Old frontiersmen are the most superstitious class of people in the world. They all believe in omens and portents, things that forebode death and disaster. Their lives are spent amid dangerous surroundings, and they are suspicious of everything that seems unusual or ominous, and often attach uncanny significance to things which would make no impression upon the ordinary citizen living in a peaceful community. One of the surest signs of approaching death to the old plainsman and Indian fighter is the scream of the "death-bird." The "death-bird" is supposed to fly about at night or hover near white men or women and children to give warning of the approach of Indians, wild beasts, or other great dangers. Its cry is the most piercing, nerve-racking wail that ever smote upon human ears. There is an almost human expression in it, as though it were the scream of a woman or child in mortal fear; and there is no mistaking its note among all the other night-birds of the plains. It never warns people unless there is no possible escape by other means, and woe to the man who hears its cry and heeds it not. As far as I have been able to discover no human eye has ever looked upon this mysterious "death-bird," for it flies only on dark nights, never uttering its warning at any other time, and the folk it honours with its attentions are thrown into such a state of fear, expectancy, and dread that curiosity as to the appearance of the bird is far from their thoughts. It is supposed, however, to be an owl, black as midnight, with very long wings and a large head and mouth, which superstitious people who claim to have seen the creature declare to be strangely like the head and mouth of a human being. Almost every old Ranger and frontiersman has a weird story to tell as to the "death-bird" having saved the life of someone or other from Indians or outlaws. Most of the stories, however, are second-hand narratives, and I found when they had been sifted down they had almost always happened to someone other than the narrator. It was extremely rare that they were personal experiences, and they generally happened in some distant part of the State at some remote time. I had been a Ranger twenty years before I met a man, in whom I had the utmost confidence, who had a personal experience to relate wherein the "death-bird" had warned him of danger and saved his life. Up to this time I had doubted the truthfulness of these stories, and scouted the idea that such a bird existed. About seven years after this my friend, in company with two other Rangers, was ambushed and killed one night by renegade Mexicans down on the Rio Grande border, and on this occasion there was no "death-bird" to save his life, so I was still a little dubious. [Illustration: MR. ISAAC MOTES, WHO HERE RELATES SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING EXPERIENCES HE HAD DURING FORTY YEARS' SERVICE AS A TEXAS RANGER. _From a Photograph._]