At a more leisurely pace he traveled through most of the day, and
at night he camped. In the ten days following his flight from Prince
Albert he kept utterly out of sight. He avoided trappers' shacks and
trails and occasional Indians. He rid himself of his beard and shaved
himself every other day. Mary Josephine had never cared much for the
beard. It prickled. She had wanted him smooth-faced, and now he was
that. He looked better, too. But the most striking resemblance to
Derwent Conniston was gone. At the end of the ten days he was at Turtle
Lake, fifty miles east of Fort Pitt. He believed that he could show
himself openly now, and on the tenth day bartered with some Indians for
fresh supplies. Then he struck south of Fort Pitt, crossed the
Saskatchewan, and hit between the Blackfoot Hills and the Vermillion
River into the Buffalo Coulee country. In the open country he came upon
occasional ranches, and at one of these he purchased a pack-horse. At
Buffalo Lake he bought his supplies for the mountains, including fifty
steel traps, crossed the upper branch of the Canadian Pacific at night,
and the next day saw in the far distance the purple haze of the Rockies.
It was six weeks after the night in Kao's place that he struck the
Saskatchewan again above the Brazeau.
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