"What do you want? What do you want?"
"What do you want, yourself?" came Governor Semple's reply with some heat and not a little insolence.
"We want our fort," demanded Boucher, slightly taken aback, but thoroughly angered. His horse was prancing restively within pistol range of the governor.
"Go to your fort, then! Go to your fort!" returned Semple with stinging contempt in manner and voice.
He might as well have told us to go to Gehenna; for the fort was scattered to the four winds.
"The fool!" muttered Grant. "The fool! Let him answer for the consequences. Their blood be on their own heads."
Whether the Bois-Brulés, who had lashed their horses into a lather of foam and were cursing out threats in the ominous undertone that precedes a storm-burst, now encroached upon the neutral ground in spite of Grant, or were led gradually forward by the warden as the Hudson's Bay governor's hostility increased, I did not in the excitement of the moment observe. One thing is certain, while the quarrel between the Hudson's Bay governor and the North-West clerk was becoming more furious, our surging cohorts were closing in on the little band like an irresistible tidal wave. I could make out several Hudson's Bay faces, that seemed to remind me of my Fort Douglas visit; but of the rabble of Nor'-Westers and Bois-Brulés disguised in hideous war-gear, I dare avow not twenty of us were recognizable.
"Miserable rogue!" Boucher was shouting, utterly beside himself with rage and flourishing his gun directly over the governor's head, "Miserable rogue! Why have you destroyed our fort?"
"Call him off, Grant! Call him off, or it's all up!" I begged, seeing the parley go from bad to worse; but Grant was busy with the Bois-Brulés and did not hear.
"Wretch!" Governor Semple exclaimed in a loud voice. "Dare you to speak so to me!" and he caught Boucher's bridle, throwing the horse back on its haunches.