which grow close together, and do not branch out until the stems are
thirty or forty feet from the ground. Beneath these trees were walked
over a carpet of pine needles, upon which our moccasined feet made no
sound. The woods seemed vast and lonely, and their silence was broken
now and then by the strange noises always to be heard in the great
forests, and which seem to mark the sad and everlasting unrest of the
wilderness. We climbed up along the trunk of a dead tree which had
toppled over until its upper branches struck in the limb crotch of
another, that thus supported it at an angle half-way in its fall. When
above the ground far enough to prevent the bear’s smelling us, we sat
still to wait for his approach; until, in the gathering gloom, we could
no longer see the sights of our rifles, and could but dimly make out
the carcass of the great elk. It was useless to wait longer; and we
clambered down and stole out to the edge of the woods. The forest here
covered one side of a steep, almost canyon-like ravine, whose other
side was bare except of rock and sage-brush. Once out from under the
trees there was still plenty of light, although the sun had set, and we
crossed over some fifty yards to the opposite hill-side, and crouched
down under a bush to see if perchance some animal might not also leave
the cover. To our right the ravine sloped downward toward the valley of
the Bighorn River, and far on its other side we could catch a glimpse
of the great main chain of the Rockies, their snow peaks glinting
crimson in the light of the set sun. Again we waited quietly in the
growing dusk until the pine trees in our front blended into one dark,
frowning mass. We saw nothing; but the wild creatures of the forest had
begun to stir abroad. The owls hooted dismally from the tops of the
tall trees, and two or three times a harsh wailing cry, probably the
voice of some lynx or wolverine, arose from the depths of the woods. At
last, as we were rising to leave, we heard the sound of the breaking
of a dead stick, from the spot where we knew the carcass lay. It was
a sharp, sudden noise, perfectly distinct from the natural creaking
and snapping of the branches; just such a sound as would be made by
the tread of some heavy creature. “Old Ephraim” had come back to the
carcass. A minute afterward, listening with strained ears, we heard him
brush by some dry twigs. It was entirely too dark to go in after him;
but we made up our minds that on the morrow he should be ours.
Early next morning we were over at the elk carcass, and, as we
expected, found that the bear had eaten his fill at it during the
night. His tracks showed him to be an immense fellow, and were so fresh
that we doubted if he had left long before we arrived; and we made up
our minds to follow him up and try to find his lair. The bears that
lived on these mountains had evidently been little disturbed; indeed,
the Indians and most of the white hunters are rather chary of meddling
with “Old Ephraim,” as the mountain-men style the grizzly, unless they
get him at a disadvantage; for the sport is fraught with some danger
and but small profit. The bears thus seemed to have very little fear of
harm, and we thought it likely that the bed of the one who had fed on
the elk would not be far away.
My companion was a skilful tracker, and we took up the trail at once.
For some distance it led over the soft, yielding carpet of moss and
pine needles, and the footprints were quite easily made out, although
we could follow them but slowly; for we had, of course, to keep a sharp
look-out ahead and around us as we walked noiselessly on in the sombre
half-light always prevailing under the great pine trees, through whose
thickly interlacing branches stray but few beams of light, no matter
how bright the sun may be outside. We made no sound ourselves, and
every little sudden noise sent a thrill through me as I peered about
with each sense on the alert. Two or three of the ravens that we had
scared from the carcass flew overhead, croaking hoarsely; and the pine
tops moaned and sighed in the slight breeze--for pine trees seem to be
ever in motion, no matter how light the wind.
After going a few hundred yards the tracks turned off on a well-beaten
path made by the elk; the woods were in many places cut up by these
game trails, which had often become as distinct as ordinary footpaths.
The beast’s footprints were perfectly plain in the dust, and he had
lumbered along up the path until near the middle of the hill-side,
where the ground broke away and there were hollows and boulders. Here
there had been a windfall, and the dead trees lay among the living,
piled across one another in all directions; while between and around
them sprouted up a thick growth of young spruces and other evergreens.
The trail turned off into the tangled thicket, within which it was
almost certain we would find our quarry. We could still follow the
tracks, by the slight scrapes of the claws on the bark, or by the
bent and broken twigs; and we advanced with noiseless caution, slowly
climbing over the dead tree trunks and upturned stumps, and not letting
a branch rustle or catch on our clothes. When in the middle of the
thicket we crossed what was almost a breastwork of fallen logs, and
Merrifield, who was leading, passed by the upright stem of a great
pine. As soon as he was by it he sank suddenly on one knee, turning
half round, his face fairly aflame with excitement; and as I strode
past him, with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, was
the great bear, slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces.
He had heard us, but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we
were, for he reared up on his haunches sideways to us. Then he saw us
and dropped down again on all fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and
shoulders seeming to bristle as he turned toward us. As he sank down on
his forefeet I had raised the rifle; his head was bent slightly down,
and when I saw the top of the white bead fairly between his small,
glittering, evil eyes, I pulled trigger. Half-rising up, the huge beast
fell over on his side in the death throes, the ball having gone into
his brain, striking as fairly between the eyes as if the distance had
been measured by a carpenter’s rule.
The whole thing was over in twenty seconds from the time I caught sight
of the game; indeed, it was over so quickly that the grizzly did not
have time to show fight at all or come a step toward us. It was the
first I had ever seen, and I felt not a little proud, as I stood over
the great brindled bulk, which lay stretched out at length in the cool
shade of the evergreens. He was a monstrous fellow, much larger than
any I have seen since, whether alive or brought in dead by the hunters.
As near as we could estimate (for of course we had nothing with which
to weigh more than very small portions) he must have weighed about
twelve hundred pounds, and though this is not as large as some of his
kind are said to grow in California, it is yet a very unusual size
for a bear. He was a good deal heavier than any of our horses; and it
was with the greatest difficulty that we were able to skin him. He
must have been very old, his teeth and claws being all worn down and
blunted; but nevertheless he had been living in plenty, for he was
as fat as a prize hog, the layers on his back being a finger’s length
in thickness. He was still in the summer coat, his hair being short,
and in color a curious brindled brown, somewhat like that of certain
bull-dogs; while all the bears we shot afterward had the long thick
winter fur, cinnamon or yellowish brown. By the way, the name of this
bear has reference to its character and not to its color, and should, I
suppose, be properly spelt grisly--in the sense of horrible, exactly as
we speak of a “grisly spectre”--and not grizzly; but perhaps the latter
way of spelling it is too well established to be now changed.
In killing dangerous game steadiness is more needed than good shooting.
No game is dangerous unless a man is close up, for nowadays hardly any
wild beast will charge from a distance of a hundred yards, but will
rather try to run off; and if a man is close it is easy enough for him
to shoot straight if he does not lose his head. A bear’s brain is about
the size of a pint bottle; and any one can hit a pint bottle off-hand
at thirty or forty feet. I have had two shots at bears at close
quarters, and each time I fired into the brain, the bullet in one case
striking fairly between the eyes, as told above, and in the other going
in between the eye and ear. A novice at this kind of sport will find
it best and safest to keep in mind the old Norse viking’s advice in
reference to a long sword. “If you go in close enough your sword will
be long enough.” If a poor shot goes in close enough he will find that
he shoots straight enough.
I was very proud over my first bear; but Merrifield’s chief feeling
seemed to be disappointment that the animal had not had time to show
fight. He was rather a reckless fellow, and very confident in his own
skill with the rifle; and he really did not seem to have any more fear
of the grizzlies than if they had been so many jack-rabbits. I did
not at all share his feelings, having a hearty respect for my foes’
prowess, and in following and attacking them always took all possible
care to get the chances on my side. Merrifield was sincerely sorry
that we never had to stand a regular charge; while on this trip we
killed five grizzlies with seven bullets, and except in the case of
the she and cub, spoken of further on, each was shot about as quickly
as it got sight of us. The last one we got was an old male, which was
feeding on an elk carcass. We crept up to within about sixty feet, and
as Merrifield had not yet killed a grizzly purely to his own gun, and
I had killed three, I told him to take the shot. He at once whispered
gleefully: “I’ll break his leg, and we’ll see what he’ll do!” Having
no ambition to be a participator in the antics of a three-legged bear,
I hastily interposed a most emphatic veto; and with a rather injured
air he fired, the bullet going through the neck just back of the head.
The bear fell to the shot, and could not get up from the ground, dying
in a few minutes; but first he seized his left wrist in his teeth and
bit clean through it, completely separating the bones of the paw and
arm. Although a smaller bear than the big one I first shot, he would
probably have proved a much more ugly foe, for he was less unwieldy,
and had much longer and sharper teeth and claws. I think that if my
companion had merely broken the beast’s leg he would have had his
curiosity as to its probable conduct more than gratified.
We tried eating the grizzly’s flesh but it was not good, being coarse
and not well flavored; and besides, we could not get over the feeling
that it had belonged to a carrion feeder. The flesh of the little black
bear, on the other hand, was excellent; it tasted like that of a young
pig. Doubtless, if a young grizzly, which had fed merely upon fruits,
berries, and acorns, was killed, its flesh would prove good eating; but
even then, it would probably not be equal to a black bear.
A day or two after the death of the big bear, we went out one afternoon
on horseback, intending merely to ride down to see a great canyon
lying some six miles west of our camp; indeed, we went more to look at
the scenery than for any other reason, though, of course, neither of
us ever stirred out of camp without his rifle. We rode down the valley
in which we had camped, through alternate pine groves and open glades,
until we reached the canyon, and then skirted its brink for a mile or
so. It was a great chasm, many miles in length, as if the table-land
had been rent asunder by some terrible and unknown force; its sides
were sheer walls of rock, rising three or four hundred feet straight up
in the air, and worn by the weather till they looked like the towers
and battlements of some vast fortress. Between them at the bottom was a
space, in some places nearly a quarter of a mile wide, in others very
narrow, through whose middle foamed a deep, rapid torrent of which
the sources lay far back among the snow-topped mountains around Cloud
Peak. In this valley, dark-green, sombre pines stood in groups, stiff
and erect; and here and there among them were groves of poplar and
cottonwood, with slender branches and trembling leaves, their bright
green already changing to yellow in the sharp fall weather. We went
down to where the mouth of the canyon opened out, and rode our horses
to the end of a great jutting promontory of rock, thrust out into the
plain; and in the cold, clear air we looked far over the broad valley
of the Bighorn as it lay at our very feet, walled in on the other side
by the distant chain of the Rocky Mountains.
Turning our horses, we rode back along the edge of another canyon-like
valley, with a brook flowing down its centre, and its rocky sides
covered with an uninterrupted pine forest--the place of all others in
whose inaccessible wildness and ruggedness a bear would find a safe
retreat. After some time we came to where other valleys, with steep,
grass-grown sides, covered with sage-brush, branched out from it, and
we followed one of these out. There was plenty of elk sign about, and
we saw several black-tail deer. These last were very common on the
mountains, but we had not hunted them at all, as we were in no need of
meat. But this afternoon we came across a buck with remarkably fine
antlers, and accordingly I shot it, and we stopped to cut off and skin
out the horns, throwing the reins over the heads of the horses and
leaving them to graze by themselves. The body lay near the crest of
one side of a deep valley, or ravine, which headed up on the plateau a
mile to our left. Except for scattered trees and bushes the valley was
bare; but there was heavy timber along the crests of the hills on its
opposite side. It took some time to fix the head properly, and we were
just ending when Merrifield sprang to his feet and exclaimed: “Look at
the bears!” pointing down into the valley below us. Sure enough there
were two bears (which afterwards proved to be an old she and a nearly
full-grown cub) travelling up the bottom of the valley, much too far
off for us to shoot. Grasping our rifles and throwing off our hats we
started off as hard as we could run, diagonally down the hill-side,
so as to cut them off. It was some little time before they saw us,
when they made off at a lumbering gallop up the valley. It would seem
impossible to run into two grizzlies in the open, but they were going
up hill and we down, and moreover the old one kept stopping. The cub
would forge ahead and could probably have escaped us, but the mother
now and then stopped to sit up on her haunches and look around at us
when the cub would run back to her. The upshot was that we got ahead
of them, when they turned and went straight up one hill-side as we ran
straight down the other behind them. By this time I was pretty nearly
done out, for running along the steep ground through the sage-brush was
most exhausting work; and Merrifield kept gaining on me and was well
in front. Just as he disappeared over a bank, almost at the bottom of
the valley, I tripped over a bush and fell full length. When I got up
I knew I could never make up the ground I had lost, and besides, could
hardly run any longer; Merrifield was out of sight below, and the bears
were laboring up the steep hill-side directly opposite and about three
hundred yards off, so I sat down and began to shoot over Merrifield’s
head, aiming at the big bear. She was going very steadily and in a
straight line, and each bullet sent up a puff of dust where it struck
the dry soil, so that I could keep correcting my aim; and the fourth
ball crashed into the old bear’s flank. She lurched heavily forward,
but recovered herself and reached the timber, while Merrifield, who had
put on a spurt, was not far behind.
I toiled up the hill at a sort of trot, fairly gasping and sobbing for
breath; but before I got to the top I heard a couple of shots and a
shout. The old bear had turned as soon as she was in the timber, and
came towards Merrifield, but he gave her the death wound by firing into
her chest, and then shot at the young one, knocking it over. When I
came up he was just walking towards the latter to finish it with the
revolver, but it suddenly jumped up as lively as ever and made off at
a great pace--for it was nearly full-grown. It was impossible to fire
where the tree trunks were so thick, but there was a small opening
across which it would have to pass, and collecting all my energies I
made a last run, got into position, and covered the opening with my
rifle. The instant the bear appeared I fired, and it turned a dozen
somersaults down-hill, rolling over and over; the ball had struck it
near the tail and had ranged forward through the hollow of the body.
Each of us had thus given the fatal wound to the bear in which the
other had fired the first bullet. The run, though short, had been very
sharp, and over such awful country that we were completely fagged out,
and could hardly speak for lack of breath. The sun had already set, and
it was too late to skin the animals; so we merely dressed them, caught
the ponies--with some trouble, for they were frightened at the smell
of the bear’s blood on our hands,--and rode home through the darkening
woods. Next day we brought the teamster and two of the steadiest
pack-horses to the carcasses, and took the skins into camp.
The feed for the horses was excellent in the valley in which we were
camped, and the rest after their long journey across the plains did
them good. They had picked up wonderfully in condition during our stay
on the mountains; but they were apt to wander very far during the
night, for there were so many bears and other wild beasts around that
they kept getting frightened and running off. We were very loath to
leave our hunting grounds, but time was pressing, and we had already
many more trophies than we could carry; so one cool morning, when the
branches of the evergreens were laden with the feathery snow that had
fallen overnight, we struck camp and started out of the mountains, each
of us taking his own bedding behind his saddle, while the pack-ponies
were loaded down with bearskins, elk and deer antlers, and the hides
and furs of other game. In single file we moved through the woods, and
across the canyons to the edge of the great table-land, and then slowly
down the steep slope to its foot, where we found our canvas-topped
wagon; and next day saw us setting out on our long journey homewards,
across the three hundred weary miles of treeless and barren-looking
plains country.
Last spring, since the above was written, a bear killed a man not very
far from my ranch. It was at the time of the floods. Two hunters came
down the river, by our ranch, on a raft, stopping to take dinner. A
score or so of miles below, as we afterwards heard from the survivor,
they landed, and found a bear in a small patch of brushwood. After
waiting in vain for it to come out, one of the men rashly attempted
to enter the thicket, and was instantly struck down by the beast,
before he could so much as fire his rifle. It broke in his skull with
a blow of its great paw, and then seized his arm in its jaws, biting
it through and through in three places, but leaving the body and
retreating into the bushes as soon as the unfortunate man’s companion
approached. We did not hear of the accident until too late to go after
the bear, as we were just about starting to join the spring round-up.
THE VANISHED SCENE
HAL G. EVARTS
From “The Passing of the Old West.” Reprinted by permission of the
publishers, Little, Brown, and Company.[31]
Wherever men fared, no matter how secluded the pocket of the hills to
which they penetrated, they found evidence that some solitary wanderer
had been before them. His horses had grazed in hidden meadows and they
found the ashes of his camp fires on the shores of unmapped lakes.
It was said that the range that rimmed the new land in on the east
was impenetrable, that no man could cross through its wild passes;
but in the dead of winter, long after the Crow tribe had taken to
winter quarters in the lower valleys, some white man’s lone trail was
often seen leading down out of these peaks which others shunned even
in the warmth of summer. He was even welcome in the wigwams of the
Crows and frequently he tarried for a few days in their villages, but
his restlessness always drove him forth to leave his tracks in the
secluded fastnesses of the winter hills. When a party of explorers
pressed westward up the valley of the Stinking Water to determine if
an entrance might be effected from the east, they found the trails
of horses leading up a tributary stream which broke in from the west
where the main river flared back in a wide sweeping curve to the north
and east. These tracks led up an elk trail, threaded the mazes of a
frowning gorge, crossed the lower extremities of late-melting snow
banks and came out at last upon the Yellowstone Slope.
The news of the segregation of these hills and valleys he loved had
brought to Mart Woodson another of those rare moments of exaltation.
The invariable theme of his childhood tales had dealt with the
near-serfdom of the inhabitants of far countries and had built up in
his mind the belief that the people of other lands were chattels. Now,
as if in direct refutation of those ancient policies which decreed that
the land was God-given for the benefit and pleasure of the few, his
country had set aside the wonder-spot of the world for the enjoyment of
the many. This vast reservation, more than three thousand square miles
of it, belonged to the people as a whole, a joint estate to descend to
unborn generations for a thousand years to come. Never a foot of it
could come into the possession of individuals or concerns.
What more could a man ask than to live his life upon his own estate
comprising hundreds of square miles? This belonged to him. A thousand
might share it, or ten thousand, but his own rights would ever remain
the same. He could make his night fire on the shores of some stream,
leave it the next morning and never look upon it again till the last
day of his life, but always with the certain knowledge that on that day
he could return and say, “Here is my camp,” and no man could wave him
off. But a man should know his own property,--so Mart Woodson set forth
to explore every nook of this vast estate which had so unexpectedly
been willed to him.
His wants were few. He killed his meat as he needed it and when he felt
the necessity of gaining a few dollars with which to buy supplies he
worked with the construction gang that had been sent here to hew out
a primitive road system through the People’s Park while the nearest
railroad point was yet five hundred miles away; but mostly he roamed
the hills and whenever seen was mounted on a bay mare that mothered
a mare colt. He scoured the hills for gold in summers and panned the
streams from the Flathead to the Green, prospected the ledges for
quartz from Big Wing River to the Gallatin. When a party of explorers
verified the existence of the stream which flowed to both seas and
heralded to the world their find of Two Ocean Pass, they found also a
low mound of earth surmounted by a headboard slabbed out with an ax and
rudely carved with the words “Tom North,” testimony that in this spot
men had lived and died before they came.
Jim Bridger’s tale of the mountain of black glass had roused a shriek
of derision that echoed round the earth, yet in time others found it
as he had said they would, and as they gazed upon the obsidian cliff
they found the tracks of a mare and colt along its base. Homeric mirth
had rocked the world at Bridger’s assertion that he had caught fish in
the icy waters of a lake and cooked them in boiling springs without
rising from his seat or removing his prey from the hook. When explorers
reached this spot they found the bones of fish upon the rocks. The lone
wanderer had once more preceded them and cooked his meal of trout a
month before they came.
And it was Woodson himself who now came in for a share of ridicule
and met general disbelief when he told men of the petrified forest
he had found. It stood on a steep side-hill cut away by the action
of water. Tier upon tier it rose, succeeding layers exposed to view,
fifteen periods of forestation one above the other. Near the base were
stumps more than a dozen feet in diameter, relics of the ages past,
when tropical vegetation flourished here. Above these ancient ones,
in successive accumulation, was the evidence of the gradual cooling
of the earth on down to date, the top strata containing vegetation of
the present age. Here were not merely crumbling fragments of bygone
periods but exact reproductions, the preserved record of the whole;
bark and twigs intact, ferns and shrubbery, even to the buds, held in
delicate tracery of stone and sprouting from the outcroppings to the
cliff. But in Woodson’s case the disbelief was not so widespread. Men
were beginning to believe all things possible of this wondrous corner
of the earth. It was decided that he should lead a party to the spot,
but when they sought for him the wanderer was gone. Years later he led
men to the ledges and they found it as he had said, the most complete
record of its kind in the world.
Woodson had moved on in search of new lands and for months he traveled
into the west, moving by easy stages with his little pack string,
sampling the ledges and panning the streams en route. Everywhere there
was food in plenty and he lived off the country as he roamed. He came
at last into a land whose natural wealth staggered his imagination,
the giant forests of the northwest coast. There were stretches where
he might travel for weeks without once leaving the timber; and such
timber! Fir, spruce and cedar side by side, each monster capable of
furnishing from within its own mighty trunk the lumber for a small
village. They stood ten to eighteen feet through at the butts, rising
with barely perceptible lessening of dimension, towering three hundred
feet aloft, two-thirds of their height without a limb. From these a
man might cut beams six feet through by a hundred feet in length as
easily as eight-inch board stuff is cut from the average tree. Week
after week he wandered through this king of forests, the ferns growing
to his saddle skirts. There was one stretch of a hundred miles each
way, covered with a solid stand of the finest timber known to man. He
lingered in this tract for a solid year. Here, in this one stretch,
he estimated, was enough lumber to rebuild the world, lumber that was
clear, straight-grained and without a knot.