86 THE HORSE COMRADE 



usual list of beauties. Some fourteen years 

 after my friend had sold out and left that- 

 country, accident brought me to Fire Valley, 

 British Columbia, and dire need of a new pack 

 animal constrained me to buy the horse. Per- 

 haps for political reasons, or to evade the 

 police, by this time old Kruger had changed his 

 name to Spot. Frig^htened of him at first, my 

 partner and I discovered his great talents as a 

 pack-horse. Besides that, he was brave, loyal, 

 and gentle, and above all things humorous. A 

 rough passage of mountains brought us to 

 settlement, where men would laugh at Spot, 

 but horses never dared. One had only to say 

 " Sick 'em ! " as to a dog, and Spot would 

 round up all the horses in sight and chase them. 

 His face was that of a fiend save for a glint of 

 fun in the one eye he had for business. For 

 al;)out fourteen hundred miles he spread terror 

 before him, stampeding bunches of loose horses 

 but always coming back with a grin, as though 

 he said, " Now, ain't I the very Devil ? " 



In the North-west Mounted Police, a de- 

 tachment of us used to ride down bareback 

 with led horses to water at the ford of Battle 

 River. Close by was a wire cable for the 

 ferry. On one occasion, my horse as he left 

 the water turned under the cable to scrape me 



