Grouse. 73 



clear, still night air the calls can be heard for a mile and 

 more, and I like to listen to them as they come through 

 the darkness, half mellowed by the distance, for they are 

 one of the characteristic sounds of plains life. Texan steers 

 often give considerable trouble before they can be bedded, 

 and are prone to stampede, especially in a thunder-storm. 

 But with the little herd we were at this time guarding 

 there was no difficulty whatever, the animals being grade 

 short-horns of Eastern origin. After seeing them quiet we 

 would leave them for the night, again riding out early in 

 the morning. 



On every occasion when we thus rode out in the 

 morning we saw great numbers of prairie fowl feeding in 

 the open plain in small flocks, each evidently composed of 

 a hen and her grown brood. They would often be right 

 round the cattle, and went indifferently among the sage- 

 brush or out on the short prairie grass. They flew into 

 the bottom from some distance off about daybreak, fed 

 for a couple of hours, and soon after sunrise again took 

 wing and flew up along the course of the dry creek men- 

 tioned above. While on the bottom they were generally 

 quite shy, not permitting any thing like a close approach 

 before taking wing. Their habit of crowing or clucking 

 while flying off is very noticeable ; it is, by the way, a 

 most strongly characteristic trait of this species. I have 

 been especially struck by it when shooting in Minnesota, 

 where both the sharp-tail and the common prairie fowl are 

 found ; the contrast between the noisiness of one bird and 

 the quiet of the other was very marked. If one of us ap- 

 proached a covey on horseback the birds would, if they 



