They were on the move shortly after sunrise, that is to say half-past three. As they rode away over the flat, each took a last look at the buildings of the post across the river, gilded by the horizontal rays, each wondering privately what fortune had in store for them before they should see the spot again.
They passed the last little shack and the last patch of grain before anybody was astir. When they rode out into the open country everybody’s spirits rose. There is nothing like taking the trail to lift up the heart—and on a June morning in the north! Troubles, heart-aches and anxieties were left behind with the houses. Even Mary Moosa beamed in her inscrutable way.
Stonor experienced a fresh access of confidence, and proceeded to deceive himself all over again. “I’m cured!” he thought. “There’s nothing to mope about. She’s my friend. Anything else is out of the question, and I will not think of it again. We’ll just be good pals like two fellows. You can be a pal with the right kind of girl, and she is that.—But better than any fellow, she’s so damn good to look at!”
It was a lovely park-like country with graceful, white-stemmed poplars standing about on the sward, and dark spruces in the hollows. The grass was starred with flowers. When Nature sets out to make a park her style has a charming abandon that no landscape-gardener can ever hope to capture. After they mounted the low bench the country rolled shallowly, flat in the prospect, with a single, long, low eminence, blue athwart the horizon ahead.
“That’s the divide between the Spirit and the Swan,” said Stonor. “We’ll cross it to-morrow. From here it looks like quite a mountain, but the ascent is so gradual we won’t know we’re over it until we see the water flowing the other way.”
Clare rode Miles Aroon, Stonor’s sorrel gelding, and Stonor rode the other police horse, a fine dark bay. These two animals fretted a good deal at the necessity of accommodating their pace to the humble pack animals. These latter had a stolid inscrutable look like their native masters. One in particular looked so respectable and matter-of-fact that Clare promptly christened her Lizzie.
Lizzie proved to be a horse of a strong, bourgeois character. If her pack was not adjusted exactly to her liking, she calmly sat on her haunches in the trail until it was fixed. Furthermore, she insisted on bringing up the rear of the cavalcade. If she was put in the middle, she simply fell out until the others had passed. In her chosen place she proceeded to fall asleep, with her head hanging ever lower and feet dragging, while the others went on. Stonor, who knew the horse, let her have her way. There was no danger of losing her. When she awoke and found herself alone, she would come tearing down the trail, screaming for her beloved companions.
Stonor rode at the head of his little company with a leg athwart his saddle, so he could hold converse with Clare behind.
Pointing to the trail stretching ahead of them like an endless brown ribbon over prairie and through bush, he said: “I suppose trails are the oldest things in America. Once thoroughly made they can never be effaced—except by the plough. You see, they never can run quite straight, though the country may be as flat as your hand, but the width never varies; three and a half hands.”
Travelling with horses is not all picnicking. Three times a day they have to be unpacked and turned out to graze, and three times caught and packed again; this in addition to the regular camp routine of pitching tents, rustling wood, cooking, etc. Clare announced her intention of taking over the cooking, but she found that baking biscuits over an open fire in a drizzle of rain, offered a new set of problems to the civilized cook, and Mary had to come to her rescue.