On the Cattle Ranges 87 



empty cartridge case to a skinning knife. But he 

 knows nothing of mice, shrews, pocket gophers, or 

 weasels; and but little even of some larger mam 

 mals with very marked characteristics. Thus I have 

 met but one or two plainsmen who knew anything 

 of the curious plains ferret, that rather rare weasel- 

 like animal, which plays the same part on the plains 

 that the mink does by the edges of all our streams 

 and brooks, and the tree-loving sable in the cold 

 northern forests. The ferret makes its home in 

 burrows, and by preference goes abroad at dawn 

 and dusk, but sometimes even at midday. It is as 

 bloodthirsty as the mink itself, and its life is one 

 long ramble for prey, gophers, prairie-dogs, sage 

 rabbits, jack-rabbits, snakes, and every kind of 

 ground bird furnishing its food. I have known one 

 to fairly depopulate a prairie-dog town, it being 

 the arch foe of these little rodents, because of its 

 insatiable blood lust and its capacity to follow them 

 into their burrows. Once I found the bloody body 

 and broken eggs of a poor prairie-hen which a fer 

 ret had evidently surprised on her nest. Another 

 time one of my men was eye-witness to a more re 

 markable instance of the little animal s blood 

 thirsty ferocity. He was riding the range, and be 

 ing attracted by a slight commotion in a clump of 

 grass, he turned his horse thither to look, and to 

 his astonishment found an antelope fawn at the last 

 gasp, but still feebly struggling, -in the grasp of a 



