His Own Ablutions Were Performed In The Clean, Hopeful
Dust Of The Chaparral; And Whenever He Happened On Their Morning
Splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining
tail to the level of his body, until he looked
Most like some
bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of
battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the
gully in fine disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure
the foolish bodies were still at it.
Out on the Ceriso about five miles, and wholly out of sight of
it, near where the immemorial foot trail goes up from Saline Flat
toward Black Mountain, is a water sign worth turning out of the
trail to see. It is a laid circle of stones large enough not
to be disturbed by any ordinary hap, with an opening flanked by
two parallel rows of similar stones, between which were an arrow
placed, touching the opposite rim of the circle, thus it would
point as the crow flies to the spring. It is the old, indubitable
water mark of the Shoshones. One still finds it in the desert
ranges in Salt Wells and Mesquite valleys, and along the slopes of
Waban. On the other side of Ceriso, where the black rock begins,
about a mile from the spring, is the work of an older, forgotten
people. The rock hereabout is all volcanic, fracturing with a
crystalline whitish surface, but weathered outside to furnace
blackness.
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