breakfast. The bread was taken out of the bake-kettle and the trout put
in to plump up in their own steam over the coals. The coffee smelled
deliciously in the sweet, cold air. The broiled ham was welcome,
even after a first course of trout, and Jack was good for a third
of bread and honey. He could use his fingers and wipe up the honey
with the broken bread until his tin plate shone, not to speak of his
countenance, and nobody observed him except to smile.
But something had happened that morning besides breakfast. Mr. Dane had
lost a tremendous trout, after playing him a long time and tiring him
out. He had been fishing from a rock, with deep water all around him.
The big fish seemed quite still and tame as he was drawn in, but as his
tail touched the rock, with a frantic rebound he made one last plunge
for the water and got off. If there had been but a beach to land him on!
Then, a man had been shot the evening before at Atlanta, the big
mining-camp of the Saw-tooth range; and another man riding a tired
horse had passed the camp at daybreak, on his way to Boise for a
surgeon. The horse he had started with from Atlanta had given out about
twenty miles from that place; he had walked ten or fifteen miles along
the mountain trail in the darkness before he could get another horse.
He wished to change this for one of the horses from the fishing-camp,
but they were back on the bluffs and he concluded to go on and change
at Gillespie’s. He had traveled about fifty miles that night, on
horseback and on foot, over a trail that some of us would not enjoy
riding over by daylight.
His wife and their young child were at his horse-ranch away back on
the hills, alone, except for some of the cowboys. He had gone up to
Atlanta to attend the ball. The man who had been shot was a stranger to
him,--had a brother in Boise, he believed. He had breathed his horse a
moment while he talked to John and took a bite of something to eat, and
then went on his way.
It was strange to think that all this was part of those dark hours of
the night that had passed so peacefully to the sleepers on the river
beach,--the miners’ ball, the shooting, the night ride in haste, the
wife waiting at the lonely ranch in the hills for her husband’s return.
The day passed with fishing and sketching and eating, and beauty of
sunlight and shadow on rocks and trees and river.
Brown had built a table and placed boxes around it for seats. The
gray rock fireplace had got well blackened, and the camp had taken on
a homelike look. Jack had gone for a glorious walk up the trail with
Brown, to see if the fence on the bluffs was all right, and if there
was a way down to the river from the bluffs by which the horses could
go down to drink. There was one, a rather obscure way; but Billy was
clever, and Pete was a “rustler,” and Mrs. O’Dowd could be relied upon
to follow the lead of her betters. But they did not seem to be eating,
and Jack fancied they looked homesick in their high pasture, as if the
scenery did not console them for being sent off so far from camp.
That second day Mr. Gilmour went fishing alone down the river. John
was gathering firewood; the boy and his mother were in the tent; Mr.
Dane sat in the doorway, tending a little fire he had made outside, and
reading aloud, while Mrs. Gilmour made a languid sketch of him, in his
red-hooded blanket robe. Mr. Dane was the first to hear a shout from
down the river. He threw off the red robe, seized a rifle, and ran down
the shore in the direction Mr. Gilmour had taken. The shout meant, to
him, game of a kind that could not be tackled with a fly-rod.
In a moment or two he came running back for more cartridges. Mr.
Gilmour had met a black bear, and they were going after him. John
followed with the axe. Some time passed, but no shots were heard. At
last the men came back, warm and merry, though disappointed of their
game. The bear had got away. It was tantalizing to think how fat and
sleek he must have been, after his summer in the mountains. There would
be no bear-steaks for supper that night, and no glossy dark skin to
carry back in triumph to the home camp and spread before next winter’s
hearth wherever the house-fires might be lighted.
Mr. Gilmour had been walking down the trail when he saw the bear ahead
of him, crossing the high flat toward the trail and making straight
for the river. If both had continued to advance, there would have been
a meeting, and as Mr. Gilmour was armed only with a fly-rod and a
pistol, he preferred the meeting should be postponed. Then he stopped
and shouted for Dane. The bear came on, and Mr. Gilmour fell back,
leisurely, he said, toward camp. He did not care to bring his game in
alive, he said, without giving the camp due warning, so he shouted
again. It was the second shout Dane had heard. The way of his retreat
led him down into a little gulch, where he lost sight of the bear.
It did not take very long to tell the story of the hunt, and then Mr.
Gilmour went back to his fishing. The sun came out. The fire in front
of the tent was a heap of smoking ashes; the magazine story palled; the
sketch was pronounced not worth finishing; and then the pack-train for
Atlanta came tinkling and shuffling down the trail. Fourteen sleek,
handsome mules, with crisp, clipped manes, like the little Greek horses
on ancient friezes, passed in single file between a man riding ahead
on the “bell-mare,” and another bringing up the rear of the train,
swinging his leathern “blind” as he rode. This one was the man from
Turner’s. He had met Mr. Gilmour farther down the river, and heard the
story about the bear, and offered to leave his dog, which he said was
a good bear-dog. But the dog wouldn’t be left, and so the picturesque
freight-train went its way, under the Indian’s rock, and up the steep
climb beyond. High above the river they could be seen, footing with
neat steps the winding trail, their packs swinging and shuffling with
a sidelong motion, in time to the regular pace, while the bell sounded
fainter and fainter.
Bear stories were told by the camp-fire that night; and Mr. Dane slept
with his rifle handy, and John with an axe. John said he was a better
shot with an axe than with a rifle. Jack thought he should dream of
bears, but he didn’t. The next morning he went with John Brown up to
the high pasture to bring down one of the horses. Brown was to ride
down to Gillespie’s and make sure of transportation for the party home,
the next day but one.
Jack had the happiness of riding Billy barebacked down the trail,
following John on Pete, Mrs. O’Dowd, as usual, in the rear. Mr. Gilmour
was surprised to see all the animals coming down, and he noticed at
once how hollow and drooping the horses looked. John explained that
they had evidently not been able to find the trail leading down to the
river, and had been without water all the time they had been kept
upon the bluffs. He could see by their tracks where they had wandered
back and forth along the edge of the bluffs, seeking a way down. How
glad they must have been of that deep draught from the river, that
had mocked them so long with the sound of its waters! No one liked to
find fault with Brown, who was faithful and tender-hearted; and it was
stupid of horses, used to the range, not to have gone back from the
bluffs and followed the fence until they found the outlet to the river.
They quickly revived with water and food, which they could once more
enjoy now that their long thirst was quenched. Brown rode Pete down to
Gillespie’s, and returned in the afternoon with word that Mr. Gillespie
himself would come for the party on Saturday, with the outfit required.
The evening was cool and cloudy; twilight came on early, and Brown
cooked supper with the whole family gathered around his fire, hungrily
watching him. There was light enough from the fire, mingled with the
wan twilight on the beach, by which to eat supper. John was filling
the tin cups with coffee, when horses’ feet were heard coming down
the trail from the direction of Boise. A man on a gray horse stopped
under the Indian’s rock and looking down on the group on the beach
below asked what was “the show for a bite of something to eat.” He was
invited to share what there was, and throwing the bridle loose on his
horse’s neck he dropped out of the saddle and joined the party at the
table.
He was the man from Atlanta, returning from his errand to Boise. No
doctor had been willing to go up from Boise, so he said, and the
friends of the wounded man had telegraphed to C--, and a doctor had
gone across from there. The messenger had stayed over a day in Boise to
rest, and was now on his way home to his ranch in the hills. He gave
the details of the shooting,--the usual details, received with the
usual comments and speculations as to the wounded man’s recovery,--then
the talk turned upon sport, and bear stories and fish stories were in
order. The man from Atlanta knew what good hunting was, from his own
account. He told how he had struck a bear track about as big as a man’s
hand in the woods and followed it some distance, thinking it was “about
his size,” and all of a sudden he had come upon a fresh track about as
big--he picked up the cover of the bake-kettle--“as big as that.” Then
he turned around and came home. It was suggested (after the man from
Atlanta had gone) that the big track he saw was where the bear had _sat
down_.
It was now deep dusk in the woods; only the latest and palest sky
gleams touched the water. The stranger included the entire party in
his cordial invitation to stop at his place if they ever got so far up
the river, mounted his horse and quickly disappeared up the trail. He
expected to reach his home some time that night.
The next day was the last in camp. It was still gray, cold weather, and
the tent among the pine-trees looked inviting, with a suggestion of a
fire outside; but there were sketches to be finished and last walks to
be taken and a big mess of trout to be caught to take home. Jack had
a little enterprise of his own to complete,--the filling of a tin can
Brown had given him with melted pine gum, which hardened into clear,
solid resin. The can was nearly full, and Jack had various experiments
in his mind which he intended to try with it on his return. Brown had
told him it would make an excellent boot-grease mixed with tallow--and
if he _should_ want to make a pair of Norwegian snowshoes next winter,
it would be just the thing to rub on the bottom of the wood to make it
slip easily over the snow.
Brown was going back on the hills to try to get some grouse and the boy
was allowed to go with him. They tramped off together, and the walk was
one of the memorable ones in Jack’s experience; but Jack’s mother would
not have been so contented in his absence, had she known they were
coming home by way of Deer Gulch, one of the most likely places in the
neighborhood of the camp for a meeting with a bear.
Mr. Gilmour was the enthusiast about fishing, and so it happened that
Mr. Dane was generally the one to stay about camp if John were off
duty. The fishing should have been good, but it was not, partly because
the Chinese placer-miners on the river had a practice of emptying the
deep pools of trout by means of giant-powder, destroying a hundred
times as many fish as they ate. The glorious fishing was higher up the
river and in its tributaries, the mountain streams. However, not a day
had passed without one meal of trout at least, and many of the fish
were of great size, and an enthusiast like Mr. Gilmour cares for the
sport, not for the fish!
The last camp-fire, Jack thought, was the best one of all; it was built
farther down the beach, since a change of wind had made the corner by
the rock fireplace uncomfortable. A big log, rolled up near the fire on
its wind-ward side, made an excellent settle-back, the seat of which
was the sand with blankets spread over it. The company sat in a row
facing the fire, and Mrs. Gilmour was provided with a tin plate for a
hand-screen. Perhaps they all were rather glad they were going home
to-morrow. Mrs. Gilmour wanted to see Polly, the sand floor of the tent
was getting lumpy, and they all were beginning to long for the wider
outlook and the fuller life of the home camp at headquarters. Beautiful
as the great pine-trees, the sheltered beach, and the shadows on the
water had looked to them after their long, hot ride over the mountain
trail, there were always the granite cliff on one side and the lava
bluffs on the other, and no far-off lines for the eye to rest upon.
People who have lived in places where there is a great deal of sky and
a wide horizon are never long contented in nooks and corners of the
earth, however lovely their detail may be.
At all events, the talk was gayer that last night by the camp-fire
than any night except the first one of their stay. At last one of
the company--the smallest one--slid quietly out of sight among the
blankets, and no more was heard of him until the time came to dig him
out, and restore him to consciousness.
After Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour and Jack--poor little sleepy Jack--had gone
down the shore to their tent, Mr. Dane and Brown rolled the log settle
upon the fire. It burned all night, and there were brands left with
which to light the kitchen fire.
Breakfast was a sort of “clean-up,” as the miners say. The last of the
ham, the last of the honey, one trout, left over from last night’s
supper which the company quarreled about, each in turn refusing
it,--even Jack, who seldom refused anything in the eating line,--and
leaving it finally for John, who perhaps suspecting there was something
wrong with it threw it out upon the beach.
After breakfast everybody fell to packing, except Jack, who roamed
around, with his leggings and his one spur on, watching for Mr.
Gillespie and the animals.
Mrs. Gilmour had finished her small share of the packing, and with Jack
climbed up among the rocks in the shadow of the cliff. Mr. Gillespie
had arrived and on the beach below he and Brown were loading the
pack-horse with the camp stuff.
The two boxes in which the kitchen was packed went up first, one on
each side of the pack-saddle, set astride the horse’s back, and in
shape something like a saw-horse. The boxes were balanced and made fast
with ropes. The roll of blankets filled the space between them; an axe
was poked in, or a fishing-pole protruded from the heap; more blankets
went up, then the tent was spread over all and the load securely roped
into place,--Mr. Gillespie and Brown, one on either side, pulling
against each other, and the patient old horse being squeezed between.
Mr. Gillespie had brought the usual “lady’s animal” for Mrs. Gilmour to
ride which, in the West always means an article of horseflesh which no
man would care to bestride, but on which it will do to “pack” women and
children about.
The chief event of the journey home was the fording of the river, once
above Gillespie’s and once below, thus avoiding the highest and hottest
part of the trail which they would pass at midday. Neither Jack nor his
mother had ever forded a stream on horseback before. The sun was high,
the breeze was strong, the river bright and noisy. Giddily rippling and
sparkling, it rushed past the low willows along its shore.
Mrs. O’Dowd was whacked into her place in the line between Billy and
the lady’s animal, and kept her feet, if not her temper. And so, in due
time, they arrived at the home ford and the ferry.
Brown and Mr. Gillespie took the animals across the ford, but the
others were glad to exchange the saddle for the boat. Polly, in a
fresh, white frock, with her hair blown over her cheeks, was watching
from the hilltop, and came flying down the trail to meet them. Every
one said how Polly had grown, and how fair she looked--and the house,
which they called a camp for its rudeness, looked quite splendid with
its lamps and books and curtains, to the sunburnt, dusty, _real_
campers; and as Jack said, it did seem good to sit in a chair again. It
was noticeable, however, that Jack sat lightly in chairs for several
days after the ride home; but he had not flinched nor whined, and
everybody acknowledged that he had won his single spur fairly well for
an eight-year-old.
[1] Poisoned meat was laid near the chicken-house one night after
the coyotes had carried off some fine young Plymouth Rocks (with a
baleful instinct they always picked out the best of the fowls), and was
eaten by them. Two of the robbers were found next day, dead, by the
irrigation ditch, where they had crept to quench their thirst, and one
was afterward seen, from time to time, in the sage-brush, a hairless
spectre. The coyote mothers no doubt told their babies of this gruesome
outcast as a warning, not against chicken-stealing, which must be one
of the coyote virtues, but against poison and other desperate arts of
man.
A VISIT TO JOHN’S CAMP
John Brown had concluded to “quit work and go to mining.” Not that
mining is not work; but a man doesn’t get so tired working for himself,
choosing his own hours and resting when he pleases, as he does working
in another man’s time. It is like picking tame blackberries inside the
garden fence for the family table, and picking wild blackberries in the
fields and hedgerows and eating as one goes. Every boy knows how that
is; and some of these good-natured, wandering, Western men are very
like big boys.
John was still the teamster at the engineers’ camp in the cañon. He
had been a sailor in his native Northern seas. He had been a fisherman
of the Skager Rack; and more than once, by his own story, he had been
driven out to sea, when drifting from his trawls, and picked up by one
of the numerous vessels of the fishing-fleet that is always lying off
or on the entrance to the strait. He had been a teamster on the plains
where the Indians were “bad.” Once, when crossing the great Snake River
plains, he had picked up a curious stone shaped by the Indians which he
recognized as a “sinker,” such as he himself had made and used on the
fishing-grounds of the far North. John had a little ranch of his own,
and he owned half a house. The other half of the house was on the land
of the adjoining settler. The two men had taken up preëmption claims,
side by side, and to save expense had built a joint-dwelling on the
boundary line between the two claims. Each man lived in his own side
of the house--the half that rested on his land. John had lived six
months on his claim, as the law requires before a settler can secure
a title to his land. He was now working to get the money to improve
it into a farm. He was a bit of a carpenter; and in many odd ways he
was clever with his hands, as fishermen and sailors almost always are.
Jack Gilmour possessed a riding-whip, such as the cowboys call a
“quirt,” which John had braided for him, with skill and economy, out
of leather thongs cut from scraps of waste leather, old boot-legs, or
saddle-straps, discarded by the camps.
Such a companion as this, so experienced and variously gifted, and
so uniformly gentle, was sure to be missed. Jack found the cañon a
much duller place without his friend. He and Charley Moy, the Chinese
cook, used to discourse about John, and recount his virtues, much as
we linger over praises of the dead--although John’s camp was but five
miles away, and he himself in good health, for all any one knew to the
contrary.
After a while, Jack got permission to ride up the river to John’s camp
and pay him a visit; and he was to be allowed to make the trip alone.
Jack had been promoted, since his fishing expedition of two summers
before, from a donkey and one spur to a pony of his own, a proper boy’s
saddle, and two spurs, all in consequence of his advancing years and
the increasing length of his legs. The pony was called “Lollo,” for
just when he came the children had been reading “Jackanapes,” and
the new pony, like the pony in the story, was “red-haired.” He had
belonged, not to the gypsies, but to the Indians, who had broken and
branded him. One of his ears was clipped, and the brand on his flank
was a circle with a bar through the centre. He had the usual thick mane
and tail of a “cayuse,” a white nose, and four white feet.
Now, there is an ancient rhyme which says:
“One white foot, buy him;
Two white feet, try him;
Three white feet, deny him;
Four white feet and a white nose,
Take off his hide and give him to the crows!”
But Lollo shook the dust of the trail from his four white feet, in
defiance of the crows; nor was he ever known to hide the light of his
white nose under a bushel, except when there were oats in the bottom of
it.
Jack’s mother advised him to make sure of his lunch by taking it with
him, in case John might be absent from the camp in the hills. But for
some reason (it is very difficult to know a boy’s real reasons) Jack
preferred to take the chances of the trip without provisions.
His father told him that when he had ridden as far as John Turner’s,
by the river trail, he must take the upper trail which runs along the
bluffs.
As it turned out, this was mistaken advice. The upper trail was not a
good one, as Jack soon discovered; and in certain places, where it was
highest and steepest above the river, it had been nearly rubbed out by
the passage of herds of stock, crowding and climbing past one another
and sliding over the dry and gritty slope.
In one spot it disappeared as a footing altogether, and here Jack was
obliged to dismount and creep along on all fours, Lollo following as he
could. A horse can go, it is said, wherever a man can go without using
his hands. As Jack used his hands it was hardly fair to expect Lollo to
follow; but the pony did so. These Western horses seem as ready as the
men to risk themselves on dangerous trails, and quite as sure of what
they are about.
What with all these ups and downs, the breeze on the bluffs, and the
natural state of a boy’s appetite about midday, Jack was hoping that
lunch would be ready at John’s camp by the time he reached it; and it
is possible that he wished he had not been so proud, and had taken a
“bite” in his pocket, as his mother advised him.
John’s camp was in a gulch where a cool stream came down from the
hills. There were shade and grass and flowers in the season of flowers.
The prospect-holes were higher up beneath the basalt bluffs which rise
like palisades along the river. Earlier prospectors had driven tunnels,
such as prisoners dig under the foundations of a wall, some extending a
few feet, some farther, under the base of the bluffs. John was pushing
these burrows farther still and “panning out” the dirt he obtained in
his progress.
Jack soon found the sluice-boxes that John had built, and the “head” he
had made by damming the little stream, but he could not find John nor
John’s camp.
He argued with himself that John would not be likely to “make camp”
below the pool of water; it was clear and cold, much better for
drinking than the murky river water. His searching, therefore, was all
up the gulch instead of down toward the river; but nowhere could he
discover a sign of John nor of his belongings.
Jack’s mother asked him afterwards, when he told his story, why he did
not call or make a noise of some kind. He said that he did whistle, but
the place was so “still and lonesome” that he “did not like the sound
of it.”
His hope now was that John might be at work in one of the tunnels under
the bluffs. So he climbed up there; and by this time he was quite
empty and weak-hearted with hunger. He had a fine view of the river
and its shores, rising or sinking as the bluffs came to the front, or
gave place to slopes of dry summer pastures. There was a strong wind
blowing up there, and the black lava rocks in the sun were like heated
ovens. The wind and the river’s faint ripple, so far below, were the
only sounds he could hear. There were no living sounds of labor, or of
anything that was human or homelike.
At the entrance to one of the tunnels he saw John’s canvas overalls,
his pick and shovel, a gold-pan, and a wheelbarrow of home
construction. Jack examined the latter and saw that the only shop-made
part of it was the wheel, an old one which John must have found, and
that John by his own ingenuity had added the other parts out of such
materials as he could find.
The sight of these things, lying unused and unclaimed by their owner,
made Jack feel more dismal than ever. The overalls, in particular, were
like a picture of John himself. The whole place began to seem strange
and awesome.