tting up and stretching, and rubbing his
stiffened legs tenderly. "I can't say that I blame you I came mighty
near doing the same thing myself when that fool of a rabbit squealed."

CHAPTER XI

THE LITTLE VILLAGER AND HIS UNFRIENDLY GUESTS

Across the still surface of Silverwater, a-gleam in the amber and
violet dusk, came a deep booming call, hollow and melancholy and
indescribably wild. _Tooh-hoo-oo-whooh-ooh-oo_, and again
_whooh-ooh-ooh-oo_, it sounded; and though the evening was warm the
Child gave a little shiver of delicious awe, as he always did when he
heard the sunset summons of the great horned owl.

"That's a bad fellow for you, the Big Horned Owl," growled Uncle Andy.
"He's worse than a weasel, and that's a hard thing to say about any of
the wild folk. He's everybody's enemy, and always ready to kill much
more than he can eat."

"_Some_ owls aren't bad," suggested the Child. He had a soft spot in
his heart for owls, because they were so downy, and had such round
faces and such round eyes, and looked as if they thought of such
wonderful, mysterious things which they would never tell.

"How do you know that?" demanded Uncle Andy suspiciously. "Mind, I'm
not saying off-hand that it isn't so, but I'd like to know where you
get your information."

"Bill told me," said the Child, with more confidence in his tones than
he usually accorded to this authority.

"Oh, Bill!" sniffed Uncle Andy. "And haven't you got used to Billy's
fairy stories yet?"

There was an obstinate look in the Child's earnest blue eyes which
showed that this time the imaginative guide had told him a tale which
he was unwilling to discredit.

"I know very well, Uncle Andy," said he with a judicial air, "that Bill
loves to yarn, and often pretends to know a lot of things that aren't
so. But I think he's telling the truth this time. He said he was.
It's a little owl that lives out West on the big sandy plains. And it
makes its nest in holes on the ground. It knows how to dig these holes
itself, you know; but it can't dig them half, or a quarter, so well as
the prairie dogs can. So it gets the prairie dogs to let it live in
their big, comfortable burrows; and in return for this hospitality it
kills and eats some of the rattlesnakes, the very small ones, I
suppose, of course, which come round among the burrows looking for the
young prairie dogs. Well, you know, Uncle Andy, Bill has been out West
himself, and he's see