“My God, Governor! We are all lost men,” mutters Heden, the blacksmith; and Kilkenny, a fighting Irishman, begs, “Give me leave, Governor! Let me shoot; or we shall all be shot. There’s Grant, the leader. Let me pick off Grant!” “No firing, I tell you,” orders Semple angrily, and the two parties come in violent collision on a little knoll of wooded ground called Seven Oaks. With Grant are our old friends of the Saskatchewan--Falçon, the rhyming poet; and Boucher, son of the scout shot on the South Saskatchewan; and Louis Primo, old reprobate who had deserted Cocking fifty years ago; and two of Marguerite Trottier’s brothers from Pembina; and a blackguard family of Deschamps from the Missouri; and seventy other Plain Rangers from the West. Followed by a bloodthirsty crew hard to hold, Cuthbert Grant was appalled to see Semple march out courting disaster. “Go tell those people to ground their arms and surrender,” he ordered Boucher. “What do you want?” demanded Semple as Boucher galloped up. “Our fort,” yelled Boucher forgetting his message. “Then go to your fort!” vehemently ordered Semple. “Rascal! You have destroyed our fort,” roared the angry Half-breed. “Dare you address me so?” retorted Semple, seizing the scout’s gun. “Men--take him prisoner!” “Have a care you do me no ill,” shouted Boucher slipping off the other side of his horse, prancing back. “Take him prisoner--I say! Is this a time to be afraid?” shouts Semple. “My God! We are all dead men,” groans Sutherland, the Scotch colonist, for the dread war whoop had rent the air. There was a blaze of musketry, and there reeled back with his arms thrown up--young Holte, the officer who had boasted that with the Lake Winnipeg schooner “he would give the Northwest scoundrels a drubbing.” Another crash, and Semple is down with a broken thigh. Cuthbert Grant dismounts and rushes to stop the massacre. “I am not mortally wounded! Take me to the fort,” gasps Semple. Grant turns to call aid. The Deschamps stab the Governor to death on the spot. The firing lasts less than fifteen minutes, but twenty of the Hudson’s Bay men have fallen, including all the officers, four colonists, fifteen servants. Captain Rodgers is advancing to surrender when he is hacked down. Of the twenty-seven who followed out, Pritchard, the former Nor’Wester, is saved by surrender; and five men escape by swimming across the river. As for the cannon, Bourke is trundling it back as fast as the horses can gallop. McLean, the settler, has been slain. One, only, of the Plain Rangers, Batoche, has been killed; only one wounded--Trottier of Pembina; and Cuthbert Grant at last succeeds in stopping the infuriated rabble’s advance and drawing off to camp west of Seven Oaks.