78 RANCHING IN THE CANADIAN WEST 



foaJs each year should be about 12 per cent., and 

 50 per cent, of your mares throwing a foal would 

 be considered good, but most unaccountable acci- 

 dents will sometimes occur which you are powerless 

 to avert. I remember coming across a horse one 

 day, miles away from the ranch house which had 

 got firmly fixed between two tree stumps, one on 

 each side of a small creek, and there the poor thing 

 must have lain for hours — perhaps a day or more — 

 with his back in the stream and his legs in the air, 

 firmly wedged. It took us some time to extricate 

 him by cutting away small portions of the stumps 

 on each side with axes. He was very weak when 

 liberated, and, I am sorry to say, did not survive 

 long, despite all our care. I can still see the almost 

 human look of appeal for help in his eyes when I 

 discovered him. 



On another occasion, while engaged in building, 

 we were living in a tent, two days out from the 

 nearest town. We had the horses secured by long 

 picket-ropes, made fast to big pegs, which were 

 driven into the ground. One little saddle-mare, 

 which we valued, got wound in her rope, and could 

 not move during the night. In the morning we 

 woke to find it snowing hard, and lying to a 

 depth of two feet, although we were in the middle 

 of May, and thought we had seen the last of winter 



