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.
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