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CHAPTER 0. PREFATORY NOTE
Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to these of my
readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may not be amiss.
He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he has devoted
practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild animals.
It has been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy and indomitable purpose
to a singular passion, almost an obsession, to capture alive, not to kill.
He has caught and broken the will of every well-known wild beast native to western
North America. Killing was repulsive to him.
He even disliked the sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessity compelled
him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffalo to the caravans crossing
the plains.
At last, seeing that the extinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his
rifle over a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species.
For ten years he labored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for which the
West gave him fame, and the name Preserver of the American Bison.
As civilization encroached upon the plains Buffalo Jones ranged slowly westward; and
to-day an isolated desert-bound plateau on the north rim of the Grand Canyon of
Arizona is his home.
There his buffalo browse with the mustang and deer, and are as free as ever they were
on the rolling plains.
In the spring of 1907 I was the fortunate companion of the old plainsman on a trip
across the desert, and a hunt in that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep
canyons and giant pines.
I want to tell about it.
I want to show the color and beauty of those painted cliffs and the long, brown-
matted bluebell-dotted aisles in the grand forests; I want to give a suggestion of the
tang of the dry, cool air; and particularly
I want to throw a little light upon the life and nature of that strange character
and remarkable man, Buffalo Jones.
Happily in remembrance a writer can live over his experiences, and see once more the
moonblanched silver mountain peaks against the dark blue sky; hear the lonely sough of
the night wind through the pines; feel the
dance of wild expectation in the quivering pulse; the stir, the thrill, the joy of
hard action in perilous moments; the mystery of man's yearning for the
unattainable.
As a boy I read of Boone with a throbbing heart, and the silent moccasined, vengeful
Wetzel I loved. I pored over the deeds of later men--Custer
and Carson, those heroes of the plains.
And as a man I came to see the wonder, the tragedy of their lives, and to write about
them.
It has been my destiny--what a happy fulfillment of my dreams of border spirit!-
-to live for a while in the fast-fading wild environment which produced these great
men with the last of the great plainsmen.
ZANE GREY.
>
CHAPTER 1. THE ARIZONA DESERT
One afternoon, far out on the sun-baked waste of sage, we made camp near a clump of
withered pinyon trees. The cold desert wind came down upon us with
the sudden darkness.
Even the Mormons, who were finding the trail for us across the drifting sands,
forgot to sing and pray at sundown. We huddled round the campfire, a tired and
silent little group.
When out of the lonely, melancholy night some wandering Navajos stole like shadows
to our fire, we hailed their advent with delight.
They were good-natured Indians, willing to barter a blanket or bracelet; and one of
them, a tall, gaunt fellow, with the bearing of a chief, could speak a little
English.
"How," said he, in a deep chest voice. "Hello, Noddlecoddy," greeted Jim Emmett,
the Mormon guide. "Ugh!" answered the Indian.
"Big paleface--Buffalo Jones---big chief-- buffalo man," introduced Emmett, indicating
Jones. "How."
The Navajo spoke with dignity, and extended a friendly hand.
"Jones big white chief--rope buffalo--tie up tight," continued Emmett, making motions
with his arm, as if he were whirling a lasso.
"No big--heap small buffalo," said the Indian, holding his hand level with his
knee, and smiling broadly. Jones, erect, rugged, brawny, stood in the
full light of the campfire.
He had a dark, bronzed, inscrutable face; a stern mouth and square jaw, keen eyes,
half-closed from years of searching the wide plains; and deep furrows wrinkling his
cheeks.
A strange stillness enfolded his feature the tranquility earned from a long life of
adventure. He held up both muscular hands to the
Navajo, and spread out his fingers.
"Rope buffalo--heap big buffalo--heap many- -one sun."
The Indian straightened up, but kept his friendly smile.
"Me big chief," went on Jones, "me go far north--Land of Little Sticks--Naza!
Naza! rope musk-ox; rope White Manitou of Great Slave Naza!
Naza!"
"Naza!" replied the Navajo, pointing to the North Star; "no--no."
"Yes me big paleface--me come long way toward setting sun--go cross Big Water--go
Buckskin--Siwash--chase cougar."
The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos hold him in as much
fear and reverence as do the Great Slave Indians the musk-ox.
"No kill cougar," continued Jones, as the Indian's bold features hardened.
"Run cougar horseback--run long way--dogs chase cougar long time--chase cougar up
tree!
Me big chief--me climb tree--climb high up- -lasso cougar--rope cougar--tie cougar all
tight." The Navajo's solemn face relaxed
"White man heap fun.
No." "Yes," cried Jones, extending his great
arms. "Me strong; me rope cougar--me tie cougar;
ride off wigwam, keep cougar alive."
"No," replied the savage vehemently. "Yes," protested Jones, nodding earnestly.
"No," answered the Navajo, louder, raising his dark head.
"Yes!" shouted Jones.
"BIG LIE!" the Indian thundered. Jones joined good-naturedly in the laugh at
his expense.
The Indian had crudely voiced a skepticism I had heard more delicately hinted in New
York, and singularly enough, which had strengthened on our way West, as we met
ranchers, prospectors and cowboys.
But those few men I had fortunately met, who really knew Jones, more than
overbalanced the doubt and ridicule cast upon him.
I recalled a scarred old veteran of the plains, who had talked to me in true
Western bluntness:
"Say, young feller, I heerd yer couldn't git acrost the Canyon fer the deep snow on
the north rim. Wal, ye're lucky.
Now, yer hit the trail fer New York, an' keep goin'!
Don't ever tackle the desert, 'specially with them Mormons.
They've got water on the brain, wusser 'n religion.
It's two hundred an' fifty miles from Flagstaff to Jones range, an' only two
drinks on the trail.
I know this hyar Buffalo Jones. I knowed him way back in the seventies,
when he was doin' them ropin' stunts thet made him famous as the preserver of the
American bison.
I know about that crazy trip of his'n to the Barren Lands, after musk-ox.
An' I reckon I kin guess what he'll do over there in the Siwash.
He'll rope cougars--sure he will--an' watch 'em jump.
Jones would rope the devil, an' tie him down if the lasso didn't burn.
Oh! he's hell on ropin' things.
An' he's wusser 'n hell on men, an' hosses, an' dogs."
All that my well-meaning friend suggested made me, of course, only the more eager to
go with Jones.
Where I had once been interested in the old buffalo hunter, I was now fascinated.
And now I was with him in the desert and seeing him as he was, a simple, quiet man,
who fitted the mountains and the silences, and the long reaches of distance.
"It does seem hard to believe--all this about Jones," remarked Judd, one of
Emmett's men. "How could a man have the strength and the
nerve?
And isn't it cruel to keep wild animals in captivity? it against God's word?"
Quick as speech could flow, Jones quoted: "And God said, 'Let us make man in our
image, and give him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, over all
the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth'!"
"Dominion--over all the beasts of the field!" repeated Jones, his big voice
rolling out.
He clenched his huge fists, and spread wide his long arms.
"Dominion! That was God's word!"
The power and intensity of him could be felt.
Then he relaxed, dropped his arms, and once more grew calm.
But he had shown a glimpse of the great, strange and absorbing passion of his life.
Once he had told me how, when a mere child, he had hazarded limb and neck to capture a
fox squirrel, how he had held on to the vicious little animal, though it bit his
hand through; how he had never learned to
play the games of boyhood; that when the youths of the little Illinois village were
at play, he roamed the prairies, or the rolling, wooded hills, or watched a gopher
hole.
That boy was father of the man: for sixty years an enduring passion for dominion over
wild animals had possessed him, and made his life an endless pursuit.
Our guests, the Navajos, departed early, and vanished silently in the gloom of the
desert.
We settled down again into a quiet that was broken only by the low chant-like song of a
praying Mormon.
Suddenly the hounds bristled, and old Moze, a surly and aggressive dog, rose and barked
at some real or imaginary desert prowler.
A sharp command from Jones made Moze crouch down, and the other hounds cowered close
together. "Better tie up the dogs," suggested Jones.
"Like as not coyotes run down here from the hills."
The hounds were my especial delight. But Jones regarded them with considerable
contempt.
When all was said, this was no small wonder, for that quintet of long-eared
canines would have tried the patience of a saint.
Old Moze was a Missouri hound that Jones had procured in that State of uncertain
qualities; and the dog had grown old over ***-trails.
He was black and white, grizzled and battlescarred; and if ever a dog had an
evil eye, Moze was that dog.
He had a way of wagging his tail--an indeterminate, equivocal sort of wag, as if
he realized his ugliness and knew he stood little chance of making friends, but was
still hopeful and willing.
As for me, the first time he manifested this evidence of a good heart under a rough
coat, he won me forever.
To tell of Moze's derelictions up to that time would take more space than would a
history of the whole trip; but the enumeration of several incidents will at
once stamp him as a dog of character, and
will establish the fact that even if his progenitors had never taken any blue
ribbons, they had at least bequeathed him fighting blood.
At Flagstaff we chained him in the yard of a livery stable.
Next morning we found him hanging by his chain on the other side of an eight-foot
fence.
We took him down, expecting to have the sorrowful duty of burying him; but Moze
shook himself, wagged his tail and then pitched into the livery stable dog.
As a matter of fact, fighting was his forte.
He whipped all of the dogs in Flagstaff; and when our blood hounds came on from
California, he put three of them hors de combat at once, and subdued the pup with a
savage growl.
His crowning feat, however, made even the stoical Jones open his mouth in amaze.
We had taken Moze to the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, and finding it impossible to
get over to the north rim, we left him with one of Jones's men, called Rust, who was
working on the Canyon trail.
Rust's instructions were to bring Moze to Flagstaff in two weeks.
He brought the dog a little ahead time, and roared his appreciation of the relief it to
get the responsibility off his hands.
And he related many strange things, most striking of which was how Moze had broken
his chain and plunged into the raging Colorado River, and tried to swim it just
above the terrible Sockdolager Rapids.
Rust and his fellow-workmen watched the dog disappear in the yellow, wrestling,
turbulent whirl of waters, and had heard his knell in the booming roar of the falls.
Nothing but a fish could live in that current; nothing but a bird could scale
those perpendicular marble walls.
That night, however, when the men crossed on the tramway, Moze met them with a wag of
his tail. He had crossed the river, and he had come
back!
To the four reddish-brown, high-framed bloodhounds I had given the names of Don,
Tige, Jude and Ranger; and by dint of persuasion, had succeeded in establishing
some kind of family relation between them and Moze.
This night I tied up the bloodhounds, after bathing and salving their sore feet; and I
left Moze free, for he grew fretful and surly under restraint.
The Mormons, prone, dark, blanketed figures, lay on the sand.
Jones was crawling into his bed.
I walked a little way from the dying fire, and faced the north, where the desert
stretched, mysterious and illimitable. How solemn and still it was!
I drew in a great breath of the cold air, and thrilled with a nameless sensation.
Something was there, away to the northward; it called to me from out of the dark and
gloom; I was going to meet it.
I lay down to sleep with the great blue expanse open to my eyes.
The stars were very large, and wonderfully bright, yet they seemed so much farther off
than I had ever seen them.
The wind softly sifted the sand. I hearkened to the *** of the cowbells
on the hobbled horses.
The last thing I remembered was old Moze creeping close to my side, seeking the
warmth of my body. When I awakened, a long, pale line showed
out of the dun-colored clouds in the east.
It slowly lengthened, and tinged to red. Then the morning broke, and the slopes of
snow on the San Francisco peaks behind us glowed a delicate pink.
The Mormons were up and doing with the dawn.
They were stalwart men, rather silent, and all workers.
It was interesting to see them pack for the day's journey.
They traveled with wagons and mules, in the most primitive way, which Jones assured me
was exactly as their fathers had crossed the plains fifty years before, on the trail
to Utah.
All morning we made good time, and as we descended into the desert, the air became
warmer, the scrubby cedar growth began to fail, and the bunches of sage were few and
far between.
I turned often to gaze back at the San Francisco peaks.
The snowcapped tips glistened and grew higher, and stood out in startling relief.
Some one said they could be seen two hundred miles across the desert, and were a
landmark and a fascination to all travelers thitherward.
I never raised my eyes to the north that I did not draw my breath quickly and grow
chill with awe and bewilderment with the marvel of the desert.
The scaly red ground descended gradually; bare red knolls, like waves, rolled away
northward; black buttes reared their flat heads; long ranges of sand flowed between
them like streams, and all sloped away to
merge into gray, shadowy obscurity, into wild and desolate, dreamy and misty
nothingness. "Do you see those white sand dunes there,
more to the left?" asked Emmett.
"The Little Colorado runs in there. How far does it look to you?"
"Thirty miles, perhaps," I replied, adding ten miles to my estimate.
"It's seventy-five.
We'll get there day after to-morrow. If the snow in the mountains has begun to
melt, we'll have a time getting across." That afternoon, a hot wind blew in my face,
carrying fine sand that cut and blinded.
It filled my throat, sending me to the water cask till I was ashamed.
When I fell into my bed at night, I never turned.
The next day was hotter; the wind blew harder; the sand stung sharper.
About noon the following day, the horses whinnied, and the mules roused out of their
tardy gait.
"They smell water," said Emmett. And despite the heat, and the sand in my
nostrils, I smelled it, too. The dogs, poor foot-sore fellows, trotted
on ahead down the trail.
A few more miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone brought us around a low mesa to
the Little Colorado. It was a wide stream of swiftly running,
reddish-muddy water.
In the channel, cut by floods, little streams trickled and meandered in all
directions. The main part of the river ran in close to
the bank we were on.
The dogs lolled in the water; the horses and mules tried to run in, but were
restrained; the men drank, and bathed their faces.
According to my Flagstaff adviser, this was one of the two drinks I would get on the
desert, so I availed myself heartily of the opportunity.
The water was full of sand, but cold and gratefully thirst-quenching.
The Little Colorado seemed no more to me than a shallow creek; I heard nothing
sullen or menacing in its musical flow.
"Doesn't look bad, eh?" queried Emmett, who read my thought.
"You'd be surprised to learn how many men and Indians, horses, sheep and wagons are
buried under that quicksand."
The secret was out, and I wondered no more. At once the stream and wet bars of sand
took on a different color. I removed my boots, and waded out to a
little bar.
The sand seemed quite firm, but water oozed out around my feet; and when I stepped, the
whole bar shook like jelly.
I pushed my foot through the crust, and the cold, wet sand took hold, and tried to suck
me down. "How can you ford this stream with horses?"
I asked Emmett.
"We must take our chances," replied he. "We'll hitch two teams to one wagon, and
run the horses. I've forded here at worse stages than this.
Once a team got stuck, and I had to leave it; another time the water was high, and
washed me downstream." Emmett sent his son into the stream on a
mule.
The rider lashed his mount, and plunging, splashing, crossed at a pace near a gallop.
He returned in the same manner, and reported one bad place near the other side.
Jones and I got on the first wagon and tried to coax up the dogs, but they would
not come.
Emmett had to lash the four horses to start them; and other Mormons riding alongside,
yelled at them, and used their whips. The wagon bowled into the water with a
tremendous splash.
We were wet through before we had gone twenty feet.
The plunging horses were lost in yellow spray; the stream rushed through the
wheels; the Mormons yelled.
I wanted to see, but was lost in a veil of yellow mist.
Jones yelled in my ear, but I could not hear what he said.
Once the wagon wheels struck a stone or log, almost lurching us overboard.
A muddy splash blinded me. I cried out in my excitement, and punched
Jones in the back.
Next moment, the keen exhilaration of the ride gave way to horror.
We seemed to drag, and almost stop. Some one roared: "Horse down!"
One instant of painful suspense, in which imagination pictured another tragedy added
to the record of this deceitful river--a moment filled with intense feeling, and
sensation of splash, and yell, and fury of
action; then the three able horses dragged their comrade out of the quicksand.
He regained his feet, and plunged on.
Spurred by fear, the horses increased their efforts, and amid clouds of spray, galloped
the remaining distance to the other side. Jones looked disgusted.
Like all plainsmen, he hated water.
Emmett and his men calmly unhitched. No trace of alarm, or even of excitement
showed in their bronzed faces. "We made that fine and easy," remarked
Emmett.
So I sat down and wondered what Jones and Emmett, and these men would consider really
hazardous.
I began to have a feeling that I would find out; that experience for me was but in its
infancy; that far across the desert the something which had called me would show
hard, keen, perilous life.
And I began to think of reserve powers of fortitude and endurance.
The other wagons were brought across without mishap; but the dogs did not come
with them.
Jones called and called. The dogs howled and howled.
Finally I waded out over the wet bars and little streams to a point several hundred
yards nearer the dogs.
Moze was lying down, but the others were whining and howling in a state of great
perturbation. I called and called.
They answered, and even ran into the water, but did not start across.
"Hyah, Moze! hyah, you Indian!" I yelled, losing my patience.
"You've already swum the Big Colorado, and this is only a brook.
Come on!" This appeal evidently touched Moze, for he
barked, and plunged in.
He made the water fly, and when carried off his feet, breasted the current with energy
and power. He made shore almost even with me, and
wagged his tail.
Not to be outdone, Jude, Tige and Don followed suit, and first one and then
another was swept off his feet and carried downstream.
They landed below me.
This left Ranger, the pup, alone on the other shore.
Of all the pitiful yelps ever uttered by a frightened and lonely puppy, his were the
most forlorn I had ever heard.
Time after time he plunged in, and with many bitter howls of distress, went back.
I kept calling, and at last, hoping to make him come by a show of indifference, I
started away.
This broke his heart. Putting up his head, he let out a long,
melancholy wail, which for aught I knew might have been a prayer, and then
consigned himself to the yellow current.
Ranger swam like a boy learning. He seemed to be afraid to get wet.
His forefeet were continually pawing the air in front of his nose.
When he struck the swift place, he went downstream like a flash, but still kept
swimming valiantly. I tried to follow along the sand-bar, but
found it impossible.
I encouraged him by yelling. He drifted far below, stranded on an
island, crossed it, and plunged in again, to make shore almost out of my sight.
And when at last I got to dry sand, there was Ranger, wet and disheveled, but
consciously proud and happy.
After lunch we entered upon the seventy- mile stretch from the Little to the Big
Colorado.
Imagination had pictured the desert for me as a vast, sandy plain, flat and
monotonous.
Reality showed me desolate mountains gleaming bare in the sun, long lines of red
bluffs, white sand dunes, and hills of blue clay, areas of level ground--in all, a
many-hued, boundless world in itself,
wonderful and beautiful, fading all around into the purple haze of deceiving distance.
Thin, clear, sweet, dry, the desert air carried a languor, a dreaminess, tidings of
far-off things, and an enthralling promise.
The fragrance of flowers, the beauty and grace of women, the sweetness of music, the
mystery of life--all seemed to float on that promise.
It was the air breathed by the lotus- eaters, when they dreamed, and wandered no
more. Beyond the Little Colorado, we began to
climb again.
The sand was thick; the horses labored; the drivers shielded their faces.
The dogs began to limp and lag.
Ranger had to be taken into a wagon; and then, one by one, all of the other dogs
except Moze. He refused to ride, and trotted along with
his head down.
Far to the front the pink cliffs, the ragged mesas, the dark, volcanic spurs of
the Big Colorado stood up and beckoned us onward.
But they were a far hundred miles across the shifting sands, and baked day, and
ragged rocks.
Always in the rear rose the San Francisco peaks, cold and pure, startlingly clear and
close in the rare atmosphere.
We camped near another water hole, located in a deep, yellow-colored gorge, crumbling
to pieces, a ruin of rock, and silent as the grave.
In the bottom of the canyon was a pool of water, covered with green ***.
My thirst was effectually quenched by the mere sight of it.
I slept poorly, and lay for hours watching the great stars.
The silence was painfully oppressive.
If Jones had not begun to give a respectable imitation of the exhaust pipe
on a steamboat, I should have been compelled to shout aloud, or get up; but
this snoring would have dispelled anything.
The morning came gray and cheerless. I got up stiff and sore, with a tongue like
a rope. All day long we ran the gauntlet of the
hot, flying sand.
Night came again, a cold, windy night. I slept well until a mule stepped on my
bed, which was conducive to restlessness. At dawn, cold, gray clouds tried to blot
out the rosy east.
I could hardly get up. My lips were cracked; my tongue swollen to
twice its natural size; my eyes smarted and burned.
The barrels and kegs of water were exhausted.
Holes that had been dug in the dry sand of a dry streambed the night before in the
morning yielded a scant supply of muddy alkali water, which went to the horses.
Only twice that day did I rouse to anything resembling enthusiasm.
We came to a stretch of country showing the wonderful diversity of the desert land.
A long range of beautifully rounded clay stones bordered the trail.
So symmetrical were they that I imagined them works of sculptors.
Light blue, dark blue, clay blue, marine blue, cobalt blue--every shade of blue was
there, but no other color.
The other time that I awoke to sensations from without was when we came to the top of
a ridge. We had been passing through red-lands.
Jones called the place a strong, specific word which really was illustrative of the
heat amid those scaling red ridges. We came out where the red changed abruptly
to gray.
I seemed always to see things first, and I cried out: "Look! here are a red lake and
trees!"
"No, lad, not a lake," said old Jim, smiling at me; "that's what haunts the
desert traveler. It's only mirage!"
So I awoke to the realization of that illusive thing, the mirage, a beautiful
lie, false as stairs of sand. Far northward a clear rippling lake
sparkled in the sunshine.
Tall, stately trees, with waving green foliage, bordered the water.
For a long moment it lay there, smiling in the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then
it faded.
I felt a sense of actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could
not believe I was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters.
Disappointment was keen.
This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the desert.
Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to
smell it and then realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, a
lure, a delusion?
I ceased to wonder at the Mormons, and their search for water, their talk of
water. But I had not realized its true
significance.
I had not known what water was. I had never appreciated it.
So it was my destiny to learn that water is the greatest thing on earth.
I hung over a three-foot hole in a dry stream-bed, and watched it ooze and seep
through the sand, and fill up--oh, so slowly; and I felt it loosen my parched
tongue, and steal through all my dry body with strength and life.
Water is said to constitute three fourths of the universe.
However that may be, on the desert it is the whole world, and all of life.
Two days passed by, all hot sand and wind and glare.
The Mormons sang no more at evening; Jones was silent; the dogs were limp as rags.
At Moncaupie Wash we ran into a sandstorm. The horses turned their backs to it, and
bowed their heads patiently.
The Mormons covered themselves. I wrapped a blanket round my head and hid
behind a sage bush. The wind, carrying the sand, made a strange
hollow roar.
All was enveloped in a weird yellow opacity.
The sand seeped through the sage bush and swept by with a soft, rustling sound, not
unlike the wind in the rye.
From time to time I raised a corner of my blanket and peeped out.
Where my feet had stretched was an enormous mound of sand.
I felt the blanket, weighted down, slowly settle over me.
Suddenly as it had come, the sandstorm passed.
It left a changed world for us.
The trail was covered; the wheels hub-deep in sand; the horses, walking sand dunes.
I could not close my teeth without grating harshly on sand.
We journeyed onward, and passed long lines of petrified trees, some a hundred feet in
length, lying as they had fallen, thousands of years before.
White ants crawled among the ruins.
Slowly climbing the sandy trail, we circled a great red bluff with jagged peaks, that
had seemed an interminable obstacle. A scant growth of cedar and sage again made
its appearance.
Here we halted to pass another night. Under a cedar I heard the plaintive,
piteous bleat of an animal.
I searched, and presently found a little black and white lamb, scarcely able to
stand. It came readily to me, and I carried it to
the wagon.
"That's a Navajo lamb," said Emmett. "It's lost.
There are Navajo Indians close by." "Away in the desert we heard its cry,"
quoted one of the Mormons.
Jones and I climbed the red mesa near camp to see the sunset.
All the western world was ablaze in golden glory.
Shafts of light shot toward the zenith, and bands of paler gold, tinging to rose,
circled away from the fiery, sinking globe.
Suddenly the sun sank, the gold changed to gray, then to purple, and shadows formed in
the deep gorge at our feet.
So sudden was the transformation that soon it was night, the solemn, impressive night
of the desert.
A stillness that seemed too sacred to break clasped the place; it was infinite; it held
the bygone ages, and eternity. More days, and miles, miles, miles!
The last day's ride to the Big Colorado was unforgettable.
We rode toward the head of a gigantic red cliff pocket, a veritable inferno,
immeasurably hot, glaring, awful.
It towered higher and higher above us.
When we reached a point of this red barrier, we heard the dull rumbling roar of
water, and we came out, at length, on a winding trail cut in the face of a blue
overhanging the Colorado River.
The first sight of most famous and much- heralded wonders of nature is often
disappointing; but never can this be said of the blood-hued Rio Colorado.
If it had beauty, it was beauty that appalled.
So riveted was my gaze that I could hardly turn it across the river, where Emmett
proudly pointed out his lonely home--an oasis set down amidst beetling red cliffs.
How grateful to the eye was the green of alfalfa and cottonwood!
Going round the bluff trail, the wheels had only a foot of room to spare; and the sheer
descent into the red, turbid, congested river was terrifying.
I saw the constricted rapids, where the Colorado took its plunge into the box-like
head of the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and the deep, reverberating boom of the river,
at flood height, was a fearful thing to hear.
I could not repress a shudder at the thought of crossing above that rapid.
The bronze walls widened as we proceeded, and we got down presently to a level, where
a long wire cable stretched across the river.
Under the cable ran a rope.
On the other side was an old scow moored to the bank.
"Are we going across in that?" I asked Emmett, pointing to the boat.
"We'll all be on the other side before dark," he replied cheerily.
I felt that I would rather start back alone over the desert than trust myself in such a
craft, on such a river.
And it was all because I had had experience with bad rivers, and thought I was a judge
of dangerous currents.
The Colorado slid with a menacing roar out of a giant split in the red wall, and
whirled, eddied, bulged on toward its confinement in the iron-ribbed canyon
below.
In answer to shots fired, Emmett's man appeared on the other side, and rode down
to the ferry landing.
Here he got into a skiff, and rowed laboriously upstream for a long distance
before he started across, and then swung into the current.
He swept down rapidly, and twice the skiff whirled, and completely turned round; but
he reached our bank safely.
Taking two men aboard he rowed upstream again, close to the shore, and returned to
the opposite side in much the same manner in which he had come over.
The three men pushed out the scow, and grasping the rope overhead, began to pull.
The big craft ran easily.
When the current struck it, the wire cable sagged, the water boiled and surged under
it, raising one end, and then the other. Nevertheless, five minutes were all that
were required to pull the boat over.
It was a rude, oblong affair, made of heavy planks loosely put together, and it leaked.
When Jones suggested that we get the agony over as quickly as possible, I was with
him, and we embarked together.
Jones said he did not like the looks of the tackle; and when I thought of his by no
means small mechanical skill, I had not added a cheerful idea to my consciousness.
The horses of the first team had to be dragged upon the scow, and once on, they
reared and plunged.
When we started, four men pulled the rope, and Emmett sat in the stern, with the
tackle guys in hand.
As the current hit us, he let out the guys, which maneuver caused the boat to swing
stern downstream. When it pointed obliquely, he made fast the
guys again.
I saw that this served two purposes: the current struck, slid alongside, and over
the stern, which mitigated the danger, and at the same time helped the boat across.
To look at the river was to court terror, but I had to look.
It was an infernal thing. It roared in hollow, sullen voice, as a
monster growling.
It had voice, this river, and one strangely changeful.
It moaned as if in pain--it whined, it cried.
Then at times it would seem strangely silent.
The current as complex and mutable as human life.
It boiled, beat and bulged.
The bulge itself was an incompressible thing, like a roaring lift of the waters
from submarine explosion. Then it would smooth out, and run like oil.
It shifted from one channel to another, rushed to the center of the river, then
swung close to one shore or the other. Again it swelled near the boat, in great,
boiling, hissing eddies.
"Look! See where it breaks through the mountain!"
yelled Jones in my ear.
I looked upstream to see the stupendous granite walls separated in a gigantic split
that must have been made by a terrible seismic disturbance; and from this gap
poured the dark, turgid, mystic flood.
I was in a cold sweat when we touched shore, and I jumped long before the boat
was properly moored. Emmett was wet to the waist where the water
had surged over him.
As he sat rearranging some tackle I remarked to him that of course he must be a
splendid swimmer, or he would not take such risks.
"No, I can't swim a stroke," he replied; "and it wouldn't be any use if I could.
Once in there a man's a goner." "You've had bad accidents here?"
I questioned.
"No, not bad. We only drowned two men last year.
You see, we had to tow the boat up the river, and row across, as then we hadn't
the wire.
Just above, on this side, the boat hit a stone, and the current washed over her,
taking off the team and two men." "Didn't you attempt to rescue them?"
I asked, after waiting a moment.
"No use. They never came up."
"Isn't the river high now?" I continued, shuddering as I glanced out at
the whirling logs and drifts.
"High, and coming up. If I don't get the other teams over to-day
I'll wait until she goes down.
At this season she rises and lowers every day or so, until June then comes the big
flood, and we don't cross for months."
I sat for three hours watching Emmett bring over the rest of his party, which he did
without accident, but at the expense of great effort.
And all the time in my ears dinned the roar, the boom, the rumble of this
singularly rapacious and purposeful river-- a river of silt, a red river of dark,
sinister meaning, a river with terrible
work to perform, a river which never gave up its dead.
>
CHAPTER 2. THE RANGE
After a much-needed rest at Emmett's, we bade good-by to him and his hospitable
family, and under the guidance of his man once more took to the wind-swept trail.
We pursued a southwesterly course now, following the lead of the craggy red wall
that stretched on and on for hundreds of miles into Utah.
The desert, smoky and hot, fell away to the left, and in the foreground a dark,
irregular line marked the Grand Canyon cutting through the plateau.
The wind whipped in from the vast, open expanse, and meeting an obstacle in the red
wall, turned north and raced past us. Jones's hat blew off, stood on its rim, and
rolled.
It kept on rolling, thirty miles an hour, more or less; so fast, at least, that we
were a long time catching up to it with a team of horses.
Possibly we never would have caught it had not a stone checked its flight.
Further manifestation of the power of the desert wind surrounded us on all sides.
It had hollowed out huge stones from the cliffs, and tumbled them to the plain
below; and then, sweeping sand and gravel low across the desert floor, had cut them
deeply, until they rested on slender
pedestals, thus sculptoring grotesque and striking monuments to the marvelous
persistence of this element of nature.
Late that afternoon, as we reached the height of the plateau, Jones woke up and
shouted: "Ha! there's Buckskin!" Far southward lay a long, black mountain,
covered with patches of shining snow.
I could follow the zigzag line of the Grand Canyon splitting the desert plateau, and
saw it disappear in the haze round the end of the mountain.
From this I got my first clear impression of the topography of the country
surrounding our objective point.
Buckskin mountain ran its blunt end eastward to the Canyon--in fact, formed a
hundred miles of the north rim.
As it was nine thousand feet high it still held the snow, which had occasioned our
lengthy desert ride to get back of the mountain.
I could see the long slopes rising out of the desert to meet the timber.
As we bowled merrily down grade I noticed that we were no longer on stony ground, and
that a little scant silvery grass had made its appearance.
Then little branches of green, with a blue flower, smiled out of the clayish sand.
All of a sudden Jones stood up, and let out a wild Comanche yell.
I was more startled by the yell than by the great hand he smashed down on my shoulder,
and for the moment I was dazed. "There! look! look! the buffalo!
Hi! Hi! Hi!"
Below us, a few miles on a rising knoll, a big herd of buffalo shone black in the gold
of the evening sun.
I had not Jones's incentive, but I felt enthusiasm born of the wild and beautiful
picture, and added my yell to his.
The huge, burly leader of the herd lifted his head, and after regarding us for a few
moments calmly went on browsing.
The desert had fringed away into a grand rolling pastureland, walled in by the red
cliffs, the slopes of Buckskin, and further isolated by the Canyon.
Here was a range of twenty-four hundred square miles without a foot of barb-wire,
a pasture fenced in by natural forces, with the splendid feature that the buffalo could
browse on the plain in winter, and go up
into the cool foothills of Buckskin in summer.
From another ridge we saw a cabin dotting the rolling plain, and in half an hour we
reached it.
As we climbed down from the wagon a brown and black dog came dashing out of the
cabin, and promptly jumped at Moze.
His selection showed poor discrimination, for Moze whipped him before I could
separate them.
Hearing Jones heartily greeting some one, I turned in his direction, only to be
distracted by another dog fight. Don had tackled Moze for the seventh time.
Memory rankled in Don, and he needed a lot of whipping, some of which he was getting
when I rescued him. Next moment I was shaking hands with Frank
and Jim, Jones's ranchmen.
At a glance I liked them both. Frank was short and wiry, and had a big,
ferocious mustache, the effect of which was softened by his kindly brown eyes.
Jim was tall, a little heavier; he had a careless, tidy look; his eyes were
searching, and though he appeared a young man, his hair was white.
"I shore am glad to see you all," said Jim, in slow, soft, Southern accent.
"Get down, get down," was Frank's welcome-- a typically Western one, for we had already
gotten down; "an' come in.
You must be worked out. Sure you've come a long way."
He was quick of speech, full of nervous energy, and beamed with hospitality.
The cabin was the rudest kind of log affair, with a huge stone fireplace in one
end, deer antlers and coyote skins on the wall, saddles and cowboys' traps in a
corner, a nice, large, promising cupboard, and a table and chairs.
Jim threw wood on a smoldering fire, that soon blazed and crackled cheerily.
I sank down into a chair with a feeling of blessed relief.
Ten days of desert ride behind me! Promise of wonderful days before me, with
the last of the old plainsmen.
No wonder a sweet sense of ease stole over me, or that the fire seemed a live and
joyously welcoming thing, or that Jim's deft maneuvers in preparation of supper
roused in me a rapt admiration.
"Twenty calves this spring!" cried Jones, punching me in my sore side.
"Ten thousand dollars worth of calves!"
He was now altogether a changed man; he looked almost young; his eyes danced, and
he rubbed his big hands together while he plied Frank with questions.
In strange surroundings--that is, away from his Native Wilds, Jones had been a silent
man; it had been almost impossible to get anything out of him.
But now I saw that I should come to know the real man.
In a very few moments he had talked more than on all the desert trip, and what he
said, added to the little I had already learned, put me in possession of some
interesting information as to his buffalo.
Some years before he had conceived the idea of hybridizing buffalo with black Galloway
cattle; and with the characteristic determination and energy of the man, he at
once set about finding a suitable range.
This was difficult, and took years of searching.
At last the wild north rim of the Grand Canyon, a section unknown except to a few
Indians and mustang hunters, was settled upon.
Then the gigantic task of transporting the herd of buffalo by rail from Montana to
Salt Lake was begun.
The two hundred and ninety miles of desert lying between the home of the Mormons and
Buckskin Mountain was an obstacle almost insurmountable.
The journey was undertaken and found even more trying than had been expected.
Buffalo after buffalo died on the way.
Then Frank, Jones's right-hand man, put into execution a plan he had been thinking
of--namely, to travel by night. It succeeded.
The buffalo rested in the day and traveled by easy stages by night, with the result
that the big herd was transported to the ideal range.
Here, in an environment strange to their race, but peculiarly adaptable, they
thrived and multiplied. The hybrid of the Galloway cow and buffalo
proved a great success.
Jones called the new species "Cattalo." The cattalo took the hardiness of the
buffalo, and never required artificial food or shelter.
He would face the desert storm or blizzard and stand stock still in his tracks until
the weather cleared.
He became quite domestic, could be easily handled, and grew exceedingly fat on very
little provender.
The folds of his stomach were so numerous that they digested even the hardest and
flintiest of corn.
He had fourteen ribs on each side, while domestic cattle had only thirteen; thus he
could endure rougher work and longer journeys to water.
His fur was so dense and glossy that it equaled that of the unplucked beaver or
otter, and was fully as valuable as the buffalo robe.
And not to be overlooked by any means was the fact that his meat was delicious.
Jones had to hear every detail of all that had happened since his absence in the East,
and he was particularly inquisitive to learn all about the twenty cattalo calves.
He called different buffalo by name; and designated the calves by descriptive terms,
such as "Whiteface" and "Crosspatch." He almost forgot to eat, and kept Frank too
busy to get anything into his own mouth.
After supper he calmed down. "How about your other man--Mr. Wallace, I
think you said?" asked Frank. "We expected to meet him at Grand Canyon
Station, and then at Flagstaff.
But he didn't show up. Either he backed out or missed us.
I'm sorry; for when we get up on Buckskin, among the wild horses and cougars, we'll be
likely to need him."
"I reckon you'll need me, as well as Jim," said Frank dryly, with a twinkle in his
eye. "The buffs are in good shape an' can get
along without me for a while."
"That'll be fine. How about cougar sign on the mountain?"
"Plenty. I've got two spotted near Clark Spring.
Comin' over two weeks ago I tracked them in the snow along the trail for miles.
We'll ooze over that way, as it's goin' toward the Siwash.
The Siwash breaks of the Canyon--there's the place for lions.
I met a wild-horse wrangler not long back, an' he was tellin' me about Old Tom an' the
colts he'd killed this winter."
Naturally, I here expressed a desire to know more of Old Tom.
"He's the biggest cougar ever known of in these parts.
His tracks are bigger than a horse's, an' have been seen on Buckskin for twelve
years.
This wrangler--his name is Clark--said he'd turned his saddle horse out to graze near
camp, an' Old Tom sneaked in an' downed him.
The lions over there are sure a bold bunch.
Well, why shouldn't they be? No one ever hunted them.
You see, the mountain is hard to get at. But now you're here, if it's big cats you
want we sure can find them.
Only be easy, be easy. You've all the time there is.
An' any job on Buckskin will take time. We'll look the calves over, an' you must
ride the range to harden up.
Then we'll ooze over toward Oak. I expect it'll be boggy, an' I hope the
snow melts soon." "The snow hadn't melted on Greenland
point," replied Jones.
"We saw that with a glass from the El Tovar.
We wanted to cross that way, but Rust said Bright Angel Creek was breast high to a
horse, and that creek is the trail."
"There's four feet of snow on Greenland," said Frank.
"It was too early to come that way. There's only about three months in the year
the Canyon can be crossed at Greenland."
"I want to get in the snow," returned Jones.
"This bunch of long-eared canines I brought never smelled a lion track.
Hounds can't be trained quick without snow.
You've got to see what they're trailing, or you can't break them."
Frank looked dubious. "'Pears to me we'll have trouble gettin' a
lion without lion dogs.
It takes a long time to break a hound off of deer, once he's chased them.
Buckskin is full of deer, wolves, coyotes, and there's the wild horses.
We couldn't go a hundred feet without crossin' trails."
"How's the hound you and Jim fetched in las' year?
Has he got a good nose?
Here he is--I like his head. Come here, Bowser--what's his name?"
"Jim named him Sounder, because he sure has a voice.
It's great to hear him on a trail.
Sounder has a nose that can't be fooled, an' he'll trail anythin'; but I don't know
if he ever got up a lion." Sounder wagged his bushy tail and looked up
affectionately at Frank.
He had a fine head, great brown eyes, very long ears and curly brownish-black hair.
He was not demonstrative, looked rather askance at Jones, and avoided the other
dogs.
"That dog will make a great lion-chaser," said Jones, decisively, after his study of
Sounder. "He and Moze will keep us busy, once they
learn we want lions."
"I don't believe any dog-trainer could teach them short of six months," replied
Frank.
"Sounder is no spring chicken; an' that black and dirty white cross between a
cayuse an' a barb-wire fence is an old dog. You can't teach old dogs new tricks."
Jones smiled mysteriously, a smile of conscious superiority, but said nothing.
"We'll shore hev a storm to-morrow," said Jim, relinquishing his pipe long enough to
speak.
He had been silent, and now his meditative gaze was on the west, through the cabin
window, where a dull afterglow faded under the heavy laden clouds of night and left
the horizon dark.
I was very tired when I lay down, but so full of excitement that sleep did not soon
visit my eyelids.
The talk about buffalo, wild-horse hunters, lions and dogs, the prospect of hard riding
and unusual adventure; the vision of Old Tom that had already begun to haunt me,
filled my mind with pictures and fancies.
The other fellows dropped off to sleep, and quiet reigned.
Suddenly a succession of ***, sharp barks came from the plain, close to the cabin.
Coyotes were paying us a call, and judging from the chorus of yelps and howls from our
dogs, it was not a welcome visit.
Above the medley rose one big, deep, full voice that I knew at once belonged to
Sounder. Then all was quiet again.
Sleep gradually benumbed my senses.
Vague phrases dreamily drifted to and fro in my mind: "Jones's wild range--Old Tom--
Sounder--great name--great voice--Sounder! Sounder!
Sounder--"
Next morning I could hardly crawl out of my sleeping-bag.
My bones ached, my muscles protested excruciatingly, my lips burned and bled,
and the cold I had contracted on the desert clung to me.
A good brisk walk round the corrals, and then breakfast, made me feel better.
"Of course you can ride?" queried Frank. My answer was not given from an
overwhelming desire to be truthful.
Frank frowned a little, as it wondering how a man could have the nerve to start out on
a jaunt with Buffalo Jones without being a good horseman.
To be unable to stick on the back of a wild mustang, or a cayuse, was an unpardonable
sin in Arizona.
My frank admission was made relatively, with my mind on what cowboys held as a
standard of horsemanship.
The mount Frank trotted out of the corral for me was a pure white, beautiful mustang,
nervous, sensitive, quivering.
I watched Frank put on the saddle, and when he called me I did not fail to catch a
covert twinkle in his merry brown eyes.
Looking away toward Buckskin Mountain, which was coincidentally in the direction
of home, I said to myself: "This may be where you get on, but most certainly it is
where you get off!"
Jones was already riding far beyond the corral, as I could see by a cloud of dust;
and I set off after him, with the painful consciousness that I must have looked to
Frank and Jim much as Central Park equestrians had often looked to me.
Frank shouted after me that he would catch up with us out on the range.
I was not in any great hurry to overtake Jones, but evidently my horse's
inclinations differed from mine; at any rate, he made the dust fly, and jumped the
little sage bushes.
Jones, who had tarried to inspect one of the pools--formed of running water from the
corrals--greeted me as I came up with this cheerful observation.
"What in thunder did Frank give you that white nag for?
The buffalo hate white horses--anything white.
They're liable to stampede off the range, or chase you into the canyon."
I replied grimly that, as it was certain something was going to happen, the
particular circumstance might as well come off quickly.
We rode over the rolling plain with a cool, bracing breeze in our faces.
The sky was dull and mottled with a beautiful cloud effect that presaged wind.
As we trotted along Jones pointed out to me and descanted upon the nutritive value of
three different kinds of grass, one of which he called the Buffalo Pea, noteworthy
for a beautiful blue blossom.
Soon we passed out of sight of the cabin, and could see only the billowy plain, the
red tips of the stony wall, and the black- fringed crest of Buckskin.
After riding a while we made out some cattle, a few of which were on the range,
browsing in the lee of a ridge. No sooner had I marked them than Jones let
out another Comanche yell.
"Wolf!" he yelled; and spurring his big bay, he was off like the wind.
A single glance showed me several cows running as if bewildered, and near them a
big white wolf pulling down a calf.
Another white wolf stood not far off. My horse jumped as if he had been shot; and
the realization darted upon me that here was where the certain something began.
Spot--the mustang had one black spot in his pure white--snorted like I imagined a
blooded horse might, under dire insult. Jones's bay had gotten about a hundred
paces the start.
I lived to learn that Spot hated to be left behind; moreover, he would not be left
behind; he was the swiftest horse on the range, and proud of the distinction.
I cast one unmentionable word on the breeze toward the cabin and Frank, then put mind
and muscle to the sore task of remaining with Spot.
Jones was born on a saddle, and had been taking his meals in a saddle for about
sixty-three years, and the bay horse could run.
Run is not a felicitous word--he flew.
And I was rendered mentally deranged for the moment to see that hundred paces
between the bay and Spot materially lessen at every jump.
Spot lengthened out, seemed to go down near the ground, and cut the air like a high-
geared auto.
If I had not heard the fast rhythmic beat of his hoofs, and had not bounced high into
the air at every jump, I would have been sure I was riding a bird.
I tried to stop him.
As well might I have tried to pull in the Lusitania with a thread.
Spot was out to overhaul that bay, and in spite of me, he was doing it.
The wind rushed into my face and sang in my ears.
Jones seemed the nucleus of a sort of haze, and it grew larger and larger.
Presently he became clearly defined in my sight; the violent commotion under me
subsided; I once more felt the saddle, and then I realized that Spot had been content
to stop alongside of Jones, tossing his head and champing his bit.
"Well, by George! I didn't know you were in the stretch,"
cried my companion.
"That was a fine little brush. We must have come several miles.
I'd have killed those wolves if I'd brought a gun.
The big one that had the calf was a bold brute.
He never let go until I was within fifty feet of him.
Then I almost rode him down.
I don't think the calf was much hurt. But those blood-thirsty devils will return,
and like as not get the calf. That's the worst of cattle raising.
Now, take the buffalo.
Do you suppose those wolves could have gotten a buffalo calf out from under the
mother? Never.
Neither could a whole band of wolves.
Buffalo stick close together, and the little ones do not stray.
When danger threatens, the herd closes in and faces it and fights.
That is what is grand about the buffalo and what made them once roam the prairies in
countless, endless droves."
From the highest elevation in that part of the range we viewed the surrounding ridges,
flats and hollows, searching for the buffalo.
At length we spied a cloud of dust rising from behind an undulating mound, then big
black dots hove in sight. "Frank has rounded up the herd, and is
driving it this way.
We'll wait," said Jones. Though the buffalo appeared to be moving
fast, a long time elapsed before they reached the foot of our outlook.
They lumbered along in a compact mass, so dense that I could not count them, but I
estimated the number at seventy-five. Frank was riding zigzag behind them,
swinging his lariat and yelling.
When he espied us he reined in his horse and waited.
Then the herd slowed down, halted and began browsing.
"Look at the cattalo calves," cried Jones, in ecstatic tones.
"See how shy they are, how close they stick to their mothers."
The little dark-brown fellows were plainly frightened.
I made several unsuccessful attempts to photograph them, and gave it up when Jones
told me not to ride too close and that it would be better to wait till we had them in
the corral.
He took my camera and instructed me to go on ahead, in the rear of the herd.
I heard the click of the instrument as he snapped a picture, and then suddenly heard
him shout in alarm: "Look out! look out! pull your horse!"
Thundering hoof-beats pounding the earth accompanied his words.
I saw a big bull, with head down, tail raised, charging my horse.
He answered Frank's yell of command with a furious grunt.
I was paralyzed at the wonderfully swift action of the shaggy brute, and I sat
helpless.
Spot wheeled as if he were on a pivot and plunged out of the way with a celerity that
was astounding. The buffalo stopped, pawed the ground, and
angrily tossed his huge head.
Frank rode up to him, yelled, and struck him with the lariat, whereupon he gave
another toss of his horns, and then returned to the herd.
"It was that darned white nag," said Jones.
"Frank, it was wrong to put an inexperienced man on Spot.
For that matter, the horse should never be allowed to go near the buffalo."
"Spot knows the buffs; they'd never get to him," replied Frank.
But the usual spirit was absent from his voice, and he glanced at me soberly.
I knew I had turned white, for I felt the peculiar cold sensation on my face.
"Now, look at that, will you?" cried Jones. "I don't like the looks of that."
He pointed to the herd.
They stopped browsing, and were uneasily shifting to and fro.
The bull lifted his head; the others slowly grouped together.
"Storm!
Sandstorm!" exclaimed Jones, pointing desert-ward.
Dark yellow clouds like smoke were rolling, sweeping, bearing down upon us.
They expanded, blossoming out like gigantic roses, and whirled and merged into one
another, all the time rolling on and blotting out the light.
"We've got to run.
That storm may last two days," yelled Frank to me.
"We've had some bad ones lately. Give your horse free rein, and cover your
face."
A roar, resembling an approaching storm at sea, came on puffs of wind, as the horses
got into their stride.
Long streaks of dust whipped up in different places; the silver-white grass
bent to the ground; round bunches of sage went rolling before us.
The puffs grew longer, steadier, harder.
Then a shrieking blast howled on our trail, seeming to swoop down on us with a yellow,
blinding pall. I shut my eyes and covered my face with a
handkerchief.
The sand blew so thick that it filled my gloves, pebbles struck me hard enough to
sting through my coat.
Fortunately, Spot kept to an easy swinging lope, which was the most comfortable motion
for me. But I began to get numb, and could hardly
stick on the saddle.
Almost before I had dared to hope, Spot stopped.
Uncovering my face, I saw Jim in the doorway of the lee side of the cabin.
The yellow, streaky, whistling clouds of sand split on the cabin and passed on,
leaving a small, dusty space of light. "Shore Spot do hate to be beat," yelled
Jim, as he helped me off.
I stumbled into the cabin and fell upon a buffalo robe and lay there absolutely
spent.
Jones and Frank came in a few minutes apart, each anathematizing the gritty,
powdery sand. All day the desert storm raged and roared.
The dust sifted through the numerous cracks in the cabin burdened our clothes, spoiled
our food and blinded our eyes.
Wind, snow, sleet and rainstorms are discomforting enough under trying
circumstances; but all combined, they are nothing to the choking stinging, blinding
sandstorm.
"Shore it'll let up by sundown," averred Jim.
And sure enough the roar died away about five o'clock, the wind abated and the sand
settled.
Just before supper, a knock sounded heavily o the cabin door.
Jim opened it to admit one of Emmett's sons and a very tall man whom none of us knew.
He was a sand-man.
All that was not sand seemed a space or two of corduroy, a big bone-handled knife, a
prominent square jaw and bronze cheek and flashing eyes.
"Get down--get down, an' come in, stranger, said Frank cordially.
"How do you do, sir," said Jones.
"Colonel Jones, I've been on your trail for twelve days," announced the stranger, with
a grim smile. The sand streamed off his coat in little
white streak.
Jones appeared to be casting about in his mind.
"I'm Grant Wallace," continued the newcomer.
"I missed you at the El Tovar, at Williams and at Flagstaff, where I was one day
behind.
Was half a day late at the Little Colorado, saw your train cross Moncaupie Wash, and
missed you because of the sandstorm there.
Saw you from the other side of the Big Colorado as you rode out from Emmett's
along the red wall. And here I am.
We've never met till now, which obviously isn't my fault."
The Colonel and I fell upon Wallace's neck.
Frank manifested his usual alert excitation, and said: "Well, I guess he
won't hang fire on a long cougar chase."
And Jim--slow, careful Jim, dropped a plate with the exclamation: "Shore it do beat
hell!" The hounds sniffed round Wallace, and
welcomed him with vigorous tails.
Supper that night, even if we did grind sand with our teeth, was a joyous occasion.
The biscuits were flaky and light; the bacon fragrant and crisp.
I produced a jar of blackberry jam, which by subtle cunning I had been able to
secrete from the Mormons on that dry desert ride, and it was greeted with acclamations
of pleasure.
Wallace, divested of his sand guise, beamed with the gratification of a hungry man once
more in the presence of friends and food.
He made large cavities in Jim's great pot of potato stew, and caused biscuits to
vanish in a way that would not have shamed a Hindoo magician.
The Grand Canyon he dug in my jar of jam, however, could not have been accomplished
by legerdemain. Talk became animated on dogs, cougars,
horses and buffalo.
Jones told of our experience out on the range, and concluded with some salient
remarks. "A tame wild animal is the most dangerous
of beasts.
My old friend, *** Rock, a great hunter and guide out of Idaho, laughed at my
advice, and got killed by one of his three- year-old bulls.
I told him they knew him just well enough to kill him, and they did.
My friend, A. H. Cole, of Oxford, Nebraska, tried to rope a Weetah that was too tame to
be safe, and the bull killed him.
Same with General Bull, a member of the Kansas Legislature, and two cowboys who
went into a corral to tie up a tame elk at the wrong time.
I pleaded with them not to undertake it.
They had not studied animals as I had. That tame elk killed all of them.
He had to be shot in order to get General Bull off his great antlers.
You see, a wild animal must learn to respect a man.
The way I used to teach the Yellowstone Park bears to be respectful and safe
neighbors was to rope them around the front paw, swing them up on a tree clear of the
ground, and whip them with a long pole.
It was a dangerous business, and looks cruel, but it is the only way I could find
to make the bears good.
You see, they eat scraps around the hotels and get so tame they will steal everything
but red-hot stoves, and will cuff the life out of those who try to shoo them off.
But after a bear mother has had a licking, she not only becomes a good bear for the
rest of her life, but she tells all her cubs about it with a good smack of her paw,
for emphasis, and teaches them to respect
peaceable citizens generation after generation.
"One of the hardest jobs I ever tackled was that of supplying the buffalo for Bronx
Park.
I rounded up a magnificent 'king' buffalo bull, belligerent enough to fight a
battleship. When I rode after him the cowmen said I was
as good as killed.
I made a lance by driving a nail into the end of a short pole and sharpening it.
After he had chased me, I wheeled my broncho, and hurled the lance into his
back, ripping a wound as long as my hand.
That put the fear of Providence into him and took the fight all out of him.
I drove him uphill and down, and across canyons at a dead run for eight miles
single handed, and loaded him on a freight car; but he came near getting me once or
twice, and only quick broncho work and lance play saved me.
"In the Yellowstone Park all our buffaloes have become docile, excepting the huge bull
which led them.
The Indians call the buffalo leader the 'Weetah,' the master of the herd.
It was sure death to go near this one.
So I shipped in another Weetah, hoping that he might whip some of the fight out of old
Manitou, the Mighty.
They came together head on, like a railway collision, and ripped up over a square mile
of landscape, fighting till night came on, and then on into the night.
"I jumped into the field with them, chasing them with my biograph, getting a series of
moving pictures of that bullfight which was sure the real thing.
It was a ticklish thing to do, though knowing that neither bull dared take his
eyes off his adversary for a second, I felt reasonably safe.
The old Weetah beat the new champion out that night, but the next morning they were
at it again, and the new buffalo finally whipped the old one into submission.
Since then his spirit has remained broken, and even a child can approach him safely--
but the new Weetah is in turn a holy terror.
"To handle buffalo, elk and bear, you must get into sympathy with their methods of
reasoning. No tenderfoot stands any show, even with
the tame animals of the Yellowstone."
The old buffalo hunter's lips were no longer locked.
One after another he told reminiscences of his eventful life, in a simple manner; yet
so vivid and gripping were the unvarnished details that I was spellbound.
"Considering what appears the impossibility of capturing a full-grown buffalo, how did
you earn the name of preserver of the American bison?" inquired Wallace.
"It took years to learn how, and ten more to capture the fifty-eight that I was able
to keep. I tried every plan under the sun.
I roped hundreds, of all sizes and ages.
They would not live in captivity. If they could not find an embankment over
which to break their necks, they would crush their skulls on stones.
Failing any means like that, they would lie down, will themselves to die, and die.
Think of a savage wild nature that could will its heart to cease beating!
But it's true.
Finally I found I could keep only calves under three months of age.
But to capture them so young entailed time and patience.
For the buffalo fight for their young, and when I say fight, I mean till they drop.
I almost always had to go alone, because I could neither coax nor hire any one to
undertake it with me.
Sometimes I would be weeks getting one calf.
One day I captured eight--eight little buffalo calves!
Never will I forget that day as long as I live!"
"Tell us about it," I suggested, in a matter of fact, round-the-campfire voice.
Had the silent plainsman ever told a complete and full story of his adventures?
I doubted it. He was not the man to eulogize himself.
A short silence ensued.
The cabin was snug and warm; the ruddy embers glowed; one of Jim's pots steamed
musically and fragrantly. The hounds lay curled in the cozy chimney
corner.
Jones began to talk again, simply and unaffectedly, of his famous exploit; and as
he went on so modestly, passing lightly over features we recognized as wonderful,
I allowed the fire of my imagination to fuse
for myself all the toil, patience, endurance, skill, herculean strength and
marvelous courage and unfathomable passion which he slighted in his narrative.
>
CHAPTER 3. THE LAST HERD
Over gray No-Man's-Land stole down the shadows of night.
The undulating prairie shaded dark to the western horizon, rimmed with a fading
streak of light.
Tall figures, silhouetted sharply against the last golden glow of sunset, marked the
rounded crest of a grassy knoll. "Wild hunter!" cried a voice in sullen
rage, "buffalo or no, we halt here.
Did Adams and I hire to cross the Staked Plains?
Two weeks in No-Man's-Land, and now we're facing the sand!
We've one keg of water, yet you want to keep on.
Why, man, you're crazy! You didn't tell us you wanted buffalo
alive.
And here you've got us looking death in the eye!"
In the grim silence that ensued the two men unhitched the team from the long, light
wagon, while the buffalo hunter staked out his wiry, lithe-limbed racehorses.
Soon a fluttering blaze threw a circle of light, which shone on the agitated face of
Rude and Adams, and the cold, iron-set visage of their brawny leader.
"It's this way," began Jones, in slow, cool voice; "I engaged you fellows, and you
promised to stick by me. We've had no luck.
But I've finally found sign--old sign, I'll admit the buffalo I'm looking for--the last
herd on the plains. For two years I've been hunting this herd.
So have other hunters.
Millions of buffalo have been killed and left to rot.
Soon this herd will be gone, and then the only buffalo in the world will be those I
have given ten years of the hardest work in capturing.
This is the last herd, I say, and my last chance to capture a calf or two.
Do you imagine I'd quit? You fellows go back if you want, but I keep
on."
"We can't go back. We're lost.
We'll have to go with you. But, man, thirst is not the only risk we
run.
This is Comanche country. And if that herd is in here the Indians
have it spotted." "That worries me some," replied the
plainsman, "but we'll keep on it."
They slept. The night wind swished the grasses; dark
storm clouds blotted out the northern stars; the prairie wolves mourned dismally.
Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky.
The hunters traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream
flowed in wet season.
Cottonwood trees were bursting into green; thickets of prickly thorn, dense and
matted, showed bright spring buds. "What is it?" suddenly whispered Rude.
The plainsman lay in strained posture, his ear against the ground.
"Hide the wagon and horses in the clump of cottonwoods," he ordered, tersely.
Springing to his feet, he ran to the top of the knoll above the hollow, where he again
placed his ear to the ground.
Jones's practiced ear had detected the quavering rumble of far-away, thundering
hoofs. He searched the wide waste of plain with
his powerful glass.
To the southwest, miles distant, a cloud of dust mushroomed skyward.
"Not buffalo," he muttered, "maybe wild horses."
He watched and waited.
The yellow cloud rolled forward, enlarging, spreading out, and drove before it a darkly
indistinct, moving mass. As soon as he had one good look at this he
ran back to his comrades.
"Stampede! Wild horses!
Indians! Look to your rifles and hide!"
Wordless and pale, the men examined their Sharps, and made ready to follow Jones.
He slipped into the thorny brake and, flat on his stomach, wormed his way like a snake
far into the thickly interlaced web of branches.
Rude and Adams crawled after him.
Words were superfluous. Quiet, breathless, with beating hearts, the
hunters pressed close to the dry grass.
A long, low, steady rumble filled the air, and increased in volume till it became a
roar. Moments, endless moments, passed.
The roar filled out like a flood slowly released from its confines to sweep down
with the sound of doom.
The ground began to tremble and quake: the light faded; the smell of dust pervaded the
thicket, then a continuous streaming roar, deafening as persistent roll of thunder,
pervaded the hiding place.
The stampeding horses had split round the hollow.
The roar lessened.
Swiftly as a departing snow-squall rushing on through the pines, the thunderous thud
and *** of hoofs died away. The trained horses hidden in the
cottonwoods never stirred.
"Lie low! lie low!" breathed the plainsman to his companions.
Throb of hoofs again became audible, not loud and madly pounding as those that had
passed, but low, muffled, rhythmic.
Jones's sharp eye, through a peephole in the thicket, saw a cream-colored mustang
bob over the knoll, carrying an Indian. Another and another, then a swiftly
following, close-packed throng appeared.
Bright red feathers and white gleamed; weapons glinted; gaunt, bronzed savage
leaned forward on racy, slender mustangs. The plainsman shrank closer to the ground.
"Apache!" he exclaimed to himself, and gripped his rifle.
The band galloped down to the hollow, and slowing up, piled single file over the
bank.
The leader, a short, squat chief, plunged into the brake not twenty yards from the
hidden men. Jones recognized the cream mustang; he knew
the somber, sinister, broad face.
It belonged to the Red Chief of the Apaches.
"Geronimo!" murmured the plainsman through his teeth.
Well for the Apache that no falcon savage eye discovered aught strange in the little
hollow! One look at the sand of the stream bed
would have cost him his life.
But the Indians crossed the thicket too far up; they cantered up the slope and
disappeared. The hoof-beats softened and ceased.
"Gone?" whispered Rude.
"Gone. But wait," whispered Jones.
He knew the savage nature, and he knew how to wait.
After a long time, he cautiously crawled out of the thicket and searched the
surroundings with a plainsman's eye.
He climbed the slope and saw the clouds of dust, the near one small, the far one
large, which told him all he needed to know.
"Comanches?" queried Adams, with a quaver in his voice.
He was new to the plains. "Likely," said Jones, who thought it best
not to tell all he knew.
Then he added to himself: "We've no time to lose.
There's water back here somewhere.
The Indians have spotted the buffalo, and were running the horses away from the
water."
The three got under way again, proceeding carefully, so as not to raise the dust, and
headed due southwest.
Scantier and scantier grew the grass; the hollows were washes of sand; steely gray
dunes, like long, flat, ocean swells, ribbed the prairie.
The gray day declined.
Late into the purple night they traveled, then camped without fire.
In the gray morning Jones climbed a high ride and scanned the southwest.
Low dun-colored sandhills waved from him down and down, in slow, deceptive descent.
A solitary and remote waste reached out into gray infinitude.
A pale lake, gray as the rest of that gray expanse, glimmered in the distance.
"Mirage!" he muttered, focusing his glass, which only magnified all under the dead
gray, steely sky.
"Water must be somewhere; but can that be it?
It's too pale and elusive to be real. No life--a blasted, staked plain!
Hello!"
A thin, black, wavering line of wild fowl, moving in beautiful, rapid flight, crossed
the line of his vision. "Geese flying north, and low.
There's water here," he said.
He followed the flock with his glass, saw them circle over the lake, and vanish in
the gray sheen. "It's water."
He hurried back to camp.
His haggard and worn companions scorned his discovery.
Adams siding with Rude, who knew the plains, said: "Mirage! the lure of the
desert!"
Yet dominated by a force too powerful for them to resist, they followed the buffalo-
hunter. All day the gleaming lake beckoned them
onward, and seemed to recede.
All day the drab clouds scudded before the cold north wind.
In the gray twilight, the lake suddenly lay before them, as if it had opened at their
feet.
The men rejoiced, the horses lifted their noses and sniffed the damp air.
The whinnies of the horses, the clank of harness, and splash of water, the whirl of
ducks did not blur out of Jones's keen ear a sound that made him jump.
It was the thump of hoofs, in a familiar beat, beat, beat.
He saw a shadow moving up a ridge.
Soon, outlined black against the yet light sky, a lone buffalo cow stood like a
statue.
A moment she held toward the lake, studying the danger, then went out of sight over the
ridge.
Jones spurred his horse up the ascent, which was rather long and steep, but he
mounted the summit in time to see the cow join eight huge, shaggy buffalo.
The hunter reined in his horse, and standing high in his stirrups, held his hat
at arms' length over his head. So he thrilled to a moment he had sought
for two years.
The last herd of American bison was near at hand.
The cow would not venture far from the main herd; the eight stragglers were the old
broken-down bulls that had been expelled, at this season, from the herd by younger
and more vigorous bulls.
The old monarchs saw the hunter at the same time his eyes were gladdened by sight of
them, and lumbered away after the cow, to disappear in the gathering darkness.
Frightened buffalo always make straight for their fellows; and this knowledge contented
Jones to return to the lake, well satisfied that the herd would not be far away in the
morning, within easy striking distance by daylight.
At dark the storm which had threatened for days, broke in a fury of rain, sleet and
hail.
The hunters stretched a piece of canvas over the wheels of the north side of the
wagon, and wet and shivering, crawled under it to their blankets.
During the night the storm raged with unabated strength.
Dawn, forbidding and raw, lightened to the whistle of the sleety gusts.
Fire was out of the question.
Chary of weight, the hunters had carried no wood, and the buffalo chips they used for
fuel were lumps of ice.
Grumbling, Adams and Rude ate a cold breakfast, while Jones, munching a biscuit,
faced the biting blast from the crest of the ridge.
The middle of the plain below held a ragged, circular mass, as still as stone.
It was the buffalo herd, with every shaggy head to the storm.
So they would stand, never budging from their tracks, till the blizzard of sleet
was over.
Jones, though eager and impatient, restrained himself, for it was unwise to
begin operations in the storm. There was nothing to do but wait.
Ill fared the hunters that day.
Food had to be eaten uncooked. The long hours dragged by with the little
group huddled under icy blankets. When darkness fell, the sleet changed to
drizzling rain.
This blew over at midnight, and a colder wind, penetrating to the very marrow of the
sleepless men, made their condition worse. In the after part of the night, the wolves
howled mournfully.
With a gray, misty light appearing in the east, Jones threw off his stiff, ice-
incased blanket, and crawled out.
A gaunt gray wolf, the color of the day and the sand and the lake, sneaked away,
looking back.
While moving and threshing about to warm his frozen blood, Jones munched another
biscuit. Five men crawled from under the wagon, and
made an unfruitful search for the whisky.
Fearing it, Jones had thrown the bottle away.
The men cursed. The patient horses drooped sadly, and
shivered in the lee of the improvised tent.
Jones kicked the inch-thick casing of ice from his saddle.
Kentuck, his racer, had been spared on the whole trip for this day's work.
The thoroughbred was cold, but as Jones threw the saddle over him, he showed that
he knew the chase ahead, and was eager to be off.
At last, after repeated efforts with his benumbed fingers, Jones got the girths
tight. He tied a bunch of soft cords to the saddle
and mounted.
"Follow as fast as you can," he called to his surly men.
"The buffs will run north against the wind. This is the right direction for us; we'll
soon leave the sand.
Stick to my trail and come a-humming." From the ridge he met the red sun, rising
bright, and a keen northeasterly wind that lashed like a whip.
As he had anticipated, his quarry had moved northward.
Kentuck let out into a swinging stride, which in an hour had the loping herd in
sight.
Every jump now took him upon higher ground, where the sand failed, and the grass grew
thicker and began to bend under the wind.
In the teeth of the nipping gale Jones slipped close upon the herd without
alarming even a cow. More than a hundred little reddish-black
calves leisurely loped in the rear.
Kentuck, keen to his work, crept on like a wolf, and the hunter's great fist clenched
the coiled lasso. Before him expanded a boundless plain.
A situation long cherished and dreamed of had become a reality.
Kentuck, fresh and strong, was good for all day.
Jones gloated over the little red bulls and heifers, as a miser gloats over gold and
jewels.
Never before had he caught more than two in one day, and often it had taken days to
capture one.
This was the last herd, this the last opportunity toward perpetuating a grand
race of beasts. And with born instinct he saw ahead the day
of his life.
At a touch, Kentuck closed in, and the buffalo, seeing him, stampeded into the
heaving roll so well known to the hunter.
Racing on the right flank of the herd, Jones selected a tawny heifer and shot the
lariat after her.
It fell true, but being stiff and *** from the sleet, failed to tighten, and the
quick calf leaped through the loop to freedom.
Undismayed the pursuer quickly recovered his rope.
Again he whirled and sent the loop. Again it circled true, and failed to close;
again the agile heifer bounded through it.
Jones whipped the air with the stubborn rope.
To lose a chance like that was worse than boy's work.
The third whirl, running a smaller loop, tightened the coil round the frightened
calf just back of its ears.
A pull on the bridle brought Kentuck to a halt in his tracks, and the baby buffalo
rolled over and over in the grass. Jones bounced from his seat and ***
loose a couple of the soft cords.
In a twinkling; his big knee crushed down on the calf, and his big hands bound it
helpless. Kentuck neighed.
Jones saw his black ears go up.
Danger threatened. For a moment the hunter's blood turned
chill, not from fear, for he never felt fear, but because he thought the Indians
were returning to ruin his work.
His eye swept the plain. Only the gray forms of wolves flitted
through the grass, here, there, all about him.
Wolves!
They were as fatal to his enterprise as savages.
A trooping pack of prairie wolves had fallen in with the herd and hung close on
the trail, trying to cut a calf away from its mother.
The gray brutes boldly trotted to within a few yards of him, and slyly looked at him,
with pale, fiery eyes. They had already scented his captive.
Precious time flew by; the situation, critical and baffling, had never before
been met by him.
There lay his little calf tied fast, and to the north ran many others, some of which he
must--he would have. To think quickly had meant the solving of
many a plainsman's problem.
Should he stay with his prize to save it, or leave it to be devoured?
"Ha! you old gray devils!" he yelled, shaking his fist at the wolves.
"I know a trick or two."
Slipping his hat between the legs of the calf, he fastened it securely.
This done, he vaulted on Kentuck, and was off with never a backward glance.
Certain it was that the wolves would not touch anything, alive or dead, that bore
the scent of a human being.
The bison scoured away a long half-mile in the lead, sailing northward like a cloud-
shadow over the plain.
Kentuck, mettlesome, over-eager, would have run himself out in short order, but the
wary hunter, strong to restrain as well as impel, with the long day in his mind, kept
the steed in his easy stride, which,
springy and stretching, overhauled the herd in the course of several miles.
A dash, a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect accord, and a
fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately for freedom under the
remorseless knee.
The big hands toyed with him; and then, secure in the double knots, the calf lay
still, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes, with the coat of the hunter
tucked under his bonds to keep away the wolves.
The race had but begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the hunter had but
tasted of sweet triumph.
Another hopeful of a buffalo mother, negligent in danger, truant from his
brothers, stumbled and fell in the enmeshing loop.
The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's neck, served as danger signal to the
wolves.
Before the lumbering buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked
helplessly on the grass and sent up vain, weak calls, and at last lay still, with the
hunter's boot tied to his cords.
Four! Jones counted them aloud, add in his mind,
and kept on.
Fast, hard work, covering upward of fifteen miles, had begun to tell on herd, horse and
man, and all slowed down to the call for strength.
The fifth time Jones closed in on his game, he encountered different circumstances such
as called forth his cunning.
The herd had opened up; the mothers had fallen back to the rear; the calves hung
almost out of sight under the shaggy sides of protectors.
To try them out Jones darted close and threw his lasso.
It struck a cow. With activity incredible in such a huge
beast, she lunged at him.
Kentuck, expecting just such a move, wheeled to safety.
This duel, ineffectual on both sides, kept up for a while, and all the time, man and
herd were jogging rapidly to the north.
Jones could not let well enough alone; he acknowledged this even as he swore he must
have five.
Emboldened by his marvelous luck, and yielding headlong to the passion within, he
threw caution to the winds.
A lame old cow with a red calf caught his eye; in he spurred his willing horse and
slung his rope. It stung the haunch of the mother.
The mad grunt she vented was no quicker than the velocity with which she plunged
and reared. Jones had but time to swing his leg over
the saddle when the hoofs beat down.
Kentuck rolled on the plain, flinging his rider from him.
The infuriated buffalo lowered her head for the fatal charge on the horse, when the
plainsman, jerking out his heavy Colts, shot her dead in her tracks.
Kentuck got to his feet unhurt, and stood his ground, quivering but ready, showing
his steadfast courage.
He showed more, for his ears lay back, and his eyes had the gleam of the animal that
strikes back. The calf ran round its mother.
Jones lassoed it, and tied it down, being compelled to cut a piece from his lasso, as
the cords on the saddle had given out. He left his other boot with baby number
five.
The still heaving, smoking body of the victim called forth the stern, intrepid
hunter's pity for a moment. Spill of blood he had not wanted.
But he had not been able to avoid it; and mounting again with close-shut jaw and
smoldering eye, he galloped to the north.
Kentuck snorted; the pursuing wolves shied off in the grass; the pale sun began to
slant westward. The cold iron stirrups froze and cut the
hunter's bootless feet.
When once more he came hounding the buffalo, they were considerably winded.
Short-tufted tails, raised stiffly, gave warning.
Snorts, like puffs of escaping steam, and deep grunts from cavernous chests evinced
anger and impatience that might, at any moment, bring the herd to a defiant stand.
He whizzed the shortened noose over the head of a calf that was laboring painfully
to keep up, and had slipped down, when a mighty grunt told him of peril.
Never looking to see whence it came, he sprang into the saddle.
Fiery Kentuck jumped into action, then hauled up with a shock that almost threw
himself and rider.
The lasso, fast to the horse, and its loop end round the calf, had caused the sudden
check. A maddened cow bore down on Kentuck.
The gallant horse straightened in a jump, but dragging the calf pulled him in a
circle, and in another moment he was running round and round the howling,
kicking pivot.
Then ensued a terrible race, with horse and bison describing a twenty-foot circle.
***! ***!
The hunter fired two shots, and heard the spats of the bullets.
But they only augmented the frenzy of the beast.
Faster Kentuck flew, snorting in terror; closer drew the dusty, bouncing pursuer;
the calf spun like a top; the lasso strung tighter than wire.
Jones strained to loosen the fastening, but in vain.
He swore at his carelessness in dropping his knife by the last calf he had tied.
He thought of shooting the rope, yet dared not risk the shot.
A hollow sound turned him again, with the Colts leveled.
***!
Dust flew from the ground beyond the bison. The two charges left in the gun were all
that stood between him and eternity.
With a desperate display of strength Jones threw his weight in a backward pull, and
hauled Kentuck up.
Then he leaned far back in the saddle, and shoved the Colts out beyond the horse's
flank. Down went the broad head, with its black,
glistening horns.
***! She slid forward with a crash, plowing the
ground with hoofs and nose--spouted blood, uttered a hoarse cry, kicked and died.
Kentuck, for once completely terrorized, reared and plunged from the cow, dragging
the calf. Stern command and iron arm forced him to a
standstill.
The calf, nearly strangled, recovered when the noose was slipped, and moaned a feeble
protest against life and captivity.
The remainder of Jones's lasso went to bind number six, and one of his socks went to
serve as reminder to the persistent wolves. "Six! On! On! Kentuck! On!"
Weakening, but unconscious of it, with bloody hands and feet, without lasso, and
with only one charge in his revolver, hatless, coatless, vestless, bootless, the
wild hunter urged on the noble horse.
The herd had gained miles in the interval of the fight.
Game to the backbone, Kentuck lengthened out to overhaul it, and slowly the rolling
gap lessened and lessened.
A long hour thumped away, with the rumble growing nearer.
Once again the lagging calves dotted the grassy plain before the hunter.
He dashed beside a burly calf, grasped its tail, stopped his horse, and jumped.
The calf went down with him, and did not come up.
The knotted, blood-stained hands, like claws of steel, bound the hind legs close
and fast with a leathern belt, and left between them a torn and bloody sock.
"Seven!
On! Old Faithfull! We MUST have another! the last!
This is your day." The blood that flecked the hunter was not
all his own.
The sun slanted westwardly toward the purpling horizon; the grassy plain gleamed
like a ruffled sea of glass; the gray wolves loped on.
When next the hunter came within sight of the herd, over a wavy ridge, changes in its
shape and movement met his gaze.
The calves were almost done; they could run no more; their mothers faced the south, and
trotted slowly to and fro; the bulls were grunting, herding, piling close.
It looked as if the herd meant to stand and fight.
This mattered little to the hunter who had captured seven calves since dawn.
The first limping calf he reached tried to elude the grasping hand and failed.
Kentuck had been trained to wheel to the right or left, in whichever way his rider
leaned; and as Jones bent over and caught an upraised tail, the horse turned to
strike the calf with both front hoofs.
The calf rolled; the horse plunged down; the rider sped beyond to the dust.
Though the calf was tired, he still could bellow, and he filled the air with robust
bawls.
Jones all at once saw twenty or more buffalo dash in at him with fast,
twinkling, short legs. With the thought of it, he was in the air
to the saddle.
As the black, round mounds charged from every direction, Kentuck let out with all
there was left in him. He leaped and whirled, pitched and swerved,
in a roaring, clashing, dusty melee.
Beating hoofs threw the turf, flying tails whipped the air, and everywhere were dusky,
sharp-pointed heads, tossing low. Kentuck squeezed out unscathed.
The mob of bison, bristling, turned to lumber after the main herd.
Jones seized his opportunity and rode after them, yelling with all his might.
He drove them so hard that soon the little fellows lagged paces behind.
Only one or two old cows straggled with the calves.
Then wheeling Kentuck, he cut between the herd and a calf, and rode it down.
Bewildered, the tously little bull bellowed in great affright.
The hunter seized the stiff tail, and calling to his horse, leaped off.
But his strength was far spent and the buffalo, larger than his fellows, threshed
about and *** in terror.
Jones threw it again and again. But it struggled up, never once ceasing its
loud demands for help. Finally the hunter tripped it up and fell
upon it with his knees.
Above the rumble of retreating hoofs, Jones heard the familiar short, quick, jarring
pound on the turf. Kentuck neighed his alarm and raced to the
right.
Bearing down on the hunter, hurtling through the air, was a giant furry mass,
instinct with fierce life and power--a buffalo cow robbed of her young.
With his senses almost numb, barely able to pull and raise the Colt, the plainsman
willed to live, and to keep his captive. His leveled arm wavered like a leaf in a
storm.
***! Fire, smoke, a shock, a jarring crash, and
silence! The calf stirred beneath him.
He put out a hand to touch a warm, furry coat.
The mother had fallen beside him.
Lifting a heavy hoof, he laid it over the neck of the calf to serve as additional
weight. He lay still and listened.
The rumble of the herd died away in the distance.
The evening waned. Still the hunter lay quiet.
From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed.
Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and
shoved black-tipped noses through the grass.
The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue.
A star shone out, then another, and another.
Over the prairie slanted the first dark shadow of night.
Suddenly the hunter laid his ear to the ground, and listened.
Faint beats, like throbs of a pulsing heart, shuddered from the soft turf.
Stronger they grew, till the hunter raised his head.
Dark forms approached; voices broke the silence; the creaking of a wagon scared
away the wolves. "This way!" shouted the hunter weakly.
"Ha! here he is.
Hurt?" cried Rude, vaulting the wheel. "Tie up this calf.
How many--did you find?" The voice grew fainter.
"Seven--alive, and in good shape, and all your clothes."
But the last words fell on unconscious ears.
>
CHAPTER 4. THE TRAIL
"Frank, what'll we do about horses?" asked Jones.
"Jim'll want the bay, and of course you'll want to ride Spot.
The rest of our nags will only do to pack the outfit."
"I've been thinkin'," replied the foreman. "You sure will need good mounts.
Now it happens that a friend of mine is just at this time at House Rock Valley, an
outlyin' post of one of the big Utah ranches.
He is gettin' in the horses off the range, an' he has some crackin' good ones.
Let's ooze over there--it's only thirty miles--an' get some horses from him."
We were all eager to act upon Frank's suggestion.
So plans were made for three of us to ride over and select our mounts.
Frank and Jim would follow with the pack train, and if all went well, on the
following evening we would camp under the shadow of Buckskin.
Early next morning we were on our way.
I tried to find a soft place on Old Baldy, one of Frank's pack horses.
He was a horse that would not have raised up at the trumpet of doom.
Nothing under the sun, Frank said, bothered Old Baldy but the operation of shoeing.
We made the distance to the outpost by noon, and found Frank's friend a genial and
obliging cowboy, who said we could have all the horses we wanted.
While Jones and Wallace strutted round the big corral, which was full of vicious,
dusty, shaggy horses and mustangs, I sat high on the fence.
I heard them talking about points and girth and stride, and a lot of terms that I could
not understand. Wallace selected a heavy sorrel, and Jones
a big bay; very like Jim's.
I had observed, way over in the corner of the corral, a bunch of cayuses, and among
them a clean-limbed black horse.
Edging round on the fence I got a closer view, and then cried out that I had found
my horse.
I jumped down and caught him, much to my surprise, for the other horses were wild,
and had kicked viciously. The black was beautifully built, wide-
chested and powerful, but not heavy.
His coat glistened like sheeny black satin, and he had a white face and white feet and
a long mane. "I don't know about giving you Satan--
that's his name," said the cowboy.
"The foreman rides him often. He's the fastest, the best climber, and the
best dispositioned horse on the range.
"But I guess I can let you have him," he continued, when he saw my disappointed
face. "By George!" exclaimed Jones.
"You've got it on us this time."
"Would you like to trade?" asked Wallace, as his sorrel tried to bite him.
"That black looks sort of fierce."
I led my prize out of the corral, up to the little cabin nearby, where I tied him, and
proceeded to get acquainted after a fashion of my own.
Though not versed in horse-lore, I knew that half the battle was to win his
confidence.
I smoothed his silky coat, and patted him, and then surreptitiously slipped a lump of
sugar from my pocket.
This sugar, which I had purloined in Flagstaff, and carried all the way across
the desert, was somewhat disreputably soiled, and Satan sniffed at it
disdainfully.
Evidently he had never smelled or tasted sugar.
I pressed it into his mouth. He munched it, and then looked me over with
some interest.
I handed him another lump. He took it and rubbed his nose against me.
Satan was mine! Frank and Jim came along early in the
afternoon.
What with packing, changing saddles and shoeing the horses, we were all busy.
Old Baldy would not be shod, so we let him off till a more opportune time.
By four o'clock we were riding toward the slopes of Buckskin, now only a few miles
away, standing up higher and darker.
"What's that for?" inquired Wallace, pointing to a long, rusty, wire-wrapped,
double-barreled blunderbuss of a shotgun, stuck in the holster of Jones's saddle.
The Colonel, who had been having a fine time with the impatient and curious hounds,
did not vouchsafe any information on that score.
But very shortly we were destined to learn the use of this incongruous firearm.
I was riding in advance of Wallace, and a little behind Jones.
The dogs--excepting Jude, who had been kicked and lamed--were ranging along before
their master.
Suddenly, right before me, I saw an immense jack-rabbit; and just then Moze and Don
caught sight of it. In fact, Moze bumped his blunt nose into
the rabbit.
When it leaped into scared action, Moze yelped, and Don followed suit.
Then they were after it in wild, clamoring pursuit.
Jones let out the stentorian blast, now becoming familiar, and spurred after them.
He reached over, pulled the shotgun out of the holster and fired both barrels at the
jumping dogs.
I expressed my amazement in strong language, and Wallace whistled.
Don came sneaking back with his tail between his legs, and Moze, who had cowered
as if stung, circled round ahead of us.
Jones finally succeeded in gettin him back. "Come in hyah!
You measly rabbit dogs! What do you mean chasing off that way?
We're after lions.
Lions! understand?" Don looked thoroughly convinced of his
error, but Moze, being more thick-headed, appeared mystified rather than hurt or
frightened.
"What size shot do you use?" I asked.
"Number ten. They don't hurt much at seventy five
yards," replied our leader.
"I use them as sort of a long arm. You see, the dogs must be made to know what
we're after. Ordinary means would never do in a case
like this.
My idea is to break them of coyotes, wolves and deer, and when we cross a lion trail,
let them go. I'll teach them sooner than you'd think.
Only we must get where we can see what they're trailing.
Then I can tell whether to call then back or not."
The sun was gilding the rim of the desert rampart when we began the ascent of the
foothills of Buckskin.
A steep trail wound zigzag up the mountain We led our horses, as it was a long, hard
climb.
From time to time, as I stopped to catch my breath I gazed away across the growing void
to the gorgeous Pink Cliffs, far above and beyond the red wall which had seemed so
high, and then out toward the desert.
The irregular ragged crack in the plain, apparently only a thread of broken ground,
was the Grand Canyon.
How unutterably remote, wild, grand was that world of red and brown, of purple
pall, of vague outline! Two thousand feet, probably, we mounted to
what Frank called Little Buckskin.
In the west a copper glow, ridged with lead-colored clouds, marked where the sun
had set. The air was very thin and icy cold.
At the first clump of pinyon pines, we made dry camp.
When I sat down it was as if I had been anchored.
Frank solicitously remarked that I looked "sort of beat."
Jim built a roaring fire and began getting supper.
A snow squall came on the rushing wind.
The air grew colder, and though I hugged the fire, I could not get warm.
When I had satisfied my hunger, I rolled out my sleeping-bag and crept into it.
I stretched my aching limbs and did not move again.
Once I awoke, drowsily feeling the warmth of the fire, and I heard Frank say: "He's
asleep, dead to the world!"
"He's all in," said Jones. "Riding's what did it You know how a horse
tears a man to pieces."
"Will he be able to stand it?" asked Frank, with as much solicitude as if he were my
brother. "When you get out after anythin'--well,
you're hell.
An' think of the country we're goin' into. I know you've never seen the breaks of the
Siwash, but I have, an' it's the worst an' roughest country I ever saw.
Breaks after breaks, like the ridges on a washboard, headin' on the south slope of
Buckskin, an' runnin' down, side by side, miles an' miles, deeper an' deeper, till
they run into that awful hole.
It will be a killin' trip on men, horses an' dogs.
Now, Mr. Wallace, he's been campin' an' roughin' with the Navajos for months; he's
in some kind of shape, but--"
Frank concluded his remark with a doubtful pause.
"I'm some worried, too," replied Jones. "But he would come.
He stood the desert well enough; even the Mormons said that."
In the ensuing silence the fire sputtered, the glare fitfully merged into dark shadows
under the weird pinyons, and the wind moaned through the short branches.
"Wal," drawled a slow, soft voice, "shore I reckon you're hollerin' too soon.
Frank's measly trick puttin' him on Spot showed me.
He rode out on Spot, an' he rode in on Spot.
Shore he'll stay." It was not all the warmth of the blankets
that glowed over me then.
The voices died away dreamily, and my eyelids dropped sleepily tight.
Late in the night I sat up suddenly, roused by some unusual disturbance.
The fire was dead; the wind swept with a rush through the pinyons.
From the black darkness came the staccato chorus of coyotes.
Don barked his displeasure; Sounder made the welkin ring, and old Moze growled low
and deep, grumbling like muttered thunder. Then all was quiet, and I slept.
Dawn, rosy red, confronted me when I opened my eyes.
Breakfast was ready; Frank was packing Old Baldy; Jones talked to his horse as he
saddled him; Wallace came stooping his giant figure under the pinyons; the dogs,
eager and soft-eyed, sat around Jim and begged.
The sun peeped over the Pink Cliffs; the desert still lay asleep, tranced in a
purple and golden-streaked mist.
"Come, come!" said Jones, in his big voice. "We're slow; here's the sun."
"Easy, easy," replied Frank, "we've all the time there is."
When Frank threw the saddle over Satan I interrupted him and said I would care for
my horse henceforward. Soon we were under way, the horses fresh,
the dogs scenting the keen, cold air.
The trail rolled over the ridges of pinyon and scrubby pine.
Occasionally we could see the black, ragged crest of Buckskin above us.
From one of these ridges I took my last long look back at the desert, and engraved
on my mind a picture of the red wall, and the many-hued ocean of sand.
The trail, narrow and indistinct, mounted the last slow-rising slope; the pinyons
failed, and the scrubby pines became abundant.
At length we reached the top, and entered the great arched aisles of Buckskin Forest.
The ground was flat as a table.
Magnificent pine trees, far apart, with branches high and spreading, gave the eye
glad welcome.
Some of these monarchs were eight feet thick at the base and two hundred feet
high. Here and there one lay, gaunt and
prostrate, a victim of the wind.
The smell of pitch pine was sweetly overpowering.
"When I went through here two weeks ago, the snow was a foot deep, an' I bogged in
places," said Frank.
"The sun has been oozin' round here some. I'm afraid Jones won't find any snow on
this end of Buckskin."
Thirty miles of winding trail, brown and springy from its thick mat of pine needles,
shaded always by the massive, seamy-barked trees, took us over the extremity of
Buckskin.
Then we faced down into the head of a ravine that ever grew deeper, stonier and
rougher.
I shifted from side to side, from leg to leg in my saddle, dismounted and hobbled
before Satan, mounted again, and rode on. Jones called the dogs and complained to
them of the lack of snow.
Wallace sat his horse comfortably, taking long pulls at his pipe and long gazes at
the shaggy sides of the ravine. Frank, energetic and tireless, kept the
pack-horses in the trail.
Jim jogged on silently. And so we rode down to Oak Spring.
The spring was pleasantly situated in a grove of oaks and Pinyons, under the shadow
of three cliffs.
Three ravines opened here into an oval valley.
A rude cabin of rough-hewn logs stood near the spring.
"Get down, get down," sang out Frank.
"We'll hang up here. Beyond Oak is No-Man's-Land.
We take our chances on water after we leave here."
When we had unsaddled, unpacked, and got a fire roaring on the wide stone hearth of
the cabin, it was once again night. "Boys," said Jones after supper, "we're now
on the edge of the lion country.
Frank saw lion sign in here only two weeks ago; and though the snow is gone, we stand
a show of finding tracks in the sand and dust.
To-morrow morning, before the sun gets a chance at the bottom of these ravines,
we'll be up and doing. We'll each take a dog and search in
different directions.
Keep the dog in leash, and when he opens up, examine the ground carefully for
tracks. If a dog opens on any track that you are
sure isn't lion's, punish him.
And when a lion-track is found, hold the dog in, wait and signal.
We'll use a signal I have tried and found far-reaching and easy to yell.
Waa-hoo!
That's it. Once yelled it means come.
Twice means comes quickly. Three times means come--danger!"
In one corner of the cabin was a platform of poles, covered with straw.
I threw the sleeping-bag on this, and was soon stretched out.
Misgivings as to my strength worried me before I closed my eyes.
Once on my back, I felt I could not rise; my chest was sore; my cough deep and
rasping.
It seemed I had scarcely closed my eyes when Jones's impatient voice recalled me
from sweet oblivion. "Frank, Frank, it's daylight.
Jim--boys!" he called.
I tumbled out in a gray, wan twilight. It was cold enough to make the fire
acceptable, but nothing like the morning before on Buckskin.
"Come to the festal board," drawled Jim, almost before I had my boots laced.
"Jones," said Frank, "Jim an' I'll ooze round here to-day.
There's lots to do, an' we want to have things hitched right before we strike for
the Siwash.
We've got to shoe Old Baldy, an' if we can't get him locoed, it'll take all of us
to do it."
The light was still gray when Jones led off with Don, Wallace with Sounder and I with
Moze.
Jones directed us to separate, follow the dry stream beds in the ravines, and
remember his instructions given the night before.
The ravine to the right, which I entered, was choked with huge stones fallen from the
cliff above, and pinyons growing thick; and I wondered apprehensively how a man could
evade a wild animal in such a place, much less chase it.
Old Moze pulled on his chain and sniffed at coyote and deer tracks.
And every time he evinced interest in such, I cut him with a switch, which, to tell the
truth, he did not notice. I thought I heard a shout, and holding Moze
tight, I waited and listened.
"Waa-hoo--waa-hoo!" floated on the air, rather deadened as if it had come from
round the triangular cliff that faced into the valley.
Urging and dragging Moze, I ran down the ravine as fast as I could, and soon
encountered Wallace coming from the middle ravine.
"Jones," he said excitedly, "this way-- there's the signal again."
We dashed in haste for the mouth of the third ravine, and came suddenly upon Jones,
kneeling under a pinyon tree.
"Boys, look!" he exclaimed, as he pointed to the ground.
There, clearly defined in the dust, was a cat track as big as my spread hand, and the
mere sight of it sent a chill up my spine.
"There's a lion track for you; made by a female, a two-year-old; but can't say if
she passed here last night. Don won't take the trail.
Try Moze."
I led Moze to the big, round imprint, and put his nose down into it.
The old hound sniffed and sniffed, then lost interest.
"Cold!" *** Jones.
"No go. Try Sounder.
Come, old boy, you've the nose for it." He urged the reluctant hound forward.
Sounder needed not to be shown the trail; he stuck his nose in it, and stood very
quiet for a long moment; then he quivered slightly, raised his nose and sought the
next track.
Step by step he went slowly, doubtfully. All at once his tail wagged stiffly.
"Look at that!" cried Jones in delight. "He's caught a scent when the others
couldn't.
Hyah, Moze, get back. Keep Moze and Don back; give him room."
Slowly Sounder paced up the ravine, as carefully as if he were traveling on thin
ice.
He passed the dusty, open trail to a scaly ground with little bits of grass, and he
kept on. We were electrified to hear him give vent
to a deep bugle-blast note of eagerness.
"By George, he's got it, boys!" exclaimed Jones, as he lifted the stubborn,
struggling hound off the trail. "I know that bay.
It means a lion passed here this morning.
And we'll get him up as sure as you're alive.
Come, Sounder. Now for the horses."
As we ran pell-mell into the little glade, where Jim sat mending some saddle trapping,
Frank rode up the trail with the horses. "Well, I heard Sounder," he said with his
genial smile.
"Somethin's comin' off, eh? You'll have to ooze round some to keep up
with that hound."
I saddled Satan with fingers that trembled in excitement, and pushed my little
Remington automatic into the rifle holster. "Boys, listen," said our leader.
"We're off now in the beginning of a hunt new to you.
Remember no shooting, no blood-letting, except in self-defense.
Keep as close to me as you can.
Listen for the dogs, and when you fall behind or separate, yell out the signal
cry. Don't forget this.
We're bound to lose each other.
Look out for the spikes and branches on the trees.
If the dogs split, whoever follows the one that trees the lion must wait there till
the rest come up.
Off now! Come, Sounder; Moze, you rascal, hyah!
Come, Don, come, Puppy, and take your medicine."
Except Moze, the hounds were all trembling and running eagerly to and fro.
When Sounder was loosed, he led them in a bee-line to the trail, with us cantering
after.
Sounder worked exactly as before, only he followed the lion tracks a little farther
up the ravine before he bayed.
He kept going faster and faster, occasionally letting out one deep, short
yelp. The other hounds did not give tongue, but
eager, excited, baffled, kept at his heels.
The ravine was long, and the wash at the bottom, up which the lion had proceeded,
turned and twisted round boulders large as houses, and led through dense growths of
some short, rough shrub.
Now and then the lion tracks showed plainly in the sand.
For five miles or more Sounder led us up the ravine, which began to contract and
grow steep.
The dry stream bed got to be full of thickets of branchless saplings, about the
poplar--tall, straight, size of a man's arm, and growing so close we had to press
them aside to let our horses through.
Presently Sounder slowed up and appeared at fault.
We found him puzzling over an open, grassy patch, and after nosing it for a little
while, he began skirting the edge.
"Cute dog!" declared Jones. "That Sounder will make a lion chaser.
Our game has gone up here somewhere." Sure enough, Sounder directly gave tongue
from the side of the ravine.
It was climb for us now. Broken shale, rocks of all dimensions,
pinyons down and pinyons up made ascending no easy problem.
We had to dismount and lead the horses, thus losing ground.
Jones forged ahead and reached the top of the ravine first.
When Wallace and I got up, breathing heavily, Jones and the hounds were out of
sight. But Sounder kept voicing his clear call,
giving us our direction.
Off we flew, over ground that was still rough, but enjoyable going compared to the
ravine slopes.
The ridge was sparsely covered with cedar and pinyon, through which, far ahead, we
pretty soon spied Jones. Wallace signaled, and our leader answered
twice.
We caught up with him on the brink of another ravine deeper and craggier than the
first, full of dead, gnarled pinyon and splintered rocks.
"This gulch is the largest of the three that head in at Oak Spring," said Jones.
"Boys, don't forget your direction. Always keep a feeling where camp is, always
sense it every time you turn.
The dogs have gone down. That lion is in here somewhere.
Maybe he lives down in the high cliffs near the spring and came up here last night for
a kill he's buried somewhere.
Lions never travel far. Hark!
Hark! There's Sounder and the rest of them!
They've got the scent; they've all got it!
Down, boys, down, and ride!" With that he crashed into the cedar in a
way that showed me how impervious he was to slashing branches, sharp as thorns, and
steep descent and peril.
Wallace's big sorrel plunged after him and the rolling stones cracked.
Suffering as I was by this time, with cramp in my legs, and torturing pain, I had to
choose between holding my horse in or falling off; so I chose the former and
accordingly got behind.
Dead cedar and pinyon trees lay everywhere, with their contorted limbs reaching out
like the arms of a devil-fish. Stones blocked every opening.
Making the bottom of the ravine after what seemed an interminable time, I found the
tracks of Jones and Wallace.
A long "Waa-hoo!" drew me on; then the mellow bay of a hound floated up the
ravine.
Satan made up time in the sandy stream bed, but kept me busily dodging overhanging
branches.
I became aware, after a succession of efforts to keep from being strung on
pinyons, that the sand before me was clean and trackless.
Hauling Satan up sharply, I waited irresolutely and listened.
Then from high up the ravine side wafted down a medley of yelps and barks.
"Waa-hoo, waa-hoo!" ringing down the slope, pealed against the cliff behind me, and
sent the wild echoes flying. Satan, of his own accord, headed up the
incline.
Surprised at this, I gave him free rein. How he did climb!
Not long did it take me to discover that he picked out easier going than I had.
Once I saw Jones crossing a ledge far above me, and I yelled our signal cry.
The answer returned clear and sharp; then its echo cracked under the hollow cliff,
and crossing and recrossing the ravine, it died at last far away, like the muffled
peal of a bell-buoy.
Again I heard the blended yelping of the hounds, and closer at hand.
I saw a long, low cliff above, and decided that the hounds were running at the base of
it.
Another chorus of yelps, quicker, wilder than the others, drew a yell from me.
Instinctively I knew the dogs had jumped game of some kind.
Satan knew it as well as I, for he quickened his pace and sent the stones
clattering behind him.
I gained the base of the yellow cliff, but found no tracks in the dust of ages that
had crumbled in its shadow, nor did I hear the dogs.
Considering how close they had seemed, this was strange.
I halted and listened. Silence reigned supreme.
The ragged cracks in the cliff walls could have harbored many a watching lion, and I
cast an apprehensive glance into their dark confines.
Then I turned my horse to get round the cliff and over the ridge.
When I again stopped, all I could hear was the thumping of my heart and the labored
panting of Satan.
I came to a break in the cliff, a steep place of weathered rock, and I put Satan to
it. He went up with a will.
From the narrow saddle of the ridge-crest I tried to take my bearings.
Below me slanted the green of pinyon, with the bleached treetops standing like spears,
and uprising yellow stones.
Fancying I heard a gunshot, I leaned a straining ear against the soft breeze.
The proof came presently in the unmistakable report of Jones's blunderbuss.
It was repeated almost instantly, giving reality to the direction, which was down
the slope of what I concluded must be the third ravine.
Wondering what was the meaning of the shots, and chagrined because I was out of
the race, but calmer in mind, I let Satan stand.
Hardly a moment elapsed before a sharp bark tingled in my ears.
It belonged to old Moze.
Soon I distinguished a rattling of stones and the sharp, metallic clicks of hoofs
striking rocks.
Then into a space below me loped a beautiful deer, so large that at first I
took it for an elk. Another sharp bark, nearer this time, told
the tale of Moze's dereliction.
In a few moments he came in sight, running with his tongue out and his head high.
"Hyah, you old gladiator! hyah! hyah!" I yelled and yelled again.
Moze passed over the saddle on the trail of the deer, and his short bark floated back
to remind me how far he was from a lion dog.
Then I divined the meaning of the shotgun reports.
The hounds had crossed a fresher trail than that of the lion, and our leader had
discovered it.
Despite a keen appreciation of Jones's task, I gave way to amusement, and repeated
Wallace's paradoxical formula: "Pet the lions and shoot the hounds."
So I headed down the ravine, looking for a blunt, bold crag, which I had descried from
camp.
I found it before long, and profiting by past failures to judge of distance, gave my
first impression a great stretch, and then decided that I was more than two miles from
Oak.
Long after two miles had been covered, and I had begun to associate Jim's biscuits
with a certain soft seat near a ruddy fire, I was apparently still the same distance
from my landmark crag.
Suddenly a slight noise brought me to a halt.
I listened intently. Only an indistinct rattling of small rocks
disturbed the impressive stillness.
It might have been the weathering that goes on constantly, and it might have been an
animal. I inclined to the former idea till I saw
Satan's ears go up.
Jones had told me to watch the ears of my horse, and short as had been my
acquaintance with Satan, I had learned that he always discovered things more quickly
than I.
So I waited patiently. From time to time a rattling roll of
pebbles, almost musical, caught my ear.
It came from the base of the wall of yellow cliff that barred the summit of all those
ridges. Satan threw up his head and nosed the
breeze.
The delicate, almost stealthy sounds, the action of my horse, the waiting drove my
heart to extra work.
The breeze quickened and fanned my cheek, and borne upon it came the faint and far-
away bay of a hound. It came again and again, each time nearer.
Then on a stronger puff of wind rang the clear, deep, mellow call that had given
Sounder his beautiful name. Never it seemed had I heard music so blood-
stirring.
Sounder was on the trail of something, and he had it headed my way.
Satan heard, shot up his long ears, and tried to go ahead; but I restrained and
soothed him into quiet.
Long moments I sat there, with the poignant consciousness of the wildness of the scene,
of the significant rattling of the stones and of the bell-tongued hound baying
incessantly, sending warm joy through my
veins, the absorption in sensations new, yielding only to the hunting instinct when
Satan snorted and quivered. Again the deep-toned bay rang into the
silence with its stirring thrill of life.
And a sharp rattling of stones just above brought another snort from Satan.
Across an open space in the pinyons a gray form flashed.
I leaped off Satan and knelt to get a better view under the trees.
I soon made out another deer passing along the base of the cliff.
Mounting again, I rode up to the cliff to wait for Sounder.
A long time I had to wait for the hound. It proved that the atmosphere was as
deceiving in regard to sound as to sight.
Finally Sounder came running along the wall.
I got off to intercept him.
The crazy fellow--he had never responded to my overtures of friendship--uttered short,
sharp yelps of delight, and actually leaped into my arms.
But I could not hold him.
He darted upon the trail again and paid no heed to my angry shouts.
With a resolve to overhaul him, I jumped on Satan and whirled after the hound.
The black stretched out with such a stride that I was at pains to keep my seat.
I dodged the jutting rocks and projecting snags; felt stinging branches in my face
and the rush of sweet, dry wind.
Under the crumbling walls, over slopes of weathered stone and droppings of shelving
rock, round protruding noses of cliff, over and under pinyons Satan thundered.
He came out on the top of the ridge, at the narrow back I had called a saddle.
Here I caught a glimpse of Sounder far below, going down into the ravine from
which I had ascended some time before.
I called to him, but I might as well have called to the wind.
Weary to the point of exhaustion, I once more turned Satan toward camp.
I lay forward on his neck and let him have his will.
Far down the ravine I awoke to strange sounds, and soon recognized the cracking of
iron-shod hoofs against stone; then voices.
Turning an abrupt bend in the sandy wash, I ran into Jones and Wallace.
"Fall in! Line up in the sad procession!" said Jones.
"Tige and the pup are faithful.
The rest of the dogs are somewhere between the Grand Canyon and the Utah desert."
I related my adventures, and tried to spare Moze and Sounder as much as conscience
would permit.
"Hard luck!" commented Jones.
"Just as the hounds jumped the cougar--Oh! they bounced him out of the rocks all
right--don't you remember, just under that cliff wall where you and Wallace came up to
me?
Well, just as they jumped him, they ran right into fresh deer tracks.
I saw one of the deer. Now that's too much for any hounds, except
those trained for lions.
I shot at Moze twice, but couldn't turn him.
He has to be hurt, they've all got to be hurt to make them understand."
Wallace told of a wild ride somewhere in Jones's wake, and of sundry knocks and
bruises he had sustained, of pieces of corduroy he had left decorating the cedars
and of a most humiliating event, where a
gaunt and bare pinyon snag had penetrated under his belt and lifted him, mad and
kicking, off his horse.
"These Western nags will hang you on a line every chance they get," declared Jones,
"and don't you overlook that. Well, there's the cabin.
We'd better stay here a few days or a week and break in the dogs and horses, for this
day's work was apple pie to what we'll get in the Siwash."
I groaned inwardly, and was remorselessly glad to see Wallace fall off his horse and
walk on one leg to the cabin.
When I got my saddle off Satan, had given him a drink and hobbled him, I crept into
the cabin and dropped like a log. I felt as if every bone in my body was
broken and my flesh was raw.
I got gleeful gratification from Wallace's complaints, and Jones's remark that he had
a stitch in his back. So ended the first chase after cougars.
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CHAPTER 5. OAK SPRING
Moze and Don and Sounder straggled into camp next morning, hungry, footsore and
scarred; and as they limped in, Jones met them with characteristic speech: "Well, you
decided to come in when you got hungry and tired?
Never thought of how you fooled me, did you?
Now, the first thing you get is a good licking."
He tied them in a little log pen near the cabin and whipped them soundly.
And the next few days, while Wallace and I rested, he took them out separately and
deliberately ran them over coyote and deer trails.
Sometimes we heard his stentorian yell as a forerunner to the blast from his old
shotgun. Then again we heard the shots unheralded by
the yell.
Wallace and I waxed warm under the collar over this peculiar method of training dogs,
and each of us made dire threats.
But in justice to their implacable trainer, the dogs never appeared to be hurt; never a
spot of blood flecked their glossy coats, nor did they ever come home limping.
Sounder grew wise, and Don gave up, but Moze appeared not to change.
"All hands ready to rustle," sang out Frank one morning.
"Old Baldy's got to be shod."
This brought us all, except Jones, out of the cabin, to see the object of Frank's
anxiety tied to a nearby oak. At first I failed to recognize Old Baldy.
Vanished was the slow, sleepy, apathetic manner that had characterized him; his ears
lay back on his head; fire flashed from his eyes.
When Frank threw down a kit-bag, which emitted a metallic clanking, Old Baldy sat
back on his haunches, planted his forefeet deep in the ground and plainly as a horse
could speak, said "No!"
"Sometimes he's bad, and sometimes worse," growled Frank.
"Shore he's plumb bad this mornin'," replied Jim.
Frank got the three of us to hold Baldy's head and pull him up, then he ventured to
lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened out his leg and sent
Frank sprawling into the dirt.
Twice again Frank patiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then he
lifted a forefoot.
Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit through Wallace's glove, yanked Jim off
his feet, and scared me so that I let go his forelock.
Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree.
There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantly held on to
Baldy's head, and a thrashing of scrub pinyon, where Baldy reached out vigorously
with his hind feet.
But for Jim, he would have escaped. "What's all the row?" called Jones from the
cabin. Then from the door, taking in the
situation, he yelled: "Hold on, Jim!
Pull down on the ornery old cayuse!" He leaped into action with a lasso in each
hand, one whirling round his head.
The slender rope straightened with a *** and whipped round Baldy's legs as he kicked
viciously. Jones pulled it tight, then fastened it
with nimble fingers to the tree.
"Let go! let go! Jim!" he yelled, whirling the other lasso.
The loop flashed and fell over Baldy's head and tightened round his neck.
Jones threw all the weight of his burly form on the lariat, and Baldy crashed to
the ground, rolled, tussled, screamed, and then lay on his back, kicking the air with
three free legs.
"Hold this," ordered Jones, giving the tight rope to Frank.
Whereupon he grabbed my lasso from the saddle, roped Baldy's two forefeet, and
pulled him down on his side.
This lasso he fastened to a scrub cedar. "He's chokin'!" said Frank.
"Likely he is," replied Jones shortly. "It'll do him good."
But with his big hands he drew the coil loose and slipped it down over Baldy's
nose, where he tightened it again. "Now, go ahead," he said, taking the rope
from Frank.
It had all been done in a twinkling. Baldy lay there groaning and helpless, and
when Frank once again took hold of the wicked leg, he was almost passive.
When the shoeing operation had been neatly and quickly attended to and Baldy released
from his uncomfortable position he struggled to his feet with heavy breaths,
shook himself, and looked at his master.
"How'd you like being hog-tied?" queried his conqueror, rubbing Baldy's nose.
"Now, after this you'll have some manners."
Old Baldy seemed to understand, for he looked sheepish, and lapsed once more into
his listless, lazy unconcern. "Where's Jim's old cayuse, the pack-horse?"
asked our leader.
"Lost. Couldn't find him this morning, an' had a
deuce of a time findin' the rest of the bunch.
Old Baldy was cute.
He hid in a bunch of pinyons an' stood quiet so his bell wouldn't ring.
I had to trail him." "Do the horses stray far when they are
hobbled?" inquired Wallace.
"If they keep jumpin' all night they can cover some territory.
We're now on the edge of the wild horse country, and our nags know this as well as
we.
They smell the mustangs, an' would break their necks to get away.
Satan and the sorrel were ten miles from camp when I found them this mornin'.
An' Jim's cayuse went farther, an' we never will get him.
He'll wear his hobbles out, then away with the wild horses.
Once with them, he'll never be caught again."
On the sixth day of our stay at Oak we had visitors, whom Frank introduced as the
Stewart brothers and Lawson, wild-horse wranglers.
They were still, dark men, whose facial expression seldom varied; tall and lithe
and wiry as the mustangs they rode.
The Stewarts were on their way to Kanab, Utah, to arrange for the sale of a drove of
horses they had captured and corraled in a narrow canyon back in the Siwash.
Lawson said he was at our service, and was promptly hired to look after our horses.
"Any cougar signs back in the breaks?" asked Jones.
"Wal, there's a cougar on every deer trail," replied the elder Stewart, "An' two
for every pinto in the breaks. Old Tom himself downed fifteen colts fer us
this spring."
"Fifteen colts! That's wholesale ***.
Why don't you kill the butcher?" "We've tried more'n onct.
It's a turrible busted up country, them brakes.
No man knows it, an' the cougars do.
Old Tom ranges all the ridges and brakes, even up on the slopes of Buckskin; but he
lives down there in them holes, an' Lord knows, no dog I ever seen could follow him.
We tracked him in the snow, an' had dogs after him, but none could stay with him,
except two as never *** back.
But we've nothin' agin Old Tom like Jeff Clarke, a hoss rustler, who has a string of
pintos corraled north of us. Clarke swears he ain't raised a colt in two
years."
"We'll put that old cougar up a tree," exclaimed Jones.
"If you kill him we'll make you all a present of a mustang, an' Clarke, he'll
give you two each," replied Stewart.
"We'd be gettin' rid of him cheap." "How many wild horses on the mountain now?"
"Hard to tell. Two or three thousand, mebbe.
There's almost no ketchin' them, an' they regrowin' all the time We ain't had no luck
this spring. The bunch in corral we got last year."
"Seen anythin' of the White Mustang?" inquired Frank.
"Ever get a rope near him?" "No nearer'n we hev fer six years back.
He can't be ketched.
We seen him an' his band of blacks a few days ago, headin' fer a water-hole down
where Nail Canyon runs into Kanab Canyon. He's so cunnin' he'll never water at any of
our trap corrals.
An' we believe he can go without water fer two weeks, unless mebbe he hes a secret
hole we've never trailed him to." "Would we have any chance to see this White
Mustang and his band?" questioned Jones.
"See him? Why, thet'd be easy.
Go down Snake Gulch, camp at Singin' Cliffs, go over into Nail Canyon, an' wait.
Then send some one slippin' down to the water-hole at Kanab Canyon, an' when the
band *** in to drink--which I reckon will be in a few days now--hev them drive the
mustangs up.
Only be sure to hev them get ahead of the White Mustang, so he'll hev only one way to
***, fer he sure is knowin'. He never makes a mistake.
Mebbe you'll get to see him *** by like a white streak.
Why, I've heerd thet mustang's hoofs ring like bells on the rocks a mile away.
His hoofs are harder'n any iron shoe as was ever made.
But even if you don't get to see him, Snake Gulch is worth seein'."
I learned later from Stewart that the White Mustang was a beautiful stallion of the
wildest strain of mustang blue blood.
He had roamed the long reaches between the Grand Canyon and Buckskin toward its
southern slope for years; he had been the most sought-for horse by all the wranglers,
and had become so shy and experienced that
nothing but a glimpse was ever obtained of him.
A singular fact was that he never attached any of his own species to his band, unless
they were coal black.
He had been known to fight and kill other stallions, but he kept out of the well-
wooded and watered country frequented by other bands, and ranged the brakes of the
Siwash as far as he could range.
The usual method, indeed the only successful way to capture wild horses, was
to build corrals round the waterholes. The wranglers lay out night after night
watching.
When the mustangs came to drink--which was always after dark--the gates would be
closed on them.
But the trick had never even been tried on the White Mustang, for the simple reason
that he never approached one of these traps.
"Boys," said Jones, "seeing we need breaking in, we'll give the White Mustang a
little run." This was most pleasurable news, for the
wild horses fascinated me.
Besides, I saw from the expression on our leader's face that an uncapturable mustang
was an object of interest for him.
Wallace and I had employed the last few warm sunny afternoons in riding up and down
the valley, below Oak, where there was a fine, level stretch.
Here I wore out my soreness of muscle, and gradually overcame my awkwardness in the
saddle.
Frank's remedy of maple sugar and red pepper had rid me of my cold, and with the
return of strength, and the coming of confidence, full, joyous appreciation of
wild environment and life made me unspeakably happy.
And I noticed that my companions were in like condition of mind, though self-
contained where I was exuberant.
Wallace galloped his sorrel and watched the crags; Jones talked more kindly to the
dogs; Jim baked biscuits indefatigably, and smoked in contented silence; Frank said
always: "We'll ooze along easy like, for we've all the time there is."
Which sentiment, whether from reiterated suggestion, or increasing confidence in the
practical cowboy, or charm of its free import, gradually won us all.
"Boys," said Jones, as we sat round the campfire, "I see you're getting in shape.
Well, I've worn off the wire edge myself. And I have the hounds coming fine.
They mind me now, but they're mystified.
For the life of them they can't understand what I mean.
I don't blame them. Wait till, by good luck, we get a cougar in
a tree.
When Sounder and Don see that, we've lion dogs, boys! we've lion dogs!
But Moze is a stubborn brute.
In all my years of animal experience, I've never discovered any other way to make
animals obey than by instilling fear and respect into their hearts.
I've been fond of buffalo, horses and dogs, but sentiment never ruled me.
When animals must obey, they must--that's all, and no mawkishness!
But I never trusted a buffalo in my life.
If I had I wouldn't be here to-night. You all know how many keepers of tame wild
animals get killed. I could tell you dozens of tragedies.
And I've often thought, since I got back from New York, of that woman I saw with her
troop of African lions. I dream about those lions, and see them
leaping over her head.
What a grand sight that was! But the public is fooled.
I read somewhere that she trained those lions by love.
I don't believe it.
I saw her use a whip and a steel spear. Moreover, I saw many things that escaped
most observers--how she entered the cage, how she maneuvered among them, how she kept
a compelling gaze on them!
It was an admirable, a great piece of work. Maybe she loves those huge yellow brutes,
but her life was in danger every moment while she was in that cage, and she knew
it.
Some day, one of her pets likely the King of Beasts she pets the most will rise up
and kill her. That is as certain as death."
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