Meeminook.

When in the early spring of '84, on my way down the Saskatchewan with a trading outfit I first happened across Meeminook, he was I thought one of the finest types of the pure Indian I had ever seen. It was at Victoria. He lived at Saddle Lake, thirty-five miles to the east, and I was going his way. The trail was new to me, and when he volunteered to keep me company I was more than pleased. He had the figure of a senator of ancient Rome - tall, graceful, commanding; strong intellectual features; a nose with a classic bend; a voice deep, sonorous and musical.

Stretched in the beguiling glow of our campfire late into the night, smoking and swallowing frequent draughts of strong black tea out of the sooty two-quart copper pail, we lay. And Meeminook, "Fought all his battles o'er again; And thrice he routed all his foes, And thrice he slew the slain." He told of war parties, of Blackfeet scalps won in battle; of camps raided and horses run off in the dark.

"Sigh, N'Chawamis," he said regretfully in his flowing Cree and grave deliberate way, "That was a time to live! When the buffalo were like grass on the plains and with your ear to the ground you could not sleep for the thunder of their hoofs. A time of feasting and fighting, a time to make warriors! They are gone now to the Sand Hills - all gone. And the men, too - they have followed them, except here and there one of the old eagles of the Crees!"

When he arrived with the Saddle Lake band in Big Bear's camp shortly after the massacre, Meeminook at once looked me up.

"Eigh, N'Chawamis!" he exclaimed, pressing my hand warmly. "I was glad when I heard they had not killed you. While I am in the camp, Kahpaypamachakwayo, if he loves his life, will be careful how he looks at you!" And Meeminook remained one of my staunchest defenders throughout the dreary two months that followed.

The night we camped in the coulee I saw Meeminook, his face smeared with vermilion and yellow ochre, leave his lodge buckling on his cartridge belt. I asked where he was going - the reason for the paint.

"To the fort," He stood looking down at me with his engaging friendly smile, his fine eyes dancing, took my hand and pressed it. "If I do not come back - well, what of it? It is what comes to us all some time. Remember always, Meeminook was your friend!"

He sprang to the saddle of the restless black stallion - the same Henry Quinn had ridden at Fort Pitt - and dashed after the party already climbing the slope behind the camp. They passed over the top and the trampling of their horses grew faint and fainter until it died away in the night.

It happened that at about the time the war party left Frenchman's Butte, Major Steele, in General Strange's camp at Fort Pitt, was instructing his bugler to blow "Boots and Saddles" for the information of his particular branch of the command, the scouts. The major was lining up a little war party of his own. His men had discovered the body of poor Cowan that afternoon on the hill above Fort Pitt, with his heart on the point of a stick planted in the sod beside him. Now they were anxious to find somebody not dead who had not been a friend to the murdered scout.

Pipestone Creek is not much of a stream to be invested with so deep and wooded a valley as it tumbles down.

The Indians had just reached its eastern bank and were about to descend and cross when the ring of steel striking on the rocks in the bed of the shallow stream below came to them. They drew hack into the shadow of a poplar bluff a hundred yards from the brow of the bank and waited.

The scouts filed slowly by twos up the trail leading out of the valley, Major Steele ahead. As his broad shoulders rose above the level of the plateau across which the Indians were halted in the darkness, the whinny of a cayuse struck his ear. He gave a sharp order in an undertone and the scouts closed up quickly and extended in some bushes along the edge of the bank.

Meeminook's horse was a racer. When he had his head he fairly flew. He had it now. Out from the shadow of a dark cloud broke the peaceful moon, and simultaneously, from the shadow of the green bluff and across the intervening space in half a dozen hounds shot the black stallion. A shrill war cry cut the night's stillness and echoed along the deep forest-flanked valley of the Pipestone - with dark eyes fixed on the officer's scarlet tunic, Meeminook was riding down on Major Steele.

"Crack! Crack!"

Smoke puffed in his face and two bullets whisked past the major's nose. Two answering reports came from the sergeant at his elbow.

Meeminook had partly reined in his horse, perhaps with a view to better aim. But Meeminook had aimed his last; he would never point a gun anymore. With a bullet through his neck, he sagged down in his saddle and tumbled to the earth.

I did not see Meeminook again but was told that one of the scouts - who should have known better - carried about with him in his waistcoat pocket an ear of the brave redskin. Knowing Meeminook as I did, I felt that his poor body merited more humane treatment. Savagery is not a trait of the red man alone.