was due, no doubt, to
the frequent prairie fires which swept the country; these found birth
in the camp-fire coals left by ignorant or careless settlers on their
way in. Under the rays of the summer sun the blackened ground became
so hot that from it ascended a column of scorching air which interfered
with the condensation of vapor preceding the falling of rain. Clouds
would bank up above the prairie horizon, eagerly watched by anxious
homesteaders; but over the burned area the clouds seemed to thin out
without a drop falling upon the parching crops.

Forty-three acres, sown to wheat, was the first crop which the
Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained
from around the edges of a slough!

One by one discouraged settlers gathered together their few belongings
and sought fresh trails. Lone men trudged by, pack on back, silent and
grim. Swearing at his horses, wheels squealing for axle-grease, tin
pans rattling and flashing in the hot morning sun, a settler with a
family stopped one day to ask questions of the two young men. He was
on his way--somewhere--no place in particular.

"I tell ye, boys, this country ain't no place fer a white man," he
volunteered. "When y'ain't freezin' ye're burnin' up, an' that's what
happens in hell!" He spat a stream of tobacco juice over the wagon
wheel and clawed his beard, his brown face twisted quizzically. "God
A'mighty ain't nowheres near here! He didn't come this fur
West--stopped down to Rat Portage![1] Well, anyways, good luck to ye
both; but ef ye don't git it, young fellers, don't ye go blamin' me, by
Jupiter!" He cracked his whip. "Come up out o' that, ye God-forsaken
old skates!" And, mud-caked wheels screeching, tin pans banging and
glaring, he jolted back to the trail that led away in distance to No
Place In Particular.

But along with some others who confessed to being poor walkers, the
Partridge boys stuck right where they were. They set about the
building of a more permanent and comfortable shack--a sod house this
time. It took more than seven thousand sods, one foot by three, three
inches thick; but when it was finished it was a precocious raindrop or
a mendacious wind that could find its way in.

About thirteen miles distant was a little mud schoolhouse, and one day
E. A. Partridge was asked to go over and teach in it. It was known
that back East, besides working on his father's farm, he had taught
school for awhile. L