f broad wings, and there,
alighting as before on the medicine pole, was the Owl again.

"My turn now!" exclaimed Yan in a gaspy whisper.

He drew his bow, the arrow flew, and the Owl slipped off unharmed as
it had the first time.

"Yan, you're no good. An easy shot like that. Why, any idiot could hit
that. Why didn't you fetch her?"

"'Cause I'm not an idiot, I suppose. I hit the same place as you did,
anyway, and drew just as much blood."

"Ef he comes back again you call me," piped Guy in his shrill voice.
"I'll show you fellers how to shoot. You're no good at all 'thout me.
Why, I mind the time I was Deer-shooting----" but a fierce dash of the
whole Tribe for Sappy's bed put a stop to the reminiscent flow and
replaced it with whines of "Now you let me alone. I ain't doin'
nothin' to you."

During the night they were again awakened by the screech in the
tree-tops, and Yan, sitting up, said, "Say, boys, that's nothing but
that big Cat Owl."

"So it is," was Sam's answer; "wonder I didn't think of that before."

"I did," said Guy; "I knew it all the time."

In the morning they went out to find their arrows. The medicine pole
was a tall pole bearing a feathered shield, with the tribal totem, a
white Buffalo, which Yan had set up to be in Indian fashion. Sighting
in line from the teepee over this, they walked on, looking far beyond,
for they had learned always to draw the arrow to the head. They
had not gone twenty-five feet before Yan burst out in unutterable
astonishment: "Look! Look at that--and _that_------"

There on the ground not ten feet apart were two enormous Horned Owls,
both shot fairly through the heart, one with Sam's "Sure-death" arrow,
the other with Yan's "Whistler"; both shots had been true, and the
boys could only say, "Well, if you saw that in print you would say it
was a big lie!" It was indeed one of those amazing things which happen
only in real life, and the whole of the Tribe with one exception voted
a _grand coup_ to each of the hunters.

Guy was utterly contemptuous. "They got so close they hit by chance
an' didn't know they done it. If he had been shooting," etc., etc.,
etc.

"How about that screech in the tree-tops, Guy?"

"Errrrh."

What a fascination the naturalist always finds in a fine Bird. Yan
revelled in these two. He measured their extent of wing and the length
from beak to tail of each. He studied the pattern on their quills;
he was thrilled by their great yellow ey