lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches cleverly; and whatever he is
about, let a coyote trot never so softly by, the raven flaps up and
after; for whatever the coyote can pull down or nose out is meat also
for the carrion crow.

And never a coyote comes out of his lair for killing, in the country of
the carrion crows, but looks up first to see where they may be
gathering. It is a sufficient occupation for a windy morning, on the
lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of them eying each other
furtively, with a tolerable assumption of unconcern, but no doubt with a
certain amount of good understanding about it. Once at Red Rock, in a
year of green pasture, which is a bad time for the scavengers, we saw
two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and
only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.

Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures,
and their cognizance 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,