In the meantime Lord Selkirk left the matter of retribution upon the murderers of Governor Semple to the law and returned to England. Punishment was duly meted out to the wrongdoers. The Red River colony struggled manfully against adversity for several winters, and it was not until 1822 that it at {286} last surmounted the evils which threatened to starve it out of existence. But the heart of its founder was not to be gladdened by the tidings of its growing prosperity. The Earl had reached England disheartened; his health was shattered by the long and anxious struggle to found a colony at Red River, and in April 1820 he breathed his last. Selkirk may be truly called the founder and father of the prosperous North-West of to-day. Soon after his death the Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies, for so long such fierce competitors in the fur trade, joined hands in friendly partnership. Gone now for ever were the old free days of the hunters and trappers, the bushrangers and voyageurs. The whole fur trade was placed on a strictly commercial basis. The Nor'-Westers, rough, enterprising adventurers, found themselves part of a huge machine operated by a governor and committee in far-away England. Smaller and more remote grew the regions where they could roam free and undisturbed. Rupert's Land extended from the American border to the Pole, and from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company ruled it and most of those who dwelt there with a rod of iron for the next fifty years. Trouble, however, was still in store for Red River. Blood was yet to flow before the Bois-Brulé could adapt himself to the new order of things. {287} CHAPTER XVIII TRAITORS, REDCOATS, AND REDSKINS