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There was one means of escape: Oregon, California, Mexico, and the territory of Arizona possessed lands, unoccupied and fertile, sufficient for a greatly increased population; and, in 1866, large numbers of people left the South seeking new homes on the Pacific slope. Among this number were Thomas Marshall and his family. Disposing of the remnant of property which was left them, they joined a small party of immigrants, and in the spring started for California.

A span of mules and a wagon, with supplies for the journey across the plains, a span of horses and an old family carriage, completed their outfit, which was carried from Louisville down the Ohio, and up the Mississippi, on a river steamer, to the great overland trail, where the weary journey toward the Pacific began.

The team which pulled the family carriage, and which Mr. Marshall drove, while Tom drove the wagon, consisted of a horse of uncertain breeding, which had been bought for the journey, and a mare which had been raised at the Marshall homestead, the only remaining animal of the many which had once been the pride and care of the owner. She was old and lame, the result of an accident which had occurred during her turf career, and it was this which had made her retention possible, when all of her companions had been confiscated during the war, in which she would have been useless as a campaigner.

A chestnut, with small white star in forehead and snip on nose, her color, the magnificent proportions of her small but symmetrical body, clearly indicated her royal breeding, notwithstanding the fact that age had greatly modified her appearance, compared with what it was when in her prime. Belle they called her, and the attachment of the family to this mare was almost human. Helen made it her special care to provide for her, as the journey progressed; and often around the camp fire, her great achievements on the turf were recounted, when she had carried the Marshall colors to victory on many hotly contested fields.

II. THE EXCHANGE AND PARTING.

The Rockies had been passed, and the little company of pilgrims, weary and travel-stained, with teams almost exhausted, were camped on the Humboldt river, in sight of the great Sierra Nevada

range, the last serious barrier between them and the Golden Gate. Above the camp on the stream was a rather pretentious ranchhouse, and many cattle and horses grazed on the river-bottom and adjacent hill-sides. The place was known as Ryan's Ranch. Tim Ryan had left Ireland ten years before, to be free from what he regarded as the unjustifiable oppression of the English landlord. He had engaged successfully in mining, in Montana, and was now in the cattle business on the Humboldt river, in the western part of Nevada.

Around the Marshall camp fire that night there was serious discussion. "It is useless," said Mr. Marshall, "to try to take her farther, her age, and the increased lameness from the old hurt caused by the long journey, have so reduced her strength that it was with great difficulty we kept up with the train today; we cannot get along without an animal to take her place, so I see nothing for us to do but to exchange her with this rancher for a horse of some kind that will pull us through to our destination."

"But, Papa," pled Helen, "just think, she is the only thing we have to remind us of the good old days before the war, think of the day she won the Oaks, and how proud we all were of her, and then how she defeated Kentucky Maid and Magnolia, in the Derby. O, Papa, I cannot think of leaving her here in this desert, among these strange people."

Tom was irreconcilable. "If Belle stays here, I'm going to stay," he declared. "There is nothing that equals her in breeding, in California, I know. And besides, think how we have counted on the colt she will have next spring. Why I expect to make it the foundation for the racing stable we are to have when we reach the coast."

Mrs. Marshall said nothing, but tears stole silently down her cheeks as she thought of those happy days when Southern chivalry was at its best, when she had been so happy in her Southern home, and how Kentucky Belle, the finest mare they had ever bred, had contributed to make her happiness more complete. And while the discussion went on, the subject of it stood quietly resting in the camp-fire glare, too tired and worn to crop the green grass which grew on the river-bottom.

Early the following morning, Mr. Marshall walked up to the

ranch house, and soon returred with a short, sandy man, whose brogue clearly indicated his Irish extraction, but whose dress and manner showed that he had become, through contact and affiliation, a typical Western American.

"I regret very much," Mr. Marshall was saying, as they approached the camp, "that it is necessary for me to part with her, but it is evident that she will not go through; in fact, I doubt if she could pull the carriage another day's journey.

I am short of money, and therefore can do nothing but exchange her for something which will pull me through to my destination. I am certain she will prove very valuable to you, her breeding is very fine, she is by-"

"O, never mind what she is," interrupted Ryan, "we don't care nothing about breeding out here, all we want is something that can head a cow, I'm not caring for royalty, neither among horses or people."

It was finally agreed that Ryan should give a buckskin pony, of very little value, but strong and in good condition, for the mare. "Shall I send my son up to the house with her?" asked Mr. Marshall.

"O, no,” replied her new owner, "let her stay here and rustle with the rest of them."

III. THE NEW AND THE OLD-BIRTH AND DEATH.

When the train moved out that morning, there were sad hearts among the Marshall contingent. Helen went to where the mare still stood, rubbed her forehead, patted her neck, sobbed, and, turning away, got into the carriage which was waiting; and her father, speaking to the buckskin pony which readily responded, followed Tom up the valley.

As the train moved on, the mare whinnied, walked down to the river and drank, and then, going slowly up the hill-side near by, cropped the bunch-grass which grew upon its slope.

Thus days and weeks passed. Each day she went to the river for water, and climbed back upon the hill-sides for grass. Sometimes she sought the company of other horses, there being many on the range, but they did not seem to like her; and besides, their habits were so different to those of the Kentucky horses, with

which she had been raised, that she felt ill at ease among them, so ranged entirely alone.

She often thought of the change which had taken place in her life. The country was devoid of vegetation, with the exception of the sage brush which grew on the hills, and a few cottonwoods which were on the river bank in the valley. The rocks hurt her feet so, and the river water was often so muddy that she could hardly drink it. In vain she wandered over the hills hunting for just one little bunch of blue-grass. She thought of the cool springs and shady groves, in the pastures of her dear old home, and contrasted them with present surroundings; and once, she almost determined to try and find her way back to Kentucky, but when she remembered the heart-breaking journey across the plains, the Indians, the possibility of being captured by them, and perhaps eaten, for she had heard that they sometimes ate horses, she abandoned the thought, and tried to become reconciled to her surroundings.

Winter approached, cold and cheerless, but the bunch grass remained green, and proved much more nutritious than she had supposed it would be; and so, when spring came, with its warm days, she was still alive, but wondered why she felt so much weaker than ever before at that season of the year. She had seen nothing of her new owner since the day he traded for her. Occasionally, a cow-boy would pass near where she was, but none ever asked concerning her, or seemed at all interested in her condition.

"Mr. Ryan," said a cow-boy, one day in June, "there is a dead mare down on the river-bottom, just below the Cottonwood Bend, and a colt, only a few days old standing by her, I think it is the old mare you got in the trade with immigrants, last fall."

"If the colt is no older than that, I think you may as well shoot it when you go back that way," said Ryan; "it would not pick its living, although the grass is unusually good this spring; it would not be worth the trouble and expense of raising by hand, so it may as well be killed."

Little Nora Ryan had been listening to this conversation, and now took part in it. "O, Papa, don't kill the little colt," she said. "Give it to me. Let me raise it, and have it for my own. I know it is a pretty colt, because I heard the young lady say that the

mother was once very pretty, and she said something about thoroughbreds, and races; don't you remember, Papa? It was when she was talking to Mama, while the wagons stopped to buy some butter and eggs, the morning the train left our ranch. O, Papa, give the little colt to me!"

Mr. Ryan expostulated. Horses were too cheap for him to be bothered raising colts around the house; it would be a nuisance, and worth nothing when it was grown. But the child was obdurate, and when she began to sob, the kind-hearted man yielded. Turning to the cow-boy, he said: "Well, Sandy, go down and bring the thing up, and we will see what it looks like, anyhow."

Sandy galloped away, and in a few hours returned with an exceedingly sorrowful-looking colt. The mother had evidently been dead for some time, as the colt was very gaunt and thin. It was a sorrel, with small star in forehead, and snip on nose, and hind pasterns white, the image, so far as color was concerned, of its dead mother. Nora was in ecstasies; her father was annoyed to think he must be bothered with an orphan colt around the place.

IV. NAMING OF BELLE-LIFE IN NEVADA.

Nora took great pleasure in teaching it to drink milk; and as there were plenty of cows on the ranch, the colt never went hungry. It soon learned to recognize its new mistress, and there was an attachment between the two which made them friends from the beginning.

So the summer passed, and winter came, very cold, as it always is on the Humboldt river. There was plenty of hay on the ranch, and the colt had now developed till it could eat. Nora begged a little oats from the cow-boys, when they fed the saddle horses, and Sandy, who was a rough but kind-hearted boy, gave it a warm corner in the stable, so that the winter was passed in comparative comfort.

Nora put a strap around the colt's neck, with a small bell attached which tinkled as she ran, greatly to the enjoyment of both. One day she asked her father where the people came from who traded the mother to him, and was informed that they were from Kentucky. "Then I'm going to call my colt Kentucky Belle," she said, "because she has a bell on, and her mother came from Ken

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