detail in that tawny landscape that made de-
tail so precious.

Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-
dog town to watch the brown earth-owls fly
home in the late afternoon and go down to
their nests underground with the dogs. An-
tonia Shimerda liked to go with me, and we
used to wonder a great deal about these birds
of subterranean habit. We had to be on our
guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurk-
ing about. They came to pick up an easy
living among the dogs and owls, which were
quite defenseless against them; took posses-
sion of their comfortable houses and ate the
eggs and puppies. We felt sorry for the owls.
It was always mournful to see them come fly-
ing home at sunset and disappear under the
earth. But, after all, we felt, winged things
who would live like that must be rather de-
graded creatures. The dog-town was a long
way from any pond or creek. Otto Fuchs
said he had seen populous dog-towns in the
desert where there was no surface water
for fifty miles; he insisted that some of the
holes must go down to water -- nearly two
hundred feet, hereabouts. Antonia said she
didn't believe it; that the dogs probably

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v?