102 RIVERBY 



course, an omelet made out of them tasted ever so 

 much better than if made out of home-laid eggs; 

 now I should not like the taste so well, probably, 

 for there is a wild flavor to the egg, as there is to 

 the flesh of the bird. Many a time I 've stepped 

 right into the nest, so well was it hidden. After a 

 prairie fire is a good time to go egging, the nests be- 

 ing in plain sight and the eggs already roasted. I 

 have tried again and again to raise the chickens by 

 setting the eggs under the tame hens, but it cannot 

 be done; they seem to inherit a shyness that makes 

 them refuse to eat, and at the first opportunity they 

 slip off in the grass and are gone. Every kind of 

 food, even to live insects, they will refuse, and will 

 starve to death rather than eat in captivity. There 

 are but few chickens here now; they have taken 

 Horace Greeley's advice and gone west. As to 

 four-footed game, there were any number of the little 

 prairie-wolves and some big gray ones. Could see 

 the little wolves running across the prairie any time 

 o' day, and at night their continual yap, yap was 

 almost unendurable. They developed a taste for 

 barn-yard fowl that made it necessary for hens to 

 roost high. They are cowards in the daytime, but 

 brave enough to come close to the house at night. 

 If people had only had foxhounds, they would have 

 afforded an opportunity for some sport. I have 

 seen people try to run them down on horseback, but 

 never knew them to succeed. 



" One of my standard amusements was to go every 

 little while to a den the wolves had, where the rocks 



