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Commercial Hotel at Julesburg. Not long after leaving Julesburg we came
upon a flamboyant sign which announced that we were nineteen miles from
Ogallala, Nebraska. The sign also informed us with particular emphasis
that Ogallala was "a wet town." We had crossed the State line and had
left behind us Colorado with its mountains, its green meadows, its wild
yuccas, its Matilija poppies, and its dark masses of pine trees.

As we drove along in the dusky twilight, little owls kept flying low in
front of our car, attracted by its lights. Sometimes a rabbit sat in the
middle of the road, blinking and bewildered. We always gave him time to
recover himself and leap into the shadows of the roadside. We had had
another exquisite sunset with the same soft pastel shades that I had
seen at Boulder. During the day we had seen many meadow larks,
red-winged blackbirds, and doves. We had seen, too, many sparrow hawks,
sitting silent on the fence posts, waiting for the approach of evening.
In one place we saw a poor young meadow lark, hanging dead from a barbed
wire fence. He had evidently in flying struck his throat full against
one of the barbs and had hung there, impaled to death. At Ogallala we
found a very comfortable lodging house, The Hollingsworth, built over a
garage. We had a good room there, although it was impossible to find a
cool spot on that broiling night.

The next morning, as we took breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we
learned that Ogallala had had a grand contest and had "gone dry" two
weeks before. An enthusiastic gentleman who had taken part in the
conflict told us that already the town was wonderfully changed. We
congratulated him and urged him to see to it that the sign nineteen
miles to the west heralded Ogallala as a dry town rather than a wet one.

The next day was cooler. The mountains had disappeared, and only wide
rolling fields, sometimes as level as a floor, lay before us. We were
crossing Nebraska. We came by a rather poor road, really a grassy trail,
to North Platte, where we had luncheon at the Vienna Cafe. As we were
driving along between Ogallala and North Platte, the grass growing high
in the road tracks, we came suddenly upon a bevy of fat quail walking in
the road. As they flew somewhat heavily, I felt sure that our wheel had
struck some of them. So I went back to see. Three of them lay dead in
the road, having been unable to fly in time to avoid the wheels. The
noise of our machine had been muf