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 ga