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Updated: September 24, 2025
The wheels on the side nearest the bank slid into the dirt first and plowed deep into the soil; the caboose came to an abrupt stop, trembled and rattled, overtopped its centre of gravity, and fell over against the cut-bank, wearily, like a drunken hag. Bryce, still clinging to the brake, was fully braced for the shock and was not flung off.
Then, ere the sled had left the river, and while the dogs still struggled in their harness to lift its nose over what was almost a cut-bank, and when Nick's attention was most needed, the whip suddenly became idle, and his stock of driving-curses changed to a shout of alarmed surprise. Down he dropped upon his knees; and, with head bent low, examined the disturbed surface of the snow.
He started out to show one of the horses to the Commissioner at the Fort, but the brute bucked fiercely towards the cut-bank, sidling and fighting against its rider until at last there seemed to be nothing for it but to go over the bank side-on. That did not suit Sharples. He turned the brute sharply towards the precipice, gave it the spur and went out into space.
Before them at a distance of a hundred yards or more a mounted Indian rode toward the farther side of the funnel and took his stand at the very spot at which there was some hope of diverting the rushing herd from the cut-bank down the side coulee to safety. "That man has got to go," said Cameron to himself, drawing his gun.
But her relief was short-lived, for when the forms in the water touched shore it was to brush against the side of the cut-bank with tea feet of perpendicular wall above them. And worse than, that, unhardened to the wear of water, the bank was caving off in great chunks as the current gnawed at its base.
This was to be the end of the drive. Here the cattle were to meet their death. Here it was that the pemmican was to be made. On the hillside opposite there was doubtless a similar fence and these two would constitute the fatal funnel down which the cattle were to be stampeded over the cut-bank to their destruction. This was the nefarious scheme planned by Raven and his treacherous allies.
Wondering, and a bit exasperated, I spurred straight up the bank, and when I had reached the high benchland loped to a point that overlooked the little valley a full mile up and down. Cottonwood and willow, cut-bank and crooning water, lay green and brown and silver-white before, but no riders, no thing that moved in the shape of men came within the scope of my eyes. But I wasn't done yet.
Every bush around him was decorated with clothes laid out on their leafy surfaces, where the sun could best operate its hygienic drying process. He saw the bobbing heads of the mudlarking children a few yards away where the low cut-bank hid their small bodies from view. And somehow an unusual pity stirred his hard, world-worn heart. And yet no one could have called him a sentimental man.
Bat jerked the pack from the lead-horse and produced clothing and blankets, dripping wet from the saturation he had given them in the poison spring. While the others repeated the process of the previous camp, Bat worked over the horses which stood in a dejected row with their noses to the base of the cut-bank.
It topped a gentle, uneven acclivity of grass, rising from the watercourse at its side; while in front, the ground extended level a hundred feet to the edge of a cut-bank. This bank rose out of the lake sheer and loamy, to the height of a cottage roof; and over the edge hung a tangled fringe of grass-roots.
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