The Prairie Sharp-tailed Grouse 203 



pointed to a white feather cUnging to a weed. 

 His gun was in the rig, and suddenly he leaped 

 to one side and shouted, " Shoot — shoot ! " 



Something appeared to be slowly moving in 

 a tunnel, so I snapped at it, and stood peering 

 through the smoke. 



" You got him — shoot ! " he roared, pointing 

 to one side. A grouse's wing waved in the grass 

 and some white thing showed at which I promptly 

 fired, and then — ye gods ! of all the infernal 

 smells that ever polluted God's glorious oxygen 

 that was the elixir. Actually it seemed as though 

 a blue haze steamed up out of the grass, and the 

 first fair whiff of it made my olfactories tingle. 

 Had those burrows penetrated to the hot here- 

 after, and the odor been the essence of all the 

 evil ever committed, it couldn't have stunk worse, 

 and coming as it did, on the pure, thin air, which 

 drifted from the taintless polar silence, it was a 

 horror indescribable. " Faugh ! — Let's — get — 

 out ! " I gasped, for I was like to choke. 



" Yes, there was a skunk at both ends of this 

 trail," said my comrade, grimly, and again I men- 

 tally cursed the bird. He, however, was deter- 

 mined to investigate, and he presently drew forth 

 the chicken, and no less than three skunks. It 

 appeared that the stricken bird had fallen upon a 

 family party of odoriferous plantigrades ; that two 

 had seized it and were in the act of dragging it 



