ible that anybody could raise melons so thickly together as Mr.
Younkins had said he had seen them? Mr. Bryant, having kicked open a
fine melon, took out the heart of it to refresh himself with, as was
the manner of the settlers, where the fruit was so plenty and the
market so far out of reach; then, between long drafts of the delicious
pulp, he explained that certain things, melons for example, flourished
better on the virgin soil of the sod than elsewhere.

"Another year or so," he said, "and you will never see on this patch
of land such melons as these. They will never do so well again on this
soil as this year. I never saw such big melons as these, and if we had
planted them a little nearer together, I don't in the least doubt that
any smart boy, like Sandy here, could walk all over the field stepping
from one melon to another, if he only had a pole to balance himself
with as he walked. There would be nothing very 'wonderful-like' about
that. It's a pity that we have no use for these, there are so many of
them and they are so good. Pity some of the folks at home haven't a
few of them--a hundred or two, for instance."

It did seem a great waste of good things that these hundreds and
hundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack of
somebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty the
settlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finest
of the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had got
one of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leaving
the rest to the birds. By night, too, the coyotes, or prairie-wolves,
mean and sneaking things that they were, would steal down into the
melon-patch, and, in the desperation of their hunger, nose into the
broken melons left by the settlers, and attempt to drag away some of
the fragments, all the time uttering their fiendish yelps and howls.

Somebody had told the boys that the juice of watermelons boiled to a
thick syrup was a very good substitute for molasses. Younkins told
them that, back in old Missouri, "many families never had any other
kind of sweetenin' in the house than watermelon molasses." So Charlie
made an experiment with the juice boiled until it was pretty thick.
All hands tasted it, and all hands voted that it was very poor stuff.
They decided that they could not make their superabundance of
watermelons useful except as an occasional refreshment.

CHAPTER XV.

PLAY COMES AFTER