A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT
"Bob-Cat was telling me," said Wilbur, as with the Ranger he rode
through the arid and silvered grayness of the Mohave desert and reached
the foothill country, "that before you entered the Service you were
pretty well known as a hunter."
"Wa'al, son," the mountaineer replied, "I reckon I've done some kind o'
huntin' for fifty years on end. But there's not much huntin' in this
part o' the country."
"No," said Wilbur, looking around him, "I guess there isn't."
The road ran along a little gully with a small stream shaded by scrub
oak, but arising from this and similar gullies, in great rounded bosses,
heaved the barren slopes, the grass already turning yellow and too
sparse to cloak the red earth below.
"Yet," said Rifle-Eye, pointing with his finger as he spoke, "there's a
desert fox."
Wilbur strained his eyes to see, but the unfamiliar growth of cacti,
sage-brush, palo verde, and the dusty-miller plants made quick vision
difficult. In a moment, however, he caught sight of the little
reddish-gray animal running swiftly and almost indistinguishable from
its surroundings.
"But up there?" queried the boy, pointing in front of them. The road
wound onward toward the middle Sierras, thickly wooded with oak and
digger pine, and, of course, the chapparal, and towering to the clouds
rose the mighty serrated peaks of the range, where magnificent forests
of pine, fir, and cedar swept upwards to the limits of eternal snow. "Up
there the hunting must be wonderful."
"Among the mount'ns!" said the old hunter slowly. "Wa'al, up there, you
see, is home."
"You certainly can't complain about the looks of your home, then," said
the boy, "for that's just about the finest I've ever seen."
"'There's no place like home,'" quoted Rifle-Eye quietly, "but I ain't
ever feelin' that my home's so humble. It ain't a question of its bein'
good enough fer me, it's a question o' whether I'm good enough fer it."
"It makes quite a house," said Wilbur, following the old mountaineer's
line of thought.
"I've never lived in any smaller house than that," responded Rifle-Eye,
"an' I reckon now I never will. There's some I know that boasts of
ownin' a few feet o' space shut in by a brick wall. Not for me. My house
is as far as my eyes c'n see, an' from the ground to the sky."
Wilbur was silent for a moment, feeling the thrill of Nature in the old
man's speech.
"It's to be my home, too," he said gently.
Rifle-Eye smiled at the lad.
"I don't know that I'm quite the oldest inhabitant," he said, "but I
sure am the oldest Ranger in the Service, an' all I c'n say is, 'Make
yerself to home.'"
"All right," said Wilbur promptly, "I'll take that as an official
welcome from the Sierras, and I will. But," he added, "you were going to
tell me about your hunting. I should think it would be great sport."
"Son," said Rifle-Eye somewhat sharply, "I never killed a harmless
critter 'for sport,' as you call it, in my life."
"But I thought," gasped Wilbur in astonishment, "that you were hunting
nearly all the time, before you started in as Ranger."
"So I was," was the quiet reply.
"But--but I don't quite see--" Wilbur stopped lamely.
"I said before," resumed the old hunter, "that I never killed a harmless
critter onless I had to. Neither have I. Varmints, o' course, is a
different matter. I've shot plenty o' them, an' once in a while I've had
ter kill fer food. But just shootin' for the sake o' shootin' is the
trick of a coward or a fool or a tenderfoot or a mixture of all three.
It's plumb unnecessary, an' it's dead wrong."
"You mean shooting deer and so forth?"
"I mean just that, son, if the shootin's only fer antlers an' what these
here greenhorns calls 'trophies.' If venison is needed, why, I ain't got
nothin' to say. A man's life is worth more than a deer's when he needs
food, but a man's conceit ain't worth more than a deer's life."
"How about bear, then, and trapping for skins?" asked the boy.
"I said 'harmless critters.' Now, a bear ain't harmless, leastways, not
as you'd notice it. Bear will take young stock, an' they're particularly
partial to young pig, an' down among these here foothills we've been
passin' through there's a lot o' shiftless hog-rustlers as depends on
pork fer a livin'. As for bearskins, why, o' course you use the pelts.
What's the idee o' leavin' them around? It ain't any kind o' good tryin'
to spare an animal's feelin's when he's plenty good an' dead. But I've
made this here section of the Sierras pretty hot for wolves."
"I heard down at the ranch," the boy remarked, "that you had bagged
forty-seven wolves last season."
"I did have a good year," assented the Ranger, "an', of course, I can't
give much time to it. But I reckon I've disposed of more'n a thousand
wolves in my day, one way and another. An' as I look at it, that's
makin' pretty good use of time."
"Are wolves worse than bear?" queried Wilbur surprisedly.
"They do a lot more harm in the long run. Cattlemen reckon that a wolf
will get away with about four head a year. Myself, I think that's
pressin' the average some; I'd put it at somewhere between two an'
three. But it's generally figured at four."
"I didn't know that wolves, lone wolves, would attack cattle."
"It's calves an' yearlin's mostly that they go for. It ain't often that
you see a wolf tacklin' anythin' bigger'n a two-year-old. But if you
figure that a wolf gets rid o' four head a year, an' inflicts himself on
a sufferin' community for a space of about ten years, that's somewhere
in the neighborhood o' forty head. A thousand wolves means about forty
thousand head of cattle, or pretty nigh a million dollars' worth of
stock."
"The beef you've saved by killing wolves," commented Wilbur, "would feed
quite a town."
"Forty thousand is a tolerable sized bunch. An' that's without figurin'
on the wolf cubs there would have been durin' all those years from the
older ones whose matrimonial expectations I disappointed plenty abrupt.
An' it makes a pile o' difference to cattlemen to know they c'n send a
herd grazin' on the national forest, an' be fairly sure they won't lose
much by varmints."
"It surely must," said the boy. "But I hadn't realized that wolves were
such a danger."
"I wouldn't go to say that they was dangerous. An old gray wolf, if you
corner him, is surly an' savage, an' will fight anythin' at any odds.
Out on the Barren Grounds they're bad, but around the Sierras I ain't
heard o' them attackin' humans but twice, an' they was children, lost in
the woods. I figure the kids had wandered around till they petered out,
an' then, when they were exhausted, the wolves got 'em. But I've never
heard of a wolf attackin' a man anywhere in the Rockies."
"But I thought wolves ran in packs often."
"Not in the United States, son, so far as I've heard of. I knew a
Russian trapper, though, who meandered down this way from Alaska in the
early days. He used to spin a lot o' yarns about the Siberian wolves
runnin' in packs an' breakfastin' freely off travelers. But he seemed to
think that it was the horses the wolves were after chiefly, although
they weren't passin' up any toothsome peasant that happened along."
"And do wolves attack horses here, too?"
"Not on the trail, that fashion. But they're some partial to colts."
"How about coyotes?"
"They're mean critters an' they give a pesky lot o' trouble, although
they bother sheep more'n cattle. But a few husky dogs will keep coyotes
at a distance, though they'll watch a chance an' sneak off with a
young lamb or any sheep what is hurt an' has fallen behind the herd. But
they don't worry us here such a great deal, they keep mostly to the
plains an' the prairie country."
Saying this, the Ranger pulled up at the door of a shack lying a short
distance from the road and gave a hail. Immediately there stepped from
the door one of the largest women Wilbur had ever seen. Though her hair
was gray, and she was angular and harsh of feature, yet, standing well
over six feet and quite erect, she seemed to fit in well under the
shadow of the Sierras.
"I reckon you've some bacon, Susan?" was the Ranger's greeting as he
swung himself off his horse. Wilbur followed suit.
"There's somethin' awful would have to happen to a pile o' hogs," was
the reply, "when you came by here an' couldn't get a bite."
By this time a swarm of children had come out, and Wilbur, seeing that
the Ranger had simply resigned his horse into the hands of one of the
larger boys, did likewise and followed his guide into the house.
"I wasn't sure if I'd find you here, Susan," said the old scout when
they were seated at a simple meal. "I thought you were goin' to move
into town."
"I did," she replied. "I stayed thar jest two weeks. An' they was two
weeks o' misery. These yar towns is too crowded for me. Now, hogs, I've
been used to 'em all my life, an' I don't mind how many's around. But it
only takes a few folks to make me feel as if I was real crowded."
"Do you prefer hogs to people?" questioned Wilbur, smiling.
"Not one by one, bub, o' course," came the slow reply, "but when it
comes to a crowd o' both, I'm kind o' lost with folks. Everybody's busy
an' they don't care nothin' about you, an' it makes you-all feel no
'count. An' the noise is bewilderin'. Have you ever been in a city?"
Wilbur admitted that he had.
"Well, then," she said, "ye'll know what I mean. But out here, there's
more room, like, an' I know I'm bigger'n my hogs." Following which,
Susan launched into a long description of her favorite porkers, which
continued almost without cessation until it was time for the two to be
on the trail again.
"That's a queer woman," said Wilbur when they were in the saddle again
and out of hearing of the shack.
"She's a good one," answered the Ranger. "Her son, by the way, is a
member o' the legislature, an' a good lawyer, an' she's made him what he
is. But she ain't the city kind."
"Not with all those children," said Wilbur. "She'd have to hire a block
to keep them all."
"Those ain't her own children," replied the Ranger, "not a bit of it. If
a youngster gits orphaned or laid up she just says 'Pork's plenty, send
'em to me.' An' I generally do. Other folks do, too, an' quite a few o'
them hev been brought her by the 'little white lady' you've been hearing
about. She's fonder o' children than any woman I ever saw, is Susan. But
she won't talk kids, she'll only talk hogs."
"That's pretty fine work, I think," said the boy. "But I should imagine
the youngsters wouldn't have much of a chance. It isn't any better than
a backwoods life, away out there."
The old Ranger, usually so slow and deliberate in his movements, turned
on him like a flash.
"The meanest thing in this world," he said, "is not bein' able to see or
willin' to see what some one else has done for you. There ain't a home
in all these here United States that don't owe its happiness to the
backwoodsman. You can't make a country civilized by sittin' in an office
an' writin' the word 'civilized' on the map. Some one has got to get out
an' do it, an' keep on doin' it till it's done. It was the man who had
nothin' in the world but a wife, a rifle, an' an ax who made America."
"I had forgotten for the moment," said the boy, a little taken off his
feet by the sudden energy and the flashing speech of the usually
impassive mountaineer.
"So does mighty near every one else 'forget for the moment.' But if the
backwoodsman forgot for the moment he was likely to be missin' his
scalp-lock, or if he tried to take a holiday it meant his family would
go hungry. He never forgot his children or his children's children, but
they're none too fond o' rememberin' him.
"Everythin' you have now, he first showed you how. If he wanted a house,
he had to build it; if he wanted bread, he had to raise the grain,
grind, an' bake it; if he wanted clothin', he had to get skins, cure,
an' sew 'em. But he never had to hunt for honor an' for courage; he
brought those with him; an' he didn't have to get any book-larnin' to
teach him how to make his cabin a home, an' his wife an' his children
were allers joys to him, not cares. They were men! An' what do you
reckon made 'em men?"
"The hardships of the life, I suppose," hazarded Wilbur.
"Not a bit of it; it was the forest. The forest was their nurse in
infancy, their playmate when they were barefooted kids runnin' around
under the trees, their work by day, an' their home when it was dark.
They lived right down with Nature, an' they larned that if she was
rugged, she was kind. They became rugged an' kind, too. An' that's what
the right sort of American is to this day."
"A lot of our best statesmen in early days were from the newly cleared
settlements; that's a fact," said Wilbur thoughtfully, "right up to the
Civil War."
"An' through it!" added the Ranger. "How about Abe Lincoln?"
Wilbur thought to himself that perhaps "backwoodsman" was not quite a
fair idea of the great President's Illinois upbringing, but he thought
it wiser not to argue the point to no profit.
"But it's all different now," continued Rifle-Eye a trifle sadly,
"things have changed an' the city's beginnin' to have a bigger hold than
the forest. An' the forest still needs, an' I reckon it allers will
need, the old kind o' men. Once we had to fight tooth an' nail agin the
forest jest to get enough land to live on, an' now we've got to fight
jest as hard for the forest so as there'll be enough of it for what we
need. In this here country you can't ever get away from the
woods-dweller, whether he's backwoodsman or Forester, or whatever you
call him--the man who can depend on himself an' live his life wherever
there's sky overhead an' ground underfoot an' trees between.
"They're the discoverers of America, too. Oh, yes, they are," he
continued, noting Wilbur's look of contradiction. "It wasn't Columbus or
Amerigo or any o' the floatin' adventurers who first saw a blue splotch
o' land on the horizon that discovered America. It was the men who
conquered the forest, who found all, did all, an' became all that the
life demanded, that really brought into bein' America an' the
Americans."
The Ranger stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and, touching his horse
lightly with the spur, went on ahead up the trail. Evidently he was
thinking of the old times and the boy had wisdom enough not to disturb
him. As the afternoon drew on the foothills were left behind and the
open road became more and more enclosed, until at last it was simply a
trail through the forest. The shadows were lengthening and it was
drawing on toward evening, when the Ranger halted beside a little
ravine, densely wooded with yellow pine, incense cedar, and white fir.
Wilbur was tired and his horses, fresh to the trail, were showing signs
of fatigue, so he was glad to stop.
"I don't know how you feel about it," said the Ranger, "but I reckon
I'll camp here. There's a good spring a couple of hundred feet down
stream. But you ain't used to this sort o' thing, an' maybe you'd better
keep on the trail for another half-mile till you come to a little
settlement. Somebody can put you up, I reckon."
"No need to," said the boy, "I'll camp here with you."
"Maybe you ain't used to sleepin' on the ground."
"I guess I can stand it, if you can," replied Wilbur promptly.
"Wa'al, I reckon I can," said the Ranger, "seein' that I always have an'
always do."
Wilbur had never camped in the open before without a tent or shelter of
some kind, but he would not for the world have had his Ranger think that
he was in the least disconcerted. Neither, to do him justice, was he,
but rather anticipating the night under the open sky with a good deal of
pleasure.
After the horses were unsaddled and hobbled, Rifle-Eye told Wilbur to
get the beds ready. The boy, greatly pleased with himself that he knew
how to do this without being told, picked up his ax and started for the
nearest balsam. But he found himself in somewhat of a difficulty. The
white fir grew to a much larger tree than the Balm-of-Gilead he had
known in the East, and the lower branches were tough. So he chopped down
a young tree near, scarcely more than a sapling.
A moment later he heard the Ranger call to him.
"How many trees of that size do you reckon you'll want?" he asked.
"Oh, they're only just saplings," the boy replied, "five or six ought to
do."
"They'll make five or six fine trees some day, won't they?" queried the
old woodsman.
"Yes, Rifle-Eye, they will," answered the boy, flushing at his lack of
thoughtfulness. "I'd better take only one, and that a little bigger,
hadn't I?"
"An' one that's crooked. Always take a tree that isn't goin' to make
good timber when you're not cuttin' for timber."
Wilbur accordingly felled a small white fir near by, having had his
first practical lesson of forest economy on his own forest, stripped the
tree of its fans or flattest branches and laid them on the ground. A
thickness of about six inches, he found, was enough to make the beds
wonderfully springy and comfortable.
In the meantime he found that Rifle-Eye was getting a fireplace ready,
using for the purpose some flat stones which lay conveniently near by.
Wilbur, stepping over a tiny rivulet which ran into the creek, noted a
couple of stones apparently just suited for the making of a rough
fireplace and brought them along. The Ranger looked at them.
"What kind o' stone do you call that?" he asked.
"Granite," said Wilbur immediately.
"An' you took them out o' the water?"
"Yes," answered the boy.
"An' what happens when you build a fire between granite stones?"
"I don't know, Rifle-Eye. What does?"
"They explode sometimes, leastways, when they're wet inside. Don't
forget that," he added as he put the stones aside. "Now," he continued,
"go down to the spring an' fill this pot with water, an' I'll have a
fire goin' an' some grub sizzlin' by the time you get back. The spring
is about two hundred feet downstream and about twenty feet above the
water. You can't miss it."
Wilbur took the aluminum pot and started for the spring. He had not gone
half the distance when he noted a stout crotched stick such as he had
been used to getting when he camped out in the middle West for the
purpose of hanging the cooking utensils on over the fire. So he picked
it up and carried it along with him. Presently the gurgling of water
told him that he was nearing the spring, and a moment later he saw the
clearing through the trees. But, suddenly, a low snarling met his ears,
and he halted dead at the edge of the clearing.
There, before him, on the ground immediately beside the spring, crouched
a large wild-cat, the hairy tips of her ears twitching nervously. Under
her claws was a rabbit, evidently just caught, into which the wild-cat
had just sunk her teeth when the approach of the boy was heard. At first
Wilbur could not understand why she had not sprung into the woods with
her prey at the first distant twig-snapping which would betoken his
approach. But as he looked more closely he saw that this was precisely
what the cat had tried to do, but that in the jerk the rabbit had been
caught and partly impaled on a tree root that projected above the
ground, and for the moment the cat could not budge it.
Wilbur was utterly at a loss to know what to do. He had been told that
wild-cats would never attack any one unless they had been provoked to
fight, and he found himself very unwilling to provoke this particular
specimen. The cat stood still, her eyes narrowed to mere slits, the ears
slightly moving, and the tip of the tail flicking from side to side in
quick, angry jerks. There was menace in every line of the wild-cat's
pose.
The boy had his revolver with him, but while he had occasionally fired a
six-shooter, he was by no means a crack shot, and he realized that if he
fired at and only wounded the creature he would unquestionably be
attacked. And there was a lithe suppleness in the manner that the
movement of the muscles rippled over the skin that was alarmingly
suggestive of ferocity. Wilbur did not like the looks of it at all. On
the other hand, he had not the slightest intention of going back to the
camp without water. He had come for water, and he would carry water
back, he thought to himself, if a regiment of bob-cats was in the way.
The old fable that a wild beast cannot stand the gaze of the human eye
recurred to Wilbur's remembrance, and he stood at the edge of the
clearing regarding the cat fixedly. But the snarls only grew the louder.
Wilbur was frightened, and he knew it, and what was more, he felt the
cat knew it with that intuition the wild animals have for recognizing
danger or the absence of danger. She made another effort to drag away
the rabbit, but failing in that, with an angry yowl, with quick jerks
and rending of her powerful jaws began to try to force the rabbit free
from the entangling root, which done, she could carry it into the forest
to devour at leisure. The ease with which those claws and teeth rent
asunder the yielding flesh was an instructive sight for Wilbur, but the
fact that the wild-cat should dare to go on striving to free her prey
instead of slinking away in fright made the boy angry. Besides, he had
come for that water.
Wilbur decided to advance into the clearing anyway, and then, if the
creature did not stir, he would be so near that he couldn't miss her
with the revolver. As he grew angrier his fear began to leave him. He
took the pot in his left hand, putting the long stick under his arm,
and, drawing his six-shooter, advanced on the cat. He came forward
slowly, but without hesitation. At his second step forward the wild-cat
raised her head, but instead of springing at him, as Wilbur half feared,
she retreated into the woods, leaving her prey, snarling as she went.
Wilbur went boldly forward to the spring, and, thinking that he would
see no more of the cat, put away his revolver.
Having secured the water, and as he turned to go, however, the boy felt
a sudden impulse to look up. He had not heard a sound, and yet, on a low
branch a few feet above his head, crouched the wild-cat, her eyes
glaring yellow in the waning light. Once again he felt the temptation to
shoot her, but resisted it, through his fear of only wounding the
creature and thus bringing her full fury upon him.
But it occurred to Wilbur that it was not unlikely that he might have to
come back to the spring a second time for more water, and he did not
wish to risk another encounter. He thought to himself that if he did
return and interrupted the wild-cat a second time he would not escape as
easily as he had on this occasion, and consequently he tried to devise a
means to prevent such meeting. He figured that if he picked up the
rabbit and threw it far into the woods the cat would follow and the path
to the spring would be open. Forgetting for the moment that he could not
expect the angry creature in the tree to divine the honesty of his
intentions, he stooped down and grasped the rabbit by the leg to throw
it into the forest. As he did so, the wild-cat, thinking herself about
to be deprived of her prey, sprang at him.
With one hand holding the pot of water, which, boy-like, he did not want
to spill, and the other grasping the rabbit, Wilbur was terribly
handicapped. But, by the greatest good fortune, as he stooped, the
crotch of the stick that he was carrying caught the wild-cat under the
body as she launched herself at him from the tree. The stick was
knocked out of the boy's grasp, but it also turned the cat aside, and
she half fell, landing on Wilbur's outstretched leg, instead of on his
neck, which was the objective point in her spring. As her claws ripped
into the soft flesh of his thigh, Wilbur released his hold of the
rabbit, drew his revolver, and fired full at the creature hanging on his
leg.
Almost instantaneously with the shot, however, one of her foreclaws shot
out and caught the back of his right hand, making a long but superficial
gash from the wrist to the knuckles. At the same time, too, one of her
hind claws struck down, opening the calf of the leg and making the boy
sick for a moment. His right hand was bleeding vigorously and paining a
good deal, but his finger was still on the trigger and Wilbur fired
again. A moment later, the Ranger came running into the clearing. But
before he reached the boy's side the cat had fallen limply to the
ground. The second shot had gone clear through her skull, and, being
fired at point-blank distance, had almost blown her head off.
The old Ranger, without wasting time in words, quickly examined the
boy's injuries and found them slight, although they were bleeding
profusely. Wilbur reached out the pot full of water from the spring.
"Here's the water, Rifle-Eye," he said a little quaveringly; "I hardly
spilled a drop."
The old woodsman took the vessel without a word. Then he looked down at
the cat.
"Just as well for you," he said, "that it wasn't a true lynx. But how
did she get at your leg? Did you walk on her, or kick her, just for
fun?"
Wilbur, laughing a little nervously from the reaction of the excitement,
described how it was that the wild-cat had landed on his leg instead of
on his neck, and the old hunter nodded.
"It's a mighty lucky thing for you," he said, "that stick was there,
because there's a heap o' places around the neck where a clawin' ain't
healthy. But these scratches of yours won't take long to heal. Where you
were a fool," he continued, "was in touchin' the rabbit at all. It's
just as I told you. When you went quietly forward, you say, the bob-cat
got out of your road all right. Of course, that's what she ought to do.
And if you had filled the pot with water an' come away that's all
there'd have been to it. But jest as soon as you begin ter get mixed up
in the prey any varmint's killed, you've got ter begin considerin' the
chances o' joinin' the select company o' victims."
"But I wanted her out of the way for next time," said Wilbur.
"She'd have got out of your way so quick you couldn't see her go," said
the hunter, "if you'd given her a chance. Next time, leave a varmint's
dinner alone."
"Next time, I will," the boy declared.
"I guess now," continued the old hunter, "you'd better come back to camp
an' we'll see what we c'n do to improve them delicate attentions you've
received. An' don't be quite the same kind of an idiot again."
"Well," said Wilbur, "I got the water from the spring, anyhow."
[Illustration: PATROLLING A COYOTE FENCE.
The old Ranger and his hound safeguarding the grazing interests of the
forest.
_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]
[Illustration: REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.]
[Illustration: REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.
Sport that is worth while, freeing the National Forests from beasts of
prey.
_Photographs by U. S. Forest Service._]