Accordingly we started, travelling as fast as our cow could keep pace. While we had open country we kept the calf on an ordinary travois, but when we came to the woods near Pigeon Lake, we made a narrower one to suit the more limited space of the bridle-path. Mrs. McDougall and our baby, old Maria and her boy, and myself constituted the party. Travelling as we did, we reached the Mission on the fifth day, and were glad to be at home once more. Our little one-roomed house seemed a palace beside the smoky lodge of our pilgrimage. We found everything as we left it. Apparently we were the first to come in to the Mission, but in a day or two others from the west and north came straggling in, and our work was ready to hand. In a couple of weeks Samson arrived with more dried meat, having killed several elk and moose after we had left him. The reader will be astonished at the amount of meat we got through with, but one must remember that our diet in those days was for the most part of the time "meat straight" or "fish straight," with duck and rabbit for an occasional change. It was one thing or the other; there were no courses at our meals. Not only, however, were we without variety of food, but we were as badly off for a change of dishes. Indeed, our outfit for household purposes was small, and unique of its kind. But our neighbors were even more poorly provided than we. Often when invited to a feast by some successful friend, the shout would come from the door of his lodge, "John, come along and bring your dish with you." And I would take my dish or plate with me as I went. [Illustration: "We carried the haycocks in between us on two poles."] As we contemplated wintering at this point, I took Samson and went to work making hay. Our implements were of the crudest sort. We had scythes with improvised handles and wooden pitchforks, and when stacking we carried the haycocks in between us on two poles. Samson had never swung a scythe before, and he soon broke his, but fortunately I had a spare one. He was apt, however, and learned quickly. We worked hard and "made hay while the sun shone," and when it rained we went hunting. When we had several good-sized stacks made and strongly fenced, the time was come to journey down to the older Mission, as per arrangement with our Chairman when we left there last spring. Our migratory people--for here people as well as preacher were itinerants--had scattered, some for the mountains, others into the northern forests, and quite a few to join the autumn hunt on the plains. And as my wife and I were owners of three wooden carts and three sets of rawhide cart harness, and a few cayuses, we concluded to let old Paul's wife have a cart and horse on shares for this "plain hunt." If the hunt was successful the outfit would bring us some provisions for the coming winter.