Continue journey--Old "La Gress"--Fifty miles per day.
Mr. Hardisty, the Hudson's Bay officer who had brought father across
the plains thus far, soon made arrangements for our continuing our
journey westward. He furnished us with horses and saddles and a
tent, and also a man as a guide. Swimming our horses across the
North Saskatchewan opposite the fort, and crossing ourselves and
saddles in a boat, we saddled up and packed our one pack-horse and
set out up the big hill, ascending it with more ease than the
American I once met at the top of it, who said to me, "That is the
mostest biliousest hill I ever did climb."
We were now on the north side of the North Saskatchewan, and away we
went at the orthodox jog-trot for Fort Pitt, the next post in the
chain established by the Hudson's Bay Company.
Our guide was an old man with the name of La Gress, or as the Indians
called him, "Grease." Mr. Hardisty had said of him, "He is a good
traveller and a quick cook," all of which we found to be true.
He was small and wiry, and sat his horse as if he had grown there.
When on the jog his little legs incessantly moved, and his pipe
seemed to everlastingly smoke.
He had been to Red River and had crossed the mountains several times,
had been on the plains and in the north, had been chased many a time
by the enemy, had starved and almost perished once for the lack of
food on one of his trips.
He was the man of whom it is told that as he sat picking the bones of
a raven, he vehemently maintained to his partner that "this was a
clean bird." Indeed our guide was a man full of adventure and
travel; to me he was full of interest, and I plied him with questions
as we jogged side by side through the country.
And what a country this was we were riding through--bluff and plain,
valley and hill, lake and stream, beautiful nook, and then grand
vistas covering great areas! Every little while father would say,
"What a future this has before it!"
We rode through the Thickwood Hills. We skirted the Bear's-paddling
Lake. We passed the springs into which tradition said the buffalo
disappeared and came out from occasionally. Trotting by Jack-fish
Lake, on for miles through most magnificent land and grass and wood
and water, we crossed the valley of the Turtle River. We rode at the
foot of Red Deer Hill and Frenchman's Butte, where in 1885--just
twenty-three years later--our troops retreated before an unknown and
practically invisible foe.
We picked up Peter Erasmus; who was associated with the Rev. Henry
Steinhauer, and was now freighting for the latter from Red River to
White-fish Lake. Peter was, and is, an "A1" interpreter, and father
concluded to take him on as guide and interpreter for the rest of our
journey.
We ate up all the rations, consisting of a ham of buffalo meat and a
chunk of hard grease. This we accomplished the last day at noon, and
we rode into Fort Pitt the evening of the fourth day from Carlton,
having averaged about fifty miles per day, which was not so bad for
men new to the saddle.