"It is his voice, Mademoiselle," and immediately the sleep flew out of
Julie's eyes, and left them luminous as the stars shining beyond the
tree-tops.
"The chief is welcome," Annette replied; and Julie was upon her feet
making a little voyage now in this direction, and now in that, in the
endeavour to find him. All the while she kept saying, "This way! this
way!" but in a tone so low that he could not have heard her at a
distance of ten lengths of this small maiden. At last his tall,
straight figure, resembling in very truth a little poplar, was seen
moving towards the tent; and with a shy run Julie was at his side.
"I followed the four braves who were bent on your capture, and saw
the affair in the swamp. When you rode away, one whom I supposed
dead, arose and joined with another whose leg I had thought was
broken in getting out the horses. One brave was really dead, and he
has by this time sunk in the bog. A fourth had a broken arm, and he
went away with the other two. They will not pursue again, so you may
sleep in peace till the rise of sun. I shall put my blanket here.
Should one approach, the ears of Little Poplar are as keen while the
spirit of sleep hovers over him as while he is awake."
Julie's dreams were very happy that night.
On the morrow Little Poplar informed them that his heart was not now
as much with the white people as it had been some little time ago. He
was aware that the braves were for the most part unreasonable, and
that they were easily led into wrong as well as to right doing.
"They have, I admit, committed some excesses; but it never can be
forgotten that strangers have taken possession of their hunting
grounds, and that, if they have no substitute to offer, the red
children of the plains must die. My tongue could not tell,
mademoiselle, nor your brain conceive, the sufferings that I have
seen among our people in the long bitter winters, with only the snow
for wrappers, and pieces of dried skins for food. Will the white man
die of hunger while food is within his reach? No, he will beg it
first, and then he will take by violence; but I have seen the young
maiden and the withered crone gasp their last breath away upon the
snow, while ranches teeming with cattle lay not an hour's march away.
"If an Indian, with a wife, and a lodge full of children dying on a
bitter winter's day of hunger, turn a calf from some nigh herd of
white man's cattle, alarming tidings fly to the east, and white men
and women learn, in their sumptuous houses, that the Indians do
naught but plunder. But they would have no need, I repeat, to lay
hands upon the ranchers' cattle if the white man had not come and
stripped them of their boundless heritage, and put them upon
reservations where a buffalo may never come. [Footnote: The words in
the mouth of this chief are not exaggerations, and it is God's own
truth that during late winters dozen after dozen of Indians, men and
women and children, perished in the snow after they had devoured the
skins that covered them. Yet these poor people are said to be under
"the paternal care of Government." Alas, our public men are only
concerned in playing their wretched political game, and they sit
intriguing, while the helpless creatures committed to their care
perish like dogs, of hunger, in their lodges.--E.C.] "And some of the soldiers who have come here from the east are more
bent on earning reputation than on making peace. Some of their
leaders do not want the cheap glory of 'killing a lot of Indians;'
and I have with my own ears heard one of the Ontario magistrates,
Col. Denison, declare that he did next come here to kill, but to
prevent killing. If military affairs were now to be given into the
hands of some men like him it would prove better for all concerned.