ragged branches made up as dismal a prospect as man could look at.  I certainly felt in no very amiable mood with the men who had brought me into this predicament, because I had been overruled in the matter of leaving our baggage behind and in the track we had been pursuing.  My companion, however, accepted the situation with apparent resignation, and I saw him commence to unharness his horse from the sled with the aspect of a man who thought a bare hill-top without food, fire, or clothes was the normal state of happiness to which a man might reasonably aspire at the close of an eighty-mile march, with out laying himself open to the accusation of being over effeminate.

Watching this for some seconds in silence, I determined to shape for myself a different course.  I dismounted, and taking from the sled a shirt made of deer-skin, mounted again my poor weary horse and turned off alone into the darkness.  “Where are you going to?” I heard my companions calling out after me.  I was half inclined not to answer, but turned in the saddle and holloaed back, “To Fort Pitt, that’s all.”  I heard behind me a violent bustle, as though they were busily engaged in yoking up the horses again, and then I rode off as hard as my weary horse could go.  My friends took a very short time to harness up again, and they were soon powdering along through the wilderness.  I kept on for about half an hour, steering by the stars due west; suddenly I came out upon the edge of a deep valley, and by the broad white band beneath recognized the frozen Saskatchewan again.  I have at least found the river, and Fort Pitt, we knew, lay somewhere upon the bank.  Turning away from the river, I held on in a south-westerly direction for a considerable distance, passing up along a bare snow-covered valley and crossing a high ridge at its end.  I could hear my friends behind in the dark.  But they had got, I think, a notion that I had taken leave of my senses, and they were afraid to call out to me.  After a bit I bent my course again to the west, and steering by my old guides, the stars, those truest and most unchanging friends of the wanderer, I once more struck the Saskatchewan, this time descending to its level and crossing it on the ice.

As I walked along, leading my horse, I must admit to experiencing a sensation not at all pleasant.  The memory of the crossing of the South Branch was still too strong to admit of over-confidence in the strength of the ice, and as every now and again my tired horse broke through the upper crust of snow and the ice beneath cracked, as it always will when weight is placed on it for the first time, no matter how strong it may be, I felt by no means as comfortable as I would have wished.  At last the long river was passed, and there on the opposite shore lay the cart track to Fort Pitt.  We were close to Pipe-stone Creek, and only three miles from the Fort.