5G0 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May 4, 1912 
“Honestly, did you take that for a squirrel?” 
he asked on seeing that I was not joking. 
“Certainly I did. What is it?” 
“A civet cat; I never knew that they got so 
far from the mountains as this, but that is a 
civet sure enough.” 
Then I admitted that it impressed me as being 
a very peculiarly marked squirrel, but as I had 
seen a good many curious animals and birds in 
that country, I had merely taken this to be a 
species that I had not before encountered. 
John said he had been told that there were 
squirrels in the timber belts of Southern and 
Western Kansas, but that he had seen none. 
But there were rabbits in unlimited profusion 
all about us, though at that season they were 
not in the best of condition; still, they furnished 
more palatable food than jerked beef, dried fish 
and pilot biscuit. So I retraced my steps to the 
timber and succeeded in bringing back a pair 
of large buck rabbits in very good flesh. 
We had barely gotten them dressed, and one 
simmering in the stew pan over John’s impro¬ 
vised fireplace, than the threatened storm began. 
For the first hour the rain was merely a fine 
mist that failed to extinguish the fire until the 
stew was done. It was not long, however, be¬ 
fore the downfall increased until a drenching 
torrent converted the plain into a series of rivers 
and lakes and tested the qualities of our tent 
severely. There were no overhead leaks of any 
consequence, but it was not long before we dis¬ 
covered that the surface water had cut a chan¬ 
nel directly beneath our domicile, and a good- 
sized rivulet was laughing gaily in our midst. 
John’s wise forethought in spreading a thick 
carpet of oak branches on the floor saved our 
blankets from a drenching, but still we did not 
enjoy the aqueous music, knowing not how soon 
the water would cut out a channel sufficiently 
deep to plunge us all into its watery depths. 
“I’m going to divert that flood,” remarked 
John, as the gurgling continued to increase be¬ 
neath our blankets. Then he divested himself 
of his clothing, remarking that “there was noth¬ 
ing like a rain bath for one’s health.” 
Selecting a large, hollow buffalo horn from 
the scores strewn about in front of the tent, 
John dug a canal along the side of the hillock 
just above the tent, and this effectually turned 
the torrent, leaving us dry. Then we ate a 
hearty meal, haid a good drink of rain water, 
which we appreciated most heartily after the 
lime and sulphur-impregnated fluid we had been 
imbibing for the past month or more, lighted 
our pipes and talked the afternoon away. Just 
before night I took out my bundle of ash twigs 
preparatory to making the usual cordon around 
our sleeping quarters, when John broke out in 
a dissertation on “old women’s superstitions.” 
He not only ridiculed the idea, but declared that 
he could not understand how a body of my ap¬ 
parent ability and sense could give credence to 
it. I told him I was merely acting upon the in¬ 
structions of old plainsmen, whose experience 
in such matters ought to carry more weight than 
a mere theory; anyhow, I proposed to be on the 
safe side and not take any chances of losing my 
young life through the medium of a rattler’s 
bite. John said no more, and I strewed the 
twigs with my customary care, having to exer¬ 
cise considerable skill to make them reach all 
the way around the tent. 
Just as I awakened the following morning, 
John was coming into the tent. “I reckon I’ll 
have to concede to you about the ash twigs,” 
was his first salutation. In response to my in¬ 
quiring gaze he continued: “The rain last night 
must have flooded out the rattlers; bet I’ve seen 
fifty within five rods of the tent, and there’s one 
sure thing, that we’d a had a visit from ’em 
before now if they weren’t afraid o’ something.’’ 
Whether the ash branches kept the snakes out 
is doubtless a question, but the fact remains that 
we were not molested by them, nor could we 
find one among our blankets. A rattler driven 
from his nest, especially if the weather be cold 
or wet, will crawl into the first dry and warm 
spot it finds, and from their close proximity to 
our tent, there is no doubt that they found it. 
John straightway became an enthusiastic convert 
to the idea which he had so vigorously con¬ 
demned the previous evening. 
Although the rain had practically ceased fall¬ 
ing, there was a prospect of more in reserve, 
and then, too, the wind had risen to the magni¬ 
tude of half a gale, a fact which wrought havoc 
with the flap fastenings of the tent. Every now 
and then the wind would whisk into the front in 
a sudden blast, inflate the tent for an instant 
like a balloon, then bang would go the flap pegs, 
and we would have to grab the rubber blankets 
to prevent their flying away. While wondering 
how we could contrive to fasten the flaps, I 
chanced to recall the skeleton of an enormous 
bull buffalo which I had discovered in my quest 
for rabbits the day before. Going to the spot 
I gathered an armful of the large curved ribs, 
and these, when used for tent pins with the 
curve toward the canvas, operated so success¬ 
fully that the fiercest blasts were impotent to 
pull them out. 
There being no dry fuel to be had, we were 
reduced to the necessity of banquetting upon 
our dried stores, despite the fact that we had 
fresh meat in abundance in the remaining rabb’t 
left from yesterday. We bewailed out lack of 
foresight in that we had not piled a quantity 
of fuel into the tent when both wood and buffalo 
chips were as dry as tinder. 
“Never mind,” said John, “if this wind will 
hold without rain for an hour longer we can 
get all the dry fuel we want.” I was strongly 
inclined to doubt this statement, but soon after¬ 
ward was taught another wonderful lesson of 
the plains, in addition to the many which I had 
already learned. Although in the morning the 
dead cottonwoods, whose fallen branches we had 
relied upon chiefly in cooking our meals, were 
reeking with water, the spongy texture of the 
grain enabling it to absorb moisture like a 
sponge, when I went to the timber an hour after 
John’s remark I found that such branches as 
lay up loosely from the ground were dry and 
light, as when vre gathered fuel for cooking 
dinner the previous afternoon. Also the sur¬ 
face of the plain, which in the early morning 
was a slough of deep mud, was now almost 
as hard and firm as before the storm. Shortly 
before noon we lighted a fire, though we had 
to use our spare blanket for a wind break, and 
made an excellent stew from the remaining 
rabldt and such herbs and tubers as John could 
find by the creek side. According to our reck¬ 
oning the next day would be Sunday, so we de¬ 
cided to remain in camp until Monday. To this 
end we went out in the late afternoon and shot 
several good buck rabbits, which we dressed and 
put away in our larder, then we took the pre¬ 
caution to stow a quantity of dry wood in the 
end of the tent for possible emergency. Our 
final chore for the day was to shift the ponies 
to a new feeding ground. 
The wind went down with the sun, though 
the s’xy was still overcast, and there was a pros¬ 
pect of more rain. It came, but not in the 
orderly, methodical fashion which characterized 
the beginning of the storm. Some time after 
midnight we were awakened by an almost in¬ 
cessant blaze of lightning, and the hoarse rumble 
of thunder away to the northward. The electri¬ 
cal display was simply beyond description. 
Dazzling chains of crinkling light darted across 
the sky in all directions, while every now and 
then broad shafts would shoot from the zenith 
to the horizon, flooding the entire plain in daz¬ 
zling, violet-hued light. 
John pulled on his boots and went to see if 
the hofses were all right, finding them huddled 
up with tails toward the coming tempest. He 
had barely reached the tent when the storm 
broke, and such a tempest! It had seemed to 
me that the ultimatum of meteorological phe¬ 
nomena was reached in the storm that I encount¬ 
ered back on the Osage trail. But on this par¬ 
ticular night I became aware that nature had 
unlimited reserve forces at command. It did 
seem as though they must have been mostly 
utilized for that occasion. The rain came in 
horizontal sheets, swept along by the wind with 
terrific force. The entire plain was aflame with 
an almost continuous blaze of purplish light, 
while thunderbolts crashed in a steady succes¬ 
sion of ear-splitting detonations which seemed 
to shake the very foundations of the earth. At 
the height of the tempest one of the tent poles 
collapsed, letting the blankets down upon us. 
Fortunately the old buffalo ribs held firm, and 
by pulling the folds of the rubbers about us, we 
were enabled to shield ourselves from the piti¬ 
less pelting of the rain, and an occasional volley 
of hailstones which stung even under the shelter 
of the tent cover and double blankets. 
The wind and thunder passed quickly, but it 
continued to rain for an hour longer. 'When 
finally we crawled out from beneath the tangle 
of tent cover and blankets, the dawn was faintly 
breaking and the lightning was drawing strange 
geometrical figures low down toward the south¬ 
eastern horizon. The ponies we found in a 
state of excitement that the storm would hardly 
warrant, as they were tolerably familiar with 
such demonstrations. The cause of the un¬ 
wonted alarm was soon apparent in the carcass 
of a coyote with a crushed skull, which lay 
within the radius of Skeezik’s heels, while just 
out of range of John’s pony was a little heap 
of white, freshly polished bones that demon¬ 
strated the fate of another of the sneaking little 
wolves'. A wholesome fear of Skeezik’s heels 
had saved the remains of the other coyote from 
spoliation. “When we appeared on the scene the 
ponies manifested their appreciation of our 
thoughtfulness by whinnying and rubbing their 
noses affectionately against our sleeves. 
John said that during a temporary lull of the 
storm he thought he heard an outcry from the 
horses and suspected that they were contending 
with something more serious (to them) than the 
raging of the elements, but declared that he 
would not have gone out into that storm to 
have saved his horse’s life. He then admitted 
