THE START OF THE TRAIL II 
do now? The snow is four feet deep in here.” 
One by one the rest of the crew gathered about 
us —rather a rough-looking lot at first glance, 
with cloth and fur caps pulled down over their ears 
and the collars of their coats turned up. Icicles 
hung from the heavy moustaches on some of their 
faces, while swinging jaws and numerous and in- 
creasing spots on the snow indicated a heavy con- 
sumption of tobacco. 
At the first opportunity Fred, in reply to their 
many questions, told them he was bound for 
Gordon’s camp; that his passenger was going in 
to see the bear-cub. To my surprise and relief, it 
seemed to be a magic word, the open sesame to our 
dilemma. Hard looks at once changed to smiles. 
“Wal,” the spokesman announced between 
puffs from a newly lighted black clay pipe, “we’ll 
see what we can do. Yer won’t have much more 
trouble if yer can get by us. There’s only four 
more teams comin’ out.” 
Luckily for us, we had stopped at a point where 
the openings between the timber were quite wide. 
No trees would have to be cut for the passing ; the 
depth of snow was the only difficulty. It took us 
half an hour, however, to overcome this obstacle. 
Briskly the men set to work tramping back and 
forth by the roadside just ahead of us. Though 
their feet were not on the ground, the snow was 
