o, in a last effort to save his men, Fitzgerald
ordered the return, in the hope of making Fort Macpherson, from which
they had travelled over 300 miles. He and Carter could have made it had
they not been hampered by the other two, who were sick. But they would
not leave them, as shown by the fact that Dempster found the camps each
night were only a few miles apart. Finally, it appears that in the hope
of reaching Macpherson and getting help Fitzgerald and Carter gave all
the food, such as it was, and all the warm sleeping-bags to their
comrades, and tried to reach Macpherson, which was only 35 miles away.
They made 10 miles and then gave out and fell. Carter was evidently the
first to go, for his body was laid out, his hands crossed, and a
handkerchief put over his face. Then the gallant Fitzgerald succumbed,
first having written with a charred stick on a paper found in his pocket
his will in the fine words: "All money in dispatch bag and bank,
clothes, etc., I leave to my dearly beloved Mother, Mrs. John
Fitzgerald, of Halifax. God bless all. F. J. Fitzgerald, R.N.W.M.P."
Many times have the initials of the old corps been written in important
and honourable connections, but never with greater honour to the Force
than when they were thus set down with the thought of his mother and a
benediction for all by the numbed fingers of the heroic Inspector who
was faithful unto death.

When Dempster and his men found the emaciated bodies and the mail which
the dead men had carefully guarded they covered the bodies over
reverently with brush, for their dogs were too far spent by the hard,
swift trip to draw them, and went on to Fort Macpherson with the sad
news. Those at Macpherson never dreamed but that the four strong,
splendid men who had left them weeks before had long ere the date of
Dempster's arrival reached Dawson City. The news that now came blanched
all faces and cast a great gloom over that little company in the far
North. Next morning, March 23, Corporal Somers and Constable Blake got
together three fresh dog-teams with which, accompanied by two Indians,
Somers started out at noon and returned on the 25th with the bodies of
the men who had given up their lives in the line of their duty. A grave
was prepared, the only one of its kind in the Northland, where the four
bodies were buried side by side, in coffins made and covered with black
by Somers and Dempster. The funeral was held in the Anglican Church,
that devoted m