Our first night in the Rattletrap passed without further
incident--that is, the greater part of it passed, though Ollie
declared that it lacked a good deal of being all passed when we
got up. The chief reason for our early rise was Old Blacky, a
member of our household (or perhaps wagonhold) not yet introduced
in this history. Old Blacky was the mate of Old Browny, and
the two made up our team of horses. Old Browny was a very
well-behaved, respectable old nag, extremely fond of quiet and
oats. He invariably slept all night, and usually much of the day;
he was a fit companion for our dog. It was the firm belief of all
on board that Old Browny could sleep anywhere on a fairly level
stretch of road without stopping.
But Old Blacky was another sort of beast. He didn't seem to
require any sleep at all. What Old Blacky wanted was food. He
loved to sit up all night and eat, and keep us awake. He seldom
even lay down at night, but would moon about the camp and blunder
against things, fall over the wagon-tongue, and otherwise
misbehave. Sometimes when we camped where the grass was not just
to his liking he would put his head into the wagon and help
himself to a mouthful of bedquilt or a bite of pillow. He was
little but an appetite mounted on four legs, and next to food he
loved a fight. Besides the name of Old Blacky, we also knew him
as the Blacksmith's Pet; but this will have to be explained later
on.
On this first morning, just as it was becoming light in the
east, Old Blacky began to make his toilet by rubbing his shoulder
against one corner of the wagon. As he was large and heavy, and
rubbed as hard as he could, he soon had the wagon tossing about
like a boat; and as the easiest way out of it, we decided to get
up. It was cool and dewy, with the larger stars still shining
faintly. We found Jack under the wagon. Ollie stirred him up, and
said:
[Illustration: Plan for Rousing a Sound Sleeper]
"See any varmints in the night, Uncle Jack?"
"Yes," answered Jack, as he unrolled himself from his
blanket. "Or at least I felt one. That disgraceful Old Blacky
nibbled at my ear twice. The first time I thought it was nothing
less than a bear."
"Did he disturb Snoozer?"
"I guess nothing ever disturbs Snoozer. He never moved all
night. How's the firewood department, Ollie?"
"All right," replied Ollie. "Got up enough last night."
"Then build the fire while I get breakfast."
This pleased Ollie, and he soon had a good fire going. I
caught Old Blacky, who had started off to walk around the lake,
woke up Old Browny, who was sleeping peacefully with his
nose resting on the ground, quieted the pony, who was still
suspicious, with a few pats on the neck, and gave them all their
oats. Soon the rest of us also had our breakfast, including
Snoozer, who seemed to wake up by instinct, and after waiting a
little for somebody to come and stretch him, stretched himself,
and began waving his tail to attract our attention to his urgent
need of food.
"Before we get back home that dog will want us to feed him
with a spoon," said Jack.
It was only a little while after sunrise when we were off for
another day's voyage. We were headed almost due south, and all
that day and the three or four following (including Sunday, when
we stayed in camp), we did not change our general direction. We
were aiming to reach the town of Yankton, where we intended to
cross the Missouri River and turn to the west in Nebraska. The
country through which we travelled was much of it prairie, but
more was under cultivation, and the houses of settlers were
numerous. The land on which wheat or other small grains had been
grown was bare, but as we got farther south we passed great
fields of corn, some of it standing almost as high as the top of
our wagon-cover.
For much of the way we were far from railroads and towns, and
got most of our supplies of food from the settlers whose houses
we passed or, indeed, sighted, since the pony proved as
convenient for making landings as Jack had predicted she would.
Ollie usually went on these excursions after milk and eggs and
such like foods. The different languages which he encountered
among the settlers somewhat bewildered him, and he often had hard
work in making the people he found at the houses understand what
he wanted. There Were many Norwegians, and the third day we
passed through a large colony of Russians, saw a few Finns, and
heard of some Icelanders who lived around on the other side of a
lake.
"It wouldn't surprise me," said Ollie one day, "to find the
man in the moon living here in a sod house."
Perhaps a majority--certainly a great many--of all these
people lived in houses of this kind. Ollie had never seen
anything of the sort before, and he became greatly interested in
them. The second day we camped near one for dinner.
"You see," said Jack, "a man gets a farm, takes half his
front yard and builds a house with it. He gains space, though,
because the place he peels in the yard will do for flowerbeds,
and the roof and sides of his house are excellent places to grow
radishes, beets, and similar vegetables."
"Why not other things besides radishes and beets?" asked
Ollie.
"Oh, other things would grow all right, but radishes and
beets seem to be the natural things for sod-house growing. You
can take hold of the lower end and pull 'em from the inside, you
know, Ollie."
"I don't believe it, Uncle Jack," said Ollie, stoutly. "Ask
the rancher," answered Jack. "If you're ever at dinner in a sod
house, and want another radish, just reach up and pull one down
through the roof, tops and all. Then you're sure they're fresh.
I'd like to keep a summer hotel in a sod house. I'd advertise
'fresh vegetables pulled at the table.'"
"I'm going to ask the man about sod houses," returned Ollie.
He went up to where the owner of the house was sitting outside,
and said:
"Will you please tell me how you make a sod house?"
"Yes," said the man, smiling. "Thinking of making one?"
"Well, not just now," replied Ollie. "But. I'd like to know
about them. I might want to build one--sometime," he added,
doubtfully.
"Well," said the man, "it's this way: First we plough up a
lot of the tough prairie sod with a large plough called a
breaking-plough, intended especially for ploughing the prairie
the first time. This turns it over in a long, even, unbroken
strip, some fourteen or sixteen inches wide and three or four
inches thick. We cut this up into pieces two or three feet long,
take them to the place where we are building the house, on a
stone-boat or a sled, and use them in laying up the walls in just
about the same way that bricks are used in making a brick house.
Openings are left for the doors and windows, and either a shingle
or sod roof put on. If it's sod, rough boards are first laid on
poles, and then sods put on them like shingles. I've got a sod
roof on mine, you see."
Ollie was looking at the grass and weeds growing on the top
and sides of the house. They must have made a pretty sight when
they were green and thrifty earlier in the season, but they were
dry and withered now.
"Do you ever have prairie-fires on your roofs?" asked Ollie,
with a smile.
"Oh, they do burn off sometimes," answered the man. "Catch
from the chimney, you know. Did you ever see a hay fire?"
"No."
"Come inside and I'll show you one."
In the house, which consisted of one large room divided
across one end by a curtain, Ollie noticed a few chairs and a
table, and opposite the door a stove which looked very much like
an ordinary cook-stove, except that the place for the fire was
rather larger. Back of it stood a box full of what seemed to be
big hay rope. The man's wife was cooking dinner on the stove.
"Here's a young tenderfoot," said the man, "who's never seen
a hay fire."
"Wish I never had," answered the woman. The man laughed.
"They're hardly as good as a wood fire or a coal fire," he said
to Ollie; "but when you're five hundred miles, more or less, from
either wood or coal they do very well." The man took off one of
the griddles and put in another "stick" of hay. Then he handed
one to Ollie, who was surprised to find it almost as heavy as a
stick of wood. "It makes a fairly good fire," said the man. "Come
outside and I'll show you how to twist it."
[Illustration: First Lesson in Hay Twisting]
They went out to a haystack near by, and the man twisted a
rope three or four inches in diameter, and about four feet long.
He kept hold of both ends till it was wound up tight; then he
brought the ends together, and it twisted itself into a hard
two-strand rope in the same way that a bit of string will do when
similarly treated. There was quite a pile of such twisted sticks
on the ground. "You see," said the man, "in this country, instead
of splitting up a pile of fuel we just twist up one." Ollie bade
the man good-bye, took another look at the queer house, and came
down to the wagon.
"So you saw a hay-stove, did you?" said Jack. "I could have
told you all about 'em. I once stayed all night with a man who
depended on a hay-stove for warmth. It was in the winter. Talk
about appetites! I never saw such an appetite as that stove had
for hay. Why, that stove had a worse appetite than Old Blacky. It
devoured hay all the time, just as Old Blacky would if he could;
and even then its stomach always seemed empty. The man twisted
all of the time, and I fed it constantly, and still it was never
satisfied."
"How did you sleep?" asked Ollie.
"Worked right along in our sleep--like Old Browny," answered
Jack.
The last day before reaching Yankton was hot and sultry. The
best place we could find to camp that night was beside a deserted
sod house on the prairie. There was a well and a tumble-down sod
stable. There were dark bands of clouds low down on the
southeastern horizon, and faint flashes 'of lightning.
"It's going to rain before morning," I said. "Wonder if it
wouldn't be better in the sod house?"
We examined it, but found it in poor condition, so decided
not to give up the wagon. "The man that lived there pulled too
many radishes and parsnips and carrots and such things into it,
and then neglected to hoe his roof and fill up the holes," said
Jack. "Besides, Old Blacky will have it rubbed down before
morning. 'When I sleep in anything that Old Blacky can get at, I
want it to be on wheels so it can roll out of the way."
We went to bed as usual, but at about one o'clock we were
awakened by a long rolling peal of thunder. Already big drops of
rain were beginning to fall. Ollie and I looked out, and found
Jack creeping from under the wagon.
"That's a dry-weather bedroom of mine," he observed, "and I
think I'll come up-stairs."
The flashes of lightning followed each other rapidly, and by
them we could see the horses. Old Browny was sleeping and Old
Blacky eating, but the pony stood with head erect, very much
interested in the storm. Jack helped Snoozer into the wagon, and
came in himself. We drew both ends of the cover as close as
possible, lit the lantern, and made ourselves comfortable, while
Jack took down his banjo and tried to play. Jack always tried to
play, but never quite succeeded. But he made a considerable
noise, and that was better than nothing.
The wind soon began to blow pretty fresh, and shake the cover
rather more than was pleasant. But. nothing gave way, and after,
as it seemed, fifty of the loudest claps of thunder we had ever
heard, the rain began to fall in torrents.
"That is what I've been waiting for," said Jack. "Now we'll
see if there's a good cover on this wagon, or if we've got to put
a sod roof on it, like that man's house."
The rain kept coming down harder and harder, but though there
seemed to be a sort of a light spray in the air of the wagon, the
water did not beat through. In some places along the bows it ran
down on the inside of the cover in little clinging streams, but
as a household we remained dry. Jack was still experimenting on
the banjo, and the dog had gone to sleep. Suddenly a flash of
lightning dazzled our eyes as if there were no cover at all over
and around us, with a crash of thunder which struck our ears like
a blow from a fist. Jack dropped the banjo, and the dog shook his
head as if his ears tingled. We all felt dizzy, and the wagon
seemed to be swaying around.
[Illustration: Investigations]
"That struck pretty close," I said. "I hope it didn't hit one
of the horses." "If it hit Old Blacky, I'll bet a cooky it got
the worst of it," answered Jack, taking up his banjo again. "Look
out, Ollie, and maybe you'll see the lightning going off
limping."
It was still raining, though not so hard. Soon we began to
hear a peculiar noise, which seemed to come from behind the
wagon. It was a breaking, splintering sort of noise, as if a
board was being smashed and split up very gradually.
"Sounds as if a slow and lazy kind of lightning was striking
our wagon," said Jack.
Ollie's face was still white from the scare at the stroke of
lightning, and his eyes now opened very wide as he listened to
the mysterious noise. Jack pulled open the back cover an inch and
peeped out. Then he said:
"I guess Old Blacky's tussle with the lightning left him
hungry; he's eating up one side of the feed-box."
Then we laughed at the strange noise, and in a few minutes,
the rain having almost ceased, we put on our rubber boots and
went out to look after the other horses. Old Browny we found in
the lee of the sod house, not exactly asleep, but evidently about
to take a nap. The pony had pulled up her picket-pin and
retreated to a little hollow a hundred yards away. We caught her
and brought her back. By the light of the lantern we found that
the great stroke of lightning had struck the curb of the well,
shattering it, and making a hole in the ground beside it. The
storm had gone muttering off to the north, and the stars were
again shining overhead.
"What a stroke of lightening that must have been to do that!"
said Ollie, as he looked at the curb with some awe.
"It wasn't the lightning that did that," returned his
truthful Uncle Jack. "That's where Old Blacky kicked at the
lightning and missed it."
Then we returned to the wagon and went to bed. The next
morning at ten o'clock we drove into Yankton. We found the
ferry-boat disabled, and that we should have to go forty miles up
the river to Running Water before we could cross. We drove a mile
out of town, and went into camp on a high bank overlooking the
milky, eddying current of the Missouri.