El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-07-12
BY F. st. Mars.

" HE field was very quiet and peace
full in the beautiful morning
sun. Birds were singing. There
was a rabbit GU on the grass from the
big warren situated where the old,
tangled. double hedge Joined the wood,
and there were two black and shining
rocks waddling about looking for
grubs.
Suddenly the rocks rose with startled
Glamour, the rabbit ran in in hurry,
and all the birds except a robin left off
singing.
-Four men, with guns and bags and
spades and two dogs, had entered the
field quietly and made their way up
along the hedge to the warren
Arrived at the warren, they flung
down spades and bags and loaded their
guns. They were still very quiet. The
bags looked rather uncanny because
they rolled ad danced about in very
odd fashion, like live things, although
they made no sound.
Then one of the men knelt by a rab-
bits hole, and slipping his hand into
one of the bags, drew forth a strange,
long, flatheaded. sharp nosed, pink
eyed. shotr legged, white beast with
coarse fur the color of ivory. He was
an odd little ANNA, because Of the eX-
treme shortness of his legs compared
to the great length of body, terminated
of the look of coOIly savage ferOcity
stamped upon him. He scratched like
a fiend at the fingers of the man who
had hold of him round the back OF the
neck, and snapped at, and narrowly
missed, the mans other hand, incau-
tiOusly held near him.
He was ferret and his business in
life was to drive out rats and rabbits
for his master and friends to kill. This
accounted for his shape and character,
for it is not every animal who is able.
or willing to turn fierce old boar rats
out of their homes.
The man calmly threw the ferret
down at the mouth of the buTrOW. and
the ferret after picking himself up
equally calmly, sneeZed twice. and
dropping his head to the ground, exact
" after the manner of questinS
hound. ran in and vanished.
Now, rabbits holes, even if they ap-
pear to run in horizontally, almost in
variably drop shap down Just inside
the entrance. This is because a wound
ed rabbit should be able to slide in out
of danger merely by his own weight
And, therefore. the ferret, careless of
danger found himself suddenly pre-
cipitated down a miniature chute into
a hot, stuffy darkness, full of the smell
of rabbits he landed at the bottom
in a cloud of DUST, bang in the center
of party Of rabbits.
The scene that followed was surpris-
ing. He might have awakened a min
ldluAG NOACdltO- " Juu-C ~ AhG COAAL u
sion Of rumblings. scufflings, scurry-
ings, stamping and stampedinE. There
were. l suppose. some half dozen
tunnels opening out from that one, and
rabbits vanished like smoke up every
one of them
AS for the ferret, h. picked himself
up out of the turmoil, and with his
little fierce eyes cleaning red in the
dark. set off on the trail of the first
rabbit he encountered. Up and down
the winding, echOing, sitting tunnels
he raced, hearing the rumblings of dis
turbed and terrified rabbits all around
him. That warren was Veritable
labyrinth of tunnels. and since our fer
ret always fOlulOwed the trail Of the
same rabbit it began to look as if he
were going to hunt his prey through
the endless maze till he. or it, dropped.
In the end our ferret cOrnered the
rabbit, however. and after narrowly