A dull eyed rattlesnake that lay
All loathsome, yellow-skinned, and slept,
Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun
With flat head through the center run,
Struck blindly back.
JOAQUIN MILLER.
The air was steeped in the warm fragrance of a California spring. Every crease and wrinkle of the encircling hills was reflected in the blue stillness of the laguna. Patches of poppies blazed like bonfires on the mesa, and higher up the faint smoke of the blossoming buckthorn tangled its drifts in the chaparral. Bees droned in the wild buckwheat, and powdered themselves with the yellow of the mustard, and now and then the clear, staccato voice of the meadow-lark broke into the drowsy quiet—a swift little dagger of sound.
MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM,
in Stories of the Foothills.
