It is sunset of June 18, 1816. Old chief Peguis comes again to the Hudson's Bay fort on Red River.
"Governor of the gard'ners!" he solemnly warns; "governor of the land workers and gard'ners, listen!…" Not much does he add, after the fashion of his race. Only this, "Let me bring my warriors to protect you!"
Semple laughs at such fears.
It is sunset of June 19. A soft west wind has set the prairie grass rippling like a green sea between the fort and the sun hanging low at the western sky line. A boy on the lookout above one of the bastion towers of Fort Douglas suddenly shouts, "The half-breeds are coming!"
Semple ascends the tower and looks through a field glass. There is a line of sixty or seventy horsemen, all armed, not coming to the fort, but moving diagonally across from the Assiniboine to the Red towards the colony. And then, north towards the colony, is wildest clamor,—people in ox carts, people on horseback, people on foot, stampeding for the shelter of the fort. And up to this moment absolutely nothing has occurred to create this terror.
"Let twenty men follow me," orders Semple; and he marches out, followed by twenty-seven armed men.
As they wade through the waist-high hay fields they meet the fleeing colonists.
"Keep your back to the river!" shouts one colonist, convoying his family. "They are painted, Governor! Don't let them surround you."
Semple sends back to the fort for a cannon to be trundled out.
Young Lieutenant Holte's gun goes off by mistake. Semple turns on him with fury and bids him have a care: there is to be no firing.