he?" Mrs. Keith rejoined. "Well, perhaps you had better write to
the Montreal office about our berths." Then, for the call had grown
clearer, she smiled as the girl went away, and added: "It might be
wiser to keep the woman in sight."

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRAIRIE

A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about, when
Blake plodded beside the jaded Indian pony that drew his Red-river
cart. It was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter
clothes, and he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper
than paying for transport. The settlement for which he was bound
stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which
stretches across central Canada, and means of communication between it
and the outer world were scarce. Harding, accordingly, had agreed to
the purchase of the animal with the idea of selling it afterwards to
one of the settlers.

Since leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail,
which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among
the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a
wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub, through which Blake steered
by compass. Now it was late in the afternoon and the men were tired of
battling with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp
sand. They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie
towards the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens
of the North. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous
wooden towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of
them, and the arid tract they journeyed through had so far no
attraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.

They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of
a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and
dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places,
stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part,
there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. The trail was heavy,
the wheels sank deep in sand as they climbed a low rise, and, to make
things worse, the rounded, white-edged clouds which had scudded across
the sky since morning were gathering in threatening masses. This had
happened every afternoon, but now and then the cloud ranks had broken,
to pour out a furious deluge and a blaze of lightning. Harding
anxiously studied the sky.