AN ELK HUNT UNDER THE TETONS
He was riding along slowly, letting Pawnee make his own way among
the loose rocks and tree-trunks, when he caught sight of an animal
standing with its tail toward him, in a little opening among the
trees. For an instant he thought it was a buckskin horse, and
the idea flashed through his mind that there must be a camp down
there. Almost before the thought had taken form, the animal moved
a little, and he saw that it was an elk. He slipped off his horse
on the side furthest from the animal, and led Pawnee out of sight
behind a clump of pines, and left him there. Then he crept back
to the ridge. In the timber below he soon made out half-a-dozen
elk, and as he watched, he could see quite a large bunch of cows
and calves. He lay there, watching and waiting. The drop down the
hill into the valley was very steep, and he was hoping that the elk
might move into some position where he would not have to go down to
them. They seemed uneasy and suspicious, and presently something
startled them, and they ran a little way, and then stopped, looking
back up the valley. Two big heifers stood almost side by side
facing opposite ways, with their shoulders close together, and
their heads in such position that their necks seemed to cross.
Jack raised his gun and took a careful sight at the necks, just
below the heads, and pulled the trigger. One of the cows dropped
instantly, while the other, standing a moment to look, turned
and ran off. He heard the elk crashing through the timber of the
valley, and then saw them climbing the bald hills on the other
side, stopping every little while to look back, and at last walking
slowly off over the hills.
A convenient side ridge gave Pawnee a good road down to where the
cow had fallen, but she had rolled far down the hill, and finally
had stopped on a little level place. She was quite dead. The animal
was rather large for Jack to handle, but with some trouble he
managed to cut off her hams and sirloins, and tying the two hams
together by the gambrel joints, he balanced them on his saddle, and
then tying the sirloins on behind, set out on foot for camp. There
was much scrambling up steep hillsides, and down others quite as
steep, and some working through the thick underbrush, before he
came out into the open lake valley. Here progress was more rapid.
Jack walked swiftly, and Pawnee followed close behind. After a time
he came on the trail made by the pack train, some hours before,
and hurrying along this, presently saw in the distance what looked
like a house. Before he reached it, however, the trail that he was
following turned sharply to the right, and led down toward the
river, two or three miles below the lake.
As he approached the tall cottonwood timber, which he supposed grew
on the shores of the river, he saw the horses feeding close to it,
and before long the cone of the lodge showed through the leaves,
and a little later he stopped by the fire.
"Good boy," said Hugh. "I'm mighty glad to get that meat. That'll
keep us going for quite a while, and now that we've got fresh meat,
and dried meat and fish, we're bound to live well."
"Animal's in good order, too," he continued, as he began to lift
the meat from the saddle. "I expect you picked out a heifer, didn't
you?"
"Well," said Jack, "I tried to, but I wasn't sure that it wasn't an
old cow until I put a knife into her. The only thing I was sure of
was that she had no calf." "Well," said Hugh, "it's a nice piece of
meat, and I'm mighty glad you got it."
"What's that house that I see up there, Hugh? Nobody lives here
now, does there?"
"No," said Hugh, "I reckon that's some kind of a shelter or stable,
built by hunters or prospectors, for their horses in fly-time.
Flies are pretty bad here now, and I reckon close about this lake
the greenheads must be enough to drive the horses crazy. I noticed
to-day when we were crossing some points of that meadow up above
that they were bad. If it hadn't been for that, I reckon we'd have
camped up there by the lake. It's an awful sightly spot, but there
were too many flies."
Supper was almost ready, and they feasted royally that night on
trout and the fat sirloins of the elk; and after the meal was over,
it was pleasant to sit round the big camp-fire that Jack and Joe
built out in front of the lodge, and watch the blaze, and listen to
the murmur of the river as it hurried over the stones, just beyond
the camp. Every stick tossed on the burning pile sent a great cloud
of sparks soaring upward to disappear among the dark green foliage
of the spruces, which here grew among the taller cottonwoods. The
warmth of the fire was grateful; the willows and cottonwoods and
spruces all about their camp sheltered them from the strong wind
which still blew down the valley; and Jack, as he lay stretched out
on the ground between Joe and Hugh, thought that he never could
have a happier time than that very moment.
"Now, boys," said Hugh, "I don't know how you feel about it, but
it strikes me this is a terrible nice place to stop for a day or
two. This is a good camp, and these mountains right opposite to us
are things I like to look at. What do you say to our stopping here,
say for one day, anyhow; and maybe to-morrow we'll take a little
ride across the river, and get closer to these mountains, and see
something of what they look like. I'd like mighty well to look at
them long enough to kind o' carry a remembrance of them back with
me to the ranch."
"Well," said Jack, "let's do that. There's no reason for our
hurrying; we've got plenty of grub, and I think we'd all like to
stay here for one day, anyhow."
"Now, there's two things we can do," said Hugh. "We ain't made up
our minds how we'll go home; but we can cross the range in a whole
lot of different places. We can either follow down Snake River for
a way, and then work up one of the creeks, and go over and strike
the head of Wind River, and follow that down, or we can go back to
the park, and then cut across, and get down onto Stinking Water,
and then go back on the prairie. My idea is that we'll do better to
keep on south, and try to go straight on our course. We can either
go up Buffalo Fork, and then strike across to the head of the Wind
River, and follow that down; or go down and follow up the Gros
Ventre, and get across some way there. We don't have to make up our
minds to-day; we can settle that to-morrow night. Let's agree that
we'll stop here to-morrow, and then to-morrow night decide what
we'll do."
"All right," said both boys.
When the three friends got up next morning, and went to the
stream to wash, they could see nothing of the great range beneath
which they were camped, for the tall spruce trees which grew on
the opposite bank cut off the view of everything beyond. After
breakfast they saddled up and having picketed two of the pack
horses, set out to cross the river, and to get nearer to the
mountains. The river was wide, and so deep that the water came
almost up to the saddle blankets, but they crossed comfortably
enough, and riding through the open dry timber of the bottom,
before long were approaching the high bluffs which formed the first
terrace above the river. In the bottom were many tracks of deer
and elk, some of the deer tracks quite fresh; and they almost rode
over a huge old porcupine, which waddled awkwardly to one side,
and then stopped among some low rose bushes, with its head between
its forefeet, its quills erect, and its tail thrashing about in a
threatening way. Jack stopped his horse and said to Hugh:
"Hugh, is there anything in that story that porcupines throw their
quills? I've heard lots of people say it is so, and then other
people say it isn't."
Hugh drew his horse up, and turning in his saddle said, "Why no,
son, there's nothing in that; though I've heard plenty of men who
ought to know a heap better say that there was. Take a stick and go
right up close to that fellow, and poke him with it, and then bring
it to me."
Jack picked up a dead branch, and going to the porcupine, poked him
in the sides and back, and when he did this the porcupine thrashed
his tail about more vigorously than ever, and two or three times
struck the stick. Leaving him, Jack went to Hugh, carrying the
stick in his hand, and Hugh said, "Look at the end of that stick
now, and see those quills." The end of the stick was pierced by a
dozen or twenty sharp, strong quills, and Jack, taking hold of one
and trying to pull it out, found that the point was firmly fastened
in the wood, so that it required quite a little effort to pull it
out.
"Now, son," said Hugh, "a porcupine, as you have seen, is slow, and
can't run away. His back and sides and tail are covered with these
quills, which are mighty sharp, and which have little stickers
pointing back toward the root, so that if a quill gets fast in the
flesh, it is a very hard matter to pull it out again. If a quill
gets stuck in an animal's head or foot, it keeps working forward
all the time; it never works backward and comes out; it has to go
through to the other side. Most animals know that it isn't good to
fool with a porcupine. The only way to kill him is to turn him
over on his back, and get at his throat and belly, which are not
covered with quills. When a porcupine sees an animal coming he
holds his body close to the ground, makes his quills stand up all
over him, and thrashes around with his tail, which is pretty well
covered with quills too. His tail is strong, and he can hit a hard
blow with it; and so you see he's pretty well defended. The quills
are not set deep in the skin; they are loose, and they pull out
mighty easy; you see that just by poking the porcupine you got that
stick full of quills. Sometimes when he thrashes hard with his tail
he may hit a piece of wood, or may knock loose some of the quills
on his tail so that they may fly a little distance; but as for
throwing them any distance from his body, or with any force, why he
can't do it.
"I have had dogs that would tackle porcupines, and when they did,
it was a terrible job to pull the quills out of them."
"Well," said Jack, "I'm glad to hear all that I've been told of
dogs tackling porcupines, up in the Adirondacks, but I never saw
one that had been pierced by quills."
"Most dogs," said Hugh, "soon learn never to bother porcupines,
but some seem never to learn, and will go for one every time they
see it. Bears sometimes tackle them, and so do lynx and panthers,
but they say the greatest animal of all to kill a porcupine is a
fisher. I've seen two or three panthers with their jaws full of
quills. I've heard people say that the fisher kills them by turning
them over on their backs and then jumping onto the belly, but I
never saw this done. What I have seen is fishers with lots of
quills in their bodies: some in the legs, some in the belly, and
some in the sides. And the Indians say that these quills don't
bother them at all; that is to say, that a fisher full of quills
don't swell up the way a dog or a panther does. The porcupine is
a pretty stupid beast, but its effect on its neighbors is quite
interesting."
Jack listened with much attention to this lesson in natural
history, and they mounted and rode on again.
Soon they came to a great slough, evidently an old beaver meadow,
and as Hugh drew up his horse and looked at it, he shook his
head:--"Too soft for us to cross, I reckon, we'll have to go round
some other way. There's plenty of sloughs and mud-holes in there
where our horses would go out of sight."
They turned northward, and for the next two hours were occupied
in trying to make their way out to the high prairie. At frequent
intervals they came to what looked like a tongue of hard dry land
extending out to the bluffs, but after following it for a little
distance they found at its end a mud-hole, which obliged them to
turn back and take another road. At length they reached a strip
of hard ground which led them to the bluffs; and just before they
rode up the steep ascent, Hugh's horse started from the ground a
brood of grouse, which scattered in all directions, many of them
alighting on the willows and spruce branches close to them. They
were singularly tame, almost as much so as the fool hens they had
seen farther north, and Jack rode up to within three or four feet
of one, and then reached out his gun to touch it, but before the
muzzle was within a foot of the bird, it flew away.
When they reached the higher prairie they rode off toward the
range, which was now plainly to be seen. There were three principal
peaks, the names of which Hugh gave them. One, he said, was Mount
Moran, a great square-topped mass of granite, with two or three
vast snow or ice banks on its north face. To the south of that were
the three pinnacles of the Tetons, whose slender summits ran far
up into the blue sky. The prairie over which they were now riding
was uneven:--here cut by dry, grassy, ancient water-ways, there
with mounds of great extent rising above the general level. There
was much gravel--some of it very large--which looked as if it might
have been carried down by the water. Long ridges composed wholly
of this gravel ran for long distances out from the foot of the
range, and were now for the most part bare of timber, having been
burned over. On some of them the fire had spared many of the pines,
and young aspen timber grew on their slopes. The terraces of the
river's flood-plain rose one above another, and on the highest of
all, on the west side, were groups of evergreen trees, and now and
then a single pine standing alone in the wide sage-plain. Scattered
about over the prairie were many antelope.
They rode on toward the mountains, trying to get up high enough
so as to look down on Jackson's Lake, which runs in close to the
foot of Mount Moran; but the ridges became higher and higher, more
and more timber grew on them, and cut off the view, so that at
length they gave up the effort and turned off to one side to ride
through the timber. Here were many fresh elk tracks and trails,
some made the night before, and some since daylight; and here,
quite unexpectedly, as they rode over a ridge a little higher than
any that they had yet passed, a fine view was had of the southern
end of Jackson's Lake. It seemed to wind and twist about among its
points and islands, and sent out long and narrow finger-like bays
into the hills in a most curious way. A little further on they saw
from a hilltop another lake, not nearly so large as Jackson's,
but still perhaps two miles long. It was surrounded by dense
forest, and reflected the great peaks which overhung it. Here they
dismounted for a while to look at the range, which was now plainly
seen.
"Big mountains, ain't they, son?" said Hugh, as they sat there
looking up at them.
"Yes, Hugh," said Jack, "they're awful big, and how bare and gray
they are. There seems to be a little timber in small patches, but
except for that, there doesn't seem to be anything growing on them
at all; they are just rocks with snow on top and in the ravines."
"Well," said Hugh, "I expect for the most part that rock is so
steep that the snow can't lie there. Even if the wind don't blow,
just as soon as any weight of snow falls on the rocks it slips off.
"Have you got your glasses with you, son?" he continued, and when
Jack had handed them to him, he looked through them and said: "I
thought so. Do you know, son, that snow up there in those highest
ravines isn't snow at all, it's ice; just like them glaciers that
we have up there in the mountains to the north. Look through the
glasses, and you can see the cracks on the lower border, and you
can see too that it is blue, and not white like snow."
Jack and Joe both looked through the glasses and saw what Hugh
meant, and both were reminded of the masses of ice that they had
seen in the mountains of the north, the year before.
It was pleasant sitting in the warm sun and looking up at this
wonderful scenery, but at last they caught up their horses, and
mounted and rode back to the camp. As they were going along side by
side, down the wide point of a ridge, a great brown deer bounced
out from an aspen thicket on Joe's side and ran down the ravine.
Joe sprang from his horse and raised his gun to shoot, but just as
he did so she sprang into a little gully, so that Joe could see
only her ears as she raced along. She followed the ravine down and
was not seen again.
Hugh and Jack both laughed at Joe, and told him that he should have
stayed on his horse, for from their point of view on horseback, the
doe's body had been in sight for quite time enough to shoot.
When they reached the level bottom, they rode out close to the
river, and keeping along the bank found firm ground all the way to
the camp. There remained still some hours of daylight, and both
boys got out their lines and began to fish, catching a number of
fine and heavy trout. Just as they were about to go to camp with
their catch, a flock of seven wild geese flew up the river, calling
loudly, and after they had passed a little beyond the boys, Joe
began to honk in response, and presently the great birds turned
about and came back, flying directly over the boys, looking down
at them, as if to see who it was that was talking to them. The air
was cool and damp after dark and they sat about the fire in the
lodge. A great horned owl a little way down the river was hooting
regularly, and Joe said, "We're going to have a storm."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I hear him now, and I heard him last night. I
reckon we're going to have change of weather."
"What do you mean, Hugh?" said Jack, "has the owl anything to do
with the weather?"
"Well no, son, I don't know that he has; but some of the Indians
say that if you hear an owl calling it means a storm's coming."
It was raining the next morning when Jack thrust his head from
under his blankets, and as the fire had not been started, and
nobody seemed to be moving, he knew that this day also would be
spent in camp. When he went out of the lodge the ground was covered
with an inch of very wet snow, and the weather seemed to be trying
to make up its mind whether it would rain or no. Big wet flakes
were falling in a mixture of rain and snow, and moisture was
everywhere.
After breakfast, Hugh cut some crotches and poles, and with the
ropes and two of the mantas made a very good shelter, under which
they built an outdoor fire. By this they sat for a long time,
discussing various matters, and then, since the rain had stopped,
Jack went down to the stream and began to fish. He caught a few
fish weighing from three quarters of a pound to a pound, and there
were enough of them to make it interesting. The small ones seemed
to trouble his hook very little, and one or two little ones that he
caught he shook off before getting them to shore. Suddenly, after a
long cast that he had made out toward the middle of the stream, a
huge fish rose to his fly, but in its eagerness, missed and sprang
over the fly showing its full length out of the water. This was
such a fish as Jack had not seen before, and he was very anxious to
get it. He cast again over the same spot, and this time drew in his
line a little more slowly. The great fish rose again, and just at
the right moment Jack struck, and had him fast.
For a moment the fish did nothing, but then came a fight the like
of which Jack had never witnessed. The fish made a strong rush
toward the deepest water of the rapid, and twice on his way there
he sprang into the air, shaking his head savagely to rid himself of
the steel that was biting his jaw. Then he turned about and rushed
back toward the bank, again throwing himself out of the water. Jack
was excited, but was trying to keep cool. Whenever the fish gave
him an opportunity he took in line, and when the fish ran he gave
him as little as possible.
Suddenly the trout started down the river at great speed, so fast
that Jack was afraid to check him, and started racing after him,
running over the slippery stones of the beach, and through the
pools of water left by the river. Presently the fish stopped, and
refused to move, and Jack recovered all the line that he could, and
then began to try to move the fish. Now it began to give a series
of tugging jerks on the line, as if it were bending itself from
side to side in the water; then it began to throw itself over and
over, as if trying to twist the line; and then it would rush off,
as if striving to break it. As the splendid fish grew tired, Jack
worked it nearer and nearer to the beach; but he had no net and
of course could not lift it from the water. After looking about a
little he found a place where the beach was shelving, and laying
down his rod, he drew the fish out by the leader and soon had it
safely in his hand. It was a handsome fish, deep and thick, and yet
graceful in all its lines, and it seemed to Jack as big as a North
River shad. As soon as it was killed, Jack took his rod and started
back to the camp for he wished to show them there the biggest trout
that he had ever seen.
White clouds hung low over the valley and hid the mountains on
either side; but as Jack walked along the beach the western sky
grew lighter, and for a few moments the sun struggled to shine
through the clouds. Then suddenly, far down the valley the white
wall that shut out the view broke away, and Jack could see the
great mountain mass of the Teton Range. He stopped and gazed,
waiting for the rent to close up again. Through it he could see,
like a picture in its frame, the mountains, not dark and gray
as they had been yesterday, but white now, in all the purity of
new-fallen snow. As he looked, the break in the clouds moved
rapidly northward, exposing one mountain after another, each
seeming more beautiful than the one seen just before. A wreath of
mist hung around and concealed the needle peak of the Grand Teton,
adding to, rather than taking away from its height. The rift in the
clouds passed northward, and after it had shown him Mount Moran, it
closed again and the white vapor cut off the view. Jack had seen
the glories of the Tetons, snow-clad. He returned to camp.