Big-Lie Day.

At nine o'clock I was up again, had breakfast and went to the trading shop. It was the first of April. A Big Bear Indian came in. Wandering Spirit was at the farming instructor's house, he said and sent word that Agent Quinn wanted to see me. I closed the shop and walked over.

Wandering Spirit grinned as I entered. He wore his war bonnet and seemed in excellent humour. "Big-Lie Day!" he exclaimed. The other Indians present laughed. So did Quinn, I joined them. There were more dupes than one there, that first of April morning, and they were not the Indians.

Imasees, Big Bear's son, said to the agent: "Sioux Speaker, we have had bad advice from the half-breeds this winter. They said they would spill much blood in the spring. They wished us to join them. They have already risen; we knew about it before you. They have beaten the soldiers in the first fight, killing many. We do not wish to join the half-breeds, but we are afraid. We wish to stay here and prove ourselves the friends of the white men. Tell us all the news that comes to you and we will tell you all we hear. The soldiers will come, perhaps, and want to fight us. We want you to protect us, to speak for us to their chief when they come."

Quinn replied: "You make good talk, Imasees. I am glad you wish to remain friends with us. The fighting is far from here. Stay on the reservation and no one will bother you. I will see that you do not for want food." Miserable Man joked with the agent about his threat in the fall. They shook hands as they passed out.

"I'm glad Wandering Spirit seems friendly," remarked Quinn. "He has a great reputation as a warrior among the tribes and as war chief is most to be feared. So long as he stays quiet we have nothing to worry about."

Perhaps it was because I came to know him so well and witnessed the ferocity of his wild, complex nature when roused, that Wandering Spirit has always filled the first place in my memory among the many Indian chiefs I have met. Tall, lithe, active, perhaps forty years of age, of a quick, nervous temperament which transformed him at a stroke in moments of excitement into a mortal fiend, he was a copper Jekyll and Hyde-a savage no more to be trusted than a snake. An odd thing about him was his hair. Whereas the hair of the ordinary Indian is as straight as falling water, the plaits of the war chief, while long and black like any other Indian's, stood out about his head in thick curls, forming a sombre background for his dark, piercing eyes. And those eyes! Shall I ever forget them? I can see them yet, in all their burning intensity, flashing here and there, seeing everything, as though it were yesterday. His nose was long and straight, his mouth wide and his lips thin and cruel. He had a prominent chin, deep sunken cheeks and features darkly bronzed and seamed about the eyes and mouth with sharply cut lines. His voice was usually soft and intriguing; when he spoke in council it rose gradually until it rang through the camp. It had a smooth, velvet quality that reminded me always, somehow, of the panther he so much resembled in other ways, and of its soft, caressing paw - with the claws of steel beneath the velvet.

"He was never much to steal horses," Four-Sky Thunder said to me one day later in the camp, when he called with a present of tobacco and we sat smoking in the lodge. "His greatest pleasure was in fighting, and he has killed more Blackfeet than any warrior among us, not excepting Big Bear."

First councillor; head soldier, war chief, cruel as the grave, a hunter of men, as proud of his record as any gold-laced general of his decorations - Kahpaypamahchakwayo, the Wandering Spirit.

In the evening I walked over to Quinn's house, dropping on the way into Delaney's. I found there Gowanlock and his wife, Gilchrist and Dill. They asked me whether Mr. Simpson, my chief at Frog Lake, had returned from Pitt and on my replying in the negative, jokingly remarked that he must be afraid to come out. I answered that if we all had as little to fear as my chief I should feel easier; he had known and traded with Big Bear and his band for twenty-five years and he and the old chief were great friends. I felt, I suppose, unreasonably irritated. Plainly these people did not sense the gravity of our position. It seemed to me no time for flippant talk. True, the Indians had not as yet given us cause for apprehension, but we were at the mercy of their every whim and who could say that a situation of deadly peril and anxiety might not develop at any moment?

I went on to Quinn's. Crossing a ploughed field beside the house, I almost stepped in the darkness on an Indian. He crawled away at my approach. They were guarding the agent's house, then! He was not to be allowed to escape as the police had done.

Quinn was seated in his office, just off the front hall. Big Bear, Imasees and one or two others from the band were with him. Imasees gave me his chair, passing a common Indian joke about me, at which all laughed except Big Bear. The chief had returned that afternoon from his hunt. His striking face was dark and swollen from the cold and the smoke of many campfires and he looked weary and troubled. He was speaking of "Uneeyen" - Riel - the half - breed rebel leader, and went on: "He said to me, 'Big Bear, much blood will flow.' He was trading whisky on the Missouri River and wanted the Crees to help him make war.

"When I was in the Long Knives' (Americans') country I had a dream, an ugly dream. I saw a spring shooting up out of the ground. I covered it with my hand, trying to smother it, but it spurted up between my fingers and ran over the back of my hand. It was a spring of blood, Kapwatamut!"

Imasees left the house. His father's talk seemed to trouble him. The old chief rose. "Good night, Kapwatamut," he said. He extended his hand, and there was deep concern in his voice as he looked into the agent's eyes and repeated: "Good night!"

After they were gone, Quinn said: "They seem friendly. Guess they're going to be all right." I answered: "Something's troubling Big Bear; he behaves queerly. I'm sure no harm's to be anticipated from him personally. I'd like to feel as sure of the others."

I remained with Quinn until eleven. He told me of the Minnesota Massacre in the '60s, when his father, an Irishman and a noted scout for the United States troops, had been ambushed and killed by the Sioux. Also of his own narrow escape at that time, when the hostiles at grey dawn raided the small frontier town where he was employed in a trading business and he had jumped in an empty barrel and worked it under the counter with his fingers. The Indians had missed him when they sacked the store and he had got away that night. Half starved, after several perilous days and nights he had at length reached a military post. He said to me as I was leaving: "Well, Cameron, they might kill me, but they can't scare me." Poor Quinn! I wonder if he guessed how soon his courage and his boast would be put to the proof?

Lone Man and Sitting Horse, the uncle and brother of Quinn's wife, a Cree woman, went to him in the night with horses and offered to see him well on the way to Fort Pitt. Quinn would not go.