CAMPING ON THE PLAINS 99 



quarter of a mile across. Thousands of holes 

 close together. Each had an opening that the 

 top of my hat just plugged. Each hole had a 

 dam of dirt around it that looked like a little 

 crater. I stepped off ninety feet square, size 

 of a baseball diamond, and inside this there 

 were forty-six holes." 



Most camping trips were made alone and 

 without a pack horse. During each trip I 

 watched for new animals. The ones I had 

 known always gave new performances. Often 

 I sat for two hours watching a mother bird 

 feed her young, or sometimes it was a lesson 

 in flying. Frequently I came upon a battle 

 between ant colonies. The last day on the 

 plains, while two colonies were fighting around 

 and all over a big ant hill, two flickers came along 

 and ate hundreds of the fighters. 



When vacation ended I returned to the cow 

 camp and one of the cowboys took me to the 

 nearest railroad station and I went home to my 

 log cabin in the mountains at Long's Peak. 



Of all the useless hardware which I carried 

 around during my earlier camping trips a big 

 compass was the most unnecessary. 



A compass will get out of order or lost or 

 jammed. And magnetic iron in some places 

 influences it so strongly that its needle goes 

 round and round like lost geese. The needle 



