Near Willow Island I come within a trifle of stepping on a belligerent rattlesnake, and in a moment his deadly fangs are hooked to one of the thick canvas gaiters I am wearing.  Were my exquisitely outlined calves encased in cycling stockings only, I should have had a “heap sick foot” to amuse myself with for the next three weeks, though there is little danger of being “snuffed out” entirely by a rattlesnake favor these days; an all-potent remedy is to drink plenty of whiskey as quickly as possible after being bitten, and whiskey is one of the easiest things to obtain in the West.  Giving his snakeship to understand that I don’t appreciate his ’’good intentions " by vigorously shaking him off, I turn my “barker “loose on him, and quickly convert him into a “goody-good snake; " for if “the only good Indian is a dead one,” surely the same terse remark applies with much greater force to the vicious and deadly rattler.  As I progress eastward, sod-houses and dug-outs become less frequent, and at long intervals frame school-houses appear to remind me that I am passing through a civilized country.  Stretches of sand alternate with ridable roads all down the Platte.  Often I have to ticklishly wobble along a narrow space between two yawning ruts, over ground that is anything but smooth.  I consider it a lucky day that passes without adding one or more to my long and eventful list of headers, and to-day I am fairly “unhorsed” by a squall of wind that-taking me unawares-blows me and the bicycle fairly over.

East of Plum Creek a greater proportion of ridable road is encountered, but they still continue to be nothing more than well-worn wagon-trails across the prairie, and when teams are met en route westward one has to give and the other take, in order to pass.  It is doubtless owing to misunderstanding a cycler’s capacities, rather than ill-nature, that makes these Western teamsters oblivious to the precept, “It is better to give than to receive;” and if ignorance is bliss, an outfit I meet to-day ought to comprise the happiest mortals in existence.  Near Elm Creek I meet a train of “schooners,” whose drivers fail to recognize my right to one of the two wheel-tracks; and in my endeavor to ride past them on the uneven greensward, I am rewarded by an inglorious header.  A dozen freckled Arkansawish faces are watching my movements with undisguised astonishment; and when my crest — alien self is spread out on the prairie, these faces — one and all — resolve into expansive grins, and a squeaking female voice from out nearest wagon, pipes:  “La me! that’s a right smart chance of a travelling machine, but, if that’s the way they stop ’em, I wonder they don’t break every blessed bone in their body.”  But all sorts of people are mingled promiscuously here, for, soon after this incident, two young men come running across the prairie from a semi-dug-out, who prove to be college graduates from “the Hub,” who are rooting prairie here in Nebraska, preferring the free, independent