II 



PREPARING SEED-GRAIN— NEWCOMERS 



Heavy snowstorms fell in the first weeks of the New 

 Year, but I pursued my programme with the horses, 

 who in all kinds of weather spent some hours of 

 each day in the open. I forsook the green room and 

 spent my days in the kitchen, since the wood pile 

 visibly decreased, and I knew that in the North- 

 West lack of fuel is not a case of Spartan endurance 

 but a matter of life or death. But January 

 ID was bright and clear, and I attempted a 

 journey to Fort Qu'Appelle. Not caring to take 

 the wagon-box and team through the unbeaten 

 track, I borrowed my neighbour's cutter, but before 

 we had made a mile of the road Nancy pitched me 

 head foremost into a snowdrift, and then made off 

 towards Mr. Ryan's house fully a mile west. By 

 the time I had caught her and we had ploughed 

 our way through the snow to the trail it was too 

 late to dream of going down into the town, and I 

 returned to my neighbour's with the cutter and 

 shared the excellent beefsteak which formed the 

 fiece de resistance of the midday meal. 



On the next morning I counted my remaining 

 poles, and later in the day went off with an axe in 

 the direction of the bluff where John Douglas had 

 been right and left, north and south, in order to 



2S3 



