At sunset one evening, Fothergill got down from his tired horse and studied the high clay bank of the Bow River. The sun had burned the color from his uniform, his skin was parched, and his red eyes hurt. For long he had slept in the smudge-fire’s smoke, by lonely poplar bluffs and in the mosquito-haunted grass, and he had faced alkali dust on the dry prairie belt. He had drunk bitter water from shrunken lakes, surrounded by a white salt-crust. His face was pinched and his look was fine-drawn, like an ascetic’s look.
Not long since he had swum the Red Deer, and now he must swim the Bow. A ranch hand had directed him to a spot at which the pioneers had crossed, but Fothergill frankly shrank from the adventure, and for a few minutes he moodily searched the plain. The western sky was green a
