of the affairs of their own kind. When the five
coyotes that range the Tejon from Pasteria to Tunawai planned a relay
race to bring down an antelope strayed from the band, beside myself to
watch, an eagle swung down from Mt. Pinos, buzzards materialized out of
invisible ether, and hawks came trooping like small boys to a street
fight. Rabbits sat up in the chaparral and cocked their ears, feeling
themselves quite safe for the once as the hunt swung near them. Nothing
happens in the deep wood that the blue jays are not all agog to tell.
The hawk follows the badger, the coyote the carrion crow, and from their
aerial stations the buzzards watch each other. What would be worth
knowing is how much of their neighbor's affairs the new generations
learn for themselves, and how much they are taught of their elders.

So wide is the range of the scavengers that it is never safe to say,
eyewitness to the contrary, that there are few or many in such a place.
Where the carrion is, there will the buzzards be gathered together, and
in three days' journey you will not sight another one. The way up from
Mojave to Red Butte is all desertness, affording no pasture and scarcely
a rill of water. In a year of little rain in the south, flocks and herds
were driven to the number of thousands along this road to the perennial
pastures of the high ranges. It is a long, slow trail, ankle deep in
bitter dust that gets up in the slow wind and moves along the backs of
the crawling cattle. In the worst of times one in three will pine and
fall out by the way. In the defiles of Red Rock, the sheep piled up a
stinking lane; it was the sun smiting by day. To these shambles came
buzzards, vultures, and coyotes from all the country round, so that on
the Tejon, the Ceriso, and the Little Antelope there were not scavengers
enough to keep the country clean. All that summer the dead mummified in
the open or dropped slowly back to earth in the quagmires of the bitter
springs. Meanwhile from Red Rock to Coyote Holes, and from Coyote Holes
to Haiwai the scavengers gorged and gorged.

The coyote is not a scavenger by choice, preferring his own kill, but
being on the whole a lazy dog, is apt to fall into carrion eating
because it is easier. The red fox and bobcat, a little pressed by
hunger, will eat of any other animal's kill, but will not ordinarily
touch what dies of itself, and are exceedingly shy of food that has been
manhandled.

Very clean and handsome, quit