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Contractor was asking for haulage tenders; he's having trouble among the sandhills and muskegs." "Then you'll be taking a wad of money along?" Jernyngham assented and the trooper looked thoughtful. "Now," he cautioned, "there's a pretty tough crowd at Nelson, and though we stopped any licenses being issued, we've had trouble over the running-in of liquor.
In places, its bottom was filled with muskegs, cumbered with half-submerged, decaying trunks of fallen trees; and when they could not spring from one crumbling log to another they sank in slime and water to the knee.
"I only know that it's remarkably rough country; thick pine bush on rolling ground, with some bad muskegs and small lakes," he said. "You would find things easier if you could hire an Indian or two and a canoe when you strike the river. The boys here seldom go up so far, but Clarke could help you if he liked. He's been north and knows the Indians."
Everywhere was gay sound the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay color the red sashes of the voyageurs, the beaded moccasins and leggings of the mètis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses around the edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the year passed.
One evening as the Indian women came in with their heavy loads they reported finding, not very far distant, a splendid place, where the berries were very plentiful, and the ground dry and mossy and free from muskegs and rocks.
"I only know that it's remarkably rough country; thick pine bush on rolling ground, with some bad muskegs and small lakes," he said. "You would find things easier if you could hire an Indian or two, and a canoe when you strike the river. The boys here seldom go up so far; but Clarke could help you if he liked. He knows that country like a book, and he knows the Indians."
There were muskegs to avoid. Broken stretches of tundra, trackless, treacherous. Cruel traps which only patience, labor, skill and great courage could avoid. Apart from all chances of hostile welcome the Bell River approaches claimed all the mental and physical sweat of man. The movements of the outfit if slow were sure, and seemingly inevitable.
Close about the little settlement crept the balsams and spruce, the birch and poplar, behind which lurked vast dreary muskegs, a chaos of bowlder-splits, the forest. The girl had known nothing different for many years. Once a summer the sailing ship from England felt its frozen way through the Hudson Straits, down the Hudson Bay, to drop anchor in the mighty River of the Moose.
Why, y' see, ma'm, we'll have to break a fresh trail if that dogone holler ain't one o' them bottomless muskegs," he added thoughtfully. He flicked his whip and spat again. His passenger's voice rose to a sharp staccato. "Then for goodness' sake why go on?" she demanded. "Wal, y' see, you can't never tell till you get ther' in these hills.
There are times, out on the vast prairie, when, through glories of pearl and crimson, night melts into day, or up in the northern muskegs, where the great Aurora blazes down through the bitter frost, when one stands, as it were, abashed and awe-stricken under a dim perception of the majesty upholding this universe.
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