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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
In Chapter VII the Indian name "Ikuts tárush" is mentioned
twice. The "u" in both words has a macron above it and is
represented as [=u].
JACK, THE YOUNG RANCHMAN
[Illustration: "JACK COULD NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE CALF HAD NOT
BEEN CHOKED TO DEATH."--_Page 101._]
JACK, THE YOUNG RANCHMAN
Or
A Boy's Adventures in the Rockies
by
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL
Author of "Pawnee Hero Stories," "Blackfoot Lodge Tales," Etc.
[Illustration]
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1899,
By Frederick A. Stokes Company
Nineteenth Printing
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE.
Far away in the west, close to the backbone of the continent,
lies the sage-brush country where the happenings described in the
following pages took place.
The story is about real things and about real people, many of whom
are alive to-day. The ranch lies in the Rocky Mountains, in a great
basin, walled in by mountains on every hand, and 7,500 feet above the
level of the sea.
The life there was exciting. There was good hunting--antelope and
elk and bears and buffalo; and, far away--yet near enough to be very
real--there were wild Indians.
It is a pleasure to review those days in memory.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Jack Danvers 1
II. Prairie Wolves and Antelope 11
III. The Road to the Ranch 21
IV. A Grizzly Killed 30
V. Roping and Riding 37
VI. An Ancient Massacre 49
VII. Hugh Chased by Indians 62
VIII. Jack's First Antelope 72
IX. John Monroe, Halfbreed 89
X. Cows in a Snow-drift 98
XI. Jack's First Elk 107
XII. Antelope Kids 116
XIII. Jack Kills a Lion 125
XIV. Wolves and Wolf-hounds 136
XV. Digging out a Wolf's Den 148
XVI. Birds and their Nests 157
XVII. Hunting on the Mountain 167
XVIII. With the Horse Roundup 180
XIX. Busting Broncos 194
XX. A Trip to Smith's Hole 206
XXI. Jack's First Camp-fire 214
XXII. A Load of Blacktail 225
XXIII. Occupations of a Cripple 236
XXIV. A Berrying Party 245
XXV. An Elk Hunt 254
XXVI. Jack Rides a Wild Horse 263
XXVII. A Mysterious Cave 274
XXVIII. What the Cave Held 285
XXIX. Swiftfoot in New York 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
"JACK COULD NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE CALF HAD NOT
BEEN CHOKED TO DEATH." frontispiece
"JACK CREPT UP PAST HUGH ... AND TOOK A CAREFUL
AIM." 84
"THE ANIMAL LAUNCHED ITSELF FROM ITS PERCH FULL
TOWARDS JACK." 130
"RAISED HIS RIFLE TO HIS SHOULDER AND FIRED." 256
JACK, THE YOUNG RANCHMAN
CHAPTER I
JACK DANVERS
The door-bell rang, and from the library Jack heard the soft tread of
Aunt Hannah, as she walked through the hall to answer it. There was
a murmur of voices, and then Hannah's tones, loud and high pitched:
"Guns! no indeedy, chile, ye can't leave 'em here. Not here, chile.
Take 'em away. No, I don't keer if they is Mr. Sturgis'. Go 'way. I
won't take 'em. Gib 'em to the policeman; ye can't get me to tetch
'em. Go 'way."
"What is it, Hannah?" said Jack, as he went to the door.
"Don't ye come here, honey. This man here, he's got some guns he
wants to leave. Says they're for your Uncle Will. Don't ye go near
'em."
"These are two rifles that Mr. Genez has been sighting. Mr. Sturgis
told him to deliver them here to-day," said the messenger.
"All right; give 'em to me," said Jack, as he took them; and the
messenger ran down the steps.
"Oh look out, honey, look out," said Aunt Hannah, shrinking away from
Jack; "they'll go off and kill you, sure."
"Pshaw, Hannah," said Jack, "what are you talking about? They
wouldn't go off of themselves, and anyhow they ain't loaded."
"There, what'd I tell ye?" cried Aunt Hannah. "Do be keerful. Many's
the time I heard your grandpaw say them's the most dang'ous kind. He
allus did say that it was the guns that wan't loaded that went off
and killed folks. 'Deed he did."
Jack took the guns up to his uncle's room, and put them on the bed,
and went back to the library. He had hardly got there, and gone to
the window to look out into the darkening street, when he heard the
front door close and a quick, light footfall in the hall.
"Oh, Uncle Will," he said, "is that you?"
"Hello, Jack, are you there?" was the reply. "I want to speak to
you," and a moment later Mr. Sturgis entered the room and stepped
over to the fireplace.
"Well, Jack," said he, "are you ready to start in to-morrow to be a
cowboy?"
"Yes, Uncle Will, I'm all ready," was the reply.
"You're sure you don't want to back out now? You know," added Mr.
Sturgis, "that you may see some rough times. Some days you will be
wet and cold and hungry, and will wish that you were in a good house
and by a warm fire, with a hot meal ready for you. It isn't all fun
and play and good times out on the ranch."
"I know that, Uncle Will," answered Jack, "but there must be plenty
of fun, too, and I think I am going to like it."
"I believe so, too, my boy, but I want you to remember that there
are two sides to almost everything. You will have lots of fun on the
ranch, and that is what you think most of now, but you must remember
also that it will not be all pleasure and no pain."
"Why, Uncle Will, don't you suppose I know that? A fellow's bound to
be too hot or too cold sometimes, and to hurt himself now and then,
but I guess I can stand it, and I don't think you need feel afraid
that I'll want to come home before I have to." As he said this, Jack
looked quite injured, and stood very straight.
"No, no, my boy. I don't doubt your pluck; but I want you to
understand well before we start what it is that you have to look
forward to.
"Now," continued Mr. Sturgis, "everything is ready for our start, and
all we have to do to-morrow is to go to the train and get into the
sleeping-car."
"Let's sit down in front of the fire and talk a little, Uncle Will.
You have plenty of time before dinner, haven't you?"
"Yes, I have half an hour before it will be time to dress; I'll smoke
a pipe and talk to you for that time. Now, ask your questions."
Jack Danvers was a New York boy about fourteen years old. He lived
in East 38th Street, near Park Avenue, and Mrs. Danver's brother,
Will Sturgis, had a ranch out on the Plains, on which were many
horses and cattle. Mr. Sturgis spent the summer on the ranch, but
often came to New York for the winter. The ranch was in a wild
country, where there were bears and elk and deer and antelope, and
sometimes buffalo and Indians.
Jack was not a very strong boy. He was slim and pale and spent most
of his time reading, instead of playing out of doors as all boys
should. In the summer when he was in the country and in the open air
he grew brown and hearty, but through the winter he became slender
and white again.
Jack had no brothers and sisters, and his parents were often anxious
about his health. They had thought several times of moving to the
country to live, so that Jack might have an out-door life all the
year round, but Mr. Danvers' business was so confining that he was
obliged to be in town constantly, and Mrs. Danvers was not willing to
leave him.
Dr. Robertson, whom Mr. Danvers had consulted, had given much thought
to the boy's case, and at last had advised his mother to send him out
to his uncle's ranch for a year, or at least for a summer, telling
her that a few months of rough life in the open air would do him more
good than all the medicines in the world. When Dr. Robertson told
her this, Mrs. Danvers at first thought the advice dreadful. She
said, "Oh, doctor, I couldn't think of doing that. Why the life out
there is one of constant danger and hardship. There are cowboys and
Indians and wild animals of all sorts. I should never have an easy
moment while Jack was away."
"My dear madam," said the doctor, "medicine is often very unpleasant
to take, unpleasant for the patient and sometimes for his friends
as well. I can build your boy's system up from time to time with
tonics, but I can do him no permanent good. My medicines are only
palliatives; the real trouble is with his environment. If the
conditions of his life are changed, he will be certain to throw off
the lassitude and weakness which he now feels, and to become a stout
and hearty boy about whose general health you need have no farther
concern; but it is important that now, when eight or ten years of
schooling and study are before him, he should have a well-nourished
body. I know of nothing that promise so much in this direction as a
course of open-air life and vigorous exercise. Now he stays too much
in the house and cares for nothing but books. This is not natural for
a boy of his age. He ought to be full of animal spirits and to be
working them off by climbing trees, running races and fighting. Think
this matter over carefully, Mrs. Danvers, and let me know what you
and your husband decide."
After much thought and many long talks, the parents had at last made
up their minds to let their boy go. All preparations had been made,
and on the next day Jack and his uncle were to take the train for the
Far West.
"Well, Uncle Will," said Jack, "first, I want to know how long it
will take us to get out to the ranch?"
"Five days, unless something happens to delay us," said Mr. Sturgis.
"Next," said Jack, "I want to know what I can do on the ranch. I want
to help in the work, you know, but I don't know how to ride, or how
to do anything that you have to do out there among the cattle and
horses. I'll have to learn a great deal before I can be of any use."
"Yes, of course, you will have to learn. You will pick up riding
and roping readily enough, but to learn the ways of the prairie and
the mountains is not so easy, and unless you are with some one that
knows all that and tries to teach you, it will take you a long time
to learn. You can easily learn the cowboy part of your education from
almost any of us out at the ranch, but there is only one man there
who can teach you how to become a good mountain man; that is old Hugh
Johnson. He has lived on the plains and in the mountains for more
than forty years, and has hunted, trapped and fought Indians from
the Mississippi to the Pacific, and from the Saskatchewan to the Rio
Grande. He knows the plains and the mountains better than any one I
ever saw, and is like an Indian for reading sign."
"What do you mean by reading sign, Uncle Will?" said Jack.
"Sign is a word which may mean a great many things. Sign may be
the tracks of animals, or of people, or the smoke of fires, or an
old camp, or clothing dropped by some one who has passed along.
Anything that shows that animals or people have been in a certain
place is called sign. Sign may be old or fresh, and there is always
something about it that should tell you more than the mere fact that
whatever made it has been there. You ought to be able to tell when
the sign was made, and sometimes how it came to be made. Sometimes
the sign is merely the way the wild animals act. I remember years
ago, when the Sioux and Cheyennes were troublesome, I was travelling
alone with Hugh, and one night when we camped, he rode out to kill
a buffalo heifer. Before long he came back and told me that he had
seen Indian sign, and that as soon as it was dark we must start and
travel on all night. When I asked him what he had seen, he said that
the animals were uneasy and the buffalo were running, and that some
one was chasing them not far off. We hid our horses in a ravine and
crept on top of a near-by hill from which we could see a good stretch
of country. Sure enough, before long we saw buffalo running as if
frightened, and a little later we saw, far off, two Indians chasing
a little bunch. We lighted no fire that evening, but soon after dark
rode away, and did not rest till we had put forty miles behind us."
"Do you think they would have tried to kill you, if they had seen
you?" asked Jack.
"I don't know," said his uncle, "we were not taking any chances.
"Now, when you get to the ranch," he went on, "you will learn a lot
about the birds and animals, and if your tastes lie that way, and
you keep your eyes open, you will find out much of the life of these
wild things that few people know. Although I have been out there
so many years and have always tried to observe things, I see every
season something that I never saw before, and learn more and more how
little I really know about the beasts and the birds of the west--even
those that are most common about the ranch. Only last year I saw for
the first time a little blind coyote puppy dug out from a hole in a
ravine and was astonished to find that, instead of being yellow it
was dark blue, almost black in fact. You could get a great collection
of pets together at the ranch. Young elk, young antelope and deer and
wolves, possibly a buffalo calf, some foxes, and birds of a dozen
different kinds, grouse, ducks, magpies, young hawks. Why, you could
have a regular menagerie."
"Oh, what fun that would be," said Jack. "I should like that. But
how do you catch all these things? I supposed that young deer and
antelope could run so fast that they could not be caught. I thought
that they ran even faster than the old ones."
"They can run very fast and they are hard to catch as soon as they
are a few weeks old," said his uncle; "but when they are quite
young--for the first few days after they are born--they can scarcely
run at all. During this time the mother hides them, telling them,
I suppose, in her own language, to lie perfectly still until she
returns. The young one lies flat on the ground, and the old mother
goes off a little way--not far though--and feeds about. If she sees
any one coming, or if danger of any kind threatens, she runs away and
only returns after it is past. Meanwhile, the little one, lying there
among the grass or weeds or undergrowth, and keeping perfectly still,
is not noticed by the hunter or the wild animal that is passing
along, and when the mother returns, she finds it just where she left
it. It is said that at this time of their lives, these young animals
give out no scent, and so they are not found by the wolves, unless
these brutes happen to come right upon them."
"Well, but how do you catch them then?" said Jack.
"When we see an old doe antelope by herself on the prairie at about
the season of the year when the young are born, we watch her and we
can tell pretty well whether she has a young one or not. If we think
she has a kid, we can get some idea of where it is hidden by the
way the mother acts. Then the only way to find it is to go to the
place and search the ground over foot by foot, until the young one
is found or the task is given up. Usually both kids will be found
side by side, but sometimes they are three or four feet apart. When
they are taken up, they do not struggle or try to get away. They hang
perfectly limp, and if you try to make them stand up, their legs give
way under them and they sink down again. It is often twenty-four
hours before they seem to take any interest in what is going on
about them, but when they get hungry, and after they have once drunk
some milk, they are tame, and as soon as they become strong, very
playful. Young antelope are not always easily reared, but young deer
and elk are more hardy. If a buffalo calf is caught it can be given
to a cow to rear. Wolf or coyote puppies can be reared on a bottle.
Those animals do not easily become tame and trustful. They are likely
to be shy and to dodge and jump away if any sudden motion is made,
but when they are pleased, when any one in whom they have confidence
approaches them, they lay back their ears and wag their tails and
wriggle their bodies just like an affectionate dog. Once we had a
young bear at the ranch for a year and a half, and he was an amusing
pet. If you gave him a bottle of milk he would stand on his hind
legs, and holding the bottle in both hands he would tilt it up and
let the milk trickle down his throat until the bottle was empty, when
he would throw it away."
"Uncle Will, I think we're going to have a splendid time out west. I
don't feel as if I could wait for to-morrow to come."
"It will be here before you know it, old fellow; and we'll be at the
ranch before you know it too."