"Governor of the gard'ners!" he solemnly warns; "governor of the land workers and gard'ners, listen! . . ." Not much does he add, after the fashion of his race. Only this, "_Let me bring my warriors to protect you_!" Semple laughs at such fears. It is sunset of June 19. A soft west wind has set the prairie grass rippling like a green sea between the fort and the sun hanging low at the western sky line. A boy on the lookout above one of the bastion towers of Fort Douglas suddenly shouts, "The half-breeds are coming!" Semple ascends the tower and looks through a field glass. There is a line of sixty or seventy horsemen, all armed, not coming to the fort, but moving diagonally across from the Assiniboine to the Red towards the colony. And then, north {394} towards the colony, is wildest clamor,--people in ox carts, people on horseback, people on foot, stampeding for the shelter of the fort. And up to this moment absolutely nothing has occurred to create this terror. "Let twenty men follow me," orders Semple; and he marches out, followed by twenty-seven armed men. As they wade through the waist-high hay fields they meet the fleeing colonists. "Keep your back to the river!" shouts one colonist, convoying his family. "They are painted, Governor! Don't let them surround you." Semple sends back to the fort for a cannon to be trundled out. Young Lieutenant Holte's gun goes off by mistake. Semple turns on him with fury and bids him have a care: there is to be no firing. The half-breeds have turned from their trail and are coming forward at a gallop. "There 's Grant, the Plain Ranger, Governor! Let me shoot him," pleads one Hudson's Bay man. "God have mercy on our souls!" mutters one of the colonists, counting the foe; "but we are all dead men." All the world knows the rest. At a knoll where grew some trees, a spot now known in Winnipeg on North Main Street as Seven Oaks, Grant, the Ranger, sent a half-breed, Boucher, forward to parley. "What do you want?" demands Semple. "We want our fort!" "Go to your fort, then!" "Rascal! You have destroyed our fort!" "Dare you to speak so to me? Arrest him!" Boucher slips from his saddle. The Plain Rangers think he has been shot. Instantaneously from both sides crashes musketry fire. Semple falls with a broken thigh. Before Grant can control his murderous crew or obtain aid for the wounded governor, a scamp of a half-breed has slashed the fallen man to death. Two or three Hudson's Bay men escape through the long grass {395} and swim across Red River. Two or three more save themselves by instant surrender. For the rest of the twenty-seven, they lie where they have fallen. They are stripped, mutilated, cut to pieces. Only one Nor'wester is killed, only one wounded.