"What, to Fort Carlton?"
"You bet. That's why Sarde ordered a stove-pipe hole for this tent. It's to cover a sleigh for his wife. The sleigh will be rigged as a shack with a stove, kitchen, bed, everything."
Now I began to understand why men were being drafted in to Fort Qu'Appelle, the tons of harness and gear we had been overhauling, Sarde's visit to Troy and lots of other happenings.
Buckie began to gossip.
"Down at the Hudson's Bay store yesterday a Scotch half-breed from the North was talking of Louis Riel, the man, you know, who got up the Red River Rebellion way back in '71. He is up there now, among the old buffalo runners and voyagers, who used to hunt and man the brigades for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Carlton. He is spreading treason among the breeds and the Crees. God has sent him, he says, to raise war against the police, the white men and the pope, to found a republic of hunters and voyagers, to be the father of all the prairie men. They are to burn Fort Carlton, to kill all the mounted police, to drive the whites from the plains—for then the buffaloes will come back, and their lodges will be red with meat as in the good old times."
"So there'll be war?" I asked and my heart was jumping with excitement.
"When the grass comes." Buckie threaded his needle neatly as a housewife. "War," said he. "That's why we're going to Carlton, and Sarde won't have much time to spare for hazing you, eh, Blackguard?"
Buckie proved right in all that he had told me. Within the week we marched, some sixteen men, mostly green recruits, each driving a one-horse sled known as a jumper, laden with forage, bedding, kit, camp gear, grub and even fire-wood. As on a sea voyage, there was nothing to be had by the wayside, so our jumpers were laden like so many little ships, as our flotilla drove on the great snows. The mercury was frozen, and at the Salt Plains, it was sixty degrees below zero, rough travel for Mrs. Sarde in her sleigh-tent, not comfortable for us. One of our fellows, Crook, had his brain chilled, and in high delirium drove off to chase a star until a little chap called Sheppey rounded him up and herded him to camp. We had to leave Crook at the Salt Plain station, and Doc, with his face frozen off, stayed with him by way of nurse.
Sarde was quite friendly to me on that trail, and for once I liked him because he played the man, taking his share with us, not with his wife. And I was happy trotting beside my jumper, pulling my horse out of snowdrifts, busiest man in the crowd when we set up the tents and cooked, rolled down our beds and slept, broke up our camp and marched.
I even made Buckie own up I was not a bounder.