Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie, carries its tribute to the
Frozen Ocean. These last are the drops we follow.

To save the horses we walk the hills, and I try to match giant steps
with Sergeant Anderson. Kennedy, Junior, joins us and has a knotty point
to settle regarding "the gentleman wot murdered the man." It is hard to
induce a Mounted Policeman to talk. However, to be striding Athabasca
Trail with the hero of the Hayward-King murder-trial is too good an
opportunity to lose, and, reluctantly rendered, bit by bit the story
comes out.

Most people looking at a map of Northwest Canada would think it a safe
wilderness for a live man or a dead man to disappear in with no
questions asked. In reality, it is about the worst place in America in
which to commit a crime and hope to go unpunished.

In September, 1904, the Indians reported to the Mounted Police that they
had seen two white men in the early summer, and that afterwards one man
walked alone, and was now at Lesser Slave. An observant Cree boy added,
"The dog won't follow that other white fellow any more." Sergeant
Anderson, going to their last camp, turned over the ashes and found
three hard lumps of flesh and a small piece of skull bone. Convinced
that murder had been done, he arrested the suspected man and sent him to
Fort Saskatchewan for trial. No one knew the identity of either the dead
man or the living. In front of the old camp-fire was a little slough or
lake, and this seemed a promising place to look for evidence. Sergeant
Anderson hired Indian women to wade in the ooze, feeling with their toes
for any hard substance. In this way were secured a sovereign-case and a
stick-pin of unusual make. The lake was systematically drained and
yielded a shoe with a broken-eyed needle sticking in it. Sifting the