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 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.
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.”