Kelsey found his way back to the Assiniboines. Another time, camp fire had been made of dry moss. Kelsey was awakened to find the grass round him on fire and the stock of his musket blazing. With his jackknife he made a rude gunstock for the rest of the trip. Hunting with an Indian one day, the two came unexpectedly on a couple of grizzly bears. The surprise was mutual. The bears knew no fear of firearms and were disposed to parley, but the hunters didn’t wait. The Indian dashed for a tree; Kelsey for hiding in a bunch of willows, firing as he ran. The bears mistook the direction of the shot and had pursued the Indian. Kelsey’s charge had wounded one bear, and with a second shot, he now disabled the other, firing full in its face. The double victory over the beast of prey most feared by the Indians gained him the name of Little Giant—_Miss-top-ashish_. From Kelsey’s journal, it is impossible to follow the exact course of his wanderings. Enemies, who tried to prove that the English Company deserved no credit for exploration, declared that he did not go farther than five hundred miles from the bay, seventy-one by canoe, three hundred through woods overland, forty-six across a plain, then eighty-one more to the buffalo country. From his own journal, the distance totals up six hundred miles; but he does not mention any large river except the Hayes, or large lake; so that after striking westward he must have been north of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan, but not so far north and west as Athabasca. This would place his wanderings in the modern province of Saskatchewan. It was the 24th of August before he joined Washa, chief of the Assiniboines, and took up lodgings amid the eighty tents of the tribe. Solemnly, the peace pipe was smoked and, on the 12th of September, Kelsey presented the Assiniboine chief with the present of a lace coat, a cap, a sash, guns, knives, powder and shot, telling the Indians these were tokens of what the white men would do if the Indians proved good hunters; but on no account must the tribes war on one another, or the white man would give the enemy guns, which would exterminate all fighters. Washa promised to bring his hunt down to the bay, which tribal wars prevented for some years. Hudson’s Bay traders, who followed up Kelsey’s exploration—aimed for the region now known as Cumberland House, variously called Poskoyac and Basquia—westward of Lake Winnipeg, so there is little doubt it was in this land that the Hudson’s Bay boy first hunted and camped. With Kelsey, the result was instant promotion. His wife went home to England, where she was regularly paid his salary, and he rose to a position second only to the venerable old Governor Knight, commander of the entire bay.