That lonely old woman on the porch of the
Homestead was never absent from my mind.

Promptly on the afternoon of my arrival at Ashcroft on the Canadian
Pacific Railway, Burton Babcock, wearing a sombrero and a suit of
corduroy, dropped from the eastbound train, a duffel bag in his right
hand, and a newly-invented camp-stove in the other. "Well, here I am,"
he said, with his characteristic chuckle.

Ready for the road, and with no regrets, no hesitancies, no fears, he
set to work getting our outfit together leaving me to gather what
information I could concerning the route which we had elected to
traverse.

It was hard for me to realize that this bent, bearded, grizzled
mountaineer was Burt Babcock, the slim companion of my Dry Run Prairie
boyhood--it was only in peculiar ways of laughter, and in a certain
familiar pucker of wrinkles about his eyes, that I traced the connecting
link. I must assume that he found in me something quite as
alien--perhaps more so, for my life in Boston and New York had given to
me habits of speech and of thought which obscured, no doubt, most of my
youthful characteristics.

As I talked with some of the more thoughtful and conscientious citizens
of the town, I found them taking a very serious view of the trip we were
about to undertake. "It is a mighty long, hard road," they said, "and a
lot of men are going to find it a test of endurance. Nobody knows
anything about the trail after you leave Quesnelle. You want to go with
a good outfit, prepared for two months of hardship."

In view of this warning I was especially slow about buying ponies. "I
want the best and gentlest beasts obtainable," I said to Burton. "I am
especially desirous of a trustworthy riding horse."

That evening, as I was standing on the hotel porch, my attention was
attracted to a man mounted on a spirited gray horse, riding up the
street toward the hotel. There was something so noble in the proud arch
of this horse's neck, something so powerful in the fling of his hooves
that I exclaimed to the landlord, "_There_ is the kind of saddle-horse I
am looking for! I wonder if by any chance he is for sale?"

The landlord smiled. "He is. I sent word to the owner and he has come on
purpose to see you. You can have the animal if you want him bad enough."

The rider drew rein and the landlord introduced me as the man who was in
need of a mount. Each moment my desire to own the horse deepened, but I
was afraid to show even app