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It was the lodge of the chief and within lay the stark body of the murdered Negansahima. As the faint light grew, one by one the warriors rose out of the mass like smoke spirals, drawing away to disappear among the tepees. Soon there came the sound of falling poles and McElroy knew that they were striking the camp. For what? Why, surely, for one thing.
"The spirit of Negansahima rests not in the lodge! The medicine men have not dreamed true! Silence in the camp while They who Dream repair to the forest fastnesses and seek true wisdom!"
"Greatly does the heart of thy brother rejoice at such word, and a present over and above that meant for him shall be given Quamenoka. Let the talk go on. We listen." But before the chief could speak again, Edmonton Ridgar had broken silence: "Negansahima is chief of that tribe and my Indian father, he having adopted me with all ceremony once when I sojourned a year among them.
They stilled themselves in a peculiar manner. "Oh, ye sachems and Men of Wisdom," he said, turning to the headmen gathered together, "come ye to the tepee of Negansahima and behold what ye have done!" Slowly, as he had come, the chief trader of De Seviere turned about and passed out of the light.
If he wondered at first how they had held out against De Courtenay it was all made plain when among the strangers he espied many Assiniboines and saw in the great canoe of the chief Negansahima, old Quamenoka, who had boasted of the coming of this tribe to De Seviere as his work. He had spoken truly and had evidently made his word good by meeting the approaching columns and returning with them.
The body of Negansahima was placed in the first canoe, covered with a priceless robe of six silver foxskins laced together; the six big warriors, their halfnaked bodies painted black, manned the paddles, and at the prow there stood the sad figure of Edmonton Ridgar. At one side had drawn out old Quamenoka and his Assiniboines, their way lying to the west.
Who after him would rule on the Assiniboine? For well he knew that death, and death thrice, aye, a million times refined, awaited so luckless a victim as he whose hand had killed the great chief. But he had not killed Negansahima. It was the gun in De Courtenay's hand. Ah, De Courtenay! Where was De Courtenay? A captive assuredly, if he was one.
One man among them seemed to wear the cloak of civilisation, Negansahima the chief. "Then one day at dusk, it was a soft day, gold and sweet, M'sieu, and soft, with all the post at the great gate watching the Indians, there were many, four or five hundred warriors and as many women and children, this day there was, a tragedy. Something happened, a trifle."
He was conscious of a sickening knowledge of Negansahima with his banded brown arms stretching into the evening light, of the tepees, of the river beyond, of the face of Edmonton Ridgar, and of all these etched distinctly in that effect of sun and shade which picks out each smallest detail sometimes of a rare evening in early summer.
Then pandemonium broke loose as Negansahima, chief of the Nakonkirhirinons, flung up his arms, the dull metal bands with their inset stones catching the crimson light, and fell into the outstretched arms of Edmonton Ridgar. A long cry broke from his lips, the death-cry of a warrior. For a moment the whole evening scene, red with the late light, was set in the mould of immobility.
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