Dorothy had noticed by the stars that the party had changed its direction.  They were now heading due north.  With the exception of one short halt they travelled all through the night, and in the early grey dawn of the morning came out upon a great plain of drifting sand that looked for all the world like an old ocean bed stretching on and on interminably.  It was the dangerous shifting sands, which the Indians generally avoided, as it contained spots where, it was said, both man and horse disappeared if they dared to put foot on it.  But Poundmaker’s lieutenant was not without some measure of skill and daring, and piloted them between the troughs of the waste with unerring skill.

When the sun gained power in the heavens and a light breeze sprang up, a strange thing took place.  The face of the wave-like heights and hollows began to move.  The tiny grains of sand were everywhere in motion, and actually gave out a peculiar singing sound, somewhat resembling the noise of grain when it falls from the spout of a winnowing machine into a sack.  It was as if the sand were on the boil.  There was no stopping now unless they wanted to be swallowed up in the quicksand.  Dorothy noticed that the squaws, and even the braves, looked not a little anxious.  But their leader kept steadily on.  The sand was hard enough and offered sufficient resistance to the broad hoof of a horse, but if one stood still for a minute or so, it began gradually to silt up and bury it.  It was a horrible place.  When at noon that devil’s slough resolved itself into a comparatively narrow strip, and Dorothy saw that they could easily have left it, she began to understand their reason for keeping on such dangerous ground—­they did not wish to leave any tracks behind them.  In all truth there was absolutely nothing to show that they had ever been in that part of the country.  At last they came to what looked like a high hill with a wall-like cliff surmounting it.  They stepped on to the firm clayey soil where the sage-bush waved, and had their midday meal.  As soon as that had been disposed of, they resumed their journey.

They now went on foot, and steadily climbed the steep hillside by the bed of an old watercourse.  Dorothy wondered what was behind the sharply-cut outline of the cliffs, for it gave the impression that nothing lay beyond save infinite space.  They entered a narrow ravine, and then suddenly it was as if they had reached the jumping-off place of the world, for they passed, as it were, into another land.  Immediately beneath them lay a broken shelf of ground shaped like a horseshoe, the sides of which were sheer cliffs, the gloomy base of which, many hundred feet below, were swept by the coldly gleaming, blue waters of the mighty Saskatchewan.  Beyond that, drowsing in a pale blue haze, lay the broad valley, and beyond that again the vast purpling panorama of rolling prairie and black pinewoods until earth and sky were merged in indistinctness and became one.  It resembled