The Ranch on the Cariboo by Alan Fry

Author:Alan Fry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-926971-41-4
Publisher: Touchwood Editions
Published: 2011-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

Mount Olie Trail

Ipoked along till dark that night, then slid well into the timber out of sight of the track I followed, a side road of fair proportions which led from the Cariboo highway to Bridge Lake, the jumping-off-place for the Mount Olie trail that came out on the North Thompson River and country kin to Kamloops, not the Cariboo. I staked my horse by a forefoot, with enough rope that if he had the sense not to wind up he’d have room to crop a feed. Then I picked as friendly a looking spruce tree as I could find and lay out my blankets.

It was in Bridge Lake country that Bill Wilson, good old stick of two summers ago, had his pothole homestead and there, I planned happily as I tossed around on the spruce roots trying to make comfy, old Bill and I’ll trade a passel of yarns before I cross over the Mount Olie trail.

That was a rough camp and the mosquitoes were bad and before daybreak I was hungry and there was nothing to eat. I rolled out of the blankets in which I’d slept but little and fetched my horse. He’d eaten the grass to the roots in the circle of the stake rope. Chances were he was hungry again, but I threw the rigging on him to move out at once. It couldn’t have been more than four-thirty in the morning.

I made good time, pushing along steadily at a mile-eating trot. I reckoned it to be near forty miles from where I’d camped to the Bridge Lake store and though I knew this country only vaguely, I could count on finding Bill once I reached the general store where it seemed he must deal for his supplies.

I passed farmhouses where the smoke had yet to rise from the chimneys, then one or two where the first flush from lighting up belched out of the Yukon pipe. I thought about stopping to dicker for food, but thinking was as far as it went. I pushed on.

The sun rose high and the day grew hot. Once I passed a herd of cows, grazing untended in the timber by the road. One of the cows had an infected jaw, probably from an encounter with a porcupine who’d left a quill or two behind as a reminder of his virtual invincibility. A distended pouch of skin, full of poison, hung below her mouth. She was quite unable to graze. I pitied her but stopped only long enough to see where she was branded, not long enough to sort out the brand itself, a poorly applied splotch of a scar.

A while later I came to a wagon track leading away from the road. In sight was a log house and some outbuildings. I paused, then turned in.

A big woman met me at the door.

“There’s a cow down the road with a poisoned jaw. I thought I’d best tell someone.”

She looked at me, pondering what I’d said, no doubt also wondering who I was.

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