"apparently burns well on a cold night on the treeless prairie"

No offense, but so did my shorts. Dry buffalo, horse and cow shit do burn real good. Well, not dry buffalo as in a buffalo wots had no water, but the buffalo's turds wots been drying in the sun burn well. Watch a field after a grass fire. Hot spots all over the place. Rabbit turds, cow pies, deer leavings and horse droppings: a veritable feast for the eyes as it were. (For you survival folk, everything is edible except the cow and horse stuff. OK, that's half, not everything, but get hungry enough and the animals would have been gone to begin with.)

I'll explain about the shorts at another time.