THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN 



self-fertilized or wind-fertilized plants, but 

 everywhere the demand for and evidence 

 of insect life. Now where there are seeds 

 and insects there will be birds and small 

 mammals, and where these are, will come 

 the slinking, sharp-toothed kind that prey 

 on them. Go as far as you dare in the 

 heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so 

 far that life and death are not before you. 

 Painted lizards slip in and out of rock 

 crevices, and pant on the white hot sands. 

 Birds, hummingbirds even, nest in the 

 cactus scrub ; woodpeckers befriend the 

 demoniac yuccas ; out of the stark, treeless 

 waste rings the music of the night-singing 

 mockingbird. If it be summer and the 

 sun well down, there will be a burrowing 

 owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksy things 

 dart across the open places, or sit motion- 

 less in the conning towers of the creosote. 

 13 



