From Rochelle to the Mississippi I found the people more conservative, but interesting subjects for character study. The topography of the country varied but little. Snipe, quail, doves and meadow larks were prevalent. The pesty pocket-gophers were as shy of my fire-arms as of the farmers' dogs; one might shoot a dozen of them only to see the spry little fellows drop dead into their "home-made" graves. I have seen hundreds of them sitting upright on as many mounds, immovable as sticks, but pop! and they vanished.
Crossing this one-time prairie state, I recalled pictures of prairie fires in my school-books, and easily imagined the terror of the droves of wild horses and buffalo, fleeing before the leaping flames.
This seemed to be a contented section, and contentment is a great thing. Although no woodland was visible, I saw occasional clusters of "pussy willows," and groups of shade-trees embowering a house, above which the shaft of an aeromotor towered like a sentinel, asserting the homestead rights. When the windwheels were in motion, they created a noise which only an expert linguist could distinguish from the vernacular of a guinea hen.
Here and there bunches of cattle browsed in the meadows behind barbed-wire fences and thorn hedges; and long corn-cribs, often full to overflowing, had rewarded most every farmer.
About dark, May first, my small caravan ambled into the village of Ashton, and my bugle blasts aroused the nodding inhabitants sufficiently to give me a fair audience for a lecture. The Germans predominated, and to them May-day festivals are indispensable. Boys and girls celebrate by hanging May-baskets on door knobs, and a few wags, who resemble frogs, in that a half dozen make you think they are a million, shower corn, sand and bird shot at windows equal to a Kansas hail-storm.
The celebration that night seemed to be directed at my particular window. The racket had almost soothed me to sleep, when suddenly a rag doll loaded with shot came smashing through the blinds and landed on my bed. My patience overtaxed, I arose and resorted to free trade by exporting to the street a piece of crockery, and a chair, not to mention a few roasted invectives. I would have folded my bedstead and sent it sailing after them, but the disturbance of the peace and the pieces ceased together.
While at breakfast I wondered if any tricks had been played on my animals. I was quite sure of it before reaching the stable. The livery keeper came hobbling up on one foot and a crutch, with his face done up in fly-paper, and a bandage around his head.
"What's up?" I asked.
"Jacks got the spasms."
"You mean spavins," I corrected, innocently enough.