Father told me that the first two days in the saddle had been trying times with him. The everlasting jog of the all-day journey made him feel so stiff and sore the first night that he was hardly able to mount his horse the next day. But after three or four days this wore off, and the trip had been to him not only a pleasant one, but a revelation as to the resources and beauty of our own country. "Why," said father, "every mile we came is abundantly fit for settlement, and the day will come when it will be taken up and developed."
CHAPTER XXI.
Continue journey—Old "La Gress"—Fifty miles per day.
Mr. Hardisty, the Hudson's Bay officer who had brought father across the plains thus far, soon made arrangements for our continuing our journey westward. He furnished us with horses and saddles and a tent, and also a man as a guide. Swimming our horses across the North Saskatchewan opposite the fort, and crossing ourselves and saddles in a boat, we saddled up and packed our one pack-horse and set out up the big hill, ascending it with more ease than the American I once met at the top of it, who said to me, "That is the mostest biliousest hill I ever did climb."
We were now on the north side of the North Saskatchewan, and away we went at the orthodox jog-trot for Fort Pitt, the next post in the chain established by the Hudson's Bay Company.
Our guide was an old man with the name of La Gress, or as the Indians called him, "Grease." Mr. Hardisty had said of him, "He is a good traveller and a quick cook," all of which we found to be true.
He was small and wiry, and sat his horse as if he had grown there.
When on the jog his little legs incessantly moved, and his pipe seemed to everlastingly smoke.
He had been to Red River and had crossed the mountains several times, had been on the plains and in the north, had been chased many a time by the enemy, had starved and almost perished once for the lack of food on one of his trips.