When they reached its vicinity, they found a great carousal was on foot there. The boisterous mirth and revelry that prevailed made it easy to reconnoitre without detection. They soon discovered the quarters where the women were assembled. It was a large tent or camp, guarded from intruders by a detachment of voyageurs and their wives. The Connecticut trapper sauntered carelessly up to one of the sentinels, and began playing off some rough jokes of the wilderness upon him, in the mingled jargon of Indian dialects and Canadian patois used among that class.
He found the fellow sulky and silent; not too well pleased with the duty assigned him, and impatient to join the revellers. He very kindly offered—"bein' a man of sobriety and havin' no hankerin' for such doin's"—to relieve the watcher, and take his place for a time. As he was a Yankee, who, as the Canadian stranger supposed, might belong to the station, he did not hesitate to accept the offer.
From this tent, on the west side, a patch of very high grass extended to a dense clump of bushes at some distance. After the new guardian had surveyed the premises for some time, with his habitual air of careless indifference, he caught a glimpse through the door, over which a buffalo robe had been hung to close it, of the woman who attended the daughter of the chief. All doubt of the maiden's presence vanished before that vision. But how to give notice that friends were near? Pacing slowly back and forth close beside the tent, he uttered distinctly, in a low voice, the sacred name given the maiden in baptism, and known to none here but her attendant—"Josephine!" and was delighted to receive a quick reply, "S. Joseph!" He continued pacing, and humming carelessly, in her native dialect, a short of chant, as if for his own amusement, the words of which conveyed a distinct idea of the grass and the bushes west of the tent, and a hint that she could creep through the one unobserved, and find friends concealed in the covert of the other.
Another sentinel accosted him, in derision, as a "merry singer," when he complained of this tedious business of watching the women, and wished the fellow he had relieved would finish his frolic, and come back.
"He will be in no haste to do that," his companion replied. "Gabriel is a sad gossip, and too fond of the drinking-cup to quit it without compulsion."
Our trapper, favoring the impression this man also had received that he belonged to the station, said he must be released to meet an engagement at this hour, or break the rules of the post; when Gabriel's daughter was called to go and summon her father. An interval elapsed which seemed an age to the trapper, whose wonted coolness almost forsook him before the truant appeared, highly elated with liquor, and loth to resume his irksome duty.
The relieved sentinel vanished to meet his "engagement," the result of which was that the ground in the high grass was speedily filled on both sides with armed and prostrate Indians, listening for the rustle which would betray the presence of their coveted prize.
Nor did they wait long; and, when the maiden with her attendant crept stealthily by them, she was informed that a swift-footed pony was concealed in the covert of the bushes for her use. Her friends soon had the satisfaction of seeing them mounted, and flying, with the speed of the wind, in the direction of their distant home; for the trapper had found a moment in which to direct her as to the course she was to take, and the maiden was no stranger to the use of the noble animal, in the management of which her people are trained from their infancy.
Scarcely were they out of sight over the vast plain before their escape was discovered. A wild sortie of the revellers ensued.
The commander, with the friend whom he was visiting, and his favorite clerk, who was always with him, mounted on swift horses, started in pursuit of the fugitive, while his followers engaged in a bloody combat with her friends. The "Northwester" was the first to descry her in the distance, and his horse was gaining rapidly upon her frantic flight, when she suddenly changed her course toward the river, which here rushed through a gorge bounded by a precipice on each side. Putting his horse to its utmost speed, and shouting his entreaties that she would refrain from fulfilling the intention he too clearly divined, he plunged madly on, reaching the bank only in time to see the pony struggling in the wild waters; but the maiden had disappeared from his sight for ever!