“We shall join you.  Let us with one blow wipe out the injustices done to us, and teach the Government that if they deny us our rights, we will fight for them; and murder those who are the agents of its will.”  So the plan was arranged, and it was not very long before it was carried out.  And now runners were everywhere on the plains, telling that Dumont had a mighty army made up of most of the brave Indians of the prairies, and comprising all the dead shots among the half-breeds; that he had encountered heavy forces of police and armed civilians, and overthrown them without losing a single man.  They likewise declared that he had hosts of prisoners, and that the whole of Canada was trembling with fear at the mention of the names of Riel and Dumont.

“Now is our time to strike,” said the Indian with the fiendish face, and the wolf-like eyes.

Therefore, the 2nd day of April was fixed for the holding of the conference between the Indians and the white settlers.  The malignant chief had settled the plan.

“When the white faces come to our lodge, they will expect no harm.  Ugh!  Then the red man will have his vengeance.”  So every Indian was instructed to have his rifle at hand in the lodge.  The white folk wondered why the Indians had arranged for a conference.

“We can do nothing to help their case,” they said, “we ourselves find it difficult enough to get the ear of Government.  It will only waste time to go.”  Many of them, therefore, remained at home, occupying themselves with their various duties, while the rest, merely for the sake of agreeableness, and of shewing the Indians that they were interested in their affairs, proceeded to the place appointed for the pow-wow.

“We hope to smoke our pipes before our white brothers go away from us,” was what the treacherous chief, with wolfish eyes, had said, in order to put the settlers off their guard.

The morning of the 2nd opened gloomily, as if it could not look cheerily down upon the bloody events planned in this distant wilderness.  Low, indigo clouds looked down over the hills, but there was not a stir in all the air.  Nor was any living thing to be seen stirring, save that troops of blue-jays went scolding from tree to tree before the settlers as they proceeded to the conference, and they perceived a few half-famished, yellow, and black and yellow dogs, with small heads and long scraggy hair, sculking about the fields and among the wigwams of the Indians in search for food.

The lodge where the parley was to be held stood in a hollow.  Behind was a tall bluff, crowned with timber; round about it green poplar, white oak, and some firs, while in front rolled by a swift stream, which had just burst its winter fetters.  Unsuspecting aught of harm, two priests of the settlement, Oblat Fathers, named Fafard and La Marchand, were the first at the spot.

“What a gloomy day,” Pere Fafard said, “and this lodge set here in this desolate spot seems to make it more gloomy still.  What, I wonder, is the nature of the business?” Then they knocked, and the voice of the chief was heard to say,