The Voyage of the Rattletrap | Page 9

man, "it's this way: First we plough up a lot of the
tough prairie sod with a large plough called a breaking-plough,
intended especially for ploughing the prairie the first time. This turns it
over in a long, even, unbroken strip, some fourteen or sixteen inches
wide and three or four inches thick. We cut this up into pieces two or
three feet long, take them to the place where we are building the house,
on a stone-boat or a sled, and use them in laying up the walls in just
about the same way that bricks are used in making a brick house.
Openings are left for the doors and windows, and either a shingle or
sod roof put on. If it's sod, rough boards are first laid on poles, and then
sods put on them like shingles. I've got a sod roof on mine, you see."
Ollie was looking at the grass and weeds growing on the top and sides
of the house. They must have made a pretty sight when they were green
and thrifty earlier in the season, but they were dry and withered now.
"Do you ever have prairie-fires on your roofs?" asked Ollie, with a
smile.
"Oh, they do burn off sometimes," answered the man. "Catch from the
chimney, you know. Did you ever see a hay fire?"
"No."

"Come inside and I'll show you one."
In the house, which consisted of one large room divided across one end
by a curtain, Ollie noticed a few chairs and a table, and opposite the
door a stove which looked very much like an ordinary cook-stove,
except that 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 condition, so decided not to give
up the wagon. "The man that lived there pulled too many radishes and
parsnips and carrots and such things into it, and then neglected to hoe
his roof and fill up the holes," said Jack. "Besides, Old Blacky will
have it rubbed down before morning. 'When I sleep in anything that
Old Blacky can get at, I want it