Newchusen was a typical Western town. Everywhere in it, were to be seen
strenuous efforts at uglification, crowned with unmeasured success. The
streets were straight level lanes without curves or beauty-spots. The
houses were cheap and mean structures of flimsy boards and tar paper,
and not even honest in their ugliness, for each of them was pretending
to be something better than itself. One had a false front to make it
look like two stories, another was of imitation brick, a third
pretended to be a marble temple.
But all agreed in being the ugliest things ever used as human
dwellings, and in each could be read the owner's secret thought--to
stand it for a year or so, then move out somewhere else. The only
beauties of the place, and those unintentional, were the long lines of
hand-planted shade-trees, uglified as far as possible with whitewashed
trunks and croppy heads, but still lovable, growing, living things.
The only building in town with a touch of picturesqueness was the grain
elevator. It was not posing as a Greek temple or a Swiss chalet, but
simply a strong, rough, honest, grain elevator. At the end of each
street was a vista of the prairie, with its farm-houses, windmill
pumps, and long lines of Osage-orange hedges. Here at least was
something of interest--the gray-green hedges, thick, sturdy, and high,
were dotted with their golden mock-oranges, useless fruit, but more
welcome here than rain in a desert; for these balls were things of
beauty, and swung on their long tough boughs they formed with the soft
green leaves a color-chord that pleased the weary eye.
Such a town is a place to get out of, as soon as possible, so thought
the traveller who found himself laid over here for two days in late
winter. He asked after the sights of the place. A white Muskrat stuffed
in a case "down to the saloon"; old Baccy Bullin, who had been scalped
by the Indians forty years ago; and a pipe once smoked by Kit Carson,
proved unattractive, so he turned toward the prairie, still white with
snow.
A mark among the numerous Dog tracks caught his eye: it was the track
of a large Jack-rabbit. He asked a passer-by if there were any Rabbits
in town.
"No, I reckon not. I never seen none," was the answer. A mill-hand gave
the same reply, but a small boy with a bundle of newspapers said: "You
bet there is; there's lots of them out there on the prairie, and they
come in town a-plenty. Why, there's a big, big feller lives right round
Si Kalb's melon-patch--oh, an awful big feller, and just as black and
as white as checkers!" and thus he sent the stranger eastward on his
walk.
The "big, big, awful big one" was the Little Warhorse himself. He
didn't live in Kalb's melon-patch; he was there only at odd times. He
was not there now; he was in his west-fronting form or bed, because a
raw east wind was setting in. It was due east of Madison Avenue, and as
the stranger plodded that way the Rabbit watched him. As long as the
man kept the road the Jack was quiet, but the road turned shortly to
the north, and the man by chance left it and came straight on. Then the
Jack saw trouble ahead. The moment the man left the beaten track, he
bounded from his form, and wheeling, he sailed across the prairie due
east.
A Jack-rabbit running from its enemy ordinarily covers eight or nine
feet at a bound, and once in five or six bounds, it makes an
observation hop, leaping not along, but high in the air, so as to get
above all herbage and bushes and take in the situation. A silly young
Jack will make an observation hop as often as one in four, and so waste
a great deal of time. A clever Jack will make one hop in eight or nine,
do for observation. But Jack Warhorse as he sped, got all the
information he needed, in one hop out of a dozen, while ten to fourteen
feet were covered by each of his flying bounds. Yet another personal
peculiarity showed in the trail he left. When a Cottontail or a
Wood-hare runs, his tail is curled up tight on his back, and does not
touch the snow. When a Jack runs, his tail hangs downward or backward,
with the tip curved or straight, according to the individual; in some,
it points straight down, and so, often leaves a little stroke behind
the foot-marks. The Warhorse's tail of shining black, was of unusual
length, and at every bound, it left in the snow, a long stroke, so long
that that alone was almost enough to tell which Rabbit had made the
track.
Now some Rabbits seeing only a man without any Dog would have felt
little fear, but Warhorse, remembering some former stinging experiences
with a far-killer, fled when the foe was seventy-five yards away, and
skimming low, he ran southeast to a fence that ran easterly. Behind
this he went like a low-flying Hawk, till a mile away he reached
another of his beds; and here, after an observation taken as he stood
on his heels, he settled again to rest.
But not for long. In twenty minutes his great megaphone ears, so close
to the ground, caught a regular sound--crunch, crunch, crunch--the
tramp of a human foot, and he started up to see the man with the
shining stick in his hand, now drawing near.
Warhorse bounded out and away for the fence. Never once did he rise to
a "spy-hop" till the wire and rails were between him and his foe, an
unnecessary precaution as it chanced, for the man was watching the
trail and saw nothing of the Rabbit.
Jack skimmed along, keeping low and looking out for other enemies. He
knew now that the man was on his track, and the old instinct born of
ancestral trouble with Weasels was doubtless what prompted him to do
the double trail. He ran in a long, straight course to a distant fence,
followed its far side for fifty yards, then doubling back he retraced
his trail and ran off in a new direction till he reached another of his
dens or forms. He had been out all night and was very ready to rest,
now that the sun was ablaze on the snow; but he had hardly got the
place a little warmed when the "tramp, tramp, tramp" announced the
enemy, and he hurried away.
After a half-a-mile run he stopped on a slight rise and marked the man
still following, so he made a series of wonderful quirks in his trail,
a succession of blind zigzags that would have puzzled most trailers;
then running a hundred yards past a favorite form, he returned to it
from the other side, and settled to rest, sure that now the enemy would
be finally thrown off the scent.