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Now and then the print of the hoof might show in the soft earth of some prairie-dog burrow; then perhaps for an hour Juan would walk on, his eye fixed apparently upon some far-off point of the horizon as upon the ground, until finally they would note the same hoof-print again and know again that the instinct of the wild guide had not failed.
"When did Sassacus ever make a secret of his lodge? He is not a beaver, or a wretched wood-chuck, to burrow in the ground, but an eagle who makes his nest on the highest trees." From this reply Arundel could only understand, that the place where the hut stood was too well known to make it difficult for the Indians to discover it.
A dozen steps away we came face to face with a big new snow-drift, its top blown over like a great white hood. I guessed that there was an old bank under this one. I took a stake from the sled, dropped on my hands and knees and began to poke about for it. I soon found it, broke through the frozen crust with the stake and began pawing out a burrow with my hands.
This is my native land, this burrow in the earth! Come rain or wind and whether it's April, and the birds all sing, and the blossoms fall about my bed or whether it's winter, and I sit alone with my good gossip the fire, and robin red breast twitters in the woods here, is my church and market, and my wife and child.
Conceive it as falling upon a man-made, masonry-walled burrow in the earth and being followed in rapid succession by five of its blood brethren; then you will begin to get some fashion of mental photograph of the result. I confess myself as unable to supply any better suggestion for a comparison. Nor shall I attempt to describe the picture in any considerable detail.
As a rule, the prey is consumed out of sight, in the burrow; but sometimes also a meal is taken on the threshold, in the open air. Besides, it is easy to rear the Lycosa and her family in a wire-gauze cage, with a layer of earth wherein the captive will never dream of sinking a well, such work being out of season. Everything then happens in the open.
"What brings you out of your beloved and stinking burrow again this day. We thought that the sight of the multitude of living men at the games would drive you back to your corpses as quickly as you could go." The cackling laugh of I-Gos acknowledged the royal sally.
This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place his secret was within my grasp. As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation.
A low squeak of warning, uttered by the father vole as he dived into his burrow, caused the young mice foraging in the undergrowth to bolt helter-skelter towards home. Kweek, joining in the general panic, rushed across the field, and had almost disappeared underground when he felt the earth and the loose pebbles falling over him, and at the same time experienced a sharp thrill of pain.
But cows will feed steadily in front, and a flock of sheep, very slowly driven, move on with a gentle 'tinkle, tinkle. Wild creatures show no fear of what they are accustomed to, and the use of which they understand. If a solitary hurdle be set up in a meadow as a hiding-place from behind which to shoot the rabbits of a burrow, not one will come out within gun-shot that evening.
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