ay the great Sisseton prairie fire burned up the town of Lone
Tree. I saw the smoke as our train lay at Siding No. 13 while the
conductor and the other railroad men nailed down snake's-heads on the
track. One had come up through the floor of the caboose and smashed
the stove and half killed a passenger. Poor man, he had a game leg as
long as I knew him, which was only natural, since when the rail burst
through the floor it struck him fair.

I was traveling free, as the friend of one of the brakemen whom I had
got to know in St. Paul. He was a queer fellow, named Burrdock. The
railroad company set great store by Burrdock on account of his
dealings with some Sioux Indians. They had tried to ride on top of
the cars of his train without paying fare, and he had thrown them all
off, one by one, while the train was going. The fireman told me about
it.

Burrdock was taking me out to Track's End because he said it was a
live town, and a good place for a boy to grow up in. He had first
wanted me to join him in braking on the railroad, but I judged the
work too hard for me. If I had known what I was coming to at Track's
End I'd have stuck to the road.

Perhaps I ought to say that I left home in June, not because I wasn't
welcome to stay, but because I thought it was time I saw something of
the world. Mother was sure I should be killed on the cars, but at last
she gave her consent. I went to Galena, from there up the Mississippi
on a packet to St. Paul, and then out to Dakota with Burrdock.

The snake's-heads delayed us so that it was eleven o'clock at night
before we reached Track's End. Ours was the only train that ran on the
road then, and it came up Mondays and Thursdays, and went back
Tuesdays and Fridays. It was a freight-train, with a caboose on the
end for passengers, "and the snake's-heads," as the fireman said. A
snake's-head on the old railroads was where a rail got loose from the
fish-plate at one end and came up _over_ the wheel instead of staying
down _under_ it.

Track's End was a new town just built at the end of the railroad. The
next town back toward the east was Lone Tree; but that day it burned
up and was no more. It was about fifty miles from Track's End to Lone
Tree, with three sidings between, and a water-tank at No. 14. After
the fire the people all went to Lac-qui-Parle, sixty miles farther
back; so that at the time of which I write there was nothing between
Track's End and Lac-qui-Parle except siding