Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at present spectators in the clouds and waiting for the final act, to become bored. Particularly the lesser animals of the forest--the Little People--were busy at their occupations. A little brown-coated pine marten--who is really nothing but an overgrown weasel famous for his particularly handsome coat--went stealing through the branches of a pine as if he had rather questionable business. Some one had told him, and he couldn't remember who, that a magpie had her nest in that same tree, and Red Eye was going to look and see. Of course he merely wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he would try to arrange to get a little sip of the mother's blood, just as it passed through the big vein of the throat,--but of course that was only incidental. He felt some curiosity about the magpie's eggs too, the last brood of the year. It might be that there were some little magpies all coiled up inside of them, that would be worth investigation by one of his scientific turn of mind. Perhaps even the male bird, coming frantically to look for his wife, might fly straight into the nest without noticing his brown body curled about the limb. It offered all kinds of pleasing prospects, this hunt through the branches. Of course it is doubtful if the buzzards could detect his serpent-like form; yet it is a brave man who will say what a buzzard can and cannot see. Anything that can remain in the air as they do, seemingly without the flutter of a wing, has powers not to speak of lightly. But if they could have seen him they would have been particularly interested. A marten isn't a glutton in his feeding, and often is content with just a sip of blood from the throat. That leaves something warm and still for the buzzard's beak. A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the dead grass on the ground beneath. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. He was just moseying--if there is such a word--along. Not a blade of grass rustled. Of course there was a chipmunk, sitting at the door of his house in the uplifted roots of a tree; but the snake--although he was approaching in his general direction--didn't seem at all interested in him. Were it not for two things, the serpent would have seemed to be utterly bored and indifferent to life in general. One of these things was its cold, glittering, reptile eyes. The other was its darting, forked tongue.