Chapter XX. The Last Patrol - Page 2

keep him in mind of that, for things are so pressing here that he might quite well imagine that he could not spare the men."

"Well, that is rather better," said Martin. "The Sergeant will send those men all right, or I will know the reason why. Hope you get your game. Good-by, old man."

A day's ride brought Cameron to Kananaskis, where the Sun Dance Trail ends on one side of the Bow River and the Ghost River Trail begins on the other. There he found signs to indicate that Jerry was before him on his way to the Manitou Rock. As Cameron was preparing to camp for the night there came over him a strong but unaccountable presentiment of approaching evil, an irresistible feeling that he ought to press forward.

"Pshaw! I will be seeing spooks next!" he said impatiently to himself. "I suppose it is the Highlander in me that is seeing visions and dreaming dreams. I must eat, however, no matter what is going to happen."

Leaving his horse saddled, but removing the bridle, he gave him his feed of oats, then he boiled his tea and made his own supper. As he was eating the feeling grew more strongly upon him that he should not camp but go forward at once. At the same time he made the discovery that the weariness that had almost overpowered him during the last half-hour of his ride had completely vanished. Hence, with the feeling of half contemptuous anger at himself for yielding to his presentiment, he packed up his kit again, bridled his horse, and rode on.

The trail was indeed, as Jerry said, "no trail." It was rugged with broken rocks and cumbered with fallen trees, and as it proceeded became more indistinct. His horse, too, from sheer weariness, for he had already done his full day's journey, was growing less sure footed and so went stumbling noisily along. Cameron began to regret his folly in yielding to a mere unreasoning imagination and he resolved to spend the night at the first camping-ground that should offer. The light of the long spring day was beginning to fade from the sky and in the forest the deep shadows were beginning to gather. Still no suitable camping-ground presented itself and Cameron stubbornly pressed forward through the forest that grew denser and more difficult at every step. After some hours of steady plodding the trees began to be sensibly larger, the birch and poplar gave place to spruce and pine and the underbrush almost entirely disappeared. The trail, too, became better, winding between the large trees which, with clean trunks, stood wide apart and arranged themselves in stately high-arched aisles and long corridors. From the lofty branches overhead the gray moss hung in long streamers, as Jerry had said, giving to the trees an ancient and weird appearance. Along these silent, solemn, gray-festooned aisles and corridors Cameron rode with an uncanny sensation that unseen eyes were peering out upon him from those dim and