place to spend the night, you look out for good feed. That assured,
all else is of slight importance; you make the best of whatever camping
facilities may happen to be attached. If necessary you will sleep on
granite or in a marsh, walk a mile for firewood or water, if only your
animals are well provided for. And on the trail you often will work
twice as hard as they merely to save them a little. In whatever I may
tell you regarding practical expedients, keep this always in mind.
As to the little details of your daily routine in the mountains, many
are worth setting down, however trivial they may seem. They mark the
difference between the greenhorn and the old-timer; but, more
important, they mark also the difference between the right and the
wrong, the efficient and the inefficient ways of doing things.
In the morning the cook for the day is the first man afoot, usually
about half past four. He blows on his fingers, casts malevolent
glances at the sleepers, finally builds his fire and starts his meal.
Then he takes fiendish delight in kicking out the others. They do not
run with glad shouts to plunge into the nearest pool, as most camping
fiction would have us believe. Not they. The glad shout and nearest
pool can wait until noon when the sun is warm. They, too, blow on
their fingers and curse the cook for getting them up so early. All eat
breakfast and feel better.
Now the cook smokes in lordly ease. One of the other men washes the
dishes, while his companion goes forth to drive in the horses. Washing
dishes is bad enough, but fumbling with frozen fingers at stubborn
hobble-buckles is worse. At camp the horses are caught, and each is
tied near his own saddle and pack.
The saddle-horses are attended to first. Thus they are available for
business in case some of the others should make trouble. You will see
that your saddle-blankets are perfectly smooth, and so laid that the
edges are to the front where they are least likely to roll under or
wrinkle. After the saddle is in place, lift it slightly and loosen the
blanket along the back bone so it will not draw down tight under the
weight of the rider. Next hang your rifle-scabbard under your left
leg. It should be slanted along the horse's side at such an angle that
neither will the muzzle interfere with the animal's hind leg, nor the
butt with your bridle-hand. This angle must be determined by
experiment. The loop in front should be attached to the scabbard, so
it can be hung over the horn; that behind to the saddle, so the muzzle
can be thrust through it. When you come to try this method, you will
appreciate its handiness. Besides the rifle, you will carry also your
rope, camera, and a sweater or waistcoat for changes in temperature.
In your saddle bags are pipe and tobacco, perhaps a chunk of bread,
your note-book, and the map--if there is any. Thus your saddle-horse
is outfitted. Do not forget your collapsible rubber cup. About your
waist you will wear your cartridge-belt with six-shooter and
sheath-knife. I use a forty-five caliber belt. By threading a buck
skin thong in and out through some of the cartridge loops, their size
is sufficiently reduced to hold also the 30-40 rifle cartridges. Thus
I carry ammunition for both revolver and rifle in the one belt. The
belt should not be buckled tight about your waist, but should hang well
down on the hip. This is for two reasons. In the first place, it does
not drag so heavily at your anatomy, and falls naturally into position
when you are mounted. In the second place, you can jerk your gun out
more easily from a loose-hanging holster. Let your knife-sheath be so
deep as almost to cover the handle, and the knife of the very best
steel procurable. I like a thin blade. If you are a student of animal
anatomy, you can skin and quarter a deer with nothing heavier than a
pocket-knife.
When you come to saddle the pack-horses, you must exercise even greater
care in getting the saddle-blankets smooth and the saddle in place.
There is some give and take to a rider; but a pack carries "dead," and
gives the poor animal the full handicap of its weight at all times. A
rider dismounts in bad or steep places; a pack stays on until the
morning's journey is ended. See to it, then, that it is on right.
Each horse should have assigned him a definite and, as nearly as
possible, unvarying pack. Thus you will not have to search everywhere
for the things you need.
For example, in our own case, Lily was known as the cook-horse. She
carried all the kitchen utensils, the fire-irons, the axe, and matches.
In addition her alforjas contained a number of little bags in which
were small quantities for immediate use of all the different sorts of
provisions we had with us. When we made camp we unpacked her near the
best place for a fire, and everything was ready for the cook. Jenny was
a sort of supply store, for she transported the main stock of the
provisions of which Lily's little bags contained samples. Dinkey
helped out Jenny, and in addition--since she took such good care of her
pack--was intrusted with the fishing-rods, the shot-gun, the
medicine-bag, small miscellaneous duffle, and whatever deer or bear
meat we happened to have. Buckshot's pack consisted of things not
often used, such as all the ammunition, the horse-shoeing outfit,
repair-kit, and the like. It was rarely disturbed at all.
These various things were all stowed away in the kyacks or alforjas
which hung on either side. They had to be very accurately balanced.
The least difference in weight caused one side to sag, and that in turn
chafed the saddle-tree against the animal's withers.
So far, so good. Next comes the affair of the top packs. Lay your
duffle-bags across the middle of the saddle. Spread the blankets and
quilts as evenly as possible. Cover all with the canvas tarpaulin
suitably folded. Everything is now ready for the pack-rope.
The first thing anybody asks you when it is discovered that you know a
little something of pack-trains is, "Do you throw the Diamond Hitch?"
Now the Diamond is a pretty hitch and a firm one, but it is by no means
the fetish some people make of it. They would have you believe that it
represents the height of the packer's art; and once having mastered it,
they use it religiously for every weight, shape, and size of pack. The
truth of the matter is that the style of hitch should be varied
according to the use to which it is to be put.
The Diamond is good because it holds firmly, is a great flattener, and
is especially adapted to the securing of square boxes. It is
celebrated because it is pretty and rather difficult to learn. Also it
possesses the advantage for single-handed packing that it can be thrown
slack throughout and then tightened, and that the last pull tightens
the whole hitch. However, for ordinary purposes, with a quiet horse
and a comparatively soft pack, the common Square Hitch holds well
enough and is quickly made. For a load of small articles and heavy
alforjas there is nothing like the Lone Packer. It too is a bit hard
to learn. Chiefly is it valuable because the last pulls draw the
alforjas away from the horse's sides, thus preventing their chafing
him. Of the many hitches that remain, you need learn, to complete your
list for all practical purposes, only the Bucking Hitch. It is
complicated, and takes time and patience to throw, but it is warranted
to hold your deck-load through the most violent storms bronco ingenuity
can stir up.
These four will be enough. Learn to throw them, and take pains always
to throw them good and tight. A loose pack is the best expedient the
enemy of your soul could possibly devise. It always turns or comes to
pieces on the edge of things; and then you will spend the rest of the
morning trailing a wildly bucking horse by the burst and scattered
articles of camp duffle. It is furthermore your exhilarating task,
after you have caught him, to take stock, and spend most of the
afternoon looking for what your first search passed by. Wes and I once
hunted two hours for as large an object as a Dutch oven. After which
you can repack. This time you will snug things down. You should have
done so in the beginning.
Next, the lead-ropes are made fast to the top of the packs. There is
here to be learned a certain knot. In case of trouble you can reach
from your saddle and jerk the whole thing free by a single pull on a
loose end.
All is now ready. You take a last look around to see that nothing has
been left. One of the horsemen starts on ahead. The pack-horses swing
in behind. We soon accustomed ours to recognize the whistling of "Boots
and Saddles" as a signal for the advance. Another horseman brings up
the rear. The day's journey has begun.
To one used to pleasure-riding the affair seems almost too deliberate.
The leader plods steadily, stopping from time to time to rest on the
steep slopes. The others string out in a leisurely procession. It does
no good to hurry. The horses will of their own accord stay in sight of
one another, and constant nagging to keep the rear closed up only
worries them without accomplishing any valuable result. In going
uphill especially, let the train take its time. Each animal is likely
to have his own ideas about when and where to rest. If he does,
respect them. See to it merely that there is no prolonged yielding to
the temptation of meadow feed, and no careless or malicious straying
off the trail. A minute's difference in the time of arrival does not
count. Remember that the horses are doing hard and continuous work on
a grass diet.
The day's distance will not seem to amount to much in actual miles,
especially if, like most Californians, you are accustomed on a fresh
horse to make an occasional sixty or seventy between suns; but it ought
to suffice. There is a lot to be seen and enjoyed in a mountain mile.
Through the high country two miles an hour is a fair average rate of
speed, so you can readily calculate that fifteen make a pretty long
day. You will be afoot a good share of the time. If you were out from
home for only a few hours' jaunt, undoubtedly you would ride your horse
over places where in an extended trip you will prefer to lead him. It
is always a question of saving your animals.
About ten o'clock you must begin to figure on water. No horse will
drink in the cool of the morning, and so, when the sun gets well up, he
will be thirsty. Arrange it.
As to the method of travel, you can either stop at noon or push
straight on through. We usually arose about half past four; got under
way by seven; and then rode continuously until ready to make the next
camp. In the high country this meant until two or three in the
afternoon, by which time both we and the horses were pretty hungry.
But when we did make camp, the horses had until the following morning
to get rested and to graze, while we had all the remainder of the
afternoon to fish, hunt, or loaf. Sometimes, however, it was more
expedient to make a lunch-camp at noon. Then we allowed an hour for
grazing, and about half an hour to pack and unpack. It meant steady
work for ourselves. To unpack, turn out the horses, cook, wash dishes,
saddle up seven animals, and repack, kept us very busy. There remained
not much leisure to enjoy the scenery. It freshened the horses,
however, which was the main point. I should say the first method was
the better for ordinary journeys; and the latter for those times when,
to reach good feed, a forced march becomes necessary.
On reaching the night's stopping-place, the cook for the day unpacks
the cook-horse and at once sets about the preparation of dinner. The
other two attend to the animals. And no matter how tired you are, or
how hungry you may be, you must take time to bathe their backs with
cold water; to stake the picket-animal where it will at once get good
feed and not tangle its rope in bushes, roots, or stumps; to hobble the
others; and to bell those inclined to wander. After this is done, it
is well, for the peace and well-being of the party, to take food.
A smoke establishes you in the final and normal attitude of good humor.
Each man spreads his tarpaulin where he has claimed his bed. Said
claim is indicated by his hat thrown down where he wishes to sleep. It
is a mark of pre-emption which every one is bound to respect. Lay out
your saddle-blankets, cover them with your quilt, place the
sleeping-blanket on top, and fold over the tarpaulin to cover the
whole. At the head deposit your duffle-bag. Thus are you assured of a
pleasant night.
About dusk you straggle in with trout or game. The camp-keeper lays
aside his mending or his repairing or his note-book, and stirs up the
cooking-fire. The smell of broiling and frying and boiling arises in
the air. By the dancing flame of the campfire you eat your third
dinner for the day--in the mountains all meals are dinners, and
formidable ones at that. The curtain of blackness draws down close.
Through it shine stars, loom mountains cold and mist-like in the moon.
You tell stories. You smoke pipes. After a time the pleasant chill
creeps down from the eternal snows. Some one throws another handful of
pine-cones on the fire. Sleepily you prepare for bed. The pine-cones
flare up, throwing their light in your eyes. You turn over and wrap
the soft woolen blanket close about your chin. You wink drowsily and
at once you are asleep. Along late in the night you awaken to find
your nose as cold as a dog's. You open one eye. A few coals mark
where the fire has been. The mist mountains have drawn nearer, they
seem to bend over you in silent contemplation. The moon is sailing
high in the heavens.
With a sigh you draw the canvas tarpaulin over your head. Instantly it
is morning.
V
THE COAST RANGES
At last, on the day appointed, we, with five horses, climbed the Cold
Spring Trail to the ridge; and then, instead of turning to the left, we
plunged down the zigzag lacets of the other side. That night we camped
at Mono Cañon, feeling ourselves strangely an integral part of the
relief map we had looked upon so many times that almost we had come to
consider its features as in miniature, not capacious for the
accommodation of life-sized men. Here we remained a day while we rode
the hills in search of Dinkey and Jenny, there pastured.
We found Jenny peaceful and inclined to be corralled. But Dinkey,
followed by a slavishly adoring brindle mule, declined to be rounded
up. We chased her up hill and down; along creek-beds and through the
spiky chaparral. Always she dodged craftily, warily, with forethought.
Always the brindled mule, wrapt in admiration at his companion's
cleverness, crashed along after. Finally we teased her into a narrow
cañon. Wes and the Tenderfoot closed the upper end. I attempted to
slip by to the lower, but was discovered. Dinkey tore a frantic mile
down the side hill. Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced
parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance
of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the
game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the
besotted mule. At a bend in the cañon interposed a steep bank. Up
this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying. I had just time to bend low
along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of
thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket. In the open space on the
farther side Bullet stopped, panting but triumphant. Dinkey,
surrounded at last, turned back toward camp with an air of utmost
indifference. The mule dropped his long ears and followed.
At camp we corralled Dinkey, but left her friend to shift for himself.
Then was lifted up his voice in mulish lamentations until, cursing, we
had to ride out bareback and drive him far into the hills and there
stone him into distant fear. Even as we departed up the trail the
following day the voice of his sorrow, diminishing like the echo of
grief, appealed uselessly to Dinkey's sympathy. For Dinkey, once
captured, seemed to have shrugged her shoulders and accepted inevitable
toil with a real though cynical philosophy.
The trail rose gradually by imperceptible gradations and occasional
climbs. We journeyed in the great cañons. High chaparral flanked the
trail, occasional wide gray stretches of "old man" filled the air with
its pungent odor and with the calls of its quail. The crannies of the
rocks, the stretches of wide loose shale, the crumbling bottom earth
offered to the eye the dessicated beauties of creamy yucca, of yerba
buena, of the gaudy red paint-brushes, the Spanish bayonet; and to the
nostrils the hot dry perfumes of the semi-arid lands. The air was
tepid; the sun hot. A sing-song of bees and locusts and strange insects
lulled the mind. The ponies plodded on cheerfully. We expanded and
basked and slung our legs over the pommels of our saddles and were glad
we had come.
At no time did we seem to be climbing mountains. Rather we wound in and
out, round and about, through a labyrinth of valleys and cañons and
ravines, farther and farther into a mysterious shut-in country that
seemed to have no end. Once in a while, to be sure, we zigzagged up a
trifling ascent; but it was nothing. And then at a certain point the
Tenderfoot happened to look back.
"Well!" he gasped; "will you look at that!"
We turned. Through a long straight aisle which chance had placed just
there, we saw far in the distance a sheer slate-colored wall; and
beyond, still farther in the distance, overtopping the slate-colored
wall by a narrow strip, another wall of light azure blue.
"It's our mountains," said Wes, "and that blue ridge is the channel
islands. We've got up higher than our range."
We looked about us, and tried to realize that we were actually more
than halfway up the formidable ridge we had so often speculated on from
the Cold Spring Trail. But it was impossible. In a few moments,
however, our broad easy cañon narrowed. Huge crags and sheer masses of
rock hemmed us in. The chaparral and yucca and yerba buena gave place
to pine-trees and mountain oaks, with little close clumps of
cottonwoods in the stream bottom. The brook narrowed and leaped, and
the white of alkali faded from its banks. We began to climb in good
earnest, pausing often for breath. The view opened. We looked back on
whence we had come, and saw again, from the reverse, the forty miles of
ranges and valleys we had viewed from the Ridge Trail.
At this point we stopped to shoot a rattlesnake. Dinkey and Jenny took
the opportunity to push ahead. From time to time we would catch sight
of them traveling earnestly on, following the trail accurately,
stopping at stated intervals to rest, doing their work, conducting
themselves as decorously as though drivers had stood over them with
blacksnake whips. We tried a little to catch up.
"Never mind," said Wes, "they've been over this trail before. They'll
stop when they get to where we're going to camp."
We halted a moment on the ridge to look back over the lesser mountains
and the distant ridge, beyond which the islands now showed plainly.
Then we dropped down behind the divide into a cup valley containing a
little meadow with running water on two sides of it and big pines
above. The meadow was brown, to be sure, as all typical California is
at this time of year. But the brown of California and the brown of the
East are two different things. Here is no snow or rain to mat down the
grass, to suck out of it the vital principles. It grows ripe and sweet
and soft, rich with the life that has not drained away, covering the
hills and valleys with the effect of beaver fur, so that it seems the
great round-backed hills must have in a strange manner the yielding
flesh-elasticity of living creatures. The brown of California is the
brown of ripeness; not of decay.
Our little meadow was beautifully named Madulce,[1] and was just below
the highest point of this section of the Coast Range. The air drank
fresh with the cool of elevation. We went out to shoot supper; and so
found ourselves on a little knoll fronting the brown-hazed east. As we
stood there, enjoying the breeze after our climb, a great wave of hot
air swept by us, filling our lungs with heat, scorching our faces as
the breath of a furnace. Thus was brought to our minds what, in the
excitement of a new country, we had forgotten,--that we were at last on
the eastern slope, and that before us waited the Inferno of the desert.
That evening we lay in the sweet ripe grasses of Madulce, and talked of
it. Wes had been across it once before and did not possess much
optimism with which to comfort us.
"It's hot, just plain hot," said he, "and that's all there is about it.
And there's mighty little water, and what there is is sickish and a
long ways apart. And the sun is strong enough to roast potatoes in."
"Why not travel at night?" we asked.
"No place to sleep under daytimes," explained Wes. "It's better to
keep traveling and then get a chance for a little sleep in the cool of
the night."
We saw the reasonableness of that.
"Of course we'll start early, and take a long nooning, and travel late.
We won't get such a lot of sleep."
"How long is it going to take us?"
Wes calculated.
"About eight days," he said soberly.
The next morning we descended from Madulce abruptly by a dirt trail,
almost perpendicular until we slid into a cañon of sage-brush and
quail, of mescale cactus and the fierce dry heat of sun-baked shale.
"Is it any hotter than this on the desert?" we inquired.
Wes looked on us with pity.
"This is plumb arctic," said he.
Near noon we came to a little cattle ranch situated in a flat
surrounded by red dikes and buttes after the manner of Arizona. Here
we unpacked, early as it was, for through the dry countries one has to
apportion his day's journeys by the water to be had. If we went
farther to-day, then to-morrow night would find us in a dry camp.
The horses scampered down the flat to search out alfilaria. We roosted
under a slanting shed,--where were stock saddles, silver-mounted bits
and spurs, rawhide riatas, branding-irons, and all the lumber of the
cattle business,--and hung out our tongues and gasped for breath and
earnestly desired the sun to go down or a breeze to come up. The
breeze shortly did so. It was a hot breeze, and availed merely to
cover us with dust, to swirl the stable-yard into our faces. Great
swarms of flies buzzed and lit and stung. Wes, disgusted, went over to
where a solitary cowpuncher was engaged in shoeing a horse. Shortly we
saw Wes pressed into service to hold the horse's hoof. He raised a
pathetic face to us, the big round drops chasing each other down it as
fast as rain. We grinned and felt better.
The fierce perpendicular rays of the sun beat down. The air under the
shed grew stuffier and more oppressive, but it was the only patch of
shade in all that pink and red furnace of a little valley. The
Tenderfoot discovered a pair of horse-clippers, and, becoming slightly
foolish with the heat, insisted on our barbering his head. We told him
it was cooler with hair than without; and that the flies and sun would
be offered thus a beautiful opportunity, but without avail. So we
clipped him,--leaving, however, a beautiful long scalp-lock in the
middle of his crown. He looked like High-low-kickapoo-waterpot, chief
of the Wam-wams. After a while he discovered it, and was unhappy.
Shortly the riders began to come in, jingling up to the shed, with a
rattle of spurs and bit-chains. There they unsaddled their horses,
after which, with great unanimity, they soused their heads in the
horse-trough. The chief, a six-footer, wearing beautifully decorated
gauntlets and a pair of white buckskin chaps, went so far as to say it
was a little warm for the time of year. In the freshness of evening,
when frazzled nerves had regained their steadiness, he returned to
smoke and yarn with us and tell us of the peculiarities of the cattle
business in the Cuyamas. At present he and his men were riding the
great mountains, driving the cattle to the lowlands in anticipation of
a rodeo the following week. A rodeo under that sun!
We slept in the ranch vehicles, so the air could get under us. While
the stars still shone, we crawled out, tired and unrefreshed. The
Tenderfoot and I went down the valley after the horses. While we
looked, the dull pallid gray of dawn filtered into the darkness, and so
we saw our animals, out of proportion, monstrous in the half light of
that earliest morning. Before the range riders were even astir we had
taken up our journey, filching thus a few hours from the inimical sun.