During this day there was hardly a stretch of half an hour but Dick and Roger made some new and interesting discovery. Now it was a little herd of antelope that, scenting the presence of human enemies on the wind, sprang from the grass where they had been lying, and went off with graceful bounds that awoke the ardent admiration of Dick, while Roger aimed his gun after them, though he was not foolish enough to waste precious ammunition when his good sense told him he had not a ghost of a show to bring the game down.
A little later they stumbled upon a village of prairie dogs, the first either of the boys had ever set eyes on. In fact, the first sign they had of the settlement was when one of the horses broke through into a burrow, and came near throwing its rider, or breaking a leg.
Then there was a great clatter as scores of the queer little fellows started to bark, and then vanish inside their burrows, from which they later cautiously thrust their noses, curious to see what these strange intruders were like.
“Better slow down to a walk until we are clear of this place,” warned Dick, as he suited his action to his words. “Did you ever see such a sight, Roger? There must be thousands of these little chaps around here; and hear the fierce way they bark at us before they run indoors.”
“I wonder if they are good to eat?” asked the practical Roger, for the elk meat was all gone, and he had begun to wonder what they might find next.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” his cousin replied; “and I wouldn’t like to try before I saw some one else eat one. The Indians are very fond of baked dog, you know; but I never heard that it was this breed. Better give that idea up, Roger; a little later we may find a chance to knock over one of those fast-running antelope, or else get a young buffalo calf for a change.”
“That sounds good enough for me,” remarked the other; “and so I think I’ll let the prairie dogs alone just now. But look there, isn’t that a rattlesnake lying in the sun outside that burrow?”
“Just what it is,” Dick answered, quickly. “Which reminds me that I’ve been told that the snakes seem to occupy the burrows along with the dogs. Perhaps they’ve got some sort of arrangement between them; or else the prairie dog isn’t afraid of the poison of the rattlesnake. See, there’s another, yes, and even a third one, much larger than any of the rest!”
“Ugh! wouldn’t I hate to have to walk through this village in the dark!” Roger exclaimed, with a shudder, as they passed several more snakes lying in the warm sunshine, not at all bothered by the thud of horses’ hoofs.
“It’s a bad job going through it, even on horseback, and in the daytime,” Dick observed, “because you have to watch closely to keep from having the animal break through the roof of a burrow; and, first thing you know, one of those nasty rattlesnakes might be striking at the horse’s legs. It would be a shame to lose so valuable an animal in that way, when we need them both so badly.”