“‘Not with the sheep,’ says the herder. ‘But,’ he says, ‘the lambs occasioned me considerable annoyance and perturbation.’
“Well, Old Man Mason didn’t know what the hell he meant, and he didn’t want to ask, for fear he’d appear ign’rant; so went on to the pens to see what was the matter with the lambs.
“The moon was up, and he could see over the rock fence. The sheep was all huddled up in the middle of the pen, and the Old Man counted a hundred and seventy-five jack-rabbits runnin’ around and buttin’ the fence, doin’ their damndest to git out.”
“I got up considerable speed once myself,” said Joe, “once when I was a good deal younger than I am now; but it wasn’t no rabbit that I was chasin’; it was a prairie-fire.”
“You mean it was the prairie-fire chasing you, don’t you?” said Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “It was jest as I was sayin’. I was chasin’ the prairie-fire. It wasn’t the prairie-fire chasin’ me.
“It was back in the early days one time when I was out huntin’ cattle on the plains. One day in August, I recken it was, I follered off some cow tracks and got lost from the outfit. I was out two days without nothin’ to eat. Finally I come on a little herd of buffalo. I shoots a good fat cow and cuts off a piece of tenderloin.
“Well, when I begins to look around for somethin’ to cook it with, not a thing can I find. There ain’t a stick of timber, not a twig, nor a dry buffalo chip nowhere around there. I was hungry enough to have et that meat raw and bloody, and I needed it too, for I was so hungry that I was weak in the knees. But somehow I never was much of a raw meat eater. It ain’t civilized.
“Well, as I was sayin’, I couldn’t find no regular fuel; so I calkilated I’d try the prairie grass, which was long and curly and dry. I gathers up a big pile, puts the hunk of meat on my ramrod and holds it over the grass and lights a match. Jest one flash and the fire’s all gone, except the wind comes up all at once and sets the dang prairie on fire.
“Well, sir, I takes out after that prairie-fire, holdin’ my meat over the blaze. It would burn along purty regular for a while; then all of a sudden it would give a big jump and tear out across the plains like hell after a wild woman, and I’d have to do my dangest to keep up with it. Well, I chased that prairie-fire about three hours, I recken, but I finally got my meat cooked. I et it—and it shore did taste good, too—and started back across the burnt country to where I had shot the buffalo. Damn me, if I hadn’t run so far in three hours that it took me two days to git back. There my hoss was waitin’ fer me, and I found the outfit the next day.”