In the Power of the Hostiles.

Big Bear, as I learned from him long afterward, went straight to his lodge when he returned to camp and went to sleep, for he was tired. Imasees, Wandering Spirit and others of the leaders were in a secret council. At midnight the war chief gave an order and four of those in the lodge stepped out quietly and vanished in the gloom.

Isadore Mondion was a minor chief of the Wood Crees with a house on the reservation. He had Iroquois blood in his veins. His father as a young man had paddled his canoe from the St. Lawrence to the Saskatchewan, a voyageur in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Mondion was strong, intelligent and fearless and a friend of the whites. He did not care for these councils of Big Bear's band; no good was to be expected from them, he thought.

Soon after midnight the door of his house opened and four of Big Bear's warriors filed silently in. They seated themselves on the floor, and Mondion rose and extended the usual Indian hospitalities. He blew the dull coals in the mud chimney into a blaze and hung the copper pail over it for tea.

"The night is dark," he said. The visitors nodded. "It is warm." Yes, it was warm, Little Bear agreed. There was a long pause. "You visit late. For what do you come to see me?"

Bare Neck spoke. "Wandering Spirit sent us. You are not a true Cree. Already the police have gone. He does not wish the other whites to leave. He does not trust you."

Mondion's eyes flashed. "Wandering Spirit is wise; also he is very brave, and he must think his followers very brave, too, that he sends four to guard a single man!"

Little Bear lowered his rifle threateningly. Mondion struck it up. They clinched and rocked back and forth across the room, until they went down, Little Bear under. The others drew knives and threw themselves on Mondion. They dragged him away and bound him. Not until near daylight did they release him.

Meanwhile Wandering Spirit had not slept. Spies lay about the agent's house. It was still dark at four o'clock when Imasees and Chaquapocase entered noiselessly through a window and crept upstairs to Quinn's room. His wife was awake and sprang between the would-be assassins and her husband. Lone Man and Sitting Horse, her brother, Ming into the room and confronted the others, guns in their hands.

"Dogs!" cried Lone Man. "Is not his wife a Cree woman and my niece? Let him alone!"

They departed, scowling. "Wandering Spirit will deal with you," muttered Imasees.

Lone Man was brave and influential, a son-in-law of Big Bear.

"Who is Wandering Spirit," he sneered. "Tell him Kapa-yagwan Napaowit protects Kapwatamut!" They remained in the agent's room. Soon daylight began to filter through the windows. Wandering Spirit forced the front door and entered the office. He took down the three guns hanging there.

"Kapwatamut!" he called. "Come down!"

"Do not go, Kapwatamut!" Lone Man urged. "We will stay and defend you."

Quinn laughed mirthlessly. "It is useless," he said. "And never will they be able to say Kapwatamut was afraid to face them!"

He reached the foot of the stairs to find himself surrounded. Wandering Spirit placed a hand on his shoulder. "You are my prisoner," said the war chief.

I was sleeping soundly in my room at the Hudson's Bay post. I awoke with a start. A hand, clutching my shoulder, was shaking me roughly. It was just sunrise. I sat up. Walking Horse, a Wood Cree employed about the post stood beside the bed. His eyes were ablaze with excitement.

"Waniska! Get up!" he cried in Cree. "I think it will be 'bad' today!"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"They've taken the horses from the government stables, already," he replied. "They say, the half-breeds, but I believe it is Big Bear's men."

I needed no further urging. I dressed quickly and went downstairs.

Immediately, Imasees entered, followed by twenty of the younger bucks. Their faces were daubed with vermilion and they carried rifles. Usually, the chief's son greeted me with some pleasantry, but there was nothing of friendliness on his unsmiling features this morning. He stopped in front of me.

"Have you any ammunition?" he asked curtly.

I thought I was fortunate to be able to tell him that I had. "Well, we want it."

He knew the regulations as well as I did. "Where is your order from the agent? You can't get it without that."

He leaned forward, his face close to mine. "This is no time for idle talk! If you don't give it to us, we'll break the shop open and take it."

My bluff had not worked. "Oh, if that's how you put it, I'll open the shop. If you're bound to have it I can't prevent you. I don't want the lock broken."

Opening the shop, I called my friend, Yellow Bear, behind the counter. "Hand that keg out," I told him. "I won't touch it."

I had, as has been seen, sent the bulk of the powder to Pitt with the police. They divided what I had kept-perhaps two pounds among them. Miserable Man leaped over the counter, elbowed me roughly aside and gathered up the scattered bullets on the floor. Others reached across the counter and helped themselves to the long butcher knives on the shelves, and files with which they began to sharpen them. Big Bear pushed his way in.

"Don't touch anything in here without leave!" he commanded sternly. "Ask him for it," indicating me with a wave of his hand. He left the shop again.

Yellow Bear stepped out among them. The old man scowled at the young bucks, shouldering them toward the door. "You have got what you wanted. Neeukl Go!"

He closed the door and stepped back behind the counter. He picked up a muskrat spear. "I'll take this," he said. "I might want to use it. I have no gun."

Big Bear's men had already secured all our weapons.

I was heartily grateful for the old man's friendship this 2nd of April morning. "Take anything you wish, Yellow Bear," I told him. "And whatever happens, stick to me."

We had in stock two boxes of Perry Davis's Painkiller. It contains alcohol and opium. I feared it might fall into the hands of the Indians and their ugly mood did not seem to need any stimulation. We took it to the house and hid it behind the chimney upstairs.

On coming down again, I found a messenger from Wandering Spirit awaiting me. I was wanted at the agent's house, he said. I went, under the guard of young men he had sent. They did not behave in any unfriendly manner; simply surrounded me.

There were nine white men beside myself in the little settlement, and when I reached Quinn's office I found them all seated in it. Quinn sat at the farther end with the Scotch-half-breed interpreter, John Pritchard, and Instructor Delaney near him. The Indians crowded around them and blocked the doorway. Wandering Spirit held the centre of the floor. He was speaking. His manner aroused in me a distinct feeling of dismay.

"Who is at the head of the whites in this country?" he demanded, shaking his fist in Quinn's face. "Is it the governor, or the Hudson's Bay Company, or who?"

Quinn laughed. I think he must already have abandoned any hope that he would be permitted to see another sunset; the laugh was harsh and forced. It may have struck him as finely ironical that the men who made the regulations for the government of these Indians should be free to walk about securely in their eastern homes while he, an instrument in carrying them out, was a prisoner of these Indians and in danger of his life at their hands.

"Sir John Macdonald, a man at Ottawa," he replied. "He is the chief of all the white men who deal with the Indians."

The speech ended with a demand for beef. They were returning to their old form of attack on the government and the agent. Would he have the fortitude, now that he was at their mercy, to refuse? Quinn turned to the instructor.

"Is there an ox on the reservation that has outlived its usefulness?" he asked.

Delaney mentioned one so old as to be no longer serviceable. Quinn said they might kill it and sent a Wood Cree boy to point the animal out.

The office was close, and the menacing attitude of the Indians and the way in which they hemmed us in no doubt made it seem closer. I felt extremely thankful, therefore, when upon gaining their point they permitted us to go outside and get a breath of fresh air. Some of Big Bear's men asked me to return to the shop; they wanted tobacco.

Gladieu, a Wood Cree leader and my good friend approached Wandering Spirit.

"Leave Cameron there," he told him. "You will be wanting other things."

The war chief, I knew against his will, agreed. I hardly need to say I was glad.

I found Yellow Bear at the shop. "Stay close to me, and when they get what they want order them out," I said to him in a low voice as I unlocked the door. "They have the strong hand today, and I can't do it."

Afterward, I went into the house and charged what they had taken as I remember it, chiefly to the government. I know I felt at the time that the authorities were not without blame for the position in which we found ourselves. Quinn should have had a strong force of the police at his back when he was sent to deal with the most intractable band of Indians in the country.

Some of the Indians passed through the house as I was making these entries. They looked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing. When they were told, they laughed. Mrs. Simpson, wife of my chief at Frog Lake and herself a half-blood, watched me closely while the Indians were about. Evidently, she feared for my safety. But I would not dwell on the dark possibilities; I could not think that they would cold-bloodedly injure those who had placed themselves unreservedly in their power, and I resolved to keep up as long as possible at least the semblance of authority.

Rev. Felix Marchand, missionary priest at Onion Lake, twenty miles on the way to Pitt, had arrived at Frog Lake the day before. He, Pere Fafard, Henry Quinn, Yellow Bear and myself had breakfast together about nine-thirty in the Company's house. I say breakfast, but we had little appetite for food. We discussed our position and agreed that it was indeed grave.

Shortly after the priests left an Indian woman, greatly agitated, entered the house. "Little Bear struck Pere Fafard in the eye with the butt of his riding whip," she whimpered. Pessimism swept over me. Anything might happen now.

I went back to the shop. George Dill's store stood on a hill directly before the Hudson's Bay post. They had looted it early in the morning, breaking in the doors and windows.

Wandering Spirit dropped in. Since I had last seen him he had smeared his eyelids and lips thickly with yellow ochre. He looked hideous.

"Why don't you go to the church?" he asked in his hard voice. "Your friends are already there." No smile played on the face of the war chief today; instead, the worst passions of his savage nature were depicted there.

I was not a Roman Catholic, but I did not dare disregard what was in effect an order and I walked over. On the way, I met Four-Sky Thunder, one of Big Bear's councillors. He bowed, smiled and said: "N'Chawamis! (My Little Brother!)" as he passed me. I felt grateful to the tall, pleasant warrior. The looks that Wandering Spirit had given me had been black enough.

The door of the church was open. Several armed and painted Indians stood before it. Father Marchand stepped down to close it, but Father Fafard stopped him. Big Bear and Miserable Man stood inside at the back. The chief told me later that he was there to prevent bloodshed and I believed him; for though outwardly calm, well do I recall the suppressed feeling and determination on the old warrior's face. I am convinced Big Bear would have flung himself upon the first of his savage followers to point a gun and fought for our lives.

All the whites were assembled, as well as the half-breeds. The priests were celebrating mass, for it was a holy day of their church-the day before Good Friday. I stepped across to the row of pews opposite the door and took a seat.