Jacky led the way, and, as they drew clear of the bush, and the house and settlement were hidden from view behind them, she urged her horse into a good swinging lope.  Thus they progressed in silence.  The far-reaching deadly mire on their right, looking innocent enough in the shadow of the snow-clad peaks beyond, the ranch well behind them in the hollow of the Foss River Valley, whilst, on their left, the mighty prairie rolled away upwards to the higher level of the surrounding country.

In this way they covered nearly a mile, then the girl drew up beside a small clump of weedy bush.

“Are you ready for the plunge, Bill?” she asked, as her companion drew up beside her.  “The path’s not more than four feet wide.  Does your ‘plug’ shy any?”

“He’s all right.  You lead right on.  Where you can travel I’ve a notion I’m not likely to funk.  But I don’t see the path.”

“I guess you don’t.  Never did nature keep her secret better than in the setting out of this one road across her woeful man-trap.  You can’t see the path, but I guess it’s an open book to me, and its pages ain’t Hebrew either.  Say, Bill, there’s been many a good prairie man looking for this path, but”—­with a slight accent of exultation—­“they’ve never found it.  Come on.  Old Nigger knows it; many a time has he trodden its soft and shaking surface.  Good old horse!” and she patted the black neck of her charger as she turned his head towards the distant hills and urged him forward with a “chirrup.”

Far across the muskeg the distant peaks of the mountain range glistened in the afternoon sun like diamond-studded sugar loaves.  So high were the clouds that every portion of the mighty summits was clearly outlined.  The great ramparts of the prairie are a magnificent sight on a clear day.  Flat and smooth as any billiard-table stretched this silent, mysterious muskeg, already green and fair to the eye, an alluring pasture to the unwary.  An experienced eye might have judged it too green—­too alluring.  Could a more perfect trap be devised by evil human ingenuity than this?  Think for one instant of a bottomless pit of liquid soil, absorbing in its peculiar density.  Think of all the horrors of a quicksand, which, embracing, sucks down into its cruel bosom the despairing victim of its insatiable greed.  Think of a thin, solid crust, spread like icing upon a cake and concealing the soft, spongy matter beneath, covering every portion of the cruel plain; a crust which yields a crop of luxurious, enticing grass of the most perfect emerald hue; a crust firm in itself and dry looking, and yet not strong enough to bear the weight of a good-sized terrier.  And what imagination can possibly conceive a more cruel—­more perfect trap for man or beast?  Woe to the creature which trusts its weight upon that treacherous crust.  For one fleeting instant it will sway beneath the tread, then, in the flash of a thought, it will break, and once the surface gives no human power can save the victim.  Down, down into the depths must the poor wretch be plunged, with scarce time to offer a prayer to God for the poor soul which so swiftly passes to its doom.  Such is the muskeg; and surely more terrible is it than is that horror of the navigator—­the quicksands.