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