McElroy and De Courtenay were loosed of their bonds and given paddles in the canoes, a change which was welcomed gladly.
At night a guard paced their sleeping-place and the strictest surveillance was kept over them.
Down the Assiniboine, into Red River, and across Portage la Prairie went the great flotilla, green shores winding past in an endless pageant of foliage, all hands falling to at the portages and trailing silently for many pipes, one behind the other, all laden with provisions and packs of furs, the canoes upturned and carried on heads and shoulders.
Of unfailing spirits was Alfred de Courteray.
“'Od's blood, M'sieu,” he would laugh, oddly mixing his dialect, “but this is seeing the wilderness with a vengeance! Though there is no lack of variety to speed the days, yet I would I were back in my post of Brisac on the Saskatchewan, with a keg of good-liquor on the table and my hearty voyaguers shouting their chansons outside, my clerks and traders making merry within. Eh, M'sieu, is it not a better picture?”
“For you, no doubt. For me, I had rather contemplate a prayer-book and recall my mother's teaching in these days,” answered McElroy simply.
“What it is to have sins upon one's conscience!” sighed the venturer. “Verily, it must preclude all pleasant thoughts.” And he fell to humming a gay French air.
Presently the foaming river, growing swifter as it neared the great lake, leaped and plunged into the wide surface of Winnipeg, shooting its burdens out upon the glassy breast of the lake like a spreading fan.
Here the blue sky was mirrored faithfully below with its lazy clouds, the green shores rimmed away to right and left, and the swarming canoes, with their gleaming paddles, made a picture well worth looking at.
The Nakonkirhirinons were going back to the Pays d'en Haut by another way than that by which they had come.