April, 1814, the colonists are again united. Those who wintered at Churchill sled down to York. On the way over the snow, Angus McKay’s wife gives birth to a child. There are not provisions enough for the other colonists to wait with McKay, but they put up his sheeting tent for him, and bank it warmly with buffalo robes, and give him of their scant stores, and leave the lonely Highlander with musket and a roaring fire, on guard against wolves. What were the thoughts of the woman within the tent only the pioneer heart may guess. June 1st, all the colonists were welcomed to Red River by Miles MacDonell, who gave to each two Indian ponies, one hundred acres, ammunition and firearms. Of implements to till the soil, there is not one. There was no other course but to join the buffalo hunters of Pembina and lay up a supply of meat for the year. Then began a life of wandering and suffering. Those families that could, remained at the Colony Buildings while the men hunted. Those who had neither the money nor the credit to buy provisions, followed hunters afield. The snow was late in falling, but the winter had set in bitterly cold. There was neither canoeing nor sleighing. Over the wind-swept plains trudged the colonists, ill-clad against such cold, camping at nights in the hospitable tepee of wandering Indians or befriended with a chance meal by passing hunters. At Pembina log cabins with sod roofs were knocked up for wintering quarters, and the place was called Fort Daer after one of Selkirk’s names. No matter what happened afterward, let it be placed to the everlasting credit of the buffalo hunters; their kindness this winter of 1814-15 saved the settlers from perishing of starvation. Settlers do not make good buffalo runners. The Plain Rangers shared their hunt with the newcomers, loaned them horses, housed men and women, helped to build cabins and provided furs for clothing. They had arrived in June. The preceding January of 1814, Miles MacDonell had committed the cardinal error of the colony. He was, of course, only carrying out Selkirk’s ideas. What the motive was matters little. The best of motives paves the way to the blackest tragedies. Old World feudalism threw down its challenge to New World democracy. Selkirk had ordered that intruders on his vast domain must be treated as poachers, “resisted with physical force if you have the means.” Conscientiously, Selkirk believed that he had the same right to exclude hunters from the fenceless prairies as to order poachers from his Scottish estates.