THE MESA TRAIL 



after prey, and on into the dark hears their 

 svit pus-ssk ! clearing out of the trail ahead. 

 Maybe the pin-point shriek of field mouse 

 or kangaroo rat that pricks the wakeful 

 pauses of the night is extorted by these 

 mellow-voiced plunderers, though it is just 

 as like to be the work of the red fox on his 

 twenty-mile constitutional. 



Both the red fox and the coyote are free 

 of the night hours, and both killers for the 

 pure love of slaughter. The fox is no great 

 talker, but the coyote goes garrulously 

 through the dark in twenty keys at once, 

 gossip, warning, and abuse. They are light 

 treaders, the split-feet, so that the solitary 

 camper sees their eyes about him in the 

 dark sometimes, and hears the soft intake 

 of breath when no leaf has stirred and no 

 twig snapped underfoot. The coyote is 

 your real lord of the mesa, and so he makes 

 150 



