With Peace River behind us we edged nearer to the base of the mountains, passing through a stretch of country alive with caribou and deer. Bear—monsters, by the track they left—frightened our picketed horses of a night. The moist earth bordering every pond and spring was marked with hoof and claw. The shyer fur-bearing animals, Barreau told me, surrounded us unseen. Barring a thickly wooded plateau south of the Peace we passed through no forest oppressively dense. Our way led over ridges and swales, timbered, to be sure, but opening out here and there into pleasant grassy parks. Once or twice forbidding areas of dead and down trees turned us aside. Again, a vast swamp enforced a detour. But I cannot recall any feature of marked unpleasantness—except the one thing that no man who crosses the North Saskatchewan can escape—the flies. Mosquitoes of all sizes, equipped with the keenest tools for their nefarious business, green-headed bulldog flies that plagued our horses beyond endurance, black gnats, flying ants, and other winged pests assailed us day and night in hungry swarms. Some day that particular portion of the Northwest will be a rich field for entomologists and manufacturers of mosquito netting. We held our own with the buzzing hosts, however, and when our flour sack had nearly reached a stage of ultimate limpness, and our tea was reduced to a tiny package in one corner of the shrunken pack, we rode out of a long belt of quivering poplars and drew up on the brow of a sharp pitch that fell away to the Sicannie River. “What in the name of the devil has been to the fore here?” Barreau exclaimed. He slid over in his saddle, staring at the scene below. Down on the flat, just back from the river bank, I made out a clutter of small log buildings enclosed within a stockade. In the center of the enclosure a half-dozen men busied themselves about the gaunt walls of a larger building. Logs and poles strewed the ground about its four sides. The ring of axe-blades on timber came floating up to us. I saw nothing amiss. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Nothing that matters greatly,” Barreau replied. “Only that ruin you see was a fine upstanding storehouse when I left here in the early spring. It seems to be undergoing a process of regeneration, for which I cannot account. Likewise, I see no trace of a stable which stood at the west end of the stockade. There are no men missing, by my count, so I dare say no great thing has happened. Anyway, this is the end of our trail for a while. We may as well get down there. I am a bit curious to know the meaning of this.”