“What is it, Pepin, my son?” asked the old lady anxiously.

“Oh, nothing—­nothing, my mother; only that they are at it again!”

“The shameless wretches!” she exclaimed; “will they never cease?  Who is it this time, Pepin?”

“Only that young Douglas female we have spoke about”—­he tried hard to infuse contempt into his voice—­“she wants me to go to her!  Just think of it mother!  But she is a preesonar, and, perhaps, it is also my help she wants.  And she was a nice girl, was it not so, ma mere?”

Between them they came to the conclusion that Pepin must go with Bastien to where Dorothy was kept a prisoner and see what could be done.  They also wisely decided that it was no use notifying or trying to lead the Imperial troops to the spot, for that might only force the Indians to some atrocity.

Later on, when the moon arose, Pepin took Lagrange out and showed him the British camp with its apparently countless tents, and its battery of guns.  It appeared to the unstable one as if all the armies of the earth must be camped on that spot.  When the dwarf told him that there were other camps further up the river, to which the one before him was as nothing, Bastien fairly trembled in his moccasins.  When a sentry challenged them, the now thoroughly disillusioned breed begged piteously that they should return to Pepin’s house and set out early on the following morning for the place where Dorothy was imprisoned up the Saskatchewan, before that army of soldiers, who surely swarmed like a colony of ants, was afoot.

Pepin knew that the approach of an army would only be the means of preventing him from finding Dorothy.  He must go to her himself.  He would also, for the sake of the proprieties, take his mother along in a Red River cart; his mind was quite made up upon that point.  If he did not do so, who could tell that the Douglas female, with the cunning of her sex, would not lay some awkward trap for him?  The girl had plainly said, “Come to me,” and he was secretly elated, but his conviction of old growth, that all women were “after” him, made him cautious.

So next morning, before break of day, the Red River cart was packed up and at the door.  Pepin and his mother got into it, Antoine was led behind by means of a rope, and Bastien rode alongside on a sturdy little Indian pony.  It was indeed an outre and extraordinary little procession that started out.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE INDIANS’ AWAKENING

Little Running Cropped-eared Dog of the Stonies sat smoking his red clay calumet at the narrow entrance of the gorge that looked out upon the wooded hillside, the only means of ingress to the shelf which constituted Dorothy’s prison-house.  He was keeping watch and ward with his good friend “Black Bull Pup,” who also sat smoking opposite him.  Their rifles lay alongside; they had finished a recherche repast of roasted dog, and were both very sleepy.  It was a horrible nuisance having to keep awake such a warm afternoon.  No one was going to intrude upon their privacy, for they had heard that the British General, Middleton, was in hot pursuit after Poundmaker, and it was unlikely that Jumping Frog, who was over them, would trouble about visiting the sentries.