“Jump, or we are lost,” yelled the scout clearing the breach in a desperate leap. Belland followed and alighted safely, but Parisien and Monkman lost their nerve and plunged in ice-cold water. Lajimoniere rescued them both, and they pressed on. For six days they marched, with no food but rock moss--_tripe de roche_--boiled in water. At length they could travel no farther. The Indian’s famine-pinched face struck fear to their hearts that he might slay them at night for food, and giving him money, they bade him find his way to an Indian camp. To their delight, he soon returned with a supply of frozen fish. This lasted them to the Sault. From Sault Ste. Marie, Lajimoniere proceeded alone by way of Detroit to Montreal. Arriving the day before Christmas, he presented himself at the door of the house where Selkirk was guest. The servant asked his message. “Letters for Lord Selkirk.” “Give them to me. I will deliver them.” “No Sir! I have come six hundred leagues to deliver these letters into Selkirk’s hands and into no other hands do they go. Go tell Lord Selkirk a voyageur from the West is here.” Bad news were these threats against the colonists to my Lord Selkirk. He told Lajimoniere to rest in Montreal till letters were ready. Then he appealed to the governor of Quebec, Sir Gordon Drummond, for a military detachment to protect Red River, but Sir Gordon Drummond asked advice of his Council, and the McGillivrays of the Northwest Company were of his Council; and there followed months of red tape in which Selkirk could gain no satisfaction. Finally in March, 1816, he received commission as a justice of the peace in the Indian country and permission to take for his personal protection a military escort to be provisioned and paid at his own cost. Canada was full of regiments disbanded from the Napoleon wars and 1812. Selkirk engaged two hundred of the De Meuron and De Watteville regiments to accompany him to Red River. Then he dispatched Lajimoniere with word that he was coming to the colonists’ aid. But the Nor’Westers were on the watch for Lajimoniere this time. One hundred strong, they had arranged their own brigade should go west from Fort William this year. It was to be a race between Selkirk and the Nor’Westers. Lajimoniere must be intercepted. “_Lajimoniere is again to pass through your Department, on his way to Red River_,” wrote Norman McLeod to the partners in Minnesota. “_He must absolutely be prevented. He and the men along with him, and an Indian guide he has, must all be sent to Fort William. It is a matter of astonishment how he could have made his way last fall through your Department._” Rewards of $100, two kegs of rum and two carrots of tobacco, were offered to Minnesota Indians if they would catch Lajimoniere. They waylaid his canoe at Fond du Lac, beat him senseless, stole his dispatches, and carried him to Fort William where he was thrown in the butter vat prison and told that his wife had already been murdered on Red River.