Show 1 1111 1 tr t f r ST THE PROGRESS OF WAGON TRAIN every now and then one hears about invasions of grasshoppers that stop railroad trains the old ola yarn was being unreeled the other night v when hen a sl eppic put in his unbelief X have been agh several graso gras h epidemics he sad sa d b bit it I 1 acier er saw any such thing but I 1 did encounter an exodus of prairie dogs once on what was then a prairie ia in nebraska Neo that held up a long em grant train for a day and night it was d iring the rush for pike pikes s jeaa it was no unusual sigl t to see miles and of corpre copprel I 1 wagons wending their way III e an army toward what was supposed to be t the he better land we had been out about two weel v eel from omaha when one of the ad vance guard hurried back along the line with the information that a drove of prairie dogs was crossin the road a mile or go so ahead and that they were so numero is that the van an guard of the prairie ie schooners had be zi stopped A temporary halt m was as alde no one supposed it would be of long duration but darkness coming on we rounded up for the night the next morning the line did not move forward nor did it gain an inch all day then a few of us mounted our horses and rode forward to re connol connot ter when we got within a quarter of a mile of the head of the line we looked forward the face of the earth was in motion As far as the vision extended north and south it was the same they hey were moving from the north to the south the pi air e dogs were they were so close together that you coulden couldn lit t have tossed byoir yo ir hat beti pen then the n they die did rot seem to bo bf panic stricken but j moved on a d on I 1 ke a great cloud it was the strangest sight I 1 ever s sn IR old plain plainsmen men said they never siw anything lile e i when they first seen we t arned the dogs in te tee train loose apon i poll them but the dogs soon gave 0 it maybe there is some sort of affinity between domes tic dogs and balrie dogs which prompted the former to strike when it came to exterminating their species anyway the lom estic dogs just up the job As for shooting the I 1 tue brown lascala that would have been folly we hadn haan t the ammini tion the last night of the great exodus everybody tired out with watching it gave up tip the job and sought rest wherever it co id be found the next day there wasn gasn t a prairie dog in sight we resumed our journey As we neared 0 ir destination and the long line of prairie schooners began to disintegrate men had something else to think about and the sight wa was forgotten I 1 suppose but I 1 never forgot it and now and then occasionally I 1 have met some one who also saw the sight and as I 1 knew they were men who never drank or dreamed I 1 satisfied myself that I 1 was not mistaken in what I 1 saw I 1 reckon it was the grand army of prairie dogs 1001 ing for places to burrow I 1 I 1 now where some of them located but where the devil did they come from |