A HORSE-RACE. 107 



On leaving " St. Joe," as it is always called, we were 

 told that a good place to camp the first night would be at the 

 town of Troy, as it was not so far but that we could easily 

 send back for anything which had been forgotten, as it was 

 only thirteen miles from St. Joe. We kept a good look out as 

 we rode along so as not to pass the place, and when we 

 arrived at a house and barn, thinking we must have done 

 thirteen miles, we asked a man, who was sitting in front of the 

 house, where Troy was, on which he laughed and said that we 

 could see all there was of it, the place having been planned and 

 pegged out but never built, one house, a barn, and the pegs 

 representing the town. There used to be many places of this 

 kind in the West, represented by grand pictures at agents' 

 offices and railway-stations as flourishing towns, and when 

 credulous people had bought corner lots, and came to visit their 

 property, they found much such a town as Troy. 



The first four or five days of our journey, through a number 

 of small settlements, were very uninteresting, the only game 

 being a few grouse, and the only incident, my losing ten 

 pounds in a cleverly managed horse-race of three hundred 

 yards. A settler came into camp one morning on a poor- 

 looking horse, and offered to run it against anything we had 

 for ten pounds (fifty dollars), the distance to be three hundred 

 yards. I took him up and saddled the race-mare, thinking I 

 had a " soft thing." The race was to be on the sandy road, 

 which here ran along the side of the hill, having a ridge on the 

 outside of it, and turning just beyond camp round a sharp 

 corner. We started from a point a short distance on our side 

 of the corner, my opponent taking the inside, and when he 

 came to the turn, he crowded me out of the road on to the 



