THE KING OF THE BIG-HORNS.
"This here's the last day's huntin' as you'll get for quite a while, and
don't you forget it."
The speaker was Rampike, and he spoke with the emphasis of conviction.
Ned Corbett, who stood beside him at the door of the dug-out, seemed
inclined to argue with him, but Rampike did not wait to hear what he had
to say.
"You think," said the old man, "as it ain't partickler cold jest because
the air is dry and there's plenty of sunshine. Wait until you get out of
the sunshine and you'll know more about it. Why, look there at the old
river--she don't close up for nothing."
Ned looked in the direction indicated by Rampike's outstretched hand,
and noticed for the first time that on the yellow flood of the Frazer a
strange white scum had risen, which seemed to gather as it drifted by so
as to almost impede the river's progress in places. This was the
beginning of the ice.
"There'll be a bridge to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder, as you mout drive
cattle over. If you want any more huntin' you'd better get it to-day. We
could do with another sheep or two." And so saying the old man went back
into the cabin.
The air of British Columbia is so dry and the sunlight so bright, that
until the shadows begin to fall or the wind begins to blow, it never
occurs to anybody that the thermometer may have fallen to "ten below."
To Ned Corbett, as he shouldered his rifle and climbed the first hill,
it seemed that the weather was about what you would expect in England in
October, but he changed his mind after he had been for five minutes in a
narrow gully with a northern aspect into which no sunlight came. There
indeed he began to wonder why, in spite of his toil, he earned no
healthy glow such as exercise should bring, and even when he emerged
upon the top of the bench he was almost afraid to open his mouth lest
the bitter cold should creep down his throat and freeze his vitals.
But there was that upon the glittering snow-covered table-land which
diverted his attention from the cold. At first he thought that the herds
of some distant rancher had wandered to the Frazer, and were now feeding
before him in little mobs and bunches of from ten to twenty head. There
were so many beasts in sight, and in the wonderfully clear atmosphere
they looked so large, their dark coats contrasting with the snow upon
which they stood, that it never occurred to Ned that they were sheep.
A second glance, however, revealed the truth, just as a second thought
reminded him that there was no rancher then in British Columbia from
whom these herds could have wandered.
Here and there Ned could see the yellowish-white sterns of a band
feeding from him, or the splendid sweep of a noble pair of horns against
the clear sky. These were no domestic cattle, bred to be butchered, but
a great army of big-horns driven from their mountain haunts by the
advance of winter. For a while Ned lay and looked at them as they
scraped away the snow to get at the sweet sun-dried grasses beneath, and
then he began to consider how best he might win some trophy from them
with which to adorn the hall of that long, low house of his father's
which looked from Shropshire across the hills to Wales.
There were giants amongst them, Ned could see that, and his fingers
itched to pull the trigger at more than one great ram; but the chiefs of
the herd, nine in number, lay like nine gray images of stone in the
middle of a level, park-like expanse, round which the smaller beasts fed
and kept guard. For a long time Corbett lay and looked at the silent
nine, with their heads turned in different directions, as if each had
undertaken to watch one particular quarter for a coming foe. At last one
of the nine rose slowly, and stood looking intently towards Corbett. At
the moment he himself had risen somewhat upon his hands and knees to get
a fairer view of the coveted horns, and possibly at a thousand yards the
ram had seen enough of Ned's cap above the sky-line to make him
suspicious. Had a gray-faced old ewe seen as much she would have given
the alarm, but the ram was bolder or more careless.
For ten minutes Corbett had to remain as he was, his head rigid, and the
spines of a prickly pear running into the palms of his hands. At the end
of that time the ram lowered his head, turned round, and lay down again.
It was only an odd-looking boulder, he thought, after all; but had he
looked ten minutes later the ram would have missed that boulder upon the
sky-line, for Ned Corbett was going at his best pace downhill to a point
from which he thought that he could creep to within two hundred yards of
his prey.
Ned was going at his best pace, because the sun stood so high in the
heavens, that under ordinary circumstances the sheep would have already
been on the move for the timber.
As it was there could not be much time to spare in spite of the
temptations of the new-found pasture, and as Ned's snow-clogged
moccasins kept letting him down upon the hillside, he just lay where he
fell, and, in his own words, "let himself rip" until he reached the
bottom. There he pulled up with a jerk, a somewhat bruised and
breathless person, but utterly reckless of such small matters as bruises
if he could only get up to his point of vantage in time.
Alas for the hopes of mortals! When Ned Corbett had reached the top of
the opposite bank his breath was coming thick and short, and great drops
of perspiration were splashing on to the snow from his brow, but there
was not one single sheep in sight where half an hour before he had seen
five hundred. The white table-land was empty. Ned could have seen a
sparrow on it if there had been one to see, but there was no living
thing there, only across and across it were the tracks of many feet, and
in one place where the rams had been, long plunging tracks, and then, as
it were, a road along which the herd had trotted steadily away to the
timbered gulches above. That stalker's curse, the wind, had brought some
hint of Ned's presence to the watchful beasts, and they had not waited
for anything more.
"Confound the wind!" Ned muttered, "I'll be shot if I can understand how
it happened;" and plucking a few hairs from his yellow head he let them
go, and watched them as they drifted straight back into his face.
"The wind is all right now," he growled. "Well, I've not done with them
yet;" and having made quite sure that the nine chiefs had gone up a
certain gully, he began to make another detour in order to get above
them.
Up and up he went, the snow getting deeper as he climbed higher, and
the trees growing wider apart. Now and again he had to force his way
through a thick place of young pines, where, as his shoulders brushed
against them, the boughs discharged whole avalanches of soft, heavy snow
upon his head, half blinding him for the moment. Once he saw the
sunlight gleam upon what looked like a spear-head low down on the other
side of a pine-hole, but as he looked a big brown ear flickered forward
beside the spear-head, and next moment a great stag had risen, and for
half a second stood looking at the intruder. But Ned let the stag go. He
did not want stags just then, and, besides, in the green timber on the
ridge where he stood there were lots of them, and all large ones. The
little fellows lived lower down, it seemed.
So he pushed on, until all at once the frost got hold of him. In a
moment his heart seemed to stop beating, his knee remained bent in the
very act of climbing over a log, his hands stuck to his sides, and his
eyes stared as if he had seen a ghost. Right below him, not sixteen
paces away, stood the statue of the thing he sought. It could not be a
live beast; it was too still. Only for a second Ned dared to look before
he sank into the snow behind a juniper bush, but in that second he saw
that what he looked on was the statue of an old, old ewe, big almost as
a six-year old ram, and gray with age, her villainously-inquisitive head
turned (luckily for Ned) downhill. For a few seconds the ewe stood
searching the depths of the gully below, and then, without so much as a
glance uphill, tossed her head in the air and walked silently forward
past Corbett's hiding-place. One after another, all at the same sober
pace and all as silent as shadows, ten or a dozen old ewes went by in
the footsteps of the first.
Then there was a little noise--you would not have heard it anywhere
else, but in the silence of the snow it was quite loud--and forty or
fifty ewes and lambs went by, all, even the lambs, looking inquiringly
down into the gully below, but none of them wasting so much as a glance
upon the ground above them. After the lambs had gone by there was a
pause, a break in the stream, and Corbett's heart began to throb louder
than it had any right to. So far he had not even drawn a bead upon the
sheep. Sixty beasts at least had gone by him one after another within
sixteen paces, and he had let them go. He knew well from experience that
the last comers would be the rams, and last of all would come the master
of the flock. There was a kind of knoll just below him, and the first
sight he got of each new-comer was upon this. One after another the
sheep appeared, like figures upon a pedestal, at this spot, stood
awhile, gazed, and then passed on. At last a ram stood there, his great
horns standing out very wide from his head. "Not of much account,"
thought the hunter. "He's a four-year old; maybe fourteen inches round
the butt--not more anyway," and he let him go.
Twice after that Ned raised his rifle and refrained. The biggest had not
come yet. At last he could stand it no longer. How could he tell that
the beauty before him was not the master ram? and if so, in another
second he would be gone. The rifle rang through the mountains, a dozen
blue grouse rattled out of the pines and swung downhill on wide,
motionless wings, the ram toppled right over and went bumping down the
gully out of sight. There was a wild rush of hurrying feet and the thud,
thud of beasts that leapt from rock to rock, and then all was still.
Rushing forward in the direction taken by the herd, Corbett found
himself stopped by a ravine--a deep-cut, uncompromising cleft in the
rock, bare stone on either side, and a sheer fall between of some
hundreds of feet, and from side to side not less than twenty-five to
thirty feet across. Ned stopped dead. This was beyond any man's power,
even with a fair run and a good take-off, and yet every lamb in that
band had jumped it--jumped it clear!
As he stood marvelling at the great leap before him, a stone rattled
down from the other side of the ravine, and raising his eyes Corbett saw
what many a man has sought season after season in vain, a ram, big and
square-built as a mountain pony, with great horns curling close against
his head in a perfect curve, horns which measured at the very least,
eighteen good inches round the butt.
Ned had only a second to look at him in, and even before he could pull
the trigger the ram had turned; but for all that Ned heard the loud
smack of his bullet, and he knew that it was not the rock against which
it had struck.
"Got him right on the shoulder-blade," he muttered, as he started full
of hope to circumnavigate the head of the ravine. It was a long way
round, but Ned got over the ground quickly, and soon found his wounded
beast hobbling slowly away upon three legs. For two solid hours Ned
followed his ram, who, in spite of his wound, could go just fast enough
to keep his pursuer out of range.
Meanwhile the sun was sinking fast, and in spite of himself Ned had to
admit that he must give up the chase. Even for an eighteen-inch head he
dared not risk a night out on these mountains with the thermometer at
ten degrees below zero. "Just one more ridge," he muttered to himself,
"and then I'll give him up;" and so muttering he climbed painfully
through the deep snow to the top of yet one more of those little ridges,
over so many of which he had climbed that day. As his head came over the
sky-line, Ned's heart dropped into his boots, and he felt the sickness
of despair. The ram had vanished. He could see for half a mile in front
of him, but there was no ram. Could it be that after all that weary
tramp, and in spite of all those great splashes of blood, his prey had
gathered fresh strength, and making a final effort had got clean away
from him? For a moment Ned thought that it must be so, but the next his
eye lighted upon what looked like a great gray boulder, a boulder though
which had no snow upon it, and which moved ever so little. Then as he
rushed forward the gray thing staggered to its knees, lurched heavily
forward, and lay still again. A few seconds later Ned Corbett's hands
clutched the solid crown of one who had been a king amongst the high
places of the earth.
But there was no time for rest, much less for exultation. The crimson of
the setting sun was already beginning to flush along the forest floors,
and Ned, as he looked over the country below him, felt his heart grow
sick at the thought that if he returned as he came he could not reach
the hut before dark.
Was there no other way--no short cut? Ned rather thought that there was,
and determined to try it. Instead of going up and down every gully on
the face of the range, he would make for the edge of the divide and
follow it round until he reached a point opposite to his camp, then he
would descend, taking his chance of finding an easy way down. But
before starting on his homeward journey, Ned hacked off the head of his
victim and bound it (a heavy load) upon his own shoulders. If he had to
stop out all night and risk death by frost-bite, he might as well take
with him a souvenir of his hardships should he be lucky enough to
survive them. As for the meat, Rampike and Steve could help him bring
that in, later on. If the _coyotés_ let it alone it would keep well
enough; and Ned thought that a rag, which he had drawn through his rifle
barrels and fastened to the carcase, would keep off the _coyotés_.
Having made his preparations he started, and toiled steadily until he
reached the ridge, where the walking became infinitely easier. Ned had
not much time to look about him, but for all that his eyes were not
shut, and he could not help noticing one valley some distance away in
the opposite direction to his camp. It seemed to him that he had seen
that valley before, but it was far off, and the light was failing.
It was night when Ned reached the dug-out; there was a harsh grinding
sound down in the river bed, and his clothes, which had been wet with
perspiration, were frozen stiff and cold. But as he gazed at his ram's
head, Ned Corbett was content.