“And be careful how you handle the hawk, if he’s only winged,” warned Jack, “for they can fight like all get-out, and the first thing he’ll try to get at will be your eyes. Knock him on the head, Jimmy, before you handle him.”
“Shucks! tell me somethin’ I don’t know!” laughed the other, starting off, gun in hand, toward the trees growing along the same stream that passed the door of Hy Adams’ dugout, some three miles away.
He came back after a little while carrying a dead hawk.
“It was a fine shot, for a fact!” admitted Jack, as he took the bird into his hands, the better to see where the bullet had struck.
“What’s that you’ve got besides, Jimmy?” asked Harry.
“Me to the foolish house if it don’t make me think of a pet pigeon I used to have long ago,” Jimmy ventured.
“It is a pigeon,” said Ned, as he handled the dead bird that had been chased and captured by the hungry hawk.
“What’s that, Ned; a tame pigeon out here on the plains?” Jack questioned.
“Well, there are no wild pigeons any more, all gone,” Ned explained, “and this bird is a passenger pigeon or a carrier. You can see from the odd shape of its bill.”
“What they call a homing pigeon, you mean, don’t you, Ned?” asked Harry.