Mr. Montague Stevens is an Englishman who for the most part attends to
the rounding-up of his cattle, which are scattered over the
northwestern quarter of New Mexico; but he does not let that interfere
with the time which all Englishmen set duly apart to be devoted to
sport. His door-yard is some hundreds of miles of mountain wilderness
and desolate mesa--a more gorgeous preserve than any king ever dreamed
of possessing for his pleasure--with its plains dotted with antelope,
and its mountains filled with cougar, deer, bear, and wild turkeys.
The white race has given up the contest with nature in those
parts, and it has reverted to the bear, the Navajo, and Mr.
Stevens--land-grants, corrals, cabins, brands, and all else.
General Miles was conducting a military observation of the country,
which is bound to be the scene of any war which the Apaches or Navajos
may make; and after a very long day’s march, during which we had found
but one water, and that was a pool of rain-water, stirred into mud and
full of alkali, where we had to let our horses into the muddy stuff at
the ends of our lariats, we had at last found a little rivulet and
some green grass. The coffee-pot bubbled and the frying-pan hissed,
while I smoked and listened to a big escort-wagon driver, who was
repairing his lash, and saying, softly, “Been drivin’ a bloody lot of
burros for thirty years, and don’t know enough to keep a whip out
of a wheel; guess I’ll go to jack-punchin’, ’nen I kin use a dry
club.”
[Illustration: WATERING HORSES]
Far down the valley a little cloud of dust gleamed up against the gray
of the mountains, and presently the tireless stride of a pony shone
darkly in its luminous midst. Nearer and nearer it grew--the flying
tail, the regular beating of the hoofs, the swaying figure of the
rider, and the left sleeve of the horseman’s coat flapping
purposelessly about. He crossed the brook with a splash, trotted, and,
with a jerk, pulled up in our midst. Mr. Stevens is a tall, thin young
man, very much bronzed, and with the set, serious face of an
Englishman. He wore corduroy clothes, and let himself out of his
saddle with one hand, which he also presented in greeting, the other
having been sacrificed to his own shot-gun on some previous occasion.
Mr. Stevens brought with him an enthusiasm for bear which speedily
enveloped the senses of our party, and even crowded out from the mind
of General Miles the nobler game which he had affected for thirty
years.
The steady cultivation of one subject for some days is bound to
develop a great deal of information, and it is with difficulty that I
refrain from herein setting down facts which can doubtless be found in
any good encyclopædia of natural history; but the men in the mountains
never depart from the consideration of that and one other subject,
which is brands, and have reached some strange conclusions--the
strangest being that the true Rocky Mountain grizzly is only seen once
in a man’s lifetime, and that the biggest one they ever heard of
leaves his tracks in this district, and costs Mr. Stevens, roughly
estimating, about $416 a year to support, since that about covers the
cattle he kills.
At break of day the officers, cavalrymen, escort-wagons, and
pack-train toiled up the Cañon Largo to Mr. Stevens’s camp, which was
reached in good time, and consisted of a regular ranchman’s
grub-wagon, a great many more dogs of more varieties than I could
possibly count, a big Texan, who was cook, and a professional
bear-hunter by the name of Cooper, who had recently departed from his
wonted game for a larger kind, with the result that, after the final
deal, a companion had passed a .45 through Mr. Cooper’s face and
filled it with powder, and brought him nigh unto death, so that even
now Mr. Cooper’s head was swathed in bandages, and his mind piled with
regrets that he had on at the time an overcoat, which prevented him
from drawing his gun with his usual precision. Our introduction to the
outfit was ushered in by a most magnificent free-for-all dog-fight;
and when we had carefully torn the snarling, yelling, biting mass
apart by the hind-legs and staked them out to surrounding trees, we
had time to watch Mr. Cooper draw diagrams of bear-paws in the dust
with a stick. These tracks he had just discovered up the Cañon Largo,
and he averred that the bear was a grizzly, and weighed 1800 pounds,
and that he had been there two years, and that all the boys had hunted
him, but that he was a sad old rascal.
After lunch we pulled on up the cañon and camped. The tents were
pitched and the cooks busy, when I noticed three cowboys down the
stream and across the cañon, who were alternately leading their horses
and stooping down in earnest consultation over some tracks on the
ground. We walked over to them. There were Mr. Cooper, whose only
visible eye rolled ominously, and Dan, the S. U. foreman, with another
puncher.
“He’s usin’ here,” said Cooper. “That’s his track, and there’s his
work,” pointing up the hill-side, where lay the body of a
five-year-old cow. We drew near her, and there was the tale of a
mighty struggle, all written out more eloquently than pen can do.
There were the deep furrows of the first grapple at the top; there was
the broad trail down the steep hill for fifty yards, with the stones
turned over, and the dust marked with horn and hoof and claw; and
there was the stump which had broken the roll down hill. The cow had
her neck broken and turned under her body; her shoulder was torn from
the body, her leg broken, and her side eaten into; and there were
Bruin’s big telltale footprints, rivalling in size a Gladstone bag, as
he had made his way down to the stream to quench his thirst and
continue up the cañon. The cow was yet warm--not two hours dead.
[Illustration: “DO YOU THINK THIS PONY IS GOING TO BUCK?”]
“We must pull out of here; he will come back to-night,” said Cooper.
And we all turned to with a will and struck the tents, while the cooks
threw their tins, bags, and boxes into the wagons, whereat we moved
off down wind for three miles, up a spur of the cañon, where we again
camped. We stood around the fires and allowed Mr. Cooper to fill our
minds with hope. “He’ll shore come back; he’s usin’ here; an’ cow
outfits--why, he don’t consider a cow outfit nothin’. He’s been right
on top of cow outfits since he’s been in these parts, and thet two
years gone now, when he begun to work this yer range, and do the work
you see done yonder. In the mornin’ we’ll strike his trail, and if we
can git to him you’ll shore see a bar-fight.”
We turned in, and during the night I was awakened twice--once by a
most terrific baying of all the dogs, who would not be quieted, and
later by a fine rain beating in my face. The night was dark, and we
were very much afraid the rain would kill the scent. We were up long
before daylight, and drank our coffee and ate our meat, and as soon as
“we could see a dog a hundred yards,” which is the bear-hunter’s
receipt, we moved off down the creek. We found that the cow had been
turned over twice, but not eaten--evidently Bruin had his suspicions.
The dogs cut his trail again and again. He had run within sight of our
camp, had wandered across the valley hither and yon, but the faithful
old hounds would not “go away.” Dan sat on his pony and blew his old
cow’s horn, and yelled: “Hooick! hooick! get down on him, Rocks;
hooick! hooick!” But Rocks could not get down on him, and then we knew
that the rain had killed the scent. We circled a half-mile out, but
the dogs were still; and then we followed up the Cañon Largo for
miles, and into the big mountain, through juniper thickets and over
malpais, up and down the most terrible places, for we knew that the
bear’s bed-ground is always up in the most rugged peaks, where the
rimrock overhangs in serried battlements, tier on tier. But no bear.
[Illustration: DAN AND ROCKS]
Rocks, the forward hound, grew weary of hunting for things which were
not, and retired to the rear to pay court to a lady friend; and Dan
had to rope Rocks, and with some irritation he started his pony, and
Rocks kept the pace by dint of legging it, and by the help of a tow
from 900 pounds of horse-flesh. Poor Rocks! He understood his
business; but in consequence of not being able to explain to the men
what fools they were, he suffered.
The hot mid-day sun of New Mexico soon kills the scent, and we were
forced to give over for the day. A cavalry sergeant shot three deer,
but we, in our superior purpose, had learned to despise deer. Later I
made a good two-hundred-yard centre on an antelope, and though I had
not been fortunate enough in years to get an antelope, the whole
sensation was flat in view of this new ambition.
On the following morning we went again to our dead cow, but nothing
except the jackals had been at the bear’s prey, for the wily old
fellow had evidently scented our camp, and concluded that we were not
a cow outfit, whereat he had discreetly “pulled his freight.”
We sat on our horses in a circle, and raised our voices. In
consideration of the short time at our disposal, we concluded that we
could be satisfied with taking 1800 pounds of bear on the instalment
plan. The first instalment was a very big piece of meat, but was--I am
going to confess--presented to us in the nature of a gift; but the
whole thing was so curious I will go into it.
We hunted for two days without success, unless I include deer and
antelope; but during the time I saw two things which interested me.
The first was a revelation of the perfect understanding which a
mountain cow-pony has of the manner in which to negotiate the
difficulties of the country which is his home.
Dan, the foreman, was the huntsman. He was a shrewd-eyed, little,
square-built man, always very much preoccupied with the matter in
hand. He wore a sombrero modelled into much character by weather and
time, a corduroy coat, and those enormous New-Mexican “chaps,” and he
sounded a cow-horn for his dogs, and alternately yelped in a most
amusing way. So odd was this yelp that it caught the soldiers, and
around their camp-fire at night you could hear the mimicking shouts of
“Oh, Rocks! eh-h-h! hooick! get down on him, Rocks; tohoot! tohoot!”
We were sitting about on our horses in a little _sienneca_, while Dan
was walking about, leading his pony and looking after his dogs.
When very near me he found it necessary to cross an _arróyo_ which
was about five feet deep and with perfectly perpendicular banks.
Without hesitation he jumped down into it, and with a light bound his
pony followed. At the opposite side Dan put up his arms on the bank
and clawed his way up, and, still paying no attention to his pony, he
continued on. Without faltering in the least, the little horse put his
fore-feet on the bank, clawed at it once, twice, jumped, scratched,
clawed, and, for all the world like a cat getting into the fork of a
tree, he was on the bank and following Dan.
[Illustration: A DANGEROUS PLACE]
Later in the day, when going to our camp, we followed one of Dan’s
short-cuts through the mountains, and the cowboys on their mountain
ponies rode over a place which made the breath come short to the
officers and men behind; not that they could not cross themselves,
being on foot, but that the cavalry horses could they had their solemn
doubts, and no one but an evil brute desires to lead a game animal
where he may lose his life. Not being a geologist, I will have to say
it was a blue clay in process of rock formation, and in wet times held
a mountain torrent. The slope was quite seventy degrees. The approach
was loose dirt and malpais, which ran off down the gulch in small
avalanches under our feet. While crossing, the horses literally stood
on their toes to claw out a footing. A slip would have sent them,
belly up, down the toboggan-slide, with a drop into an unknown depth
at the end. I had often heard the cavalry axiom “that a horse can go
anywhere a man can if the man will not use his hands,” and a little
recruit murmured it to reassure himself. I passed, with the loss of a
quarter of the skin on my left hand, and later asked a quaint old
veteran of four enlistments if he thought it was a bad place, and he
said, “It’s lizards, not harses, what ought to go thar.”
Riding over the rough mountains all day sows poppyseeds in a man’s
head, and when the big medical officer opens your tent-flaps in the
morning, and fills the walls with his roars to “Get up! it’s four
o’clock,” it is with groans that you obey. You also forego washing,
because you are nearly frozen stiff, and you go out and stand around
the fire with your companions, who are all cheerfully miserable as
they shiver and chaff each other. It seems we do not live this life on
a cold, calculating plane of existence, but on different lines, the
variation of which is the chief delight of the discriminating, and I
must record a distinct pleasure in elbowing fellows around a camp-fire
when it is dark and cold and wet, and when you know that they are
oftener in bed than out of it at such hours. You drink your quart of
coffee, eat your slice of venison, and then regard your horse with
some trepidation, since he is all of a tremble, has a hump on his
back, and is evidently of a mind to “pitch.”
The eastern sky grows pale, and the irrepressible Dan begins to “honk”
on his horn, and the cavalcade moves off through the grease-wood,
which sticks up thickly from the ground like millions of Omaha
war-bonnets.
The advance consists of six or eight big blood-hounds, which range out
in front, with Dan and Mr. Cooper to blow the horn, look out for “bear
sign,” and to swear gently but firmly when the younger dogs take
recent deer trails under consideration. Three hundred yards behind
come Scotch stag-hounds, a big yellow mastiff, fox-terriers, and one
or two dogs which would not classify in a bench-show, and over these
Mr. Stevens holds a guiding hand, while in a disordered band come
General Miles, his son, three army officers, myself, and seven
orderlies of the Second Cavalry. All this made a picture, but, like
all Western canvases, too big for a frame. The sun broke in a golden
flash over the hills, and streaked the plain with gold and gray
greens. The spirit of the thing is not hunting but the chase of the
bear, taking one’s mind back to the buffalo, or the nobles of the
Middle Ages, who made their “image of war” with bigger game than red
foxes.
[Illustration: “GONE AWAY”]
Leaving the plain we wound up a dry creek, and noted that the small
oaks had been bitten and clawed down by bear to get at the acorns. The
hounds gave tongue, but could not get away until we had come to a
small glade in the forest, where they grew wildly excited. Mr. Cooper
here showed us a very large bear track, and also a smaller one, with
those of two cubs by its side. With a wild burst the dogs went away up
a cañon, the blood went into our heads, and our heels into the horses,
and a desperate scramble began. It is the sensation we have travelled
so long to feel. Dan and Cooper sailed off through the brush and over
the stones like two old crows, with their coat-tails flapping like
wings. We follow at a gallop in single file up the narrow, dry
watercourse. The creek ends, and we take to the steep hill-sides,
while the loose stones rattle from under the flying hoofs. The rains
have cut deep furrows on their way to the bed of the cañon, and your
horse scratches and scrambles for a foothold. A low, gnarled branch
bangs you across the face, and then your breath fairly stops as you
see a horse go into the air and disappear over a big log, fallen down
a hill of seventy degrees’ slope. The “take-off and landing” is
yielding dust, but the blood in your head puts the spur in your horse,
and over you go. If you miss, it is a 200-foot roll, with a 1200-pound
horse on top of you. But the pace soon tells, and you see nothing but
good honest climbing ahead of you. The trail of the yelling dogs goes
straight up, amid scraggly cedar and juniper, with loose malpais
underfoot. We arrive at the top only to see Cooper and Dan disappear
over a precipice after the dogs, but here we stop. Bears always seek
the very highest peaks, and it is better to be there before them if
possible. A grizzly can run downhill quicker than a horse, and all
hunters try to get above them, since if they are big and fat they
climb slowly; besides, the mountain-tops are more or less flat and
devoid of underbrush, which makes good running for a horse. We
scatter out along the cordon of the range. The bag doing on the
rimrock of the mountain-tops, where the bear tries to throw off the
dogs, makes it quite impossible to follow them at speed, so that you
must separate and take your chances of heading the chase.
[Illustration: TIMBER-TOPPING IN THE ROCKIES]
I selected Captain Mickler--the immaculate, the polo-player, the
epitome of staff form, the trappiest trooper in the Dandy Fifth--and,
together with two orderlies, we started. Mickler was mounted on a
cow-pony, which measured one chain three links from muzzle to
coupling. Mickler had on English riding-togs--this is not saying that
the pony could not run, or that Mickler was not humorous. But it was
no new experience for him, this pulling a pony and coaxing him to
attempt breakneck experiments, for he told me casually that he had led
barefooted cavalrymen over these hills in pursuit of Apaches at a date
in history when I was carefully conjugating Latin verbs.
We were making our way down a bad formation when we heard the dogs,
and presently three shots. A strayed cavalry orderly had, much to his
disturbance of mind, beheld a big silver-tip bearing down on him, jaws
skinned, ears back, and red-eyed, and he had promptly removed himself
to a proper distance, where he dismounted. The bear and dogs were much
exhausted, but the dogs swarmed around the bear, thus preventing a
shot. But Bruin stopped at intervals to fight the dogs, and the
soldier fired, but without effect. If men do not come up with the dogs
in order to encourage them, many will draw off, since the work of
chasing and fighting a bear without water for hours is very trying.
Only hounds can be depended on, as the tongues of other dogs thicken,
and they soon droop when long without water. Some of the dogs may
have followed the bear with cubs, but if they did we never heard of
them. The one now running was an enormous silver-tip, and could not
“tree.” The shots of the trooper diverted the bear, which now took off
down a deep cañon next to the one we were in, and presently we heard
him no more. After an hour’s weary travelling down the winding way we
came out on the plain, and found a small cow outfit belonging to Mr.
Stevens, and under a tree lay our dead silver-tip, while a half-dozen
punchers squatted about it. It appeared that three of them had been
working up in the foot-hills when they heard the dogs, and shortly
discovered the bear. Having no guns, and being on fairly good ground,
they coiled their _riatas_ and prepared to do battle.
The silver-tip was badly blown, and the three dogs which had stayed
with him were so tired that they sat up at a respectful distance and
panted and lolled. The first rope went over Bruin’s head and one paw.
There lies the danger. But instantly number two flew straight to the
mark, and the ponies surged, while Bruin stretched out with a roar. A
third rope got his other hind-leg, and the puncher dismounted and tied
it to a tree. The roaring, biting, clawing mass of hair was
practically helpless, but to kill him was an undertaking.
“Why didn’t you brand him and turn him loose?” I asked of the cowboy.
“Well,” said the puncher, in his Texan drawl, “we could have branded
him all right, but we might have needed some help in turning him
loose.”
They pelted him with malpais, and finally stuck a knife into a vital
part, and then, loading him on a pony, they brought him in. It was a
daring performance, but was regarded by the “punchers” as a great
joke.
Mickler and I rode into camp, thinking on the savagery of man. One
never heard of a bear which travelled all the way from New Mexico to
Chicago to kill a man, and yet a man will go 3000 miles to kill a
bear--not for love or fear or hate or meat; for what, then? But
Mickler and I had not killed a bear, so we were easy.
[Illustration: THE BEAR AT BAY]
One by one the tired hunters and dogs struggled into camp all
disappointed, except the dogs, which could not tell us what had
befallen them since morning. The day following the dogs started a big
black bear, which made a good run up a bad place in the hills, but
with the hunters scrambling after in full cry. The bear treed for the
dogs, but on sighting the horsemen he threw himself backward from the
trunk and fell fifteen feet among the dogs, which latter piled into
him _en masse_, the little fox-terriers being particularly aggressive.
It was a tremendous shake-up of black hair and pups of all colors; but
the pace was too fast for Bruin, and he sought a new tree. One little
foxie had been rolled over, and had quite a job getting his bellows
mended. This time the bear sat on a limb very high up, and General
Miles put a .50-calibre ball through his brain, which brought him down
with a tremendous thump, when the pups again flew into him, and
“wooled him,” as the cowboys put it, to their hearts’ content.
While our bear-hunting is not the thing we are most proud of, yet the
method is the most sportsmanlike, since nothing but the most desperate
riding will bring one up with the bear in the awful country which they
affect. The anticipation of having a big silver-tip assume the
aggressive at any moment is inspiriting. Indeed, they often do; for
only shortly before one had sprung from a thicket on to the
hind-quarters of one of Mr. Stevens’s cowboy’s ponies, and it was only
by the most desperate work on the part of his companion, who rode up
close and shot the bear with his six-shooter, that saved his
comrade’s life. The horse was killed. When one thinks of the enormous
strength of the silver-tip, which can overpower the mightiest steer,
and bend and break its neck or tear its shoulder from its body at a
stroke, one is able to say, “Do not hunt a bear unless thy skin is not
dear to thee.” Then the dogs must be especially trained to run bear,
since the country abounds in deer, and it is difficult to train dogs
to ignore their sight and scent. The cowboys account for the number
of the bear in their country from the fact that it is the old Apache
and Navajo range, and the incoherent mind of the savage was impressed
with the rugged mass of fur and the grinning jaws of the monster which
crossed his path, and he was awed by the dangers of the
encounter--arrow against claw. He came to respect the apparition, and
he did not know that life is only sacred when in the image of the
Creator. He did not discriminate as to the value of life, but with his
respect for death there grew the speculation, which to him became a
truth, that the fearsome beast was of the other world, and bore the
lost souls of the tribe. He was a vampire; he was sacred. O Bear!
[Illustration: THE FINALE]
[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE HUNTERS]