Chapter XIII: The Red-Headed Scotch Boy

Instead of continuing on the west bank of the Red River and crossing the Assiniboine, the cart train turned to the east, followed a well-traveled track down to the Red, and forded that river below the Forks. The country just south of the Assiniboine was marshy and thickly wooded with willows and small poplars. By following the east bank of the Red the almost impassable low ground was avoided.

The carts were now on the St. Boniface side, where the stream that Louis called _Rivière la Seine_, and the Scotch settlers, German Creek, entered the river. Some of the DeMeuron cabins were near at hand, and the Swiss who were to remain there were on the lookout for a chance to say good-bye to their friends. Walter saw again the red-faced ex-soldier who had boasted that he and his comrades were the pick of many countries. He carried a gun on his shoulder and looked as if he had been drinking. The boy liked him even less than before.

The carts crossed the creek, which was narrow and shallow where it joined the river. Ten or twelve miles farther on, they forded the Red again, above the mouth of the _Rivière la Sale_, a small, muddy stream coming in from the west.

Their way now lay across the open prairie west of the Red River; treeless plains such as the Swiss immigrants had never seen before. Trees grew along the river bank only. The few elevations in sight seemed scarcely high enough to be called hills. This was the fertile, rich soiled land of which the new settlers had been told. Its grass ravaged by locusts, dried by the sun, withered by frost, in some places consumed by sweeping fires; the prairie showed little outward sign of its fertility. The immigrants gazed across the yellow-gray expanse and the unsightly black stretches, and shook their heads wonderingly and doubtfully. Many a heart was heavy with homesickness for native mountains and valleys.

Walter Rossel was not a little heartsick, as he walked beside the loaded cart or took a turn at riding on the shafts and driving the shaggy pony. He was trudging along, absorbed in his own thoughts, when he was startled by the sudden dash of a horse so close that he instinctively jumped the other way. Looking up, he saw a freckled, red-haired lad in a Tam-o’-Shanter, grinning cheerfully down from the back of the wiry, black pony he had pulled up so short it was standing on its hind legs. Instantly Walter recognized the horseman. This red-headed boy was the first of the settlers he had seen when the brigade approached the Scotch settlement of Kildonan. He was the fisherman who had waved his blue bonnet to the boats.

The Scotch lad was greeting Louis as an old friend, and the Canadian responded smilingly. “_Bo’jou_, Neil MacKay,” he cried. “So your family goes again to Pembina.”

“What else can we do?” was the question. “We must eat, and there is sure to be more food at Pembina this winter than at Kildonan. We will hunt together again, Louis.”

“Yes, you and I and my other friend here, Walter Rossel.”

Walter and Neil responded to this introduction by exchanging nods and grins. The red-haired lad dismounted, and, leading his pony, fell into step by Walter’s side. The conversation of the three was carried on principally in French. The Scotch boy had learned that language during his first winter at the Red River. That winter, and several of the succeeding ones, he had spent at Pembina. Among the French and _bois brulés_ he had had plenty of practice in the Canadian tongue. Indeed he spoke it far better than English, for his native speech was the Gaelic of northern Scotland. Already familiar with Louis’ Canadian French, Walter had little difficulty in understanding Neil, except when he introduced a Gaelic word or phrase.

The Scotch boy answered the newcomer’s questions readily and told him much about the Colony. Neil had come from Scotland with his father and mother, brothers and sisters, before he was nine years old. He was just fifteen now. When the MacKays and their companions had reached the Red River, they had found the settlement deserted, the houses burned. The settlers were gathered together again and spent the winter at Pembina, returning to Fort Douglas in the spring. Then came Cuthbert Grant and his wild _bois brulé_ followers. Governor Semple was killed and Fort Douglas captured for the Northwest Company. The colonists, including the MacKays, were compelled to go to Norway House. They had returned when Lord Selkirk and his DeMeurons arrived and had gone on with their farming.

There were some two hundred settlers at Kildonan now, Neil said, and about a hundred DeMeurons along German Creek. How many Canadians and _bois brulés_ really belonged at St. Boniface it was hard to tell, they came and went so constantly. “They do little farming on the east side of the river,” the boy remarked. “Hunting and fishing are more to their taste. I don’t blame them. They can get enough to eat more easily that way. Raising crops here is discouraging work. You will learn that soon enough.”

“Isn’t the soil good?” asked Walter. “We were told it was rich.”

“Oh, the soil is all right, after you get the ground broken. Breaking is hard work though, when you have nothing but a hoe and a spade. There is scarcely a plow in the Colony. There hasn’t been an ox till just lately. The Indian ponies aren’t trained for farm work. Things grow fast once they are planted, but what is the good of raising them when the grasshoppers take them all? I would go to Canada, as so many have done, or to the United States, but my father is stubborn. He won’t leave Kildonan. He has worked hard and he doesn’t want to give up his land. Yet if the grasshoppers keep coming every year, they will drive even him away.” Neil shook his red head, his face very sober.

The settlers, he went on to say, had no sheep and few pigs. Until a few weeks before, they had had no cattle. Alexis Bailly, a _bois brulé_ trader had come, during the summer, clear from the Mississippi River with a herd of about forty.

“He got a good price for the beasts,” Neil commented, “but he deserved it, after bringing them hundreds of miles through the Sioux country. Why the Indians didn’t get every one of them I can’t understand.”

“It was a great feat truly,” Louis agreed. “But most of those cattle will be killed for food this winter.”

“I’m afraid so. It will be hard times in the Colony, and everyone is deep in debt to the store now.”

“The prices are high there I hear,” Louis remarked.

“High? Yes, and that’s not the worst of it. The Colony store isn’t run honestly. So many of the settlers can’t read or write, it is easy to cheat them. My father can write and he keeps account of everything he buys, but they won’t let him have anything more until he settles the bill they have against him. Half of that bill is for things he never had, and he swears he won’t pay for what he didn’t buy.”

“I should think not,” cried Walter indignantly. “Why doesn’t he appeal to the Governor?”

Neil laughed shortly. “He tried, but it did him no good. If the Governor doesn’t do the cheating himself, he winks at it. Governor ‘Grasshopper’ is one of the Colony’s worst troubles. He thinks he is a little king, with his high-handed ways, and the court he keeps at Fort Douglas, and the revels he holds there.”

“We heard something of that last night.”

“Aye, it’s no uncommon thing. McDonnell is not the man to be at the head of the Colony. We’re all hoping he won’t last much longer. Many complaints have been made to the Company, to Nicholas Garry and Simon McGillivray when they were here in the summer, and even by letter across the sea.”

The prairie track the carts followed ran well back from the wooded river banks. As the sun was setting behind a far distant rise of land across the plain, the guide turned from the trail. The squeaking carts followed his lead, bumping, pitching, and wobbling over the untracked ground. Supposing that Lajimonière was seeking the shelter of the woods, Walter was surprised when the guide reined in his mount at a distance of at least a half mile from the nearest trees. His cart stopped also and the flag it bore was lowered, as a signal to the rest of the train. Camp was to be made on the prairie in the full sweep of the sharp northwest wind.

“This is a poor place it seems to me,” the Swiss boy commented. “Farther over, among the trees, there would be shelter, and plenty of wood.”

“Lajimonière prefers the open. It is safer.”

“What is there to fear?”

“Nothing probably, but we can’t be sure.” Neil MacKay spoke quietly but seriously. “Out here on the prairie, we can see anyone approaching.”

“You mean Indians? I thought the Saulteux and Crees were friendly.”

“They are. Lajimonière is thinking about Sioux. Whether the Sioux are friendly or not is an open question just now. Didn’t you hear what happened at Fort Douglas a few weeks ago?”

“The visit of the Sioux?” questioned Louis. “I was told of it last night at St. Boniface. It was a most unfortunate affair.”

“What was it?” Walter asked. “I didn’t know the Sioux ever came to Fort Douglas. Louis told me their country was farther south.”

“So it is,” replied the Scotch lad. “A Sioux seldom ventures this far down the Red River nowadays, but a party of them did come clear to the fort a while ago. They said they had heard how fine the Company’s goods were and what generous presents the traders gave. So they came to pay a visit to the Hudson Bay white men. They were friendly, almost too friendly. They expected drink and gifts. The Governor was away, and one of the Company clerks was in charge. He didn’t know just what to do with such dangerous guests. He told them there wasn’t any rum in the fort, and gave them tea instead. Then he fed them and distributed a few trinkets and little things. If they would go back to their own country, he said, the Company would send traders to them with goods and more presents.”

“The Company will get into trouble with the American traders if goods are sent to the Sioux country beyond the border,” Louis commented.

“Yes, but he had to promise something to get rid of the fellows. If they stayed around, he was afraid of trouble with the Saulteux. The Sioux seemed satisfied when they left the fort. But several Saulteux were hiding in ambush in the fort garden. They fired on the Sioux, killed two, and wounded another, then escaped by swimming the river and dodging through the willows. Of course the Sioux were furious. They said the white men had given the Saulteux powder and shot to kill friendly visitors. One of them boasted to a _bois brulé_ from St. Boniface,—who is part Sioux himself and speaks their language,—that they were going back to the fort to scalp the clerk. The half-breed went right to the fort with the story. Things looked serious. If the party of Sioux had been larger they might have attacked the fort or massacred all of us, but they knew they were far outnumbered. Somehow they learned that the men in the fort had been warned of their plot. They decamped suddenly, and nothing more has been seen of them. Probably they have gone back to their own country, but no one knows. They may be hiding somewhere waiting for a chance to attack any Saulteur or _bois brulé_ or white man who comes along.”

Louis nodded soberly. “When an Indian seeks revenge he is not always careful what man he strikes. Lajimonière does well to camp in the open.”

Neil’s story had sent a chill up Walter’s spine. Hardship he had become used to during the journey from Fort York, hardship and danger from the forces of Nature; water and wind, cold and storm. But this was the first time in his life that real peril from enemy human beings had ever confronted him. He had known of course that there might be danger from Indians in this wild land to which he had come, but he had never actually sensed that danger before. He glanced towards the woods, and saw, in imagination, half naked, copper colored savages concealed in the shadows and watching with fierce eyes the approaching carts.

Although camp was pitched out of musket range from that belt of trees, the woods nevertheless must be penetrated. The beasts must be taken to the river. Water and fuel must be brought back. After listening to Neil’s story, Walter was surprised at the apparent light-hearted carelessness of the men and boys who started riverward with the horses and cattle. Neil had a cow and three ponies to water, and he offered one of the latter to Walter.

“Ride the roan,” he advised, “if you’re not used to our ponies. He is older and better broken.”

Neil took for granted that Walter wanted to go with Louis and himself, and the Swiss boy, who was far from being a coward, did not think of declining. He had not been on a horse for several years, but before his apprenticeship to Mr. Perier, he had been used to riding. The roan was unusually well broken and sedate for a prairie pony. Though obliged to ride bareback and with only a halter instead of bridle and bit, Walter had no trouble with the animal. The horse knew it was being taken to water and needed no guidance to keep with the other beasts.

The boy could not help a feeling of uneasiness as he approached the woods, and he noticed that Louis, though he seemed to ride carelessly, kept one hand on his gun. The irregular cavalcade of mounted men and boys and loose animals passed in among the trees,—sturdy oaks, broad topped elms, great basswoods, which Louis called _bois blanc_,—white wood,—and Walter _lindens_. All were nearly leafless now, except the oaks, which retained part of their dry, brown foliage, but the trunks stood close enough together to furnish cover for any lurking enemy. Without alarm, however, the animals threaded their way through the belt of larger growth to the river bank. The steep slopes and narrow bottom were covered with smaller trees and bushes, aspen poplar, wild plum and cherry, highbush cranberry, saskatoon or service berry, prickly raspberry canes, and, especially along the river margin, thick willows.

Following a track where wild animals had broken a way through the bushes and undergrowth, dogs, cattle, horses, and men made their way down the first slope, along a shelf or terrace, and on down a yet steeper incline to the river bottom. The sure-footed, thirsty beasts made the descent in quick time, and crashed eagerly through the willows to the water. The Red River ran sluggishly here. It was smooth and deep, with muddy shores. In the dried mud along the margin were the old tracks of the animals that had broken the trail down the slope.

When the boys had dismounted to water their horses, Louis pointed out the prints, which resembled those of naked feet. “Somewhere near here,” he said, “the bears must cross. They have regular fords. Once in the fall I watched a band of bears cross the Pembina. I was up in a tree and I counted nineteen, old and young, but I was too far away for a good shot.”

The bear tracks led up stream. Leaving the horses to bathe and splash, Louis and Walter, who preferred to drink at a less muddy spot, pushed their way among the willows. A hundred yards up stream, they came to a bend and shallows, caused by a limestone cliff.

“This is the bears’ fording place,” said Louis, “and a good one too. Not only bears but men have been here,” he added quickly, “and not long ago. Look.”

On the bit of beach at the base of the cliff lay a little heap of charred wood and ashes. Near by, clearly imprinted in the damp sand, were foot tracks and marks that must have been made by the bow of a boat.

“Indians?” questioned Walter, the chill creeping up his spine again.

“Or white men,” Louis returned. “These are moccasin prints, but the color of the feet inside those moccasins I know no way to tell. There were two men, that is plain, and one is tall, I think, for his feet are long. They were voyaging, those two, and stopped here to boil their tea. They have not been gone many hours. That fire was burning since last night’s frost.” The Canadian boy’s tone was careless. His curiosity had in it no suggestion of fear.

Walter was more concerned. “Those Sioux,” he ventured. “Do you suppose——”

“No, no,” came the prompt reply. “The Sioux had horses. They didn’t come by river. Sioux seldom travel by water. These men were white, or _bois brulés_, or Saulteux, or other Ojibwas. They had a birch canoe. No clumsy wooden boat or dugout made that mark.” Louis examined the footprints again. “That one man is a big fellow truly. See how long his track is.” The boy placed his own left foot in the most distinct of the prints. “He must be as tall as _le Murrai Noir_.”