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 spring, feeding as they go on grasshoppers,
lizards, and small, swift creatures, diving into burrows to catch
field mice asleep, battling with chipmunks at their own doors, and
getting down in great numbers toward the long juniper. Now owls do
not love water greatly on its own account. Not to my knowledge
have I caught one drinking or bathing, though on night wanderings
across the mesa they flit up from under the horse's feet along
stream borders. Their presence near the spring in great numbers
would indicate the presence of the things they feed upon. All
night the rustle and soft hooting keeps on in the neighborhood of
the spring, with seldom small shrieks of mortal agony. It is clear
day before they have all gotten back to their particular hummocks,
and if one follows cautiously, not to frighten them into some
near-by burrow, it is possible to trail them far up the slope.
The crested quail that troop in the Ceriso are the happiest
frequenters of the water trails. There is no furtiveness about
their morning drink. About the time the burrowers and all that
feed upon them are addressing themselves to sleep, great
flocks pour down the trails with that peculiar melting motion of
moving quail, twittering, shoving, and shouldering. They splatter
into the shallows, drink daintily, shake out small showers over
their perfect coats, and melt away again into the scrub, preening
and pranking, with soft contented noises.
After the quail, sparrows and ground-inhabiting birds bathe
with the utmost frankness and a great deal of splutter; and here in
the heart of noon hawks resort, sitting panting, with wings aslant,
and a truce to all hostilities because of the heat. One summer
there came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and
prying, and he had never any patience with the water baths of the
sparrows. 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.
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