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He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had done. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North.
As you stand at the border of the woods in the gloaming you can hear the rustling of the fodder as the juncos move about in their tepees, trying to find the choicest and snuggest berths. Usually they select the tops of the standing shocks, perhaps for safety; yet some may be found also in the shocks that have partly fallen to the ground.
This is Fort Chipewyan. At certain seasons Indian tepees dot the surrounding plains; and bronze-faced savages, clad in the ill-fitting garments of white people, shamble about the stores, or sit haunched round the shady sides of the log houses, smoking long-stemmed pipes.
Instead of a world of city streets and country towns, of tilled fields and rivers busy with commerce, the raw recruit at Old Fort Snelling entered upon a world of stone barracks and Indian tepees, of tangled prairies and rushing rivers.
"One day we reached the end. It was near evening, and we came to the top of a wooded knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head with fatigue and weakness, but I could see below us, on the edge of the great bay, a large hut, Esquimau lodges and Indian tepees near it. It was the Fort, my cheerless prison-house." He paused.
Then came a yell from the rear, from the sergeant in charge of the led horses. "It's one of our men lying there wounded. For God's sake save him!" and that was enough. Every carbine along the line was brought to bear on the stooping, crouching, scurrying warriors who had ventured so far out from the sheltering tepees.
On either side of them the level plain stretched, gray with its sage, buff with intervening grass, hay-cocked with the smoky, mellow-stained, meerschaum-like canvas tepees of the Indians, quiet as a painting; far eastward lay long, low, rose-red hills, half dissolved in the trembling mystery of sun and distance; and westward, close at hand and high, shone the great pale-blue serene mountains through the vaster serenity of the air.
The black stretch before her seemed devoid of tepees, but she was not sure. Of one thing she felt convinced, even if the camps were confined to the fires there was no likelihood of these wide intervals being left unguarded. Her horse refreshed, she put him into a strong gallop, and in a few minutes had entered the danger zone. Almost on the instant her surmise proved correct.
The hut, about seven feet square and as many feet in height, was built strongly of poles, with a small entrance closed by a clapboard door fastened stoutly on the outside with withes. The hut was well in the shadow of tepees, and all were still at the feasting and merrymaking.
The most of their tepees were down and packed for the march. The ponies, more than 3,000, had been gathered in and most of the squaws and children were mounted, some of them having taken the line of march up the stream to the new camp. The General watched the movements of his men until he saw the last man emerge from the ravine, when he wheeled on the left into line.
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