Every day Walter watched for the Periers. Whenever he heard the creaking of a cart, he hoped that another brigade was arriving from Fort Douglas. He never went a mile from the settlement without wondering if his friends would be there when he came back. As the days passed, he grew more and more anxious. Had disaster overtaken the boats of the second division?
One day, just at dusk, as the four hunters were returning along the bank of the Pembina, there came to their ears, faintly at first, from the prairie to the north, the screeching of ungreased axles. As the noise grew louder, the boys realized that such a squawking and screaming could never come from two or three carts only. A whole brigade must be approaching. Leaving the woods along the river, the lads started across the prairie to meet the cart train. They could hear it much farther than they could see it in the gathering darkness.
Louis was the first to make out a line of black objects against the sky. He and Walter were some distance ahead of their companions when they met the guide of the brigade riding in advance. Louis shouted a question and the reply in Canadian French came promptly:
“We come from Fort Douglas. We bring some of the new colonists.”
At the guide’s words, Walter dropped his gun and his birds and ran towards the carts. He was too impatient to wait for them to come to him. The first vehicle belonged to the guide and his family, but walking beside the second was someone Walter knew, Johan Scheidecker. He and the Scheidecker boys had shared the same tent at York Factory. As he greeted Johan, Walter looked eagerly around for some sign of his friends.
“Where is Monsieur Perier?” he demanded.
“He is not with us.”
“Not with you? Why, what has happened?”
“Nothing,—to the Periers,” was Johan’s reassuring reply. “They remain at Fort Douglas. A man named Kolbach has taken them into his house. I have a letter for you that will explain it all.” He handed Walter a folded packet of coarse paper.
The boy was dumbfounded. The possibility that the Periers might not come on to Pembina had never occurred to him. It was too dark to read his letter, so he fell into step beside Johan and questioned him.