decided to set a bear bait. Our Host was a cattle king, and could wage
war on bears with a good conscience. The usual three-cornered affair of
logs was fixed, the trap in the centre and elk meat as a decoy. Horse
meat is more alluring, but we deemed we would not need that, since we had
with us "a never-failing bear charm." Its object was to suggest a lady
bear, and thus attract some gallant to her side. The secret of the
preparation of this charm had been confided to Nimrod by an old hunter
the year before. It was a liquid composed of rancid fish oil, and--but I
suppose I must not tell. A more ungodly odour I have never known. Nimrod
put a few drops of it on his horse's feet, and all the other horses
straightway ostracised him for several days till the worst of it wore
away. Even the cook allowed "it was all-fired nasty." So some of this
bear charm went on the bait.
The next morning, as we started out for the day to roam the mountains, we
first inspected the bear pen. Nothing had been near it. Indeed that charm
would keep everything else away, if not the bear himself.
The next day it was the same story, but this really was no argument for
or against the charm, because, as I was told, bears in feeding usually
make about a two weeks' circuit, and although we had seen many tracks
they were all stale, demonstrating in a rough way that if we could linger
for a week or two we would be sure to catch some one of the trackers on
the return trip.
This we could not do, as the expected snow-storm was now threatening,
and we were still two days from the Divide. To be snowed up there would
be serious. Before we could get packed up the snow began, falling
steadily and quietly as though reserving its forces for later violence.
We had been travelling about an hour from where we broke camp, when
Nimrod beckoned me to join him where he had halted with the Horsewrangler
a little off the line the pack train was following. I rode up quietly,
thinking it might be game. But no; Horsewrangler pointed to a little bank
where there was a circular opening in the trees. I looked, but did not
understand.
"Do you see that dip in the ground there where the snow melts as fast as
it drops?"
"Yes."
"Wal, that there's a bear bath."
"A bear's bath!" I exclaimed, suspecting a hoax.
"Yes, a sulphur spring. I reckon this here one belongs to the Big
Grizzly."
We examined the place with much interest, but found no fresh tracks, and
the snow had covered most of the stale ones, as "of course he ain't got
no call for it in winter. Like as not, he's denned up somewheres near,
though it's a mite early."
This was thrilling. Perhaps we might pass within a few feet of Wahb and
never know it. It was like being told that the ghost of the dear departed
is watching you. Nimrod pointed out to me a tree with the bark scratched
and torn off for several feet--one of Wahb's rubbing trees. He located
the sunning ledge for me, and then we reluctantly hurried on, for the
journey ahead promised to be long and hard. Indeed I found it so.
There were many indications that the storm was a serious one, and not the
least of these was the behaviour of the little chief hare, or pika. As we
ascended the rocky mountain-side we saw many of these little creatures
scurrying hither and thither with bundles of hay in their mouths, which
they deposited in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places under rocks. So hard
were they working that they could not even stop to be afraid of us. As
all the party, but myself, knew, this meant bad weather and winter; for
these cute, overgrown rats are reliable barometers, and they gave every
indication that they were belated in getting their food supply, which had
been garnered in the autumn after the manner of their kind, properly
housed for winter use.
All that day we worked our way through the forest with the silent snow
deepening around us, ever up and up, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten
thousand feet. It was an endless day of freezing in the saddle, and of
snow showers in one's face from the overladen branches. I was frightfully
cold and miserable. Every minute seemed the last I could endure without
screeching. But still our Host pushed on. It was necessary to get near
enough to the top of the Continental Divide so that we could cross it the
next day. It began to grow dark about three o'clock; the storm increased.
I kept saying over and over to myself what I was determined I should not
say out loud:
"Oh, please stop and make camp! I cannot stay in this saddle another
minute. My left foot is frozen. I know it is, and the saddle cramp is
unbearable. I am so hungry, so cold, so exhausted; oh, please stop!"
Then, having wailed this out under my breath, I would answer it harshly:
"You little fool, stop your whimpering. The others are made of flesh and
blood too. We should be snowbound if we stopped here. Don't be a
cry-baby. There is lots of good stuff in you yet. This only seems
terrible because you are not used to it, so brace up."
[Illustration: THUS I FOUGHT THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.]
Then I would even smile at Nimrod who kept keen watch on me, or wave my
hand at the Host, who was in front. This appearance of unconcern helped
me for a few seconds, and then I would begin the weary round: "Oh, my
foot, my back, my head; I cannot endure it another moment; I can't, I
can't." Yet all the while knowing that I could and would. Thus I fought
through the afternoon, and at last became just a numb thing on the horse
with but one thought, "I can and will do it." So at last when the order
came to camp in four feet of snow ten thousand feet above the sea, with
the wind and snow blowing a high gale, I just drew rein and sat there on
my tired beast.
We disturbed a band of mountain sheep that got over the deep snow with
incredible swiftness. It was my first view of these animals, but it
aroused no enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder that they seemed to be
enjoying themselves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled me off, I was too
stiff and numb to get down myself. Then I found that the snow was so deep
I could not go four feet. Not to be able to move about seemed to me the
end of all things. I simply dropped in the snow--it was impossible to
ever be warm and happy again--and prepared at last to weep.
But I looked around first--Nimrod was coaxing a pack animal through the
snow to a comparatively level place where our tent and bed things could
be placed. The Host was shovelling a pathway between me and the spot
where the Cook was coaxing a fire. The Horsewrangler was unpacking the
horses alone (so that I might have a fire the sooner). They were all
grim--doubtless as weary as I--but they were all working for my ultimate
comfort, while I was about to repay them by sitting in the snow and
weeping. I pictured them in four separate heaps in the snow, all weeping.
This was too much; I did not weep. Instead by great effort I managed to
get my horse near the fire, and after thawing out a moment unsaddled the
tired animal, who galloped off gladly to join his comrades, and thus I
became once more a unit in the economic force. But bad luck had
crossed its fingers at me that day without doubt, and I had to be taught
another lesson. I tell of it briefly as a warning to other women; of
course--men always know better, instinctively, as they know how to fight.
I presume you will agree that ignorance is punished more cruelly than any
other thing, and that in most cases good intentions do not lighten the
offence. My ignorance that time was of the effect of eating snow on an
empty stomach. My intentions were of the best, for, being thirsty, I ate
several handfuls of snow in order to save the cook from getting water out
of a brook that was frozen. But my punishment was the same--a severe
chill which made me very ill.
I had been cold all day, but that is a very different thing from having a
chill. I felt stuffed with snow; snow water ran in my veins, snow
covered the earth, the peaks around me. I was mad with snow. They gave me
snow whisky and put me beside a snow fire. I had not told any one what I
had done, not realising what was the mischief maker, and it really looked
as though I had heart disease, or something dreadful.
They put rugs and coats around me till I could not move with their
weight; but they were putting them around a snow woman. The only thing I
felt was the icy wind, and that went through my shivering, shaking self.
The snow was falling quietly and steadily, as it had fallen all day. We
_must_ cross yonder divide to-morrow. It was no time to be ill. Every one
felt that, and big, black gloom was settling over the camp, when I by way
of being cheerful remarked to the Host: "Do you-ou kno-ow, I feel as
though there was n-nothing of me b-but the sno-ow I ate an hour ago."
"Snow!" he exclaimed. "Did you eat much? Well, no wonder you are ill."
The effect was instantaneous. Everybody looked relieved; I was not even
a heroine.
"I will soon cure you," said the Host, as he poured out more whisky, and
the Cook reheated some soup and chocolate. The hot drinks soon succeeded
in thawing me from a snow woman back to shivering flesh and blood which
was supportable.
Nimrod looked pleasant again and began studying the mountain sheep
tracks. The cook fell to whistling softly from one side of his mouth,
while a cigarette dangled from the other, as was his wont when he
puttered about the fire. The Horsewrangler was making everything tight
for the night against wind and snow. The Host lighted a cigarette, a calm
expression glided over his face, and he became chatty, and, although the
storm was just as fierce and the thermometer just as low, peace was
restored to Camp Snow.
The next day we crossed the divide, and not a day too soon. The snow was
so deep that the trail breaker in front was in danger of going over a
precipice or into a rock crevice at any time. After him came the pack,
animals, so that they could make a path for us. The path was just the
width of the horse, and in some places the walls of it rose above my
head. In such places I had to keep my feet high up in the saddle to
prevent them from being crushed. For a half day we struggled upwards
with danger stalking by our sides, then on the very ridge of the divide
itself, 11,500 feet in the air, with the icy wind blowing a hurricane of
blinding snow, we skirted along a precipice the edge of which the snow
covered so that we could not be sure when a misstep might send us over
into whatever is waiting for us in the next world.
But fortunately we did not even lose a horse. Then came the plunging
down, down, with no chance to pick steps because of the all-concealing
snow. Those, indeed, were "stirring times," but we made camp that night
in clear weather and good spirits. We were on the right side of the
barrier and only two days from the Palette Ranch--and safety, not to
say luxury.
If you had Aladdin's lamp and asked for a shooting box, you could hardly
expect to find anything more ideal than the Palette Ranch. There is no
spot in the world more beautiful or more health giving. It is tucked away
by itself in the heart of the Rockies, 150 miles from the railroad, 40
miles from the stage route, and surrounded on the three sides by a
wilderness of mountains. And when after travelling over these for three
weeks with compass as guide, one dark, stormy night we stumbled and
slipped down a mountain side and across an icy brook to its front lawn,
the message of good cheer that streamed in rosy light from its windows
seemed like an opiate dream.
We entered a large living room, hung with tapestries and hunting trophies
where a perfectly appointed table was set opposite a huge stone
fireplace, blazing with logs. Then came a delicious course dinner with
rare wines, and served by a French chef. The surprise and delight of it
in that wilderness--but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we
entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing
lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal
mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a
hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled
bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that
region a veritable fairy's chamber. Truly it is a canny Host who can thus
blend harmoniously the human luxuries of the East and the natural glories
of the West.
In our rides around the Palette I saw Wahb's tracks once again. The Host
had taken us to a far away part of his possessions. Three beautiful wolf
hounds frisked along beside us, when all at once they became much excited
about something they smelt in a little scrub-pine clump on the right. We
looked about for some track or sign that would explain their behaviour. I
spied a huge bear track.
"Hah!" I thought, "Wahb at last," and my heart went pit-a-pat as I
pointed it out to Nimrod. He recognised it but remained far too calm
for my fancy. I pointed into the bushes with signs of "Hurrah, it's
Wahb." I received in reply a shake of the head and a pitying smile. How
was I to know that the dogs were saying as plainly as dogs need to "A
bobcat treed"?
So I followed meekly and soon saw the bobcat's eyes glaring at us from
the topmost branches. The Host took a shot at it with the camera which
the lynx did not seem to mind, and calling off the disappointed dogs we
went on our way. The Host allows no shooting within a radius of twelve
miles of the Palette. Any living thing can find protection there and the
result is that any time you choose to ride forth you can see perfectly
wild game in their homeland.
* * * * *
It was not till the next year that I really saw Wahb. It was at his
summer haunt, the Fountain Hotel in the Yellowstone National Park. If
you were to ask Nimrod to describe the Fountain geyser or Hell Hole,
or any of the other tourist sights thereabouts, I am sure he would
shake his head and tell you there was nothing but bears around the
hotel. For this was the occasion when Nimrod spent the entire day in
the garbage heap watching the bears, while I did the conventional
thing and saw the sights.
About sunset I got back to the hotel. Much to my surprise I could not
find Nimrod; and neither had he been seen since morning, when he had
started in the direction of the garbage heap in the woods some quarter of
a mile back from the hotel. Anxiously I hurried there, but could see no
Nimrod. Instead I saw the outline of a Grizzly feeding quietly on the
hillside. It was very lonely and gruesome. Under other circumstances I
certainly would have departed quickly the way I came, but now I must find
Nimrod. It was growing dark, and the bear looked a shocking size, as big
as a whale. Dear me, perhaps Nimrod was inside--Jonah style. Just then I
heard a sepulchral whisper from the earth.
"Keep quiet, don't move, it's the Big Grizzly."
I looked about for the owner of the whisper and discovered Nimrod not
far away in a nest he had made for himself in a pile of rubbish. I
edged nearer.
"See, over there in the woods are two black bears. You scared them away.
Isn't he a monster?" indicating Wahb.
I responded with appropriate enthusiasm. Then after a respectful silence
I ventured to say:
"How long have you been here?"
"All day--and such a day--thirteen bears at one time. It is worth all
your geysers rolled into one.
"H'm--Have you had anything to eat?"
"No." Another silence, then I began again.
"Aren't you hungry? Don't you want to come to dinner?"
He nodded yes. Then I sneaked away and came back as soon as possible with
a change of clothes. The scene was as I had left it, but duskier. I stood
waiting for the next move. The Grizzly made it. He evidently had finished
his meal for the night, and now moved majestically off up the hill
towards the pine woods. At the edge of these he stood for a moment,
Wahb's last appearance, so far as I am concerned, for, as he posed, the
fading, light dropped its curtain of darkness between us, and I was able
to get Nimrod away.
XII.
THE DEAD HUNT.
To hunt the wily puma, the wary elk, or the fleet-footed antelope is to
have experiences strange and varied, but for the largest assortment of
thrills in an equal time the 'dead hunt' is the most productive. My
acquaintance with a 'dead hunt'--which is by no means a 'still
hunt'--began and ended at Raven Agency. It included horses, bicycles, and
Indians, and followed none of the customary rules laid down for a hunt,
either in progress or result.
And, not to antagonise the reader, I will say now that it was very
naughty to do what I did, an impolite and ungenerous thing to do, on a
par with the making up of slumming parties to pry into the secrets of the
poor. It was the act of a vandal, and at times--in the gray dawn and on
the first day of January--I am sorry about it; but then I should not have
had that carved bead armlet, and as that is the tail of my story, I will
put it in the mouth and properly begin.
Nimrod and I went to the United States agency for the Asrapako or Raven
Indians in--well, never mind, not such a far cry from the Rockies, unless
you are one of those uncomfortable persons who carry a map of the United
States in your mind's eye--because Burfield was there painting Many
Whacks, the famous chief; because Nimrod wanted to know what kind of
beasties lived in that region; and because I wanted a face to face
encounter with the Indian at home. I got it.
The first duty of a stranger at Raven Agency is to visit the famous
battlefield, three miles away; and the Agent, an army officer, very
charmingly made up a horseback party to escort us there. He put me on a
rawboned bay who, he said, was a "great goer." It was no merry jest. I
was nearly the last to mount and quite the first to go flying down the
road. The Great Goer galloped all the way there. His mouth was as hard as
nails, and I could not check him; still, the ride was no worse than being
tossed in a blanket for half an hour. On the very spot, I heard the
story of the tragic Indian fight by one who claimed to have been an
eye-witness. Every place where each member of that heroic band fell,
doing his duty, is marked by a small marble monument, and as I looked
over the battle ground and saw these symbols of beating hearts, long
still in death, clustered in twos and threes and a dozen where each had
made the last stand, every pillar seemed to become a shadowy soldier; the
whole awful shame of the massacre swept over me, and I was glad to head
my horse abruptly for home. And then there were other things to think
about, things more intimate and real. No sooner did the Great Goer's nose
point in the direction of his stable than he gave a great bound, as
though a bee had stung him; then he lowered his head, laid back his ears,
and--gallopped home.
[Illustration: WE WHIZZED ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACK IN FRONT OF THE
DAY EXPRESS.]
I yanked and tugged at the bit. It was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I
might as well have been a monkey or a straw woman bobbing up and down on
his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, gaily sped on the Great Goer.
There were dim shouts far behind me for a while, then no more. The
roadside whipped by, two long streaks of green. We whizzed across the
railroad track in front of the day express, accompanied by the engine's
frantic shriek of "down brakes." If a shoe had caught in the track--ah!
I lost my hat, my gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown locks flew out
two feet behind.
Away went my watch, then the all in two pockets, knife, purse,
match-box--surely this trail was an improvement on Tom Thumb's' bread
crumbs. One foot was out of the stirrup. I wrapped the reins around the
pommel and clung on. There is a gopher hole--that means a broken leg for
him, a clavicle and a few ribs for me. No; on we go. Ah, that stony brook
ahead we soon must cross! Ye gods, so young and so fair! To perish thus,
the toy of a raw-boned Great Goer!
Pound, pound, pound, the hard road rang with the thunder of hoofs. Could
I endure it longer? Oh, there is the stream--surely he will stop. No! He
is going to jump! It's an awful distance! With a frantic effort I got my
feet in the stirrups. He gathered himself together. I shut my eyes. Oh!
We missed the bank and landed in the water--an awful mess. But the Great
Goer scrambled out, with me still on top somehow, and started on. I
pulled on the reins again with every muscle, trying to break his pace, or
his neck anything that was his. Then there was a flapping noise below. We
both heard it, we both knew what it was--the cinch worked loose, that
meant the saddle loose.
In desperation I clutched the Great Goer's mane with both hands and,
leaning forward, yelled wildly in his ears:
"Whoa, whoa! The saddle's turning! Whoa! Do you wa-ant to _ki-ill_ me?"
Do not tell me that the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a
vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the
Great Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in
the line of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to
nibbling grass as placidly as though he had not been doing racing time
for three miles, and I should have gone on forever believing in his
wondrous wit had I not turned and realised that he was standing in his
own pasture lot.
Seeking to console my dishevelled self as I got off, I murmured, "Well,
it was a sensation any way--an absolutely new one," just as Nimrod
gallopped up, and seeing I was all right, called out:
"Hello, John Gilpin!" That is the way with men.
My scattered belongings were gathered up by the rest of the party, and
each as he arrived with the relic he had gathered, made haste to explain
that his horse had no chance with my mount.
I thanked the Agent for the Great Goer without much comment. (See advice
to Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband.) But that is why, the next
day, when Burfield confided to me that he knew where there were some
'Dead-trees' (not dead trees) that could be examined without fear of
detection, I preferred to borrow the doctor's wife's bicycle.
Dead-trees? Very likely you know what I did not until I saw for myself,
that the Asrapako, in common with several Indian tribes, place their dead
in trees instead of in the ground. As the trees are very scarce in that
arid country, and only to be found in gullies and along the banks of the
Little Big Buck River, nearly every tree has its burden of one or more
swathed-up bodies bound to its branches, half hidden by the leaves, like
great cocoons--most ghastly reminders of the end of all human things.
It was to a cluster of these "deadtrees," five miles away, that Burfield
guided me, and it was on this ride that the wily wheel, stripped of all
its glamour of shady roads, tête-à-têtes, down grades, and asphalts,
appeared as its true, heavy, small seated, stubborn self.
I can undertake to cure any bicycle enthusiast. The receipt is simple and
here given away. First, take two months of Rocky Mountains with a living
sentient creature to pull you up and down their rock-ribbed sides, to
help out with his sagacity when your own fails, and to carry you at a
long easy lope over the grassy uplands some eight or ten thousand feet
above the sea in that glorious bracing air. Secondly, descend rapidly to
the Montana plains--hot, oppressive, enervating--or to the Raven Agency,
if you will, and attempt to ride a wheel up the only hill in all that
arid stretch of semi desert, a rise of perhaps three hundred feet.
It is enough. You will find that your head is a sea of dizziness, that
your lungs have refused to work, that your heart is pounding aloud in
agony, and you will then and there pronounce the wheel an instrument of
torture, devised for the undoing of woman.
I tried it. It cured me, and, once cured, the charms of the wheel are as
vapid as the defence of a vigilant committee to the man it means to hang.
Stubborn--it would not go a step without being pushed. It would not even
stand up by itself, and I literally had to push it--it, as well as myself
on it--in toil and dust and heat the whole way. Nimrod said his bicycle
betrayed itself, too, only not so badly. Of course, that was because he
was stronger. The weaker one is, the more stubbornly bicycles behave.
Every one knows that. And they are so narrow minded. They needs must
stick to the travelled road, and they behave viciously when they get in a
rut. Imagine hunting antelope across sage-brush country on a bicycle! I
know a surveyor who tried it once. They brought him home with sixteen
broken bones and really quite a few pieces of the wheel, improved to
Rococo. Bah! Away with it and its limitations, and those of its big
brother, the automobile! Sing me no death knell of the horse companion.
At last, with the assistance of trail and muscle, the five miles were
covered, and we came to a dip in the earth which some bygone torrent had
hollowed out, and so given a chance for a little moisture to be retained
to feed the half-dozen cottonwoods and rank grass, that dared to struggle
for existence in that baked up sage-brush waste which the government has
set aside for the Raven paradise.
We jumped--no, that is horse talk--we sprawled off our wheels and left
the stupid things, lying supinely on their sides, like the dead lumpish
things they are, and descended a steep bank some ten feet into the gully.