Tales Of Lonely Trails (1996) (38 page)

[Illustration: ANOTHER BEAR]

Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the earth, and with another and more striking effect of this vast tilted rim of mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This rim was a huge wall of splintered rock, a colossal cliff, towering so high above the black basin below that ravines and canyons resembled ripples or dimples, darker lines of shade. And on the other side from its very edge, where the pine fringe began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of canyons opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start not fifty feet from the rim.

Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the fingers of a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep, narrow, forested by giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by a murmuring brook, deep down among the many slopes, was our camp ground, and never had I seen one more desirable. The wind soughed in the lofty pine tops, but not a breeze reached down to this sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high slopes our camp was shrouded in twilight shadows. R. C. and I stretched a canvas fly over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left the sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.

Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the great brown pines with some weird aspect. The boys put up an old tent for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine rivals. I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed. When R. C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old dog, you keep the skunks away," said R. C. And Buck emitted some kind of a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.

We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses, which had been hobbled and turned loose. Lee had remained with his father at Beaver Dam camp. For breakfast Takahashi had venison, biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.

Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a fight with Buck.

By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses. A mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds. The rest of us rode out to a point there to await developments. The sun had already flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim were dark in shade. I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and looked, and cared not for passage of time.

But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right under us the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes. They worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his horse. "Saw a bar," he yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an open ridge. Come on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim.

"Ride along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."

Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R. C. and George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim. The hounds could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I was going. The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon--all these brought vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past, and for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died recently. In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand, he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild animals--he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever wholly hopeless.

I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and promontories--a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R. C. or Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.

Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse!

Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the deep canyons!

I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R. C.'s boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed lost in immensity. Then I rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings and I were weary. At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a pine on the rim. Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of a flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so that I could study them through my field glass. They were considerably larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast, with ringed or barred neck. Haught had assured me that birds of this description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in the United States. I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks that darkened the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.

Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.

The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R. C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story.

Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day.

Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R. C. had been close to George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said:

"Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."

One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin' back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin' out of the brush--a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was smokin' shells up on the rim?"

When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a silvertip."

How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions.

I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"

After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.

Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.

One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any means a small or frail girl--rather the contrary--but she appeared diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died.

In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.

Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway.