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Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and headed several ravines that ran and widened down into the big canyon. All at once R.C. held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened, but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes and ears.
R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a good hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and many years of still hunting, accounted for this faculty. As for myself, the one gift of which I was especially proud was my eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in the woods before any one who was with me. This had applied to all my guides except Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific, searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made my eyes all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game in which he tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen before I saw it. This fun for us dated back to boyhood days.
Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one side, and his body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he said. We stood perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from far off in the forest I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling note. How thrilling, how lonely a sound!
"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and listened. R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not recognized it. Just as the mournful howl of a wolf is the wildest, most haunting sound of the wilderness, so is the bugle of the elk the noblest, most melodious and thrilling. With tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We heard elk bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away. R.C. and I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing of elk, but that was no reason why we might not trail them, and have the sport of seeing them in their native haunts. So we stole softly through the woods, halting now and then to listen, pleased to note that every whistle we heard appeared to be closer.
At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us from the ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk began to become really exciting. We did not make any noise threading that wet thicket, and we ascended the opposite slope very cautiously. What little wind there was blew from the elk toward us, so they could not scent us. Once up on the edge of the ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we heard a far-away bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had we miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was almost silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun peeped out of the pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the pines in brightness. I opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was rendered mute by a piercing whistle, high-pitched and sweet and melodiously prolonged. It made my ears tingle and my blood dance. "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on." We began to steal through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets, peeping out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp, facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated by about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison. Passing through a thicket of little pines we came into an open forest full of glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped from tree to tree. Finally we stooped along for a space, and then, at a bugle blast so close that it made me jump, I began to crawl. My objective point was a fallen pine the trunk of which appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C. kept working a little farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I kept on. Still I saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting toward its climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw a cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a hundred yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way, and pointed. But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning for me to join him. I ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He whispered pantingly: "Grandest sight—ever saw!" I peeped out.
In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent bull elk, looking back over his shoulder. His tawny hind-quarters, then his dark brown, almost black shaggy shoulders and head, then his enormous spread of antlers, like the top of a dead cedar—these in turn fascinated my gaze. How graceful, stately, lordly!
R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled out, took a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had the fun of imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not really want to kill him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp, hot gush of my blood, the fiery thrill along my nerves, the feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The bull eyed us for a second, then laid his forest of antlers back over his shoulders, and with singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny flash into the green forest.
R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the glade, without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye caught sight of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on the ground, vanishing behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I got to where I could see beyond the thicket. An immense flock of turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to get a bead on a running turkey R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled. So we dashed through the forest with the turkeys running ahead of us. Never did they come out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just as I was about to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This happened again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting chance, but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.
"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like streaks. I couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."
I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying to locate this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C. finally, as he wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some game anyhow.... Where are we?"
It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun had become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the forest had grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The matter did not look serious, however, until we had wandered around for another hour without finding anything familiar. Then we realized we were lost. This sort of experience had happened to R.C. and me often; nevertheless we did not relish it, especially the first day out. As usual on such occasions R.C. argued with me about direction, and then left the responsibility with me. I found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one side from the misty rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees and sky and clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or west. After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was pleased to discover that the instinct of direction I had been subtly prompted to take, would have helped me as much as the sun.
We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead so that we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to a deep canyon. In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I recognized it. "Well, R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and it may not. But to make sure we'll follow it up to the rim. Then we can locate camp." R.C. replied with weary disdain. "All right, my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As Loren says, I'm starved to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who bids fair to be like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and before meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!
When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more heavily. We were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept out all night. So I struck forward with long stride.
In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I deliberated a moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry, from which fact I decided we had better take to the left-hand fork. Grass and leaves appeared almost as wet as running water. Soon we were soaked to the skin. After two miles the canyon narrowed and thickened, so that traveling grew more and more laborsome. It must have been four miles from its mouth to where it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we found ourselves on familiar ground, about five miles from camp. Exhausted and wet and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If I had taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order. R.C. said to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of our way." Everybody but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture. Takahashi said in his imperfect English: "Go get on more better dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good yes!"
V
It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in camp and rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning I started out on foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon intending to go up on the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the flock of turkeys.
I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor acquaintances in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for Nielsen. Copple was born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south of Flagstaff, and was one-fourth Indian. He had a good education. His whole life had been in the open, which fact I did not need to be told. A cowboy when only a boy he had also been sheepherder, miner, freighter, and everything Arizonian. Eighteen years he had hunted game and prospected for gold in Mexico. He had been a sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served in the army in the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous life; and as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be a mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the violence, the truth of the west.
Copple was inclined to be loquacious—a trait that ordinarily was rather distasteful to me, but in his case would be an advantage. On our way down the canyon not only did he give me an outline of the history of his life, but he talked about how he had foretold the storm just ended. The fresh diggings of gophers—little mounds of dirt thrown up—had indicated the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls; likewise the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant storm. From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the light of the moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they will lie in a thicket. If a hunter came near the deer would lower their horns flat and remain motionless, unless almost ridden over. In the dark of the moon deer feed at early morning, lie down during the day, and feed again toward sunset, always alert, trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.
Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place where R.C. and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I missed it, and we went on farther. Copple showed me old bear sign, an old wolf track, and then fresh turkey tracks. The latter reminded me that we were out hunting. I could carry a deadly rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of flower-decked Elysian fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of the canyon slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took a snap shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low, upsetting him. Both of them disappeared.
Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting around along the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep enough to be classed as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and still, with sunlight showing down in rays and gleams. While hunting I always liked to sit down here and there to listen and watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down. Opposite us the rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred yards. We listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.
Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is movement that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump, woolly beast walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and stand in the shade.
"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing. "Lion—no, big lynx," he replied. I aimed and shot just a little too swiftly. Judging by the puff of dust my bullet barely missed the big cat. He leaped fully fifteen feet. Copple fired, hitting right under his nose as he alighted. That whirled him back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot went over him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we missed him," declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that first time. Biggest lynx I ever saw."
We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success. Then we climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge, and crossed that to see down into a beautiful valley, with stately isolated pines, and patches of aspens, and floor of luxuriant grass. A ravine led down into this long park and the mouth of it held a thicket of small pines. Just as we got half way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high grass. I peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a thumping—and then turkeys appeared to be running every way.
Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a big gobbler on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!" he called out. I could not see what he had done, but of course I knew he had done execution. It roused my ire as well as a desperate ambition. Turkeys were running up hill everywhere. I aimed at this one, then at that. Again I fired. Another miss! How that gobbler ran! He might just as well have flown. Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds weight.
Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two turkeys, both shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If you hit them in the body you spoil them for cooking. I used to hit all mine in the head. Let me give you a hunch. Always pick out a turkey running straight away from you or straight toward you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running to the side."
Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at least was consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and after a while heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller, but he clucked anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was trying to get together again, and some of them were approaching us. Copple continued to call. Then I appreciated how fascinating R.C. had found this calling game. Copple got answers from all around, growing closer. But presently the answers ceased. "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again. At that moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long shot, and I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate him, and aimed at the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however, was a few feathers. Like a grouse he flew across the opening and was gone. We lingered there a while, hoping to see or hear more of the flock, but did neither. Copple tried to teach me how to tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a lesson I did not think I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied their legs together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of about fifty pounds.
All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from over the ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we followed a rather meandering course, over ridge and down dale, and through grassy parks and stately forests, and along the slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets. Copple claimed to hear deer running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps I dragged along before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome the sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one deer that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods. Takahashi hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That fine! Nice fat ones!"
But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to visit Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds. Haught had not been able to secure more than two new hounds, and these named Rock and Buck were still unknown quantities.
Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames. This fact, and the way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared him to me.
Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears, and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever demonstrative except upon sight of his master. Haught told me that if Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a deer they would chase it till they dropped; accordingly he never shot at anything except bear and lion when he had these hounds with him.
Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her. She was a slim, dark brown hound with fine and very long ears. Rock, one of the new hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large, clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression. I could not account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head and distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any friends, for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had enough to eat. He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup came near him. I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would not have an easy task.
Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean, hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year, either in body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp just to hear himself and run any kind of a trail—how he would be the first to quit and come back. And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a scared deer.
To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better. Trailer and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run and howl.
If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other trail crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack till' the bear got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp with porcupine quills in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny pups!
Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black half-shepherd, small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent face, with the brightest hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his tail seemed most comical yet convincing. Bobby wagged only the nether end and that most emphatically. He would stand up to me, holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an appealing beggar he was! Bobby's value to Haught was not inconsiderable. He was the only dog Haught ever had that would herd the pigs. On a bear hunt Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly disposition, and yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of the pack. He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like to run him.
All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting species. But there was now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We might kill a big grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us perhaps made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I had not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.
Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the leaves had scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed weeks off. A storm and then a cold snap would help matters wonderfully, and for these we hoped. Indeed the weather had not settled; hardly a day had been free of clouds. But despite conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every other day, feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them and ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it arrived.
Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and I went down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and windy at intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy. From above Horton Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with scarcely any touch of autumn colors; from below, once in it, all seemed a darker green, cool and damp. Water lay in all low places. The creek roared bankfull of clear water.
The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth, through thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long slopes of manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were not fruitful this year as they were last, only a few having clusters of lavender-colored berries. The manzanita brush appeared exceptionally beautiful with its vivid contrasts of crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and smooth, shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground, with a long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows fresh every spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow blossoms. The honey from the flowers of mescal and mesquite is the best to be obtained in this country of innumerable bees.
Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and they worked on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon, called See Canyon. After a while the country grew so rough that fast riding was impossible; the thickets tore and clutched at us until they finally stopped the horses. We got off. Edd climbed to a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round," he called. "I'll walk. Take my horse back." I decided to let George take my horse also, and I hurried to catch up with Edd.
Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as strenuous as keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We climbed steep slopes and the farther we climbed the thicker grew the brush. Often we would halt to listen for hounds, at which welcome intervals I endeavored to catch my breath. We kept the hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to renewed endeavors. At length we got into a belt of live-oak and scrub-pine brush, almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and here we had to bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere. Small stones and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears searching for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the heads of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass, yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We climbed and climbed, until my back began to give me trouble. "Reckon we—bit off—a big hunk," remarked Edd once, and I thought he referred to the endless steep and brushy slopes. By and bye the hounds came back to us one by one, all footsore and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our best prospect then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the forest to camp.
I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up with Edd. His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles, so that he might have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in my boots and they caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I had a burning sensation all over. My legs and arms ached; the rifle weighed a ton; my feet seemed to take hold of the ground and stick. We could not go straight up owing to the nature of that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub forests. For hours we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward. Only through such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge of the roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.
At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and there, on a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a bear. I saw the dust he raised, as he piled into the thicket below the slide. What a wild clamor from the hounds! We got out on the rocky slope where we could see and kept sharp eyes roving, but the bear went straight down hill. Amazing indeed was it the way the hounds drew away from us. In a few moments they were at the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the course we had been so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on the rim, so as to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd distanced me on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I could scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet. My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness and disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition returned to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very day accomplished a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I should have been happy. But I had not been used to a lame back. When I reached the rim I fell there, and lay there a few moments, until I could get up. Then I followed along after Edd whose yells to the hounds I heard, and overtook him upon the point of a promontory. Far below the hounds were baying. "They're chasin' him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for low country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack are behind."
I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed was the panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned, rippling basin of timber and red rocks leading away to the mountain ranges of the Four Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward the yellowing sunset stood out long escarpments for miles, and long sloping lines of black ridges, leading down to the basin where there seemed to be a ripple of the earth, a vast upset region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and dark.
I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a matter I regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure of a bee-line during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the forest the sunset gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The aspens took most of the color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned pink, and low along the western horizon of the forest the light seemed golden and blue.
I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just at dark, I was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper, a fact that occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain. Undoubtedly this was the hardest day's work I had done since my lion hunting with Buffalo Jones. It did not surprise me that next day I had to forget my crosscut saw exercise.
Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame and starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at supper-time.
Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C. and I went off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure. This day was cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We saw two bull elk, a cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably agile for so heavy an animal. Neither of these, however, were of such magnificent proportions as the one R.C. and I had stalked the first day out. A few minutes later we scared out three more cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for fun, and sighted my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon where beaver had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like teeth. They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe. Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we could not find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey Canyon, however, we found a place where beavers had dammed the brook. Many aspens were fresh cut, one at least two feet thick, and all the small branches had been cut off and dragged to the water, where I could find no further trace of them. The grass was matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed beaver tracks.
Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer, turkey and bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns); and if we could locate the mast we would find the game. He said he had once seen a herd of several hundred deer migrating from one section of country to another. Apparently this was to find new feeding grounds.
While we were resting under a spruce I espied a white-breasted, blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the bark. Some of them saw or heard him coming and escaped, but many of them he caught. He went about this death-dealing business with a brisk and cheerful manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the trees from bugs and worms and beetles.
Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a large bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared to be a species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black colors, a round head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was crippled, as it hopped and fluttered about in the grass. I got down to catch it. Then I discovered it was only tame. I could approach to within a foot of reaching it. Once it perched upon a low snag, and peeped at me with little bright dark eyes, very friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat there within a few feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride. Crossing a fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses. But that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual, empty handed as far as game was concerned.
I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black and gray bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was it then to see another such bird and that one right in camp. He appeared to be as tame as the other. He flew and hopped around camp in such a friendly manner that I placed a piece of meat in a conspicuous place for him. Not long was he in finding it. He alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a great rate. Doyle claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the Lewis and Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one I've seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the open this statement seemed rather remarkable.
We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six degrees, and then another change indicative of unsettled weather. It rained, and sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too wet to hold the snow.
The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on autumn colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of white aspens, golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green pines, maples a blaze of vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta, rose—and slopes of dull red sumac. These were the beginning of Indian summer days, the melancholy days, with their color and silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.
Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back to me dim mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One afternoon Copple, R.C., and I went as far as the east side of Gentry Canyon and worked down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey sign. We tied our horses, and slipped back against the wind. R.C. took one side of a ridge, with Copple and me on the other, and we worked down toward where we had seen the sign. After half an hour of slow, stealthy glide through the forest we sat down at the edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon. The white aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The wind lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on leaves. Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen and tight, expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But none came. Leaving our stand we slipped into the woods, careful not to make the slightest sound. Such careful, slow steps were certainly not accountable for the rapid beat of my heart. Something gray moved among the green and yellow leaves. I halted, and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I descried what I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the slightest sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it saw us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long ears, and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I had ever beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too, but with emotion. Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"
His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray flash. Also it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I exclaimed, quite loud. "Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't have shot——"
A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of branches—then a big buck deer bounded onward into the thicket. I got one snap shot at his fleeting blurred image and missed him. We ran ahead, but to no avail.
"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin' behind that brush."
"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.
"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where he jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started after you shot."
A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the buck had vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps, and it amounted to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a magnificent leap! It reminded me of the story of Hart-leap Well.
As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had heard the buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around together for an hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide detour, leaving me at a stand in the hope they might drive some turkeys my way. I sat on a log until almost sunset. All the pine tips turned gold and patches of gold brightened the ground. Jays were squalling, gray squirrels were barking, red squirrels were chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones were dropping, leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I did not miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here early to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some meat to camp."
But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next, giving us spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine deceptive in their promise. Camp, however, with our big camp-fire, and little tent-stoves, and Takahashi, would have been delightful in almost any weather. Takahashi was insulted, the boys told me, because I said he was born to be a cook. It seemed the Jap looked down upon this culinary job. "Cook—that woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.
As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to think more of the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly and I grew to like him. The Orientals are mystics and hard to understand. But any one could see that here was a Japanese who was a real man. I never saw him idle. He resented being told what to do, and after my first offense in this regard I never gave him another order. He was a wonderful cook. It pleased his vanity to see how good an appetite I always had. When I would hail him: "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply: "Aw, turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life tasted anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served us. Or he would say: "Pan-cakes—apple dumplings—rice puddings." No one but the Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him how he cooked rice over an open fire and he said: "I know how hot—when done." Takahashi must have possessed an uncanny knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean, efficient and saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a revelation. Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters. Takahashi's ambition was to be a rancher in California. I learned many things about him. In summer he went to the Imperial Valley where he picked and packed cantaloupes. He could stand the intense heat. He was an expert. He commanded the highest wage. Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him was another art. He had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to save his money. He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he intended to live in the United States.
Takahashi had that best of traits—generosity. Whenever he made pie or cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me to have for my lunch next day. No use to try to break him of this kindly habit! He was keen too, and held in particular disfavor any one who picked out the best portions of turkey or meat. "No like that," he would say; and I heartily agreed with him. Life in the open brought out the little miserable traits of human nature, of which no one was absolutely free.
I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of firewood he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but most of all I liked his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to be a joy to me. We had some pop corn which we sometimes popped over the camp-fire. He was fond of it and he said: "You eat all time—much pop corn—just so long you keep mouth going all same like horse—you happy." We were troubled a good deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but others were disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk, according to westerners, very often had hydrophobia and would bite a sleeper. I knew of several men dying of rabies from this bite. Copple said he had been awakened twice at night by skunks biting the noses of his companions in camp. Copple had to choke the skunks off. One of these men died. We were really afraid of them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he had been forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now Takahashi slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a skunk awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk all black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid. He no run. He act funny—then just walk off."
After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One morning he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take picture for me send my wife Sadayo."
So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position, as did all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph him and his skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me, and he lifted up the box-trap. A furry white and black cat appeared, with remarkably bushy tail. What a beautiful little animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same like cat," said Takahashi. "Kittee—kittee." It appeared that kitty was not in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable Jap with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified manner. Then she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and Takahashi together. When she started off the Jap followed and poked her with the pole. "Take 'nother picture." But kitty suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a most surprising and brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I yelled: "Run George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful little beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased her out of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty thing! She make awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I kill her sure!"
The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and we reached it the following morning while the frost was still white and sparkling. We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a deer day. I'll show you a buck sure. Let's stick together an' walk easy."
So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was so light as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark ravine, taking half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the forest! When it was like this I always felt as if I had discovered something new. The big trees loomed stately and calm, stretching a rugged network of branches over us. Fortunately no saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be abroad to warn game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill, seemed to come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn were at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us strung to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the wild. R.C., as might have been expected, halted us with a softly whispered: "Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C. heard, and presently we moved on as before. Presently again R.C. made us pause, with a like result. Somehow the forest seemed unusually wild. It provoked a tingling expectation. The pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed ridge to our left, the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to harbor listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge ran down in points to where the junction of several ravines formed the head of Gentry Canyon.
How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for deer to graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and white with frost and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no game.
Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C. stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then crouch a little. He leaned forward—his eyes had the look of a falcon. Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked—I strained my eyes—I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack. I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch headlong and I heard a solid thump.
"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for another one."
No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots of its antlers.
"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat. Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other help me hang him up."
VI
I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.
The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length I came out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees. Suddenly Don Carlos shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for days and he appeared more than usually spirited. He saw or heard something. I held him in, and after a moment I dismounted and drew my rifle. A crashing in brush somewhere near at hand excited me. Peering all around I tried to locate cause for the sound. Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush accompanied by a snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don Carlos snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that the sound came from overhead.
I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze arrested by a threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty spruce. I saw a dark form moving against a background of blue sky. Instantly I thought it must be a lynx and was about to raise my rifle when a voice as from the very clouds utterly astounded me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I dreaming? But violent threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely assured me that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get you—whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the swaying top of that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi. For a moment I could not find my voice. Then I shouted:
"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near shooting you."
"Aw hullo!—I come down now," replied Takahashi.
I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
"I no see you—no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun—see squirrel. I chase him up tree—I climb high—awful high. No good. Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me—get away."
Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say—labor hard—he very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable eyesight that he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting above the highest limb of a tall white oak. And he was such a splendid shot that he had often "barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so stun it that it would fall as if dead.
"Aw my goodnish—your daddy more better shot than you!" ejaculated Takahashi.
"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash the long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting days—playing days of boyhood were the best of life. It seemed to me that one of the few reasons I still had for clinging to hunting was this keen, thrilling hark back to early days. Books first—then guns—then fishing poles—so ran the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.
That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on the spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it rained—first a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at five-thirty a roar of hail on the tent. This music did not last long. At seven o'clock the thermometer registered thirty-four degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was somewhat cloudy or foggy, with promise of clearing.
We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and Nielsen went down with them, the rest of us waited above for developments. Scarcely had they more than time enough to reach the gorge below when the pack burst into full chorus. Haught led the way then around the rough rim for better vantage points. I was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten for me—a fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and powerful, though not over medium size. One splendid feature about him was that a saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never slipped. And another feature, infinitely the most attractive to me, was his easy gait. His trot and lope were so comfortable and swinging, like the motion of a rocking-chair, that I could ride him all day with pleasure. But when it came to chasing after hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me trouble. Too eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose the direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad jumbles or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried me under low branches and through dense thickets, and in general showed he was exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but ignorant of rough forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and got out of hearing of both hounds and men, and eventually found myself lost somewhere on the west side of See Canyon. To get out I had to turn my back to the sun, travel west till I came to the rim above Horton Thicket, and from there return to camp, arriving rather late in the afternoon.
All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I was rather surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high state of dudgeon. Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning Nielsen I learned that the hounds had at once struck a fresh bear track in See Canyon. Nielsen and Edd had not followed far before they heard a hound yelping in pain. They found Buck caught in a bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a little bear cub, caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it had evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she had been around trying to save it or minister to it. There were trappers in See Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers manifestly there was no love lost. Edd said they had as much right to trap as we had to hunt, but that was not the question. There had been opportunity to tell the Haughts about the big number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they did not tell it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky brown coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had suffered.
This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to me. Bad enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat, but at least this is a game where the deer have all the advantage. Bad indeed it may be to chase bear with hounds, but that is a hard, dangerous method of hunting which gives it some semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts proved to me that I ran more risks than the bears. To set traps, however, to hide big iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and clutch wild animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or gnawed off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun or club to end the miserable business—what indeed shall I call that? Cruel—base—cowardly!
It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed interests are at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes was built upon the brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for their furs. And in this fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten, beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx, muskrat, mink, otter, were higher by double than they had ever been. Trappers were going to reap a rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a living; but is this trapping business honest, is it manly? To my knowledge trappers are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but the public eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and seasons furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay there is no justification for censure. But the vast number of furs go to deck the persons of vain women. I appreciate the beautiful contrast of fair skin against a background of sable fur, or silver fox, or rich, black, velvety seal. But beautiful women would be just as beautiful, just as warmly clothed in wool instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not long ago I met a young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels, and I remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared to be refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was a pity women did not know or care where furs came from. She seemed surprised. Then I told her about the iron-jawed, spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs or on the runways of game—about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its food, training its young to fare for themselves—about the sudden terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the instinctive fury, the violent struggle—about the foot gnawed off by the beast that was too fierce to die a captive—about the hours of agony, the horrible thirst—the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All because women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath the beautiful coat of furs, and seemed insulted.
Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming somewhere back along the trail hopping along on three legs. I rode on down to my camp, and procuring a bottle of iodine I walked back in the hope of doing Buck a good turn. During my absence he had reached camp, and was lying under an aspen, apart from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and more distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a trick played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him, as he licked the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as kindly as I knew how. And finally I sat down beside him. The trap-teeth had caught his right front leg just above the first joint, and from the position of the teeth marks and the way he moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken. Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the bone. When I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled ominously. He would have bitten me. I patted his head with one hand, and watching my chance, at length with the other I poured iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept patting him and holding his head until the iodine had become absorbed. Perhaps it was only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of something he did not understand. That look more than ever determined me to try to find some way to his affections.
A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a pack outfit, and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called Dude Creek. "Reckon we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude," said Haught. "Never was in there but I jumped bars. Good deer an' turkey country, too."
Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing shape with the intention of starting early the following morning. But it rained on and off; and the day after that we could not find Haught's burros, and not until the fourth morning could we start. It turned out that Buck did not have a broken leg and had recovered surprisingly from the injury he had received. Aloof as he held himself it appeared certain he did not want to be left behind.
We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the road, but how strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that memorable trip, that I did not remember all. Usually forest or desert ground I have traveled over I never forget. This ride, in the middle of October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make the forest a region of golden enchantment, was one of particular delight to me. I had begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night I had suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and straighten out. Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got warmed up from riding or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me altogether and I forgot it. I had given myself heroic treatment, but my reward was in sight. My theory that the outdoor life would cure almost any ill of body or mind seemed to have earned another proof added to the long list.
At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road, and had arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the rim, down into a canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were to camp.
Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at the section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to recognize the point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild bear! It was a wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared to be at the extreme point of a vast ten-league promontory, rising high over the basin, where the rim was cut into canyons as thick as teeth of a saw. They were notched and v-shaped. Craggy russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and gold-stained rocks, old crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine thickets, ravines and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush all green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire—these indeed were the heights and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and beauty of Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak thickets, where the bears lived, long gray slides of weathered rocks, long slanting ridges of pine, descending for miles out and down into the green basin, yet always seeming to stand high above that rolling wilderness. The sun stood crossed by thin clouds—a golden blaze in a golden sky—sinking to meet a ragged horizon line of purple.
Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the earth, and with another and more striking effect of this vast tilted rim of mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This rim was a huge wall of splintered rock, a colossal cliff, towering so high above the black basin below that ravines and canyons resembled ripples or dimples, darker lines of shade. And on the other side from its very edge, where the pine fringe began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of canyons opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start not fifty feet from the rim.
Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the fingers of a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep, narrow, forested by giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by a murmuring brook, deep down among the many slopes, was our camp ground, and never had I seen one more desirable. The wind soughed in the lofty pine tops, but not a breeze reached down to this sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high slopes our camp was shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a canvas fly over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left the sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.
Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the great brown pines with some weird aspect. The boys put up an old tent for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine rivals. I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed. When R.C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old dog, you keep the skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.
We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses, which had been hobbled and turned loose. Lee had remained with his father at Beaver Dam camp. For breakfast Takahashi had venison, biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him. Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a fight with Buck.
By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses. A mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds. The rest of us rode out to a point there to await developments. The sun had already flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim were dark in shade. I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and looked, and cared not for passage of time.
But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right under us the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes. They worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his horse. "Saw a bar," he yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an open ridge. Come on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim. "Ride along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."
Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R.C. and George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim. The hounds could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I was going. The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon—all these brought vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past, and for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died recently. In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand, he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild animals—he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever wholly hopeless.
I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and promontories—a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him. Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse! Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the deep canyons!
I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R.C.'s boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed lost in immensity. Then I rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings and I were weary. At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a pine on the rim. Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of a flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so that I could study them through my field glass. They were considerably larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast, with ringed or barred neck. Haught had assured me that birds of this description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in the United States. I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks that darkened the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.
Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.
The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story. Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day. Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said: "Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."
One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin' back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin' out of the brush—a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was smokin' shells up on the rim?"
When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a silvertip."
How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions. I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"
After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.
Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.
One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any means a small or frail girl—rather the contrary—but she appeared diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died. In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.
Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway. Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill, and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to smile.
These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch. How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?
Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his own—a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.
Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the evening happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long chase after a bear and became separated. Bill was new at the game, and he was a peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking to himself! Haught finally rode to the edge of a ridge and espied Bill under a pine in which the hounds had treed a bear. Bill did not hear Haught's approach, and on the moment he was stalking round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung to a branch about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more full-grown bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill had not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill was yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to assassinate you. Chased me about a hundred miles—! An' thought you'd fool me, didn't you? Why, I've treed more bears than you ever saw—! You needn't look at me like thet, 'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you in a minnit an' skin your black har off, I am—"
"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about the other two bears up in the top of the tree?"
Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly astounded and tremendously elated to discover the other two bears. He yelled and acted as one demented. "Three black Jaspers! I've treed you all. An' I'm agoin' to assassinate you all!"
"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that assassinatin' make up your mind not to cripple any of them. You've got to shoot straight, so they'll be dead when they fall. If they're only crippled, they'll kill the hounds."
Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with bears in trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him to dislodge the bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of the tree—apparently unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked them, and there arose a terrible uproar. Haught had to run down to save his dogs. Bill was going to shoot right into the melee, but Haught knocked the rifle up, and forbid him to use it. Then Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat off the hounds. Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally disposed of two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific yells he turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear tearing the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also. Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate them." Bill slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled. "By Golly, I'll skin 'em anyhow!"
Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to Arizona from Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry offered to wager this dog was the best bear chaser in the country. The general impression Henry's hound gave was that he would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught took his brother Henry and some other men on a bear hunt. There were wagers made as to the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last Haught's pack struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast behind, Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at Henry as if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll show them!" He loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying this race with his master. After a while the chase grew hotter. Then Henry's half-hound ran ahead a little way, and came back to look up wisely, as if to say: "Not time yet!" After a while, when the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's wonderful canine let out a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack and took the lead in the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear till he treed. Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.
The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what Haught called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between brown and black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear with unusually large teeth and very long claws. So different from ordinary bears that it appeared another species. The blue bear could run like a greyhound, and keep it up all day and all night. Its power of endurance was incredible. In Haught's twenty years of hunting there he had seen a number of blue bears and had killed two. Haught chased one all day with young and fast hounds. He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the chase. Next day Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over into Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again. Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the blue bear padding along as lively as ever.
I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a hundred bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often escaped by a breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not the most interesting to me. Haught had lived a singularly elemental life. He never knew what to tell me, because I did not know what to ask for, so I just waited for stories, experiences, woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come when they would. Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under any conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his ears, look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been just where Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!
When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up over the rim he used to get down in the cedar country, close to the desert. Here he heard of a pure black antelope that was the leader of a herd of ordinary color, which was a grayish white. The day came when Haught saw this black antelope. It was a very large, beautiful stag, the most noble and wild and sagacious animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to stalk it and kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got even a shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never heard of again.
By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell, and now began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I envied his most remarkable imagination. His story had to do with hunting meat for a mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a rifle that he never aimed at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a habit of gun-fighters! Once the camp was out of meat, and also he was out of ammunition. Only one shell left! He came upon a herd of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were small deer and he wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around and waited until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to make sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks. Killed the whole five in one shot!
We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and completely at Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal tales. He was hunting along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate, but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out its head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the jaguar. First to give in was the cat. He let go and let out a squall. But the turtle started to crawl off, got going strong, and dragged the jaguar into the sea and drowned him. With naive earnestness Copple assured his mute listeners that he could show them the exact spot in Sonora where this happened.
Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his immense loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really was no greater dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us want to see the mighty hunter have a fall.
We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself. About sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We all heard him shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his revolver. Everybody said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys—maybe a dozen, if Copple got two in line!" And we were all glad to think so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did not return till dark. He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a remarkable hard luck story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys, and they were rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and running fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all. Too dark—brush—trees—running like deer. Copple had a dozen excuses. Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away. He shot twice. The turkey was a knot, and he had missed even that.
Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how Copple had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!" the day I had missed so many. Then I said:
"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I raised my voice high.
"Turkey number one—Nix!... Turkey number two—missed, by Gosh!... Turkey number three—never touched him!... Turkey number four—No!... Turkey number five—Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells!... Turkey number six on the log—BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"
We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter, Haught, rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his mirth.
VII
Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with gold I went down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our horses. During the night our stock had been chased by a lion. We had all been awakened by their snorting and stampeding. We found our horses scattered, the burros gone, and Copple's mules still squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple assured me that this formation of his mules on guard was an infallible sign of lions prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten years and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the woods.
We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty feet long, and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks showed in places, and on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in the mud, were lion tracks as large as the crown of my hat. How sight of them made me tingle all over! Here was absolute proof of the prowling of one of the great cats.
Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular looking tracks, the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed. Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and wary. These dams had just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut for food. Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the water, and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.
Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could put up that lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged it to be a big one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C. preferred to keep after bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an off day an' chase thet lion. Had a burro killed here a couple of years ago."
So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's Canyon lay to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it that day. Edd and Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple and I followed shortly afterward with the intention of descending mid-way, and then working along the ridge crests and promontories. The other boys remained on the rim to take up various stands as occasion called for.
I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim. They were grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that made them so hard to travel. Right off, half way down, we started a herd of bucks. The noise they made sounded like cattle. We found tracks of half a dozen. "Lots of deer under the rim," declared Copple, his eyes gleaming. "They're feedin' on acorns. Here's where you'll get your big buck." After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush.
Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had to cross gravel patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and at last, gaining the bench we went through the pine grove, out to a manzanita thicket, to a rocky point where the ledges were toppling and dangerous. The stand here afforded a magnificent view. We were now down in the thick of this sloped and canyoned and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof from it. The dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black notch below us. We watched and listened. And presently across open patches we saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck following them. Thus were my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed. Copple yelled down to Edd that some of the hounds were running deer, but apparently Edd was too far away to hear.
Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn, calling in the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint all of us above that he was going down around the point to drive the next canyon. Copple and I had to choose between climbing back to the rim or trying to cross the slopes and head the gorges, and ascend the huge ridge that separated Pyle's Canyon from the next canyon. I left the question to Copple, with the result that we stayed below.
We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim we felt so far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in places and slippery in others, with deep cuts and patches of manzanita. No stranger was I to this beautiful treacherous Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike of it almost equal to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty, dry, and had begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were what continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive—that looked short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered miles in our detours and we had to travel fast because we knew Edd could round the base of the lower points in quick time. |
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