Pembina seethed with indignation when the Periers’ story was told. The Swiss, who were all undergoing their share of suffering, sympathized warmly with their country folk. Though still prejudiced against the new colonists, the Scotch and Irish settlers had nothing but condemnation for the rascally half-breed Murray. Many of the bois brulés of Pembina had bitterly opposed the Selkirk settlement, and some had joined with the Northwesters in driving out the colonists. Since the union of the two companies, however, most of the enmity had evaporated. Walter had received only the kindest treatment from the French mixed bloods. Now there was not one to defend Murray in his heartless desertion of helpless travelers. So strong was the feeling against the treacherous voyageur that if he had been in Pembina when the Periers arrived, he would scarcely have escaped with his life. Though he had been gone several hours, a party of armed men went out to search for him. Uncertain whether he had told the truth when he had said he was going up river, they scoured the country for miles to the east and west as well as to the south. They did not overtake him. He had too long a start.

Murray was not well known in Pembina. He had never lived there nor at St. Boniface. No one in either settlement knew much about him. The spring after the killing of Governor Semple, the tall voyageur had come down the Assiniboine from the west with a brigade transporting furs to York Factory, and had remained in Hudson Bay service. It was said at that time that he was the son of a free trader of mixed Scotch and Cree blood. The elder Murray had wandered far, – so it was said, – and had taken a wife from among the western Sioux. If this story was true, Murray could not be more than one quarter white and was at least half Sioux. The Indian blood in the Pembina half-breeds was chiefly Ojibwa and Cree. The Sioux were the traditional enemies of the Ojibwas and the Crees. To the people of Pembina Murray’s Sioux blood did not endear him. There was not a man to find excuse for behavior of which few full-blooded Sioux would have been guilty.

It was some time before the Perier family recovered from their terrible experience. The frost bites Elise and Max had suffered were so severe that the outer skin of their cheeks, noses, hands, and feet peeled off in patches, leaving sore, tender spots. Their father was in a far worse condition. His feet and ankles, his right hand and arm, were badly swollen and inflamed and very painful. It was weeks before he was able to walk or to use his right hand. Had the boys failed to give him prompt treatment when they first found him he would have frozen to death. Realizing what might have happened if they had camped on the prairie that night, instead of pushing on to the river, Walter felt that he and his companions had indeed been guided to the rescue.

The little settlement had passed through hard days while the three boys were in the hills. Food had been very scanty. The buffalo had been far away, and following them in the deep snow next to impossible. Other game had been exceedingly scarce. Even the nets set under the ice of the two rivers had yielded little. The bois brulés and the older settlers had fared better than the Swiss. Though the rations had been slender, neither the Brabants nor the MacKays had been entirely without food. The Swiss had suffered severely. Johan Scheidecker told Walter that at one time his family had not had a morsel to eat for three days. At Fort Douglas conditions had been even worse than at Pembina. By February most of the settlers were on an allowance of a pint of wheat or barley a day, which they ground in hand mills or mortars. Soup made from the grain and an occasional fish were all they had for weeks at a time. Though their fare had been meager enough, the Periers, in Sergeant Kolbach’s care, had fared better than many of their country folk. They had never been quite without food.

With the coming of spring matters improved at Pembina. When the ice in the rivers began to break up, wild fowl arrived in great flocks. Almost every night they could be heard passing over. By day they alighted to feed along the rivers and in the marshes. Every man able to walk, every boy large enough to carry a gun, shoot an arrow, or set a snare, and many of the women and girls, hunted from daylight till dark for ducks, geese, swans, pelicans, cranes, pigeons, any and every bird, large or small, that could be eaten. The buffalo also were drawing nearer the settlement. Following the herds over the wet, sodden prairie was difficult, even on horseback, but a skilful hunter brought down a cow or calf now and then. The lucky men shared generously with their neighbors.

Louis and Walter had no time for long hunting trips. Both had obtained temporary employment at the Company post. Indian and half-breed hunters were bringing in the winter’s catch, and the two boys were engaged to help with the cleaning, sorting, and packing of the pelts.

The post was a busy and a merry place those spring days. The men worked rapidly and well, but found plenty of time for joking, laughing, singing, and challenging one another to feats of strength and agility. After the cold and hardships of the winter, the spring fur-packing was a season of jollity for the voyageurs. Walter and Louis enjoyed the bustle and merriment, while they worked with a will.

The skins were thoroughly shaken and beaten to free them from dust and dried mud. Then they were sorted, folded to convenient size, and pressed into packs by means of a wooden lever press that stood in the post courtyard. Each bundle, – about ninety pounds weight, – of assorted furs was wrapped in a strong hide. In every package was a slip of paper with a list of the contents. To the outside was attached a wooden stave, with the number and weight of the pack, and the name of the post. The numbers and lettering were burned into the wood. Because he wrote a good hand, Walter was able to help the overworked clerk with these invoices and labels. He did a share of the harder physical work as well.

The Swiss boy was heartily glad of employment. His wages, in Hudson Bay Company paper money, were exchanged for food and ammunition, and clothes for Elise, Max and himself. The Periers needed his help sorely. They had reached Pembina destitute. When they had left Switzerland, they had been well supplied with clothing. They had also brought with them the apothecary’s herbs and powders and such household goods as they were permitted to take aboard ship. In the crowded open boat in which they had come from Fort York, there had not been room for all their belongings, so some had been left behind. Nearly everything else had been lost in the wreck on Lake Winnipeg. The little that remained had been on the toboggan that Murray had run away with. Every cent of Mr. Perier’s money, as well as the Hudson Bay paper he had received for his work at the buffalo wool factory, had gone for food and other expenses during the winter. Even his silver watch and chain he had turned over to Murray. Father and children had nothing left but the worn clothes they were wearing, two blankets, and the few packets of medicinal plant seeds the apothecary carried in his pockets. He must begin all over again, and on credit at that.

Mrs. Brabant’s sympathy for the unfortunate family was genuine and warm. They crowded her house to overflowing, but she would not hear of their going elsewhere. Indeed there was no other place for them to go but Fort Daer, and the fort was too well filled for comfort. It was hardly worth while to attempt building a new cabin, if they were to return to the Selkirk settlement in a few weeks.

Were they going to return to the settlement? That was the question that troubled Mr. Perier and Walter. It led to many debates, as the two families sat around the fire after the evening meal. There was that hundred acres of land to be considered. A vast estate it seemed to the Swiss apothecary. The promise of that great tract of land had dazzled him when he first talked with Captain Mai in Geneva. Since his coming to the new country, however, the hundred acres of unbroken prairie had grown less alluring. He had learned that not one of the older colonists had been able to cultivate more than a few acres. He had no farming tools and he could obtain nothing but hoe and spade at the Colony store. There was not a plough to be bought for credit or cash. Breaking tough prairie sod with hoe and spade would be slow and painful toil for Walter and himself.

Because of the depredations of the locusts, seed grain was very scarce. The little Mr. Perier might buy would be high in price. From his first crop he would have to pay for seed as well as rent for the land. If he did not succeed in raising a crop, if the grasshoppers came again and destroyed it, he would be far in debt to the Colony, with no immediate hope of getting out. Already he had learned to his cost that prices were high at the Colony store, and that bills were sometimes rendered for things that had not been bought. In the end he might easily lose his land and have nothing to show for his labor. The prospect was not bright. Hopeful though he was by nature, he doubted his ability to make a success of farming under such discouraging conditions.

Walter was strongly against returning to Fort Douglas. It would be better to remain where they were, he argued, and trust to making a living, as the bois brulés did, by hunting, fishing, and planting a small garden. Perhaps the Company would let Mr. Perier have his hundred acres in the neighborhood of Pembina. Both Louis and Jean Lajimonière, – who was consulted, – shook their heads at the latter suggestion. Pembina was included in Lord Selkirk’s grant, but the real Colony was established at and near Fort Douglas. It was there that the land was allotted. They thought it unlikely that Mr. Perier could obtain his anywhere else. In any case there would be the same difficulty about tools, seed, supplies, and rent. And so the argument went on.

In the meantime spring had come in earnest. The ice was gone from the rivers. Birds were nesting in the woods, in the marshes, and on the prairie, according to their habit. As the rivers subsided from flood stage, fishing was resumed and yielded good results. The snow had melted from the prairie, though it still lingered in shaded places in the woods and along the river banks. The burned stretches showed new green. The sun was drying up the excess of moisture that had turned the prairie into ponds and spongy expanses and had converted the rambling paths and cart tracks of Pembina into sticky mud.

In May the old colonists and most of the new began to prepare for the return to Fort Douglas. Still Mr. Perier and Walter were undecided. At last they came to a decision suddenly and almost by accident. Through Lajimonière, Mr. Perier met a man named St. Antoine who had traveled more widely than most of the Pembina mixed bloods. Two years before, he had been far to the south and east with Laidlaw, the Colony superintendent of farming, when the latter had gone to Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi River for seed grain. St. Antoine had many tales to tell of the country along the Mississippi and the St. Peter rivers.

“That is a fine land,” he told Mr. Perier, “a land with hills and forests, – not flat and bare like this, though there is open country there too, good land for farming. At Prairie du Chien now, there the soil is rich and the crops grow well and ripen. It is not so cold as here. The spring comes earlier and the frost later.”

“Are there grasshoppers there?” Mr. Perier inquired.

“The kind that eat up everything? No, no. Those grasshoppers have never been seen in that country, the people say. And where the two rivers come together, where the Americans are building a fort, it is beautiful there, with high hills and bluffs like mountains, and woods and waterfalls.”

Mr. Perier’s brown eyes were wistful. St. Antoine’s description sounded good to a Swiss homesick for his mountains. “How does one go to that country?” he asked. “Can land be bought or rented?”

“Oh,” replied St. Antoine confidently, “you do not have to buy or rent it, that land. There is no Hudson Bay Company to say where you shall live and where you shall not, and to charge you so many bushels of wheat a year. You find a place that you like and you build a house and plant your crops and it is yours. That is the way folk do on the east side of the Rivière Mississippi. On the west side the American government does not want people to settle. That is Indian country. You may live there if you are a trader. But there is plenty of land on the east side, fine land too. Some time I am going back there to stay, – when I get old and want to settle down.”

St. Antoine’s tales took hold of Mr. Perier’s imagination. The more he thought of that country to the south and east, the more he wanted to go there, and the less he wanted to return to Fort Douglas. He told Walter and Louis, and they too talked to St. Antoine, who fired their imaginations as he had fired the older man’s. It did not take Walter long to decide what he wanted to do. The question was how were they to get to the Mississippi. It would be a long journey, hundreds of miles, by cart and horseback through the country of the Sioux. But it could be done of course. It had been done a number of times. The previous summer’s threats of trouble with the Sioux had come to nothing. Yet the trip might be a dangerous one for a small party. At this point Louis had a suggestion to offer.

“The summer buffalo hunt will start in June,” he said. “It will go far to the south, perhaps near to the Lake Traverse. We can travel with the hunters at first. When we are near Lake Traverse, – or if the hunters go too far to the west, – we can leave them and make haste to the lake. There is a trading post there, so St. Antoine says, and another at the Lake Big Stone. Traders go back and forth along the Rivière St. Pierre to the Mississippi. There will surely be some party we can travel with.”

“You will go too, Louis?” Walter asked eagerly.

“But certainment. Do you think I would let you and M’sieu Perier and Ma’amselle Elise and the little Max go alone? No, no, I want to see that country too. And I think Neil MacKay will go also.”

“His people would never let him.”

“I am not so sure of that. M’sieu MacKay is not well pleased with the Selkirk Colony. He says if the grasshoppers come again, he will go somewhere else. I think he would not object to Neil’s going to see that country to the south.”

So, gradually, the plan took shape. It was Mrs. Brabant who made the strongest objections at first. But when Mr. Perier and Walter finally decided to go, and Louis insisted on going with them, she suddenly made up her mind, much to Raoul’s delight, that she and the children would go along. “And if we like that country, Louis,” she said, “we will stay. It may be there will be a better chance for you there. If we do not like it, we can come back when some party comes this way.”

Neil proved eager to go. After some argument, he got his father’s consent, with the provision that he was to return to the Red River colony at the first opportunity, before winter if possible. He must learn all he could about that Mississippi country, his father said. If the crops should fail again, it might be that the MacKay family would have to leave the Red River for good. The Northwesters could not drive the stubborn Scot to give up his land, but against the locusts he could not contend forever.

XXIX
THE COMING OF THE SIOUX

Early in May the Perier family said good-bye to their countryfolk who were returning to Fort Douglas. Some of the Swiss tried to dissuade Mr. Perier from going farther into the interior. Others talked of following later if things did not turn out well in the Colony.

A short time after the Swiss left, something happened that threatened to upset all Mr. Perier’s plans. A party of men returning from a buffalo hunt brought disquieting news. They had met an Ojibwa scout who had told them that a large body of Sioux were on the march towards the settlement. Remembering the unfortunate affair at Fort Douglas the summer before, the people of Pembina feared the worst. Scouts were sent out to watch for the Sioux, guns were overhauled, and bullets moulded.

In the midst of the preparations for defence, two boats arrived from down river, bringing reenforcements. Rumors of the approach of the Sioux had reached the Governor, and he had sent a detachment of DeMeurons and voyageurs to meet the Indians and prevent them from going on to Fort Douglas. The Sioux were to be stopped by diplomatic methods if possible. Force was to be used only in case of necessity. With the party were Sergeant Kolbach and the Rev. Mr. West, the man who had befriended the Periers when their boat was wrecked on Lake Winnipeg. The clergyman greeted Mr. Perier cordially, but Kolbach favored his former guest with the stiffest and slightest of nods. Walter looked in vain for the red-faced DeMeuron with the sandy beard. Inquiry brought the information that Fritz Kolbach was not among the soldiers. Fritz was not in favor with the Company just then, having been accused of free trading with the Assiniboins, one DeMeuron told Walter.

The relief force arrived on Friday, and Saturday passed without alarm. Sunday morning Mr. West held service at Fort Daer, and the Periers and Walter attended. Just at the close of the service scouts came hurrying in with word that the Sioux were approaching. Armed men began to gather at the fort, the plan being to make so strong a showing that the Indians would not dare attack. The women and children were to stay north of the Pembina, where carts and boats were in readiness to carry them to Fort Douglas if there should be trouble.

Walter took Elise and Max across the river to join Mrs. Brabant. Then he returned to Fort Daer where he found Louis just arrived. The MacKays had gone to Kildonan with other colonists who had wintered at Pembina. In June Neil was to return to go south with his friends.

“They are in sight,” shouted a man who was watching from the roof of one of the buildings.

The fort gates stood open, for the Company officers intended to maintain a friendly attitude as long as possible. With others, Louis and Walter ran out to watch the coming of the Indians. There they were, a band of mounted men approaching across the prairie from the south. Walter’s heart beat fast, but he was surprised to find that he was excited and eager rather than frightened.

“There are no travois, only mounted men, no women,” St. Antoine remarked. “That looks bad. Yet they come openly, in the daytime. They raise no war cry. But we cannot tell. The Dakota are treacherous.” He used the name by which the Indians of the prairies called themselves – Dakota. It was their enemies, the Ojibwa, who named them Sioux.

The Indians came on at an easy pace until they were a few hundred yards from the fort. There they halted, as if waiting to see how they were to be received. A small group of white men, among them Mr. West, went out on foot to meet the strangers. Suddenly, out from the fort gate darted a slender, bronze figure, a young Indian stripped naked and without weapons. Straight towards the Sioux he ran full speed.

“He has gone crazy,” gasped Walter. “They will kill him.” He knew the fellow, an Ojibwa hunter who had recently brought his furs to the post.

“He does it to prove his courage, to show that he is not afraid of the Sioux,” explained Louis. “But what use is it to a man to be called brave, after he is dead?”

As the young Indian drew near the enemies of his people, Walter held his breath, expecting every moment that a shower of musket balls or a cloud of arrows would put an end to the rash Ojibwa. But nothing happened. Whether from admiration for his reckless bravery or because they scorned to kill an enemy so easily, the Sioux let him come on uninjured. When he was almost up to them he paused, stood still for a moment, then turned and walked back towards the white men.

How would the party from Fort Daer be received? Was it to be peace or war? In silence, every nerve tense, the watchers waited to learn. The white men drew closer and closer, without pause or hesitation. The Indians were dismounting. The two parties were mingling. They were coming towards the fort, together. Only a few of the Sioux remained behind to watch the horses. Walter drew a long breath.

The Sioux were conducted straight to the open gates. They were to be treated as guests. This was Walter’s first glimpse of Sioux. He looked on with keen interest as they were ushered into the fort. They were manly looking fellows, these Dakotas. Most of them were rather tall, taller than the majority of the bois brulés. They were straight and slender, lithe and wiry rather than muscular in appearance. Their faces were intelligent for the most part, strong featured, and with a look of pride and fierceness very different from the stupid expression of the Crees he had seen at Fort York. All wore fringed leggings and moccasins. The bodies of some were bare to the waist, while others were clothed in shirts of deerskin or calico, or wrapped in blankets or buffalo robes. Their black hair, adorned with feathers, hung in braids over their shoulders. Every face and bare body was hideous with paint, in streaks, patches, spots, circles, and zigzags, the favorite colors being red, yellow, and black. They were all tricked out in their best finery, beadwork, quill embroidery, necklaces of animals’ teeth or birds’ claws, and trinkets bought from the traders.

The Sioux proved restless and uncomfortable visitors. They pried into every corner of the fort. They appeared to be suspicious and acted as if they were looking for trouble. The Company officers fed them and treated them to tea, tobacco, and some liquor. That was a dangerous thing to do, Walter thought, to give them liquor, for all were armed with guns, bows, knives, or tomahawks. But the refusal to give them drink might have been taken as an insult. The Chief insisted on crossing the river to the Company fort, and the trader in charge thought it best to let him go. But he managed things so that only a few of Chief Waneta’s followers accompanied him. As soon as possible they were conducted back to Fort Daer.

All the rest of that day the Sioux lingered at Fort Daer. When night came they showed no intention of leaving. They had brought nothing to trade, but they expected all sorts of gifts. Most of the bois brulés had gone back to their families, but Mr. Perier and Walter were allowed to remain at the fort with Mr. West. It was a night of anxiety and alarms. Drink had made the savage guests touchy and quarrelsome. Several times shots were fired in threat or sport, but luckily no one was hurt. The arrival of three Assiniboins, who said they had come to smoke the peace pipe with their ancient enemies, did not help matters any.

About eleven o’clock shouts and war whoops from outside the walls roused everyone. Thinking that the attack had begun, Mr. Perier and Walter rushed out of the house where they had withdrawn to keep out of the way of quarrelsome Indians. They found that the Sioux, instead of attacking, were leaving the fort in haste. There had been a fight between a Dakota and an Assiniboin. The Dakota had shot the Assiniboin and scalped him, the fallen man’s two companions had fled, and some of the Sioux had started in pursuit.

Chief Waneta had been overbearing and truculent enough himself, but he apparently did not want a general fight. Waneta was no fool. He probably realized that the white men and bois brulés of Pembina were too strong for him in numbers and too well prepared for trouble. With unexpected promptness he gathered his followers together, and started for home. Before midnight the whole band had disappeared in the darkness, riding south.