Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/108

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that time in North Alberta. He knew tlie whole country from the Great Slave Lake to the Montana boundary line, almost to a square yard, and was well ac- quainted with the territory on the Eed Elk Creek, twenty-five miles from Fort Perry, where it empties into the North Saskatchewan.

"Ecds or breeds?" inquired Boyd, non- chalantly.

"Oh, plenty o' them, too," said Cam- eron, "and worse nor them, forbye. The gray beasties are just botching (swarm- ing) in the spruce in yon quarter, lad."

"What, wolves?" cried Boyd con- temptuously, laughing, "why, Fruin there and I will soon attend to them. Won't we Fruin?"

Boyd's fine collie frisked in the snow around the waiting horses, at the idea, and barked at the croaking old sourdough who was predicting evil.

"Is that the only drawback, Sandy?"

"Ye'll maybe think that's plenty afore we ha'e the sicht o' ye at the Fort again," growled Cameron. Boyd laughed gaily, gave the old hunter a playful stroke across the back with his blacksnake and "tchiked" to the horse, which sprang through the gateway and off across the snow prairie at fine speed.

Boyd, after serving a term with the Northwest Mounted Police, had obtained his discharge and was taking up farming at Red Elk, a lonely spot, with no living companions save his faithful Highland collie and his team of bays. His nearest neighbors were the ]\Iasons, who had a ranch twelve miles west of Red Elk Creek. Mason was also a retired British soldier, having been sergeant-major of one of the dragoon regiments. He lived with his wife, son and two daughters. The eldest, Maisie, was betrothed to Boyd. The Ma- sons had helped Boyd to build his castle, as he called it, and now, his duties as mounted policeman completed, he was go- ing to enter into occupation.

That winter set in to break records for cold. Boyd's ability to keep tally on the steady drop of the mercury vanished one morning late in January along with the volatile fluid itself into the red bulb at the bottom of the thermometer glass.

Then he knew it was what they call cold out on the Alberta plains. Indoors one was forced to stay during such spells. Feeding the horses and keeping the stove going with spruce logs were the only occu- pations.

The "big freeze" lasted nearly a week, the monotony of existence being broken by a succession of blizzards from the northeast. They brought the very burgs of Hudson Bay in their teeth, and thor- oughly tested the stability of Boyd's cas- tle. Had it not been built by what the people at the fort called a crank it must have succumbed to those arctic tempests. Fortunately its timbers were mortised, dovetailed and pinned like one of Caesar's bridges, so that where a board shanty, the usual Alberta home, would have been whirled into kindling wood, Boyd's house weathered the gales.

It was one story and a half, with a look- out tower on top from which he was wont to survey the surrounding country. From this coign of vantage the soldier-rancher often watched the deer, arctic hare, jack rabbits and little antelope wandering around the house and clearing in search of food, and, of course, the coyote, every inch a thief, flitted at all hours like a yel- low ghost about the open spaces and lurked in the shadowy places.

From a peep hole alongside the door Boyd fed the deer with scraps, which they took greedily from his hand. The peep hole is one of those devices of the middle ages which the lonely settler in untrodden Canada is wise to incorporate in the front elevation of his abode. It is built so as to enable the inmate to rake the whole clearing in front with his rifle without opening door or window, when unwelcome guests, Indians, bear, or wolf, happen to call. Then, Boyd's military instincts had led him to contrive that the windows on the lower floor shoidd all open outward on hinges like port-hole coverings. On the wall of his little dining-room hung his old cavalry sabre, his cavalry trumpet, relic of his early days in the service, his Winchester rifle, and big service? revolver. On the bugle Boyd was fond of practicing the calls for amusement, and the clear note of the instrument could be heard across the snow-bound prairie for many miles.

One morning a strange thing h