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When his presence was announced, neither the cony nor I could see him because of an intervening upthrust of rock. Soon the weasel appeared, circling the rock where the cony had been sunning himself, searching beneath it, hurrying along the tunnels through which the cony had fled. Emerging upon the bowlder, he paused for a few seconds as he looked in all directions.
For the garden, they now saw, was peopled with a host of living creatures, fair and of, perhaps, a hundred sorts; and they pointed out to one another how here emerged a cony, or there scampered a hare, or couched a goat, or grazed a fawn, or many another harmless, all but domesticated, creature roved carelessly seeking his pleasure at his own sweet will.
They were the conies' castles, ready refuges from enemies, their devious passages as effective as drawbridge or portcullis. The cony is something like the heaver far down on the flats below; working at top speed when he does work, and then resting for many months.
From near and far came answering marmot shrillings, and from near by a cony "squee-eked" his quick alarm. My reappearance reassured the marmot. He whistled again, and I thought I distinguished a note of disgust or of disappointment. This marmot lived on the south slope of the big moraine that shoulders against Lady Washington, neighboring peak to the giant mountain, Long's Peak.
He is called Little Chief Hare, but he isn't a Hare at all, although he looks much like a small Rabbit with short hind legs and rounded ears. He has a family all to himself and should be called a Pika. Some folks do call him that, but more call him a Cony, and some call him the Crying Hare. This is because he uses his voice a great deal, which is something no member of the Hare family does.
It must have been about three o'clock, for the moon had begun to sink towards the western sky, when she woke, with a violent start. She sat up, and pressed her hand against her heart. "What can it be? A cony must surely have run across my feet and frightened me!" she said, and she turned to lie down again; but soon she sat up. Outside, there was the distinct sound of thorns crackling in a fire.
Not many persons were present, for fame had put forth that the last demon cast out in that church went no farther than into one of the company: "as a cony ferreted out of one burrow runs to the next." When Gerard and the friar came up, the priest seemed to think there were now spectators enough; and began.
Sheltering rocks there are, to be sure, but their comfort is small to the man smitten with the scourge of the crowded city. In such heights man is of no more value than the wolf or the cony. It was hard to leave an old and broken man in such a drear and wind-contested spot, and yet it had to be done.
She held her breath. Not a cony in all the rocks was so still. "They can never find me here," she said; and she knelt, and listened to every word they said. She could hear it all. "You may have all the money," said the Bushman; "but I want the cask of brandy. I will set the roof alight in six places, for a Dutchman burnt my mother once alive in a hut, with three children."
Thus he solved the transportation question and gained a new home at the same time. Several times, upon digging beneath the slide rock, I discovered cony dens, merely openings far down between the jumbled rocks, beyond the reach of wind and weather. They were of great variety, large, small, wide, narrow; all ready to move into.
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