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Updated: June 23, 2025
The mocking-birds, which had so jeered and flouted him before, were again fluttering to and fro over his head and crying incessantly with their sharp, small voices: "Herr Studiosus, Herr Studiosus, don't be in such a hurry! Don't peep into the clouds so! You may fall on your nose He, he! Herr Studiosus, put your powder-mantle on; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle your toupee."
"Well, keep your teeth shut down on it, then, darn yuh!" he growled. "That's the Injun of it I know YOU! Screech-owl huh! You said when you left it was an Indian and that's why we didn't take after it ourselves. We don't want to get the whole bunch down on us like they are on you and if there was one acting up around here, we knew blamed well it was on your account for what happened to-day.
The terse language of my note-book will answer for the rest of this day's experiences: "Broke camp at 7 A.M., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb Dana valley and the rough mountains horses limping and that Arab screech-owl that does most of the singing and carries the water-skins, always a thousand miles ahead, of course, and no water to drink will he never die?
It pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking without him. "That's what hurts worst of all," he would say: "that I cannot drink my Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going without drink is the very deuce." Then his wife's screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she would break in with the words: "Look at him!
"So have I." "Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!" "It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey." "If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do. You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say what I say.
The purple twilight merged into blue shadows, then into black, impenetrable darkness that swallowed up the pass and the two little white tents of the Pony Rider Boys. "W'en de screech-owl light on de gable en' En holler, Whoo-oo! oh-oh! Den you bettah keep yo' eyeball peel, Kase dey bring bad luck t' yo', Oh-oh! oh-oh!" "Stop that noise!" shouted an angry voice from the tent occupied by the boys.
For my own part, I would rather have his cheerfulness and kind neighborhood than many berries. The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one o the sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with the most beguiling mockery of distance. For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer regard.
Go! thou wilt be consulted in the kitchens of many critics; they will fly thy light, and like the screech-owl, retreat into thy shadow. Ho, ho, ho! Already I hear the ear-cracking howls in the inhospitable forest, and anxiously conceal myself in my sable. I chanced the other eve, But how I ne'er will tell, The paper to receive. That's published down in hell.
"O Lord, O Lord!" ejaculated the terrified comrade of the fallen man, dropping on his knees, "for Heaven's sake, sir, have a care." "What argument canst thou allege, thou screech-owl of the metropolis, that thou shouldst not share the same fate as thy brother owl?" "Thou art an impudent thing to jest at us," said Tarleton; "but thy wit has saved thee; rise."
A piece of water in front of the house attracted all the frogs in the neighbourhood; the screech-owl mewed from the tops of the plane-trees, and numerous birds, no longer disturbed by the presence of man, had domiciled themselves in the lilacs and the cypresses. A host of insects had seized upon the dwelling, which had long been deserted.
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