Watched by Wild Animals Part 17

But sometimes there are less peaceful scenes in dog town. A dog town without a coyote would be like Hades without Mephistopheles.

The prairie dog likes to keep close to his hole, or to the hole of a neighbour into which he can duck and escape the surprise raids of the coyote.

The coyote stalks patiently, hiding until a dog comes close or is too far from his hole to outrun the coyote to it. Coyotes hunt in pairs or fours and often while one, two, or three of them are holding the attention of the dogs the other coyote makes a sudden dash. Sometimes they take sheer delight in stirring up things in congested corners of dog town.

As I stood watching them, screened by the cottonwood, two coyotes crossed the corner of dog town and set it all agog. While these coyotes made their way leisurely through dog town the dogs sat on their crater-like mounds and uttered rapid-fire protests, ready to drop into safety in case of a rush by the coyotes. Suddenly two old dogs wheeled and yapped at highest rattling speed. While the first pair of coyotes was attracting attention a second pair appeared. The old dogs violently denounced the second pair for this surprise. But the coyote is ever doing the unexpected.

On the outskirts of Cactus Center numerous pairs of coyotes had enlarged prairie dog holes for a den. Pairs of prairie owls occupied other deserted dog holes, rabbits possessed many, and two were taken by skunk families.

The black-footed ferret is the terrible enemy of prairie dogs. This small, agile, powerful fellow boldly invades the dens and slays the dog, rabbit or other inmates. The dogs do not appear even to attempt to resist him. But apparently he does not often call.

The mixed population of dog towns is not at peace. Lizards, rabbits, dogs, owls, snakes congest in the same block, but the block is red in tooth and claw. In a few cases I noticed these warring species all used the same subway entrance, but below the surface they surely lived in separate apartments.

No, the rattlesnake, prairie dog, and owl do not lie down together, unless a flood or other calamity throws them together.

One time I was approaching a town limits where yelpings and yappings filled the sky like a wind. From the summit of the ridge treeless, houseless, fenceless plains extended in leagues of level distances to every horizon. Before me there must have been one hundred thousand dogs swarming like the inhabitants of a disturbed ant hill. Beside a lone and grizzled old cottonwood I explored localities of dog town through my gla.s.ses.

Cloud shadows were sliding in silence across the green plains in which the golden banner bloomed like broken yellow coral. A cottontail hopped slowly from his hole to a clump of Spanish bayonet; buzzing gnats and bees hummed by. Gra.s.shoppers all jumping toward the town limits suggested that they were abandoning the congested town.

Suddenly there were two disturbances: Near me an old dog was set upon by a protesting, noisy mob of dogs, while off on my left an invading rattlesnake threw a locality into a frenzy of excitement.

Apparently dogs aim to bury alive all enemies and invaders. The frightened rattler was pursued by a screeching, noisy dog mob, and driven into a dog hole. While two or three dogs kept watch of this, other dogs were looking into or wildly watching other dog holes which the snake might reach through underground tunnels.

Out of one of these holes he glided and at him went the yapping, snapping dog mob. Down into another hole he ducked. Evidently the dogs realized that this hole was detached, and the dogs fell over each other with efforts to claw earth into it. Presently the hole was filled to the collar and the snake buried. On this filled hole the dogs danced with weird and uncanny glee.

The other dog mob evidently rough handled the outcast dog but I missed most of this in watching the snake mob. It, too, was a vehement, noisy mob. The wise old dog refused to go into a hole but was literally jammed in, with earth clawed in after him until the hole was filled, then another barbaric, triumphal war dance upon the buried one.

Rattlesnakes eat young dogs and sometimes boldly enter the dens for them during the mother's absence.

But what was the offense of the old dog which had been attacked by his fellows? Was it crime or misdemeanour? Had he been misunderstood, or was it a case of circ.u.mstantial evidence? In other dog towns I have seen the populace putting one of their number to death, and in this town, about two years later, I saw two dogs entombed by the same wild mob. In this case even the sentinels forgot the coyote and joined the mob. Were the executed ones murderers, robbers, or had they denied some ancient and unworthy superst.i.tion and like reformers paid the penalty of being in advance of popular opinion?

One afternoon Cactus Center had a storm. Black clouds suddenly covered the sky and a storm swept the prairie. A barrage of large hailstones led, striking the prairie violently at an angle so sharp that stones bounded and rolled for long distances. One which struck me in the side felt like a thrown baseball. There was a thumping, deep roar while they dashed meteorically down.

Dog town watched the hail but was deserted before the first raindrop fell. The downpour lasted for several minutes with a plentiful accompaniment of cras.h.i.+ng of lightning.

A deep sheet of water swept down from the prairie beyond the town limits to the west, where the rainfall was a cloudburst. The sheet of water overspread the town and temporarily filled hundreds of the inhabited dens.

Out came the sputtering, protesting dogs. Numbers, perhaps hundreds, were drowned. Across the soaked prairie I hurried, catching the effects and the movements. I pulled several gurgling dogs from their water-filled holes, each of them making nip-and-tuck efforts to climb out.

The following morning a pair of coyotes slipped up the invading gully trench into town. Occasionally these crafty fellows peeked over the bank. Then they crept farther in, and one peeped from a screen of sagebrush on the bank. Suddenly both dashed out and each killed two dogs. The entire village howled and yapped itself hoa.r.s.e while the invaders feasted within the town limits. Leisurely the coyote at last moved on through the town turning aside to sniff at the drowned dogs.

One spring I called early in Cactus Center and found blackbirds, robins, and other northbound birds among the visitors. Among these was a flock of golden plover, one of the greatest of bird travellers.

These birds were resting and feeding. They probably were on their way from the far South American plains, to their nesting ground on the treeless gra.s.sland around the Arctic Circle.

During an early summer visit to this dog town it was decorated with wild flowers--sand lilies, golden banner, creamy vetch, and p.r.i.c.kly poppy. I wandered about in the evening twilight looking at the evening star flowers while a coyote chorus sounded strangely over the wide, listening prairie. Near me was a dog hole; its owner climbed up to peep out; in a minute or so he retired without a bark or a yap.

The magnificent visible distances of the plains seem to create a desire in its dwellers to see everything that is going on around. And also a desire for sociability, for herds. Buffalo crowded in enormous herds, the antelope were sometimes in flocks of thousands, and the little yellow-brown dogs crowded and congested.

The old cottonwood tree which stood on one edge of Cactus Center dog-town limits was the observed of all observers. Through the years it must have seen ten thousand tragedies, comedies, courts.h.i.+ps, plays, and games of these happy little people of the plains.

No dog hole was within fifty feet of the old cottonwood tree. The tree probably offered the wily coyote concealment behind which he sometimes approached to raid; and from its top hawks often dived for young dogs, for mice, and also for gra.s.shoppers. I suppose owls often used it for a philosophizing stand, and also for a point of vantage from which to hoot derision on the low-down, numerous populace.

But the old tree was not wholly allied with evil, and was a nesting site for orioles, wrens, and bluebirds. From its summit through the summer days the meadow lark with breast of black and gold would send his silvery notes sweetly ringing across the wide, wide prairie.

CHAPTER XVII

ECHO MOUNTAIN GRIZZLY

A grizzly bear's tracks that I came upon had the right forefoot print missing.

The trail of this three-legged bear was followed by the tracks of two cubs--strangely like those of barefooted children--clearly impressed in the snow. These tracks were only a few hours old.

Hoping to learn where this mother grizzly and her cubs came from I back-tracked through the November snows in a dense forest for about twenty miles. This trail came out of a lake-dotted wooded basin lying high up between Berthoud Pa.s.s and James Peak on the western slope of the Continental Divide. The three-legged mother grizzly was leaving the basin, evidently bound for a definite, far-off place. Her tracks did not wander; there had been no waste of energy. A crippled bear with two cub children and the ever-possible hunter in mind has enough to make her serious and definite.

But the care-free cubs, judging from their tracks, had raced and romped, true to their play nature and to youth. The mother's tracks showed that she had stopped once and looked back. Possibly she had commanded the cubs to come along, but it is more than likely that she had turned to watch them. Though ever scouting for their safety and perhaps even now seeking a new home, yet she probably enjoyed their romping and with satisfaction had awaited their coming.

I had gone along reading the story these bears had written in the snow without ever thinking to look back. The following morning I realized that this grizzly may have been following me closely.

I spent that night with a prospector from whom I learned many things of interest concerning this three-legged grizzly. Truly, she was a character. She had lived a career in the Berthoud Pa.s.s Basin.

Only a few weeks before, so the prospector told me, a trapper had captured one of her cubs and nearly got the grizzly herself. A grizzly bear is one of the most curious of animals. In old bears this constant curiosity is supplemented and almost always safeguarded by extreme caution. But during cubhood this innate curiosity often proves his misfortune before he has learned to be wary of man.

The trapper, in moving camp, had set a number of small traps in the camp rubbish. He felt certain that if a bear with cubs should be prowling near, the cubs on scenting the place would rush up to investigate before they could be restrained by the mother. There would be little to rouse her suspicion, she doubtless having smelled over many abandoned camp sites, and she, too, might be trapped.

One of this grizzly's three cubs was caught. She and the two other cubs were waiting with the trapped one when the trapper came on his rounds, but at his appearance they made off into the woods. The trapper set a large steel trap and left the trapped cub as a decoy.

The mother bear promptly returned to rescue the trapped cub. In her excited efforts she plunged her right forefoot into the large trap.

Many grizzlies appear to be right-handed, and her best hand was thus caught. An old grizzly is seldom trapped. But this bear, finding herself caught, did the unusual. She gnawed at the imprisoned foot to get away, and finally, at the reappearance of the trapper, tore herself free, leaving a foot behind her in the trap. She fled on three feet, driving the two cubs before her.

Then, though crippled, she returned that same night to the scene where the cub was trapped. Not finding it she followed the scent to the miner's cabin, in which the cub was chained. Here she charged one of the dogs so furiously that he literally leaped through the window into the cabin. The other dogs set up a great to-do and the three-legged bear made off into the woods. As soon as her leg healed she apparently left Berthoud Pa.s.s Basin on the trail which I had discovered, and set off like a wide-awake, courageous pioneer to find a new home in a more desirable region.

A miner came to the prospector's cabin before I had left the next morning and told the story of her attempted rescue of the cub during the preceding night. She had left her two cubs in a safe place and evidently returned to rescue her third trapped cub. She went to the miner's cabin where the captured cub had been kept. The dogs gave alarm at her presence and the miner going out fired two shots. She escaped untouched and straightway started back to the other cubs.

This so interested me that I decided to trail her from the basin.

After following her fresh trail for about three miles this united with the trail she had made in leaving the basin--the trail which I had back-tracked the day before. Travelling about ten miles, beyond where I had first seen the trail the day before, I came to a cave-like place high up on the side of Echo Mountain. Here she had left the cubs the night before. Tracks showed that she was then in the cave with them. I did not disturb them, but I did revisit their territory again and again.

In this cave they hibernated that winter. It was a roomy, natural cave formed by enormous rock fragments that had tumbled together at the base of a time-worn cliff. The den which the grizzly and cubs used the first winter was not used again, nor were their later hibernating places discovered.

The grizzly's new domain was about thirty miles to the northward of her former wilderness home. It was a wild, secluded region between Echo Mountain and Long's Peak.

Grizzlies often explore afar and become acquainted with the unclaimed territory round them, and it is possible that this mother grizzly knew the character of the new home territory before emigrating. There was an abundance of food in the old home territory, but it is possible that she had lost former cubs there and it is certain that she had been shot at a number of times. However, the change may have been simply due to that wanderl.u.s.t which sometimes takes possession of the ever-adventurous grizzly. In the eventful years which followed she showed tireless energy and skill. Though badly crippled, she still maintained those qualities which mean success for the survival of the species--the ability to make a living, the postponing of death, and the production of offspring.

The Echo Mountain grizzly had individuality and an adventurous career.

This heroic grizzly mother might be called an emigrant or an exile, or even a refugee. Though crippled, she dared to become a pioneer. All that men learned of her eventful life was a story of struggles and triumphs--the material for the biography of a character.