The Land of Little Rain | Page 9

again; the coyotes that are astir in the Ceriso of late
afternoons, harrying the rabbits from their shallow forms, and the
hawks that sweep and swing above them, are not there from any
mechanical promptings of instinct, but because they know of old

experience that the small fry are about to take to seed gathering and the
water trails. The rabbits begin it, taking the trail with long, light leaps,
one eye and ear cocked to the hills from whence a coyote might
descend upon them at any moment. Rabbits are a foolish people. They
do not fight except with their own kind, nor use their paws except for
feet, and appear to have no reason for existence but to furnish meals for
meat-eaters. In flight they seem to rebound from the earth of their own
elasticity, but keep a sober pace going to the spring. It is the young
watercress that tempts them and the pleasures of society, for they
seldom drink. Even in localities where there are flowing streams they
seem to prefer the moisture that collects on herbage, and after rains
may be seen rising on their haunches to drink delicately the clear drops
caught in the tops of the young sage. But drink they must, as I have
often seen them mornings and evenings at the rill that goes by my door.
Wait long enough at the Lone Tree Spring and sooner or later they will
all come in. But here their matings are accomplished, and though they
are fearful of so little as a cloud shadow or blown leaf, they contrive to
have some playful hours. At the spring the bobcat drops down upon
them from the black rock, and the red fox picks them up returning in
the dark. By day the hawk and eagle overshadow them, and the coyote
has all times and seasons for his own.
Cattle, when there are any in the Ceriso, drink morning and evening,
spending the night on the warm last lighted slopes of neighboring hills,
stirring with the peep o' day. In these half wild spotted steers the habits
of an earlier lineage persist. It must be long since they have made beds
for themselves, but before lying down they turn themselves round and
round as dogs do. They choose bare and stony ground, exposed fronts
of westward facing hills, and lie down in companies. Usually by the
end of the summer the cattle have been driven or gone of their own
choosing to the mountain meadows. One year a maverick yearling,
strayed or overlooked by the vaqueros, kept on until the season's end,
and so betrayed another visitor to the spring that else I might have
missed. On a certain morning the half-eaten carcass lay at the foot of
the black rock, and in moist earth by the rill of the spring, the foot-pads
of a cougar, puma, mountain lion, or whatever the beast is rightly
called. The kill must have been made early in the evening, for it

appeared that the cougar had been twice to the spring; and since the
meat-eater drinks little until he has eaten, he must have fed and drunk,
and after an interval of lying up in the black rock, had eaten and drunk
again. There was no knowing how far he had come, but if he came
again the second night he found that the coyotes had left him very little
of his kill.
Nobody ventures to say how infrequently and at what hour the small
fry visit the spring. There are such numbers of them that if each came
once between the last of spring and the first of winter rains, there would
still be water trails. I have seen badgers drinking about the hour when
the light takes on the yellow tinge it has from coming slantwise through
the hills. They find out shallow places, and are loath to wet their feet.
Rats and chipmunks have been observed visiting the spring as late as
nine o'clock mornings.
The larger spermophiles that live near the spring and keep awake to
work all day, come and go at no particular hour, drinking sparingly. At
long intervals on half-lighted days, meadow and field mice steal
delicately along the trail. These visitors are all too small to be watched
carefully at night, but for evidence of their frequent coming there are
the trails that may be traced miles out among the crisping grasses. On
rare nights, in the places where no grass grows between the shrubs, and
the sand silvers whitely to the moon, one sees them whisking to and fro
on innumerable errands of seed gathering, but the chief witnesses of
their presence near the spring are the elf owls. Those burrow-haunting,
speckled fluffs of greediness begin a twilight flitting toward the