The ’74 Mounties: The Great March Across the Plains – Part 3
By Major Fred A. Bagley, late of Banff, Alberta
On the trail, Fargo to Dufferin
‘Our initial 160 miles of prairie travel between Fargo, N.D., and Dufferin (now Emerson), Manitoba, through the town of Grand Forks, and past the U.S. Army Post of Fort Pembina gave us a foretaste of what we were to experience during the weary months to come when Romance and Adventure were to go by the board.
Entries in my diary such as “Supper of 23”, or “Breakfast of wet and dry” (the former phrase meaning in the language of the funny men “tea only”, and the latter “tea – or water and hard tack”) were frequent, and pointed to the fact that there was something wrong in the Supply Department. A variation in the gist of these entries as above (but this occurred only once be it said) was “No supper. All cooks drunk”.’
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