Gretchen's mother was bending over her wash-tubs out under the oaks, and I called her attention to the pretty birds brooding in her door-yard, telling her that they were good friends of hers, eating up the worms that destroyed her flowers and vegetables. "So?" she asked, but seemed ready to let the subject drop there, and hurried back to her work. A poor widow with a large family of children and a ranch to look after can find little time, even in beautiful California, to enjoy what Nature places in her door-yard.
Three weeks later Gretchen came riding down to tell me that there were eggs in the tree again. The bluebird bid fair to be as hardworked as the widow, at that rate, I thought, when I went up to look at them. The children showed me the nest of a goldfinch, near the ground, in one of the little orange-trees in front of the house. They also pointed out linnets' nests in the vines by the door, and the oldest child said eagerly, "When we came home from school there was a hummingbird in the window, and we caught it," adding, "I think it must have been a father hummingbird." "Why?" I asked, "was it pretty?" "Yes, it just shined," she exclaimed enthusiastically.
When the family were at home, their puppy would bark at us furiously, and follow us about suspiciously, but when he had been left on the ranch alone he was glad of our society. Then when I watched the bluebirds, he came and curled down by my side, becoming so friendly that he actually grew jealous of Billy, and turned to have me caress him each time that the little horse walked up to have the flies brushed off his nose, or having pulled up a bunch of grass by the roots, brought it for me to hold so that he could eat it without getting the dirt in his mouth.
Going home one day, Billy came upon a gopher snake. Now Canello had been brought up in a rattlesnake country, and was always on his guard, but Billy was 'raised' in the mountains, where snakes are scarce, and did not seem to know what they were. He had given me a good deal of anxiety by this indifference—he had stepped over a big one once without seeing any need for haste—and I had been expecting that he would get bitten. Here, then, was my chance to give him a scare. The gopher snake was harmless; perhaps, if I could get him so close to it that he would see it wriggle away from under his feet, he might be less indifferent to rattlers.
The gopher snake was three or four feet long, and lay as straight as a stick across our path. As I urged Billy up beside it, he actually stepped on the tip of its tail. The poor snake writhed a little, but gave no other sign of pain; its rôle was to remain a stick. And Billy certainly acted as if it were. I threw the reins on his neck, thinking that if he put his head down to graze he might make a discovery. Then a horrid thought came to me. The people said the rattlers sometimes lost their rattles. In a general way, rattlers and gopher snakes look alike; what if this were a rattlesnake, and at my bidding my little horse should be struck! But no. There was no mistaking the long tapering body of the gopher, and it lacked the wide flat head of the rattler. But I might have spared myself my fears. Billy would not even put his head down, and when I tried to force him upon the snake he quietly turned aside. To make the snake move, I threw a stick at it, but it was as obstinate as Billy himself. Then I slipped to the ground, and picking up a long pole gave it a gingerly little poke. Still motionless! I tried another plan, taking Billy away a few yards. Then at last the snake slowly pulled itself along. But the moment we came back it turned into a stick again, and Billy relapsed into indifference. It was no use. I could do nothing with either of them. I would see the snake go off, anyway, I thought, so withdrew and waited till it felt reassured, when it started. Its silken skin shone as it wormed silently through the grass and disappeared down a hole without a sound, and I reflected that it might also come up without a sound, very likely beside me as I sat on the dead leaves!
XVII.
WHICH WAS THE MOTHER BIRD?