little wind-blown or water-placed piles of soil, which produce dwarfed shrubs, grasses, and vigorous plants and wild flowers.

Dried food in the form of hay is what enables the cony to endure the long winters and to live merrily in the very frontier of warm-blooded life. In this zone he lives leisurely.

Rocky placed his haystack between boulders, beneath the edge of the big flat rock on which he sat for hours daily, except during haymaking time. As soon as the stack was dry he carried the hay down into his underground house and stacked it in one or more of the rock-walled rooms. It appears that all cony stacks are placed by the entrance of the den, and in as sheltered a spot as possible. Rocky cut and stacked his hay during September, then early October I saw him carrying it underground.

These cony haystacks were of several sizes and many shapes. The average one was smaller than a bushel basket. I have seen a few that contained twice or even three times the contents of a bushel.

There were rounded haystacks, long and narrow ones, and others of angular shape. But few were of good form, and the average stack had the appearance of a wind-blown trash pile, or a mere heap of dropped hay. Invariably the stack was placed between or to the leeward of rocks; evidently for wind protection.

One stack in a place was the custom. But a number of times I have seen two, four, and once five stacks in collection. Near each stack collection was an equal number of entrances to cony dens.

But little is known concerning the family life of the cony. Nor do I know how long the average cony lives. A prospector in the San Juan Mountains saw a cony frequently through four years. I had glimpses of Rocky a few times each year for three years. During the second summer one of his ears was torn and the slit never united. Just how this happened I do not know.

All conies that I saw making hay were working alone. But there were five conies at work in one field. One of these haymakers was lame in the left hind foot. Each haycutter carried his load off to his stack. One stack was thirty steps from the field; the one of the lame fellow, fortunately, was only eight steps.

The cony is a relative of the rabbit, the squirrel, the beaver, and the prairie dog. Although he has a home underground, he spends most of his waking hours outdoors. Above ground on a rock he sits—in the sunshine, in cloud, and even in the rain.

Except during harvest, or when seeking a new home, he works but little. Much of the time he simply sits. On a rock that rises two feet or more above the surrounding level he sits by the hours, apparently dreaming.

By the entrance of Rocky’s den lay a large, flat slab of granite, several feet long. This was raised upon boulders. He stacked his hay beneath the edge of this outreaching slab and upon the slab he spent hours each day, except in busy haymaking time.

With back against his rock, without a move for an hour or longer, he would sit in one spot near his den. Now and then he sent forth a call as though asking a question, and then gravely listened to the responses of far-off conies. Occasionally he appeared to repeat a call as though relaying a message from his station. Many of these “Skee-eks” may at times be just common cony talk, while others, given with different speeds and inflections, sometimes are quick and peculiarly accented, and probably warn of possible danger or tell of the approach of something harmless.

One spring day I came by Rocky’s place and he was not in sight. I waited long, then laid my sweater upon his slab of granite and went on to the home of another cony. On returning Rocky was home. Like a little watch dog he sat upon the sweater.

Another time in June he was out in the hay meadow eating the short young plants. I stood within ten feet of him and he went on eating as though he did not know I was there. Occasionally he called “Ke-ack” that appeared to be relayed to far-off conies. He did not seem to be watching me but the instant I moved he darted beneath a rock out of sight.

Conies are shy wherever I have found them, and I found many in places possibly not before visited by people.

Rocky’s nearest cony neighbour was more than two hundred feet away across the boulders. During a winter visit to him I found cony tracks which indicated that these two conies had exchanged calls.

The cony appears something of a traveller, something of an explorer. A number climb to the summit of the nearest peak during the summer and occasionally one goes far down into the lower lands.

A few times I have seen them as explorers on top of Long’s Peak and other peaks that rise above 14,000 feet; and occasionally a cony comes to my cabin and spends a few days looking around, taking refuge, and spending the nights in the woodpile. My cabin is at 9,000 feet, and the nearest cony territory is about a mile up the mountainside.

One snowy day, while out following a number of mountain sheep, I passed near the home of Rocky and turned aside hoping to see him. Before reaching his rock I saw a weasel coming toward me with a limp cony upon his shoulder and clutched by the throat. The weasel saw me and kept on coming toward me, and would, I believe, have brushed by. He appeared in a hurry to take his kill somewhere, probably home.

I threw a large chunk of snow which struck upon a rock by him. He fell off the rock in scrambling over the snow. But he clung to the cony and dragged it out of reach beneath a boulder.

No fur or blood was found on Rocky’s rock nor on any of the rocks surrounding his den. Possibly the cony carried by the weasel was another cony. Just what may have become of Rocky I cannot be sure. Possibly he was crushed by the settling of the rock walls of his house; a fox, eagle, or weasel may have seized him. But at any rate, I never saw him again that I know of, and that autumn no busy little haymaker appeared in the meadow among the boulders.

The weasel is the most persistent and effective enemy of the cony. Evidently he is dreaded by them. Bears, lions, coyotes, foxes, and eagles occasionally catch a cony; but the weasel often does. The weasel is agile, powerful, slender bodied, and can follow a cony into the smaller hiding places of the den and capture him. During winter he is the snow-white ermine, and in white easily slips up over the snow unseen. He can outrun, outdodge a cony, and then, too, he is a trained killer. From the weasel there is no escape for the cony.

During winter rambles in cony highlands I occasionally discovered a stack of hay on the surface. Most stacks are moved into the dens before winter is on.

When a stack is left outside it commonly means that either the stack is exceptionally well sheltered from wind and snow, and in easy and safe reach of the cony, or else the little owner has lost his life—an avalanche or other calamity forced him to leave the locality.

One sunny morning I set off early on snowshoes to climb high and to search for the scattered cony haystacks among the rocks on the side of Long’s Peak. A haystack sheltered against a cliff was found at timberline. By it was the fresh track of a bighorn ram. He had eaten a few bites of the hay. No other part of the stack had been touched. Around were no cony tracks in the snow. The stack had the appearance of being incomplete. Had a lynx or other prowler captured the haymaker in the unsheltered hayfield? Evidently the owner or builder had not been about for weeks. A slowly forming icicle almost filled the unused entrance to the cony den.

Against the bottom of one large slide of rock was a grassy meadow of a few acres which