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, quite belying his relationship in appearance,
is Clark's crow, that scavenger and plunderer of mountain camps. It is
permissible to call him by his common name, "Camp Robber:" he has earned
it. Not content with refuse, he pecks open meal sacks, filches whole
potatoes, is a gormand for bacon, drills holes in packing cases, and is