long, five or six feet in width, and only three or four feet high.”  The objective point of Major-General Middleton’s march was Batoche’s Crossing, where Riel had several large pits sunk, and fortifications thrown up, for a grand and final encounter with our troops.  The line of march lay sometimes along the Saskatchewan’s banks, but more frequently through the open prairie.  The position of the rebels prior to the battle was this:  Dumont, with 250 half-breeds and Indians, had been retreating slowly before General Middleton’s right column on the east bank of the river, their scouts keeping them informed of the General’s movements.  Dumont appears to have thought of waiting for the troops to attack him on Thursday night; at least that is the belief of the scouts, who saw some of his mounted men signalling to him all afternoon on Thursday.  However that may be, he lay waiting for our men at the edge of a big coulee near Fish Creek, early on Friday morning, his forces being snugly stowed away behind boulders, or concealed in the dense everglades of hazel, birch, and poplar.  From day to day, almost from hour to hour, this veteran buffalo hunter had learned every tidings of the General’s troops that keen observation made from clumps of bush along the prairie could give him.  So when he learnt that the General himself, with his officers, were near at hand, his eyes fairly gleamed with enthusiasm.

“My men,” he said, as he went from covert to covert, from bluff to bluff, “you know the work that lies before you; I need not repeat it to you.  Do not expose yourself, and do not fire unless you have a tolerable target.”  Then he arranged a system of signals, chiefly low whistles and calls, by which the men would be able to know when to advance, retire, lie close, make a dash, or move from one part of the ground to another.

“They will at first fall into an ambush,” he said, “then, my men, be nimble.  In the panic there will be a rich harvest for you.  Bring down the General if you can.  Wherever an officer is in range, let him have a taste of your lead in preference to the privates.”  Then he lay close and watched, and listened, many times putting his ear to the ground.  At last he gave an exclamation.  It was in a whisper; but the silent rebels who lay there, mute as the husht trees around them, could well hear the words, “they come!”

Let me now briefly describe the position which the rebel had chosen for himself.  About five miles from McIntosh’s stand two bluffs, about five hundred yards apart, thickly wooded on the top.  Between these bluffs is a level open prairie that extends backward about a thousand yards, across which there runs a deep ravine, thickly timbered at the bottom.