The wilderness hunter

By Theodore Roosevelt

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Title: The wilderness hunter

Author: Theodore Roosevelt

Release date: October 27, 2025 [eBook #77136]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Co-operative Publication Society, 1889

Credits: Hendrik Kaiber and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILDERNESS HUNTER ***





[Illustration:

_IN THE FOREST OF CALIFORNIA_

_President Roosevelt and party, including Secretary Moody and
Governor Pardee, after crossing the old trail of “The Wilderness
Hunter”_]




THE WORKS OF

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES

_Illustrated_

THE WILDERNESS HUNTER

[Illustration]

Executive Edition

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE PRESIDENT THROUGH SPECIAL
ARRANGEMENT WITH THE CENTURY CO., MESSRS. CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, AND
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS


THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICATION SOCIETY

NEW YORK AND LONDON




COPYRIGHT 1889 BY G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS


This edition is published under arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
of New York and London.




TO

E. K. R.




       “They saw the silences
   Move by and beckon; saw the forms,
   The very beards, of burly storms,
   And heard them talk like sounding seas....
   They saw the snowy mountains rolled
   And heaved along the nameless lands
   Like mighty billows; saw the gold
   Of awful sunsets; saw the blush
   Of sudden dawn, and felt the hush
   Of heaven when the day sat down
   And hid his face in dusky hands.”

   --_Joaquin Miller_


  “In vain the speeding of shyness;
  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods....
  ... where geese nip their food with short jerks,
  Where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless prairie,
  Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles,
    far and near,
  Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and ice-clad trees....
  The moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, plunging with his
  forefeet, the hoofs as sharp as knives.... The blazing fire at
    night, the
  sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the
  bear-skin.”

  --_Walt Whitman_




CONTENTS


PREFACE


CHAPTER I

THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS; WILDERNESS HUNTERS AND WILDERNESS GAME

The American Wilderness--Forests, Plains, Mountains--Likeness and
Unlikeness to the Old-World Wilderness--Wilderness Hunters--Boone,
Crockett, Houston, Carson--The Trappers--The Buffalo Hunters--The
Stockmen--The Regular Army--Wilderness Game--Bison, Moose, Elk,
Caribou, Deer, Antelope--Other Game--Hunting in the Wilderness


CHAPTER II

HUNTING FROM THE RANCH; THE BLACKTAIL DEER

In the Cattle Country--Life on a Ranch--A Round-up--Branding a
Maverick--The Bad Lands--A Shot at a Blacktail--Still-hunting the
Blacktail--Its Habits--Killing a Buck in August--A Shot at Close
Range--Occasional Unwariness of Blacktail


CHAPTER III

THE WHITETAIL DEER; AND THE BLACKTAIL OF THE COLUMBIA

The Whitetail--Yields Poor Sport--Fire Hunting--Hunting with
Hounds--Shooting at Running Game--Queer Adventure--Anecdotes of
Plainsmen--Good and Bad Shots--A Wagon Trip--A Shot from the
Ranch-house Veranda--The Columbian Blacktail


CHAPTER IV

ON THE CATTLE RANGES; THE PRONG-HORN ANTELOPE

Riding to the Round-up--The Open Plains--Sights and Sounds--Gophers,
Prairie Dogs, Sharp-tail Grouse, Antelope--The Cow-camp--Standing
Night Guard--Dawn--Make an Antelope Hunt--An Easy Stalk--A
Difficult Stalk--Three Antelope Shot--The Plains Skylark--The
Meadow-Lark--The Mocking-bird--Other Singers--Harsher Wilderness
Sounds--Pack Rats--Plains Ferret, Its Ferocity--The War Eagle--Attacks
Antelope--Kills Jack-Rabbit--One Shot on Wing with Rifle


CHAPTER V

HUNTING THE PRONG-BUCK; FROST, FIRE, AND THIRST

Hunting the Prong-Buck--Long Shots--Misses--Winter Weather--A Hunt
in December--Riding in the Bitter Cold--The Old Hunter’s Tepee--A
Night in a Line Camp--An Antelope Herd--Two Bucks Shot--Riding Back
to Ranch--The Immigrant Train--Hunting in Fall--Fighting Fire--A
Summer Hunt--Sufferings from Thirst--Swimming Cattle Across a
Swollen Stream--Wagon Trip to the Black Hills--The Great Prairies--A
Prong-buck Shot--Pleasant Camp--Buck Shot in Morning--Continue our
Journey--Shooting Sage Fowl and Prairie Fowl with Rifle


CHAPTER VI

AMONG THE HIGH HILLS; THE BIGHORN OR MOUNTAIN SHEEP

A Summer on the Ranch--Working Among the Cattle--Killing Game for the
Ranch--A Trip After Mountain Sheep--The Bad Lands--Solitary Camp--The
Old Horse Manitou--Still-hunt at Dawn--Young Ram Shot--A Hunt in the
Rocky Mountains--An Old Bighorn Stalked and Shot--Habits of the Game


CHAPTER VII

MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT

A Trip to the Big Hole Basin--Incidents of Travel with a Wagon--Camp
Among the Mountains--A Trip on Foot After Goats--Spruce Grouse--Lying
Out at Night--A Climb over the High Peaks--Two Goats Shot--Weary Tramp
Back--A Hunt in the Kootenai Country--Hard Climbing Among the Wooded
Mountains--Goat Shot on Brink of Chasm--Ptarmigan for Supper--Goat
Hunting Very Hard Work--Ways and Habits of the Goats--Not much Decrease
in Numbers


CHAPTER VIII

HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS; THE CARIBOU

A Camp on Kootenai Lake--Traveling on Foot Through the Dense
Forests--Excessive Toil--Water Shrew and Water Thrush--Black Bear
Killed--Mountain Climbing--Woodchucks and Conies--The Indian
Ammál--Night Sounds--A Long Walk--A Caribou Killed--A Midwinter Trip on
Snowshoes in Maine--Footprints on the Snow--A Helpless Deer--Caribou at
Ease in the Deep Drifts


CHAPTER IX

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK

A Hunt in the Bitter Root Mountains--A Trip on Foot--Two Bull Elk
Fighting--The Peacemaker--All Three Shot--Habits of the Wapiti--Their
Bugling--A Grand Chorus--Shooting a Bull at Sunrise--Another
Killed near the Ranch--Vanishing of the Elk--Its Antlers--The
Lynx--Porcupine--Chickarees and Chipmunks--Clark’s Crow--Lewis’
Woodpecker--Whiskey-jack--Trout--The Yellowstone Canyon


CHAPTER X

AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS

In the Shoshones--Traveling with a Pack-train--Scenery--Flowers--A
Squaw-man--Bull Elk Shot in Rain while Challenging--Storm--Breaking
Camp in Rain--Two-Ocean Pass--Our Camp--A Young Ten-pointer Shot--The
Mountains in Moonlight--Blue Grouse--Snowshoe Rabbits--Death of a
Master Bull--The Tetons--Following a Bull by Scent--Ill Luck--Luck
Changes--Death of Spike Bull--Three Bulls Killed--Traveling Home--Heavy
Snowstorm--Bucking Horse--Various Hunts Compared--Number Cartridges
Used--Still-hunting the Elk


CHAPTER XI

THE MOOSE; THE BEAST OF THE WOODLAND

The Moose of the Rocky Mountains--Its Habits--Difficult Nature of Its
Haunts--Repeated Failures while Hunting It--Watching a Marsh at Dawn--A
Moose in the Reeds--Stalking and Shooting Him--Traveling Light with a
Pack-train--A Beaver Meadow--Shooting a Big Bull at Dawn--The Moose
in Summer, in Winter--Young Moose--Pugnacity of Moose--Still-hunting
Moose--Rather More Easy to Kill than Whitetail Deer--At Times a
Dangerous Antagonist--The Winter Yards--Hunting on Snowshoes--A Narrow
Escape--A Fatal Encounter


CHAPTER XII

HUNTING LORE

Game Which Ought Not to Be Killed--Killing Black Bear
with a Knife--Sports with Rod and Shot-gun--Snowshoeing
and Mountaineering--American Writers on Out-door
Life--Burroughs--Thoreau--Audubon, Coues, etc.--American Hunting
Books--American Writers on Life in the Wilderness: Parkman,
Irving--Cooper on Pioneer Life--American Statesmen and Soldiers Devoted
to the Chase--Lincoln, Jackson, Israel Putnam--A Letter from Webster
on Trout-fishing--Clay--Washington--Hunting Extracts from Washington’s
Diaries--Washington as a Fox-hunter


APPENDIX




PREFACE


For a number of years much of my life was spent either in the
wilderness or on the borders of the settled country--if, indeed,
“settled” is a term that can rightly be applied to the vast, scantily
peopled regions where cattle-ranching is the only regular industry.
During this time I hunted much, among the mountains and on the plains,
both as a pastime and to procure hides, meat, and robes for use on the
ranch; and it was my good luck to kill all the various kinds of large
game that can properly be considered to belong to temperate North
America.

In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is after all but a
part of the whole. The free, self-reliant, adventurous life, with its
rugged and stalwart democracy; the wild surroundings, the grand beauty
of the scenery, the chance to study the ways and habits of the woodland
creatures--all these unite to give to the career of the wilderness
hunter its peculiar charm. The chase is among the best of all national
pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which
in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities
can possibly atone.

No one, but he who has partaken thereof, can understand the keen
delight of hunting in lonely lands. For him is the joy of the horse
well ridden and the rifle well held; for him the long days of toil and
hardship, resolutely endured, and crowned at the end with triumph. In
after years there shall come forever to his mind the memory of endless
prairies shimmering in the bright sun; of vast snow-clad wastes lying
desolate under gray skies; of the melancholy marshes; of the rush of
mighty rivers; of the breath of the evergreen forest in summer; of the
crooning of ice-armored pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of
cataracts roaring between hoary mountain masses; of all the innumerable
sights and sounds of the wilderness; of its immensity and mystery; and
of the silences that brood in its still depths.


THEODORE ROOSEVELT

 SAGAMORE HILL,
 _June, 1893_.




THE WILDERNESS HUNTER




CHAPTER I

THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS; WILDERNESS HUNTERS AND WILDERNESS GAME


Manifold are the shapes taken by the American wilderness. In the east,
from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi Valley, lies a land of
magnificent hardwood forest. In endless variety and beauty, the trees
cover the ground, save only where they have been cleared away by man,
or where toward the west the expanse of the forest is broken by fertile
prairies. Toward the north, this region of hardwood trees merges
insensibly into the southern extension of the great sub-arctic forest;
here the silver stems of birches gleam against the sombre background of
coniferous evergreens. In the southeast again, by the hot, oozy coasts
of the South Atlantic and the Gulf, the forest becomes semi-tropical;
palms wave their feathery fronds, and the tepid swamps teem with
reptile life.

Some distance beyond the Mississippi, stretching from Texas to North
Dakota, and westward to the Rocky Mountains, lies the plains country.
This is a region of light rainfall, where the ground is clad with
short grass, while cottonwood trees fringe the courses of the winding
plains streams; streams that are alternately turbid torrents and mere
dwindling threads of water. The great stretches of natural pasture are
broken by gray sage-brush plains, and tracts of strangely shaped and
colored Bad Lands; sun-scorched wastes in summer, and in winter arctic
in their iron desolation. Beyond the plains rise the Rocky Mountains,
their flanks covered with coniferous woods; but the trees are small,
and do not ordinarily grow very closely together. Toward the north the
forest becomes denser, and the peaks higher; and glaciers creep down
toward the valleys from the fields of everlasting snow. The brooks are
brawling, trout-filled torrents; the swift rivers foam over rapid and
cataract, on their way to one or the other of the two great oceans.

Southwest of the Rockies evil and terrible deserts stretch for leagues
and leagues, mere waterless wastes of sandy plain and barren mountain,
broken here and there by narrow strips of fertile ground. Rain rarely
falls, and there are no clouds to dim the brazen sun. The rivers run
in deep canyons, or are swallowed by the burning sand; the smaller
watercourses are dry throughout the greater part of the year.

Beyond this desert region rise the sunny Sierras of California, with
their flower-clad slopes and groves of giant trees; and north of them,
along the coast, the rain-shrouded mountain chains of Oregon and
Washington, matted with the towering growth of the mighty evergreen
forest.

The white hunters, who from time to time first penetrated the different
parts of this wilderness, found themselves in such hunting grounds
as those wherein, long ages before, their Old-World forefathers had
dwelled; and the game they chased was much the same as that their
lusty barbarian ancestors followed, with weapons of bronze and of
iron, in the dim years before history dawned. As late as the end of
the seventeenth century the turbulent village nobles of Lithuania and
Livonia hunted the bear, the bison, the elk, the wolf, and the stag,
and hung the spoils in their smoky wooden palaces; and so, two hundred
years later, the free hunters of Montana, in the interludes between
hazardous mining quests and bloody Indian campaigns, hunted game
almost or quite the same in kind, through the cold mountain forests
surrounding the Yellowstone and Flathead lakes, and decked their log
cabins and ranch houses with the hides and horns of the slaughtered
beasts.

Zoologically speaking, the north temperate zones of the Old and New
Worlds are very similar, differing from one another much less than they
do from the various regions south of them, or than these regions differ
among themselves. The untrodden American wilderness resembles both in
game and physical character the forests, the mountains, and the steppes
of the Old World as it was at the beginning of our era. Great woods
of pine and fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut; streams where the
chief game fish are spotted trout and silvery salmon; grouse of various
kinds as the most common game birds; all these the hunter finds as
characteristic of the New World as of the Old. So it is with most of
the beasts of the chase, and so also with the fur-bearing animals that
furnish to the trapper alike his life work and his means of livelihood.
The bear, wolf, bison, moose, caribou, wapiti, deer, and bighorn, the
lynx, fox, wolverine, sable, mink, ermine, beaver, badger, and otter
of both worlds are either identical or more or less closely kin to one
another. Sometimes of the two forms, that found in the Old World is
the larger. Perhaps more often the reverse is true, the American beast
being superior in size. This is markedly the case with the wapiti,
which is merely a giant brother of the European stag, exactly as the
fisher is merely a very large cousin of the European sable or marten.
The extraordinary prong-buck, the only hollow-horned ruminant which
sheds its horns annually, is a distant representative of the Old-World
antelopes of the steppes; the queer white antelope-goat has for its
nearest kinsfolk certain Himalayan species. Of the animals commonly
known to our hunters and trappers, only a few, such as the cougar,
peccary, raccoon, possum (and among birds the wild turkey), find their
nearest representatives and type forms in tropical America.

Of course this general resemblance does not mean identity. The
differences in plant life and animal life, no less than in the
physical features of the land, are sufficiently marked to give the
American wilderness a character distinctly its own. Some of the most
characteristic of the woodland animals, some of those which have
most vividly impressed themselves on the imagination of the hunters
and pioneer settlers, are the very ones which have no Old-World
representatives. The wild turkey is in every way the king of American
game birds. Among the small beasts the coon and the possum are those
which have left the deepest traces in the humbler lore of the frontier;
exactly as the cougar--usually under the name of panther or mountain
lion--is a favorite figure in the wilder hunting tales. Nowhere else is
there anything to match the wealth of the eastern hardwood forests, in
number, variety, and beauty of trees; nowhere else is it possible to
find conifers approaching in size the giant redwoods and sequoias of
the Pacific slope. Nature here is generally on a larger scale than in
the Old-World home of our race. The lakes are like inland seas, the
rivers, like arms of the sea. Among stupendous mountain chains there
are valleys and canyons of fathomless depth and incredible beauty and
majesty. There are tropical swamps, and sad, frozen marshes; deserts
and Death Valleys, weird and evil, and the strange wonderland of
the Wyoming geyser region. The waterfalls are rivers rushing over
precipices; the prairies seem without limit, and the forest never
ending.

At the time when we first became a nation, nine-tenths of the territory
now included within the limits of the United States was wilderness.
It was during the stirring and troubled years immediately preceding
the outbreak of the Revolution that the most adventurous hunters, the
vanguard of the hardy army of pioneer settlers, first crossed the
Alleghanies, and roamed far and wide through the lonely, danger-haunted
forests which filled the No-man’s-land lying between the Tennessee
and the Ohio. They waged ferocious warfare with Shawnee and Wyandot
and wrought huge havoc among the herds of game with which the forest
teemed. While the first Continental Congress was still sitting, Daniel
Boone, the archetype of the American hunter, was leading his bands of
tall backwoods riflemen to settle in the beautiful country of Kentucky,
where the red and the white warriors strove with such obstinate rage
that both races alike grew to know it as “the dark and bloody ground.”

Boone and his fellow-hunters were the heralds of the oncoming
civilization, the pioneers in that conquest of the wilderness which has
at last been practically achieved in our own day. Where they pitched
their camps and built their log huts or stockaded hamlets, towns
grew up, and men who were tillers of the soil, not mere wilderness
wanderers, thronged in to take and hold the land. Then, ill-at-ease
among the settlements for which they had themselves made ready the
way, and fretted even by the slight restraints of the rude and uncouth
semi-civilization of the border, the restless hunters moved onward
into the yet unbroken wilds where the game dwelled and the red tribes
marched forever to war and hunting. Their untamable souls ever found
something congenial and beyond measure attractive in the lawless
freedom of the lives of the very savages against whom they warred so
bitterly.

Step by step, often leap by leap, the frontier of settlement was
pushed westward; and ever from before its advance fled the warrior
tribes of the red men and the scarcely less intractable array of white
Indian fighters and game hunters. When the Revolutionary War was at
its height, George Rogers Clark, himself a mighty hunter of the old
backwoods type, led his handful of hunter-soldiers to the conquest of
the French towns of the Illinois. This was but one of the many notable
feats of arms performed by the wild soldiery of the backwoods. Clad in
their fringed and tasseled hunting-shirt of buckskin or homespun, with
coonskin caps and deer-hide leggings and moccasins, with tomahawk and
scalping-knife thrust into their bead-worked belts, and long rifles in
hand, they fought battle after battle of the most bloody character,
both against the Indians, as at the Great Kanawha, at the Fallen
Timbers, and at Tippecanoe, and against more civilized foes, as at
King’s Mountain, New Orleans, and the River Thames.

Soon after the beginning of the present century Louisiana fell into our
hands, and the most daring hunters and explorers pushed through the
forests of the Mississippi Valley to the great plains, steered across
these vast seas of grass to the Rocky Mountains, and then through
their rugged defiles onward to the Pacific Ocean. In every work of
exploration, and in all the earlier battles with the original lords
of the western and southwestern lands, whether Indian or Mexican, the
adventurous hunters played the leading part; while close behind came
the swarm of hard, dogged, border-farmers,--a masterful race, good
fighters and good breeders, as all masterful races must be.

Very characteristic in its way was the career of quaint, honest,
fearless Davy Crockett, the Tennessee rifleman and Whig Congressman,
perhaps the best shot in all our country, whose skill in the use of
his favorite weapon passed into a proverb, and who ended his days by
a hero’s death in the ruins of the Alamo. An even more notable man
was another mighty hunter, Houston, who when a boy ran away to the
Indians; who while still a lad returned to his own people to serve
under Andrew Jackson in the campaigns which that greatest of all the
backwoods leaders waged against the Creeks, the Spaniards, and the
British. He was wounded at the storming of one of the strongholds of
Red Eagle’s doomed warriors, and returned to his Tennessee home to rise
to high civil honor, and become the foremost man of his State. Then,
while Governor of Tennessee, in a sudden fit of moody anger, and of
mad longing for the unfettered life of the wilderness, he abandoned
his office, his people, and his race, and fled to the Cherokees beyond
the Mississippi. For years he lived as one of their chiefs; until one
day, as he lay in ignoble ease and sloth, a rider from the south, from
the rolling plains of the San Antonio and Brazos, brought word that
the Texans were up, and in doubtful struggle striving to wrest their
freedom from the lancers and carbineers of Santa Anna. Then his dark
soul flamed again into burning life; riding by night and day he joined
the risen Texans, was hailed by them as a heaven-sent leader, and at
the San Jacinto led them on to the overthrow of the Mexican host.
Thus the stark hunter, who had been alternately Indian fighter and
Indian chief, became the President of the new Republic, and, after its
admission into the United States, a Senator at Washington; and, to his
high honor, he remained to the end of his days staunchly loyal to the
flag of the Union.

By the time that Crockett fell, and Houston became the darling leader
of the Texans, the typical hunter and Indian fighter had ceased to be
a backwoodsman; he had become a plainsman, or mountain-man; for the
frontier, east of which he never willingly went, had been pushed beyond
the Mississippi. Restless, reckless, and hardy, he spent years of his
life in lonely wanderings through the Rockies as a trapper; he guarded
the slowly moving caravans, which for purposes of trade journeyed
over the dangerous Santa Fé trail; he guided the large parties of
frontier settlers who, driving before them their cattle, with all their
household goods in their white-topped wagons, spent perilous months and
seasons on their weary way to Oregon or California. Joining in bands,
the stalwart, skin-clad riflemen waged ferocious war on the Indians,
scarcely more savage than themselves, or made long raids for plunder
and horses against the outlying Mexican settlements. The best, the
bravest, the most modest of them all was the renowned Kit Carson. He
was not only a mighty hunter, a daring fighter, a finder of trails,
and maker of roads through the unknown, untrodden wilderness, but
also a real leader of men. Again and again he crossed and recrossed
the continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific; he guided many of
the earliest military and exploring expeditions of the United States
Government; he himself led the troops in victorious campaigns against
Apache and Navahoe; and in the Civil War he was made a colonel of the
Federal Army.

After him came many other hunters. Most were pure-blooded Americans,
but many were Creole Frenchmen, Mexicans, or even members of the
so-called civilized Indian tribes, notably the Delawares. Wide
were their wanderings, many their strange adventures in the chase,
bitter their unending warfare with the red lords of the land. Hither
and thither they roamed, from the desolate, burning deserts of the
Colorado to the grassy plains of the Upper Missouri; from the rolling
Texas prairies, bright beneath their sunny skies, to the high snow
peaks of the northern Rockies, or the giant pine forests, and soft
rainy weather, of the coasts of Puget Sound. Their main business was
trapping, furs being the only articles yielded by the wilderness,
as they knew it, which were both valuable and portable. These early
hunters were all trappers likewise, and, indeed, used their rifles only
to procure meat or repel attacks. The chief of the fur-bearing animals
they followed was the beaver, which abounded in the streams of the
plains and mountains; in the far north they also trapped otter, mink,
sable, and fisher. They married squaws from among the Indian tribes
with which they happened for the moment to be at peace; they acted as
scouts for the United States troops in their campaigns against the
tribes with which they happened to be at war.

Soon after the Civil War the life of these hunters, taken as a class,
entered on its final stage. The Pacific Coast was already fairly well
settled, and there were few mining camps in the Rockies; but most of
this Rocky Mountain region, and the entire stretch of plains country
proper, the vast belt of level or rolling grass land lying between the
Rio Grande and the Saskatchewan, still remained primeval wilderness,
inhabited only by roving hunters and formidable tribes of Indian
nomads, and by the huge herds of game on which they preyed. Beaver
swarmed in the streams and yielded a rich harvest to the trapper; but
trapping was no longer the mainstay of the adventurous plainsmen.
Foremost among the beasts of the chase, on account of its numbers,
its size, and its economic importance, was the bison or American
buffalo; its innumerable multitudes darkened the limitless prairies.
As the transcontinental railroads were pushed toward completion, and
the tide of settlement rolled onward with ever-increasing rapidity,
buffalo robes became of great value. The hunters forthwith turned
their attention mainly to the chase of the great clumsy beasts,
slaughtering them by hundreds of thousands for their hides; sometimes
killing them on horseback, but more often on foot, by still-hunting,
with the heavy long range Sharp’s rifle. Throughout the fifteen years
during which this slaughter lasted, a succession of desperate wars
was waged with the banded tribes of the Horse Indians. All the time,
in unending succession, long trains of big white-topped wagons crept
slowly westward across the prairies, marking the steady oncoming of the
frontier settlers.

By the close of 1883 the last buffalo herd was destroyed. The beaver
were trapped out of all the streams, or their numbers so thinned that
it no longer paid to follow them. The last formidable Indian war had
been brought to a successful close. The flood of the incoming whites
had risen over the land; tongues of settlement reached from the
Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Rocky Mountains to
the Pacific. The frontier had come to an end; it had vanished. With it
vanished also the old race of wilderness hunters, the men who spent
all their days in the lonely wilds, and who killed game as their sole
means of livelihood. Great stretches of wilderness still remained in
the Rocky Mountains, and here and there in the plains country, exactly
as much smaller tracts of wild land are to be found in the Alleghanies
and northern New York and New England; and on these tracts occasional
hunters and trappers still linger; but as a distinctive class, with a
peculiar and important position in American life, they no longer exist.

There were other men besides the professional hunters, who lived on the
borders of the wilderness, and followed hunting, not only as a pastime,
but also as yielding an important portion of their subsistence. The
frontier farmers were all hunters. In the Eastern backwoods, and in
certain places in the West, as in Oregon, these adventurous tillers of
the soil were the pioneers among the actual settlers; in the Rockies
their places were taken by the miners, and on the great plains by the
ranchmen and cowboys, the men who lived in the saddle, guarding their
branded herds of horses and horned stock. Almost all of the miners and
cowboys were obliged on occasions to turn hunters.

Moreover, the regular army which played so important a part in all
the later stages of the winning of the West produced its full share
of mighty hunters. The later Indian wars were fought principally by
the regulars. The West Point officer and his little company of trained
soldiers appeared abreast of the first hardy cattlemen and miners.
The ordinary settlers rarely made their appearance until in campaign
after campaign, always inconceivably wearing and harassing, and often
very bloody in character, the scarred and tattered troops had broken
and overthrown the most formidable among the Indian tribes. Faithful,
uncomplaining, unflinching, the soldiers wearing the national uniform
lived for many weary years at their lonely little posts, facing
unending toil and danger with quiet endurance, surrounded by the
desolation of vast solitudes, and menaced by the most merciless of
foes. Hunting was followed not only as a sport, but also as the only
means of keeping the posts and the expeditionary trains in meat. Many
of the officers became equally proficient as marksmen and hunters. The
three most famous Indian fighters since the Civil War, Generals Custer,
Miles, and Crook, were all keen and successful followers of the chase.

Of American big game the bison, almost always known as the buffalo,
was the largest and most important to man. When the first white
settlers landed in Virginia the bison ranged east of the Alleghanies
almost to the sea-coast, westward to the dry deserts lying beyond
the Rocky Mountains, northward to the Great Slave Lake and southward
to Chihuahua. It was a beast of the forests and mountains, in the
Alleghanies no less than in the Rockies; but its true home was on
the prairies and the high plains. Across these it roamed, hither and
thither, in herds of enormous, of incredible magnitude; herds so
large that they covered the waving grass land for hundreds of square
leagues, and when on the march occupied days and days in passing a
given point. But the seething myriads of shaggy-maned wild cattle
vanished with remarkable and melancholy rapidity before the inroads
of the white hunters, and the steady march of the oncoming settlers.
Now they are on the point of extinction. Two or three hundred are left
in that great national game preserve, the Yellowstone Park; and it is
said that others still remain in the wintry desolation of Athabasca.
Elsewhere only a few individuals exist--probably considerably less than
half a hundred all told--scattered in small parties in the wildest and
most remote and inaccessible portions of the Rocky Mountains. A bison
bull is the largest American animal. His huge bulk, his short, curved
black horns, the shaggy mane clothing his great neck and shoulders,
give him a look of ferocity which his conduct belies. Yet he is truly
a grand and noble beast, and his loss from our prairies and forest is
as keenly regretted by the lover of nature and of wild life as by the
hunter.

Next to the bison in size, and much superior in height to it and to all
other American game--for it is taller than the tallest horse--comes the
moose, or broad-horned elk. It is a strange, uncouth-looking beast,
with very long legs, short thick neck, a big, ungainly head, a swollen
nose, and huge shovel horns. Its home is in the cold, wet pine and
spruce forests, which stretch from the sub-arctic region of Canada
southward in certain places across our frontier. Two centuries ago it
was found as far south as Massachusetts. It has now been exterminated
from its former haunts in northern New York and Vermont, and is on
the point of vanishing from northern Michigan. It is still found in
northern Maine and northeastern Minnesota and in portions of northern
Idaho and Washington; while along the Rockies it extends its range
southward through western Montana to northwestern Wyoming, south of
the Tetons. In 1884 I saw the fresh hide of one that was killed in the
Bighorn Mountains.

The wapiti, or round-horned elk, like the bison, and unlike the moose,
had its centre of abundance in the United States, though extending
northward into Canada. Originally its range reached from ocean to ocean
and it went in herds of thousands of individuals; but it has suffered
more from the persecution of hunters than any other game except the
bison. By the beginning of this century it had been exterminated in
most localities east of the Mississippi; but a few lingered on for many
years in the Alleghanies. Colonel Cecil Clay informs me that an Indian
whom he knew killed one in Pennsylvania in 1869. A very few still
exist here and there in northern Michigan and Minnesota, and in one or
two spots on the western boundary of Nebraska and the Dakotas; but it
is now properly a beast of the wooded Western mountains. It is still
plentiful in western Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and in parts of
Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Though not as large as the moose it is
the most beautiful and stately of all animals of the deer kind, and its
antlers are marvels of symmetrical grandeur.

The woodland caribou is inferior to the wapiti both in size and
symmetry. The tips of the many branches of its long irregular antlers
are slightly palmated. Its range is the same as that of the moose,
save that it does not go so far southward. Its hoofs are long and
round; even larger than the long, oval hoofs of the moose, and much
larger than those of the wapiti. The tracks of all three can be told
apart at a glance, and can not be mistaken for the footprints of other
game. Wapiti tracks, however, look much like those of yearling and
two-year-old cattle, unless the ground is steep or muddy, in which
case the marks of the false hoofs appear, the joints of wapiti being
more flexible than those of domestic stock.

The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, the best known and
most abundant of American big game, and though its numbers have been
greatly thinned it is still found in almost every State of the Union.
The common blacktail or mule deer, which has likewise been sadly
thinned in numbers, though once extraordinarily abundant, extends from
the great plains to the Pacific; but is supplanted on the Puget Sound
coast by the Columbian blacktail. The delicate, heart-shaped footprints
of all three are nearly indistinguishable; when the animal is running
the hoof points are of course separated. The track of the antelope is
more oval, growing squarer with age. Mountain sheep leave footmarks
of a squarer shape, the points of the hoof making little indentations
in the soil, well apart, even when the animal is only walking; and
a yearling’s track is not unlike that made by a big prong-buck when
striding rapidly with the toes well apart. White-goat tracks are
also square, and as large as those of the sheep; but there is less
indentation of the hoof points, which come nearer together.

The antelope, or prong-buck, was once found in abundance from the
eastern edge of the great plains to the Pacific, but it has everywhere
diminished in numbers, and has been exterminated along the eastern and
western borders of its former range. The bighorn, or mountain sheep,
is found in the Rocky Mountains from northern Mexico to Alaska; and in
the United States from the Coast and Cascade ranges to the Bad Lands of
the western edges of the Dakotas, wherever there are mountain chains or
tracts of rugged hills. It was never very abundant, and, though it has
become less so, it has held its own better than most game. The white
goat, however, alone among our game animals, has positively increased
in numbers since the advent of settlers; because white hunters rarely
follow it, and the Indians who once sought its skin for robes now
use blankets instead. Its true home is in Alaska and Canada, but it
crosses our borders along the lines of the Rockies and Cascades, and
a few small isolated colonies are found here and there southward to
California and New Mexico.

The cougar and wolf, once common throughout the United States, have now
completely disappeared from all save the wildest regions. The black
bear holds its own better; it was never found on the great plains. The
huge grisly ranges from the great plains to the Pacific. The little
peccary or Mexican wild hog merely crosses our southern border.

The finest hunting ground in America was, and indeed is, the
mountainous region of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming. In
this high, cold land, of lofty mountains, deep forests, and open
prairies, with its beautiful lakes and rapid rivers, all the species of
big game mentioned above, except the peccary and Columbian blacktail,
are to be found. Until 1880 they were very abundant, and they are
still, with the exception of the bison, fairly plentiful. On most of
the long hunting expeditions which I made away from my ranch, I went
into this region.

The bulk of my hunting has been done in the cattle country, near my
ranch on the Little Missouri, and in the adjoining lands round the
lower Powder and Yellowstone. Until 1881 the valley of the Little
Missouri was fairly thronged with game, and was absolutely unchanged
in any respect from its original condition of primeval wildness. With
the incoming of the stockmen all this changed, and the game was wofully
slaughtered; but plenty of deer and antelope, a few sheep and bear, and
an occasional elk are still left.

Since the professional hunters have vanished with the vast herds of
game on which they preyed, the life of the ranchman is that which
yields most chance of hunting. Life on a cattle ranch, on the great
plains or among the foothills of the high mountains, has a peculiar
attraction for those hardy, adventurous spirits who take most kindly
to a vigorous out-of-door existence, and who are therefore most apt to
care passionately for the chase of big game. The free ranchman lives
in a wild, lonely country, and exactly as he breaks and tames his
own horses, and guards and tends his own branded herds, so he takes
the keenest enjoyment in the chase, which is to him not merely the
pleasantest of sports, but also a means of adding materially to his
comforts, and often his only method of providing himself with fresh
meat.

Hunting in the wilderness is of all pastimes the most attractive, and
it is doubly so when not carried on merely as a pastime. Shooting over
a private game preserve is of course in no way to be compared to it.
The wilderness hunter must not only show skill in the use of the rifle
and address in finding and approaching game, but he must also show
the qualities of hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution needed for
effectively grappling with his wild surroundings. The fact that the
hunter needs the game, both for its meat and for its hide, undoubtedly
adds a zest to the pursuit. Among the hunts which I have most enjoyed
were those made when I was engaged in getting in the winter’s stock of
meat for the ranch, or was keeping some party of cowboys supplied with
game from day to day.




CHAPTER II

HUNTING FROM THE RANCH; THE BLACKTAIL DEER


No life can be pleasanter than life during the months of fall on a
ranch in the northern cattle country. The weather is cool; in the
evenings and on the rare rainy days we are glad to sit by the great
fireplace, with its roaring cottonwood logs. But on most days not a
cloud dims the serene splendor of the sky; and the fresh pure air is
clear with the wonderful clearness of the high plains. We are in the
saddle from morning to night.

The long, low, roomy ranch house, of clean hewed logs, is as
comfortable as it is bare and plain. We fare simply but well; for the
wife of my foreman makes excellent bread and cake, and there are plenty
of potatoes, grown in the forlorn little garden-patch on the bottom. We
also have jellies and jams, made from wild plums and buffalo berries;
and all the milk we can drink. For meat we depend on our rifles; and,
with an occasional interlude of ducks or prairie chickens, the mainstay
of each meal is venison, roasted, broiled, or fried.

Sometimes we shoot the deer when we happen on them while about our
ordinary business,--indeed throughout the time that I have lived on the
ranch, very many of the deer and antelope I killed were thus obtained.
Of course while doing the actual round-up work it is impossible to
attend to anything else; but we generally carry rifles while riding
after the saddle band in the early morning, while visiting the line
camps, or while in the saddle among the cattle on the range; and get
many a shot in this fashion.

In the fall of 1890 some friends came to my ranch; and one day we
took them to see a round-up. The OX, a Texan steer-outfit, had sent
a couple of wagons to work down the river, after beef cattle, and
one of my men had gone along to gather any of my own scattered steers
that were ready for shipping, and to brand the late calves. There were
perhaps a dozen riders with the wagons; and they were camped for the
day on a big bottom where Blacktail and Whitetail creeks open into the
river, several miles below my ranch.

At dawn one of the men rode off to bring in the saddle band. The rest
of us were up by sunrise; and as we stood on the veranda under the
shimmering cottonwood trees, reveling in the blue of the cloudless sky,
and drinking in the cool air before going to breakfast, we saw the
motley-colored string of ponies file down from the opposite bank of the
river, and splash across the broad, shallow ford in front of the ranch
house. Cantering and trotting the band swept toward the high, round
horse-corral, in the open glade to the rear of the house. Guided by the
jutting wing which stuck out at right angles, they entered the open
gate, which was promptly closed by the cowboy who had driven them in.

After breakfast we strolled over to the corral, with our lariats, and,
standing by the snubbing-post in the middle, roped the horses we wished
for the party--some that were gentle, and others that were not. Then
every man saddled his horse; and at the moment of mounting for the
start there was, as always, a thrill of mild excitement, each rider
hoping that his own horse would not buck, and that his neighbor’s
would. I had no young horses on the ranch at the time; but a number
of the older ones still possessed some of the least amiable traits of
their youth.

Once in the saddle we rode off down river, along the bottoms,
crossing the stream again and again. We went in Indian file, as
is necessary among the trees and in broken ground, following the
cattle-trails--which themselves had replaced or broadened the game
paths that alone crossed the plateaus and bottoms when my ranch house
was first built. Now we crossed open reaches of coarse grass, thinly
sprinkled with large, brittle cottonwood trees, their branches torn and
splintered; now we wound our way through a dense jungle where the gray,
thorny buffalo bushes, spangled with brilliant red berry clusters,
choked the spaces between the thick-growing box-alders; and again the
sure-footed ponies scrambled down one cut bank and up another, through
seemingly impossible rifts, or with gingerly footsteps trod a path
which cut the side of a butte or overhung a bluff. Sometimes we racked,
or shacked along at the fox trot which is the cow-pony’s ordinary gait;
and sometimes we loped or galloped and ran.

At last we came to the ford beyond which the riders of the round-up had
made their camp. In the bygone days of the elk and buffalo, when our
branded cattle were first driven thus far north, this ford had been
dangerous from quicksand; but the cattle, ever crossing and recrossing,
had trodden down and settled the sand, and had found out the firm
places; so that it was now easy to get over.

Close beyond the trees on the further bank stood the two round-up
wagons; near by was the cook’s fire, in a trench, so that it might not
spread; the bedding of the riders and horse-wranglers lay scattered
about, each roll of blankets wrapped and corded in a stout canvas
sheet. The cook was busy about the fire; the night-wrangler was
snatching an hour or two’s sleep under one of the wagons. Half a mile
away, on the plain of sage brush and long grass, the day-wrangler was
guarding the grazing or resting horse herd, of over a hundred head.
Still further distant, at the mouth of a ravine, was the day-herd of
cattle, two or three cowboys watching it as they lolled drowsily in
their saddles. The other riders were off on circles to bring in cattle
to the round-up; they were expected every moment.

With the ready hospitality always shown in a cow-camp we were pressed
to alight and take dinner, or at least a lunch; and accordingly we
jumped off our horses and sat down. Our tin plates were soon heaped
with fresh beef, bread, tomatoes, rice, and potatoes, all very good;
for the tall, bearded, scrawny cook knew his work, and the OX outfit
always fed its men well,--and saw that they worked well too.

Before noon the circle riders began to appear on the plain, coming
out of the ravines, and scrambling down the steep hills, singly or
in twos and threes. They herded before them bunches of cattle, of
varying size; these were driven together and left in charge of a
couple of cow-punchers. The other men rode to the wagon to get a hasty
dinner--lithe, sinewy fellows, with weather-roughened faces and fearless
eyes; their broad felt hats flapped as they galloped, and their spurs
and bridle chains jingled. They rode well, with long stirrups, sitting
straight in the deep stock saddles, and their wiry ponies showed no
signs of fatigue from the long morning’s ride.

The horse-wrangler soon drove the saddle band to the wagons, where it
was caught in a quickly improvised rope-corral. The men roped fresh
horses, fitted for the cutting-work round the herd, with its attendant
furious galloping and flash-like turning and twisting. In a few minutes
all were in the saddle again and riding toward the cattle.

Then began that scene of excitement and turmoil, and seeming confusion,
but real method and orderliness, so familiar to all who have engaged
in stock-growing on the great plains. The riders gathered in a wide
ring round the herd of uneasy cattle, and a couple of men rode into
their midst to cut out the beef steers and the cows that were followed
by unbranded calves. As soon as the animal was picked out the cowboy
began to drive it slowly toward the outside of the herd, and when it
was near the edge he suddenly raced it into the open. The beast would
then start at full speed and try to double back among its fellows;
while the trained cow-pony followed like a shadow, heading it off at
every turn. The riders round that part of the herd opened out and the
chosen animal was speedily hurried off to some spot a few hundred yards
distant, where it was left under charge of another cowboy. The latter
at first had his hands full in preventing his charge from rejoining the
herd; for cattle dread nothing so much as being separated from their
comrades. However, as soon as two or three others were driven out,
enough to form a little bunch, it became a much easier matter to hold
the “cut,” as it is called. The cows and calves were put in one place,
the beeves in another; the latter were afterward run into the day-herd.

Meanwhile from time to time some clean-limbed young steer or heifer,
able to run like an antelope and double like a jack-rabbit, tried to
break out of the herd that was being worked, when the nearest cowboy
hurried in pursuit at top speed and brought it back, after a headlong,
break-neck race, in which no heed was paid to brush, fallen timber,
prairie-dog holes, or cut banks. The dust rose in little whirling
clouds, and through it dashed bolting cattle and galloping cowboys,
hither and thither, while the air was filled with the shouts and
laughter of the men, and the bellowing of the herd.

As soon as the herd was worked it was turned loose, while the cows and
calves were driven over to a large corral, where the branding was done.
A fire was speedily kindled, and in it were laid the branding irons of
the different outfits represented on the round-up. Then two of the best
ropers rode into the corral and began to rope the calves, round the
hind legs by preference, but sometimes round the head. The other men
dismounted to “wrestle” and brand them. Once roped, the calf, bawling
and struggling, was swiftly dragged near the fire, where one or two
of the calf-wrestlers grappled with and threw the kicking, plunging
little beast, and held it while it was branded. If the calf was large
the wrestlers had hard work; and one or two young maverick bulls--that
is, unbranded yearling bulls, which had been passed by in the round-ups
of the preceding year--fought viciously, bellowing and charging, and
driving some of the men up the sides of the corral, to the boisterous
delight of the others.

After watching the work for a little while we left and rode homeward.
Instead of going along the river bottoms we struck back over the
buttes. From time to time we came out on some sharp bluff overlooking
the river. From these points of vantage we could see for several miles
up and down the valley of the Little Missouri. The level bottoms were
walled in by rows of sheer cliffs, and steep, grassy slopes. These
bluff lines were from a quarter of a mile to a mile apart; they did not
run straight, but in a succession of curves, so as to look like the
halves of many amphitheatres. Between them the river swept in great
bends from side to side; the wide bed, brimful during the time of
freshets, now held but a thin stream of water. Some of the bottoms were
covered only with grass and sage brush; others were a dense jungle of
trees; while yet others looked like parks, the cottonwoods growing in
curved lines or in clumps scattered here and there.

On our way we came across a bunch of cattle, among which the sharp eyes
of my foreman detected a maverick two-year-old heifer. He and one of
the cowboys at once got down their ropes and rode after her; the rest
of us first rounding up the bunch so as to give a fair start. After a
sharp run one of the men, swinging his lariat round his head, got close
up; in a second or two the noose settled round the heifer’s neck, and
as it became taut she was brought to with a jerk; immediately afterward
the other man made his throw and cleverly heeled her. In a trice
the red heifer was stretched helpless on the ground, the two fierce
little ponies, a pinto and a buckskin, keeping her down on their own
account, tossing their heads and backing so that the ropes which led
from the saddle-horns to her head and hind feet never slackened. Then
we kindled a fire; one of the cinch rings was taken off to serve as a
branding iron, and the heifer speedily became our property--for she was
on our range.

When we reached the ranch it was still early, and after finishing
dinner it lacked over an hour of sundown. Accordingly we went for
another ride; and I carried my rifle. We started up a winding coulie
which opened back of the ranch house; and after half an hour’s canter
clambered up the steep head-ravines, and emerged on a high ridge which
went westward, straight as an arrow, to the main divide between the
Little Missouri and the Big Beaver. Along this narrow, grassy crest we
loped and galloped; we were so high that we could look far and wide
over all the country round about. To the southward, across a dozen
leagues of rolling and broken prairie, loomed Sentinel Butte, the chief
landmark of all that region. Behind us, beyond the river, rose the
weird chaos of Bad Lands which at this point lie for many miles east
of the Little Missouri. Their fantastic outlines were marked against
the sky as sharply as if cut with a knife; their grim and forbidding
desolation warmed into wonderful beauty by the light of the dying
sun. On our right, as we loped onward, the land sunk away in smooth
green-clad slopes and valleys; on our left it fell in sheer walls.
Ahead of us the sun was sinking behind a mass of blood-red clouds; and
on either hand the flushed skies were changing their tint to a hundred
hues of opal and amethyst. Our tireless little horses sprang under us,
thrilling with life; we were riding through a fairy world of beauty and
color and limitless space and freedom.

Suddenly a short hundred yards in front three blacktail leaped out of
a little glen and crossed our path, with the peculiar bounding gait of
their kind. At once I sprang from my horse and, kneeling, fired at the
last and largest of the three. My bullet sped too far back, but struck
near the hip and the crippled deer went slowly down a ravine. Running
over a hillock to cut it off, I found it in some brush a few hundred
yards beyond and finished it with a second ball. Quickly dressing it, I
packed it on my horse, and trotted back leading him; an hour afterward
saw through the waning light the quaint, home-like outlines of the
ranch house.

After all, however, blacktail can only at times be picked up by
chance in this way. More often it is needful to kill them by fair
still-hunting, among the hills or wooded mountains where they delight
to dwell. If hunted they speedily become wary. By choice they live in
such broken country that it is difficult to pursue them with hounds;
and they are by no means such water-loving animals as whitetail. On
the other hand, the land in which they dwell is very favorable to the
still-hunter who does not rely merely on stealth, but who can walk and
shoot well. They do not go on the open prairie, and, if possible, they
avoid deep forests, while, being good climbers, they like hills. In the
mountains, therefore, they keep to what is called park country, where
glades alternate with open groves. On the great plains they avoid both
the heavily timbered river bottoms and the vast treeless stretches
of level or rolling grass land; their chosen abode being the broken
and hilly region, scantily wooded, which skirts almost every plains
river and forms a belt, sometimes very narrow, sometimes many miles
in breadth, between the alluvial bottom land and the prairies beyond.
In these Bad Lands dwarfed pines and cedars grow in the canyon-like
ravines and among the high steep hills; there are also basins and
winding coulies, filled with brush and shrubbery and small elm or ash.
In all such places the blacktail loves to make its home.

I have not often hunted blacktail in the mountains, because while there
I was generally after larger game; but round my ranch I have killed
more of them than of any other game, and for me their chase has always
possessed a peculiar charm. We hunt them in the loveliest season of
the year, the fall and early winter, when it is keen pleasure merely
to live out-of-doors. Sometimes we make a regular trip, of several
days’ duration, taking the ranch wagon, with or without a tent, to
some rugged little disturbed spot where the deer are plenty; perhaps
returning with eight or ten carcasses, or even more--enough to last a
long while in cold weather. We often make such trips while laying in
our winter supply of meat.

At other times we hunt directly from the ranch house. We catch our
horses over night, and are in the saddle for an all-day’s hunt long
before the first streak of dawn, possibly not returning until some
hours after nightfall. The early morning and late evening are the
best time for hunting game, except in regions where it is hardly
ever molested, and where in consequence it moves about more or less
throughout the day.

During the rut, which begins in September, the deer are in constant
motion, and are often found in bands. The necks of the bucks swell and
their sides grow gaunt; they chase the does all night, and their flesh
becomes strong and stringy--far inferior to that of the barren does
and yearlings. The old bucks then wage desperate conflicts with one
another, and bully their smaller brethren unmercifully. Unlike the elk,
the blacktail, like the whitetail, are generally silent in the rutting
season. They occasionally grunt when fighting; and once, on a fall
evening, I heard two young bucks barking in a ravine back of my ranch
house, and crept up and shot them; but this was a wholly exceptional
instance.

At this time I hunt on foot, only using the horse to carry me to and
from the hunting-ground; for while rutting, the deer, being restless,
do not try to escape observation by lying still, and on the other hand
are apt to wander about and so are easily seen from a distance. When I
have reached a favorable place I picket my horse and go from vantage
point to vantage point, carefully scanning the hillsides, ravines, and
brush coulies from every spot that affords a wide outlook. The quarry
once seen it may be a matter of hours, or only of minutes, to approach
it, according as the wind and cover are or are not favorable. The walks
for many miles over the hills, the exercise of constant watchfulness,
the excitement of the actual stalk, and the still greater excitement
of the shot, combine to make still-hunting the blacktail, in the sharp
fall weather, one of the most attractive of hardy outdoor sports. Then
after the long, stumbling walk homeward, through the cool gloom of the
late evening, comes the meal of smoking venison and milk and bread, and
the sleepy rest, lying on the deer-skins, or sitting in the rocking
chair before the roaring fire, while the icy wind moans outside.

Earlier in the season, while the does are still nursing the fawns, and
until the bucks have cleaned the last vestiges of velvet from their
antlers, the deer lie very close, and wander round as little as may be.
In the spring and early summer, in the ranch country, we hunt big game
very little, and then only antelope; because in hunting antelope there
is no danger of killing aught but bucks. About the first of August we
begin to hunt blacktail, but do not kill does until a month later--and
then only when short of meat. In the early weeks of the deer season
we frequently do even the actual hunting on horseback instead of on
foot; because the deer at this time rarely appear in view, so as to
afford chance for a stalk, and yet are reluctant to break cover until
very closely approached. In consequence we keep on our horses, and so
get over much more ground than on foot, beating through or beside all
likely-looking cover, with the object of jumping the deer close by.
Under such circumstances bucks sometimes lie until almost trodden on.

One afternoon in mid-August, when the ranch was entirely out of meat, I
started with one of my cow-hands, Merrifield, to kill a deer. We were
on a couple of stout, quiet ponies, accustomed to firing and to packing
game. After riding a mile or two down the bottoms we left the river and
struck off up a winding valley, which led back among the hills. In a
short while we were in a blacktail country, and began to keep a sharp
lookout for game, riding parallel to, but some little distance from,
one another. The sun, beating down through the clear air, was very hot;
the brown slopes of short grass, and still more, the white clay walls
of the Bad Lands, threw the heat rays in our faces. We skirted closely
all likely-looking spots, such as the heavy brush-patches in the
bottoms of the winding valleys, and the groves of ash and elm in the
basins and pockets flanking the high plateaus; sometimes we followed a
cattle trail which ran down the middle of a big washout, and again we
rode along the brink of a deep cedar canyon.

After a while we came to a coulie with a small muddy pool at its mouth;
and round this pool there was much fresh deer sign. The coulie was but
half a mile long, heading into and flanked by the spurs of some steep,
bare hills. Its bottom, which was fifty yards or so across, was choked
by a dense growth of brush, chiefly thorny bullberries, while the sides
were formed by cut banks twelve or fifteen feet high. My companion rode
up the middle, while I scrambled up one of the banks, and, dismounting,
led my horse along its edge, that I might have a clear shot at whatever
we roused. We went nearly to the head, and then the cowboy reined up
and shouted to me that he “guessed there were no deer in the coulie.”
Instantly there was a smashing in the young trees midway between us,
and I caught a glimpse of a blacktail buck speeding round a shoulder
of the cut bank: and though I took a hurried shot I missed. However,
another buck promptly jumped up from the same place; evidently the two
had lain secure in their day-beds, shielded by the dense cover, while
the cowboy rode by them, and had only risen when he halted and began
to call to me across them. This second buck, a fine fellow with big
antlers not yet clear of velvet, luckily ran up the opposite bank, and
I got a fair shot at him as he galloped broadside to me along the open
hillside. When I fired he rolled over with a broken back. As we came up
he bleated loudly, an unusual thing for a buck to do.

Now, these two bucks must have heard us coming, but reckoned on our
passing them by without seeing them; which we would have done had they
not been startled when the cowboy halted and spoke. Later in the season
they would probably not have let us approach them, but would have run
as soon as they knew of our presence. Of course, however, even later
in the season, a man may by chance stumble across a deer close by. I
remember one occasion when my ranch partner, Robert Munro Ferguson, and
I almost corralled an unlucky deer in a small washout.

It was October, and our meat supply unexpectedly gave out; on our
ranch, as on most ranches, an occasional meat famine of three or
four days intervenes between the periods of plenty. So Ferguson and
I started together, to get venison; and at the end of two days’ hard
work, leaving the ranch by sunrise, riding to the hunting grounds and
tramping steadily until dark, we succeeded. The weather was stormy and
there were continual gusts of wind and of cold rain, sleet, or snow. We
hunted through a large tract of rough and broken country, six or eight
miles from the ranch. As often happens in such wild weather the deer
were wild too; they were watchful and were on the move all the time.
We saw a number, but either they ran off before we could get a shot,
or if we did fire it was at such a distance or under such unfavorable
circumstances that we missed. At last, as we were plodding drearily up
a bare valley, the sodden mud caking round our shoes, we roused three
deer from the mouth of a short washout but a few paces from us. Two
bounded off; the third by mistake rushed into the washout, where he
found himself in a regular trap and was promptly shot by my companion.
We slung the carcass on a pole and carried it down to where we had left
the horses; and then we loped homeward, bending to the cold, slanting
rain.

Although in places where it is much persecuted the blacktail is a shy
and wary beast, the successful pursuit of which taxes to the uttermost
the skill and energy of the hunter, yet, like the elk, if little
molested it often shows astonishing tameness and even stupidity. In
the Rockies I have sometimes come on blacktail within a very short
distance, which would merely stare at me, then trot off a few yards,
turn and stare again, and wait for several minutes before really taking
alarm. What is much more extraordinary, I have had the same thing
happen to me in certain little hunted localities in the neighborhood
of my ranch, even of recent years. In the fall of 1890, I was riding
down a canyon-coulie with my foreman, Sylvane Ferris, and a young
friend from Boston, when we almost rode over a barren blacktail doe.
She only ran some fifty yards, round a corner of the coulie, and then
turned and stood until we ran forward and killed her--for we were in
need of fresh meat. One October, a couple of years before this, my
cousin, West Roosevelt, and I took a trip with the wagon to a very
wild and rugged country, some twenty miles from the ranch. We found
that the deer had evidently been but little disturbed. One day while
scrambling down a steep, brushy hill, leading my horse, I came close on
a doe and fawn; they merely looked at me with curiosity for some time,
and then sauntered slowly off, remaining within shot for at least five
minutes. Fortunately we had plenty of meat at the time, and there was
no necessity to harm the graceful creatures. A few days later we came
on two bucks sunning themselves in the bottom of a valley. My companion
killed one. The other was lying but a dozen rods off; yet it never
moved, until several shots had been fired at the first. It was directly
under me, and, in my anxiety to avoid overshooting, to my horror I
committed the opposite fault, and away went the buck.

Every now and then any one will make most unaccountable misses. A few
days after thus losing the buck I spent nearly twenty cartridges in
butchering an unfortunate yearling, and only killed it at all because
it became so bewildered by the firing that it hardly tried to escape. I
never could tell why I used so many cartridges to such little purpose.
During the next fortnight I killed seven deer without making a single
miss, though some of the shots were rather difficult.




CHAPTER III

THE WHITETAIL DEER; AND THE BLACKTAIL OF THE COLUMBIA


The whitetail deer is much the commonest game animal of the United
States, being still found, though generally in greatly diminished
numbers, throughout most of the Union. It is a shrewd, wary, knowing
beast; but it owes its prolonged stay in the land chiefly to the fact
that it is an inveterate skulker, and fond of the thickest cover.
Accordingly it usually has to be killed by stealth and stratagem, and
not by fair, manly hunting; being quite easily slain in any one of half
a dozen unsportsmanlike ways. In consequence I care less for its chase
than for the chase of any other kind of American big game. Yet in the
few places where it dwells in open, hilly forests and can be killed by
still-hunting as if it were a blacktail; or, better still, where the
nature of the ground is such that it can be run down in fair chase on
horseback, either with greyhounds, or with a pack of trackhounds, it
yields splendid sport.

Killing a deer from a boat while the poor animal is swimming in the
water, or on snowshoes as it flounders helplessly in the deep drifts,
can only be justified on the plea of hunger. This is also true of lying
in wait at a lick. Whoever indulges in any of these methods, save from
necessity, is a butcher pure and simple, and has no business in the
company of true sportsmen.

Fire hunting may be placed in the same category; yet it is possibly
allowable under exceptional circumstances to indulge in a fire hunt,
if only for the sake of seeing the wilderness by torchlight. My first
attempt at big-game shooting, when a boy, was “jacking” for deer in the
Adirondacks, on a pond or small lake surrounded by the grand northern
forests of birch and beech, pine, spruce, and fir. I killed a spike
buck; and while I have never been willing to kill another in this
manner, I can not say that I regret having once had the experience.
The ride over the glassy, black water, the witchcraft of such silent
progress through the mystery of the night, can not but impress one.
There is pleasure in the mere buoyant gliding of the birch-bark canoe,
with its curved bow and stern; nothing else that floats possesses
such grace, such frail and delicate beauty, as this true craft of the
wilderness, which is as much a creature of the wild woods as the deer
and bear themselves. The light streaming from the bark lantern in the
bow cuts a glaring lane through the gloom; in it all objects stand out
like magic, shining for a moment white and ghastly and then vanishing
into the impenetrable darkness; while all the time the paddler in the
stern makes not so much as a ripple, and there is never a sound but the
occasional splash of a muskrat, or the moaning _uloo-oo--uloo-uloo_
of an owl from the deep forests; and at last perchance the excitement
of a shot at a buck, standing at gaze, with luminous eyeballs.

The most common method of killing the whitetail is by hounding;
that is, by driving it with hounds past runways where hunters are
stationed--for all wild animals when on the move prefer to follow
certain definite routes. This is a legitimate, but inferior, kind of
sport.

However, even killing driven deer may be good fun at certain times.
Most of the whitetail we kill round the ranch are obtained in this
fashion. On the Little Missouri--as throughout the plains country
generally--these deer cling to the big wooded river bottoms, while the
blacktail are found in the broken country back from the river. The
tangled mass of cottonwoods, box-alders, and thorny bullberry bushes
which cover the bottoms afford the deer a nearly secure shelter from
the still-hunter; and it is only by the aid of hounds that they can be
driven from their wooded fastnesses. They hold their own better than
any other game. The great herds of buffalo, and the bands of elk, have
vanished completely; the swarms of antelope and blacktail have been
woefully thinned; but the whitetail, which were never found in such
throngs as either buffalo or elk, blacktail or antelope, have suffered
far less from the advent of the white hunters, ranchmen, and settlers.
They are of course not as plentiful as formerly; but some are still
to be found in almost all their old haunts. Where the river, winding
between rows of high buttes, passes my ranch house, there is a long
succession of heavily wooded bottoms; and on all of these, even on the
one whereon the house itself stands, there are a good many whitetail
yet left.

When we take a day’s regular hunt we usually wander afar, either to
the hills after blacktail or to the open prairie after antelope.
But if we are short of meat, and yet have no time for a regular
hunt, being perhaps able to spare only a couple of hours after the
day’s work is over, then all hands turn out to drive a bottom for
whitetail. We usually have one or two trackhounds at the ranch; true
Southern deerhounds, black and tan, with lop ears and hanging lips,
their wrinkled faces stamped with an expression of almost ludicrous
melancholy. They are not fast, and have none of the alert look of the
pied and spotted modern foxhound; but their noses are very keen, their
voices deep and mellow, and they are wonderfully staunch on a trail.

All is bustle and laughter as we start on such a hunt. The baying
hounds bound about, as the rifles are taken down; the wiry ponies are
roped out of the corral, and each broad-hatted hunter swings joyfully
into the saddle. If the pony bucks or “acts mean” the rider finds that
his rifle adds a new element of interest to the performance, which is
of course hailed with loud delight by all the men on quiet horses. Then
we splash off over the river, scramble across the faces of the bluffs,
or canter along the winding cattle paths, through the woods, until we
come to the bottom we intend to hunt. Here a hunter is stationed at
each runway along which it is deemed likely that the deer will pass;
and one man, who has remained on horseback, starts into the cover
with the hounds; occasionally this horseman himself, skilled, as most
cowboys are, in the use of the revolver, gets a chance to kill a deer.
The deep baying of the hounds speedily gives warning that the game
is afoot; and the watching hunters, who have already hid their horses
carefully, look to their rifles. Sometimes the deer comes far ahead of
the dogs, running very swiftly with neck stretched straight out; and
if the cover is thick such an animal is hard to hit. At other times,
especially if the quarry is a young buck, it plays along not very far
ahead of its baying pursuers, bounding and strutting with head up and
white flag flaunting. If struck hard, down goes the flag at once, and
the deer plunges into a staggering run, while the hounds yell with
eager ferocity as they follow the bloody trail. Usually we do not have
to drive more than one or two bottoms before getting a deer, which
is forthwith packed behind one of the riders, as the distance is not
great, and home we come in triumph. Sometimes, however, we fail to
find game, or the deer take unguarded passes, or the shot is missed.
Occasionally I have killed deer on these hunts; generally I have merely
sat still a long while, listened to the hounds, and at last heard
somebody else shoot. In fact such hunting, though good enough fun if
only tried rarely, would speedily pall if followed at all regularly.

Personally the chief excitement I have had in connection therewith
has arisen from some antic of my horse; a half-broken bronco is apt
to become unnerved when a man with a gun tries to climb on him in a
hurry. On one hunt in 1890 I rode a wild animal named Whitefoot. He had
been a confirmed and very bad bucker three years before, when I had
him in my string on the round-up; but had grown quieter with years.
Nevertheless I found he had some fire left; for a hasty vault into the
saddle on my part was followed on his by some very resolute pitching.
I lost my rifle and hat, and my revolver and knife were bucked out of
my belt; but I kept my seat all right, and finally got his head up and
mastered him without letting him throw himself over backward, a trick
he sometimes practiced. Nevertheless, in the first jump when I was
taken unawares, I strained myself across the loins, and did not get
entirely over it for six months.

To shoot running game with the rifle it is always necessary to be a
good and quick marksman; for it is never easy to kill an animal, when
in rapid motion, with a single bullet. If on a runway a man who is a
fairly skilful rifleman has plenty of time for a clear shot, on open
ground, at comparatively short distance, say under eighty yards, and if
the deer is cantering, he ought to hit; at least I generally do under
such circumstances, by remembering to hold well forward, in fact just
in front of the deer’s chest. But I do not always kill by any means;
quite often when I thought I held far enough ahead, my bullet has gone
into the buck’s hips or loins. However, one great feature in the use of
dogs is that they enable one almost always to recover wounded game.

If the animal is running at full speed a long distance off, the
difficulty of hitting is of course very much increased; and if the
country is open the value of a repeating rifle is then felt. If
the game is bounding over logs or dodging through underbrush, the
difficulty is again increased. Moreover, the natural gait of the
different kinds of game must be taken into account. Of course the
larger kinds, such as elk and moose, are the easiest to hit; then comes
the antelope, in spite of its swiftness, and the sheep, because of
the evenness of their running; then the whitetail, with its rolling
gallop; and last and hardest of all, the blacktail, because of its
extraordinary stiff-legged bounds.

Sometimes on a runway the difficulty is not that the game is too far,
but that it is too close; for a deer may actually almost jump on the
hunter, surprising him out of all accuracy of aim. Once something of
the sort happened to me.

Winter was just beginning. I had been off with the ranch wagon on a
last round-up of the beef steers; and had suffered a good deal, as one
always does on these cold weather round-ups, sleeping out in the snow,
wrapped up in blankets and tarpaulin, with no tent and generally no
fire. Moreover, I became so weary of the interminable length of the
nights, that I almost ceased to mind the freezing misery of standing
night guard round the restless cattle; while roping, saddling, and
mastering the rough horses each morning, with numbed and stiffened
limbs, though warming to the blood was harrowing to the temper.

On my return to the ranch I found a strange hunter staying there; a
clean, square-built, honest-looking little fellow, but evidently not
a native American. As a rule, nobody displays much curiosity about
any one’s else antecedents in the Far West; but I happened to ask
my foreman who the newcomer was,--chiefly because the said newcomer,
evidently appreciating the warmth and comfort of the clean, roomy ranch
house, with its roaring fires, books, and good fare, seemed inclined
to make a permanent stay, according to the custom of the country.
My foreman, who had a large way of looking at questions of foreign
ethnology and geography, responded with indifference: “Oh, he’s a kind
of a Dutchman; but he hates the other Dutch, mortal. He’s from an
island Germany took from France in the last war!” This seemed puzzling;
but it turned out that the “island” in question was Alsace. Native
Americans predominate among the dwellers in and on the borders of the
wilderness, and in the wild country over which the great herds of the
cattlemen roam; and they take the lead in every way. The sons of the
Germans, Irish, and other European newcomers are usually quick to claim
to be “straight United States,” and to disavow all kinship with the
fellow-countrymen of their fathers. Once while with a hunter bearing a
German name we came by chance on a German hunting party from one of the
Eastern cities. One of them remarked to my companion that he must be
part German himself, to which he cheerfully answered: “Well, my father
was a Dutchman, but my mother was a white woman! I’m pretty white
myself!” whereat the Germans glowered at him gloomily.

As we were out of meat the Alsatian and one of the cowboys and I
started down the river with a wagon. The first day in camp it rained
hard, so that we could not hunt. Toward evening we grew tired of doing
nothing, and as the rain had become a mere fine drizzle, we sallied
out to drive one of the bottoms for whitetail. The cowboy and our one
trackhound plunged into the young cottonwood which grew thickly over
the sandy bottom; while the little hunter and I took our stands on a
cut bank, twenty feet high and half a mile long, which hedged in the
trees from behind. Three or four game trails led up through steep,
narrow clefts in this bank; and we tried to watch these. Soon I saw
a deer in an opening below, headed toward one end of the bank, round
which another game trail led; and I ran hard toward this end, where
it turned into a knife-like ridge of clay. About fifty yards from the
point there must have been some slight irregularities in the face of
the bank, enough to give the deer a foothold; for as I ran along the
animal suddenly bounced over the crest, so close that I could have hit
it with my right hand. As I tried to pull up short and swing round, my
feet slipped from under me in the wet clay, and down I went; while the
deer literally turned a terrified somersault backward. I flung myself
to the edge and missed a hurried shot as it raced back on its tracks.
Then, wheeling, I saw the little hunter running toward me along the
top of the cut bank, his face on a broad grin. He leaped over one of
the narrow clefts, up which a game trail led; and hardly was he across
before the frightened deer bolted up it, not three yards from his
back. He did not turn, in spite of my shouting and handwaving, and the
frightened deer, in the last stage of panic at finding itself again
almost touching one of its foes, sped off across the grassy slopes like
a quarter horse. When at last the hunter did turn, it was too late; and
our long-range fusillade proved harmless. During the next two days I
redeemed myself, killing four deer.

Coming back our wagon broke down, no unusual incident in ranch-land,
where there is often no road, while the strain is great in hauling
through quick-sands, and up or across steep broken hills; it rarely
makes much difference beyond the temporary delay, for plainsmen
and mountain-men are very handy and self-helpful. Besides, a mere
break-down sinks into nothing compared to having the team play out;
which is, of course, most apt to happen at the times when it ensures
hardship and suffering, as in the middle of a snowstorm, or when
crossing a region with no water. However, the reinsmen of the plains
must needs face many such accidents, not to speak of runaways, or
having the wagon pitchpole over on to the team in dropping down too
steep a hillside. Once after a three days’ rainstorm some of us tried
to get the ranch wagon along a trail which led over the ridge of a
gumbo or clay butte. The sticky stuff clogged our shoes, the horses’
hoofs, and the wheels; and it was even more slippery than it was
sticky. Finally we struck a sloping shoulder; with great struggling,
pulling, pushing, and shouting, we reached the middle of it, and then,
as one of my men remarked, “the whole darned outfit slid into the
coulie.”

These hunting trips after deer or antelope with the wagon usually take
four or five days. I always ride some tried hunting horse; and the
wagon itself when on such a hunt is apt to lead a checkered career, as
half the time there is not the vestige of a trail to follow. Moreover
we often make a hunt when the good horses are on the round-up, or
otherwise employed, and we have to get together a scrub team of
cripples or else of outlaws--vicious devils, only used from dire need.
The best teamster for such a hunt that we ever had on the ranch was a
weather-beaten old fellow known as “Old Man Tompkins.” In the course of
a long career as lumberman, plains teamster, buffalo hunter, and Indian
fighter, he had passed several years as a Rocky Mountain stage driver;
and a stage driver of the Rockies is of necessity a man of such skill
and nerve that he fears no team and no country. No matter how wild the
unbroken horses, Old Tompkins never asked help; and he hated to drive
less than a four-in-hand. When he once had a grip on the reins, he let
no one hold the horses’ heads. All he wished was an open plain for
the rush at the beginning. The first plunge might take the wheelers’
forefeet over the cross-bars of the leaders, but he never stopped for
that; on went the team, running, bounding, rearing, tumbling, while
the wagon leaped behind, until gradually things straightened out of
their own accord. I soon found, however, that I could not allow him to
carry a rifle; for he was an inveterate game butcher. In the presence
of game the old fellow became fairly wild with excitement, and forgot
the years and rheumatism which had crippled him. Once, after a long and
tiresome day’s hunt, we were walking home together; he was carrying his
boots in his hands, bemoaning the fact that his feet hurt him. Suddenly
a whitetail jumped up; down dropped Old Tompkins’s boots, and away he
went like a college sprinter, entirely heedless of stones and cactus.
By some indiscriminate firing at long range we dropped the deer; and
as Old Tompkins cooled down he realized that his bare feet had paid
full penalty for his dash.

One of these wagon trips I remember because I missed a fair running
shot which I much desired to hit; and afterward hit a very much more
difficult shot about which I cared very little. Ferguson and I, with
Sylvane and one or two others, had gone a day’s journey down the river
for a hunt. We went along the bottoms, crossing the stream every mile
or so, with an occasional struggle through mud or quicksand, or up
the steep, rotten banks. An old buffalo hunter drove the wagon, with
a couple of shaggy, bandy-legged ponies; the rest of us jogged along
in front on horseback, picking out a trail through the bottoms and
choosing the best crossing places. Some of the bottoms were grassy
pastures; on others great, gnarled cottonwoods with shivered branches
stood in clumps; yet others were choked with a true forest growth.
Late in the afternoon we went into camp, choosing a spot where the
cottonwoods were young; their glossy leaves trembled and rustled
unceasingly. We speedily picketed the horses--changing them about as
they ate off the grass,--drew water, and hauled great logs in front of
where we had pitched the tent, while the wagon stood nearby. Each man
laid out his bed; the food and kitchen kit were taken from the wagon;
supper was cooked and eaten; and we then lay round the camp-fire,
gazing into it, or up at the brilliant stars, and listening to the
wild, mournful wailing of the coyotes. They were very plentiful round
this camp; before sunrise and after sundown they called unceasingly.

Next day I took a long tramp and climb after mountain-sheep and missed
a running shot at a fine ram, about a hundred yards off; or, rather, I
hit him and followed his bloody trail a couple of miles, but failed to
find him; whereat I returned to camp much cast down.

Early the following morning Sylvane and I started for another hunt,
this time on horseback. The air was crisp and pleasant; the beams
of the just-risen sun struck sharply on the umber-colored hills and
white cliff walls guarding the river, bringing into high relief their
strangely carved and channeled fronts. Below camp the river was little
but a succession of shallow pools strung along the broad sandy bed
which in spring-time was filled from bank to bank with foaming muddy
water. Two mallards sat in one of these pools; and I hit one with the
rifle, so nearly missing that the ball scarcely ruffled a feather; yet
in some way the shock told, for the bird, after flying thirty yards,
dropped on the sand.

Then we left the river and our active ponies scrambled up a small
canyon-like break in the bluffs. All day we rode among the hills;
sometimes across rounded slopes, matted with short buffalo grass;
sometimes over barren buttes of red or white clay, where only sage
brush and cactus grew; or beside deep ravines, black with stunted
cedar; or along beautiful winding coulies, where the grass grew rankly,
and the thickets of ash and wild plum made brilliant splashes of red
and yellow and tender green. Yet we saw nothing.

As evening grew on we rode riverward; we slid down the steep bluff
walls, and loped across a great bottom of sage brush and tall grass,
our horses now and then leaping like cats over the trunks of dead
cottonwoods. As we came to the brink of the cut bank which forms the
hither boundary of the river in freshet time, we suddenly saw two deer,
a doe and a well grown fawn--of course long out of the spotted coat.
They were walking with heads down along the edge of a sand-bar, near
a pool, on the further side of the stream bed, over two hundred yards
distant. They saw us at once, and turning, galloped away, with flags
aloft, the pictures of springing, vigorous beauty. I jumped off my
horse in an instant, knelt, and covered the fawn. It was going straight
away from me, running very evenly, and I drew a coarse sight at the tip
of the white flag. As I pulled trigger down went the deer, the ball
having gone into the back of its head. The distance was a good three
hundred yards; and while of course there was much more chance than
skill in the shot I felt well pleased with it--though I could not help
a regret that, while making such a difficult shot at a mere whitetail,
I should have missed a much easier shot at a noble bighorn. Not only I,
but all the camp, had a practical interest in my success; for we had
no fresh meat, and a fat whitetail fawn, killed in October, yields the
best of venison. So after dressing the deer I slung the carcass behind
my saddle, and we rode swiftly back to camp through the dark; and that
evening we feasted on the juicy roasted ribs.

The degree of tameness and unsuspiciousness shown by whitetail deer
depends, of course, upon the amount of molestation to which they are
exposed. Their times for sleeping, feeding, and coming to water vary
from the same cause. Where they are little persecuted they feed long
after sunrise and before sunset, and drink when the sun is high in
the heavens, sometimes even at midday; they then show but little fear
of man, and speedily become indifferent to the presence of deserted
dwellings.

In the cattle country the ranch houses are often shut during the
months of warm weather, when the round-ups succeed one another without
intermission, as the calves must be branded, the beeves gathered and
shipped, long trips made to collect strayed animals, and the trail
stock driven from the breeding to the fattening grounds. At that time
all the menfolk may have to be away in the white-topped wagons,
working among the horned herds, whether plodding along the trail, or
wandering to and fro on the range. Late one summer, when my own house
had been thus closed for many months, I rode thither with a friend to
pass a week. The place already wore the look of having slipped away
from the domain of man. The wild forces, barely thrust back beyond
the threshold of our habitation, were prompt to spring across it to
renewed possession the moment we withdrew. The rank grass grew tall
in the yard, and on the sodded roofs of the stable and sheds; the
weather-beaten log walls of the house itself were one in tint with the
trunks of the gnarled cottonwoods by which it was shaded. Evidently the
woodland creatures had come to regard the silent, deserted buildings as
mere out-growths of the wilderness, no more to be feared than the trees
around them or the gray, strangely shaped buttes behind.

Lines of delicate, heart-shaped footprints in the muddy reaches of
the half-dry river-bed showed where the deer came to water; and in
the dusty cattle-trails among the ravines many round tracks betrayed
the passing and repassing of timber wolves,--once or twice in the late
evening we listened to their savage and melancholy howling. Cotton-tail
rabbits burrowed under the veranda. Within doors the bushy-tailed
pack-rats had possession, and at night they held a perfect witches’
sabbath in the garret and kitchen; while a little white-footed mouse,
having dragged half the stuffing out of a mattress, had made thereof a
big fluffy nest, entirely filling the oven.

Yet, in spite of the abundant sign of game, we at first suffered under
one of those spells of ill-luck which at times befall all hunters, and
for several days we could kill nothing, though we tried hard, being
in need of fresh meat. The moon was full--each evening, sitting on the
ranch veranda, or walking homeward, we watched it rise over the line of
bluffs beyond the river--and the deer were feeding at night; moreover,
in such hot weather they lie very close, move as little as possible,
and are most difficult to find. Twice we lay out from dusk until dawn,
in spite of the mosquitoes, but saw nothing; and the chances we did get
we failed to profit by.

One morning, instead of trudging out to hunt I stayed at home, and
sat in a rocking-chair on the veranda reading, rocking, or just
sitting still listening to the low rustling of the cottonwood branches
overhead, and gazing across the river. Through the still, clear, hot
air, the faces of the bluffs shone dazzling white; no shadow fell from
the cloudless sky on the grassy slopes, or on the groves of timber;
only the faraway cooing of a mourning-dove broke the silence. Suddenly
my attention was arrested by a slight splashing in the water; glancing
up from my book I saw three deer, which had come out of the thick
fringe of bushes and young trees across the river, and were strolling
along the sand-bars directly opposite me. Slipping stealthily into the
house I picked up my rifle, and slipped back again. One of the deer was
standing motionless, broadside to me; it was a long shot, two hundred
and fifty yards, but I had a rest against a pillar of the veranda. I
held true, and as the smoke cleared away the deer lay struggling on the
sands.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the whitetail is the most common and widely distributed of American
game, so the Columbian blacktail has the most sharply limited
geographical range; for it is confined to the northwest coast, where it
is by far the most abundant deer. In antlers it is indistinguishable
from the common blacktail of the Rockies and the great plains, and it
has the regular blacktail gait, a succession of stiff-legged bounds
on all four feet at once; but its tail is more like a whitetail’s in
shape, though black above. As regards methods of hunting, and the
amount of sport yielded, it stands midway between its two brethren. It
lives in a land of magnificent timber, where the trees tower far into
the sky, the giants of their kind; and there are few more attractive
sports than still-hunting on the mountains, among these forests of
marvelous beauty and grandeur. There are many lakes among the mountains
where it dwells, and as it cares more for water than the ordinary
blacktail, it is comparatively easy for hounds to drive it into some
pond where it can be killed at leisure. It is thus often killed by
hounding.

The only one I ever killed was a fine young buck. We had camped near a
little pond, and as evening fell I strolled off toward it and sat down.
Just after sunset the buck came out of the woods. For some moments he
hesitated and then walked forward and stood by the edge of the water,
about sixty yards from me. We were out of meat, so I held right behind
his shoulder, and though he went off, his bounds were short and weak,
and he fell before he reached the wood.




CHAPTER IV

ON THE CATTLE RANGES; THE PRONG-HORN ANTELOPE


Early one June just after the close of the regular spring round-up, a
couple of wagons, with a score of riders between them, were sent to
work some hitherto untouched country, between the Little Missouri
and the Yellowstone. I was to go as the representative of our own
and of one or two neighboring brands; but as the round-up had halted
near my ranch I determined to spend a day there, and then to join the
wagons;--the appointed meeting-place being a cluster of red scoria
buttes, some forty miles distant, where there was a spring of good
water.

Most of my day at the ranch was spent in slumber; for I had been
several weeks on the round-up, where nobody ever gets quite enough
sleep. This is the only drawback to the work; otherwise it is pleasant
and exciting, with just that slight touch of danger necessary to give
it zest, and without the wearing fatigue of such labor as lumbering or
mining. But there is never enough sleep, at least on the spring and
midsummer round-ups. The men are in the saddle from dawn until dusk,
at the time when the days are longest on these great northern plains;
and in addition there is the regular night guarding and now and then
a furious storm or a stampede, when for twenty hours at a stretch the
riders only dismount to change horses or snatch a mouthful of food.

I started in the bright sunrise, riding one horse and driving loose
before me eight others, one carrying my bedding. They traveled strung
out in single file. I kept them trotting and loping, for loose horses
are easiest to handle when driven at some speed, and moreover the way
was long. My rifle was slung under my thigh; the lariat was looped on
the saddle-horn.

At first our trail led through winding coulies, and sharp grassy
defiles; the air was wonderfully clear, the flowers were in bloom, the
breath of the wind in my face was odorous and sweet. The patter and
beat of the unshod hoofs, rising in half-rhythmic measure, frightened
the scudding deer; but the yellow-breasted meadow larks, perched on the
budding tops of the bushes, sang their rich full songs without heeding
us as we went by.

When the sun was well on high and the heat of the day had begun we
came to a dreary and barren plain, broken by rows of low clay buttes.
The ground in places was whitened by alkali; elsewhere it was dull
gray. Here there grew nothing save sparse tufts of coarse grass, and
cactus, and sprawling sage brush. In the hot air all things seen afar
danced and wavered. As I rode and gazed at the shimmering haze the vast
desolation of the landscape bore on me, it seemed as if the unseen and
unknown powers of the wastes were moving by and marshaling their silent
forces. No man save the wilderness dweller knows the strong melancholy
fascination of these long rides through lonely lands.

At noon, that the horses might graze and drink, I halted where some
box-alders grew by a pool in the bed of a half-dry creek; and shifted
my saddle to a fresh beast. When we started again we came out on the
rolling prairie, where the green sea of wind-rippled grass stretched
limitless as far as the eye could reach. Little striped gophers
scuttled away, or stood perfectly straight at the mouths of their
burrows, looking like picket pins. Curlews clamored mournfully as
they circled overhead. Prairie fowl swept off, clucking and calling,
or strutted about with their sharp tails erect. Antelope were very
plentiful, running like race-horses across the level, or uttering their
queer, barking grunt as they stood at gaze, the white hairs on their
rumps all on end, their neck bands of broken brown and white vivid in
the sunlight. They were found singly or in small straggling parties;
the master bucks had not yet begun to drive out the younger and weaker
ones as later in the season, when each would gather into a herd as many
does as his jealous strength could guard from rivals. The nursing does
whose kids had come early were often found with the bands; the others
kept apart. The kids were very conspicuous figures on the prairies,
across which they scudded like jack-rabbits, showing nearly as much
speed and alertness as their parents; only the very young sought safety
by lying flat to escape notice.

The horses cantered and trotted steadily over the mat of buffalo
grass, steering for the group of low scoria mounds which was my goal.
In mid-afternoon I reached it. The two wagons were drawn up near
the spring; under them lay the night-wranglers, asleep; nearby the
teamster-cooks were busy about the evening meal. A little way off the
two day-wranglers were watching the horse-herd; into which I speedily
turned my own animals. The riders had already driven in the bunches of
cattle, and were engaged in branding the calves, and turning loose the
animals that were not needed, while the remainder were kept, forming
the nucleus of the herd which was to accompany the wagon.

As soon as the work was over the men rode to the wagons; sinewy
fellows, with tattered broad-brimmed hats and clanking spurs, some
wearing leather shaps or leggings, others having their trousers tucked
into their high-heeled top-boots, all with their flannel shirts and
loose neckerchiefs dusty and sweaty. A few were indulging in rough,
goodnatured horse play, to an accompaniment of yelling mirth; most were
grave and taciturn, greeting me with a silent nod or a “How! friend.” A
very talkative man, unless the acknowledged wit of the party, according
to the somewhat florid frontier notion of wit, is always looked on
with disfavor in a cow-camp. After supper, eaten in silent haste, we
gathered round the embers of the small fires, and the conversation
glanced fitfully over the threadbare subjects common to all such
camps; the antics of some particularly vicious bucking bronco, how
the different brands of cattle were showing up, the smallness of the
calf drop, the respective merits of rawhide lariats and grass ropes,
and bits of rather startling and violent news concerning the fates
of certain neighbors. Then one by one we began to turn in under our
blankets.

Our wagon was to furnish the night guards for the cattle; and each of
us had his gentlest horse tied ready to hand. The night guards went
on duty two at a time for two-hour watches. By good luck my watch
came last. My comrade was a happy-go-lucky young Texan who for some
inscrutable reason was known as “Latigo Strap”; he had just come from
the South with a big drove of trail cattle.

A few minutes before two, one of the guards who had gone on duty at
midnight rode into camp and wakened us up by shaking our shoulders.
Fumbling in the dark, I speedily saddled my horse; Latigo had left his
saddled, and he started ahead of me. One of the annoyances of night
guarding, at least in thick weather, is the occasional difficulty of
finding the herd after leaving camp, or in returning to camp after
the watch is over; there are few things more exasperating than to
be helplessly wandering about in the dark under such circumstances.
However, on this occasion there was no such trouble; for it was a
brilliant starlight night and the herd had been bedded down by a
sugar-loaf butte which made a good landmark. As we reached the spot we
could make out the loom of the cattle lying close together on the level
plain; and then the dim figure of a horseman rose vaguely from the
darkness and moved by in silence; it was the other of the two midnight
guards, on his way back to his broken slumber.

At once we began to ride slowly round the cattle in opposite
directions. We were silent, for the night was clear, and the herd
quiet; in wild weather, when the cattle are restless, the cowboys never
cease calling and singing as they circle them, for the sounds seem to
quiet the beasts.

For over an hour we steadily paced the endless round, saying nothing,
with our greatcoats buttoned, for the air was chill toward morning
on the northern plains, even in summer. Then faint streaks of gray
appeared in the east. Latigo Strap began to call merrily to the
cattle. A coyote came sneaking over the butte nearby, and halted to
yell and wail; afterward he crossed the coulie and from the hillside
opposite again shrieked in dismal crescendo. The dawn brightened
rapidly; the little skylarks of the plains began to sing, soaring far
overhead, while it was still much too dark to see them. Their song is
not powerful, but it is so clear and fresh and long-continued that it
always appeals to one very strongly; especially because it is most
often heard in the rose-tinted air of the glorious mornings, while the
listener sits in the saddle, looking across the endless sweep of the
prairies.

As it grew lighter the cattle became restless, rising and stretching
themselves, while we continued to ride round them.

  “Then the bronc’ began to pitch
    And I began to ride;
  He bucked me off a
    cut bank, Hell! I nearly died!”

sang Latigo from the other side of the herd. A yell from the wagons
told that the cook was summoning the sleeping cow-punchers to
breakfast; we were soon able to distinguish their figures as they
rolled out of their bedding, wrapped and corded it into bundles, and
huddled sullenly round the little fires. The horse-wranglers were
driving in the saddle bands. All the cattle got on their feet and
started feeding. In a few minutes the hasty breakfast at the wagons
had evidently been despatched, for we could see the men forming rope
corrals into which the ponies were driven; then each man saddled,
bridled, and mounted his horse, two or three of the half-broken beasts
bucking, rearing, and plunging frantically in the vain effort to unseat
their riders.

The two men who were first in the saddle relieved Latigo and myself,
and we immediately galloped to camp, shifted our saddles to fresh
animals, gulped down a cup or two of hot coffee, and some pork, beans
and bread, and rode to the spot where the others were gathered, lolling
loosely in their saddles, and waiting for the round-up boss to assign
them their tasks. We were the last, and as soon as we arrived the boss
divided all into two parties for the morning work, or “circle riding,”
whereby the cattle were to be gathered for the round-up proper. Then,
as the others started, he turned to me and remarked: “We’ve got enough
hands to drive this open country without you; but we’re out of meat,
and I don’t want to kill a beef for such a small outfit; can’t you
shoot some antelope this morning? We’ll pitch camp by the big blasted
cottonwood at the foot of the ash coulies, over yonder, below the
breaks of Dry Creek.”

Of course I gladly assented, and was speedily riding alone across the
grassy slopes. There was no lack of the game I was after, for from
every rise of ground I could see antelope scattered across the prairie,
singly, in couples, or in bands. But their very numbers, joined to
the lack of cover on such an open, flattish country, proved a bar to
success; while I was stalking one band another was sure to see me and
begin running, whereat the first would likewise start; I missed one or
two very long shots, and noon found me still without game.

However, I was then lucky enough to see a band of a dozen feeding to
windward of a small butte, and by galloping in a long circle I got
within a quarter of a mile of them before having to dismount. The stalk
itself was almost too easy; for I simply walked to the butte, climbed
carefully up a slope where the soil was firm and peered over the top
to see the herd, a little one, a hundred yards off. They saw me at
once and ran, but I held well ahead of a fine young prong-buck, and
rolled him over like a rabbit, with both shoulders broken. In a few
minutes I was riding onward once more with the buck lashed behind my
saddle.

The next one I got, a couple of hours later, offered a much more
puzzling stalk. He was a big fellow in company with four does or small
bucks. All five were lying in the middle of a slight basin, at the head
of a gentle valley. At first sight it seemed impossible to get near
them, for there was not so much cover as a sage brush, and the smooth,
shallow basin in which they lay was over a thousand yards across, while
they were looking directly down the valley. However, it is curious how
hard it is to tell, even from nearby, whether a stalk can or can not
be made; the difficulty being to estimate the exact amount of shelter
yielded by little inequalities of ground. In this instance a small,
shallow watercourse, entirely dry, ran along the valley, and after
much study I decided to try to crawl up it, although the big bulging
telescopic eyes of the prong-buck--which have much keener sight than
deer or any other game--would in such case be pointed directly my way.

Having made up my mind I backed cautiously down from the coign of
vantage whence I had first seen the game, and ran about a mile to the
mouth of a washout which formed the continuation of the watercourse
in question. Protected by the high clay banks of this washout I was
able to walk upright until within half a mile of the prong-bucks; then
my progress became very tedious and toilsome, as I had to work my way
up the watercourse flat on my stomach, dragging the rifle beside me.
At last I reached a spot beyond which not even a snake could crawl
unnoticed. In front was a low bank, a couple of feet high, crested with
tufts of coarse grass. Raising my head very cautiously I peered through
these and saw the prong-horn about a hundred and fifty yards distant.
At the same time I found that I had crawled to the edge of a village
of prairie dogs, which had already made me aware of their presence by
their shrill yelping. They saw me at once: and all those away from
their homes scuttled toward them, and dived down the burrows, or sat on
the mounds at the entrances, scolding convulsively and jerking their
fat little bodies and short tails. This commotion at once attracted the
attention of the antelope. They rose forthwith, and immediately caught
a glimpse of the black muzzle of the rifle which I was gently pushing
through the grass tufts. The fatal curiosity which so often in this
species offsets wariness and sharp sight, proved my friend; evidently
the antelope could not quite make me out and wished to know what I
was. They moved nervously to and fro, striking the earth with their
fore hoofs, and now and then uttering a sudden bleat. At last the big
buck stood still broadside to me, and I fired. He went off with the
others, but lagged behind as they passed over the hill crest, and when
I reached it I saw him standing, not very far off, with his head down.
Then he walked backward a few steps, fell over on his side, and died.

As he was a big buck I slung him across the saddle, and started for
camp afoot, leading the horse. However, my hunt was not over, for while
still a mile from the wagons, going down a coulie of Dry Creek, a
yearling prong-buck walked over the divide to my right and stood still
until I sent a bullet into its chest; so that I made my appearance in
camp with three antelope.

I spoke above of the sweet singing of the Western meadow-lark and
plains skylark; neither of them kin to the true skylark, by the way,
one being a cousin of the grakles and hang-birds, and the other a kind
of pipit. To me both of these birds are among the most attractive
singers to which I have ever listened; but with all bird-music much
must be allowed for the surroundings and much for the mood, and the
keenness of sense, of the listener. The lilt of the little plains
skylark is neither very powerful nor very melodious; but it is sweet,
pure, long-sustained, with a ring of courage befitting a song uttered
in highest air.

The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher order, deserving to rank with
the best. Its song has length, variety, power, and rich melody; and
there is in it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness, inexpressibly
touching. Yet I can not say that either song would appeal to others
as it appeals to me; for to me it comes forever laden with a hundred
memories and associations; with the sight of dim hills reddening in
the dawn, with the breath of cool morning winds blowing across lonely
plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit prairie, with the
motion of fiery horses, with all the strong thrill of eager and buoyant
life. I doubt if any man can judge dispassionately the bird songs of
his own country; he can not disassociate them from the sights and
sounds of the land that is so dear to him.

This is not a feeling to regret, but it must be taken into account
in accepting any estimate of bird music--even in considering the
reputation of the European skylark and nightingale. To both of these
birds I have often listened in their own homes; always with pleasure
and admiration, but always with a growing belief that relatively to
some other birds they were ranked too high. They are pre-eminently
birds with literary associations; most people take their opinions of
them at second-hand, from the poets.

No one can help liking the lark; it is such a brave, honest, cheery
bird, and, moreover, its song is uttered in the air, and is very
long-sustained. But it is by no means a musician of the first rank.
The nightingale is a performer of a very different and far higher
order; yet though it is indeed a notable and admirable singer, it is
an exaggeration to call it unequaled. In melody, and above all in that
finer, higher melody where the chords vibrate with the touch of eternal
sorrow, it can not rank with such singers as the wood-thrush and
hermit-thrush. The serene, ethereal beauty of the hermit’s song, rising
and falling through the still evening, under the archways of hoary
mountain forests that have endured from time everlasting; the golden,
leisurely chiming of the wood-thrush, sounding on June afternoons,
stanza by stanza, through sun-flecked groves of tall hickories, oaks,
and chestnuts; with these there is nothing in the nightingale’s song
to compare. But in volume and continuity, in tuneful, voluble, rapid
outpouring and ardor, above all in skilful and intricate variation of
theme, its song far surpasses that of either of the thrushes. In all
these respects it is more just to compare it with the mocking-bird’s,
which, as a rule, likewise falls short precisely on those points where
the songs of the two thrushes excel.

The mocking-bird is a singer that has suffered much in reputation from
its powers of mimicry. On ordinary occasions, and especially in the
daytime, it insists on playing the harlequin. But when free in its own
favorite haunts at night in the love season it has a song, or rather
songs, which are not only purely original, but are also more beautiful
than any other bird music whatsoever. Once I listened to a mocking-bird
singing the livelong spring night, under the full moon, in a magnolia
tree; and I do not think I shall ever forget its song.

It was on the plantation of Major Campbell Brown, near Nashville,
in the beautiful, fertile mid-Tennessee country. The mocking-birds
were prime favorites on the place; and were given full scope for the
development, not only of their bold friendliness toward mankind, but
also of that marked individuality and originality of character in which
they so far surpass every other bird as to become the most interesting
of all feathered folk. One of the mockers, which lived in the hedge
bordering the garden, was constantly engaged in an amusing feud with
an honest old setter dog, the point of attack being the tip of the
dog’s tail. For some reason the bird seemed to regard any hoisting of
the setter’s tail as a challenge and insult. It would flutter near the
dog as he walked; the old setter would become interested in something
and raise his tail. The bird would promptly fly at it and peck the
tip; whereupon down went the tail until in a couple of minutes the old
fellow would forget himself, and the scene would be repeated. The dog
usually bore the assaults with comic resignation; and the mocker easily
avoided any momentary outburst of clumsy resentment.

On the evening in question the moon was full. My host kindly assigned
me a room of which the windows opened on a great magnolia tree, where,
I was told, a mocking-bird sang every night and all night long. I
went to my room about ten. The moonlight was shining in through the
open window, and the mocking-bird was already in the magnolia. The
great tree was bathed in a flood of shining silver; I could see each
twig, and mark every action of the singer, who was pouring forth such
a rapture of ringing melody as I have never listened to before or
since. Sometimes he would perch motionless for many minutes, his body
quivering and thrilling with the outpour of music. Then he would drop
softly from twig to twig, until the lowest limb was reached, when he
would rise, fluttering and leaping through the branches, his song never
ceasing for an instant, until he reached the summit of the tree and
launched into the warm, scent-laden air, floating in spirals, with
outspread wings, until, as if spent, he sank gently back into the tree
and down through the branches, while his song rose into an ecstasy of
ardor and passion. His voice rang like a clarinet, in rich, full tones,
and his execution covered the widest possible compass; theme followed
theme, a torrent of music, a swelling tide of harmony, in which
scarcely any two bars were alike. I stayed till midnight listening to
him; he was singing when I went to sleep; he was still singing when I
woke a couple of hours later; he sang through the livelong night.

There are many singers beside the meadow-lark and little skylark in
the plains country; that brown and desolate land, once the home of the
thronging buffalo, still haunted by the bands of the prong-buck, and
roamed over in ever-increasing numbers by the branded herds of the
ranchman. In the brush of the river bottoms there are the thrasher and
song sparrow; on the grassy uplands the lark finch, vesper sparrow, and
lark bunting; and in the rough canyons the rock wren, with its ringing
melody.

Yet in certain moods a man cares less for even the loveliest bird
songs than for the wilder, harsher, stronger sounds of the wilderness;
the guttural booming and clucking of the prairie fowl and the great
sage fowl in spring; the honking of gangs of wild geese, as they
fly in rapid wedges; the bark of an eagle, wheeling in the shadow
of storm-scarred cliffs; or the far-off clanging of many sandhill
cranes, soaring high overhead in circles which cross and recross at
an incredible altitude. Wilder yet, and stranger, are the cries of
the great four-footed beasts; the rhythmic pealing of a bull-elk’s
challenge; and that most sinister and mournful sound, ever fraught with
foreboding of murder and rapine, the long-drawn baying of the gray
wolf.

Indeed, save to the trained ear, most mere bird songs are not very
noticeable. The ordinary wilderness dweller, whether hunter or cowboy,
scarcely heeds them; and in fact knows but little of the smaller
birds. If a bird has some conspicuous peculiarity of look or habit he
will notice its existence; but not otherwise. He knows a good deal
about magpies, whiskey jacks, or water ousels; but nothing whatever
concerning the thrushes, finches, and warblers.

It is the same with mammals. The prairie-dogs he can not help
noticing. With the big pack-rats also he is well acquainted; for they
are handsome, with soft gray fur, large eyes, and bushy tails; and,
moreover, no one can avoid remarking their extraordinary habit of
carrying to their burrows everything bright, useless, and portable,
from an empty cartridge case to a skinning knife. But he knows nothing
of mice, shrews, pocket gophers, or weasels; and but little even of
some larger mammals with very marked characteristics. Thus I have
met but one or two plainsmen who knew anything of the curious plains
ferret, that rather rare weasel-like animal, which plays the same part
on the plains that the mink does by the edges of all our streams and
brooks, and the tree-loving sable in the cold northern forests. The
ferret makes its home in burrows, and by preference goes abroad at
dawn and dusk, but sometimes even at midday. It is as bloodthirsty as
the mink itself, and its life is one long ramble for prey, gophers,
prairie-dogs, sage rabbits, jack-rabbits, snakes, and every kind of
ground bird furnishing its food. I have known one to fairly depopulate
a prairie-dog town, it being the arch foe of these little rodents,
because of its insatiable blood lust and its capacity to follow them
into their burrows. Once I found the bloody body and broken eggs of
a poor prairie-hen which a ferret had evidently surprised on her
nest. Another time one of my men was eye-witness to a more remarkable
instance of the little animal’s bloodthirsty ferocity. He was riding
the range, and being attracted by a slight commotion in a clump of
grass, he turned his horse thither to look, and to his astonishment
found an antelope fawn at the last gasp, but still feebly struggling,
in the grasp of a ferret, which had throttled it and was sucking its
blood with hideous greediness. He avenged the murdered innocent by a
dexterous blow with the knotted end of his lariat.

That mighty bird of rapine, the war eagle, which on the great plains
and among the Rockies supplants the bald-headed eagle of better-watered
regions, is another dangerous foe of the young antelope. It is even
said that under exceptional circumstances eagles will assail a
full-grown prong-horn; and a neighboring ranchman informs me that he
was once an eye-witness to such an attack. It was a bleak day in the
late winter, and he was riding home across a wide dreary plateau,
when he saw two eagles worrying and pouncing on a prong-buck--seemingly
a yearling. It made a gallant fight. The eagles hovered over it with
spread wings, now and then swooping down, their talons out-thrust, to
strike at the head, or to try to settle on the loins. The antelope
reared and struck with hoofs and horns like a goat; but its strength
was failing rapidly, and doubtless it would have succumbed in the end
had not the approach of the ranchman driven off the marauders.

I have likewise heard stories of eagles attacking badgers, foxes,
bob-cats, and coyotes; but I am inclined to think all such cases
exceptional. I have never myself seen an eagle assail anything bigger
than a fawn, lamb, kid, or jack-rabbit. It also swoops at geese,
sage fowl, and prairie fowl. On one occasion while riding over the
range I witnessed an attack on a jack-rabbit. The eagle was soaring
overhead, and espied the jack while the latter was crouched motionless.
Instantly the great bird rushed down through the humming air, with
closed wings; checked itself when some forty yards above the jack,
hovered for a moment, and again fell like a bolt. Away went long-ears,
running as only a frightened jack can; and after him the eagle, not
with the arrowy rush of its descent from high air, but with eager,
hurried flapping. In a short time it had nearly overtaken the fugitive,
when the latter dodged sharply to one side, and the eagle overshot
it precisely as a greyhound would have done, stopping itself by a
powerful, setting motion of the great pinions. Twice this manœuvre
was repeated; then the eagle made a quick rush, caught and overthrew
the quarry before it could turn, and in another moment was sitting
triumphant on the quivering body, the crooked talons driven deep into
the soft, furry sides.

Once while hunting mountain sheep in the Bad Lands I killed an eagle on
the wing with the rifle. I was walking beneath a cliff of gray clay,
when the eagle sailed into view over the crest. As soon as he saw me
he threw his wings aback, and for a moment before wheeling poised
motionless, offering a nearly stationary target; so that my bullet
grazed his shoulder, and down he came through the air, tumbling over
and over. As he struck the ground he threw himself on his back, and
fought against his death with the undaunted courage proper to his brave
and cruel nature.

Indians greatly prize the feathers of this eagle. With them they make
their striking and beautiful war bonnets, and bedeck the manes and
tails of their spirited war ponies. Every year the Grosventres and
Mandans from the Big Missouri come to the neighborhood of my ranch to
hunt. Though not good marksmen they kill many whitetail deer, driving
the bottoms for them in bands, on horseback; and they catch many
eagles. Sometimes they take these alive by exposing a bait near which
a hole is dug, where one of them lies hidden for days, with Indian
patience, until an eagle lights on the bait and is noosed.

Even eagles are far less dangerous enemies to antelope than are wolves
and coyotes. These beasts are always prowling round the bands to snap
up the sick or unwary; and in spring they revel in carnage of the kids
and fawns. They are not swift enough to overtake the grown animals by
sheer speed; but they are superior in endurance, and, especially in
winter, often run them down in fair chase. A prong-buck is a plucky
little beast, and when cornered it often makes a gallant, though not a
very effectual, fight.




CHAPTER V

HUNTING THE PRONG-BUCK; FROST, FIRE, AND THIRST


As with all other American game, man is a worse foe to the prong-horns
than all their brute enemies combined. They hold their own much better
than the bigger game; on the whole even better than the blacktail; but
their numbers have been wofully thinned, and in many places they have
been completely exterminated. The most exciting method of chasing them
is on horseback with greyhounds; but they are usually killed with the
rifle. Owing to the open nature of the ground they frequent the shots
must generally be taken at long range; hence this kind of hunting is
pre-eminently that needing judgment of distance and skill in the use
of the long-range rifle at stationary objects. On the other hand the
antelope are easily seen, making no effort to escape observation, as
deer do, and are so curious that in very wild districts to this day
they can sometimes be tolled within rifle shot by the judicious waving
of a red flag. In consequence, a good many very long, but tempting,
shots can be obtained. More cartridges are used, relatively to the
amount of game killed, on antelope, than in any other hunting.

Often I have killed prong-bucks while riding between the outlying
line camps, which are usually stationed a dozen miles or so back from
the river, where the Bad Lands melt into the prairie. In continually
trying long shots, of course one occasionally makes a remarkable hit.
Once I remember while riding down a broad, shallow coulie with two
of my cow-hands--Seawell and Dow, both keen hunters and among the
staunchest friends I have ever had--rousing a band of antelope which
stood irresolute at about a hundred yards until I killed one. Then
they dashed off, and I missed one shot, but with my next, to my own
utter astonishment, killed the last of the band, a big buck, just as
he topped a rise four hundred yards away. To offset such shots I have
occasionally made an unaccountable miss. Once I was hunting with the
same two men, on a rainy day, when we came on a bunch of antelope some
seventy yards off, lying down on the side of a coulie, to escape the
storm. They huddled together a moment to gaze, and, with stiffened
fingers I took a shot, my yellow oilskin slicker flapping around me
in the wind and rain. Down went one buck, and away went the others.
One of my men walked up to the fallen beast, bent over it, and then
asked, “Where did you aim?” Not reassured by the question, I answered
doubtfully, “Behind the shoulder;” whereat he remarked dryly, “Well,
you hit it in the eye!” I never did know whether I killed the antelope
I aimed at or another. Yet that same day I killed three more bucks at
decidedly long shots; at the time we lacked meat at the ranch, and were
out to make a good killing.

Besides their brute and human foes, the prong-horn must also fear the
elements, and especially the snows of winter. On the northern plains
the cold weather is of polar severity, and turns the green, grassy
prairies of midsummer into iron-bound wastes. The blizzards whirl and
sweep across them with a shrieking fury which few living things may
face. The snow is like fine ice dust, and the white waves glide across
the grass with a stealthy, crawling motion which has in it something
sinister and cruel. Accordingly, as the bright fall weather passes, and
the dreary winter draws nigh, when the days shorten, and the nights
seem interminable, and gray storms lower above the gray horizon, the
antelope gather in bands and seek sheltered places, where they may
abide through the winter-time of famine and cold and deep snow. Some of
these bands travel for many hundred miles, going and returning over the
same routes, swimming rivers, crossing prairies, and threading their
way through steep defiles. Such bands make their winter home in places
like the Black Hills, or similar mountainous regions, where the shelter
and feed are good, and where in consequence antelope have wintered in
countless thousands for untold generations. Other bands do not travel
for any very great distance, but seek some sheltered grassy tableland
in the Bad Lands, or some well-shielded valley, where their instinct
and experience teach them that the snow does not lie deep in winter.
Once having chosen such a place they stand much persecution before
leaving it.

One December, an old hunter whom I knew told me that such a band was
wintering a few miles from a camp where two line-riders of the W Bar
brand were stationed; and I made up my mind to ride thither and kill
a couple. The line camp was twenty miles from my ranch; the shack in
which the old hunter lived was midway between, and I had to stop there
to find out the exact lay of the land.

At dawn, before our early breakfast, I saddled a tough, shaggy sorrel
horse; hastening indoors as soon as the job was over, to warm my numbed
fingers. After breakfast I started, muffled in my wolfskin coat,
with beaver-fur cap, gloves, and shaps, and great felt overshoes.
The windless air was bitter cold, the thermometer showing well below
zero. Snow lay on the ground, leaving bare patches here and there,
but drifted deep in the hollows. Under the steel-blue heavens the
atmosphere had a peculiar glint as if filled with myriads of tiny
crystals. As I crossed the frozen river, immediately in front of the
ranch house, the strangely carved tops of the bluffs were reddening
palely in the winter sunrise. Prairie fowl were perched in the bare
cottonwoods along the river brink, showing large in the leafless
branches; they called and clucked to one another.

Where the ground was level and the snow not too deep I loped, and
before noon I reached the sheltered coulie where, with long poles and
bark, the hunter had built his tepee-wigwam, as Eastern woodsmen would
have called it. It stood in a loose grove of elms and box-alders; from
the branches of the nearest trees hung saddles of frozen venison.
The smoke rising from the funnel-shaped top of the tepee showed that
there was more fire than usual within; it is easy to keep a good tepee
warm, though it is so smoky that no one therein can stand upright.
As I drew rein the skin door was pushed aside, and the hard old face
and dried, battered body of the hunter appeared. He greeted me with a
surly nod, and a brief request to “light and hev somethin’ to eat”--the
invariable proffer of hospitality on the plains. He wore a greasy
buckskin shirt or tunic, and an odd cap of badger skin, from beneath
which strayed his tangled hair; age, rheumatism, and the many accidents
and incredible fatigue, hardship, and exposure of his past life had
crippled him, yet he still possessed great power of endurance, and in
his seamed, weather-scarred face his eyes burned fierce and piercing
as a hawk’s. Ever since early manhood he had wandered over the plains,
hunting and trapping; he had waged savage private war against half
the Indian tribes of the north; and he had wedded wives in each of
the tribes of the other half. A few years before this time the great
buffalo herds had vanished, and the once swarming beaver had shared the
same fate; the innumerable horses and horned stock of the cattlemen,
and the daring rough riders of the ranches, had supplanted alike the
game and the red and white wanderers who had followed it with such
fierce rivalry. When the change took place the old fellow, with failing
bodily powers, found his life-work over. He had little taste for the
career of the desperado, horse-thief, highway-man and mankiller, which
not a few of the old buffalo hunters adopted when their legitimate
occupation was gone; he scorned still more the life of vicious and
idle semi-criminality led by others of his former companions who were
of weaker mold. Yet he could not do regular work. His existence had
been one of excitement, adventure, and restless roaming, when it was
not passed in lazy ease; his times of toil and peril varied by fits of
brutal revelry. He had no kin, no ties of any kind. He would accept no
help, for his wants were very few, and he was utterly self-reliant. He
got meat, clothing, and bedding from the antelope and deer he killed;
the spare hides and venison he bartered for what little else he needed.
So he built him his tepee in one of the most secluded parts of the Bad
Lands, where he led the life of a solitary hunter, awaiting in grim
loneliness the death which he knew to be near at hand.

I unsaddled and picketed my horse, and followed the old hunter into his
smoky tepee; sat down on the pile of worn buffalo robes which formed
his bedding, and waited in silence while he fried some deer meat, and
boiled some coffee--he was out of flour. As I ate, he gradually unbent
and talked quite freely, and before I left he told me exactly where
to find the band, which he assured me was located for the winter, and
would not leave unless much harried.

After a couple of hours’ rest I again started, and pushed out to the
end of the Bad Lands. Here, as there had been no wind, I knew I should
find in the snow the tracks of one of the riders from the line camp,
whose beat lay along the edge of the prairie for some eight miles,
until it met the beat of a rider from the line camp next above. As
nightfall came on it grew even colder; long icicles hung from the lips
of my horse; and I shivered slightly in my fur coat. I had reckoned the
distance ill, and it was dusk when I struck the trail; but my horse at
once turned along it of his own accord and began to lope. Half an hour
later I saw through the dark what looked like a spark on the side of a
hill. Toward this my horse turned; and in another moment a whinnying
from in front showed I was near the camp. The light was shining through
a small window, the camp itself being a dugout with a log roof and
front--a kind of frontier building always warm in winter. After turning
my horse into the rough log stable with the horses of the two cowboys,
I joined the latter at supper inside the dugout; being received of
course with hearty cordiality. After the intense cold outside the
warmth within was almost oppressive, for the fire was roaring in the
big stone fireplace. The bunks were broad; my two friends turned into
one, and I was given the other, with plenty of bedding; so that my
sleep was sound.

We had breakfasted and saddled our horses and were off by dawn next
morning. My companions, muffled in furs, started in opposite directions
to ride their lonely beats, while I steered for my hunting-ground. It
was a lowering and gloomy day; at sunrise pale, lurid sundogs hung in
the glimmering mist; gusts of wind moaned through the ravines.

At last I reached a row of bleak hills, and from a ridge looked
cautiously down on the chain of plateaus, where I had been told I
should see the antelope. Sure enough, there they were, to the number
of several hundred, scattered over the level snow-streaked surface of
the nearest and largest plateau, greedily cropping the thick, short
grass. Leaving my horse tied in a hollow I speedily stalked up a coulie
to within a hundred yards of the nearest band and killed a good buck.
Instantly all the antelope in sight ran together into a thick mass
and raced away from me, until they went over the opposite edge of the
plateau; but almost as soon as they did so they were stopped by deep
drifts of powdered snow, and came back to the summit of the tableland.
They then circled round the edge at a gallop, and finally broke madly
by me, jostling one another in their frantic haste, and crossed by a
small ridge into the next plateau beyond: as they went by I shot a
yearling.

I now had all the venison I wished, and would shoot no more, but I was
curious to see how the antelope would act, and so walked after them.
They ran about half a mile, and then the whole herd, of several hundred
individuals, wheeled into line fronting me, like so many cavalry, and
stood motionless, the white and brown bands on their necks looking like
the facings on a uniform. As I walked near they again broke and rushed
to the end of the valley. Evidently they feared to leave the flats
for the broken country beyond, where the rugged hills were riven by
gorges in some of which snow lay deep even thus early in the season.
Accordingly, after galloping a couple of times round the valley, they
once more broke by me, at short range, and tore back along the plateaus
to that on which I had first found them. Their evident and extreme
reluctance to venture into the broken country round about made me
readily understand the tales I had heard of game butchers killing over
a hundred individuals at a time out of a herd so situated.

I walked back to my game, dressed it, and lashed the saddles and hams
behind me on my horse; I had chosen old Sorrel Joe for the trip because
he was strong, tough, and quiet. Then I started for the ranch, keeping
to the prairie as long as I could, because there the going was easier;
sometimes I rode, sometimes I ran on foot, leading Sorrel Joe.

Late in the afternoon, as I rode over a roll in the prairie I saw ahead
of me a sight very unusual at that season; a small emigrant train going
westward. There were three white-topped prairie schooners, containing
the household goods, the tow-headed children, and the hard-faced,
bony women; the tired horses were straining wearily in the traces; the
bearded, moody men walked alongside. They had been belated by sickness,
and the others of their company had gone ahead to take up claims along
the Yellowstone; now they themselves were pushing forward in order
to reach the holdings of their friends before the first deep snows
stopped all travel. They had no time to halt; for there were still two
or three miles to go that evening before they could find a sheltered
resting-place with fuel, grass, and water. A little while after passing
them I turned in the saddle and looked back. The lonely little train
stood out sharply on the sky-line, the wagons looming black against the
cold red west as they toiled steadily onward across the snowy plains.

Night soon fell; but I cared little, for I was on ground I knew. The
old horse threaded his way at a lope along the familiar game trails and
cattle paths; in a couple of hours I caught the gleam from the firelit
windows of the ranch house. No man who, for his good-fortune, has at
times in his life endured toil and hardship, ever fails to appreciate
the strong elemental pleasures of rest after labor, food after hunger,
warmth and shelter after bitter cold.

So much for the winter hunting. But in the fall, when the grass is dry
as tinder, the antelope hunter, like other plainsmen, must sometimes
face fire instead of frost. Fire is one of the most dreaded enemies
of the ranchmen on the cattle ranges; and fighting a big prairie fire
is a work of extraordinary labor, and sometimes of danger. The line of
flame, especially when seen at night, undulating like a serpent, is
very beautiful; though it lacks the terror and grandeur of the great
forest fires.

One October, Ferguson and I, with one of the cow-hands, and a friend
from the East, took the wagon for an antelope hunt in the broken
country between the Little Missouri and the Beaver. The cowboy
drove the wagon to a small spring, near some buttes which are well
distinguished by a number of fossil tree-stumps; while the rest of
us, who were mounted on good horses, made a circle after antelope. We
found none, and rode on to camp, reaching it about the middle of the
afternoon. We had noticed several columns of smoke in the southeast,
showing that prairie fires were under way; but we thought that they
were too far off to endanger our camp, and accordingly unsaddled our
horses and sat down to a dinner of bread, beans, and coffee. Before
we were through the smoke began to pour over a ridge a mile distant
in such quantities that we ran thither with our slickers, hoping to
find some stretch of broken ground where the grass was sparse, and
where we could fight the fire with effect. Our hopes were vain. Before
we reached the ridge the fire came over its crest, and ran down in
a long tongue between two scoria buttes. Here the grass was quite
short and thin, and we did our best to beat out the flames; but they
gradually gained on us, and as they reached the thicker grass lower
down the slope, they began to roar and dart forward in a way that bade
us pay heed to our own safety. Finally they reached a winding line of
brushwood in the bottom of the coulie; and as this burst into a leaping
blaze we saw it was high time to look to the safety of our camp,
and ran back to it at top speed. Ferguson, who had been foremost in
fighting the fire, was already scorched and blackened.

We were camped on the wagon trail which leads along the divide
almost due south to Sentinel Butte. The line of fire was fanned by a
southeasterly breeze, and was therefore advancing diagonally to the
divide. If we could drive the wagon southward on the trail in time to
get it past the fire before the latter reached the divide, we would
be to windward of the flames, and therefore in safety. Accordingly,
while the others were hastily harnessing the team, and tossing the
bedding and provisions into the wagon, I threw the saddle on my horse,
and galloped down the trail, to see if there was yet time to adopt
this expedient. I soon found that there was not. Half a mile from camp
the trail dipped into a deep coulie, where fair-sized trees and dense
undergrowth made a long winding row of brush and timber. The trail led
right under the trees at the upper end of this coulie. As I galloped
by I saw that the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below
me; in the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and
roared in a thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulie. I galloped
to the hill ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the
divide, and turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed
under the trees, the fire, running like a race-horse in the brush, had
reached the road; its breath was hot in my face; tongues of quivering
flame leaped over my head and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty
yards away.

When I got back to camp Ferguson had taken measures for the safety of
the wagon. He had moved it across the coulie, which at this point had a
wet bottom, making a bar to the progress of the flames until they had
time to work across lower down. Meanwhile we fought to keep the fire
from entering the well-grassed space on the hither side of the coulie,
between it and a row of scoria buttes. Favored by a streak of clay
ground, where the grass was sparse, we succeeded in beating out the
flame as it reached this clay streak, and again beating it out when it
ran round the buttes and began to back up toward us against the wind.
Then we recrossed the coulie with the wagon, before the fire swept
up the further side; and so, when the flames passed by, they left us
camped on a green oasis in the midst of a charred, smoking desert. We
thus saved some good grazing for our horses.

But our fight with the fire had only begun. No stockman will see a
fire waste the range and destroy the winter feed of the stock without
spending every ounce of his strength in the effort to put a stop to its
ravages--even when, as in our case, the force of men and horses at hand
is so small as to offer only the very slenderest hope of success.

We set about the task in the way customary in the cattle country. It
is impossible for any but a very large force to make head against a
prairie fire while there is any wind; but the wind usually fails after
nightfall, and accordingly the main fight is generally waged during the
hours of darkness.

Before dark we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and then split its
carcass in two lengthwise with an axe. After sundown the wind lulled;
and we started toward the line of fire, which was working across a row
of broken grassy hills, three-quarters of a mile distant. Two of us
were on horseback, dragging a half carcass, bloody side down, by means
of ropes leading from our saddle-horns to the fore and hind legs; the
other two followed on foot with slickers and wet saddle blankets. There
was a reddish glow in the night air, and the waving, bending lines of
flame showed in great bright curves against the hillside ahead of us.

When we reached them, we found the fire burning in a long, continuous
line. It was not making rapid headway, for the air was still, and the
flames stood upright, two or three feet high. Lengthening the ropes,
one of us spurred his horse across the fire line and then, wheeling,
we dragged the carcass along it; one horseman being on the burnt
ground, and one on the unburnt grass, while the body of the steer lay
lengthwise across the line. The weight and the blood smothered the fire
as we twitched the carcass over the burning grass; and the two men
following behind with their blankets and slickers readily beat out any
isolated tufts of flame.

The fire made the horses wild, and it was not always easy to manage
both them and the ropes, so as to keep the carcass true on the line.
Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the
grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching. We were blackened
with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs; while at times the
plunging horses tried to buck or bolt. It was worse when we came to
some deep gully or ravine, breaking the line of fire. Into this we of
course had to plunge, so as to get across to the fire on the other
side. After the glare of the flame the blackness of the ravine was
Stygian; we could see nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it
anywhere, taking our chances. Down we would go, stumbling, sliding,
and pitching, over cut banks and into holes and bushes, while the
carcass bounded behind, now catching on a stump, and now fetching loose
with a “pluck” that brought it full on the horses’ haunches, driving
them nearly crazy with fright. The pull up the opposite bank was, if
anything, worse.

By midnight the half carcass was worn through; but we had stifled the
fire in the comparatively level country to the eastward. Back we went
to camp, drank huge draughts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs,
and dragged out the other half carcass to fight the fire on the west.
But after hours of wearing labor we found ourselves altogether baffled
by the exceeding roughness of the ground. There was some little risk to
us who were on horseback, dragging the carcass; we had to feel our way
along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead and the other behind,
while the steer dangled over the precipice on one side; and in going
down the buttes and into the canyons only by extreme care could we
avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in a heap. Moreover
the fire was in such rough places that the carcass could not be
twitched fairly over it, and so we could not put it out. Before dawn we
were obliged to abandon our fruitless efforts and seek camp, stiffened
and weary. From a hill we looked back through the pitchy night at the
fire we had failed to conquer. It had been broken into many lines by
the roughness of the chasm-strewn and hilly country. Of these lines of
flame some were in advance, some behind, some rushing forward in full
blast and fury, some standing still; here and there one wheeling toward
a flank, or burning in a semicircle, round an isolated hill. Some of
the lines were flickering out; gaps were showing in others. In the
darkness it looked like the rush of a mighty army, bearing triumphantly
onward, in spite of a resistance so stubborn as to break its formation
into many fragments and cause each one of them to wage its own battle
for victory or defeat.

On the wide plains where the prong-buck dwells the hunter must
sometimes face thirst, as well as fire and frost. The only time I ever
really suffered from thirst was while hunting prong-buck.

It was late in the summer. I was with the ranch wagon on the way to
join a round-up, and as we were out of meat I started for a day’s
hunt. Before leaving in the morning I helped to haul the wagon across
the river. It was fortunate I stayed, as it turned out. There was no
regular ford where we made the crossing; we anticipated no trouble,
as the water was very low, the season being dry. However, we struck
a quicksand, in which the wagon settled, while the frightened horses
floundered helplessly. All the riders at once got their ropes on the
wagon, and hauling from the saddle, finally pulled it through. This
took time; and it was ten o’clock when I rode away from the river, at
which my horse and I had just drunk--our last drink for over twenty-four
hours as it turned out.

After two or three hours’ ride, up winding coulies, and through the
scorched desolation of patches of Bad Lands, I reached the rolling
prairie. The heat and drought had long burned the short grass dull
brown; the bottoms of what had been pools were covered with hard, dry,
cracked earth. The day was cloudless, and the heat oppressive. There
were many antelope, but I got only one shot, breaking a buck’s leg; and
though I followed it for a couple of hours I could not overtake it. By
this time it was late in the afternoon, and I was far away from the
river; so I pushed for a creek, in the bed of which I had always found
pools of water, especially toward the head, as is usual with plains
watercourses. To my chagrin, however, they all proved to be dry; and
though I rode up the creek bed toward the head, carefully searching for
any sign of water, night closed on me before I found any. For two or
three hours I stumbled on, leading my horse, in my fruitless search;
then a tumble over a cut bank in the dark warned me that I might as
well stay where I was for the rest of the warm night. Accordingly I
unsaddled the horse, and tied him to a sage brush; after a while he
began to feed on the dewy grass. At first I was too thirsty to sleep.
Finally I fell into slumber, and when I awoke at dawn I felt no thirst.
For an hour or two more I continued my search for water in the creek
bed; then abandoned it and rode straight for the river. By the time we
reached it my thirst had come back with redoubled force, my mouth was
parched, and the horse was in quite as bad a plight; we rushed down
to the brink, and it seemed as if we could neither of us ever drink
our fill of the tepid, rather muddy water. Of course this experience
was merely unpleasant; thirst is not a source of real danger in the
plains country proper, whereas in the hideous deserts that extend from
southern Idaho through Utah and Nevada to Arizona, it ever menaces with
death the hunter and explorer.

In the plains the weather is apt to be in extremes; the heat is
tropical, the cold arctic, and the droughts are relieved by furious
floods. These are generally most severe and lasting in the spring,
after the melting of the snow; and fierce local freshets follow the
occasional cloudbursts. The large rivers then become wholly impassable,
and even the smaller are formidable obstacles. It is not easy to get
cattle across a swollen stream, where the current runs like a turbid
mill-race over the bed of shifting quicksand. Once five of us took
a thousand head of trail steers across the Little Missouri when the
river was up, and it was no light task. The muddy current was boiling
past the banks, covered with driftwood and foul, yellow froth, and the
frightened cattle shrank from entering it. At last, by hard riding,
with much loud shouting and swinging of ropes, we got the leaders
in, and the whole herd followed. After them we went in our turn, the
horses swimming at one moment, and the next staggering and floundering
through the quicksand. I was riding my pet cutting horse, Muley, which
has the provoking habit of making great bounds where the water is just
not deep enough for swimming; once he almost unseated me. Some of the
cattle were caught by the currents and rolled over and over; most of
these we were able, with the help of our ropes, to put on their feet
again; only one was drowned, or rather choked in a quicksand. Many swam
down stream, and in consequence struck a difficult landing, where the
river ran under a cut bank; these we had to haul out with our ropes.
Both men and horses were well tired by the time the whole herd was
across.

Although I have often had a horse down in quicksand, or in crossing
a swollen river, and have had to work hard to save him, I have never
myself lost one under such circumstances. Yet once I saw the horse of
one of my men drown under him directly in front of the ranch house,
while he was trying to cross the river. This was in early spring, soon
after the ice had broken.

When making long wagon trips over the great plains, antelope often
offer the only source of meat supply, save for occasional water fowl,
sage fowl, and prairie fowl--the sharp-tailed prairie fowl, be it
understood. This is the characteristic grouse of the cattle country;
the true prairie fowl is a bird of the farming land further east.

Toward the end of the summer of ’92 I found it necessary to travel from
my ranch to the Black Hills, some two hundred miles south. The ranch
wagon went with me, driven by an all-round plainsman, a man of iron
nerves and varied past, the sheriff of our county. He was an old friend
of mine; at one time I had served as deputy-sheriff for the northern
end of the county. In the wagon we carried our food and camp kit, and
our three rolls of bedding, each wrapped in a thick, nearly waterproof
canvas sheet; we had a tent, but we never needed it. The load being
light, the wagon was drawn by but a span of horses, a pair of wild
runaways, tough, and good travelers. My foreman and I rode beside the
wagon on our wiry, unkempt, unshod cattle-ponies. They carried us
all day at a rack, pace, single-foot, or slow lope, varied by rapid
galloping when we made long circles after game; the trot, the favorite
gait with Eastern park-riders, is disliked by all peoples who have to
do much of their life-work in the saddle.

The first day’s ride was not attractive. The heat was intense and the
dust stifling, as we had to drive some loose horses for the first few
miles, and afterward to ride up and down the sandy river bed, where
the cattle had gathered, to look over some young steers we had put on
the range the preceding spring. When we did camp it was by a pool of
stagnant water, in a creek bottom, and the mosquitoes were a torment.
Nevertheless, as evening fell, it was pleasant to climb a little knoll
nearby and gaze at the rows of strangely colored buttes, grass-clad,
or of bare earth and scoria, their soft reds and purples showing as
through a haze, and their irregular outlines gradually losing their
sharpness in the fading twilight.

Next morning the weather changed, growing cooler, and we left the
tangle of ravines and Bad Lands, striking out across the vast sea-like
prairies. Hour after hour, under the bright sun, the wagon drew slowly
ahead, over the immense rolling stretches of short grass, dipping down
each long slope until it reached the dry, imperfectly outlined creek
bed at the bottom,--wholly devoid of water and without so much as a
shrub of wood,--and then ascending the gentle rise on the other side
until at last it topped the broad divide, or watershed, beyond which
lay the shallow winding coulies of another creek system. From each
rise of ground we looked far and wide over the sunlit prairie, with
its interminable undulations. The sicklebill curlews, which in spring,
while breeding, hover above the traveling horseman with ceaseless
clamor, had for the most part gone southward. We saw only one small
party of half a dozen birds; they paid little heed to us, but piped
to one another, making short flights, and on alighting stood erect,
first spreading and then folding and setting their wings with a
slow, graceful motion. Little horned larks continually ran along the
ruts of the faint wagon track, just ahead of the team, and twittered
plaintively as they rose, while flocks of long-spurs swept hither and
thither, in fitful, irregular flight.

My foreman and I usually rode far off to one side of the wagon, looking
out for antelope. Of these we at first saw few, but they grew more
plentiful as we journeyed onward, approaching a big, scantily wooded
creek, where I had found the prong-horn abundant in previous seasons.
They were very wary and watchful whether going singly or in small
parties, and the lay of the land made it exceedingly difficult to get
within range. The last time I had hunted in this neighborhood was in
the fall, at the height of the rutting season. Prong-bucks, even more
than other game, seem fairly maddened by erotic excitement. At the
time of my former hunt they were in ceaseless motion; each master buck
being incessantly occupied in herding his harem, and fighting would-be
rivals, while single bucks chased single does as greyhounds chase
hares, or else, if no does were in sight, from sheer excitement ran
to and fro as if crazy, racing at full speed in one direction, then
halting, wheeling, and tearing back again just as hard as they could go.

At this time, however, the rut was still some weeks off, and all the
bucks had to do was to feed and keep a lookout for enemies. Try my
best, I could not get within less than four or five hundred yards, and
though I took a number of shots at these, or at even longer distances,
I missed. If a man is out merely for a day’s hunt, and has all the time
he wishes, he will not scare the game and waste cartridges by shooting
at such long ranges, preferring to spend half a day or more in patient
waiting and careful stalking; but if he is traveling, and is therefore
cramped for time, he must take his chances, even at the cost of burning
a good deal of powder.

I was finally helped to success by a characteristic freak of the game
I was following. No other animals are as keen-sighted, or are normally
as wary as prong-horns; but no others are so whimsical and odd in their
behavior at times, or so subject to fits of the most stupid curiosity
and panic. Late in the afternoon, on topping a rise I saw two good
bucks racing off about three hundred yards to one side; I sprang to
the ground, and fired three shots at them in vain, as they ran like
quarter horses until they disappeared over a slight swell. In a minute,
however, back they came, suddenly appearing over the crest of the
same swell, immediately in front of me, and, as I afterward found by
pacing, some three hundred and thirty yards away. They stood side by
side facing me, and remained motionless, unheeding the crack of the
Winchester; I aimed at the right-hand one, but a front shot of the
kind, at such a distance, is rather difficult, and it was not until I
fired for the fourth time that he sank back out of sight. I could not
tell whether I had killed him, and took two shots at his mate, as the
latter went off, but without effect. Running forward, I found the first
one dead, the bullet having gone through him lengthwise; the other did
not seem satisfied even yet, and kept hanging round in the distance for
some minutes, looking at us.

I had thus bagged one prong-buck, as the net outcome of the expenditure
of fourteen cartridges. This was certainly not good shooting; but
neither was it as bad as it would seem to the man inexperienced in
antelope hunting. When fresh meat is urgently needed, and when time
is too short, the hunter who is after antelope in an open, flattish
country must risk many long shots. In no other kind of hunting is there
so much long-distance shooting, or so many shots fired for every head
of game bagged.

Throwing the buck into the wagon, we continued our journey across the
prairie, no longer following any road, and before sunset jolted down
toward the big creek for which we had been heading. There were many
water-holes therein, and timber of considerable size; box-alder and
ash grew here and there in clumps and fringes, beside the serpentine
curves of the nearly dry torrent bed, the growth being thickest under
the shelter of the occasional low bluffs. We drove down to a heavily
grassed bottom, near a deep, narrow pool, with, at one end, that rarest
of luxuries in the plains country, a bubbling spring of pure, cold
water. With plenty of wood, delicious water, ample feed for the horses,
and fresh meat we had every comfort and luxury incident to camp life
in good weather. The bedding was tossed out on a smooth spot beside
the wagon; the horses were watered and tethered to picket pins where
the feed was best; water was fetched from the spring; a deep hole was
dug for the fire, and the grass round about carefully burned off; and
in a few moments the bread was baking in the Dutch oven, the potatoes
were boiling, antelope steaks were sizzling in the frying-pan, and
the kettle was ready for the tea. After supper, eaten with the relish
known well to every hard-working and successful hunter, we sat for half
an hour or so round the fire, and then turned in under the blankets,
pulled the tarpaulins over us, and listened drowsily to the wailing of
the coyotes until we fell sound asleep.

We determined to stay in this camp all day, so as to try and kill
another prong-buck, as we would soon be past the good hunting grounds.
I did not have to go far for my game next morning, for soon after
breakfast, while sitting on my canvas bag cleaning my rifle, the
sheriff suddenly called to me that a bunch of antelope were coming
toward us. Sure enough there they were, four in number, rather over
half a mile off, on the first bench of the prairie, two or three
hundred yards back from the creek, leisurely feeding in our direction.
In a minute or two they were out of sight, and I instantly ran along
the creek toward them for a quarter of a mile, and then crawled up a
short shallow coulie, close to the head of which they seemed likely
to pass. When nearly at the end I cautiously raised my hatless head,
peered through some straggling weeds, and at once saw the horns of the
buck. He was a big fellow, about a hundred and twenty yards off; the
others, a doe and two kids, were in front. As I lifted myself on my
elbows he halted and turned his raised head toward me; the sunlight
shone bright on his supple, vigorous body with its markings of sharply
contrasted brown and white. I pulled trigger, and away he went; but I
could see that his race was nearly run, and he fell after going a few
hundred yards.

Soon after this a wind storm blew up so violent that we could hardly
face it. In the late afternoon it died away, and I again walked out to
hunt, but saw only does and kids, at which I would not shoot. As the
sun set, leaving bars of amber and pale red in the western sky, the air
became absolutely calm. In the waning evening the low, far-off ridges
were touched with a violet light; then the hues grew sombre, and still
darkness fell on the lonely prairie.

Next morning we drove to the river, and kept near it for several
days, most of the time following the tracks made by the heavy wagons
accompanying the trail herds--this being one of the regular routes
followed by the great throng of slow-moving cattle yearly driven
from the south. At other times we made our own road. Twice or thrice
we passed ranch houses; the men being absent on the round-up, they
were shut, save one which was inhabited by two or three lean Texan
cow-punchers, with sun-burned faces and reckless eyes, who had come up
with a trail herd from the Cherokee strip. Once, near the old Sioux
crossing, where the Dakota war bands used to ford the river on their
forays against the Crows and the settlers along the Yellowstone, we met
a large horse herd. The tough, shabby, tired-looking animals, one or
two of which were loaded with bedding and a scanty supply of food, were
driven by three travel-worn, hard-faced men, with broad hats, shaps,
and long pistols in their belts. They had brought the herd over plain
and mountain pass all the way from far distant Oregon.

It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees save for a fringe of
cottonwoods along the river, and occasional clumps of cedar on the
jagged, brown buttes; as we went further the hills turned the color of
chalk, and were covered with a growth of pine. We came upon acres of
sunflowers as we journeyed southward; they are not as tall as they are
in the rich bottom lands of Kansas, where the splendid blossoms, on
their strong stalks, stand as high as the head of a man on horseback.

Though there were many cattle here, big game was scarce. However, I
killed plenty of prairie chickens and sage hens for the pot; and as the
sage hens were still feeding largely on crickets and grasshoppers, and
not exclusively on sage, they were just as good eating as the prairie
chickens. I used the rifle, cutting off their heads or necks, and, as
they had to be shot on the ground, and often while in motion, or else
while some distance away, it was more difficult than shooting off the
heads of grouse in the mountains, where the birds sit motionless in
trees. The head is a small mark, while to hit the body is usually to
spoil the bird; so I found that I averaged three or four cartridges for
every head neatly taken off, the remaining shots representing spoiled
birds and misses.

For the last sixty or seventy miles of our trip we left the river and
struck off across a great, desolate gumbo prairie. There was no game,
no wood for fuel, and the rare water-holes were far apart, so that we
were glad when, as we toiled across the monotonous succession of long,
swelling ridges, the dim, cloud-like mass, looming vague and purple on
the rim of the horizon ahead of us, gradually darkened and hardened
into the bold outline of the Black Hills.




CHAPTER VI

AMONG THE HIGH HILLS; THE BIGHORN OR MOUNTAIN SHEEP


During the summer of 1886 I hunted chiefly to keep the ranch in meat.
It was a very pleasant summer; although it was followed by the worst
winter we ever witnessed on the plains. I was much at the ranch, where
I had a good deal of writing to do; but every week or two I left, to
ride among the line camps, or to spend a few days on any round-up which
happened to be in the neighborhood.

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were themselves full of
pleasure. At dawn we were in the saddle, the morning air cool in our
faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across the grassy reaches of
prairie land, or climbing in single file among the rugged buttes. All
forenoon we spent riding the long circle with the cow-punchers of the
round-up; in the afternoon we worked the herd, cutting the cattle,
with much break-neck galloping and dexterous halting and wheeling. Then
came the excitement and hard labor of roping, throwing, and branding
the wild and vigorous range calves; in a corral, if one was handy,
otherwise in a ring of horsemen. Soon after nightfall we lay down, in
a log hut or tent, if at a line camp; under the open sky, if with the
round-up wagon.

After ten days or so of such work, in which every man had to do his
full share--for laggards and idlers, no matter who, get no mercy in
the real and healthy democracy of the round-up--I would go back to the
ranch to turn to my books with added zest for a fortnight. Yet even
during these weeks at the ranch there was some outdoor work; for I was
breaking two or three colts. I took my time, breaking them gradually
and gently, not, after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, by sheer
main strength and rough riding, with the attendant danger to the
limbs of the man and very probable ruin to the manners of the horse.
We rose early; each morning I stood on the low-roofed veranda, looking
out under the line of murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the
shallow river, to see the sun flame above the line of bluffs opposite.
In the evening I strolled off for an hour or two’s walk, rifle in hand.
The roomy, home-like ranch house, with its log walls, shingled roof,
and big chimneys and fireplaces, stands in a glade, in the midst of
the thick forest, which covers half the bottom; behind rises, bare and
steep, the wall of peaks, ridges, and tablelands.

During the summer in question, I once or twice shot a whitetail buck
right on this large bottom; once or twice I killed a blacktail in the
hills behind, not a mile from the ranch house. Several times I killed
and brought in prong-bucks, rising before dawn, and riding off on a
good horse for an all day’s hunt in the rolling prairie country twelve
or fifteen miles away. Occasionally I took the wagon and one of the
men, driving to some good hunting ground and spending a night or two;
usually returning with two or three prong-bucks, and once with an
elk--but this was later in the fall. Not infrequently I went away by
myself on horseback for a couple of days, when all the men were on the
round-up, and when I wished to hunt thoroughly some country quite a
distance from the ranch. I made one such hunt in late August, because
I happened to hear that a small bunch of mountain sheep were haunting a
tract of very broken ground, with high hills, about fifteen miles away.

I left the ranch early in the morning, riding my favorite hunting
horse, old Manitou. The blanket and oilskin slicker were rolled and
strapped behind the saddle; for provisions I carried salt, a small bag
of hard tack, and a little tea and sugar, with a metal cup in which to
boil my water. The rifle and a score of cartridges in my woven belt
completed my outfit. On my journey I shot two prairie chickens from a
covey in the bottom of a brush coulie.

I rode more than six hours before reaching a good spot to camp. At
first my route lay across grassy plateaus, and along smooth wooded
coulies; but after a few miles the ground became very rugged and
difficult. At last I got into the heart of the Bad Lands proper, where
the hard, wrinkled earth was torn into shapes as sullen and grotesque
as those of dreamland. The hills rose high, their barren flanks carved
and channeled, their tops mere needles and knife crests. Bands of
black, red, and purple varied the gray and yellow-brown of their sides;
the tufts of scanty vegetation were dull green. Sometimes I rode my
horse at the bottom of narrow washouts, between straight walls of clay,
but a few feet apart; sometimes I had to lead him as he scrambled up,
down, and across the sheer faces of the buttes. The glare from the
bare clay walls dazzled the eye; the air was burning under the hot
August sun. I saw nothing living except the rattlesnakes, of which
there were very many.

At last, in the midst of this devil’s wilderness, I came on a lovely
valley. A spring trickled out of a cedar canyon, and below this spring
the narrow, deep ravine was green with luscious grass and was smooth
for some hundreds of yards. Here I unsaddled, and turned old Manitou
loose to drink and feed at his leisure. At the edge of the dark cedar
wood I cleared a spot for my bed, and drew a few dead sticks for the
fire. Then I lay down and watched drowsily until the afternoon shadows
filled the wild and beautiful gorge in which I was camped. This
happened early, for the valley was very narrow and the hills on either
hand were steep and high.

Springing to my feet, I climbed the nearest ridge, and then made my
way, by hard clambering, from peak to peak and from crest to crest,
sometimes crossing and sometimes skirting the deep washouts and
canyons. When possible I avoided appearing on the sky-line, and I
moved with the utmost caution, walking in a wide sweep so as to hunt
across and up wind. There was much sheep sign, some of it fresh,
though I saw none of the animals themselves; the square slots, with
the indented marks of the toe points wide apart, contrasting strongly
with the heart-shaped and delicate footprints of deer. The animals
had, according to their habit, beaten trails along the summits of the
higher crests; little side trails leading to any spur, peak, or other
vantage-point from which there was a wide outlook over the country
roundabout.

The bighorns of the Bad Lands, unlike those of the mountains, shift
their range but little, winter or summer. Save in the breeding season,
when each master ram gets together his own herd, the ewes, lambs,
and yearlings are apt to go in bands by themselves, while the males
wander in small parties; now and then a very morose old fellow lives by
himself, in some precipitous, out-of-the-way retreat. The rut begins
with them much later than with deer; the exact time varies with the
locality, but it is always after the bitter winter weather has set
in. Then the old rams fight fiercely together, and on rare occasions
utter a long grunting bleat or call. They are marvelous climbers, and
dwell by choice always among cliffs and jagged, broken ground, whether
wooded or not. An old bighorn ram is heavier than the largest buck;
his huge, curved horns, massive yet supple build, and proud bearing
mark him as one of the noblest beasts of the chase. He is wary; great
skill and caution must be shown in approaching him; and no one but a
good climber, with a steady head, sound lungs, and trained muscles, can
successfully hunt him in his own rugged fastnesses. The chase of no
other kind of American big game ranks higher, or more thoroughly tests
the manliest qualities of the hunter.

I walked back to camp in the gloaming, taking care to reach it before
it grew really dark; for in the Bad Lands it is entirely impossible to
travel, or to find any given locality, after nightfall. Old Manitou
had eaten his fill and looked up at me with pricked ears, and wise,
friendly face as I climbed down the side of the cedar canyon; then he
came slowly toward me to see if I had not something for him. I rubbed
his soft nose and gave him a cracker; then I picketed him to a solitary
cedar, where the feed was good. Afterward I kindled a small fire,
roasted both prairie fowl, ate one, and put the other by for breakfast;
and soon rolled myself in my blanket, with the saddle for a pillow, and
the oilskin beneath. Manitou was munching the grass nearby. I lay just
outside the line of stiff black cedars; the night air was soft in my
face; I gazed at the shining and brilliant multitude of stars until my
eyelids closed.

The chill breath which comes before dawn awakened me. It was still and
dark. Through the gloom I could indistinctly make out the loom of the
old horse, lying down. I was speedily ready, and groped and stumbled
slowly up the hill, and then along its crest to a peak. Here I sat
down and waited a quarter of an hour or so, until gray appeared in
the east, and the dim light-streaks enabled me to walk further. Before
sunrise I was two miles from camp; then I crawled cautiously to a high
ridge and, crouching behind it, scanned all the landscape eagerly. In
a few minutes a movement about a third of a mile to the right, midway
down a hill, caught my eye. Another glance showed me three white specks
moving along the hillside. They were the white rumps of three fine
mountain sheep, on their way to drink at a little alkaline pool in the
bottom of a deep, narrow valley. In a moment they went out of sight
round a bend of the valley; and I rose and trotted briskly toward them,
along the ridge. There were two or three deep gullies to cross, and
a high shoulder over which to clamber; so I was out of breath when I
reached the bend beyond which they had disappeared. Taking advantage
of a scrawny sage brush as cover I peeped over the edge, and at once
saw the sheep, three big young rams. They had finished drinking and
were standing beside the little miry pool, about three hundred yards
distant. Slipping back I dropped down into the bottom of the valley,
where a narrow washout zigzagged from side to side, between straight
walls of clay. The pool was in the upper end of this washout, under a
cut bank.

An indistinct game trail, evidently sometimes used by both bighorn
and blacktail, ran up this washout; the bottom was of clay so that
I walked noiselessly; and the crookedness of the washout’s course
afforded ample security against discovery by the sharp eyes of the
quarry. In a couple of minutes I stalked stealthily round the last
bend, my rifle cocked and at the ready, expecting to see the rams by
the pool. However, they had gone, and the muddy water was settling
in their deep hoof marks. Running on I looked over the edge of the
cut bank and saw them slowly quartering up the hillside, cropping the
sparse tufts of coarse grass. I whistled, and as they stood at gaze I
put a bullet into the biggest, a little too far aft of the shoulder,
but ranging forward. He raced after the others, but soon fell behind,
and turned off on his own line, at a walk, with dropping head. As he
bled freely I followed his tracks, found him, very sick, in a washout
a quarter of a mile beyond, and finished him with another shot. After
dressing him, and cutting off the saddle and hams, as well as the head,
I walked back to camp, breakfasted, and rode Manitou to where the sheep
lay. Packing it securely behind the saddle, and shifting the blanket
roll to in front of the saddle-horn, I led the horse until we were
clear of the Bad Lands; then mounted him, and was back at the ranch
soon after midday. The mutton of a fat young mountain ram, at this
season of the year, is delicious.

Such quick success is rare in hunting sheep. Generally each head has
cost me several days of hard, faithful work; and more than once I have
hunted over a week without any reward whatsoever. But the quarry is so
noble that the ultimate triumph--sure to come, if the hunter will but
persevere long enough--atones for all previous toil and failure.

Once a lucky stalk and shot at a bighorn was almost all that redeemed
a hunt in the Rockies from failure. I was high among the mountains at
the time, but was dogged by ill luck; I had seen but little, and I
had not shot very well. One morning I rose early, and hunted steadily
until midday without seeing anything. A mountain hunter was with me.
At noon we sat down to rest, and look over the country, from behind a
shield of dwarf evergreens on the brink of a mighty chasm. The rocks
fell downward in huge cliffs, stern and barren; from far below rose the
strangled roaring of the torrent, as the foaming masses of green and
white water churned round the bowlders in the stream bed. Except this
humming of the wild water, and the soughing of the pines, there was
no sound. We were sitting on a kind of jutting promontory of rock so
that we could scan the cliffs far and near. First I took the glasses
and scrutinized the ground almost rod by rod, for nearly half an hour;
then my companion took them in turn. It is very hard to make out game,
especially when lying down, and still; and it is curious to notice
how, after fruitlessly scanning a country through the glasses for a
considerable period, a herd of animals will suddenly appear in the
field of vision as if by magic. In this case, while my companion held
the glasses for the second time, a slight motion caught his eye; and
looking attentively he made out, five or six hundred yards distant, a
mountain ram lying among some loose rocks and small bushes at the head
of a little grassy cove or nook, in a shallow break between two walls
of the cliff. So well did the bluish gray of its body harmonize in tint
with the rocks and shrubbery that it was some time before I could see
it, even when pointed out to me.

The wind was favorable, and we at once drew back and began a cautious
stalk. It was impossible, owing to the nature of the cliffs above and
below the bighorn’s resting-place, to get a shot save by creeping
along nearly on a level with him. Accordingly we worked our way down
through a big cleft in the rocks, being forced to go very slowly and
carefully lest we should start a loose stone; and at last reached a
narrow terrace of rock and grass along which we walked comparatively
at our ease. Soon it dwindled away, and we then had to do our only
difficult piece of climbing--a clamber for fifty or sixty feet across a
steep cliff shoulder. Some little niches and cracks in the rock and a
few projections and diminutive ledges on its surface, barely enabled
us to swarm across, with painstaking care--not merely to avoid alarming
the game this time, but also to avoid a slip which would have proved
fatal. Once across we came on a long, grassy shelf, leading round a
shoulder into the cleft where the ram lay. As I neared the end I crept
forward on hands and knees, and then crawled flat, shoving the rifle
ahead of me, until I rounded the shoulder and peered into the rift.
As my eyes fell on the ram he sprang to his feet, with a clatter of
loose stones, and stood facing me, some sixty yards off, his dark face
and white muzzle brought out finely by the battered, curved horns. I
shot into his chest, hitting him in the sticking place; and after a
few mad bounds he tumbled headlong, and fell a very great distance,
unfortunately injuring one horn.

When much hunted, bighorn become the wariest of all American game, and
their chase is then peculiarly laborious and exciting. But where they
have known nothing of men, not having been molested by hunters, they
are exceedingly tame. Professor John Bach McMaster informs me that
in 1877 he penetrated to the Uintah Mountains of Wyoming, which were
then almost unknown to hunters; he found all the game very bold, and
the wild sheep in particular so unsuspicious that he could walk up to
within short rifle range of them in the open.

On the high mountains bighorn occasionally get killed by a snow-slide.
My old friend, the hunter Woody, once saw a band which started such an
avalanche by running along a steep sloping snow field, it being in the
spring; for several hundred yards it thundered at their heels, but by
desperate racing they just managed to get clear. Woody was also once an
eye-witness to the ravages the cougar commits among these wild sheep.
He was stalking a band in the snow when he saw them suddenly scatter at
a run in every direction. Coming up he found the traces of a struggle,
and the track of a body being dragged through the snow, together with
the round footmarks of the cougar; a little further on lay a dead ewe,
the blood flowing from the fang wounds in her throat.




CHAPTER VII

MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT


Late one August I started on a trip to the Big Hole Basin, in western
Montana, to hunt white goats. With me went a friend of many hunts, John
Willis, a tried mountain man.

We left the railroad at the squalid, little hamlet of Divide, where we
hired a team and wagon from a “busted” granger, suspected of being a
Mormon, who had failed, even with the help of irrigation, in raising a
crop. The wagon was in fairly good order; the harness was rotten, and
needed patching with ropes; while the team consisted of two spoiled
horses, overworked and thin, but full of the devil the minute they
began to pick up condition. However, on the frontier one soon grows to
accept little facts of this kind with bland indifference; and Willis
was not only an expert teamster, but possessed that inexhaustible
fertility of resource and unfailing readiness in an emergency so
characteristic of the veteran of the border. Through hard experience he
had become master of plainscraft and woodcraft, skilled in all frontier
lore.

For a couple of days we jogged up the valley of the Big Hole River,
along the mail road. At night we camped under our wagon. At the mouth
of the stream the valley was a mere gorge, but it broadened steadily
the further up we went, till the rapid river wound through a wide
expanse of hilly, treeless prairie. On each side the mountains rose,
their lower flanks and the foothills covered with the evergreen forest.
We got milk and bread at the scattered log-houses of the few settlers;
and for meat we shot sage fowl, which abounded. They were feeding on
grasshoppers at this time, and the flesh, especially of the young
birds, was as tender and well tasting as possible; whereas, when we
again passed through the valley in September, we found the birds almost
uneatable, being fairly bitter with sage. Like all grouse, they are
far tamer earlier in the season than later, being very wild in winter;
and, of course, they are boldest where they are least hunted; but for
some unexplained reason they are always tamer than the sharp-tail
prairie fowl which are to be found in the same locality.

Finally we reached the neighborhood of the Battle Ground, where a rude
stone monument commemorates the bloody drawn fight between General
Gibbons’ soldiers and the Nez Percés warriors of Chief Joseph. Here, on
the third day of our journey, we left the beaten road and turned toward
the mountains, following an indistinct trail made by wood-choppers.
We met with our full share of the usual mishaps incident to prairie
travel; and toward evening our team got mired in crossing a slough.
We attempted the crossing with some misgivings, which were warranted
by the result; for the second plunge of the horses brought them up to
their bellies in the morass, where they stuck. It was freezing cold,
with a bitter wind blowing, and the bog holes were skimmed with ice;
so that we passed a thoroughly wretched two hours while freeing the
horses and unloading the wagon. However, we eventually got across;
my companion preserving an absolutely unruffled temper throughout,
perseveringly whistling the “Arkansaw Traveler.” At one period, when we
were up to our waists in the icy mud, it began to sleet and hail, and
I muttered that I would “rather it didn’t storm”; whereat he stopped
whistling for a moment to make the laconic rejoinder, “We’re not having
our rathers this trip.”

At nightfall we camped among the willow bushes by a little brook. For
firewood we had only dead willow sticks; they made a hot blaze which
soon died out; and as the cold grew intense, we rolled up in our
blankets as soon as we had eaten our supper. The climate of the Big
Hole Basin is alpine; that night, though it was the 20th of August, the
thermometer sank to 10° F.

Early next morning we struck camp, shivering with cold as we threw the
stiff, frozen harness on the horses. We soon got among the foothills,
where the forest was open and broken by large glades, forming what is
called a park country. The higher we went the smaller grew the glades
and the denser the woodland; and it began to be very difficult to get
the wagon forward. In many places one man had to go ahead to pick out
the way and if necessary do a little chopping and lopping with the axe,
while the other followed driving the team. At last we were brought to a
standstill, and pitched camp beside a rapid, alder-choked brook in the
uppermost of a series of rolling glades, hemmed in by mountains and the
dense coniferous forest. Our tent stood under a grove of pines, close
to the brook; at night we built in front of it a big fire of crackling,
resinous logs. Our goods were sheltered by the wagon, or covered with
a tarpaulin; we threw down sprays of odorous evergreens to make a
resting-place for our bedding; we built small scaffolds on which to dry
the flesh of elk and deer. In an hour or two we had round us all the
many real comforts of such a little wilderness home.

Whoever has long roamed and hunted in the wilderness always cherishes
with wistful pleasure the memory of some among the countless camps he
has made. The camp by the margin of the clear, mountain-hemmed lake;
the camp in the dark and melancholy forest, where the gusty wind booms
through the tall pine tops; the camp under gnarled cottonwoods, on the
bank of a shrunken river, in the midst of endless grassy prairies,--of
these, and many like them, each has had its own charm. Of course in
hunting one must expect much hardship and repeated disappointment; and
in many a camp, bad weather, lack of shelter, hunger, thirst, or ill
success with game, renders the days and nights irksome and trying. Yet
the hunter worthy of the name always willingly takes the bitter if by
so doing he can get the sweet, and gladly balances failure and success,
spurning the poorer souls who know neither.

We turned our horses loose, hobbling one; and as we did not look after
them for several days, nothing but my companion’s skill as a tracker
enabled us to find them again. There was a spell of warm weather which
brought out a few of the big bull-dog flies, which drive a horse--or
indeed a man--nearly frantic; we were in the haunts of these dreaded
and terrible scourges, which up to the beginning of August render it
impossible to keep stock of any description unprotected where they
abound, but which are never formidable after the first frost. In many
parts of the wilderness these pests, or else the incredible swarms of
mosquitoes, blackflies, and buffalo gnats, render life not worth living
during the last weeks of spring and the early months of summer.

There were elk and deer in the neighborhood; also ruffed, blue, and
spruce grouse; so that our camp was soon stocked with meat. Early one
morning while Willis was washing in the brook, a little black bear
thrust its sharp nose through the alders a few feet from him, and then
hastily withdrew and was seen no more. The smaller wild-folk were more
familiar. As usual in the northern mountains, the gray moose-birds
and voluble, nervous little chipmunks made themselves at home in the
camp. Parties of chickadees visited us occasionally. A family of flying
squirrels lived overhead in the grove; and at nightfall they swept
noiselessly from tree to tree, in long, graceful curves. There were
sparrows of several kinds moping about in the alders; and now and then
one of them would sing a few sweet, rather mournful bars.

After several days’ preliminary exploration we started on foot for
white goat. We took no packs with us, each carrying merely his jacket,
with a loaf of bread and a paper of salt thrust into the pockets. Our
aim was to get well to one side of a cluster of high, bare peaks, and
then to cross them and come back to camp; we reckoned that the trip
would take three days.

All the first day we tramped through dense woods and across and around
steep mountain spurs. We caught glimpses of two or three deer and a
couple of elk, all does or fawns, however, which we made no effort to
molest. Late in the afternoon we stumbled across a family of spruce
grouse, which furnished us material for both supper and breakfast.
The mountain men call this bird the fool-hen; and most certainly it
deserves the name. The members of this particular flock, consisting
of a hen and her three-parts grown chickens, acted with a stupidity
unwonted even for their kind. They were feeding on the ground among
some young spruce, and on our approach flew up and perched in the
branches four or five feet above our heads. There they stayed, uttering
a low, complaining whistle, and showed not the slightest suspicion when
we came underneath them with long sticks and knocked four off their
perches--for we did not wish to alarm any large game that might be in
the neighborhood by firing. One particular bird was partially saved
from my first blow by the intervening twigs; however, it merely flew
a few yards, and then sat with its bill open,--having evidently been a
little hurt,--until I came up and knocked it over with a better directed
stroke.

Spruce grouse are plentiful in the mountain forests of the northern
Rockies, and, owing to the ease with which they are killed, they have
furnished me my usual provender when off on trips of this kind, where
I carried no pack. They are marvelously tame and stupid. The young
birds are the only ones I have ever killed in this manner with a stick;
but even a full plumaged old cock in September is easily slain with a
stone by any one who is at all a good thrower. A man who has played
much base-ball need never use a gun when after spruce grouse. They are
the smallest of the grouse kind; the cock is very handsome, with red
eyebrows and dark, glossy plumage. Moreover, he is as brave as he is
stupid and good-looking, and in the love season becomes fairly crazy:
at such time he will occasionally make a feint of attacking a man,
strutting, fluttering, and ruffling his feathers. The flesh of the
spruce grouse is not so good as that of his ruffed and blue kinsfolk;
and in winter, when he feeds on spruce buds, it is ill tasting. I
have never been able to understand why closely allied species, under
apparently the same surroundings, should differ so radically in such
important traits as wariness and capacity to escape from foes. Yet
the spruce grouse in this respect shows the most marked contrast
to the blue grouse and the ruffed grouse. Of course all three kinds
vary greatly in their behavior according as they do or do not live
in localities where they have been free from man’s persecutions. The
ruffed grouse, a very wary game bird in all old-settled regions, is
often absurdly tame in the wilderness; and under persecution even the
spruce grouse gains some little wisdom; but the latter never becomes as
wary as the former, and under no circumstances is it possible to outwit
the ruffed grouse by such clumsy means as serve for his simple-minded
brother. There is a similar difference between the sage fowl and
prairie fowl, in favor of the latter. It is odd that the largest and
the smallest kinds of grouse found in the United States should be the
tamest; and also the least savory.

After tramping all day through the forest, at nightfall we camped
in its upper edge, just at the foot of the steep rock walls of the
mountain. We chose a sheltered spot, where the small spruce grew thick,
and there was much dead timber; and as the logs, though long, were of
little girth, we speedily dragged together a number sufficient to keep
the fire blazing all night. Having drunk our full at a brook we cut two
forked willow sticks, and then each plucked a grouse, split it, thrust
the willow-fork into it, and roasted it before the fire. Besides this
we had salt, and bread; moreover we were hungry and healthily tired; so
the supper seemed, and was, delicious. Then we turned up the collars of
our jackets, and lay down, to pass the night in broken slumber; each
time the fire died down the chill waked us, and we rose to feed it with
fresh logs.

At dawn we rose, and cooked and ate the two remaining grouse. Then we
turned our faces upward, and passed a day of severe toil in climbing
over the crags. Mountaineering is very hard work; and when we got high
among the peaks, where snow filled the rifts, the thinness of the air
forced me to stop for breath every few hundred yards of the ascent.
We found much sign of white goats, but in spite of steady work and
incessant careful scanning of the rocks, we did not see our quarry
until early in the afternoon.

We had clambered up one side of a steep saddle of naked rock, some of
the scarped ledges being difficult, and indeed dangerous, of ascent.
From the top of the saddle a careful scrutiny of the neighboring peaks
failed to reveal any game, and we began to go down the other side. The
mountain fell away in a succession of low cliffs, and we had to move
with the utmost caution. In letting ourselves down from ledge to ledge
one would hold the guns until the other got safe footing, and then
pass them down to him. In many places we had to work our way along
the cracks in the faces of the frost-riven rocks. At last, just as we
reached a little smooth shoulder, my companion said, pointing down
beneath us, “Look at the white goat!”

A moment or two passed before I got my eyes on it. We were looking down
into a basin-like valley, surrounded by high mountain chains. At one
end of the basin was a low pass, where the ridge was cut up with the
zigzag trails made by the countless herds of game which had traveled
it for many generations. At the other end was a dark gorge, through
which a stream foamed. The floor of the basin was bright emerald green,
dotted with darker bands where belts of fir trees grew; and in its
middle lay a little lake.

At last I caught sight of the goat, feeding on a terrace rather over
a hundred and twenty-five yards below me. I promptly fired, but
overshot. The goat merely gave a few jumps and stopped. My second
bullet went through its lungs; but fearful lest it might escape to some
inaccessible cleft or ledge I fired again, missing; and yet again,
breaking its back. Down it went, and the next moment began to roll over
and over, from ledge to ledge. I greatly feared it would break its
horns; an annoying and oft-recurring incident of white-goat shooting,
where the nature of the ground is such that the dead quarry often falls
hundreds of feet, its body being torn to ribbons by the sharp crags.
However, in this case the goat speedily lodged unharmed in a little
dwarf evergreen.

Hardly had I fired my fourth shot when my companion again exclaimed,
“Look at the white goats! look at the white goats!” Glancing in the
direction in which he pointed I speedily made out four more goats
standing in a bunch rather less than a hundred yards off, to one
side of my former line of fire. They were all looking up at me. They
stood on a slab of white rock, with which the color of their fleece
harmonized well; and their black horns, muzzles, eyes, and hoofs looked
like dark dots on a light-colored surface, so that it took me more
than one glance to determine what they were. White goat invariably run
up hill when alarmed, their one idea seeming to be to escape danger
by getting above it; for their brute foes are able to overmatch them
on anything like level ground, but are helpless against them among
the crags. Almost as soon as I saw them these four started up the
mountain, nearly in my direction, while I clambered down and across
to meet them. They halted at the foot of a cliff, and I at the top,
being unable to see them; but in another moment they came bounding and
cantering up the sheer rocks, not moving quickly, but traversing the
most seemingly impossible places by main strength and sure-footedness.
As they broke by me, some thirty yards off, I fired two shots at the
rearmost, an old buck, somewhat smaller than the one I had just killed;
and he rolled down the mountain dead. Two of the others, a yearling
and a kid, showed more alarm than their elders, and ran off at a brisk
pace. The remaining one, an old she, went off a hundred yards, and
then deliberately stopped and turned round to gaze at us for a couple
of minutes! Verily the white goat is the fool-hen among beasts of the
chase.

Having skinned and cut off the heads we walked rapidly onward, slanting
down the mountain side, and then over and down the pass of the game
trails; for it was growing late and we wished to get well down among
the timber before nightfall. On the way an eagle came soaring overhead,
and I shot at it twice without success. Having once killed an eagle
on the wing with a rifle, I always have a lurking hope that some time
I may be able to repeat the feat. I revenged myself for the miss by
knocking a large blue goshawk out of the top of a blasted spruce, where
it was sitting in lazy confidence, its crop stuffed with rabbit and
grouse.

A couple of hours’ hard walking brought us down to timber; just before
dusk we reached a favorable camping spot in the forest, beside a
brook, with plenty of dead trees for the night-fire. Moreover, the
spot fortunately yielded us our supper, too, in the shape of a flock
of young spruce grouse, of which we shot off the heads of a couple.
Immediately afterward I ought to have procured our breakfast, for a
cock of the same kind suddenly flew down nearby; but it was getting
dark, I missed with the first shot, and with the second must have
merely creased the neck, for though the tough old bird dropped, it
fluttered and ran off among the underbrush and escaped.

We broiled our two grouse before our fire, dragged plenty of logs into
a heap beside it, and then lay down to sleep fitfully, an hour or so at
a time, throughout the night. We were continually wakened by the cold,
when we had to rise and feed the flames. In the early morning we again
started, walking for some time along the fresh trail made by a large
band of elk, cows and calves. We thought we knew exactly the trend and
outlet of the valley in which we were, and that therefore we could tell
where the camp was; but, as so often happens in the wilderness, we had
not reckoned aright, having passed over one mountain spur too many,
and entered the ravines of an entirely different watercourse-system.
In consequence we became entangled in a network of hills and valleys,
making circle after circle to find our bearings; and we only reached
camp after twelve hours’ tiresome tramp without food.

On another occasion I shot a white goat while it was in a very curious
and characteristic attitude. I was hunting, again with an old mountain
man as my sole companion, among the high mountains of the Kootenai
country, near the border of Montana and British Columbia. We had left
our main camp, pitched by the brink of the river, and were struggling
wearily on foot through the tangled forest and over the precipitous
mountains, carrying on our backs light packs, consisting of a little
food and two or three indispensable utensils, wrapped in our blankets.
One day we came to the foot of a great chain of bare rocks, and climbed
laboriously to its crest, up cliff after cliff, some of which were
almost perpendicular. Swarming round certain of the rock shoulders,
crossing an occasional sheer chasm, and in many places clinging to
steep, smooth walls by but slight holds, we reached the top. The
climbing at such a height was excessively fatiguing; moreover, it was
in places difficult and even dangerous. Of course it was not to be
compared to the ascent of towering, glacier-bearing peaks, such as
those of the Selkirks and Alaska, where climbers must be roped to one
another and carry ice axes.

Once at the top we walked very cautiously, being careful not to show
ourselves against the sky-line, and scanning the mountain sides through
our glasses. At last we made out three goats, grazing unconcernedly on
a narrow, grassy terrace, which sloped abruptly to the brink of a high
precipice. They were not very far off, and there was a little rock spur
above them which offered good cover for a stalk; but we had to crawl so
slowly, partly to avoid falling, and partly to avoid detaching loose
rocks, that it was nearly an hour before we got in a favorable position
above them, and some seventy yards off. The frost-disintegrated
mountains in which they live are always sending down showers of
detached stones, so that the goats are not very sensitive to the noise;
still, they sometimes pay instantaneous heed to it, especially if the
sound is repeated.

When I peeped over the little ridge of rock, shoving my rifle carefully
ahead of me, I found that the goats had finished feeding and were
preparing to leave the slope. The old billy saw me at once, but
evidently could not quite make me out. Thereupon, gazing intently at
me, he rose gravely on his haunches, sitting up almost in the attitude
of a dog when begging. I know no other horned animal that ever takes
this position.

As I fired he rolled backward, slipped down the grassy slope, and
tumbled over the brink of the cliff, while the other two, a she and
a kid, after a moment’s panic-struck pause, and a bewildered rush in
the wrong direction, made off up a little rocky gully, and were out of
sight in a moment. To my chagrin when I finally reached the carcass,
after a tedious and circuitous climb to the foot of the cliff, I found
both horns broken off.

It was late in the afternoon, and we clambered down to the border
of a little marshy alpine lake, which we reached in an hour or so.
Here we made our camp about sunset, in a grove of stunted spruces,
which furnished plenty of dead timber for the fire. There were many
white-goat trails leading to this lake, and from the slide rock
roundabout we heard the shrill whistling of hoary rock-woodchucks,
and the querulous notes of the little conies--two of the sounds most
familiar to the white-goat hunter. These conies had gathered heaps of
dried plants, and had stowed them carefully away for winter use in the
cracks between the rocks.

While descending the mountain we came on a little pack of snow grouse
or mountain ptarmigan, birds which, save in winter, are always found
above timber line. They were tame and fearless, though hard to make out
as they ran among the rocks, cackling noisily, with their tails cocked
aloft; and we had no difficulty in killing four, which gave us a good
breakfast and supper. Old white goats are intolerably musky in flavor,
there being a very large musk-pod between the horn and ear. The kids
are eatable, but of course are rarely killed; the shot being usually
taken at the animal with best horns--and the shes and young of any game
should only be killed when there is a real necessity.

These two hunts may be taken as samples of most expeditions after
white goat. There are places where the goats live in mountains close
to bodies of water, either ocean fjords or large lakes; and in such
places canoes can be used, to the greatly increased comfort and
lessened labor of the hunters. In other places, where the mountains are
low and the goats spend all the year in the timber, a pack-train can
be taken right up to the hunting grounds. But generally one must go on
foot, carrying everything on one’s back, and at night lying out in the
open or under a brush lean-to; meanwhile living on spruce grouse and
ptarmigan, with an occasional meal of trout, and in times of scarcity
squirrels, or anything else. Such a trip entails severe fatigue and
not a little hardship. The actual hunting, also, implies difficult and
laborious climbing, for the goats live by choice among the highest
and most inaccessible mountains; though where they are found, as
they sometimes are, in comparatively low forest-clad ranges, I have
occasionally killed them with little trouble by lying in wait beside
the well-trodden game trails they make in the timber.

In any event the hard work is to get up to the grounds where the game
is found. Once the animals are spied there is but little call for the
craft of the still-hunter in approaching them. Of all American game the
white goat is the least wary and most stupid. In places where it is
much hunted it of course gradually grows wilder and becomes difficult
to approach and kill; and much of its silly tameness is doubtless due
to the inaccessible nature of its haunts, which renders it ordinarily
free from molestation; but aside from this it certainly seems as if it
was naturally less wary than either deer or mountain sheep. The great
point is to get above it. All its foes live in the valleys, and while
it is in the mountains, if they strive to approach it at all, they must
do so from below. It is in consequence always on the watch for danger
from beneath; but it is easily approached from above, and then, as it
generally tries to escape by running up hill, the hunter is very apt to
get a shot.

Its chase is thus laborious rather than exciting; and to my mind it
is less attractive than is the pursuit of most of our other game. Yet
it has an attraction of its own after all; while the grandeur of the
scenery amid which it must be carried on, the freedom and hardihood of
the life and the pleasure of watching the queer habits of the game, all
combine to add to the hunter’s enjoyment.

White goats are self-confident, pugnacious beings. An old billy, if he
discovers the presence of a foe without being quite sure what it is,
often refuses to take flight, but walks around, stamping, and shaking
his head. The needle-pointed black horns are alike in both sexes, save
that the males’ are a trifle thicker; and they are most effective
weapons when wielded by the muscular neck of a resolute and wicked old
goat. They wound like stilettos and their bearer is in consequence a
much more formidable foe in a hand-to-hand struggle than either a
branching-antlered deer or a mountain ram, with his great battering
head. The goat does not butt; he thrusts. If he can cover his back by
a tree trunk or bowlder he can stand off most carnivorous animals no
larger than he is.

Though awkward in movement, and lacking all semblance of lightness
or agility, goats are excellent climbers. One of their queer traits
is their way of getting their forehoofs on a slight ledge, and then
drawing or lifting their bodies up by simple muscular exertion,
stretching out their elbows, much as a man would. They do a good deal
of their climbing by strength and command over their muscles; although
they are also capable of making astonishing bounds. If a cliff surface
has the least slope, and shows any inequalities or roughness whatever,
goats can go up and down it with ease. With their short, stout legs,
and large, sharp-edged hoofs they clamber well over ice, passing and
repassing the mountains at a time when no man would so much as crawl
over them. They bear extreme cold with indifference, but are intolerant
of much heat; even when the weather is cool they are apt to take their
noontide rest in caves; I have seen them solemnly retiring, for this
purpose, to great rents in the rocks, at a time when my own teeth
chattered because of the icy wind.

They go in small flocks; sometimes in pairs or little family parties.
After the rut the bucks often herd by themselves, or go off alone,
while the young and the shes keep together throughout the winter and
the spring. The young are generally brought forth above timber line, or
at its uppermost edge, save of course in those places where the goats
live among the mountains wooded to the top. Throughout the summer they
graze on the short mountain plants which in many places form regular
mats above timber line; the deep winter snows drive them low down in
the wooded valleys, and force them to subsist by browsing. They are
so strong that they plow their way readily through deep drifts; and a
flock of goats at this season, when their white coat is very long and
thick, if seen waddling off through the snow, have a comical likeness
to so many diminutive polar bears. Of course they could easily be
run down in the snow by a man on snowshoes, in the plain; but on a
mountain side there are always bare rocks and cliff shoulders, glassy
with winter ice, which give either goats or sheep an advantage over
their snowshoe-bearing foes that deer and elk lack. Whenever the goats
pass the winter in woodland they leave plenty of sign in the shape of
patches of wool clinging to all the sharp twigs and branches against
which they have brushed. In the spring they often form the habit of
drinking at certain low pools, to which they beat deep paths; and at
this season, and to a less extent in the summer and fall, they are
very fond of frequenting mineral licks. At any such lick the ground
is tramped bare of vegetation, and is filled with pits and hollows,
actually dug by the tongues of innumerable generations of animals;
while the game paths lead from them in a dozen directions.

In spite of the white goat’s pugnacity, its clumsiness renders it no
very difficult prey when taken unawares by either wolf or cougar, its
two chief enemies. They can not often catch it when it is above timber
line; but it is always in sore peril from them when it ventures into
the forest. Bears, also, prey upon it in the early spring; and one
midwinter my friend Willis found a wolverine eating a goat which it
had killed in a snowdrift at the foot of a cliff. The savage little
beast growled and showed fight when he came near the body. Eagles are
great enemies of the young kids, as they are of the young lambs of the
bighorn.

The white goat is the only game beast of America which has not
decreased in numbers since the arrival of the white man. Although in
certain localities it is now decreasing, yet, taken as a whole, it is
probably quite as plentiful now as it was fifty years back; for in the
early part of the present century there were Indian tribes who hunted
it perseveringly to make the skins into robes, whereas now they get
blankets from the traders and no longer persecute the goats. The early
trappers and mountain-men knew but little of the animal. Whether they
were after beaver, or were hunting big game or were merely exploring,
they kept to the valleys; there was no inducement for them to climb to
the tops of the mountains; so it resulted that there was no animal with
which the old hunters were so unfamiliar as with the white goat. The
professional hunters of to-day likewise bother it but little; they do
not care to undergo severe toil for an animal with worthless flesh and
a hide of little value--for it is only in the late fall and winter that
the long hair and fine wool give the robe any beauty.

So the quaint, sturdy, musky beasts, with their queer and awkward
ways, their boldness and their stupidity, with their white coats and
big black hoofs, black muzzles, and sharp, gently curved span-long
black horns, have held their own well among the high mountains that
they love. In the Rockies and the Coast ranges they abound from Alaska
south to Montana, Idaho, and Washington; and here and there isolated
colonies are found among the high mountains to the southward, in
Wyoming, Colorado, even in New Mexico, and, strangest of all, in one or
two spots among the barren coast mountains of southern California. Long
after the elk has followed the buffalo to the happy hunting grounds the
white goat will flourish among the towering and glacier-riven peaks,
and, grown wary with succeeding generations, will furnish splendid
sport to those hunters who are both good riflemen and hardy cragsmen.




CHAPTER VIII

HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS; THE CARIBOU


In September, 1888, I was camped on the shores of Kootenai Lake, having
with me as companions John Willis and an impassive-looking Indian
named Ammál. Coming across through the dense coniferous forests of
northern Idaho we had struck the Kootenai River. Then we went down
with the current as it wound in half circles through a long alluvial
valley of mixed marsh and woodland, hemmed in by lofty mountains. The
lake itself, when we reached it, stretched straight away like a great
fjord, a hundred miles long and about three in breadth. The frowning
and rugged Selkirks came down sheer to the water’s edge. So straight
were the rock walls that it was difficult for us to land with our
batteau, save at the places where the rapid mountain torrents entered
the lake. As these streams of swift water broke from their narrow
gorges they made little deltas of level ground with beaches of fine
white sand; and the stream-banks were edged with cottonwood and poplar,
their shimmering foliage relieving the sombre coloring of the evergreen
forest.

Close to such a brook, from which we drew strings of large silver
trout, our tent was pitched, just within the forest. From between the
trunks of two gnarled, wind-beaten trees, a pine and a cottonwood, we
looked out across the lake. The little bay in our front, in which we
bathed and swam, was sometimes glassily calm; and again heavy wind
squalls arose, and the surf beat strongly on the beach where our boat
was drawn up. Now and then great checker-back loons drifted buoyantly
by, stopping with bold curiosity to peer at the white tent gleaming
between the tree trunks, and at the smoke curling above their tops;
and they called to one another, both at dawn and in the daytime, with
shrieks of unearthly laughter. Troops of noisy, party-colored Clark’s
crows circled over the tree-tops or hung from among the pine cones;
jays and chickadees came round the camp, and woodpeckers hammered
lustily in the dead timber. Two or three times parties of Indians
passed down the lake, in strangely shaped bark canoes, with peaked,
projecting prows and sterns; craft utterly unlike the graceful,
feather-floating birches so beloved by both the red and the white
woodsmen of the Northeast. Once a couple of white men, in a dugout or
pirogue made out of a cottonwood log, stopped to get lunch. They were
mining prospectors, French Canadians by birth, but beaten into the
usual frontier-mining stamp; doomed to wander their lives long, ever
hoping, in the quest for metal wealth.

With these exceptions there was nothing to break the silent loneliness
of the great lake. Shrouded as we were in the dense forest, and at the
foot of the first steep hills, we could see nothing of the country
on the side where we were camped; but across the water the immense
mountain masses stretched away from our vision, range upon range, until
they turned to a glittering throng of ice peaks and snow fields, the
feeding beds of glaciers. Between the lake and the snow range were
chains of gray rock peaks, and the mountain sides and valleys were
covered by the primeval forest. The woods were on fire across the lake
from our camp, burning steadily. At night the scene was very grand, as
the fire worked slowly across the mountain sides in immense zigzags of
quivering red; while at times isolated pines of unusual size kindled,
and flamed for hours, like the torches of a giant. Finally the smoke
grew so thick as to screen from our views the grand landscape opposite.

We had come down from a week’s fruitless hunting in the mountains;
a week of excessive toil, in a country where we saw no game--for in
our ignorance we had wasted time, not going straight back to the
high ranges, from which the game had not yet descended. After three
or four days of rest, and of feasting on trout--a welcome relief to
the monotony of frying-pan bread and coarse salt pork--we were ready
for another trial; and early one morning we made the start. Having
to pack everything for a fortnight’s use on our backs, through an
excessively rough country we of course traveled as light as possible,
leaving almost all we had with the tent and boat. Each took his own
blanket; and among us we carried a frying-pan, a teapot, flour, pork,
salt, tea, and matches. I also took a jacket, a spare pair of socks,
some handkerchiefs, and my washing kit. Fifty cartridges in my belt
completed my outfit.

We walked in single file, as is necessary in thick woods. The white
hunter led and I followed, each with rifle on shoulder and pack on
back. Ammál, the Indian, pigeon-toed along behind, carrying his
pack, not as we did ours, but by help of a forehead-band, which he
sometimes shifted across his breast. The traveling through the tangled,
brush-choked forest, and along the bowlder-strewn and precipitous
mountain sides, was inconceivably rough and difficult. In places we
followed the valley, and when this became impossible we struck across
the spurs. Every step was severe toil. Now we walked through deep moss
and rotting mould, every few feet clambering over huge trunks; again we
pushed through a stiff jungle of bushes and tall, prickly plants--called
“devil’s clubs,”--which stung our hands and faces. Up the almost
perpendicular hillsides we in many places went practically on all
fours, forcing our way over the rocks and through the dense thickets of
laurels or young spruce. Where there were windfalls or great stretches
of burned forest, black and barren wastes, we balanced and leaped from
log to log, sometimes twenty or thirty feet above the ground; and
when such a stretch was on a steep hillside, and especially if the
logs were enveloped in a thick second growth of small evergreens, the
footing was very insecure, and the danger from a fall considerable.
Our packs added greatly to our labor, catching on the snags and stubs;
and where a grove of thick-growing young spruces or balsams had been
burned, the stiff and brittle twigs pricked like so much coral. Most
difficult of all were the dry watercourses, choked with alders, where
the intertwined tangle of tough stems formed an almost literally
impenetrable barrier to our progress. Nearly every movement--leaping,
climbing, swinging one’s self up with one’s hands, bursting through
stiff bushes, plunging into and out of bogs--was one of strain and
exertion; the fatigue was tremendous, and steadily continued, so that
in an hour every particle of clothing I had on was wringing wet with
sweat.

At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite of lunch--a chunk of
cold frying-pan bread, which was all we had.

While at lunch I made a capture. I was sitting on a great stone by the
edge of the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which had come up from
a short flight--I can call it nothing else--underneath the water, and
was singing sweetly from a spray-splashed log. Suddenly a small animal
swam across the little pool at my feet. It was less in size than a
mouse, and as it paddled rapidly underneath the water its body seemed
flattened like a disk and was spangled with tiny bubbles, like specks
of silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare little beast. I sat motionless
and watched both the shrew and the water-wren--water-ousel, as it should
rightly be named. The latter, emboldened by my quiet, presently flew
by me to a little rapids close at hand, lighting on a round stone, and
then slipping unconcernedly into the swift water. Anon he emerged,
stood on another stone, and trilled a few bars, though it was late in
the season for singing, and then dived again into the stream.

I gazed at him eagerly; for this strange, pretty water-thrush is to me
one of the most attractive and interesting birds to be found in the
gorges of the great Rockies. Its haunts are romantically beautiful, for
it always dwells beside and in the swift-flowing mountain brooks; it
has a singularly sweet song; and its ways render it a marked bird at
once, for, though looking much like a sober-colored, ordinary woodland
thrush, it spends half its time under the water, walking along the
bottom, swimming and diving, and flitting through as well as over the
cataracts.

In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. It got into a
little shallow eddy and caught a minute fish, which it carried to a
half-sunken stone and greedily devoured, tugging voraciously at it
as it held it down with its paws. Then its evil genius drove it into
a small puddle alongside the brook, where I instantly pounced on and
slew it; for I knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Washington who would
have coveted it greatly. It was a soft, pretty creature, dark above,
snow-white below, with a very long tail. I turned the skin inside out
and put a bent twig in, that it might dry; while Ammál, who had been
intensely interested in the chase and capture, meditatively shook his
head and said “wagh,” unable to fathom the white man’s medicine.
However, my labor came to naught, for that evening I laid the skin out
on a log, Ammál threw the log into the fire, and that was the end of
the shrew.

When this interlude was over we resumed our march, toiling silently
onward through the wild and rugged country. Toward evening the valley
widened a little, and we were able to walk in the bottoms, which much
lightened our labor. The hunter, for greater ease, had tied the thongs
of his heavy pack across his breast, so that he could not use his
rifle; but my pack was lighter, and I carried it in a manner that would
not interfere with my shooting, lest we should come unwares on game.

It was well that I did so. An hour or two before sunset we were
traveling, as usual, in Indian file, beside the stream, through an open
wood of great hemlock trees. There was no breeze, and we made no sound
as we marched, for our feet sunk noiselessly into the deep sponge of
moss, while the incessant dashing of the torrent, churning among the
stones, would have drowned a far louder advance.

Suddenly the hunter, who was leading, dropped down in his tracks,
pointing forward; and some fifty feet beyond I saw the head and
shoulders of a bear as he rose to make a sweep at some berries. He
was in a hollow where a tall, rank, prickly plant, with broad leaves,
grew luxuriantly; and he was gathering its red berries, rising on his
hind legs and sweeping them down into his mouth with his paw, and was
much too intent on his work to notice us, for his head was pointed the
other way. The moment he rose again I fired, meaning to shoot through
the shoulders, but instead, in the hurry, taking him in the neck. Down
he went, but whether hurt or not we could not see, for the second he
was on all fours he was no longer visible. Rather to my surprise he
uttered no sound--for bear when hit or when charging often make a great
noise--so I raced forward to the edge of the hollow, the hunter close
behind me, while Ammál danced about in the rear, very much excited, as
Indians always are in the presence of big game. The instant we reached
the hollow and looked down into it from the low bank on which we stood
we saw by the swaying of the tall plants that the bear was coming our
way. The hunter was standing some ten feet distant, a hemlock trunk
being between us; and the next moment the bear sprang clean up the bank
the other side of the hemlock, and almost within arm’s-length of my
companion. I do not think he had intended to charge; he was probably
confused by the bullet through his neck, and had by chance blundered
out of the hollow in our direction; but when he saw the hunter so close
he turned for him, his hair bristling and his teeth showing. The man
had no cartridge in his weapon, and with his pack on could not have
used it anyhow; and for a moment it looked as if he stood a fair
chance of being hurt, though it is not likely that the bear would have
done more than knock him down with his powerful forepaw, or perchance
give him a single bite in passing. However, as the beast sprang out of
the hollow he poised for a second on the edge of the bank to recover
his balance, giving me a beautiful shot, as he stood side-wise to me;
the bullet struck between the eye and ear, and he fell as if hit with a
pole axe.

Immediately the Indian began jumping about the body, uttering wild
yells, his usually impassive face lighted up with excitement, while
the hunter and I stood at rest, leaning on our rifles and laughing.
It was a strange scene, the dead bear lying in the shade of the giant
hemlocks, while the fantastic-looking savage danced round him with
shrill whoops, and the tall frontiersman looked quietly on.

Our prize was a large black bear, with two curious brown streaks down
his back, one on each side the spine. We skinned him and camped by the
carcass, as it was growing late. To take the chill off the evening air
we built a huge fire, the logs roaring and crackling. To one side of it
we made our beds--of balsam and hemlock boughs; we did not build a brush
lean-to, because the night seemed likely to be clear. Then we supped
on sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of bear meat, fried
or roasted--and how very good it tasted only those know who have gone
through much hardship and some little hunger, and have worked violently
for several days without flesh food. After eating our fill we stretched
ourselves around the fire; the leaping sheets of flame lighted the tree
trunks round about, causing them to start out against the cavernous
blackness beyond, and reddened the interlacing branches that formed a
canopy overhead. The Indian sat on his haunches, gazing steadily and
silently into the pile of blazing logs, while the white hunter and I
talked together.

The morning after killing Bruin, we again took up our march, heading
up stream, that we might go to its sources amid the mountains, where
the snow fields fed its springs. It was two full days’ journey thither,
but we took much longer to make it, as we kept halting to hunt the
adjoining mountains. On such occasions Ammál was left as camp guard,
while the white hunter and I would start by daybreak and return at dark
utterly worn out by the excessive fatigue. We knew nothing of caribou,
nor where to hunt for them; and we had been told that thus early in the
season they were above tree limit on the mountain sides. Accordingly we
would climb up to the limits of the forests, but never found a caribou
trail; and once or twice we went on to the summits of the crag-peaks,
and across the deep snow fields in the passes. There were plenty of
white goats, however, their trails being broad paths, especially at one
spot where they led down to a lick in the valley; round the lick for a
space of many yards the ground was trampled as if in a sheepfold.

The mountains were very steep, and the climbing was in places
dangerous, when we were above the timber and had to make our way along
the jagged knife-crests and across the faces of the cliffs; while our
hearts beat as if about to burst in the high, thin air. In walking over
rough but not dangerous ground--across slides or in thick timber--my
companion was far more skilful than I was; but rather to my surprise I
proved to be nearly as good as he when we came to the really dangerous
places, where we had to go slowly, and let one another down from ledge
to ledge, or crawl by narrow cracks across the rock walls.

The view from the summits was magnificent, and I never tired of gazing
at it. Sometimes the sky was a dome of blue crystal, and mountain,
lake, and valley lay spread in startling clearness at our very feet;
and again snow-peak and rock-peak were thrust up like islands through
a sea of billowy clouds. At the feet of the topmost peaks, just above
the edge of the forest, were marshy alpine valleys, the boggy ground
soaked with water, and small bushes or stunted trees fringing the icy
lakes. In the stony mountain sides surrounding these lakes there were
hoary woodchucks and conies. The former resembled in their habits the
alpine marmot, rather than our own common Eastern woodchuck. They lived
alone or in couples among the rocks, their gray color often making them
difficult to see as they crouched at the mouths of their burrows, or
sat bolt upright; and as an alarm note they uttered a loud piercing
whistle, a strong contrast to the querulous, plaintive “p-a-a-y” of the
timid conies. These likewise loved to dwell where the stones and slabs
of rock were heaped on one another; though so timid, they were not
nearly as wary as the woodchucks. If we stood quite still the little
brown creatures would venture away from their holes and hop softly over
the rocks as if we were not present.

The white goats were too musky to eat, and we saw nothing else to
shoot; so we speedily became reduced to tea, and to bread baked in
the frying-pan, save every now and then for a feast on the luscious
mountain blueberries. This rather meagre diet, coupled with incessant
fatigue and exertion, made us fairly long for meat food; and we fell
off in flesh, though of course in so short a time we did not suffer
in either health or strength. Fortunately the nights were too cool
for mosquitoes; but once or twice in the afternoons, while descending
the lower slopes of the mountains, we were much bothered by swarms of
gnats; they worried us greatly, usually attacking us at a time when we
had to go fast in order to reach camp before dark, while the roughness
of the ground forced us to use both hands in climbing, and thus forbade
us to shield our faces from our tiny tormentors. Our chief luxury
was, at the end of the day, when footsore and weary, to cast aside
our sweat-drenched clothes and plunge into the icy mountain torrent
for a moment’s bath that freshened us as if by magic. The nights were
generally pleasant, and we slept soundly on our beds of balsam boughs,
but once or twice there were sharp frosts, and it was so cold that the
hunter and I huddled together for warmth and kept the fires going till
morning. One day, when we were on the march, it rained heavily, and we
were soaked through, and stiff and chilly when we pitched camp; but we
speedily built a great brush lean-to, made a roaring fire in front,
and grew once more to warmth and comfort as we sat under our steaming
shelter. The only discomfort we really minded was an occasional night
in wet blankets.

In the evening the Indian and the white hunter played interminable
games of seven-up with a greasy pack of cards. In the course of his
varied life the hunter had been a professional gambler; and he could
have easily won all the Indian’s money, the more speedily inasmuch as
the untutored red man was always attempting to cheat, and was thus
giving his far more skilful opponent a certain right to try some
similar deviltry in return. However, it was distinctly understood that
there should be no gambling, for I did not wish Ammál to lose all
his wages while in my employ; and the white man stood loyally by his
agreement. Ammál’s people, just before I engaged him, had been visited
by their brethren, the Upper Kootenais, and in a series of gambling
matches had lost about all their belongings.

Ammál himself was one of the Lower Kootenais; I had hired him for the
trip, as the Indians west of the Rockies, unlike their kinsmen of
the plains, often prove hard and willing workers. His knowledge of
English was almost nil; and our very scanty conversation was carried
on in the Chinook jargon, universally employed between the mountains
and the Pacific. Apparently he had three names: for he assured us
that his “Boston” (_i.e._ American) name was Ammál; his “Siwash”
(_i.e._ Indian) name was Appák; and that the priest called him
Abél--for the Lower Kootenais are nominally Catholics. Whatever his
name he was a good Indian, as Indians go. I often tried to talk with
him about game and hunting, but we understood each other too little
to exchange more than the most rudimentary ideas. His face brightened
one night when I happened to tell him of my baby boys at home; he must
have been an affectionate father in his way, this dark Ammál, for he
at once proceeded to tell me about his own papoose, who had also seen
one snow, and to describe how the little fellow was old enough to take
one step and then fall down. But he never displayed so much vivacity
as on one occasion when the white hunter happened to relate to him a
rather grewsome feat of one of their mutual acquaintances, an Upper
Kootenai Indian named Three Coyotes. The latter was a quarrelsome,
adventurous Indian, with whom the hunter had once had a difficulty--“I
had to beat the cuss over the head with my gun a little,” he remarked
parenthetically. His last feat had been done in connection with a
number of Chinamen who had been working among some placer mines,
where the Indians came to visit them. Now, the astute Chinese are as
fond of gambling as any of the borderers, white or red, and are very
successful, generally fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three Coyotes
lost all he possessed to one of the pigtailed gentry; but he apparently
took his losses philosophically, and pleasantly followed the victor
round, until the latter had won all the cash and goods of several other
Indians. Then he suddenly fell on the exile from the Celestial Empire,
slew him and took all his plunder, retiring unmolested, as it did not
seem any one’s business to avenge a mere Chinaman. Ammál was immensely
interested in the tale, and kept recurring to it again and again,
taking two little sticks and making the hunter act out the whole story.
The Kootenais were then only just beginning to consider the Chinese as
human. They knew they must not kill white people, and they had their
own code of morality among themselves; but when the Chinese first
appeared they evidently thought that there could not be any special
objection to killing them, if any reason arose for doing so. I think
the hunter himself sympathized somewhat with this view.

Ammál objected strongly to leaving the neighborhood of the lake. He
went the first day’s journey willingly enough, but after that it was
increasingly difficult to get him along, and he gradually grew sulky.
For some time we could not find out the reason; but finally he gave
us to understand that he was afraid because up in the high mountains
there were “little bad Indians” who would kill him if they caught him
alone, especially at night. At first we thought he was speaking of
stray warriors of the Blackfeet tribe; but it turned out that he was
not thinking of human beings at all, but of hobgoblins.

Indeed the night sounds of these great stretches of mountain woodlands
were very weird and strange. Though I have often and for long periods
dwelt and hunted in the wilderness, yet I never before so well
understood why the people who live in lonely forest regions are prone
to believe in elves, wood spirits and other beings of an unseen world.
Our last camp, whereat we spent several days, was pitched in a deep
valley nearly at the head of the stream. Our brush shelter stood
among the tall coniferous trees that covered the valley bottom; but
the altitude was so great that the forest extended only a very short
distance up the steep mountain slopes. Beyond, on either hand, rose
walls of gray rock, with snow beds in their rifts, and, high above,
toward the snow peaks, the great white fields dazzled the eyes. The
torrent foamed swiftly by but a short distance below the mossy level
space on which we had built our slight weather-shield of pine boughs;
other streams poured into it, from ravines through which they leaped
down the mountain sides.

After nightfall, round the camp fire, or if I awakened after sleeping
a little while, I would often lie silently for many minutes together,
listening to the noises in the wilderness. At times the wind moaned
harshly through the tops of the tall pines and hemlocks; at times the
branches were still; but the splashing murmur of the torrent never
ceased, and through it came other sounds--the clatter of huge rocks
falling down the cliffs, the dashing of cataracts in far-off ravines,
the hooting of owls. Again, the breeze would shift, and bring to
my ears the ringing of other brooks and cataracts and wind-stirred
forests, and perhaps at long intervals the cry of some wild beast, the
crash of a falling tree, or the faint rumble of a snow avalanche. If
I listened long enough, it would almost seem that I heard thunderous
voices laughing and calling to one another, and as if at any moment
some shape might stalk out of the darkness into the dim light of the
embers.

Until within a couple of days of turning our faces back toward the
lake we did not come across any caribou and saw but a few old signs;
and we began to be fearful lest we should have to return without
getting any, for our shoes had been cut to ribbons by the sharp rocks,
we were almost out of flour, and therefore had but little to eat.
However, our perseverance was destined to be rewarded.

The first day after reaching our final camp, we hunted across a set of
spurs and hollows but saw nothing living; yet we came across several
bear tracks, and in a deep, mossy quagmire, by a spring, found where a
huge silver-tip had wallowed only the night before.

Next day we started early, determined to take a long walk and follow
the main stream up to its head, or at least above timber line. The
hunter struck so brisk a pace, plunging through thickets and leaping
from log to log in the slashes of fallen timber, and from bowlder to
bowlder in crossing the rock-slides, that I could hardly keep up to
him, struggle as I would, and we each of us got several ugly tumbles,
saving our rifles at the expense of scraped hands and bruised bodies.
We went up one side of the stream, intending to come down the other;
for the forest belt was narrow enough to hunt thoroughly. For two or
three hours we toiled through dense growth, varied by rock-slides, and
once or twice by marshy tracts, where water oozed and soaked through
the mossy hillsides, studded rather sparsely with evergreens. In one of
these places we caught a glimpse of an animal which the track showed
to be a wolverine.

Then we came to a spur of open hemlock forest; and no sooner had
we entered it than the hunter stopped and pointed exultingly to a
well-marked game trail, in which it was easy at a glance to discern
the great round footprints of our quarry. We hunted carefully over the
spur and found several trails, generally leading down along the ridge;
we also found a number of beds, some old and some recent, usually
placed where the animal could keep a lookout for any foe coming up
from the valley. They were merely slight hollows or indentations in
the pine needles; and, like the game trails, were placed in localities
similar to those that would be chosen by blacktail deer. The caribou
droppings were also very plentiful; and there were signs of where they
had browsed on the blueberry bushes, cropping off the berries, and also
apparently of where they had here and there plucked a mouthful of a
peculiar kind of moss, or cropped off some little mushrooms. But the
beasts themselves had evidently left the hemlock ridge, and we went on.

We were much pleased at finding the sign in open timber, where the
ground was excellent for still-hunting; for in such thick forest as we
had passed through, it would have been by mere luck only that we could
have approached game.

After a little while the valley became so high that the large timber
ceased, and there were only occasional groves of spindling evergreens.
Beyond the edge of the big timber was a large boggy tract, studded
with little pools; and here again we found plenty of caribou tracks.
A caribou has an enormous foot, bigger than a cow’s, and admirably
adapted for traveling over snow or bogs; hence they can pass through
places where the long, slender hoofs of moose or deer, or the round
hoofs of elk, would let their owners sink at once; and they are very
difficult to kill by following on snowshoes--a method much in vogue
among the brutal game butchers for slaughtering the more helpless
animals. Spreading out his great hoofs, and bending his legs till he
walks almost on the joints, a caribou will travel swiftly over a crust
through which a moose breaks at every stride, or through deep snow in
which a deer can not flounder fifty yards. Usually he trots; but when
pressed he will spring awkwardly along, leaving tracks in the snow
almost exactly like magnified imprints of those of a great rabbit, the
long marks of the two hind legs forming an angle with each other, while
the forefeet make a large point almost between.

The caribou had wandered all over the bogs and through the shallow
pools, but evidently only at night or in the dusk, when feeding or in
coming to drink; and again we went on. Soon the timber disappeared
almost entirely, and thick brushwood took its place; we were in a high,
bare alpine valley, the snow lying in drifts along the sides. In places
there had been enormous rock-slides, entirely filling up the bottom, so
that for a quarter of a mile at a stretch the stream ran underground.
In the rock masses of this alpine valley we, as usual, saw many conies
and hoary woodchucks.

The caribou trails had ceased, and it was evident that the beasts were
not ahead of us in the barren, treeless recesses between the mountains
of rock and snow; and we turned back down the valley, crossing over
to the opposite or south side of the stream. We had already eaten our
scanty lunch, for it was afternoon. For several miles of hard walking,
through thicket, marsh, and rock-slide, we saw no traces of the game.
Then we reached the forest, which soon widened out, and crept up the
mountain sides; and we came to where another stream entered the one
we were following. A high, steep shoulder between the two valleys was
covered with an open growth of great hemlock timber, and in this we
again found the trails and beds plentiful. There was no breeze, and
after beating through the forest nearly to its upper edge, we began to
go down the ridge, or point of the shoulder. The comparative freedom
from brushwood made it easy to walk without noise, and we descended the
steep incline with the utmost care, scanning every object, and using
every caution not to slip on the hemlock needles, nor to strike a
stone or break a stick with our feet. The sign was very fresh, and when
still half a mile or so from the bottom we at last came on three bull
caribou.

Instantly the hunter crouched down, while I ran noiselessly forward
behind the shelter of a big hemlock trunk until within fifty yards of
the grazing and unconscious quarry. They were feeding with their heads
up-hill, but so greedily that they had not seen us; and they were
rather difficult to see themselves, for their bodies harmonized well
in color with the brown tree trunks and lichen-covered bowlders. The
largest, a big bull with a good but by no means extraordinary head, was
nearest. As he stood fronting me with his head down I fired into his
neck, breaking the bone, and he turned a tremendous back somersault.
The other two halted a second in stunned terror; then one, a yearling,
rushed past us up the valley down which we had come, while the other,
a large bull with small antlers, crossed right in front of me, at a
canter, his neck thrust out, and his head--so coarse-looking compared
to the delicate outlines of an elk’s--turned toward me. His movements
seemed clumsy and awkward, utterly unlike those of a deer; but he
handled his great hoofs cleverly enough, and broke into a headlong,
rattling gallop as he went down the hillside, crashing through the
saplings and leaping over the fallen logs. There was a spur a little
beyond, and up this he went at a swinging trot, halting when he reached
the top, and turning to look at me once more. He was only a hundred
yards away; and though I had not intended to shoot him (for his head
was not good), the temptation was sore; and I was glad when, in another
second, the stupid beast turned again and went off up the valley at a
slashing run.

Then we hurried down to examine with pride and pleasure the dead
bull--his massive form, sleek coat, and fine antlers. It was one of
those moments that repay the hunter for days of toil and hardship; that
is if he needs repayment, and does not find life in the wilderness
pleasure enough in itself.

It was getting late, and if we expected to reach camp that night it
behooved us not to delay; so we merely halted long enough to dress the
caribou, and take a steak with us--which we did not need, by the way,
for almost immediately we came on a band of spruce grouse and knocked
off the heads of five with our rifles. The caribou’s stomach was filled
with blueberries, and with their leaves, and with a few small mushrooms
also, and some mouthfuls of moss. We went home very fast, too much
elated to heed scratches and tumbles; and just as it was growing so
dark that further traveling was impossible we came opposite our camp,
crossed the river on a fallen hemlock, and walked up to the moody
Indian, as he sat crouched by the fire.

He lost his sullenness when he heard what we had done; and next day we
all went up and skinned and butchered the caribou, returning to camp
and making ready to start back to the lake the following morning; and
that night we feasted royally.

We were off by dawn, the Indian joyfully leading. Coming up into the
mountains he had always been the rear man of the file; but now he
went first and struck a pace that, continued all day long, gave me a
little trouble to follow. Each of us carried his pack; to the Indian’s
share fell the caribou skull and antlers, which he bore on his head.
At the end of the day he confessed to me that it had made his head
“heap sick”--as well it might. We had made four short days’, or parts
of days’ march coming up; for we had stopped to hunt, and moreover we
knew nothing of the country, being probably the first white men in it,
while none of the Indians had ever ventured a long distance from the
lake. Returning we knew how to take the shortest route, we were going
down hill, and we walked or trotted very fast; and so we made the whole
distance in twelve hours’ travel. At sunset we came out on the last
range of steep foothills, overlooking the cove where we had pitched
our permanent camp; and from a bare cliff shoulder we saw our boat on
the beach, and our white tent among the trees, just as we had left
them, while the glassy mirror of the lake reflected the outlines of the
mountains opposite.

Though this was the first caribou I had ever killed, it was by no means
the first I had ever hunted. Among my earliest hunting experiences,
when a lad, were two fruitless and toilsome expeditions after caribou
in the Maine woods. One I made in the fall, going to the head of the
Munsungin River in a pirogue, with one companion. The water was low,
and all the way up we had to drag the pirogue, wet to our middles, our
ankles sore from slipping on the round stones under the rushing water,
and our muscles aching with fatigue. When we reached the head-waters we
found no caribou sign, and came back without slaying anything larger
than an infrequent duck or grouse.

The following February I made a trip on snowshoes after the same
game, and with the same result. However, I enjoyed the trip, for
the northland woods are very beautiful and strange in winter, as
indeed they are at all other times--and it was my first experience on
snowshoes. I used the ordinary webbed racquets, and as the snow, though
very deep, was only imperfectly crusted, I found that for a beginner
the exercise was laborious in the extreme, speedily discovering that,
no matter how cold it was, while walking through the windless woods I
stood in no need of warm clothing. But at night, especially when lying
out, the cold was bitter. Our plan was to drive in a sleigh to some
logging camp, where we were always received with hearty hospitality,
and thence make hunting trips, in very light marching order, through
the heart of the surrounding forest. The woods, wrapped in their heavy
white mantle, were still and lifeless. There were a few chickadees and
woodpeckers; now and then we saw flocks of red-polls, pine linnets,
and large, rosy grossbeaks; and once or twice I came across a grouse
or white rabbit, and killed it for supper; but this was nearly all.
Yet, though bird life was scarce, and though we saw few beasts beyond
an occasional porcupine or squirrel, every morning the snow was dotted
with a network of trails made during the hours of darkness; the fine
tracery of the footprints of the little red wood-mouse, the marks which
showed the loping progress of the sable, the V and dot of the rabbit,
the round pads of the lucivee, and many others. The snow reveals, as
nothing else does, the presence in the forest of the many shy woodland
creatures which lead their lives abroad only after nightfall. Once we
saw a coon, out early after its winter nap, and following I shot it
in a hollow tree. Another time we came on a deer and the frightened
beast left its “yard,” a tangle of beaten paths or deep furrows. The
poor animal made but slow headway through the powdery snow; after
going thirty or forty rods it sank exhausted in a deep drift, and lay
there in helpless panic as we walked close by. Very different were
the actions of the only caribou we saw--a fine beast which had shed
its antlers. I merely caught a glimpse of it as it leaped over a
breastwork of down timbers; and we never saw it again. Alternately
trotting and making a succession of long jumps, it speedily left us
far behind; with its great splay-hoofs it could snowshoe better than
we could. It is among deer the true denizen of the regions of heavy
snowfall; far more so than the moose. Only under exceptional conditions
of crust-formation is it in any danger from a man on snowshoes.

In other ways it is no better able to take care of itself than moose
and deer; in fact I doubt whether its senses are quite as acute, or
at least whether it is as wary and knowing, for under like conditions
it is rather easier to still-hunt. In the fall caribou wander long
distances, and are fond of frequenting the wet barrens which break the
expanse of the northern forest in tracts of ever-increasing size as the
sub-arctic regions are neared. At this time they go in bands, each under
the control of a master bull, which wages repeated and furious battles
for his harem; and in their ways of life they resemble the wapiti
more than they do the moose or deer. They sometimes display a curious
boldness, the bulls especially showing both stupidity and pugnacity
when in districts to which men rarely penetrate.

On our way out of the woods, after this hunt, there was a slight warm
spell, followed by rain and then by freezing weather, so as to bring
about what is known as a silver thaw. Every twig was sheathed in
glittering ice, and in the moonlight the forest gleamed as if carved
out of frosted silver.




CHAPTER IX

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK


Once, while on another hunt with John Willis, I spent a week in a vain
effort to kill moose among the outlying mountains at the southern end
of the Bitter Root range. Then, as we had no meat, we determined to
try for elk, of which we had seen much sign.

We were camped with a wagon, as high among the foothills as wheels
could go, but several hours’ walk from the range of the game; for it
was still early in the season, and they had not yet come down from the
upper slopes. Accordingly we made a practice of leaving the wagon for
two or three days at a time to hunt; returning to get a night’s rest
in the tent, preparatory to a fresh start. On these trips we carried
neither blankets nor packs, as the walking was difficult and we had
much ground to cover. Each merely put on his jacket with a loaf of
frying-pan bread and a paper of salt stuffed into the pockets. We were
cumbered with nothing save our rifles and cartridges.

On the morning in question we left camp at sunrise. For two or three
hours we walked up-hill through a rather open growth of small pines and
spruces, the traveling being easy. Then we came to the edge of a deep
valley, a couple of miles across. Into these we scrambled, down a steep
slide, where the forest had grown up among the immense bowlder masses.
The going here was difficult to a degree; the great rocks, dead timber,
slippery pine needles, and loose gravel entailing caution at every
step, while we had to guard our rifles carefully from the consequences
of a slip. It was not much better at the bottom, which was covered by
a tangled mass of swampy forest. Through this we hunted carefully, but
with no success, in spite of our toil; for the only tracks we saw that
were at all fresh were those of a cow and calf moose. Finally, in the
afternoon, we left the valley and began to climb a steep gorge, down
which a mountain torrent roared and foamed in a succession of cataracts.

Three hours’ hard climbing brought us to another valley, but of an
entirely different character. It was several miles long, but less than
a mile broad. Save at the mouth, it was walled in completely by chains
of high rock-peaks, their summits snow-capped; the forest extended a
short distance up their sides. The bottom of the valley was in places
covered by open woodland, elsewhere by marshy meadows, dotted with
dense groves of spruce.

Hardly had we entered this valley before we caught a glimpse of a
yearling elk walking rapidly along a game path some distance ahead.
We followed as quickly as we could without making a noise, but after
the first glimpse never saw it again; for it is astonishing how fast
an elk travels, with its ground-covering walk. We went up the valley
until we were well past its middle, and saw abundance of fresh elk
signs. Evidently two or three bands had made the neighborhood their
headquarters. Among them were some large bulls, which had been trying
their horns not only on the quaking-asp and willow saplings, but also
on one another, though the rut had barely begun. By one pool they had
scooped out a kind of a wallow or bare spot in the grass, and had torn
and tramped the ground with their hoofs. The place smelt strongly of
their urine.

By the time the sun set we were sure the elk were toward the head of
the valley. We utilized the short twilight in arranging our sleeping
place for the night, choosing a thick grove of spruce beside a small
mountain tarn, at the foot of a great cliff. We were chiefly influenced
in our choice by the abundance of dead timber of a size easy to handle;
the fuel question being all-important on such a trip, where one has to
lie out without bedding, and to keep up a fire, with no axe to cut wood.

Having selected a smooth spot, where some low-growing firs made a wind
break, we dragged up enough logs to feed the fire throughout the night.
Then we drank our fill at the icy pool, and ate a few mouthfuls of
bread. While it was still light we heard the querulous bleat of the
conies, from among the slide rocks at the foot of the mountain; and the
chipmunks and chickarees scolded at us. As dark came on, and we sat
silently gazing into the flickering blaze, the owls began muttering and
hooting.

Clearing the ground of stones and sticks, we lay down beside the fire,
pulled our soft felt hats over our ears, buttoned our jackets, and went
to sleep. Of course our slumbers were fitful and broken, for every hour
or two the fire got low and had to be replenished. We wakened shivering
out of each spell of restless sleep to find the logs smouldering; we
were alternately scorched and frozen.

As the first faint streak of dawn appeared in the dark sky my companion
touched me lightly on the arm. The fire was nearly out; we felt numbed
by the chill air. At once we sprang up, stretched our arms, shook
ourselves, examined our rifles, swallowed a mouthful or two of bread,
and walked off through the gloomy forest.

At first we could scarcely see our way, but it grew rapidly lighter.
The gray mist rose and wavered over the pools and wet places; the
morning voices of the wilderness began to break the death-like
stillness. After we had walked a couple of miles the mountain tops on
our right hand reddened in the sun rays.

Then, as we trod noiselessly over the dense moss, and on the pine
needles under the scattered trees, we heard a sharp clang and clatter
up the valley ahead of us. We knew this meant game of some sort; and
stealing lightly and cautiously forward we soon saw before us the cause
of the noise.

In a little glade, a hundred and twenty-five yards from us, two bull
elk were engaged in deadly combat, while two others were looking
on. It was a splendid sight. The great beasts faced each other with
lowered horns, the manes that covered their thick necks and the hair
on their shoulders bristling and erect. Then they charged furiously,
the crash of the meeting antlers resounding through the valley. The
shock threw them both on their haunches; with locked horns and glaring
eyes they strove against each other, getting their hind legs well
under them, straining every muscle in their huge bodies, and squealing
savagely. They were evenly matched in weight, strength and courage;
and push as they might, neither got the upper hand, first one yielding
a few inches, then the other, while they swayed to and fro in their
struggles, smashing the bushes and plowing up the soil.

Finally they separated and stood some little distance apart, under the
great pines; their sides heaving, and columns of steam rising from
their nostrils through the frosty air of the brightening morning.
Again they rushed together with a crash, and each strove mightily to
overthrow the other, or get past his guard; but the branching antlers
caught every vicious lunge and thrust. This set-to was stopped rather
curiously. One of the onlooking elk was a yearling; the other, though
scarcely as heavy-bodied as either of the fighters, had a finer head.
He was evidently much excited by the battle, and he now began to walk
toward the two combatants, nodding his head and uttering a queer,
whistling noise. They dared not leave their flanks uncovered to his
assault; and as he approached they promptly separated, and walked
off side by side a few yards apart. In a moment, however, one spun
round and jumped at his old adversary, seeking to stab him in his
unprotected flank; but the latter was just as quick, and as before
caught the rush on his horns. They closed as furiously as ever; but
the utmost either could do was to inflict one or two punches on the
neck and shoulders of his foe, where the thick hide served as a shield.
Again the peacemaker approached, nodding his head, whistling, and
threatening; and again they separated.

This was repeated once or twice; and I began to be afraid lest the
breeze, which was very light and puffy, should shift and give them
my wind. So, resting my rifle on my knee I fired twice, putting one
bullet behind the shoulder of the peacemaker, and the other behind the
shoulder of one of the combatants. Both were deadly shots, but, as so
often with wapiti, neither of the wounded animals at the moment showed
any signs of being hit. The yearling ran off unscathed. The other three
crowded together and trotted behind some spruce on the left, while
we ran forward for another shot. In a moment one fell; whereupon the
remaining two turned and came back across the glade, trotting to the
right. As we opened fire they broke into a lumbering gallop, but were
both downed before they got out of sight in the timber.

As soon as the three bulls were down we busied ourselves taking off
their heads and hides, and cutting off the best portions of the
meat--from the saddles and hams--to take back to camp, where we smoked
it. But first we had breakfast. We kindled a fire beside a little
spring of clear water and raked out the coals. Then we cut two willow
twigs as spits, ran on each a number of small pieces of elk loin, and
roasted them over the fire. We had salt; we were very hungry; and I
never ate anything that tasted better.

The wapiti is, next to the moose, the most quarrelsome and pugnacious
of American deer. It can not be said that it is ordinarily a dangerous
beast to hunt; yet there are instances in which wounded wapiti,
incautiously approached to within striking distance, have severely
misused their assailants, both with their antlers and their forefeet.
I myself knew one man who had been badly mauled in this fashion. When
tamed the bulls are dangerous to human life in the rutting season. In a
grapple they are of course infinitely more to be dreaded than ordinary
deer, because of their great strength.

However, the fiercest wapiti bull, when in a wild state, flees the
neighborhood of man with the same panic terror shown by the cows; and
he makes no stand against a grisly, though when his horns are grown he
has little fear of either wolf or cougar if on his guard and attacked
fairly. The chief battles of the bulls are of course waged with one
another. Before the beginning of the rut they keep by themselves:
singly, while the sprouting horns are still very young, at which time
they lie in secluded spots and move about as little as possible; in
large bands, later in the season. At the beginning of the fall these
bands join with one another and with the bands of cows and calves,
which have likewise been keeping to themselves during the late winter,
the spring, and the summer. Vast herds are thus sometimes formed,
containing, in the old days when wapiti were plenty, thousands of
head. The bulls now begin to fight furiously with one another, and
the great herd becomes split into smaller ones. Each of these has one
master bull, who has won his position by savage battle, and keeps it by
overcoming every rival, whether a solitary bull, or the lord of another
harem, who challenges him. When not fighting or love-making he is kept
on the run, chasing away the young bulls who venture to pay court to
the cows. He has hardly time to eat or sleep, and soon becomes gaunt
and worn to a degree. At the close of the rut many of the bulls become
so emaciated that they retire to some secluded spot to recuperate. They
are so weak that they readily succumb to the elements, or to their
brute foes; many die from sheer exhaustion.

The battles between the bulls rarely result fatally. After a longer
or shorter period of charging, pushing, and struggling the heavier or
more enduring of the two begins to shove his weaker antagonist back
and round; and the latter then watches his chance and bolts, hotly,
but as a rule harmlessly, pursued for a few hundred yards. The massive
branching antlers serve as effective guards against the most wicked
thrusts. While the antagonists are head on, the worst that can happen
is a punch on the shoulder which will not break the thick hide, though
it may bruise the flesh underneath. It is only when a beast is caught
while turning that there is a chance to deliver a possibly deadly
stab in the flank, with the brow prongs, the “dog-killers” as they
are called in bucks. Sometimes, but rarely, fighting wapiti get their
antlers interlocked and perish miserably; my own ranch, the Elkhorn,
was named from finding on the spot where the ranch house now stands two
splendid pairs of elk antlers thus interlocked.

Wapiti keep their antlers until the spring, whereas deer and moose lose
theirs by midwinter. The bull’s behavior in relation to the cow is
merely that of a vicious and brutal coward. He bullies her continually,
and in times of danger his one thought is for sneaking off to secure
his own safety. For all his noble looks he is a very unamiable beast,
who behaves with brutal ferocity to the weak, and shows abject terror
of the strong. According to his powers, he is guilty of rape, robbery,
and even murder. I never felt the least compunction at shooting a bull,
but I hate to shoot a cow, even when forced by necessity. Maternity
must always appeal to any one. A cow has more courage than a bull. She
will fight valiantly for her young calf, striking such blows with her
forefeet that most beasts of prey at once slink away from the combat.
Cougars and wolves commit great ravages among the bands; but they often
secure their quarry only at the cost of sharp preliminary tussles--and
in tussles of this kind they do not always prove victors or escape
scathless.

During the rut the bulls are very noisy; and their notes of
amorous challenge are called “whistling” by the frontiersmen,--very
inappropriately. They begin to whistle about ten days before they begin
to run; and they have in addition an odd kind of bark, which is only
heard occasionally. The whistling is a most curious, and to me a most
attractive sound, when heard in the great lonely mountains. As with so
many other things, much depends upon the surroundings. When listened
to nearby and under unfavorable circumstances, the sound resembles a
succession of hoarse whistling roars, ending with two or three gasping
grunts.

But heard at a little distance, and in its proper place, the call of
the wapiti is one of the grandest and most beautiful sounds in nature.
Especially is this the case when several rivals are answering one
another, on some frosty moonlight night in the mountains. The wild
melody rings from chasm to chasm under the giant pines, sustained and
modulated, through bar after bar, filled with challenge and proud
anger. It thrills the soul of the listening hunter.

Once, while in the mountains, I listened to a peculiarly grand chorus
of this kind. We were traveling with pack ponies at the time, and our
tent was pitched in a grove of yellow pine, by a brook in the bottom
of a valley. On either hand rose the mountains, covered with spruce
forest. It was in September, and the first snow had just fallen.

The day before we had walked long and hard; and during the night I
slept the heavy sleep of the weary. Early in the morning, just as the
east began to grow gray, I waked; and as I did so, the sounds that
smote on my ear caused me to sit up and throw off the warm blankets.
Bull elk were challenging among the mountains on both sides of the
valley, a little way from us, their notes echoing like the calling of
silver bugles. Groping about in the dark, I drew on my trousers, an
extra pair of thick socks, and my moccasins, donned a warm jacket,
found my fur cap and gloves, and stole out of the tent with my rifle.

The air was very cold; the stars were beginning to pale in the dawn;
on the ground the snow glimmered white, and lay in feathery masses on
the branches of the balsams and young pines. The air rang with the
challenges of many wapiti; their incessant calling came pealing down
through the still, snow-laden woods. First one bull challenged; then
another answered; then another and another. Two herds were approaching
one another from opposite sides of the valley, a short distance above
our camp; and the master bulls were roaring defiance as they mustered
their harems.

I walked stealthily up the valley, until I felt that I was nearly
between the two herds; and then stood motionless under a tall pine. The
ground was quite open at this point, the pines, though large, being
scattered; the little brook ran with a strangled murmur between its
rows of willows and alders, for the ice along its edges nearly skimmed
its breadth. The stars paled rapidly, the gray dawn brightened, and in
the sky overhead faint rose-colored streaks were turning blood-red.
What little wind there was breathed in my face and kept me from
discovery.

I made up my mind, from the sound of the challenging, now very near me,
that one bull on my right was advancing toward a rival on my left, who
was answering every call. Soon the former approached so near that I
could hear him crack the branches, and beat the bushes with his horns;
and I slipped quietly from tree to tree, so as to meet him when he came
out into the more open woodland. Day broke, and crimson gleams played
across the snow-clad mountains beyond.

At last, just as the sun flamed red above the hilltops, I heard the
roar of the wapiti’s challenge not fifty yards away; and I cocked and
half raised my rifle, and stood motionless. In a moment more, the
belt of spruces in front of me swayed and opened, and the lordly bull
stepped out. He bore his massive antlers aloft; the snow lay thick on
his mane; he snuffed the air and stamped on the ground as he walked. As
I drew a bead, the motion caught his eye; and instantly his bearing of
haughty and warlike self-confidence changed to one of alarm. My bullet
smote through his shoulder-blades, and he plunged wildly forward, and
fell full length on the blood-stained snow.

Nothing can be finer than a wapiti bull’s carriage when excited or
alarmed; he then seems the embodiment of strength and stately grace.
But at ordinary times his looks are less attractive, as he walks with
his neck level with his body and his head outstretched, his horns lying
almost on his shoulders. The favorite gait of the wapiti is the trot,
which is very fast, and which they can keep up for countless miles;
when suddenly and greatly alarmed, they break into an awkward gallop,
which is faster, but which speedily tires them.

I have occasionally killed elk in the neighborhood of my ranch on the
Little Missouri. They were very plentiful along this river until 1881,
but the last of the big bands were slaughtered or scattered about that
time. Smaller bunches were found for two or three years longer, and to
this day, scattered individuals, singly or in parties of two or three,
linger here and there in the most remote and inaccessible parts of
the broken country. In the old times they were often found on the open
prairie, and were fond of sunning themselves on the sand bars by the
river, even at midday, while they often fed by daylight (as they do
still in remote mountain fastnesses). Nowadays the few survivors dwell
in the timber of the roughest ravines, and only venture abroad at dusk
or even after nightfall. Thanks to their wariness and secluseness,
their presence is often not even suspected by the cowboys or others who
occasionally ride through their haunts; and so the hunters only know
vaguely of their existence. It thus happens that the last individuals
of a species may linger in a locality for many years after the rest of
their kind have vanished; on the Little Missouri to-day every elk (as
in the Rockies every buffalo) killed is at once set down as “the last
of its race.” For several years in succession I myself kept killing one
or two such “last survivors.”

A yearling bull which I thus obtained was killed while in company with
my staunch friend Will Dow, on one of the first trips which I took with
that prince of drivers, old man Tompkins. We were laying in our stock
of winter meat; and had taken the wagon to go to a knot of high and
very rugged hills where we knew there were deer, and thought there
might be elk. Old Tompkins drove the wagon with unmoved composure up,
down, and across frightful-looking hills, and when they became wholly
impassable, steered the team over a cut bank and up a kind of winding
ravine or wooded washout, until it became too rough and narrow for
further progress. There was good grass for the horses on a hill off to
one side of us; and stunted cottonwood trees grew between the straight
white walls of clay and sandstone which hemmed in the washout. We
pitched our tent by a little trickling spring and kindled a great fire,
the fitful glare lighting the bare cliffs and the queer, sprawling
tops of the cottonwoods; and after a dinner of fried prairie-chicken
went to bed. At dawn we were off, and hunted till nearly noon; when
Dow, who had been walking to one side, beckoned to me and remarked,
“There’s something mighty big in the timber down under the cliff; I
guess it’s an elk” (he never had seen one before); and the next moment,
as old Tompkins expressed it, “the elk came bilin’ out of the coulie.”
Old Tompkins had a rifle on this occasion and the sight of game always
drove him crazy; as I aimed I heard Dow telling him “to let the boss
do the shooting”; and I killed the elk to a savage interjectional
accompaniment of threats delivered at old man Tompkins between the
shots.

Elk are sooner killed off than any other game save buffalo, but this
is due to their size and the nature of the ground they frequent rather
than to their lack of shyness. They like open woodland, or mountainous
park country, or hills riven by timber coulies; and such ground is the
most favorable to the hunter, and the most attractive in which to hunt.
On the other hand moose, for instance, live in such dense cover that
it is very difficult to get at them; when elk are driven by incessant
persecution to take refuge in similar fastnesses they become almost
as hard to kill. In fact, in this respect the elk stands to the moose
much as the blacktail stands to the whitetail. The moose and whitetail
are somewhat warier than the elk and blacktail; but it is the nature
of the ground which they inhabit that tells most in their favor. On
the other hand, as compared to the blacktail, it is only the elk’s
size which puts it at a disadvantage in the struggle for life when
the rifle-bearing hunter appears on the scene. It is quite as shy and
difficult to approach as the deer; but its bulk renders it much more
eagerly hunted, more readily seen, and more easily hit. Occasionally
elk suffer from fits of stupid tameness or equally stupid panic; but
the same is true of blacktail. In two or three instances, I have seen
elk show silly ignorance of danger; but half a dozen times I have known
blacktail behave with an even greater degree of stupid familiarity.

There is another point in which the wapiti and blacktail agree in
contrast to the moose and whitetail. Both the latter delight in
water-lilies, entering the ponds to find them, and feeding on them
greedily. The wapiti is very fond of wallowing in the mud, and of
bathing in pools and lakes; but as a rule it shows as little fondness
as the blacktail for feeding on water-lilies or other aquatic plants.

In reading of the European red deer, which is nothing but a diminutive
wapiti, we often see “a stag of ten” alluded to as if a full-grown
monarch. A full-grown wapiti bull, however, always has twelve, and
may have fourteen, regular normal points on his antlers, besides
irregular additional prongs; and he occasionally has ten points
when a two-year-old, as I have myself seen with calves captured
young and tamed. The calf has no horns. The yearling carries two
foot-long spikes, sometimes bifurcated, so as to make four points.
The two-year-old often has six or eight points on his antlers; but
sometimes ten, although they are always small. The three-year-old has
eight or ten points, while his body may be nearly as large as that of
a full-grown animal. The four-year-old is normally a ten or twelve
pointer, but as yet with much smaller antlers than those so proudly
borne by the old bulls.

Frontiersmen only occasionally distinguish the prongs by name. The brow
and bay points are called dog-killers or war-tines; the tray is known
simply as the third point; and the most characteristic prong, the long
and massive fourth, is now and then called the dagger-point; the others
being known as the fifth and sixth.

In the high mountain forest into which the wapiti has been driven,
the large, heavily furred northern lynx, the lucivee, takes the place
of the smaller, thinner-haired lynx of the plains, and of the more
southern districts, the bobcat or wildcat. On the Little Missouri
the latter is the common form; yet I have seen a lucivee which was
killed there. On Clark’s Fork of the Columbia both occur, the lucivee
being the most common. They feed chiefly on hares, squirrels, grouse,
fawns, etc.; and the lucivee, at least, also occasionally kills foxes
and coons, and has in its turn to dread the pounce of the big timber
wolf. Both kinds of lynx can most easily be killed with dogs, as they
tree quite readily when thus pursued. The wildcat is often followed
on horseback, with a pack of hounds, when the country is favorable;
and when chased in this fashion yields excellent sport. The skin of
both these lynxes is tender. They often maul an inexperienced pack
quite badly, inflicting severe scratches and bites on any hound which
has just resolution enough to come to close quarters, but not to rush
in furiously; but a big fighting dog will readily kill either. At
Thompson’s Falls two of Willis’ hounds killed a lucivee unaided, though
one got torn. Archibald Rogers’ dog Sly, a cross between a greyhound
and a bull mastiff, killed a bobcat single-handed. He bayed the cat and
then began to threaten it, leaping from side to side; suddenly he broke
the motion, and rushing in got his foe by the small of the back and
killed it without receiving a scratch.

The porcupine is sure to attract the notice of any one going through
the mountains. It is also found in the timber belts fringing the
streams of the great plains, where it lives for a week at a time in a
single tree or clump of trees, peeling the bark from the limbs. But
it is the easiest of all animals to exterminate, and is now abundant
only in deep mountain forests. It is very tame and stupid; it goes on
the ground; but its fastest pace is a clumsy waddle, and on trees,
but is the poorest of tree-climbers,--grasping the trunk like a small,
slow bear. It can neither escape nor hide. It trusts to its quills for
protection, as the skunk does to its odor; but it is far less astute
and more helpless than the skunk. It is readily made into a very
unsuspicious and familiar, but uninteresting, pet. I have known it come
into camp in the daytime, and forage round the fire by which I was
sitting. Its coat protects it against most foes. Bears sometimes eat
it when very hungry, as they will eat anything; and I think that elk
occasionally destroy it in sheer wantonness. One of its most resolute
foes is the fisher, that big sable--almost a wolverine--which preys on
everything, from a coon to a fawn, or even a small fox.

The noisy, active little chickarees and chipmunks, however, are by far
the most numerous and lively denizens of these deep forests. They are
very abundant and very noisy; scolding the travelers exactly as they do
the bears when the latter dig up the caches of ants. The chipmunks soon
grow tame and visit camp to pick up the crusts. The chickarees often
ascend to the highest pine tops, where they cut off the cones, dropping
them to the ground with a noise which often for a moment puzzles the
still-hunter.

Two of the most striking and characteristic birds to be seen by him
who hunts and camps among the pine-clad and spruce-clad slopes of the
northern Rockies are a small crow and a rather large woodpecker. The
former is called Clark’s crow, and the latter Lewis’ woodpecker. Their
names commemorate their discoverers, the explorers Lewis and Clark,
the first white men who crossed the United States to the Pacific, the
pioneers of that great army of adventurers who since then have roamed
and hunted over the Great Plains and among the Rocky Mountains.

These birds are nearly of a size, being about as large as a flicker.
The Clark’s crow, an ash-colored bird with black wings and white tail
and forehead, is as common as it is characteristic, and is sure to
attract attention. It is as knowing as the rest of its race, and very
noisy and active. It flies sometimes in a straight line, with regular
wing-beats, sometimes in a succession of loops like a woodpecker, and
often lights on rough bark or a dead stump in an attitude like the
latter; and it is very fond of scrambling and clinging, often head
downward, among the outermost cones on the top of a pine, chattering
loudly all the while. One of the noticeable features of its flight is
the hollow, beating sound of the wings. It is restless and fond of
company, going by preference in small parties. These little parties
often indulge in regular plays, assembling in some tall tree-top and
sailing round and round it, in noisy pursuit of one another, lighting
continually among the branches.

The Lewis’ woodpecker, a handsome, dark-green bird, with white breast
and red belly, is much rarer, quite as shy, and generally less noisy
and conspicuous. Its flight is usually strong and steady, like a
jay’s, and it perches upright among the twigs, or takes short flights
after passing insects, as often as it scrambles over the twigs in the
ordinary woodpecker fashion. Like its companion, the Clark’s crow,
it is ordinarily a bird of the high tree-tops, and around these it
indulges in curious aërial games, again like those of the little crow.
It is fond of going in troops, and such a troop frequently choose some
tall pine and soar round and above it in irregular spirals.

The remarkable and almost amphibious little water wren, with its sweet
song, its familiarity, and its very curious habit of running on the
bottom of the stream, several feet beneath the surface of the race of
rapid water, is the most noticeable of the small birds of the Rocky
Mountains. It sometimes sings loudly while floating with half-spread
wings on the surface of a little pool. Taken as a whole, small birds
are far less numerous and noticeable in the wilderness, especially
in the deep forests, than in the groves and farmland of the settled
country. The hunter and trapper are less familiar with small-bird music
than with the screaming of the eagle and the large hawks, the croaking
bark of the raven, the loon’s cry, the crane’s guttural clangor, and
the unearthly yelling and hooting of the big owls.

No bird is so common around camp, so familiar, so amusing on some
occasions, and so annoying on others, as that drab-colored imp of
iniquity, the whiskey-jack--also known as the moose bird and camp
robber. The familiarity of these birds is astonishing, and the variety
of their cries--generally harsh, but rarely musical--extraordinary. They
snatch scraps of food from the entrances of the tents, and from beside
the camp fire; and they shred the venison hung in the trees unless
closely watched. I have seen an irate cook of accurate aim knock one
off an elk-haunch, with a club seized at random; and I have known
another to be killed with a switch, and yet another to be caught alive
in the hand. When game is killed they are the first birds to come to
the carcass. Following them come the big jays, of a uniform dark-blue
color, who bully them, and are bullied in turn by the next arrivals,
the magpies; while when the big ravens come, they keep all the others
in the background, with the exception of an occasional wide-awake
magpie.

For a steady diet no meat tastes better or is more nourishing than elk
venison; moreover the different kinds of grouse give variety to the
fare, and delicious trout swarm throughout the haunts of the elk in the
Rockies. I have never seen them more numerous than in the wonderful and
beautiful Yellowstone Canyon, a couple of miles below where the river
pitches over the Great Falls, in wind-swayed cataracts of snowy foam.
At this point it runs like a mill-race, in its narrow winding bed,
between immense walls of queerly carved and colored rock which tower
aloft in almost perpendicular cliffs. Late one afternoon in the fall
of ’90 Ferguson and I clambered down into the canyon, with a couple of
rods, and in an hour caught all the fish we could carry. It then lacked
much less than an hour of nightfall, and we had a hard climb to get out
of the canyon before darkness overtook us; as there was not a vestige
of a path, and as the climbing was exceedingly laborious, and at one
or two points not entirely without danger, the rocks being practicable
in very few places, we could hardly have made much progress after it
became too dark to see. Each of us carried the bag of trout in turn,
and I personally was nearly done out when we reached the top; and then
had to trot three miles to the horses.




CHAPTER X

AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS


In September, 1891, with my ranch-partner, Ferguson, I made an
elk-hunt in northwestern Wyoming among the Shoshone Mountains, where
they join the Hoodoo and Absoraka ranges. There is no more beautiful
game-country in the United States. It is a park land, where glades,
meadows, and high mountain pastures break the evergreen forest; a
forest which is open compared to the tangled density of the woodland
further north. It is a high, cold region of many lakes and clear,
rushing streams. The steep mountains are generally of the rounded form
so often seen in the ranges of the Cordilleras of the United States;
but the Hoodoos, or Goblins, are carved in fantastic and extraordinary
shapes; while the Tetons, a group of isolated rock-peaks, show a
striking boldness in their lofty outlines.

This was one of the pleasantest hunts I ever made. As always in the
mountains, save where the country is so rough and so densely wooded
that one must go afoot, we had a pack-train; and we took a more
complete outfit than we had ever before taken on such a hunt, and so
traveled in much comfort. Usually when in the mountains I have merely
had one companion, or at most a couple, and two or three pack-ponies;
each of us doing his share of the packing, cooking, fetching water, and
pitching the small square of canvas which served as tent. In itself
packing is both an art and a mystery, and a skilful professional
packer, versed in the intricacies of the “diamond hitch,” packs with
a speed which no non-professional can hope to rival, and fixes the
side packs and top packs with such scientific nicety, and adjusts the
doubles and turns of the lash-rope so accurately, that everything stays
in place under any but the most adverse conditions. Of course, like
most hunters, I can myself in case of need throw the diamond hitch
after a fashion, and pack on either the off or near side. Indeed,
unless a man can pack it is not possible to make a really hard hunt
in the mountains, if alone, or with only a single companion. The
mere fair-weather hunter, who trusts entirely to the exertions of
others, and does nothing more than ride or walk about under favorable
circumstances, and shoot at what somebody else shows him, is a hunter
in name only. Whoever would really deserve the title must be able at
a pinch to shift for himself, to grapple with the difficulties and
hardships of wilderness life unaided, and not only to hunt, but at
times to travel for days, whether on foot or on horseback, alone.
However, after one has passed one’s novitiate, it is pleasant to be
comfortable when the comfort does not interfere with the sport; and
although a man sometimes likes to hunt alone, yet often it is well
to be with some old mountain hunter, a master of woodcraft, who is a
first-rate hand at finding game, creeping upon it, and tracking it when
wounded. With such a companion one gets much more game, and learns many
things by observation instead of by painful experience.

On this trip we had with us two hunters, Tazewell Woody and Elwood
Hofer, a packer who acted as cook, and a boy to herd the horses. Of
the latter, there were twenty; six saddle-animals and fourteen for the
packs--two or three being spare horses, to be used later in carrying
the elk-antlers, sheep-horns, and other trophies. Like most hunters’
pack-animals, they were either half-broken, or else broken down; tough,
unkempt, jaded-looking beasts of every color--sorrel, buckskin, pinto,
white, bay, roan. After the day’s work was over, they were turned
loose to shift for themselves; and about once a week they strayed, and
all hands had to spend the better part of the day hunting for them.
The worst ones for straying, curiously enough, were three broken-down
old “bear-baits,” which went by themselves, as is generally the case
with the cast-off horses of a herd. There were two sleeping tents,
another for the provisions,--in which we ate during bad weather,--and a
canvas tepee, which was put up with lodge-poles, Indian fashion, like
a wigwam. A tepee is more difficult to put up than an ordinary tent;
but it is very convenient when there is rain or snow. A small fire
kindled in the middle keeps it warm, the smoke escaping through the
open top--that is, when it escapes at all; strings are passed from one
pole to another, on which to hang wet clothes and shoes, and the beds
are made around the edges. As an offset to the warmth and shelter, the
smoke often renders it impossible even to sit upright. We had a very
good camp-kit, including plenty of cooking and eating utensils; and
among our provisions were some canned goods and sweet-meats, to give
a relish to our meals of meat and bread. We had fur coats and warm
clothes,--which are chiefly needed at night,--and plenty of bedding,
including waterproof canvas sheeting and a couple of caribou-hide
sleeping-bags, procured from the survivors of a party of arctic
explorers. Except on rainy days, I used my buckskin hunting-shirt or
tunic; in dry weather I deem it, because of its color, its texture, and
its durability, the best possible garb for the still-hunter, especially
in the woods.

Starting a day’s journey south of Heart Lake, we traveled and hunted on
the eastern edge of the great basin, wooded and mountainous, wherein
rise the head-waters of the mighty Snake River. There was not so much
as a spotted line--that series of blazes made with the axe, man’s first
highway through the hoary forest,--but this we did not mind, as for
most of the distance we followed the well-worn elk-trails. The train
traveled in Indian file. At the head, to pick the path, rode tall,
silent old Woody, a true type of the fast-vanishing race of game
hunters and Indian fighters, a man who had been one of the California
forty-niners, and who ever since had lived the restless, reckless
life of the wilderness. Then came Ferguson and myself; then the
pack-animals, strung out in line; while from the rear rose the varied
oaths of our three companions, whose miserable duty it was to urge
forward the beasts of burden.

It is heart-breaking work to drive a pack-train through thick timber
and over mountains, where there is either a dim trail or none. The
animals have a perverse faculty for choosing the wrong turn at critical
moments; and they are continually scraping under branches and squeezing
between tree-trunks, to the jeopardy or destruction of their burdens.
After having been laboriously driven up a very steep incline, at the
cost of severe exertion both to them and to the men, the foolish
creatures turn and run down to the bottom, so that all the work has
to be done over again. Some travel too slow; others travel too fast.
Yet one can not but admire the toughness of the animals, and the
sure-footedness with which they pick their way along the sheer mountain
sides, or among bowlders and over fallen logs.

As our way was so rough, we found that we had to halt at least once
every hour to fix the packs. Moreover, we at the head of the column
were continually being appealed to for help by the unfortunates in
the rear. First it would be “that white-eyed cayuse; one side of its
pack’s down!” then we would be notified that the saddle-blanket of the
“lop-eared Indian buckskin” had slipped back; then a shout “Look out
for the pinto!” would be followed by that pleasing beast’s appearance,
bucking and squealing, smashing dead timber, and scattering its load
to the four winds. It was no easy task to get the horses across some of
the boggy places without miring; or to force them through the denser
portions of the forest, where there was much down timber. Riding with a
pack-train, day in and day out, becomes both monotonous and irritating,
unless one is upheld by the hope of a game-country ahead, or by the
delight of exploration of the unknown. Yet when buoyed by such a hope,
there is pleasure in taking a train across so beautiful and wild a
country as that which lay on the threshold of our hunting grounds in
the Shoshones. We went over mountain passes, with ranges of scalped
peaks on either hand; we skirted the edges of lovely lakes, and of
streams with bowlder-strewn beds; we plunged into depths of sombre
woodland, broken by wet prairies. It was a picturesque sight to see the
loaded pack-train stringing across one of these high mountain meadows,
the motley colored line of ponies winding round the marshy spots
through the bright green grass, while beyond rose the dark line of
frowning forest, with lofty peaks towering in the background. Some of
the meadows were beautiful with many flowers--goldenrod, purple aster,
bluebells, white immortelles, and here and there masses of blood-red
Indian pinks. In the park-country, on the edges of the evergreen
forest, were groves of delicate quaking-aspen, the trees often growing
to quite a height; their tremulous leaves were already changing to
bright green and yellow, occasionally with a reddish blush. In the
Rocky Mountains the aspens are almost the only deciduous trees, their
foliage offering a pleasant relief to the eye after the monotony of the
unending pine and spruce woods, which afford so striking a contrast to
the hardwood forest east of the Mississippi.

For two days our journey was uneventful, save that we came on the camp
of a squaw-man--one Beaver Dick, an old mountain hunter, living in a
skin tepee, where dwelt his comely Indian wife and half-breed children.
He had quite a herd of horses, many of them mares and colts; they had
evidently been well treated, and came up to us fearlessly.

The morning of the third day of our journey was gray and lowering.
Gusts of rain blew in my face as I rode at the head of the train. It
still lacked an hour of noon, as we were plodding up a valley beside
a rapid brook running through narrow willow-flats, the dark forest
crowding down on either hand from the low foothills of the mountains.
Suddenly the call of a bull elk came echoing down through the wet
woodland on our right, beyond the brook, seemingly less than half a
mile off; and was answered by a faint, far-off call from a rival on the
mountain beyond. Instantly halting the train, Woody and I slipped off
our horses, crossed the brook, and started to still-hunt the first bull.

In this place the forest was composed of the Western tamarack; the
large, tall trees stood well apart, and there was much down timber, but
the ground was covered with deep wet moss, over which we trod silently.
The elk was traveling up-wind, but slowly, stopping continually to paw
the ground and thresh the bushes with his antlers. He was very noisy,
challenging every minute or two, being doubtless much excited by the
neighborhood of his rival on the mountain. We followed, Woody leading,
guided by the incessant calling.

It was very exciting as we crept toward the great bull, and the
challenge sounded nearer and nearer. While we were still at some
distance the pealing notes were like those of a bugle, delivered in two
bars, first rising, then abruptly falling; as we drew nearer they took
on a harsh squealing sound. Each call made our veins thrill; it sounded
like the cry of some huge beast of prey. At last we heard the roar of
the challenge not eighty yards off. Stealing forward three or four
yards, I saw the tips of the horns through a mass of dead timber and
young growth, and I slipped to one side to get a clean shot.

Seeing us but not making out what we were, and full of fierce and
insolent excitement, the wapiti bull stepped boldly toward us with a
stately swinging gait. Then he stood motionless, facing us, barely
fifty yards away, his handsome twelve-tined antlers tossed aloft, as
he held his head with the lordly grace of his kind. I fired into his
chest, and as he turned I raced forward and shot him in the flank; but
the second bullet was not needed, for the first wound was mortal, and
he fell before going fifty yards.

The dead elk lay among the young evergreens. The huge, shapely body was
set on legs that were as strong as steel rods, and yet slender, clean,
and smooth; they were in color a beautiful dark brown, contrasting well
with the yellowish of the body. The neck and throat were garnished with
a mane of long hair; the symmetry of the great horns set off the fine,
delicate lines of the noble head. He had been wallowing, as elk are
fond of doing, and the dried mud clung in patches to his flank; a stab
in the haunch showed that he had been overcome in battle by some master
bull who had turned him out of the herd.

We cut off the head, and bore it down to the train. The horses crowded
together, snorting, with their ears pricked forward, as they smelt the
blood. We also took the loins with us, as we were out of meat, though
bull elk in the rutting season is not very good. The rain had changed
to a steady downpour when we again got under way. Two or three miles
further we pitched camp, in a clump of pines on a hillock in the bottom
of the valley, starting hot fires of pitchy stumps before the tents, to
dry our wet things.

Next day opened with fog and cold rain. The drenched pack-animals, when
driven into camp, stood mopingly, with drooping heads and arched backs;
they groaned and grunted as the loads were placed on their backs and
the cinches tightened, the packers bracing one foot against the pack
to get a purchase as they hauled in on the lash-rope. A stormy morning
is a trial to temper; the packs are wet and heavy, and the cold makes
the work even more than usually hard on the hands. By ten we broke
camp. It needs between two and three hours to break camp and get such
a train properly packed; once started, our day’s journey was six to
eight hours, making no halt. We started up a steep, pine-clad mountain
side, broken by cliffs. My hunting-shoes, though comfortable, were old
and thin, and let the water through like a sieve. On the top of the
first plateau, where black spruce groves were strewn across the grassy
surface, we saw a band of elk, cows and calves, trotting off through
the rain. Then we plunged down into a deep valley, and, crossing it,
a hard climb took us to the top of a great bare tableland, bleak and
wind-swept. We passed little alpine lakes, fringed with scattering
dwarf evergreens. Snow lay in drifts on the north sides of the gullies;
a cutting wind blew the icy rain in our faces. For two or three hours
we traveled toward the further edge of the tableland. In one place a
spike bull elk stood half a mile off, in the open; he traveled to and
fro, watching us.

As we neared the edge the storm lulled, and pale, watery sunshine
gleamed through the rifts in the low-scudding clouds. At last our
horses stood on the brink of a bold cliff. Deep down beneath our feet
lay the wild and lonely valley of Two-Ocean Pass, walled in on either
hand by rugged mountain chains, their flanks scarred and gashed by
precipice and chasm. Beyond, in a wilderness of jagged and barren
peaks, stretched the Shoshones. At the middle point of the pass, two
streams welled down from either side. At first each flowed in but one
bed, but soon divided into two; each of the twin branches then joined
the like branch of the brook opposite, and swept one to the east
and one to the west, on their long journey to the two great oceans.
They ran as rapid brooks, through wet meadows and willow-flats, the
eastern to the Yellowstone, the western to the Snake. The dark pine
forests swept down from the flanks and lower ridges of the mountains
to the edges of the marshy valley. Above them jutted gray rock peaks,
snowdrifts lying in the rents that seamed their northern faces. Far
below us, from a great basin at the foot of the cliff, filled with the
pine forest, rose the musical challenge of a bull elk; and we saw a
band of cows and calves looking like mice as they ran among the trees.

It was getting late, and after some search we failed to find any trail
leading down; so at last we plunged over the brink at a venture. It
was very rough scrambling, dropping from bench to bench, and in places
it was not only difficult but dangerous for the loaded pack-animals.
Here and there we were helped by well-beaten elk-trails, which we could
follow for several hundred yards at a time. On one narrow pine-clad
ledge, we met a spike bull face to face; and in scrambling down a very
steep, bare, rock-strewn shoulder, the loose stones started by the
horses’ hoofs, bounding in great leaps to the forest below, dislodged
two cows.

As evening fell, we reached the bottom, and pitched camp in a beautiful
point of open pine forest, thrust out into the meadow. There was good
shelter, and plenty of wood, water and grass; we built a huge fire and
put up our tents, scattering them in likely places among the pines,
which grew far apart and without undergrowth. We dried our steaming
clothes, and ate a hearty supper of elk-meat; then we turned into our
beds, warm and dry, and slept soundly under the canvas, while all night
long the storm roared without. Next morning it still stormed fitfully;
the high peaks and ridges round about were all capped with snow. Woody
and I started on foot for an all-day tramp; the amount of game seen the
day before showed that we were in a good elk country, where the elk
had been so little disturbed that they were traveling, feeding, and
whistling in daylight. For three hours we walked across the forest-clad
spurs of the foothills. We roused a small band of elk in thick timber;
but they rushed off before we saw them, with much smashing of dead
branches. Then we climbed to the summit of the range. The wind was
light and baffling; it blew from all points, veering every few minutes.
There were occasional rain-squalls; our feet and legs were well soaked;
and we became chilled through whenever we sat down to listen. We caught
a glimpse of a big bull feeding up-hill, and followed him; it needed
smart running to overtake him, for an elk, even while feeding, has a
ground-covering gait. Finally we got within a hundred and twenty-five
yards, but in very thick timber, and all I could see plainly was the
hip and the after-part of the flank. I waited for a chance at the
shoulder, but the bull got my wind and was off before I could pull
trigger. It was just one of those occasions when there are two courses
to pursue, neither very good, and when one is apt to regret whichever
decision is made.

At noon we came to the edge of a deep and wide gorge, and sat down
shivering to await what might turn up, our fingers numb, and our wet
feet icy. Suddenly the love-challenge of an elk came pealing across
the gorge, through the fine, cold rain, from the heart of the forest
opposite. An hour’s stiff climb, down and up, brought us nearly to him;
but the wind forced us to advance from below through a series of open
glades. He was lying on a point of the cliff-shoulder, surrounded by
his cows; and he saw us and made off. An hour afterward, as we were
trudging up a steep hillside dotted with groves of fir and spruce, a
young bull of ten points, roused from his day-bed by our approach,
galloped across us some sixty yards off. We were in need of better
venison than can be furnished by an old rutting bull; so I instantly
took a shot at the fat and tender young ten-pointer. I aimed well ahead
and pulled trigger just as he came to a small gully; and he fell into
it in a heap with a resounding crash. This was on the birthday of my
eldest small son; so I took him home the horns, “for his very own.” On
the way back that afternoon I shot off the heads of two blue grouse, as
they perched in the pines.

That evening the storm broke, and the weather became clear and very
cold, so that the snow made the frosty mountains gleam like silver. The
moon was full, and in the flood of light the wild scenery round our
camp was very beautiful. As always where we camped for several days, we
had fixed long tables and settles, and were most comfortable; and when
we came in at nightfall, or sometimes long afterward, cold, tired, and
hungry, it was sheer physical delight to get warm before the roaring
fire of pitchy stumps, and then to feast ravenously on bread and beans,
on stewed or roasted elk venison, on grouse and sometimes trout, and
flapjacks with maple syrup.

Next morning dawned clear and cold, the sky a glorious blue. Woody and
I started to hunt over the great tableland, and led our stout horses
up the mountain-side, by elk-trails so bad that they had to climb like
goats. All these elk-trails have one striking peculiarity. They lead
through thick timber, but every now and then send off short, well-worn
branches to some cliff-edge or jutting crag, commanding a view far
and wide over the country beneath. Elk love to stand on these lookout
points, and scan the valleys and mountains round about.

Blue grouse rose from beside our path; Clark’s crows flew past us,
with a hollow, flapping sound, or lit in the pine-tops, calling and
flirting their tails; the gray-clad whiskey-jacks, with multitudinous
cries, hopped and fluttered near us. Snowshoe rabbits scuttled away,
the big furry feet which give them their name already turning white.
At last we came out on the great plateau, seamed with deep, narrow
ravines. Reaches of pasture alternated with groves and open forests
of varying size. Almost immediately we heard the bugle of a bull elk,
and saw a big band of cows and calves on the other side of a valley.
There were three bulls with them, one very large, and we tried to creep
up on them; but the wind was baffling and spoiled our stalk. So we
returned to our horses, mounted them, and rode a mile further, toward a
large open wood on a hillside. When within two hundred yards we heard
directly ahead the bugle of a bull, and pulled up short. In a moment I
saw him walking through an open glade; he had not seen us. The slight
breeze brought us down his scent. Elk have a strong characteristic
smell; it is usually sweet, like that of a herd of Alderney cows; but
in old bulls, while rutting, it is rank, pungent, and lasting. We stood
motionless till the bull was out of sight, then stole to the wood, tied
our horses, and trotted after him. He was traveling fast, occasionally
calling; whereupon others in the neighborhood would answer. Evidently
he had been driven out of some herd by the master bull.

He went faster than we did, and while we were vainly trying to overtake
him we heard another very loud and sonorous challenge to our left. It
came from a ridge-crest at the edge of the woods, among some scattered
clumps of the northern nut-pine or pinyon--a queer conifer, growing
very high on the mountains, its multiforked trunk and wide-spreading
branches giving it the rounded top, and, at a distance, the general
look of an oak rather than a pine. We at once walked toward the
ridge, up-wind. In a minute or two, to our chagrin, we stumbled on an
outlying spike bull, evidently kept on the outskirts of the herd by the
master bull. I thought he would alarm all the rest; but, as we stood
motionless, he could not see clearly what we were. He stood, ran, stood
again, gazed at us, and trotted slowly off. We hurried forward as fast
as we dared, and with too little care; for we suddenly came in view of
two cows. As they raised their heads to look, Woody squatted down where
he was, to keep their attention fixed, while I cautiously tried to slip
off to one side unobserved. Favored by the neutral tint of my buckskin
hunting-shirt, with which my shoes, leggings, and soft hat matched, I
succeeded. As soon as I was out of sight I ran hard and came up to a
hillock crested with pinyons, behind which I judged I should find the
herd. As I approached the crest, their strong, sweet smell smote my
nostrils. In another moment I saw the tips of a pair of mighty antlers,
and I peered over the crest with my rifle at the ready. Thirty yards
off, behind a clump of pinyons, stood a huge bull, his head thrown back
as he rubbed his shoulders with his horns. There were several cows
around him, and one saw me immediately, and took alarm. I fired into
the bull’s shoulder, inflicting a mortal wound; but he went off, and
I raced after him at top speed, firing twice into his flank; then he
stopped, very sick, and I broke his neck with a fourth bullet. An elk
often hesitates in the first moments of surprise and fright, and does
not get really under way for two or three hundred yards; but, when once
fairly started, he may go several miles, even though mortally wounded;
therefore, the hunter, after his first shot, should run forward as fast
as he can, and shoot again and again until the quarry drops. In this
way many animals that would otherwise be lost are obtained, especially
by the man who has a repeating-rifle. Nevertheless, the hunter should
beware of being led astray by the ease with which he can fire half a
dozen shots from his repeater; and he should aim as carefully with each
shot as if it were his last. No possible rapidity of fire can atone for
habitual carelessness of aim with the first shot.

The elk I thus slew was a giant. His body was the size of a steer’s,
and his antlers, though not unusually long, were very massive and
heavy. He lay in a glade, on the edge of a great cliff. Standing on its
brink we overlooked a most beautiful country, the home of all homes for
the elk: a wilderness of mountains, the immense evergreen forest broken
by park and glade, by meadow and pasture, by bare hillside and barren
tableland. Some five miles off lay the sheet of water known to the
old hunters as Spotted Lake; two or three shallow, sedgy places, and
spots of geyser formation, made pale green blotches on its wind-rippled
surface. Far to the southwest, in daring beauty and majesty, the grand
domes and lofty spires of the Tetons shot into the blue sky. Too sheer
for the snow to rest on their sides, it yet filled the rents in their
rough flanks, and lay deep between the towering pinnacles of dark rock.

That night, as on more than one night afterward, a bull elk came down
whistling to within two or three hundred yards of the tents, and tried
to join the horse herd. The moon had set, so I could not go after it.
Elk are very restless and active throughout the night in the rutting
season; but where undisturbed they feed freely in the daytime, resting
for two or three hours about noon.

Next day, which was rainy, we spent in getting in the antlers and meat
of the two dead elk; and I shot off the heads of two or three blue
grouse on the way home. The following day I killed another bull elk,
following him by the strong, not unpleasing, smell, and hitting him
twice as he ran, at about eighty yards. So far I had had good luck,
killing everything I had shot at; but now the luck changed, through no
fault of mine, as far as I could see, and Ferguson had his innings. The
day after I killed this bull he shot two fine mountain rams; and during
the remainder of our hunt he killed five elk,--one cow, for meat, and
four good bulls. The two rams were with three others, all old and with
fine horns; Ferguson peeped over a lofty precipice and saw them coming
up it only fifty yards below him. His first two and finest bulls were
obtained by hard running and good shooting; the herds were on the move
at the time, and only his speed of foot and soundness of wind enabled
him to get near enough for a shot. One herd started before he got
close, and he killed the master bull by a shot right through the heart,
as it trotted past, a hundred and fifty yards distant.

As for me, during the next ten days I killed nothing save one cow
for meat; and this though I hunted hard every day from morning till
night, no matter what the weather. It was stormy, with hail and snow
almost every day; and after working hard from dawn until nightfall,
laboriously climbing the slippery mountain-sides, walking through the
wet woods, and struggling across the bare plateaus and cliff-shoulders,
while the violent blasts of wind drove the frozen rain in our faces, we
would come in after dusk wet through and chilled to the marrow. Even
when it rained in the valleys it snowed on the mountain-tops, and there
was no use trying to keep our feet dry. I got three shots at bull elk,
two being very hurried snapshots at animals running in thick timber,
the other a running-shot in the open, at over two hundred yards; and I
missed all three. On most days I saw no bull worth shooting; the two
or three I did see or hear we failed to stalk, the light, shifty wind
baffling us, or else an outlying cow which we had not seen giving the
alarm. There were many blue and a few ruffed grouse in the woods, and
I occasionally shot off the heads of a couple on my way homeward in
the evening. In racing after one elk, I leaped across a gully and so
bruised and twisted my heel on a rock that, for the remainder of my
stay in the mountains, I had to walk on the fore part of that foot.
This did not interfere much with my walking, however, except in going
down-hill.

Our ill success was in part due to sheer bad luck; but the chief
element therein was the presence of a great hunting-party of Shoshone
Indians. Split into bands of eight or ten each, they scoured the
whole country on their tough, sure-footed ponies. They always hunted
on horseback, and followed the elk at full speed wherever they went.
Their method of hunting was to organize great drives, the riders
strung in lines far apart; they signaled to one another by means of
willow whistles, with which they also imitated the calling of the bull
elk, thus tolling the animals to them, or making them betray their
whereabouts. As they slew whatever they could, but by preference cows
and calves, and as they were very persevering, but also very excitable
and generally poor shots, so that they wasted much powder, they not
only wrought havoc among the elk, but also scared the survivors out of
all the country over which they hunted.

Day in and day out we plodded on. In a hunting trip the days of long
monotony in getting to the ground, and the days of unrequited toil
after it has been reached, always far outnumber the red-letter days
of success. But it is just these times of failure that really test a
hunter. In the long run, common sense and dogged perseverance avail him
more than any other qualities. The man who does not give up, but hunts
steadily and resolutely through the spells of bad luck until the luck
turns, is the man who wins success in the end.

After a week at Two-Ocean Pass, we gathered our pack-animals one frosty
morning, and again set off across the mountains. A two-days’ jaunt took
us to the summit of Wolverine Pass, near Pinyon Peak, beside a little
mountain tarn; each morning we found its surface skimmed with black
ice, for the nights were cold. After three or four days, we shifted
camp to the mouth of Wolverine Creek, to get off the hunting grounds of
the Indians. We had used up our last elk-meat that morning, and when we
were within a couple of hours’ journey of our intended halting-place,
Woody and I struck off on foot for a hunt. Just before sunset we came
on three or four elk; a spike bull stood for a moment behind some thick
evergreens a hundred yards off. Guessing at his shoulder, I fired, and
he fell dead after running a few rods. I had broken the luck, after ten
days of ill success.

Next morning Woody and I, with the packer, rode to where this elk lay.
We loaded the meat on a pack-horse, and let the packer take both the
loaded animal and our own saddle-horses back to camp, while we made
a hunt on foot. We went up the steep, forest-clad mountain-side, and
before we had walked an hour heard two elk whistling ahead of us. The
woods were open, and quite free from undergrowth, and we were able to
advance noiselessly; there was no wind, for the weather was still,
clear and cold. Both of the elk were evidently very much excited,
answering each other continually; they had probably been master bulls,
but had become so exhausted that their rivals had driven them from
the herds, forcing them to remain in seclusion until they regained
their lost strength. As we crept stealthily forward, the calling grew
louder and louder, until we could hear the grunting sounds with which
the challenge of the nearest ended. He was in a large wallow, which
was also a lick. When we were still sixty yards off, he heard us, and
rushed out, but wheeled and stood a moment to gaze, puzzled by my
buckskin suit. I fired into his throat, breaking his neck, and down
he went in a heap. Rushing in and turning, I called to Woody, “He’s a
twelve-pointer, but the horns are small!” As I spoke I heard the roar
of the challenge of the other bull not two hundred yards ahead, as if
in defiant answer to my shot.

Running quietly forward, I speedily caught a glimpse of his body. He
was behind some fir-trees about seventy yards off, and I could not
see which way he was standing, and so fired into the patch of flank
which was visible, aiming high, to break the back. My aim was true,
and the huge beast crashed down hill through the evergreens, pulling
himself on his fore legs for fifteen or twenty rods, his hind quarters
trailing. Racing forward, I broke his neck. His antlers were the finest
I ever got. A couple of whiskey-jacks appeared at the first crack of
the rifle with their customary astonishing familiarity and heedlessness
of the hunter; they followed the wounded bull as he dragged his great
carcass down the hill, and pounced with ghoulish bloodthirstiness on
the gouts of blood that were sprinkled over the green herbage.

These two bulls lay only a couple of hundred yards apart, on a broad
game-trail, which was as well beaten as a good bridle-path. We began
to skin out the heads; and as we were finishing we heard another bull
challenging far up the mountain. He came nearer and nearer, and as soon
as we had ended our work we grasped our rifles and trotted toward him
along the game-trail. He was very noisy, uttering his loud, singing
challenge every minute or two. The trail was so broad and firm that we
walked in perfect silence. After going only five or six hundred yards,
we got very close indeed, and stole forward on tiptoe, listening to
the roaring music. The sound came from a steep, narrow ravine, to one
side of the trail, and I walked toward it with my rifle at the ready.
A slight puff gave the elk my wind, and he dashed out of the ravine
like mad; but he was only thirty yards off, and my bullet went into his
shoulder as he passed behind a clump of young spruce. I plunged into
the ravine, scrambled out of it, and raced after him. In a minute I
saw him standing with drooping head, and two more shots finished him.
He also bore fine antlers. It was a great piece of luck to get three
such fine bulls at the cost of half a day’s light work; but we had
fairly earned them, having worked hard for ten days, through rain,
cold, hunger, and fatigue, to no purpose. That evening my home-coming
to camp, with three elk-tongues and a brace of ruffed grouse hung at my
belt, was most happy.

Next day it snowed, but we brought a pack-pony to where the three great
bulls lay, and took their heads to camp; the flesh was far too strong
to be worth taking, for it was just the height of the rut.

This was the end of my hunt; and a day later Hofer and I, with two
pack-ponies, made a rapid push for the Upper Geyser Basin. We traveled
fast. The first day was gray and overcast, a cold wind blowing strong
in our faces. Toward evening we came on a bull elk in a willow thicket;
he was on his knees in a hollow, thrashing and beating the willows with
his antlers. At dusk we halted and went into camp, by some small pools
on the summit of the pass north of Red Mountain. The elk were calling
all around us. We pitched our cosey tent, dragged great stumps for the
fire, cut evergreen boughs for our beds, watered the horses, tethered
them to improvised picket-pins in a grassy glade, and then set about
getting supper ready. The wind had gone down, and snow was falling
thick in large, soft flakes; we were evidently at the beginning of a
heavy snowstorm. All night we slept soundly in our snug tent. When we
arose at dawn there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and
the flakes were falling as fast as ever. There is no more tedious work
than striking camp in bad weather; and it was over two hours from the
time we rose to the time we started. It is sheer misery to untangle
picket lines and to pack animals when the ropes are frozen; and by the
time we had loaded the two shivering, wincing pack-ponies, and had
bridled and saddled our own riding-animals, our hands and feet were
numb and stiff with cold, though we were really hampered by our warm
clothing. My horse was a wild, nervous roan, and as I swung carelessly
into the saddle, he suddenly began to buck before I got my right leg
over, and threw me off. My thumb was put out of joint. I pulled it in
again, and speedily caught my horse in the dead timber. Then I treated
him as what the cowboys call a “mean horse,” and mounted him carefully,
so as not to let him either buck or go over backward. However, his
preliminary success had inspirited him, and a dozen times that day he
began to buck, usually choosing a down grade, where the snow was deep,
and there was much fallen timber.

All day long we pushed steadily through the cold, blinding snowstorm.
Neither squirrels nor rabbits were abroad; and a few Clark’s crows,
whiskey-jacks and chickadees were the only living things we saw. At
nightfall, chilled through, we reached the Upper Geyser Basin. Here
I met a party of railroad surveyors and engineers, coming in from
their summer’s field work. One of them lent me a saddle-horse and
a pack-pony, and we went on together, breaking our way through the
snow-choked roads to the Mammoth Hot Springs, while Hofer took my own
horses back to Ferguson.

I have described this hunt at length because, though I enjoyed it
particularly on account of the comfort in which we traveled and the
beauty of the land, yet, in point of success in finding and killing
game, in value of trophies procured, and in its alternations of good
and bad luck, it may fairly stand as the type of a dozen such hunts I
have made. Twice I have been much more successful; the difference being
due to sheer luck, as I hunted equally hard in all three instances.
Thus on this trip I killed and saw nothing but elk; yet the other
members of the party either saw, or saw fresh signs of, not only
blacktail deer, but sheep, bear, bison, moose, cougar, and wolf. Now in
1889 I hunted over almost precisely similar country, only further to
the northwest, on the boundary between Idaho and Montana, and, with the
exception of sheep, I stumbled on all the animals mentioned, and white
goat in addition, so that my bag of twelve head actually included
eight species--much the best bag I ever made, and the only one that
could really be called out of the common. In 1884, on a trip to the
Bighorn Mountains, I killed three bear, six elk and six deer. In laying
in the winter stock of meat for my ranch I often far excelled these
figures as far as mere numbers went; but on no other regular hunting
trip, where the quality and not the quantity of the game was the prime
consideration, have I ever equaled them; and on several where I worked
hardest I hardly averaged a head a week. The occasional days or weeks
of phenomenal luck are more than earned by the many others where no
luck whatever follows the very hardest work. Yet if a man hunts with
steady resolution he is apt to strike enough lucky days amply to repay
him for his trouble.

On this Shoshone trip I fired fifty-eight shots. In preference to
using the knife I generally break the neck of an elk which is still
struggling; and I fire at one as long as it can stand, preferring
to waste a few extra bullets, rather than see an occasional head of
game escape. In consequence of these two traits the nine elk I got
(two running at sixty and eighty yards, the others standing, at from
thirty to a hundred) cost me twenty-three bullets; and I missed three
shots--all three, it is but fair to say, difficult ones. I also cut off
the heads of seventeen grouse, with twenty-two shots; and killed two
ducks with ten shots--fifty-eight in all. On the Bighorn trip I used a
hundred and two cartridges. On no other trip did I use fifty.

To me still-hunting elk in the mountains, when they are calling, is
one of the most attractive of sports, not only because of the size and
stately beauty of the quarry and the grand nature of the trophy, but
because of the magnificence of the scenery, and the stirring, manly,
exciting nature of the chase itself. It yields more vigorous enjoyment
than does lurking stealthily through the grand but gloomy monotony
of the marshy woodland where dwells the moose. The climbing among
the steep forest-clad and glade-strewn mountains is just difficult
enough thoroughly to test soundness in wind and limb, while without
the heart-breaking fatigue of white-goat hunting. The actual grapple
with an angry grisly is of course far more full of strong, eager
pleasure; but bear hunting is the most uncertain, and usually the least
productive, of sports.

As regards strenuous, vigorous work, and pleasurable excitement, the
chase of the bighorn alone stands higher. But the bighorn, grand beast
of the chase though he be, is surpassed in size, both of body and of
horns, by certain of the giant sheep of Central Asia; whereas the
wapiti is not only the most stately and beautiful of American game--far
more so than the bison and moose, his only rivals in size--but is also
the noblest of the stag kind throughout the world. Whoever kills him
has killed the chief of his race; for he stands far above his brethren
of Asia and Europe.




CHAPTER XI

THE MOOSE; THE BEAST OF THE WOODLAND


The moose is the giant of all deer; and many hunters esteem it the
noblest of American game. Beyond question there are few trophies more
prized than the huge shovel horns of this strange dweller in the cold
northland forests.

I shot my first moose after making several fruitless hunting trips with
this special game in view. The season I finally succeeded it was only
after having hunted two or three weeks in vain, among the Bitter Root
Mountains, and the ranges lying southeast of them.

I began about the first of September by making a trial with my old
hunting friend Willis. We speedily found a country where there were
moose, but of the animals themselves we never caught a glimpse. We
tried to kill them by hunting in the same manner that we hunted elk;
that is, by choosing a place where there was sign, and going carefully
through it against or across the wind. However, this plan failed;
though at that very time we succeeded in killing elk in this way,
devoting one or two days to their pursuit. There were both elk and
moose in the country, but they were usually found in different kinds of
ground, though often close alongside one another. The former went in
herds, the cows, calves, and yearlings by themselves, and they roamed
through the higher and more open forests, well up toward timber line.
The moose, on the contrary, were found singly or in small parties
composed at the outside of a bull, a cow, and her young of two years;
for the moose is practically monogamous, in strong contrast to the
highly polygamous wapiti and caribou.

The moose did not seem to care much whether they lived among the
summits of the mountains or not, so long as they got the right kind of
country; for they were much more local in their distribution, and at
this season less given to wandering than their kin with round horns.
What they wished was a cool, swampy region of very dense growth; in the
main chains of the northern Rockies even the valleys are high enough
to be cold. Of course many of the moose lived on the wooded summits
of the lower ranges; and most of them came down lower in winter than
in summer, following about a fortnight after the elk; but if in a
large tract of woods the cover was dense and the ground marshy, though
it was in a valley no higher than the herds of the ranchmen grazed,
or perchance even in the immediate neighborhood of a small frontier
hamlet, then it might be chosen by some old bull who wished to lie in
seclusion till his horns were grown, or by some cow with a calf to
raise. Before settlers came to this high mountain region of western
Montana, a moose would often thus live in an isolated marshy tract
surrounded by open country. They grazed throughout the summer on marsh
plants, notably lily stems, and nibbled at the tops of the very tall
natural hay of the meadows. The legs of the beast are too long and the
neck too short to allow it to graze habitually on short grass; yet in
the early spring when greedy for the tender blades of young, green
marsh grass, the moose will often shuffle down on its knees to get at
them, and it will occasionally perform the same feat to get a mouthful
or two of snow in winter.

The moose which lived in isolated, exposed localities were speedily
killed or driven away after the incoming of settlers; and at the time
that we hunted we found no sign of them until we reached the region of
continuous forest. Here, in a fortnight’s hunting, we found as much
sign as we wished, and plenty of it fresh; but the animals themselves
we not only never saw, but we never so much as heard. Often after hours
of careful still-hunting or cautious tracking, we found the footprints
deep in the soft earth, showing where our quarry had winded or heard
us, and had noiselessly slipped away from the danger. It is astonishing
how quietly a moose can steal through the woods if it wishes: and it
has what is to the hunter a very provoking habit of making a half or
three-quarters circle before lying down, and then crouching with its
head so turned that it can surely perceive any pursuer who may follow
its trail. We tried every method to outwit the beasts. We attempted
to track them; we beat through likely spots; sometimes we merely “sat
on a log” and awaited events, by a drinking hole, meadow, mud wallow,
or other such place (a course of procedure which often works well in
still-hunting); but all in vain.

Our main difficulty lay in the character of the woods which the moose
haunted. They were choked and tangled to the last degree, consisting
of a mass of thick-growing conifers, with dead timber strewn in every
direction, and young growth filling the spaces between the trunks. We
could not see twenty yards ahead of us, and it was almost impossible
to walk without making a noise. Elk were occasionally found in these
same places; but usually they frequented more open timber, where the
hunting was beyond comparison easier. Perhaps more experienced hunters
would have killed their game; though in such cover the best tracker
and still-hunter alive can not always reckon on success with really
wary animals. But, be this as it may, we, at any rate, were completely
baffled, and I began to think that this moose-hunt, like all my former
ones, was doomed to end in failure.

However, a few days later I met a crabbed old trapper named Hank
Griffin, who was going after beaver in the mountains, and who told me
that if I would come with him he would show me moose. I jumped at the
chance, and he proved as good as his word; though for the first two
trials my ill-luck did not change.

At the time that it finally did change we had at last reached a place
where the moose were on favorable ground. A high, marshy valley
stretched for several miles between two rows of stony mountains, clad
with a forest of rather small fir-trees. This valley was covered with
reeds, alders, and rank grass, and studded with little willow-bordered
ponds and island-like clumps of spruce and graceful tamaracks.

Having surveyed the ground and found moose sign the preceding
afternoon, we were up betimes in the cool morning to begin our hunt.
Before sunrise we were posted on a rocky spur of the foothills, behind
a mask of evergreens; ourselves unseen we overlooked all the valley,
and we knew we could see any animal which might be either feeding away
from cover or on its journey homeward from its feeding ground to its
day-bed.

As it grew lighter we scanned the valley with increasing care and
eagerness. The sun rose behind us; and almost as soon as it was up
we made out some large beast moving among the dwarf willows beside
a little lake half a mile in our front. In a few minutes the thing
walked out where the bushes were thinner, and we saw that it was a
young bull moose browsing on the willow tops. He had evidently nearly
finished his breakfast, and he stood idly for some moments, now and
then lazily cropping a mouthful of twig tips. Then he walked off
with great strides in a straight line across the marsh, splashing
among the wet water-plants, and plowing through boggy spaces with the
indifference begotten of vast strength and legs longer than those of
any other animal on this continent. At times he entered beds of reeds
which hid him from view, though their surging and bending showed the
wake of his passage; at other times he walked through meadows of tall
grass, the withered yellow stalks rising to his flanks, while his body
loomed above them, glistening black and wet in the level sunbeams.
Once he stopped for a few moments on a rise of dry ground, seemingly
to enjoy the heat of the young sun; he stood motionless, save that his
ears were continually pricked, and his head sometimes slightly turned,
showing that even in this remote land he was on the alert. Once, with
a somewhat awkward motion, he reached his hind leg forward to scratch
his neck. Then he walked forward again into the marsh; where the water
was quite deep he broke into the long, stretching, springy trot, which
forms the characteristic gait of his kind, churning the marsh water
into foam. He held his head straight forward, the antlers resting on
his shoulders. After a while he reached a spruce island, through which
he walked to and fro; but evidently could find therein no resting-place
quite to his mind, for he soon left and went on to another. Here after
a little wandering he chose a point where there was some thick young
growth, which hid him from view when he lay down, though not when he
stood. After some turning he settled himself in his bed just as a steer
would.

He could not have chosen a spot better suited for us. He was nearly at
the edge of the morass, the open space between the spruce clump where
he was lying and the rocky foothills being comparatively dry and not
much over a couple of hundred yards broad; while some sixty yards from
it, and between it and the hills, was a little hummock, tufted with
firs, so as to afford us just the cover we needed. Keeping back from
the edge of the morass we were able to walk upright through the forest,
until we got the point where he was lying in a line with this little
hummock. We then dropped on our hands and knees, and crept over the
soft, wet sward, where there was nothing to make a noise. Wherever the
ground rose at all we crawled flat on our bellies. The air was still,
for it was a very calm morning.

At last we reached the hummock, and I got into position for a shot,
taking a final look at my faithful 45–90 Winchester to see that all
was in order. Peering cautiously through the shielding evergreens, I
at first could not make out where the moose was lying, until my eye
was caught by the motion of his big ears, as he occasionally flapped
them lazily forward. Even then I could not see his outline; but I knew
where he was, and having pushed my rifle forward on the moss, I snapped
a dry twig to make him rise. My veins were thrilling and my heart
beating with that eager, fierce excitement, known only to the hunter
of big game, and forming one of the keenest and strongest of the many
pleasures which with him go to make up “the wild joy of living.”

As the sound of the snapping twig smote his ears the moose rose nimbly
to his feet, with a lightness on which one would not have reckoned in
a beast so heavy of body. He stood broadside to me for a moment, his
ungainly head slightly turned, while his ears twitched and his nostrils
snuffed the air. Drawing a fine bead against his black hide, behind his
shoulder and two-thirds of his body’s depth below his shaggy withers, I
pressed the trigger. He neither flinched nor reeled, but started with
his regular ground-covering trot through the spruces; yet I knew he was
mine, for the light blood sprang from both of his nostrils, and he fell
dying on his side before he had gone thirty rods.

Later in the fall I was again hunting among the lofty ranges which
continue toward the southeast the chain of the Bitter Root, between
Idaho and Montana. There were but two of us, and we were traveling very
light, each having but one pack-pony and the saddle animal he bestrode.
We were high among the mountains, and followed no regular trail. Hence
our course was often one of extreme difficulty. Occasionally, we took
our animals through the forest near timber line, where the slopes were
not too steep; again we threaded our way through a line of glades, or
skirted the foothills, in an open, park country; and now and then we
had to cross stretches of tangled mountain forest, making but a few
miles a day, at the cost of incredible toil, and accomplishing even
this solely by virtue of the wonderful docility and sure-footedness
of the ponies, and of my companion’s skill with the axe and thorough
knowledge of the woodcraft.

Late one cold afternoon we came out in a high alpine valley in which
there was no sign of any man’s having ever been before us. Down its
middle ran a clear brook. On each side was a belt of thick spruce
forest, covering the lower flanks of the mountains. The trees came down
in points and isolated clumps to the brook, the banks of which were
thus bordered with open glades, rendering the traveling easy and rapid.

Soon after starting up this valley we entered a beaver meadow of
considerable size. It was covered with lush, rank grass, and the stream
wound through it rather sluggishly in long curves, which were fringed
by a thick growth of dwarfed willows. In one or two places it broadened
into small ponds, bearing a few lily-pads. This meadow had been all
tramped up by moose. Trails led hither and thither through the grass,
the willow twigs were cropped off, and the muddy banks of the little
black ponds were indented by hoof-marks. Evidently most of the lilies
had been plucked. The footprints were unmistakable; a moose’s foot is
longer and slimmer than a caribou’s, while on the other hand it is much
larger than an elk’s, and a longer oval in shape.

Most of the sign was old, this high alpine meadow, surrounded by snow
mountains, having clearly been a favorite resort for moose in the
summer; but some enormous, fresh tracks told that one or more old
bulls were still frequenting the place.

The light was already fading, and, of course, we did not wish to
camp where we were, because we would then certainly scare the moose.
Accordingly we pushed up the valley for another mile, through an open
forest, the ground being quite free from underbrush and dead timber,
and covered with a carpet of thick moss, in which the feet sank
noiselessly. Then we came to another beaver-meadow, which offered fine
feed for the ponies. On its edge we hastily pitched camp, just at dusk.
We tossed down the packs in a dry grove, close to the brook, and turned
the tired ponies loose in the meadow, hobbling the little mare that
carried the bell. The ground was smooth. We threw a cross-pole from one
to the other of two young spruces, which happened to stand handily, and
from it stretched and pegged out a piece of canvas, which we were using
as a shelter tent. Beneath this we spread our bedding, laying under it
the canvas sheets in which it had been wrapped. There was still bread
left over from yesterday’s baking, and in a few moments the kettle was
boiling and the frying-pan sizzling, while one of us skinned and cut
into suitable pieces two grouse we had knocked over on our march. For
fear of frightening the moose we built but a small fire, and went to
bed soon after supper, being both tired and cold. Fortunately, what
little breeze there was blew up the valley.

At dawn I was awake, and crawled out of my buffalo bag, shivering and
yawning. My companion still slumbered heavily. White frost covered
whatever had been left outside. The cold was sharp, and I hurriedly
slipped a pair of stout moccasins on my feet, drew on my gloves and
cap, and started through the ghostly woods for the meadow where we had
seen the moose sign. The tufts of grass were stiff with frost; black
ice skimmed the edges and quiet places of the little brook.

I walked slowly, it being difficult not to make a noise by cracking
sticks or brushing against trees, in the gloom; but the forest was so
open that it favored me. When I reached the edge of the beaver-meadow
it was light enough to shoot, though the front sight still glimmered
indistinctly. Streaks of cold red showed that the sun would soon rise.

Before leaving the shelter of the last spruces I halted to listen; and
almost immediately heard a curious splashing sound from the middle of
the meadow, where the brook broadened into small willow-bordered pools.
I knew at once that a moose was in one of these pools, wading about
and pulling up the water lilies by seizing their slippery stems in
his lips, plunging his head deep under water to do so. The moose love
to feed in this way in the hot months, when they spend all the time
they can in the water, feeding or lying down; nor do they altogether
abandon the habit even when the weather is so cold that icicles form in
their shaggy coats.

Crouching, I stole noiselessly along the edge of the willow-thicket.
The stream twisted through it from side to side in zigzags, so that
every few rods I got a glimpse down a lane of black water. In a minute
I heard a slight splashing near me; and on passing the next point of
bushes, I saw the shadowy outline of the moose’s hindquarters, standing
in a bend of the water. In a moment he walked onward, disappearing. I
ran forward a couple of rods, and then turned in among the willows,
to reach the brook where it again bent back toward me. The splashing
in the water, and the rustling of the moose’s body against the frozen
twigs, drowned the noise made by my moccasined feet.

I strode out on the bank at the lower end of a long, narrow pool of
water, dark and half frozen. In this pool, half way down and facing me,
but a score of yards off, stood the mighty marsh beast, strange and
uncouth in look as some monster surviving over from the Pliocene. His
vast bulk loomed black and vague in the dim gray dawn; his huge antlers
stood out sharply; columns of steam rose from his nostrils. For several
seconds he fronted me motionless; then he began to turn, slowly, and
as if he had a stiff neck. When quarter way round I fired into his
shoulder; whereat he reared and bounded on the bank with a great leap,
vanishing in the willows. Through these I heard him crash like a
whirlwind for a dozen rods; then down he fell, and when I reached the
spot he had ceased to struggle. The ball had gone through his heart.

When a moose is thus surprised at close quarters, it will often stand
at gaze for a moment or two, and then turn stiffly around until headed
in the right direction; once thus headed aright it starts off with
extraordinary speed.

The flesh of the moose is very good; though some deem it coarse. Old
hunters, who always like rich, greasy food, rank the moose’s nose with
a beaver’s tail, as the chief of backwood delicacies; personally I
never liked either. The hide of the moose, like the hide of the elk, is
of very poor quality, much inferior to ordinary buckskin; caribou hide
is the best of all, especially when used as webbing for snowshoes.

The moose is very fond of frequenting swampy woods throughout the
summer, and indeed late into the fall. These swampy woods are not
necessarily in the lower valleys, some being found very high among the
mountains. By preference it haunts those containing lakes, where it
can find the long lily-roots of which it is so fond, and where it can
escape the torment of the mosquitoes and deer-flies by lying completely
submerged save for its nostrils. It is a bold and good swimmer, readily
crossing lakes of large size; but it is of course easily slain if
discovered by canoe-men while in the water. It travels well through
bogs, but not as well as the caribou; and it will not venture on ice at
all if it can possibly avoid it.

After the rut begins the animals roam everywhere through the woods;
and where there are hardwood forests the winter-yard is usually made
among them, on high ground, away from the swamps. In the mountains the
deep snows drive the moose, like all other game, down to the lower
valleys, in hard winters. In the summer it occasionally climbs to the
very summits of the wooded ranges, to escape the flies; and it is said
that in certain places where wolves are plenty the cows retire to the
tops of the mountains to calve. More often, however, they select some
patch of very dense cover, in a swamp or by a lake, for this purpose.
Their ways of life of course vary with the nature of the country they
frequent. In the towering chains of the Rockies, clad in sombre and
unbroken evergreen forests, their habits, in regard to winter and
summer homes, and choice of places of seclusion for cows with young
calves and bulls growing their antlers, differ from those of their kind
which haunt the comparatively low, hilly, lake-studded country of Maine
and Nova Scotia, where the forests are of birch, beech, and maple,
mixed with pine, spruce, and hemlock.

The moose being usually monogamous is never found in great herds like
the wapiti and caribou. Occasionally a troop of fifteen or twenty
individuals may be seen, but this is rare; more often it is found
singly, in pairs, or in family parties, composed of a bull, a cow, and
two or more calves and yearlings. In yarding, two or more such families
may unite to spend the winter together in an unusually attractive
locality; and during the rut many bulls are sometimes found together,
perhaps following the trail of a cow in single file.

In the fall, winter, and early spring, and in certain places during
summer, the moose feeds principally by browsing, though always willing
to vary its diet by mosses, lichens, fungi, and ferns. In the Eastern
forests, with their abundance of hardwood, the birch, maple, and
moose-wood form its favorite food. In the Rocky Mountains, where the
forests are almost purely evergreen, it feeds on such willows, alders,
and aspens as it can find, and also, when pressed by necessity, on
balsam, fir, spruce, and very young pine. It peels the bark between its
hard palate and sharp lower teeth, to a height of seven or eight feet;
these “peelings” form conspicuous moose signs. It crops the juicy,
budding twigs and stem-tops to the same height; and if the tree is
too tall it “rides” it, that is, straddles the slender trunk with its
forelegs, pushing it over and walking up it until the desired branches
are within reach. No beast is more destructive to the young growth of
a forest than the moose. Where much persecuted it feeds in the late
evening, early morning, and by moonlight. Where rarely disturbed it
passes the day much as cattle do, alternately resting and feeding for
two or three hours at a time.

Young moose, when caught, are easily tamed, and are very playful,
delighting to gallop to and fro, kicking, striking, butting, and
occasionally making grotesque faces. As they grow old they are apt to
become dangerous, and even their play takes the form of a mock fight.
Some lumbermen I knew on the Aroostook, in Maine, once captured a young
moose, and put it in a pen of logs. A few days later they captured
another, somewhat smaller, and put it in the same pen, thinking the
first would be grateful at having a companion. But if it was it
dissembled its feelings, for it promptly fell on the unfortunate
newcomer and killed it before it could be rescued.

During the rut the bulls seek the cows far and wide, uttering
continually throughout the night a short, loud roar, which can be heard
at a distance of four or five miles; the cows now and then respond with
low, plaintive bellows. The bulls also thrash the tree trunks with
their horns, and paw big holes in soft ground; and when two rivals
come together at this season they fight with the most desperate fury.
It is chiefly in these battles with one another that the huge antlers
are used; in contending with other foes they strike terrible blows
with their fore hoofs and also sometimes lash out behind like a horse.
The bear occasionally makes a prey of the moose; the cougar is a more
dangerous enemy in the few districts where both animals are found at
all plentifully; but next to man its most dreaded foe is the big timber
wolf, that veritable scourge of all animals of the deer kind. Against
all of these the moose defends itself valiantly; a cow with a calf and
a rutting bull being especially dangerous opponents. In deep snows
through which the great deer flounders while its adversary runs lightly
on the crust, a single wolf may overcome and slaughter a big bull
moose; but with a fair chance no one or two wolves would be a match
for it. Desperate combats take place before a small pack of wolves
can master the shovel-horned quarry, unless it is taken at a hopeless
disadvantage; and in these battles the prowess of the moose is shown
by the fact that it is no unusual thing for it to kill one or more
of the ravenous throng; generally by a terrific blow of the foreleg,
smashing a wolf’s skull or breaking its back. I have known of several
instances of wolves being found dead, having perished in this manner.
Still, the battle usually ends the other way, the wolves being careful
to make the attack with the odds in their favor; and even a small pack
of the ferocious brutes will in a single winter often drive the moose
completely out of a given district. Both cougar and bear generally
reckon on taking the moose unawares, when they jump on it. In one case
that came to my knowledge a black bear was killed by a cow moose whose
calf he had attacked.

In the Northeast a favorite method of hunting the moose is by “calling”
the bulls in the rutting season, at dawn or nightfall; the caller
imitating their cries through a birch-bark trumpet. If the animals
are at all wary, this kind of sport can only be carried on in still
weather, as the approaching bull always tries to get the wind of the
caller. It is also sometimes slain by fire-hunting, from a canoe,
as the deer are killed in the Adirondacks. This, however, is but an
ignoble sport; and to kill the animal while it is swimming in a lake is
worse. However, there is sometimes a spice of excitement even in these
unworthy methods of the chase; for a truculent moose will do its best,
with hoofs and horns, to upset the boat.

The true way to kill the noble beast, however, is by fair
still-hunting. There is no grander sport than still-hunting the
moose, whether in the vast pine and birch forests of the Northeast,
or among the stupendous mountain masses of the Rockies. The moose has
wonderfully keen nose and ears, though its eyesight is not remarkable.
Most hunters assert that it is the wariest of all game, and the most
difficult to kill. I have never been quite satisfied that this was
so; it seems to me that the nature of the ground wherein it dwells
helps it even more than do its own sharp senses. It is true that I
made many trips in vain before killing my first moose; but then I had
to hunt through tangled timber, where I could scarcely move a step
without noise, and could never see thirty yards ahead. If moose were
found in open park-like forests like those where I first killed elk,
on the Bighorn Mountains, or among brushy coulies and bare hills,
like the Little Missouri Bad Lands, where I first killed blacktail
deer, I doubt whether they would prove especially difficult animals to
bag. My own experience is much too limited to allow me to speak with
any certainty on the point; but it is borne out by what more skilled
hunters have told me. In the Big Hole Basin, in southwest Montana,
moose were quite plentiful in the late ’seventies. Two or three of
the old settlers, whom I know as veteran hunters and trustworthy men,
have told me that in those times the moose were often found in very
accessible localities; and that when such was the case they were
quite as easily killed as elk. In fact, when run across by accident
they frequently showed a certain clumsy slowness of apprehension
which amounted to downright stupidity. One of the most successful
moose-hunters I know is Col. Cecil Clay, of the Department of Law, in
Washington; he it was who killed the moose composing the fine group
mounted by Mr. Hornaday, in the National Museum. Col. Clay lost his
right arm in the Civil War; but is an expert rifle shot nevertheless,
using a short, light forty-four calibre old style Winchester carbine.
With this weapon he has killed over a score of moose, by fair
still-hunting; and he tells me that on similar ground he considers it
if anything rather less easy to still-hunt and kill a whitetail deer
than it is to kill a moose.

My friend Col. James Jones killed two moose in a day in northwestern
Wyoming, not far from the Tetons; he was alone when he shot them and
did not find them especially wary. Ordinarily, moose are shot at fairly
close range; but another friend of mine, Mr. E. P. Rogers, once dropped
one with a single bullet, at a distance of nearly three hundred yards.
This happened by Bridget’s Lake, near Two-Ocean Pass.

The moose has a fast walk, and its ordinary gait when going at any
speed is a slashing trot. Its long legs give it a wonderful stride,
enabling it to clear down-timber and high obstacles of all sorts
without altering its pace. It also leaps well. If much pressed or
startled it breaks into an awkward gallop, which is quite fast for
a few hundred yards, but which speedily tires it out. After being
disturbed by the hunter a moose usually trots a long distance before
halting.

One thing which renders the chase of the moose particularly interesting
is the fact that there is in it on rare occasions a spice of peril.
Under certain circumstances it may be called dangerous quarry, being,
properly speaking, the only animal of the deer kind which ever fairly
deserves the title. In a hand to hand grapple an elk or caribou, or
even under exceptional circumstances a blacktail or a whitetail, may
show itself an ugly antagonist; and indeed a maddened elk may for a
moment take the offensive; but the moose is the only one of the tribe
with which this attitude is at all common. In bodily strength and
capacity to do harm it surpasses the elk; and in temper it is far more
savage and more apt to show fight when assailed by man; exactly as the
elk in these respects surpasses the common deer.

Two hunters with whom I was well acquainted once wintered between the
Wind River Mountains and the Three Tetons, many years ago, in the days
of the buffalo. They lived on game, killing it on snowshoes; for the
most part wapiti and deer, but also bison, and one moose, though they
saw others. The wapiti bulls kept their antlers two months longer than
the moose; nevertheless, when chased they rarely made an effort to
use them, while the hornless moose displayed far more pugnacity, and
also ran better through the deep snow. The winter was very severe, the
snows were heavy and the crusts hard; so that the hunters had little
trouble in overtaking their game, although--being old mountain-men, and
not hide hunters--they killed only what was needed. Of course in such
hunting they came very close to the harried game, usually after a chase
of from twenty minutes to three hours. They found that the ordinary
deer would scarcely charge under any circumstances; that among the
wapiti it was only now and then that individuals would turn upon their
pursuers--though they sometimes charged boldly; but that both the bison
and especially the moose, when worried and approached too near, would
often turn to bay and make charge after charge in the most resolute
manner, so that they had to be approached with some caution.

Under ordinary conditions, however, there is very little danger,
indeed, of a moose charging. A charge does not take place once in a
hundred times when the moose is killed by fair still-hunting; and
it is altogether exceptional for those who assail them from boats
or canoes to be put in jeopardy. Even a cow moose, with her calf,
will run if she has the chance; and a rutting bull will do the same.
Such a bull when wounded may walk slowly forward, grunting savagely,
stamping with his forefeet, and slashing the bushes with his antlers;
but, if his antagonist is any distance off, he rarely actually runs
at him. Yet there are now and then found moose prone to attack on
slight provocation; for these great deer differ as widely as men in
courage and ferocity. Occasionally a hunter is charged in the fall
when he has lured the game to him by calling, or when he has wounded
it after a stalk. In one well-authenticated instance which was brought
to my attention, a settler on the left bank of the St. John, in New
Brunswick, was tramped to death by a bull moose which he had called
to him and wounded. A New Yorker of my acquaintance, Dr. Merrill, was
charged under rather peculiar circumstances. He stalked and mortally
wounded a bull which promptly ran toward him. Between them was a gully
in which it disappeared. Immediately afterward, as he thought, it
reappeared on his side of the gully, and with a second shot he dropped
it. Walking forward, he found to his astonishment that with his second
bullet he had killed a cow moose; the bull lay dying in the gully, out
of which he had scared the cow by his last rush.

However, speaking broadly, the danger to the still-hunter engaged in
one of the legitimate methods of the chase is so small that it may be
disregarded; for he usually kills his game at some little distance,
while the moose, as a rule, only attacks if it has been greatly worried
and angered, and if its pursuer is close at hand. When a moose is
surprised and shot at by a hunter some way off, its one thought is
of flight. Hence, the hunters who are charged by moose are generally
those who follow them during the late winter and early spring, when
the animals have yarded and can be killed on snowshoes--by “crusting,”
as it is termed, a very destructive, and often a very unsportsmanlike
species of chase.

If the snowfall is very light, moose do not yard at all; but in a hard
winter they begin to make their yards in December. A “yard” is not,
as some people seem to suppose, a trampled-down space, with definite
boundaries; the term merely denotes the spot which a moose has chosen
for its winter home, choosing it because it contains plenty of browse
in the shape of young trees and saplings, and perhaps also because
it is sheltered to some extent from the fierce winds and heaviest
snowdrifts. The animal travels to and fro across this space in straight
lines and irregular circles after food, treading in its own footsteps,
where practicable. As the snow steadily deepens, these lines of
travel become beaten paths. There results finally a space half a mile
square--sometimes more, sometimes very much less, according to the lay
of the land, and the number of moose yarding together--where the deep
snow is seamed in every direction by a network of narrow paths along
which a moose can travel at speed, its back level with the snow round
about. Sometimes, when moose are very plentiful, many of these yards
lie so close together that the beasts can readily make their way from
one to another. When such is the case, the most expert snowshoer, under
the most favorable conditions, can not overtake them, for they can
then travel very fast through the paths, keeping their gait all day.
In the early decades of the present century, the first settlers in
Aroostook County, Maine, while moose-hunting in winter, were frequently
baffled in this manner.

When hunters approach an isolated yard the moose immediately leave it
and run off through the snow. If there is no crust, and if their long
legs can reach the ground, the snow itself impedes them but little,
because of their vast strength and endurance. Snowdrifts which render
an ordinary deer absolutely helpless, and bring even an elk to a
standstill, offer no impediment whatever to a moose. If, as happens
very rarely, the loose snow is of such depth that even the stilt-like
legs of the moose can not touch solid earth, it flounders and struggles
forward for a little time, and then sinks exhausted; for a caribou is
the only large animal which can travel under such conditions. If there
be a crust, even though the snow is not remarkably deep, the labor of
the moose is vastly increased, as it breaks through at every step,
cutting its legs and exhausting itself. A caribou, on the other hand,
will go across a crust as well as a man on snowshoes, and can never be
caught by the latter, save under altogether exceptional conditions of
snowfall and thaw.

“Crusting,” or following game on snowshoes, is, as the name implies,
almost always practiced after the middle of February, when thaws begin,
and the snow crusts on top. The conditions for success in crusting
moose and deer are very different. A crust through which a moose would
break at every stride may carry a running deer without mishap; while
the former animal would trot at ease through drifts in which the latter
would be caught as if in a quicksand.

Hunting moose on snow, therefore, may be, and very often is, mere
butchery; and because of this possibility or probability, and also
because of the fact that it is by far the most destructive kind of
hunting, and is carried on at a season when the bulls are hornless and
the cows heavy with calf, it is rigidly and properly forbidden wherever
there are good game-laws. Yet this kind of hunting may also be carried
on under circumstances which render it if not a legitimate, yet a most
exciting and manly sport, only to be followed by men of tried courage,
hardihood, and skill. This is not because it ever necessitates any
skill whatever in the use of the rifle, or any particular knowledge of
hunting-craft; but because under the conditions spoken of the hunter
must show great endurance and resolution, and must be an adept in the
use of snowshoes.

It all depends upon the depth of the snow and the state of the crust.
If when the snow is very deep there comes a thaw, and if it then
freezes hard, the moose are overtaken and killed with ease; for the
crust cuts their legs, they sink to their bellies at every plunge, and
speedily become so worn out that they can no longer keep ahead of any
man who is even moderately skilful in the use of snowshoes; though they
do not, as deer so often do, sink exhausted after going a few rods from
their yard. Under such circumstances a few hardy hunters or settlers,
who are perfectly reckless in slaughtering game, may readily kill all
the moose in a district. It is a kind of hunting which just suits
the ordinary settler, who is hardy and enduring, but knows little of
hunting-craft proper.

If the snow is less deep, or the crust not so heavy, the moose may
travel for scores of miles before it is overtaken; and this even
though the crust be strong enough to bear a man wearing snowshoes
without breaking. The chase then involves the most exhausting fatigue.
Moreover, it can be carried on only by those who are very skilful
in the use of snowshoes. These snowshoes are of two kinds. In the
Northeast, and in the most tangled forests of the Northwest, the webbed
snowshoes are used; on the bare mountain-sides, and in the open forests
of the Rockies, the long narrow wooden skees, or Norwegian snowskates,
are preferred, as upon them men can travel much faster, though they
are less handy in thick timber. Having donned his snowshoes and struck
the trail of a moose, the hunter may have to follow it three days
if the snow is of only ordinary depth, with a moderate crust. He
shuffles across the snow without halt while daylight lasts, and lies
down wherever he happens to be when night strikes him, probably with
a little frozen bread as his only food. The hunter thus goes through
inordinate labor, and suffers from exposure; not infrequently his
feet are terribly cut by the thongs of the snowshoes, and become sore
and swollen, causing great pain. When overtaken after such a severe
chase, the moose is usually so exhausted as to be unable to make any
resistance; in all likelihood it has run itself to a standstill.
Accordingly, the quality of the firearms makes but little difference
in this kind of hunting. Many of the most famous old moose-hunters of
Maine, in the long past days, before the Civil War, when moose were
plenty there, used what were known as “three dollar” guns; light,
single-barreled smooth-bores. One whom I knew used a flint-lock musket,
a relic of the War of 1812. Another in the course of an exhausting
three days’ chase lost the lock off his cheap, percussion-cap gun; and
when he overtook the moose he had to explode the cap by hammering it
with a stone.

It is in “crusting,” when the chase has lasted but a comparatively
short time, that moose most frequently show fight; for they are not
cast into a state of wild panic by a sudden and unlooked-for attack
by a man who is a long distance from them, but on the contrary, after
being worried and irritated, are approached very near by foes from whom
they have been fleeing for hours. Nevertheless, in the majority of
cases even crusted moose make not the slightest attempt at retaliation.
If the chase has been very long, or if the depth of the snow and
character of the crust are exceptionally disadvantageous to them, they
are so utterly done out, when overtaken, that they can not make a
struggle, and may even be killed with an axe. I know of at least five
men who have thus killed crusted moose with an axe; one in the Rocky
Mountains, one in Minnesota, three in Maine.

But in ordinary snow a man who should thus attempt to kill a moose
would merely jeopardize his own life; and it is not an uncommon thing
for chased moose, when closely approached by their pursuers, even when
the latter carry guns and are expert snowshoers, to charge them with
such ferocity as to put them in much peril. A brother of one of my
cow-hands, a man from Maine, was once nearly killed by a cow moose.
She had been in a yard with her last year’s calf when startled. After
two or three hours’ chase he overtook them. They were traveling in
single file, the cow breaking her path through the snow, while the calf
followed close behind, and in his nervousness sometimes literally ran
up on her. The man trotted close alongside; but, before he could fire,
the old cow spun round and charged him, her mane bristling and her
green eyes snapping with rage. It happened that just there the snow
became shallow, and the moose gained so rapidly that the man, to save
his life, sprang up a tree. As he did so the cow reared and struck at
him, one forefoot catching in his snowshoe and tearing it clear off,
giving his ankle a bad wrench. After watching him a minute or two she
turned and continued her flight; whereupon he climbed down the tree,
patched up his torn snowshoe and limped after the moose, which he
finally killed.

An old hunter named Purvis told me of an adventure of the kind, which
terminated fatally. He was hunting near the Cœur d’Alene Mountains
with a mining prospector named Pingree; both were originally from New
Hampshire. Late in November there came a heavy fall of snow, deep
enough to soon bring a deer to a standstill, although not so deep as
to hamper a moose’s movement. The men bound on their skees and started
to the borders of a lake, to kill some blacktail. In a thicket close
to the lake’s brink they suddenly came across a bull moose; a lean old
fellow, still savage from the rut. Pingree, who was nearest, fired at
and wounded him; whereupon he rushed straight at the man, knocked him
down before he could turn round on his skees, and began to pound him
with his terrible forefeet. Summoned by his comrade’s despairing cries,
Purvis rushed round the thickets, and shot the squealing, trampling
monster through the body, and immediately after had to swing himself up
a small tree to avoid its furious rush. The moose did not turn after
this charge, but kept straight on, and was not seen again. The wounded
man was past all help, for his chest was beaten in, and he died in a
couple of hours.




CHAPTER XII

HUNTING LORE


It has been my good-luck to kill every kind of game properly belonging
to the United States: though one beast which I never had a chance to
slay, the jaguar, from the torrid South, sometimes comes just across
the Rio Grande; nor have I ever hunted the musk-ox and polar-bear in
the boreal wastes where they dwell, surrounded by the frozen desolation
of the uttermost North.

I have never sought to make large bags, for a hunter should not be a
game butcher. It is always lawful to kill dangerous or noxious animals,
like the bear, cougar, and wolf; but other game should only be shot
when there is need of the meat, or for the sake of an unusually fine
trophy. Killing a reasonable number of bulls, bucks, or rams does no
harm whatever to the species; to slay half the males of any kind of
game would not stop the natural increase, and they yield the best
sport, and are the legitimate objects of the chase. Cows, does, and
ewes, on the contrary, should only be killed (unless barren) in case
of necessity; during my last five years’ hunting I have killed but
five--one by a mischance, and the other four for the table.

From its very nature, the life of the hunter is in most places
evanescent; and when it has vanished there can be no real substitute
in old settled countries. Shooting in a private game preserve is but
a dismal parody; the manliest and healthiest features of the sport
are lost with the change of conditions. We need, in the interest of
the community at large, a rigid system of game laws rigidly enforced,
and it is not only admissible, but one may almost say necessary, to
establish, under the control of the State, great national forest
reserves, which shall also be breeding grounds and nurseries for wild
game; but I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system
of large private game preserves, kept for the enjoyment of the very
rich. One of the chief attractions of the life of the wilderness is
its rugged and stalwart democracy; there every man stands for what he
actually is, and can show himself to be.

There are, in different parts of our country, chances to try so many
various kinds of hunting, with rifle or with horse and hound, that it
is nearly impossible for one man to have experience of them all. There
are many hunts I long hoped to take, but never did and never shall;
they must be left for men with more time, or for those whose homes are
nearer to the hunting grounds. I have never seen a grisly roped by
the riders of the plains, nor a black bear killed with the knife and
hounds in the Southern canebrakes; though at one time I had for many
years a standing invitation to witness this last feat on a plantation
in Arkansas. The friend who gave it, an old backwoods planter, at one
time lost almost all his hogs by the numerous bears who infested his
neighborhood. He took a grimly humorous revenge each fall by doing
his winter killing among the bears instead of among the hogs they had
slain; for as the cold weather approached he regularly proceeded to
lay in a stock of bear-bacon, scouring the canebrakes in a series of
systematic hunts, bringing the quarry to bay with the help of a big
pack of hard-fighting mongrels, and then killing it with his long,
broad-bladed bowie.

Again, I should like to make a trial at killing peccaries with the
spear, whether on foot or on horseback, and with or without dogs. I
should like much to repeat the experience of a friend who cruised
northward through Bering Sea, shooting walrus and polar bear; and that
of two other friends who traveled with dog-sleds to the Barren Grounds,
in chase of the caribou, and of that last survivor of the Ice Age,
the strange musk-ox. Once in a while it must be good sport to shoot
alligators by torchlight in the everglades of Florida or the bayous of
Louisiana.

If the big-game hunter, the lover of the rifle, has a taste for kindred
field sports with rod and shotgun, many are his chances for pleasure,
though perhaps of a less intense kind. The wild turkey really deserves
a place beside the deer; to kill a wary old gobbler with the small-bore
rifle, by fair still-hunting, is a triumph for the best sportsman.
Swans, geese, and sandhill cranes likewise may sometimes be killed
with the rifle; but more often all three, save perhaps the swan, must
be shot over decoys. Then there is prairie-chicken shooting on the
fertile grain prairies of the Middle West, from Minnesota to Texas; and
killing canvas-backs from behind blinds, with the help of that fearless
swimmer, the Chesapeake Bay dog. In Californian mountains and valleys
live the beautiful plumed quails; and who does not know their cousin
bob-white, the bird of the farm, with his cheery voice and friendly
ways? For pure fun, nothing can surpass a night scramble through the
woods after coon and possum.

The salmon, whether near Puget Sound or the St. Lawrence, is the
royal fish; his only rival is the giant of the warm Gulf waters, the
silver-mailed tarpon; while along the Atlantic coast the great striped
bass likewise yields fine sport to the men of rod and reel. Every
hunter of the mountains and the northern woods knows the many kinds
of spotted trout; for the black bass he cares less; and least of all
for the sluggish pickerel, and his big brother of the Great Lakes, the
muscallonge.

Yet the sport yielded by rod and smooth-bore is really less closely
kin to the strong pleasures so beloved by the hunter who trusts in
horse and rifle than are certain other outdoor pastimes, of the
rougher and hardier kind. Such a pastime is snowshoeing, whether with
webbed rackets, in the vast northern forests, or with skees, on the
bare slopes of the Rockies. Such is mountaineering, especially when
joined with bold exploration of the unknown. Most of our mountains
are of rounded shape, and though climbing them is often hard work, it
is rarely difficult or dangerous, save in bad weather, or after a
snowfall. But there are many of which this is not true; the Tetons, for
instance, and various glacier-bearing peaks in the Northwest; while the
lofty, snow-clad ranges of British Columbia and Alaska offer one of
the finest fields in the world for the daring cragsman. Mountaineering
is among the manliest of sports; and it is to be hoped that some of
our young men with a taste for hard work and adventure among the high
hills will attempt the conquest of these great untrodden mountains of
their own continent. As with all pioneer work, there would be far more
discomfort and danger, far more need to display resolution, hardihood,
and wisdom in such an attempt than in any expedition on wellknown
and historic ground like the Swiss Alps; but the victory would be a
hundred-fold better worth winning.

The dweller or sojourner in the wilderness who most keenly loves and
appreciates his wild surroundings, and all their sights and sounds, is
the man who also loves and appreciates the books which tell of them.

Foremost of all American writers on outdoor life is John Burroughs; and
I can scarcely suppose that any man who cares for existence outside the
cities would willingly be without anything that he has ever written.
To the naturalist, to the observer and lover of nature, he is of course
worth many times more than any closet systematist; and though he has
not been very much in really wild regions, his pages so thrill with the
sights and sounds of outdoor life that nothing by any writer who is
a mere professional scientist or a mere professional hunter can take
their place, or do more than supplement them--for scientist and hunter
alike would do well to remember that before a book can take the highest
rank in any particular line it must also rank high in literature
proper. Of course, for us Americans, Burroughs has a peculiar charm
that he can not have for others, no matter how much they, too, may
like him; for what he writes of is our own, and he calls to our minds
memories and associations that are very dear. His books make us
homesick when we read them in foreign lands; for they spring from our
soil as truly as “Snowbound” or “The Biglow Papers.”[1]

As a woodland writer, Thoreau comes second only to Burroughs.

For natural history in the narrower sense there are still no better
books than Audubon and Bachman’s Mammals and Audubon’s Birds. There are
also good works by men like Coues and Bendire; and if Hart Merriam, of
the Smithsonian, will only do for the mammals of the United States what
he has already done for those of the Adirondacks, we shall have the
best book of its kind in existence. Nor, among less technical writings,
should one overlook such essays as those of Maurice Thompson and Olive
Thorne Miller.

There have been many American hunting-books; but too often they have
been very worthless, even when the writers possessed the necessary
first hand knowledge, and the rare capacity of seeing the truth. Few
of the old-time hunters ever tried to write of what they had seen and
done; and of those who made the effort fewer still succeeded. Innate
refinement and the literary faculty--that is, the faculty of writing a
thoroughly interesting book, full of valuable information--may exist in
uneducated people; but if they do not, no amount of experience in the
field can supply their lack. However, we have had some good works on
the chase and habits of big game, such as Caton’s “Deer and Antelope
of America,” Van Dyke’s “Still-Hunter,” Elliott’s “Carolina Sports,”
and Dodge’s “Hunting Grounds of the Great West,” besides the Century
Company’s “Sport with Rod and Gun.” Then there is Catlin’s book, and
the journals of the explorers from Lewis and Clark down; and occasional
volumes on outdoor life, such as Theodore Winthrop’s “Canoe and
Saddle,” and Clarence King’s “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.”

Two or three of the great writers of American literature, notably
Parkman in his “Oregon Trail,” and, with less interest, Irving in his
“Trip on the Prairies,” have written with power and charm of life in
the American wilderness; but no one has arisen to do for the far
Western plainsman and Rocky Mountain trappers quite what Hermann
Melville did for the South Sea whaling folk in “Omoo” and “Moby Dick.”
The best description of these old-time dwellers among the mountains
and on the plains is to be found in a couple of good volumes by the
Englishman Ruxton. However, the backwoodsmen proper, both in their
forest homes and when they first began to venture out on the prairie,
have been portrayed by a master hand. In a succession of wonderfully
drawn characters, ranging from “Aaron Thousandacres” and “Ishmael
Bush,” Fenimore Cooper has preserved for always the likenesses of these
stark pioneer settlers and backwoods hunters; uncouth, narrow, hard,
suspicious, but with all the virile virtues of a young and masterful
race, a race of mighty breeders, mighty fighters, mighty commonwealth
builders. As for Leather-stocking, he is one of the undying men of
story; grand, simple, kindly, pure-minded, staunchly loyal, the type of
the steel-thewed and iron-willed hunter-warrior.

Turning from the men of fiction to the men of real life, it is worth
noting how many of the leaders among our statesmen and soldiers have
sought strength and pleasure in the chase, or in kindred vigorous
pastimes. Of course field sports, or at least the wilder kinds, which
entail the exercise of daring, and the endurance of toil and hardship,
and which lead men afar into the forests and mountains, stand above
athletic exercises; exactly as among the latter, rugged outdoor games,
like football and lacrosse, are much superior to mere gymnastics and
calisthenics.

With a few exceptions, the men among us who have stood foremost in
political leadership, like their fellows who have led our armies, have
been of stalwart frame and sound bodily health. When they sprang from
the frontier folk, as did Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, they usually
hunted much in their youth, if only as an incident in the prolonged
warfare waged by themselves and their kinsmen against the wild forces
of nature. Old Israel Putnam’s famous wolf-killing feat comes strictly
under this head. Doubtless he greatly enjoyed the excitement of the
adventure; but he went into it as a matter of business, not of sport.
The wolf, the last of its kind in his neighborhood, had taken heavy
toll of the flocks of himself and his friends; when they found the deep
cave in which it had made its den it readily beat off the dogs sent in
to assail it; and so Putnam crept in himself, with his torch and his
flint-lock musket, and shot the beast where it lay.

When such men lived in long settled and thickly peopled regions, they
needs had to accommodate themselves to the conditions and put up
with humbler forms of sport. Webster, like his great rival for Whig
leadership, Henry Clay, cared much for horses, dogs, and guns; but
though an outdoor man he had no chance to develop a love for big-game
hunting. He was, however, very fond of the rod and shotgun. Mr. Cabot
Lodge recently handed me a letter written to his grandfather by
Webster, and describing a day’s trout fishing. It may be worth giving
for the sake of the writer, and because of the fine heartiness and zest
in enjoyment which it shows:

  SANDWICH, June 4,
  Saturday mor’g
  6 o’clock

  DEAR SIR:

  I send you eight or nine trout, which I took yesterday, in that
  chief of all brooks, Mashpee. I made a long day of it, and with good
  success, for me. John was with me, full of good advice, but did not
  fish--nor carry a rod.

    I took 26 trouts, all weighing                   17 lb.  12 oz.
    The largest (you have him) weighed at Crokers     2  ”    4  ”
    The 5 largest                                     3  ”    5  ”
    The eight largest                                11  ”    8  ”

  I got these by following your advice; that is, _by careful &
  thorough_ fishing of the difficult places, which others do not fish.
  The brook is fished, nearly every day. I entered it, not so high up as
  we sometimes do, between 7 & 8 o’clock, & at 12 was hardly more than
  half way down to the meeting-house path. You see I did not hurry. The
  day did not hold out to fish the whole brook properly. The largest
  trout I took at 3 P.M. (you see I am precise) below the meeting-house,
  under a bush on the right bank, two or three rods below the large
  _beeches_. It is singular, that in the whole day, I did not take
  two trouts out of the same hole. I found both ends, or parts of the
  Brook about equally productive. Small fish not plenty, in either. So
  many hooks get everything which is not hid away in the manner large
  trouts take care of themselves. I hooked one, which I suppose to be
  larger than any which I took, as he broke my line, by fair pulling,
  after I had pulled him out of his den, & was playing him in fair open
  water.

  Of what I send you, I pray you keep what you wish yourself, send three
  to Mr. Ticknor, & three to Dr. Warren; or two of the larger ones,
  to each will perhaps be enough--& if there be any left, there is Mr.
  Callender & Mr. Blake, & Mr. Davis, either of them not “averse to
  fish.” Pray let Mr. Davis _see_ them--especially the large one.--As
  he promised to come, & fell back, I desire to excite his regrets. I
  hope you will have the large one on your own table.

  The day was fine--not another hook in the Brook. John steady as a
  judge--and everything else exactly right. I never, on the whole, had so
  agreeable a day’s fishing tho’ the result, in pounds or numbers, is not
  great;--nor ever expect such another.

  Please preserve this letter; but rehearse not these particulars to the
  uninitiated.

  I think the Limerick _not_ the best hook. Whether it pricks too
  soon, or for what other reason, I found or thought I found the fish
  more likely to let go his hold, from this, than from the old-fashioned
  hook.

  YRS.

  D. WEBSTER.

  H. CABOT, ESQ.

The greatest of Americans, Washington, was very fond of hunting,
both with rifle and fowling-piece, and especially with horse, horn,
and hound. Essentially the representative of all that is best in our
national life, standing high as a general, high as a statesman, and
highest of all as a man, he could never have been what he was had he
not taken delight in feats of hardihood, of daring, and of bodily
prowess. He was strongly drawn to those field sports which demand in
their follower the exercise of the manly virtues--courage, endurance,
physical address. As a young man, clad in the distinctive garb of the
backwoodsman, the fringed and tasseled hunting-shirt, he led the life
of a frontier surveyor; and like his fellow adventurers in wilderness
exploration and Indian campaigning, he was often forced to trust to the
long rifle for keeping his party in food. When at his home, at Mount
Vernon, he hunted from simple delight in the sport.

His manuscript diaries, preserved in the State Department at
Washington, are full of entries concerning his feats in the chase;
almost all of them naturally falling in the years between the ending
of the French war and the opening of the Revolutionary struggle
against the British, or else in the period separating his service as
Commander-in-chief of the Continental armies from his term of office as
President of the Republic. These entries are scattered through others
dealing with his daily duties in overseeing his farm and mill, his
attendance at the Virginia House of Burgesses, his journeys, the drill
of the local militia, and all the various interests of his many-sided
life. Fond though he was of hunting, he was wholly incapable of the
career of inanity led by those who make sport, not a manly pastime,
but the one serious business of their lives.

The entries in the diaries are short, and are couched in the homely
vigorous English, so familiar to the readers of Washington’s journals
and private letters. Sometimes they are brief jottings in reference
to shooting trips; such as: “Rid out with my gun”; “went pheasant
hunting”; “went ducking,” and “went a-gunning up the Creek.” But far
more often they are: “Rid out with my hounds,” “went a fox hunting,”
or “went a hunting.” In their perfect simplicity and good faith they
are strongly characteristic of the man. He enters his blank days
and failures as conscientiously as his red-letter days of success:
recording with equal care on one day, “Fox hunting with Captain
Posey--catch a Fox,” and another, “Went a hunting with Lord Fairfax ...
catched nothing.”

Occasionally he began as early as August and continued until April; and
while he sometimes made but eight or ten hunts in a season, at others
he made as many in a month. Often he hunted from Mt. Vernon, going out
once or twice a week, either alone or with a party of his friends and
neighbors; and again he would meet with these same neighbors at one of
their houses, and devote several days solely to the chase. The country
was still very wild, and now and then game was encountered with which
the fox-hounds proved unable to cope; as witness entries like: “found
both a Bear and a Fox, but got neither”; “went a hunting ... started
a Deer & then a Fox but got neither”; and “Went a hunting and after
trailing a fox a good while the Dogs raized a Deer & ran out of the
Neck with it & did not some of them at least come home till the next
day.” If it was a small animal, however, it was soon accounted for.
“Went a Hunting ... catched a Rakoon but never found a fox.”

The woods were so dense and continuous that it was often impossible
for the riders to keep close to the hounds throughout the run; though
in one or two of the best covers, as the journal records, Washington
“directed paths to be cut for Fox Hunting.” This thickness of the
timber made it difficult to keep the hounds always under control; and
there are frequent allusions to their going off on their own account,
as “Joined some dogs that were self hunting.” Sometimes the hounds got
so far away that it was impossible to tell whether they had killed or
not, the journal remarking “catched nothing that we knew of,” or “found
a fox at the head of the blind Pocoson which we suppose was killed in
an hour but could not find it.”

Another result of this density and continuity of cover was the frequent
recurrence of days of ill success. There are many such entries as:
“Went Fox hunting, but started nothing”; “Went a hunting, but catched
nothing”; “found nothing”; “found a Fox and lost it.” Often failure
followed long and hard runs: “Started a Fox, run him four hours, took
the Hounds off at night”; “found a Fox and run it 6 hours and then
lost”; “Went a hunting above Darrells ... found a fox by two dogs but
lost it upon joining the Pack.” In the season of 1772–73 Washington
hunted eighteen days and killed nine foxes; and though there were
seasons when he was out much more often, this proportion of kills
to runs was if anything above the average. At the beginning of 1768
he met with a series of blank days which might well have daunted a
less patient and persevering hunter. In January and the early part of
February he was out nine times without getting a thing; but this diary
does not contain a word of disappointment or surprise, each successive
piece of ill luck being entered without comment, even when one day he
met some more fortunate friends “who had just catched 2 foxes.” At
last, on February 12th, he himself “catched two foxes”; the six or
eight gentlemen of the neighborhood who made up the field all went home
with him to Mt. Vernon, to dine and pass the night, and in the hunt of
the following day they repeated the feat of a double score. In the next
seven days’ hunting he killed four times.

The runs of course varied greatly in length; on one day he “found a
bitch fox at Piney Branch and killed it in an hour”; on another he
“killed a Dog fox after having him on foot three hours & hard running
an hour and a qr.”; and on yet another he “catched a fox with a bobd
Tail & cut ears after 7 hours chase in which most of the Dogs were
worsted.” Sometimes he caught his fox in thirty-five minutes, and
again he might run it nearly the whole day in vain; the average run
seems to have been from an hour and a half to three hours. Sometimes
the entry records merely the barren fact of the run; at others a few
particulars are given, with homespun, telling directness, as: “Went a
hunting with Jacky Custis and catched a Bitch Fox after three hours
chase--founded it on ye. ck. by I. Soals”; or “went a Fox hunting with
Lund Washington--took the drag of a fox by Isaac Gates & carrd. it
tolerably well to the old Glebe then touched now and then upon a cold
scent till we came into Col. Fairfaxes Neck where we found about half
after three upon the Hills just above Accotinck Creek--after running
till quite Dark took off the dogs and came home.”

The foxes were doubtless mostly of the gray kind, and besides going
to holes they treed readily. In January, 1770, he was out seven days,
killing four foxes; and two of the entries in the journal relate to
foxes which treed; one, on the 10th, being, “I went a hunting in the
Neck and visited the plantn. there found and killed a bitch fox after
treeing it 3 t. chasg. it abt. 3 hrs.,” and the other on the 23d: “Went
a hunting after breakfast & found a Fox at muddy hole & killed her (it
being a bitch) after a chase of better than two hours and after treeing
her twice the last of which times she fell dead out of the Tree after
being therein sevl. minutes apparently.” In April, 1769, he hunted four
days, and on every occasion the fox treed. April 7th, “Dog fox killed,
ran an hour & treed twice.” April 11th, “Went a fox hunting and took
a fox alive after running him to a Tree--brot him home.” April 12th,
“Chased the above fox an hour & 45 minutes when he treed again after
which we lost him.” April 13th, “Killed a dog fox after treeing him in
35 minutes.”

Washington continued his fox hunting until, in the spring of 1775, the
guns of the minutemen in Massachusetts called him to the command of
the Revolutionary soldiery. When the eight weary years of campaigning
were over, he said good-by to the war-worn veterans whom he had led
through defeat and disaster to ultimate triumph, and became once more
a Virginia country gentleman. Then he took up his fox-hunting with as
much zest as ever. The entries in his journal are now rather longer,
and go more into detail than formerly. Thus, on December 12th, 1785,
he writes that after an early breakfast he went on a hunt and found
a fox at half after ten, “being first plagued with the dogs running
hogs,” followed on his drag for some time, then ran him hard for an
hour, when there came a fault; but when four dogs which had been thrown
out rejoined the pack they put the fox up afresh, and after fifty
minutes’ run killed him in an open field, “every Rider & every Dog
being present at the Death.” With his usual alternations between days
like this, and days of ill-luck, he hunted steadily every season until
his term of private life again drew to a close and he was called to the
headship of the nation he had so largely helped to found.

In a certain kind of fox-hunting lore there is much reference to a
Warwickshire squire who, when the Parliamentary and Royalist armies
were forming for the battle at Edgehill, was discovered between the
hostile lines, unmovedly drawing the covers for a fox. Now, this placid
sportsman should by rights have been slain offhand by the first trooper
who reached him, whether Cavalier or Roundhead. He had mistaken means
for ends, he had confounded the healthful play which should fit a man
for needful work with the work itself; and mistakes of this kind are
sometimes criminal. Hardy sports of the field offer the best possible
training for war; but they become contemptible when indulged in while
the nation is at death-grips with her enemies.

It was not in Washington’s strong nature to make such an error.
Nor yet, on the other hand, was he likely to undervalue either the
pleasure, or the real worth of outdoor sports. The qualities of heart,
mind and body, which made him delight in the hunting-field, and which
he there exercised and developed, stood him in good stead in many a
long campaign and on many a stricken field; they helped to build that
stern capacity for leadership in war which he showed alike through the
bitter woe of the winter at Valley Forge, on the night when he ferried
his men across the half-frozen Delaware to the overthrow of the German
mercenaries at Trenton, and in the brilliant feat of arms whereof the
outcome was the decisive victory of Yorktown.




ENDNOTE

[1] I am under many obligations to the writings of Mr. Burroughs
(though there are one or two of his theories from which I should
dissent); and there is a piece of indebtedness in this very volume of
which I have only just become aware. In my chapter on the prong-buck
there is a paragraph which will at once suggest to any lover of
Burroughs some sentences in his essay on “Birds and Poets.” I did
not notice the resemblance until happening to reread the essay after
my own chapter was written, and at the time I had no idea that I was
borrowing from anybody, the more so as I was thinking purely of
Western wilderness life and Western wilderness game, with which I knew
Mr. Burroughs had never been familiar. I have concluded to leave the
paragraph in with this acknowledgment.




APPENDIX


In this volume I have avoided repeating what was contained in either of
my former books, the _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_ and _Ranch
Life and the Hunting Trail_. For many details of life and work in
the cattle country I must refer the reader to these two volumes; and
also for more full accounts of the habits and methods of hunting such
game as deer and antelope. As far as I know, the description in my
_Ranch Life_ of the habits and the chase of the mountain-sheep
is the only moderately complete account thereof that has ever been
published. The five game-heads figured in this volume are copied
exactly from the originals, now in my home; the animals were, of
course, shot by myself.

There have been many changes, both in my old hunting-grounds and my old
hunting-friends, since I first followed the chase in the far Western
country. Where the buffalo and the Indian ranged, along the Little
Missouri, the branded herds of the ranchmen now graze; the scene of my
elk-hunt at Two-Ocean Pass is now part of the National Forest Reserve;
settlers and miners have invaded the ground where I killed bear and
moose; and steamers ply on the lonely waters of Kootenai Lake. Of my
hunting companions some are alive; others--among them my staunch and
valued friend, Will Dow, and crabbed, surly old Hank Griffen--are dead;
while yet others have drifted away, and I know not what has become of
them.

I have made no effort to indicate the best kind of camp kit for
hunting, for the excellent reason that it depends so much upon the kind
of trip taken, and upon the circumstances of the person taking it. The
hunting trip may be made with a pack-train, or with a wagon, or with a
canoe, or on foot; and the hunter may have half a dozen attendants, or
he may go absolutely alone. I have myself made trips under all of these
circumstances. At times I have gone with two or three men, several
tents, and an elaborate apparatus for cooking, cases of canned goods,
and the like. On the other hand, I have made trips on horseback, with
nothing whatsoever beyond what I had on, save my oilskin slicker, a
metal cup, and some hardtack, tea, and salt in the saddle pockets;
and I have gone for a week or two’s journey on foot, carrying on my
shoulders my blanket, a frying-pan, some salt, a little flour, a small
chunk of bacon, and a hatchet. So it is with dress. The clothes should
be stout, of a neutral tint; the hat should be soft, without too large
a brim; the shoes heavy, and the soles studded with small nails, save
when moccasins or rubber-soled shoes are worn; but within these limits
there is room for plenty of variation. Avoid, however, the so-called
deer-stalker’s cap, which is an abomination; its peaked brim giving no
protection whatsoever to the eyes when facing the sun quartering, a
position in which many shots must be taken. In very cold regions, fur
coats, caps, and mittens, and all-wool underclothing are necessary. I
dislike rubber boots when they can possibly be avoided. In hunting in
snow in the winter I use the so-called German socks and felt overshoes
where possible. One winter I had an ermine cap made. It was very good
for peeping over the snowy ridge crests when game was on the other
side; but, except when the entire landscape was snow-covered, it was
an unmitigated nuisance. In winter, webbed snowshoes are used in the
thick woods, and skees in the open country.

There is an endless variety of opinion about rifles, and all that can
be said with certainty is that any good modern rifle will do. It is
the man behind the rifle that counts, after the weapon has reached a
certain stage of perfection. One of my friends invariably uses an old
Government Springfield, a 45-calibre, with an ounce bullet. Another
cares for nothing but the 40–90 Sharps’, a weapon for which I myself
have much partiality. Another uses always the old 45-calibre Sharps’,
and yet another the 45-calibre Remington. Two of the best bear and
elk hunters I know prefer the 32 and 38-calibre Marlin’s with long
cartridges, weapons with which I myself would not undertake to produce
any good results. Yet others prefer pieces of very large calibre.

The amount of it is that each one of these guns possesses some
excellence which the others lack, but which is in most cases atoned
for by some corresponding defect. Simplicity of mechanism is very
important, but so is rapidity of fire; and it is hard to get both of
them developed to the highest degree in the same piece. In the same
way, flatness of trajectory, penetration, range, shock, and accuracy
are all qualities which must be attained; but to get one in perfection
usually means the sacrifice of some of the rest. For instance, other
things being equal, the smallest calibre has the greatest penetration,
but gives the least shock; while a very flat trajectory, if acquired by
heavy charges of powder, means the sacrifice of accuracy. Similarly,
solid and hollow pointed bullets have, respectively, their merits and
demerits. There is no use of dogmatizing about weapons. Some which
prove excellent for particular countries and kinds of hunting are
useless in others.

There seems to be no doubt, judging from the testimony of sportsmen
in South Africa and in India, that very heavy calibre double-barreled
rifles are best for use in the dense jungles and against the
thick-hided game of those regions; but they are of very little value
with us. In 1882, one of the buffalo hunters on the Little Missouri
obtained from some Englishman a double-barreled ten-bore rifle of the
kind used against rhinoceros, buffalo, and elephant in the Old World;
but it proved very inferior to the 40 and 45-calibre Sharps’ buffalo
guns when used under the conditions of American buffalo hunting, the
tremendous shock given by the bullet not compensating for the gun’s
great relative deficiency in range and accuracy, while even the
penetration was inferior at ordinary distances. It is largely also a
matter of individual taste. At one time I possessed a very expensive
double-barreled 500 Express, by one of the crack English makers; but
I never liked the gun, and could not do as well with it as with my
repeater, which cost barely a sixth as much. So one day I handed it
to a Scotch friend, who was manifestly ill at ease with a Winchester
exactly like my own. He took to the double-barrel as naturally as I did
to the repeater, and did excellent work with it. Personally, I have
always preferred the Winchester. I now use a 45–90, with my old buffalo
gun, a 40–90 Sharps’, as spare rifle. Both, of course, have specially
tested barrels, and are stocked and sighted to suit myself.


END OF VOLUME TWO




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