The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray sculptured stones. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves.
In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it. There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of 'coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees- willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter's flooding and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. ONE A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.
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