Chapter XXXVII: Flight

Louis and Walter decided that Neil’s plan was worth trying. They muffled the axles of the two carts with strips torn from a ragged blanket, and carefully cased the vehicles over the edge of the coulee. The moon, shining into the rift, lighted them down the steep slope. Along the bed of the shallow brook that ran through the coulee to join the Wild Rice River, they pushed and pulled the carts, and left them well hidden among willows and cottonwoods where the ravine widened.

“There,” said Neil when the job was done, “if those Indians follow straight up the coulee after us, they won’t find the carts at all. If they come down here and find them, they may think we have gone back across the river.”

“Probably,” Louis returned, “they will divide into two parties, one to go up, the other down the coulee. But if they get all our things they may be content to let us go.”

Hiding the carts had taken less than a half hour. In the meantime Mrs. Brabant and the children had gone down into the coulee, Jeanne and Max stumbling along, scarcely awake enough to realize what was happening. While the horses were being led down, Walter remained behind as rear guard. As he threw a last armful of fuel on the fire, a burst of hideous noise came across the prairie from the Indian camp. Howls and yells, to the thumping of many drums, proved that Murray’s medicine dance was in full swing. A picture flashed through the boy’s mind; a picture of that central space within the circle of tipis as it must look now, with scores of naked, painted, befeathered savages, stamping, leaping, yelling around the blazing fires. There was no time to lose.

Mrs. Brabant was impatient and anxious to be away. She had made no protest at leaving the carts behind. All her household belongings were in them, but what were blankets and copper kettles, and the precious wooden chest of clothing and little things, compared with the safety of her children? She and little Jeanne had been placed on one of the ponies. There were only four horses for ten people. Mr. Perier took Max with him on another, and the remaining two were given to Elise and Marie. Marie could ride almost as well as her brothers, and Elise had learned since leaving Pembina.

It was very dark at the bottom of the coulee among the willows that fringed the stream. Speed was not possible, and the foot travelers could easily keep up with the ponies. Yet there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was the only route to take. On the open prairie, in the moonlight, they would be plainly visible from every direction. Here they were completely hidden. They hoped to be miles away before the Indians discovered that they had gone.

Progress seemed heart-breakingly slow, however, as the little party picked their way up the bed of the brook in the darkness. Louis, on foot, went ahead as guide. Walter, Neil and Raoul brought up the rear. The stream was not much over a foot deep at its deepest, with a sticky mud bottom. Luckily the ponies were sure-footed and almost cat-eyed. One or another slipped or stumbled now and then, but recovered quickly without unseating the rider. The night remained oppressively warm. Not a breath of breeze stirred the willows down below the level of the prairie. Pale flashes lit up the narrow strip of sky overhead, and distant thunder rumbled.

The coulee grew narrower and shallower. The brook dwindled to a rivulet, the fringing willows were smaller and met above the stream. It was difficult to push a way through. At last Louis called a halt.

“Wait a little,” he said. “I will go on and find a way.”

Strung out along the narrow streamlet, which scarcely covered the hoofs of the horses, the rest waited for his return. The mosquitoes were bad, and the tormented horses twisted, turned, pawed the mud, and slapped their tails about. Walter made his way among the willows to Elise’s side to be at hand if her mount should become unmanageable. But they exchanged only a word or two. The oppression of the night and the danger lay too heavy upon them both.

After what seemed a long time, Louis returned. “The coulee ends a little way ahead,” he reported. “The stream comes from a wet marsh that we must go around. I have found a place where we can climb the right bank.”

Without further words, he took hold of the bridle of his mother’s horse and led it through the willows and up a dry gully. The gully was one of the channels by which the marsh waters, during spring floods and rainy periods, found their way into the coulee. The prairie at the head of the gully was dry in July, the marsh being shrunken to dry weather proportions.

There was a certain relief in being up on the open plain again. For one thing there was more light. The western sky was banked with clouds. Over there lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, but the moon remained uncovered. Looking back to the northwest across the flat prairie, Walter could see, against the dark clouds, the glow of the fires in the Indian camp. A flash of lightning showed the pointed tips of the tipis black against the white light.

It seemed a long time since the fugitives had gone down into the coulee. The boy was disappointed and alarmed to find that they had not come farther. Had the Indians discovered their absence yet? He scanned the prairie for moving figures. To his great relief he could see not one. Not even a buffalo or a wolf appeared to be abroad on that wide, moonlit expanse. Only an occasional puff of breeze stirred the tall grass.

The party were gathered together at the head of the gully. Louis was speaking, and Walter turned to listen.

“We can go faster now, but one must go ahead to keep the course and——”

“You must do that, Louis,” Neil interrupted. “You are guide. It is your place. The two girls will have to ride one horse.”

Louis hesitated. “It is not right for me to ride away and leave you three to follow on foot.”

“It is the only way,” put in Walter. “The ponies can’t carry us all. The others can’t go on without a guide. You will have to do it, Louis. We won’t be far behind.”

“Neil can guide as well as I can,” Louis began.

“I can’t and I won’t,” retorted the Scotch boy stubbornly. “You have your mother and sisters to take care of, and you are going on ahead.”

“One of you boys can take my horse,” Mr. Perier proposed. “I am the least experienced and the least useful of all.” He started to dismount.

“No, no,” cried Louis. “You will be too slow with your crippled foot. You will hold the others back. You must ride.”

“There are the children to think of,” Walter added earnestly. “You must go with them. Neil and Raoul and I can go much faster on foot than you could.”

“Stop talking and get away,” exclaimed Raoul impatiently. “Marie, come off that horse.”

For once in her life Marie obeyed her next older brother. She took his hand and slipped quickly to the ground. Raoul helped her up in front of Elise. Louis, without further argument, mounted and took the lead. He knew as well as anyone that they had already wasted too much time in argument.

As Raoul drew back from helping Marie up, his mother bent down from her horse to throw her left arm about his neck. “God guard you, my son,” she said softly.

“And you,” muttered Raoul huskily.

At first the lads on foot kept almost at the heels of the ponies. The prairie grass grew high and rank, and there was no beaten path. The animals could not go fast, and all three boys were good runners. But running through tall grass is not like running on an open road or even on a well-trodden cart track. They soon tired, and had to slow their pace and fall behind. The ponies were double burdened and far from fresh, but they were tough, wiry beasts, capable of extraordinary endurance. When they struck firmer ground beyond the marsh, they made better speed. The rear guard fell still farther behind. They tried to keep in the track made by the horses, but it was not always easy to do so, especially when flying clouds covered the moon and left them in darkness.

No rain fell, however. The storm that had been threatening for so long was working around to the north. The rumblings of thunder grew fainter, the lightning flashes less bright. Before dawn they had ceased altogether. A fresh, cool breeze sprang up, billowing the grass and putting new life into the tired boys, as they plodded on, carrying their heavy muskets. They no longer tried to run, but they kept up a steady walking pace.

Dawn showed a line of trees ahead that did not appear to be much over a half mile away. Those trees, the boys felt sure, must mark the course of the Bois des Sioux. It was from one of the groves on its bank that the stream took its name. The foot travelers had lost the horse track some time before, but Neil and Raoul had managed, with the aid of the stars, to keep a general course towards the east. The rest of the party were nowhere in sight. Probably they had crossed the river long ago.

Though the trees seemed such a short distance away, the sun was rising above them before the lads reached the river. Wet, marshy ground had forced a detour. The stream, where they came out upon it, proved larger and wider than they had expected.

“If we cross here we will have to swim,” said Neil, as he looked down at the muddy water. “I think we are too far down. See there.” He pointed to the opposite shore up stream. “Either the river makes a sharp bend there, or another one comes in.”

“It is the Ottertail,” suggested Raoul. “That must be where the two come together to make the Red.”

“It looks like it,” Walter agreed. “Anyway this doesn’t seem to be a good place to cross. We know nothing about the current. We had better go on up and look for a ford.”

The boys did not have to go far along the west bank of the united rivers to convince themselves that the stream coming in from the east was indeed the Ottertail. They could see plainly enough that it was larger than the branch from the south. Single file, with Walter in the lead, they were making their way along the bank opposite the mouth of the Ottertail, when from the willows directly in front of them an Indian appeared.

“_Bo jou_,” he said, and added a few words in his own language.

Walter, startled, had half raised his musket, but Raoul, who was close behind him, seized his arm.

“That’s a Saulteur, not a Sioux,” the younger boy whispered, then answered the man in his own tongue.

Neil pushed forward to join in the conversation. He also knew a little of the Saulteur or Ojibwa language, though he did not speak it so readily as Raoul, who had played with Indian and half-breed lads since babyhood. Walter, unable to understand more than an occasional word or two—picked up at Pembina and among the hunters—stood back and looked on.

The sudden appearance of this lone Saulteur near the southern limits of the debatable ground surprised him greatly. What puzzled him most, however, was the man’s familiar face. Surely he had seen that scarred cheek, where the skin drew tight over the bone, before, but where? On the way from York Factory, at Fort Douglas, at Pembina, at the Company post when the hunters were bringing in their winter’s catch? Then he remembered. It was at the post he had seen the Ojibwa; not in the spring, but in the autumn. This was the hunter who had been beaten and robbed, as he was loading his canoe to return to his hunting grounds at Red Lake. What was he doing here?

The Indian was speaking rapidly, in a low voice. Walter caught two words he knew, “_Murrai Noir_.” Neil swung around, excitement in his eyes.

“Walter,” he exclaimed, “this fellow says Murray is his enemy. He is after Murray to get revenge. Is he——”

“Yes.” Walter did not wait for Neil to finish the question. “He is the man Murray and Fritz Kolbach attacked. I know that scar on his cheek. At the post they said a grizzly bear once clawed him in the face. How did he learn that Murray was in this part of the country? Ask him.”

Raoul put the question and translated the answer. “He was at Pembina just after the hunt left. Fritz Kolbach and two other DeMeurons were there at the same time. Scar Face attacked Kolbach, but the other fellows separated them. Then Kolbach declared it was Murray who hit Scar Face over the head, and offered to put him on Murray’s trail. He told Scar Face that Murray was near Lake Traverse trading with the Dakotas and pretending to be a medicine man. Some men going from Traverse to Pembina with carts had seen him. So Scar Face is trailing him.”

“Alone?” queried Walter.

“No, he has some young braves with him who want to get a reputation by raiding enemy country. They came down the Ottertail River.”

“Where are they?”

“Near here somewhere. I don’t know how he learned that Murray was with Tatanka Wechacheta’s band, but he knew it before I told him.”

“Did you tell him that we are running away from them?”

“Yes. Wait a minute.”

The Indian was speaking. He pointed up the river and his manner was earnest and emphatic. When Scar Face paused, Raoul turned to the others again.

“He says he has heard that there is a good ford a little way up the river. That is probably where our people crossed. He thinks that Murray and the Sioux will follow the horse tracks to the ford. If Scar Face and his braves lie in wait there, they can get a shot at Murray when he tries to cross. They will take us to the ford in their canoes.”

Before Raoul had finished this explanation, the Indian was showing signs of impatience. He turned now and led the way in among the willows. There, where the river current had taken a crescent-shaped bite out of the mud bank, two birch canoes were pulled up. Five young braves, arrayed in feathers and war paint, came out from hiding places among the bushes, where they had been waiting for their leader, who had been for a look across the prairie west of the river.

They were a wild and fearsome looking little band. Had the boys not known that they were, for the time being at least, on the Saulteur side of the quarrel, they might have hesitated to trust themselves with the war party. But they had given Scar Face and his comrades information of value, and had nothing to fear from them.