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But Rag's life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call old age. The Cottontails had enemies on every side. Their daily life was a series of escapes.
Here and there huge logs plunged downward like water-monsters, as they threaded between wooded islands, where meek-looking cottontails squatted and twiddled their noses at the passing craft; on, on, until, far off, loomed the boldest highest cliff of all, its top crested by a quaint old slit-windowed round tower of a fort, once a border defense against Chippewa and Sioux, now backed by the sleek lawns of well-groomed officers.
It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon those herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much so that the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails toward the rim of Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the west. "Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep it," exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from him that day.
It was a good deal of fun, too, sneaking about afoot through the low brush, making believe that the sage was a jungle, the tiny pellets express bullets, the rabbits magnified I am sorry for the fellow who cannot have fun sometimes "pretending!" In the brush, too, dwelt little cottontails, very good to eat. The jackrabbit was a pest, but the cottontail was worth getting.
Ranger was the name of a young hound in the neighborhood. To train him his master used to put him on the trail of one of the Cottontails. It was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young buck enjoyed the runs as much as they did, the spice of danger in them being just enough for zest. He would say: "Oh, mother! here comes the dog again, I must have a run to-day."
The men caught his strain and none of them spoke again. Cottontails quivered out of sight as the automobile rushed on. An occasional coyote, silhouetted against the sky, disappeared as if by magic. Swooping buzzards hung motionless to see, then swept on into the heavens. Jim was taking right-angled curves at twenty-five miles an hour. The hoboes clung to the machine wild-eyed and speechless.
While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty yards away; a paisano bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long tail.
Enoch looked at her, drew a deep breath, then put his gun across his arm and followed Diana to the yucca thicket where quail was to be found. They were very silent during the hour of hunting. They bagged a pair of cottontails and a number of quail, and when they did speak, it was only regarding the hunt or the preparations for the coming exodus.
The wind blew harder and colder as the hours went by, and about midnight a fine, icy snow came ticking down on the dead leaves and hissing through the brush heap. It might seem a poor night for hunting, but that old fox from Springfield was out. He came pointing up the wind in the shelter of the Swamp and chanced in the lee of the brush-pile, where he scented the sleeping Cottontails.
The Cottontails run into the first opening they see and never keep on running as their cousins do. I have had my lesson. I shall cut them off my visiting list from now on." And that is the reason the Cottontail family are never invited to any dinners that the wood folk give their trails can be too easily followed by Mr. Dog.
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