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Show HI AWLStory of the Buy.!fli NIQHT IN THE WILDERNESS. A (BY ROBERT DUNN.) t "We sat with the northern sunset In our faces on s wave of the half-forested prairie of Alberta, Canada, the evening of June 15th, five years ago. Far west the Rockies tapered, east yet further lay Hudson bay; northward for 2000 miles stretched the great northern forest for-est of America Jack and I had said. "Let's chuck this world." and having chucked it, were beginning our first night in the perfect per-fect wilderness f the earth; and we were twenty and alone. The Red river cart pointed its shaft to heaven. The horses, forelegs hobbled, cowbells Jangling, tottered down the hill to half-breed Michel and his mud-chinked mud-chinked cabin by the creek. From infinite in-finite east to infinite west it streaked the world, and slim and silvery on the north horiaon some lake drew down and chilled the sun. There by the willow fire, the black pots and the cold beans. Jack amoked a cigarette, the cigarette he called It. made of T. & B. plug and letter paper; big and strong enough to last all day unless he sucked too hard and swallowed swal-lowed its inside. Jack was always reckless. Our fourth year at Cambridge bored us both, as we bored academic Harvard. This summer sum-mer of '98, remember, war thrilled the land, and stirred by love and war. Jack would be a hero: till war, he learned. of the north wilderness. ' I must -get to the heart of it. now, I said, before life Is a task. Tou may talk like that at 20 talk as I did of ' a . tale of the Hudson bay land which had hit me badly, the "Red PatroL" It told of the spirit of the North. "Tes, but how's the shooting up there V Jack had said, when "Drool. Bobble, drool," was the fair remark. So I half believe Jack's warm heart and sympathy for me had to do with his sudden fever to go north, but chiefly his blood was always up for ventures, he lived with guns, and h knew the wilderness wil-derness was a good place to forget another an-other thing in. And then, hadn't the North Just set the world at hint for a greater thing than glory? Fired with dreams much rosier than mine, the "West was scattering Jasons over our enchanted country toward the gold of a Yukon moose pasture." We had forgotten forgot-ten that. So three week found us Jack with a feminine red Tam O'Shan-ter O'Shan-ter in his outfit steaming north from the gray deserts of Montana to the town of Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan- river, the gateway of Prince Rupert's Ru-pert's .Land, the "last house" of the f continent. Now. since a thousand argonauts. cowboys to counter jumpers, palousersj w to British peers, had vani3hed north ' J from Edmonton, we had a time satisfy- A ing the town that ftrt of aU we were "V, not out for gold. "But if we see It lying ly-ing around." said Jack, "we'll stoop to ir. I guess." The Northwest police, unmounted, in gold braid and Atkins caps, sauntered past the bars, and the Klondike outfitters, now the rush was over, dozed on their bank accounts We did not dream then that the quiet here was the repose of guilt. All that is another an-other story, the most tragic story I know, and we all but acted in it. This gold fever is a monstrous thing, but chiefly in that it kills the innocent and lets the malign ones who Infect with it fatten and go free. But to us that June. Edmonton was Just a false-fronted town, where Jack and I. knowing nothing about horces, dealt with a trader trad-er at his corral on tho sandy-blrchy river riv-er flat a drunken cowboy's horse talk on the train at Medicine Hat; umh-ed. and ah-d on chunkiness, broad withers, and square noses. Jack saying now and then, "A beast with a nose like that's no use to us, of course" till we owned five range ponies for packing at $15 each. Then we must have a Red river cart, for an Edmonton wise Aleck said we could drive clear to Peace river the liar, phew! 90 $35 we put up for a cart, and piled into it our five months' beans and tea and sow belly. Next, a trial run in the dawn down Main street to the grim looks of the argonauts firt cast back by the North, stranded but not hopeless; then the crop-eared bar between the shafts. Jack on the saddle horse (called so because he bucked In the cart), the bllnd-in-ooe-eye, the stubborn stub-born roan, and I following on, we tunnelled tun-nelled scented . avenues . of poplar balsams bal-sams north toward the Mission of St. Albert. i meant sweltering ln the tlcky sands of Florida, and love, he learned, meant . Just then it was we were in Cambridge still I said that war with all the world could not keep me from Prince Rupert's Ru-pert's Land that spring. I told Jack why. Reared by the ocean, trotted as a child along the beach each Sunday to hark the mysteries myste-ries the wild waves moaned, I came to hate the sea. ("So do I." said Jack, "but I get seasick.") Then at thirteen, plunging on by night through north New England on my first trip inland, as the wet ferns swished and shivered by the railroad and the forest slapped back the road, I first caught the inland scent of tamarack and sweet fern. Up my spine it shivered, entered my blood, and since that red-letter night has never nev-er left it. So in the boys' camp I was bound for, I would lie awake outside the shanty each night before we started start-ed to explore the enchanted mountains all about, my hands moistening at thought of what lay beyond the beyond seen last, heart thumping lest It rain. I reached every summit first, gazing out alone, hot and dlssy with awe upon the new worlds (and first I reached the farmhouse under the mountain, tucked pie on pie into my stomach, and left them all ln the river). For seven years' life was the summer, spent so in old New Hampshire. Time only warmed the fever for horizons, widened dreams |