nd it was
heading straight for the country of the Saskatchewan.

Towering head-dresses swept above their moving columns, pomp and
ceremony showed in the panoply of carved spear-heads, feathered shafts,
and slung bows of the white ash which decked them on their peaceful
mission, while underneath fringed garments of buckskin, stained and
beaded with porcupine quills, were bands and stripes of war-paint. They
were ready for anything that might happen in this unknown country into
which they journeyed at the word of their friends the Assiniboines,
given at the buffalo hunt the fall before, above the Great Slave Lake.

Never before had the Nakonkirhirinons been so far in the south.

And long before they reached Deer Lake word had been brought to that new
venturer in his post on the Saskatchewan, Alfred de Courtenay, and he
was keenly alert.

About the same time a half-breed trapper came into Fort de Seviere, loud
in his lamentations, and sought McElroy.

From the flats south of the Capot River, where he had wintered amid a
band of Blackfoot Indians, a rare thing for a white man, he had come
laden with rich furs from that unopened country, bound for De Seviere,
and on the banks of the Qui Appelle three men had come upon him who had
shared his lonely campfire. Rollicking fellows they were, brawny of form
and light of head, and they had carried much liquor in flasks in their
leg-straps, which liquor flowed freely amid songs and fireglow.

In the morning when he awoke late with, Mon Dieu! such a head! there
were no three men, who had vanished like dreams of the liquor, likewise
there was no well-strapped pack of fat winter beaver!

The man, a French half-breed, whimpered and cursed in impotent wrath,
and showed McElroy one of the flasks that had been in the leg-straps of
his visitors. It was covered with a fine light wicker weave, of the same
pattern as that jug which De Courtenay had left at the post gate that
morning in early spring.

"Ridgar," said the factor, showing the thing to him, "our friend from
Montreal is taking a high hand with the country. The freedom of the wild
has gone to his head."

Indeed it seemed as though that were true, for the tales of the reckless
doings of that post of the Nor'westers on the Saskatchewan over which
De Courtenay presided became more frequent and always they were
characterised by a wildness and folly that were only exceeded by their
daring.

The young adventurer had already mad