“The critter don’t seem to take to it nohow, does he?” said the blacksmith, cheerfully, as he again got up.

“He’s a very peculiar horse,” answered Jack.  “Has violent likes and dislikes.  His likes are for food, and his dislikes for everything else.”

“I’ll tackle him again, though,” said the man.

But Blacky saw that he could no longer afford to temporize with the fellow, and now began kicking fiercely with both feet in all directions, swinging about like a warship to get the proper range on everything in sight, and finally ending up by putting one foot through the bellows.

“Reckon I’ve got to call in assistance,” said the man, as he started off.  He came back with another man, who laid hold of one of Blacky’s forward legs and held it up off the floor.  The blacksmith then seized one of his hind ones and got it up.  This left the old sinner so that if he would kick he would have to stand on one foot while he did it, and this was hardly enough for even so bad a horse as he was.  He did not wholly give up, however, but after a great amount of struggling they at last got him shod.

“We’ll call him the Blacksmith’s Pet,” said Jack.

Good camping-places did not seem to be numerous, and just after the sun had gone down we turned out beside the road near a half-completed sod house.  There was no other house in sight, and this had apparently been abandoned early in the season, as weeds and grass were growing on top of the walls, which were three or four feet high.  There was also a peculiar sort of well, a few of which we had seen during the day.  It consisted of four one-inch boards nailed together and sunk into the ground.  The boards were a foot wide, thus making the inside of the shaft ten inches square.  This one was forty or fifty feet deep, but there was a long rope and slender tin bucket beside it.  The water was not good, but there was no other to be had.  Near the house Ollie found the first cactus we had seen, which showed, if nothing else did, that we were getting into a dry country.  He took it up carefully and stowed it away in the cabin to take back home as evidence of his extensive travels.

For several days we had not been able to have a camp-fire, owing to the wind and dryness of the prairie, for had we started a prairie fire it might have done great damage.

“We don’t want the Holt County Anti-Prairie Fire Society after us,” Jack had said; so we bad been using our oil-stove.

But this evening was very still, and there seemed to be no danger in building a camp-fire within the walls of the house, and we soon had one going with wood which we had gathered along the river, since to have found wood enough for a camp-fire in that neighborhood would have been as impossible as to have found a stone or a spring of water.

We were sitting about on the sods after supper when a man rode up on horseback, who said he was looking for some lost stock.  We asked him to have something to eat, and he accepted the invitation, and afterwards talked a long time, and gave us much information which we wished about the country.  Somebody mentioned the little well, and the man turned to Ollie and said: