Sagebrush

“ In the hot valleys and foothills of the southern half of California and in the Colorado Desert, south to Lower California, these grayish, black and white sparrows are found abundantly in localities where the sagebrush is common. They build their nests of roots and twigs, loosely put together, and usually lined with grass, feathers and horsehair, in the low sagebrush within two feet of the ground, or quite often placed on the ground under the cover of one of these bushes. ”

“ If men offended the laws of nature, a terrible punishment was exacted from them. If they offended the laws of man, as they did every day, the ordinary machinery of man's justice could not always reach them—and they knew it.
"By gosh," said Sagebrush, when they halted at noon in the shade of a towering pinnacle of rock, "ye done a good stroke when ye got to work this mornin' and cut off Sidewinder from them fellers yonder! ”

“ At such times he was more dangerous than when under the first influence of whiskey. It was close upon noon, and the silvery sagebrush was shimmering beneath the direct rays of the sun, when he rode his lathered horse out of a cottonwood grove to gaze, from the edge of a deep draw, at Wade's ranch buildings. That very morning a gaunt, gray timber-wolf had peered forth at almost the same point; and despite Moran's bulk, there was a hint of a weird likeness between man and beast in the furtive suspicious survey they made of the premises. ”

“ The bare desert rocks on the ridge four miles from our cabin are swarming with them. Ugh! They sun themselves in tangled masses, Allen says, but truly I can’t bring myself to go near the place. I get quite too much of snakes without that, for we are constantly killing them in the sagebrush. This country has never been settled, and except for an occasional prospector, there was nobody to kill them before the surveyors came. The Indians never bother the snakes, but pass by on the other side of a sagebrush and leave them in peace. ”

“ And these turned themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight was done; many would lose heart in the face of such great odds before the green blessing of alfalfa should rise out of the sullen ground.
Many a widow was there, whose heart was buried in a grave back East, and many a gray man, making his first independent start. ”

“ For this field on the other side was the wide, open plain; and it was grown over by tiny, half-knee high thickets of tumbleweed with here and there a trifle of sagebrush. Between these miniature thickets wound narrow strips of sandy soil, like streams and bays and estuaries in shape. We knew that the quail would lie well here, for they hate to cross bare openings.
Therefore, we threw out our skirmish line, and the real advance in force began.
Every man retrieved his own birds, a matter of some difficulty in the tumbleweed. While one was searching, the rest would get ahead of him. ”

“ Its drooping flowers on fairly tall stems are found growing in the Sagebrush areas or in alpine meadows. As they are not very conspicuous, they are often overlooked by visitors. The petals, with their mottled effect in brown, yellow and purple spots, present a remarkable pattern of beauty when observed closely. The odor of the plant is not pleasing to humans, but is no doubt attractive to insects. ”

“ One can expect to find most of the typical “badlands” species. Along the river look for Belted Kingfisher, any of the regular swallows, and migrant waterfowl and shorebirds. The sagebrush flats are good for Sharp-tailed Grouse, Gray Partridge, and Field Sparrows. ”

“ Into his ear it whispers the information that where it grows alfalfa will flourish. After imparting this information, it is content to endure the woes of surrendering its home. The farmer, using a railroad rail or a plank-drag, clears his ground of it and puts in its stead a field of alfalfa.
The sagebrush belongs to the composite family, and its immediate cousins are widely distributed. They are known as the artemisias, and there are a host of them, many with important uses in the economy of civilization. Artemisia absinthium is popularly known as wormwood ”

“ This species feeds extensively on sagebrush, at least in winter. Six young seem to be the rule and they are born any time from late in May until early in August.
Fig. 7. Distribution of Sylvilagus idahoensis.
[Pg 141]
Subgenus SYLVILAGUS Gray—Cottontails and Allies
1867. Sylvilagus Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 20 (ser. 3) :221. Type, Lepus sylvaticus Bachman [= Lepus nuttalli mallurus Thomas] .
1867. Tapeti Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 20 (ser. 3) :224, September. Type Lepus brasiliensis Linnaeus. ”

“ The Androscoggins also, with their little navy above Still-Water, floated downward with the very flower of the tribe, and before the sun should arise, the Sagamore of Saco, and his band of warriors, should be no more known than the cloud which yesterday dimmed the horizon, or the vapor which lost itself in the far-off ocean. ”

“ The mad-dog stone is a different species, used medicinally for the cure of hydrophobia, and the bite of venomous serpents. This latter is of oriental origin.
The sagamore would gladly have left all, and followed the oracle of the wizard, traveling toward the rising sun, where he now felt sure he should find Hope; but, as chief of the tribe he could not cast off the duties it involved, or forget the grave decorums of the office. He must await the return of the scout, and then follow the Terrentines and Androscoggins to their villages or hunting-grounds. ”

“ While the sagamore thus poured out his poetic rhapsody with beaming eyes, and looks unutterably tender, Hope’s dreamy eyes were fixed on the vapors circling the falls, which were ever and anon swept aside by the gusty wind which stirred in the bare branches of the trees. It was evident that much in the mind of her lover was to her a sealed book. Perhaps John Bonyton felt something of the kind. Who has not, at some time, poured out the unfathomed wealth of a soul upon an arid desert! ”

“ CHAPTER XIX AMOCHOL
By daybreak we had salted our parched corn, soaked, and eaten it, and my Indians were already freshening their paint. The Sagamore, stripped for battle, barring clout and sporran, stood tall and powerfully magnificent in his white and vermilion hue of war. On his broad chest the scarlet Ghost Bear reared; on his crest the scarlet feathers slanted low. The Yellow Moth was unbelievably hideous in the poisonous hue of a toad-stool; his crest and all his skin glistened yellow, shining like the sulphurous belly of a snake. ”

“ The smoke of the little hamlet rose dreamily upon the air, and the light tinkle of the herd-bell mingled with the lowing of kine and the faint echo of the ax of the woodman.
Often had Hope Vines paddled her light canoe across the Saco to meet her upon this upland, and here, with John Bonyton, they had idled away the long summer days, unconscious of that dreamy future which had now made life a desert to them all. ”

“ The same cloud returns not to the sky; the same blossom blooms not twice; human faces wear not twice the same look; and, alas! alas! the heart of to-day is not that of to-morrow.”
Her eyes had been fixed on the face of her lover, but as she went on, they were raised upward from his loving eyes—upward from his noble brow, and gazed away into the far-off and unknown, with a weird, wistful earnestness, as we have seen a child’s eyes fixed as the spirit found its way to the crystal gates of Paradise.
The sagamore seemed to listen when her voice had ceased ”

“ My Indians, silent and morose, their vengeance unslaked and now indefinitely deferred, moved at a dog trot through the forest, led by the Sagamore, whose eyes saw as clearly in the dark as my own by day.
And after a little while we noticed the stars above us, and felt ferns and grass under our feet, and came out into that same glade from whence runs the trail to Yndaia through the western hill cleft.
"People ahead!" whispered the Sagamore. "Their Sorceress and six Eries!"
"Are you certain?" I breathed, loosening my hatchet.
"Certain, Loskiel. Yonder they are halted within the ferns. ”

“ I can not live to see thee look with a weary heart—a half-heart, upon the Hope who is all thine.”
While the solitary child, pure as the unnamed crystal that hung from the cave in which she had been so long immured, gave expression to that untutored tenderness which she felt was to be a dream of the past, the sagamore suddenly started forward, and pointed to a high rock by the margin of the falls, upon which appeared the tall figure of Acashee. Hope saw her with a faint smile, which was not lost upon her lover. ”

“ Lastly, the minister came slowly down the pulpit-stairs, and walked down the aisle, and then John Bonyton strode forth, and walked, in a slow and stately manner, up the main street of the village, along the river-bank, and up the mountain gorges. No man dared lay hands upon him.
The Sagamore of Saco was no ordinary man, and the men of the times felt it. ”

“ That night the weather became worse than ever. The storm raged through the woods, roaring in the pines and swaying the birches and beeches, while dead branches snapped off with cracks like rifle-fire. Skewbald and his mother were sheltering on the lee side of a giant beech. If it had been day, the trail of dead oyster fungus up its trunk would have told its tale of inner decay. The mare became uneasy, and moved away from the shelter of the vast column. She called to Skewbald, who followed, but feeling the bite of the freezing wind, backed behind the trunk again. ”

“ Upon the headland overlooking the falls, and hidden by the heavy but stunted vegetation of the rocky hight, stood a small group of ancient warriors, the sole remnant of a once powerful band. These, after taking into their unwilling minds the terrible truth of ambush, defeat and death, stole away to the village to hasten the departure of the women and children.
Not so Acashee. She watched intently the group below in the midst of which floated the white, abundant locks of Hope Vines. With jealous rage she saw the sagamore fold the slight form to his breast ”

“ The Sagamore is of the high blood of the Delawares, and is the great chief of their Tortoises! That some of this stock are among the people of whom the singer tells us, is plain by his words; and, had he but spent half the breath in prudent questions that he has blown away in making a trumpet of his throat, we might have known how many warriors they numbered. It is, altogether, a dangerous path we move in; for a friend whose face is turned from you often bears a bloodier mind than the enemy who seeks your scalp. ”

“ Of these, some look up to it as to the trees of an ancient forest and are lost in its mazes; but of those who know it from the ground up, none is more loyal than the Sage Sparrow. Whether he gathers a breakfast, strewn upon the ground, among the red, white, and blue, of storkbill, chickweed, and fairy-mint, or whether he explores the crevices of the twisted sage itself for its store of shrinking beetles, his soul is filled with a vast content.
Here in the springtime he soon gets full enough for utterance, and mounts the topmost sprig of a sage bush to voice his thanks. ”

“ The sagamore plunged into the recesses of the forest, and at length emerged upon the river-bank, where, as boy and youth, he had idled his days in that ecstatic dream of love and youth, which so fills up the soul that the past is forgotten, the future hung with rainbow clouds, pavilioned with golden vaults and silvery sheen, thus exalting the glow of the present by an onward gorgeous perspective. ”

“ The newcomer advanced to the middle of the salon, moving like a man exhausted and breathing hard. There he leaned against a table, across which he confronted Mme. de Plougastel. And she stood regarding him, a strange horror in her eyes.
In the background, on a settle at the salon's far end, sat Aline staring in bewilderment and some fear at a face which, if unrecognizable through the mask of blood and dust that smeared it, was yet familiar. And then the man spoke, and instantly she knew the voice for that of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. ”

“ It was determined that two hundred picked warriors, headed by the sagamore, would be sufficient to effect the surprise and discomfiture of the eastern alliance, which had proposed to wait till the hunting season was finished before they started upon their warlike expedition. But the Sacos boasted that the grass never grew in the trail of their warriors, and now, headed by their brave and untiring sagamore, they were confident of success. ”

“ This is the description of the common sambur deer (Cervus hippelaphus) best known to Europeans, and among Anglo-Indian sportsmen called “stag”; but it is to be observed that in different parts of Asia there are many different species and varieties of the sambur. Zoologists usually class them in a group called Rusa; and one or other of this group may be found in every district of India from Ceylon to the Himalayas, and from the Indus to the islands of the Indian Archipelago. They haunt in timber, and usually by the banks of streams or other waters. ”

“ Siward.... What is that furry hunch up there in that tall thin tree?”
“A raccoon,” he said presently. “Can you see the foxy head peeping so slyly down at us? Look at Sagamore nosing the air in that droll blind mole-like way. He knows there's something furry up aloft somewhere; and he knows it's none of his business.” ”

“ Among these persecuted denizens of the forest, the sable (Martes zibellina) , which closely resembles the pine-marten (Martes abietum) in shape and size, deserves to be particularly noticed, both for the beauty of its pelt, and its importance in the fur-trade. Sleeping by day, the sable hunts his prey by night; but though he chiefly relishes animal food, such as hares, young birds, mice, and eggs, he also feeds on berries, and the tasteful seeds of the Pinus cembra. His favorite abode is near the banks of some river, in holes of the earth, or beneath the roots of trees. ”