It is useless to ask for directions, you will merely be told "Go five miles north, and three miles east and one mile south and four miles west, and then look for the elevator at So-and-So. Ye can't miss it." But you can miss it, very easily. Again, you are often told that a place is "quite close" and find it to be at least five miles away. There are no landmarks on these trails, except the elevators in the towns near the track. The sections are marked by a small heap of stones at their corners. There is scarcely a fence on the prairie, there being no stock to speak of and no wood at hand for posts. There are also no sign-posts or danger signals, and for lack of the latter we had a narrow escape of finishing our tour before it had well begun. Soon after we left Winnipeg, running through the main street of a little town, we suddenly saw a great C.P.R. train cross the road in front of us with no warning whatever. Had we been a minute or two sooner we must have been killed. It is no unusual thing for the track to cross the trail, but in this instance the houses prevented us from seeing the approach of the train. Meeting another car was an awkward matter as it meant climbing out of the ruts and running with one wheel in the gutter. Sometimes, in trying to avoid a mud hole or something, we ran at such an angle that I only kept my seat by clinging to the steering-wheel, and how Winifred kept hers is a mystery. Straw and sand are sometimes thrown into these mud holes, in a vain endeavour to fill them up. When stuck fast in one it was little consolation to be told that it was probably an old buffalo wallow. This is how Winifred described the trail in one of her letters: "The road was long, the ruts were deep, the sloughs were lined with mud. The road was narrow, and on each side those watery sloughs did gleam with tempting sunset gleams of cherry, pink and gold, a warm, warm glow. They said 'Oh, guide your car into our gleams and spend the night with us.'" CHAPTER VIII FROM WINNIPEG TO REGINA