The party reached Hastings Thursday, June 17, where I purchased a saddle for c.o.o.nskin. Detained by a thunderstorm, we pa.s.sed a miserable night in close quarters. Next morning, Mac pranced about like a circus donkey, and trailed to Kearney in a manner almost to wind his fellows.

Before leaving Hastings, the Superintendent of the Asylum for the Chronic Insane, three miles out of town, telephoned me to stop and dine with him. On this occasion I rode into the asylum grounds without hesitation or nervousness.

"You must earn your grub, according to contract, Professor," said the Superintendent, when the greetings were over, pointing to a wood-pile in the rear of the building. As soon as I fairly began to comply with the suggestion his young lady secretary, the daughter of a deceased and much esteemed congressman, trained a camera on me and the axe and secured a picture.

I was then notified I had more than earned my dinner, and was escorted into the family dining-room, where an enjoyable repast was accorded me, after which, some twenty wardens and matrons purchased photos at double price. Then I resumed the journey with more heartfelt blessings than had been expressed to me on similar occasions.

The trail was superb. But an intensely hot spell followed, and made all of us perspire. Two days of hard travel brought us to the old Government Reservation of Ft. Kearney, established by Gen.

Fremont on his historic overland trip to California in pioneer days.

The fort has long since been abandoned. There the Mormons camped for a short period after leaving Council Bluffs.

Next evening, I made my camp on the site of the notorious Dirty Woman's Ranch of early days, and spent a Sunday in delightful rest and recreation in the shade of the grove of wide-spreading elms and cotton-woods that sighed mournfully over the deserted scene.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Trail through the timber._"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_He had caught a nice mess._"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Climbing Pike's Peak._"]

We crossed the long, low bridge over the Platte, early in the morning. It required nearly an hour and all our wits and energies to get the donkeys across, even after blindfolding them. And when my party ambled into Kearney, that sultry, dusty June day, grimy with dirt and perspiring, we all were in ripe condition for a swim. The little city looked to be about the size of Hastings, but did not show the same enterprise and thrift. In fact, the inhabitants ventured out in the broiling sun with an excusable lack of animation, and seemer to show no more interest in their local affairs than they did in Pye Pod's pilgrimage. It was here I first saw worn the j.a.panese straw helmet. It served as a most comfortable and effective sun-shade, and purchasing a couple, we donned them at once.

Kearney is said to be the half-way point, by rail, between New York and San Francisco. My diary, however, showed I had covered fully two thousand miles of my overland journey; I had consumed 227 days, with only one hundred and thirty-four days left me, the prospects of accomplishing the "feat" in schedule time looked dubious enough.

The great Watson Ranch, when my donkey party arrived, was experiencing its busiest season. But, while the male representatives were in the fields, the good matron in charge of the house made us welcome and treated us to cheering bowls of bread and milk. When Mr.

Watson, Jr., arrived, he showed us about the place and enlightened me about alfalfa, of which he had over a thousand acres sown; fifty hired hands were busy harvesting it.

For a week or two we had, for the most part, been trailing through the perfumed prairies at an invigorating alt.i.tude ranging from two thousand to nearly three thousand feet, inhaling the fresh, pure air, gazing on the flower-carpeted earth, and enjoying a constant shifting of panoramic scenes of browsing herds, and bevies of birds, and occasional glimpses of the winding Platte and the sand dunes beyond.

The cities and villages, that formed knots in the thread of our travels on the plains, came into view like the incoming ships from the sea. At first one spied a white church-steeple in the distance like a pointed stake in the earth only a mile away, but soon the chimneys and roofs and finally door-yard fences would come into view, then what we thought a village, nearby, proved to be, as we journeyed onward, a town of much greater size seven or eight miles beyond the point of calculation. The crossbars on the telegraph poles, along the straight and level tracks of the Union Pacific, formed in the eye's dim perspective a needle, as they seemed to meet with the rails on the horizon. Little bunches of trees, scattered miles apart and then overtopped by the spinning wheel of an air motor, indicated the site of a ranch-house where we might procure water. The trail ahead became lost in a sea of flowers and gra.s.ses.

From time to time, as I dismounted to ease myself and little steed I picked from the stirrups a half dozen kinds of flowers, ensnared as my feet brushed through the gra.s.ses. Great beds of blood-red marshmallows; natural parterres of the wax-like blooms of the p.r.i.c.kly pear; scattering stems of the flowery thistle with white corollas as large as tulips; and wild roses and daisies of all shades and colors--the white and pink, and the white wild roses being the first I ever saw; these with varicolored flowers of all descriptions were woven into the prairie gra.s.ses and likened the far-reaching plain to a great Wilton carpet enrolled from the mesa to the river.

Some of the sunsets were gorgeous. At times, the western sky glowed like a prairie fire; and the sunrises were not less magnificent. Sometimes, we were overtaken by severe electric storms, and obliged to pitch the tent in a hurry. When the lightning illuminates the plains at night, the trees and the distant towns are brought into fantastic relief against the darkness, like the shifting pictures of a stereopticon.

A flash of lightning to the right reveals a church or school-house, to the left, a bunch of cattle chewing the cud or grazing, ahead of us, a ranch house, and, sometimes, to the rear, a pack of cowardly coyotes, at a safe distance, either following my caravan, or out on a forage hunt.

Often, as the trains swept by, the engineers would salute with a deafening blast of whistles, frightening the donkeys and entertaining the pa.s.sengers. Some of the prairie towns which look large on the map have entirely disappeared. In one case, I found more dead citizens in the cemetery than live ones in the village.

Frequently, as a means of diversion, I left the saddle to visit these white-chimney villages of the dead. Such might be considered a grave sort of amus.e.m.e.nt, but really some of the gravestones contained interesting epitaphs. In one instance the following caught my eye:

"G.o.d saw best from us to sever Darling Michael, whom we love; He has gone from us forever, To the happy realms above."

Imagine the shock to my sobered senses on reading these lines cut on a white-washed wooden slab, close by:

"Here lays Ezekiel Dolder, Who died from a jolt in the shoulder; He tried to shoot snipe While lighting his pipe, And now underneath his bones moulder."

Just below the heartrending epitaph appeared in bold letters the satisfactory statement--"This monument is pade fer."

On the lonely plains, miles from habitation, a single grave fenced in with barbed wire in a circular corral, I discovered a mate to the preceding epitaph, which ill.u.s.trates the utter abandon with which the rugged, dashing "bronco buster" regards the perils of riding a bucking wild horse.

"Here is buried my bronco, Ah Sam, Beside me--I don't give a d.a.m.n!

While bucking he killed me; On this spot he spilled me, And now the devil's I am."

Sometime before parting with my courier, unknown to him we pitched camp one dark night in a graveyard. Barley was an early riser, and, as we know, as superst.i.tious as he was gullible. He was the first out of the tent at dawn. Suddenly he rushed back, exclaiming: "De Resurrection has came, fellows, an' wese de first livin' on earth agin." And with terror in his eyes and voice, dragged c.o.o.nskin and me to see a strange sight indeed. There, some forty feet from the tent, stood a towering crucifix with a figure of the Saviour, life size, looking down upon us, while about us were tablets and mounds: the scene was so still and solemn no wonder that my awestricken courier thought the world had come to an end.

On the 24th of June, after a hot and dusty trail across an arid waste, where only occasional patches of buffalo gra.s.s and cacti matted the earth in the place of the long prairie gra.s.s and flowers we were tramping in a few days before, my weary troop, jaded and hungry entered the little village of Overton.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

BY MAC A'RONY.

And the a.s.s turned out of the way, and went into the field; and Balaam smote the a.s.s, to turn her into the way.--_Book of Numbers._

Shortly after reaching Overton, I took Pod with c.o.o.nskin and Don to pay our respects to Towserville, a large dog town so closely situated to Overton as to inspire a rivalry far more serious than that existing between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Overtonians complained of repeated raids made by prairie dogs of Towserville on their chickens and gardens. On the other hand, the Towser "villians" repudiated the calumny, then fled in confusion from the charge of shotguns and rifles.

As our party approached with guns trained for a complimentary salute, I saw his honor, the Mayor, seated in his hallway. The roof of his mound towered above the other habitations, and was undoubtedly the City Hall. Copying after New York, each burrow in Towserville had a representative in the City Council.

I'm sure we would have been welcomed cordially, had not Don wanted to be first to shake the Mayor's paw; his honor abruptly excused himself to avoid a scene, and his fellow townsdogs likewise, with the result that the above dogtown population rushed in and slammed the doors in our faces. The Professor was embarra.s.sed. He had no visiting cards, so decided to leave at each door a sample box of cathartic pills; and a careful distribution was made.

Next morning as we pa.s.sed Towserville, his dogcellency, the Mayor, his alderdogs and towndogs looked regretful of their slight to us, as each stood at his door or sat with his housekeeper, the owl, on the roof of his dwelling, nodding and waving at us. Others, however, were prostrate, either from remorse or Pod's magnanimity.

Sometime about noon, we approached the shallow current of the Platte, where we were unpacked and fed. We donks were almost roasted from the sun's scorching rays. Close by was a deep well, but no bucket in which to draw water. So c.o.o.nskin hitched a syrup can to the rope and drew water for Pod and himself. Soon a drove of cattle, accompanied by two ranchmen and a boy, came down to the river to drink with us donks, just to show there was no hard feeling. The lad laid down to drink from the stream.

"Here, boy, come and have a drink of cold water!" Pod called.

"That ain't fit to drink."

"Fitter'n that well water," answered the lad.

Said Pod: "I'd like to know the reason."

"Well," replied the lad, approaching, "I dropped a dead jackrabbit in the well a week ago."

Somehow the men had drunk so much of that cool well-water they hadn't room for dinner; too cool water I guess aint' good for one when heated. After the dishes were washed, Pod took off everything but his socks and collar-b.u.t.ton, and wrote his newspaper letter, while c.o.o.nskin went prospecting. Pretty soon the latter returned with a sand turtle and, hitching it up in a rope harness, said he was going to keep it for a pet. He named it Bill. He said it would make a fine center-piece for the table; it would keep the Buffalo gnats and mosquitos and flies off the victuals, and if tied at the tent door no centipede or tarantula would dare enter. Pod thought it a good scheme. So, when we packed up, Bill was put in one of my saddle bags, without my knowing it. All new luggage was generally tied on to Damfino; I supposed the turtle was.

After going a couple miles, I felt something mysterious crawling on my back. I looked around, but my master was in the way; so I up and kicked with all my might, determined to scatter that crawling thing to the four winds, but, instead, threw Pod completely over my head. Then I ran pell-mell down the desert trail, kicking and braying, with that terrible something gnawing my hair and bouncing and flopping with every jump I made. I ran fast and thought fast, and that thing stuck fast. Suddenly, I stopped, laid down, and tried to roll on it. This I couldn't do, on account of the saddle horn. But while I was still trying, the rest of the party came up, and solved the mystery by capturing the turtle, Bill; then they chained him on Damfino, and our outfit moved on peacefully for several miles, the men talking merrily. Said Pod, "Hitting the trail on the plains in summer isn't as comfortable as driving a city ice-wagon.

"Not much," c.o.o.nskin returned; "but the donkeys and dog have their woes, too."

"Verily so," confirmed the Professor. "For instance, there's Damfino; she thinks she's awfully persecuted. Being a female, she doesn't have much to say. But how about Mac? Doesn't he do more kicking than all the rest put together?"

"Oh, well," c.o.o.nskin answered, "you see Mac regards himself a pioneer and all the others mere tenderfeet."

I couldn't help grinning at the simple debate. The fact of the case was, our caravan had been growing larger with every day's travel. New articles were continually added. Cheese and I generally carried the men; but to our saddles were hung guns, revolvers, cameras, and the lantern, not to mention a bundle of blankets; all of which, added to the burden of our thoughts, a nagging whip and a pair of spurs, and a million and one buffalo gnats, mastodon mosquitos, and other kindergarten birds of prey, tended to make us lose our mental equilibrium a dozen times a day.

In my case, there was a lump of avoirdupois in the saddle ranging between 150 and 160 pounds. Sometimes Pod would get out of his seat and walk a mile or two, to relieve me. With Cheese it was much the same. But that old spinster, Damfino, bore a burden, increasing daily. She was large and strong, and couldn't appreciate fine sentiments, or fine stuffs either, even complaining of sand in the wind, and coughed and snorted continually. Her sawbuck saddle corset was laced tightly around her robust bust, and to this unhealthsome vesture were hung on both sides large canvas panniers, packed with canned goods, medicines, salves, ink, cow-bells, vegetables, ham and bacon, vinegar, old shoes, toilet articles, including currycomb, clothes, soap, flour, salt, baking-powder, cheese, coffee, tea, kerosine oil, matches, cooking tools, ammunition, folding kitchen range, and two dozen et ceteras. On top and lopping over the panniers were roped the tent and tent-poles, folding beds, canteens, musical instruments, axe, and axle-grease, five iron picket-pins, packages of photos (for sale), a tin wash basin, two tin pails, extra ropes, a half dozen paper pads, and a dozen more et ceteras.