LUCK ON THE PRAIRIE 185 



with a dense thicket of low shrubs, I caught the 

 tinkle of junco voices and presently a glimpse of 

 white tail feathers. Now, then, since luck was 

 the order of the day, it was as likely as not that 

 these were not simple Junco hyemalis, such as I 

 had found at San Antonio, but one of several 

 Western kinds that might, for aught I was 

 aware, be looked for hereabout. 



And so it proved. The birds were amazingly 

 shy and secretive, but with patience I had three 

 or four of them under my glass one after an- 

 other ; and they were noticeably different from 

 our Eastern junco, and belonged, as the book's 

 description made clear, to the variety Junco hye- 

 malis connectens, the intermediate junco, so 

 (not very poetically) called. 



I went to dinner with an excellent appetite, 

 and afterward, the delay of the train still con- 

 tinuing, though with rumors that its end was 

 near, I took one more turn in the field, and this 

 time happened upon still another stranger, the 

 handsomest of the day, so wonderfully handsome, 

 though " handsome " is too cheap a word, that a 

 man would have to go far to beat it — an Ari- 

 zona PyrrJmloxia ; a bird — related to the cardi- 

 nal grosbeak group — having no representative 

 in the East. It would be a shame to attempt a 

 description of it here at the end of a hurried 



