 This they did, and travelled amongst the ice pans in a leaky scow.Scouts from Fort Battleford reported that everyone at Fort Pitt had been massacred; however, after six days on the river Dickens and his men arrived at Battleford and received a hero's welcome.Following his discharge from the Mounted Police in 1886 (for reasons of ill health — he was becoming increasingly hard of hearing among other infirmities) Frank was going to embark on a series of lecture talks in the US (as his father had successfully done), but died of a heart attack at a friend's house in Moline, Illinois the night of his first speech.