To have one's nose all but broken, both eyes blackened and a twisted
ankle is a sad misfortune wherever it occurs, but when such a thing
happens to a fellow many weary miles from the nearest human habitation
and in a howling wilderness it might be considered anything but
pleasant. Yet, strange as it may appear, among the most pleasant and
precious memories I have stored away in my mind, only to be tapped upon
special occasions, is the memory of the glorious days spent nursing my
bruises and lolling around that far-away camp. Sometimes I listened to
the quaint yarns of my unique and interesting guide or idly watched the
changing colors and effects which the sun and the atmosphere produced on
the snow-capped mountains of Darlinkel's Park. I made friends with our
little neighbors the rock-chuck, whose home was in the base of the cliff
back of the spring, and became intimate with the golden chipmunk and its
pretty little black and white cousin, the four-striped chipmunk, both of
which were common and remarkably tame about camp.
Back of the camp in the dark shade of the evergreens there was a bark
mound composed entirely of the fragments of the conifera cones, which
Pete said was the squirrel's dining room. This mound contained at least
four good cart-loads of fragments and all of it was the work of the
impudent little blunt-nosed red squirrels, which were plentiful in the
woods.
How long it took these small rodents to heap such a mass of material
together I was unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as some
of the shell heaps made by the ancient oyster-eating men and left by
them along our coast from Florida to Maine.
The numerous magpies seemed to be conscious of my admiration of their
beautiful piebald plumage and to take every opportunity to show off its
iridescent hues to the best advantage in the sunlight.
Pete evidently thought I was a chap of very low taste, with a great lack
of discrimination in the choice of my friends among the forest folk, and
he could see no reason for my intimacy with "all th' outlaws and most
rascally varmints of the park."
Truth compels me to admit that the pranks of some of my little friends
were often mischievous and annoying, but they were also humorous and
entertaining and I laughed when the "tallow-head" jay swooped down and
snatched a tid-bit from Pete's plate just as he was about to eat it, and
when the irate trapper threw his plate at the camp robber it was a
charming sight to see a number of birds flutter down to feast upon the
scattered food.
The loud-mouthed, self-asserting fly-catcher in the cottonwood tree
learned to know my whistle, and whenever I attempted to mimic him he
would send back a ringing answer. The charming little lazulii buntings
were tamer than the irritating dirty English sparrows at home.
It was interesting to notice how quickly all our little wild neighbors
learned to know that the sound produced by banging on a tin plate meant
dough-god and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustling
among the grasses or fluttering from bush and trees they showed more
fear of each other than they did of Pete and me.
When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky or
the great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what was
doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the big
pack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secret
caves and invade the camp.
In the gray dawn, while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hear
something scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadow
of a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives,
compasses and all other small objects were never safe unless securely
packed away out of reach of these nocturnal marauders.
Our conversations around the camp fire evenings were highly interesting
too, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of the
Great West at his tongue's end. Indeed, the story of his family and
their migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been a
trapper in the old days; he had done his share of roaming the mountains,
prospecting and making his strikes, small and large, fighting Indians
and living the strenuous life of the border pioneer. He had found the
woman he afterward married unconscious under an overturned wagon of an
emigrant train that had been raided by the Indians, and after nursing
her back to health in his mining shack, had married her. With money he
had worked from the "diggin's" he had acquired, by grants from the
government, the beautiful and expansive mountain park where he had
planned to develop a ranch. He never went very far with his project,
however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in the
mountains and his wife found his body pinned to the ground with arrows.
The shock of his tragedy killed Big Pete's mother soon after, and the
young Peter Darlinkel, then three years old, went to a nearby settlement
to be brought up by an uncle and a squaw aunt. Pete became prospector,
scout, trapper and hunter, using this beautiful park that became his as
a result of the passing of his father, as a private game preserve, so to
speak. That is, it was private except for the intrusion of the Wild
Hunter and his black wolf pack.
In a fragmentary way Big Pete told me this story and other interesting
tales of this wild western country, but mostly our conversation turned
to this old man of the mountains who was such a mystery to everyone,
even to Big Pete, but who, despite the lugubrious reputation, had
proved a kindly gentleman and a good friend to me.
There were no visible signs of a change in the weather which had been
clear for weeks, and the sky was otherwise clear blue save where the
white mares' tails swept across the heavens. But when we sat down to
supper that evening I could hear the rumbling of distant thunder. I knew
it was thunder for, although the fall of avalanches makes the same
noise, avalanches choose the noon time to fall when the sun is hottest
and the snows softest. Soon I could see the heads of some dark clouds
peering at us over the mountains and before dark the clouds crept over
the mountain tops and overcast our sky.
It rained all that night in a fitful manner and came to a stop about
four A. M. The wind went down and the air seemed to have lost its
vivacity and life; it was a dead atmosphere; we arose from our blankets
feeling tired and listless.
While we were eating our breakfast dark clouds again suddenly obscured
the heavens and before we had finished the meal big drops of rain set
the camp fire spluttering and drove us to the shelter of our tent; then
it rained! Lord help us! the water came down in such torrents that on
account of the spray we could not see thirty feet; then came hailstones
as large as hen's eggs. There was some lightning and thunder, but either
the splashing of the water drowned the rumbling or the electric fluid
was so far distant that the reports were not loud when they reached us.
Suddenly there was a ripping noise, followed by a sort of subdued roar
which stampeded our horses from their shelter under a projecting rock
and made the earth shudder.
"Earthquake!" I exclaimed.
"Wuss," said Pete, "hit's a landslide."
Instantly a thought went through my brain like a hot bullet and made me
shudder.
"Pete," I shouted.
"I'm right hyer, tenderfut, you needn't holler so loud," he answered,
and calmly filled his pipe.
I flung myself impulsively on my companion, grasped his big brawny
shoulders, and with my face close to his I whispered, "Pete, I believe
the slide occurred at the gate."
"Well, hit did sound that-a-way," admitted Pete composedly.
"Pete," I continued, "that butte has caved in on our trail!"
"Wull, tenderfut, we ain't hurt, be we? Tha's plenty of game here fur
the tak'n of it and plenty of water, as fine as ever spouted from old
Moses' rock, right at hand. If the Mesa's cut our trail we can live well
here for a hundred years and not have to chew wolf mutton neither. I
don't reckon I can go to York with you just yet," drawled my comrade in
a most provokingly imperturbable manner, as he slowly freed himself from
my grasp and made for the camp fire, which being to a great extent
sheltered by an overhanging rock, was still smouldering in spite of the
drenching rain. Raking the ashes until he found a red glowing coal, Pete
deftly picked it up and by juggling it from one hand to the other, he
conducted the live ember to his pipe-bowl, then he puffed away as calmly
as if there was nothing in this world to trouble him.
"If the gate be shut," he resumed, "it will keep out prospectors, tramps
and Injuns." With that he went to smoking his red-willow[1] bark again.
[Footnote 1: The trappers and Indians made Kil-i-ki-nic, or
Kinnikinick, by mixing tobacco with the inside bark of red
willow, which is the common name for the red osier of the
dogwood family. EDITOR.]
But I could not view the situation so complacently, and when the rain
had ceased as suddenly as it began, with some difficulty I caught my
horse and made my way to the gate, to discover that my worst fears were
realized; a large section of the cliff had split off the Mesa and slid
down into the narrow gateway completely filling the space and leaving a
wall of over one hundred feet of sheer precipice for us to climb before
we could escape from our Eden-like prison.
Again a wave of superstitious dread swept over me as I viewed the
tightly closed exit, a dread that perhaps after all there was more to
Big Pete's superstitions about the Wild Hunter than I dared to admit,
else why should that cliff which had stood for thousands of years take
this opportunity to split off and choke up the ancient trail?
The longer I questioned myself, the less was my ability to answer. I sat
on a stone and for some time was lost in thought. When at length I
looked up it was to see Big Pete with folded arms silently gazing at the
barricaded exit and the muddy pool of water extending for some distance
back of the gateway into the park.
"Well, tenderfut, you was dead right in your judication. The gate air
shut sure 'nuff. Our horses ain't likely to take the back trail and
leave us, that's sartin."
"Oh, Pete," I exclaimed, "how will we ever get out? Must we spend the
remainder of our lives here?"
"It do look as if we'd stop hyer a right smart bit," he admitted, "maybe
till this hyer holler between the mountains all fills with water agin
like it was onct before, I reckon. Don't you think that we'd better get
busy and build a Noah's Ark?"
"Pete, you'd joke if the world came to an end. But seriously I think we
might move our camp back to the far end of your park."