Darkness was settling down over the edge of the timber belt that cuts off the prairie from the desolate barrens. In the fading light the straggling wood wore a dreary, forbidding look. The spruces were gnarled and twisted by the wind, a number of them were dead, and many leaned unsymmetrically athwart each other.
Blake and Harding found no beauty in the scene as they wearily led two packhorses through the thin, scattered trees, with Benson lagging a short distance behind. They had spent some time crossing a wide stretch of rolling country dotted with clumps of poplar and birch, which was still sparsely inhabited; and now they were compelled to pick their way among fallen branches and patches of muskeg, for the ground was marshy and their feet sank among the withered needles.
Blake checke
