Father Marc and Yellow Hair were not the only two expeditions in motion at the moment. Eight hundred miles southwest of York Factory, bobbing along on the undulating bosom of the Saskatchewan, were McGlincy’s brigades.
Major Alexander McGlincy himself was in the largest canoe, and the sight of him was most inspiring.
He knew how to travel, did McGlincy. It was raining so hard that the voyageurs were soaked through, but did McGlincy get wet? The spray spattered along the gunwales and into the men’s faces, but did McGlincy get spattered? It was grueling work even though it was downstream, but did McGlincy spare the whiskey to keep his spirits up?
No, he had a fine canopy just big enough to cover him—which was fairly large, at that—held up by four poles lashed to the gunwales. He had the c
