sent during the past two years to Ottawa and there as regularly
pigeon-holed above the desks of deputy ministers. The politicians had
a somewhat dim notion that there was some sort of row on among the
"breeds" about Prince Albert and Battleford, but this concerned them
little. The members of the Opposition found in the resolutions and
petitions of rights useful ammunition for attack upon the Government. In
purple periods the leader arraigned the supineness and the indifference
of the Premier and his Government to "the rights and wrongs of our
fellow-citizens who, amid the hardships of a pioneer civilization, were
laying broad and deep the foundations of Empire." But after the smoke
and noise of the explosion had passed both Opposition and Government
speedily forgot the half-breed and his tempestuous gatherings in the
stores and schoolhouses, at church doors and in open camps, along the
banks of the far away Saskatchewan.

There were a few men, however, that could not forget. An Indian agent
here and there with a sense of responsibility beyond the pickings of his
post, a Hudson Bay factor whose long experience in handling the affairs
of half-breeds and Indians instructed him to read as from a printed page
what to others were meaningless and incoherent happenings, and above all
the officers of the Mounted Police, whose duty it was to preserve the
"pax Britannica" over some three hundred thousand square miles of Her
Majesty's dominions in this far northwest reach of Empire, these carried
night and day an uneasiness in their minds which found vent from time
to time in reports and telegraphic messages to members of Government and
other officials at headquarters, who slept on, however, undisturbed. But
the word was passed along the line of Police posts over the plains and
far out into British Columbia to watch for signs and to be on guard. The
Police paid little heed to the high-sounding resolutions of a few angry
excitable half-breeds, who, daring though they were and thoroughly able