Pony Tracks Part 12

BEAR-CHASING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Mr. Montague Stevens is an Englishman who for the most part attends to the rounding-up of his cattle, which are scattered over the northwestern quarter of New Mexico; but he does not let that interfere with the time which all Englishmen set duly apart to be devoted to sport. His door-yard is some hundreds of miles of mountain wilderness and desolate mesa--a more gorgeous preserve than any king ever dreamed of possessing for his pleasure--with its plains dotted with antelope, and its mountains filled with cougar, deer, bear, and wild turkeys.

The white race has given up the contest with nature in those parts, and it has reverted to the bear, the Navajo, and Mr.

Stevens--land-grants, corrals, cabins, brands, and all else.

General Miles was conducting a military observation of the country, which is bound to be the scene of any war which the Apaches or Navajos may make; and after a very long day's march, during which we had found but one water, and that was a pool of rain-water, stirred into mud and full of alkali, where we had to let our horses into the muddy stuff at the ends of our lariats, we had at last found a little rivulet and some green gra.s.s. The coffee-pot bubbled and the frying-pan hissed, while I smoked and listened to a big escort-wagon driver, who was repairing his lash, and saying, softly, "Been drivin' a b.l.o.o.d.y lot of burros for thirty years, and don't know enough to keep a whip out of a wheel; guess I'll go to jack-punchin', 'nen I kin use a dry club."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATERING HORSES]

Far down the valley a little cloud of dust gleamed up against the gray of the mountains, and presently the tireless stride of a pony shone darkly in its luminous midst. Nearer and nearer it grew--the flying tail, the regular beating of the hoofs, the swaying figure of the rider, and the left sleeve of the horseman's coat flapping purposelessly about. He crossed the brook with a splash, trotted, and, with a jerk, pulled up in our midst. Mr. Stevens is a tall, thin young man, very much bronzed, and with the set, serious face of an Englishman. He wore corduroy clothes, and let himself out of his saddle with one hand, which he also presented in greeting, the other having been sacrificed to his own shot-gun on some previous occasion.

Mr. Stevens brought with him an enthusiasm for bear which speedily enveloped the senses of our party, and even crowded out from the mind of General Miles the n.o.bler game which he had affected for thirty years.

The steady cultivation of one subject for some days is bound to develop a great deal of information, and it is with difficulty that I refrain from herein setting down facts which can doubtless be found in any good encyclopaedia of natural history; but the men in the mountains never depart from the consideration of that and one other subject, which is brands, and have reached some strange conclusions--the strangest being that the true Rocky Mountain grizzly is only seen once in a man's lifetime, and that the biggest one they ever heard of leaves his tracks in this district, and costs Mr. Stevens, roughly estimating, about $416 a year to support, since that about covers the cattle he kills.

At break of day the officers, cavalrymen, escort-wagons, and pack-train toiled up the Canon Largo to Mr. Stevens's camp, which was reached in good time, and consisted of a regular ranchman's grub-wagon, a great many more dogs of more varieties than I could possibly count, a big Texan, who was cook, and a professional bear-hunter by the name of Cooper, who had recently departed from his wonted game for a larger kind, with the result that, after the final deal, a companion had pa.s.sed a .45 through Mr. Cooper's face and filled it with powder, and brought him nigh unto death, so that even now Mr. Cooper's head was swathed in bandages, and his mind piled with regrets that he had on at the time an overcoat, which prevented him from drawing his gun with his usual precision. Our introduction to the outfit was ushered in by a most magnificent free-for-all dog-fight; and when we had carefully torn the snarling, yelling, biting ma.s.s apart by the hind-legs and staked them out to surrounding trees, we had time to watch Mr. Cooper draw diagrams of bear-paws in the dust with a stick. These tracks he had just discovered up the Canon Largo, and he averred that the bear was a grizzly, and weighed 1800 pounds, and that he had been there two years, and that all the boys had hunted him, but that he was a sad old rascal.

After lunch we pulled on up the canon and camped. The tents were pitched and the cooks busy, when I noticed three cowboys down the stream and across the canon, who were alternately leading their horses and stooping down in earnest consultation over some tracks on the ground. We walked over to them. There were Mr. Cooper, whose only visible eye rolled ominously, and Dan, the S. U. foreman, with another puncher.

"He's usin' here," said Cooper. "That's his track, and there's his work," pointing up the hill-side, where lay the body of a five-year-old cow. We drew near her, and there was the tale of a mighty struggle, all written out more eloquently than pen can do.

There were the deep furrows of the first grapple at the top; there was the broad trail down the steep hill for fifty yards, with the stones turned over, and the dust marked with horn and hoof and claw; and there was the stump which had broken the roll down hill. The cow had her neck broken and turned under her body; her shoulder was torn from the body, her leg broken, and her side eaten into; and there were Bruin's big telltale footprints, rivalling in size a Gladstone bag, as he had made his way down to the stream to quench his thirst and continue up the canon. The cow was yet warm--not two hours dead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DO YOU THINK THIS PONY IS GOING TO BUCK?"]

"We must pull out of here; he will come back to-night," said Cooper.

And we all turned to with a will and struck the tents, while the cooks threw their tins, bags, and boxes into the wagons, whereat we moved off down wind for three miles, up a spur of the canon, where we again camped. We stood around the fires and allowed Mr. Cooper to fill our minds with hope. "He'll sh.o.r.e come back; he's usin' here; an' cow outfits--why, he don't consider a cow outfit nothin'. He's been right on top of cow outfits since he's been in these parts, and thet two years gone now, when he begun to work this yer range, and do the work you see done yonder. In the mornin' we'll strike his trail, and if we can git to him you'll sh.o.r.e see a bar-fight."

We turned in, and during the night I was awakened twice--once by a most terrific baying of all the dogs, who would not be quieted, and later by a fine rain beating in my face. The night was dark, and we were very much afraid the rain would kill the scent. We were up long before daylight, and drank our coffee and ate our meat, and as soon as "we could see a dog a hundred yards," which is the bear-hunter's receipt, we moved off down the creek. We found that the cow had been turned over twice, but not eaten--evidently Bruin had his suspicions.

The dogs cut his trail again and again. He had run within sight of our camp, had wandered across the valley hither and yon, but the faithful old hounds would not "go away." Dan sat on his pony and blew his old cow's horn, and yelled: "Hooick! hooick! get down on him, Rocks; hooick! hooick!" But Rocks could not get down on him, and then we knew that the rain had killed the scent. We circled a half-mile out, but the dogs were still; and then we followed up the Canon Largo for miles, and into the big mountain, through juniper thickets and over malpais, up and down the most terrible places, for we knew that the bear's bed-ground is always up in the most rugged peaks, where the rimrock overhangs in serried battlements, tier on tier. But no bear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAN AND ROCKS]

Rocks, the forward hound, grew weary of hunting for things which were not, and retired to the rear to pay court to a lady friend; and Dan had to rope Rocks, and with some irritation he started his pony, and Rocks kept the pace by dint of legging it, and by the help of a tow from 900 pounds of horse-flesh. Poor Rocks! He understood his business; but in consequence of not being able to explain to the men what fools they were, he suffered.

The hot mid-day sun of New Mexico soon kills the scent, and we were forced to give over for the day. A cavalry sergeant shot three deer, but we, in our superior purpose, had learned to despise deer. Later I made a good two-hundred-yard centre on an antelope, and though I had not been fortunate enough in years to get an antelope, the whole sensation was flat in view of this new ambition.

On the following morning we went again to our dead cow, but nothing except the jackals had been at the bear's prey, for the wily old fellow had evidently scented our camp, and concluded that we were not a cow outfit, whereat he had discreetly "pulled his freight."

We sat on our horses in a circle, and raised our voices. In consideration of the short time at our disposal, we concluded that we could be satisfied with taking 1800 pounds of bear on the instalment plan. The first instalment was a very big piece of meat, but was--I am going to confess--presented to us in the nature of a gift; but the whole thing was so curious I will go into it.

We hunted for two days without success, unless I include deer and antelope; but during the time I saw two things which interested me.

The first was a revelation of the perfect understanding which a mountain cow-pony has of the manner in which to negotiate the difficulties of the country which is his home.

Dan, the foreman, was the huntsman. He was a shrewd-eyed, little, square-built man, always very much preoccupied with the matter in hand. He wore a sombrero modelled into much character by weather and time, a corduroy coat, and those enormous New-Mexican "chaps," and he sounded a cow-horn for his dogs, and alternately yelped in a most amusing way. So odd was this yelp that it caught the soldiers, and around their camp-fire at night you could hear the mimicking shouts of "Oh, Rocks! eh-h-h! hooick! get down on him, Rocks; tohoot! tohoot!"

We were sitting about on our horses in a little _sienneca_, while Dan was walking about, leading his pony and looking after his dogs.

When very near me he found it necessary to cross an _arroyo_ which was about five feet deep and with perfectly perpendicular banks.

Without hesitation he jumped down into it, and with a light bound his pony followed. At the opposite side Dan put up his arms on the bank and clawed his way up, and, still paying no attention to his pony, he continued on. Without faltering in the least, the little horse put his fore-feet on the bank, clawed at it once, twice, jumped, scratched, clawed, and, for all the world like a cat getting into the fork of a tree, he was on the bank and following Dan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DANGEROUS PLACE]

Later in the day, when going to our camp, we followed one of Dan's short-cuts through the mountains, and the cowboys on their mountain ponies rode over a place which made the breath come short to the officers and men behind; not that they could not cross themselves, being on foot, but that the cavalry horses could they had their solemn doubts, and no one but an evil brute desires to lead a game animal where he may lose his life. Not being a geologist, I will have to say it was a blue clay in process of rock formation, and in wet times held a mountain torrent. The slope was quite seventy degrees. The approach was loose dirt and malpais, which ran off down the gulch in small avalanches under our feet. While crossing, the horses literally stood on their toes to claw out a footing. A slip would have sent them, belly up, down the toboggan-slide, with a drop into an unknown depth at the end. I had often heard the cavalry axiom "that a horse can go anywhere a man can if the man will not use his hands," and a little recruit murmured it to rea.s.sure himself. I pa.s.sed, with the loss of a quarter of the skin on my left hand, and later asked a quaint old veteran of four enlistments if he thought it was a bad place, and he said, "It's lizards, not ha.r.s.es, what ought to go thar."

Riding over the rough mountains all day sows poppyseeds in a man's head, and when the big medical officer opens your tent-flaps in the morning, and fills the walls with his roars to "Get up! it's four o'clock," it is with groans that you obey. You also forego was.h.i.+ng, because you are nearly frozen stiff, and you go out and stand around the fire with your companions, who are all cheerfully miserable as they s.h.i.+ver and chaff each other. It seems we do not live this life on a cold, calculating plane of existence, but on different lines, the variation of which is the chief delight of the discriminating, and I must record a distinct pleasure in elbowing fellows around a camp-fire when it is dark and cold and wet, and when you know that they are oftener in bed than out of it at such hours. You drink your quart of coffee, eat your slice of venison, and then regard your horse with some trepidation, since he is all of a tremble, has a hump on his back, and is evidently of a mind to "pitch."

The eastern sky grows pale, and the irrepressible Dan begins to "honk"

on his horn, and the cavalcade moves off through the grease-wood, which sticks up thickly from the ground like millions of Omaha war-bonnets.

The advance consists of six or eight big blood-hounds, which range out in front, with Dan and Mr. Cooper to blow the horn, look out for "bear sign," and to swear gently but firmly when the younger dogs take recent deer trails under consideration. Three hundred yards behind come Scotch stag-hounds, a big yellow mastiff, fox-terriers, and one or two dogs which would not cla.s.sify in a bench-show, and over these Mr. Stevens holds a guiding hand, while in a disordered band come General Miles, his son, three army officers, myself, and seven orderlies of the Second Cavalry. All this made a picture, but, like all Western canvases, too big for a frame. The sun broke in a golden flash over the hills, and streaked the plain with gold and gray greens. The spirit of the thing is not hunting but the chase of the bear, taking one's mind back to the buffalo, or the n.o.bles of the Middle Ages, who made their "image of war" with bigger game than red foxes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "GONE AWAY"]

Leaving the plain we wound up a dry creek, and noted that the small oaks had been bitten and clawed down by bear to get at the acorns. The hounds gave tongue, but could not get away until we had come to a small glade in the forest, where they grew wildly excited. Mr. Cooper here showed us a very large bear track, and also a smaller one, with those of two cubs by its side. With a wild burst the dogs went away up a canon, the blood went into our heads, and our heels into the horses, and a desperate scramble began. It is the sensation we have travelled so long to feel. Dan and Cooper sailed off through the brush and over the stones like two old crows, with their coat-tails flapping like wings. We follow at a gallop in single file up the narrow, dry watercourse. The creek ends, and we take to the steep hill-sides, while the loose stones rattle from under the flying hoofs. The rains have cut deep furrows on their way to the bed of the canon, and your horse scratches and scrambles for a foothold. A low, gnarled branch bangs you across the face, and then your breath fairly stops as you see a horse go into the air and disappear over a big log, fallen down a hill of seventy degrees' slope. The "take-off and landing" is yielding dust, but the blood in your head puts the spur in your horse, and over you go. If you miss, it is a 200-foot roll, with a 1200-pound horse on top of you. But the pace soon tells, and you see nothing but good honest climbing ahead of you. The trail of the yelling dogs goes straight up, amid scraggly cedar and juniper, with loose malpais underfoot. We arrive at the top only to see Cooper and Dan disappear over a precipice after the dogs, but here we stop. Bears always seek the very highest peaks, and it is better to be there before them if possible. A grizzly can run downhill quicker than a horse, and all hunters try to get above them, since if they are big and fat they climb slowly; besides, the mountain-tops are more or less flat and devoid of underbrush, which makes good running for a horse. We scatter out along the cordon of the range. The bag doing on the rimrock of the mountain-tops, where the bear tries to throw off the dogs, makes it quite impossible to follow them at speed, so that you must separate and take your chances of heading the chase.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TIMBER-TOPPING IN THE ROCKIES]

I selected Captain Mickler--the immaculate, the polo-player, the epitome of staff form, the trappiest trooper in the Dandy Fifth--and, together with two orderlies, we started. Mickler was mounted on a cow-pony, which measured one chain three links from muzzle to coupling. Mickler had on English riding-togs--this is not saying that the pony could not run, or that Mickler was not humorous. But it was no new experience for him, this pulling a pony and coaxing him to attempt breakneck experiments, for he told me casually that he had led barefooted cavalrymen over these hills in pursuit of Apaches at a date in history when I was carefully conjugating Latin verbs.

We were making our way down a bad formation when we heard the dogs, and presently three shots. A strayed cavalry orderly had, much to his disturbance of mind, beheld a big silver-tip bearing down on him, jaws skinned, ears back, and red-eyed, and he had promptly removed himself to a proper distance, where he dismounted. The bear and dogs were much exhausted, but the dogs swarmed around the bear, thus preventing a shot. But Bruin stopped at intervals to fight the dogs, and the soldier fired, but without effect. If men do not come up with the dogs in order to encourage them, many will draw off, since the work of chasing and fighting a bear without water for hours is very trying.

Only hounds can be depended on, as the tongues of other dogs thicken, and they soon droop when long without water. Some of the dogs may have followed the bear with cubs, but if they did we never heard of them. The one now running was an enormous silver-tip, and could not "tree." The shots of the trooper diverted the bear, which now took off down a deep canon next to the one we were in, and presently we heard him no more. After an hour's weary travelling down the winding way we came out on the plain, and found a small cow outfit belonging to Mr.

Stevens, and under a tree lay our dead silver-tip, while a half-dozen punchers squatted about it. It appeared that three of them had been working up in the foot-hills when they heard the dogs, and shortly discovered the bear. Having no guns, and being on fairly good ground, they coiled their _riatas_ and prepared to do battle.

The silver-tip was badly blown, and the three dogs which had stayed with him were so tired that they sat up at a respectful distance and panted and lolled. The first rope went over Bruin's head and one paw.

There lies the danger. But instantly number two flew straight to the mark, and the ponies surged, while Bruin stretched out with a roar. A third rope got his other hind-leg, and the puncher dismounted and tied it to a tree. The roaring, biting, clawing ma.s.s of hair was practically helpless, but to kill him was an undertaking.

"Why didn't you brand him and turn him loose?" I asked of the cowboy.

"Well," said the puncher, in his Texan drawl, "we could have branded him all right, but we might have needed some help in turning him loose."

They pelted him with malpais, and finally stuck a knife into a vital part, and then, loading him on a pony, they brought him in. It was a daring performance, but was regarded by the "punchers" as a great joke.

Mickler and I rode into camp, thinking on the savagery of man. One never heard of a bear which travelled all the way from New Mexico to Chicago to kill a man, and yet a man will go 3000 miles to kill a bear--not for love or fear or hate or meat; for what, then? But Mickler and I had not killed a bear, so we were easy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEAR AT BAY]

One by one the tired hunters and dogs struggled into camp all disappointed, except the dogs, which could not tell us what had befallen them since morning. The day following the dogs started a big black bear, which made a good run up a bad place in the hills, but with the hunters scrambling after in full cry. The bear treed for the dogs, but on sighting the hors.e.m.e.n he threw himself backward from the trunk and fell fifteen feet among the dogs, which latter piled into him _en ma.s.se_, the little fox-terriers being particularly aggressive.

It was a tremendous shake-up of black hair and pups of all colors; but the pace was too fast for Bruin, and he sought a new tree. One little foxie had been rolled over, and had quite a job getting his bellows mended. This time the bear sat on a limb very high up, and General Miles put a .50-calibre ball through his brain, which brought him down with a tremendous thump, when the pups again flew into him, and "wooled him," as the cowboys put it, to their hearts' content.

While our bear-hunting is not the thing we are most proud of, yet the method is the most sportsmanlike, since nothing but the most desperate riding will bring one up with the bear in the awful country which they affect. The antic.i.p.ation of having a big silver-tip a.s.sume the aggressive at any moment is inspiriting. Indeed, they often do; for only shortly before one had sprung from a thicket on to the hind-quarters of one of Mr. Stevens's cowboy's ponies, and it was only by the most desperate work on the part of his companion, who rode up close and shot the bear with his six-shooter, that saved his comrade's life. The horse was killed. When one thinks of the enormous strength of the silver-tip, which can overpower the mightiest steer, and bend and break its neck or tear its shoulder from its body at a stroke, one is able to say, "Do not hunt a bear unless thy skin is not dear to thee." Then the dogs must be especially trained to run bear, since the country abounds in deer, and it is difficult to train dogs to ignore their sight and scent. The cowboys account for the number of the bear in their country from the fact that it is the old Apache and Navajo range, and the incoherent mind of the savage was impressed with the rugged ma.s.s of fur and the grinning jaws of the monster which crossed his path, and he was awed by the dangers of the encounter--arrow against claw. He came to respect the apparition, and he did not know that life is only sacred when in the image of the Creator. He did not discriminate as to the value of life, but with his respect for death there grew the speculation, which to him became a truth, that the fearsome beast was of the other world, and bore the lost souls of the tribe. He was a vampire; he was sacred. O Bear!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FINALE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RETURN OF THE HUNTERS]

THE END