Ain't they a queer-lookin'
bunch?"
They were a queer-looking lot to more than Piegan. Their uniforms fitted
as if they had grown into them; scarlet jackets buttoned to the throat,
black riding-breeches with a yellow stripe running down the outer seam
of each leg, and funny little round caps like the lid of a big
baking-powder can set on one side of their heads, held there by a narrow
strap that ran around the chin. But for all their comic-opera get-up,
there was many a man that snickered at them that day in Benton who
learned later to dread the flash of a scarlet jacket on the distant
hills.
They didn't linger long at Benton, but got under way and marched
overland to the Cypress Hills. On Battle Creek they built the first
post, Fort Walsh, and though in time they located others, Walsh remained
headquarters for the Northwest so long as buffalo-hunting and the Indian
trade endured. And Benton and Walsh were linked together by great
freight-trails thereafter, for the Mounted Police supplies came up the
Missouri and traveled by way of long bull-trains to their destination;
there was no other way then; Canada was a wilderness, and Benton with
its boats from St. Louis was the gateway to the whole Northwest.
Two years from the time Fort Walsh was built the La Pere outfit sent me
across the line in charge of a bunch of saddle-horses the M.
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