Corbett was never rash, and the subsequent years showed
that his purpose was honest to fulfil it to the letter.
Maggie, being many years his junior, could not think of addressing him
by his first name, and she felt that it was not seemly to use the
prefix, so again she followed her mother's example, and addressed him
as her mother did Murphy, senior, as "Da."
It was in the early eighties that Maggie and John Corbett decided to
come farther west. The cry of free land for the asking was coming to
many ears, and at Maggie's table it was daily discussed. They sold out
the contents of their house, and, purchasing oxen and a covered wagon,
they made the long overland journey. On the bank of Black Creek they
pitched their tent, and before a week had gone by Maggie Corbett was
giving meals to hungry men, cooking bannocks, frying pork, and making
coffee on her little sheet-iron camp-stove, no bigger than a biscuit-
box.
The next year, when the railroad came to Brandon, and the wheat was
drawn in from as far south as Lloyd's Lake, the Black Creek Stopping-
House became a far-famed and popular establishment.
CHAPTER II.
_THE HOUSE OF BREAD_.
Across the level plain which lies between the valley of the Souris and
the valley of the Assiniboine there ran, at this time, three trails.
There was the deeply-rutted old Hudson Bay trail, over which went the
fabulously heavy loads of fur long ago--grass-grown now and broken with
badger holes; there was "the trail," hard and firm, in the full pride
of present patronage, defying the invasion of the boldest blade of
grass; and by the side of it, faint and shadowy, like a rainbow's
understudy, ran "the new trail," strong in the certainty of being the
trail in time.
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