"The tip-top o' the mornin' to the renegade! I thought ye'd been scalped—and so ye have been—nearly—only they mistook y'r hat for the wool o' y'r crown. Boots gone too! Out wid your midnight pranks."
A succession of welcoming thuds accompanied the tirade. As breath returned, I gasped out a brief account of the night.
"And now," he exclaimed triumphantly, "I have news to translate ye to a sivinth hiven! Och! But it's clane cracked ye'll be when ye hear it. Now, who's appointed to trade with the buffalo hunters but y'r very self?"
It was with difficulty I refrained from embracing the bearer of such good tidings.
"Be easy," he commanded. "Ye'll need these demonstrations, I'm thinkin'—huntin' one lass and losin' y'r heart to another."
We arranged he should go to Fort Douglas for Frances Sutherland and I was to set out later. They were to ride along the river-path south of the forks where I could join them. I, myself, picked out and paid for two extra horses, one a quiet little cayuse with ambling action, the other, a muscular broncho. I had the satisfaction of seeing Father Holland mounted on the latter setting out for Fort Douglas, while the Indian pony wearing an empty side-saddle trotted along in tow.
The information I brought back from Fort Douglas delayed any more hostile demonstrations against the Hudson's Bay. That very morning, before I had finished breakfast, Governor McDonell rode over to Fort Gibraltar, and on condition that Fort Douglas be left unmolested gave himself up to the Nor'-Westers. At noon, when I was riding off to the buffalo hunt and the Missouri, I saw the captain, smiling and debonair, embarking—or rather being embarked—with North-West brigades, to be sent on a free trip two thousand five hundred miles to Montreal.
"A safe voyage to ye," said Duncan Cameron, commander of Nor'-Westers, as the ex-governor of Red River settled himself in a canoe. "A safe voyage to ye, mon!"
"And a prosperous return," was the ironical answer of the dauntless ruler over the Hudson's Bay.
"Sure now, Rufus," said Father Holland to me a year afterwards, "'twas a prosperous return he had!"