accorded to humans. It was worth all the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for
that appallingly illogical cloud cap took a new vagary. It split and
lifted a little, and there, not three hundred yards away, in the
twilight of that cold wet cloud, on that mountain in the sky, were two
bull elk in deadly combat. Their far branching horns were locked
together, and they swayed now this way, now that, as they wrestled for
the supremacy of the herd of does, which doubtless was not far away. We
could not see clearly: all was as in a dream. There was not a sound, only
the blurred outlines through the blank mist of two mighty creatures
struggling for victory. One brief glimpse of this mountain drama; then
they sank out of sight, and the numbing grayness and darkness once more
closed around us.
On the way back to camp, Blondey shied at a heap of decaying bones that
were still attached to a magnificent pair of antlers. They were at the
foot of a cliff, over which the animal had probably fallen. The gruesome
sight was suggestive of the end of one of those shadowy creatures,
fighting back there high up on the mountain in the mist and the darkness.
We saw no mountain sheep, but oh, the joy of our camp fire that night!
For we got back in due time all right--Nimrod and the gods know how. To
feel the cheery dancing warmth from the pine needles driving away cold
and misery was pure bliss. One thing is certain about roughing it for a
woman:--there is no compromise. She either sits in the lap of happiness
or of misery. The two are side by side, and toss her about a dozen times
a day--but happiness never lets her go for long.
VIII.
AT YEDDAR'S.
Life at Yeddar's ranch on Green River, where Nimrod and I left the pack
train, is different from life in New York; likewise the people are
different. And as every Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure
to go through a Yeddar experience, I offer a few observations by way of
enlightenment before telling how I killed my antelope. (If you wish to
be proper, always use the possessive for animals you have killed. It is a
Western abbreviation in great favour.)
A two-story log house, a one-room log office, a log barn, and, across the
creek, the log shack we occupied, fifty miles from the railroad, and no
end of miles from anything else, but wilderness--that was Yeddar's.
Old Yeddar--Uncle John, the guides and trappers and teamsters called
him--had solved the problem of ideal existence. He ran this rough road
house without any personal expenditure of labour or money. He sold whisky
in his office to the passing teamsters and guides, and relied upon the
same to do the chores around the place, for which he gave them grub, the
money for which came from the occasional summer tourist, such as we.
Mrs. Spiker 'did' for him in the summer for her board and that of her
little girl, and in the winter he and a pard or two rustled for
themselves, on bacon, coffee, and that delectable compound of bread and
water known as camp sinkers. He got some money for letting the horses
from two Eastern outfits run over the surrounding country and eat up the
Wyoming government hay. Thus he loafs on through the years, outside or
inside his office, without a care beyond the getting of his whisky and
his tobacco. Of course he has a history. He claims to be from a 'high up'
Southern family, but has been a plainsman since 1851. He has lived among
the Indians, has several red-skinned children somewhere on this planet,
and seems to have known all the wild tribe of stage drivers, miners, and
frontiersmen with rapid-firing histories.
Once a week, if the weather were fine, Uncle John would tie a towel and a
clean shirt to his saddle, throw one leg across the back of Jim, his cow
pony, blind in one eye and weighted with years unknown, and the two would
jog a mile or so back in the mountains, to a hot sulphur spring, where
Yeddar would perform his weekly toilet. He was not known to take off his
clothes at any other time, and if the weather were disagreeable the
pilgrimage was omitted.
The cheapest thing at Yeddar's, except time, was advice. You could not
tie up a dog without the entire establishment of loafers bossing the job.
A little active co-operation was not so easy to get, however. One day I
watched a freighter get stuck in the mud down the road 'a piece.' One by
one, the whole number of freighters, mountaineers and guides then at
Yeddar's lounged to the place, until there were nine able-bodied men
ranged in a row watching the freighter dig out his wagon. No one offered
to help him, but all contented themselves with criticising his methods
freely and inquiring after his politics.
During the third week of our stay, Uncle John raised the price of our
board--and such board!--giving as an excuse that when we came he did not
know that we were going to like it so well, or stay so long! Please place
this joke where it belongs.
The charm that held us to this rough place was the abundance of game. The
very night we got there, I was standing quietly by the cabin door at
dusk, when down the path came two of the prettiest does that the whole
of the Blacktail tribe could muster. Shoulder to shoulder, with their big
ears alert, they picked their way along, and under cover of the deepening
twilight advanced to examine the dwelling of the white man.
I watched them with silent breath. They were not ten yards away. Then
they saw me and, wheeling around, stopped, the boldest a little in
advance of her companion, with the right forefoot raised for action. I
made no move. The graceful things eyed me suspiciously for several
seconds and then advanced a little in a one-sided fashion.
A laugh from Yeddar's office, across the creek, where Uncle John and Dave
were having a quiet game of pinochle, caused a short retreat up the
road. About fifty yards away, they stopped, and there, in the twilight,
in that wild glen, they put themselves through a series of poses so
graceful, so unstudied, so tender, so deer-like, that my heart was
thrilled with joy at the mere artistic beauty of the scene. Then the
loudmouthed alarm of a dog sent them silently into the forest gloom.
Nimrod wanted some photographs of animals from life, and the energy which
we put forth to obtain these was a constant surprise and disturbance to
Uncle John and his co-loafers. They could understand why one might trap
an animal, but to let it go again unhurt, after spending hours over it
with a camera, was a problem that required many drinks and much quiet
cogitation in the shade of the office.
For days we tried to get a wood-chuck. At last we succeeded, and I find
this note written in my journal for that date:--
"Oct. 15th: Nimrod caught a woodchuck to-day, a baby one, and we called
him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us all day in his cage, while Nimrod made
a sketch of him and I took his picture. Then, in the late afternoon, we
took him back to his home in the stone-clad hill, and put him among his
brothers and sisters, who peeped cautiously at us from various rocky
niches, higher up the hill."
Little Johnny must have had a great deal to say of the strange ways and
food of the big white animal. It must have been hard, too, for him to
have found suitable woodchuck language to express his sensations when he
was carried, oh! such a long way, in a big sack that grew on the side of
his captor; and of the taste of peppermint candy, which he ate in his
prettiest style, sitting on his haunches and clutching the morsel in both
forepaws like any well-bred baby woodchuck. And then those delicious
sugar cookies that Mrs. Spiker had just baked! How could he make his
ignorant brother chuckies appreciate those cookies! Poor little Johnny is
a marked woodchuck. He has seen the world.
When Nimrod went hunting skunks, the group at the office gave us up.
"Locoed, plumb locoed," was the verdict.
Have you ever been on a skunk hunt? But perhaps you have no prejudices. I
had. My code of action for a skunk was, if you see a black and white
animal, don't stop to admire its beautiful bushy tail, but give a good
imitation of a young woman running for her life. This did not suit
Nimrod. He assured me that there was no danger if we treated his
skunkship respectfully, and, as I was the photographer, I put on my old
clothes and meekly fell in line. Nimrod set several box traps in places
where skunks had been. These traps were merely soap boxes raised at one
end by a figure four arrangement of sticks, so that when the animal goes
inside and touches the bait the sticks fall apart, down comes the box,
and the animal is caged unhurt. The next morning we went the rounds. The
first trap was unsprung. The second one was down. Of course we could not
see inside. Was it empty? Was the occupant a rat or a skunk, and if so,
_what_ was he going to do?
Nimrod approached the trap. Just then a big tree chanced to get between
me and it. I stopped, thinking that as good a place as any to await
developments.
"It's a skunk all right," Nimrod announced gleefully.
The box was rather heavy, so Nimrod went to Yeddar's, which was not far
away, to see if he could get one of the loungers to help carry the
captive to a large wire cage that we had rigged up near our shack.
There were six men near the office, bronzed mountaineers, men of guns and
grit, men who had spent their lives facing danger; but, when it came to
facing a skunk, each looked at Nimrod as one would at a crazy man and had
important business elsewhere. For once I thoroughly appreciated their
point of view, but as there was no one else I took one end of the box,
and we started. It was a precarious pilgrimage, but we moved gently and
managed not to outrage the little animal's feelings.
When the men saw us coming across the creek, with one accord they all
went in and took a drink.
We gingerly urged Mr. Skunk into the big cage, and with the greatest
caution, never making a sudden move, I took his picture. All was as merry
as a marriage bell, and might have continued so but for that puppy Sim.
That is the trouble with skunks; they will lose their manners if
startled, and _dogs startle skunks_.
Of course the puppy barked; of course the skunk did not like it. He
ruffled up his cold black nose, and elevated his bushy tail--his
beautiful, plumy tail. I opened the door of his cage and, snatching
the puppy, fled. The skunk was a wise and good animal, really a
gentleman, if treated politely. He appreciated my efforts on his
behalf. He forbearingly lowered his tail, composed his fur, and walked
out of the cage and into the near-by woods as tamely as a house tabby
out for a stroll.
IX.
MY ANTELOPE.
It was a week later when I did something which those old guides could
understand and appreciate--I made a dead shot. I committed a murder, and
from that time, the brotherhood of pards was open to us, had we cared to
join. It was all because I killed an antelope.
Nimrod and I started out that morning with the understanding that, if we
saw antelope, I was to have a chance.
In about six miles, Nimrod spied two white specks moving along the rocky
ridge to the east of us, which rose abruptly from the plain where we
were. I was soon able to make out that they were antelope. But the
antelope had also seen us, and there was as much chance of getting near
to them, by direct pursuit, as of a snail catching a hare. So we rode on
calmly northward for half a mile, making believe we had not seen them,
until we passed out of sight behind a long hill. Then we began an
elaborate detour up the mountain, keeping well out of sight, until we
judged that the animals, providing they had not moved, were below us,
under the rocky ledge nearly a mile back.
We tied up the horses on that dizzy height, and stole, Nimrod with a
carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended,
twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the
cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would
slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over
the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on
a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play
compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent us flying over the
cliff, but I did not think of that--my only care was not to startle the
shy fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. I hardly dared to breathe;
every muscle and nerve was tense with the long suspense.
[Illustration: A MISSTEP WOULD HAVE SENT US FLYING OVER THE CLIFF.]
Suddenly I clutched Nimrod's arm and pointed at an oblong tan coloured
bulk fifty yards above us on the mountain.
"Antelope! Lying down!" I whispered in his ear. He nodded and motioned me
to go ahead. I crawled nearer, inch by inch, my gaze riveted on that
object. It did not move. I grew more elated the nearer it allowed me to
approach. It was not so very hard to get at an antelope, after all. I
felt astonishingly pleased with my performance. Then--rattle, crash--and
a stone went bounding down. What a pity, after all my painful contortions
not to do it! I instantly raised the rifle to get a shot before the swift
animal went flying away.
But it was strangely quiet. I stole a little nearer--and then turned and
went gently back to Nimrod. He was convulsed with silent and unnecessary
laughter. My elaborate stalk had been made on--a nice buff stone.
We continued our precarious journey for another quarter of a mile, when
I motioned that I was going to try to get a sight of the antelope, which,
according to my notion, were under the rock some hundred feet below, and
signed to Nimrod to stay behind.
Surely my guardian angel attended that descent. I slid down a crack in
the rock three feet wide, which gave me a purchase on the sides with my
elbows and left hand. The right hand grasped the rifle, to my notion an
abominably heavy awkward thing. One of these drops was eight feet,
another twelve. A slip would probably have cost me my life. Then I
crawled along a narrow ledge for about the width of a town-house front,
and, making another perilous slide, landed on a ledge so close to the
creatures I was hunting that I was as much startled as they.
Away those two beautiful animals bounded, their necks proudly arched and
their tiny feet hitting the only safe places with unerring aim. They were
far out of range before I thought to get my rifle in position, and my
random shot only sent them farther out on the plain, like drifting leaves
on autumn wind.
It was impossible to return the way I had come; so I rolled and jumped
and generally tumbled to the grassy hill below, and waited for Nimrod to
go back along the shaly stretch, and bring down the horses the way they
had gone up.
Then we took some lunch from the saddle bags and sat down in the waving,
yellow grass of the foot hill with a sweep of miles before us, miles of
grassy tableland shimmering in the clear air like cloth of gold in the
sun, where cattle grow fat and the wild things still are at home.
During lunch Nimrod tried to convince me that he knew all the time that
the antelope I stalked on the mountainside was a stone. Of course wives
should believe their husbands. The economy of State and Church would
collapse otherwise. However, the appearance of a large band of antelope,
a sight now very rare even in the Rockies, caused the profitless
discussion to be engulfed in the pursuit of the real thing.
The antelope were two miles away, mere specks of white. We could not
tell them from the twinkling plain until they moved. We mounted
immediately and went after those antelope--by pretending to go away
from them. For three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly browsing
animals. We hid behind low hills, and crawled down a water-course, and
finally dismounted behind the very mound of prairie on the other side of
which they were resting, a happy, peaceful family. There were twenty
does, and proudly in their midst moved the king of the harem, a powerful
buck with royal horns.
The crowning point of my long day's hunt was before me. That I should
have my chance to get one of the finest bucks ever hunted was clear. What
should I do, should I hit or miss? Fail! What a thought--never!
Just then a drumming of hoofs which rapidly faded away showed that
the wind had betrayed us, and the whole band was off like a flight
of arrows.
"Shoot! Shoot!" cried Nimrod, but my gun was already up and levelled on
the flying buck--now nearly a hundred yards away.
Bang! The deadly thing went forth to do its work. Sliding another
cartridge into the chamber, I held ready for another shot.
There was no need. The fleet-footed monarch's reign was over, and already
he had gone to his happy hunting ground. The bullet had gone straight to
his heart, and he had not suffered. But the does, the twenty beating
hearts of his harem! There they were, not one hundred yards away, huddled
together with ears erect, tiny feet alert for the next bound--yet waiting
for their lord and master, the proud tyrant, so strangely still on the
ground. Why did he not come? And those two creatures whose smell they
feared--why did he stay so near?
They took a few steps nearer and again waited, eyes and ears and
uplifted hoofs asking the question, "Why doesn't he come? Why does he
let those dreadful creatures go so close?" Then, as we bent over their
fallen hero, they knew he was forever lost to them, and fear sent them
speeding out of sight.
X.
A MOUNTAIN DRAMA.
But hunting does not make one wholly a brute, crying, 'Kill, kill!' at
every chance. In fact I have no more to confess in that line. Another
side to it is shown by an incident that happened about a week later.
We were riding leisurely along, a mile or so from the spot where my
antelope had yielded his life to my vanity, when we saw, several
miles away in the low hills, two moving flecks of white which might
mean antelope.
We watched. The two spots came rapidly nearer, and were clearly antelope.
We were soon able to make out that one was being chased by the other;
then that they were both bucks, the one in the rear much the heavier and
evidently the aggressor. Then from behind a hill came the cause of it
all--a bunch of lady antelope, who kept modestly together and to one
side, and watched the contest that should decide their master. Surely
this unclaimed harem was my doing!
All at once, the two on-coming figures saw us. The first one paused,
doubtful which of the two dangers to choose. His foe caught up with him.
He wheeled and charged in self-defence, their horns met with a crash,
and the smaller was thrown to the ground. He was clearly no match for
his opponent.
He sprang to his feet. His only safety was in flight, but where? His
strength was nearly gone. He ran a short distance away from us, circling
our cavalcade. His foe was nearly up to him again. He stopped an instant
with uplifted foot, then turned and made directly for _us_. Three loaded
guns hung at our saddles, but no hand went towards them. Not thirty feet
away from our motionless horses the buck dropped, exhausted. We could
easily have lassoed him. His adversary kept beyond gunshot, not daring to
follow him into the power of an enemy all wild things fear; and an eagle
who had perched on a rock near by, in hopes of a coming feast, flapped
his wings and slowly flew away to search elsewhere for his dinner. The
conquering buck walked back to his spoils of war, and soon marshalled
them out of sight behind a hill.
The young buck almost at our feet quickly recovered. He was not seriously
hurt, only frightened and winded. He rose to his feet and stood for an
instant looking directly at us, his head with its growing horns held high
in the air, as if to thank us for the protection from a lesser foe he had
so boldly asked and so freely received of an all powerful enemy. Then,
turning, he lightly sped over the plain in an opposite direction, and the
eagle, who had kept us in sight until now, perhaps with a lingering hope,
rose swiftly upwards and was lost to sight.
One elk with an eleven-point crown, and one antelope, of the finest ever
brought down, is the tax I levied on the wild things. Of the many, many
times I have watched them and left them unmolested, and of the lessons
they have taught me, under Nimrod's guidance, I have not space to tell,
for the real fascination of hunting is not in the killing but in seeing
the creature at home amid his glorious surroundings, and feeling the
freely rushing blood, the health-giving air, the gleeful sense of joy and
life in nature, both within and without.
XI.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAHB OF THE BIGHORN BASIN.
A fourteen-inch track is big, even for a grizzly. That was the size of
Wahb's. The first time I saw it, the hole looked big enough for a
baby's bath tub.
We were travelling in Mr. A.'s pack train across the Shoshones from Idaho
to Wyoming. It was the first of October, and by then, in that region,
winter is shaking hands with you--pleasant hands to be sure, but a bit
cool. The night before we had made a picturesque camp on the lee side of
a rock cliff which was honeycombed with caves. A blazing camp fire was
built at the mouth of one of these and we lounged on the rock ledges
inside, thoroughly protected from the wind and cold. A storm was brewing.
We could hear the pine trees whistle and shriek as they were lashed about
in the forest across the brook. The lurid light of the fire showed us
ourselves in distorted shadows. The whole place seemed wild and wicked,
like a robber camp, and under its spell one thought things and felt
things that would have been impossible in the sun shine, where everything
is revealed. It began to snow, but we laughed at that. What did it matter
in the shelter of the cave? For the first time in days I was thoroughly
toasted on all sides at once. We had changed abruptly from the
steam-heated Pullman to camping in snow, and it takes a few days to get
used to such a shock. We told tales as weird as the scene, until far into
the night. The next morning the sun was bright, but the cook had to cut a
hole in the ice blanket over the brook to get water. We dared not linger
at our robber camp, for at any time a big snowstorm might come that would
cover the Wind River Divide, which we had to cross, with snow too deep
for the horses to travel.
Two days later, the weather still promising well, we decided to camp for
a few days on the Upper Wiggin's Fork to hunt. It was a lovely spot; one
of those little grassy parks which but for the uprising masses of
mountains and towering trees might have surrounded your country home.
That first night as we sat around the camp fire there came out of the
blackness behind us a faint greeting--_Wheres Who_--_Wheres Who_--from a
denizen of this mountain park, the great horned owl. The next morning we
packed biscuits into our saddle-bags and separated for the day into two
parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and myself, leaving the
Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk, mountain lion, or
bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a combination which the
Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance.
The Host led me down the Wiggin's Fork for two miles, when we came out
upon a sandy, pebbly stretch which in spring the torrents entirely
covered, but now had been dried up for months. I was following
mechanically, guiding Blondey's feet among the cobblestones, for nature
had paved the place very badly, without much thought for anything beyond
the pleasure of being alive, when the Host suddenly stopped and pointed
to the ground. There I made out the track of a huge bear going the way we
were, and beyond was another, and another. Then they disappeared like a
row of post-holes into the distance. The Host said there was only one
bear in that region that could make a track like that; in spite of the
fact that this was beyond his range, it must be Meeteetsee Wahb. He got
off his horse and measured the track. Yes, the hind foot tracked fourteen
inches. What a hole in the ground it looked!
The Host said the maker of it was probably far away, as he judged the
track to be several weeks old. I had heard so many tales of this monster
that when I gazed upon his track I felt as though I were looking at the
autograph of a hero.