, still bumping and rattling,
made its way along the even newer and worse track which led into
Athabasca Landing.

There were neither depot nor light to make cheer for the tired travelers.
With the help of Moosetooth and La Biche and a few half-breeds, the
considerable baggage of the party was dumped out onto the sand of the new
roadway and then, all joining in the task, it was carried across the
street to the new Alberta Hotel. For the first time the boys discovered
that there was almost a chill of frost in the air; in the office of the
hotel a fire was burning in a big stove and from the front door Colonel
Howell pointed through the starlight to a bank of mist beyond the
railroad track.

"There she is, boys," he remarked.

"You mean the river?" exclaimed Roy.

"Our river now," answered their elder. "There's plenty of room here and
good beds. Turn in and don't lose any time in the morning. We've got
nothing ahead of us now but work. And remember, too, you're not in the
land of condensed milk yet; you'll have the best breakfast to-morrow
morning you're going to have for many a day."

Moosetooth and old La Biche had already disappeared toward the misty
riverbank.

Dawn came early the next morning and with almost the first sign of it
Norman and Roy were awake. From their window they had their first sight
of the Athabasca. A light fog still lay over the river and the
three-hundred-foot abrupt hills on the far side. Had they been able to
make out the tops of these hills, they would have seen a few poplar
trees. A steep brown road that started from the end of a ferry and
mounted zigzag into the fog, was the beginning of a trail that at once
passed into a desolate wilderness. They were within sight of the endless
untraveled land that reached, unbroken by civilization, to the
far-distant Arctic.

Beneath the fog the wide river slipped southward, a waveless sheet moving
silently as oil, and whose brown color was only touched here and there by
floating timber and the spume of greasy eddies.

"Not very cheerful looking," was Norman's comment.

"No," answered Roy, "she's no purling trout-brook; she couldn't be and be
what she is--one of the biggest rivers in America."

The boys dressed and hurried through the new railroad yards to the muddy
banks of a big river. The town of Athabasca Landing lay at their backs.
The riverbank itself was as crude and unimproved as if the place had not
been a commercial center for Indian