CHAPTER XVII
A CLOSE CALL
As the would-be priest and originator of two rebellions approached Pasmore, the ragged, wild-eyed, clamorous crowd made way for him. It was ludicrous to note the air of superiority and braggadocio that this inordinately vain and ambitious man adopted. The prisoner was standing surrounded by his now largely augmented guard, who, forgetful of one another's contiguity, had their many wonderfully and fearfully made blunderbusses levelled at him, ready to blow him into little pieces at a moment's notice if he made the slightest attempt to resist or escape. Great would have been the slaughter amongst the metis if this had happened.
"Prisoner," said Riel, with a decided French accent, "you are a spy." He fixed his dark grey eyes upon Pasmore angrily, and jerked out what he had to say.
"I fail to see how one who wears the Queen's uniform can be a spy," said Pasmore, undoing the leather tags of his long buffalo coat and showing a serge jacket with the regimental brass button on it.
"Ah, that is enough—one of the Mounted Police! What are you doing in this camp?"
"It is I who should be asking you that question. What are you doing under arms? Another rebellion? Be warned by me, Monsieur Riel, and stop this bloodshed as you value your immortal soul."
He knew that through the fanatic's religion lay the only way of reaching him at all.
But the only effect these words had upon Riel was to further incense the arch rebel.
"Bind him, and search him," he cried.
Pasmore knew that resistance was hopeless, so quietly submitted. Their mode of tying him was unique. They put a rope round his waist, leaving his arms free, while the two ends were held on either side by a couple of men. His late guard, the big breed, who could not have been such a bad fellow, discovered his pipe, tobacco, and matches in one pocket, but withdrew his hand quickly.
"Nozing thar," he declared.
Whether or not he thought the prisoner might soon require them on his way to the Happy Hunting Grounds is a matter of speculation.
They took his pocket-knife and keys, and in the inner pocket of his jacket they found the usual regimental papers and weekly reports pertaining to the Police Detachment. These are alike as peas throughout the Territories, and not of the slightest value or interest, save to those directly concerned, but to Riel it was a great find. He spread them out, scanned a few lines here and there, opened his eyes wide, pursed his lips, and then, as if it were superfluous pursuing the matter further, waved his hand in a melodramatic fashion, and cried—
"It is enough! He is of the Police. He has also been found spying in camp, and the penalty for that is death. I hear he is one of the men who ran down and shot Heinault, who was one of the people. Let him be taken to the same spot and shot also. He took the blood of the metis—let the metis now take his! Away with him!"
Such a wild yelling, whooping, and brandishing of guns took place at these words that Pasmore thought there would be little necessity to take him to the spot where "Wild Joe" of tender memory slept. When an antiquated fowling-piece actually did go off, and shot an Indian in the legs, the uproar was inconceivable. Pasmore thought of Rory's dogs having a sporting five minutes, and smiled, despite the gravity of the situation. But order was restored, and with Riel and two of his so-called "generals" in the lead, and a straggling crowd of human beings and dogs following, the prisoner was led slowly towards the spot fixed for his execution.
Past the piles of smouldering ashes, and tracks strewn, with all sorts of destroyed merchandise, they went. They had looted the stores to their hearts' content, and were now rioting in an excess of what to them was good living; but where those short-sighted creatures expected to get fresh supplies from is a question they probably never once put to themselves.
Silent and powerless in King Frost's embrace lay the great river. How like beautiful filagree work some of the pine-boughs looked against the snow banks and the pale blue sky! How lovely seemed the whole world! Pasmore was thinking about many things, but most he was thinking of some one whom he hoped was now making her way over the snow, and for whose sake he was now here. No, he did not grudge his life, but it was a strange way to die after all his hopes—mostly shattered ones; to be led like a brute beast amongst a crowd of jeering half-breeds who, only a few days before, were ready to doff their caps at sight of him; and to be shot dead by them with such short shrift, and because he had only done his duty!…
They were coming to the rise now. How like a gallows that tall, dead, scraggy pine looked against the pale grey! How the hound-like mob alongside yelled and jeered! One of them—he knew him well—he of the evil Mongolian-like eyes and snaky locks—whom he had spoken a timely word to a year ago and saved from prison—from some little distance took the opportunity of throwing a piece of frozen snow at Pasmore. It struck the policeman behind the ear, causing him to feel sick and dizzy. He felt the hot blood trickling down his neck, and he heard one or two of the pack laughing.
"He will be plenty dead soon," said one. "What does it matter?"
But the big breed, with a touch of that humanity which beats down prejudice and makes us all akin, turned upon the now unpleasantly demonstrative rabble, and swore at them roundly. In another moment Pasmore was himself again, and he could see that gallows-like tree right in front of him… And what was that hulking brute alongside saying about skulking shermoganish? Was he going to his death hearing the uniform he wore insulted by cowardly brutes without making a resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much the hope these few words carried with them, as the spirit in which they were uttered, that stayed Pasmore's precipitate action. He knew that no help would come from the invested Fort, but God at times brought about many wonderful things.
As they led him up the rough, conical mound he breathed a prayer for Divine aid. It would be nothing short of a miracle now if in a few minutes he were not dead. They faced him about and tied him to the tree; and now he looked down upon the upturned faces of the wild-eyed, fiery-natured rebels.
Riel stepped forward with the papers in his hand.
"Prisoner," he said, "you have been caught red-handed, and the metis will it that you must die. Is it not so?" He turned to the crowd. "On the spot where he now stands he spilt the blood of the metis. What say you?"
There was a hoarse yell of assent from the followers of the fanatic.
Riel turned to one of his generals, who cried to some one in the crowd. It was the next of kin to Heinault, who had been shot on that very spot, and in very truth he looked a fit representative of the man who had perished for his crimes. He was indeed an ill-looking scoundrel. There was a gratified grin upon his evil face. He knew Pasmore of old, and Pasmore had very good reason to know him. Their eyes met.
"Now you will nevare, nevare threaten me one, two, three times again," he cried.
Pasmore looked into the cruel, eager face of the breed, and he knew that no hope lay there. Then he caught the gleam of snow on the crest of the opposite ridge—it was scintillating as if set with diamonds. How beautiful was that bit of blue seen through the pillar-like stems of the pines!
Pasmore's thoughts were now elsewhere than with his executioners, when unexpectedly there came an interruption. There was a hurried scattering of the crowd at the foot of the mound, and Pepin Quesnelle, leading his bear, appeared upon the scene. That his short legs had been sorely tried in reaching the spot there could be little doubt, for his face was very red, and it was evident he had wrought himself into something very nearly approaching a passion.
Riel, who had at first turned round with an angry exclamation on his lips, seemed somewhat startled when he saw the weird figures before him, for he, too, like the breeds and Indians, was not without a species of superstitious dread of the manikin and his strange attendant. The executioner glared at the intruder angrily.
"Wait, you just wait one bit—coquin, rascal, fool!" gasped Pepin, pulling up within a few yards of him, and shaking his stick. "You will not kill that man, I say you will not! I know you, Leon Heinault; it is because this man will stop you from doing as your vile cousin did that you want to shoot him." He turned to Riel. "Tell him to put down that gun!"
But Riel had the dignity of his position to maintain before the crowd, and although he would not meet the black, bead-like eyes of the dwarf, with no little bluster, he said—
"This man is a spy, and he must die. He is of the hated English, and it is the will of the Lord that His people, the metis, inherit the land."
"And I say, Louis Riel, that it is the will of the Lord that this man shall not die!" reiterated the dwarf, emphasising his words with a flourish of his stick.
Then an uncanny thing happened that to this day the metis speak about with bated breath, and the Indians are afraid to mention at all. Heinault, who during the wrangle had concluded that his quarry was about to slip through his hands, took the opportunity of raising his gun to the shoulder. But ere he could pull the trigger there was the whistle of a bullet, and he fell dead in the snow. Then, somewhere from the wooded bluffs—for the echoes deceived one—there came the distant ring of a rifle.
The perspiration was standing in beads on Pasmore's forehead, for he would have been more than human had not the strain of the terrible ordeal told upon him. From a dogged abandonment to his fate, a ray of hope lit up the darkness that seemed to have closed over him. It filtered through his being, but he feared to let it grow, knowing the bitterness of hope's extinction. But the blue through the pines seemed more beautiful, and the snow on the crest of the ridge scintillated more cheerily.
As the would-be executioner fell, something like a moan of consternation ran through the crowd. The dwarf was the only one who seemed to take the tragedy as a matter of course. He was quick to seize the opportunity.
"It is as the Lord has willed," he said simply, pointing to the body.
But Riel, visibly taken aback by this sudden contretemps, knew only too well that his cause and influence would be imperilled if he allowed this manikin, of whom his people stood so much in awe, to get the better of him; and he was too quick-witted not to know exactly what to do. He turned to his officers, and immediately a number of breeds started out to scour the bluffs. Then he called upon five breeds and Indians by name to step forward, and to see that their rifles were charged. Pepin waited quietly until his arrangements were completed, and then, looking round upon the crowd with his dark eyes, and finally fixing them upon the arch rebel, he spoke with such strength and earnestness that his hearers stood breathless and spellbound. The file of men which had been drawn up to act as executioners, and the condemned man himself, hung upon his words. It was significant that, after the fatal shot had been fired, no one seemed to be apprehensive of a second.
"Louis Riel," he began, "you are one bigger fool than I did take you for!"
Riel started forward angrily, and was about to speak when the dwarf stopped him with a motion of his hand.
"You are a fool because you cannot see where you are going," he continued.
"Can't I, Mr. Hop-o'-my-thumb?" broke out the rebel in a white heat, shouldering his rifle.
But the dwarf raised his stick warningly, and catching Riel's shifty gaze, held it as if by some spell until the rifle barrel sunk lower inch by inch.
"If you do, Louis Riel, if you do, the Lord will give you short shrift!" he said. "Now, I will tell you what I see, and to you it ought to be plain, for you have been in Montreal and Quebec, and know much more than is known to the metis. I see—and it will come to pass long before the ice that is in one great mass in this river is carried down and melts in the big lakes, whose waters drain into the Bay of Hudson—I see the soldiers of the great Queen swarming all over the land in numbers like the gophers on the prairie. They have wrested from you Battleford, Prince Albert, and Batoche. I see a battlefield, and the soldiers of the Queen have the great guns—as big as Red River carts—that shoot high into the air as flies the kite, and rain down bullets and jagged iron like unto the hailstorms that sweep the land in summer time. I see the bodies of the metis lying dead upon the ground as thick as the sheaves of wheat upon the harvest-field. Many I see that crawl away into the woods to die, like to the timber-wolves when they have eaten of the poison. I see the metis scattered and homeless. I see you, Louis Riel, who have misled them, skulking alone in the woods like a hunted coyote, without rest night and day, with nothing to eat, and with no moccasins to your feet. But the red-coats will catch you, for there is no trail too long or too broken for the Riders of the Plains to follow. And, above all, and take heed, Louis Riel, I see the great beams of the gallows-tree looming up blackly against the grey of a weary dawn; and that will be your portion if you shoot this man. Put him in prison if you will, and keep him as a hostage; but if you spill innocent blood wantonly, as the Lord liveth, you shall swing in mid-air. And now I have spoken, and you have all seen how the hand of the Lord directed the bullet that laid that thing low. Remember this—there are more bullets!"
The dwarf paused, and there was a death-like stillness. Riel stood motionless, glaring into space, as if he still saw that picture of the gallows. While as for Pasmore, his heart was thumping against his ribs, for the spark of Hope within him had burst into flame, and he saw how beautiful was the blue between the columns of the pines.