e had as
companion and defender a young Sioux brave, whose handsome face also bore
token to his having been busily employed in seeing Chaumon through it. M.
Rossette was one of the most noted of the Red River bullies, a terrible
drunkard, but tolerated for some stray tokens of a better nature which
seemed at times to belong to him. When we came up to him he was camped
with his horses and carts on a piece of rising ground situated between
two clear and beautiful lakes.

"Well, Chaumon, going to trade again?"

"Oui, Captain."

"You had better not come to the forts, all liquor can be confiscated now.
No more whisky for Indian-all stopped."

"I go very far out on Coteau to meet Sioux. Long before I get to Sioux I
drink all my own liquor; drink all, trade none. Sioux know me very well,
Sioux give me plenty horses; plenty things: I quite fond of Sioux."

Chaumon had that holy horror of the law and its ways which every wild or
semi-wild man possesses. There is nothing so terrible to the savage as
the idea of imprisonment; the wilder the bird the harder he will feel the
cage. The next thing to imprisonment in Chaumon's mind was a Government
proclamation--a thing all the more terrible because he could not read a
line of it nor comprehend what it could be about. Chaumon's face was a
study when I handed him three different proclamations and one copy of
"The Small-pox in Three Stages." Whether he ever reached the Coteau and
his friends the Sioux I don't know, for I soon passed on my way; but if
that lively bit of literature, entitled "The Small-pox in Three Stages,"
had as convincing an impression on the minds of the Sioux as it had upon
Chaumon, that he was doing something very reprehensible indeed, if he
could only find out what it was, abject terror must have been carried far
over the Coteau and the authority of the law fully vindicated along the
Missouri.

On Sunday morning the 30th of October we reached a high bank overlooking'
a deep valley through which rolled the Assineboine River. On the opposite
shore, 300 feet above the current, stood a few white houses surrounded by
a wooden palisade. Around, the country stretched away on all sides in
magnificent expanses. This was Fort Ellice, near the junction of the
Qu'Appelle and Assineboine Rivers, 230 miles west from Fort Garry.
Fording the Assineboine, which rolled its masses of ice Swiftly against
the shoulder and neck of my horse, we climbed the steep hill, and gained
th