But it was the man himself, with his extraordinary personality, who fascinated Dorothy. He was standing with his hands behind his back and his legs apart, talking to the sulky, uncompromising half-breed who had brought her there. He was not more than three feet in height, and he seemed all head and body. His arms were abnormally long and muscular. He had a dark shock head of hair, and his little black moustache was carefully waxed. His forehead was low and broad, and his aquiline nose, like his jet-black, almond-shaped eyes, betrayed an Indian ancestor. His face betokened intelligence, conceit, and a keen sense of sardonic humour; still, there was nothing in it positively forbidding. To those whom he took a fancy to, he was doubtless loyal and kind, albeit his temperament was of a fiery and volatile nature. In this he showed the Gallic side of his origin. It was very evident that, despite his inconsiderable size, his hulking and sulky neighbour stood in considerable awe of him.
"Pshaw! Idiot! Pudding-head!" he was saying. "But it is like to as many Muskymote dogs you are—let one get down and all the others attack him. What, I ask, did your Riel do for you in '70? Did he not show the soles of the moccasins he had not paid for as soon as he heard that the red-coats were close to Fort Garry, and make for the States? Bah, you fools, and he will do so again—if he gets the chance! But he will not, mark my words, Bastien Lagrange; this time the red-coats will catch him, and he and you—yes, you, you chuckle-head—will hang all in a row at the end of long ropes in the square at Regina until you are dead, dead, dead! Think of it, Lagrange, what a great big ugly bloated corpse you'll make hanging by the neck after your toes have stopped twitching, twitching, and your face is a beautiful blue. Eh? Bien! is not that so, blockhead?"
And the dwarf grinned and chuckled in such a bloodthirsty and anticipating fashion that the girl shuddered.
Bastien Lagrange did not seem to relish the prospect, and his shifty eyes roamed round the walls.
"But the red-coats, how can they come?" he weakly asked. "Where are they, the soldiers of the Great Mother? Riel has said that those stories of the cities over seas and the many red-coats are all lies, and that the Lord will smite the Police and those that are in the country with the anthrax that kills the cattle in the spring. Riel swears to that, for St. Peter appeared to him and told him so. He said so himself!"
"Bah, idiot!" retorted Pepin, "if it is that Riel is on such friendly terms with St. Peter, and the Lord is going to do such wonderful things for him, why does not the Saint give his messengers enough in advance for them to pay the poor men who make for them the moccasins they wear? Why does he suffer them to steal from their own people? Pshaw, it is the same old tale, the same old game from all time, from Mahomet to the present down-at-heel! But courage, mon cher Bastien! I will come and see you ch-chk, ch-chk!"—he elongated and twisted his neck, at the same time turning his eyes upwards in a horrible fashion—"while your feet go so … so,"—he described a species of pas-seul with his toes. "Is that not so, Antoine? Eh?—you beauty, you?" and here he gave the great bear, that had been gravely sitting on its haunches watching him like an attendant spirit, a sudden and affectionate kick.
To Dorothy's horror the great brute made a quick snap at him, which, however, only served to intensely amuse Pepin, for he skilfully evaded it, and, seizing his stick, at once began to dance up and down. The cunning little black eyes of the beast watched him apprehensively and resentfully.
"Aha, Antoine!" he cried. "Git up, you lazy one, and dance! Houp-la!"—the huge brute stood up on its hind legs—"Now, then, Bastien, pick up that fiddle and play. That's it, piff-poum—piff-poum! Houp-la! piff-poum!" and in another minute the man and the bear were dancing opposite each other. It was a weird and uncanny sight, the grotesque dwarf, with his face flushed and his hair on end, capering about and kicking with his pigmy legs, and the bear with uncouth waddles waltzing round and round, its movements every now and again being accelerated by a judicious dig in the ribs from Pepin's stick. Bastien Lagrange fiddled away as if for dear life, and the old dame, her face beaming with pride and admiration, clapped her hands in time to the music. Every minute or two she would glance from her son to Dorothy's face to note what impression such a gallant sight had made.
"Is it not magnifique? Is he not splendid?" she asked the girl.
"He is indeed wonderful," replied Dorothy, truthfully enough.