r way then; Canada was a wilderness, and Benton with
its boats from St. Louis was the gateway to the whole Northwest.

Two years from the time Fort Walsh was built the La Pere outfit sent me
across the line in charge of a bunch of saddle-horses the M. P.
quartermaster had said he'd buy if they were good. I turned them over
the afternoon I reached Walsh, and inside of forty-eight hours I was
headed home with the sale-money--ten thousand dollars--in big bills, so
that I could strap it round my middle. I remember that on the hill south
of the post the three of us, two horse-wranglers and myself, flipped a
dollar to see whether we kept to the Assiniboine trail or struck across
country. It was a mighty simple transaction, but it produced some
startling results for me, that same coin-spinning. The eagle came
uppermost, and the eagle meant the open prairie for us. So we aimed for
Stony Crossing, and let our horses jog; there were three of us, well
mounted, and we had plenty of grub on a pack-horse; it seemed that our
homeward trip should be a pleasant jaunt. It certainly never entered my
head that I should soon have ample opportunity to see how high the
"Riders of the Plains" stacked up when they undertook to enforce
Canadian law and keep intact the peace and dignity of the Crown.

We had started early that morning, and by the time we thought of camping
for dinner we saw ahead of us what we could tell was a white man's camp.
It wasn't far, so we kept on, and presently it developed that we had
accidentally come upon old Piegan Smith. He was lying there ostensibly
resting his stock from the hard buffalo-running of the past winter, but
I knew the old rascal's horses were more weary from a load of moonshine
whisky they had lately jerked into the heart of the territory. But he
was there, anyway, and half a dozen choice spirits with him, and when
we'd said "Howdy" all around they proceeded to spring a keg of whisky on
us.

Now, the whole Northwest groaned beneath a cast-iron prohibition law at
that time, and for some years thereafter. No booze of any description
was supposed to be sold in that portion of the Queen's domain. If you
got so thirsty you couldn't stand it any longer, you could petition the
governing power of the Territory for what was known as a "permit," which
same document granted you leave and license to have in your possession
one gallon of whisky. If you were a person of irreproachable character,
and your humble p