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The Land of Little Rain-Part4_Mary Hunter Austin(1868-1934)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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tracks where it lay.

Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there



is no other except the bear makes so much noise. Being so well

warned beforehand, it is a very stupid animal, or a very bold one,



that cannot keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is hunted in

turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That



is the economy of nature, but with it all there is not sufficient

account taken of the works of man. There is no scavenger that eats



tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like disfigurement on the

forest floor.



THE POCKET HUNTER

I remember very well when I first met him. Walking in the evening



glow to spy the marriages of the white gilias, I sniffed the

unmistakable odor of burning sage. It is a smell that carries far



and indicates usually the nearness of a campoodie, but on the level

mesa nothing taller showed than Diana's sage. Over the tops of it,



beginning to dusk under a young white moon, trailed a wavering

ghost of smoke, and at the end of it I came upon the Pocket Hunter



making a dry camp in the friendly scrub. He sat tailorwise in the

sand, with his coffee-pot on the coals, his supper ready to hand in



the frying-pan, and himself in a mood for talk. His pack burros in

hobbles strayed off to hunt for a wetter mouthful than the sage



afforded, and gave him no concern.

We came upon him often after that, threading the windy passes,



or by water-holes in the desert hills, and got to know much of his

way of life. He was a small, bowed man, with a face and manner



and speech of no character at all, as if he had that faculty of

small hunted things of taking on the protective color of his



surroundings. His clothes were of no fashion that I could

remember, except that they bore liberal markings of pot black, and



he had a curious fashion of going about with his mouth open, which

gave him a vacant look until you came near enough to perceive him



busy about an endless hummed, wordless tune. He traveled far and

took a long time to it, but the simplicity of his kitchen



arrangements was elemental. A pot for beans, a coffee-pot, a

frying-pan, a tin to mix bread in--he fed the burros in this when



there was need--with these he had been half round our western world

and back. He explained to me very early in our acquaintance what



was good to take to the hills for food: nothing sticky, for that

"dirtied the pots;" nothing with "juice" to it, for that would not



pack to advantage; and nothing likely to ferment. He used no gun,

but he would set snares by the water-holes for quail and doves, and



in the trout country he carried a line. Burros he kept, one or two

according to his pack, for this chief excellence, that they would



eat potato parings and firewood. He had owned a horse in the

foothill country, but when he came to the desert with no forage but



mesquite, he found himself under the necessity of picking the beans

from the briers, a labor that drove him to the use of pack animals



to whom thorns were a relish.

I suppose no man becomes a pocket hunter by first intention.



He must be born with the faculty, and along comes the occasion,

like the tap on the test tube that induces crystallization. My



friend had been several things of no moment until he struck a

thousand-dollar pocket in the Lee District and came into his



vocation. A pocket, you must know, is a small body of rich ore

occurring by itself, or in a vein of poorer stuff. Nearly every



mineral ledge contains such, if only one has the luck to hit upon

them without too much labor. The sensible thing for a man to do



who has found a good pocket is to buy himself into business and

keep away from the hills. The logical thing is to set out looking



for another one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking

twenty years. His workingoutfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan



which he kept cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When

he came to a watercourse he would pan out the gravel of its bed for



"colors," and under the glass determine if they had come from far

or near, and so spying he would work up the stream until he found



where the drift of the gold-bearing outcrop fanned out into the

creek; then up the side of the canon till he came to the proper



vein. I think he said the best indication of small pockets was an

iron stain, but I could never get the run of miner's talk enough to



feel instructed for pocket hunting. He had another method in the

waterless hills, where he would work in and out of blind



gullies and all windings of the manifold strata that appeared not

to have cooled since they had been heaved up. His itinerary began



with the east slope of the Sierras of the Snows, where that range

swings across to meet the coast hills, and all up that slope to the



Truckee River country, where the long cold forbade his progress




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