Oliver dared not jump from his horse into the water that surrounded us, for I had threatened him all manner of punishment if he got wet and ran the risk of a relapse, and he was in mortal fear of the huge bull that was now coming quite close to him. But as I ran up, and before I could reach for my gun from Oliver, the brute took away in another direction, thus happily relieving the situation. He evidently was, as Paul put it, "a good-hearted fellow," and as we had all we could very well manage, we did not fire any shots after him. But this excitement and fun helped to break the monotony of our journey. It was late when we reached a point that I thought would be half way to the lake, and we hurriedly cut brush for our patients to alight on, and unsaddled the oxen and horses. I had put the whole of our seed potatoes on my saddle horse, "Scarred Thigh," and he had behaved extremely well all the day, carrying his load without a jar or disarrangement, as if he instinctively knew we had enough trouble with the rest. But now he insisted on my taking the load from him before I should relieve the others. As soon as I went to a horse to unpack him the little fellow would step in between me and the other horse, and plainly say by his actions that his was the first claim, so all our party said, "Help him first, he deserves it." To unsaddle the ten animals and unpack seven of them, to cut lodge-poles and erect the lodge and floor it with brush, to chop firewood and cook supper kept Paul and I on the jump until late, but our patients though tired were gaining strength and appetite, and we were thankful. The next day was a repetition of the one just described, only more so--water deeper, timber denser, and creeks multiplying. My wife and I each had an old-fashioned Hudson's Bay trunk. One was painted blue and the other red, and we packed these on the biggest of the oxen, firmly securing them by the handles before and behind, with collar straps and breeching of harness; and now as these boxes rubbed alternately on the trees on either side of the narrow path, one could track them by the paint, this side red and the other blue, which often was a source of wonder to travellers who came later along this path. When we came nearer the lake we were glad to find that the land around the lake, being higher than that over which we had come, was comparatively dry, and that spring was further advanced than anywhere else along our route. Thankful for this, we put up our skin lodge near the place where we proposed to build our house. We were not the first in the same line on this spot. Nearly twenty years before Benjamin Sinclair, a native lay agent, under the direction of the Rev. R. Rundle, began a Mission, but the coming into the vicinity of a party of Blackfeet, and their killing of some of the people, had created a stampede from here to Lac la Biche, some two hundred miles north-east, and this place was abandoned.