a big one once without seeing
any need for haste--and I had been expecting that he would get bitten.
Here, then, was my chance to give him a scare. The gopher snake was
harmless; perhaps, if I could get him so close to it that he would see
it wriggle away from under his feet, he might be less indifferent to
rattlers.

The gopher snake was three or four feet long, and lay as straight as a
stick across our path. As I urged Billy up beside it, he actually
stepped on the tip of its tail. The poor snake writhed a little, but
gave no other sign of pain; its role was to remain a stick. And Billy
certainly acted as if it were. I threw the reins on his neck, thinking
that if he put his head down to graze he might make a discovery. Then a
horrid thought came to me. The people said the rattlers sometimes lost
their rattles. In a general way, rattlers and gopher snakes look alike;
what if this were a rattlesnake, and at my bidding my little horse
should be struck! But no. There was no mistaking the long tapering body
of the gopher, and it lacked the wide flat head of the rattler. But I
might have spared myself my fears. Billy would not even put his head
down, and when I tried to force him upon the snake he quietly turned
aside. To make the snake move, I threw a stick at it, but it was as
obstinate as Billy himself. Then I slipped to the ground, and picking up
a long pole gave it a gingerly little poke. Still motionless! I tried
another plan, taking Billy away a few yards. Then at last the snake
slowly pulled itself along. But the moment we came back it turned into a
stick again, and Billy relapsed into indifference. It was no use. I
could do nothing with either of them. I would see the snake go off,
anyway, I thought, so withdrew and waited till it felt reassured, when
it started. Its silken skin shone as it wormed silently through the
grass and disappeared down a hole without a sound, and I reflected that
it might also come _up_ without a sound, very likely beside me as I sat
on the dead leaves!

[Illustration]

XVII.

WHICH WAS THE MOTHER BIRD?

THE second time I went to California the little whitewashed adobe
opposite my ranch was still standing, but an acacia-tree had grown over
the well where the black ph[oe]be had nested, and the shaft was so
overrun with bushes and vines that it was hard to find a trace of it.
Drawn by pleasant memories, I rode in one morning, sure of finding
something interesting about