CHAPTER X
JACK FRENCH OF THE NIGHT HAWK RANCH
A map of Western Canada showing the physical features of the
country lying between the mountains on the one side and the Bay
and the Lakes on the other, presents the appearance of a vast
rolling plain scarred and seamed and pitted like an ancient face.
These scars and seams and pits are great lazy rivers, meandering
streams, lakes, sleughs and marshes which form one vast system of
waters that wind and curve through the rolls of the prairie and
nestle in its sunlit hollows, laving, draining, blessing where
they go and where they stay.
By these, the countless herds of buffalo and deer quenched their
thirst in the days when they, with their rival claimants for the land,
the Black Feet and the Crees, roamed undisturbed over these mighty
plains. These waterways in later days when The Honourable the Hudson's
Bay Company ruled the West, formed the great highways of barter. By
these teeming lakes and sleughs and marshes hunted and trapped Indians
and half-breeds. Down these streams and rivers floated the great fur
brigades in canoe and Hudson's Bay pointer with priceless bales of
pelts to the Bay in the north or the Lakes in the south, on their
way to that centre of the world's trade, old London.
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