No need to describe the blackness of the work that night on the prairie. The Half-breeds wreaked their pent-up vengeance on the bodies of the slain. Let it be said to the credit of the Nor’Westers, they had no part in this ghoulish work. The worst miscreants were the Deschamps of the Missouri, whose blood-stained hands no decent Indian would ever touch after that night. In camp, Pierre Falçon, the rhymster, was chanting the glories of the victory, and Pritchard was pleading with Grant for the lives of the women and children. For years afterward--yes, even to this day--terrible stories were told of the threats against the families of the colonists; but let it be stated there was never at any time the shadow of a vestige of a wrong contemplated against the women and children. What Indians might do, old Chief Peguis had shown. What the Deschamps, who were half-white men, might do--the mutilated bodies of the dead at Seven Oaks revealed. Pritchard was sent across to the fort with word that the colonists must save themselves by surrender. Otherwise, Grant could not answer for their safety among his wild Plain Rangers. The panic of the two hundred people inside was pitiable. For a second time they were to be driven houseless to the wilderness, and yet the bolder spirits were for manning the fort and resisting siege. If only they could have known that Selkirk was coming; but Lajimoniere lay captive in the butter-vat prison at Fort William, and Miles MacDonell had not yet come. Without help, how could two hundred people subsist inside the palisades? A white sheet was tied on the end of a pole, and the colonists marched out on June 22nd, at eight in the morning, Grant standing guard to protect them as they embarked in eight boats for Lake Winnipeg. Before abandoning Fort Douglas, Angus Matheson and old Chief Peguis gather a few of the dead and bury them in a dry coulée near the site of the old Cree graveyard at the south end of modern Winnipeg’s Main Street. Other bodies are buried as they lie at Seven Oaks; but the graves are so shallow they are ripped open by the wolves. Grant rides along the river bank to protect the colonists from marauders till they have passed the Rapids of St. Andrew’s and are well beyond modern Selkirk. Beyond Selkirk, at the famous camping place of Nettley Creek, whom should the colonists meet but the Nor’ West partners galloping their canoes at racehorse pace to reach the field of action before Selkirk. “What news?” calls Norman McLeod; but the news is plain enough in the eight boat loads of dejected colonists.