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The creek no longer kept within its banks, but spread in shallow pools; and the rotting trees were giving place to tall grass and reeds. The valley had turned into very wet muskeg. It was shut in by hills whose rocky sides were seamed by ravines and covered with banks of stones and short brush, through which it was almost impossible to force a passage.
It followed what was called a cut-out line, which worked round the muskeg and back to the main track through a country too difficult for the latter to traverse; and for a while Prescott's interest was occupied by its progress. Groups of men in brown overalls were seated on the rails, which clanged musically in rude harmony with the clatter of the wheels.
From daybreak until dusk fell, hoarse shouts, the clank of rails, the beat of heavy hammers filled his ears, and often the uproar did not stop at dark. When a soft muskeg swallowed the new track, he must watch, by the flaring blast-lamps, noisy ploughs throw showers of gravel from the ballast cars. Labor and concentration had left their mark.
Small trees lay in tangled rows about the fresh gravel; farther back, the standing bush ran in a broken line against the fading light. In front, thin mist drifted across the muskeg where slender trunks rose from the quaking mud. Not far off a high, wooden trestle carried the rails across a ravine.
"Feel for every step before you put your weight on it!" the naturalist instructed. He, of course, had taken the foremost position of leader. "If you want to disappear quicker than you did in yon muskeg, Master Bob, you can set the tip o' your big toe in yon mud, and you'll travel as quick as electricity."
To begin with, we can't very well press the charge you make against Prescott without some proof of the victim's death, which has not been discovered yet. The muskeg, I must remind you, was drained and nothing found. The handsome reward you offered led to no result, though every man in the district who had any time to spare spent it in searching the bluffs.
Also had they galloped miles past the muskeg trap, and A'tim dared not take the Bull back; some new plan must be devised for his destruction. "Where did she come from?" puffed Shag, his froth-covered tongue lolling from between big, thick lips; "where did she come from, A'tim, you who know the Northland forests?" "She's a Wood Buffalo," answered the Dog-Wolf. "What's a Wood Buffalo?" asked Shag.
"It's that fool Benson Clarke's Englishman," Gardner explained. "Found he'd got into my bed with his boots on after falling down in a muskeg. It's not the first time he's played that trick; when he gets worse than usual he makes straight for my room." "Why do you give him the liquor?" Harding inquired. "I don't," said Gardner drily.
He now bore off to the right to counteract the possible deviation from his true course. Though the hunger pangs were no longer so exquisite, he realized that he was weak. He was compelled to pause for frequent rests, when he attacked the muskeg berries and rush-grass patches. His tongue felt dry and large, as though covered with a fine hairy growth, and it tasted bitter in his mouth.
Night would fall soon. He must find her while it was still light enough to follow her tracks. The disasters that might have fallen upon her crowded his mind. A bear might have attacked her. She might be lost or tangled in the swampy muskeg. Perhaps she had accidentally shot herself. As swiftly as he could he snowshoed through the forest, following the plain trail she had left.
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