KAIBAB GRIZZLY
“I’ve got to turn back, Sid,” gasped Colonel Colvin, as they halted at
the foot of the vast slope that topped the second rim of the canyon
like a house roof. “Climbing up out of here is a job for a young heart;
mine would need half-soling before we’d ever make the rim again!”
From safety holds on tough pinyons that overhung the precipice of the
second rim, they peered down at the chase far below. This second rim
was an ungodly wall, perhaps a thousand feet sheer, and it no doubt cut
a noticeable figure as viewed from El Tovar, where tourists at that
moment were raving in absurd sentimentalities over the canyon. To the
Colonel it meant a terminus, for him, of that particular cougar chase,
for to add its weight to the labors already in store on the climb back
would be foolhardy to one of his age. They watched the tiny black dots
weaving slowly across the lower slope, that must have been the dogs in
hot chase of the cougar, and after them came two oval specks that were
Scotty and Big John as viewed perpendicularly from their height. Then
the whole business disappeared over a ledge and nothing but the baying
of invisible hounds came floating up from the far depths.
Colonel Colvin shook his head. “It’s their meat, Sid. But there’s room
enough in this country for two or three hunts to be going at the same
time. They’ve got the dogs, but we’ve got Niltci, who’s better than a
dog at forest hunting, I’ll warrant. We’ll climb back to the rim and
start something of our own back in the breaks.”
Sid felt that his place was with his father, anyway, and he did not
care much about being a tailender in a hunt that had already distanced
them.
“Shrewd guess of Big John’s that was, Dad,” he replied. “It cut off at
least half a mile for them. If the cat had gone north, along under the
first rim wall, they’d have been out of it instead of us. Let’s ride
back into the gulches and box canyons of the country behind the rim,
and see what we can see.”
They looked up, seeking a place to climb back. A thousand feet above
them towered the rim of rock, dented with columnar pinnacles, crowned
with dwarfed pines that they knew were themselves at least a hundred
feet high. The Colonel was winded and panting before they had climbed
for fifteen minutes. The crumbly soil slid down underfoot; even
zigzagging was slow and laborious toil,--not at all eased by ledge
after ledge of rock outcroppings that called for hands, knees and feet
to scramble up them. Niltci and Sid pulled and pushed the Colonel up,
but an hour of dizzy, sweating work had gone by and all were spitting
cotton before they stood at the base of the rim rock precipice.
Five hundred feet sheer it rose above them. For comparison Sid imagined
that if he were looking up the Woolworth building to its very top and
if, at the same time, he were standing on a narrow shelf of yellow and
rotten rock with a slope three times as deep below, ending in blue
nothingness--he would have some of the sensations that now overcame
him as he looked up for some possible chimney up which to climb and
wondered how they were ever going to get his father up it if they
did find one. If he could only manage to stand off from this thing a
little, so as to get some idea of its surface, it would be easy to find
the break in the rim where they had come down. Which way did it lie,
north or south? They discussed it, finally yielding to Niltci, who was
sure that it lay north.
Along under the rim wall they crept. The narrow path was worn deep with
cougar tracks. It was a regular runway for them, for they lived down
here in the canyon and came over the rim at night to hunt in the deer
and wild horse country of the hinterland. At any point they might come
upon a cougar cave, here, and the Colonel, who was in advance, never
passed around a pinnacle base without stepping warily, with his rifle
poised for instant use.
“By George, Niltci, you’re wrong--we should have turned south!” barked
out Sid after perhaps half an hour of this gingerly progress. “Look at
these young Matterhorns coming up out of the canyon below us! I never
noticed them before!”
The party stopped to take bearings. Certainly the lookout was new and
unfamiliar. The canyon jutted out here in a great cape, and on its
slope Nature had dropped, casually, three or four red and yellow
mountains that rose below like pyramids. Anywhere else they would be
objects of wonder and bear grandiloquent names.
But Niltci shook his head vigorously and led on without a word. The rim
cliff ended abruptly a little further on in a huge tower of stone, and,
rounding it, they found themselves in a vast amphitheater, a mile deep,
and a mile across a valley of illimitable depths to its opposite point.
All around it the cliffs rose sheer. Surely they never came down here!
Niltci had to acknowledge that much, himself, but instead of turning
back to retrace their steps he grunted impetuously and led them on,
following the rim into that enormous basin.
“Aw, rats!--what’s the use, Niltci, you’re crazy!” exploded Sid, as
both he and the Colonel balked at going any further. For answer the
Indian boy pointed to a thin fissure that cleft the rim from top nearly
to bottom, up near the head of the basin. It was about half a mile
away. How Niltci could know that that crevice could be practicable for
ascent, Sid could not conjecture, but the red men were wise in the ways
of Nature, so he followed on, albeit incredulously. But he had no idea
what impassable obstacle might await them to the south if they turned
back. This, at least, looked possible!
Arrived at it, they peered up to where the last of it ended in a
broken, jagged path, showing where water had come down during the
rains. For fifty feet this rose up the cliff,--an absurd trail for
anything but a fly to attempt; then began the in-cutting of the fissure.
Niltci started up it, amid a howl of protest from Sid and the Colonel.
Like a creeping cat the Indian lad climbed steadily up until he had
reached the fissure, where he turned with a whoop of triumph.
“Wow! We can’t let him get away with that, Father!” chuckled Sid. “Shut
your eyes and climb! Forget mother, forget your insurance, and all the
rest of it--it’s the only way!--I’ll be right behind you.”
The Colonel groaned, whimsically, and started up. Niltci came down
again by some incredible feat of legerdemain--as they looked back
upon that climb afterwards--and gave him a strong lift over the worst
places, and so they all reached the bottom of the fissure. It was dark
and gloomy, and it curved around a bend above, so that they had no idea
how it was all going to turn out--most likely in some sheer wall,
thought Sid. But the only way to get over these things was to go ahead
and do them, so they climbed up into it. Part of the time Niltci was
straddling both walls of it; part of the climb crawling up vertical
ledges higher than his head. The curve mercifully hid from them the
frightful depths below, should anyone fall. It grew better, once around
it, cutting deeper and deeper into the rim wall and becoming less and
less vertical. Masses of pine roots fringed it overhead, and finally
their feet found a narrow bottom of yellow, crumbled rocks, which led
up in a steep slant to the forest above.
“Great work, Niltci! That’s mountaineering for you!” laughed the
Colonel as they dropped panting on the forest duff. “I suppose you
could visualize this whole water crack, having once seen the fissure in
the rim wall, eh?”
Niltci grunted happily. He had no idea what that speech was all about,
but evidently his adored Lord Colonel was pleased! Sid rejoined them, a
moment later, and all sat and looked ruefully at their clothing. Their
bleeding knees peeped through frayed and torn riding breeches, their
buckskin gloves were out at the fingers; Sid had a scraped thigh, caked
with blood; all the uppers of their cruiser moccasins gapped open in
rent seams. Niltci, in his light cottons and buckskin leggings, seemed
the least frazzled of the three, but his bare toes poked out from thin
moccasins worn through on the rocks. It was half an hour before the
Colonel sat up again.
“And now, where are we?” he queried, briskly. “We’ve got all the rest
of the day, so we’ll find the horses and go hang up a buck for camp
meat.”
They all rose and started off through the forest. A short walk through
the high pines that covered the plateau brought the blue haze beyond,
of the canyon again, and presently they came out on a rock pinnacle
that commanded the whole prospect below. A sheer fall about a thousand
feet lay below them. Beyond that smoky, purple depths showed beyond
over the second rim.
“The place where we came down must lie to the west of here, boys,”
declared the Colonel. “Big John and Scotty are somewhere down in this
valley--they’ll be all day getting back! We’ll start west for another
look-see.”
A second outlook from another point showed them the steep slope down
which they had first come. Up in the ravine at the head of it would be
the horses, for there they had first started the cougar. Soon they
were in it and had remounted.
“Sore and tattered, but still in the game!” ejaculated the Colonel as
he put spurs to the roan and led back up the ravine into the hinterland.
Back in here they found the huge flanks of Buckskin all cut up with
rocky glades grown up with yellow pines, and gulches which led to high,
walled canyons, all leading out to a discharge into the Grand Canyon,
somewhere. Great pines grew heavily in the swales. It was a wonderful,
rich, plentiful game country! Again and again Niltci grunted, to point
down at deer tracks, wolf tracks, and the round hoof-prints of wild
horses, and there seemed to be a cougar after every deer, judging from
their frequent footprints!
“Hist!” called the Colonel, suddenly, stooping down to whip out his .35
from its scabbard. The bushes shook, up in a densely grown ravine that
lost itself somewhere in the upper flanks of the mountain. Gray shapes
bounded across it, stiff-legged, flashing into sight occasionally, to
disappear as quickly.
The Colonel’s rifle barked, followed by Sid’s. One of the gray shapes
plunged, and there was a mad scramble in the timber. They were mule
deer, a whole drove of them! Sid fired at another, running bewilderedly
up a bush-strewn slope in full flight. Then all was still again.
“I nailed mine,” said the Colonel. “We’ll wait a while. Once he lies
down he’ll never get up.--Lord, boys, there must have been thirty in
that drove!”
He got out his pipe and lit it, while the horses switched flies
patiently. Then Niltci, who had been scouting through the bush, called
to them with a low grunt of eagerness. There seemed to be suppressed
excitement in it, too, and the tones of his voice thrilled Sid with
a nameless feeling as he urged his horse over to where Niltci stood,
pointing down at the track.
“Come over here, Father--for the love of Pete, look!” called Sid,
tingling with shivery sensations as he looked down from his horse at
a deep hollow in the needles, over which Niltci still stood, his wild
eyes snapping meaningly.
The Colonel came over and halted his horse. The track looked as if
someone had set down a long oval bowl there. It was all of fourteen
inches long, and the foot that made it had borne down so heavily that
a trilobed palm and the five toeprints, huddled together like a human
foot, were distinctly visible. And such toes! Each one was the size of
two human thumbs laid down together! Some distance beyond each was a
long, pointed gash in the soil at least five inches from base to tip,
the claw marks, all heading together.
“Good Lord! That’s more than a grizzly, Sid!” ejaculated the Colonel
after studying it awhile. “I tell you what!--in the old days we used to
have the giant yellow grizzly of California, a whale of a brute. He’d
carry off a whole horse, and many’s the cowman who has been suddenly
charged by one from ambush. The old boy wanted the horse, but he didn’t
mind fetching its rider a swipe, incidentally, that knocked him into
kingdom come. A .45-90,--even the old Sharps .45-105 with the 550-grain
bullet--never fazed him. That tribe of grizzlies has been extinct since
the early ’90’s in California, boys, but I’ll miss my guess if here
isn’t one! First track like this I’ve seen in thirty years. Here, if
anywhere, there’d be a few survivors. He’s my meat, Sid! You got old
Ring-Neck, up in Montana; this bird is _mine_!” declared the old Indian
fighter, his eyes flashing. “How old is that track, Niltci?”
The Indian boy knelt down and smelled it for some time. Then he raised
his head and held up one finger.
“One day, eh? It’s a good thing we got two bucks, Sid. We’ll get one of
them out of here for camp meat and leave the other for bait.”
Niltci pointed silently into the bush ahead of him. Here was another
deep footprint, and, sighting along it, a dim line of them led up the
ravine flank. They followed slowly on the horses, who were shivering
and plunging violently, for even up to their nostrils had come that
faint grizzly odor that a horse fears above all other things. Up on
the ridge the track crossed bare rock, and on a little sandy spot a
huge track lay, a beautiful print, like an enormous, flat, stubby hand
with long, sharp, in-pointing nails for fingers. Beyond the ridge lay a
hideous gulch, a bad-land, all bowlders and scraggly pinyons, twisting
and writhing among the rocks in weird contortions. It would invite a
broken foreleg to attempt to work the horses in there.
“No use following him any further,” said Colonel Colvin as they reined
up to look it over. “We’d only leave our own scent around,--though I
doubt if _he’d_ care any! We’ll go get the bucks.”
They retraced their way and went up on the hill. The Colonel’s buck lay
some fifty feet from where he had been hit, his double-Y antlers and
black crown proclaiming him a mule deer. Sid’s lay further up in the
bush and was a mere spikehorn.
“He’ll do fine for camp meat, though. Get him up, Sid; we’ll paunch
him somewhere away from here. The old yellow grizzly may clear out, if
there’s too much human sign around, but still, mighty few people ever
hunt this country and he _may_ have that bad temper of the old-timers.”
He halted his horse and looked over the scene, planning where to locate
his ambush and the probable course of the charge and battle that would
surely ensue if the first shot from the .35 did not prove mortal. Sid
and Niltci got up the buck and tied its legs to the saddle thongs.
Then they all rode back to camp, silent, subdued, thinking over that
twilight vigil of the Colonel’s by the bait, to come.
After rustling a meal, all three went out to the rim rock to await
the return of Scotty and Big John. It was nearly sunset before they
heard voices below, and then Big John’s sombrero--what was left of
it--appeared over the rim. His face was caked with dirt, bloody, and
streaked with sweat lines.
“Shore I ain’t got enough clothes left on me to flag a tote-train!” he
grinned, spitting the dust out of a grimy mouth as he turned to haul on
a bundle below him. “Hyar’s yore cat skin--I needs another skin myself,
b’gosh! Anyone which same wants a kitty out’n that canyon kin go an’
get him, an’ keep right on goin’!--_Thar!_”--he gave the rope a final
haul and sat down on the brim with a mighty “_Whoosh!_” of relief.
Scotty came up, pushing behind the bundle. He hadn’t a word, but an
unconquerable grin beamed out of his eyes. He flopped down on the
needles, and after him struggled Ruler, to lie down with his long, red
tongue hanging out and his sides panting. Pepper crawled over the rim
in his wake and curled up in a doggy heap of legs and ears, licking
morosely at various red wounds that gashed his sides and thighs. The
other two pups were yelping disconsolately at the foot of the slide and
Sid and Niltci sprang down to carry them up.
“Whoosh! That was reg’lar Bronx Park huntin’, I’ll say!” exclaimed Big
John, yawning, with a mighty stretch of his arms. “Where in thunder was
you-all? Scotty, here, got him.”
Sid grinned as he looked over the ragged assembly. Scotty was a sight!
He was covered with yellow dirt from head to foot; his breeches were
split wide open and a jagged red cut showed on his thigh. Big John’s
knees were bloody, with the fringes of his home-spuns encircling them
like whiskers. Ruler licked steadily at a great red tear on his thigh
where the skin hung open like a small hairy tent flap, and shook his
ears continually as they dripped blood from long slits in them.
“Father couldn’t make it, boys,” he explained. “It takes a heart like a
hunk of sole leather to attempt the canyon. He was wise to stay out. We
turned back at the first rim, when you fellows and the dogs went over
the second. We’ve got a buck hanging up in camp.”
“Roast her whole, boys,--I could eat a rhinoc’ros raw!” gaped Big John.
“We’ve been climbin’ since ten o’clock ’smornin’. Lucky I thought to
take my rope down with me. We had to haul them dawgs up the chutes, one
at a time.”
Sid and Niltci picked up the cougar skin and the whole party started
for camp. An hour later a monumental mulligan, compounded of cougar
chunks, spuds, onions, peas, tomatoes and macaroni, boiled in an
eight-quart pail, was served. Big John and Scotty were still prodding
into the bottom of it with their spoons when Sid and Niltci sat back
utterly stuffed. The Colonel had long since departed for his lonely
vigil near the buck carcass, awaiting the coming of the Yellow Grizzly.
They stretched out the cougar skin and measured it--nine feet two
inches, with three feet six of tail--but could get nothing but
uninterested grunts from those two, who still scooped in the mulligan
pail for more. Then Scotty and Big John rolled over without a further
word and fell sound asleep where they lay.
It was broad daylight when Sid awoke again, and the sun must have been
ten o’clock high. The Colonel had not returned. Scotty and Big John
slept heavily, for Nature had a lot of fixing up to do on them yet.
Niltci was gone. Sid hoped that he had tracked his father to the rocky
gulch, for he felt mighty uneasy about that great yellow bear of the
fourteen-inch track, with only a lone hunter to face him. All he had
ever read about the California Silver-Tip came to mind. The largest one
ever measured weighed 1,150 pounds and was nine feet from nose to tail
and over ten feet across the fore paws. That was as large as any Alaska
brown bear, yet with the ferociousness and agility of the grizzly to
back all that weight and strength. The Black Panther would be a mere
kitten compared to this brute! The average Bengal tiger weighed 340
pounds and would go something over eleven feet; the largest cougar was
under three hundred pounds. Even the Black Panther would not reach over
three hundred, judging from the skin of the cat Scotty had killed. The
Yellow Grizzly was three times as big as any of them, and quite as
active and ferocious. He doubted whether the .35 was rifle enough to
stop him.
Sid had about decided to take Scotty’s .405 and try to ride to the
gulch to see what had happened, when he looked up, to see a Navaho
Indian standing silently before him. The man’s face looked somehow
familiar. Sid thought he recognized him as one of the bucks at the Fire
Dance, as the red man held out a grimy envelope and proffered it with a
bronzed and friendly smile.
Sid tore it open, although it was addressed to Colonel Colvin.
“DEAR COLONEL [it read]:
“All halleluiah has broken loose in wagon loads, here. I hate to send
for the Agent, and perhaps get out a troop of soldiers, but I’ll
have to do it if it gets much worse. The Indians have spirited old
Neyani off somewhere, and I reckon they’ll make a sacrifice of him
to appease Dsilyi in spite of all I can do for him. I found a wild
story about the Black Panther having taken Niltci, the boy, when I
got here. You had left for the Canyon, but the Panther came back
only a few nights later and took another sheep from Neyani’s corral.
You can understand how the Indians took that! They wanted to wipe
out Neyani’s whole family. If I had dogs I’d track that confounded
cougar and do away with him, somehow, but I can’t lay for him and
shoot him here or my influence over these redskins would be gone
forever. If you can break your hunt to come over here with the dogs I
would be eternally grateful. Meet me in Canyon Cheyo, near the mouth
of Monument Canyon, which is a good landmark. I’ll be there, and
we’ll put something over on this superstitious bunch of redskins. I
declare, I lose all patience with them sometimes!
“Yours in haste,
“J. F. HINCHMAN, Maj. U. S. A. Ret’d.”
Sid made up his mind at once. It was necessary to get rid of the Indian
runner, first, so that their movements could be made unwatched by
the Navaho. He went to his tent and tore a fly leaf out of a small
leather notebook in his tent wall pocket. He wrote a brief message that
they were coming, rolled it small, and slipped it into an empty rifle
cartridge. Corking it with a bit of pine, he returned to hand it to the
runner.
“You take, White Father Hinch,” he ordered. “Pronto! Savvy? You got
meat and oats?”
The Indian shook his head, pointing to the small bag of meal at his
loin cloth. Sid cut him a flank from the buck, gave him a bag of oats
and a handful of cartridges for a present, and sent him on his way.
Then he saddled Pinto and rode toward the gulch, leaving Scotty and Big
John still snoring in camp.
He rode along the flanks of Buckskin, trying hard to remember the lay
of the ravines, even though he had passed through them twice before. It
was not easy. Several times he was sure he was lost, but each time some
familiar tree or rock formation reassured him and he rode on. When he
finally reached their ravine he was not sure of it, even then. Scraggly
pinyons covered its rocky slopes, but there were dozens of others just
like it, and there was absolutely nothing living to be seen in it. But,
as for men or animals, what are they in Nature’s vast landscapes,
where half a mile of verdure is tilted up as a mere wrinkle in one of
her mountains! Buckskin was twenty miles long, a straight knife-edge
as seen from across the canyon, cloud-covered, dim, and distant, as
inaccessible to the traveling world as the North Pole, and it had
hundreds of ravines like this.
Sid halted his pony, looking down into the ravine with half a mind to
push on further. Then a sort of break in the pinyons attracted his eye.
That was not natural; something lay there! He rode over to it, and long
before he reached it a great brown mass of fur appeared dimly, huddled
up in a mass of tough, craggy trees that had been broken off like
jackstraws. He dismounted and walked over to it with rifle at ready,
for by no urging would Pinto come a step nearer. The brown mass did not
move as he climbed through the crags toward it.
A shiver went through Sid. Why, this was the place the Colonel had
chosen for his hide! It was a hundred yards from where the buck lay,
down hill, there, on the ravine flank! Then he got sight of the
animal’s head. Big as a brown bowlder it was, with incurved snout-bone
doubled up on a great beard of furry whiskers. The great round ears
were erect, but the eyes were closed and a streak of blood ran from
under long, glistening tushes still bared in the snarl of death. It
was the Yellow Grizzly, Sid realized--but _where_ was his father! He
stood looking over the carcass and peering about through the pinyons,
fearfully. There were cakes of matted blood all over the long hair on
the bear’s chest, and great cavities where the bullets had come out on
the other side, and there in that side was a knife, still buried to the
hilt--Niltci’s!
Sid looked around, bewildered. The pines were all torn and mangled
about him. There had been a terrific fight, here!
Then a feebly cry electrified him. “Water!” it called, more a moan than
an articulate voice.
Sid rushed over. Down in a pit of bowlders he saw the brown khaki-clad
back of a man, lying face downward doubled up on his side. Those broad
shoulders could be none other than his father’s, the boy realized, as
he scrambled toward the spot with sobs of anguish welling up in him.
Gently he turned him over, and sat him up in a more comfortable
position. Down the Colonel’s side, from his shoulder to knee, he saw
a frightful row of red marks, as if some set of steel cultivator
hooks had gouged its way there. The rocks around were all red, and the
Colonel’s clothing was soaked and dripping.
But the old warrior’s eyes opened and looked at him steadfastly as Sid
slipped his arm tenderly behind his head, calling to him softly, the
tears raining down his cheeks. He motioned for water. Sid nodded and
raced to where he had tied Pinto. Ripping off the canteen from the
saddle hook, he dashed back and held its life-giving stream to Colonel
Colvin’s lips. Then he set about bandaging his claw wounds.
“Better now, Father?” asked Sid, tremulously, as he finished.
The Colonel opened his eyes again. “Niltci!” he gasped, waving his arm
feebly. “Don’t mind me--now.”
Sid rested him back, comfortably, and set out in the direction the
Colonel had indicated, searching the bowlders under the low pinyons.
Fifty feet further on, he made out a white cotton shirt lying under the
shade of a scraggy pine. One buckskinned leg was drawn up in the act of
creeping; the other lay limp and was red with blood.
“Gosh,--that boy would have crawled all the way to camp for help,
if he hadn’t fainted!” exclaimed Sid, as he rushed to him with his
canteen. “I need all kinds of help, here! It’s time I fired our signal.”
Niltci came to and grabbed at the canteen, his eyes speaking volumes
as he drank. Sid looked around. A glint of blue steel caught his eye.
It was the Colonel’s .35--with its stock smashed off close behind
the lever. Its magazine was empty, and he dared not move the Colonel
again to take more cartridges from his belt. He ran over to the bear’s
carcass, grabbed up his own Army .30, and raised it to the sky.
“_Bang! Bang! Bang!--Bang!_” whipped out its sharp report.