IX
IX
The hounds enjoyed a well-earned rest the next day. R.C. and I, behind Haught's back, fed them all they could eat. The old hunter had a fixed idea that dogs should be kept lean and hungry so they would run bears the better. Perhaps he was right. Only I could not withstand Old Dan and Old Tom as they limped to me, begging and whining. Yet not even sore feet and hunger could rob these grand old hounds of their dignity. For an hour that morning I sat beside them in a sunny spot.
In the afternoon Copple took me on a last deer hunt for that trip. We rode down the canyon a mile, and climbed out on the west slope. Haught had described this country as a "wolf" to travel. He used that word to designate anything particularly tough. We found the ridge covered with a dense forest, in places a matted jungle of pine saplings. These thickets were impenetrable. Heavy snows had bent the pines so that they grew at an angle. We found it necessary to skirt these thickets, and at that, sometimes had to cut our way through with our little axes. Hunting was scarcely possible under such conditions. Still we did not see any deer tracks.
Eventually we crossed this ridge, or at least the jungle part of it, and got lower down into hollows and swales full of aspens. Copple recognized country he had hunted before. We made our way up a long shallow hollow that ended in an open where lay the remains of an old log cabin, and corrals. From under a bluff bubbled a clear beautiful spring. Copple looked all around slowly, with strange expression, and at last, dismounting he knelt to drink of the spring.
"Ah-h-good!" he exclaimed, after a deep draught. "Get down an' drink. Snow water an' it never goes dry."
Indeed it was so cold it made my teeth ache, and so pure and sweet that I drank until I could hold no more. Deer and cat and bear tracks showed along the margin of clean sand. Lower down were fresh turkey tracks. A lonely spring in the woods visited by wild game! This place was singularly picturesque and beautiful. The purest drinking water is found in wild forest or on mountains. Men, cities, civilization contaminate waters that are not isolated.
Copple told me a man named Mitchell had lived in that lonely place thirty years ago. Copple, as a boy, had worked for him—had ridden wild bronchos and roped wild steers in that open, many and many a day. Something of unconscious pathos showed in Copple's eyes as he gazed around, and in his voice. We all hear the echoing footsteps of the past years! In those days Copple said the ranch was overrun by wild game, and wild horses too.
We rode on westward, to come out at length on the rim of a magnificent canyon. It was the widest and deepest and wildest gorge I had come across in this country. So deep that only a faint roar of running water reached our ears! The slopes were too steep for man, let alone a horse; and the huge cliffs and giant spruces gave it a singularly rugged appearance. We saw deer on the opposite slope. Copple led along the edge, searching for traces of an old trail where Mitchell used to drive cattle across. We did not find a trail, but we found a place where Copple said one used to be. I could see no signs of it. Here leading his horse with one hand and wielding his little axe with the other Copple started down. For my part I found going down remarkably easy. The only trouble I had was to hold on, so I would not go down like a flash. Stockings, my horse, had in a few weeks become a splendid traveler in the forest. He had learned to restrain his spirit and use his intelligence. Wherever I led he would go and that without any fear. There is something fine in constant association with an intelligent horse under such circumstances. In bad places Stockings braced his forefeet, sat on his haunches, and slid, sometimes making me jump to get out of his way. We found the canyon bed a narrow notch, darkly rich and green, full of the melody of wild birds and murmuring brook, with huge rocks all stained gold and russet, and grass as high as our knees. Frost still lingered in the dark, cool, shady retreat; and where the sun struck a narrow strip of the gorge there was warm, sweet, dry breath of the forest. But for the most part, down here all was damp, dank, cool shadow where sunshine never reached, and where the smells were of dead leaves and wet moss and ferns and black rich earth.
Impossible we found it to ascend the other slope where we had seen the deer, so we had to ride up the canyon, a matter greatly to my liking. Copple thought I was hunting with him, but really, except to follow him, I did not think of the meaning of his slow wary advance. Only a few more days had I to roam the pine-scented forest. That ride up this deep gorge was rich in sensation. Sun and sky and breeze and forest encompassed me. The wilderness was all about me; and I regretted when the canyon lost its splendid ruggedness, and became like the others I had traversed, and at last grew to be a shallow grassy ravine, with patches of gray aspens along the tiny brook.
As we climbed out once more, this time into an open, beautiful pine forest, with little patches of green thicket, I seemed to have been drugged by the fragrance and the color and the beauty of the wild. For when Copple called low and sharp: "Hist!" I stared uncomprehendingly at him.
"Deer!" he whispered, pointing. "Get off an' smoke 'em up!"
Something shot through me—a different kind of thrill. Ahead in the open I saw gray, graceful, wild forms trotting away. Like a flash I slid off my horse and jerked out my rifle. I ran forward a few steps. The deer had halted—were gazing at us with heads up and ears high. What a wild beautiful picture! As I raised my rifle they seemed to move and vanish in the green. The hunter in me, roused at last, anathematized my miserable luck. I ran ahead another few steps, to be halted by Copple. "Buck!" he called, sharply. "Hurry!" Then, farther on in the open, out in the sunlight, I saw a noble stag, moving, trotting toward us. Keen, hard, fierce in my intensity, I aligned the sights upon his breast and fired. Straight forward and high he bounded, to fall with a heavy thud.
Copple's horse, startled by my shot, began to snort and plunge. "Good shot," yelled Copple. "He's our meat."
What possessed me I knew not, but I ran ahead of Copple. My eyes searched avidly the bush-dotted ground for my quarry. The rifle felt hot in my tight grip. All inside me was a tumult—eager, keen, wild excitement. The great pines, the green aisles leading away into the woods, the shadows under the thickets, the pine-pitch tang of the air, the loneliness of that lonely forest—all these seemed familiar, sweet, beautiful, things mine alone, things seen and smelled and felt before, things ... Then suddenly I ran right upon my deer, lying motionless, dead I thought. He appeared fairly large, with three-point antlers. I heard Copple's horse thudding the soft earth behind me, and I yelled: "I got him, Ben." That was a moment of exultation.
It ended suddenly. Something halted me. My buck, now scarcely fifteen feet from me, began to shake and struggle. He raised his head, uttering a choking gasp. I heard the flutter of blood in his throat. He raised himself on his front feet and lifted his head high, higher, until his nose pointed skyward and his antlers lay back upon his shoulders. Then a strong convulsion shook him. I heard the shuddering wrestle of his whole body. I heard the gurgle and flow of blood. Saw the smoke of fresh blood and smelled it! I saw a small red spot in his gray breast where my bullet had struck. I saw a great bloody gaping hole on his rump where the.30 Gov't expanding bullet had come out. From end to end that bullet had torn! Yet he was not dead. Straining to rise again!
I saw, felt all this in one flashing instant. And as swiftly my spirit changed. What I might have done I never knew, but most likely I would have shot him through the brain. Only a sudden action of the stag paralyzed all my force. He lowered his head. He saw me. And dying, with lungs and heart and bowels shot to shreds, he edged his stiff front feet toward me, he dragged his afterquarters, he slid, he flopped, he skittered convulsively at me. No fear in the black, distended, wild eyes!
Only hate, only terrible, wild, unquenchable spirit to live long enough to kill me! I saw it, He meant to kill me. How magnificent, how horrible this wild courage! My eyes seemed riveted upon him, as he came closer, closer. He gasped. Blood sputtered from his throat. But more terrible than agony, than imminent death was the spirit of this wild beast to slay its enemy. Inch by inch he skidded closer to me, with a convulsive quivering awful to see. No veil of the past, no scale of civilization between beast and man then! Enemies as old as the earth! I had shot him to eat, and he would kill me before he died. For me the moment was monstrous. No hunter was I then, but a man stricken by the spirit and mystery of life, by the agony and terror of death, by the awful strange sense that this stag would kill me.
But Copple galloped up, and drawing his revolver, he shot the deer through the head. It fell in a heap.
"Don't ever go close to a crippled deer," admonished my comrade, as he leaped off his horse. "I saw a fellow once that was near killed by a buck he'd taken for dead.... Strange the way this buck half stood up. Reckon he meant bad, but he was all in. You hit him plumb center."
"Yes, Ben, it was—strange," I replied, soberly. I caught Copple's keen dark glance studying me. "When you open him up—see what my bullet did, will you?"
"All right. Help me hang him to a snag here," returned Copple, as he untied his lasso.
When we got the deer strung up I went off into the woods, and sat on a log, and contended with a queer sort of sickness until it passed away. But it left a state of mind that I knew would require me to probe into myself, and try to understand once and for all time this bloodthirsy tendency of man to kill. It would force me to try to analyze the psychology of hunting. Upon my return to Copple I found he had the buck ready to load upon his horse. His hands were bright red. He was wiping his hunting-knife on a bunch of green pine needles.
"That 150-grain soft-nose bullet is some executioner," he declared, forcefully. "Your bullet mushroomed just after it went into his breast. It tore his lung to pieces, cut open his heart, made a mess of kidneys an' paunch, an' broke his spine.... An' look at this hole where it came out!"
I helped Copple heave the load on his saddle and tie it securely, and I got my hands red at the job, but I did not really look at the buck again. And upon our way back to camp I rode in the lead all the way. We reached camp before sunset, where I had to endure the felicitations of R.C. and my comrades, all of whom were delighted that at last I had gotten a buck. Takahashi smiled all over his broad brown face. "My goodnish! I awful glad! Nice fat deer!"
That night I lay awake a long time, and though aware of the moan of the wind in the pines and the tinkle of the brook, and the melancholy hoot of an owl, and later the still, sad, black silence of the midnight hours, I really had no pleasure in them. My mind was active.
Boys are inherently cruel. The games they play, at least those they invent, instinctively partake of some element of brute nature. They chase, they capture, they imprison, they torture, and they kill. No secret rendezvous of a boy's pirate gang ever failed to be soaked with imaginary blood! And what group of boys have not played at being pirates? The Indian games are worse—scalping, with red-hot cinders thrown upon the bleeding head, and the terrible running of the gauntlet, and burning at the stake.
What youngster has not made wooden knives to spill the blood of his pretended enemies? Little girls play with dolls, and with toy houses, and all the implements of making a home; but sweet and dear as the little angels are they love a boy's game, and if they can through some lucky accident participate in one it is to scream and shudder and fight, indeed like the females of the species. No break here between these little mothers of doll-babies and the bloody mothers of the French Revolution, or of dusky, naked, barbarian children of a primitive day!
Boys love the chase. And that chase depends upon environment. For want of wild game they will harry a poor miserable tom-cat with sticks and stones. I belonged once to a gang of young ruffians who chased the neighbor's chickens, killed them with clubs, and cooked them in tin cans, over a hidden fire. Boys love nothing so much as to chase a squirrel or a frightened little chipmunk back and forth along a rail fence. They brandish their sticks, run and yell, dart to and fro, like young Indians. They rob bird's nests, steal the eggs, pierce them and blow them. They capture the young birds, and are not above killing the parents that fly frantically to the rescue. I knew of boys who ground captured birds to death on a grindstone. Who has not seen a boy fling stones at a helpless hop-toad?
As boys grow older to the age of reading they select, or at least love best, those stories of bloodshed and violence. Stevenson wrote that boys read for some element of the brute instinct in them. His two wonderful booksTreasure IslandandKidnappedare full of fight and the killing of men.Robinson Crusoeis the only great boy's book I ever read that did not owe its charm to fighting. But still did not old Crusoe fight to live on his lonely island? And this wonderful tale is full of hunting, and has at the end the battle with cannibals.
When lads grow up they become hunters, almost without exception, at least in spirit if not in deed. Early days and environment decide whether or not a man becomes a hunter. In all my life I have met only two grown men who did not care to go prowling and hunting in the woods with a gun. An exception proves a great deal, but all the same most men, whether they have a chance or not, love to hunt. Hunters, therefore, there are of many degrees. Hunters of the lowly cotton-tail and the woodland squirrel; hunters of quail, woodcock, and grouse; hunters of wild ducks and geese; hunters of foxes—the red-coated English and the homespun clad American; hunters—which is a kinder name for trappers—of beaver, marten, otter, mink, all the furred animals; hunters of deer, cat, wolf, bear, antelope, elk, moose, caribou; hunters of the barren lands where the ice is king and where there are polar bears, white foxes, musk-ox, walrus. Hunters of different animals of different countries. African hunters for lion, rhinoceros, elephant, buffalo, eland, hartebeest, giraffe, and a hundred species made known to all the world by such classical sportsmen as Selous, Roosevelt, Stewart Edward White.
But they are all hunters and their game is the deadly chase in the open or the wild. There are hunters who hate action, who hate to walk and climb and toil and wear themselves out to get a shot. Such men are hunters still, but still not men! There are hunters who have game driven up to them. I heard a story told by an officer whom I believe. In the early days of the war he found himself somewhere on the border between Austria and Germany. He was invited to a hunt by personages of high degree. They motored to a sequestered palace in the forest, and next day motored to a shooting-lodge. At daylight he was called, and taken to the edge of a forest and stationed in an open glade. His stand was an upholstered divan placed high in the forks of a tree. His guide told him that pretty soon a doe would come out of the forest. But he was not to shoot it. In fifteen minutes a lame buck would come out. But he was not to shoot that one either. In ten more minutes another buck would come out, and this third deer he was to kill. My informant told me this was all very seriously meant. The gun given him was large enough in calibre to kill an elephant. He walked up the steps to the comfortable divan and settled himself to await events. The doe trotted out exactly on schedule time. So did the lame buck. They came from the woods and were not frightened. The third deer, a large buck, was a few moments late—three minutes to be exact. According to instructions the American killed this buck—a matter that took some nerve he said, for the buck walked out like a cow. That night a big supper was given in the guest's honor. He had to eat certain parts of the buck he had killed, and drink flagons of wine. This kind of hunting must be peculiarly German or Austrian, and illustrates the peculiar hunting ways of men.
A celebrated bear hunter and guide of the northwest told me that for twenty years he had been taking eastern ministers—preachers of the gospel—on hunting trips into the wild. He assured me that of all the bloody murderers—waders in gore, as he expressed it—these teachers of the gospel were the worst. The moment they got out into the wild they wanted to kill, kill, kill. He averred their natures seemed utterly to change.
In reading the books of hunters and in listening to their talks at Camp-fire Club dinners I have always been struck with the expression of what these hunters felt, what they thought they got out of hunting. The change from city to the open wilderness; the difference between noise, tumult, dirt, foul air, and the silence, the quiet, the cleanness and purity; the sweet breath of God's country as so many called it; the beauty of forest and mountain; the wildness of ridge and valley; the wonder of wild animals in their native haunts; and the zest, the joy, the excitement, the magnificent thrill of the stalk and the chase. No one of them ever dwelt upon the kill! It was mentioned, as a result, an end, a consummation. How strange that hunters believed these were the attractions of the chase! They felt them, to be sure, in some degree, or they would not remember them. But they never realized that these sensations were only incidental to hunting.
Men take long rides, hundreds and thousands of miles, to hunt. They endure hardships, live in camps with absolute joy. They stalk through the forest, climb the craggy peaks, labor as giants in the building of the pyramids, all with a tight clutch on a deadly rifle. They are keen, intent, strained, quiveringly eager all with a tight clutch on a deadly rifle. If hunters think while on a stalk—which matter I doubt considerably—they think about the lay of the land, or the aspect of it, of the habits and possibilities of their quarry, of their labor and chances, and particularly of the vague unrealized sense of comfort, pleasure, satisfaction in the moment. Tight muscles, alert eyes, stealthy steps, stalk and run and crawl and climb, breathlessness, a hot close-pressed chest, thrill on thrill, and sheer bursting riot of nerve and vein—these are the ordinary sensations and actions of a hunter. No ascent too lofty—no descent too perilous for him then, if he is a man as well as a hunter!
Take the Brazilian hunter of the jungle. He is solitary. He is sufficient to himself. He is a survival of the fittest. The number of his tribe are few. Nature sees to that. But he must eat, and therefore he hunts. He spears fish and he kills birds and beasts with a blow-gun. He hunts to live. But the manner of his action, though more skilful, is the same as any hunter's. Likewise his sensations, perhaps more vivid because hunting for him is a matter of life or death. Take the Gaucho of Patagonia—the silent lonely Indian hunter of the Pampas. He hunts with abola, a thin thong or string at each end of which is a heavy leather-covered ball of stone or iron. This the Gaucho hurls through the air at the neck or legs of his quarry. The balls fly round—the thong binds tight—it is a deadly weapon. The user of it rides and stalks and sees and throws and feels the same as any other hunter. Time and place, weapon and game have little to do with any differences in hunters.
Up to this 1919 hunting trip in the wilds I had always marveled at the fact that naturalists and biologists hate sportsmen. Not hunters like the Yellow Knife Indians, or the snake-eating Bushmen of Australia, or the Terra-del-Fuegians, or even the native country rabbit-hunters—but the so-called sportsmen. Naturalists and biologists have simply learned the truth why men hunt, and that when it is done in the name of sport, or for sensation, it is a degenerate business. Stevenson wrote beautiful words about "the hunter home from the hill," but so far as I can find out he never killed anything himself. He was concerned with the romance of the thought, with alliteration, and the singular charm of the truth—sunset and the end of the day, the hunter's plod down the hill to the cottage, to the home where wife and children awaited him. Indeed it is a beautiful truth, and not altogether in the past, for there are still farmers and pioneers.
Hunting is a savage primordial instinct inherited from our ancestors. It goes back through all the ages of man, and farther still—to the age when man was not man, but hairy ape, or some other beast from which we are descended. To kill is in the very marrow of our bones. If man after he developed into human state had taken to vegetable diet—which he never did take—he yet would have inherited the flesh-eating instincts of his animal forebears. And no instinct is ever wholly eradicated. But man was a meat eater. By brute strength, by sagacity, by endurance he killed in order to get the means of subsistence. If he did not kill he starved. And it is a matter of record, even down to modern times, that man has existed by cannibalism.
The cave-man stalked from his hole under a cliff, boldly forth with his huge club or stone mace. Perhaps he stole his neighbor's woman, but if so he had more reason to hunt than before—he had to feed her as well as himself. This cave-man, savagely descended, savagely surrounded, must have had to hunt all the daylight hours and surely had to fight to kill his food, or to keep it after he killed it. Long, long ages was the being called cave-man in developing; more long ages he lived on the earth, in that dim dark mystic past; and just as long were his descendants growing into another and higher type of barbarian. But they and their children and grandchildren, and all their successive, innumerable, and varying descendants had to hunt meat and eat meat to live.
The brain of barbarian man was small, as shown by the size and shape of his skull, but there is no reason to believe its construction and use were any different from the use of other organs—the eye to see with—the ear to hear with—the palate to taste with. Whatever the brain of primitive man was it held at birth unlimited and innumerable instincts like those of its progenitors; and round and smooth in babyhood, as it was, it surely gathered its sensations, one after another in separate and habitual channels, until when manhood arrived it had its convolutions, its folds and wrinkles. And if instinct and tendency were born in the brain how truly must they be a part of bone, tissue, blood.
We cannot escape our inheritance. Civilization is merely a veneer, a thin-skinned polish over the savage and crude nature. Fear, anger, lust, the three great primal instincts are restrained, but they live powerfully in the breast of man. Self preservation is the first law of human life, and is included in fear. Fear of death is the first instinct. Then if for thousands, perhaps millions of years, man had to hunt because of his fear of death, had to kill meat to survive—consider the ineradicable and permanent nature of the instinct.
The secret now of the instinctive joy and thrill and wildness of the chase lies clear.
Stealing through the forest or along the mountain slope, eyes roving, ears sensitive to all vibrations of the air, nose as keen as that of a hound, hands tight on a deadly rifle, we unconsciously go back. We go back to the primitive, to the savage state of man. Therein lies the joy. How sweet, vague, unreal those sensations of strange familiarity with wild places we know we never saw before! But a million years before that hour a hairy ancestor of ours felt the same way in the same kind of a place, and in us that instinct survives. That is the secret of the wonderful strange charm of wild places, of the barren rocks of the desert wilderness, of the great-walled lonely canyons. Something now in our blood, in our bones once danced in men who lived then in similar places. And lived by hunting!
The child is father to the man. In the light of this instinct how easy to understand his boyish cruelty. He is true to nature. Unlimited and infinite in his imagination when he hunts—whether with his toys or with real weapons. If he flings a stone and kills a toad he is instinctively killing meat for his home in the cave. How little difference between the lad and the man! For a man the most poignantly exciting, the most thrillingly wild is the chase when he is weaponless, when he runs and kills his quarry with a club. Here we have the essence of the matter. The hunter is proudest of his achievement in which he has not had the help of deadly weapons. Unconsciously he will brag and glow over that conquest wherein lay greatest peril to him—when he had nothing but his naked hands. What a hot gush of blood bursts over him! He goes back to his barbarian state when a man only felt. The savage lived in his sensations. He saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, but seldom thought. The earthy, the elemental of eye and ear and skin surrounded him. When the man goes into the wilderness to change into a hunter that surviving kinship with the savage revives in his being, and all unconsciously dominates him with driving passion. Passion it is because for long he has been restrained in the public haunts of men. His real nature has been hidden. The hunting of game inhibits his thoughts. He feels only. He forgets himself. He sees the track, he hears the stealthy step, he smells the wild scent; and his blood dances with the dance of the ages. Then he is a killer. Then the ages roll back. Then he is brother to the savage. Then all unconsciously he lives the chase, the fight, the death-dealing moment as they were lived by all his ancestors down through the misty past.
What then should be the attitude of a thoughtful man toward this liberation of an instinct—that is to say, toward the game or sport or habit of hunting to kill? Not easily could I decide this for myself. After all life is a battle. Eternally we are compelled to fight. If we do not fight, if we do not keep our bodies strong, supple, healthy, soon we succumb to some germ or other that gets a hold in our blood or lungs and fights for its life, its species, until it kills us. Fight therefore is absolutely necessary to long life, and Alas! eventually that fight must be lost. The savages, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks all worshipped physical prowess in man. Manhood, strength—the symbols of fight! To be physically strong and well a man must work hard, with frequent intervals of change of exercise, and he must eat meat. I am not a great meat eater, but I doubt if I could do much physical labor or any brain work on a vegetable diet. Therefore I hold it fair and manly to go once a year to the wilderness to hunt. Let that hunt be clean hard toil, as hard as I can stand! Perhaps nature created the lower animals for the use of man. If I had been the creator I think I would have made it possible for the so-called higher animal man to live on air.
Somewhere I read a strange remarkable story about monkeys and priests in the jungle of India. An old order of priests had from time out of mind sent two of their comrades into the jungle to live with the monkeys, to tame them, feed them, study them, love them. And these priests told an incredible story, yet one that haunted with its possibilities of truth. After a long term of years in which one certain priest had lived with the monkeys and they had learned truly he meant them no harm and only loved them, at rare moments an old monkey would come to him and weep and weep in the most terrible and tragic manner. This monkey wanted to tell something, but could not speak. But the priest knew that the monkey was trying to tell him how once the monkey people had been human like him. Only they had retrograded in the strange scale of evolution. And the terrible weeping was for loss—loss of physical stature, of speech, perhaps of soul.
What a profound and stunning idea! Does evolution work backward? Could nature in its relentless inscrutable design for the unattainable perfection have developed man only to start him backward toward the dim ages whence he sprang? Who knows! But every man can love wild animals. Every man can study and try to understand the intelligence of his horse, the loyalty of his dog. And every hunter can hunt less with his instinct, and more with an understanding of his needs, and a consideration for the beasts only the creator knows.
X
X
The last day of everything always comes. Time, like the tide, waits for no man. Anticipation is beautiful, but it is best and happiest to enjoy the present. Live while we may!
On this last day of my hunt we were up almost before it was light enough to see. The morning star shone radiant in the dark gray sky. All the other stars seemed dimmed by its glory. Silent as a grave was the forest. I started a fire, chopped wood so vigorously that I awakened Nielsen who came forth like a burly cave-man; and I washed hands and face in the icy cold brook. By the time breakfast was over the gold of the rising sun was tipping the highest pines on the ridges.
We started on foot, leaving the horses hobbled near camp. All the hounds appeared fit. Even Old Dan trotted along friskily. Pyle, a neighbor of Haught's, had come to take a hunt with us, bringing two dogs with him. For this last day I had formulated a plan. Edd and one of the boys were to take the hounds down on the east side of the great ridge that made the eastern wall of Dude Canyon. R.C. was to climb out on this ridge, and take his position at the most advantageous point. We had already chased half a dozen bears over this saddle, one of which was the big frosty-coated grizzly that Edd and Nielsen had shot at. The rest of us hurried to the head of Dude Canyon. Copple and I were to go down to the first promontories under the rim. The others were to await developments and go where Haught thought best to send them.
Copple and I started down over and around the crags, going carefully until we reached the open slope under the rim-rock. It seemed this morning that I was fresh, eager, agile like a goat on my feet. In my consciousness of this I boasted to Copple that I would dislodge fewer stones and so make less noise than he. The canyon sloped at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and we slid, stepped, jumped and ran down without starting an avalanche.
When we descended to the first bare cape of projecting rock the hour was the earliest in which I had been down under the rim. All the canyon and the great green gulf below were unusually fresh and beautiful. I heard the lonely call of strange birds and the low murmur of running water. An eagle soared in the sunlight. High above us to the east rose the magnificent slope of Dude Canyon. I gazed up to the black and green and silver ascent, up to the gold-tipped craggy crest where R.C. had his stand. I knew he could see me, but I could not see him. Afterward he told me that my red cap shone clearly out of green and gray, so he had no difficulty in keeping track of my whereabouts. The thickets of aspens and oaks seemed now to stand on end. How dark in the shade and steely and cold they looked! That giant ridge still obstructed the sun, and all on this side of it, under its frowning crest and slope was dark and fresh and cool in shadow. The ravines were choked black with spruce trees. Here along this gray shady slant of wall, in niches and cracks, and under ledges, and on benches, were the beds of the bears. Even as I gazed momentarily I expected to see a bear. It looked two hundred yards across the canyon from where we stood, but Copple declared it was a thousand. On our other side capes and benches and groves were bright in sunshine, clear across the rough breaks to the west wall of Dude Canyon. I saw a flock of wild pigeons below. Way out and beyond rolled the floor of the basin, green and vast, like a ridged sea of pines, to the bold black Mazatzals so hauntingly beckoning from the distance. Copple spoke now and then, but I wanted to be silent. How wild and wonderful this place in the early morning!
But I had not long to meditate and revel in beauty and wildness. Far down across the mouth of the canyon, at the extreme southern end of that vast oak thicket, the hounds gave tongue. Old Dan first! In the still cool air how his great wolf-bay rang out the wildness of the time and place! Already Edd and Pyle had rounded the end of the east ridge and were coming up along the slope of Dude Canyon.
"Hounds workin' round," declared Copple. "Now I'll tell you what. Last night a bear was feedin' along that end of the thicket. The hounds are millin' round tryin' to straighten out his trail.... It's a dead cinch they'll jump a bear an' we'll see him."
"Look everywhere!" I cautioned Copple, and my eyes roved and strained over all that vast slope. Suddenly I espied the flash of something black, far down the thicket, and tried to show it to my comrade.
"Let's go around an' down to that lower point of rock. It's a better stand than this. Closer to the thicket an' commands those.... By Golly, I see what you see! That's a bear, slippin' down. Stay with me now!"
Staying with Copple was a matter of utter disregard of clothes, limbs, life. He plunged off that bare ledge, slid flat on his back, and wormed feet first under manzanita, and gaining open slope got up to run and jump into another thicket. By staying with him I saw that I would have a way opened through the brush, and something to fall upon if I fell. He rimmed the edge of a deep gorge that made me dizzy. He leaped cracks. He let himself down over a ledge by holding to bushes. He found steps to descend little bluffs, and he flew across the open slides of weathered rock. I was afraid this short cut to the lower projecting cape of rock would end suddenly on some impassable break or cliff, but though the travel grew rough we still kept on. I wore only boots, trousers, and shirt, and cap, with cartridge belt strapped tight around me. It was a wonder I was not stripped. Some of my rags went to decorate the wake we left down that succession of ledges. But we made it, with me at least, bruised and ragged, dusty and choked, and absolutely breathless. My body burned as with fire. Hot sweat ran in streams down my chest. At last we reached the bare flat projecting cape of rock, and indeed it afforded an exceedingly favorable outlook. I had to sink down on the rock; I could not talk until I got my breath; but I used my eyes to every advantage. Neither Copple nor I could locate the black moving object we had seen from above. We were much closer to the hounds, though they still were baying a tangled cross trail. Fortunate it was for me that I was given these few moments to rest from my tremendous exertions.
My eyes searched the leaf-covered slope so brown and sear, and the shaggy thickets, and tried to pierce the black tangle of spruce patches. All at once, magically it seemed, my gaze held to a dark shadow, a bit of dense shade, under a large spruce tree. Something moved. Then a big bear rose right out of his bed of leaves, majestically as if disturbed, and turned his head back toward the direction of the baying hounds. Next he walked out. He stopped. I was quivering with eagerness to tell Copple, but I waited. Then the bear walked behind a tree and peeped out, only his head showing. After a moment again he walked out.
"Ben, aren't you ever going to see him?" I cried at last.
"What?" ejaculated Copple, in surprise.
"Bear!" and I pointed. "This side of dead spruce."
"No!... Reckon you see a stump.... By Golly! I see him. He's a dandy. Reddish color.... Doc, he's one of them mean old cinnamons."
"Watch! What will he do?—Ben, he hears the hounds."
How singularly thrilling to see him, how slowly he walked, how devoid of fear, how stately!
"Sure he hears them. See him look back. The son-of-a-gun! I'll bet he's given us the bear-laugh more than once."
"Ben, how far away is he?" I asked.
"Oh, that's eight hundred yards," declared Copple. "A long shot. Let's wait. He may work down closer. But most likely he'll run up-hill."
"If he climbs he'll go right to R.C.'s stand," I said, gazing upward.
"Sure will. There's no other saddle."
Then I decided that I would not shoot at him unless he started down. My excitement was difficult to control. I found it impossible to attend to my sensations, to think about what I was feeling. But the moment was full of suspense. The bear went into a small clump of spruces and stayed there a little while. Tantalizing moments! The hounds were hot upon his trail, still working to and fro in the oak thicket. I judged scarcely a mile separated them from the bear. Again he disappeared behind a little bush. Remembering that five pairs of sharp eyes could see me from the points above I stood up and waved my red cap. I waved it wildly as a man waves a red flag in moments of danger. Afterward R.C. said he saw me plainly and understood my action. Again the bear had showed, this time on an open slide, where he had halted. He was looking across the canyon while I waved my cap.
"Ben, could he see us so far?" I asked.
"By Golly, I'll bet he does see us. You get to smokin' him up. An' if you hit him don't be nervous if he starts for us. Cinnamons are bad customers. Lay out five extra shells an' make up your mind to kill him."
I dropped upon one knee. The bear started down, coming towards us over an open slide. "Aim a little coarse an' follow him," said Copple. I did so, and tightening all my muscles into a ball, holding my breath, I fired. The bear gave a savage kick backwards. He jerked back to bite at his haunch. A growl, low, angry, vicious followed the echoes of my rifle. Then it seemed he pointed his head toward us and began to run down the slope, looking our way all the time.
"By Golly!" yelled Copple. "You stung him one an' he's comin'!... Now you've got to shoot some. He can roll down-hill an' run up-hill like a jack rabbit. Take your time—wait for open shots—an' make sure!"
Copple's advice brought home to me what could happen even with the advantage on my side. Also it brought the cold tight prickle to my skin, the shudder that was not a thrill, the pressure of blood running too swiftly, I did not feel myself shake, but the rifle was unsteady. I rested an elbow on my knee, yet still I had difficulty in keeping the sight on him. I could get it on him, but could not keep it there. Again he came out into the open, at the head of a yellow slide, that reached to a thicket below. I must not hurry, yet I had to hurry. After all he had not so far to come and most of the distance was under cover. Through my mind flashed Haught's story of a cinnamon that kept coming with ten bullets in him.
"Doc, he's paddin' along!" warned Copple. "Smoke some of them shells!"
Straining every nerve I aimed as before, only a little in advance, held tight and pulled at the same instant. The bear doubled up in a ball and began to roll down the slide. He scattered the leaves. Then into the thicket he crashed, knocking the oaks, and cracking the brush.
"Some shot!" yelled Copple. "He's your bear!"
But my bear continued to crash through the brush. I shot again and yet again, missing both times. Apparently he was coming, faster now—and then he showed dark almost at the foot of our slope. Trees were thick there. I could not see there, and I could not look for bear and reload at the same moment. My fingers were not very nimble.
"Don't shoot," shouted Copple. "He's your bear. I never make any mistakes when I see game hit."
"But I see him coming!"
"Where?... By Golly! that's another bear. He's black. Yours is red.... Look sharp. Next time he shows smoke him!"
I saw a flash of black across an open space—I heard a scattering of gravel. But I had no chance to shoot. Then both of us heard a bear running in thick leaves.
"He's gone down the canyon," said Copple. "Now look for your bear."
"Listen Ben. The hounds are coming fast. There's Rock.—There's Sue."
"I see them. Old Dan—what do you think of that old dog?... There!—your red bear's still comin' ... He's bad hurt."
Though Copple tried hard to show me where, and I strained my eyes, I could not see the bear. I could not locate the threshing of brush. I knew it seemed close enough for me to be glad I was not down in that thicket. How the hounds made the welkin ring! Rock was in the lead. Sue was next. And Old Dan must have found the speed of his best days. Strange he did not bay all down that slope! When Rock and Sue headed the bear then I saw him. He sat up on his haunches ready to fight, but they did not attack him. Instead they began to yelp wildly. I dared not shoot again for fear of hitting one of them. Old Dan just beat the rest of the pack to the bear. Up pealed a yelping chorus. I had never heard Old Dan bay a bear at close range. With deep, hoarse, quick, wild roars he dominated that medley. A box canyon took up the bays, cracking them back in echo from wall to wall.
From the saddle of the great ridge above pealed down R.C.'s: "Waahoo!"
I saw him silhouetted dark against the sky line. He waved and I answered. Then he disappeared.
Nielsen bellowed from the craggy cape above and behind us. From down the canyon Edd sent up his piercing: "Ki Yi!" Then Takahashi appeared opposite to us, like a goat on a promontory. How his: "Banzai!" rang above the baying of the hounds!
"We'd better hurry down an' across," said Copple. "Reckon the hounds will jump that bear or some one else will get there first. We got to skedaddle!"
As before we fell into a manzanita thicket and had to crawl. Then we came out upon the rim of a box canyon where the echoes made such a din. It was too steep to descend. We had to head it, and Copple took chances. Loose boulders tripped me and stout bushes saved me. We knocked streams of rock and gravel down into this gorge, sending up a roar as of falling water. But we got around. A steep slope lay below, all pine needles and leaves. From this point I saw Edd on the opposite slope.
"I stopped one bear," I yelled. "Hurry. Look out for the dogs!"
Then, imitating Copple, I sat down and slid as on a toboggan for some thirty thrilling yards. Some of my anatomy and more of my rags I left behind me. But it was too exciting then to think of hurts. I managed to protect at least my rifle. Copple was charging into the thicket below. I followed him into the dark gorge, where huge boulders lay, and a swift brook ran, and leaves two feet deep carpeted the shady canyon bed. It was gloomy down into the lower part. I saw where bear had turned over the leaves making a dark track.
"The hounds have quit," called Copple suddenly. "I told you he was your bear."
We yelled. Somebody above us answered. Then we climbed up the opposite slope, through a dense thicket, crossing a fresh bear track, a running track, and soon came into an open rocky slide where my bear lay surrounded by the hounds, with Old Dan on guard. The bear was red in color, with silky fur, a long keen head, and fine limbs, and of goodly size.
"Cinnamon," declared Copple, and turning him over he pointed to a white spot on his breast. "Fine bear. About four hundred pounds. Maybe not so heavy. But he'll take some packin' up to the rim!"
Then I became aware of the other men. Takahashi had arrived on the scene first, finding the bear dead. Edd came next, and after him Pyle.
I sat down for a much needed rest. Copple interested himself in examining the bear, finding that my first shot had hit him in the flank, and my second had gone through the middle of his body. Next Copple amused himself by taking pictures of bear and hounds. Old Dan came to me and lay beside me, and looked as if to say: "Well, we got him!"
Yells from both sides of the canyon were answered by Edd. R.C. was rolling the rocks on his side at a great rate. But Nielsen on the other side beat him to us. The Norwegian crashed the brush, sent the avalanches roaring, and eventually reached us, all dirty, ragged, bloody, with fire in his eye. He had come all the way from the rim in short order. What a performance that must have been! He said he thought he might be needed. R.C. guided by Edd's yells, came cracking the brush down to us. Pale he was and wet with sweat, and there were black brush marks across his face. His eyes were keen and sharp. He had started down for the same reason as Nielsen's. But he had to descend a slope so steep that he had to hold on to keep from sliding down. And he had jumped a big bear out of a bed of leaves. The bed was still warm. R.C. said he had smelled bear, and that his toboggan slide down that slope, with bears all around for all he knew, had started the cold sweat on him.
Presently George Haught joined us, having come down the bed of the canyon.
"We knew you'd got a bear," said George. "Father heard the first two bullets hit meat. An' I heard him rollin' down the slope."
"Well!" exclaimed R.C. "That's what made those first two shots sound so strange to me. Different from the last two. Sounded like soft dead pats! And it was lead hitting flesh. I heard it half a mile away!"
This matter of the sound of bullets hitting flesh and being heard at a great distance seemed to me the most remarkable feature of our hunt. Later I asked Haught. He said he heard my first two bullets strike and believed from the peculiar sound that I had my bear. And his stand was fully a mile away. But the morning was unusually still and sound carried far.
The men hung my bear from the forks of a maple. Then they decided to give us time to climb up to our stands before putting the hounds on the other fresh trail.
Nielsen, R.C., and I started to climb back up to the points. Only plenty of time made it possible to scale those rugged bluffs. Nielsen distanced us, and eventually we became separated. The sun grew warm. The bees hummed. After a while we heard the baying of the hounds. They were working westward under the bases of the bluffs. We rimmed the heads of several gorges, climbed and crossed the west ridge of Dude Canyon, and lost the hounds somewhere as we traveled.
R.C. did not seem to mind this misfortune any more than I. We were content. Resting a while we chose the most accessible ridge and started the long climb to the rim. Westward under us opened a great noble canyon full of forests, thicketed slopes, cliffs and caves and crags. Next time we rested we again heard the hounds, far away at first, but gradually drawing closer. In half an hour they appeared right under us again. Their baying, however, grew desultory, and lacked the stirring note. Finally we heard Edd calling and whistling to them. After that for a while all was still. Then pealed up the clear tuneful melody of Edd's horn, calling off the chase for that day and season.
"All over," said R.C. "Are you glad?"
"For Old Dan's sake and Tom's and the bears—yes," I replied.
"Me, too! But I'd never get enough of this country."
We proceeded on our ascent over and up the broken masses of rock, climbing slowly and easily, making frequent and long rests. We liked to linger in the sun on the warm piny mossy benches. Every shady cedar or juniper wooed us to tarry a moment. Old bear tracks and fresh deer tracks held the same interest, though our hunt was over. Above us the gray broken mass of rim towered and loomed, more formidable as we neared it. Sometimes we talked a little, but mostly we were silent.