By the end of the dry season the water trails of the Ceriso are worn to
a white ribbon in the leaning grass, spread out faint and fanwise toward
the homes of gopher and ground rat and squirrel. But however faint to
man-sight, they are sufficiently plain to the furred and feathered folk
who travel them. Getting down to the eye level of rat and squirrel kind,
one perceives what might easily be wide and winding roads to us if they
occurred in thick plantations of trees three times the height of a man.
It needs but a slender thread of barrenness to make a mouse trail in the
forest of the sod. To the little people the water trails are as country
roads, with scents as signboards.
It seems that man-height is the least fortunate of all heights from
which to study trails. It is better to go up the front of some tall
hill, say the spur of Black Mountain, looking back and down across the
hollow of the Ceriso. Strange how long the soil keeps the impression of
any continuous treading, even after grass has overgrown it. Twenty years
since, a brief heyday of mining at Black Mountain made a stage road
across the Ceriso, yet the parallel lines that are the wheel traces show
from the height dark and well defined. Afoot in the Ceriso one looks in
vain for any sign of it. So all the paths that wild creatures use going
down to the Lone Tree Spring are mapped out whitely from this level,
which is also the level of the hawks.
There is little water in the Ceriso at the best of times, and that
little brackish and smelling vilely, but by a lone juniper where the rim
of the Ceriso breaks away to the lower country, there is a perpetual
rill of fresh sweet drink in the midst of lush grass and watercress. In
the dry season there is no water else for a man's long journey of a day.
East to the foot of Black Mountain, and north and south without
counting, are the burrows of small rodents, rat and squirrel kind. Under
the sage are the shallow forms of the jackrabbits, and in the dry banks
of washes, and among the strewn fragments of black rock, lairs of
bobcat, fox, and coyote.
The coyote is your true water-witch, one who snuffs and paws, snuffs and
paws again at the smallest spot of moisture-scented earth until he has
freed the blind water from the soil. Many water-holes are no more than
this detected by the lean hobo of the hills in localities where not even
an Indian would look for it. It is the opinion of many wise and busy
people that the hill-folk pass the ten-month interval between the end
and renewal of winter rains, with no 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 he 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 cañon 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. 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 lone 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, 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. Around the
spring, where must have been a gathering place of the tribes, it is
scored over with strange pictures and symbols that have no meaning to
the Indians of the present day; but out where the rock begins, there is
carved into the white heart of it a pointing arrow over the symbol for
distance and a circle full of wavy lines reading thus: "In this
direction three [units of measurement unknown] is a spring of sweet
water; look for it."