an usual, they were once more ready to
take the trail.

"Do you mean what luck I had in finding a new trail? Well, none too
good, but better, I think, than the one on ahead. Anyway, we'll try
it. If we can make the mouth of Hardisty Creek, we can't complain.
Besides, talking of adventures, you can't think of anything that has
more chance in it than finding a new trail down the Athabasca side of
this divide--no telling how many muskegs or hills or creeks we may run
into."

Uncle Dick, however, proved to be a very practical wilderness guide,
for he now led the party considerably to the south of the old trail
into country broken and covered with down timber, but with little or
none of bad muskeg in it. By noon they were well down toward the
water-grade of the Athabasca itself, and at night, after a long, hard
day's work, they made their encampment at a point which to the eye
seemed almost within touch of the Rocky Mountains themselves. They
counted on much better going in the flat valley of the Athabasca than
they had had in crossing the country back of them, broken as it had
been with many little waterways and by the deep, troughlike valleys of
the bolder streams making northward into the Athabasca.

By this time their camp work seemed less like a picnic and more like
routine work, but on the other hand they were settling down to it in
steady and businesslike fashion, so that it did not take them long
either to make or to break camp. Nor did their weary bodies leave them
time to enjoy the splendid mountain view which now lay about them.

On the next day, leaving the big peak of Mount Hardisty behind them,
they made a swift climb up the valley of a little creek called Prairie
Creek, the beaten trail leaving the main valley and heading off
parallel to the big shallows of the Athabasca, known as Brule Lake.
Now the great shoulders of the Rockies seemed to come close about
them. They were following the general course of the Athabasca valley
southward to the point where it breaks out through its gate of the
hills. Folding Mountain now rose to the left of them, and when finally
they pitched their camp on the next night in a little glade near its
foot they felt the pleasing assurance that at last they were getting
to the Rockies themselves. Their leader pointed out to them that they
were now within the original lines of the great Dominion reserve known
as Jasper Park, five thousand square miles in extent, and reaching
from