PLAINS AND FOOTHILLS 179 



especially out on the plains. Not far from Denver one 

 of these uncanny, sepulchral birds was seen, having been 

 frightened from her tunnel as I came stalking near it. 

 She flew over the brow of the hill in her smooth, silent 



way, and uttered no svl- " The dark 

 lable of protest as I examined '^''^'•"•«2/" 

 ' "*'' her domicile — or, rather, the 



outside of it. Scattered about 

 the dark doorway were a number of bones, feathers, 

 and the skin of a frog, telling the story of the table 

 d'hote set by this underground dweller before her nest- 

 lings. She might have put up the crossbones and 

 skull as a sign at the entrance to her burrow, or even 

 placed there the well-known Dantean legend, " All hope 

 abandon, ye who enter here," neither of which would 

 have been more suggestive than the telltale litter piled 

 up before her door. When I chased her from her 

 hiding-place, she flew down the hill and alighted on a 

 fence-post in the neighborhood of her nest, uttering 

 several screechy notes as I came near her again, as if she 



