during the months of summer that yet remained. By winter time I counted upon having reached the vicinity of those great herds of buffaloes which kept far out from the range of man, in the most remote recesses of the wilderness, and there we would build a winter hut in some sheltered valley, or dwell with any Indian tribe whose chief would bid us a welcome to his lodges.

Of the country that lay before us, or of the people who roved over it, I knew only what I had pictured from books in the old glen at home, or from the chance acquaintances I had made during our stay in the frontier settlement; but when one has a simple plan of life to follow, it usually matters little whether the knowledge of a new land which can be derived from books or men has been obtained or not; time is the truest teacher, and we had time before us and to spare.

We ate our supper that night with but few words spoken. The scene was too strange—the outlook too mysterious, to allow thoughts to find spoken expression.

Had I been asked that night by Donogh to define for him the precise objects I had in view in thus going out into the wilds, I do not think that I could have given a tangible reason. I did not go as a gold-seeker, or a trapper of furs, or a hunter of wild animals. We would follow the chase, trap the wild animals of the streams or marshes, look for gold too; but it was not to do all or any of these things that I had left civilization behind me. This great untamed wilderness, this home of distance and solitude, this vast unbroken dominion of nature—where no fence crossed the surface of the earth, where plough had never turned, where lakes lay lapped amid shores tenanted only by the moose and the rein-deer—all this endless realm of prairie, forest, rock, and rapid, which yet remains the grandest domain of savage nature in the world, had had for me a charm, not the less seductive because it could not then find expression in words, or give explanation for its fancy. Enough that we went forth with no sinister object in view against man or beast, tree or plain; we went not to annex, to conquer, nor to destroy; we went to roam and rove the world, and to pitch our camps wheresoever the evening sun might find us.

Before turning in for the night I left the light of the fire, and wandered out into the surrounding darkness. It was a wonderful sight. The prairie lay wrapt in darkness, but above, in the sky, countless stars looked down upon the vast plain; far away to the south, the red glow of a distant fire was visible; our own camp fire flamed and flickered, shedding a circle of light around it, and lighting up the nearer half of the lakelet and the aspen clumps on the shore. At times there passed over the vast plain the low sound of wind among grasses—a sound that seemed to bring to the ear a sense of immense distance and of great loneliness. For a moment I felt oppressed by this vague lonely waste; but I thought of the old priest’s words, and looking up again from the dark earth to the starlit heavens, I saw all the old stars shining that I used to know so well in the far-away glen at home. Then I knelt down on the prairie, and prayed for help and guidance in the life that lay before me.

Daylight had broken some time when I awoke, and rose from my blanket bed for a survey of the morning. How vast seemed the plain! Far away it spread on all sides; all its loneliness had vanished; it lay before me fresh, fair, and dew-sparkled—our trail leading off over distant ridges, until it lay like a faint thread vanishing into the western space.

As my eye followed this western path, I noticed a mounted figure moving along it about a mile distant, approaching our camping-place at an easy pace. I called to Donogh to get the fire going and make ready our breakfast, and we had barely got the kettle on the flames when the stranger had reached our camp.

The solitary Sioux.

He rode right up to the spot where we stood, alighted from his horse, and throwing the reins loose on the animal’s neck, came forward to meet me. I advanced towards him and held out my hand in welcome. A large shaggy hound, half deer half wolf-dog, followed closely at his heels. We shook hands; the stranger seated himself near the fire, and silence reigned for a few minutes. My experience in the settlement had taught me the few rules of Indian etiquette, and I busied myself in helping Donogh to complete the arrangement for breakfast before questioning the new comer upon his journey or intentions.

Our breakfast was soon ready. I handed a cup of tea and a plate of pemmican to the Indian, and sat down myself to the same fare. When we had eaten a little, I addressed our guest, asking him his length of journey and its destination.

He had come many days from the west, he said in reply. His destination was the west again, when he had visited the settlement.

Then it was my turn to tell our movements. I said exactly what they were. I told him that we had come from a land across the sea, and that we were going as far as the land would take us into the north-west, that we were strangers on the prairie, but hoped soon to learn its secrets and its people.

While the meal proceeded I had opportunity of studying the appearance, dress, and accoutrements of our guest. They were remarkable, and quite unlike anything I had before seen.

He was a man in the very prime of life; his dress of deer-skin had been made with unusual neatness; the sleeves fully interwoven with locks of long black hair, were covered with embroidered porcupine-quill work, which was also plentifully scattered over the breast and back; the tight-fitting leggings and sharp-pointed moccasins were also embroidered.

He carried across his saddle-bow a double-barrelled English rifle; but the ancient weapons of his race had not been abandoned by him, for a quiverful of beautifully shaped Indian arrows, and a short stout bow, along the back of which the sinews of the buffalo had been stretched to give it strength and elasticity, showed that he was perfectly independent, for war or the chase, of modern weapons and ammunition.

As head covering he wore nothing, save what nature had given him—long jet-black hair, drawn back from the forehead and flowing thickly over the shoulders. A single feather from an eagle’s tail formed its sole ornament. The end of the feather, turned slightly back, was tied with the mystic “totem” of chieftainship. His horse, a stout mustang of fourteen hands high, carried the simple trappings of the plains—the saddle of Indian workmanship, the bridle, a single rein and small snaffle with a long larêt attached, and from the neck was suspended the leather band by means of which the rider could lay his length along the horse’s flank farthest from his enemy while he launched his arrows beneath the animal’s neck, as he galloped furiously in lessening circles around his foe.

He spoke English with an accent that showed he had been taught in western schools; but though the language was English the manner of its utterance was wholly Indian; it was Indian thought put into English words, and accompanied by the slow and dignified action of Indian gesture. He took the tobacco pouch which I offered him when our meal was finished, filled his greenstone pipe, drew a lighted stick from the fire, and began to smoke quietly, while his dark eye seemed to rest upon the ashes and embers of the fire before him. But the keen sharp eye was not idle; and one by one the articles of our little kit, and the horses which Donogh had now driven in preparatory to saddling for the day’s journey, had been conned over in his mind.

After smoking for some time he spoke. “Does my brother know what he will meet on the path he is following?” he asked. I told him that I had only a very shadowy idea of what was before us; that I intended going on from day to day, and that when the winter season came I hoped to build a tent, and live in it until the snow went, and I could wander on again. I told him, too, that I was not going to seek for gold, or to trade for furs and peltries, but only to live on the prairies—to meet the red men, to breathe the open air of the wilderness, and roam the world. Then I asked some more questions about his own intentions. I asked him how it was that he was all alone on this long journey; for I knew that the Indians were in the habit of moving in parties, and that it was most unusual for them to be seen travelling alone. He replied that he travelled by himself partly from choice and partly from necessity.

“I am the last of my people,” he said, “the last of the Mandan branch of the Sioux race. It is true that I might find companions among the Ogahalla or Minatarree branches of my nation, but then I would have to dwell with them and live their lives. The work I have to do can only be done by myself; until it is finished I must follow a single trail. I have for companion this dog, an old and oft-tried friend.”

I then asked him if he had seen much of the prairie.

He replied that he knew it all; that from the Stony Mountains to the waters of the Lake Winnipeg, from the pine forest of the north to the sage-bush deserts of the Platte, he had travelled all the land. Shortly after this he rose to depart. We shook hands again; he sprang lightly into his saddle and rode off towards the east. When he was gone we rolled up our blankets and traps and departed on our western way. It was the morning after the second night from this time that we found ourselves camped at break of day in the valley of a small stream which flowed south toward the Souri river. So far, all had gone well with us. We had met with no difficulty, and had begun to think that our western course would continue to be marked by unchanging success. On this morning, however, we awoke to other thoughts.

Two of our horses had disappeared. At first we thought that they had strayed farther away than the others, but after searching far and near over the prairie we came to the conclusion that they had been stolen. It was a cruel blow. At first I felt stunned, but bit by bit I thought the matter out and determined to face the difficulty. After all it might have been worse, we had still two horses left; we would put all our supplies on one animal, and ride by turns on the other. We would camp early, let the horses feed while it was yet daylight, and keep them picketted by our camp at night. So, putting a good face upon the matter, we got our things together, and set out about mid-day on our western road. Donogh was on foot leading the pack-horse; I rode slowly on in front. It still wanted two full hours of sunset when we halted for the evening. We turned out the horses to graze. I took my gun and sat down on a ridge to watch them as they fed. It was then that the loss we had suffered seemed to come heaviest to me. As I sat there I thought over the length of time we must now take to reach the distant prairies of the west, and my heart sank at the prospect of slow and weary travel, with the chances of further losses that would leave us helpless upon the vast plains.

As I sat thus brooding upon our misfortunes I noticed one of the horses raise his head from feeding and gaze steadily back upon our trail. Looking in that direction I saw a solitary figure approaching upon horseback. A glance sufficed to tell me that it was the same man who had visited our camp two mornings earlier. For a moment I involuntarily connected his presence with our loss; but then it occurred to me that he would not seek our camp again if he had stolen our horses, and I remembered too that he had told me he was going west when he had visited the frontier settlement.

He came up to where I was, and shook hands with me without dismounting, his dog keeping close by his horse’s flank. I told him of our loss, and spoke freely of its serious nature to us. I said we were now reduced to only two horses, and asked him frankly if he could do anything to help me. He listened quietly, and when I had done speaking he said,—

“The prairie without horses is like a bird without wings. When I left you two days ago, I thought you would soon learn that life in the wilderness was not all so easy. Your horses have been taken by some Salteaux Indians. I saw their trail at mid-day to-day as I came hither. They are far away from here by this time. I am sorry for you,” he went on, “for you are the first white man I have ever met who came out to this land of ours with the right spirit. You do not come to make money out of us Indians: you do not come to sell or to buy, to cheat and to lie to us. White men think there is but one work in life, to get money. When you told me your story a couple of mornings since I thought it was my own life you were telling me of. Now you ask me if I can help you to get back the horses which have been taken from you. I could get them back, but it would take time and long travel. I can do better for you, my brother; I can get you new horses in place of the old ones.”

I scarcely believed the words I listened to, so good was the news they told me.

“If you like,” he went on, “to learn the life of the prairie, I will teach it to you. Do not sorrow any more for your loss; we will camp here to-night, and to-morrow we will see what can be done.”

So saying he unsaddled his horse, and throwing saddle, bridle, and blanket on the ground, sat down by the fire and began to smoke. When supper was ready I gave him a share of our meal, and he camped with us that night.

We were astir very early on the next morning. In order to travel with greater speed the Indian divided our baggage into three portions, which he placed equally on the three horses, adjusting the loads in front and behind the saddles. This enabled Donogh to ride; and although it put a heavy load on all the horses, it would only be for one day. What plan the Indian had formed I had at this time no idea of, but I already looked upon him in the light of a true benefactor, and I was prepared to follow implicitly his guidance. The sun had just risen when we quitted our camping-place and took the old trail to the west; but an hour or so after starting, the Indian, who led the way, quitted the trail and bent his course across the plain in a south-westerly direction. During some hours he held his way in this direction; there was no trail, but every hill and hollow seemed to be familiar to our guide, and he kept his course in a line which might have appeared to me to be accidental, had I not observed that when we struck streams and water-courses the banks afforded easy means of crossing. About mid-day we quitted the open prairie, and entered upon a country broken into clumps of wood and small copses of aspen; many lakelets were visible amid the thickets; and the prairie grouse frequently rose from the grass before our horses’ feet, and went whirring away amid the green and golden thickets of cotton-wood and poplars.

It was drawing towards evening when our little party emerged upon the edge of a deep depression which suddenly opened before us. The bottom of this deep valley was some two or three miles wide; it was filled with patches of bright green meadow, and dotted with groups of trees placed as though they had been planted by the hand of man. Amidst the meadows and the trees ran a many-curved stream of clear silvery water, now glancing over pebble-lined shallows, now flowing still and soft in glassy unrippled lengths.

Drawing rein at the edge of this beautiful valley, the Indian pointed his hand down towards a small meadow lying at the farther side of the river. “There is the Souri river,” he said, “and those specks in the meadow at the far side are my horses. Our halting-place is in the wood where you see the pine-tops rise above the cotton-trees.” So saying he led the way down the ridge. We soon became lost in the maze of thickets in the lower valley; but half an hour’s ride brought us to the meadows bordering upon the river, and soon we gained the Souri itself. The Indian led the way into the stream, and heading for a shelving bank on the other side ascended the opposite shore. On the very edge of the stream at the farther side stood the grove of pines which we had seen from the upper level half an hour before.

Into this grove we rode, pushing through some poplar brushwood that fringed its outer edges. Once inside this brushwood, the ground beneath the pine-trees was clear. Almost in the centre of the “bluff” an Indian lodge was pitched. It stood quite hidden from view until we were close upon it. I soon saw that the pine bluff occupied a “point” on the river; that is to say, the stream formed almost a complete curve around it, encircling the bluff upon three sides. From the doorway of the lodge a view could be obtained of the ground within and beyond the narrow neck formed by the river’s bend as they approached each other.

Immediately on arrival the Indian had dismounted.

“Here,” he said, “is my home for the present, and whenever I wander into these regions. To-night we will rest here, and to-morrow continue our way towards the west. This morning you gave me food from your small store; to-night you will eat with me.”

So saying he set about his preparations for evening.

From a branch overhead he let down a bag of dry meat and flour; from a pile of wood close by he got fuel for a fire in the centre of the lodge; from a cache in the hollow trunk of one of the trees he took a kettle and other articles of camp use; and before many minutes had passed our evening meal was ready in the lodge, while the horses were adrift in the meadow beyond the “neck,” with the others already grazing there.

Before our meal was finished evening had closed over the scene, and in the shadow of the spruce pines it was quite dark. An ample supply of dry fuel was piled near the tent door, and the fire in the centre of the lodge was kept well supplied. It burned bright and clear, lighting up the features of the Indian as he sat before it cross-legged upon the ground. He seemed to be buried in deep thought for some time. Looking across the clear flame I observed his face with greater attention than I had before bestowed upon it. It was a handsome countenance, but the lines of care and travail showed deeply upon it, and the expression was one of great and lasting sadness. In the moments of action in the work of the prairie this sad look had been less observable; but now, as he sat in repose, looking intently into the fire, the features had relapsed into their set expression of gloom.

[At last he raised his head and spoke.]

[At last the Sioux raised his head and spoke.]

“You must know my story. When you have heard it, you can decide for yourself and your friend what course you will follow. I will tell you how it has happened that I am here, and why I am going west so soon. Listen to me well.”

Then, as we sat around the fire in the centre of the lodge, he thus began:—

“Among men I am called ‘Red Cloud.’ It is now more than ten years since I joined my people, the Mandan Sioux, on the shores of Minnie Wakan. They had just been driven back by the soldiers of the United States. My tribe had dwelt on the coteau by the edge of the great Pipe Stone quarry. The buffalo were numerous over all the surrounding prairies. We were then at peace with the Americans. They had purchased from our chiefs the valley of the Bois des Sioux, the Red River, and the land of the Otter Tail. We had given up all that fair region of lake and meadow, hill and copse, which still carries the name we gave it, “Minnesota,” or the Land of Sky-coloured Water. The white waves were coming on faster and faster from the east, and we, the red waves, were drifting before them farther and farther into the west. I dwelt with my people at the Minnie Wakan, or the Lake of the Evil Spirit. It is a salt and bitter water which lies far out in the great prairie; but it was a favourite haunt of the buffalo, and the wapiti were many in the clumps of aspen and poplar along its deep-indented shores.

“For a time after the surrender of Minnesota peace reigned between our people and the white man; but it was a hollow peace; we soon saw it could not last. Many of our old chiefs had said, ‘Take what the white man offers you. Let us fix the boundaries of our lands far out towards the setting sun, and then we will be safe from the white man, who ever comes from the rising sun. We will then live at peace with him.’

“Well, we went far out into the prairie; but the white man soon followed us. The buffalo began to leave us; the wapiti became scarce around the shores of Minnie Wakan. We were very poor. At the time when I joined my people an army had taken the field with the avowed intention of driving the remnants of our once strong race across the great Missouri river. I could not remain an idle spectator of a struggle in which my people were fighting for home and for existence.

“It is true I had been brought up a Christian, educated in a school far away in Canada with white people, and taught the uselessness of contending with civilization; but what of that?

“Blood is stronger than what you call civilization; and when I got back again into the prairie, and to the sky-bound plain—when I felt beneath me the horse bound lightly over the measureless meadow—and when I knew that my people were about to make a last fight for the right to live on the land that had been theirs since a time the longest memory could not reach—then I cast aside every other thought, and turned my face for ever towards the wilderness and my home.

“The Mandans received me with joy. As a boy I had left them; as a man I returned. My father was still a chief in the tribe, and from his horses I had soon the best and fastest for my own.

“I had forgotten but few of the exercises which an Indian learns from earliest childhood. I could ride and run with the best of them, and in addition to the craft and skill of the wilderness, I had learned the use of the weapons of civilization, and the rifle had become as familiar to hand and eye as the bow had been in the days of my boyhood.

“Soon we heard that the Americans were advancing towards the coteau. We struck our lodges by the Minnie Wakan, fired the prairie, and set out for the south. By the edge of the coteau our scouts first fell in with the white men. We did not fire, for the chief had decided that we would not be the first to fight, but would seek a parley when we met. It was my work to meet the white people and hear what they had to say. I was able to speak to them.

“I approached their scouts with a few of my men, and made signs that we wished to talk. Some of the white people rode forward in answer, and we met them midway. I began by asking what they wanted in our land; that they were now in our country, and that our chief had sent me to know the meaning of their visit.

“One of them replied that they had come by order of the Great Father at Washington; that the land belonged to him from sea to sea; and that they could ride through it where they willed.

“While we spoke, one of my braves had approached a large, strongly-built man who rode a fine black horse. All at once I heard the click of a gun-lock. In token of peace we had left our guns in the camp; we carried only our bows. The gun thus cocked was in the hands of the white man riding the black horse. It has been said since that he did the act fearing that the Indian who stood near meant harm; if so, his belief was wrong, and it cost him his life. The Indian heard the noise of the hammer. With a single bound he was at the horse’s shoulders, had seized the barrel of the gun and twisted it from the white man’s hands. As he did so, one barrel exploded in the air. An instant later the other was discharged full into the white man’s breast, and before a word could be uttered, the brave was in his saddle, driving the black horse furiously over the plain. There was nothing for it but to gallop too; we were well mounted, and the shots they sent after us only made our horses fly the faster. We reached our people. The war had begun.

“I will not tell you of that war now. In the end we were beaten, as we always must be. Two men will beat one man, twenty will do it faster.

“Many of us were killed; many more fled north into English territory. My father was among the latter number. I remained with a few others in the fastnesses of the Black Hills.

“Now listen to me.

“My father, the old chief, went, I have said, north into British land. I never saw him again. A year later I also sought refuge in this region, and this is the story I gathered from the few scattered people of our tribe.

“My father, ‘The Black Eagle,’ had been invited to a trader’s house on the banks of the Red River, not fifty miles from where we now are. This trader had given him spirit to drink. In the spirit he had put laudanum. My father drank unsuspectingly, and was soon plunged into deep unconscious sleep. From that sleep he woke to find himself in the hands of the Americans.

“It was the depth of winter. His betrayers had bound him while asleep upon a sledge drawn by a fast horse. In the dead of night they had carried him to the American lines at Pembina, and there sold him to the Yankee officer, bound and helpless.

“The price paid was 500 dollars. A week later the old chief, my father, was hanged as a traitor in sight of the very river by whose banks he had been born.

“You wonder what has brought me to these northern lands? My father’s spirit has brought me. Five times since that day I have sought my father’s murderer, and each time my search has been fruitless. Yes, through all these years, through many changes, and from far distant places, I have come here to seek revenge. Again I have been baffled. The man for whom I look has gone far out on the plains, trading with the Crees and Blackfeet. I learned this two days ago, in the settlement, and at once turned my horse’s head towards the west, determined to seek this spot, get my horses, pack up, and follow the trail of my father’s murderer into the great prairie.

“By chance I saw you again this morning. You are different from all the white men I have ever met. You seem to love the wilderness for its wildness, as a bird loves the air for its freedom. Well, it is for that that I love it too. In our old times, when the Sioux were strong and powerful, the young men of the tribe, the best and bravest, used to swear an oath of brotherhood and lasting friendship to the young braves of other tribes. That oath meant, that if they met in battle, or in danger, the life of one was sacred to the other.

“To you I will give that promise and that oath. I have no friends but my horse and dog. My people are scattered far and wide over the wilderness. Most of those who were with me ten years ago are now dead. I am an outcast on the earth; but I am free, and fear no man. We will together roam the wilderness; at any time if you desire it, you are free to part. I do not ask your assistance to revenge the wrongs I have suffered. That shall be my own work. For the rest I have quarrel with no man. Ever since that war with the Americans I have fired no hostile shot at a red man of any race or tribe. When attacked I have defended myself; but I have joined no tribe to fight another tribe. If I fall into the hands of my enemies I know that my father’s death will be my death—that as his bones were left to bleach in sight of the land in which he was born, so mine would be also gibbeted, as a warning to the wretched remnants of my race who yet live, spectral shadows, on the land that once had owned the dominion of the Sioux.”

The Indian ceased speaking. The fire still burned bright and clear.

As the light of the evening grew fainter, and darkness closed over the scene, the sounds of the wilderness fell distinctly upon our ears—the ripple of the river, the lonely cry of grey owls, the far-off echo of some prowling wolf.

For some minutes the silence of the lodge remained unbroken. I was too much affected by the story I had listened to to speak, but I held out my hand to the Sioux and shook his, in silent token that henceforth we were brothers.

[CHAPTER III.]

To the West—Wapiti in sight—A stalk—A grand run—The sand-hills in sight—The finish—A noble beast—A gorgeous sunset—A vast landscape—The Hills of Life and Death.

At dawn on the following morning we departed from the camp on the Souri, holding our way towards the west.

It was a fair fresh morning; the summer, verging towards autumn, held already in its nights and first hours of day the faint breathings of the northern chill of frost; the dew lay upon the ground in silvery sheen and glitter; all was yet green in meadow and willow copse; the current of the river ran with fresh and sparkling eagerness, and from its mimic rapids on the shallows little streaks of vapour rose—an indication that the air of the morning was cooler than the water of the river. Over all the scene, over the hill and the valley, on wood and stream and meadow, there lay a sense of the perfect rest and ceaseless quiet of the wilderness.

The path which the Indian took led for awhile along the valley of the Souri. At times it climbed the higher ridges that bordered on the north and south the alluvial meadows which fringed the river, and at times it dived into the patches of poplar thicket and oak-wood copse that dotted alike both hill and valley.

The Sioux was mounted on the same horse which he had ridden on the previous day, but a change had fallen on the fortunes of Donogh and myself. We now bestrode two close-knit wiry horses, whose sleek coats and rounded flanks showed that the early summer had been to them a season of rest, and that they had profited by the quiet of the last few days to improve the “shining hours” on the fertile meadows of the Souri. We went along now at an easy pace, half walk, half trot—a pace which got over the ground with little fatigue to man and horse, and yet made a long day’s journey out of the travel hours of daylight.

As the morning wore towards mid-day, and the trail led at times over places which commanded a wider view of river and valley, the Indian riding in front watched with keen glance each open space, and often cantered his horse to the upper level for a better survey of the higher plateau. All at once he stopped, and lay low upon his horse. He was some distance ahead of us, but near enough to be seen by me. I at once pulled up. Presently the Sioux came back to where we were standing. There were wapiti in sight, he said; I could go forward with him on foot and see them. We left our horses with Donogh, and went forward very carefully to the spot from whence the Sioux had seen the game. It was at the end of a willow copse. From here, looking partly through and partly over the leaves of some small aspens, I now saw at the farther side of an open space which was more than a mile across, a herd of large dun-coloured animals, and high above all stood one stag, erect and stately, looking in our direction, as though the echo of our approach had apparently reached him.

These were the wapiti, the giant red-deer of North America. The monarch of the group was evidently a gigantic specimen of his race, who, with the true kingship of nature, kept watch and ward over his weaker subjects, and did not, as in modern society, delegate that chiefest function of leadership to other less favoured mortals. And now how was this noble animal to be reached? The forest of antlers fixed and rigid showed that his gaze was fixed too upon the spot from whence an attack might be expected.

The Indian, surveying the ground for a moment, whispered to me, “We cannot approach him from this side; his suspicions are already aroused. And yet he is a noble prize, and well worth the trouble of the chase. There is only one way it can be done. Where the ground rises to the north, on the right of where we now stand, there is a large open expanse of prairie, once on that level plain it would rest with our horses to reach him; the few scattered clumps of trees growing upon it cannot hide him from our view; he must be ours. So far, he has neither seen nor winded us; he has simply heard a sound; he is watchful, not alarmed. Let us see what can be done.”

Having said this, he drew back a little, plucked the heads of a few long grasses growing near, and flung the dry light seeds into the air. They floated towards the east; the wind was from the west. “Now,” he said, having noted this, “we must retrace our steps along the path we have come for some distance, then it will be possible to get round yonder beast. We shall see.”

So saying, we fell back with easy and quiet footsteps, and, followed by Donogh, were soon a long way from the open glade and its denizens. Having gained the required distance, the Sioux stopped again to detail to us the further plan of attack; it was simply this. We were to make a long détour to the south; when the right position had been attained, we would advance in the direction of the herd, emerging upon the clearing full in view of the stag, whose course, the Indian said, would when alarmed at once lead up the wind, or towards the west. This, however, was not the direction in which the Indian wanted him to go. How then was it to be done? We shall presently see.

Striking from the trail towards the south, we pursued our way through mixed open and thicket country until the required distance had been gained, then bending round to the west we gradually drew nearer to the open ground on which the wapiti had last been seen.

When the neighbourhood of the open space was reached the Indian again stopped, and spoke his last directions to us. “Wait here until you hear a wolf cry twice; at the second call ride straight to the north at an easy pace. When you emerge upon the open you will be in sight of the big stag, but a long way from him; after looking at you for a moment he will trot away to your left; then you must ride straight up the hill until you gain the level plain on the summit; you will then see the stag not very far from you. I will be there too. Let the pack-horses follow quietly to the upper ground.” Having said this, the Indian turned his horse to the west, and was soon lost to sight in the thickets and undulations of the ground.

About a quarter of an hour passed; at length we heard the cry of a wolf sounding a long way off to north and west. We listened anxiously for the second signal. It soon came, and as it died away in the silence of space we put our horses into a trot and rode straightforward. Two minutes’ riding brought us to the edge of the prairie, on the other side of which, but now some miles distant, we had first looked upon the wapiti. As we entered upon the open ground we caught sight of the herd, still in the same spot. The chief had apparently ceased to reconnoitre, for his huge antlers no longer towered aloft; he was quietly feeding like the others. We now rode at a walk straight for the herd. Our presence in their area of vision was almost instantly detected, and all heads were lifted from the ground to examine the enemy; then the leader led the way, and the band, following his steps, filed off quietly towards the wind.

I was sorely disposed to follow, but, remembering the directions of the Indian I put my horse into a sharp canter, and held straight for the high ground, the edge of which was visible in our front. As we crossed the centre of the open space, a shot rang out some distance to our left, and then there came a faint Halloo! borne down the west wind. Still we held on our course, and climbing the steep ridge, gained the open prairie land above. As our heads topped the ridge, we beheld a sight that made our hearts beat fast with excitement. There, not half a mile distant, going full across the plain, was the herd of wapiti, still close grouped together; behind them, and not more than three hundred yards distant from them, rode the Indian, his horse held full within his pace but going at a free gallop across a level plain, on which the grass grew short and crisp under a horse’s hoof. I did not need the waving arm of the Indian to tell me what was to be done. My horse seemed to realize the work too; I shook free his rein, and was soon in fast pursuit of the flying stag.

There are many moments in wild life, the minute sensations of which are worth the oft-indulged recollections of after time—moments when every nerve is strained to action, when eye and ear and nostril are filled with the sound, the sight and the scent of nature’s freshness—and when the animate or inanimate thing that bears us, the horse or the canoe, become sharers in the keenness of our progress, and seem to quiver with the excitement of our impetuous onset; there are such moments in the wild life of the wilderness, amply sufficient to outweigh the hardships and privations of travel and exposure in a land where the sky is the roof, and the ground the bed, the table and the chair of the wayfarer.

Much toil and trouble had befallen us since that distant day when we had quitted the little roof of our far-away home; the goal aimed at had often seemed a long way off, and many had been the obstacles that had forced in between us and the wild life I had sought to reach; but now it was ours—fully, entirely ours; and as my horse, entering at once into the spirit of the chase, launched himself gamely along the level sward I could not repress a ringing cheer, the natural voice of freedom found, and of wild life fully realized.

I was now in wild pursuit. I directed my horse towards a spot far in advance of the flying herd; the wapiti in turn, not slow to perceive the advance of a fresh enemy from the flank, bent away in the opposite direction, giving the Indian the advantages of a similar advance upon an oblique line to cut them off, and so cause them to again alter their course in my favour.

It is a singular fact in the hunting of wild game, that if a particular animal of a herd be selected for pursuit, even though he may at the time be in the midst of a number of other animals all flying from the hunter, nevertheless, the one marked out as the special quarry will quickly realize that he alone is the object of the hunter’s aim, and he will soon become the solitary one, deserted by his companions, who seem to understand his position. Such was now the case. One by one the meaner ones in the little herd had dropped off to the right or to left, and ere two miles had been ridden the monarch stag pursued alone his wild career.

His pace was still the long rapid stride or trot peculiar to his breed. To the inexperienced eye it looked a rate of speed which could be easily overtaken by a horse; but, nevertheless, although a good horse will always outrun a wapiti, it takes both time and open country to enable him to do so. The long swinging trot is really the wapiti’s best pace. When he is forced to change it for a gallop, his end is near—his course is almost run.

Right on over the level prairie held the stag, and at full speed we followed his flying steps. The prairie lay an almost unbroken level for six or seven miles, then a succession of sand-ridges appeared in view, and farther still rose the blue outlines of more distant hills. It was toward this refuge that the stag now held his way.

When the last of his little band had fallen from him, and he was alone with his pursuers, it seemed that his energies only reached their fullest power; for, more than half way across the plain he not only kept his distance in the race, but increased it by many lengths; nor did he appear to labour in his stride, as with head thrown forward, and antlers lying back almost upon his haunches, he spurned behind him the light soil of the plains.

With rapid survey the Indian scanned the hills towards which his quarry was now leading, and his practised eye soon caught the features of the land, while he still maintained the same headlong speed. We knew that if the stag once gained those ridges of light brown sand his chances of final escape would be great. The yielding surface would give the spreading cloven hoof the support which it would refuse to the more solid pressure of the horse.

In all these things nature never fails to instruct her creatures in the means of escape she provides for them in their hours of trouble. The hare seeks the hill when coursed by the grey-hound, because the great length of her hind legs gives her an increased power to traverse with rapidity rising ground.

When the falcon is abroad, the birds know that their wings are their weakest refuge, lying close hid on moorland or in cover.

The moose makes his place of rest for the day to the leeward of his track during the night, so that he may have the wind of every hunter who follows in his trail.

It is in that acute knowledge of all these various resources, instincts, and habits, possessed by the wild game which they pursue, that the Indian hunter surpasses all other hunters of the earth.

It is not too much to say that a good Indian hunter can anticipate every instinct of the animal he is in quest of.

We have seen in the present instance how completely the Sioux had forced the herd of wapiti to take the upper level. This he had achieved by knowing exactly where they would run upon being first disturbed, and then placing himself in such a position that they were enabled to scent his presence before they could see that he meant to follow them. By this means he caused them to abandon the partly wooded country before they had become thoroughly frightened by a closer attack.

Under the different conditions of suspicion, fear, and absolute danger, wild animals, like human creatures, show widely different tactics. It is these finer distinctions of habit and emotion that the red man has so thoroughly mastered, and it is this knowledge that enables him almost invariably to outwit the keenest sense of animal cunning.

In most of the wisdom of civilized man he is only a child. His perceptions of things relating to social or political life are bounded by narrow limits. But in the work of the wilderness, in all things that relate to the conquest of savage nature, be it grizzly bear, foaming rapid, or long stretch of icy solitude, he is all unmatched in skill, in daring, and in knowledge.

But while we have been speaking thus of Indian skill in the chase, our stag has been nearing with rapid strides the sand-hills of his refuge.

We had now drawn closer to each other in the pursuit, and it seemed that hunters and hunted were straining their every nerve, the one to attain, the other to prevent, the gaining of this refuge.

I had thought that the horse ridden by the Sioux had been going at its utmost speed. But in this I was mistaken, as the next instant proved.

All at once he shot forward, laying himself out over the prairie as I had never before seen any horse do.

He was soon close upon the flying footsteps of the stag, which now, finding himself almost outpaced, broke from his long-held steady trot into a short and laboured gallop, while his great antlers moved from side to side, as he watched over his flanks the progress of his pursuer.

The sand-hills were but a short half-mile distant. Another minute would decide the contest. Just when I thought the stag must win, I saw [the Sioux] urge his horse to a still faster effort. He [was now almost at the flank of the wapiti]. Then I saw him with the quickness of lightning unsling his short bow, and place an arrow on the string. One sharp draw, apparently without any aim, and the shaft sped upon its way, piercing the heart of the giant stag, which, with one great leap forward into space, rolled dead upon the prairie.

[The Sioux was now almost at the flank of the wapiti.]

He was a noble specimen of those gigantic animals now growing scarce on the American prairies.

From fore hoof to tip of shoulders he stood seventeen hands high. His antlers were the finest I ever saw. They branched from his frontlet in perfect symmetry and regularity, each tier was the exact counterpart of the opposite one. From brow to tip they measured more than five feet, and their ribbed sides shone like roughened bronze, while the strong tips were polished ivory. Standing breathless beside my breathless horse, I looked on the dead animal in mute admiration, while the Sioux set to at the more practical work of getting some meat for dinner.

“You may well look at him,” he said to me; “he is the finest of his tribe I have yet seen.”

“It is almost a pity we have killed such a noble beast,” I replied; “to lay such a proud head low.”

“Yes,” answered the Indian. “But it is in such things that we learn the great work of war. To ride a chase to the end; to shoot an arrow fast and true after a six-mile gallop; to watch every turn of the game enemy, and to note every stride of the steed; to avoid the deadly charge of the buffalo, and to wheel upon his flank as he blindly pursues his impetuous onset; to stand steady before the advance of the savage grizzly bear, and to track the wary moose with silent footfall into the willow thickets,—these are the works by which, in times of peace, the Indian learns his toil in the deeper game of war.

“And then, the health, the strength, the freshness of these things; the pleasure they give us in after-time when by the camp fire in the evening we run back in memory some day of bygone chase. Well, now we have other work to do. This run has taken us far from our trail. The sun gets low upon the plain. We must away.”

So taking with us a few tit-bits of the wapiti, we retraced our steps to where the pack-horses had been left with Donogh when I joined the pursuit, and then rode briskly towards the now declining sun.

By sunset we came in sight of a small creek, on the banks of which grew a few dark pine-trees. Beneath one of these pines we made our camp; the horses found good pasturage along the edge of the creek, and from a high sand dune which rose behind the camp the Sioux pointed out to us our course for the morrow.

As we stood together on the summit of the sand ridge, the scene that lay to the west was enough to make even the oldest voyageur pause in wonder as he beheld it. Many a long mile away, over a vast stretch of prairie, the western sky blazed in untold hues of gold, saffron, orange, green, and purple. Down to the distant rim of the prairie, the light shone clear and distinct. No fog, no smoke blurred the vast circle of the sky-line. Never before had we realized at a single glance the vastness of earthly space. The lustrous sky made dim the intervening distance, and added tenfold to the sense of immensity.

The Indian pointed his finger full towards the spot where the sun had gone down.

“There lies our course,” he said. “Would that, like yon sunset, the prairie land circled the world, then we might for ever travel into the west.”

“Well, master, we’re in the big wilderness, surely,” said Donogh, as he stood by my side watching intently this vast ocean of grass, slowly sinking into night beneath the many-hued splendours of the western skies. “When we used to sit together on the top of Seefin, talking of the lands beyond the seas, I didn’t think that one short year would carry us so far.”

“How do you like it, Donogh?” I asked him.

“Like it, sir! I like it as long as it holds you in it. And I like it for all the fine wild birds and beasts it has. But I’d like it better if it had a few more hills, just to remind me of Coolrue, and the rest of the old mountains about Glencar!”

“We’ll come to the hills all in good time,” I replied. “There, beyond where you see the sun has gone down, twenty long days’ riding from here you will see hills that will make Seefin and Coolrue seem only hillocks in comparison—mountains where the snow never melts.”

“What name do the Indians call the Rocky Mountains?” I asked Red Cloud, who was listening to our conversation.

“The Blackfeet call them the Ridge of the World,” he answered. “My people named them the Mountains of the Setting Sun; and the Assineboines, who dwell at their feet, call them the Hills of Life and Death, because they say that the spirits of the dead climb them to look back on life, and forward on the happy hunting-grounds.”

“Do you hear, Donogh?” I said.

He laughed as he answered,—

“Who knows but we’ll see Glencar from there, sir?”

[CHAPTER IV.]

We reach the hills of the Wolverine—Something moves far out upon the plains—The wounded Cree—His story—Adventure with a grizzly bear—Left alone—A long crawl for life—Hunger, thirst, and travail—A grizzly again—“The Great Spirit, like an eagle, looks down upon the prairie”—Saved—Watched.

In five days’ easy travel, riding each day at a kind of amble, half trot half walk, we reached the hills of the Wolverine, a low range of ridges surrounded upon all sides by a vast plain. We pitched camp close beside a small lake which was situated nigh the western extremity of the group of hills, and from the top of a ridge behind the lodge the eye ranged over an expanse the greater part of which was destitute of trees.

It was the Indian’s wont every evening, after camp had been made, to make a long circuit around the camping-place armed with his fowling-piece. From these excursions he usually returned at dusk, bringing with him a brace of wild ducks or a few prairie grouse for the morning meal.

On the evening of our arrival at the Touchwood Hills he and I set out as usual upon this evening ramble, leaving Donogh to look after the camp. Ascending the ridge I have spoken of, we surveyed intently the plain which stretched from the base of the hill on which we stood until it was lost to sight in the western horizon. It was so vast a prospect that the eye wandered over it for a length of time ere it could note even the nearer portion that lay well within the range of vision. The Sioux took a long survey of the scene. Shading his eyes with his hands, he slowly traversed the great circle of the horizon; then his gaze sought the nearer landscape, passing along it in a manner that left no portion of the field of sight unscanned. As thus he looked, [his] slow-moving [eyes all at once became] steadily [fixed upon one object set within the mid-distance] of the scene. To an ordinary eye it appeared a speck, a rock, or a bush, or perhaps some stray wolf roving the plain in search of food; to the quick eye of the Sioux it was none of these things. It moved very slowly in the landscape; it appeared to stop at times and then to go on again, keeping generally the same direction. It was slowly approaching the Wolverine Hills. At last the Sioux seemed to satisfy himself as to the nature of this slow-moving object. Quitting the summit, he descended with rapid steps to the camp, caught his horse, told me to secure mine, passed a piece of leather into his mouth as bridle, and springing upon his bare back and calling upon me to follow, set off at a gallop into the plain in the direction of the strange object.

[His eyes all at once became fixed upon one object set within the mid-distance.]

It yet wanted about half an hour of sunset, and by riding hard we would reach the spot ere night had closed in; for darkness comes quickly on the heels of the day in the prairie, and though a lustrous after-glow lives sometimes in the western sky, the great plain instantly grows dim when the sun has gone beneath the horizon. From the lower level of the plain at the foot of the hills no sign was visible of the object which he had seen from the summit; but this mattered little to the Sioux, whose practised eye had taken in the line of direction by other objects, and his course was now held straight upon his mark.

When we reached the neighbourhood of the spot in which he had last seen the moving object, he pulled up his horse and looked around him on every side. There was nothing to be seen. The plain lay around us motionless and silent, already beginning to grow dark in the decreasing light. A man gifted with less acute sight would have rested satisfied that the moving object which he had looked upon was a wild animal—a wolf or a wolverine, whose sharp sense of sound alarmed at the approach of man, had caused it to seek concealment; but the Indian had noticed certain peculiarities in the object that led him to form other conclusions regarding its nature. In a loud, clear voice he called out in an Indian language that he was a friend, and that whoever was near need have no fear to discover himself.

“It is the Red Cloud who speaks,” he said. “No Indian need fear to meet him.” Scarcely had he thus spoken when from a dry watercourse near at hand there rose up a figure which seemed in the twilight to be that of a man who was unable to lift himself fully upon his feet. He was distant about one hundred yards from us, and it was evident from the manner in which he drew himself out of the depression in which he had lain concealed from sight, that he had difficulty in making any movement. As the figure emerged from the hollow, it resumed the crouching attitude which had been first noticed. We were soon beside this strange apparition. It proved to be a young Indian of the Cree nation, a man so spent and worn, so thin in face and figure, and so tattered in dress, that he scarcely resembled a human being. He was utterly unable to rise from a kneeling position. One arm hung at his side, broken below the elbow; one leg was painfully dragged after him along the ground; his leather dress hanging in tatters upon his back showed many cuts and bruises upon his body. The Sioux spoke a few words to this wretched object; but the man answered in such a broken voice and rambling manner that little could be gleaned from what he said.

The Sioux having dismounted for a better examination of this maimed creature, now lifted him without difficulty on to his own horse; then mounting himself, we set off at an easy pace for the camp. The man now appeared quite senseless, his head and feet hanging down the horse’s sides like that of a dead body. The night had quite closed in when we rounded the base of the outer line of hills and came full into the firelight of the camp. Donogh was astonished to see us bearing back to camp an apparently lifeless body, which was immediately taken from the horse and laid on the ground before the fire.

The warmth of the fire, and a drink of hot tea which was soon given him, brought consciousness back again to the poor creature. For a while he looked wildly and vacantly around, seemed slowly to take in the new state of existence that had so quickly come to him, then he seized the vessel of tea that Donogh was holding near his lips and drained it to the dregs. Some time elapsed, however, ere he could answer in a collected manner the questions put to him by the Sioux, but by degrees the following story was elicited. It ran thus:—

“More than forty days ago I quitted a camp of Crees near the Lone Mountain prairie to go south on the war-trail, there were fourteen of us in all; our horses were fat, and we travelled fast. On the fifth day we reached the woody hills. There were no Indians near, and we began to hunt buffalo, which were numerous over all the prairies south of the Qu’appelle river.

“It was about the tenth day that one of our party, who had gone out with the horses in the morning, came back to camp saying that he had struck the trail of a large grizzly bear some little distance from where we lay. Four of us started out with him to hunt the bear; I was one of them. We soon struck the trail. The bear had crossed a ravine and ascended a steep bank beyond; the side of this bank was covered with cotton-wood thicket. We followed the trail right into the thicket; we were all on foot. All at once we heard, as we walked in file along the trail, a heavy tread sounding close at hand, and a loud breaking of branches and dry sticks. Then appeared in front the object of our chase. He was a very large grizzly, and so wicked that he did not wait for us to attack him, but came all at once full upon us.

“I stood second in the line. The foremost brave sprang aside to enable me to fire, and also to get clear of our line himself. I levelled my gun and fired full upon the huge beast; one or two other shots sounded about me, but I saw through the smoke that the bear had not been killed by them—he was advancing right upon me. I stepped back on one side, with the intention of running until I could again load my gun, but at that instant the upraised root of a tree caught my foot, and I fell full upon the ground almost at the feet of the advancing animal, now doubly maddened by the wounds he had received. I had only time to draw my knife from my belt when he was full upon me. I struck blindly at him, but it was no use, his claws and his teeth were fastened in my flesh; I was bruised, wounded and torn ere I could repeat the blow with my knife. Then I heard two or three shots above my head, a heavy crushing weight fell upon me, and I knew no more.

“When next I knew what was passing around me everything was changed. I was a helpless cripple; my leg and my arm had both been broken; I was torn all over my body. My companions had carried me back to camp, but what could they do with me? They were all braves whose work is war and the chase; our women and old men lay far away, six long days’ riding, ten easy days’ travel. Besides we were on the war-path. At any moment the Blackfeet might appear. I would be worse than useless to my friends, I would be a burden to them. I read their thoughts in their faces, and my mind was made up.

“‘Dry plenty of buffalo meat,’ I said to them; ‘put it where my hand can reach it; lay me by the edge of the stream of water; then go away and leave me to die here. Destroy the trail as you go away, so that no one will ever find the spot, and my scalp will not hang in the lodge of a Blackfoot.’

“They did as I told them; they put beside me a pile of dry buffalo meat; they loaded my gun and left it at my right hand, so that I could defend myself against a wild beast while my life lasted; and they laid my blanket by the edge of a stream of water, so that I could get drink without moving; then one by one they wished me good-bye, and I saw them depart for ever.

“It was the middle of the day when they thus left me. When they were all gone and I could no more hear the sound of man or horse, I felt very lonely, and wished to die. I saw the daylight growing dim and the night coming down through the trees. Then I felt hungry, and taking some meat from the pile beside me, I ate it, drank some water, and slept.

“When I awoke next morning I felt better. My leg and arm were both useless, but my flesh-wounds were beginning to heal, and I did not seem so weak as I had been. That day passed, and another, and another. I began to get accustomed to the solitude, and to watch everything around me. Two whiskey jacks came and sat looking at me on a branch close to my head. I threw small bits of meat to them, and at last they came so close that they took the food from my hand and hopped over my body. I was glad to have them, they were company to me during the long daylight hours. About ten days passed, and I was still alive—alive, and gaining strength day by day. What was to be done? I looked at my store of meat, and saw that it could not last more than ten days; after that time I would starve to death. I began to think very anxiously on what I could do to save myself from this death. To stay where I was, meant to die a lingering death after ten days. I thought I would try to move and practise myself in moving even on my hands and knees. Each day I crept more and more about the thicket in which I had been. I crept to the edge of it and looked out over the plains. They lay around me to the north and west far as my eye could reach. They never seemed so large to me before. I saw buffalo feeding a long way off towards the north; that was the way we had come. My camp lay away in that direction—but so far. I thought over the direction in my mind; I remembered all the streams we had crossed, the places where we had camped, the hills and the valleys we had passed: it seemed as long as a dream at night.

“For four days I kept moving to and fro, crawling on hands and knees about the thicket. I began to go farther and farther away from it, and each day I found I could move faster. I had the use of one leg and one arm quite strong; the other arm was sound to the elbow, but the hand was helpless; my left leg had been broken below the knee. I felt much pain when I moved, but that did not matter; anything was better than lying in the trees waiting for death. On the sixth day after this I put together all that remained of my dry meat store, and with nothing but my knife in my belt (I never could have carried my gun), I crawled forth from the camp in which I had lain during so many days. I held my slow way towards the north almost along the same line we had travelled but a month earlier, when we swept so swiftly along over the prairie.

“For many hours I plodded on. It seemed as though I could never get out of sight of the thicket; often I looked back, and there it was still close to me; at last the night hid it from sight, and I stretched my aching limbs upon the ground.

“All next day I went on. About noon I came to a stream, drank deeply, and washed my wounds in the cool water; again I crawled on towards the north, and slept again in the middle of the plain.

“By the fifth day I had finished the last scrap of my meat. I now looked about anxiously for the bodies of buffalo that had been killed. On our journey down we had killed many buffaloes, and I was now passing over ground where we had hunted twenty days before; but it is one thing to look for buffalo on horseback, and another thing to seek for it lying level upon the ground. I could not see far before or around me; sometimes I crawled to the top of a hillock for a wider survey of the plain. The night came, I lay down without food or water. Next morning I began to move as soon as it was light enough to see. I made for a small hill that stood a little to one side of my line; from its top I saw, a long distance away from my course, a small black speck. I knew it to be a dead buffalo. I made for it, but it was noon when I had reached it. I ate a little, then cut with my knife as much as I could carry, and set out to find water, for I was very thirsty. I held on in the direction of a valley I had noticed from the top of a hill. It was sunset when I got to it, and to my great joy I found water; then I ate a great deal of my meat and drank plentifully of the water, and lay down to sleep, happy.

“The next morning I ate and drank again, and then set out once more. Day by day I went on; sometimes I dragged myself all day along, starving and thirsty; sometimes I had to lie down at night with burning throat; sometimes I came to a buffalo, so long killed that of his flesh the wolves had left nothing except the skin and muscle of the head and hide. At night when I had got no food during the day I used to dream of old times, when the camp had feasted upon freshly-killed buffalo, when the squaws had dressed the tongues; and at other times I thought I had some moose noses before me, and was seated in my lodge while the briskets were being boiled over the fire in the centre; and then my lips would open and close, and I heard my teeth strike together as though I had been eating, and I woke to find I was weak and hungry, and that only the great dark prairie lay around me.

“At last I lost all count of the days. I only thought of three things—food, drink, and the course I had to travel. My pain had become so much my life that I had ceased to think about it. One day I was as usual dragging myself along when I noticed right in front of me an object that filled my heart with terror. Before me, over the ridge of an incline which I was ascending, appeared two small pointed objects. They were sharply seen against the sky over the rim of the ridge. I knew instantly what they were. I knew that under these two small pointed objects there were the head and body of a grizzly bear. He was lying there right in my onward path, watching for buffalo. I knew that he had seen me while afar, and that he now awaited my approach, thinking that I was some wild animal of whose capture he was certain.

“I laid myself flat upon the ground, and then I drew away to the left, and when I had gained what I had deemed sufficient distance I again tried to ascend the incline; but again, full in my front, I saw the dreaded pointed tips over the prairie ridge. The bear had seen me as I moved to the left, and he too had gone in that direction to intercept me on the brow of the hill. Again I laid myself flat upon the prairie and crawled away to one side, this time taking care not to attempt to cross the ridge until I had gone a long way to the flank. Creeping very cautiously up the hill, I looked over the ridge. The bear was nowhere to be seen. I made all haste to leave behind the spot so nearly fatal to me, and continuing to crawl long after night had fallen, I at length lay down to sleep, feeling more tired, and hungry, and exhausted, than I had yet been since I set out first upon my long journey. That was only a few days since. Three days ago I came in sight of these hills, they filled my heart with hope; but only last night I had again to lie exposed to a great danger—a band of Indians passed me making for these hills. I could hear them speaking to one another as they went by; they were Assineboine Indians on the war-path; they were so close that some of their horses scented me, for I heard one say, ‘Fool, it is only a wolf you start from.’

“This morning I almost gave up hope of ever reaching succour. I knew my people must have left these hills, or else the Stonies could not have been there. Then I thought that some of their scouts would be sure to see me on the plain, and that it would be better to lie down in some watercourse and die there, than to die at the hands of my enemies and have my scalp hung at the mane of an Assineboine’s horse; but when I thought of all that I had gone through—of how, when I had been dying of thirst, water had lain in my track—of how I had found food when starving,—I took hope again, and said to myself, ‘The Great Spirit sees me. Like an eagle in the mid-day, His eye is cast down upon the prairie; He has put food and water on the plain; He has shielded me from the grizzly, and wrapt the night around me when my enemies passed near me. I will not lie down and die; I will go on still, in hope.’

“Well, I went on, and it grew dark once more. I was determined to drag on until I reached these hills, for I knew that there was plenty of water here. Then all at once I heard the noise of a horse’s hoofs, and I hid myself, thinking it was an Assineboine scout; and then I heard your voice, and I knew that I was safe.”

Such was the story.

The poor fellow spoke in his native tongue, which the Sioux understood, and as to him many Indian dialects were familiar, interpreted to me as we sat at the camp fire. The Red Cloud, familiar as his life had made him with every phase of hardship of Indian existence on the great prairie, had never before met with such a singular instance of Indian fortitude and perseverance as this was; but the concluding portion of the Cree’s narrative had roused other thoughts in his mind, and to these he directed his questions.

“The Assineboines that passed by you last night,” he said, “how many might they have numbered?”

“They were but few,” answered the Cree; “about fifteen men.”

“What part of the hills were they making for?”

“They were on a line that would lead them north of where we now are.”

The Sioux remained silent for some time. He was thinking deeply upon the presence of this war-party. It boded trouble in the future. It was true he had quarrel with no Indian tribe; but a small war-party of fifteen braves is not particular on the score of cause of enmity, and if horses are to be captured or scalps taken, it usually matters little whether actual war has been declared beforehand; and the adage that those who are not with me are against me, holds good on such wild raids as that upon which the party seen by the Cree were now bound. Thinking out many different courses, and weighing well their various probabilities of success or failure, the Sioux at length wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down to rest. We had spread a blanket for the Cree, and had done all we could to make him comfortable. At first the poor creature seemed scarcely to understand the meaning of so much kindness and attention from a stranger. Under the influence of a good supper he soon forgot the fearful hardships which he had so lately passed through, and the full realization of his immediate safety seemed to obliterate all anxiety for the future. And yet, as he now lay by the camp fire of his preserver there was as much danger hanging over him as ever had threatened him in the darkest moment of his terrible journey.

Over the brow of a hill close by, a pair of watchful eyes were looking into the camp, intently noting every movement in and around it.

[CHAPTER V.]

An Assineboine camp—The trader McDermott—The chief “Wolverine”—Fire-water and finesse—The Assineboine war-party—A chance of a Cree scalp—The trader hears a well-known name—A big bid for murder, two hundred skins!

The events that now began to unfold themselves in my life and in those of my companions, took shape and context only after long lapse of time had passed by.

It was frequently when months had vanished that I learned the various threads of action which had led to incidents of more or less importance to me. Hitherto I had been only a boy-actor in the drama of existence. I was now about to become a sharer in a larger sphere of action, and to participate in scenes of adventure the springs of which were involved in the lives and actions of other men. Writing now as I do from a standpoint of life which looks back across many years to those early adventures, I am able to set down the record with its various parts complete. I can see the lines of life upon which other men moved, and can trace the impulses upon which they acted—can fill in, as it were, the gaps between their action and mine own, and give to the story of my life at that period an insight into events which then lay veiled from me by distance. It will therefore be necessary, in order that my readers may comprehend clearly the thread of the events I am about to relate, that I should at times carry them away to scenes in which personally I was not an actor, and that they should occasionally o’erleap the boundaries of the moment to look upon a far wider theatre of events than I myself had at the time beheld.

We will therefore leave the scene at the camp-fire in the Wolverine hills, and travel in imagination a hundred miles to the south-west, where, on one of the sources of the Qu’appelle river, a large camp of Assineboines, or Stone Indians, is pitched.

The camp is a large one, for the buffalo have been numerous all the summer long on the prairies south of the Qu’appelle, and many scattered bands of the tribe have come together to hunt and feast upon the mighty herd. [A brisk trade is being carried on] too in skins and robes; for a rich trader has arrived in the camp, with goodly store of guns, blankets, trinkets, powder and ball, and beads; and chief and brave, and squaw and boy, are busy at the work of barter and exchange.

[A brisk trade is being carried on.]

On the evening we speak of, the chief of the Assineboines was seated smoking in his lodge, when the leather door was raised and the figure of a white man entered. It was McDermott, the trader from the Red River.

The Wolverine extended his hand to the new comer, the trader shook it, seated himself on the opposite side of the small, clear wood fire that burned in the centre of the lodge, and began to smoke in silence. The Indian scarcely moved a muscle, but sat smoking too, his eyes fixed upon the flame. At last the trader broke silence. “Has any news come of the young men who are on the war-path?” he asked.

“No,” answered the Wolverine, “they will carry their own news; when they have something to tell and to show, then they will return.”

McDermott had his own reasons for asking; he wanted horses, and he knew that if the war-party was successful he would obtain them for a trifle. Horses lightly got upon the war-path, are lightly parted with by their captors. A trading gun and some ball and powder would purchase a good horse in the camp; ten guns’ value would not buy him in the English settlement on the Red river.

The Wolverine knew well that the trader did not ask these questions without good reason; and although he had that day received news of the war-party, both of their whereabouts and future movements, he was not going to give the smallest item of that news to his questioner without receiving some substantial return for it.

On his part McDermott was also aware that a messenger had come in during the day from the war-party, but of the purport of the news, or the movements of the party, he could not glean any tidings; but he had brought with him to the lodge of the Wolverine a potent key to unlock the secret store of that chief's mind, and as he now produced from his pocket a bottle of the strongest fire-water, there came a look into the impassive eye of the old Indian opposite that told the trader at once that the information he sought for would soon be his.

Taking a small tin vessel, he poured out into it some of the fiery poison, and handed the cup across the fire to the chief. As his hand passed over the flame he shook a few drops of the spirit on the fire; a bright blue flame shot quickly up, illuminating all the interior of the lodge and lighting up the dusky features of the Wolverine, whose arm was already outstretched to receive the drink he so deeply thirsted for.

“It is good fire-water,” he said as he saw the blaze, “so it will light up the heart of the red man as it does this red stick.”

McDermott cautiously refrained for some moments from asking any more questions of the whereabouts of the war-party. A perfect adept in the ways of Indian trade, he knew the fire-water would soon do its work on the brain of the Wolverine.

The Indian drank, and returned the empty cup to his visitor.

“I wished to learn the movements of your young men,” said McDermott after a long pause, during which his sharp eye had noted the Indian’s face as he sat glowering over the fire, “because I am about to quit this camp, and I am afraid they may come upon my horses at night and mistake them for those of an enemy.”

“What direction do you travel?” asked the chief.

“Towards the settlement,” replied the trader. “My supplies are nearly exhausted, and it is time to return home.”

This was a lie. He had no intention whatever of leaving the plains, and the best portion of his goods he had kept concealed from the Assineboines in a cache on the Qu’appelle river. For the third time he filled the cup, and already the eye, glistening in the firelight like that of a serpent, told the effect the fiery liquor was having upon the Wolverine’s brain. “I want you,” went on the trader, “to send with me the Indian who came to-day from the war-party. He will protect my horses from being taken, in case I should fall in with your young men.”