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As for the mark on his arm that they call a prairie-dog, it looks as much like anything else that has legs." To the family, however, every week brought some additional confirmation that the stranger was their own Willie. By degrees, he was able to make them understand the outlines of his story.
The burrow has an easy incline for about two feet, then descends perpendicularly for five or six, and after that branches off obliquely; it is often as large as a foot in diameter. It has been claimed that the prairie-dog, the owl and the rattlesnake live harmoniously together. Concerning this, Mr. William G. Smith, the well-known naturalist, says: "Impossible.
The simplest affair, sometimes, will start the whole herd; a prairie-dog barking at the entrance to his burrow, a shadow of one of themselves or that of a passing cloud, is sufficient to make them run for miles as if a real and dangerous enemy were at their heels. Like an army, a herd of buffaloes put out vedettes to give the alarm in case anything beyond the ordinary occurred.
Slices of smoked rabbit, with salted steaks of prairie-dog, were offered in place of the quail, which had not come; but Leo, having a fondness for sweets, saw with wonder one tart made from about a quarter of an apple. This proved to be such a sweet morsel that he kept Paz running for more until he had eaten a dozen.
The other, where it spreads rapidly over the surface just under the skin, after the fashion of the prairie fire, producing erysipelas. In the first of these he behaves like the famous burrowing owl of our Western plains, who forms, with the prairie-dog, the so-called "happy family."
They moved aside so as to make a place for him, and Old Man sat down and looked on at what they were doing. He saw that they were playing a game, and this was the way they did it: they put one prairie-dog in the fire and covered him up with hot ashes, and then, after he had been there a little while, he would say, "sk, sk," and they pushed the ashes off him and pulled him out.
He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle.
Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie-dog it would serve a double purpose: While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon.
Sometimes she brought them a Prairie-dog, at other times she would come home with a whole bunch of Gophers and Mice in her jaws; and once or twice, by the clever trick of relay-chasing, she succeeded in getting one of the big Northern Jack-rabbits for the little folks at home. After they had feasted they would lie around in the sun for a time.
A little beyond and on the opposite side of the crevice is Prairie-dog town, not a very extensive town, to be sure, but so true a copy that one unfamiliar with the small animal and his style of architecture would afterwards easily recognize both. At one time his dogship was carried away by a too eager collector, but a letter to the suspected visitor brought him home by the next freight.
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