But as they stood, there was a fluttering of broad wings, and there, alighting as before on the medicine pole, was the Owl again.

“My turn now!” exclaimed Yan in a gaspy whisper.

He drew his bow, the arrow flew, and the Owl slipped off unharmed as it had the first time.

“Yan, you’re no good.  An easy shot like that.  Why, any idiot could hit that.  Why didn’t you fetch her?”

“’Cause I’m not an idiot, I suppose.  I hit the same place as you did, anyway, and drew just as much blood.”

“Ef he comes back again you call me,” piped Guy in his shrill voice.  “I’ll show you fellers how to shoot.  You’re no good at all ’thout me.  Why, I mind the time I was Deer-shooting——­” but a fierce dash of the whole Tribe for Sappy’s bed put a stop to the reminiscent flow and replaced it with whines of “Now you let me alone.  I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to you.”

During the night they were again awakened by the screech in the tree-tops, and Yan, sitting up, said, “Say, boys, that’s nothing but that big Cat Owl.”

“So it is,” was Sam’s answer; “wonder I didn’t think of that before.”

“I did,” said Guy; “I knew it all the time.”

In the morning they went out to find their arrows.  The medicine pole was a tall pole bearing a feathered shield, with the tribal totem, a white Buffalo, which Yan had set up to be in Indian fashion.  Sighting in line from the teepee over this, they walked on, looking far beyond, for they had learned always to draw the arrow to the head.  They had not gone twenty-five feet before Yan burst out in unutterable astonishment:  “Look!  Look at that--and that------”

There on the ground not ten feet apart were two enormous Horned Owls, both shot fairly through the heart, one with Sam’s “Sure-death” arrow, the other with Yan’s “Whistler”; both shots had been true, and the boys could only say, “Well, if you saw that in print you would say it was a big lie!” It was indeed one of those amazing things which happen only in real life, and the whole of the Tribe with one exception voted a grand coup to each of the hunters.

Guy was utterly contemptuous.  “They got so close they hit by chance an’ didn’t know they done it.  If he had been shooting,” etc., etc., etc.

“How about that screech in the tree-tops, Guy?”

“Errrrh.”

What a fascination the naturalist always finds in a fine Bird.  Yan revelled in these two.  He measured their extent of wing and the length from beak to tail of each.  He studied the pattern on their quills; he was thrilled by their great yellow eyes and their long, powerful claws, and he loved their every part.  He hated to think that in a few days these wonderful things would be disgusting and fit only to be buried.

“I wish I knew hew to stuff them,” he said.

“Why don’t you get Si Lee to show you,” was Sam’s suggestion.  “Seems to me I often seen pictures of Injun medicine men with stuffed birds,” he added shrewdly and happily.