THE PRAIRIE

A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about and
adding to Blake's discomfort as he plodded beside a jaded Indian pony
and a small cart. The cart was loaded with preserved provisions, camp
stores, and winter clothes; he had bought it and the pony because that
seemed cheaper than paying for transport. The settlement for which he
and Harding were bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweep
of grass which stretches across central Canada. Since leaving the
railroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ran
plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, and
sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand and
short poplar scrub.

It was now late in the afternoon and the men were tired of battling
with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp sand.
They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie toward
the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens of the
North. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous wooden
towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of them,
and the arid tract through which they journeyed had so far no
attraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.

They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of
a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and
dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places,
stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part,
there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. The trail was heavy,
the wheels sank deep in sand as they climbed a low rise, and, to make
things worse, the rounded, white-edged clouds which had scudded across