"Where are your friends?" she asked. "Tell me everything—yes, you can trust me. By the Blessed Virgin, I swear I will serve you faithfully!" She raised her great dark tear-stained eyes to Dorothy's.
The girl instinctively felt that Katie was to be trusted. The only question was, could she count upon her discretion? She felt that she could do that also; she knew that in a matter of intrigue the dusky metis have no equals. The chances were that the others had reached the Fort; if so, no more harm could be done. Briefly she told Katie about those who had started out with her to steal through the rebel lines to the English garrison.
"If Jacques and the women went in the direction you say," said Katie, "the chances are they have got to the Fort. It matters not about the Police and Rory—they can look after themselves. I doubt, however, if your father and the sergeant have got through. You will stay in this house while I go and see. I have many friends among our people; the hearts of some of them not being entirely with Riel, they will help me. I shall take Pierre. Pepin and his mother you need not fear—they are not of the rebels; they have lived too long at Medicine Hat with the whites."
And then she went on briefly to explain how Pepin was a man renowned for his great wisdom and his cunning, as well as for the bodily strength which had once enabled him to strangle a bear. Still, his one great weakness was conceit of his personal appearance, and his belief that every woman was making a dead set at him. He also prided himself upon his manners, which were either absurdly elaborate or rough to a startling degree, as the mood seized him, and as Dorothy had seen for herself. His mother, whom she would see in the next room, was rather an amiable old soul, whose one providentially overpowering delusion was that Pepin was all that he considered himself to be. She regarded most young unengaged women with suspicion, as she fancied they looked upon her son with matrimonial designs. Katie knew that the old lady was at heart a match-maker, but, with the exception of herself, who, however, was engaged, she had found no one good or beautiful enough to aspire to an alliance with the Quesnelle family.
Dorothy felt vastly relieved at hearing all this. Then Katie took her by the hand, and, telling her to be of good courage, as she had nothing to fear led her into the next room.
"A good daughter for you, mother," she said smilingly to the dame who sat by the fire.
The old white-haired woman, who was refreshingly clean and tidy, turned her dark eyes sharply upon the new arrival. Whether it was that Dorothy was prepossessed in her favour and showed it, and that the old lady took it as a personal compliment, or that the physical beauty of the girl appealed to her, is immaterial; but the fact remained that she in her turn was favourably impressed. She motioned to a seat beside herself.
"Sit hyar, honey," she said. "I will put the kettle on the fire and give you to eat and drink."
But the girl smilingly thanked her, and said that she had not long since finished supper. In no way loth to do so, she then went and sat down next the old dame, who regarded her with considerable curiosity and undisguised favour. Katie, seeing that she could safely leave her charge there, spoke a few words in a strange patois of Cree and French to Pepin, and, calling Pierre, left the house.
Dorothy glanced in wonder round the common sitting-room of this singular family. It was a picturesque interior, decorated with all kinds of odds and ends. There were curios in the way of Indian war weapons, scalping knives, gorgeously beaded moccasins and tobacco pouches, barbaric plumed head-dresses, stuffed birds and rattlesnakes, butterflies, strings of birds' eggs, and grinning and truly hideous Indian masks for use in devil and give-away dances. At the far end of the room was a rude cobbler's bench and all the paraphernalia of one who works in boots, moccasins, and harness. Thus was betrayed the calling of Pepin Quesnelle.