"I followed the four braves who were bent on your capture, and saw the affair in the swamp. When you rode away, one whom I supposed dead, arose and joined with another whose leg I had thought was broken in getting out the horses. One brave was really dead, and he has by this time sunk in the bog. A fourth had a broken arm, and he went away with the other two. They will not pursue again, so you may sleep in peace till the rise of sun. I shall put my blanket here. Should one approach, the ears of Little Poplar are as keen while the spirit of sleep hovers over him as while he is awake."
Julie's dreams were very happy that night.
On the morrow Little Poplar informed them that his heart was not now as much with the white people as it had been some little time ago. He was aware that the braves were for the most part unreasonable, and that they were easily led into wrong as well as to right doing.
"They have, I admit, committed some excesses; but it never can be forgotten that strangers have taken possession of their hunting grounds, and that, if they have no substitute to offer, the red children of the plains must die. My tongue could not tell, mademoiselle, nor your brain conceive, the sufferings that I have seen among our people in the long bitter winters, with only the snow for wrappers, and pieces of dried skins for food. Will the white man die of hunger while food is within his reach? No, he will beg it first, and then he will take by violence; but I have seen the young maiden and the withered crone gasp their last breath away upon the snow, while ranches teeming with cattle lay not an hour's march away.
"If an Indian, with a wife, and a lodge full of children dying on a bitter winter's day of hunger, turn a calf from some nigh herd of white man's cattle, alarming tidings fly to the east, and white men and women learn, in their sumptuous houses, that the Indians do naught but plunder. But they would have no need, I repeat, to lay hands upon the ranchers' cattle if the white man had not come and stripped them of their boundless heritage, and put them upon reservations where a buffalo may never come. [Footnote: The words in the mouth of this chief are not exaggerations, and it is God's own truth that during late winters dozen after dozen of Indians, men and women and children, perished in the snow after they had devoured the skins that covered them. Yet these poor people are said to be under "the paternal care of Government." Alas, our public men are only concerned in playing their wretched political game, and they sit intriguing, while the helpless creatures committed to their care perish like dogs, of hunger, in their lodges.—E.C.]
"And some of the soldiers who have come here from the east are more bent on earning reputation than on making peace. Some of their leaders do not want the cheap glory of 'killing a lot of Indians;' and I have with my own ears heard one of the Ontario magistrates, Col. Denison, declare that he did next come here to kill, but to prevent killing. If military affairs were now to be given into the hands of some men like him it would prove better for all concerned.
"But there is another officer, Major Beaver, who has made amazing marches; his men, in fact, have travelled like March hares. But give me a bluff, and fifty braves, and not one of all his rash and rushing followers will get back again to Ontario to boast of their deeds of daring.
"Some of our men have been guilty of excesses, but Government gave them its solemn pledge that if they returned to their reserves no harm should come to them. All of my braves have gone back, because I gave them the assurance that some of the officers gave to me. Yet, if I mistake not, Major Beaver is at this moment planning an attack upon us. His young men want to kill a few Indians, provided the thing can be done without any risk; and then they will be described as great heroes in the newspapers. They would fare very badly if they had to return without having 'a brush,' as the more war-like of them have put it, in the hearing of some of my friends."
"Yes, mon chef," Annette replied, "but you say that Colonel Denison and others advocate a healing of the present sores, and pacific measures. Then there are others who have always sympathized with the Indian, like Mr. Mair. Mon pere tells me that he has been for some time engaged on a beautiful poem, intended to show the injustice that has been heaped upon the children of the plains. With good counsels like these, surely no outrage will be done unto your people."
"And now, where do the two brave scouts purpose going?" the chief enquired, as they came in sight of a small settlement nestling around the edge of a coil in the Saskatchewan.