CHAPTER XII.

RED-EYE, THE INDIAN CHIEF--A TERRIBLE ADVENTURE WITH A BEAR--BAD NEWS!--STOLEN OR KILLED BY INDIANS.

The war in Upper Canada may be said to have ended before the winter of 1814-15. Ended indeed in General Drummond's terrible but abortive attack or assault on Fort Erie, in which he lost about five hundred in killed and wounded.

The general, although reinforced, dared not attack again, "but," as Alison says, "contented himself with drawing closer the investment, and cooping the large American army up in a corner of British territory, where they were rendered perfectly useless during the remainder of the campaign."

Meanwhile, however, ships were being built, and gunboats too, both for the British and Americans to float and fight on the great inland seas and lakes, and this with the intention on the American side to make one more effort to conquer Canada in the ensuing spring.

If, however, I were to tell you of the battles, by land and sea, which took place this year between Britain and America, further south than Canada, although I might succeed in interesting some of my readers on this side of the Atlantic, I might irritate my good friends on the other.

While the good weather lasted, and the bright and beautiful Indian summer, life in camp, in log huts, or in houses was delightful enough to my grandfather and his wife, with my little mother, Mary Robertson, to say nothing of Tonal's Spanish wife herself.

The woods and forests, the lakes and streams, and the rugged hills were clad in all the glory and colour of a late autumn.

My mother was a true _fille du regiment_, and continued to be as much a favourite and as much beloved by officers and men on shore as she had been at sea.

The Indians in those times were far more numerous in the forests and hills, in the great lake districts, than they are now. Neither British nor Americans have ever meted out to them any very great measure of justice. In fact it has been very much the reverse. We have driven them back, back, back, before us; we have taken their territories over and over again; we have cheated and robbed them, and when they have retaliated and taken the revenge that red men always will, we have declared against them a war of extermination, or almost; we seemed to forget that they were human beings, and shot them down like wolves.

These poor, brave creatures assisted us greatly in the war against America. But they fought in a savage way, and mutilated even the wounded in a shocking and fearful manner. For the braves must have scalps to hang on poles, far away where their wigwams stood in forest glade, or by the peaceful streams that meandered through their territory.

These Indians, now that comparative peace had come, still lingered around our camps. They were, alas! too often led into excesses by the fire-water of the pale-faces.

Strangely enough, the child Mary exhibited not the slightest trace of fear in the company of these dusky warriors. She would even toddle off at times to their camp, and not be seen again for hours, when some of the Royal Scots, being sent in search of her, were sure to find her chatting gaily to squaws or braves, in their tents or by the log-fires.

But there were Indians also who hated the British, and hated also those tribes who had fought for the pale-faces, such as the Chippawas, the Wyandottes, and Minsees. With these, I believe, we were friendly on the whole, but far away in the west and north, was a tribe or branch of the Micmacs, whose hand appeared to be turned against everyone, and who were constantly on the war-path. They lived chiefly by their bows and arrows or spears, but of late years had made use of guns also, so that they were now considered still more dangerous and deadly.

Their wigwams stood on the shores of a beautiful, lonesome sheet of water, embosomed by woods, and to which they had given the euphonic name Eeowreeva, or Yewreeva, the Great Pike Lake. Here these red men had lived for many generations, more than Red-Eye, a friendly Micmac, who often visited the camp, could count on his fingers. They loved their home in the wild west, Red-Eye said, because no pale-face had ever yet come to see and seek their land.

This land, and all the hills and forests around it, was no reservation. It was simply a country into which the pale-face had not as yet penetrated.

But Red-Eye, or Led-Eye, as Mary called him, was no beauty to gaze upon. On the contrary, it was believed that, although he prided himself on the distance he could throw a spear, or his skill with a tomahawk, his chief pride lay in his stern and dreadful face, and in the number of scars he had on his body, many of which, he assured my grandmother, whom he often visited, had been received in fights and encounters with wild beasts, with bears and panthers, that he had followed, even to their very dens, and killed. In his own country he had been a chief.

Little Mary, my mother, used to listen with rapt attention to this semi-civilised savage's account of his adventures, as he squatted near the fire, wrapped in his great striped blanket.

But she must have been too young to understand much of what was said.

A strange sort of friendship, however, sprang up between the two.

Their love-making, if so it could be called, was droll in the extreme.

"Po' Led-Eye," she said one day, as she stood beside him, nursing one of his hands, on which were the marks left by a panther's teeth. "Po' Led-Eye. And the nasty wild beast cut you so! Did you kill the big cat, Led-Eye?"

"Ugh! child, yes, I kill he quick. With my spear I kill he. Hold my spear so."

"Ah! Ah! wild cat was all toveled (covered) wi' blood, wasn't he, Led-Eye?"

"Blood in streams!" said Red-Eye.

"O, how nice! Anazle (another) big tut (cut) on 'oo blow (your brow), po' Led-Eye, what make that tut?"

"The spear of a chief, child of my heart."

He smoothed her long fair hair as he spoke, and glanced lovingly into her blue eyes.

"Child of my heart! Hair like sunset clouds. Eyes and cheeks like stars and flowers. Child of my love!"

"'Oo iss, of tourse. Child of oor love. But 'oo kill the tief (chief) that troo the spear and cuttit oo blow. You kill him, quick, quick?"

"I kill him, plenty quick."

"And he bleeded all over?"

"Ugh! I wash my hands in his blood."

My little mother jumped for joy.

"How nice! how nice!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Tell the chile of oo love mo' stolies."

"Mary, Mary," cried my grandmother, "come here this instant, till I get you ready for bed."

"I think," said Tonal to my grandfather, as they lay on their blankets by the fire, "I think that Mary would grow up a splendid savage. Come here, Mary, and sit on my knee. Your mother won't put you to bed for just a little while, I'm sure."

"Not if she's good."

"I sit on oo knee bymeby, when po' Led-Eye does (goes) away to feep (sleep)."

"You like Red-Eye best, then?"

"Of tourse. Led-Eye mo' ugly as you.

"Nevah mind," she continued, patting the savage's cheek, "when I dlows (grows) up, I lun (run) away to the woods and be oo queen."

"It's all settled then, John," said Tonal.

"It would seem so, Tonal."

But Red-Eye's love-making did not end in mere words. Words are only froth, acts alone are solid, and he used to bring the "child of his love" many beautiful things from the forest--flowers, skins of beasts, and feathers of birds.

Once he brought her a live humming-bird, or one of an allied species. It soon died, however. Then he took much pains to cure it for her. He opened it slightly, and stuffed it with strange spices and musk. Then he rolled it in leaves, and laid it on a stone near the fire, and behold! in an hour it was embalmed and cured.

That little bird, in a tiny glass case, is on my table as I write. I would not part with it for all the world. All the world would be nothing to me, as I should not know what to do with it, but this little case, ah! what gladsome memories it brings me back.

Tonal and my grandfather used often to accompany Major Drake or Dr. McLeod in long rambles into the forests.

They would be away for two or even three days sometimes, and never return without the spoils of the chase, to the great delight of my little mother, Mary.

Part of these excursions was by boat, the other on shore.

Their guide was invariably Red-Eye.

He was a fearless fellow, and often led them into adventures that it would have been as well for them had they avoided.

On one of these occasions McLeod fired upon a great bear on a hillside. The brute was but grazed, and came rushing down upon him with a roar that seemed to rend the very rocks. Both man and bear went rolling down the brae, and powerful though the doctor was, he never could have come out of the adventure alive, had not Red-Eye been there. The Indian buried his tomahawk in the monster's neck. With a yell the bear now sprang at him, and had not O'Reilly, who was near, placed the muzzle of his gun close to the bear's ear and fired, poor Red-Eye would have told my little mother no more terrible stories.

Though badly bruised,

"Unwounded from the dreadful close But breathless all McLeod arose."

Red-Eye appeared none the worse. He just shook himself and said, pointing to O'Reilly's gun:

"Ugh! Much good fire-stick."

But the spoils of the chase did not invariably consist of bears, or any other of the _feræ_, but game and pigeons. The latter were seen sometimes, not in flocks only, but in clouds, so that it was no uncommon thing for our heroes to bring them down with bullets.

I do not mean to say that the very bird that was aimed at always fell---though with a good modern rifle and a good modern marksman this might have been the case--but so numerous were they that it was almost impossible to fire without hitting.

Some of the streams, away in the backwoods, teemed with fish. In fact, so numerous were these that one could scarcely call it sport to catch them.

One day, while my grandfather and Drake were in the woods, they got talking together about home, and the old scenes they had passed through, and the battles in which they had fought shoulder to shoulder.

Both had received letters only the day before.

"O, by the way, Sergeant," said Major Drake suddenly, "I have something to tell you.

"I had a letter from H----. You know he is a friend of the Duke--our particular Duke."

"The Duke of Kent?"

"Yes; and it seems H---- was telling his Royal Highness how your wife shot that terrible harpy on the battle-field, and saved your life.

"The Duke," continued Drake, "was enthusiastic, and he does not take wine to make him so, either.

"'Robertson,' he said, 'was one of the best non-commissioned officers I ever had on my staff, and right bravely but coolly he could do his duty in his regiment also.

"'And, H----,' he continued, 'the Highland battalion. of the Royal Scots will soon be _au fait accompli_, and I shan't forget my promise to Robertson.'"

"Thank Heaven," said my grandfather, "for that news! It has been my dream for years. Could I afterwards gain a captaincy in my company, and once lead it into action against the French, I would die happy. And you know, sir, I am no mere romancist.

"But, sir," he added, "with the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, don't you think wars will cease all over the world, and that there won't be anymore use for Highland battalions?"

Drake laughed.

"Listen, Sergeant John," he said. "Mind, I'm no prophet, and never was, but--Napoleon is scotched, not killed."

"And pray, sir--who--or where----"

"Where did I get my information?"

"I fear I'm rude, sir, but that is what I was about to ask."

"Well, my good follow, a wee birdie told me."

That was a happy day all through for my grandfather.

Happy, that is, until eventide.

But as he was going singing up to his own log hut, with a bundle of birds over his left shoulder, he was surprised to find the men standing here and there in little groups. And he could not help imagining that they were looking at him in a kind of pitying way.

I have said little about Tonal's Spanish wife for the simple reason that there was little to tell; yet she had followed his fortunes all through the war, and proved a very great boon to the pipe-major, as he was now called.

She was here in camp.

Instead of little Mary running as usual to meet her father, it was poor Mrs. Tonal that came.

Her large, dark eyes were swimming in tears.

"O, Sergeant Robertson," she began, but the grief seemed to choke her utterance.

"Good heavens, girl, speak!" cried my grandfather. "Speak, I entreat of you! Has anything happened to my dear wife?"

"No, no," gasped the girl, for girl she was to all appearance. "She is gone to the Indian camp, but my husband has gone."

"Tonal gone?--dead?"

"Oh!" she cried, "we do not know, Mr. Robertson, but Mary, little Mary, too, has gone."

For a moment, forest, lake, and hill seemed to spin round, and my grandfather had almost fainted.

His daughter, whom he adored, lost, gone! It was too awful to think about.

He threw down his gun, threw down his game, and next moment was hurrying off to the Indian camp.

He would now, at all events, hear the very worst.