And this turned out an unhappy necessity for Jack French, for when
the Macmillan outfit drove up to the Crossing he was lying incapable
and dead to all around, in Jimmy Green's back store.

CHAPTER XI

THE EDMONTON TRAIL

Straight across the country, winding over plains, around sleughs,
threading its way through bluffs, over prairie undulations, fording
streams and crossing rivers, and so making its course northwest
from Winnipeg for nine hundred miles, runs the Edmonton trail.

Macmillan was the last of that far-famed and adventurous body of
men who were known all through the western country for their skill,
their courage, their endurance in their profession of freighters
from Winnipeg to the far outpost of Edmonton and beyond into the
Peace River and Mackenzie River districts. The building of railroads
cut largely into their work, and gradually the freighters faded from
the trails. Old Sam Macmillan was among the last of his tribe left
upon the Edmonton trail. He was a master in his profession. In the
packing of his goods with their almost infinite variety, in the
making up of his load, he was possessed of marvellous skill, while
on the trail itself he was easily king of them all.

Macmillan was a big silent Irishman, raw boned, hardy, and with a
highly developed genius for handling ox or horse teams of any size
in a difficult bit of road, and possessing as well a unique command
of picturesque and varied profanity. These gifts he considered as
necessarily related, and the exercise of each was always in
conjunction with the other, for no man ever heard Macmillan swear
in ordinary conversation or on commonplace occasions. But when his
team became involved in a sleugh, it was always a point of doubt
whether he aroused more respect and admiration in his attendants
by his rare ability to get the last ounce of hauling power out of
his team or by the artistic vividness and force of the profanity
expended in producing this desired result. It is related that on an
occasion when he had as part of his load the worldly effects of an
Anglican Bishop en route to his heroic mission to the far North, the
good Bishop, much grieved at Macmillan's profanity, urged upon him
the unnecessary character of this particular form of encouragement.

"Is it swearing Your Riverence objects to?" said Macmillan, whose
vocabulary still retained a slight flavour of the Old Land. "I do
assure you that they won't pull a pound without i