but late in the
evening had run one knobby leg into a hole in the prairie-dog village
and taken a bad tumble. He had not been able to rise again, and, in
struggling had got wedged upon his back between two mounds, so that he
had to lie, feet up, all night. His mother had fed near him till dark
came on, and had stood over him through the night; and not till the sun
was well up did she leave him to go for water. It was then that he had
been blinded, for some crows, flying by to the stubble-fields around the
farm-house, had thought him dead and had alighted beside him with
inquiring cries.

Now, as he stood in the cottonwoods beside his mother, he shook his head
uneasily as if unpleasant memories were stirring in his baby brain, and
stamped crossly as the dogs came up, their tongues out with their hot
pursuit.

Time dragged slowly. Late in the afternoon a dash of rain found its way
down through the cottonwood leaves, splashed against the little girl's
face, and mingled with the tear-drops. The pinto moved farther into the
shelter of the grove and the light sprinkle did not wet her. As the
light slowly faded the peepers along the river began to send up their
lonesome chant, and a crow went whirring past to his home down the
river, with no cry to the blind black colt underneath, for his bill was
thrust through a redhead's egg. Near by, from the open prairie, the
brown pippets flew skyward against the rain-drops, greeting the coming
night with a last song, and then dropped silently to their nests in the
lush grass.

The framework of the smoke-house roof was in its place, and the laying
of the straw bundles, in long, overlapping rows, well started before the
shower began; and so rapidly did the big brothers work, that when the
collie came in with the sheep, the thatching was nearly finished, and
the squatty, straw-crowned building, with grass and flower tops
sticking, still fresh, from between its sods, looked like one of the
chocolate layer-cakes that the little girl's mother made for
Thanksgiving, only the filling was green instead of brown, and the top
coating was gold.

They were on top of the house, laying the last two rows of straw along
the ridge-pole, when their mother, who was in the kitchen getting
supper, noticed that it was sprinkling, looked northward through the
gloom to try to catch a glimpse of the little girl returning with the
herd, and then called to the big brothers to ask if they could not see
cattl