Even the most brilliant sunlight cannot cheer the mournful outlook to any great extent. Out on the Edmonton trail, hundreds of miles to the north of Forks, at the crossroads where the Battule trail branches to the east, the cheerless prospect is intensified by the skeleton arms of a snow-crowned bluff. The shelter of trees is no longer a shelter against the wind, which now comes shrieking through the leafless branches and drives out any benighted creature foolish enough to seek its protection against the winter storm. But in winter the crossroads are usually deserted.
Contrary to custom, however, it is evident that a horseman has recently visited the bluff. For there are hoof-prints on one of the crossing trails; on the trail which comes from somewhere in the south. The marks are sharp indentations and look fresh, but they terminate as the crossing is reached. Here they have turned off into the bush and are lost to view. The matter is somewhat incomprehensible.
But there is something still more incomprehensible about the desolate place. Just beyond where the hoof-prints turn off a lightning-stricken pine tree stands alone, bare and blackened by the fiery ordeal through which it has passed, and, resting in the fork of one of its shriveled branches, about the height of a horseman’s head, is a board—a black board, black as is the tree-trunk which supports it.
As we draw nearer to ascertain the object of so strange a phenomenon on a prairie trail we learn that some one has inscribed a message to those who may arrive at the crossing. A message of strange meaning and obscure. The characters are laboriously executed in chalk, and have been emphasized with repeated markings and an attempt at block capitals. Also there is a hand sketched roughly upon the board, with an outstretched finger pointing vaguely somewhere in the direction of the trail which leads to Battule.
“This is the One-Way Trail”
We read this and glance at the pointing finger which is so shaky of outline, and our first inclination is to laugh. But somehow before the laugh has well matured it dies away, leaving behind it a look of wonder not unmixed with awe. For there is something sinister in the message, which, though we do not understand it, still has power to move us. If we are prairie folk we shall have no inclination to laugh at all. Rather shall we frown and edge away from the ominous black board; and it is more than probable we shall avoid the trail indicated, and prefer to make a detour if our destination should chance to be Battule.
Why is that board there? Who has set it up? And “the one-way trail” is the trail over which there is no returning. The message is no jest.
The coldly gleaming sun has set, and at last a horse and rider enter the bluff. They turn off into the bush and are seen no more. The long night passes. Dawn comes again, and, as the daylight broadens, the horseman reappears and rides off down the trail. At evening he returns again; disappears into the bush again; and, with daylight, rides off again. Day after day this curious coming and going continues without any apparent object, unless it be that the man has no place but the skeleton bush in which to rest. And with each coming and going the man rides slower, he lounges wearily in his saddle, and before the end of a week looks a mere spectre of the man who first rode into the bluff. Starvation is in the emaciated features, the brilliant feverish eyes. His horse, too, appears little better.
At length one evening he enters the bush, and the following dawn fails to witness his departure. All that day there is the faint sound of a horse moving about amongst the trees with that limping gait which denotes the application of a knee-halter. But the man makes no sound.
As night comes on a solitary figure may be seen seated on a horse at a point which is sheltered from the trail by a screen of bushes. The man sits still, silent, but drooping. His tall gaunt frame is bent almost double over the horn of his saddle in his weakness. The horse’s head is hanging heavy with sleep, but the man’s great, wild eyes are wide open and alight with burning eagerness. The horse sleeps and frequently has to be awakened by its rider as it stumbles beneath its burden; but the man is as wakeful as the night-owl seeking its prey, and the grim set of his wasted face implies a purpose no less ruthless.