It was mid-winter before word that Fort Douglas had fallen into the hands of the Nor’Westers and Fort William into the hands of Lord Selkirk, came to Colin Robertson ice-bound at Moose. Robertson was ever the stormy petrel of every fight--one of those doughty heroes of iron strength who thought no more of tramping seven hundred miles on snowshoes for Christmas dinner with some comrade of the wilds than town men think of a voyage across their own dining-room. Though he knew very well that the Half-breeds had threatened “to flay him alive,” that the Indians had been bribed to scalp him, and that warrants were out in Montreal for his arrest in connection with the seizure of Gibraltar from the Nor’Wester, Cameron--Robertson did not hesitate for a moment. He set out on snowshoes for Montreal. Now that Selkirk was on the field, Robertson knew it would be a fight to the death. The company that captured Athabasca, whence came the wealth of furs, would be able to force the other to terms of union. To be sure, Sherbrooke, Governor General of Canada, had issued a Royal Proclamation commanding peace; but Williams, the new Hudson’s Bay governor, declared “the royal proclamation was all d---- nonsense!” He “would drive every Nor’Wester out of the country or perish in the attempt.” On the Nor’Westers’ side was equal defiance of the Proclamation. The most of the Northwest Eastern partners were either under bail or yet in confinement. Of their Western partners, Norman McLeod, the justice of the peace, was the ruling spirit; and his views of the Canadian Proclamation may be guessed from orders to his bullies in Athabasca: “Go it, my lads! Go it! You can do what you like here! There is no law in the Indian Territory!”