Early on the morning of October the 11th, Robertson's valet roused him from bed with word that a man had been accidentally shot. Slipping a pistol in his pocket and all unsuspicious of trickery, Robertson dashed out. It happened that the most of his men were at a slight distance from his fort. Before they could rally to his rescue he was knocked down, disarmed, surrounded by the Nor'westers, thrown into a boat, and carried back to their fort a captive. In vain he stormed almost apoplectic with rage, and tried to send back Indian messengers to his men. The Nor'westers laughed at him good-naturedly and relegated him to quarters in one room of a log hut, where sole furnishings were a berth bed and a fireplace without a floor. Robertson's only possessions in captivity were the clothes on his back, a jackknife, a small pencil, and a notebook; but he probably consoled himself that his men were now on guard, and, outnumbering the Nor'westers two to one, could hold the ground for the Hudson's Bay that winter. As time passed the captive Robertson began to wrack his brains how to communicate with his men. It was a drinking age; and the fur traders had the reputation of capacity to drink any other class of men off their legs. Robertson feigned an unholy thirst. Rapping for his guard, he requested that messengers might be sent across to the Hudson's Bay fort for a keg of liquor. It can be guessed how readily the Nor'westers complied; but Robertson took good care, when the guard was absent and the door locked, to pour out most of the whisky on the earth floor. Then taking slips of paper from his notebook, he cut them in strips the width of a spool. On these he wrote cipher and mysterious instructions, which only his men could understand, giving full information of the Nor'westers' movements, bidding his people hold their own, and ordering them to send messages down to the new Hudson's Bay governor at Red River,—William Williams,—to place his De Meuron soldiers in ambush along the Grand Rapids of the Saskatchewan to catch the Northwest partners on their way to Montreal the next spring. These slips of paper he rolled up tight as a spool and hammered into the bunghole of the barrel. Then he plastered clay over all to hide the paper, and bade the guard carry this keg of whisky back to the H.B.C. fort; it was musty, Robertson complained; let the men rinse out the keg and put in a fresh supply!
All that winter Robertson, the Hudson's Bay man, captive in the Nor'westers' fort, sent weekly commands to his men by means of the whisky kegs; but in the spring his trick was discovered, and the angry Nor'westers decided he was too clever a man to be kept on the field. They would ship him out of the country when their furs were sent east.
On the way east he succeeded in escaping at Cumberland House. Waiting only a few hours, he launched out in his canoe and followed on the trail of the Northwest partners, on down to see what would happen at Grand Rapids, where the Saskatchewan flows into Lake Winnipeg. A jubilant shout from a canoe turning a bend in the river presently announced the news: "All the Northwest partners captured!" When Robertson came to Grand Rapids he found Governor Williams and the De Meurons in possession. Cannon pointed across the river below the rapids. The Northwest partners were prisoners in a hut. The voyageurs were allowed to go on down to Montreal with the furs. This last act in the great struggle ended tragically enough. What was to be done with the captured partners? They could not be sent to Eastern Canada. Pending investigations for the union of the companies, Governor Williams sent them to York Factory, Hudson Bay, whence some took ship to England, others set out overland on snowshoes for Canada; but in the scuffle at Grand Rapids, Frobisher, one of the oldest partners, with a reputation of great cruelty in his treatment of Hudson's Bay men, had been violently clubbed on the head with a gun. From that moment he became a raving maniac, and the Hudson's Bay people did not know what to do with such a captive. He must not be permitted to go home to England. His condition was too terrible evidence against them; so they kept him prisoner in the outhouses of York Factory, with two faithful Nor'wester half-breeds as personal attendants.
One dark cold night towards the first of October Frobisher succeeded in escaping through the broken bars of his cell window. A leap took him over the pickets. By chance an old canoe lay on Hayes River. With this he began to ascend stream for the interior, paddling wildly, laughing wildly, raving and singing. The two half-breeds knew that a voyage to the interior at this season without snowshoes, food, or heavy clothing, meant certain death; but they followed their master faithfully as black slaves. Wherever night found them they turned the canoe upside down and slept under it. Fish lines supplied food, and the deserted hut of some hunter occasionally gave them shelter for the night. Winter set in early. The ice edging of the river cut the birch canoe. Abandoning it, they went forward on foot. From York Fort, Hudson Bay, the nearest Northwest post was seven hundred miles. By the end of October they had not gone half the distance. Then came one of those changes so frequent in northern climes,—a sunburst of warm weather following the first early winter, turning all the frozen fields to swimming marshes, and the travelers had no canoe. By this time Frobisher was too weak to walk. As his body failed his mind rallied, and he begged the two half-breeds to go on without him, as delay meant the death of all three; but the faithful fellows carried him by turns on their backs. They themselves were now so emaciated they were making but a few miles a day. Their moccasins had been worn to tatters, and all three looked more like skeletons than living men. Then, the third week of November, Frobisher could go no farther, and the servants' strength failed. Building a fire in a sheltered place for their master, the two faithful fellows left Frobisher somewhere west of Lake Winnipeg. Two days later they crept into a Northwest post too weak to speak, and handed the Northwesters a note scrawled by Frobisher, asking them to send a rescue party. Frobisher was found lying across the ashes of the fire. Life was extinct.
PLANS OF YORK AND PRINCE OF WALES FORTS
In 1820 the union of the companies put an end to the ruinous and criminal struggle. George Simpson, afterwards knighted, who has been sent to look over matters in Athabasca, is appointed governor, and Nicholas Garry, one of the London directors, comes out to appoint the officers of the united companies to their new districts. The scene is one for artist brush,—the last meeting of the partners at Fort William, Hudson's Bay men and Nor'westers, such deadly enemies they would not speak, sitting in the great dining hall, glowering at each other across tables: George Simpson at one end of the tables, pompously dressed in ruffles and satin coat and silk breeches, vainly endeavoring to keep up suave conversation; Nicholas Garry at the other end of the table, also very pompous and smooth, but with a look on his face as if he were sitting above a powder mine, the Highland pipers dressed in tartans, standing at each end of the hall, filling the room with the drone and the skurl of the bagpipes.
