try, and the quail family saw quite as many of 
them as they cared to see. There was one big 
fellow in particular that they found several 
times near a cluster of palo verde trees and 
cacti that grew on the bank of the arroyo. 
They always took good care to keep at a safe 
distance, because for some reason they were 
much afraid of him, despite the fact that he 
never chased or disturbed them in any way. 
There came a time when they saw what he could 
do to a bird that was so foolish as to get close to 
him. A black-throated sparrow was the victim. 
When they first noticed the bird it was slowly 
hopping along the lower limb of a thorn bush, 
fluttering its wings in a helpless manner and 
calling plaintively. Soon it sprang to the 
ground, and there only a few feet away lay the 
snake in a half coil. Slowly, irresistibly, the 
sparrow fluttered forward. It could not take 
its eyes from the terrible enemy before it. Then 
all at once the snake’s head shot out and the 
poor bird was caught. 
If the quails had thought much about this inci- 
dent and had been.mentally capable of reason- 
202 
