"Brava, brava," and the girl heard many words of warm commendation spoken in the boat. Then letting her luminous eyes linger for a moment with a tender longing upon the barge, she raised her voice, saying,
"Bon voyage Messieurs," and was off through the dark like a swallow.
Meanwhile tidings of atrocities committed by Indians upon unoffending settlers, began to set the blood shivering in the veins of persons throughout the continent; and one horrible circumstance, bearing upon the story, I shall relate. At the distant settlement of Frog Lake, at the commencement of the tumult, when night came down, Indians, smeared in hideous, raw, earthy-smelling paint, would creep about among the dwellings, and peer, with eyes gleaming with hate, through the window-panes at the innocent and unsuspecting inmates. At last one chief, with a diabolical face, said,
"Brothers, we must be avenged upon every white man and woman here. We will shoot them like dogs." The answer to this harangue was the clanking of barbaric instruments of music, the brandishing of tomahawks, and the gleam of hunting-knives. Secretly the Indians went among the Bois-Brules squatting about, and revealed their plans; but some of these people shrank with fear from the proposal. Others, however, said,
"We shall join you." So the plan was arranged, and it was not very long before it was carried out. And now runners were everywhere on the plains, telling that Marton had a mighty army made up of most of the brave Indians of the prairies, and comprising all the dead shots among the half-breeds; that he had encountered heavy forces of police and armed civilians, and overthrown them without losing a single man.
"Now is our time to strike," said the Indian with the fiendish face, and the wolf-like eyes.
Therefore, the 2nd day of April was fixed for the holding of a conference between the Indians and the white settlers. The malignant chief had settled the plan.
"When the white faces come to our lodge, they will expect no harm. Ugh! Then the red man will have his vengeance." So every Indian was instructed to have his rifle at hand in the lodge. The white folk wondered why the Indians had arranged for a conference.
"We can do nothing to help their case," they said. "It will only waste time to go." Many of them, therefore, remained at home, occupying themselves with their various duties, while the rest, merely for the sake of agreeableness, and of showing the Indians that they were interested in their affairs, proceeded to the place appointed for the pow-wow.
"We hope to smoke our pipes before our white brothers go away from us," was what the treacherous chief, with wolfish eyes, had said, in order to put the settlers off their guard.