The Land of Little Rain | Page 8

drink; but your true idler, with days and nights to spend beside
the water trails, will not subscribe to it. The trails begin, as I said, very
far back in the Ceriso, faintly, and converge in one span broad, white,
hard-trodden way in the gully of the spring. And why trails if there are
no travelers in that direction?
I have yet to find the land not scarred by the thin, far roadways of
rabbits and what not of furry folks that run in them. Venture to look for
some seldom-touched water-hole, and so long as the trails run with
your general direction make sure you are right, but if they begin to
cross yours at never so slight an angle, to converge toward a point left
or right of your objective, no matter what the maps say, or your
memory, trust them; they know.
It is very still in the Ceriso by day, so that were it not for the evidence
of those white beaten ways, it might be the desert it looks. The sun is
hot in the dry season, and the days are filled with the glare of it. Now
and again some unseen coyote signals his pack in a long-drawn,
dolorous whine that comes from no determinate point, but nothing stirs
much before mid-afternoon. It is a sign when there begin to be hawks
skimming above the sage that the little people are going about their
business.
We have fallen on a very careless usage, speaking of wild creatures as
if they were bound by some such limitation as hampers clockwork.
When we say of one and another, they are night prowlers, it is perhaps
true only as the things they feed upon are more easily come by in the
dark, and they know well how to adjust themselves to conditions
wherein food is more plentiful by day. And their accustomed
performance is very much a matter of keen eye, keener scent, quick ear,
and a better memory of sights and sounds than man dares boast. Watch
a coyote come out of his lair and cast about in his mind where be will
go for his daily killing. You cannot very well tell what decides him, but
very easily that he has decided. He trots or breaks into short gallops,
with very perceptible pauses to look up and about at landmarks, alters
his tack a little, looking forward and back to steer his proper course.

I am persuaded that the coyotes in my valley, which is narrow and
beset with steep, sharp hills, in long passages steer by the pinnacles of
the sky-line, going with head cocked to one side to keep to the left or
right of such and such a promontory.
I have trailed a coyote often, going across country, perhaps to where
some slant-winged scavenger hanging in the air signaled prospect of a
dinner, and found his track such as a man, a very intelligent man
accustomed to a hill country, and a little cautious, would make to the
same point. Here a detour to avoid a stretch of too little cover, there a
pause on the rim of a gully to pick the better way,--and it is usually the
best way,--and making his point with the greatest economy of effort.
Since the time of Seyavi the deer have shifted their feeding ground
across the valley at the beginning of deep snows, by way of the Black
Rock, fording the river at Charley's Butte, and making straight for the
mouth of the canon that is the easiest going to the winter pastures on
Waban. So they still cross, though whatever trail they had has been
long broken by ploughed ground; but from the mouth of Tinpah Creek,
where the deer come out of the Sierras, it is easily seen that the creek,
the point of Black Rock, and Charley's Butte are in line with the wide
bulk of shade that is the foot of Waban Pass. And along with this the
deer have learned that Charley's Butte is almost the only possible ford,
and all the shortest crossing of the valley. It seems that the wild
creatures have learned all that is important to their way of life except
the changes of the moon. I have seen some prowling fox or coyote,
surprised by its sudden rising from behind the mountain wall, slink in
its increasing glow, watch it furtively from the cover of near-by brush,
unprepared and half uncertain of its identity until it rode clear of the
peaks, and finally make off with all the air of one caught napping by an
ancient joke. The moon in its wanderings must be a sort of exasperation
to cunning beasts, likely to spoil by untimely risings some fore-planned
mischief.
But to take the trail