CONCLUDED.
The next morning, at a very early hour, it was apparent that an assemblage of Indians at the council lodge had been summoned, to consider the proposal of the missionary. His hopes were encouraged when he noted that many of the old men and earliest converts were mingling with the fierce warriors and young men of the vicinity, on their way to the place of meeting.
After some time, a delegation, with the brave who had borne the message of the priest to his chief at their head, proceeded with measured and stately steps from the council lodge to that of the missionary, where they were received with the silent and ceremonious solemnity so dear to Indians.
The result of the debate, which they communicated, was, that their foes should be requested to meet them—under guaranty of the missionary for their good faith, and the assurance that the injured party would meet them unarmed, if they also would leave their arms behind—that the proposed council should be solemnly held. Should its decision be for peace, all should join in the pursuit and recapture of the maiden; if otherwise, time should be allowed for the foe to regain their camps before her people should take the war-path.
The trapper departed immediately to proclaim these decisions in the nearest camps of the hostile party, and to secure their general diffusion among those tribes. The missionary soon set out to notify the residents of other missions, after seeing that the young chief had despatched runners to summon a full attendance of his own people and friends.
There is wonderful despatch in the simple machinery set in motion by the aborigines of our country upon such occasions, executing their purpose with a speed which proves their ignorance of the wise "circumlocution offices" of civilization.
Immediate preparations were set on foot at the appointed rendezvous for entertaining a multitude. Large parties were sent out in quest of game. The women of the vicinity assembled to prepare the meats, the camash, the wappato, and the bitter root, for a great feast.
During the three days succeeding the transactions related above, multitudes were to be seen gathering from all quarters, and taking their course to the village where they were to meet, in profound silence, and with the grave composure befitting an assembly before which the tremendous issues of life and death were to be discussed.
The trapper came with a large party of the fiercest warriors whom the wiles of the "Northwester" had deceived. Several priests from scattered missions, more or less remote, with their converted Indians, arrived. Numerous savages of both sides advanced in parties by themselves, caring for nothing but blood and plunder should war be the word, or feasting and revelry should it be peace. French creoles, half-breeds, Canadian voyageurs, coureurs des bois, and free trappers, completed the list of this wild and miscellaneous assemblage.
Arrangements were made with great precision for the opening of the council. When the council lodge was in readiness, notice for the assembling of the various delegates was proclaimed from its roof by an Indian crier.
The missionaries passed in first, followed by the chiefs, and seated themselves on a semicircular platform slightly elevated from the earthen floor at the further end of the lodge, the priests sitting in the centre, between the two parties, as umpires. Then the elders, the delegates, and the warriors took their seats upon the floor along each side of the lodge.
The oldest chief of the injured confederates arose, and proceeded with calm dignity to explain the relations which the two parties, although ancient enemies even unto blood, had maintained with each other since they had been mutually moved by the message of peace, delivered by the holy Black Gowns, to bury the hatchet and live, as Christian brethren should, in peace and amity. He showed how faithfully those of his side, on their part, had kept the compact, depicting in vivid colors their grief and horror at the perfidy of their brothers, and the cruel slaughter of their innocent and unsuspecting friends. When he described the ambush, the sudden attack, the death of the old chief, and the murder of his followers; the plunder of their goods, the massacre of the women and children, and the capture of the cherished daughter of her race, it was fearful to see among the warriors the kindling passion for revenge flashing from fiery eyes which glared like those of the tiger thirsting for blood, though their manner remained otherwise cool, collected, and subdued.
At the close of this harangue, he called upon his brother,[163] the oldest chief of the opposite party, to reply, and state what he could in justification of their conduct.
With the same lofty composure, the respondent recapitulated and confirmed all that had been stated as to the former enmity and the friendly relations promoted and established between them by the labors and influence of the Black Gowns.
He then set forth in glowing language the dismay with which his people and their allies had heard that these their pretended friends were joining among themselves and with the new American companies—under the sanction of the missionaries—for their destruction and the possession of their hunting-grounds. That their good friends of the Northwest Company had warned them of their impending ruin, and furnished arms and ammunition, that they might avert the calamity by making the first attack themselves. That this was their sole motive for the act, and in self-defence, for self-preservation, they were ready to pursue the war-path as long as a man was left of their tribes to fight. But as to the massacre at the encampment, and abduction of the maiden, he indignantly denied for himself, his people, and their allies, all knowledge of any such place, or aid in its fulfilment, or of the instruments by which it had been executed.
Convictions of the crafty fabrications by which the Northwest Company, through its wily commander, had beguiled them, fastened gradually upon the minds of both parties, as their history was thus opened.
The missionaries now proceeded to re-establish peace, in which they were so successful that the calumet was duly passed from one to another through the whole assembly. Before the close of the council the terms of a new alliance were fully settled, and all parties pledged to fidelity in maintaining it, and diligence in seeking the lost maiden.
Muttered threats were breathed against the Northwest Company, and especially its false commander, and a determination to take his life vehemently expressed. The missionaries reproved these threats so sternly that they were accused of befriending him, and the trapper was again obliged to exert all his influence in quelling the rising distrust.
Meanwhile, preparations for a grand banquet, after the most approved and bountiful mode of savage magnificence, had been going on, and the village was redolent of savory odors from every variety of meat and vegetables in process of cooking according to the Indian fashions.
The great assemblage regaled themselves plentifully, but with staid decorum. The mirth, the dancing, and the songs, customary upon such occasions, were omitted, out of respect for the memory of the departed chief and the sorrows of his son.
At the close of the feast, the Rosary was recited by the missionaries and their converts; after which the parties who were to set out in quest of the maiden were duly organized and equipped with arms and ammunition, procured for the purpose from the nearest American station. These were so dispersed as to surround by a long circuit the principal trading post of the Northwest Company—at which the commander made his headquarters—and draw towards it by narrowing circles, to intercept any party which might be sent to convey the object of their search to some other place should news of their expedition reach the post before their arrival. A runner accompanied each party to notify the next of any important incident touching the interests of their expedition.
As they were patiently and gradually converging toward their destination, one detachment met a party of traders from the Hudson's Bay Company, who informed them that the "Northwester" whom they sought was absent.
He had failed to meet them, as he had agreed, to arrange terms of requital with them for plunder committed upon their territory by his agents; and had departed a day or two before, with a fleet of canoes and a large party of voyageurs, down the river to an American station which was commanded by a former partner in his company, with whom he was on terms of suspicious intimacy, considering their rival interests.
There were a number of women in the canoes, supposed to be the wives of the voyageurs.
This intelligence changed the course of the expedition. The several bands were notified, and united as speedily as possible, to make their way to the station indicated.
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!
While he was still lamenting, with frenzied exclamations, his own folly, and the dire calamity in which it had resulted, a pursuing party of her friends arrived. It was terrific to mark the fierce flash of eyes that fixed their blazing regard upon him from all sides, as his savage foes encircled him!
He seemed too completely lost in the tumult of his own grief, disappointment, and passion to heed their approach, or the imminent peril in which he stood, as one after another of the band drew up his rifle and prepared to fire upon him at a word from their leader, when the tall form of the trapper stalked into the circle, and his ringing voice gave the command that was instinctively obeyed.
"Down with your rifles, ye bloody-minded sarpints"—suiting a gesture to the word, that was understood in a twinkling. Then, addressing them in their own tongue: "Are the red men wolves, that they would drink the blood of the pale chief without hearing what he has to say? How will they answer to the holy Black Gown for the deed, or how will they face the pestilence and famine which will surely follow every life-drop that flows from the veins of the great medicine-man of the palefaces?" he added, appealing to the faith of the converted Indians, and to the superstitions of the unconverted, and whispering a brief sentence in the ear of the young chief, who had been maddened at the loss of his sister, but was subdued by the presence and words of the trapper. Then resuming his own language, he said to himself as if musing—indulging a habit formed during his long and lonely wanderings—"I'm willin' to own the chap has many ways that a man of peace and justice like myself can't approve by any manner of means, for they don't square with my notions of what's right. But it may be more the misfortune of the critter than his fault, seein' he comes of them Britishers, whose blood, I conclude, carries its pesky pizin down from father to son to the third and fourth generation, as the holy commandments say both good and evil is carried. But there's two sides to every story, and I an't agoin' to stand by and see the life of a feller-critter taken, if he is a son of Satan, without hearin' both. Them Injins an't sich angils of innocence either as to have the right to cast the first stone at the wicked. I'm not a prejudiced man, I hope, but 'cordin' to my notion there an't a truer thing in natur 'cept the Holy Bible—which I take to be the truest of all—than that they're a tarnal pack, take 'em by and large, and 'ud ruther drink blood than water any day, every mother's son on' em, savin' and exceptin' always—as lawyer Smith used to say—the Flat-heads and the Pendorays, who're 'bout the likeliest folks I've met this side of the univarsal world, and have as nat'ral a twist towards Gospil light as the sunflower has to the sun. But all this is neither here nor there"—he said, rousing himself from his soliloquy, which the natives had heard to a close with quiet gravity, being accustomed to his manner; and, striding up to the "Northwester," who remained sitting motionless on his horse, with his back to his pursuers and his eyes fixed upon the rushing flood, as if so petrified by the shocking event he had witnessed as to have eyes or ears for nothing else—"Are you crazy, or a fool?" exclaimed the trapper in a low voice as he approached—"to sit here as unconsarned as if you was in a lady's parlor, with a hundred rifles raised to draw your heart's blood, and your long account with etarnity all unsettled! What on airth is the critter thinkin' of! Speak quick! or I wouldn't give the glim of a lightnin'-bug for all they'll leave of the vital spark in your carkiss in less'n the twinklin' of its wings; they'll put daylight in its place, and your scalp'll be danglin' from the belt of the young chief in less time than it takes to speak the words—a sight I should greatly mislike, bein' a man of peace, though no great admirator of your race, any more'n I be of the Injuns."
Suddenly assuming the careless manner natural to him, and turning towards the maddened throng with the scornful indifference which seldom forsook him, and was the best weapon he could have opposed to the fury of his savage foes at this critical juncture, the young man related in a few words what had happened.
With a sneer of contempt, the Indian appointed to speak for the band replied: "Did the Great Spirit give his bird wings that she might fly from the white chief to the home where his falsehood has sent her father? or is she a fish that she may cleave the waters of that flood and escape from him? No, no, our daughter lives! When the white chief says she went over the rock, his words are to deceive; and when he bewails the fate of the maiden, he is making a false face. He sent the horse over the rock to blind the eyes of her people. He has a long arm and a strong voice, and can call his braves from every covert. He knows where he has hidden our daughter. But we will follow him even unto the homes of the palefaces, and lie in wait until more moons are counted than the hairs on his scalp would number, to drink his blood at last. Our feet will be swift to pursue and our knives to find his heart, even to the piercing of stone walls!"
"Lord give us patience with their Injin nonsense!" the trapper ejaculated. Then, speaking in their language: "Will my red brethren waste time in idle words like prattling women? The white chief will go with us to the lodge of the holy Black Gown, whose words are truth, and whose counsels are wise and just. That's as true's you're alive, Hezekiah," he proceeded, resuming his own tongue; and, as if moved by an irresistible impulse—"Talk about your Methodist preachers, your Presbyterers, your Baptists, and all sorts, who deny that these missionaries hold to Gospel truth! But let 'em obsarve how they follow out Gospel rules by layin' aside all critter comforts, forsakin' father and mother, brother and sister, housen and lands, and, comin' into these howlin' deserts, without scrip or staff, wives or children, labor with their own hands for a livin', sharin' and puttin' up with all the poverty and hardships of the shiftless critters they come to teach—whose souls, I make no dispute, are of as much value for the next world, and in the sight of their Maker, as if they belonged to thoroughgoin', giniwine Yankees—though their works don't amount to much in this, even in the line of their callin' in furs and sich, at which a Connecticut trapper 'ill beat 'em all hollow any day." Then, suddenly recollecting himself, he again addressed his wild companions: "The Big Foot will pledge his own life to his red brothers, against that of the white chief, that he prove not false in this matter; and they will let the Black Gown say what his children shall do."
After some consultation the proposal was accepted, and without any great delay they all departed in the direction of the mission.
When the missionary had examined the matter after their arrival, he became convinced that the life of the young commander would be in danger while he remained within reach of his exasperated foes, and would hardly be safe in his Montreal home from their revengeful pursuit. He therefore advised him to leave without delay.
The advice was scornfully rejected at first, but soon perceiving that it would be folly to provoke a fate which flight only could evade, he joined a party who were leaving for Lake Superior, to proceed thence by the usual route to Montreal, and was seen no more in those Northwestern regions.
Many years had elapsed since these events took place. A dark and rainy night had succeeded a tempestuous autumnal day, and settled down like a wet mantle over Montreal, wrapping the city in its chilling folds.
The street-lamps with which it was dimly lighted in the early evenings of yore—when oil furnished an obscure foreshadowing of this era of gas, that served only to make "darkness visible"—had gone out one by one, leaving the narrow streets, with their high stone houses overhanging on either side, in utter gloom.
The twinkling of a lantern borne by an invisible pilgrim might be seen—like the transient dancing gleam of a will-o'-the-wisp—revealing occasional glimpses of a tall form by his side clad in the habit of the Society of Jesus. They were threading the narrow course of old St. Paul Street, which they followed until they reached a road that turned and ascended a rising ground to the west, in the direction of a district where there had formerly been a beaver meadow of considerable extent, through which flowed a sluggish brook, but which was rapidly assuming the features now presented by that part of the city lying in the neighborhood of Beaver Hall Block.
Into this road they turned, and, passing the district mentioned, took a path to the left, which led them to the base of the hill on the summit of which the city water-works and reservoir are now situated.
In those days the ascent was by no means easy, and the aged father had to pause frequently to take breath during the course of it. Having reached the height, and rested for a brief space, they turned again to the left into spacious, neglected grounds, surrounding a very large stone mansion which stood unfinished on the side of the mountain, as entirely isolated on that lonely height as if in the midst of vast solitudes, instead of the suburb of a populous and thriving city. So chilling, gloomy, and repulsive were all the features of the lofty edifice and its bleak environs, which had been an open common for many years, that even the reverend father, long accustomed to encounter such varied forms of desolation as the missionary in savage regions must continually meet, recoiled unconsciously as he passed the dismal portal, which no door had ever closed, into the damp atmosphere within. Here the mouldy walls appeared to give shelter only to a multitude of owls and bats, whose wings flapped indignantly at the unwonted gleam of light in their dark dominion, and equally rare intrusion of a guest upon the silence of their retreat.
The man with the lantern passed on in advance, followed slowly and cautiously by his venerable companion, over a narrow platform constructed by laying planks on the timber of the framework, until they came to a remote corner of the building, in which a small room had been awkwardly prepared, and arranged in a manner to render it barely habitable. A more comfortless abode could hardly be imagined. Before the door of this rude apartment they paused, the guide inserted a key in the huge lock, the bolt of which yielded slowly as if fearing to betray its trust, the door creaked harshly on its rusty hinges and gave admittance to the reverend guest.
Guided by the faint glimmer of a taper—standing on a rough block beside a bed on which the form of a man tossing in restless agony was dimly visible, the priest approached the sufferer, addressing some soothing words to him.
"Ah, reverend father! is it you?" he faintly gasped. "It was kind of you to come through the storm this dismal night, and, after your long journey, to seek the lost sheep so utterly unworthy of your care! I am near the close of a misspent and wasted life! Will the worthless wreck offered at the eleventh hour in penitence and tears be accepted? O father! how true were the words you uttered when reproving my sinful course: 'Unless you repent the wrongs you have inflicted, making such requital as remains within your power, a fearful retribution awaits you in this world, and eternal despair in the next.' The first part has been fulfilled—wife, children, family, and friends have fallen from me one by one, and for long years the victim of his own folly and iniquity has lingered on desolate and alone—haunted by visions of retribution and despair. But I have tried to be contrite, and to offer such contrition as I could gain, in anguish and tears at the foot of my Redeemer's cross. May I not hope it will be accepted? How I have longed, reverend father, for your return to Montreal! The first emotion of joy my heart has known for years was imparted when I heard from my attendant that you had at length arrived—just in time to hear my last confession and console my dying hour, if there is indeed comfort for such a sinner. The blood of that Indian chief—singled first of all from his followers for death by my command (because he set his authority against my designs)—and that of his innocent daughter and her nurse, who perished by my means, have set a burning seal upon my guilty soul; while the phantom of my injured wife, taken from me while I was pursuing my unhallowed passion, joins with theirs to reproach and haunt me. I am lost, lost in the horrors of remorse for the triple murder, added to an endless list of misdeeds!
"Peace, my son!" the reverend father said tenderly and firmly—"though your sins are as scarlet, their guilt has not surpassed the bounds of Infinite mercy! Nor has it reached so far as you suppose. The Indian maiden lives. A holy nun in an American convent, she has never ceased her supplications for the salvation of your soul, and for the pardon of her own weakness and disobedience to her father, in yielding her young heart's affections to your importunities before she learned, as she did on the voyage down the river, that you were already married, and sought only to make her your dishonored dupe.
"She urged her horse over the precipice according to instructions from the trapper, who told her to fly with all speed in that direction, and at what point to turn to the river, if pursued and in danger of being overtaken. He also warned her to make no resistance to the current, only to avoid being drawn into whirlpools, but to let it carry her through the gorge to a place where the waters spread into a small lake, on the shore of which, near the foot of the gorge, she would find a singular cave opening toward the water, and easily seen, where she must secrete herself until he should bring her brother to her. In all this she succeeded by the skill in swimming which seems to be part of an Indian's nature. When the trapper and her brother sought the hiding-place—with but faint hope indeed of finding her—so great was her dread of your power and of her own weakness, that she entreated them to keep the fact of her escape concealed, and arrange for her departure with a company of traders belonging to the American stations, who were intending to leave with their wives and pass the winter in a distant city of the United States. They therefore left her, first providing means by which her servant could obtain their food; and after the return of the party to me, those arrangements were made. Upon her arrival in that city, and delivery of a letter from me to the superior of a convent there, she was received into the house, and soon after entered upon her novitiate as one of its members."
"And now, my son," he continued, "it only remains for you to prepare for the solemnities of the approaching hour, with deep humility and contrition. I am sent by my Divine Master to call, 'not the just, but sinners to repentance.'"
The holy man remained with his dying penitent through the night, and, while the morning bells of the city were proclaiming the story of our salvation on the wings of the Angelus, the spirit, so long perturbed with agonizing throes of remorse, but at length reconciled and refreshed by the healing dews of divine grace, passed to the tribunal before which it had so dreaded to appear, trusting solely in the merits of that Redeemer born of a Virgin for us, and who was now to be its Judge.
He was the first and last occupant of the gloomy mansion that had been designed for the abode of almost regal magnificence. The phantoms of horror with which his distorted imagination had filled the vacant spaces within those extensive walls, and even the surrounding premises, led him to confine himself entirely to his room. And thus he lived for years, a prisoner in that dimly lighted and cheerless apartment, attended only by the faithful servant who provided his food, and haunted by dark remembrances of the past.
The shadows of those visions still linger around the empty walls, and pervade the silent precincts, nourishing a firm belief in the minds of many that they are peopled by unearthly forms, and investing them with a mysterious influence that keeps all intruders at a distance.
The Canadian driver, as he conveys the stranger in his cab or cariole to different points of interest about the city, pauses a moment on the height opposite the frowning mansion, and points it out—standing in dismal grandeur among the brambles of its neglected grounds—with the half-whispered explanation, "Yonder is the Haunted House of Montreal."
We questioned the narrator as to the fate of the Big Foot, and learned that he made profession of the Catholic faith soon after the departure of the "Northwester" for Montreal; and from that time until his death, a few years later, attached himself to the service of the missionary whom he so venerated.
"And the confidential clerk of the fur trader?" we inquired.
Rising to his feet, and drawing his tall form to its full height, our narrator replied, with a proud self-assertion of which none but a Scotch Highlander is fully capable, and which no pen can describe—"I am myself that clerk. His grandfather was chief of the clan to which my family belonged. When his father came to Canada, mine came with him. I was but little younger than this oldest son, and we were brought up together. When he was sent to the Northwest, I was permitted to go with him, and never left him until the grave closed its inexorable door between us."
He turned away to hide his emotion, and left us pondering upon the strange things that happen in this world of ours!
[163] Indians always address their equals as "brothers."