Ollie and I ploughed along with the sand still streaming, like long flaxen hair, off the wagon-wheels as they turned.  In a little valley about ten o’clock Ollie shot his first grouse.  We saw more antelope, and met a man with his wife and six children and five dogs and two cows and twelve chickens going east.  He said he was tired of Nebraska, and was on his way to Illinois.  At noon we stopped at Merriman, another railroad station.  Jack got up and made a pretence of getting dinner, but he ate nothing himself, and really began to look ill.

We made but a short stop, as we were anxious to get out of the worst of the sand that afternoon.  We asked about feed and water for the horses, and were told that we could get both at Irwin, another station fifteen miles ahead.  We pressed on, with Jack still in the wagon, but it was almost dark before we reached the station.  We found a man on the railroad track.

“Can we get some feed and water here?” I asked of him.

“Reckon not,” answered the man.

“Where can we find the station agent?”

“He’s gone up to Gordon, and won’t be back till midnight.”

“Hasn’t any one got any horse-feed for sale?”

[Illustration:  No Horse-Feed]

“There isn’t a smell of horse-feed here,” said the man.  “I’ve got the only well, except the railroad’s, but it’s ’most dry.  I’ll give you what water I can, though.  As for feed, you’d better go on three miles to Keith’s ranch.  It’s on Lost Creek Flat, and there’s lots of haystacks there, and you can help yourself.  At the ranch-house they will give you other things.”

We drove over to the man’s house, and got half a pail of water apiece for the horses.  They wanted more, but there was no more in the well.  The man said we could get everything we wanted at the ranch, and we started on.  The horses were tired, but even Old Blacky was quite amiable, and trudged along in the sand without complaint.

Jack was still in the wagon, and we heard nothing of him.  It was cloudy and very dark.  But the horses kept in the trail, and after, as it seemed to us, we had gone five miles, we felt ourselves on firmer ground.  Soon we thought we could make out something, perhaps hay-stacks, through the darkness.  I sent Ollie on the pony to see what it was.  He rode away, and in a moment I heard a great snorting and a stamping of feet, and Ollie’s voice calling for me to come.  I ran over with the lantern, and found that he had ridden full into a barbed-wire fence around a hay-stack.  The pony stood trembling, with the blood flowing from her breast and legs, but the scratches did not seem to be deep.

“We must find that ranch-house,” I said to Ollie.  “It ought to be near.”

For half an hour we wandered among the wilderness of hay-stacks, every one protected by barbed wire.  At last we heard a dog barking, followed the sound, and came to the house.  The dog was the only live thing at home, and the house was locked.