"The farmers fire their seed into the ground with six-shooters," said a man we fell in with on the road. "Very expensive for powder."
"The soil's what you call gumbo, isn't it?" I said to him.
"Yes. Works better when it's wet. One man can stick a spade into it then. Takes two to pull it out, though."
It was not long before we passed the Dakota line, marked by a post and a pile of tin cans. Shortly before noon Ollie made a discovery.
"What are those little animals?" he cried. "Oh, I know--prairie-dogs!"
There was a whole town of them right beside the road, with every dog sitting on top of the mound that marked his home, and uttering his shrill little bark, and marking each bark by a peculiar little jerk of his tail.
"How do you know they are prairie-dogs?" asked Jack.
"They had some of them in the park at home," said Ollie. "But last fall they all went down in their burrows for the winter, and in the spring they didn't come up. Folks said they must have frozen to death."
"Nonsense," said Jack. "They got turned around somehow, and in the spring dug down instead of digging up. They may come out in China yet if they have good-luck."
"I can hardly swallow that," replied Ollie. "But, anyhow, these seem to be all right."