Ten miles we rode through park-land with its little tarns for ducks, its aspen groves and drifted glades where soft snow lay neck-deep beside our trail. Then, as we passed through a narrow belt of bush, word came from man to man, that the scouts were racing in. Beyond the timber our column formed front on the left, extending out at right angles from the road for nearly a hundred yards. The big sleighs plunged through drifts like boats in a storm at sea, forming a rough and broken line of rampart. Then we dismounted into snow breast-deep, and sent back all the horses into the bush for shelter with one man to each bunch of four, while the rest of us took cover in clusters behind the sleighs, and our officers tramped out a pathway close behind us.
The open land ahead was only about a hundred yards across encircled by clumps of bush. On our far right, across the road, a lane deep-drifted, went off to a little shack on rising ground. That farm had a field enclosed with a snake fence which filled the angle between lane and road.
Out there along the road beside the fence was Paddy, with our interpreter, Joe McKay, a half-breed, a chap we liked. He was interpreting to the skipper while an Indian, wrapped in a dingy white blanket, stood making a long oration. This was the Cree chief, Beardy, who owned the farm on our right. He seemed to be talking forever and ever, amen.
I felt it was all some endless, rambling dream, from which I should wake for breakfast. Beside me on my right was Chambers, and half my mind was listening while he talked. He told me of the ranch he had made for Miss Burrows, the shack he had built for her, the fixings, the ornymints. Those made me chuckle, while the other half of my mind wondered resentfully what the joke was about. It seemed profane to laugh while in my dream I knew I was badly frightened.
Out on the road the Indian suddenly snatched at the interpreter's carbine, but McKay was on the alert, and emptied his revolver into Beardy, who crumpled up, staggered against the fence and lay there twitching. Our leader swung round in the saddle, and "Fire, boys!" he shouted.
"Please, sir, you're right in the way!" cried the seven-pounder gun.
"Oh, never mind me!" laughed Paddy. Beardy had held him in talk while the rebels, four times our strength, traveling light on snow-shoes, hidden within the bush, closed in a horseshoe formation with our line between its prongs, almost surrounded at point-blank range for the coming massacre. We faced a blinding snow-glare toward the sun, where trees of branched sprayed diamond sparkled along their roots with jets of flame, and gusts of smoke like pearls rolled in serene air. We fired out a blue smoke film, our bullets whipping the crests of snow-drift into spray, and dust of diamond fell from the fairy woods.
So rifles blazed and smoked, so bullets whined and sang, but still the dream sense told me it was all a mere twittering as of summer birds amid the mighty silence of the plains which filled the vault of heaven sun-high with peace. Then my mind cleared, for a gust of lead was smashing the sleigh-box above me, shattering and splintering planks into long slivers. I knew that our force was helplessly bogged down, ambushed and being destroyed. After one shot the seven-pounder jammed. Nine gallant civilian volunteers were killed attempting to charge the shack upon our right. The enemy at both ends enfiladed our broken line.
Then in the bush I saw a man leap, falling. Buckie let out a little yelp of bliss, but this was my meat and I claimed it. "And what's the next article?" said I. At my side I heard something grunt. "Pig!" said I, but Chambers rolled over against me. So Buckie and I let our carbines cool off, while we watched Chambers to see what was wrong with him. The red flush faded under the tan, the strong features became thin, pinched, frozen. His buffalo coat spread broad upon the snow, the sunlight blazed on scarlet serge and glittering buttons, but his face was in gray shadow.
"Wake up, old man," said I, stripping his serge apart to give him air. "Where is it, Joe?"