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Soft deer skin moccasins are very much superior to civilised boots or shoes under such conditions. There are no roads in that vast country. The frost King freezes up every lake and stream, and hardens into adamant every muskeg and quaking bog.
"She's in the rock cut now," Kemp remarked. "Hardie ought to throttle down when he runs out and sees the light." Lister listened. The swelling note indicated that the train had left the cut, but it did not look as if the engineer was pulling up. "She's coming along pretty fast," said Willis. "If he doesn't snub her soon, she'll jump the steel and take the muskeg."
How they got out of the river Prudence never knew, nor did she fully realize all that had happened when at last the horse and rider again stood on firm ground. And the tough little broncho had covered another mile or more before the girl awoke to the fact that they were now in an open prairie country, and skirting the brink of the great southern muskeg.
There was a short outlet to the bay from the river, a weedy channel leading through flat meadows of vivid green; only, to use an Irishism, they were not meadows at all, but stretches of swamp, in Canadian parlance a muskeg: and the unwary creature, human or animal, that set foot thereon was speedily engulfed.
It was not until 1884 that the wilderness north of Lake Superior was attacked in strong force. Nine thousand men were employed here alone. Rock and muskeg, hill and hollow, made this section more difficult to face than even the Fraser Canyon. In one muskeg area to-day seven layers of Canadian Pacific rails are buried, one below the other.
He could not eat, however, and soon sank again into a restless sleep. His companions sat disconsolately beside the fire as night closed in. Their clothes were damp and splashed with mud, for they had had to cross a patch of very soft muskeg to gather wood among a clump of rotting spruces.
With an effort, he began his story at the portage over the divide, and, possessed by vivid memories, he made her see the desolate region they had laboriously traversed. Because her imagination was powerful, she could picture the brother she had loved toiling with desperate purpose and failing strength through muskeg and morass. Then, when she quietly insisted, he described Gladwyne's last camp.
Horrocks's survey was cut short, however, for now the herd of cattle was tearing down upon him at a desperate racing pace. He saw the solitary rider gather up his lines and move his horse further away from the edge of the muskeg. Then the herd of cattle came along.
Should, however, the game trail happen to cross a muskeg where there were no trees to blaze, he would place moss upon the bushes to answer instead of blazes, and in case the ground was hard and left an invisible trail, he would cut a stick and shoving the small end into the trail, would slant the butt in the direction he had gone.
At last, when Harding felt the tension becoming unendurable, Clarke glanced at his watch and reopened the small bottle. "We'll try again," he said gravely; and Harding thought he detected anxiety in his tone. The dose was given; and Harding, feeling the urgent need of action if he were to continue calm, got up and wandered about the muskeg. Coming back after a while, he looked at Clarke.
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