In a corner of what is occasionally termed "Our Empire of the
Northwest," there lies a country of mountains and valleys where, until
recently, citizens have been few. At the present time certain mines, and
uncertain hopes, have gathered an eccentric population and evoked some
sudden towns. The names which several of these bear are tolerably
sumptuous: Golden, Oro, and Ruby, for instance; and in them dwell many
colonels and judges, and people who own one suit of clothes and half a
name (colored by adjuncts, such as Hurry Up Ed), and who sleep almost
anywhere. These communities are brisk, sanguine, and nomadic, full of
good will and crime; and in each of them you will be likely to find a
weekly newspaper, and an editor who is busy writing things about the
neighboring editors. The flume slants down the hill bearing water to the
concentrator; buckets unexpectedly swing out from the steep pines into
mid-air, sailing along their wire to the mill; little new staring
shanties appear daily; somebody having trouble in a saloon upsets a
lamp, and half the town goes to ashes, while the colonels and Hurry Up
Eds carouse over the fireworks till morning. In a short while there are
more little shanties than ever, and the burnt district is forgotten. All
this is going on not far from the mountain goat, but it is a forlorn
distance from the railroad; and except for the stage line which the
recent mining towns have necessitated, my route to the goat country
might have been too prolonged and uncertain to attempt.
I stepped down one evening from the stage, the last public conveyance I
was to see, after a journey that certainly has one good side. It is
completely odious; and the breed of sportsmen that takes into camp every
luxury excepting, perhaps, cracked ice, will not be tempted to infest
the region until civilization has smoothed its path. The path, to be
sure, does not roughen until one has gone along it for twenty-eight
hundred miles. You may leave New York in the afternoon, and arrive very
early indeed on the fifth day at Spokane. Here the luxuries begin to
lessen, and a mean once-a-day train trundles you away on a branch west
of Spokane at six in the morning into a landscape that wastes into a
galloping consumption. Before noon the last sick tree, the ultimate
starved blade of wheat, has perished from sight, and you come to the end
of all things, it would seem; a domain of wretchedness unspeakable. Not
even a warm, brilliant sun can galvanize the corpse of the bare ungainly
earth. The railroad goes no further,--it is not surprising,--and the
stage arranges to leave before the train arrives. Thus you spend sunset
and sunrise in the moribund terminal town, the inhabitants of which
frankly confess that they are not staying from choice. They were floated
here by a boom-wave, which left them stranded. Kindly they were, and
anxious to provide the stranger with what comforts existed.
Geographically I was in the "Big Bend" country, a bulk of land looped in
by the Columbia River, and highly advertised by railroads for the
benefit of "those seeking homes." Fruit and grain no doubt grow
somewhere in it. What I saw was a desert cracked in two by a chasm
sixty-five miles long. It rained in the night, and at seven next
morning, bound for Port Columbia, we wallowed northward out of town in
the sweating canvas-covered stage through primeval mud. After some
eighteen miles we drew out of the rain area, and from around the wheels
there immediately arose and came among us a primeval dust, monstrous,
shapeless, and blind. First your power of speech deserted you, then your
eyesight went, and at length you became uncertain whether you were
alive. Then hilarity at the sheer discomfort overtook me, and I was
joined in it by a brother American; but two Jew drummers on the back
seat could not understand, and seemed on the verge of tears. The
landscape was entirely blotted out by the dust. Often you could not see
the roadside,--if the road had any side. We may have been passing homes
and fruit-trees, but I think not. I remember wondering if getting goat
after all--But they proved well worth it.
Toward evening we descended into the sullen valley of the Columbia,
which rushes along, sunk below the level of the desert we had crossed.
High sterile hills flank its course, and with the sweeping, unfriendly
speed of the stream, its bleak shores seemed a chilly place for
home-seekers. Yet I blessed the change. A sight of running water once
more, even of this overbearing flood, and of hills however dreary, was
exhilaration after the degraded, stingy monotony of the Big Bend. The
alkali trails in Wyoming do not seem paradises till you bring your
memory of them here. Nor am I alone in my estimate of this impossible
hole. There is a sign-post sticking up in the middle of it, that
originally told the traveler it was thirty-five miles to Central Ferry.
But now the traveler has retorted; and three different hand-writings on
this sign-post reveal to you that you have had predecessors in your
thought, comrades who shared your sorrows:
Forty-five miles to water.
Seventy-five miles to wood.
And then the last word:
Two and one-half miles to hell.
Perhaps they were home-seekers.
We halted a moment at the town of Bridgeport, identified by one wooden
store and an inchoate hotel. The rest may be seen upon blue-print maps,
where you would suppose Bridgeport was a teeming metropolis. At Port
Columbia, which we reached by a land-slide sort of road that slanted the
stage over and put the twin Jew drummers in mortal fear, we slept in one
of the two buildings which indicate that town. It is another important
center,--in blue print,--but invisible to the naked eye. In the morning,
a rope ferry floated the new stage and us travelers across the river.
The Okanagon flows south from lakes and waters above the British line,
and joins the Columbia here. We entered its valley at once, crossed it
soon by another rope ferry, and keeping northward, with the river to the
east between us and the Colville Reservation, had one good meal at noon,
and entering a smaller valley, reached Ruby that evening. Here the stage
left me to continue its way to Conconally, six miles further on. With
the friends who had come to meet me, I ascended out of Ruby the next day
over the abrupt hill westward, and passing one night out in my blankets
near a hospitable but limited cabin (its flowing-haired host fed us,
played us the fiddle, and would have had us sleep inside), arrived bag
and baggage the fourth day from the railroad at the forks of the Methow
River--the next tributary of the Columbia below the Okanagon.
Here was a smiling country, winning the heart at sight. An ample beauty
was over everything Nature had accomplished in this place; the pleasant
trees and clear course of the stream, a fertile soil on the levels, the
slopes of the foot-hills varied and gentle, unencumbered by woods, the
purple cloak of forest above these on the mountains, and rising from the
valley's head a crown of white, clean frozen peaks. These are known to
some as the Isabella Range and Mount Gardner, though the maps do not
name them. Moreover, I heard that now I was within twenty-five miles of
goats; and definite ridges were pointed out as the promised land.
Many things were said to me, first and last. I remember a ragged old
trapper, lately come over the mountains from the Skagit River. Goats,
did I say? On top there the goats had tangled your feet walking in the
trail. He had shot two in camp for staring at him. Another accurate
observer had seen three hundred on a hill just above Early Winter as he
was passing by. The cabined dwellers on the Methow tied their horses to
the fence and talked to me--so I had come from the East after goats, had
I?--and in the store of the Man at the Forks I became something of a
curiosity. Day by day I sat on the kegs of nails, or lay along the
counter devoted to his dry-goods, and heard what passed. Citizens and
denizens--for the Siwash with his squaws and horses was having his
autumn hunt in the valley--knocked at the door to get their mail, or buy
tobacco, or sell horns and fur, or stare for an hour and depart with a
grunt; and the grave Man at the Forks stood behind one counter while I
lay on the other, acquiring a miscellaneous knowledge. One old medical
gentleman had slain all wild animals without weapons, and had been the
personal friend of so many distinguished historical characters that we
computed he was nineteen about the time of Bunker Hill. They were
hospitable with their information, and I followed my rule of believing
everything that I hear. And they were also hospitable with whatever
they possessed. The memory of those distant dwellers among the
mountains, young and old, is a friendly one, like the others I carry,
whether of Wind or Powder Rivers, or the Yellowstone, or wherever
Western trails have led me.
Yet disappointment and failure were the first things. There was all the
zeal you could wish. We had wedged painfully into a severe
country--twelve miles in two days, and trail-cutting between--when
sickness turned us back, goatless. By this time October was almost gone,
and the last three days of it went in patching up our disintegrated
outfit. We needed other men and other horses; and while these were being
sought, nothing was more usual than to hear "if we'd only been along
with So-and-So, he saw goats" here and there, and apparently everywhere.
We had, it would seem, ingeniously selected the only place where there
were none. But somehow the services of So-and-So could not be procured.
He had gone to town; or was busy getting his winter's meat; or his
married daughter had just come to visit him, or he had married somebody
else's daughter. I cannot remember the number of obstacles always lying
between ourselves and So-and-So.
At length we were once more in camp on a stream named the Twispt. In the
morning--new stroke of misfortune--one of us was threatened with
illness, and returned to the Forks. We three, the guide, the cook, and
myself, went on, finally leaving the narrow valley, and climbing four
hours up a mountain at the rate of about a mile an hour. The question
was, had winter come in the park above, for which we were heading? On
top, we skirted a bare ridge from which everything fell precipitously
away, and curving round along a steep hollow of the hill, came to an
edge and saw the snow lying plentifully among the pines through which we
must go down into the bottom of the park. But on the other side, where
the sun came, there was little or none, and it was a most beautiful
place. At the head of it was a little frozen lake fringed with tamarack,
and a stream flowed down from this through scattered birches and pines,
with good pasture for the horses between. The park sank at its outlet
into a tall impassable canyon through which the stream joined the Twispt,
miles below. It was a little lap of land clear at the top of the
mountains, the final peaks and ridges of which rose all around, walling
it in completely. You must climb these to be able to see into it, and
the only possible approach for pack-horses was the pine-tree slant, down
which we came. Of course there was no trail.
We prospected before venturing, and T----, the guide, shook his head. It
was only a question of days--possibly of hours--when snow must shut the
place off from the world until spring. But T---- appreciated the three
thousand miles I had come for goats; and if the worst came to the worst,
said he, we could "make it in" to the Forks on foot, leading the horses,
and leaving behind all baggage that weighed anything. So we went down.
Our animals slipped a little, the snow balling their feet; but nothing
happened, and we reached the bottom and chose a camp in a clump of
tamarack and pine. The little stream, passing through shadows here, ran
under a lid of frozen snow easily broken, and there was plenty of wood,
and on the ground only such siftings of snow as could be swept clean for
the tent. The saddles were piled handily under a tree, a good fireplace
was dug, we had a comfortable supper; and nothing remained but that the
goats should be where they ought to be--on the ridges above the park.
I have slept more soundly; doubt and hope kept my thoughts active. Yet
even so, it was pleasant to wake in the quiet and hear the bell on our
horse, Duster, occasionally tankle somewhere on the hill. My watch I had
forgotten to place at T----'s disposal, so he was reduced to getting the
time of day from the stars. He consulted the Great Bear, and seeing this
constellation at an angle he judged to indicate five o'clock, he came
back into the tent, and I heard him wake the cook, who crawled out of
his blankets.
"Why, it's plumb night," the cook whined.
"Make the breakfast," said T----.
I opened my eyes, and shut them immediately in despair at the darkness
that I saw. Presently I heard the fire and the pans, and knew that the
inevitable had come. So I got my clothes on, and we looked at my watch.
It was only 4.30 A. M. T---- and the Great Bear had made half an hour's
miscalculation, and the face of the cook was so grievous that I secretly
laughed myself entirely awake. "Plumb night" lasted some time longer. I
had leisure to eat two plates of oatmeal and maple syrup, some
potato-and-onion soup, bacon, and coffee, and digest these, before dawn
showed.
T---- and I left camp at 6.40 A. M. The day was a dark one. On the high
peaks behind camp great mounds of cloud moved and swung, and the sky was
entirely overcast. We climbed one of the lower ridges, not a hard climb
nor long, but very sliding, and often requiring hands and feet to work
round a ledge. From the top we could see the open country lying
comfortably below and out of reach of the howling wind that cut across
the top of the mountain, straight from Puget Sound, bringing all that it
could carry of the damp of the Pacific. The ridges and summits that
surrounded our park continually came into sight and disappeared again
among the dense vapors which bore down upon them.
We went cautiously along the narrow top of crumbling slate, where the
pines were scarce and stunted, and had twisted themselves into
corkscrews so they might grip the ground against the tearing force of
storms. We came on a number of fresh goat-tracks in the snow or the soft
shale. These are the reverse of those of the mountain sheep, the V which
the hoofs make having its open end in the direction the animal is going.
There seemed to be several, large and small; and the perverted animals
invariably chose the sharpest slant they could find to walk on, often
with a decent level just beside it that we were glad enough to have. If
there were a precipice and a sound flat top, they took the precipice,
and crossed its face on juts that did not look as if your hat would hang
on them. In this I think they are worse than the mountain sheep, if that
is possible. Certainly they do not seem to come down into the high
pastures and feed on the grass levels as the sheep will.
T---- and I hoped we should find a bunch, but that was not to be, in
spite of the indications. As we continued, I saw a singular-looking
stone lying on a little ledge some way down the mountain ahead. I
decided it must be a stone, and was going to speak of it, when the stone
moved, and we crouched in the slanting gravel. T---- had been making up
his mind it was a stone. The goat turned his head our way, but did not
rise. He was two hundred yards across a split in the mountain, and the
wind blowing hard. T---- wanted me to shoot, but I did not dare to run
such a chance. I have done a deal of missing at two hundred yards, and
much nearer, too. So I climbed, or crawled, out of sight, keeping any
stone or little bush between me and the goat, till I got myself where a
buttress of rock hid me, and then I ran along the ridge and down and up
the scoop in it made by the split of the mountain, and so came
cautiously to where I could peer over and see the goat lying turned away
from me, with his head commanding the valley. He was on a tiny shelf of
snow, beside him was one small pine, and below that the rock fell away
steeply into the gorge. Ought I to have bellowed at him, and at least
have got him on his legs? I know it would have been more honorable. He
looked white, and huge, and strange; and somehow I had a sense of
personality about him more vivid than any since I watched my first
silver-tip lift a rotten log, and, sitting on his hind legs, make a
breakfast on beetles, picking them off the log with one paw.
I fired, aiming behind the goat's head. He did not rise, but turned his
head round. The white bead of my Lyman sight had not showed well against
the white animal, and I thought I had missed him. Then I fired again,
and he rolled very little--six inches--and lay quiet. He could not have
been more than fifty yards away, and my first shot had cut through the
back of his neck and buried itself in mortal places, and the second in
his head merely made death instantaneous. Shooting him after he had
become alarmed might have lost him over the edge; even if a first shot
had been fatal, it could not have been fatal soon enough. Two struggles
on that snow would have sent him sliding through space. As it was, we
had a steep, unsafe scramble down through the snow to where he lay
stretched out on the little shelf by the tree.
He was a fair-sized billy, and very heavy. The little lifting and
shoving we had to do in skinning him was hard work. The horns were
black, slender, slightly spreading, curved backward, pointed, and
smooth. They measured six inches round the base, and the distance from
one point to the other, measured down one horn, along the skull, and up
the other, was twenty-one and a half inches. The hoofs were also black
and broad and large, wholly unlike a tame goat's. The hair was
extraordinarily thick, long, and of a weather-beaten white; the eye
large and deep-brown.
I had my invariable attack of remorse on looking closely at the poor
harmless old gentleman, and wondered what achievement, after all, could
be discerned in this sort of surprise and murder. We did not think of
securing any of his plentiful fat, but with head and hide alone climbed
back up the ticklish slant, hung the trophies on a tree in a gap on the
camp side of the ridge, and continued our hunt. It was not ten o'clock
yet, and we had taken one hour to skin the goat. We now hunted the
higher ridges behind camp until 1 P. M., finding tracks that made it
seem as if a number of goats must be somewhere near by. But the fog
came down and shut everything out of sight; moreover, the wind on top
blew so that we could not have seen had it been clear.
We returned to camp, and found it greatly improved. The cook had
carpentered an important annex to the tent. By slanting pine-logs
against a ridge-pole and nailing them, he had built a room, proof
against wind and rain, and in it a table. One end was against the
opening of the tent, the other at the fire. The arrangement was
excellent, and timely also. The storm revived during the night, and it
rained fitfully. The roar of the wind coming down from the mountain into
our park sounded like a Niagara, and its approach was tremendous. We had
built up a barrier of pine-brush, and this, with a clump of trees,
sheltered us well enough; but there were wild moments when the gust
struck us, and the tent shuddered and strained, until that particular
breeze passed on with a diminishing roar down the canyon.
The next morning the rain kept us from making an early start, and we did
not leave camp until eight. Now and then a drizzle fell from the mist,
and the banks of clouds were still driving across the higher peaks, but
during the day the sun slowly got the better of them. Again we saw a
solitary goat, this time far below down the ridge we had chosen. Like
the sheep, these animals watch the valley. There is no use in attempting
to hunt them from there. Their eyes are watchful and keen, and the
chances are that if you are working up from below and see a goat on the
hill, he will have been looking at you for some time. Once he is
alarmed, ten minutes will be enough for him to put a good many hours of
climbing between himself and you. His favorite trick is to remain
stock-still, watching you till you pass out of his sight behind
something, and then he makes off so energetically that when you see him
next he will be on some totally new mountain. But his intelligence does
not seem to grasp more than the danger from below. While he is
steadfastly on the alert against this, it apparently does not occur to
him that anything can come down upon him. Consequently from above you
may get very near before you are noticed. The chief difficulty is the
noise of falling stones your descent is almost sure to make. The
character of these mountain-sides is such that even with the greatest
care in stepping we sent a shower rattling down from time to time. We
had a viciously bad climb. We went down through tilted funnels of crag,
avoiding jumping off places by crossing slides of brittle slate and
shale, hailing a dead tree as an oasis. And then we lost count, and
T---- came unexpectedly on the goat, which was up and away and was shot
by T---- before I could get a sight of him. I had been behind some
twenty yards, both of us supposing we had to go considerably further.
T---- was highly disgusted. "To think of me managing such a botch as
that," he said, "when you've come so far"; and he wanted me to tell the
people that I had shot the goat myself. He really cared more than I did.
This goat was also a billy, and larger than the first. We sat skinning
him where he had fallen at the edge of a grove of tamarack, and T----
conversed about the royal family of England. He remarked that he had
always rather liked "that chap Lorne."
I explained to him that "that chap Lorne" had made himself ridiculous
forever at the Queen's Jubilee. Then, as T---- did not know, I told him
how the marquis had insisted on riding in the procession upon a horse,
against which the Prince of Wales, aware of the tame extent of his
horsemanship, had warned him. In the middle of the pageant, the Queen in
her carriage, the crowned heads of Europe escorting her on horseback,
and the whole world looking on--at this picturesque moment, Lorne fell
off. I was not sure that T---- felt fully how inappropriate a time this
was for a marquis to tumble from his steed.
"I believe the Queen sent somebody," I continued.
"Where?" said T----.
"To him. She probably called the nearest king and said: 'Frederick,
Lorne's off. Go and see if he's hurt.'"
"'And if he ain't hurt, _hurt him_,'" said T----, completing her
Majesty's thought.
[Illustration: On the Slide-Rock.
Photographed from nature by William H. Seward, Jr. From Forest and
Stream.]
This second billy seemed to me twice the size of a domestic goat. He was
certainly twice the weight. His hide alone weighed thirty pounds, as far
as one could determine by balancing it against weights that we knew,
such as a sack of flour or sugar. But I distrust the measurements of
wild animals made by guesswork on a mountain-top during the enthusiastic
state of the hunter's mind which follows at once upon a lucky shot.
Therefore, I can positively vouch for this only, that all the goats
which I have seen struck me as being larger and heavier animals than the
goat of civilization. After all, the comparison is one into which we are
misled by the name. This is an antelope; and though, through certain
details of his costume, he is able to masquerade as a goat, it must be
remembered that he is of a species wholly distinct.
We took the web tallow, and the tallow of one kidney. The web was three
quarters of an inch thick.
Neither elk, nor any animal I have seen, except bear, has such
quantities of fat, and I do not think even a bear has a thicker hide. On
the rump it was as thick as the sole of my boot, and the masses of hair
are impenetrable to anything but modern firearms. An arrow might easily
stick harmless; and I am told that carnivorous animals who prey upon
the deer in these mountains respectfully let the goat alone. Besides his
defensive armor, he is an ugly customer in attack. He understands the
use of his thin, smooth horns, and, driving them securely into the belly
of his enemy, jumps back and leaves him a useless, ripped-open sack.
Male and female have horns of much the same size; and in taking a bite
out of one of either sex, as T---- said, a mountain lion would get only
a mouthful of hair.
But modern firearms have come to be appreciated by the wild animals; and
those which were once unquestionably dangerous to pioneers, now retreat
before the Winchester rifle. Only a bear with cubs to defend remains
formidable.
I said this to T----, who told me a personal experience that tends to
destroy even this last chance for the sportsman to be doughty. T----
came on a bear and cubs in the spring, and of course they made off, but
his dog caught and held one little cub which cried out like a child--and
its contemptible mama hurried straight on and away.
Not so a goat mama of which T---- also told me. Some prospectors came on
a bunch of goats when the kids were young enough to be caught. One of
the men captured a kid, and was walking off with it, when the mother
took notice and charged furiously down on him. He flew by in ignominious
sight of the whole camp with the goat after him, till he was obliged to
drop the kid, which was then escorted back to its relatives by its most
competent parent.
Yet no room for generalizing is here. We cannot conclude that the
_Ursus_ family fails to think blood as thick as other people do. These
two incidents merely show that the race of bears is capable of producing
unmaternal females, while, on the other hand, we may expect occasionally
to find in a nanny-goat a Mother of the Gracchi.
I wished to help carry the heavy hide of the second billy; but T----
inflicted this upon himself, "every step to camp," he insisted, "for
punishment at disappointing you." The descent this day had been bad
enough, taking forty minutes for some four hundred yards. But now we
were two hours getting up, a large part of the way on hands and knees.
I carried the two rifles and the glass, going in front to stamp some
sort of a trail in the sliding rocks, while T---- panted behind me,
bearing the goat-hide on his back.
Our next hunt was from seven till four, up and down, in the presence of
noble and lonely mountains. The straight peaks which marshal round the
lake of Chelan were in our view near by, beyond the valley of the
Twispt, and the whole Cascade range rose endlessly, and seemed to fill
the world. Except in Switzerland, I have never seen such an unbroken
area of mountains. And all this beauty going begging, while each year
our American citizens of the East, more ignorant of their own country
and less identified with its soil than any race upon earth, herd across
the sea to the tables d'hote they know by heart! But this is wandering a
long way from goats, of which this day we saw none.
A gale set in after sunset. This particular afternoon had been so
mellow, the sun had shone so clear from a stable sky, that I had begun
to believe the recent threats of winter were only threats, and that we
had some open time before us still. Next morning we waked in midwinter,
the flakes flying thick and furious over a park that was no longer a
pasture, but a blind drift of snow. We lived in camp, perfectly
comfortable. Down at the Forks I had had made a rough imitation of a
Sibley stove. All that its forger had to go on was my unprofessional and
inexpert description, and a lame sketch in pencil; but he succeeded so
well that the hollow iron cone and joints of pipe he fitted together
turned out most efficient. The sight of the apparatus packed on a horse
with the panniers was whimsical, and until he saw it work I know that
T---- despised it. After that, it commanded his respect. All this stormy
day it roared and blazed, and sent a lusty heat throughout the tent.
T---- cleaned the two goat-heads, and talked Shakspere and Thackeray to
me. He quoted Henry the Fourth, and regretted that Thackeray had not
more developed the character of George Warrington. Warrington was the
_man_ in the book. When night came the storm was gone.
By eight the next morning we had sighted another large solitary billy.
But he had seen us down in the park from his ridge. He had come to the
edge, and was evidently watching the horses. If not quick-witted, the
goat is certainly wary; and the next time we saw him he had taken
himself away down the other side of the mountain, along a spine of rocks
where approach was almost impossible. We watched his slow movements
through the glass, and were both reminded of a bear. He felt safe, and
was stepping deliberately along, often stopping, often walking up some
small point and surveying the scenery. He moved in an easy, rolling
fashion, and turned his head importantly. Then he lay down in the sun,
but saw us on our way to him, and bounced off. We came to the place
where he had jumped down sheer twenty feet at least. His hoof-tracks
were on the edge, and in the gravel below the heavy scatter he made in
landing; and then,--hasty tracks round a corner of rock, and no more
goat that day.
I had become uneasy about the weather. It was all sunshine again, and
though our first goat was irretrievably gone, we had the afternoon
before us. Nevertheless, when I suggested we should spend it in taking
the shoes off the horses, so they might be able to walk homeward
without falling in the snow, T---- thought it our best plan. We wanted
to find a bunch of goats now, nannies and kids, as well as billies. It
had been plain that these ridges here contained very few, and those all
hermits; males who from age, or temperament, or disappointment in love,
had retired from society, and were spending the remainder of their days
in a quiet isolation and whatever is the goat equivalent for reading
Horace. It was well enough to have begun with these philosophers, but I
wanted new specimens.
We were not too soon. A new storm had set in by next morning, and the
unshod horses made their journey down the mountain, a most odious
descent for man and beast, in the sliding snow. But down on the Twispt
it was yet only autumn, with no snow at all. This was a Monday, the 7th
of November, and we made haste to the Forks, where I stopped a night to
read a large, accumulated mail, and going on at once, overtook my
outfit, which had preceded me on the day before.
Our new camp--and our last one--was up the Methow, twenty-three miles
above the Forks, in a straight line. Here the valley split at right
angles against a tall face of mountain, and each way the stream was
reduced to a brook one could cross afoot. The new valley became steep
and narrow almost at once, and so continued to the divide between
Columbia water and tributaries of the Skagit. We lived comfortably in an
old cabin built by prospectors. The rain filtered through the growing
weeds and sand on the roof and dropped on my head in bed; but not much,
and I was able to steer it off by a rubber blanket. And of course there
was no glass in the windows; but to keep out wind and wet we hung gunny
sacks across those small holes, and the big stone fireplace was
magnificent.
By ten next morning T---- and I saw "three hundred" goats on the
mountain opposite where we had climbed. Just here I will risk a
generalization. When a trapper tells you he has seen so many hundred
head of game, he has not counted them, but he believes what he says. The
goats T---- and I now looked at were a mile away in an air-line, and
they seemed numberless. The picture which the white, slightly moving
dots made, like mites on a cheese, inclined one to a large estimate of
them, since they covered the whole side of a hill. The more we looked
the more we found; besides the main army there were groups, caucuses,
families sitting apart over some discourse too intimate for the general
public; and beyond these single animals could be discerned, moving,
gazing, browsing, lying down.
"Megod and Begod," said T---- (he occasionally imitated a brogue for no
hereditary reason), "there's a hundred thousand goats!"
"Let's count'em," I suggested, and we took the glasses. There were
thirty-five.
We found we had climbed the wrong hill, and the day was too short to
repair this error. Our next excursion, however, was successful. The hill
where the goats were was not two miles above camp,--you could have seen
the animals from camp but for the curve in the canyon,--yet we were four
hours and a half climbing the ridge, in order to put ourselves above
them. It was a hard climb, entirely through snow after the first. On top
the snow came at times considerably above the knees. But the judicious
T---- (I have never hunted with a more careful and thorough man) was
right in the route he had chosen, and after we had descended again to
the edge of the snow, we looked over a rock, and saw, thirty yards below
us, the nanny and kid for which we had been aiming. I should have said
earlier that the gathering of yesterday had dispersed during the night,
and now little bunches of three and four goats could be seen up and down
the canyon. We were on the exact ground they had occupied, and their many
tracks were plain. My first shot missed--thirty yards!--and as nanny and
kid went bounding by on the hill below, I knocked her over with a more
careful bullet, and T---- shot the kid. The little thing was not dead
when we came up, and at the sight of us it gave a poor little thin bleat
that turns me remorseful whenever I think of it. We had all the
justification that any code exacts. We had no fresh meat, and among
goats the kid alone is eatable; and I justly desired specimens of the
entire family.
We carried the whole kid to camp, and later its flesh was excellent. The
horns of the nanny, as has been said before, are but slightly different
from those of the male. They are, perhaps, more slender, as is also the
total makeup of the animal. In camp I said to T---- that I desired only
one more of those thirty-five goats, a billy; and that if I secured him
the next day, that should be the last. Fortune was for us. We surprised
a bunch of several. They had seen me also, and I was obliged to be
quick. This resulted in some shots missing, and in two, perhaps three,
animals going over ledges with bullets in them, leaving safe behind the
billy I wanted. His conduct is an interesting example of the goat's
capacity to escape you and die uselessly, out of your reach.
I had seen him reel at my first shot, but he hurried around a corner,
and my attention was given to others. As I went down, I heard a shot,
and came round the corner on T----, who stood some hundred yards further
along the ledge beside a goat. T---- had come on him lying down. He had
jumped up and run apparently unhurt, and T---- had shot him just as he
reached the end of the ledge. Beyond was a fall into inaccessible
depths. Besides T----'s shot we found two of mine--one clean through
from the shoulder--the goat had faced me when I fired first--to the ham,
where the lead was flat against the bone. This goat was the handsomest
we had, smaller than the other males, but with horns of a better shape,
and with hair and beard very rich and white. Curiously enough, his lower
jaw between the two front teeth had been broken a long time ago,
probably from some fall. Yet this accident did not seem to have
interfered with his feeding, for he was in excellent plump condition.
This completely satisfied me, and I willingly decided to molest no more
goats. I set neither value nor respect on numerical slaughter. One
cannot expect Englishmen to care whether American big game is
exterminated or not; that Americans should not care is a disgrace. The
pervading spirit of the far West as to game, as to timber, as to
everything that a true American should feel it his right to use and his
duty to preserve for those coming after, is--"What do I care, so long as
it lasts my time?"
There remain a few observations to make, and then I have said the little
that I know about goats. Their horns are not deciduous, so far at least
as I could learn, and the books say this also. But I read a somewhat
inaccurate account of the goat's habits in winter-time. It was stated
that at that season, like mountain sheep, he descends and comes into the
valleys. This does not seem to be the case. He does not depend upon
grass, if indeed he eats grass at all. His food seems to be chiefly the
short, almost lichen-like moss that grows on the faces and at the base
of the rocks and between them in the crevices. The community of goats I
watched was feeding; afterward, when on the spot where they had been, I
found there was no grass growing anywhere near, and signs pointed to its
having been the moss and rock plants that they had been eating. None of
the people in the Methow country spoke of seeing goats come out of the
mountains during winter. I have not sufficient data to make the
assertion, but I am inclined to believe that the goat keeps consistently
to the hills, whatever the season may be, and in this differs from the
mountain sheep as he differs in appearance, temperament, and in all
characteristics excepting the predilection for the inclined plane; and
in this habit he is more vertical than the sheep.
Lest the region I hunted in may have remained vague to Eastern readers,
it is as well to add that in an air-line I was probably some thirty
miles below the British border, and some hundred and twenty east of
Puget Sound.
_Owen Wister._