t the place for the fire was
rather larger. Back of it stood a box full of what seemed to be
big hay rope. The man's wife was cooking dinner on the stove.

"Here's a young tenderfoot," said the man, "who's never seen
a hay fire."

"Wish I never had," answered the woman. The man laughed.
"They're hardly as good as a wood fire or a coal fire," he said
to Ollie; "but when you're five hundred miles, more or less, from
either wood or coal they do very well." The man took off one of
the griddles and put in another "stick" of hay. Then he handed
one to Ollie, who was surprised to find it almost as heavy as a
stick of wood. "It makes a fairly good fire," said the man. "Come
outside and I'll show you how to twist it."

[Illustration: First Lesson in Hay Twisting]

They went out to a haystack near by, and the man twisted a
rope three or four inches in diameter, and about four feet long.
He kept hold of both ends till it was wound up tight; then he
brought the ends together, and it twisted itself into a hard
two-strand rope in the same way that a bit of string will do when
similarly treated. There was quite a pile of such twisted sticks
on the ground. "You see," said the man, "in this country, instead
of splitting up a pile of fuel we just twist up one." Ollie bade
the man good-bye, took another look at the queer house, and came
down to the wagon.

"So you saw a hay-stove, did you?" said Jack. "I could have
told you all about 'em. I once stayed all night with a man who
depended on a hay-stove for warmth. It was in the winter. Talk
about appetites! I never saw such an appetite as that stove had
for hay. Why, that stove had a worse appetite than Old Blacky. It
devoured hay all the time, just as Old Blacky would if he could;
and even then its stomach always seemed empty. The man twisted
all of the time, and I fed it constantly, and still it was never
satisfied."

"How did you sleep?" asked Ollie.

"Worked right along in our sleep--like Old Browny," answered
Jack.

The last day before reaching Yankton was hot and sultry. The
best place we could find to camp that night was beside a deserted
sod house on the prairie. There was a well and a tumble-down sod
stable. There were dark bands of clouds low down on the
southeastern horizon, and faint flashes 'of lightning.

"It's going to rain before morning," I said. "Wonder if it
wouldn't be better in the sod house?"

We examined it, but found it in poor