much interested in the families you are watching
that you feel as if their troubles were yours, and are haunted by the
fear that they will think you have something to do with their accidents.
They had taken me on probation at first, and at last had come to trust
me--and then to imagine that I could deceive them and do the harm
myself!

When Canello and I left the brushy side of the canyon and started across
the valley, the pretty little horned larks, whose reddish backs matched
the color of the road, would run on ahead of us, or let the horses come
within a few feet of them, squatting down ready to start, but not taking
wing till it seemed as if they would get stepped on. Sometimes one sat
on a stone by the roadside, so busy singing its thin chattering song
that it only flitted on to the next stone as we came up; for it never
seemed to occur to the trustful birds that passers-by might harm them.

One of our most interesting birds nested in holes in the open
uncultivated fields down the valley,--the burrowing owl, known
popularly, though falsely, as the bird who shares its nest with prairie
dogs and rattlesnakes. Though they do not share their quarters with
their neighbors, they have large families of their own. We once passed a
burrow around which nine owls were sitting. The children of the ranchman
called the birds the 'how-do-you-do owls,' from the way they bow their
heads as people pass. The owls believe in facing the enemy, and the
Mexicans say they will twist their heads off if you go round them times
enough.

One of our neighbors milked his cows out in a field where the burrowing
owls had a nest, and he told me that his collie had nightly battles with
the birds. I rode down one evening to see the droll performance, and
getting there ahead of the milkers found the bare knoll of the pasture
peopled with ground squirrels and owls. The squirrels sat with heads
sticking out of their holes, or else stood up outside on their hind
legs, with the sun on their light breasts, looking, as Mr. Roosevelt
says, like 'picket pins.' The little old yellowish owls who matched the
color of the pasture sat on the fence posts, while the darker colored
young ones sat close by their holes, matching the color of the earth
they lived in. As I watched, one of the old birds flew down to feed its
young. A comical little fellow ran up to meet his parent and then
scudded back to the nest hole, keeping low to the ground as if afraid of
being