In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets.

The ground was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere.

Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect.

High overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the trail.
On the hillsides, in thinly scattered groups were the cattle, grazing deliberately, working slowly toward the water-holes for their evening drink, the horses keeping to themselves, the colts nuzzling at their mothers' bellies, whisking their tails, stamping their unshod feet.

But once in a remoter field, solitary, magnificent, enormous, the short hair curling tight upon his forehead, his small red eyes twinkling, his vast neck heavy with muscles, Presley came upon the monarch, the king, the great Durham bull, maintaining his lonely state, unapproachable, austere.
Presley found the one-time shepherd by a water-hole, in a far distant corner of the range.