ake with his
handful of police and civilian volunteers and had just returned after
experiencing a reverse.

At that time, and later in his formal report, Irvine expressed keen
regret that Crozier, knowing the Commissioner to be within 50 miles with
reinforcements, had not waited. But Crozier had been true to the Police
record of not counting odds when duty seemed clear. And so, when his
first small detachment, under Thomas McKay, had come back, the
Superintendent doubtless felt that unless he acted at once, the rebels
would say that the Police could be bluffed, and would thus be able to
call to the cause of the revolt hundreds of half-breeds and Indians, who
would take courage from the apparent apathy or weakness of the
Government forces. Besides this, it became known later that the
volunteers from Prince Albert were anxious to settle the rebels, as
their homes were menaced by the uprising.

So the Duck Lake fight took place between Crozier, Inspector Howe, with
Surgeon Miller and fifty-three men of the Mounted Police, aided by
forty-one civilian volunteers from Prince Albert, under Captains Moore
and Morton, a total of ninety-nine on the one side against Gabriel
Dumont, Chief Beardy and a force of nearly 400 half-breeds and Indians
on the other. The rebels first used a flag of truce, and under cover of
conference partially outflanked our men on the one side, while the rest
of their forces were well concealed under cover of log buildings and
brush. The thing was too unequal, and our men, after fighting in the
open with the utmost coolness and courage against a practically hidden
enemy, gathered up their nine dead and five wounded, who needed care,
and retired in good order to Carlton. The loss of the rebels, who
concealed their dead, was not known, but Gabriel Dumont was wounded by a
bullet which plowed along his head and felled him to the ground. A few
years later Mr. Roger Goulet, a famous loyalist French half-breed
land-surveyor in Winnipeg, who was on the Commission to inquire into the
question of half-breed rights, said to me: "The Duck Lake fight was
worth while, because Gabriel Dumont's wound, which I saw later when he
took off his hat to make an affidavit, cooled his ardour to such an
extent that he was timid for the rest of the campaign, or the rebellion
might have lasted much longer." Goulet's theory possibly accounts for
the fact that Dumont, whose judgment was for a night attack on
Middleton's camp at Fish