But the Nor’Westers were on the watch for Lajimoniere this time. One hundred strong, they had arranged their own brigade should go west from Fort William this year. It was to be a race between Selkirk and the Nor’Westers. Lajimoniere must be intercepted. “Lajimoniere is again to pass through your Department, on his way to Red River,” wrote Norman McLeod to the partners in Minnesota. “He must absolutely be prevented. He and the men along with him, and an Indian guide he has, must all be sent to Fort William. It is a matter of astonishment how he could have made his way last fall through your Department.”

Rewards of $100, two kegs of rum and two carrots of tobacco, were offered to Minnesota Indians if they would catch Lajimoniere. They waylaid his canoe at Fond du Lac, beat him senseless, stole his dispatches, and carried him to Fort William where he was thrown in the butter vat prison and told that his wife had already been murdered on Red River.

Out on Red River, Colin Robertson was doing his best to stem the tide of disaster. During the winter of 1815-16, Semple was continuing the fatuous policy of seizing all the supplies of Northwest pemmican, and had gone on a tour to the different fur posts in Selkirk’s territory. For reasons that are now known, no word had come from Selkirk. Toward March arrived an Indian from the upper Assiniboine, whom a Hudson’s Bay doctor had cured of disease, and who now in gratitude revealed to Robertson that a storm was gathering on both sides likely to break on the heads of the colonists. Alex McDonell of the Assiniboine was rallying the Bois Brulés to meet the spring brigade from Montreal, and the spring brigade was to consist of nearly every partner in the Northwest Company, with eighty fighting men. “Look out for yourselves,” warned the Indian. “They are after the heads of the colony. They are saying if they catch Robertson they will skin him alive and feed him to the dogs for attacking Cameron last fall.”

Old Chief Peguis comes again and again with offers to defend the colonists by having his tribe heave “the war hatchet,” but Robertson has no notion of playing war with Indians. “Beware, white woman, beware!” the old chief tells Marie Gaboury. “If the Bois Brulés fight, come you and your children to my tepee.”

Map showing roughly what regions The Fur Traders Explored.

Robertson did not wait for the storm to break. Taking half a dozen men with him on March 13, 1816, he marched across to Fort Gibraltar to seize Cameron as hostage. It was night. The light of a candle guided them straight to the room where the Northwest partner sat pen in hand over a letter. Bursting into the room, Robertson who was of a large and powerful frame, caught Cameron by the collar. Two others placed pistols at the Nor’Wester’s head. There lay the most damning evidence beneath Cameron’s hand—the letter asking Grant of Minnesota to rally the Pillager Indians against Fort Douglas. Cameron was taken prisoner and when Semple returned, he was sent down in May to Hudson’s Bay to be forwarded to England for trial. Ice jam in the straits delayed him a whole year at Moose; and when he was taken to England, Cameron, the Nor’Wester, was no more brought to trial by the Hudson’s Bay Company than MacDonell, the Hudson’s Bay man, was brought to trial by the Nor’Westers. I confess at this stage of the game, I can see very little difference in the faults on both sides. Both sides were playing a desperate, ruthless, utterly lawless game. Both had advanced too far for retreat. Even Selkirk was involved in the meshes with his two hundred soldiers tricked out as a bodyguard.

Semple and Robertson now quarreled outright. Robertson was for striking the blow before it was too late; Semple for temporizing, waiting for word from Selkirk. Robertson was for calling all the settlers inside the palisades. Semple could not believe there was danger.