Robertson sent Clarke with the French voyageurs on to Athabasca. Clarke departed boasting he would send every “Nor’Wester out a prisoner to the bay.” Robertson led the colonists back to the settlement. When Duncan Cameron came triumphantly from the Nor’Westers’ annual meeting, he was surprised to find the colony arisen from the ashes of its ruin stronger than ever. The first thing Robertson did was to recapture the arms of the settlement. On October 15th, as Cameron was riding home after dark he felt the bridle of his horse suddenly seized, and peered forward to find himself gazing along the steel barrel of a pistol. A moment later, Hudson’s Bay men had jerked him from his horse. He was beaten and dragged a prisoner before Robertson, who coolly told him he was to be held as hostage till all the cannon of the colonists were restored. Twelve Nor’Westers at once restored cannon and muskets to Fort Douglas, and Cameron was allowed to go on parole, breathing fire and vengeance till Governor Semple came.
Semple with one hundred and sixty colonists and some one hundred Hudson’s Bay men arrived at Kildonan on November 3rd. Robertson was deeply disappointed in the new governor. A man of iron hand and relentless action was needed. Semple was gentle, scholarly, courteous, temporizing—a man of peace, not war. He would show them, he forewarned Nor’Westers, whether Selkirk could enforce his rights. Forewarned is forearmed. The Nor’Westers rallied their Plain Rangers to the Assiniboine and Red River. “Beware, look out for yourselves,” the friendly Indians daily warned. “Listen, white men! The Nor’Westers are arming the Bois Brulés!” To these admonitions Semple’s answer was formal notice that if the Nor’Westers harmed the colonists “the consequences would be terrible to themselves; a shock that would be heard from Montreal to Athabasca.” Robertson raged inwardly. Well he knew from long service with the Nor’Westers that such pen and ink drivel was not the kind of warfare to appall those fighters.
Across the river in what is now St. Boniface, there lived in a little sod-thatched hut, J. Ba’tiste Lajimoniere and his wife, Marie Gaboury. Robertson sent for Ba’tiste. Would the voyageur act as scout? “But Marie,” interjects Ba’tiste. “Oh, that’s all right,” Robertson assures him. “Marie and the children will be given a house inside Fort Douglas.” “Bon! Ba’tiste will go. Where is it? And what is it?” “It is to carry secret letters to Lord Selkirk in Montreal. Selkirk will have heard that the colony was scattered. He must be told that the people have been gathered back. Above all, he must be told of these terrible threats about the Plain Rangers arming for next year. “But pause, Ba’tiste! It is now November. It is twenty-eight hundred miles to Montreal by the trail you must follow, for you must not go by the Nor’Westers trail. They will lie in wait to assassinate you all the way from Red River to St. Lawrence. You must go south through Minnesota to the Sault; then south along the American shore of Lake Huron to Detroit, and from Detroit to Montreal.”
Ba’tiste thinks twice. Of all his wild hunts, this is the wildest, for he is to be the hunted, not the hunter. But leaving Marie and the children in the fort, he sets out. At Pembina, two of his old hunter friends—Belland and Parisien—accompany him in a cart, but at Red Lake there is such a heavy fall of snow, the horse is only a hindrance. Taking only blankets, provisions on their backs, guns and hatchets, Ba’tiste and his friends pushed forward on foot with an Indian called Monkman. They keep their course by following the shores of Lake Superior—doubly careful now, for they are nearing Fort William. Provisions run out. One of the friends slips through the woods to buy food at the fort, but he cannot get it without explaining where he is going. As they hide near the fort, a dog comes out. Good! Ba’tiste makes short work of that dog; and they hurry forward with a supply of fresh meat, shortening the way by cutting across the ice of the lake. But this is dangerous traveling. Once the ice began to heave under their feet and a broad crevice of water opened to the fore.
“Back!” called Lajimoniere; but when they turned they found that the ice had broken afloat from the shore.
“Jump, or we are lost,” yelled the scout clearing the breach in a desperate leap. Belland followed and alighted safely, but Parisien and Monkman lost their nerve and plunged in ice-cold water. Lajimoniere rescued them both, and they pressed on. For six days they marched, with no food but rock moss—tripe de roche—boiled in water. At length they could travel no farther. The Indian’s famine-pinched face struck fear to their hearts that he might slay them at night for food, and giving him money, they bade him find his way to an Indian camp. To their delight, he soon returned with a supply of frozen fish. This lasted them to the Sault. From Sault Ste. Marie, Lajimoniere proceeded alone by way of Detroit to Montreal. Arriving the day before Christmas, he presented himself at the door of the house where Selkirk was guest. The servant asked his message.
“Letters for Lord Selkirk.”
“Give them to me. I will deliver them.”
“No Sir! I have come six hundred leagues to deliver these letters into Selkirk’s hands and into no other hands do they go. Go tell Lord Selkirk a voyageur from the West is here.”
Bad news were these threats against the colonists to my Lord Selkirk. He told Lajimoniere to rest in Montreal till letters were ready. Then he appealed to the governor of Quebec, Sir Gordon Drummond, for a military detachment to protect Red River, but Sir Gordon Drummond asked advice of his Council, and the McGillivrays of the Northwest Company were of his Council; and there followed months of red tape in which Selkirk could gain no satisfaction. Finally in March, 1816, he received commission as a justice of the peace in the Indian country and permission to take for his personal protection a military escort to be provisioned and paid at his own cost. Canada was full of regiments disbanded from the Napoleon wars and 1812. Selkirk engaged two hundred of the De Meuron and De Watteville regiments to accompany him to Red River. Then he dispatched Lajimoniere with word that he was coming to the colonists’ aid.