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Updated: June 4, 2025
The air is soft and balmy, in striking contrast to the chilly atmosphere of early morning in the mountain country, where the accumulated snows of a thousand winters exert their chilling influence in opposition to the benign rays of old Sol. This evening I pass through "Prairie-dog City," the largest congregation of prairie-dog dwellings met with on the tour.
In these they lived very snugly four men in each and would often amuse themselves by poking their heads out and barking at the occupants of adjacent huts in imitation of the prairie-dog, whose comfortable nests had probably suggested the idea of dugouts. The men were much better off, in fact, than many of the officers, for the high winds frequently made havoc with our wall-tents.
One hundred troopers under Major Brown were detailed as escort, and the commissary department fairly bulged. Several ambulances were also taken along, for the comfort of those who might weary of the saddle. Game was abundant, and rare sport was had. Buffalo, elk, and deer were everywhere, and to those of the party who were new to Western life the prairie-dog villages were objects of much interest.
It is more social or gregarious than the American species, living in large families like our prairie-dog. In the Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the place, in some respects, of the English rabbit, burrowing in every hillside and under every stone wall and jutting ledge and large bowlder, from whence it makes raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon the garden vegetables.
Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole.
This led to an edict against poisoning in that district, and thus was a great boon to the Coyotes. Tito quickly learned that not only each kind of game must be hunted in a special way, but different ones of each kind may require quite different treatment. The Prairie-dog with the outlying den was really an easy prey, but the town was quite compact now that he was gone.
Great confusion has been caused in the minds of readers on account of there being another burrowing animal, called by Lewis and Clark "the burrowing squirrel," which resembles the petit chien in some respects. But the little animal described here is now well known as the prairie-dog, an unfortunate and misleading name. It is in no sense a species of dog.
When a respite in my disorder gave me some returning strength, I rode out well-armed upon the prairie, or bathed with Shaw in the stream, or waged a petty warfare with the inhabitants of a neighborhood prairie-dog village. Around our fire at night we employed ourselves in inveighing against the fickleness and inconstancy of Indians, and execrating The Whirlwind and all his village.
It was not the pony's fault. Neither was it Ferguson's. The pony was experienced; behind his slant eyes was stored a world of horse-wisdom that had pulled him and his rider through many tight places. And Ferguson had ridden horses all his life; he would not have known what to do without one. But the pony stumbled. The cause was a prairie-dog hole, concealed under a clump of matted mesquite.
Through the hours of that day on rolled the train, still over the crisp buffalo grass, across the well-worn buffalo trails, past the prairie-dog villages.
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