"A few minutes ride will take you to the river; half an hour then to
the north and you are at Pitt. Before I leave, just a word. Tall Elk
put on paint to-day, and before the set of to-morrow's sun, there is
not a Cree in all the region who will not be on the war-path. To-morrow
the chief goes to Big Bear, to press him to dig up the hatchet;
so Messieurs, look to your guns in the Fort, as you will have more
than three hundred enemies under the stockades before the
rising of the next moon. Au revoir."
Before any of the group could utter a word of thanks, the mysterious
boy was off again to the north-west with the speed of the wind.
"That voice!" exclaimed Stephen striking his forehead. "I know it
surely; whose can it be?" and bewildered past hope of enlightenment,
he turned his horse down the slope, and dashed towards the Saskatchewan.
His followers and himself were admitted readily enough by Inspector
Dicken, a son of the great novelist, and destined afterwards to be one
of the heroes of the war.
When Annette rode away from Louis Riel to give warning to her lover,
the rebel chief ground his teeth and swore terrible oaths.
"It is as well" he muttered; "I have now justifiable grounds for
depriving her of liberty." Putting a whistle to his mouth he blew a
long blast, which was immediately answered from a clump of
cottonwood, about a quarter of a mile distant. Then came the tramp of
hoofs, and a minute later a horseman drew bridle by his chief.
"The spy has escaped me, Jean, and he was none other than I
supposed, ma belle Demoiselle. She did not deny that she was on a
mission hostile to our interests, and when I remonstrated, she held a
pistol in my face and swore by the Virgin that she would fire. This
is reason enough, Jean, for her apprehension. Let us away."
The chief led along the skirt of the upland, till he entered the
mouth of a wide, darksome valley. Upon either side straggled a growth
of mixed larch and cedar; in the centre was a dismal bog, through
which slowly rolled a black, foul stream. As they passed along the
shoulder of solid ground, troops of birds rose out of the wide sea of
bog, and the noise of their wings made a low, mournful whirring as
they passed in dark troops upwards into the ever-deepening dusk.
Then out of the gloom came a Ding Dong, like the low, solemn beat of
a bell. Jean crossed himself and exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! What is that Monsieur?"
"What, afraid Jean? That is no toll for a lost soul, but the crying
of the dismal bell bird."