Chapter Fourteen.
Treachery in the Air.
At this time the half-breeds of the colony of Red River formed a small party compared with the numbers to which they multiplied in after years, and the band of hunters who annually went to the plains to chase the buffalo was proportionally small. Nevertheless, they were numerous enough to constitute a formidable band, capable of holding their own, when united, against any band of wandering Indians who might feel disposed to attack them. They were a brave, hardy race of men, but of course there were some black sheep among them like La Certe.
About sixty or a hundred miles from the Settlement, the party, under command of Antoine Dechamp, found the buffalo, and preparations were at once made to attack them. It was dusk, however, when the herds were discovered, so that the hunt had to be postponed to the following day.
A small clump of bushes afforded wood enough for camp-fires. The carts were ranged in a circle with the trains outward. Sentries were posted; the horses were secured; the kettles put on; pipes lighted; and noise, laughter, song and story, mingled with the shrill voices of children, were heard far on into the night.
Among the children, if we may venture so to class them, were Archie and Billie Sinclair—though we suspect that Archie would have claimed, and with some reason, to be classed with the men. They belonged to the camp-fire, which formed a centre to the party composed of Dan and Peter, Fergus, Dechamp, and Fred Jenkins the sailor. The latter, who it was thought had come out to the country by way of a skylark rather than as a settler, had followed the hunters, bent, he said, on firing a broadside into a buffalo. He had brought with him a blunderbuss, which he averred had been used by his great-grandfather at the battle of Culloden. It was a formidable old weapon, capable of swallowing, at one gulp, several of the bullets which fitted the trading guns of the country. Its powers of scattering ordinary shot in large quantity had proved to be very effective, and had done such execution among flocks of wild-fowl, that the Indians and half-breeds, although at first inclined to laugh at it, were ultimately filled with respect.
“I doubt its capacity for sending ball straight, however,” remarked Dan to Jenkins, who was carefully cleaning out the piece, “especially if charged with more than one ball.”
“No fear of it,” returned the sailor, with a confident air. “Of course it scattered the balls about six yards apart the only time I tried it with a lot of ’em, but that was at fifty yards off, an’ they tell me that you a’most ram the muzzle against the brutes’ sides when chasin’ buffalo. So there’s no room to scatter, d’ee see, till they get inside their bodies, and when there it don’t matter how much they scatter.”
“It’s well named a young cannon by La Certe,” said Peter Davidson, who, like the seaman, was out on his first buffalo-hunt. “I never heard such a roar as it gave that time you brought down ten out of one flock of ducks on the way up here.”
“Ay, Peter, she barked well that time,” remarked the sailor, with a grin, “but, then there was a reason. I had double-shotted her by mistake.”