Menotah Part 31

Silently she obeyed. The blue fingers closed hungrily round the warm rounded hand of his child. For a s.p.a.ce he lay silent, fighting for life breath.

'Menotah, my child-love, my age-light, I shall see you again in the joy land whither the Spirit calls me.... You must swear, by that you hold in honour, you must take the great oath, never to pause on the path of vengeance ... until you avenge your wrongs on the life of the vile white.... Good Antoine will aid you.... Strike, child, and pity not. Let his blood be spilt for your lost honour.'

The effort had been too great. He lay, throbbing with death agony, while a thin stream of blood trickled from the mouth and coursed slowly along a deep furrow of the chin.

'He pa.s.ses,' muttered Antoine, hoa.r.s.ely. 'It is time. On such a night was he born. So does he die, amid the north wind and biting cold. Swear, child, lest he die cursing you.'

A hollow exclamation ascended from the withered form. 'Swear!'

Then she placed the right hand on her father's head, and raising the other aloft, with stern voice and unflinching determination, took the oath which might not be broken.

The final flicker of strength darted into the exhausted frame, that sudden flash of energy which heralds the silence. 'Antoine,' he whispered, 'raise me to the light. So will I die cursing the white man.'

The Ancient raised the emaciated form in his shaking arms. For a few seconds, faint, yet intensely bitter words of condemnation and hatred fell from the blood-stained lips, before life faded away into the unseen. Menotah, still holding the hand, felt the shudder of the departing soul, and caught the distant echo of a voice--forced, as it seemed, from the cold body, after the pa.s.sing of the Spirit, 'I go, daughter ... it is dark.'

The dreary death chant and low groaning of the women beat upon the night.

Half contemptuously Menotah turned from the still form, with pa.s.sion unexpressed. Antoine lifted his slow, watering eyes from the withered remains, to gloat upon her hopeless aspect.

'You grieve not, daughter?'

'I have done with such things as joy or grief,' she said savagely. 'My destiny calls, and I leave the emotions for the sport of fools.'

The Ancient s.h.i.+vered, for the cold bit into his stiff limbs, 'You speak as he would wish to hear. You shall have your desire, child. I have said it.'

Half mad, she turned to the open door and called to the dusky-featured ones squatting at the fires,--

'Shout louder, women. Howl until the voice breaks the wind and scatters the ghost lights.[1] Beat your b.r.e.a.s.t.s for the sorrow that lies within the camp. Louder, I tell you. Cry louder.'

Antoine laughed hoa.r.s.ely. 'Ay, shout! He hears you not. Perchance the G.o.d has an ear open to our cries.'

The uncouth strain of savage melody swelled fitfully upward in long, suffering cadence, then fell, dying away in shuddering murmurs, to ascend again more loudly, yet more bitterly.

Menotah clenched her small hands and bit the pale lips in the agony of the yet living heart. Then Antoine was at her side, nervously plucking at the blanket that trailed from her shoulder.

'Hearken, daughter. To-morrow we must burn the old Chief, and send him forth upon a long journey. Then there is duty--'

'You may forget,' she broke in coldly, 'but I--'

'Peace, child, let me have speech. You were ever over ready with your words. I am aged, and strength is not mine. I must be satisfied with controlling the striking weapon. So I can only aid by cursing your enemy, and by praying to the G.o.d.'

'May your G.o.d-hunting be successful,' she said scornfully.

'The G.o.d of the white men has the greater power,' he continued unmoved.

'He has conquered ours, and bidden the enemy rule over us. Therefore, daughter, I would for the time follow that G.o.d.'

'You, who always hated the white, become one of them! What plan is this?'

'Then I should be one of His followers, and He would hear my prayers.

Now I have other G.o.ds, so He could not listen to me. I would beseech Him each day, to grant us vengeance upon the white man.'

'Will you sport with the lightning?' she said calmly.

'I care not. I will take canoe, before the ice binds the river, and paddle for six days. Then I shall find one of their doctors. I have heard the wanderers tell of him. They call him Father Bertrand. He must tell me what I am to do, to join the followers of the white G.o.d.'

She turned from him wearily, longing vaguely for silence and isolation.

'Pray to whom you will; all G.o.ds are the same. They laugh at sorrow, and they heed not.'

'You shall see, child. I have greater wisdom than you. But now we must take our part in mourning for the dead.'

He took her cold, resistless hand, and together they stepped within the ruddy glow. Then he raised his sh king hands and cried aloud,--

'Mourn, warriors! The Chief, who led you to battle, who kept you in peace, who gave you wise counsel, your father, your ruler, is dead. Cry aloud to the Spirit, and sing your songs of grief.

'Mourn, women! The Chief, who loved you, who protected you, who smiled upon you with favours, your father, your husband, is dead. Scream your lamentations, tear your hair, dig the sharp nails into b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and cry aloud in your grief.'

The unearthly melody surged upward in a tumultuous wave of sound, until the auroral lights flickered like flames in the blast. The air became thick and silvery with frost crystals, while sharp cold settled along the ground. This was a night of frost, of death--of fearful and unutterable despair.

[1] The shout of the human voice repels and scatters the auroral lights.

Hence many Indian legends.

PART III

THE HEART'S PEACE

CHAPTER I

LAMONT

A radiant flood of light poured from the white moon upon the rippling waters of the Red River. A grove of black oaks along the bank waved silently in the clear night; frogs chirped merrily from the fenced in fields, where fireflies sparkled and flashed before a long dark background of foliage. Along that portion of the shelving bank, where a young man and a dark-haired girl walked closely together, might be perceived on looking back the twinkling lights of Fort Garry, from whose stone walls the shadow of war had now lifted for ever. Nearer, outside the actual fort, a grey stunted tower shot upward from the thick of an oak bluff. Here rested in their last quiet many of the brave English and Canadian boys who had fallen in the late Rebellion.

Winter and spring had pa.s.sed since the desertion of Menotah. That time had wrought change to the western and northern country, a change, sad perhaps, yet necessary from the standpoint of civilisation. The last traces of vengeful fire in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those who had joined the insurrection had been stamped out, the final agreement had been made, the white again triumphed. Louis Riel had swung upon the gallows at Regina, before the eyes of many on that dreary, treeless plain, that no traveller who has once seen can forget. There was no leader, no keen spirit left. So the survivors gladly s.n.a.t.c.hed at that, only thing they could now ask for--pardon.

Yet the question of justice, from the position of the conquered, may be still worth considering. One of the half-breeds most zealous to the cause spoke thus in the echoing valley[1] before his priest,--

'Why did I fight, my Father? I, who have the blood of the white men in me. It was for that reason that I fought, and that I killed. The white man came into a country which was not his, which had belonged to others for many hundreds of years, and he saw that the country was good, and full of animals. Also he perceived that the women were beautiful. So he said, I will make this place my home, and call my friends to come here also. These men came, and brought with them guns and fire-water. Then they took the women, first one and then another, and had children by them. So was I born, and I have brothers and sisters of many different mothers. Yet the father was the same. But what could the Indians do against the white man's guns? They said, give us back our wives and our daughters, also our land and our buffalo. But the white man only laughed, and gave them fire-water, which ate away their manhood and their courage. So they said at length, we will rise up and reclaim our own. We have now nothing to lose, for the white man has taken all from us, except life. Let him take that also, or give us back that which makes it happy. That is why I fought, my Father.'

It is a strange fact in modern times, and one so far unrecognised, that the Rebellion should have been crushed by the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Standing merely upon the path of duty, Archbishop Tache, with his band of gallant priests, amongst whom Father Lecompte must stand predominant, succeeded in quenching the flame of human pa.s.sion entirely by means of that extraordinary devotion entertained by these ignorant children of the Rebellion for their kindly teachers.

Actuated the Archbishop certainly was by a high sense of duty, yet it was also right that he should subsequently look for that reward which the Government had promised, as some slight return for the salvation of a country. It is notorious that such reward was never paid. It is, or should be, universally known that there was but one care which distressed 'the man of the great heart,' as his 'children'