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"Aha!" he said, "these Bois-Brules that have joined our captors appear to have had dealings with the whites. Yonder is the source of your discovered animation. Whiskey, as I live, and circling fast among the braves. It bodes ill for us, my friend." "So? Why so?" "Because never was redskin yet who could hold fire-water and himself at the same time.
Half-breeds, dissolute renegades, and Indians, they pushed and peered and in many a face was already burning the excitement of her beauty, especially those of the savage Bois-Brules. McElroy prayed aloud to God for the heavens to fall, for some great disaster. But soon it became apparent that something of importance was to take place.
A wounded man lay on a litter at the end of the long, low room; and the traders sitting on the benches against the walls, or standing aimlessly about, were talking in suppressed tones. Scotchmen, driven from their farms by the Bois-Brulés, hung around in anxious groups. The lanterns, suspended on iron hooks from mid-rafter, gave but a dusky light, and I vainly scanned many faces for Eric Hamilton.
He's wounded, and he wants a Rufus Gillespie, who's with the Nor'-Westers. The Bois-Brulés fired on the fort. Where is Rufus Gillespie?" "Bless you, lassie! Here here here he is!" The holy father thumped my back at every word. "Here he is, crazy as a March hare for news of Hamilton!" "You Rufus Gillespie!" So she did not even know my name.
Europeans, Indians, and Bois-brules, as the half-breed is denominated, are all found in this employ, but so much alike in equipment and complexion, that, only for the round Saxon face, light hair, and blue eyes, here and there distinguishable, it would be difficult to conceive them of different lineage.
As the spring of 1815 opened, all eyes were looking to the action of the "New Nation" on the Qu'Appelle River as the Bois-brulés under Cuthbert Grant called themselves. As the whole of these events were afterwards investigated by the law courts of Upper Canada, there is substantial agreement about the facts.
The messengers had trundled it out only a short distance from the gateway, when they met the fugitives flying back with news of the massacre. Under protection of the cannon, the men made a plucky retreat to the fort, though the Bois-Brulés harassed them to the very walls.
On the stockades outside were proclamations commanding settlers to take up arms in defense of the Hudson's Bay traders and forbidding natives to sell furs to any but our rivals. These things added fuel to the hot anger of the chafing Bois-Brulés. A curious race were these mongrel plain-rangers, with all the savage instincts of the wild beast and few of the brutal impulses of the beastly man.
Why have you destroyed our fort?" "Call him off, Grant! Call him off, or it's all up!" I begged, seeing the parley go from bad to worse; but Grant was busy with the Bois-Brulés and did not hear. "Wretch!" Governor Semple exclaimed in a loud voice. "Dare you to speak so to me!" and he caught Boucher's bridle, throwing the horse back on its haunches. Boucher, agile as a cat, slipped to the ground.
It was already three-quarters of a century since the traders had erected the first trading post upon the Red River of the North. The early French voyageurs had left a race of half-breeds, popularly called bois-brulés, who were the vassals of the two great companies.
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