“What part of the hills were they making for?”
“They were on a line that would lead them north of where we now are.”
The Sioux remained silent for some time. He was thinking deeply upon the presence of this war-party. It boded trouble in the future. It was true he had quarrel with no Indian tribe; but a small war-party of fifteen braves is not particular on the score of cause of enmity, and if horses are to be captured or scalps taken, it usually matters little whether actual war has been declared beforehand; and the adage that those who are not with me are against me, holds good on such wild raids as that upon which the party seen by the Cree were now bound. Thinking out many different courses, and weighing well their various probabilities of success or failure, the Sioux at length wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down to rest. We had spread a blanket for the Cree, and had done all we could to make him comfortable. At first the poor creature seemed scarcely to understand the meaning of so much kindness and attention from a stranger. Under the influence of a good supper he soon forgot the fearful hardships which he had so lately passed through, and the full realization of his immediate safety seemed to obliterate all anxiety for the future. And yet, as he now lay by the camp fire of his preserver there was as much danger hanging over him as ever had threatened him in the darkest moment of his terrible journey.
Over the brow of a hill close by, a pair of watchful eyes were looking into the camp, intently noting every movement in and around it.
[CHAPTER V.]
An Assineboine camp—The trader McDermott—The chief “Wolverine”—Fire-water and finesse—The Assineboine war-party—A chance of a Cree scalp—The trader hears a well-known name—A big bid for murder, two hundred skins!
The events that now began to unfold themselves in my life and in those of my companions, took shape and context only after long lapse of time had passed by.
It was frequently when months had vanished that I learned the various threads of action which had led to incidents of more or less importance to me. Hitherto I had been only a boy-actor in the drama of existence. I was now about to become a sharer in a larger sphere of action, and to participate in scenes of adventure the springs of which were involved in the lives and actions of other men. Writing now as I do from a standpoint of life which looks back across many years to those early adventures, I am able to set down the record with its various parts complete. I can see the lines of life upon which other men moved, and can trace the impulses upon which they acted—can fill in, as it were, the gaps between their action and mine own, and give to the story of my life at that period an insight into events which then lay veiled from me by distance. It will therefore be necessary, in order that my readers may comprehend clearly the thread of the events I am about to relate, that I should at times carry them away to scenes in which personally I was not an actor, and that they should occasionally o’erleap the boundaries of the moment to look upon a far wider theatre of events than I myself had at the time beheld.