THE PRAIRIE A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about and adding to Blake's discomfort as he plodded beside a jaded Indian pony and a small cart.

The cart was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter clothes; he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper than paying for transport.

The settlement for which he and Harding were bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which stretches across central Canada.

Since leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub.
It was now late in the afternoon and the men were tired of battling with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp sand.
They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie toward the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens of the North.

The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous wooden towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of them, and the arid tract through which they journeyed had so far no attraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.
They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali.