To Turn Back Was As
Bad As To Go On, And As We Saw Wheel-Tracks Along The Fence We
Stuck To Them, Thanking Our Stars When We Got Through Safely.
* * * * *
June 12th.
We have had a real visitor lately - I mean one who has brought a
change, and a toothbrush; and for the auspicious event we rigged
him up a stretcher bed, the most comfortable of things, canvas
stretched on to a wooden frame, with a mattress on the top. You
could not wish for anything softer. He was one of our ocean
companions; his nickname of Mike still sticks to him. On getting
to Winnipeg at night he had great difficulty in finding our
whereabouts; even at the Club he was told the only W - - known
kept a store in Main Street. Luckily from the Club he went to
A - - 's livery stable, which is exactly behind it, where a man
offered to drive him out forthwith, having driven another man here
only four days ago; but he preferred waiting till the morning,
getting here somewhere about 9 o'clock, when he was set down
immediately to work to stone the raisins for a plum cake, and when
tired of that had to help A - - planting potatoes. He declares he
never will come here with his best clothes and a "boiled" shirt on
again, as we have worked him so hard.
The accounts he gives, in an exaggerated Irish brogue, of his
experiences in Minnesota have kept us in fits of laughter. The
description of their first drive, when both he and his companions
were all bogged; and how that twenty-seven mules and twenty-eight
horses bought at St. Louis all arrived one night at the station
about 5 o'clock, after sixty hours' travelling with no food or
water, had to be unloaded from the cars, and they hadn't a halter
or even a rope to do it with. Eventually they got all the poor
beasts into a yard with wooden pailing round, but, something
startling them, they made a rush, the fence gave way, for which
damage the proprietor charged them ten pounds, and all galloped
straight on to the prairie, and it took the men all night getting
them together again. One pair of horses disappeared altogether;
but were brought back when a reward of thirty dollars was offered;
they had wandered nineteen miles.
Mike slept in A - - 's room. They talked so much, and told so many
funny stories, that we despaired of ever getting them down to
breakfast; Mike declaring he would like to bring his bed along
with him, as he hadn't slept in one, or been between sheets since
leaving New York, six weeks previously. We drove him over one
afternoon to fish in the creek about two and a half miles off; but
as we had to go in a light waggon, and with only one spring seat,
both Mike and A - - had to hang on behind, with a plank as seat,
which was always slipping and landing them on their backs at the
bottom of the waggon.
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