Such are the principal charges you will be called upon to answer. It would be easy but at present unnecessary to swell the catalogue with minor but serious accusations and however much a long residence here may induce you to consider them of small importance, depend upon it they will be viewed in a very different light by a British jury and a British public.
The whole mass of intercepted papers now in my hands appears to disclose such wicked principles and transactions that I think it my duty to forward them to be laid before His Maj.’s ministers by the director of the Honourable, the H. B. C. I am preparing a letter to the agents and proprietors of the N. W. C. advising them of this my resolution and the motives wh. have determined me to it, a copy of wh. shall be handed to you meantime.
I remain, Sir,
Robert Semple.
D. Cameron, Esq.
CHAPTER XXIX
1816-1821
BOTH COMPANIES MAKE A DASH TO CAPTURE ATHABASCA WHENCE CAME THE MOST VALUABLE FURS—ROBERTSON OVERLAND TO MONTREAL, TRIED AND ACQUITTED, LEADS A BRIGADE TO ATHABASCA—HE IS TRICKED BY THE NOR’WESTERS, BUT TRICKS THEM IN TURN—THE UNION OF THE COMPANIES—SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, GOVERNOR.
It was mid-winter before word that Fort Douglas had fallen into the hands of the Nor’Westers and Fort William into the hands of Lord Selkirk, came to Colin Robertson ice-bound at Moose. Robertson was ever the stormy petrel of every fight—one of those doughty heroes of iron strength who thought no more of tramping seven hundred miles on snowshoes for Christmas dinner with some comrade of the wilds than town men think of a voyage across their own dining-room. Though he knew very well that the Half-breeds had threatened “to flay him alive,” that the Indians had been bribed to scalp him, and that warrants were out in Montreal for his arrest in connection with the seizure of Gibraltar from the Nor’Wester, Cameron—Robertson did not hesitate for a moment. He set out on snowshoes for Montreal. Now that Selkirk was on the field, Robertson knew it would be a fight to the death. The company that captured Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs, would be able to force the other to terms of union.