CHAPTER XI.
THE EDMONTON TRAIL Straight across the country, winding over plains, around sleughs, threading its way through bluffs, over prairie undulations, fording streams and crossing rivers, and so making its course northwest from Winnipeg for nine hundred miles, runs the Edmonton trail.
Macmillan was the last of that far-famed and adventurous body of men who were known all through the western country for their skill, their courage, their endurance in their profession of freighters from Winnipeg to the far outpost of Edmonton and beyond into the Peace River and Mackenzie River districts.

The building of railroads cut largely into their work, and gradually the freighters faded from the trails.

Old Sam Macmillan was among the last of his tribe left upon the Edmonton trail.

He was a master in his profession.

In the packing of his goods with their almost infinite variety, in the making up of his load, he was possessed of marvellous skill, while on the trail itself he was easily king of them all.
Macmillan was a big silent Irishman, raw boned, hardy, and with a highly developed genius for handling ox or horse teams of any size in a difficult bit of road, and possessing as well a unique command of picturesque and varied profanity.