Indeed, that five days' journey had been quite perfect if only one might have left the baggage behind, and gone without a cold uncomfortable body, a sled and a weary horse. The spirit needs no baggage to enter that great White Silence of the snow-field or to visit the night splendors of the star drift.
On our last march of sixty miles we drove through the log village of Batoche where Louis Riel was hatching his new rebellion, and some of his hunters lounged sullen in their doorways. There we crossed the South Saskatchewan and all day long were driving through the land between the two branches of that river, so very soon to become the seat of war. It was dusk when we came to the edge of the plains, looking down on the valley of the North Saskatchewan. It was starlight when we reached the foot of the hill, and swung round the stockade to enter the river gate of old Fort Carlton.
CHAPTER IV
THE PASSIONS OF WAR
I
Two human lives flow sparkling down childhood's merry rapids, and more sedately across the sadder years, to draw together, then to run apart, until at last they meet midway upon their journey, and as one life go married toward their rest.
Two rivers tumbling down the Rocky Mountains, sparkling through the foot-hills, racing across the plains, draw near together, then flow apart a while before they meet, and marry to form the great Saskatchewan rolling toward the sea.
There is my map, but I was always bad in my geography, and as to history—well, what can you expect of a blackguard?
Just where the two Saskatchewans first draw near, and are but fifty miles or so apart, our base, Fort Carlton, stood on the northern branch, and Batoche, the rebel camp, was on the southern river. Below these, in the land between the rivers, lay the Prince Albert settlement, and its trading village stood on the northern branch fifty-five miles down-stream from Fort Carlton. So you see, the rebels commanded the main approach both to the fort and the settlement. They were strong enough to threaten one while they attacked the other. But neither fort nor settlement had strength sufficient to attack the rebels. So much for strategy.
Louis Riel commanded at Batoche four hundred buffalo runners, dead shots at full gallop, and perhaps the finest marksmen in the world. He had two hundred Assiniboin warriors, and twenty-two hundred Crees—in all three thousand men. His envoys were at large among the Blackfeet, and if they rose—good night! Still worse, the Irish Fenians in the United States seemed able to control the government, for they were openly preparing, in Riel's interest, their third armed raid upon Canada. Worst of all, we could not arrest the rebel because he happened to be French Canadian, and had the active sympathy of fifteen hundred thousand brave compatriots. Our first motion might give the whole Dominion to the flames of civil war.