sind him about his business." With
these words, he opened the door for me and I escaped.

Farewell, lovely maids of Kansas and Missouri! If mayhap this writing
comes to you, oh, let us meet again; my heart yearns to greet you and
your granddaughters. For surely, though it seems to me as yesterday,
the blossoms of forty summers have fallen in our path and whitened our
hair.

CHAPTER II.

PERILOUS JOURNEY

After several days I arrived at the end of my railway journey, Junction
City, without delay or accident. The trip was not lacking in
interesting details. The monotony of the never ending prairie was at
times enlivened by herds of buffalo and antelope. On one occasion they
delayed our train for several hours. An enormous herd of thousands upon
thousands of buffalo crossed the railroad track in front of our train.
Bellowing, crowding, and pushing, they were not unlike the billows of
an angry sea as it crashes and foams over the submerged rocks of a
dangerous coast. Their rear guard was made up of wolves, large and
small. They followed the herd stealthily, taking advantage of every
hillock and tuft of buffalo grass to hide themselves. The gray wolf or
lobo, larger and heavier than any dog, and adorned with a bushy tall
was a fierce-looking animal, to be sure. The smaller ones were called
coyotes or prairie wolves, and are larger than foxes and of a
gray-brown color. These are the scavengers of the plains, and divide
their prey with the vultures of the air.

At times we passed through villages of the prairie dog, consisting of
numberless little mounds, with their owners sitting erect on top. When
alarmed, they would yelp and dive into their lairs in the earth. These
little rodents share their habitations with a funny-looking little owl
and the rattlesnake. I believe, however, that the snake is not there as
a welcome visitor, but comes in the role of a self-appointed assessor
and tax gatherer. I picked up and adopted a little bulldog which had
been either abandoned on the cars or lost by its owner, not then
thinking that this little Cerberus, as I called it, should later prove,
on one occasion, to be my true and only friend when I was in dire
distress and in the extremity of peril.

The town of Junction City, which numbered less than a score of
buildings and tents, was in a turmoil of excitement, resembling a nest
of disturbed hornets. Several hundred angry-looking men crowded the
only street, every one arme