The Red River Half-Breed: A Tale of the Wild North-West

CHAPTER I

THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT

We stand on the loftiest peak of the Big Wind River Mountains, that highest and longest chain of the Northern Rockies, a chaos of granite fifteen thousand feet towards the firmament from the sea.

Around us the lesser pinnacles hold up heads as fantastic in shape as an Indian's plumed for battle, and, below a little, diamonds of ice deck the snowy ermine of the colossal giant's robe.

Far beneath, the mosses are grown upon by sparse grasses, and they by scrub evergreens, gradually displaced in the descent to the warm alcoved valleys by taller and taller pines, spruce, larch, and cedar. But the ancient ocean wash here shows lines alone of the constant west and southwest winds, which never bring a seed or grain into this calm frigidity.

In the placid afternoon, the beats are audible of the wings of the king of the air, that proud eagle which Milton chose as the finest emblem of the American people who, in their vigorous youth, had lit their eyes in the unclouded sunbeams; and the song of the Arctic bluebird, startled by the unwonted squeaking of the dry ice powder intermixed with ground fossils and granite, as horses in the uneven line of a new and breakneck trail crunch antediluvian shells to atoms as they follow a daring man up the heights along chasms of ten thousand feet, from the western acclivity to the actual summit divide, not two yards wide.

It was November, a time when the almost impossible crossing was alone in the power of man, since in the thaws of summer the ravines are choke full of resistless water, and, later, the snowstorms are overwhelming.

The guide of the little train stood on the monstrous pedestal, firm and unblenching as a statue, and contemplated with an impassioned but unflinching eye the sublime spectacle four hundred miles in diameter. Like the jags of a necklace, the peaks of the sierra protruded, and like gems glittered the pure lakes of the mountain tops, those that feed to both hands the western and eastern rivers: towards the Pole, the Athabasca's Devil's Punchbowl, and the Two-world Pond under our eyes, into which the salmon trout leap from the Orient, and flash down into the Missouri for the Mexican Gulf!

Like steps of an immense staircase, the Plains of the Missouri, Cheyenne, and Laramie extended, monotonous, drying up the mountain flow in insatiate rocks and sands, and heaving up stone barriers to the prairie ocean. Like a thin thread of water gleams the rails of the Pacific Railroad, twenty thousand miles of metal over which the dolefully hooting steam engine capers to connect the Iron and Coal States with those of Gold and Corn.

But the presumptuous pigmy soon ceases to be impressed with the grandeur and the magnificence, and lets an admiring glance dwell on the shining face of the never-freezing Lake of the Yellowstone Valley, and seems to feel no such awe as an Indian would have at viewing the inimitable hues and fanciful wreaths of smoke which overhung the mysterious Firehole Basin – the Geyser land of the scientific, the haunt of the red man's demons and gods.

"Huh-la!" he cries to the horses and mules, and up they come in his dauntless footsteps, and, the loads telling on them in the rarity of the air, gladly snicker as they take the downward path at last, spite of the peril.

Sunset impends, and the adventurer still urges the train till the last arrival appears, goaded by a second pioneer, who seems of Indian blood.

The two men silently exchange a grasp of the hand, as if their task were nearly accomplished, and plunge into the darkness, commencing to climb the steeps as they commence what appears a mad descent. The stony spires and domes glow like orange shaded lamps at a Chinese festival along the chain for hundreds of miles, and, after one moment of mezzotint, so scant is the twilight here, the stars of the Great Bear stand out sparkling so near and so detached in the dark blue ether, that the sound of the auroral lights dancing seems the crackle of the orbs' own axles.

Surely it is worth while to follow two men so daring as to surmount the greatest obstacle of Nature, and who carry themselves as if they, and not the grizzly bear and eagle, were monarchs of this weird domain.

CHAPTER II

THE FALSE PILOT

To the north of the trappers, approaching, but out of their reach of vision, a singular train was skimming over the snows. From a distance one might have supposed it a flight of birds, for no four-footed creatures could have travelled at that surprising pace.

But it was a procession of carrioles, or dog sledges, preceded by two large ones. These were impelled by the wind alone, caught in sails, which would be the tent canvas by night, fastened to masts set in the breadth of the beam like that of an "ice yacht." The runners, on the principle of a mail coach's, shoes were formed of thin wood turned up in front; their width prevented the sledges sinking materially. But the speed was what saved them better from being submerged in the twenty-five feet dead level snow. Moreover, the steersmen, so to call them, of the queer craft, were both fitted for their posts. The second sledge was governed, thanks to the adroit manipulation of a tough pole, by one of those Scotch-Americans who are the indisputable rulers of the Northwest. At the cold they never wince; they are sober, prudent, rather silent than talkative, as firm as a rock in defence, and as trusty as a dog.

In the foremost snow ship an Indian was pilot and helmsman too. Upon him depended the lives of all in those two vehicles. Those following might swerve off from any danger they met by whipping the dogs to turn quickly.

This savage seemed less thickly clad than the white men, who, however, crouched down, but he flinched as little from the cutting blast as a bronze statue. Now and again a whirl of wind caught up the ice crystals and encircled his erect figure within the cruel clouds. The next moment he was seen again, his face as sternly set, his eyes as rigidly bent ahead, as before his disappearance.

The sense of safety he inspired and the glorious thrill which the rapidity of the course provided left the passengers in a placid joy.

The dog sledges contained the provisions necessary in these uninhabited wilds, with the hunters, servants, and guards of the party leader. The second snow ship carried the more valuable property and the "new hands," who could not be trusted with the semiwild dogs; under the steersman, it was commanded by the secretary of the chief.

This gentleman was in the foremost conveyance with his daughter and the most "reliable" men.

He was an important man, as this escort, nearly thirty strong, abundantly manifested.

Sir Archie Maclan was a retired shipping merchant, enriched by the Eastern tea and silk trade. He was chairman of a land purchase company that contemplated founding a city on the line of the British Pacific Railway. He never invested his money on hearsay, and he would not ask his friends to do so either. Hence, having volunteered to go and investigate, at his own expense, the shareholders had voted him thanks and unanimously approved.

He was a widower, and took with him the sole object of his affection in his daughter.

Miss Ulla Maclan was one of those fair Northern beauties, born types of "Norma," though the black-haired and swart-complexioned Italians do their most to mar our proper conception of that ideal of the druidess. At the officers' ball at Québec, and the Mayor and Council ball in Montreal, she had carried away the palms for grace, amiability and loveliness.

Ofttimes dreamy and somewhat superstitious, Ulla had insisted upon not being left behind when her father prepared to push west for the Red River. As she was indomitable, he compromised as usual when they disputed. He put off the original project till spring; and, in the meanwhile, assented to her wish to see something of the marvels which were currently reported of the Yellowstone Basin. By the greatest good luck, an Indian was at Fort Sailor King who had come up that way. The officers recommended him. In a few days he had proven himself weather-wise, brave, devoted, cautious as Sandy Ferguson himself, and more ingenious than nine out of ten of his race.

Little by little he had risen in esteem till no one was hurt by his having charge of the patron and his precious daughter, for whom any man would gladly have died. If there were one exception to this universal homage to talent in the scorned aborigine, it was the English secretary of Sir Archie, and that distrust seemed to be caused by a kind of jealousy at being consigned to the other sailing sledge, remote from the charming girl. But then, had he exhaled any plaint, who would have listened to him – a raw Old Country sportsman, who carried his rifle slung across his shoulders when he went gunning?

There was one drawback to the full enjoyment of the fleet course: the immense and oppressive silence. All the deer were stripping the trees of bark and moss in secret coverts; even the Arctic fox kept secluded behind the tops of trees buried in the snow, so that they seemed mere topknots of Indians. The dogs wore no bells; the men talked in whispers.

Nevertheless, the complete desert offered no cause for alarm. But the illimitable white field, the ice-clad mountains, the mighty wind that hurried the two ponderous sledges onward as if they were feathers – these struck the rudest with awe as the short day closed in.

As darkness threatened the men brightened in their chat. Visions of hot tea made lips water, where, alas, the frost seized the moisture instantly.

For hours the uninterrupted rush had been maintained. Few obstacles cropped up which the Indian had not avoided with dexterity and warned his successor of by a sharp cry.

The wind strengthened with the dusk. A faint dark blue line at length revealed the limit of the snowy plateau. It was so swiftly "lifted" that in an hour or so all believed they would be camping down in shelter of a forest which would furnish the welcome fire.

The Indian himself relaxed his muscles, for they saw him faintly smile too.

All at once he began to murmur, and then to utter audibly a curious monotonous chant, which amused Miss Maclan. Her father had dozed off in the warm furs that muffled them both.

"Oh, the Chippeway is singing," she remarked. "What a funny song! I cannot call it lively, though."

"Lively be hanged!" burst out the Canadian at her elbow, who had never been so rude before. "It's a death song. Look out, mates. Au guet, camarades!" with a great shout, "This red nigger's turned 'bad!'"

The savage responded to the accusation by a defiant whoop. Fifty different spots sent up its echo, and what seemed wolves bounded up out of the snow here and there in the gathering gloom.

It was too late for the hunters to attempt a seizure of the steersman. Already they were paralyzed, as they had partly arisen, by beholding the snow plain unexpectedly end in a sheer descent. Two seconds after the first sledge was over the precipice; in five the second followed. Three or four men leaped out of this – of the other it was impossible to do so in time, and it sank in the snow of which their leap broke the crust. The conductors of the dog sledges began plying their whips, and the yelping of the dogs rent the frosty air. Upon these fugitives, scattered on each side, the fifty dark figures shot arrows with almost a fatal aim.

By night, in about half an hour only, no living representative of the party seemed forthcoming. Till then the assailing force had not relaxed their murderous intentions. Dragging the dog sledges to a hollow, where they could light a fire unobserved, they greedily feasted on the provisions, with the additional dainty of one of the dogs roasted for "fresh meat!"

In the morning they descended into the chasm where the Indian guide had so deliberately wrecked the "canoes-that-slide-on-the-snow." None of the fallen had survived the descent as far as they could be found in the snow. They were smothered, or the cold had killed them in the long night. Over the whites the Indians showed no emotion save a brutal rejoicing. But it was different when they discovered the body of their countryman. Not only were they a little perplexed how to regard a suicide which so profited the tribe, for the Indian rarely commits that crime, but Sandy Ferguson, chancing to be hurled near the villain, had dragged himself, though his limbs were dislocated, so as to fall on him, and had half torn off his scalp when death had fastened his icy grip on him.

The joy of the victors was thus damped. They sang over their martyr-hero, and, bestowing on his corpse the prizes he would have won if alive, gave him a chief's burial.

"He was a great man, and Ahnemekee (the Thunderbolt) gives up his own trophy, the English gun, to adorn his last sleeping place. May the fear inspiring Crow nation never know the son who would not do as much to lead a prey into their grasp. Ahnemekee salutes thee!"

They had rigged up a kind of bed with crosspieces in the united apex of fern pines. These were within reach of the men on the snow at present. When the thaws came, the dead Crow, laid upon this platform, would be forty feet in the air. About him was laid and hung his share of the spoil due to his long and patient plotting.

In times of distress, the funereal offerings to any Indian of mark may be as symbolical and worthless, intrinsically, as the cut paper of the Chinese. But when valuables can be afforded, they themselves are left with the dead, and dogs and horses are sacrificed.

On the completion of this mournful ceremony the Crows departed, sure that they had made a clean sweep of the party, so skilfully and daringly decoyed to their doom by the pretended Chippeway. Not till the stealing up of the whitened wolves proved they had long since left the wind untainted with their odour did the rubbish heap of a large decayed tree move as if a gigantic mole were in operation, and the apprehensive face of Miss Maclan showed itself.

Apparently she alone had escaped the butchery following the hurling of the large sledges over into the snowy gulf.

Spilt out, like all the other occupants of the vehicle except two or three, when it "turned turtle" in its leap, the sail had chanced to embosom her in its folds as the circularly rising column of cold air from below caught it and momentarily swelled it out. By this accident the swiftness was lessened. Nevertheless, the sail was soon snatched from her and rent to shreds, whilst she landed on the touchwood of the storm felled cedar.

When she recovered consciousness it was night. She fancied she heard a voice calling, but that may have been pure fancy. On the height above she could hear only too plainly the ghoulish merriment of the Indians over their carouse, and the moans of some wretch being tortured to add a zest to their regale. All she had heard of the redskin's merciless treatment of women captives impressed her. She crept still more deeply into the cavity of the rotten tree, and waited with little hope. Not a sound to cheer her in her neighbourhood. Absorbed in prayers, to drive away the poignant anxiety for her father, she did not feel the intense cold. As for that, she was well garbed in superb furs, the double clothing which Canadian ladies had chosen for her with their experience, when she announced her resolve to accompany her father.

When dawn came, her fears were harrowing. Around and even over her head in her ambush, the ravenous foe scampered and scuttled like the beasts of rapine and carnage they were. They probed the snow and every cleft of the rocks to secure the hairy trophies from the hapless crews of the snow ships. Not one could have been found alive, for at each unearthing, Ulla judged by the tone that the finders experienced disappointment. On the other hand, the spoil of the sledges was embarrassing in its quantity for the band.

She dared not peep out; she dreaded that the feeble blue thread of condensed breath from her nook would betray her. She did not see, therefore, that, unable to bear away more than a tenth of the plunder, the rest was hidden under the precipice.

At last came the time when hunger drove her forth. The desolation and stillness in this hollow were overwhelming. The snow was trampled and pulled about by the searchers. Dead bodies, gashed and unlimbed, strewed the late virgin white expanse, amid the broken boxes and disrupted cases.

Ulla shuddered to tread among these hideous corpses, where it was impossible for her to recognise her late companions. To find her father was a vain idea. She took a smashed tin of meat and some chocolate, and ate ferociously.

On high, the stars glittered with a cold brightness, which revealed they saw her misery and grief, but offered no consolation. On the edge of the precipice, gorged wolves, that had devoured the voyageurs up there, were lazily contemplating the solitary form with motion in the wreck, and among the human remains of the expedition so gay and gallant fifty hours before.

Her ungovernable appetite appeased, and her thirst far from quenched by sucking a snowball, she mournfully reflected on her plight.

A child of luxury, it was more a nightmare than reality that she could be here, in the Northwestern desert, the great mass of the Rocky Mountains looming up beyond, impressive, insurmountable, and on the other three points, a thousand miles of snow! And she a young girl, alone!

A company of sappers and miners would have had a week's work in the ironbound soil under the snow to inter this mangled débris of mortality. For her to attempt the pious duty was a mockery.

Nevertheless, when the moon rose, a frenzied impulse to veil the poor creatures, with at least a little shrouding snow, would have set her in action. But at the first step towards the nearest corpse, with its trunk bristling with arrows, and its eyeless sockets appealing to the Creator against the barbarous outrage, Ulla stopped short.

She was fascinated by the spectacle presented at the junction of protruding pines where the deceptive Indian guide reposed upon the platform. The moon inundated it with tremulous beams.

Suddenly she was sure that the body was animated. So do the vampires spring to life when the moon bathes them in radiance. Certainly the figure sat up cautiously; the pale face was even visible; with a steady hand some of the trophies which adorned the monument were unhanged from the branches – the knife of Sandy Ferguson, the English rifle and cartridge container of her father, diverse appurtenances which had been left to equip the departing spirit for the happy hunting ground "over the range" yonder.

Thus armed, the ghastly phantom leaped down, and threatened to march upon the horrified observer. Already three wolves, descending the face of the bluff, sniffed danger. As the spectre proceeded, the largest squatted, and emitted a lugubrious howl. All the others echoed it. For some minutes the scene was filled with this bloodcurdling concert, loud enough to have awakened still more dead.

But Ulla did not hear the infernal chorus any longer. On beholding the course of the appalling apparition to be aimed indubitably at her, the conviction was too strong for her overtasked nerves. She murmured a prayer, and turned to flee frantically; but the snow was treacherous, and she slid down in a soft gap, where the feathery particles closed over her head.

Perfectly unconscious, she did not hear the supposed Indian halt almost at the edge of the sealed up cavity which concealed her from even his eagerly questioning eyes.

"What a terrible tragedy," he exclaimed, with the deepest emotion, in English.

It was the secretary of Sir Archie.

"All torn to pieces by those odious villains!" he continued. "On the dead they vented their spite; on the goods they have inflicted all the wanton damage possible, so that they might not benefit even some starving traveller who came into this Pit of Abomination. That generous old gentleman, these brave, patient, devoted, cheerful hunters and campmen, that young lady never to be too much pitied! It brings the tears into my eyes – miserable solitary mourner that I am to try to do so much barbarity justice. Heaven knows that I came out here with no prejudice against the red man. This same Indian who enlisted merely to lure the expedition to destruction, accepted my courtesies with a grateful mien. And yet he was a monster! I glory to have profaned his resting place – to rob the robber of the weapons with which, God aiding me, I shall avenge my massacred comrades!"

He perambulated the valley of death till sunrise. He called and examined every spot with care; but all the time no response was given him. Then, having made a meal on the height, where the same fatal tale was displayed in the bones with which the wolves sported, he doggedly took up the trail of the victors.

But at the woods, where the snow presented a different aspect and was absent in tracts, he found that the wily savages were not to be followed by an inexperienced man, however brave, vigorous, and determined.

CHAPTER III

THE MOUNTAINEERS' SNUG CABIN

The two hunters, red and white, who had taken eight days to ascend the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, were only one reaching a reasonable approach to the level of the plateau of the Yellowstone Basin.

A little above them shone the snow line belting the giants of granite, and here the timberline spread in brown. The breath of numberless icy caverns murmured of the stupendous crystal founts, sources of powerful streams which would be on their way to enrich regions remote.

The declining sun glimmered along the smooth steeps and glittered on the jagged ones, reflected from ice, softened by snows, sparkling in torrents as the scattered diamonds leaped so far that finally they were dissipated in humid dust.

Through all the difficulties of the way, where no trodden way existed, the two guides and guards of the little train proceeded with the perfection of experience to be acquired only by bearing fatigues and danger with which that magnificent mountain chain abounds.

In fact, it was impossible, even among the host of Western pioneers, more numerous than those imagine who never can see them collected, to find two mountain men more keen, skilled, and resolute than "Old Jim" Ridge and "Cherokee Bill."

Ridge was a taller man than ordinarily met, even in the West; but too well proportioned, though a little spare, to reveal to the careless eye how enviably he was gifted by nature. His features were handsome, though worn and weather-beaten; after a course of Turkish baths and fine toilet appliances, he would have eclipsed the showiest cavaliers in a Paris, London, or Vienna opera house ball. His forehead, high and broad, was creased rather by play of emotions than effect of age. His blue eyes were mild enough in repose to charm the most timid maid; but in action they became fierce and sharp as a buffalo's at bay. They were eyes that could follow a trail without his getting out of the saddle or leaning over much. His nose was long, rather curved than straight, with pliant nostrils which rose and fell freely in his liberal respiration for the supply of a massive chest. The mouth was full of teeth, strong, sound and white, as only garnish those who are mostly meat eaters; the lips were red, but almost concealed in a moustache and beard, trimmed rarely, yet well kept, of a warm flaxen striped with silver; this tint also gleamed in his long locks from under a blue fox skin cap. Erect, something like a Mars who inclined towards Apollo rather than Hercules, sturdy, firm, energetic, any beholder knew that he stood before an exceptional man, full of goodness, courage, and simple belief in man being no merely inspired animal.

In "citizen's dress" he would have seemed confined; hence, his hunting costume suited him far better. It was – from the fur cap mentioned to the moccasins fortified with rawhide soles – composed of a leather frock, caught in at the waist to support his small arms by its belt, fringed with its own buckskin; a red flannel shirt, with a black silk neckerchief carelessly fastened by a diamond pin of California gold, such as an ingenious miner himself may shape; the leggings were also of buckskin, fringed like the frock, and similarly so "worked up in grease" as to have lost the tendency to stretch in the wet which plays the mischief with leather garments. Balancing a sword bayonet on one hip, not unlike a machete, hung a hatchet, whilst his six-shooters were of a size that promised damage at a longish range. His gun was peculiar. It was a "yager," or short rifle of the old United States dragoons, sending a large ball; he had had it converted into a breechloader, a "fourteen shoot," with the availability to reserve the store and load at the muzzle with any particular charge independently. The stock was fortified with homemade rawhide bands. Thanks to long and continual practice, knowing how to humour all "her leetle peculiarities," as he would affectionately say, the rifle was used by him afoot or on horse, offhanded or in a rest, with long and calculated aim or at a snap shot with a fatality that made it dreaded. As often as by any other title, Jim Ridge was called "the Yager of the Yellowstone." As far south as the mysterious sun-worshipping Indians' secluded homes, this name was the backbone of camp stories, in which our mountaineer's marksmanship was not unduly praised.