"That voice!" exclaimed Stephen striking his forehead. "I know it surely; whose can it be?" and bewildered past hope of enlightenment, he turned his horse down the slope, and dashed towards the Saskatchewan. His followers and himself were admitted readily enough by Inspector Dicken, a son of the great novelist, and destined afterwards to be one of the heroes of the war.
When Annette rode away from Louis Riel to give warning to her lover, the rebel chief ground his teeth and swore terrible oaths.
"It is as well" he muttered; "I have now justifiable grounds for depriving her of liberty." Putting a whistle to his mouth he blew a long blast, which was immediately answered from a clump of cottonwood, about a quarter of a mile distant. Then came the tramp of hoofs, and a minute later a horseman drew bridle by his chief.
"The spy has escaped me, Jean, and he was none other than I supposed, ma belle Demoiselle. She did not deny that she was on a mission hostile to our interests, and when I remonstrated, she held a pistol in my face and swore by the Virgin that she would fire. This is reason enough, Jean, for her apprehension. Let us away."
The chief led along the skirt of the upland, till he entered the mouth of a wide, darksome valley. Upon either side straggled a growth of mixed larch and cedar; in the centre was a dismal bog, through which slowly rolled a black, foul stream. As they passed along the shoulder of solid ground, troops of birds rose out of the wide sea of bog, and the noise of their wings made a low, mournful whirring as they passed in dark troops upwards into the ever-deepening dusk.
Then out of the gloom came a Ding Dong, like the low, solemn beat of a bell. Jean crossed himself and exclaimed,
"Mon Dieu! What is that Monsieur?"
"What, afraid Jean? That is no toll for a lost soul, but the crying of the dismal bell bird."
"I never heard it before Mon Chef."
"And may never hear it again. It lives only in the most doleful and solitary swamps, and I doubt if there is another place in all the wide territories save here, where you may hear its voice."