I had no eye for the grade ahead. On the bush road
the going was good--now and then a small drift, but
nothing alarming anywhere. The anti-climax had set in.
Again the speckled trunks of the balm poplars struck my
eye, now interspersed with the scarlet stems of the red
osier dogwood. But they failed to cheer me--they were
mere facts, unable to stir moods...
I began to think. A few weeks ago I had met that American
settler with the French sounding name who lived alongside
the angling dam further north. We had talked snow, and
he had said, "Oh, up here it never is bad except along
this grade,"--we were stopping on the last east-west
grade, the one I was coming to--"there you cannot get
through. You'd kill your horses. Level with the tree-tops."
Well, I had had just that a little while ago--I could
not afford any more of it. So I made up my mind to try
a new trail, across a section which was fenced. It meant
getting out of my robes twice more, to open the gates,
but I preferred that to another tree-high drift. To spare
my horses was now my only consideration. I should not
have liked to take the new trail by night, for fear of
missing the gates; but that objection did not hold just
now.
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