Spurred on by the hot pursuit, the Indians fled faster and faster, till they reached Beaver River, which they crossed in hastily built coracles of hide stretched on willow frames. We, too, reached Beaver River, a fine stream flowing through a deep valley between steep, thickly wooded hillsides. Some of us got across, in a derelict canoe, and struck away north as far as Cold Lake; but Big Bear had clearly given us the slip. Great was our rejoicing when a messenger from Fort Pitt came after us with the news that all the prisoners had been saved.
It turned out that a band of friendly Indians, whom Big Bear had forced to go on the war path, and who had all along protected the prisoners from the wilder Crees, had one day lagged behind on pretence of mending their harness, and set the last of the white folk free as soon as the other Indians were out of sight.
Big Bear soon afterwards came down to Prince Albert and gave himself up. He and Poundmaker were sent to prison for a few months, while Riel and eight Indian murderers were hanged. The Métis were now assured of their rights, on the time-honored principle of locking the stable door after all the horses have been stolen. Even before receiving this assurance, the [a]Rebellion Extinct] rebels had settled down, quite as glad as we were to be done fighting. I wandered about among them alone for a time without meeting the slightest trace of ill will. The earth was still fresh in the rifle pits of Batoche, and the bullet scars raw on the trees of Duck Lake, but the rebellion was dead as a camp fire after a rain storm.
THE NEW TIMES
CHAPTER IX
Opening the Door of the West
DO YOU see that rough man with a key in his hand? It looks like a spade, you say—and so it is; but it is doing the work of a key. He strikes it into the soil; he digs up a sod. That is all you observe, till your imagination awakes—and then you see that he is opening the door of the West. He has turned the first sod of a railway line from the East.
The saving of the West from destruction, the swift suppression of revolt when delay might have rallied all the Indians to the rebel flag, was only made possible by the railway. But when the railway was planned there was no idea that it would be needed for such a purpose. It was not built for its military value.
True, the safeguarding of our country and our Empire in case of war had always been one aim of those far-sighted men who looked forward to a transcontinental railway on British soil. Such a line, enabling troops and munitions to be carried from Atlantic to Pacific in a few days, would clearly be a priceless advantage, and might even be the deciding factor in a life and death struggle; we know the immense help it gave in the life and death struggle we were plunged into a few years ago.
Yet the reasons which decided Canada to carry out this tremendous railway scheme were wholly peaceful—to [a]The Railway a National Necessity] open up a land of homes for loyal people on the plains, and to join the East and Centre with the farthest West; to unite our scattered little communities in one great Dominion.