struck the ground after being tossed up it would rebound several
inches. But it was almost as light asa thistle-ball, and when we
turned it loose it rolled away across the prairie again as if
nothing had happened.

"They're bad things sometimes when there is a prairie tire,"
said Jack. "No matter how wide the fire-break may be, a blazing
tumbleweed will often roll across it and set tire to the grass
beyond. They've been known to leap over streams of considerable
width, too, or fall in the water and float across, still
blazing. Two years ago the town of Frontenac was burned up by a
tumbleweed, though the citizens had made ah approved fire-break
by ploughing two circles of furrows around their village and
burning off the grass between them. These big red ones must be
worse than the others. I believe," he went on, "that tumbleweeds
might be used to carry messages, like carrier-pigeons. The
next one we come across we'll try it."

That afternoon we caught a fine specimen, and Jack securely
fastened this message to it and turned it adrift:

"Schooner Rattletrap, September --, 188-: Latitude.
42.50; Longitude, 99.35. To Whom it may Concern: From Prairie
Flower, bound for Deadwood. All well except Old Blacky, who has
an appetite."

The night after our stop by the unfinished house we again
camped on the open prairie, a quarter of a mile from a settler's
house, where we got water for the horses. This house was really a
"dugout," being more of a cellar than a house. It was built in