Now that Dorothy knew the worst was about to happen, she, strangely enough, felt more self-possessed than she had done before. These rebels might kill her, or not, just as the mood swayed them, but she would let them see that the daughter of a white man was not afraid.
In that short walk to the chapel she reviewed her position. She hoped that by this time the others had managed to reach the Fort. If they had, then she could face with comparative equanimity what might happen to herself. Her only fear was what her father, in his distress on hearing of her capture, might do.
Fortunately it was not far to the chapel which Riel had converted into his headquarters. Indeed, he was only paying a hurried visit there to exhort the faithful and long-suffering metis and Indians to prompt and decisive action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot. A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel, "stickit priest," and now malcontent and political agitator by profession. This worthy gentleman had already cost the Government a rebellion, but why he should have been allowed to run to a second is one of those seeming mysteries that can only be accounted for by the too clement policy of a British Government.
Dorothy and her captors entered the small porch of the chapel and passed into the sacred edifice. For one like Riel, who had been educated for the priesthood in Lower Canada, it was a strange use to put such a place to. The scene when they entered almost defies description. It was crowded with breeds and Indians armed to the teeth with all manner of antiquated weapons. Most of them wore blue copotes and kept on their unplucked beaver caps or long red tuques. Haranguing them close to the altar was the great Riel himself, the terror of the Saskatchewan.
He did not look the dangerous, religious fanatic that he was in reality. He was about five feet seven in height, with red hair and beard. His face was pale and flabby, and his dark grey eyes, set close together, glowed when he spoke and were very restless. His nose was slightly aquiline, his neck long, and his lips thick. His voice, though low and gentle in ordinary conversation, was loud and abrupt now that he was excited.
He was so carried away by the exuberance of his own eloquence when Dorothy and her captors entered, that he still kept on in a state of rapt ecstasy. His semi-mystical oration was a weird jumble of religion and lawlessness, devout exhortation, riot, plunder, prayer, and pillage. He extolled the virtues of the murderous Poundmaker and Big Bear. He said that Mistawasis and Chicastafasin, the chiefs, and some others, were feeble of heart and backsliders, for they had left their reserves to escape being drawn into the trouble. Crowfoot, head chief of the Blackfoot nation, was protesting his loyalty to the Lieutenant-Governor, and his squaws would one day stone him to death as a judgment. Fort Pitt, Battleford and Prince Albert must shortly capitulate to them, and then the squaws would receive the white women of those places as their private prisoners to do with as their sweet wills suggested. Already many of the accursed whites had been slaughtered, as at Duck Lake, for instance, but many more had yet to die. They must be utterly exterminated, so that the elect might possess the land undisturbed.
At this point he caught sight of the newcomers. At a sign from him they approached.
"Ha!" he said, with an unctuous accent in his voice, and rubbing his hands like a miserable old Fagin, "Truly the Lord is delivering them into our hands. What are you, woman?"
But beyond her name Dorothy would at first tell him nothing. Her captors briefly stated the little they knew concerning her presence in the town. The self-constituted dictator tried bombast, threats and flattery to gain information from her, but they were of no avail. His authority being thus disputed by a woman, and his absurd self-esteem ruffled, he gave way to a torrent of abuse, but Dorothy was as if she heard it not. It was only when Riel was about to give instructions to his "General," Gabriel Dumont, and more of the members of his staff and "government" to instantly cause a search to be made in the camp for those who might have been with the girl, that she said he might do so if he chose, but it would be useless, as her friends must have entered the Fort an hour ago.
"Hear to her, hear to this shameless woman!" cried the fanatical and self-constituted saviour of the metis, gesticulating and trying, as he always did, to work upon the easily-roused feelings of his semi-savage following. "She convicts herself out of her own mouth; she must suffer. She is young and fair to look upon, but she is the daughter of Douglas, the great friend of the English, and therefore evil of heart. Moreover, she defies me, even me, to whom St Peter himself appeared in the Church of St. James at Washington, Columbia! Take her hence and keep her as a prisoner until we decide what fate shall be hers. In the days of the old prophets the dogs licked the blood of a woman from the stones—of a woman who deserved better than she."