[Illustration: "I headed her out again into the lake."]
Fording the Little Saskatchewan, we continued our journey. One day we stopped for noon on the shore of Shoal Lake, and here while our stock were resting I made an experiment. We had brought with us from the mission a fine strong mare about seven years of age, which had never been broken to either drive or ride, and was very wild. She would follow the carts and stay with our horses, that was all. My plan was to take her out into the lake and break her there. We made a corral with the carts, and I lassoed the mare, and haltering her, stripped off my clothes and swam out into the lake with her, then quietly slipped on her back. She gave a plunge or two, but only succeeded in ducking herself, and then settled down to straight swimming. After a while I headed her for the shore, but as soon as she got squarely on the bottom she began to buck, so I headed her out again into the lake, and presently I could take her out on the beach and canter up and down as nicely as with an old saddle-horse. Then I dressed, and putting a saddle-pad on, rode her all the afternoon. Rolling on as well as we could, heeding but little the mud and mosquitoes and pelting rains, in good time we reached the Assiniboine. We were two days rafting that stream, and the large part of another in doubling and portaging up the big sand hill which forms the north bank of the Assiniboine at this point.
Leaving my party in camp on the bank of the Qu'Appelle, I forded this stream and rode over to Fort Ellice, hoping to secure some dried meat or pemmican, as we were living now entirely on flour and milk, and I wanted to use the flour as little as possible. On my way through the woods which thickly covered the hill between the Qu'Appelle and Fort Ellice, I met four white men on foot, carrying new flint-lock guns. The guns and their appearance branded them as belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, and being "green hands," as all the newly received employees were called, I enquired of them where they were going. One of them answered, "The Lord knows, for we don't." My next question was, "What are you looking for?" and they answered in chorus, "Our supper." "Why," said I, "are there no provisions in the Fort?" "None," they answered; "we were given these guns and some shot and powder, and told to hunt for our suppers." This was poor encouragement for me in my quest for provisions. I had noticed that the leader, while he had a new gun on his shoulder, did not have any flint in the dog-head. "Well, my friend," I said, "you will never kill your supper with that gun you carry." "Why," he asked, "what is the matter?" I pointed out to him what the matter was, and then all began to look at their guns, and I went on, for about the most dangerous place you can be in is where a number of tenderfeet are handling guns.