The Voyage of the Rattletrap | Page 4

him to come, and he arrived the night before our start. Ollie liked the idea of the trip so much that he simply stood and looked at the wagon, the guns, the pony, and the horses, and was speechless. At last he managed to say:
"Uncle Jack, it'll be just like a picnic, won't it?"
The next morning we started as early as we could. But it was not before people were up.
"Where be they going?" asked Grandpa Oldberry.
"Oh, Nebraska, and Wyoming, and the Black Hills, and any crazy place they hear of," answered Squire Poinsett.
"They'll all be scalped by Injuns," said Grandpa Oldberry. "Ain't the Injuns bad this fall?"
"So I was a-reading," returned the Squire. "And in the hills I should be afeared of b'ar."
"Right," assented Grandpa. "B'ar and sim'lar varmints. And more 'specially hossthieves and sich-like cutthroats. I disremember seeing three scalawags starting off on such a fool trip since afore the war."

II: OUTWARD BOUND
The port of Prairie Flower was in the eastern part of the Territory of Dakota. It stood out on an open plain a half-dozen miles wide, which seemed to be the prairie itself, though it was really the valley of the Big Sioux River, that funny stream which could run either way, and usually stood still in the night and rested. To the east and west the edges of this valley were faintly marked by a range of very low bluffs, so low that they were mere wrinkles in the surface of the earth, and made the valley but very little lower than the great plain which rolled away for miles to the east and for leagues to the west.
It was a beautiful morning a little after the middle of September that the Rattletrap got away and left Prairie Flower behind. The sun had been up only half an hour or so, and the shadow of our craft stretched away across the dry gray plain like a long black streak without end. The air was fresh and dewy. The morning breeze was just beginning to stir, and down by the river the acres of wild sunflowers were nodding the dew off their heads, and beginning to roll in the first long waves which would keep up all day like the rolling of the ocean. We shouted "Good-bye" to Grandpa Oldberry and Squire Poinsett, but they only shook their heads very seriously. The cows and horses picketed on the prairie all about the little clump of houses which made up the town looked at us with their eyes open extremely wide, and no doubt said in their own languages, like Grandpa Oldberry, that they had no recollection of seeing any such capers as this for many years.
"See here," I said, suddenly, to Jack, "where's that dog you said was going to follow us?"
"You just hold on," answered Jack.
"Oh, are we going to have a dog, too?" asked Ollie.
"You wait a minute," insisted Jack.
Just then we passed the railroad station. Jack craned his head out of the front end of the wagon. Ollie and I did the same. Lying asleep on the corner of the station platform we saw a dog. He was about the size of a rather small collie; or, to put it another way, perhaps he was half as big as the largest-size dog. If dogs were numbered like shoes, from one to thirteen, this would have been about a No. 7 dog. He was yellow, with short hair, except that his tail was very bushy. One ear stood up straight, and the other lopped over, very much wilted. Jack whistled sharply. The dog tossed up his head, straightened up his lopped ear, let fall his other ear, and looked at us. Jack whistled again, and the dog came. He ran around the wagon, barked once or twice, sniffed at the pony's heels and got kicked at for his familiarity, yelped sharply, and came and looked up at us, and wagged his bushy tail with a great flourish.
"He wants to get in. Give him a boost, Ollie," said Jack.
Ollie clambered over the dash-board and jumped to the ground. He pushed the dog forward, and he leaped up and scrambled into the wagon, jumped over on the bed, where he folded his head and tail on his left side, turned around rapidly three times, and lay down and went to sleep, one ear up and one ear down.
[Illustration: Snoozer]
"He's just the dog for the Rattletrap," said Jack. "We'll call him Snoozer."
"That looks a good deal like stealing to me, Uncle Jack," said Ollie. "Doesn't he belong to somebody?"
"No," said Jack, "he doesn't belong to anybody but us. He came here a week ago with a tramp. The tramp deserted him, and rode away on the trucks of a freight train; but Snoozer didn't like that way