Seven years ago I used to go up there every year, to shoot prairie chickens, coyotes and elk.
There wasn't any North Battleford then--just the glorious prairie, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of it.

There was a single shack on the Saskatchewan River, where North Battleford now stands, and I used to stay there.

In that shack there was a little girl, twelve years old.

We used to go out hunting together--for I used to kill things in those days.

And the little girl would cry sometimes when I killed, and I'd laugh at her.
"Then a railroad came, and then another, and they joined near the shack, and all at once a town sprang up.