HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS; THE CARIBOU
In September, 1888, I was camped on the shores of Kootenai Lake, having
with me as companions John Willis and an impassive-looking Indian
named Ammál. Coming across through the dense coniferous forests of
northern Idaho we had struck the Kootenai River. Then we went down
with the current as it wound in half circles through a long alluvial
valley of mixed marsh and woodland, hemmed in by lofty mountains. The
lake itself, when we reached it, stretched straight away like a great
fjord, a hundred miles long and about three in breadth. The frowning
and rugged Selkirks came down sheer to the water’s edge. So straight
were the rock walls that it was difficult for us to land with our
batteau, save at the places where the rapid mountain torrents entered
the lake. As these streams of swift water broke from their narrow
gorges they made little deltas of level ground with beaches of fine
white sand; and the stream-banks were edged with cottonwood and poplar,
their shimmering foliage relieving the sombre coloring of the evergreen
forest.
Close to such a brook, from which we drew strings of large silver
trout, our tent was pitched, just within the forest. From between the
trunks of two gnarled, wind-beaten trees, a pine and a cottonwood, we
looked out across the lake. The little bay in our front, in which we
bathed and swam, was sometimes glassily calm; and again heavy wind
squalls arose, and the surf beat strongly on the beach where our boat
was drawn up. Now and then great checker-back loons drifted buoyantly
by, stopping with bold curiosity to peer at the white tent gleaming
between the tree trunks, and at the smoke curling above their tops;
and they called to one another, both at dawn and in the daytime, with
shrieks of unearthly laughter. Troops of noisy, party-colored Clark’s
crows circled over the tree-tops or hung from among the pine cones;
jays and chickadees came round the camp, and woodpeckers hammered
lustily in the dead timber. Two or three times parties of Indians
passed down the lake, in strangely shaped bark canoes, with peaked,
projecting prows and sterns; craft utterly unlike the graceful,
feather-floating birches so beloved by both the red and the white
woodsmen of the Northeast. Once a couple of white men, in a dugout or
pirogue made out of a cottonwood log, stopped to get lunch. They were
mining prospectors, French Canadians by birth, but beaten into the
usual frontier-mining stamp; doomed to wander their lives long, ever
hoping, in the quest for metal wealth.
With these exceptions there was nothing to break the silent loneliness
of the great lake. Shrouded as we were in the dense forest, and at the
foot of the first steep hills, we could see nothing of the country
on the side where we were camped; but across the water the immense
mountain masses stretched away from our vision, range upon range, until
they turned to a glittering throng of ice peaks and snow fields, the
feeding beds of glaciers. Between the lake and the snow range were
chains of gray rock peaks, and the mountain sides and valleys were
covered by the primeval forest. The woods were on fire across the lake
from our camp, burning steadily. At night the scene was very grand, as
the fire worked slowly across the mountain sides in immense zigzags of
quivering red; while at times isolated pines of unusual size kindled,
and flamed for hours, like the torches of a giant. Finally the smoke
grew so thick as to screen from our views the grand landscape opposite.
We had come down from a week’s fruitless hunting in the mountains;
a week of excessive toil, in a country where we saw no game--for in
our ignorance we had wasted time, not going straight back to the
high ranges, from which the game had not yet descended. After three
or four days of rest, and of feasting on trout--a welcome relief to
the monotony of frying-pan bread and coarse salt pork--we were ready
for another trial; and early one morning we made the start. Having
to pack everything for a fortnight’s use on our backs, through an
excessively rough country we of course traveled as light as possible,
leaving almost all we had with the tent and boat. Each took his own
blanket; and among us we carried a frying-pan, a teapot, flour, pork,
salt, tea, and matches. I also took a jacket, a spare pair of socks,
some handkerchiefs, and my washing kit. Fifty cartridges in my belt
completed my outfit.
We walked in single file, as is necessary in thick woods. The white
hunter led and I followed, each with rifle on shoulder and pack on
back. Ammál, the Indian, pigeon-toed along behind, carrying his
pack, not as we did ours, but by help of a forehead-band, which he
sometimes shifted across his breast. The traveling through the tangled,
brush-choked forest, and along the bowlder-strewn and precipitous
mountain sides, was inconceivably rough and difficult. In places we
followed the valley, and when this became impossible we struck across
the spurs. Every step was severe toil. Now we walked through deep moss
and rotting mould, every few feet clambering over huge trunks; again we
pushed through a stiff jungle of bushes and tall, prickly plants--called
“devil’s clubs,”--which stung our hands and faces. Up the almost
perpendicular hillsides we in many places went practically on all
fours, forcing our way over the rocks and through the dense thickets of
laurels or young spruce. Where there were windfalls or great stretches
of burned forest, black and barren wastes, we balanced and leaped from
log to log, sometimes twenty or thirty feet above the ground; and
when such a stretch was on a steep hillside, and especially if the
logs were enveloped in a thick second growth of small evergreens, the
footing was very insecure, and the danger from a fall considerable.
Our packs added greatly to our labor, catching on the snags and stubs;
and where a grove of thick-growing young spruces or balsams had been
burned, the stiff and brittle twigs pricked like so much coral. Most
difficult of all were the dry watercourses, choked with alders, where
the intertwined tangle of tough stems formed an almost literally
impenetrable barrier to our progress. Nearly every movement--leaping,
climbing, swinging one’s self up with one’s hands, bursting through
stiff bushes, plunging into and out of bogs--was one of strain and
exertion; the fatigue was tremendous, and steadily continued, so that
in an hour every particle of clothing I had on was wringing wet with
sweat.
At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite of lunch--a chunk of
cold frying-pan bread, which was all we had.
While at lunch I made a capture. I was sitting on a great stone by the
edge of the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which had come up from
a short flight--I can call it nothing else--underneath the water, and
was singing sweetly from a spray-splashed log. Suddenly a small animal
swam across the little pool at my feet. It was less in size than a
mouse, and as it paddled rapidly underneath the water its body seemed
flattened like a disk and was spangled with tiny bubbles, like specks
of silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare little beast. I sat motionless
and watched both the shrew and the water-wren--water-ousel, as it should
rightly be named. The latter, emboldened by my quiet, presently flew
by me to a little rapids close at hand, lighting on a round stone, and
then slipping unconcernedly into the swift water. Anon he emerged,
stood on another stone, and trilled a few bars, though it was late in
the season for singing, and then dived again into the stream.
I gazed at him eagerly; for this strange, pretty water-thrush is to me
one of the most attractive and interesting birds to be found in the
gorges of the great Rockies. Its haunts are romantically beautiful, for
it always dwells beside and in the swift-flowing mountain brooks; it
has a singularly sweet song; and its ways render it a marked bird at
once, for, though looking much like a sober-colored, ordinary woodland
thrush, it spends half its time under the water, walking along the
bottom, swimming and diving, and flitting through as well as over the
cataracts.
In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. It got into a
little shallow eddy and caught a minute fish, which it carried to a
half-sunken stone and greedily devoured, tugging voraciously at it
as it held it down with its paws. Then its evil genius drove it into
a small puddle alongside the brook, where I instantly pounced on and
slew it; for I knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Washington who would
have coveted it greatly. It was a soft, pretty creature, dark above,
snow-white below, with a very long tail. I turned the skin inside out
and put a bent twig in, that it might dry; while Ammál, who had been
intensely interested in the chase and capture, meditatively shook his
head and said “wagh,” unable to fathom the white man’s medicine.
However, my labor came to naught, for that evening I laid the skin out
on a log, Ammál threw the log into the fire, and that was the end of
the shrew.
When this interlude was over we resumed our march, toiling silently
onward through the wild and rugged country. Toward evening the valley
widened a little, and we were able to walk in the bottoms, which much
lightened our labor. The hunter, for greater ease, had tied the thongs
of his heavy pack across his breast, so that he could not use his
rifle; but my pack was lighter, and I carried it in a manner that would
not interfere with my shooting, lest we should come unwares on game.
It was well that I did so. An hour or two before sunset we were
traveling, as usual, in Indian file, beside the stream, through an open
wood of great hemlock trees. There was no breeze, and we made no sound
as we marched, for our feet sunk noiselessly into the deep sponge of
moss, while the incessant dashing of the torrent, churning among the
stones, would have drowned a far louder advance.
Suddenly the hunter, who was leading, dropped down in his tracks,
pointing forward; and some fifty feet beyond I saw the head and
shoulders of a bear as he rose to make a sweep at some berries. He
was in a hollow where a tall, rank, prickly plant, with broad leaves,
grew luxuriantly; and he was gathering its red berries, rising on his
hind legs and sweeping them down into his mouth with his paw, and was
much too intent on his work to notice us, for his head was pointed the
other way. The moment he rose again I fired, meaning to shoot through
the shoulders, but instead, in the hurry, taking him in the neck. Down
he went, but whether hurt or not we could not see, for the second he
was on all fours he was no longer visible. Rather to my surprise he
uttered no sound--for bear when hit or when charging often make a great
noise--so I raced forward to the edge of the hollow, the hunter close
behind me, while Ammál danced about in the rear, very much excited, as
Indians always are in the presence of big game. The instant we reached
the hollow and looked down into it from the low bank on which we stood
we saw by the swaying of the tall plants that the bear was coming our
way. The hunter was standing some ten feet distant, a hemlock trunk
being between us; and the next moment the bear sprang clean up the bank
the other side of the hemlock, and almost within arm’s-length of my
companion. I do not think he had intended to charge; he was probably
confused by the bullet through his neck, and had by chance blundered
out of the hollow in our direction; but when he saw the hunter so close
he turned for him, his hair bristling and his teeth showing. The man
had no cartridge in his weapon, and with his pack on could not have
used it anyhow; and for a moment it looked as if he stood a fair
chance of being hurt, though it is not likely that the bear would have
done more than knock him down with his powerful forepaw, or perchance
give him a single bite in passing. However, as the beast sprang out of
the hollow he poised for a second on the edge of the bank to recover
his balance, giving me a beautiful shot, as he stood side-wise to me;
the bullet struck between the eye and ear, and he fell as if hit with a
pole axe.
Immediately the Indian began jumping about the body, uttering wild
yells, his usually impassive face lighted up with excitement, while
the hunter and I stood at rest, leaning on our rifles and laughing.
It was a strange scene, the dead bear lying in the shade of the giant
hemlocks, while the fantastic-looking savage danced round him with
shrill whoops, and the tall frontiersman looked quietly on.
Our prize was a large black bear, with two curious brown streaks down
his back, one on each side the spine. We skinned him and camped by the
carcass, as it was growing late. To take the chill off the evening air
we built a huge fire, the logs roaring and crackling. To one side of it
we made our beds--of balsam and hemlock boughs; we did not build a brush
lean-to, because the night seemed likely to be clear. Then we supped
on sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of bear meat, fried
or roasted--and how very good it tasted only those know who have gone
through much hardship and some little hunger, and have worked violently
for several days without flesh food. After eating our fill we stretched
ourselves around the fire; the leaping sheets of flame lighted the tree
trunks round about, causing them to start out against the cavernous
blackness beyond, and reddened the interlacing branches that formed a
canopy overhead. The Indian sat on his haunches, gazing steadily and
silently into the pile of blazing logs, while the white hunter and I
talked together.
The morning after killing Bruin, we again took up our march, heading
up stream, that we might go to its sources amid the mountains, where
the snow fields fed its springs. It was two full days’ journey thither,
but we took much longer to make it, as we kept halting to hunt the
adjoining mountains. On such occasions Ammál was left as camp guard,
while the white hunter and I would start by daybreak and return at dark
utterly worn out by the excessive fatigue. We knew nothing of caribou,
nor where to hunt for them; and we had been told that thus early in the
season they were above tree limit on the mountain sides. Accordingly we
would climb up to the limits of the forests, but never found a caribou
trail; and once or twice we went on to the summits of the crag-peaks,
and across the deep snow fields in the passes. There were plenty of
white goats, however, their trails being broad paths, especially at one
spot where they led down to a lick in the valley; round the lick for a
space of many yards the ground was trampled as if in a sheepfold.
The mountains were very steep, and the climbing was in places
dangerous, when we were above the timber and had to make our way along
the jagged knife-crests and across the faces of the cliffs; while our
hearts beat as if about to burst in the high, thin air. In walking over
rough but not dangerous ground--across slides or in thick timber--my
companion was far more skilful than I was; but rather to my surprise I
proved to be nearly as good as he when we came to the really dangerous
places, where we had to go slowly, and let one another down from ledge
to ledge, or crawl by narrow cracks across the rock walls.
The view from the summits was magnificent, and I never tired of gazing
at it. Sometimes the sky was a dome of blue crystal, and mountain,
lake, and valley lay spread in startling clearness at our very feet;
and again snow-peak and rock-peak were thrust up like islands through
a sea of billowy clouds. At the feet of the topmost peaks, just above
the edge of the forest, were marshy alpine valleys, the boggy ground
soaked with water, and small bushes or stunted trees fringing the icy
lakes. In the stony mountain sides surrounding these lakes there were
hoary woodchucks and conies. The former resembled in their habits the
alpine marmot, rather than our own common Eastern woodchuck. They lived
alone or in couples among the rocks, their gray color often making them
difficult to see as they crouched at the mouths of their burrows, or
sat bolt upright; and as an alarm note they uttered a loud piercing
whistle, a strong contrast to the querulous, plaintive “p-a-a-y” of the
timid conies. These likewise loved to dwell where the stones and slabs
of rock were heaped on one another; though so timid, they were not
nearly as wary as the woodchucks. If we stood quite still the little
brown creatures would venture away from their holes and hop softly over
the rocks as if we were not present.
The white goats were too musky to eat, and we saw nothing else to
shoot; so we speedily became reduced to tea, and to bread baked in
the frying-pan, save every now and then for a feast on the luscious
mountain blueberries. This rather meagre diet, coupled with incessant
fatigue and exertion, made us fairly long for meat food; and we fell
off in flesh, though of course in so short a time we did not suffer
in either health or strength. Fortunately the nights were too cool
for mosquitoes; but once or twice in the afternoons, while descending
the lower slopes of the mountains, we were much bothered by swarms of
gnats; they worried us greatly, usually attacking us at a time when we
had to go fast in order to reach camp before dark, while the roughness
of the ground forced us to use both hands in climbing, and thus forbade
us to shield our faces from our tiny tormentors. Our chief luxury
was, at the end of the day, when footsore and weary, to cast aside
our sweat-drenched clothes and plunge into the icy mountain torrent
for a moment’s bath that freshened us as if by magic. The nights were
generally pleasant, and we slept soundly on our beds of balsam boughs,
but once or twice there were sharp frosts, and it was so cold that the
hunter and I huddled together for warmth and kept the fires going till
morning. One day, when we were on the march, it rained heavily, and we
were soaked through, and stiff and chilly when we pitched camp; but we
speedily built a great brush lean-to, made a roaring fire in front,
and grew once more to warmth and comfort as we sat under our steaming
shelter. The only discomfort we really minded was an occasional night
in wet blankets.
In the evening the Indian and the white hunter played interminable
games of seven-up with a greasy pack of cards. In the course of his
varied life the hunter had been a professional gambler; and he could
have easily won all the Indian’s money, the more speedily inasmuch as
the untutored red man was always attempting to cheat, and was thus
giving his far more skilful opponent a certain right to try some
similar deviltry in return. However, it was distinctly understood that
there should be no gambling, for I did not wish Ammál to lose all
his wages while in my employ; and the white man stood loyally by his
agreement. Ammál’s people, just before I engaged him, had been visited
by their brethren, the Upper Kootenais, and in a series of gambling
matches had lost about all their belongings.
Ammál himself was one of the Lower Kootenais; I had hired him for the
trip, as the Indians west of the Rockies, unlike their kinsmen of
the plains, often prove hard and willing workers. His knowledge of
English was almost nil; and our very scanty conversation was carried
on in the Chinook jargon, universally employed between the mountains
and the Pacific. Apparently he had three names: for he assured us
that his “Boston” (_i.e._ American) name was Ammál; his “Siwash”
(_i.e._ Indian) name was Appák; and that the priest called him
Abél--for the Lower Kootenais are nominally Catholics. Whatever his
name he was a good Indian, as Indians go. I often tried to talk with
him about game and hunting, but we understood each other too little
to exchange more than the most rudimentary ideas. His face brightened
one night when I happened to tell him of my baby boys at home; he must
have been an affectionate father in his way, this dark Ammál, for he
at once proceeded to tell me about his own papoose, who had also seen
one snow, and to describe how the little fellow was old enough to take
one step and then fall down. But he never displayed so much vivacity
as on one occasion when the white hunter happened to relate to him a
rather grewsome feat of one of their mutual acquaintances, an Upper
Kootenai Indian named Three Coyotes. The latter was a quarrelsome,
adventurous Indian, with whom the hunter had once had a difficulty--“I
had to beat the cuss over the head with my gun a little,” he remarked
parenthetically. His last feat had been done in connection with a
number of Chinamen who had been working among some placer mines,
where the Indians came to visit them. Now, the astute Chinese are as
fond of gambling as any of the borderers, white or red, and are very
successful, generally fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three Coyotes
lost all he possessed to one of the pigtailed gentry; but he apparently
took his losses philosophically, and pleasantly followed the victor
round, until the latter had won all the cash and goods of several other
Indians. Then he suddenly fell on the exile from the Celestial Empire,
slew him and took all his plunder, retiring unmolested, as it did not
seem any one’s business to avenge a mere Chinaman. Ammál was immensely
interested in the tale, and kept recurring to it again and again,
taking two little sticks and making the hunter act out the whole story.
The Kootenais were then only just beginning to consider the Chinese as
human. They knew they must not kill white people, and they had their
own code of morality among themselves; but when the Chinese first
appeared they evidently thought that there could not be any special
objection to killing them, if any reason arose for doing so. I think
the hunter himself sympathized somewhat with this view.
Ammál objected strongly to leaving the neighborhood of the lake. He
went the first day’s journey willingly enough, but after that it was
increasingly difficult to get him along, and he gradually grew sulky.
For some time we could not find out the reason; but finally he gave
us to understand that he was afraid because up in the high mountains
there were “little bad Indians” who would kill him if they caught him
alone, especially at night. At first we thought he was speaking of
stray warriors of the Blackfeet tribe; but it turned out that he was
not thinking of human beings at all, but of hobgoblins.
Indeed the night sounds of these great stretches of mountain woodlands
were very weird and strange. Though I have often and for long periods
dwelt and hunted in the wilderness, yet I never before so well
understood why the people who live in lonely forest regions are prone
to believe in elves, wood spirits and other beings of an unseen world.
Our last camp, whereat we spent several days, was pitched in a deep
valley nearly at the head of the stream. Our brush shelter stood
among the tall coniferous trees that covered the valley bottom; but
the altitude was so great that the forest extended only a very short
distance up the steep mountain slopes. Beyond, on either hand, rose
walls of gray rock, with snow beds in their rifts, and, high above,
toward the snow peaks, the great white fields dazzled the eyes. The
torrent foamed swiftly by but a short distance below the mossy level
space on which we had built our slight weather-shield of pine boughs;
other streams poured into it, from ravines through which they leaped
down the mountain sides.
After nightfall, round the camp fire, or if I awakened after sleeping
a little while, I would often lie silently for many minutes together,
listening to the noises in the wilderness. At times the wind moaned
harshly through the tops of the tall pines and hemlocks; at times the
branches were still; but the splashing murmur of the torrent never
ceased, and through it came other sounds--the clatter of huge rocks
falling down the cliffs, the dashing of cataracts in far-off ravines,
the hooting of owls. Again, the breeze would shift, and bring to
my ears the ringing of other brooks and cataracts and wind-stirred
forests, and perhaps at long intervals the cry of some wild beast, the
crash of a falling tree, or the faint rumble of a snow avalanche. If
I listened long enough, it would almost seem that I heard thunderous
voices laughing and calling to one another, and as if at any moment
some shape might stalk out of the darkness into the dim light of the
embers.
Until within a couple of days of turning our faces back toward the
lake we did not come across any caribou and saw but a few old signs;
and we began to be fearful lest we should have to return without
getting any, for our shoes had been cut to ribbons by the sharp rocks,
we were almost out of flour, and therefore had but little to eat.
However, our perseverance was destined to be rewarded.
The first day after reaching our final camp, we hunted across a set of
spurs and hollows but saw nothing living; yet we came across several
bear tracks, and in a deep, mossy quagmire, by a spring, found where a
huge silver-tip had wallowed only the night before.
Next day we started early, determined to take a long walk and follow
the main stream up to its head, or at least above timber line. The
hunter struck so brisk a pace, plunging through thickets and leaping
from log to log in the slashes of fallen timber, and from bowlder to
bowlder in crossing the rock-slides, that I could hardly keep up to
him, struggle as I would, and we each of us got several ugly tumbles,
saving our rifles at the expense of scraped hands and bruised bodies.
We went up one side of the stream, intending to come down the other;
for the forest belt was narrow enough to hunt thoroughly. For two or
three hours we toiled through dense growth, varied by rock-slides, and
once or twice by marshy tracts, where water oozed and soaked through
the mossy hillsides, studded rather sparsely with evergreens. In one of
these places we caught a glimpse of an animal which the track showed
to be a wolverine.
Then we came to a spur of open hemlock forest; and no sooner had
we entered it than the hunter stopped and pointed exultingly to a
well-marked game trail, in which it was easy at a glance to discern
the great round footprints of our quarry. We hunted carefully over the
spur and found several trails, generally leading down along the ridge;
we also found a number of beds, some old and some recent, usually
placed where the animal could keep a lookout for any foe coming up
from the valley. They were merely slight hollows or indentations in
the pine needles; and, like the game trails, were placed in localities
similar to those that would be chosen by blacktail deer. The caribou
droppings were also very plentiful; and there were signs of where they
had browsed on the blueberry bushes, cropping off the berries, and also
apparently of where they had here and there plucked a mouthful of a
peculiar kind of moss, or cropped off some little mushrooms. But the
beasts themselves had evidently left the hemlock ridge, and we went on.
We were much pleased at finding the sign in open timber, where the
ground was excellent for still-hunting; for in such thick forest as we
had passed through, it would have been by mere luck only that we could
have approached game.
After a little while the valley became so high that the large timber
ceased, and there were only occasional groves of spindling evergreens.
Beyond the edge of the big timber was a large boggy tract, studded
with little pools; and here again we found plenty of caribou tracks.
A caribou has an enormous foot, bigger than a cow’s, and admirably
adapted for traveling over snow or bogs; hence they can pass through
places where the long, slender hoofs of moose or deer, or the round
hoofs of elk, would let their owners sink at once; and they are very
difficult to kill by following on snowshoes--a method much in vogue
among the brutal game butchers for slaughtering the more helpless
animals. Spreading out his great hoofs, and bending his legs till he
walks almost on the joints, a caribou will travel swiftly over a crust
through which a moose breaks at every stride, or through deep snow in
which a deer can not flounder fifty yards. Usually he trots; but when
pressed he will spring awkwardly along, leaving tracks in the snow
almost exactly like magnified imprints of those of a great rabbit, the
long marks of the two hind legs forming an angle with each other, while
the forefeet make a large point almost between.
The caribou had wandered all over the bogs and through the shallow
pools, but evidently only at night or in the dusk, when feeding or in
coming to drink; and again we went on. Soon the timber disappeared
almost entirely, and thick brushwood took its place; we were in a high,
bare alpine valley, the snow lying in drifts along the sides. In places
there had been enormous rock-slides, entirely filling up the bottom, so
that for a quarter of a mile at a stretch the stream ran underground.
In the rock masses of this alpine valley we, as usual, saw many conies
and hoary woodchucks.
The caribou trails had ceased, and it was evident that the beasts were
not ahead of us in the barren, treeless recesses between the mountains
of rock and snow; and we turned back down the valley, crossing over
to the opposite or south side of the stream. We had already eaten our
scanty lunch, for it was afternoon. For several miles of hard walking,
through thicket, marsh, and rock-slide, we saw no traces of the game.
Then we reached the forest, which soon widened out, and crept up the
mountain sides; and we came to where another stream entered the one
we were following. A high, steep shoulder between the two valleys was
covered with an open growth of great hemlock timber, and in this we
again found the trails and beds plentiful. There was no breeze, and
after beating through the forest nearly to its upper edge, we began to
go down the ridge, or point of the shoulder. The comparative freedom
from brushwood made it easy to walk without noise, and we descended the
steep incline with the utmost care, scanning every object, and using
every caution not to slip on the hemlock needles, nor to strike a
stone or break a stick with our feet. The sign was very fresh, and when
still half a mile or so from the bottom we at last came on three bull
caribou.
Instantly the hunter crouched down, while I ran noiselessly forward
behind the shelter of a big hemlock trunk until within fifty yards of
the grazing and unconscious quarry. They were feeding with their heads
up-hill, but so greedily that they had not seen us; and they were
rather difficult to see themselves, for their bodies harmonized well
in color with the brown tree trunks and lichen-covered bowlders. The
largest, a big bull with a good but by no means extraordinary head, was
nearest. As he stood fronting me with his head down I fired into his
neck, breaking the bone, and he turned a tremendous back somersault.
The other two halted a second in stunned terror; then one, a yearling,
rushed past us up the valley down which we had come, while the other,
a large bull with small antlers, crossed right in front of me, at a
canter, his neck thrust out, and his head--so coarse-looking compared
to the delicate outlines of an elk’s--turned toward me. His movements
seemed clumsy and awkward, utterly unlike those of a deer; but he
handled his great hoofs cleverly enough, and broke into a headlong,
rattling gallop as he went down the hillside, crashing through the
saplings and leaping over the fallen logs. There was a spur a little
beyond, and up this he went at a swinging trot, halting when he reached
the top, and turning to look at me once more. He was only a hundred
yards away; and though I had not intended to shoot him (for his head
was not good), the temptation was sore; and I was glad when, in another
second, the stupid beast turned again and went off up the valley at a
slashing run.
Then we hurried down to examine with pride and pleasure the dead
bull--his massive form, sleek coat, and fine antlers. It was one of
those moments that repay the hunter for days of toil and hardship; that
is if he needs repayment, and does not find life in the wilderness
pleasure enough in itself.
It was getting late, and if we expected to reach camp that night it
behooved us not to delay; so we merely halted long enough to dress the
caribou, and take a steak with us--which we did not need, by the way,
for almost immediately we came on a band of spruce grouse and knocked
off the heads of five with our rifles. The caribou’s stomach was filled
with blueberries, and with their leaves, and with a few small mushrooms
also, and some mouthfuls of moss. We went home very fast, too much
elated to heed scratches and tumbles; and just as it was growing so
dark that further traveling was impossible we came opposite our camp,
crossed the river on a fallen hemlock, and walked up to the moody
Indian, as he sat crouched by the fire.
He lost his sullenness when he heard what we had done; and next day we
all went up and skinned and butchered the caribou, returning to camp
and making ready to start back to the lake the following morning; and
that night we feasted royally.
We were off by dawn, the Indian joyfully leading. Coming up into the
mountains he had always been the rear man of the file; but now he
went first and struck a pace that, continued all day long, gave me a
little trouble to follow. Each of us carried his pack; to the Indian’s
share fell the caribou skull and antlers, which he bore on his head.
At the end of the day he confessed to me that it had made his head
“heap sick”--as well it might. We had made four short days’, or parts
of days’ march coming up; for we had stopped to hunt, and moreover we
knew nothing of the country, being probably the first white men in it,
while none of the Indians had ever ventured a long distance from the
lake. Returning we knew how to take the shortest route, we were going
down hill, and we walked or trotted very fast; and so we made the whole
distance in twelve hours’ travel. At sunset we came out on the last
range of steep foothills, overlooking the cove where we had pitched
our permanent camp; and from a bare cliff shoulder we saw our boat on
the beach, and our white tent among the trees, just as we had left
them, while the glassy mirror of the lake reflected the outlines of the
mountains opposite.
Though this was the first caribou I had ever killed, it was by no means
the first I had ever hunted. Among my earliest hunting experiences,
when a lad, were two fruitless and toilsome expeditions after caribou
in the Maine woods. One I made in the fall, going to the head of the
Munsungin River in a pirogue, with one companion. The water was low,
and all the way up we had to drag the pirogue, wet to our middles, our
ankles sore from slipping on the round stones under the rushing water,
and our muscles aching with fatigue. When we reached the head-waters we
found no caribou sign, and came back without slaying anything larger
than an infrequent duck or grouse.
The following February I made a trip on snowshoes after the same
game, and with the same result. However, I enjoyed the trip, for
the northland woods are very beautiful and strange in winter, as
indeed they are at all other times--and it was my first experience on
snowshoes. I used the ordinary webbed racquets, and as the snow, though
very deep, was only imperfectly crusted, I found that for a beginner
the exercise was laborious in the extreme, speedily discovering that,
no matter how cold it was, while walking through the windless woods I
stood in no need of warm clothing. But at night, especially when lying
out, the cold was bitter. Our plan was to drive in a sleigh to some
logging camp, where we were always received with hearty hospitality,
and thence make hunting trips, in very light marching order, through
the heart of the surrounding forest. The woods, wrapped in their heavy
white mantle, were still and lifeless. There were a few chickadees and
woodpeckers; now and then we saw flocks of red-polls, pine linnets,
and large, rosy grossbeaks; and once or twice I came across a grouse
or white rabbit, and killed it for supper; but this was nearly all.
Yet, though bird life was scarce, and though we saw few beasts beyond
an occasional porcupine or squirrel, every morning the snow was dotted
with a network of trails made during the hours of darkness; the fine
tracery of the footprints of the little red wood-mouse, the marks which
showed the loping progress of the sable, the V and dot of the rabbit,
the round pads of the lucivee, and many others. The snow reveals, as
nothing else does, the presence in the forest of the many shy woodland
creatures which lead their lives abroad only after nightfall. Once we
saw a coon, out early after its winter nap, and following I shot it
in a hollow tree. Another time we came on a deer and the frightened
beast left its “yard,” a tangle of beaten paths or deep furrows. The
poor animal made but slow headway through the powdery snow; after
going thirty or forty rods it sank exhausted in a deep drift, and lay
there in helpless panic as we walked close by. Very different were
the actions of the only caribou we saw--a fine beast which had shed
its antlers. I merely caught a glimpse of it as it leaped over a
breastwork of down timbers; and we never saw it again. Alternately
trotting and making a succession of long jumps, it speedily left us
far behind; with its great splay-hoofs it could snowshoe better than
we could. It is among deer the true denizen of the regions of heavy
snowfall; far more so than the moose. Only under exceptional conditions
of crust-formation is it in any danger from a man on snowshoes.
In other ways it is no better able to take care of itself than moose
and deer; in fact I doubt whether its senses are quite as acute, or
at least whether it is as wary and knowing, for under like conditions
it is rather easier to still-hunt. In the fall caribou wander long
distances, and are fond of frequenting the wet barrens which break the
expanse of the northern forest in tracts of ever-increasing size as the
sub-arctic regions are neared. At this time they go in bands, each under
the control of a master bull, which wages repeated and furious battles
for his harem; and in their ways of life they resemble the wapiti
more than they do the moose or deer. They sometimes display a curious
boldness, the bulls especially showing both stupidity and pugnacity
when in districts to which men rarely penetrate.
On our way out of the woods, after this hunt, there was a slight warm
spell, followed by rain and then by freezing weather, so as to bring
about what is known as a silver thaw. Every twig was sheathed in
glittering ice, and in the moonlight the forest gleamed as if carved
out of frosted silver.