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,