Excerpt

Sheldon had plunged on into this new country rather recklessly, being in reckless mood. Now, five days northward of Belle Fortune, he knew that he had somewhere taken the wrong trail. The knowledge came upon him gradually. There was the suspicion before ten o’clock that morning, when the stream he followed seemed to him to be running a little too much to the northwest. But he had pushed on, watchful of every step, seeking a blazed tree or the monument of a stone set upon a rock. When he made camp at noon he was still undecided, inclined to believe that the wise thing would be to turn back. But he did not turn back. He was his own man now; all time was before him; the gigantic wilderness about him was grateful. At night, when he had yanked his small pack down from his horse’s saddle, suspicion had grown into certainty. He smoked his good-night pipe in deep content. If you could run a line straight from Belle Fortune to Ruminoff Shanty—and you’d want both tunnel and aeroplane to do the job nicely!—your line would measure exactly two hundred and forty miles. It would cut almost in halves the Sasnokee-keewan, the country into which few men come, let entirely alone by the Indians who with simple emphasis term it “Bad Country.”