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 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.
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