When he is found the next morning, he has developed chills then a high fever but Flicka was alive. Ken sneaks from the house and spends the night sitting on the bank of the stream, with his legs in the cold water, holding her head to prevent her from drowning. The night before the order is to be carried out, Flicka wades into a shallow brook, falls, and is unable to rise. Unfortunately Flicka grows so thin and weak that Rob decides she must be shot to put her out of her misery. During this time, he writes his overdue essay well enough to convince his fifth-grade English teacher to promote him to the next grade. Flicka comes to love and trust the boy, but her wounds fester and cause a dangerous blood infection, still young Ken perseveres in his care of her. He names her Flicka вЂ“ Swedish for 'little girl' вЂ“ and spends hours every day tending to her needs and keeping her company. Ken spends the rest of the summer nursing the filly. During the second attempt, she tries to escape by attempting to jump an impossibly high barbed wire fence and injures herself severely. Rob, Ken, and the ranch hands make two attempts to capture her. Ken persists, however, and Rob reluctantly agrees to let him have the filly. All the Goose Bar horses with this strain have been fast and beautiful, but untameable, and after many years of trying to break just one of them, Rob has decided to get rid of them all. The mustang blood comes from a wild horse called the Albino, named for his pure white coat. Rob, once again, is annoyed with his son this particular filly has a strain of mustang blood that makes her very wild вЂ“ 'loco', in ranch idiom. Ken is unable to decide which yearling he wants until he sees a beautiful sorrel filly running swiftly away from him. After a few mishaps in his first few days home, Nell convinces Rob to give Ken a colt, saying it will give him something to work towards and improve himself and his sense of responsibility.

ДЄt the beginning of the novel, Ken has angered his father by returning home from boarding school with failing grades and will have to repeat fifth grade, an expense Rob can ill afford.

It was added to the main house by O'Hara and her husband around 1931.

The room on the Remount Ranch outside Cheyenne, Wyoming where Mary O'Hara wrote My Friend Flicka.

My flicker