CHAPTER VIII
THE PRAIRIE
A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about, when Blake plodded beside the jaded Indian pony that drew his Red-river cart. It was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter clothes, and he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper than paying for transport. The settlement for which he was bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which stretches across central Canada, and means of communication between it and the outer world were scarce. Harding, accordingly, had agreed to the purchase of the animal with the idea of selling it afterwards to one of the settlers.
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, through which Blake steered by compass. Now it was 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 towards 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 they journeyed through 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 the sky since morning were gathering in threatening masses. This had happened every afternoon, but now and then the cloud ranks had broken, to pour out a furious deluge and a blaze of lightning. Harding anxiously studied the sky.
"I guess we're up against another thunderstorm," he said. "My opinion of the mid-continental climate is singularly mean, but I'd put this strip of Canada near the limit. Our Texan northers are fierce when they come along, but here it blows all the time."
"We'll make camp, if you like; I don't feel very fresh," Blake replied.
"Not here," snapped Harding, "Where I stop I sleep, and I've no use for sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff."
"Very well," Blake agreed. "I daresay we ought to find one in the hollow we got a glimpse of from the last rise, but we haven't had to put up with much discomfort yet."