The Old Fort was reached early in the afternoon, and at one of the favourite camping places on the western side of the rushing waters of the great river that comes pouring out of Lake Winnipeg they went ashore. The active Indians soon had an abundance of dry wood cut and gathered. The fires were soon brightly burning, and the meal was prepared. Around it clustered the happy hungry ones, and very much did they enjoy their dinner out in the sunshine amid the beauties of this romantic spot.
Mrs Ross and the children, escorted by Mr Ross and our three lads, went for a long ramble through the woods, looking for some rare and beautiful ferns which here abound. They succeeded in getting quite a number of fine specimens, which they carefully dug up to be planted in the grounds around Sagasta-weekee. Some beautiful wild flowers were also found, and several small young mountain ash trees were carefully dug up and carried home.
After this delightful ramble, which was without any exciting adventure, they all returned to the camp, where they found that tea had already been prepared for them by the thoughtful Indian canoemen. When this was partaken of, Mrs Ross and the young people embarked in their capacious canoe for the return trip, and under the vigorous paddling of their four canoemen reached Sagasta-weekee before midnight.
The only excitement they had on the way was the seeing a beautiful deer and her young fawn swimming in the water a long way out from the shore. They gave chase and caught up to the beautiful frightened creatures. Mrs Ross would not allow the men to kill either of them, as she did not want the children to be shocked by the death of such beautiful, timid animals, especially as the solicitude manifested by the mother deer was very interesting to observe.
At first even the experienced Indians were perplexed at the sight of the deer with her young fawn in this broad water so far from land. Generally while the fawns are so small the mother deer keeps them hid in the deep, dark forests, only going to them when it is necessary for them to suckle.
It was not very long before these Indians had an idea of the cause for the unusual conduct of this deer. So they began watching very carefully the distant shore, from which the deer had come, and after a while one who had been shading his eyes gave a start and whispered earnestly:
“Wolf! wolf!”
And sure enough there was, for trotting up and down on the shore was a great, fierce, northern grey wolf, he must have got on the trail of the deer and alarmed her, but not before she had time to rush from her retreat with the fawn and spring into the water. They must have got quite a distance out from shore before the wolf reached the water, as the Indians said, judging by the way the wolf ran up and down on the beach, trying to find the trail; he had not seen them in the water.
Wolves do not take to water like bears. It is true they can swim when necessary, but they cannot make much of a fight in the water. A full-grown deer can easily drown a wolf that is rash enough to dare to attack him in the deep water. The Indians would have liked to have gone ashore and made an effort to get in the rear of the wolf and had a shot at him, but this was at present out of the question. So they only paddled in between the swimming deer and fawn and the shore from whence they had come. This enabled them to escape to the shore opposite from the wolf. Shortly after, as the wolf, so angry at being baffled of his prey while the scent was so hot on the shore, came running along in plain sight. The Indians carefully fired a couple of bullets at him. These, while not killing him, went near enough to cause him to give a great jump of surprise and alarm, and to suddenly disappear in the forest.
“Sometime soon we get that wolf,” said one of the Indians.