INTO THE WILDERNESS
For several days we marched steadily northward over a rolling country,
camping at first upon streams which flowed south-westward to the Great
Salt Lake, and latterly upon others which took a northerly course to
join the turbulent Snake, the great southern branch of the Columbia.
During this time, Percy and I, by systematic practice, became fairly
expert in the art of packing; Percy, too, having developed unsuspected
gifts as a cook, was unanimously elected to fill that responsible
position, while I, having no genius for anything in particular, was
allotted the more humble office of dish-washer.
Whenever occasion permitted--while Percy was cooking and Jack chopping
wood, perhaps--I would take the little single-barrelled shotgun and
wander up the stream to try for some ducks, or over the hills in the
hope of stirring up a jack-rabbit or a sage-hen. Many a supper did
Ulysses and I and the shotgun procure between us; but as yet we had had
little use for our rifles; excepting one antelope which Percy and I had
blazed at and missed, we had seen no large game, unless the occasional
wolf and the frequent coyote be counted as such.
What astute vagabonds are those coyotes, the street-arabs of the
wilderness, their wits sharpened by the unceasing competition for
a livelihood with their hungry relations, and with all the other
carnivorous beasts of the field,--to say nothing of several of the
birds of the air! With what persistency would they sit around our
camp-fire at night and serenade us with their doleful howlings, and how
silently would they glide away into the darkness when the indignant
Ulysses rushed forth to devour them!
Ulysses, having been brought up in a town, was as yet unacquainted with
the wiles of those “subterfugious beasts,” as Percy called them, and
great store of breath and energy did he expend in frantic efforts to
catch one, until, learning by experience the futility of such a course,
he contented himself with bestowing upon them a contemptuous glance
when they trotted across our path, and, at a distance of twenty yards,
impudently stood still to watch us go by.
The coyote is generally spoken of with disrespect as a cowardly,
sneaking outcast, a lean and draggle-tailed caricature of his big
cousin, the wolf. But, for my part, I confess I rather like him.
His big ears, and his sharp, inquisitive nose, make him the most
wide-awake-looking animal I know; while, as for activity, not even the
antelope is more light-footed. His valour, I admit, is leavened by a
large measure of discretion. He will run away, as a rule, from any dog
that is more than half as big as himself. But get him into a corner
where he has no chance to run farther, and it will be a bold dog that
will venture within range of his snapping jaws.
That the coyote possesses good reasoning powers no one who is familiar
with him will deny. He is aware, for instance, of the custom of the
jack-rabbit to run in a circle when pursued, and on one occasion
I saw him take advantage of that knowledge, to the disgust of our
honest friend Ulysses. We were encamped on an open plain, and Ulysses,
going off on a private hunt, put up a “jack,” which he pursued with
vociferous impetuosity. As I stood watching the chase, I observed a
coyote come running toward the spot and take up a position on a little
hillock, where he sat down to watch also. The rabbit, as usual, made a
large circuit, and as he came back to the starting-point, with Ulysses,
breathless but still hopeful, a hundred yards behind, the coyote rushed
down from his perch, snapped up the rabbit, and ran off with it,
leaving Ulysses seated on the ground, his long, red tongue hanging out,
thinking--I have no doubt--uncomplimentary thoughts of the thieving
vagrant who had defrauded him of his dinner.
It was about the end of the second week of our journey that we came
suddenly upon a swift, muddy river running in a rocky channel sunk deep
below the level of the plain--the Snake.
Although it was yet early in the afternoon, we went into camp at once
in a fine grove of cottonwoods and willows fringing the banks of a
little branch stream which there ran down to the river, and here Jack,
taking from his pocket a large map, spread it upon the ground and
issued a summons for an immediate council of war.
“Now, you fellows,” said he, as we got sat cross-legged before the map,
“we have got to get to the other side of this river somehow or go home
again. There are three ways of doing it: by fording, by rafting, or by
going a long way down-stream to the bridge marked here. The last is out
of the question, for our friend Squeaky is probably waiting there for
us now. I think that if we can’t find a ford in a couple of days we had
better build a little raft at some point where the river is not too
swift, ferry our things across, and make the horses and mules swim. I
have no doubt we might find a ford if we were to follow up the stream
far enough, but you see the country is very little known up in that
direction, for most of the branch streams are marked with dotted lines,
showing that they are unexplored. So I think a raft-- Hallo! Ulysses.
What’s the matter with you?”
Ulysses, who had been peacefully snoozing in the shade, at this moment
sprang to his feet and began to growl, sniffing the breeze which blew
up the river. Jack rose and looked in that direction through the tops
of the willows, but hardly had he straightened up ere he ducked down
again, and whispered:
“Horsemen. Riding on the other side of the river about a mile off.
Coming this way. Get your rifles.”
At some remote period in the earth’s history there had occurred in this
neighbourhood a great volcanic eruption, covering the wide-spreading
plain with a thick bed of lava. Into this lava-bed the strong,
ceaseless flow of the river had cut a channel some fifteen to twenty
feet deep, in the perpendicular walls of which there was no apparent
break except at the point where the little stream upon which we were
encamped ran down to the river. From where we stood we could see a
long way down-stream, and with much anxiety we watched the approaching
riders. Was Squeaky there? That was the question that troubled us. Had
he somehow got wind of our movements, and had he abandoned his post at
the bridge below in order to seek for our trail up the river?
“I can’t make them out,” said Jack, who was gazing at them intently
through the glass. “The sun is just behind them----”
As he spoke the cavalcade suddenly vanished as though the earth had
swallowed it up; but in another minute it reappeared in the river.
There was evidently a break in the wall which we could not see.
“It’s all right,” exclaimed Jack, as soon as he got sight of them
against the dark background of the rocks. “The first is a white man,
then comes a pack-horse, then two little boys on one pony, bareback,
then another pack-horse, and the last is an Indian; a squaw, I expect,
from her size.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” said Percy, in a tone of much relief; a
sentiment in which we all emphatically coincided.
“What are they going to do?” I asked presently. “What are they riding
up the river like that for?” For they were splashing along up-stream
close under the opposite bank.
“There’s a ford here somewhere,” replied Jack, “and it must come out at
this point; there’s no other place. They know what they are about, you
may be sure. That man is an old trapper, I expect.”
The party kept on up-stream until they were nearly opposite the mouth
of our little creek, and then the leader, turning short to his right,
headed his horse across the river, the rest following. The horses
understood their business, evidently; they came slowly across, walking
sideways or nearly so, with their heads up-stream; the water, which
was very swift, being almost half-way up their bodies. It looked
dangerous, especially for the little boys, who, should their horse
stumble, would almost certainly be swept away and drowned.
The man was within twenty feet of the bank when the very thing we had
been half expecting happened. The boys’ horse stepped into a hole, fell
upon his knees, and was rolled over in a trice. The smaller boy was
instantly whisked away; but the elder, having the reins in his hands,
held on to them. At the cry of the children the man looked back, and
promptly swung his horse round to go to their assistance; but seeing
that the elder boy still had hold of the bridle, that the horse had
regained his feet and was standing steady with his legs wide apart,
and seeing also that the woman was making all possible haste to the
rescue, he turned back again and came splashing towards the bank, with
the intention of galloping down-stream and “heading off” the other boy,
who, small though he was, was swimming along like a cork.
The very instant that this catastrophe happened Jack burst out of the
willows and ran down towards the river, but Percy, having caught a
glimpse of the small boy’s head bobbing along down-stream, grabbed up a
long picket-rope which fortunately lay near at hand, and calling to me
to follow, set off as hard as he could run down the bank.
Having caught up with and passed the boy, who, with the stoicism of his
half-Indian nature, was all this time swimming along without making
a sound, Percy flung the coil of rope to me with a “Hold on to that,
Tom,” seized the end between his teeth, scrambled down the rocks, waded
out as far as possible, and then, throwing himself forward, struck out
for mid-stream. As the little brown-faced youngster came sweeping by,
Percy grasped him by the shirt between the shoulder-blades, gripped the
rope with his left hand, and called to me to haul in.
It was all very well to say “Haul in”; the best I could do, sitting
with my feet braced against the rocks, was to avoid being hauled in
myself, the current was so strong. The moment the rope tightened, down
went Percy and the boy under the water, reappearing directly with much
spluttering and gasping; and then for the first time the little shaver
began to cry and struggle. At the same moment there was a rush of
footsteps, and Jack was down in the water pulling on the rope, which,
between us, we drew in hand over hand. Percy and the boy were almost
within reach when I heard a clatter of hoofs behind me, and a tall man
threw himself from his horse, half climbed and half tumbled down the
rocks, waded into the river, and seized the boy by the shoulder and
Percy by the wrist; none too soon, either, for Percy’s arm was almost
pulled out at the socket.
Two minutes more, and we were all high and dry on the bank again,
shaking hands with each other, and praising the little whimpering
youngster for being so brave. The whole thing, I believe, occupied
hardly five minutes.
The tall stranger, who stood there still holding his shivering little
son in his arms, was evidently a man of few words, one of the silent
kind who have neither the gift nor the habit of expressing their
feelings in flowing language. Setting the boy upon the ground and
telling him to “cut along” to his mother, he extended his hand again to
Percy and said, “You did that mighty well,--mighty well. I am ever so
much beholden to you. Come on. Let’s get back to camp.”
The Indian woman had already lighted a fire, and the two little
brown-bodied rascals, stripped of their clothing, were running about
quite happy, not a whit the worse for their ducking. While the squaw
unpacked and unsaddled the horses, which she set about doing as though
it were her regular duty (as no doubt it was), the man came over to
the roaring camp-fire I had started, and with Percy and Jack took up a
position before it, where he and they were soon steaming away like so
many geysers.
“Hunting?” asked our laconic new acquaintance.
“Yes,” replied Jack, with equal brevity.
“Going across the river?”
“Yes; going up to Montana. How’s grass and water and game?”
“First rate. Going up the Henry?”
“Well, I don’t know for certain. I thought of following along the
foothills of the Teton range, and doing a little prospecting. Do you
know the country?”
“Mighty well, some of it. I’ve hunted around here the last five years.
My name’s Jim Perkins; folks call me Tracker Jim.”
“Oh, then, I’ve heard of you,” exclaimed Jack. “Wasn’t it you who held
a pass some years ago against a band of Blackfeet, somewhere up beyond
the Gallatin valley?”
The man nodded.
“Won’t you tell us about it?” asked Percy, turning round to roast the
other side of his person.
“Why, there ain’t much to tell. About a dozen young bucks went off on
the rampage, and as some of the settlers was in danger I went to warn
them. There was five women and half-a-dozen children and only three
men, and the Blackfeet caught up with us just as we were coming out
at the top end of a narrow cañon, so I stayed behind to stand ’em off
while the rest cleared out.”
“Well?” said Percy, inquiringly; for Mr. Tracker Jim seemed disposed to
stop there.
“Well, I got behind a rock, and we had a lively time for a spell, them
shooting at me and me shooting at them. The walls of the cañon was too
steep for ’em to climb up and get behind me, but one of ’em climbed up
part way, where he could get a sight of me, and a mighty good shot he
was, considering what an awkward standing-place he had; the bullets
kept a-pecking up the ground all around me as I lay flat behind my
boulder; and whenever I tried to shoot back at him, all the others
would blaze away at me.”
“Weren’t you frightened?” I asked, regarding him with the greatest
interest.
“Scared blue,” replied the modest hero. “But I stood ’em off till
dark, and then a party of cowboys come along and toted me out o’ there.
After that I left that part of the country and come down here.”
“You were wounded, weren’t you?” inquired Jack.
“Why, yes. I had my left hand broke, and I was hit in five other
places; but you see they didn’t know that, or they’d’a’ rushed the
place, and then I’d’a’ bin a goner.”
The man told this brief tale in the quietest and most matter-of-fact
way. He did not look for applause; he merely mentioned the matter
because he had been asked to do so; and as to regarding himself as a
hero, such an idea, seemingly, had never occurred to him.
As Jack said, in talking of him afterwards, there are two classes of
frontiersmen: one whose members brag and talk and “swell around,” and
do nothing, performing their deeds of heroism by word of mouth in the
bar-rooms of the settlements; the other composed of those men who _do_
things and _say_ nothing--men whose deeds, courageous almost past the
understanding of ordinary stay-at-home folks, are the beginning and the
foundation of the stirring history of the Great West.
Our friend standing there by the fire was one of the latter; though no
one suspected it less than he.
“Is there any danger from Indians between here and Bozeman?” asked Jack
presently--a question of great moment to us, for it had been mutually
agreed between us that we had no right to take any risk so serious
as an encounter with Indians, and should our new friend reply in the
affirmative we felt that our duty to our parents, to say nothing of
our solicitude for our own safety, would compel us to hark back to the
stage-road,--Squeaky or no Squeaky,--or even to abandon our expedition
altogether. Tracker Jim therefore lifted a great weight from our minds
when, in response to Jack’s inquiry, he said:
“No; not the way you intend to go, between the Tetons and the Henry
River; especially so early in the year as this.”
“Can you give us any advice as to the best course?” Jack continued.
“Well, in a general way, all you’ve got to do is to keep the Tetons on
your right and the Henry on your left until you come to the head-waters
of the river. I’ve heard say it heads in a lake, but I never was up
that far. Then you’ll have to bear a little to your left until you
strike Bozeman or Virginia City or the stage-road. It’s simple enough.
After you’ve crossed the Snake, here, you can head straight for the
Grand Teton if you want to. If you’re hunting scenery as well as game
it’s worth going out of your way to see; it’s the finest mountain in
America that I know of.”
“I think we may as well do that,” replied Jack. “Eh, you fellows? Time
and place are no very particular objects with us.”
To this proposition we assented; and just then I observed that the
Indian woman was making signs to Tracker Jim.
“The woman says supper’s ready,” he remarked. “Come on, if you’re dried
out enough.”
Gladly accepting this invitation, we marched over to the other camp,
armed with our own tin plates and cups; being received by the silent
Indian woman with a broad smile. A very noble supper we had that night.
Two courses,--soup and meat. Uncommonly good that soup was too. It
was made of the tail of a beaver; the second course consisting of the
beaver itself, baked before being cleaned,--a fact we did not discover
till afterwards; which was just as well, perhaps.
Our new friend having volunteered to show us the way across the
dangerous ford, we followed him next morning into the river and shortly
found ourselves standing in safety upon its northern bank, where, with
mutual good wishes, we took leave of Tracker Jim, and turning our faces
toward the east plunged into the unknown wilderness; highly delighted
at the thought of how we had circumvented Squeaky, who, we had no
doubt, was at that moment impatiently awaiting our appearance at the
bridge below.
We had not long passed the Snake ere we discovered that we had
come into a country very different from that we had hitherto been
traversing. For one thing, game of all sorts became abundant. One
could not ascend a hill without seeing at least one band of antelope,
and more often three or four; while, as we approached the mountains,
black-tail and white-tail deer began to make their appearance, elk
were occasionally seen, and now and then a bear. These last, by mutual
consent, we very carefully left alone; we decided that we had no right
to take any risks with them.
With all this game to practise on, Percy and I soon became fairly
expert hunters, and it was not long ere Jack abandoned to us entirely
the fascinating duty of supplying the camp with meat.
Another particular in which the passage of the Snake had produced a
great change was in the nature of the country itself. In place of the
long stretches of barren sand we found rolling hills covered with
luxuriant grass, intersected by deep cañons which sometimes forced us
to go several miles out of our course in search of a crossing-place.
We discovered also that as a guide our map was now practically useless.
Such features of the country as the mountains of the Teton range,
the most conspicuous objects within a circle of a hundred miles, or
a great river like the Snake, were set down with some pretentions to
accuracy, but otherwise our speculative map-maker had committed sins
both of omission and commission. He had decorated his map with streams
and mountains which did not exist, while a trifling feature such as
the Teton Basin, a district containing some eight hundred square miles
of the finest grass-land, he appeared to think unworthy of notice; at
any rate he had neither named nor indicated it upon his map. Evidently
this important basin, though well known to trappers and hunters, was
a _terra incognita_ to the world in general and to our geographer in
particular.
But it was little we cared about that. We were not afraid of losing
ourselves. We could not well cross the Teton range to the east
without being aware of it, while we knew that by turning westward and
continuing in that direction for an indefinite number of miles we
should eventually come first upon the Henry River and later upon the
stage-road. In fact, the unreliability of our map rather added zest
to our enterprise; it proved, to our satisfaction at least, that we
might with justice lay claim to the proud titles of “Pioneers of the
Wilderness,” “Explorers of the Great West.” So strong, indeed, was this
feeling of self-complacency, that, as we rode along in the glorious
sunshine, with the peak of the Teton straight in front of us, Percy
burst forth singing _Hail Columbia_ with great gusto. He was obliged
to desist, however, after the first verse, for Calliope insisted upon
joining in, with disastrous results. Calliope might be a good singer
(for a mule), but it must be confessed she had one fatal fault: she
would _not_ pay attention to the time or the tune; a defect which is
ruinous to the proper rendering of a concerted piece.
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