y decided to rush three canoes of twenty _voyageurs_ to
Michilimackinac for food and powder. Father Aulneau, the young priest,
accompanied the boatmen to attend a religious retreat at
Michilimackinac. It had been a hard year for the youthful missionary.
The ship that brought him from France had been plague-stricken. The
trip to Fort St. Charles had been arduous and swift, through stifling
heat; and the year passed in the North was one of famine.

Accompanied by the priest and led by Jean de la Verendrye, now in his
twenty-third year, the _voyageurs_ embarked hurriedly on the 8th of
June, 1736, five years to a day from the time that they left
Montreal--and a fateful day it was--in the search for the Western Sea.
The Crees had always been friendly; and when the boatmen landed on a
sheltered island twenty miles from Fort St. Charles to camp for the
night, no sentry was stationed. The lake lay calm as glass in the hot
June night, the camp-fire casting long lines across the water that
could be seen for miles. An early start was to be made in the morning
and a furious pace to be kept all the way to Lake Superior, and the
_voyageurs_ were presently sound asleep on the sand. The keenest ears
could scarcely have distinguished the soft lapping of muffled paddles;
and no one heard the moccasined tread of ambushed Indians
reconnoitring. Seventeen Sioux stepped from their canoes, stole from
cover to cover, and looked out on the unsuspecting sleepers. Then the
Indians as noiselessly slipped back to their canoes to carry word of
the discovery to a band of marauders.

[Illustration: "The soldiers marched out from Mount Royal."]

Something had occurred at Fort St. Charles without M. de la Verendrye's
knowledge. Hilarious with their new possessions of firearms, and
perhaps, also, mad with the brandy of which Father Aulneau had
complained, a few mischievous Crees had fired from the fort on
wandering Sioux of the prairie.

"Who--fire--on--us?" demanded the outraged Sioux.

"The French," laughed the Crees.

The Sioux at once went back to a band of one hundred and thirty
warriors. "Tigers of the plains" the Sioux were called, and now the
tigers' blood was up. They set out to slay the first white man seen.
By chance, he was one Bourassa, coasting by himself. Taking him
captive, they had tied him to burn him, when a slave squaw rushed out,
crying: "What would you do? This Frenchman is a friend of the Sioux!
He saved my life