sure the foolish bodies were still at it.

Out on the Ceriso about five miles, and wholly out of sight of it, near
where the immemorial foot trail goes up from Saline Flat toward Black
Mountain, is a water sign worth turning out of the trail to see. It is a
laid circle of stones large enough not to be disturbed by any ordinary
hap, with an opening flanked by two parallel rows of similar stones,
between which were an arrow placed, touching the opposite rim of the
circle, it would point as the crow flies to the spring. It is the old,
indubitable water mark of the Shoshones. One still finds it in the
desert ranges in Salt Wells and Mesquite valleys, and along the slopes
of Waban. On the other side of Ceriso, where the black rock begins,
about a mile from the spring, is the work of an older, forgotten people.
The rock hereabout is all volcanic, fracturing with a crystalline
whitish surface, but weathered outside to furnace blackness. Around the
spring, where must have been a gathering place of the tribes, it is
scored over with strange pictures and symbols that have no meaning to
the Indians of the present day; but out where the rock begins, there is
carved into the white heart of it a pointing arrow over the symbol for
distance and a circle full of wavy lines reading thus: "In this
direction three [units of measurement unknown] is a spring of sweet
water; look for it."



THE SCAVENGERS

Fifty-seven buzzards, one on each of fifty-seven fence posts at the
rancho El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September morning, sat solemnly
while the white tilted travelers' vans lumbered down the Canada de los