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. Ther