It would have been madness for the party to have made any serious attempt to resist arrest, for they were simply covered by the muzzles of fire-arms. Still, Pasmore sent two Indians reeling backwards with two right and left blows, which made them look so stupid that Poundmaker was secretly amused, and therefore stopped the pulling of the trigger of the blunderbuss that an Indian placed close to the police sergeant's head in order to effect a thorough and equal distribution of his brains. The grim and politic chief, who was not without a sense of humour, ordered that a rope be tied round the waist of the wild cat—as he was pleased to term Pasmore—and that to the two braves who had been so stupid as to allow him to punch their heads, should be allotted the task of leading him about like a bear. He hinted that if Pasmore occasionally amused himself by testing the powers of resistance of their skulls with his hammer-like fists, no difficulties would be thrown in his way by the others.
Douglas had begged to be allowed to accompany his daughter, but Poundmaker said that was impossible, and assured him that no harm would come to her. Dorothy went over to her father and said good-bye, and then they were forced apart. To Pasmore she said—
"You need not fear for me. I feel sure that, now they know the strength of the British, they will take care of us so as to save themselves. It is madness for you to resist. If you wish to help me, go quietly with them."
"Yes, you are right," he said. "But it is so hard. Still,
I feel that we shall pull through yet. Good-bye!"
He was too much a man of action and of thought to be prodigal of words. And she knew that a facility in making pretty speeches is in nine cases out of ten merely the refuge of those who desire to conceal indifference or shallowness of heart.
In another minute the men were hurried away. An Indian pony with a saddle was brought for Dorothy, and she was told to mount. The young squaw who had her in charge, and who was called "The Star that Falls by Night," mounted another pony and took over a leading-rein from Dorothy's. Poundmaker, after giving a few instructions, rode off to direct operations and to see that his sharpshooters were posted in such a way that it would be impossible for the British to advance until his main body had made good their retreat into the more inaccessible country. Of course, it was only a matter of time before they would be starved out of those hills, but much might occur before then.
The middle-aged brave who was handicapped with a name that suggested froggy agility, proudly took his place at the head of the little cavalcade, and a few minutes later they were threading their way through deep, narrow gullies, crossing from the head of one little creek on to the source of another, and choosing such places generally that the first shower of rain would gather there and wash out their tracks. When they passed the main camp, Dorothy saw that the lodges had been pulled down, and were being packed on travois, [Footnote: Two crossed poles with cross pieces trailing from the back of a pony.] preparatory to a forced march. She noted that the sleighs had been abandoned, as, of course, there were no wheels there to take the place of the runners. Her own slender belongings were secured on the back of a pack-horse, and the squaw saw to it that she had her full complement of provisions and camp paraphernalia such as suited the importance of her prisoner.
Poor Dorothy! There would, however, be no more tea or sugar, or other things she had been accustomed to, for many a long day, but, after all, that was of no particular moment There was pure water in the streams, and there would soon be any amount of luscious wild berries in the woods, and plants by the loamy banks of creeks that made delicious salads and spinaches, and they would bring such a measure of health with them that she would experience what the spoilt children of fortune, and the dwellers in cities, can know little about—the mere physical joy of being alive—the glorious pulsing of the human machine.
They kept steadily on their way till dusk, and then halted for a brief space. The party was a small one now, only some half-dozen braves and a few squaws. Dorothy wandered with her jailer, whom she had for shortness called the Falling Star, to a little rise, and looked down upon the great desolate, purpling land in which evidently Nature had been amusing herself. There were huge, pillar-like rocks streaked with every colour of the rainbow, from pale pink and crimson to slate-blue. There were yawning canyons, on the scarped sides of which Nature had been fashioning all manner of grotesqueries—gargoyles and griffins, suggestions of many-spired cathedrals, the profile of a face which was that of an angel, and of another which was so weirdly and horribly ugly—suggesting as it did all that was evil and sinister—that one shivered and looked away. All these showed themselves like phantasmagoria, and startled one with a suggestion of intelligent design. But it was not with the face of the cliff alone that Nature had trifled.
The gigantic boulders of coloured clays, strewn about all higgledy-piggledy, resolved themselves into uncouth antediluvian monsters, with faces so suggestive of something human and malign that they were more like the weird imaginings of some evil dream than inanimate things of clay. And over all brooded the mysterious dusk and the silence—the silence as of death that had been from the beginning, and which haunted one like a living presence. Only perhaps now and again there was a peculiar and clearly-defined, trumpet-toned sound caused by the outstretched wing of a great hawk as it swooped down to seize its prey. It was the very embodiment of desolation. It might well have been some dead lunar landscape in which for aeons no living thing had stirred.