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But Hervey was not a keen observer, or he would have added, "and as wicked as a rattlesnake." The two tramped on all that day, but there was little shooting done. Hervey also seemed to have utterly forgotten his intention to shoot the dog. Time after time jack-rabbits got up and dashed off into the woods, but there followed no report of the gun.
Next summer was a wonderful year for the Jack-rabbits. A foolish law had set a bounty on Hawks and Owls and had caused a general massacre of these feathered policemen. Consequently the Rabbits had multiplied in such numbers that they now were threatening to devastate the country. The farmers, who were the sufferers from the bounty law, as well as the makers of it, decided on a great Rabbit drive.
Anything that we put up, from a fox to a coyote or a prong-buck, was fair game, and was instantly followed at full speed. The animals we most frequently killed were jack-rabbits. They always gave good runs, though like other game they differed much individually in speed.
A few days of this taught the Jack-rabbits that when pursued their safety was to get back by one of the hatches into the Haven. Now the second lesson began. The whole band were driven out of a side door into a long lane which led around three sides of the Park to another inclosure at the far end. This was the Starting Pen.
It was the twelfth of April, Thursday; that, then, was to be the date of his death Thursday, April twelfth, at two in the morning, so it would read upon his gravestone. For an instant the awfulness of the thing he was to do came upon him, and the next instant he found himself wondering if they still coursed jack-rabbits with greyhounds down at Coronado the way they used to do when he was there.
Here is where they met, here they chased each other in play, for no signs of battle were there to be seen; here they fed or sat together in the sun, there they ambled side by side, and here again they sported in the snow, always together. There was only one conclusion: this was the mating season. This was a pair of Jack-rabbits the Little Warhorse and his mate.
Realizing this fact, Scotty was not in the least deceived when, during a lull at the dinner-table one evening late in the Fall, she broke in with an irrelevant though seemingly innocent remark. "I saw several big jack-rabbits when I was out riding this morning." The dark eyes turned upon her father quizzically, humorously. "They seem to be very plentiful."
The tiny chap of a game-bearer, gripping the long, velvet ears of one of the jack-rabbits tied to his horse, felt a horrid new sensation of sliding backward when the pony began to follow the hunters up the hill. Not only did the animal's rump seem to sink beneath him as they took the slope, but perspiration had made it amazingly smooth and insecure.
There are prairie chickens, and there are ten jack-rabbits there to one in Colorado." "But, Terry, last winter you wrote me about some bad Mexican and American cowboys who had made trouble for you." "Yes, but didn't we have the same trouble out in Colorado?
His appreciation of a sunrise is always exuberant. Ever since that coyote's been big enough to rustle his own jack-rabbits he's howled at a lovely full moon, and if he's ever missed his sun-up cheer it's because something he ate the night before didn't agree with him." "Sir," snapped the irascible one, "you're a trifler. You're you're a " "Say it," soothed the student of nature.
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