"And sometimes
there are snakes or an owl in the same hole with the prairie dog."
"Then I'm not going any nearer," decided Janet. "I don't mind an
owl, but I don't like snakes! Come on, Ted, let's hurry."
As they started off, the prairie dog, which really did make a
whistling sound, suddenly darted down inside his burrow or hole.
Perhaps he thought Teddy and Janet were coming to carry him off, but
they were not. The children saw many more of the little animals as
they rode over the prairies.
"But we must look for marks--tracks, Baldy calls them," said Teddy.
"Tracks will tell us which way the Indians went," and so the children
kept their eyes turned toward the sod as they rode along.
For a while they could see many marks in the soft ground--the marks
of horses' feet, some shod with iron shoes and others bare, for on
the prairie grass there is not the same need of iron shoes on the
hoofs of horses as in the city, with its hard, paved streets. Then
the marks were not so plain; and pretty soon, about a mile from the
spring amid the rocks where the ground was quite hard, Teddy and
Janet could see no marks at all.
"Which way do we go?" asked Ted's sister, as he called to his pony
to stop. "Do you know the way?"
"No, I don't guess I do," he answered. "But anyhow we can ride along
and maybe well see 'em."
"Yes, we can do that," Janet said.
It was still early in the afternoon, and the sun was shining
brightly.
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