Into the Crucible.

On Good Friday, the day following the massacre, John Fitzpatrick, farming instructor at Cold Lake, fifty miles to the north, was brought into camp by Big Bear's runners. The Indians had been told by him that the Americans would send troops to assist them in their war against the Canadian government, and being an American, Fitzpatrick was looked upon as a friend.

King Bird put his head into Patenaude's lodge and said he had been sent by Wandering Spirit to summon me to the Council sitting at the upper end of the camp. I had learned only too well what was likely to happen to anyone insane enough to disregard the war chief's wishes; I got up quickly and followed King Bird. As we walked along I said in Cree, with a wave of my hand in the direction of the smouldering ruins of Frog Lake:

"I hope there's going to be no more of that?" King Bird looked at me with his engaging frankness. "Oh, no," he answered. "Wandering Spirit wants only to talk with you."

It was a beautiful morning - the 4th of April. An atmosphere of peace, a melting, slumberous haze, rested over all the virgin loveliness of that wilderness land - its wooded slopes, its sweeping green expanses, its soft blue lakes under the wide skies. It was hard to believe that amid such smiling settings there had been staged, just two days before, one of the blackest tragedies in Canadian history.

The council sat on the grass in a circle, a triple row of painted and befeathered savages. They made a way for me to reach the hollow space in the centre, and Wandering Spirit, who sat on his heels inside the inner row, motioned me to a seat beside him on the right. He wore his war bonnet and a rifle rested across his knees. From the bonnet decended on five broad white eagle plumes, their points jet-tipped, for each of which I had heard him boast he meant to have a white man's life. Until then he had taken just two, those of Quinn and Father Marchand, so that three were still needed to make good his boast.

Immediately behind Wandering Spirit sat Imasees, half-brother to King Bird. Imasees was the real instigator of the Frog Lake atrocities, though clever enough so to manoeuvre that upon others should fall the blame. He was emphatically a dangerous Indian - a cool, commanding figure in the flush of young manhood, with muscles of spring steel and the features of a Roman legionary. He wore his hair roached above his unwinking black eyes, like a horse's foretop, and he had about him something of the dominating force which, despite his age, still remained to Big Bear. In fact, so striking an example of the pure type of Plains savage was Imasees that notwithstanding his crafty and treacherous nature, I could not but confess a degree of secret admiration for him.

John Pritchard sat in the centre of the hollow space, with Mr. Simpson beside him. I noticed Fitzpatrick sitting with some half-breeds, including Andre Nault, Louis Goulet and Abram Montour, on the left of the circle. Louis Patenaude, my guard in the camp, and Alexis Crossarms sat immediately beside Wandering Spirit on the left; William Gladieu on his right. The plains Crees completely surrounded us. As I walked to the place assigned me and glanced over the banked ring of bedaubed and forbidding faces, a sense of the peril which hemmed us in came upon me. Should we ever again pass that barrier of sinister faces? I tried to tell myself that we should, but it was not easy.

Wandering Spirit fixed me with the eyes that always seemed to bore into one's very soul and raising a hand as if to impress me with the importance of what he had to say, he began:

"You are one of them, the big Company. You trade with the Crees for furs and write everything down in a book. Tell me-you know: The Company sold this land to the Big Chief Woman; took money for it. Why did they do that? This land belongs to us. The Company did not own it. But they are rich because they got much money for something that was not theirs. We are not rich. We are poor. Often we do not have enough to eat. So we have taken back the land, and when it is sold again to the Long-Knives (Americans) - the money will come to us, not to the Company.

"You saw what happened the other day; how Sioux Speaker and those other men dropped. It is iyamun when the Crees make war! Plenty of blood runs. This, that began the other day - it will go on until there are no longer any Canadians here. That was my vow when I fired the first shot. Now, say: Why did they sell the land? How much did they get?"

I realized the need for carefully considered replies to any questions he might put to me. I was in no hurry to answer. Wandering Spirit, backed, no doubt, by Imasees, had set a trap for me. I was the only living white man who had witnessed the butchery at Frog Lake. It gave him, I think, a sense of uneasiness when he looked at me and recalled that. It was an omen of bad luck. On the morning of that day of blood, he had intended I should die with the others; planned to that end, ordering me again and again to join and stay with them. But some friendly Indian, on one pretext or another, was sure a moment later to take me aside, so that when the fatal moment arrived with the firing of the first shot I was in the trading shop, fitting Yellow Bear with a cap.

Wandering Spirit had never forgiven me, I knew, for being still alive and I had no doubt his mind was made up, notwithstanding his professions of goodwill, to remedy the miscarriage of his designs and dispose of me at the earliest opportunity. That might arise at any instant with a hasty slip of my tongue. Wandering Spirit knew no English and our conversation was carried on in Cree.

"I do not carry all these things in my head," I said at length, "but I will try to tell you. The Hudson's Bay Company did not sell the country; as you say, it was not theirs to sell. But the Great Mother thought they had some rights. They had been here two hundred years. That is a long time. If you had lived for two hundred years on a piece of land you would be very bitter if somebody took it away. The Queen made a treaty with the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company had to give up the land - most of it. They could not be driven out - or where would the Indians have traded their furs? - and they had to live somewhere; they had to have land for their trading posts. Now, you ask why the Great Mother paid money to the Company. I will tell you. The Company had been good to the Indians, so the Great Mother, when she sent her money chiefs to make the treaty, paid the Company three hundred thousand pounds."

Wandering Spirit clapped his hand over his mouth in the Cree gesture of astonishment too colossal for expression in words. Then he swung suddenly upon me and said in his peculiarly penetrative tones:

"You knew about the fighting at Duck Lake - knew before the 'bad day' here. If you Company men were friends of the Crees, you would have told the news. You told us nothing."

The fight, between Riel and the North-West Mounted Police occurred on March 26th; we had learned of it five days later. Frog Lake followed on April 2nd. This was April 4th. We had not thought it wise to say anything to the Indians about the rising at Duck Lake.

I said: "I overheard something of your talk. You knew all about it - more than we did. I could not tell you anything."

"Well, we will see how much you know now," he persisted. "Tell me all about it - the half-breed war; how it started, who was killed, how many soldiers, where they are. Speak with one tongue."

He had given me a formidable and disturbing task. "Mr. Simpson brought me a musinagan from Fort Pitt. It tells about Duck Lake - the fighting. I will get the paper and read it to you." I rose, but he stopped me with a gesture.

"If you saw it, you know what it says. You don't need the paper."

My position had now reached a point of extreme difficulty and danger. I could not rely on memory to give him exact details of the battle or of the movements and numbers of troops - already on their way from the East to the Saskatchewan. Yet there were half-breeds in the camp able to read English and I knew that the paper would be taken and read by one of them following this examination and that any trifling discrepancy would be seized on by Wandering Spirit to fix upon me a charge of falsehood and attempt to mislead the band. A pretext to denounce me as an enemy of the Crees was all that was wanted by Wandering Spirit.

"You must think me very wise, Kahpaypamahchakwayo," I replied. "I am not so clever. You do not make it easy for me; you make it hard." I looked around at the rows of tense, unsmiling faces. Some of them, I knew, were my friends.

"Hear - I am speaking to the council - I want to say, I will tell all I remember! If I leave anything out that is in the paper - if I do not tell something exactly as it is there - do not say I spoke with two tongues. That will not be so!" A shout of the approving "How!" ran round the circle. I went on:

"The South Branch half-breeds, misled by Riel and other headmen, threatened to seize the traders' stores at Duck Lake. The chief of the mounted police, with 100 men, on the way from Fort Carlton to Duck Lake to protect the stores, met the half-breeds under Riel and Dumont and a battle followed. Eleven of the white men were killed; some wounded. Some of the half-breeds and a few of Beardy's Crees, also. A bullet ploughed through Gabriel Dumont's scalp; the white chief was wounded in the face. The police had returned to Carlton. The head chief of the mounted police had arrived there with one hundred more men, but Fort Carlton was accidentally burned and he moved down to Prince Albert. One of the Queen's big soldier chiefs had reached the Touchwood Hills with two thousand men. More soldiers were following from Red River. An "I don't believe all this!" Wandering Spirit broke in excitedly. "Liar!"

I looked him in the eye. "You asked me to tell you what the paper says. I am telling you. I don't know whether it's true or not. Some things I am not very sure about. But about the soldiers - I remember that."

"You seem to remember everything against us - all this talk of soldiers coming to fight us," he sneered. He regarded me darkly for a moment; then: "I am going to ask another question. A minute ago you wanted everyone to hear you. Let them hear you now when you answer: Do you want to see Riel win, or the whites? Whose side are you on?"

I hope never again to find myself in so critical a predicament. I could not bring myself, in no matter what extremity, to say I sided with these cut-throats, even though, because the thought of death so appalled me just then, I had taken the hand held out to me by the arch-assassin when he promised on the demand of Oneepohayo that I should not be harmed - that lean, claw-like hand the closing of which half an hour before had loosed the ball that stretched poor Quinn dead at his feet.

What I finally did say - and I spoke to the whole council - was: "The other day you made us - ten white men - prisoners, over yonder. A little later nine died. I am glad that I am alive - that you saved me - but I have no life of my own anymore. It is yours. I am in your camp. Who can I side with?"

I was manoeuvring to avoid stating a deliberate falsehood, but the effect to me was startling. I had looked for quick manifestations of anger over an evasive answer. What I met was a chorus of approval of my reply. In brief, I had made a hit. But not with Wandering Spirit. Of that, his face was the unspoken evidence.

I took advantage of a temporary lull in events to move, with the air of regarding my position in the camp as definitely established, to a seat in the open space near Pritchard, about six feet in front of Wandering Spirit. But a moment later he turned on me again and said sharply:

"Say that you will stay with the Crees - will help them, not try to get away!" I nodded.

I could see his eyes kindled as he looked off to the right for a second; then he faced me again: "Swear it!" he commanded. "Raise your hand!"

But the sympathy of many in the council had by this time swung over to me. They shouted, "He did swear!" "Namoya!" retorted the war chief angrily. "He did not!"

A clamour of virulent dispute arose, my champions asserting loudly that I had sworn, most of Big Bear's men as vociferously combating the statement. The war of words mounted to an uproar, till at length Wandering Spirit, fearing an actual clash between the two factions, Wood and Plains Crees, dropped the point and I escaped taking the hateful oath.

I have many times thought over the occurrence and long ago reached the conclusion that what followed was just one detail, worked out probably by Imasees' or by Imasees and Wandering Spirit together, in the game these two master conspirators had set out to play.

I question if, barring Big Bear himself and his son-in-law, The Lone Man - perhaps the bravest redskin I ever knew - there was in that whole camp of two hundred lodges a single Indian who was not afraid of Wandering Spirit. I do not except even Imasees, truculent by nature though he was. The Lone Man and the war chief hated each other with a deadly enmity, but - because of that, no doubt - they also avoided one another, contact spelling danger for both. No brave in his right mind who wished to continue living would deliberately have provoked Wandering Spirit.

Oseewoosgwan - Bald Head - was very old and he had the mind of a very old man. That is why I put him down as a tool of Imasees. From his actions and appearance, I am certain no sense of danger entered his shrunken old brain as, leaning heavily on a stick, he pushed his way into the circle and bending over, with a finger pointed derisively at the war chief, piped in a high querulous falsetto:

"For what do you keep these white people here? You did not hold back the other day." He waved a hand in the direction of the smoking desolation. "But now you talk - just talk. You have done badly already. It beats you to go on with what you started, eh?"

The blood surged to Wandering Spirit's face, flushing it darkly, as he sat looking up from beneath his war bonnet at the old man. Suddenly his right hand shot out, throwing the lever of his Winchester down in the action of loading and thereby raising the muzzle.

He jumped to his feet. "You will see today whether it beats me" he shouted.

But rapid as had been his movements, Louis Patenaude and Alexis Crossarms had anticipated them. They were both on their feet at his left; in one hand Louis grasped the barrel of the Winchester and held it above his head; behind, Alexis reinforced his hold with a double grip of his own on the gun. Any effort by the now-infuriated leader to control the weapon was effectually blocked. In vain he struggled to lower the barrel, to raise the butt to his shoulder. Alexis and Louis held the Winchester as in a vice.

I had leaped to my feet at the first move of the war chief and now stood with muscles tensed, oblivious to everything else, watching with fascinated interest the drama being played out before me. How would it end? If the maddened war chief succeeded by any chance in wresting the gun from my defenders I was ready to throw myself upon him and seize the rifle before he could level and discharge it at me. At Frog Lake I had walked along, while rifles cracked and screams and whoops and war - cries a hundred yards away made a stunning horror of the golden April morning, weaponless, like a man with hands bound, my eyes on the ground before me, expecting each instant a bullet in the back. Here at least there was certainty of action. I would go down, if it was my fate, fighting - I hoped with a kind of wild joy, bringing others down with me - not like a dog I was too engrossed at the moment to feel any sense of fear.

A long knife stuck in a sheath in Wandering Spirit's belt. Both the war chief's hands were engaged with his gun. Patenaude bent forward suddenly and with his right hand plucked the knife from the sheath and raising his arm, held the point poised an inch above Wandering Spirit's heart. Then he craned forward until his face almost met that of the war chief and with eyes that glittered under the black brows like a snake's, bent upon the eyes opposing them a look of such calculated deadliness that in the hush that fell upon the staring council only the subdued clicking of stealthily-lifted gun-hammers could be heard.

The war chief's fury died under the menace of those level eyes, and over the copper features spread a film of dull grey, like dusted ashes. But he still fought, though without his former desperate recklessness, for possession of the Winchester.

Gladieu had risen with Wandering Spirit and his gun was now levelled on the war chief's head from behind. The hilt of the knife protruded above Louis' hand. Imasees, who had also risen and stood at Wandering Spirit's back, reached under his shoulder, grasped the protruding handle and, with a sudden jerk, drew the knife through, leaving an ugly gash across Louis' fingers. Then Imasees, with outstretched arms and the naked blade in his left hand flashing in the sun, glanced quickly around the circle and spoke, in low emotion-less tones:

"This is not the way to do it! It will make trouble between us. We want to be all friends!"

The way of retreat had been opened for Wandering Spirit. He seized it eagerly - no doubt gratefully.

"Uh-huh!" he exclaimed, his head nodding to emphasize his agreement. "Tapwa! (True!) The old man's talk made my heart bad, but that is past. We are all Crees here, all brothers!"

Alexis and Louis had kept their hold on the rifle, but when Wandering Spirit lowered the hammer, they released it. Gladieu stepped over, pushed his shoulder against that of the war chief and his rifle alongside the Winchester and watched narrowly while the two guns came down together. The significance of Gladieu's action lay in the fact that he distrusted the war chief's professed change of heart. He was guarding against a feint - a surprise by Wandering Spirit once control of his Winchester had passed again into his own hands.

Wandering Spirit was seated once more, but I still stood, absorbed as ever, awaiting the next development. He looked up presently and motioned with his hand.

"A pee!" he said, "Sit! Numanando keeah!" For which there is no adequate translation. What he meant to convey was that I was not in danger at the moment. Which was satisfactory as far as it went.

The strain had proved too much for the war chief and as he sat before me I noted the violent shaking of his hands and knees, which he sought in vain to control. The depression that had come over him he was unable to throw off, and in a few minutes he had left the circle and the council was over.

Big Bear stopped me on my way back to Patenaude's lodge.

"Okemasis," said the chief, "you were foolish to stand up just now. Any could have shot you without danger to the others. Sitting you were safer." I saw the force of Big Bear's statement. Pritchard said: "How did you ever get up? I could not have moved to save my life. They could have knocked me on the head like a rabbit."

Fitzpatrick had tried to rise, but Big Bear, who sat behind him, pulled him down. So the old chief not only preached commonsense; he put it into practice.

It was some time before the war chief made any further attempt to dispose of me and nothing I experienced later tried me as did the ordeal I had just successfully weathered.

I was walking through the camp a day or two later. The drummers were beating the big drum; the war song rose above the assembled braves. I glanced over at the group and gasped. Two warriors shuffled up and down in the war dance, over their shoulders the gilt and white vestments of their most unworldly and inoffensive victims, the dead priests. I am not a Roman Catholic, but apart from its, for me, poignant personal significance, the sight so completely outraged those feelings of reverence I had been brought up to entertain for all things sacred that I could only stand and stare. It remains amongst my most vivid impressions of that terrible two months.