ish't you'd come out yer right quick. They's
two o' them prai' dogs out yer a-chasin' ouah hens agin--nasty, dirty
things!"

"Very well, Lucy," called out a voice in answer. Mary Ellen arose from
her seat near the window, whence she had been gazing out over the wide,
flat prairie lands and at the blue, unwinking sky. Her step was free
and strong, but had no hurry of anxiety. It was no new thing for these
"prairie dogs," as Aunt Lucy persisted in calling the coyotes, to chase
the chickens boldly up to the very door. These marauding wolves had at
first terrified her, but in her life on the prairies she had learned to
know them better. Gathering each a bit of stick, she and Aunt Lucy
drove away the two grinning daylight thieves, as they had done dozens
of times before their kin, all eager for a taste of this new feathered
game that had come in upon the range. With plenteous words of
admonition, the two corralled the excited but terror-stricken speckled
hen, which had been the occasion of the trouble, driving her back
within the gates of the inclosure they had found a necessity for the
preservation of the fowls of their "hen ranch." Once inside the
protecting walls, the erring one raised her feathers in great anger and
stalked away in high dudgeon, clucking out anathemas against a country
where a law-abiding hen could not venture a quarter of a mile from
home, even at the season when bugs were juiciest.

"It's that same Domineck, isn't it, Lucy?" said Mary Ellen, leaning
over the fence and gazing at the fowls.

"Yess'm, that same ole hen, blame her fool soul! She's mo' bother'n
she's wuf. I 'clare, ever' time I takes them er' chickens out fer a
walk that ole Sar' Ann hen, she boun' fer to go off by herse'f
somewheres, she's that briggotty; an' first thing I knows, dar she is
in trouble again--low down, no 'count thing, I say!"

"Poor old Sarah!" said Mary Ellen. "Why, Aunt Lucy, she's raised more
chickens than any hen we've got."

"Thass all right, Miss Ma'y Ellen, thass all right, so she have, but
she made twict as much trouble as any hen we got, too. We kin git two
dollahs fer her cooked, an' seems like long's she's erlive she boun'
fer ter keep me chasin' 'roun' after her. I 'clare, she jest keep the
whole lot o' ouah chickens wore down to a frazzle, she traipsin 'roun'
all the time, an' them a-follerin' her. Jess like some womenfolks.
They gad 'roun' so much they kain't git no flesh ontoe 'em. An', o