“Had I been your enemy you would have known it be fore.  I heard you would not visit me, and, although I felt humiliated, I came to see you to show you my pacific inclinations.”

Then darting quickly from the room he left me.  An hour later I left the dirty ill-kept fort.  The place was then full of half-breeds armed and unarmed.  They said nothing and did nothing, but simply stared as I drove by.  I had seen the inside of Fort Garry and its president, not at my solicitation but at his own; and now before me lay the solitudes of the foaming Winnipeg and the pathless waters of great inland seas.

It was growing dusk when I reached the Lower Fort.  My canoe men stood ready, for the hour at which I was to have joined them had passed, and they had begun to think some mishap had befallen me.  After a hasty supper and a farewell to my kind host of the Lower Fort, I stepped into the frail canoe of painted bark which lay restive on the swift current.  “All right; away!” The crew, with paddles held high for the first dip, gave a parting shout, and like an arrow from its bow we shot out into the current.  Overhead the stars were beginning to brighten in the intense blue of the twilight heavens; far away to the north, where the river ran between wooded shores, the luminous arch of the twilight bow spanned the horizon, merging the northern constellation into its soft hazy glow.  Towards that north we held our rapid way, while the shadows deepened on the shores and the reflected stars grew brighter on the river.

We halted that night at the mission, resuming our course at sunrise on the following morning.  A few miles below the mission stood the huts and birch-bark lodges Of the Indians.  My men declared that it would be impossible to pass without the ceremony of a visit.  The chief had given them orders on the subject, and all the Indians were expecting it; so, paddling in to the shore, I landed and walked up the pathway leading to the chief’s hut.

It was yet very early in the morning, and most of the braves were lying asleep inside their wigwams, dogs and papooses seeming to have matters pretty much their own way outside.

The hut in which dwelt the son of Pequis was small, low, and ill-ventilated.  Opening the latched door I entered stooping; nor was there much room to extend oneself when the interior was attained.

The son of Pequis had not yet been aroused from his morning’s slumber; the noise of my entrance, however, disturbed him, and he quickly came forth from a small interior den, rubbing his eyelids and gaping profusely.  He looked sleepy all over, and was as much disconcerted as a man usually is who has a visit of ceremony paid to him as he is getting out of bed.

Prince, the son of Pequis, essayed a speech, but I am constrained to admit that taken altogether it was a miserable failure.  Action loses dignity when it is accompanied by furtive attempts at buttoning nether garments, and not even the eloquence of the Indian is proof against the generally demoralized aspect of a man just out of bed.  I felt that some apology was due to the chief for this early visit; but I told him that being on my way to meet the great Ogima whose braves were coming from the big sea water, I could not pass the Indian camp without stopping to say good-bye.