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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12225 ***
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+BY ZANE GREY
+
+
+1922
+
+[Illustration: Zane Grey]
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. NONNEZOSHE
+
+II. COLORADO TRAILS
+
+III. ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+IV. TONTO BASIN
+
+V. DEATH VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ZANE GREY
+
+Z.G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS
+
+THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE PEAKED RANGES
+
+WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY
+
+SUNSET ON THE DESERT
+
+CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS
+
+THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES THE RUINED
+CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN
+
+THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO NONNEZOSHE
+
+FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO
+
+THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE DISTANCE
+
+A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE
+
+LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS
+
+SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME
+
+A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING
+
+THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS
+
+UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS
+
+WHITE ASPEN TREE SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS
+
+A BLACK BEAR TREED
+
+CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON
+
+WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO
+
+DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER
+
+CAMP AT THE SADDLE
+
+BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER
+
+JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION
+
+REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS
+
+A LION TIED
+
+FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S DESERT RANCH
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+HIDING
+
+A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM
+
+WHICH IS THE PIUTE
+
+WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE
+
+JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION
+
+TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE
+
+JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS
+
+BILLY IN CAMP
+
+LION LICKING SNOWBALL
+
+SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN SNAKE GULCH
+
+ON THE WAY HOME
+
+RIDING WITH A NAVAJO
+
+THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN
+
+ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED
+
+THE TONTO BASIN
+
+LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS
+
+ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS
+
+WILD TURKEY
+
+WILD TURKEYS
+
+THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS
+
+THE SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP
+
+ON THE RIM
+
+WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK
+
+WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER
+
+CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA
+
+BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON
+
+Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR
+
+R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR
+
+ANOTHER BEAR
+
+MEAT IN CAMP
+
+BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL
+
+THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF THE CACTUS
+
+THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS
+
+DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY
+
+DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED RIDGES TO THE
+STARK VALLEY OF DEATH
+
+DESERT GRAVES
+
+THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY
+
+IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH VALLEY, THREE
+HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at
+Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is
+probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in
+the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her
+influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting
+the secret of the great bridge.
+
+After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al
+Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take
+me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was
+the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same
+year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb
+brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most
+beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There
+is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after
+Doyle and I came out we admitted that we would not care to try to
+return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This
+is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find
+again alone.
+
+My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument
+Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great
+prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
+
+The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats
+and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
+wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
+Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
+thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
+convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
+Wetherill's Navajos.
+
+We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so
+that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew
+and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this
+grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that
+I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
+surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
+storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
+sultry air.
+
+At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red
+walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared
+endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye
+began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the
+time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of
+Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed
+a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock,
+magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird,
+lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the
+monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect
+was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
+
+[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]
+
+Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
+its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
+beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not
+the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of
+red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
+league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
+columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
+sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
+across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I
+had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and
+the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught
+Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE-PEAKED RANGES]
+
+Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful
+canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could
+make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it
+Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less
+the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon
+from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a
+red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented
+by spruce-sided notches.
+
+There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of
+which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A
+huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a
+projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These
+silent little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows
+had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.
+
+Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the
+trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and
+beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at
+all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss
+of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named
+Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought
+it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their
+imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight
+of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed
+over me a strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true.
+My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
+I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls
+where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered
+the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and
+sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the
+grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I
+had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I
+could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party.
+Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self.
+I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the
+story it had given me.
+
+That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser
+of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had
+lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old
+chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont
+to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made
+great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses.
+Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the
+geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser
+ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.
+
+[Illustration: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY]
+
+[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE DESERT]
+
+[Illustration: CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS]
+
+Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we
+were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses
+disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a
+man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians
+disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the
+Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I
+thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.
+
+"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.
+
+Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so
+significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It
+is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I
+know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Piute's dark,
+inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.
+
+My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow
+and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level
+with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene;
+and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that
+I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept
+looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my
+judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed
+one moment and magnified the next.
+
+Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he
+said.
+
+"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright
+rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines
+of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and
+only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the Grand
+Canyon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the red, that's
+where the San Juan comes in. And there's Escalante Canyon."
+
+I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the
+desert--to look with slow contracted eyes from near to far.
+
+The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope,
+bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar.
+Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I
+knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker
+green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be
+mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its
+waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated.
+They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were
+strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes,
+crags, great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze
+to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
+thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts,
+each of which was a canyon.
+
+Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the
+lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and
+because of its limitless deceiving surfaces incomprehensible to the
+gaze of man. Away to the eastward began a winding ragged blue line,
+looping back upon itself, and then winding away again, growing wider
+and bluer. This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line
+all its length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined
+a dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
+Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
+farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
+revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther westward
+it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas. Here the canyon
+was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed, it gaped, it lost
+itself and showed again in that chaos of a million cliffs. And then it
+faded, a mere purple line, into deceiving distance.
+
+I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this. The
+tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This happened to
+be a place where so much of the desert could be seen and the effect
+was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here.
+Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages
+was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
+sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
+dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
+the shining spaces.
+
+Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
+rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
+slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
+mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
+ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
+sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
+of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
+of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
+green only at a distance.
+
+Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
+and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
+on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
+Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
+silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
+the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
+again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
+
+It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw piñon patches under
+the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
+already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
+their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
+of cliff.
+
+I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It
+ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the
+ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not
+a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and
+Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a
+swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see
+similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be
+called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes
+far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were
+no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and
+occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and piñon. We
+found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
+
+Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another
+wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between.
+Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our
+mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short,
+careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger
+was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in
+horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second
+slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking
+advantage of every bulge and depression.
+
+Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous
+slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and
+many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us
+to see the bottom.
+
+[Illustration: THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES
+THE RUINED CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN]
+
+At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon
+cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the
+steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum
+jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe
+Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of
+anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with
+all his might.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO
+NONNEZOSHE]
+
+It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope
+ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in
+terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place
+to have trouble with horses.
+
+I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear
+over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe's hold on
+the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick as thought Joe ran
+sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and yelled for help. I got
+to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas ta Bega; and together we
+pulled Chub up out of danger. At first we thought he had been choked
+to death. But he came to, and got up, a bloody, skinned horse, but
+alive and safe. I have never seen a more magnificent effort than Joe
+Lee's. Those fellows are built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on
+those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the
+trip which is not splendid.
+
+We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently
+came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green
+split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was
+the head of a canyon.
+
+"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.
+
+This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got down into
+it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a selection of
+the best levels, the best places to cross the brook, the best places
+to climb, and it was a process of continual repetition. There was no
+trail ahead of us, but we certainly left one behind. And as Wetherill
+picked out the course and the mustangs followed him I had all freedom
+to see and feel the beauty, color, wildness and changing character of
+Nonnezoshe Boco.
+
+My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip down this
+strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not alike. This one
+did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and
+bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue
+river. Huge caverns had been hollowed out by water or wind. And when
+the brook ran close under one of these overhanging places the running
+water made a singular indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a
+stone rang like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the
+croak of a frog--the only living creature I noted in the canyon--was a
+weird and melancholy thing.
+
+"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.
+
+"How do you know?" I asked.
+
+"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones are
+found above."
+
+I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger than
+the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite beauty and
+fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I had never seen.
+
+"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.
+
+That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer
+canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the green. It was
+impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under foot. And as
+the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume
+to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green
+sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself
+in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and
+great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming
+buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of
+cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled
+with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy
+air.
+
+But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
+level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
+clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and bulging walls--these
+features were gradually lost, and Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare
+red and white stone steps. The walls sheered away from one another,
+breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and
+there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the
+nature that had created this old rent in the earth.
+
+There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
+alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by one, the
+mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled
+along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil
+increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was
+left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified
+and its character changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon,
+leaning, broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking
+passage, with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
+dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting canyons. It
+jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and
+pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous stone-shape left
+by avalanche or cataclysm.
+
+Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of boulders
+and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that canyon
+had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor, in places, was
+bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording
+treacherous foothold. And the time came when Wetherill abandoned the
+stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
+
+The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined amphitheater,
+and then apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed the
+walls.
+
+I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and lag. I
+wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the Indians tired. It
+was with great pleasure that I observed the giant Joe Lee plodding
+slowly along. And when I glanced behind at my straggling party it was
+with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled
+and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag
+myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept
+on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped--was waiting for
+me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
+canyon.
+
+I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile
+beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the
+canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a
+magnificent natural bridge.
+
+"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.
+
+This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one
+grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague
+disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
+with what the mind had conceived.
+
+But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and
+brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and
+revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this
+rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in
+some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even
+beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a
+work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued
+arch against the blue sky.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE]
+
+[Illustration: NONNEZOSHE]
+
+Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle the huge
+amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging.
+The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered
+progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls
+turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed dark.
+
+We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we reached it
+Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions. He was saying his
+prayer to this great stone god. Then he began to climb straight up the
+steep slope. Wetherill told me the Indian would not pass under the
+arch.
+
+When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame mustangs
+twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to fare for what
+scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to
+find than grass. When our simple meal had been eaten there was gloom
+gathering in the canyon and stars had begun to blink in the pale strip
+of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and we were
+mostly silent.
+
+Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by the
+bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was invisible,
+but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock upon which I
+composed myself, to watch, to feel.
+
+A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been continually
+looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never seemed the same
+any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for immediate
+comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had formed it--to reflect
+upon its meaning as to age and force of nature. Yet it seemed that all
+I could do was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved
+line. The rim of the arch appeared to shine. The moon was up there
+somewhere. The far side of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over
+its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the
+canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
+The bridge turned to silver.
+
+It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta Bega. Dark,
+silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted, with all that was
+spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge
+of his place there, he represented to me that which a solitary figure
+of human life represents in a great painting. Nonnezoshe needed life,
+wild life, life of its millions of years--and here stood the dark and
+silent Indian.
+
+Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the bridge. The
+moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above, and
+the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with all
+the strangeness of that strange country in its moan, rushed through
+the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as I
+imagined might have dwelt deep in the center of the earth. And again
+an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. It had a mocking echo. An
+echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!
+
+The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other
+sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to see in them
+the meaning of life and the past--the illimitable train of faces
+that had shone under the stars. There was something nameless in that
+canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the
+great Nonnezoshe, or the life of the present, or the death of the
+ages, or the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent,
+dreaming, waiting walls--the truth was that there was a spirit.
+
+I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the tip of
+the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to shine. The sun
+had just risen high enough over some low break in the wall to reach
+the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous transformation, the gold
+and blue and rose and pink and purple blended their hues, softly,
+mistily, cloudily, until once more the arch was a rainbow.
+
+I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth this
+bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black and mystic
+at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at sunset a flaming
+curve limned against the heavens. When the race of man had passed it
+would, perhaps, stand there still. It was not for many eyes to see.
+The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would
+never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any
+man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great
+things of life had to be earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone,
+grand, silent, beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a
+mute, reverent farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+COLORADO TRAILS
+
+Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the motive
+were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the reader who
+longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle of fishing
+records that this is not that kind of story. But it will be one for
+those who love horses and dogs, the long winding dim trails, the wild
+flowers and the dark still woods, the fragrance of spruce and the
+smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well for those who love to angle in
+brown lakes or rushing brooks or chase after the baying hounds or
+stalk the stag on his lonely heights.
+
+[Illustration: PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO]
+
+We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road and had a
+long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies have a sweep, a
+limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many miles we crossed no
+streams, and climbed and wound up barren slopes. Once across the divide,
+however, we descended into a country of black forests and green valleys.
+Yampa, a little hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of
+the Bear River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
+would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very wide
+and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It seemed a
+deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the guide, lived there.
+He assured me it was not quite as lively a place as in the early days
+when it was a stage center for an old and rich mining section. We stayed
+there at the one hotel for a whole day, most of which I spent sitting on
+the board walk. Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it
+seemed always the same--deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old
+and forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a while.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE
+DISTANCE]
+
+On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills,
+some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were to meet us with
+saddle and pack horses. The ride was not interesting until the Flattop
+Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce,
+rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of
+snow. I felt the first cool breath of mountain air, exhilarating and
+sweet. From that moment I began to live.
+
+We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with
+his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let alone gotten
+acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load
+of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It
+appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged
+jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called
+it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in
+a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, and schools of darkish,
+mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. We wished for
+our tackle then and for time to fish.
+
+Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not
+resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look as if he had
+walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So I took a
+liking to him at once.
+
+But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any
+delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our
+outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses that were to carry
+us on such long rides was an anxious and thrilling one. I have felt
+it many times, and it never grows any weaker from experience. Many a
+scrubby lot of horses had turned out well upon acquaintance, and some
+I had found hard to part with at the end of trips. Up to that time,
+however, I had not seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much
+concerned by the fact that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty,
+ragged, maneless, cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected,
+they were bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them,
+and I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any one.
+
+In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his own
+mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals, heavily
+laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face and keen
+gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I got the
+impression that he liked work.
+
+"Let's organize," he said, briskly. "Have you picked the horses you're
+goin' to ride?"
+
+Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy powerful
+horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble head. He had
+escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at least was one horse.
+
+The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or temporarily lame,
+and I had no choice, except to take the one it would be kindest to
+ride.
+
+"He ain't much like your Silvermane or Black Star," said Teague,
+laughing.
+
+"What do you know about them?" I asked, very much pleased at this from
+him.
+
+"Well, I know all about them," he replied. "I'll have you the best horse
+in this country in a few days. Fact is I've bought him, an' he'll come
+with my cowboy, Vern.... Now, we're organized. Let's move."
+
+[Illustration: A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS]
+
+[Illustration: SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME]
+
+We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which towered the
+great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy, and steep in
+places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little breaks on the water
+gave evidence of feeding trout. We had several miles of meadow, and
+then sheered off to the left up into the timber. It was a spruce
+forest, very still and fragrant. We climbed out up on a bench, and
+across a flat, up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of
+snow. Here snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw
+a fox, a badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One
+more climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven
+thousand feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was
+splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim
+along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not very wide
+at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a green gulf
+of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here again I got the
+suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour to ride down to
+Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet of water. The larger
+lake was farther down. It was big, irregular, and bordered by spruce
+forests, and shadowed by the lofty gray peaks.
+
+The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm, and
+mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It was after
+sunset and I was too tired to have many impressions.
+
+Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep quavering
+voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was silent most of
+the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when they spoke, for he
+was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to discover that he was a
+good cook.
+
+Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too
+tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and
+splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights.
+The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric
+mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night
+grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly.
+There was a soft murmur of falling water. A lonesome coyote barked,
+and that thrilled me. Teague's dogs answered this prowler, and some of
+them had voices to make a hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had
+a roar like a lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and
+I was thinking about them when I fell asleep.
+
+Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and
+frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the
+tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.
+
+The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I
+could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to
+ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After
+each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle
+an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts.
+Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his
+discomfiture.
+
+After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods,
+and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when
+we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green
+in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent
+black slopes.
+
+The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called
+wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes
+during dog days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague
+reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We
+tried the outlet first, but trout were not rising there. Then we
+began wading and casting along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had
+instructed us to cast, then drag the flies slowly across the surface
+of the water, in imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and
+several times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I
+had strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout.
+Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my
+surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook the
+fish.
+
+R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the
+ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most
+unaccountable fiendish pleasure.
+
+"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful fisherman to
+make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which
+is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch me cast!"
+
+I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water boiled, and he
+hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite speechless with envy and
+admiration I watched him play them and eventually beach them. They
+were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided and marked with the red slash
+along their gills that gave them their name. I did not catch any while
+wading, but from the bank I spied one, and dropping a fly in front
+of his nose, I got him. R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in
+weight, and then he had a strike that broke his leader. He did not
+have another leader, so we walked back to camp.
+
+Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the forest.
+Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful and very
+pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful flower that is
+the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its blue, Indian paint
+brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in color from red to pink
+and from white to yellow.
+
+My favorite of all wild flowers--the purple asters--were there too,
+on tall nodding stems, with pale faces held up to the light. The
+reflection of mountain and forest in Trappers Lake was clear and
+beautiful.
+
+The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great show about
+beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last very long. The
+sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge under a pine. One of
+the blessings of outdoor life was that a man could be like an Indian
+and do nothing. So from rest I passed to dreams and from dreams to
+sleep.
+
+In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout. The lake
+appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck and we could
+not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again. Here the current
+was swift. I found a place between two willow banks where trout were
+breaking on the surface. It took a long cast for me, but about every
+tenth attempt I would get a fly over the right place and raise a fish.
+They were small, but that did not detract from my gratification. The
+light on the water was just right for me to see the trout rise, and
+that was a beautiful sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had
+caught four when a shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I
+found him standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent
+double and a long line out.
+
+"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him--down there--in that white water.
+See him flash red!... Go down there and land him for me. Hurry! He's
+got all the line!"
+
+I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream was
+shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a flashing gleam
+of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I could not reach it
+without wading in. When I did this the trout lunged out. He looked
+crimson and silver. I could have put my fist in his mouth.
+
+"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation. "There!
+He's got all the line."
+
+"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.
+
+He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his fish.
+This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I grasped
+the leader that the big trout would break it or pull free. The same
+situation, with different kinds of fish, had presented itself many
+times on my numberless fishing jaunts with R.C. and they all crowded
+to my mind. Nevertheless I had no choice. Plunging in to my knees I
+frantically reached for the leader. The red trout made a surge. I
+missed him. R.C. yelled that something would break. That was no news
+to me. Another plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I
+essayed to lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was
+tired and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to
+lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my legs.
+
+When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was sitting on
+the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was holding his broken
+leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went into a rage! Blamed me for
+the loss of that big trout! Under such circumstances it was always
+best to maintain silence and I did so as long as I could. After his
+paroxysm had spent itself and he had become somewhat near a rational
+being once more he asked me:
+
+"Was he big?"
+
+"Oh--a whale of a trout!" I replied.
+
+"Humph! Well, how big?"
+
+Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of that trout.
+I made him out very much bigger than he actually looked to me and I
+minutely described his beauty and wonderful gaping mouth. R.C. groaned
+and that was my revenge.
+
+We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape acquaintance
+with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted pack--four Airedales, one
+bloodhound and seven other hounds of mixed breeds. There were also
+three pup hounds, white and yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all
+pups, noisy and mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied
+also to one of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by
+some estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of
+him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with that
+name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and exceedingly
+funny. When he was approached he had a trick of standing up, holding
+up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way, with his head twisted in
+the most absurd manner. This was when he was chained--otherwise he
+would have been climbing up on anyone who gave him the chance. He was
+the most jealous dog I ever saw. He could not be kept chained very
+long because he always freed himself. At meal time he would slip
+noiselessly behind some one and steal the first morsel he could
+snatch. Bill was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of
+firewood.
+
+Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then saddled up
+to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and down ridges of
+heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer sign. Elk tracks
+appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we left the trail to
+climb into heavy timber we began to look for game. The forest was
+dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No squirrels or birds or
+sign of life! We had a hard ride up and down steep slopes. A feature
+was the open swaths made by avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a
+path through the timber, and the young shoots of spruce were springing
+up. I imagined the roar made by that tremendous slide.
+
+We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the grass
+had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign where the
+elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers to get rid of
+the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes made by an axe. The
+Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently
+had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox
+could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not
+see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note
+again.
+
+We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with wild
+asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The patches of red
+and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere we rode we were knee
+deep in flowers. At length we came out of the heavy timber down upon
+Big Fish Lake. This lake was about half a mile across, deep blue-green
+in color, with rocky shores. Upon the opposite side were beaver
+mounds. We could see big trout swimming round, but they would not rise
+to a fly. R.C. went out in an old boat and paddled to the head of the
+lake and fished at the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went
+around and up the little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly
+through a meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering
+banks. At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds.
+It was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as cold
+as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several big trout,
+and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed him. Then in a
+swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I saw a big trout
+lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I hooked him. He was not
+active, but heavy and plunging, and he bored in and out, and made
+short runs. I had not seen such beautiful red colors in any fish. He
+made a fine fight, but at last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat
+of about one and three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green,
+and spotted all over. That was the extent of my luck.
+
+We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little while to
+see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not. A storm began
+to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great gray clouds obscured
+the peaks, and at length the rain came. It was cold and cutting. We
+sought the shelter of spruces for a while, and waited. After an hour
+it cleared somewhat, and R.C. caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all
+green and silver, with only two slashes of red along under the gills.
+Then another storm threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp
+the rain began again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was
+raining hard when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces
+were dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes.
+After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the open
+places high up we could see a great green void of spruce, and beyond,
+boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon. We flushed a big
+blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at length another big
+one.
+
+In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of scenting
+game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was pressed down.
+Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump of an elk protruding
+from behind some spruces. I beckoned for R.C. and we both dismounted.
+Just then the elk rose and stalked out. It was a magnificent bull with
+crowning lofty antlers. The shoulders and neck appeared black. He
+raised his head, and turning, trotted away with ease and grace for
+such a huge beast. That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen
+before. We were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with
+exclamations.
+
+We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the lofty
+red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest again, dim
+and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and oppressive stillness.
+The forest primeval! When we rode out of that into open slopes the
+afternoon was far advanced, and long shadows lay across the distant
+ranges. When we reached camp, supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet
+were exceedingly welcome. I was tired.
+
+Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched our
+horses near Teague's old corral. Our intention was to hunt up along
+the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We waited, hoping
+the big black clouds would break. But they did not. They rolled down
+with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and a storm enveloped us. We
+sought shelter in a thick spruce. It rained and hailed. By and bye
+the air grew bitterly cold, and Teague suggested we give up, and ride
+back. So we did. The mountains were dim and obscure through the gray
+gloom, and the black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against
+the background. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and
+crashed in magnificent bombardment across the heavens.
+
+Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only a
+few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the weather
+promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the mountains,
+first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we decided to ride
+out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around what they call the
+Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through the spruces above Little
+Trappers Lake. And as we got near the top it began to hail. Again
+the air grew cold. Once out on top I found a wide expanse, green and
+white, level in places, but with huge upheavals of ridge. There
+were flowers here at eleven thousand feet. The view to the rear was
+impressive--a wide up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of
+rocks, and patches of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall,
+and the view to the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling
+thick and white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell
+into the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet,
+lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White River
+Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope, up to a
+bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range, dark under the
+lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh Rocky Mountain sheep
+tracks. A little later, going into a draw, we crossed a snow-bank,
+solid as ice. We worked down into this draw into the timber. It
+hailed, and rained some more, then cleared. The warm sun felt good.
+Once down in the parks we began to ride through a flower-garden. Every
+slope was beautiful in gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks
+were luxuriant with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the
+great stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not
+see one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and
+miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length we
+got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood sear and
+ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with fallen trees that
+we had difficulty in threading a way through them. Patches of aspen
+grew on the hillside, still fresh and green despite this frosty
+morning. Here we found a sego lily, one of the most beautiful of
+flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian paint brush. At the foot of this
+long burned slope we came to the White River trail, and followed it up
+and around to camp.
+
+Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped off
+into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then paused to
+listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a sound. It was a
+place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of twigs, and presently
+heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We penetrated half a mile into
+the spruce, pausing now and then to listen. At length R.C. heard
+something. We stopped. After a little I heard the ring of a horn on
+wood. It was thrilling. Then came the crack of a hoof on stone, then
+the clatter of a loosened rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer
+evaded us. We hunted around till dark without farther sign of any
+game.
+
+R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down White
+River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw tracks of
+five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we climbed high up a
+burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen. We climbed ridge after
+ridge, and at last got out of the burned district into reaches of
+heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of deer and elk tracks, we
+dismounted and left our horses. I went to the left, and into some
+beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer or elk, and many tracks.
+Returning to the horses, I led them into a larger park, and climbed
+high into the open and watched. There I saw some little squirrels
+about three inches long, and some gray birds, very tame. I waited a
+long time before there was any sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was
+the dog I saw first. I whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted
+and rode on for an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of
+huge trees, windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we
+came out at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant
+park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we ran
+across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small band of
+elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.
+
+Next day we started for a few days' trip to Big Fish Lake. R.C. and I
+went along up around the mountain. I found our old trail, and was at a
+loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign, but no live game at all.
+
+In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile, while
+R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we caught four
+trout, one of which was fair sized.
+
+Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but we could
+not get them to take a fly.
+
+The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to be
+beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some big trout
+in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every way to get a
+strike. No use! In the little lake matters were worse. It was full of
+trout up to two pounds. They would run at the fly, only to refuse it.
+Exasperating work! We gave up and returned to Big Fish. After supper
+we went out to try again. The lake was smooth and quiet. All at once,
+as if by concert, the trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay
+we began to get strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The
+small ones were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed.
+We caught one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted
+wrong, broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too
+slow, and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because
+they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to
+imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line which I
+could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and altogether we got
+seven. All in that little bay, where the water was shallow! In other
+places we could not catch a fish. I had one vicious strike. The fish
+appeared to be feeding on a tiny black gnat, which we could not
+imitate. This was the most trying experience of all. We ought to have
+caught a basketful.
+
+The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet of Big
+Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for grayling. The
+stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared full of ice water
+and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an automobile, and a camp
+outfit. That was enough for me. Where an automobile can run, I do not
+belong. The fishing was poor. But the beautiful open valley, flowered
+in gold and purple, was recompense for a good deal of bad luck.
+
+A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as beautiful a
+fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker or mullet, had a
+small mouth, dark color, and was rather a sluggish-looking fish.
+
+We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers afforded
+much comfort.
+
+Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down over a
+mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.
+
+R.C. and I, with Teague, started for the top of the big mountain on
+the west. I had a new horse, a roan, and he looked a thoroughbred.
+He appeared tired. But I thought he would be great. We took a trail
+through the woods, dark green-gray, cool and verdant, odorous and
+still. We began to climb. Occasionally we crossed parks, and little
+streams. Up near the long, bare slope the spruce trees grew large and
+far apart. They were beautiful, gray as if bearded with moss. Beyond
+this we got into the rocks and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags
+up the slope brought us to the top of a notch, where at the right lay
+a patch of snow. The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but
+it had timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark
+domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out of the
+timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard struggle for
+life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and wild, studded
+with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving clouds.
+
+Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills.
+
+Away on the western rim, where we could look down upon a long rugged
+iron-gray ridge of mountain, our guide using the glass, found two big
+stags. We all had our fill of looking. I could see them plainly with
+naked eyes.
+
+We decided to go back to where we could climb down on that side,
+halter the horses, leave all extra accoutrements, and stalk those
+stags, and take a picture of them.
+
+I led the way, and descended under the rim. It was up and down over
+rough shale, and up steps of broken rocks, and down little cliffs.
+We crossed the ridge twice, many times having to lend a hand to each
+other.
+
+At length I reached a point where I could see the stags lying down.
+The place was an open spot on a rocky promonotory with a fringe of
+low spruces. The stags were magnificent in size, with antlers in the
+velvet. One had twelve points. They were lying in the sun to harden
+their horns, according to our guide.
+
+I slipped back to the others, and we all decided to have a look. So we
+climbed up. All of us saw the stags, twitching ears and tails.
+
+Then we crept back, and once more I took the lead to crawl round under
+the ledge so we could come up about even with them. Here I found the
+hardest going yet. I came to a wind-worn crack in the thin ledge, and
+from this I could just see the tips of the antlers. I beckoned the
+others. Laboriously they climbed. R.C. went through first. I went over
+next, and then came Teague.
+
+R.C. and I started to crawl down to a big rock that was our objective
+point. We went cautiously, with bated breath and pounding hearts. When
+we got there I peeped over to see the stags still lying down. But they
+had heads intent and wary. Still I did not think they had scented us.
+R.C. took a peep, and turning excitedly he whispered:
+
+"See only one. And he's standing!"
+
+And I answered: "Let's get down around to the left where we can get a
+better chance." It was only a few feet down. We got there.
+
+When he peeped over at this point he exclaimed: "They're gone!"
+
+It was a keen disappointment. "They winded us," I decided.
+
+We looked and looked. But we could not see to our left because of the
+bulge of rock. We climbed back. Then I saw one of the stags loping
+leisurely off to the left. Teague was calling. He said they had walked
+off the promontory, looking up, and stopping occasionally.
+
+Then we realized we must climb back along that broken ridge and then
+up to the summit of the mountain. So we started.
+
+That climb back was proof of the effect of excitement on judgment. We
+had not calculated at all on the distance or ruggedness, and we had a
+job before us. We got along well under the western wall, and fairly
+well straight across through the long slope of timber, where we saw
+sheep tracks, and expected any moment to sight an old ram. But we did
+not find one, and when we got out of the timber upon the bare sliding
+slope we had to halt a hundred times. We could zigzag only a few
+steps. The altitude was twelve thousand feet, and oxygen seemed
+scarce. I nearly dropped. All the climbing appeared to come hardest on
+the middle of my right foot, and it could scarcely have burned hotter
+if it had been in fire. Despite the strenuous toil there were not many
+moments that I was not aware of the vastness of the gulf below, or the
+peaceful lakes, brown as amber, or the golden parks. And nearer at
+hand I found magenta-colored Indian paint brush, very exquisite and
+rare.
+
+Coming out on a ledge I spied a little, dark animal with a long tail.
+He was running along the opposite promontory about three hundred yards
+distant. When he stopped I took a shot at him and missed by apparently
+a scant half foot.
+
+After catching our breath we climbed more and more, and still more, at
+last to drop on the rim, hot, wet and utterly spent.
+
+The air was keen, cold, and invigorating. We were soon rested, and
+finding our horses we proceeded along the rim westward. Upon rounding
+an out-cropping of rock we flushed a flock of ptarmigan--soft gray,
+rock-colored birds about the size of pheasants, and when they flew
+they showed beautiful white bands on their wings. These are the rare
+birds that have feathered feet and turn white in winter. They did not
+fly far, and several were so tame they did not fly at all. We got our
+little .22 revolvers and began to shoot at the nearest bird. He was
+some thirty feet distant. But we could not hit him, and at last Fox,
+getting disgusted, tried to catch the bird and made him fly. I felt
+relieved, for as we were getting closer and closer with every shot, it
+seemed possible that if the ptarmigan sat there long enough we might
+eventually have hit him. The mystery was why we shot so poorly. But
+this was explained by R.C., who discovered we had been shooting the
+wrong shells.
+
+It was a long hard ride down the rough winding trail. But riding down
+was a vastly different thing from going up.
+
+On September third we were up at five-thirty. It was clear and cold
+and the red of sunrise tinged the peaks. The snow banks looked pink.
+All the early morning scene was green, fresh, cool, with that mountain
+rareness of atmosphere.
+
+We packed to break camp, and after breakfast it took hours to get our
+outfit in shape to start--a long string, resembling a caravan. I knew
+that events would occur that day. First we lost one of the dogs. Vern
+went back after him. The dogs were mostly chained in pairs, to prevent
+their running off. Samson, the giant hound, was chained to a little
+dog, and the others were paired not according to size by any means.
+The poor dogs were disgusted with the arrangement. It developed
+presently that Cain, the bloodhound, a strange and wild hound much
+like Don of my old lion-hunting days, slipped us, and was not missed
+for hours. Teague decided to send back for him later.
+
+Next in order of events, as we rode up the winding trail through the
+spruce forest, we met Teague's cow and calf, which he had kept all
+summer in camp. For some reason neither could be left. Teague told us
+to ride on, and an hour later when we halted to rest on the Flattop
+Mountain he came along with the rest of the train, and in the fore was
+the cow alone. It was evident that she was distressed and angry, for
+it took two men to keep her in the trail. And another thing plain to
+me was the fact that she was going to demoralize the pack horses. We
+were not across the wide range of this flat mountain when one of the
+pack animals, a lean and lanky sorrel, appeared suddenly to go mad,
+and began to buck off a pack. He succeeded. This inspired a black
+horse, very appropriately christened Nigger, to try his luck, and he
+shifted his pack in short order. It took patience, time, and effort to
+repack. The cow was a disorganizer. She took up as wide a trail as a
+road. And the pack animals, some with dignity and others with disgust,
+tried to avoid her vicinity. Going down the steep forest trail on
+the other side the real trouble began. The pack train split, ran and
+bolted, crashing through the trees, plunging down steep places, and
+jumping logs. It was a wild sort of chase. But luckily the packs
+remained intact until we were once more on open, flat ground. All went
+well for a while, except for an accident for which I was to blame. I
+spurred my horse, and he plunged suddenly past R.C.'s mount, colliding
+with him, tearing off my stirrup, and spraining R.C.'s ankle. This
+was almost a serious accident, as R.C. has an old baseball ankle that
+required favoring.
+
+Next in order was the sorrel. As I saw it, he heedlessly went too near
+the cow, which we now called Bossy, and she acted somewhat like a
+Spanish Bull, to the effect that the sorrel was scared and angered at
+once. He began to run and plunge and buck right into the other pack
+animals, dropping articles from his pack as he dashed along. He
+stampeded the train, and gave the saddle horses a scare. When order
+was restored and the whole outfit gathered together again a full
+hour had been lost. By this time all the horses were tired, and that
+facilitated progress, because there were no more serious breaks.
+
+Down in the valley it was hot, and the ride grew long and wearisome.
+Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful. The valley was green and
+level, and a meandering stream formed many little lakes. On one
+side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on the other a black,
+spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a bold, blunt peak
+patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in the clear light. Huge
+white clouds sailed aloft, making dark moving shadows along the great
+slopes.
+
+We reached our turning-off place about five o'clock, and again entered
+the fragrant, quiet forest--a welcome change. We climbed and climbed,
+at length coming into an open park of slopes and green borders of
+forest, with a lake in the center. We pitched camp on the skirt of the
+western slope, under the spruces, and worked hard to get the tents up
+and boughs cut for beds. Darkness caught us with our hands still full,
+and we ate supper in the light of a camp-fire, with the black, deep
+forest behind, and the pale afterglow across the lake.
+
+I had a bad night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I saw the
+moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent walls, and the
+flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard the melodious
+tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy bawled often--a
+discordant break in the serenity of the night. Occasionally the hounds
+bayed her.
+
+Toward morning I slept some, and awakened with what seemed a broken
+back. All, except R.C., were slow in crawling out. The sun rose hot.
+This lower altitude was appreciated by all. After breakfast we set to
+work to put the camp in order.
+
+That afternoon we rode off to look over the ground. We crossed the
+park and worked up a timbered ridge remarkable for mossy, bare ground,
+and higher up for its almost total absence of grass or flowers. On the
+other side of this we had a fine view of Mt. Dome, a high peak across
+a valley. Then we worked down into the valley, which was full of parks
+and ponds and running streams. We found some fresh sign of deer, and a
+good deal of old elk and deer sign. But we saw no game of any kind. It
+was a tedious ride back through thick forest, where I observed many
+trees that had been barked by porcupines. Some patches were four feet
+from the ground, indicating that the porcupine had sat on the snow
+when he gnawed those particular places.
+
+After sunset R.C. and I went off down a trail into the woods, and
+sitting down under a huge spruce we listened. The forest was solemn
+and still. Far down somewhere roared a stream, and that was all the
+sound we heard. The gray shadows darkened and gloom penetrated the
+aisles of the forest, until all the sheltered places were black as
+pitch. The spruces looked spectral--and speaking. The silence of
+the woods was deep, profound, and primeval. It all worked on my
+imagination until I began to hear faint sounds, and finally grand
+orchestral crashings of melody.
+
+On our return the strange creeping chill, that must be a descendant of
+the old elemental fear, caught me at all obscure curves in the trail.
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING]
+
+Next day we started off early, and climbed through the woods and into
+the parks under the Dome. We scared a deer that had evidently been
+drinking. His fresh tracks led before us, but we could not catch a
+glimpse of him.
+
+[Illustration: THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS]
+
+We climbed out of the parks, up onto the rocky ridges where the
+spruce grew scarce, and then farther to the jumble of stones that had
+weathered from the great peaks above, and beyond that up the slope
+where all the vegetation was dwarfed, deformed, and weird, strange
+manifestation of its struggle for life. Here the air grew keener and
+cooler, and the light seemed to expand. We rode on to the steep slope
+that led up to the gap we were to cross between the Dome and its
+companion.
+
+[Illustration: UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS]
+
+I saw a red fox running up the slope, and dismounting I took a quick
+shot at three hundred yards, and scored a hit. It turned out to be a
+cross fox, and had very pretty fur.
+
+When we reached the level of the deep gap the wind struck us hard and
+cold. On that side opened an abyss, gray and shelving as it led down
+to green timber, and then on to the yellow parks and black ridges that
+gleamed under the opposite range.
+
+We had to work round a wide amphitheater, and up a steep corner to the
+top. This turned out to be level and smooth for a long way, with a
+short, velvety yellow grass, like moss, spotted with flowers. Here at
+thirteen thousand feet, the wind hit us with exceeding force, and soon
+had us with freezing hands and faces. All about us were bold black and
+gray peaks, with patches of snow, and above them clouds of white and
+drab, showing blue sky between. It developed that this grassy summit
+ascended in a long gradual sweep, from the apex of which stretched a
+grand expanse, like a plain of gold, down and down, endlessly almost,
+and then up and up to end under a gray butte, highest of the points
+around. The ride across here seemed to have no limit, but it was
+beautiful, though severe on endurance. I saw another fox, and
+dismounting, fired five shots as he ran, dusting him with three
+bullets. We rode out to the edge of the mountain and looked off. It
+was fearful, yet sublime. The world lay beneath us. In many places we
+rode along the rim, and at last circled the great butte, and worked up
+behind it on a swell of slope. Here the range ran west and the drop
+was not sheer, but, gradual with fine benches for sheep. We found many
+tracks and fresh sign, but did not see one sheep. Meanwhile the
+hard wind had ceased, and the sun had come out, making the ride
+comfortable, as far as weather was concerned. We had gotten a long way
+from camp, and finding no trail to descend in that direction we turned
+to retrace our steps. That was about one o'clock, and we rode and rode
+and rode, until I was so tired that I could not appreciate the scenes
+as I had on the way up. It took six hours to get back to camp!
+
+Next morning we took the hounds and rode off for bear. Eight of the
+hounds were chained in braces, one big and one little dog together,
+and they certainly had a hard time of it. Sampson, the giant gray and
+brown hound, and Jim, the old black leader, were free to run to and
+fro across the way. We rode down a few miles, and into the forest.
+There were two long, black ridges, and here we were to hunt for bear.
+It was the hardest kind of work, turning and twisting between the
+trees, dodging snags, and brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse
+among fallen logs. The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich
+brown and black muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds
+got caught on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a
+scent of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail
+and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail. We
+penetrated deep between the two ridges, and came to a little lake,
+about thirty feet wide, surrounded by rushes and grass. Here we rested
+the horses, and incidentally, ourselves. Fox chased a duck, and it
+flew into the woods and hid under a log. Fox trailed it, and Teague
+shot it just as he might have a rabbit. We got two more ducks, fine
+big mallards, the same way. It was amazing to me, and R.C. remarked
+that never had he seen such strange and foolish ducks.
+
+This forest had hundreds of trees barked by porcupines, and some clear
+to the top. But we met only one of the animals, and he left several
+quills in the nose of one of the pups. I was of the opinion that these
+porcupines destroy many fine trees, as I saw a number barked all
+around.
+
+We did not see any bear sign. On the way back to camp we rode out of
+the forest and down a wide valley, the opposite side of which was open
+slope with patches of alder. Even at a distance I could discern the
+color of these open glades and grassy benches. They had a tinge of
+purple, like purple sage. When I got to them I found a profusion of
+asters of the most exquisite shades of lavender, pink and purple. That
+slope was long, and all the way up we rode through these beautiful
+wild flowers. I shall never forget that sight, nor the many asters
+that shone like stars out of the green. The pink ones were new to me,
+and actually did not seem real. I noticed my horse occasionally nipped
+a bunch and ate them, which seemed to me almost as heartless as to
+tread them under foot.
+
+When we got up the slope and into the woods again we met a storm, and
+traveled for an hour in the rain, and under the dripping spruces,
+feeling the cold wet sting of swaying branches as we rode by. Then the
+sun came out bright and the forest glittered, all gold and green. The
+smell of the woods after a rain is indescribable. It combines a rare
+tang of pine, spruce, earth and air, all refreshed.
+
+The day after, we left at eight o'clock, and rode down to the main
+trail, and up that for five miles where we cut off to the left and
+climbed into the timber. The woods were fresh and dewy, dark and cool,
+and for a long time we climbed bench after bench where the grass and
+ferns and moss made a thick, deep cover. Farther up we got into fallen
+timber and made slow progress. At timber line we tied the horses and
+climbed up to the pass between two great mountain ramparts. Sheep
+tracks were in evidence, but not very fresh. Teague and I climbed on
+top and R.C., with Vern, went below just along the timber line. The
+climb on foot took all my strength, and many times I had to halt for
+breath. The air was cold. We stole along the rim and peered over. R.C.
+and Vern looked like very little men far below, and the dogs resembled
+mice.
+
+Teague climbed higher, and left me on a promontory, watching all
+around.
+
+The cloud pageant was magnificent, with huge billowy white masses
+across the valley, and to the west great black thunderheads rolling
+up. The wind began to blow hard, carrying drops of rain that stung,
+and the air was nipping cold. I felt aloof from all the crowded world,
+alone on the windy heights, with clouds and storm all around me.
+
+When the storm threatened I went back to the horses. It broke, but
+was not severe after all. At length R.C. and the men returned and we
+mounted to ride back to camp. The storm blew away, leaving the sky
+clear and blue, and the sun shone warm. We had an hour of winding in
+and out among windfalls of timber, and jumping logs, and breaking
+through brush. Then the way sloped down to a beautiful forest, shady
+and green, full of mossy dells, almost overgrown with ferns and low
+spreading ground pine or spruce. The aisles of the forest were long
+and shaded by the stately spruces. Water ran through every ravine,
+sometimes a brawling brook, sometimes a rivulet hidden under
+overhanging mossy banks. We scared up two lonely grouse, at long
+intervals. At length we got into fallen timber, and from that worked
+into a jumble of rocks, where the going was rough and dangerous.
+
+The afternoon waned as we rode on and on, up and down, in and out,
+around, and at times the horses stood almost on their heads, sliding
+down steep places where the earth was soft and black, and gave forth a
+dank odor. We passed ponds and swamps, and little lakes. We saw where
+beavers had gnawed down aspens, and we just escaped miring our
+horses in marshes, where the grass grew, rich and golden, hiding
+the treacherous mire. The sun set, and still we did not seem to get
+anywhere. I was afraid darkness would overtake us, and we would get
+lost in the woods. Presently we struck an old elk trail, and following
+that for a while, came to a point where R.C. and I recognized a tree
+and a glade where we had been before--and not far from camp--a welcome
+discovery.
+
+Next day we broke camp and started across country for new territory
+near Whitley's Peak.
+
+We rode east up the mountain. After several miles along an old logging
+road we reached the timber, and eventually the top of the ridge. We
+went down, crossing parks and swales. There were cattle pastures, and
+eaten over and trodden so much they had no beauty left. Teague wanted
+to camp at a salt lick, but I did not care for the place.
+
+We went on. The dogs crossed a bear trail, and burst out in a clamor.
+We had a hard time holding them.
+
+The guide and I had a hot argument. I did not want to stay there and
+chase a bear in a cow pasture.... So we went on, down into ranch
+country, and this disgusted me further. We crossed a ranch, and rode
+several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly, and climbed a rough,
+rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen. We crossed it, and went
+down for several miles, and had to camp in an aspen grove, on the
+slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting place to stay, but as there
+was no other we had to make the best of it. The afternoon had waned. I
+took a gun and went off down the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge.
+Here I heard the sound of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour,
+but saw no game.
+
+That night I had a wretched bed, one that I could hardly stay in,
+and I passed miserable hours. I got up sore, cramped, sleepy and
+irritable. We had to wait three hours for the horses to be caught and
+packed. I had predicted straying horses. At last we were off, and rode
+along the steep slope of a canyon for several miles, and then struck a
+stream of amber-colored water. As we climbed along this we came into
+deep spruce forest, where it was pleasure to ride. I saw many dells
+and nooks, cool and shady, full of mossy rocks and great trees. But
+flowers were scarce. We were sorry to pass the head-springs of that
+stream and to go on over the divide and down into the wooded, but dry
+and stony country. We rode until late, and came at last to a park
+where sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high
+dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for we
+rode into a park with many branches, where there was good water and
+fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which to pitch our
+tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at night.
+
+The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started before
+a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses, and soon
+we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We put on our
+slickers. After a short ride down through the forest we entered
+Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time trying to find a
+forester's trail leading out of it. At last we found one, but it soon
+petered out, and we were lost in thick timber, in a driving rain, with
+the cold and wind increasing. But we kept on.
+
+This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and great
+canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to ride out of
+it. When we began to descend once more we struck an old lumber road.
+More luck--the storm ceased, and presently we were out on an aspen
+slope with a great valley beneath, and high, black peaks beyond. Below
+the aspens were long swelling slopes of sage and grass, gray and
+golden and green. A ranch lay in the valley, and we crossed it to
+climb up a winding ravine, once more to the aspens where we camped in
+the rancher's pasture. It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be
+fairly comfortable.
+
+The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled.
+There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and
+violet-hued banks of cloud.
+
+Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About nine
+the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed pastures and
+aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the grass grew luxuriant,
+and the red wall of rock overhung the long slopes. The view west was
+magnificent--a long, bulging range of mountains, vast stretches of
+green aspen slopes, winding parks of all shapes, gray and gold and
+green, and jutting peaks, and here and there patches of autumn blaze
+in grass and thicket.
+
+We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with water,
+grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of mountains and
+valleys below.
+
+We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak. After the
+middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to the touch of
+frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly beautiful. Against
+a background of gray sage the gold and red and purple aspen groves
+showed too much like exquisite paintings to seem real. In the mornings
+the frost glistened thick and white on the grass; and after the
+gorgeous sunsets of gold over the violet-hazed ranges the air grew
+stingingly cold.
+
+Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely criticised by
+many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business,
+and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the
+kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know
+what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I
+would not do so, except in a case of hunger. All the same, leaving the
+tree out of consideration, bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously
+exciting and hazardous game. But my ideas about sport are changing.
+Hunting, in the sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate business.
+
+[Illustration: WHITE ASPEN TREE, SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS]
+
+The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong about
+the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my hands. All is
+exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent up to the moment
+the shot is fired. After that it is another matter. It is useless for
+sportsmen to tell me that they, in particular, hunt right, conserve
+the game, do not go beyond the limit, and all that sort of thing. I do
+not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made
+for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may
+keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of
+spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
+the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life
+is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to
+the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a
+man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is
+to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard
+and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will
+weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not prepared now to say
+whether or not that would be well. The Germans believe they are the
+race fittest to survive over all others--and that has made me a
+little sick of this Darwin business.
+
+[Illustration: A BLACK BEAR TREED]
+
+To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a wild
+chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating experience, I will
+relate a couple of instances, and I will leave it to my readers to
+judge whether or not it is a cowardly sport.
+
+One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that he had
+surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead cow.
+
+"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
+delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll come
+back to-night."
+
+Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode into
+camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were
+glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that
+crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide
+led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a
+quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the
+chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that my
+brother and I were well ahead of the others. But we did not see any
+bear near the carcass of the cow. Old Jim and Sampson were close
+behind us, and when Jim came within forty yards of that carcass he
+put his nose up with a deep and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a
+streak. He never went near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder
+and raced after Jim.
+
+"They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come on!"
+
+We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to the edge
+of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with noses high. I
+heard a string of yelps and bellows from our rear.
+
+"Look back!" shouted R.C.
+
+Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack. It surely
+was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like the wind they
+passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods with deep bays. I was
+riding Teague's best horse for this sort of work and he understood the
+game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s horse ran as fast in the woods as
+he did in the open. This frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be
+careful. I yelled to deaf ears. That is the first great risk--a rider
+is not going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson
+with the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both
+horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases with
+Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and snags, and
+sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against trees. For a mile
+the forest was comparatively open, and here we had a grand and ringing
+run. I received two hard knocks, was unseated once, but held on, and
+I got a stinging crack in the face from a branch. R.C. added several
+more black-and-blue spots to his already spotted anatomy, and he
+missed, just by an inch, a solid snag that would have broken him
+in two. The pack stretched out in wild staccato chorus, the little
+Airedales literally screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then
+Sampson. Still it was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather
+than sight. They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble
+in the windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the
+mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear. The
+forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the dogs go
+down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague and the others
+strung out along the edge of the park. They got far ahead of us. When
+we reached the bottom of the slope they were out of sight, but we
+could hear them yell. The hounds were working around on another slope,
+from which craggy rocks loomed above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged
+across the park and appeared to be running off from mine. I was a
+little to the right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we
+had the bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his
+knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to alight all
+spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to be hurt. When I
+got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be patient with me, but
+he was in a hurry. Before we got across the wet place R.C. was out of
+sight. I decided that instead of worrying about him I had better think
+about myself. Once on hard ground my horse fairly charged into the
+woods and we broke brush and branches as if they had been punk. It
+was again open forest, then a rocky slope, and then a flat ridge with
+aisles between the trees. Here I heard the melodious notes of Teague's
+hunting horn, and following that, the full chorus of the hounds. They
+had treed the bear. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks
+here and there, I caught sight of R.C. far ahead, and soon I had
+glimpses of the other horses, and lastly, while riding full tilt, I
+spied a big, black, glistening bear high up in a pine a hundred yards
+or more distant.
+
+Slowing down I rode up to the circle of frenzied dogs and excited men.
+The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was beaming. R.C. sat his
+horse, and it struck me that he looked sorry for the bear.
+
+"Fifteen minutes!" ejaculated Teague, with a proud glance at Old Jim
+standing with forepaws up on the pine.
+
+Indeed it had been a short and ringing chase.
+
+All the time while I fooled around trying to photograph the treed
+bear, R.C. sat there on his horse, looking upward.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, better kill him," said Teague, cheerfully. "If he
+gets rested he'll come down."
+
+It was then I suggested to R.C. that he do the shooting.
+
+"Not much!" he exclaimed.
+
+The bear looked really pretty perched up there. He was as round as a
+barrel and black as jet and his fur shone in the gleams of sunlight.
+His tongue hung out, and his plump sides heaved, showing what a quick,
+hard run he had made before being driven to the tree. What struck me
+most forcibly about him was the expression in his eyes as he looked
+down at those devils of hounds. He was scared. He realized his peril.
+It was utterly impossible for me to see Teague's point of view.
+
+"Go ahead--and plug him," I replied to my brother. "Get it over."
+
+"You do it," he said.
+
+"No, I won't."
+
+"Why not--I'd like to know?"
+
+"Maybe we won't have so good a chance again--and I want you to get
+your bear," I replied.
+
+"Why it's like--murder," he protested.
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," I returned, weakly. "We need the meat. We've
+not had any game meat, you know, except ducks and grouse."
+
+"You won't do it?" he added, grimly.
+
+"No, I refuse."
+
+Meanwhile the young ranchers gazed at us with wide eyes and the
+expression on Teague's honest, ruddy face would have been funny under
+other circumstances.
+
+"That bear will come down an' mebbe kill one of my dogs," he
+protested.
+
+"Well, he can come for all I care," I replied, positively, and I
+turned away.
+
+I heard R.C. curse low under his breath. Then followed the spang of his
+.35 Remington. I wheeled in time to see the bear straining upward in
+terrible convulsion, his head pointed high, with blood spurting from his
+nose. Slowly he swayed and fell with a heavy crash.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO]
+
+The next bear chase we had was entirely different medicine.
+
+Off in the basin under the White Slides, back of our camp, the hounds
+struck a fresh track and in an instant were out of sight. With the
+cowboy Vern setting the pace we plunged after them. It was rough
+country. Bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little parks, stretches of timber
+full of windfalls, groves of aspens so thick we could scarcely squeeze
+through--all these obstacles soon allowed the hounds to get far away.
+We came out into a large park, right under the mountain slope, and
+here we sat our horses listening to the chase. That trail led around
+the basin and back near to us, up the thick green slope, where high up
+near a ledge we heard the pack jump this bear. It sounded to us as if
+he had been roused out of a sleep.
+
+"I'll bet it's one of the big grizzlies we've heard about," said
+Teague.
+
+That was something to my taste. I have seen a few grizzlies. Riding
+to higher ground I kept close watch on the few open patches up on the
+slope. The chase led toward us for a while. Suddenly I saw a big bear
+with a frosted coat go lumbering across one of these openings.
+
+"Silvertip! Silvertip!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I saw him!"
+
+My call thrilled everybody. Vern spurred his horse and took to the
+right. Teague advised that we climb the slope. So we made for the
+timber. Once there we had to get off and climb on foot. It was steep,
+rough, very hard work. I had on chaps and spurs. Soon I was hot,
+laboring, and my heart began to hurt. We all had to rest. The baying
+of the hounds inspirited us now and then, but presently we lost it.
+Teague said they had gone over the ridge and as soon as we got up to
+the top we would hear them again. We struck an elk trail with fresh
+elk tracks in it. Teague said they were just ahead of us. I never
+climbed so hard and fast in my life. We were all tuckered out when we
+reached the top of the ridge. Then to our great disappointment we did
+not hear the hounds. Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded
+ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher. Once on
+a bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed. The big,
+round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me. No doubt of
+its being a silvertip!
+
+We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the summit
+of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of the pack. They
+were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and over a wooded bench
+at our feet. Teague yelled as he spurred down. R.C. rode hard in his
+tracks.
+
+But my horse was new to this bear chasing. He was mettlesome, and he
+did not want to do what I wanted. When I jabbed the spurs into his
+flanks he nearly bucked me off. I was looking for a soft place to
+light when he quit. Long before I got down that open slope Teague and
+R.C. had disappeared. I had to follow their tracks. This I did at a
+gallop, but now and then lost the tracks, and had to haul in to find
+them. If I could have heard the hounds from there I would have gone on
+anyway. But once down in the jack-pines I could hear neither yell or
+bay. The pines were small, close together, and tough. I hurt my hands,
+scratched my face, barked my knees. The horse had a habit of suddenly
+deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and
+when he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both
+to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me. I was worked into a
+frenzy. Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old grizzly
+and fail to kill him! That was the reason for my desperate hurry. I
+got a crack on the head that nearly blinded me. My horse grew hot and
+began to run in every little open space. He could scarcely be held in.
+And I, with the blood hot in me too, did not hold him hard enough.
+
+It seemed miles across that wooded bench. But at last I reached
+another slope. Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C. and Teague
+yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly. He was growling
+and threshing about far below. I had missed the tracks made by Teague
+and my brother, and it was necessary to find them. That slope looked
+impassable. I rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally I found
+where the ground was plowed deep and here I headed my horse. He had
+been used to smooth roads and he could not take these jumps. I went
+forward on his neck. But I hung on and spurred him hard. The mad
+spirit of that chase had gotten into him too. All the time I could
+hear the fierce baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I
+heard a savage bawl from the bear. I literally plunged, slid, broke a
+way down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I discovered
+the footprints of Teague and R.C. They had walked, leading their
+horses. By this time I was so mad I would not get off. I rode all the
+way down that steep slope of dense saplings, loose rock slides and
+earth, and jumble of splintered cliff. That he did not break my
+neck and his own spoke the truth about that roan horse. Despite his
+inexperience he was great. We fell over one bank, but a thicket of
+aspens saved us from rolling. The avalanches slid from under us until
+I imagined that the grizzly would be scared. Once as I stopped to
+listen I heard bear and pack farther down the canyon--heard them above
+the roar of a rushing stream. They went on and I lost the sounds of
+fight. But R.C.'s clear thrilling call floated up to me. Probably he
+was worried about me.
+
+Then before I realized it I was at the foot of the slope, in a narrow
+canyon bed, full of rocks and trees, with the din of roaring water in
+my ears. I could hear nothing else. Tracks were everywhere, and when I
+came to the first open place I was thrilled. The grizzly had plunged
+off a sandy bar into the water, and there he had fought the hounds.
+Signs of that battle were easy to read. I saw where his huge tracks,
+still wet, led up the opposite sandy bank.
+
+Then, down stream, I did my most reckless riding. On level ground
+the horse was splendid. Once he leaped clear across the brook. Every
+plunge, every turn I expected to bring me upon my brother and Teague
+and that fighting pack. More than once I thought I heard the spang of
+the .35 and this made me urge the roan faster and faster.
+
+The canyon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. I had to slow down to
+get through the trees and rocks. And suddenly I was overjoyed to ride
+pell-mell upon R.C. and Teague with half the panting hounds. The
+canyon had grown too rough for the horses to go farther and it would
+have been useless for us to try on foot. As I dismounted, so sore and
+bruised I could hardly stand, old Jim came limping in to fall into the
+brook where he lapped and lapped thirstily. Teague threw up his hands.
+Old Jim's return meant an ended chase. The grizzly had eluded the
+hounds in that jumble of rocks below.
+
+"Say, did you meet the bear?" queried Teague, eyeing me in
+astonishment and mirth.
+
+Bloody, dirty, ragged and wringing wet with sweat I must have been a
+sight. R.C. however, did not look so very immaculate, and when I saw
+he also was lame and scratched and black I felt better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+I
+
+The Grand Canyon of Arizona is over two hundred miles long, thirteen
+wide, and a mile and a half deep; a titanic gorge in which mountains,
+tablelands, chasms and cliffs lie half veiled in purple haze. It is
+wild and sublime, a thing of wonder, of mystery; beyond all else a
+place to grip the heart of a man, to unleash his daring spirit.
+
+On April 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary party and
+pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the most isolated,
+inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in all the canyon
+country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared insurmountable;
+standing aloof from the towers and escarpments, rugged and bold in
+outline, its forest covering like a strip of black velvet, its giant
+granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed apart from the world,
+haunting with its beauty, isolation and wild promise.
+
+The members of my party harmoniously fitted the scene. Buffalo Jones,
+burly-shouldered, bronze-faced, and grim, proved in his appearance
+what a lifetime on the plains could make of a man. Emett was a Mormon,
+a massively built grey-bearded son of the desert; he had lived his
+life on it; he had conquered it and in his falcon eyes shone all its
+fire and freedom. Ranger Jim Owens had the wiry, supple body and
+careless, tidy garb of the cowboy, and the watchful gaze, quiet face
+and locked lips of the frontiersman. The fourth member was a Navajo
+Indian, a copper-skinned, raven-haired, beady-eyed desert savage.
+
+I had told Emett to hire some one who could put the horses on grass in
+the evening and then find them the next morning. In northern Arizona
+this required more than genius. Emett secured the best trailer of the
+desert Navajos. Jones hated an Indian; and Jim, who carried an ounce
+of lead somewhere in his person, associated this painful addition to
+his weight with an unfriendly Apache, and swore all Indians should
+be dead. So between the two, Emett and I had trouble in keeping our
+Navajo from illustrating the plainsman idea of a really good Indian--a
+dead one.
+
+While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and above a
+hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden pounding in the
+turf attracted our attention.
+
+"Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.
+
+As we all made a dive among our snorting and plunging horses the sound
+seemed to be coming right into camp. In a moment I saw a string of
+wild horses thundering by. A noble black stallion led them, and as he
+ran with beautiful stride he curved his fine head backward to look at
+us, and whistled his wild challenge.
+
+Later a herd of large white-tailed deer trooped up the hollow. The
+Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when Emett told
+him we had not come out to kill, he looked dumbfounded. Even the
+Indian felt it a strange departure from the usual mode of hunting to
+travel and climb hundreds of miles over hot desert and rock-ribbed
+canyons, to camp at last in a spot so wild that deer were tame as
+cattle, and then not kill.
+
+Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling into
+permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the all-satisfying
+touch to the background of forest, flowers and mighty pines and sunlit
+patches of grass, the white tents and red blankets, the sleeping
+hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a picture like that of a
+hunter's dream.
+
+"Come, saddle up," called the never restful Jones. "Leave the Indian
+in camp with the hounds, and we'll get the lay of the land." All
+afternoon we spent riding the plateau. What a wonderful place! We were
+completely bewildered with its physical properties, and surprised
+at the abundance of wild horses and mustangs, deer, coyotes, foxes,
+grouse and other birds, and overjoyed to find innumerable lion trails.
+When we returned to camp I drew a rough map, which Jones laid flat on
+the ground as he called us around him.
+
+"Now, boys, let's get our heads together."
+
+In shape the plateau resembled the ace of clubs. The center and side
+wings were high and well wooded with heavy pines; the middle wing
+was longest, sloped west, had no pine, but a dense growth of cedar.
+Numerous ridges and canyons cut up this central wing. Middle Canyon,
+the longest and deepest, bisected the plateau, headed near camp, and
+ran parallel with two smaller ones, which we named Right and Left
+Canyons. These three were lion runways and hundreds of deer carcasses
+lined the thickets. North Hollow was the only depression, as well as
+runway, on the northwest rim. West Point formed the extreme western
+cape of the plateau. To the left of West Point was a deep cut-in of
+the rim wall, called the Bay. The three important canyons opened into
+it. From the Bay, the south rim was regular and impassable all the way
+round to the narrow Saddle, which connected it to the mainland.
+
+"Now then," said Jones, when we assured him that we were pretty well
+informed as to the important features, "you can readily see our
+advantage. The plateau is about nine or ten miles long, and six wide
+at its widest. We can't get lost, at least for long. We know where
+lions can go over the rim and we'll head them off, make short cut
+chases, something new in lion hunting. We are positive the lions can
+not get over the second wall, except where we came up, at the Saddle.
+In regard to lion signs, I'm doubtful of the evidence of my own eyes.
+This is virgin ground. No white man or Indian has ever hunted lions
+here. We have stumbled on a lion home, the breeding place of hundreds
+of lions that infest the north rim of the canyon."
+
+The old plainsman struck a big fist into the palm of his hand, a rare
+action with him. Jim lifted his broad hat and ran his fingers through
+his white hair. In Emett's clear desert-eagle eyes shown a furtive,
+anxious look, which yet could not overshadow the smouldering fire.
+
+"If only we don't kill the horses!" he said.
+
+More than anything else that remark from such a man thrilled me with
+its subtle suggestion. He loved those beautiful horses. What wild
+rides he saw in his mind's eye! In cold calculation we perceived the
+wonderful possibilities never before experienced by hunters, and as
+the wild spell clutched us my last bar of restraint let down.
+
+During supper we talked incessantly, and afterward around the
+camp-fire. Twilight fell with the dark shadows sweeping under the
+silent pines; the night wind rose and began its moan.
+
+"Shore there's some scent on the wind," said Jim, lighting his pipe
+with a red ember. "See how uneasy Don is."
+
+The hound raised his fine, dark head and repeatedly sniffed the air,
+then walked to and fro as if on guard for his pack. Moze ground his
+teeth on a bone and growled at one of the pups. Sounder was sleepy,
+but he watched Don with suspicious eyes. The other hounds, mature and
+somber, lay stretched before the fire.
+
+"Tie them up, Jim," said Jones, "and let's turn in."
+
+
+II
+
+When I awakened next morning the sound of Emett's axe rang out
+sharply. Little streaks of light from the camp-fire played between the
+flaps of the tent. I saw old Moze get up and stretch himself. A jangle
+of cow-bells from the forest told me we would not have to wait for the
+horses that morning.
+
+"The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett.
+
+"All rustle for breakfast," called Jim.
+
+We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever brightening.
+Dawn broke as we saddled our horses. The pups were limber, and ran
+to and fro on their chains, scenting the air; the older hounds stood
+quietly waiting.
+
+"Come Navvy--come chase cougie," said Emett.
+
+"Dam! No!" replied the Indian.
+
+"Let him keep camp," suggested Jim.
+
+"All right; but he'll eat us out," Emett declared.
+
+"Climb up you fellows," said Jones, impatiently. "Have I got
+everything--rope, chains, collars, wire, nippers? Yes, all right.
+Hyar, you lazy dogs--out of this!"
+
+We rode abreast down the ridge. The demeanor of the hounds contrasted
+sharply with what it had been at the start of the hunt the year
+before. Then they had been eager, uncertain, violent; they did not
+know what was in the air; now they filed after Don in an orderly trot.
+
+We struck out of the pines at half past five. Floating mist hid the
+lower end of the plateau. The morning had a cool touch but there was
+no frost. Crossing Middle Canyon about half way down we jogged on.
+Cedar trees began to show bright green against the soft gray sage. We
+were nearing the dark line of the cedar forest when Jim, who led, held
+up his hand in a warning check. We closed in around him.
+
+"Watch Don," he said.
+
+The hound stood stiff, head well up, nose working, and the hair on his
+back bristling. All the other hounds whined and kept close to him.
+
+"Don scents a lion," whispered Jim. "I've never known him to do that
+unless there was the scent of a lion on the wind."
+
+"Hunt 'em up Don, old boy," called Jones.
+
+The pack commenced to work back and forth along the ridge. We neared
+a hollow when Don barked eagerly. Sounder answered and likewise Jude.
+Moze's short angry "bow-wow" showed the old gladiator to be in line.
+
+"Ranger's gone," cried Jim. "He was farthest ahead. I'll bet he's
+struck it. We'll know in a minute, for we're close."
+
+The hounds were tearing through the sage, working harder and harder,
+calling and answering one another, all the time getting down into the
+hollow.
+
+Don suddenly let out a string of yelps. I saw him, running head up,
+pass into the cedars like a yellow dart. Sounder howled his deep, full
+bay, and led the rest of the pack up the slope in angry clamor.
+
+"They're off!" yelled Jim, and so were we.
+
+In less than a minute we had lost one another. Crashings among the dry
+cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one direction. The
+fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I remembered that Jim had
+said Emett and his charger might keep the pack in sight, but that none
+of the rest of us could.
+
+It did not take me long to realize what my mustang was made of. His
+name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a fast pace on
+the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by keeping in this
+trail part of the work of breaking through the brush was already done
+for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead branches, more numerous in a
+cedar forest than elsewhere, struck and stung us as we passed. We
+climbed a ridge, and found the cedars thinning out into open patches.
+Then we faced a bare slope of sage and I saw Emett below on his big
+horse.
+
+Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage, and
+showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open ground, with
+its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the little mustang. I
+heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears. Emett's trail, plain
+in the yellow ground showed me the way. On entering the cedars again
+I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the
+baying of the hounds, but no answer to my signal. Then I attended to
+the stern business of catching up. For what seemed a long time, I
+threaded the maze of cedar, galloped the open sage flats, always on
+Emett's track.
+
+A signal cry, sharp to the right, turned me. I answered, and with the
+exchange of signal cries found my way into an open glade where Jones
+and Jim awaited me.
+
+"Here's one," said Jim. "Emett must be with the hounds. Listen."
+
+With the labored breathing of the horses filling our ears we could
+hear no other sound. Dismounting, I went aside and turned my ear to
+the breeze.
+
+"I hear Don," I cried instantly.
+
+"Which way?" both men asked.
+
+"West."
+
+"Strange," said Jones. "The hound wouldn't split, would he, Jim?"
+
+"Don leave that hot trail? Shore he wouldn't," replied Jim. "But his
+runnin' do seem queer this morning."
+
+"The breeze is freshening," I said. "There! Now listen! Don, and
+Sounder, too."
+
+The baying came closer and closer. Our horses threw up long ears. It
+was hard to sit still and wait. At a quick cry from Jim we saw Don
+cross the lower end of the flat.
+
+No need to spur our mounts! The lifting of bridles served, and away
+we raced. Foxie passed the others in short order. Don had long
+disappeared, but with blended bays, Jude, Moze, and Sounder broke out
+of the cedars hot on the trail. They, too, were out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where the hounds
+had come out of the forest, attracted and even frightened me. I saw
+the green of a low cedar tree shake, and split, to let out a huge,
+gaunt horse with a big man doubled over his saddle. The onslaught
+of Emett and his desert charger stirred a fear in me that checked
+admiration.
+
+"Hounds running wild," he yelled, and the dark shadows of the cedars
+claimed him again.
+
+A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett,
+dismounted, searching the ground. Moze and Sounder were with him,
+apparently at fault. Suddenly Moze left the little glade and venting
+his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees. Sounder sat on
+his haunches and yelped.
+
+"Now what the hell is wrong?" growled Jones tumbling off his saddle.
+
+"Shore something is," said Jim, also dismounting.
+
+"Here's a lion track," interposed Emett.
+
+"Ha! and here's another," cried Jones, in great satisfaction. "That's
+the trail we were on, and here's another crossing it at right angles.
+Both are fresh: one isn't fifteen minutes old. Don and Jude have split
+one way and Moze another. By George! that's great of Sounder to hang
+fire!"
+
+"Put him on the fresh trail," said Jim, vaulting into his saddle.
+
+Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off on the
+trail Moze had taken. All of us got in some pretty hard riding, and
+managed to stay within earshot of Sounder. We crossed a canyon, and
+presently reached another which, from its depth, must have been Middle
+Canyon. Sounder did not climb the opposite slope, so we followed the
+rim. From a bare ridge we distinguished the line of pines above us,
+and decided that our location was in about the center of the plateau.
+
+Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze. Sounder had caught up
+with him. We came to a halt where the canyon widened and was not so
+deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an easy slope leading
+down. Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted harsh, eager howls, and
+both hounds, in plain sight, began working in circles.
+
+"The lion has gone up somewhere," cried Jim. "Look sharp!"
+
+Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and looked
+over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to return. When
+I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the bottom of the stone
+wall, and jump into the low branches of a cedar I knew where to look.
+Then I descried the lion a round yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a
+mass of dark branches. He had leaped into the tree from the wall.
+
+"There he is! Treed! Treed!" I yelled. "Moze has found him."
+
+"Down boys, down into the canyon," shouted Jones, in sharp voice.
+"Make a racket, we don't want him to jump."
+
+How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone! For a moment I
+could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle by a strange
+vacillation that could have been no other thing than fear.
+
+"Are you afraid?" called Jones from below.
+
+"Yes, but I am coming," I replied, and dismounted to plunge down the
+hill. It may have been shame or anger that dominated me then; whatever
+it was I made directly for the cedar, and did not halt until I was
+under the snarling lion.
+
+"Not too close!" warned Jones. "He might jump. It's a Tom, a
+two-year-old, and full of fight."
+
+It did not matter to me then whether he jumped or not. I knew I had to
+be cured of my dread, and the sooner it was done the better.
+
+Old Moze had already climbed a third of the distance up to the lion.
+
+"Hyar Moze! Out of there, you rascal coon chaser!" Jones yelled as he
+threw stones and sticks at the hound. Moze, however, replied with his
+snarly bark and climbed on steadily.
+
+"I've got to pull him out. Watch close boys and tell me if the lion
+starts down."
+
+When Jones climbed the first few branches of the tree, Tom let out an
+ominous growl.
+
+"Make ready to jump. Shore he's comin'," called Jim.
+
+The lion, snarling viciously, started to descend. It was a ticklish
+moment for all of us, particularly Jones. Warily he backed down.
+
+"Boys, maybe he's bluffing," said Jones, "Try him out. Grab sticks and
+run at the tree and yell, as if you were going to kill him."
+
+Not improbably the demonstration we executed under the tree would
+have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white
+fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as
+he could. The forked branch on which he stood swayed alarmingly.
+
+"Here, punch Moze out," said Jim handing up a long pole.
+
+The old hound hung like a leech to the tree, making it difficult to
+dislodge him. At length he fell heavily, and venting his thick battle
+cry, attempted to climb again.
+
+Jim seized him, made him fast to the rope with which Sounder had
+already been tied.
+
+"Say Emett, I've no chance here," called Jones. "You try to throw at
+him from the rock."
+
+Emett ran up the rock, coiled his lasso and cast the noose. It sailed
+perfectly in between the branches and circled Tom's head. Before it
+could be slipped tight he had thrown it off. Then he hid behind the
+branches.
+
+"I'm going farther up," said Jones.
+
+"Be quick," yelled Jim.
+
+Jones evidently had that in mind. When he reached the middle fork of
+the cedar, he stood erect and extended the noose of his lasso on the
+point of his pole. Tom, with a hiss and snap, struck at it savagely.
+The second trial tempted the lion to saw the rope with his teeth. In
+a flash Jones withdrew the pole, and lifted a loop of the slack rope
+over the lion's ears.
+
+"Pull!" he yelled.
+
+Emett, at the other end of the lasso, threw his great strength into
+action, pulling the lion out with a crash, and giving the cedar such a
+tremendous shaking that Jones lost his footing and fell heavily.
+
+Thrilling as the moment was, I had to laugh, for Jones came up out of
+a cloud of dust, as angry as a wet hornet, and made prodigious leaps
+to get out of the reach of the whirling lion.
+
+"Look out!" he bawled.
+
+Tom, certainly none the worse for his tumble, made three leaps, two at
+Jones, one at Jim, which was checked by the short length of the rope
+in Emett's hands. Then for a moment, a thick cloud of dust enveloped
+the wrestling lion, during which the quick-witted Jones tied the free
+end of the lasso to a sapling.
+
+"Dod gast the luck!" yelled Jones reaching for another lasso. "I
+didn't mean for you to pull him out of the tree. Now he'll get loose
+or kill himself."
+
+When the dust cleared away, we discovered our prize stretched out at
+full length and frothing at the mouth. As Jones approached, the lion
+began a series of evolutions so rapid as to be almost indiscernible to
+the eye. I saw a wheel of dust and yellow fur. Then came a thud and
+the lion lay inert.
+
+Jones pounced upon him and loosed the lasso around his neck.
+
+"I think he's done for, but maybe not. He's breathing yet. Here, help
+me tie his paws together. Look out! He's coming to!"
+
+The lion stirred and raised his head. Jones ran the loop of the second
+lasso around the two hind paws and stretched the lion out. While in
+this helpless position and with no strength and hardly any breath left
+in him the lion was easy to handle. With Emett's help Jones quickly
+clipped the sharp claws, tied the four paws together, took off the
+neck lasso and substituted a collar and chain.
+
+"There, that's one. He'll come to all right," said Jones. "But we are
+lucky. Emett, never pull another lion clear out of a tree. Pull him over
+a limb and hang him there while some one below ropes his hind paws.
+That's the only way, and if we don't stick to it, somebody is going to
+get done for. Come, now, we'll leave this fellow here and hunt up Don
+and Jude. They've treed another lion by this time."
+
+Remarkable to me was to see how, as soon as the lion lay helpless,
+Sounder lost his interest. Moze growled, yet readily left the spot.
+Before we reached the level, both hounds had disappeared.
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER]
+
+[Illustration: CAMP AT THE SADDLE]
+
+"Hear that?" yelled Jones, digging spurs into his horse. "Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+From the cedars rang the thrilling, blending chorus of bays that told
+of a treed lion. The forest was almost impenetrable. We had to pick
+our way. Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing the deadwood; and
+soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones' assertion.
+
+First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the cedar, and
+the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the dead top of the
+tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny lion.
+
+"Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips. Quiet Jim was yelling; and
+Emett, silent man of the desert, let from his wide cavernous chest a
+booming roar that drowned ours.
+
+Jones' next decisive action turned us from exultation to the grim
+business of the thing. He pulled Moze out of the cedar, and while he
+climbed up, Emett ran his rope under the collars of all of the hounds.
+Quick as the idea flashed over me I leaped into the cedar adjoining
+the one Jones was in, and went up hand over hand. A few pulls brought
+me to the top, and then my blood ran hot and quick, for I was level
+with the lion, too close for comfort, but in excellent position for
+taking pictures.
+
+The lion, not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread
+paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came
+pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The
+quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body
+crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping
+jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his
+tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking them, manifested
+his extremity. The eager hounds waited below, howling, leaping.
+
+It bothered me considerably to keep my balance, regulate my camera
+and watch the proceedings. Jones climbed on with his rope between his
+teeth, and a long stick. The very next instant it seemed to me, I
+heard the cracking of branches and saw the lion biting hard at the
+noose which circled his neck.
+
+Here I swung down, branch to branch, and dropped to the ground, for
+I wanted to see what went on below. Above the howls and yelps, I
+distinguished Jones' yell. Emett ran directly under the lion with a
+spread noose in his hands. Jones pulled and pulled, but the lion held
+on firmly. Throwing the end of the lasso down to Jim, Jones yelled
+again, and then they both pulled. The lion was too strong. Suddenly,
+however, the branch broke, letting the lion fall, kicking frantically
+with all four paws. Emett grasped one of the four whipping paws, and
+even as the powerful animal sent him staggering he dexterously left
+the noose fast on the paw. Jim and Jones in unison let go of their
+lasso, which streaked up through the branches as the lion fell, and
+then it dropped to the ground, where Jim made a flying grab for it.
+Jones plunging out of the tree fell upon the rope at the same instant.
+
+If the action up to then had been fast, it was slow to what followed.
+It seemed impossible for two strong men with one lasso, and a giant
+with another, to straighten out that lion. He was all over the little
+space under the trees at once. The dust flew, the sticks snapped,
+the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars. Jones ploughed the
+ground flat on his stomach, holding on with one hand, with the other
+trying to fasten the rope to something; Jim went to his knees; and on
+the other side of the lion, Emett's huge bulk tipped a sharp angle,
+and then fell.
+
+I shouted and ran forward, having no idea what to do, but Emett rolled
+backward, at the same instant the other men got a strong haul on
+the lion. Short as that moment was in which the lasso slackened, it
+sufficed for Jones to make the rope fast to a tree. Whereupon with the
+three men pulling on the other side of the leaping lion, somehow I had
+flashed into my mind the game that children play, called skipping the
+rope, for the lion and lasso shot up and down.
+
+This lasted for only a few seconds. They stretched the beast from tree
+to tree, and Jones running with the third lasso, made fast the front
+paws.
+
+"It's a female," said Jones, as the lion lay helpless, her sides
+swelling; "a good-sized female. She's nearly eight feet from tip to
+tip, but not very heavy. Hand me another rope."
+
+When all four lassos had been stretched, the lioness could not move.
+Jones strapped a collar around her neck and clipped the sharp yellow
+claws.
+
+"Now to muzzle her," he continued.
+
+Jones' method of performing this most hazardous part of the work was
+characteristic of him. He thrust a stick between her open jaws, and
+when she crushed it to splinters he tried another, and yet another,
+until he found one that she could not break. Then while she bit on it,
+he placed a wire loop over her nose, slowly tightening it, leaving the
+stick back of her big canines.
+
+The hounds ceased their yelping and when untied, Sounder wagged his
+tail as if to say, "Well done," and then lay down; Don walked within
+three feet of the lion, as if she were now beneath his dignity; Jude
+began to nurse and lick her sore paw; only Moze the incorrigible
+retained antipathy for the captive, and he growled, as always, low and
+deep. And on the moment, Ranger, dusty and lame from travel, trotted
+wearily into the glade and, looking at the lioness, gave one disgusted
+bark and flopped down.
+
+
+III
+
+Transporting our captives to camp bade fair to make us work. When
+Jones, who had gone after the pack horses, hove in sight on the sage
+flat, it was plain to us that we were in for trouble. The bay stallion
+was on the rampage.
+
+"Why didn't you fetch the Indian?" growled Emett, who lost his temper
+when matters concerning his horses went wrong. "Spread out, boys, and
+head him off."
+
+We contrived to surround the stallion, and Emett succeeded in getting
+a halter on him.
+
+"I didn't want the bay," explained Jones, "but I couldn't drive the
+others without him. When I told that redskin that we had two lions, he
+ran off into the woods, so I had to come alone."
+
+"I'm going to scalp the Navajo," said Jim, complacently.
+
+These remarks were exchanged on the open ridge at the entrance to the
+thick cedar forest. The two lions lay just within its shady precincts.
+Emett and I, using a long pole in lieu of a horse, had carried Tom up
+from the Canyon to where we had captured the lioness.
+
+Jones had brought a packsaddle and two panniers.
+
+[Illustration: BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER]
+
+When Emett essayed to lead the horse which carried these, the animal
+stood straight up and began to show some of his primal desert
+instincts. It certainly was good luck that we unbuckled the packsaddle
+straps before he left the vicinity. In about three jumps he had
+separated himself from the panniers, which were then placed upon the
+back of another horse. This one, a fine looking beast, and amiable
+under surroundings where his life and health were considered even a
+little, immediately disclaimed any intention of entering the forest.
+
+"They scent the lions," said Jones. "I was afraid of it; never had but
+one nag that would pack lions."
+
+"Maybe we can't pack them at all," replied Emett dubiously. "It's
+certainly new to me."
+
+"We've got to," Jones asserted; "try the sorrel."
+
+For the first time in a serviceable and honorable life, according to
+Emett, the sorrel broke his halter and kicked like a plantation mule.
+
+"It's a matter of fright. Try the stallion. He doesn't look afraid,"
+said Jones, who never knew when he was beaten.
+
+Emett gazed at Jones as if he had not heard right.
+
+"Go ahead, try the stallion. I like the way he looks."
+
+No wonder! The big stallion looked a king of horses--just what he
+would have been if Emett had not taken him, when a colt, from his wild
+desert brothers. He scented the lions, and he held his proud head up,
+his ears erect, and his large, dark eyes shone fiery and expressive.
+
+"I'll try to lead him in and let him see the lions. We can't fool
+him," said Emett.
+
+Marc showed no hesitation, nor anything we expected. He stood
+stiff-legged, and looked as if he wanted to fight.
+
+"He's all right; he'll pack them," declared Jones.
+
+The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to the horns,
+Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the left pannier
+while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom never lived. It was
+cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as
+Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse
+was adding insult to injury. Tom frothed at the mouth and seemed like
+a fizzing torpedo about to explode. The lioness being considerably
+longer and larger, was with difficulty gotten into the other pannier,
+and her head and paws hung out. Both lions kept growling and snarling.
+
+"I look to see Marc bolt over the rim," said Emett, resignedly, as
+Jones took up the end of the rope halter.
+
+"No siree!" sang out that worthy. "He's helping us out; he's proud to
+show up the other nags."
+
+Jones was always asserting strange traits in animals, and giving them
+intelligence and reason. As to that, many incidents coming under my
+observation while with him, and seen with his eyes, made me incline to
+his claims, the fruit of a lifetime with animals.
+
+Marc packed the lions to camp in short order, and, quoting Jones,
+"without turning a hair." We saw the Navajo's head protruding from a
+tree. Emett yelled for him, and Jones and Jim "hahaed" derisively;
+whereupon the black head vanished and did not reappear. Then they
+unhooked one of the panniers and dumped out the lioness. Jones
+fastened her chain to a small pine tree, and as she lay powerless he
+pulled out the stick back of her canines. This allowed the wire muzzle
+to fall off. She signalled this freedom with a roar that showed her
+health to be still unimpaired. The last action in releasing her from
+her painful bonds Jones performed with sleight-of-hand dexterity. He
+slipped the loop fastening one paw, which loosened the rope, and in a
+twinkling let her work all of her other paws free. Up she sprang, ears
+flat, eyes ablaze, mouth wide, once more capable of defense, true to
+her instinct and her name.
+
+Before the men lowered Tom from Marc's back I stepped closer and put
+my face within six inches of the lion's. He promptly spat on me. I had
+to steel my nerve to keep so close. But I wanted to see a wild lion's
+eyes at close range. They were exquisitely beautiful, their physical
+properties as wonderful as their expression. Great half globes of
+tawny amber, streaked with delicate wavy lines of black, surrounding
+pupils of intense purple fire. Pictures shone and faded in the amber
+light--the shaggy tipped plateau, the dark pines and smoky canyons,
+the great dotted downward slopes, the yellow cliffs and crags. Deep in
+those live pupils, changing, quickening with a thousand vibrations,
+quivered the soul of this savage beast, the wildest of all wild
+Nature, unquenchable love of life and freedom, flame of defiance and
+hate.
+
+Jones disposed of Tom in the same manner as he had the lioness,
+chaining him to an adjoining small pine, where he leaped and wrestled.
+
+Presently I saw Emett coming through the woods leading and dragging
+the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that his fear was
+not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no wonder to me that
+the Navvy should hang back from this sacrilegious treatment of his
+god. A natural wisdom, which I had in common with all human beings who
+consider self preservation the first law of life, deterred me from
+acquainting my august companions with my belief. At least I did not
+want to break up the camp.
+
+In the remorseless grasp of Emett, forced along, the Navajo dragged
+his feet and held his face sidewise, though his dark eyes gleamed
+at the lions. Terror predominated among the expressions of his
+countenance. Emett drew him within fifteen feet and held him there,
+and with voice, and gesticulating of his free hand, tried to show the
+poor fellow that the lions would not hurt him.
+
+Navvy stared and muttered to himself. Here Jim had some deviltry in
+mind, for he edged up closer; but what it was never transpired, for
+Emett suddenly pointed to the horses and said to the Indian:
+
+"_Chineago_ (feed)."
+
+It appeared when Navvy swung himself over Marc's broad back, that our
+great stallion had laid aside his transiently noble disposition and
+was himself again. Marc proceeded to show us how truly Jim had spoken:
+"Shore he ain't no use for the redskin." Before the Indian had fairly
+gotten astride, Marc dropped his head, humped his shoulders, brought
+his feet together and began to buck. Now the Navajo was a famous
+breaker of wild mustangs, but Marc was a tougher proposition than the
+wildest mustang that ever romped the desert. Not only was he unusually
+vigorous; he was robust and heavy, yet exceedingly active. I had seen
+him roll over in the dust three times each way, and do it easily--a
+feat Emett declared he had never seen performed by another horse.
+
+Navvy began to bounce. He showed his teeth and twisted his sinewy
+hands in the horse's mane. Marc began to act like a demon; he plowed
+the ground; apparently he bucked five feet straight up. As the Indian
+had bounced he now began to shoot into the air. He rose the last time
+with his heels over his head, to the full extent of his arms; and on
+plunging down his hold broke. He spun around the horse, then went
+hurtling to the ground some twenty feet away. He sat up, and seeing
+Emett and Jones laughing, and Jim prostrated with joy, he showed his
+white teeth in a smile and said:
+
+"No bueno dam."
+
+I think all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and especially
+when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the mean Indian,
+patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted. Marc, not being so
+difficult to please as Jim in the way of discomfiting the Navajo,
+appeared satisfied for the present, and trotted off down the hollow,
+with the string of horses ahead, their bells jingling.
+
+Camp-fire tasks were a necessary wage in order to earn the full
+enjoyment and benefit of the hunting trip; and looking for some task
+with which to turn my hand, I helped Jim feed the hounds. To feed
+ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a bone; however, our dogs
+were not ordinary. It took time to feed them, and a prodigious amount
+of meat. We had packed between three and four hundred pounds of
+wild-horse meat, which had been cut into small pieces and strung on
+the branches of a scrub oak near camp.
+
+Don, as befitted a gentleman and the leader of the greatest pack in
+the West, had to be fed by hand. I believe he would rather had starved
+than have demeaned himself by fighting. Starved he certainly would
+have, if Jim had thrown meat indiscriminately to the ground. Sounder
+asserted his rights and preferred large portions at a time. Jude
+begged with great solemn eyes but was no slouch at eating for all her
+gentleness. Ranger, because of imperfectly developed teeth rendering
+mastication difficult, had to have his share cut into very small
+pieces. As for Moze--well, great dogs have their faults as do great
+men--he never got enough meat; he would fight even poor crippled Jude,
+and steal even from the pups; when he had gotten all Jim would give
+him, and all he could snatch, he would growl away with bulging sides.
+
+"How about feeding the lions?" asked Emett.
+
+"They'll drink to-night," replied Jones, "but won't eat for days; then
+we'll tempt them with fresh rabbits."
+
+We made a hearty meal, succeeding which Jones and I walked through
+the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and glistening,
+invited us westward, and after a detour of half a mile we reached it.
+The points of the rim, striking out into the immense void, always drew
+me irresistibly. We found the view from this rock one of startling
+splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of the middle wing extended to the
+west, at this moment apparently running into the setting sun. The gold
+glare touching up the millions of facets of chiseled stone, created
+color and brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And
+looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue, bottomless
+depths of the Pacific.
+
+"Here, help me push off this stone," I said to Jones. We heaved a huge
+round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move. Fortunately we had a
+little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked and began to slide. Just as
+it toppled over I glanced at the second hand of my watch. Then with
+eyes over the rim we waited. The silence was the silence of the
+canyon, dead and vast, intensified by our breathless earstrain. Ten
+long palpitating seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too
+great for sound to reach us. Fifteen seconds--seventeen--eighteen--
+
+With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most awful
+bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened, deadened to burst
+out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled
+under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the
+cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble--roar and rumble! for two long
+moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in
+the far-distant canyons.
+
+"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.
+
+Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the
+red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening
+downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark
+tide.
+
+On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to
+a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The
+hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
+We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress with
+his big arm.
+
+"Listen," he whispered.
+
+It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine
+needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be approaching under
+the trees.
+
+I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the
+hollow.
+
+"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.
+
+"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken
+wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."
+
+I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down like
+shadows.
+
+"Have they scented us?"
+
+"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
+They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"
+
+Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an
+indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies,
+a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings
+and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.
+
+"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
+Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to
+him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the
+bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through
+and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I
+saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer,
+and I hurriedly shot six times at it.
+
+"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for quick
+work? It's a yearling doe."
+
+In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones feet. It
+was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the wheeze of blood
+in its throat, and the sound, like a death-rattle, affected me
+powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where one side of the neck, low
+down, had been terribly lacerated.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.
+
+"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have
+another shot put this doe out of agony."
+
+But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife.
+We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound,
+probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the
+throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
+
+I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living thing was
+a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied natural
+selection, the variability of animals under different conditions of
+struggling existence, the law whereby one animal struck down and
+devoured another. But I had never seen and heard that law enacted on
+such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.
+
+Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.
+
+"What's up?" he asked quickly.
+
+He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the other;
+and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk that I
+experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his advent
+might mean at a time of real peril.
+
+[Illustration: JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION]
+
+[Illustration: REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS]
+
+"Emett, I've lived to see many things," replied Jones, "but this is
+the first time I ever saw a lion jump a deer right under my nose!"
+
+As Emett bent over to seize the long ears of the deer, I noticed the
+gasping had ceased.
+
+"Neck broken," he said, lifting the head. "Well, I'm danged. Must have
+been an all-fired strong lion. He'll come back, you may be sure of
+that. Let's skin out the quarters and hang the carcass up in a tree!"
+
+We returned to camp in a half an hour, the richer for our walk by a
+quantity of fresh venison. Upon being acquainted with our adventure,
+Jim expressed himself rather more fairly than was his customary way.
+
+"Shore that beats hell! I knowed there was a lion somewheres, because
+Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the brute."
+
+I believed Jim's wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any rate
+to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the doe
+justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it was not
+so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner of it, and
+especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama of the plateau.
+The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps
+often in the day and likely at different points at the same time.
+Emett told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried
+hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we
+were encamped.
+
+"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."
+
+"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, _coco! coco!_" called Emett.
+
+The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up the fire
+and threw on more wood.
+
+"_Discass!_ (cold)," he said to me. "_Coco, bueno_ (fire good)."
+
+I replied, "Me savvy--yes."
+
+"Sleep-ie?" he asked.
+
+"Mucha," I returned.
+
+While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of Navajo,
+English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw the stars
+disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder and carried
+a breath of snow. I like north wind best--from under the warm
+blankets--because of the roar and lull and lull and roar in the pines.
+Crawling into the bed presently, I lay there and listened to the
+rising storm-wind for a long time. Sometimes it swelled and crashed
+like the sound of a breaker on the beach, but mostly, from a low
+incessant moan, it rose and filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly
+lulled. This lull, despite a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to
+sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The Navajo
+aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly from under
+the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw fleecy flakes
+of white drifting through the small window of my tent.
+
+"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones' hopes.
+Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots and coat I
+went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow. The forest was
+beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was falling. I walked to the
+roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits, well-browned and of generous
+size, had just been dumped into the middle of our breakfast cloth, a
+tarpaulin spread on the ground; the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and
+a Dutch oven sizzled with a great number of slices of venison. "Did
+you hear the Indian chanting?" asked Jones, who sat with his horny
+hands to the blaze.
+
+"I heard his singing."
+
+"No, it wasn't a song; the Navajo never sings in the morning. What you
+heard was his morning prayer, a chant, a religious and solemn ritual
+to the break of day. Emett says it is a custom of the desert tribe.
+You remember how we saw the Mokis sitting on the roofs of their little
+adobe huts in the gray of the morning. They always greet the sun in
+that way. The Navajos chant."
+
+It certainly was worth remembering, I thought, and mentally observed
+that I would wake up thereafter and listen to the Indian.
+
+"Good luck and bad!" went on Jones. "Snow is what we want, but now we
+can't find the scent of our lion of last night."
+
+Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives presented sorry
+spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled. Emett had chopped down a
+small pine, the branches of which he was using to make shelter for the
+lions. While I looked on Tom tore his to pieces several times, but the
+lioness crawled under hers and began licking her chops. At length
+Tom, seeing that Emett meant no underhand trick, backed out of the
+drizzling snow and lay down.
+
+Emett had already constructed a shack for the hounds. It was a way of
+his to think of everything. He had the most extraordinary ability. A
+stroke of his axe, a twist of his great hands, a turn of this or that
+made camp a more comfortable place. And if something, no matter what,
+got out of order or broken, there was Emett to show what it was to be
+a man of the desert. It had been my good fortune to see many able
+men on the trail and round the camp-fire, but not one of them even
+approached Emett's class. When I said a word to him about his knack
+with things, his reply was illuminating: "I'm fifty-eight, and four
+out of every five nights of my life I have slept away from home on the
+ground."
+
+"_Chineago!_" called Jim, who had begun with all of us to assimilate a
+little of the Navajo's language.
+
+Whereupon we fell to eating with appetite unknown to any save hunters.
+Somehow the Indian had gravitated to me at meal times, and now he sat
+cross-legged beside me, holding out his plate and looking as hungry as
+Moze. At first he had always asked for the same kind of food that
+I happened to have on my own plate. When I had finished and had no
+desire to eat more, he gave up his faculty of imitation and asked for
+anything he could get. The Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked
+sweet things, sugar best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get
+his hands on a can of fruit. Although he inspired Jones with disgust
+and Jim with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to me. He
+called me "Mista Gay" and he pronounced the words haltingly in low
+voice and with unmistakable respect.
+
+"What's on for today?" queried Emett.
+
+"I guess we may as well hang around camp and rest the hounds," replied
+Jones. "I did intend to go after the lion that killed the deer, but
+this snow has taken away the scent."
+
+"Shore it'll stop snowin' soon," said Jim.
+
+The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying powder; the
+leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew brighter and
+brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.
+
+Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after his
+departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through the forest.
+
+"Something's up," said Emett instantly. "An Indian never yells like
+that at a horse."
+
+[Illustration: A LION TIED]
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S
+DESERT RANCH]
+
+We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell repeated.
+It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells, which told us he
+had the horses coming. He appeared off to the right, riding Foxie and
+racing the others toward camp.
+
+"Cougie--mucha big--dam!" he said leaping off the mustang to confront
+us.
+
+"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned Jones.
+
+"Me savvy," replied the Indian. "_Butteen, butteen_!"
+
+"He says, trail--trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd better go and
+see."
+
+"I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight and hurry
+with the horses' oats."
+
+We followed the tracks of the horses which lead southwest toward the
+rim, and a quarter of a mile from camp we crossed a lion trail running
+at right angles with our direction.
+
+"Old Sultan!" I cried, breathlessly, recognizing that the tracks had
+been made by a giant lion we had named Sultan. They were huge, round,
+and deep, and with my spread hand I could not reach across one of
+them.
+
+Without a word, Jones strode off on the trail. It headed east and
+after a short distance turned toward camp. I suppose Jones knew what
+the lion had been about, but to Emett and me it was mystifying. Two
+hundred yards from camp we came to a fallen pine, the body of which
+was easily six feet high. On the side of this log, almost on top, were
+two enormous lion tracks, imprinted in the mantle of snow. From here
+the trail led off northeast.
+
+"Darn me!" ejaculated Jones. "The big critter came right into camp; he
+scented our lions, and raised up on this log to look over."
+
+Wheeling, he started for camp on the trot. Emett and I kept even
+with him. Words were superfluous. We knew what was coming. A
+made--to--order lion trail could not have equalled the one right in
+the back yard of our camp.
+
+"Saddle up!" said Jones, with the sharp inflection of words that had
+come to thrill me. "Jim, Old Sultan has taken a look at us since break
+of day."
+
+I got into my chaps, rammed my little automatic into its saddle
+holster and mounted. Foxie seemed to want to go. The hounds came out
+of their sheds and yawned, looking at us knowingly. Emett spoke a word
+to the Navajo, and then we were trotting down through the forest. The
+sun had broken out warm, causing water to drip off the snow laden
+pines. The three of us rode close behind Jones, who spoke low and
+sternly to the hounds.
+
+What an opportunity to watch Don! I wondered how soon he would catch
+the scent of the trail. He led the pack as usual and kept to a
+leisurely dog--trot. When within twenty yards of the fallen log, he
+stopped for an instant and held up his head, though without exhibiting
+any suspicion or uneasiness.
+
+The wind blew strong at our backs, a circumstance that probably
+kept Don so long in ignorance of the trail. A few yards further on,
+however, he stopped and raised his fine head. He lowered it and
+trotted on only to stop again. His easy air of satisfaction with
+the morning suddenly vanished. His savage hunting instinct awakened
+through some channel to raise the short yellow hair on his neck and
+shoulders and make it stand stiff. He stood undecided with warily
+shifting nose, then jumped forward with a yelp. Another jump brought
+another sharp cry from him. Sounder, close behind, echoed the yelp.
+Jude began to whine. Then Don, with a wild howl, leaped ten feet to
+alight on the lion trail and to break into wonderfully rapid flight.
+The seven other hounds, bunched in a black and yellow group, tore
+after him filling the forest with their wild uproar.
+
+Emett's horse bounded as I have seen a great racer leave the post, and
+his desert brothers, loving wild bursts of speed, needing no spur,
+kept their noses even with his flanks. The soft snow, not too deep,
+rather facilitated than impeded this wild movement, and the open
+forest was like a highway.
+
+So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for branches,
+vaulting the white--blanketed logs, and swerving as we split to pass
+the pines. The mist from the melting snow moistened our faces, and the
+rushing air cooled them with fresh, soft sensation. There were moments
+when we rode abreast and others when we sailed single file, with white
+ground receding, vanishing behind us.
+
+My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth flight
+and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I hoped we would
+not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a thicket where he
+had dragged a deer, because the race was too splendid a thing to cut
+short. Through my mind whirled with inconceivable rapidity the great
+lion chases on which we had ridden the year before. And this was
+another chase, only more stirring, more beautiful, because it was the
+nature of the thing to grow always with experience.
+
+Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung along the
+trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup was neck and
+neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels, leading the other pups.
+Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of Jude.
+
+But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds, was not in
+the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned due west when he
+began to go down the little hollows and their intervening ridges. We
+lost ground. The pack left us behind. The slope of the plateau became
+decided. We rode out of the pines to find the snow failing in the
+open. Water ran in little gullies and glistened on the sagebrush. A
+half mile further down the snow had gone. We came upon the hounds
+running at fault, except Sounder, and he had given up.
+
+"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's track and
+his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as well to wait
+until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing somewhere and it is my
+idea we might catch his trail as he comes back."
+
+The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There seemed
+no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but features of
+the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the lower end of the
+plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even if we found a fresh
+morning trail in the sand, the heat would have burned out the scent.
+
+So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp only the
+shady patches were left.
+
+It was almost eleven o'clock when I lay down on my bed to rest awhile
+and fell asleep. The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard Jim calling
+Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The snow had all
+disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim sat on his horse and
+Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow, leading the saddle horses.
+
+"Jones, get out," called Jim.
+
+"Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones testily.
+
+"Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.
+
+Jones burst out of his tent, with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes.
+
+"I went over to see the carcass of the deer an' found a lion sittin'
+up in the tree, feedin' for all he was worth. Pie jumped out an' ran
+up the hollow an' over the rim. So I rustled back for you fellows.
+Lively now, we'll get this one sure."
+
+"Was it the big fellow?" I asked
+
+"No, but he ain't no kitten; an' he's a fine color, sort of reddish. I
+never seen one just as bright. Where's Emett?"
+
+"I don't know. He was here a little while ago. Shall I signal for
+him?"
+
+"Don't yell," cried Jones holding up his fingers. "Be quiet now."
+
+Without another word we finished saddling, mounted and, close
+together, with the hounds in front, rode through the forest toward the
+rim.
+
+
+V
+
+We rode in different directions toward the hollow, the better to
+chance meeting with Emett, but none of us caught a glimpse of him.
+
+It happened that when we headed into the hollow it was at a point just
+above where the deer carcass hung in the scrub oak. Don in spite of
+Jones' stern yells, let out his eager hunting yelp and darted down the
+slope. The pack bolted after him and in less than ten seconds were
+racing up the hollow, their thrilling, blending bays a welcome spur to
+action. Though I spoke not a word to my mustang nor had time to raise
+the bridle, he wheeled to one side and began to run. The other horses
+also kept to the ridge, as I could tell by the pounding of hoofs on
+the soft turf. The hounds in full cry right under us urged our good
+steeds to a terrific pace. It was well that the ridge afforded clear
+going.
+
+The speed at which we traveled, however, fast as it was, availed not
+to keep up with the pack. In a short half mile, just as the hollow
+sloped and merged into level ground, they left us behind and
+disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My mustang plunged
+out of the forest to the rim and dashed along, apparently unmindful of
+the chasm. The red and yellow surface blurred in a blinding glare. I
+heard the chorus of hounds, but as its direction baffled me I trusted
+to my horse and I did well, for soon he came to a dead halt on the
+rim.
+
+Then I heard the hounds below me. I had but time to see the character
+of the place--long, yellow promontories running out and slopes of
+weathered stone reaching up between to a level with the rim--when in a
+dwarf pine growing just over the edge I caught sight of a long, red,
+pantherish body.
+
+I whooped to my followers now close upon me and leaping off hauled out
+my Remington and ran to the cliff. The lion's long, slender body, of a
+rare golden-red color, bright, clean, black-tipped and white-bellied,
+proclaimed it a female of exceeding beauty. I could have touched her
+with a fishing rod and saw how easily she could be roped from where I
+stood. The tree in which she had taken refuge grew from the head of
+a weathered slope and rose close to the wall. At that point it was
+merely a parapet of crumbling yellow rock. No doubt she had lain
+concealed under the shelving wall and had not had time to get away
+before the hounds were right upon her.
+
+"She's going to jump," yelled Jones, in my rear, as he dismounted.
+
+I saw a golden-red streak flash downward, heard a mad medley from the
+hounds, a cloud of dust rose, then something bright shone for a second
+to the right along the wall. I ran with all my might to a headland of
+rock upon which I scrambled and saw with joy that I could command the
+situation.
+
+The lioness was not in sight, nor were the hounds. The latter,
+however, were hot on the trail. I knew the lioness had taken to
+another tree or a hole under the wall, and would soon be routed out.
+This time I felt sure she would run down and I took a rapid glance
+below. The slope inclined at a steep angle and was one long slide of
+bits of yellow stone with many bunches of scrub oak and manzanita.
+Those latter I saw with satisfaction, because in case I had to go down
+they would stop the little avalanches. The slope reached down perhaps
+five hundred yards and ended in a thicket and jumble of rocks from
+which rose on the right a bare yellow slide. This ran up to a low
+cliff. I hoped the lion would not go that way, for it led to great
+broken battlements of rim. Left of the slide was a patch of cedars.
+
+Jim's yell pealed out, followed by the familiar penetrating howl of
+the pack when it sighted game. With that I saw the lioness leaping
+down the slope and close behind her a yellow hound.
+
+"Go it, Don, old boy!" I yelled, wild with delight.
+
+A crushing step on the stones told me Jones had arrived.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" roared he.
+
+I thought then that if the lioness did not cover thirty feet at every
+jump I was not in a condition to judge distance. She ran away from Don
+as if he had been tied and reached the thicket below a hundred yards
+ahead of him. And when Don leaving his brave pack far up the slide
+entered the thicket the lioness came out on the other side and bounded
+up the bare slope of yellow shale.
+
+"Shoot ahead of her! Head her off! Turn her back!" cried Jones.
+
+With the word I threw forward the Remington and let drive. Following
+the bellow of the rifle, so loud in that thin air, a sharp, harsh
+report cracked up from below. A puff of yellow dust rose in front of
+the lioness. I was in line, but too far ahead. I fired again. The
+steel jacketed bullet hit a stone and spitefully whined away into the
+canyon. I tried once more. This time I struck close to the lioness.
+Disconcerted by a cloud of dust rising before her very eyes she
+wheeled and ran back.
+
+We had forgotten Don and suddenly he darted out of the thicket,
+straight up the slide. Always, in every chase, we were afraid the
+great hound would run to meet his death. We knew it was coming
+sometime. When the lioness saw him and stopped, both Jones and I felt
+that this was to be the end of Don.
+
+"Shoot her! Shoot her!" cried Jones. "She'll kill him! She'll kill
+him!"
+
+As I knelt on the rock I had a hard contraction of my throat, and
+then all my muscles set tight and rigid. I pulled the trigger of my
+automatic once, twice. It was wonderful how closely the two bullets
+followed each other, as we could tell by the almost simultaneous
+puffs of dust rising from under the beast's nose. She must have been
+showered and stung with gravel, for she bounded off to the left and
+disappeared in the cedars. I had missed, but the shots had served to a
+better end than if I had killed her.
+
+As Don raced up the ground where a moment before a battle and probably
+death had awaited him, the other hounds burst from the thicket. With
+that, a golden form seemed to stand out from the green of the cedar,
+to move and to rise.
+
+"She's treed! She's treed!" shouted Jones. "Go down and keep her there
+while I follow."
+
+From the back of the promontory where I met the main wall, I let
+myself down a niche, foot here and there, a hand hard on the soft
+stone, braced knee and back until I jumped to the edge of the slope.
+The scrub oak and manzanita saved me many a fall. I set some stones
+rolling and I beat them to the bottom. Having passed the thicket, I
+bent my efforts to the yellow slide and when I had surmounted it my
+breath came in labored pants. The howling of the hounds guided me
+through the cedars.
+
+First I saw Moze in the branches of cedar and above him the lioness. I
+ran out into a little open patch of stony ground at the end of which
+the tree stood leaning over a precipice. In truth the lioness was
+swaying over a chasm.
+
+Those details I grasped in a glance, then suddenly awoke to the fact
+that the lioness was savagely snarling at Moze.
+
+"Moze! Moze! Get down!" I yelled.
+
+He climbed on serenely. He was a most exasperating dog. I screamed at
+him and hit him with a rock big enough to break his bones. He kept on
+climbing. Here was a predicament. Moze would surely get to the lioness
+if I did not stop him, and this seemed impossible. It was out of the
+question for me to climb after him. And if the lioness jumped she
+would have to pass me or come straight at me. So I slipped down the
+safety catch on my automatic and stood ready to save Moze or myself.
+
+The lioness with a show of fury that startled me, descended her branch
+a few steps, and reaching below gave Moze a sounding smack with her
+big paw. The hound dropped as if he had been shot and hit the ground
+with a thud. Whereupon she returned to her perch.
+
+This reassured me and I ran among the dogs and caught Moze already
+starting for the tree again and tied him, with a strap I always carried,
+to a small bush nearby. I heard the yells of my companions
+and looking back over the tops of the cedars I saw Jim riding down and
+higher to the left Jones sliding, falling, running at a great rate. I
+encouraged them to keep up the good work, and then gave my attention to
+the lioness.
+
+She regarded me with a cold, savage stare and showed her teeth. I
+repaid this incivility on her part by promptly photographing her from
+different points.
+
+Jones and Jim were on the spot before I expected them and both were
+dusty and dripping with sweat. I found to my surprise that my face was
+wet as was also my shirt. Jones carried two lassos, and my canteen,
+which I had left on the promontory.
+
+"Ain't she a beauty?" he panted, wiping his face. "Wait--till I get my
+breath."
+
+When finally he walked toward the cedar the lioness stood up and
+growled as if she realized the entrance of the chief actor upon the
+scene. Jones cast his lasso apparently to try her out, and the noose
+spread out and fell over her head. As he tightened the rope the
+lioness backed down behind a branch.
+
+"Tie the dogs!" yelled Jones.
+
+"Quick!" added Jim. "She's goin' to jump."
+
+Jim had only time to aid me in running my lasso under the collar of
+Don, Sounder, Jude and one of the pups. I made them fast to a cedar.
+I got my hands on Ranger just as Moze broke his strap. I grabbed his
+collar and held on.
+
+Right there was where trouble commenced for me. Ranger tussled valiantly
+and Moze pulled me all over the place. Behind me I heard Jones' roar and
+Jim's yell; the breaking of branches, the howling of the other dogs.
+Ranger broke away from me and so enabled me to get my other hand on the
+neck of crazy Moze. On more than one occasion I had tried to hold him
+and had failed; this time I swore I would do it if he rolled me
+over the precipice. As to that, only a bush saved me.
+
+More and louder roars and yells, hoarser howls and sharper
+wrestling, snapping sounds told me what was going on while I tried to
+subdue Moze. I had a grim thought that I would just as lief have had
+hold of the lioness. The hound presently stopped his plunging which gave
+me an opportunity to look about. The little space was smoky with a smoke
+of dust. I saw the lioness stretched out with one lasso around a bush
+and another around a cedar with the end in the hands of Jim. He looked
+as if he had dug up the ground. While he tied this lasso securely Jones
+proceeded to rope the dangerous front paws.
+
+The hounds quieted down and I took advantage of this absence of tumult
+to get rid of Moze.
+
+"Pretty lively," said Jones, spitting gravel as I walked up. Sand and
+dust lay thick in his beard and blackened his face. "I tell you she
+made us root."
+
+Either the lioness had been much weakened or choked, or Jones had
+unusual luck, for we muzzled her and tied up her paws in short order.
+
+"Where's Ranger?" I asked suddenly, missing him from the panting
+hounds.
+
+"I grabbed him by the heels when he tackled the lion, and I gave him a
+sling somewheres," replied Jim.
+
+Ranger put in an appearance then under the cedars limping painfully.
+
+"Jim, darn me, if I don't believe you pitched him over the precipice!"
+said Jones.
+
+Examination proved this surmise to be correct. We saw where Ranger had
+slipped over a twenty-foot wall. If he had gone over just under the
+cedar where the depth was much greater he would never have come back.
+
+"The hounds are choking with dust and heat," I said. When I poured
+just a little water from my canteen into the crown of my hat, the
+hounds began fighting around and over me and spilled the water.
+
+"Behave, you coyotes!" I yelled. Either they were insulted or fully
+realized the exigency of the situation, for each one came up and
+gratefully lapped every drop of his portion.
+
+"Shore, now comes the hell of it," said Jim appearing with a long
+pole. "Packin' the critter out."
+
+An argument arose in regard to the best way up the slope, and by
+virtue of a majority we decided to try the direction Jim and I thought
+best. My companions led the way, carrying the lioness suspended on the
+pole. I brought up the rear, packing my rifle, camera, lasso, canteen
+and a chain.
+
+It was killing work. We had to rest every few steps. Often we would
+fall. Jim laughed, Jones swore, and I groaned. Sometimes I had to drop
+my things to help my companions. So we toiled wearily up the loose,
+steep way.
+
+"What's she shakin' like that for?" asked Jim suddenly.
+
+Jones let down his end of the pole and turned quickly. Little tremors
+quivered over the lissome body of the lioness.
+
+"She's dying," cried Jim, jerking out the stick between her teeth and
+slipping off the wire muzzle.
+
+Her mouth opened and her frothy tongue lolled out. Jones pointed to
+her quivering sides and then raised her eyelids. We saw the eyes
+already glazing, solemnly fixed.
+
+"She's gone," he said.
+
+Very soon she lay inert and lifeless. Then we sat beside her without
+a word, and we could hardly for the moment have been more stunned and
+heartbroken if it had been the tragic death of one of our kind.
+In that wild environment, obsessed by the desire to capture those
+beautiful cats alive, the fateful ending of the successful chase was
+felt out of all proportion.
+
+"Shore she's dead," said Jim. "And wasn't she a beauty? What was
+wrong?"
+
+"The heat and lack of water," replied Jones. "She choked. What idiots
+we were! Why didn't we think to give her a drink."
+
+So we passionately protested against our want of fore-thought, and
+looked again and again with the hope that she might come to. But death
+had stilled the wild heart. We gave up presently, still did not move
+on. We were exhausted, and all the while the hounds lay panting on the
+rocks, the bees hummed, the flies buzzed. The red colors of the upper
+walls and the purple shades of the lower darkened silently.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Shore we can't set here all night," said Jim. "Let's skin the lion
+an' feed the hounds."
+
+The most astonishing thing in our eventful day was the amount of meat
+stowed away by the dogs. Lion flesh appealed to their appetites. If
+hungry Moze had an ounce of meat, he had ten pounds. It seemed a good
+opportunity to see how much the old gladiator could eat; and Jim and I
+cut chunks of meat as fast as possible. Moze gulped them with absolute
+unconcern of such a thing as mastication. At length he reached his
+limit, possibly for the first time in his life, and looking longingly
+at a juicy red strip Jim held out, he refused it with manifest shame.
+Then he wobbled and fell down.
+
+We called to him as we started to climb the slope, but he did not
+come. Then the business of conquering that ascent of sliding stone
+absorbed all our faculties and strength. Little headway could we have
+made had it not been for the brush. We toiled up a few feet only to
+slide back and so it went on until we were weary of life.
+
+When one by one we at last gained the rim and sat there to recover
+breath, the sun was a half globe of fire burning over the western
+ramparts. A red sunset bathed the canyon in crimson, painting the
+walls, tinting the shadows to resemble dropping mists of blood. It was
+beautiful and enthralling to my eyes, but I turned away because it
+wore the mantle of tragedy.
+
+Dispirited and worn out, we trooped into camp to find Emett and a
+steaming supper. Between bites the three of us related the story of
+the red lioness. Emett whistled long and low and then expressed his
+regret in no light terms.
+
+"Roping wild steers and mustangs is play to this work," he said in
+conclusion.
+
+I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even the
+glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my bed with
+eyes already glued shut.
+
+A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first, when
+only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my bed, then
+hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was dropping off
+again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black
+night had faded to the gray of dawn. The sound I recognized at once
+to be the Navajo's morning chant. I lay there and listened. Soft and
+monotonous, wild and swelling, but always low and strange, the savage
+song to the break of day was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I
+wondered what the literal meaning of his words could have been. The
+significance needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away,
+to the brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the
+morning sun, to the Giver of Life--to these the Indian chanted his
+prayer.
+
+Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the Navajo with
+his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the trees, the rocks, the
+light and sun, and he prayed to that which was divinely helpful to him
+in all the mystery of his unintelligible life.
+
+We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it was to be
+a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question arose--whether we or the
+hounds were the more crippled. Ranger did not show himself; Don could
+just walk and that was all; Moze was either too full or too tired to
+move; Sounder nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.
+
+After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves different
+tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began to turn the camp
+topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate it. The wire, however,
+was not to be found. This was a calamity, for, as we asked each other,
+how could we muzzle lions without wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy
+leather straps which I had bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had
+disappeared. We had only one collar left, the one that Jones had put
+on the red lioness.
+
+Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow heated and
+naturally from that to become angry. It seems a fatality of campers
+along a wild trail, like explorers in an unknown land, to be prone to
+fight. If there is an explanation of this singular fact, it must be
+that men at such time lose their poise and veneer of civilization; in
+brief, they go back. At all events we had it hot and heavy, with the
+center of attack gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always
+losing something, naturally we united in force against him.
+
+Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off in the
+woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs preceded his
+appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten a bridle on Marc,
+and from the way the big stallion hurled his huge bulk over logs and
+through thickets, it appeared evident he meant to usurp Jim's ambition
+and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward
+camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to
+buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to
+ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the
+dogs' shelter and thundered down the ridge.
+
+Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at home. He
+was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept his seat on a
+wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low branch of a pine,
+sweeping the Indian off.
+
+When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously hurt,
+perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.
+
+Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or muscle,
+he certainly appeared dead.
+
+"Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen it before
+from just such accidents."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak. Jim, who
+always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked profoundly sorry.
+
+"He's a dead Indian, all right," replied Emett.
+
+We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain and
+deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us much
+relief.
+
+"That's your dead Indian," exclaimed Jones.
+
+Emett stooped again and felt the Indian's back and got in reward
+another mournful groan.
+
+"It's his back," said Emett, and true to his ruling passion, forever
+to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he began to rub
+the Indian and call for the liniment.
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be
+dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing the
+hollow of his brown back.
+
+"Here we are," said Jim, returning on the run with the bottle.
+
+"Pour some on," replied Emett.
+
+Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the Indian's
+back.
+
+"Don't waste it," remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy's back.
+
+Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed to
+quiver through the Indian's body; he rose at a single leap, and
+uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw an Indian
+or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed back to us.
+
+Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.
+
+"That's your dead Indian!" ejaculated Jim.
+
+"What the hell!" exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such language.
+
+"Look here!" cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. "See! Don't you see
+it?"
+
+Jim fell face downward and began to shake.
+
+"What?" shouted Emett and I together.
+
+"Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong bottle!"
+
+In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the sward, and
+the forest rang with sounds of mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and so
+strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. "More snow" was the
+verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the Navajo to
+share my tent.
+
+"Sleepie-me," I said to him.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed with
+me.
+
+Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations, which
+struck me as being singularly selfish considering they would not be
+inconvenienced in any way.
+
+"Why not?" I asked. "It's a cold night. There'll be frost if not
+snow."
+
+"Shore you'll get 'em," said Jim.
+
+"There never was an Indian that didn't have 'em," added Jones.
+
+"What?" I questioned.
+
+They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance as to
+what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my mind. When
+I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at my feet as usual
+and he growled so deep that I could not but think he, too, resented
+the addition to my small tent.
+
+"Mista Gay!" came in the Indian's low voice.
+
+"Well Navvy?" I asked.
+
+"Sleepie--sleepie?"
+
+"Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?"
+
+"Me savvy--mucha sleepie--mucha--no bueno."
+
+I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did not
+awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent was light
+and he had gone. I found my companions up and doing.
+
+We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun, a red
+ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn to gold. No
+snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the ground. The hounds,
+wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they detested, trotted in
+front. Don showed no effects of his great run down the sliding slope
+after the red lioness; it was one of his remarkable qualities that he
+recuperated so quickly. Ranger was a little stiff, and Sounder favored
+his injured foot. The others were as usual.
+
+Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had passed the
+edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead, he turned his
+horse up the bank.
+
+We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest, which we
+entered without having seen the hounds show interest in anything.
+Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed lion tracks, many
+of them, but too old to carry a scent. Even North Hollow with its
+regular beaten runway failed to win a murmur from the pack.
+
+"Spread out," said Jones, "and look for tracks. I'll keep the center
+and hold in the hounds."
+
+Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the breadth
+of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open sage flats
+inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon a broken sage
+bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I discovered no track but
+dismounted and scrutinized the surroundings carefully. A heavy body
+had been dragged across the sage, crushing it. The ends of broken
+bushes were green, the leaves showed bruises.
+
+I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my mustang I
+slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an occasional down-trodden
+bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the cedars again Foxie snorted.
+Under the first tree I found a ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of
+grayish hairs and a split skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe
+ears were still warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even
+a well pressed imprint of a lion's body where he had rolled or lain.
+
+The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive of
+interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then, what with
+my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily with shrill
+cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.
+
+An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing and
+breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He arrived
+from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat. Mutely I held up
+the two long ears.
+
+"Get on your horse!" cried Jim after one quick glance at the spread of
+bones and hair.
+
+It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I ran to
+Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared among the sage
+and a string of yelps split the air.
+
+"It's Don!" yelled Jim.
+
+Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight for us! He
+passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and disappeared like a
+gleam under the gloomy cedars.
+
+We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed in on us
+from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out behind Emett,
+fighting the branches, dodging and swerving, hugging the saddle, and
+always sending out our sharp yells.
+
+The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up together
+found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West Point.
+
+"The hounds have gone down," he said, pointing to the runway.
+
+We all listened to the meaning bays.
+
+"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they found him
+under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now fellows, I'll go down.
+It might be a good idea for you to spread along the rim."
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: HIDING]
+
+With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to the rim
+as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often forced us to
+circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls below, kept pace
+with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused Jones to dispatch
+Emett on the gallop for the next runway at North Hollow.
+
+Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of the
+promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my mustang
+I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded through the sage
+and cedar to the rim.
+
+Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and
+bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling
+bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From
+one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like
+the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches
+of cedar and the great blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the
+lion, but I could not see one of them.
+
+The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this was with
+brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might climb down.
+Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding, clinging to what
+afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of stone hid the sky from
+me part of the way. I came out a hundred feet below upon a second
+promontory of huge slabs of yellow stone. Over these I clambered, to
+sit with my feet swinging over the last one.
+
+Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon. In the
+soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes
+were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender
+shadow of twilight. Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines
+full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome
+leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the
+rolling, weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full
+of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
+limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully
+growing in crannies.
+
+Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance and a
+thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and eager eyes
+to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was mine as usual;
+the hounds were working up toward me. How I strained my sight! Hearing
+a single cry I looked eastward to see Jones silhouetted against the
+blue on a black promontory. He seemed a giant primeval man overlooking
+the ruin of a former world. I signalled him to make for my point.
+
+Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He was at
+fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his left. I
+heard Don's clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air, seemingly
+to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not locate him.
+Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim. Moze was next to
+appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble of stone hid him, and
+then Ranger again showed. Evidently he wanted to get around the bottom
+of a low crag, for he jumped and jumped only to fall back.
+
+Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon the top
+of it was the long, slender body of a lion.
+
+"Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" I yelled till my lungs failed me.
+
+"Where are you?" came from above.
+
+"Here! Here!" I cried seeing Jones on the rim. "Come down. Climb down
+the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round crag. He's fooled
+the hounds and they can't find him."
+
+"I see him! I see him!" yelled Jones. Then he roared out a single call
+for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the curved broken rim
+wall, opening up echoes which clapped like thunder.
+
+While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay with
+head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle. What a
+place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing down the
+broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe from
+pursuit.
+
+Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps. I could
+not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the crag. I
+leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the varied and
+thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of hard, panting
+breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As Jones had set in
+motion bushels of stone and had already scraped his feet over the
+rocks behind me I thought the forced respiration came from him. When
+I turned he was yet far off--too far for me to hear him breathe. I
+thought this circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.
+
+On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle blast,
+and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent up the thrice
+welcome news of a treed lion.
+
+"There 're two! There 're two!" I yelled to Jones, now working down to
+my right.
+
+"He's treed down here. I've got him spotted!" replied Jones. "You stay
+there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett."
+
+Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim far below
+to the left sent me an answer.
+
+The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with Jones
+and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone, waiting
+impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one lion and I
+watched the other.
+
+Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could have
+gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about
+him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the
+throb and race of his wild blood.
+
+Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes. No doubt
+he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the left of our
+position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to toil up the other.
+I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds hailed him.
+
+"Steer to your left Jim!" I called.. "There's a lion on that crag
+above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the left--Jones is
+there!"
+
+The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to the
+sound rising from below without being able to see what happened. My
+lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had crouched closer to his
+crag, evidently believing he was unseen, which obviously made it
+imperative for me to keep my seat and hold him there as long as
+possible.
+
+But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.
+
+"Hyar Moze--get out of that. Catch him--hold him! Damn these rotten
+limbs. Hand me a pole--Jones, back down--back down! he's comin'--Hi!
+Hi! Whoop! Boo--o! There--now you've got him! No, no; it slipped! Now!
+Look out, Jim, from under--he's going to jump!"
+
+A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of yelps
+with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones' last words. Then
+two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first was the lion, the
+second was Don. The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in
+their wake. Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with
+Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth. The animated
+and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually
+lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed
+altogether from my jealous sight.
+
+On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry
+again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent
+yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus. Then presently all quieted
+down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the
+slope. Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional
+bark.
+
+I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a few
+minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag and never
+moved.
+
+I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks of the
+Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far beyond to
+where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther still to the
+Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the distance.
+
+Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the time I
+was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring above would
+have placed me as well as my lion among the few living things in the
+range of his all-compassing vision. Therefore, all was mine, not
+merely the lion--for he was only the means to an end--but the
+stupendous, unnameable thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains
+in the shades of its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming
+pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
+the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
+that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty
+exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of
+presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to keep.
+
+"Waa-hoo!"
+
+The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the ridge of
+cedars.
+
+"All right here--have you kept your line there?" he yelled.
+
+"All's well--come along, come along," I replied.
+
+I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved. The
+hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could not
+find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a continual
+baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they had tied up the
+lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up the slope.
+
+"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called in
+warning.
+
+"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.
+
+I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between the
+boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim catching
+my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I reached the
+bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of the cliff, and soon
+all three of us with the hounds stood out on the rocky shelf with only
+a narrow space between us and the crouching lion.
+
+Before we had a moment to speak, much less form a plan of attack, the
+lion rose, spat at us defiantly, and deliberately jumped off the crag.
+We heard him strike with a frightful thud.
+
+Surprise held us dumb. To take the leap to the slope below seemed
+beyond any beast not endowed with wings. We saw the lion bounding down
+the identical trail which the other lion had taken. Jones came out of
+his momentary indecision.
+
+"Hold the dogs! Call them back!" he yelled hoarsely. "They'll kill the
+lion we tied! They'll kill him!"
+
+The hounds had scattered off the bench here and there, everywhere, to
+come together on the trail below. Already they were in full cry with
+the matchless Don at the fore. Manifestly to call them back was an
+injustice, as well as impossible. In ten seconds they were out of
+sight.
+
+In silence we waited, each listening, each feeling the tragedy of the
+situation, each praying that they would pass by the poor, helpless,
+bound lion. Suddenly the regular baying swelled to a burst of savage,
+snarling fury, such as the pack made in a vicious fight. This
+ceased--short silence ensued; Don's sharp voice woke the echoes, then
+the regular baying continued.
+
+As with one thought, we all sat down. Painful as the certainty was it
+was not so painful as that listening, hoping suspense.
+
+"Shore they can't be blamed," said Jim finally. "Bumping their nose
+into a tied lion that way--how'd they know?"
+
+"Who could guess the second lion would jump off that quick and run
+back to our captive?" burst out Jones.
+
+"Shore we might have knowed it," replied Jim. "Well, I'm goin' after
+the pack."
+
+He gathered up his lasso and strode off the bench. Jones said he would
+climb back to the rim, and I followed Jim.
+
+Why the lions ran in that particular direction was clear to me when
+I saw the trail. It was a runway, smooth and hard packed. I trudged
+along it with rather less enjoyment than on any trail I had ever
+followed to the canyon. Jim waited for me over the cedar ridge and
+showed me where the captive lion lay dead. The hounds had not torn
+him. They had killed him and passed on after the other.
+
+"He was a fine fellow, all of seven feet, we'll skin him on our way
+back."
+
+Only dogged determination coupled with a sense of duty to the hounds
+kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had been
+submerged. But we had to follow the pack.
+
+Jim, less weighted down and perhaps less discouraged, forged ahead up
+and down. The sun had burned all the morning coolness out of the air.
+I perspired and panted and began to grow weary. Jim's signal called me
+to hurry. I took to a trot and came upon him and the hounds under a
+small cedar. The lion stood among the dead branches. His sides where
+shaking convulsively, and his short breaths could be plainly heard.
+He had the most blazing eyes and most untamed expression of any wild
+creature I have ever seen; and this amazed me considering I had kept
+him on a crag for over an hour, and had come to look upon him as my
+own.
+
+"What'll we do, Jim, now that we have him treed?"
+
+"Shore, we'll tie him up," declared Jim.
+
+The lion stayed in the cedar long enough for me to photograph him
+twice, then he leaped down again and took to his back trail. We
+followed as fast as we could, soon to find that the hounds had put him
+up another cedar. From this he jumped down among the dogs, scattered
+them as if they had been so many leaves, and bounded up the slope out
+of sight.
+
+I laid aside my rifle and camera and tried to keep up with Jim. The
+lion ran straight up the slope and treed again under the wall. Before
+we covered half the distance he was on the go once more, flying down
+in clouds of dust.
+
+"Don is makin' him hump," said Jim.
+
+And that alone was enough to spur us on. We would reward the noble
+hound if we had the staying power. Don and his pack ran westward this
+time, and along a mile of the beaten trail put him up two more trees.
+But these we could not see and judged only by the sound.
+
+[Illustration: A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHICH IS THE PIUTE?]
+
+"Look there!" cried Jim. "Darn me if he ain't comin' right at us."
+
+It was true. Ahead of us the lion appeared, loping wearily. We stopped
+in our tracks undecided. Jim drew his revolver. Once or twice the lion
+disappeared behind stones and cedars. When he sighted us he stopped,
+looked back, then again turning toward us, he left the trail to plunge
+down. He had barely got out of sight when old Don came pattering along
+the trail; then Ranger leading the others. Don did not even put his
+nose to the ground where the lion had switched, but leaped aside and
+went down. Here the long section of slope between the lion's runway
+and the second wall had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed
+into deep ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled
+on, always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped fissures,
+we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar below, and send
+long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.
+
+A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood at the
+constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second wall. The
+side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of mass on mass of
+broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a gigantic scale. Points
+of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks lined the wall.
+
+"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over the
+second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds seemed to
+be back further toward where the split narrows."
+
+Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns we wormed
+our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.
+
+"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat shelf some
+few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close by, but too far
+for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was gasping and frothing
+at the mouth.
+
+"Shore if he'd only stay there--" said Jim.
+
+He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the tired
+beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw failed of its
+purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up painfully it seemed,
+and faced the dogs. That way barred he turned to the cliff. Almost
+opposite him a shelf leaned out. He looked at it, then paced to and
+fro like a beast in a cage.
+
+He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and finally
+concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length sagged in
+the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and strung, and he
+sprang like a tawny streak.
+
+His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the shelf
+and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his claws
+scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a somersault, struck
+twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded from that to fall down,
+striking suddenly and then to roll, a yellow wheel that lodged behind
+a rock and stretched out to move no more.
+
+The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little stones
+rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon seemed to pay
+tribute to the lion's unquenchable spirit and to the freedom he had
+earned to the last.
+
+
+VIII
+
+How long Jim and I sat there we never knew. The second tragedy, not so
+pitiful but as heart sickening as the first, crushed our spirits.
+
+"Shore he was a game lion," said Jim. "An' I'll have to get his skin."
+
+
+"I'm all in, Jim. I couldn't climb out of that hole." I said.
+
+"You needn't. Rest a little, take a good drink an' leave your canteen
+here for me; then get your things back there on the trail an' climb
+out. We're not far from West Point. I'll go back after the first
+lion's skin an' then climb straight up. You lead my horse to the point
+where you came off the rim."
+
+He clattered along the gorge knocking the stones and started down. I
+watched him letting himself over the end of the huge slabs until he
+passed out of my sight. A good, long drink revived me and I began the
+ascent.
+
+From that moment on time did not matter to me. I forgot all about it.
+I felt only my leaden feet and my laboring chest and dripping skin.
+I did not even notice the additional weight of my rifle and camera
+though they must have overburdened me. I kept my eyes on the lion
+runway and plunged away with short steps. To look at these towering
+walls would have been to surrender.
+
+At last, stumbling, bursting, sick, I gained the rim and had to rest
+before I could mount. When I did get into the saddle I almost fell
+from it.
+
+Jones and Emett were waiting for me at the promontory where I had
+tied my horse, and were soon acquainted with the particulars of my
+adventure, and that Jim would probably not get out for hours. We made
+tracks for camp, and never did a place rouse in me such a sense of
+gratefulness. Emett got dinner and left on the fire a kettle of potato
+stew for Jim. It was almost dark when that worthy came riding into
+camp. We never said a word as he threw the two lion skins on the
+ground.
+
+"Fellows, you shore have missed the wind-up!" he exclaimed.
+
+We all looked at him and he looked at us.
+
+"Was there any more?" I asked weakly.
+
+"Shore! An' it beats hell! When I got the skin of the lion the dogs
+killed I started to work up to the place I knowed you'd leave my
+horse. It's bad climbing where you came down. I got on the side of
+that cliff an' saw where I could work out, if I could climb a smooth
+place. So I tried. There was little cracks an' ridges for my feet and
+hands. All to once, just above where I helped you down, I heard a
+growl. Looking up I saw a big lion, bigger'n any we chased except
+Sultan, an' he was pokin' his head out of a hole, an' shore telling
+me to come no further. I couldn't let go with either hand to reach my
+gun, because I'd have fallen, so I yelled at him with all my might. He
+spit at me an' then walked out of the hole over the bench as proud as
+a lord an' jumped down where I couldn't see him any more. I climbed
+out all right but he'd gone. An' I'll tell you for a minute, he shore
+made me sweat."
+
+"By George!" I yelled, greatly excited. "I heard that lion breathing.
+Don chased him up there. I heard hard, wheezing breaths somewhere
+behind me, but in the excitement I didn't pay any attention to them. I
+thought it was Jones panting, but now I know what it meant."
+
+"Shore. He was there all the time, lookin' at you an' maybe he could
+have reached you."
+
+We were all too exhausted for more discussion and putting that off
+until the next day we sought our beds. It was hardly any wonder that I
+felt myself jumping even in my sleep, and started up wildly more than
+once in the dead of night.
+
+[Illustration: WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+Morning found us all rather subdued, yet more inclined to a
+philosophical resignation as regarded the difficulties of our special
+kind of hunting. Capturing the lions on the level of the plateau was
+easy compared to following them down into canyons and bringing them up
+alone. We all agreed that that was next to impossible. Another feature,
+which before we had not considered, added to our perplexity and it was a
+dawning consciousness that we would be perhaps less cruel if we killed
+the lions outright. Jones and Emett arrayed themselves on the side that
+life even in captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still
+under the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end,
+inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable fact that
+as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of intelligence.
+
+[Illustration: JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION]
+
+About eleven o'clock while the others had deserted camp temporarily
+for some reason or other, I was lounging upon an odorous bed of pine
+needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through
+the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through
+the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow
+woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I
+imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so
+afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left
+no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my
+shirt, and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.
+
+Suddenly a thought swept on the heels of my indolent and rather
+annoying realization. Could I have gotten from the Navajo what Jim and
+Jones so characteristically called "'em"? I turned cold all over. And
+on the very instant I received another bite that burned like fire.
+
+The return of my companions prevented any open demonstration of my
+fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore inwardly. During
+the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had on a horsehair shirt
+with the ends protruding toward my skin, and, in the exaggerated
+sensitiveness of the moment, made sure "'em" were chasing up and down
+my back.
+
+After dinner I sneaked off into the woods. I remembered that Emett
+had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and that was to
+disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments and person. With
+serious mind and murderous intent I undressed. In the middle of the
+back of my jersey I discovered several long, uncanny, gray things.
+
+"I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.
+
+Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature, oblivious
+to all around, intent only on the massacre of the things that had
+violated me. How much time flew I could not guess. Great loud
+"Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There behind me stood Jones
+and Emett shaking as if with the ague.
+
+"It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage. I had the unreasonable
+suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones, who
+cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and Emett the
+sober Mormon, laughed until they cried.
+
+"I was--just wondering--what your folks would--think--if they--saw
+you--now," gurgled Jones.
+
+That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in their
+mirth.
+
+"All I hope is that you fellows will get 'em' too," I said.
+
+"The Good Lord preserve me from that particular breed of Navvy's,"
+cried Emett.
+
+Jones wriggled all over at the mere suggestion. Now so much from the
+old plainsman, who had confessed to intimate relations with every
+creeping, crawling thing in the West, attested powerfully to the
+unforgettable singularity of what I got from Navvy.
+
+I returned to camp determined to make the best of the situation,
+which owing to my failure to catch all of the gray devils, remained
+practically unchanged. Jim had been acquainted with my dilemma, as was
+manifest in his wet eyes and broad grin with which he greeted me.
+
+"I think I'd scalp the Navvy," he said.
+
+"You make the Indian sleep outside after this, snow or no snow," was
+Jones' suggestion.
+
+"No I won't; I won't show a yellow streak like that. Besides, I want
+to give 'em to you fellows."
+
+A blank silence followed my statement, to which Jim replied:
+
+"Shore that'll be easy; Jones'll have 'em, so'll Emett, an' by thunder
+I'm scratchin' now."
+
+"Navvy, look here," I said severely, "mucha no bueno! heap bad!
+You--me!" here I scratched myself and made signs that a wooden Indian
+would have understood.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied, sullenly, then flared up. "Heap big lie."
+
+He turned on his heel, erect, dignified, and walked away amid the
+roars of my gleeful comrades.
+
+
+IX
+
+One by one my companions sought their blankets, leaving the shadows,
+the dying embers, the slow-rising moan of the night wind to me. Old
+Moze got up from among the other hounds and limped into my tent, where
+I heard him groan as he lay down. Don, Sounder, and Ranger were
+fast asleep in well-earned rest. Shep, one of the pups, whined and
+impatiently tossed his short chain. Remembering that he had not been
+loose all day, I unbuckled his collar and let him go.
+
+He licked my hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his shapely,
+sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the circle cast by
+the fire and looked out into the darkening shadows. It was plain that
+Shep's instincts were developing fast; he was ambitious to hunt. But
+sure in my belief that he was afraid of the black night and would stay
+in camp, I went to bed.
+
+The Navajo who slept with me snored serenely and Moze growled in his
+dreams; the wind swept through the pines with an intermittent rush.
+Some time in the after part of the night I heard a distant sound.
+Remote, mournful, wild, it sent a chill creeping over me. Borne
+faintly to my ears, it was a fit accompaniment to the moan of the wind
+in the pines. It was not the cry of a trailing wolf, nor the lonesome
+howl of a prowling coyote, nor the strange, low sound, like a cough,
+of a hunting cougar, though it had a semblance of all three. It was
+the bay of a hound, thinned out by distance, and it served to keep me
+wide awake. But for a while, what with the roar and swell of the wind
+and Navvy's snores, I could hear it only at long intervals.
+
+Still, in the course of an hour, I followed the sound, or imagined so,
+from a point straight in line with my feet to one at right angles
+with my head. Finally deciding it came from Shep, and fancying he was
+trailing a deer or coyote, I tried to go to sleep again.
+
+In this I would have succeeded had not, all at once, our captive lions
+begun to growl. That ominous, low murmuring awoke me with a vengeance,
+for it was unusual for them to growl in the middle of the night.
+I wondered if they, as well as the pup, had gotten the scent of a
+prowling lion.
+
+I reached down to my feet and groped in the dark for Moze. Finding
+him, I gave him a shake. The old gladiator groaned, stirred, and came
+out of what must have been dreams of hunting meat. He slapped his tail
+against my bed. As luck would have it, just then the wind abated to a
+soft moan, and clear and sharp came the bay of a hound. Moze heard it,
+for he stopped wagging his tail, his body grew tense under my hand,
+and he vented his low, deep grumble.
+
+I lay there undecided. To wake my companions was hardly to be
+considered, and to venture off into the forest alone, where old Sultan
+might be scouting, was not exactly to my taste. And trying to think
+what to do, and listening for the bay of the pup, and hearing mostly
+the lions growling and the wind roaring, I fell asleep.
+
+"Hey! are you ever going to get up?" some one yelled into my drowsy
+brain. I roused and opened my eyes. The yellow, flickering shadows on
+the wall of my tent told me that the sun had long risen. I found my
+companions finishing breakfast. The first thing I did was to look over
+the dogs. Shep, the black-and-white pup, was missing.
+
+"Where's Shep?" I asked.
+
+"Shore, I ain't seen him this mornin'," replied Jim.
+
+Thereupon I told what I had heard during the night.
+
+"Everybody listen," said Jones.
+
+We quieted down and sat like statues. A gentle, cool breeze, barely
+moving the pine tips, had succeeded the night wind. The sound of
+horses munching their oats, and an occasional clink, rattle, and growl
+from the lions did not drown the faint but unmistakable yelps of a
+pup.
+
+"South, toward the canyon," said Jim, as Jones got up.
+
+"Now, it'd be funny if that little Shep, just to get even with me for
+tying him up so often, has treed a lion all by himself," commented
+Jones. "And I'll bet that's just what he's done."
+
+He called the hounds about him and hurried westward through the
+forest.
+
+"Shore, it might be." Jim shook his head knowingly. "I reckon it's
+only a rabbit, but anythin' might happen in this place."
+
+I finished breakfast and went into my tent for something--I forget
+what, for wild yells from Emett and Jim brought me flying out again.
+
+"Listen to that!" cried Jim, pointing west.
+
+The hounds had opened up; their full, wild chorus floated clearly on
+the breeze, and above it Jones' stentorian yell signaled us.
+
+"Shore, the old man can yell," continued Jim. "Grab your lassos an'
+hump yourselves. I've got the collar an' chain."
+
+"Come on, Navvy," shouted Emett. He grasped the Indian's wrist and
+started to run, jerking Navvy into the air at every jump. I caught up
+my camera and followed. We crossed two shallow hollows, and then saw
+the hounds and Jones among the pines not far ahead.
+
+In my excitement I outran my companions and dashed into an open glade.
+First I saw Jones waving his long arms; next the dogs, noses upward,
+and Don actually standing on his hind legs; then a dead pine with a
+well-known tawny shape outlined against the blue sky.
+
+"Hurrah for Shep!" I yelled, and right vigorously did my comrades join
+in.
+
+"It's another female," said Jones, when we calmed down, "and fair
+sized. That's the best tree for our purpose that I ever saw a lion in.
+So spread out, boys; surround her and keep noisy."
+
+Navvy broke from Emett at this juncture and ran away. But evidently
+overcome by curiosity, he stopped to hide behind a bush, from which I
+saw his black head protruding.
+
+When Jones swung himself on the first stubby branch of the pine, the
+lioness, some fifteen feet above, leaped to another limb, and the one
+she had left cracked, swayed and broke. It fell directly upon Jones,
+the blunt end striking his head and knocking him out of the tree.
+Fortunately, he landed on his feet; otherwise there would surely have
+been bones broken. He appeared stunned, and reeled so that Emett
+caught him. The blood poured from a wound in his head.
+
+This sudden shock sobered us instantly. On examination we found a
+long, jagged cut in Jones' scalp. We bathed it with water from my
+canteen and with snow Jim procured from a nearby hollow, eventually
+stopping the bleeding. I insisted on Jones coming to camp to have the
+wound properly dressed, and he insisted on having it bound with a
+bandana; after which he informed us that he was going to climb the
+tree again.
+
+We objected to this. Each of us declared his willingness to go up and
+rope the lion; but Jones would not hear of it.
+
+"I'm not doubting your courage," he said. "It's only that you cannot
+tell what move the lion would make next, and that's the danger."
+
+We could not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill the
+animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the tree,
+passed the first branch and then another. The lioness changed her
+position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to keep the tree
+trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out on a branch in a
+most favorable position for roping.
+
+The first cast of the lasso did the business, and Jim and Emett with
+nimble fingers tied up the hounds.
+
+"Coming," shouted Jones. He slid down, hand over hand, on the rope,
+the lioness holding his weight with apparent ease.
+
+"Make your noose ready," he yelled to Emett.
+
+I had to drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal from
+her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness, hissing,
+snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the rope out of
+our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed her hind paws in a
+flash.
+
+"Make fast your rope," shouted Jones. "There, that's good! Now let her
+down--easy."
+
+As soon as the lioness touched ground we let go the lasso, which
+whipped up and over the branch. She became a round, yellow, rapidly
+moving ball. Emett was the first to catch the loose lasso, and he
+checked the rolling cougar. Jones leaped to assist him and the two of
+them straightened out the struggling animal, while Jim swung another
+noose at her. On the second throw he caught a front paw.
+
+"Pull hard! Stretch her out!" yelled Jones. He grasped a stout piece
+of wood and pushed it at the lioness. She caught it in her mouth,
+making the splinters fly. Jones shoved her head back on the ground and
+pressed his brawny knee on the bar of wood.
+
+"The collar! The collar! Quick!" he called.
+
+I threw chain and collar to him, which in a moment he had buckled
+round her neck.
+
+"There, we've got her!" he said. "It's only a short way over to camp,
+so we'll drag her without muzzling."
+
+As he rose the lioness lurched, and reaching him, fastened her
+fangs in his leg. Jones roared. Emett and Jim yelled. And I, though
+frightened, was so obsessed with the idea of getting a picture that I
+began to fumble with the shutter of my camera.
+
+"Grab the chain! Pull her off!" bawled Jones.
+
+I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with all my
+might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round her neck.
+Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she brought Jones'
+leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the chain and jumped.
+
+"**-- **--!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think more of a picture
+than of saving my life?" Having expressed this not unreasonable
+protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made fast to a small
+sapling.
+
+Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an animated
+center, began a march through the forest that for variety of action
+and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever beheld.
+
+So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
+straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
+ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
+dance, along the side lines.
+
+There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the ground
+and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs and chased
+the two in front and dragged the one behind; others when she came
+within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.
+
+They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and though Jones
+evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a tree. There was
+no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of the time and the
+fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos were each thirty feet
+long, but even with that the men could just barely keep out of her
+reach.
+
+Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly,
+unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing
+the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing
+one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The
+weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope
+slackening. The leap of the lioness carried her within reach of Jones;
+and as he raised himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for
+him just as Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.
+
+The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws. Then
+she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge. Jones sprang
+up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his scarlet face, working
+spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed how utterly unable he was
+to give expression to his rage. I had a stitch in my side that nearly
+killed me, but laugh I had to though I should die for it.
+
+No laughing matter was it for them. They volleyed and thundered
+back and forth meaningless words of which "hell" was the only one
+distinguishable, and probably the word that best described their
+situation.
+
+All the while, however, they had been running from the lioness, which
+brought them before they realized it right into camp. Our captive
+lions cut up fearfully at the hubbub, and the horses stampeded in
+terror.
+
+"Whoa!" yelled Jones, whether to his companions or to the struggling
+cougar, no one knew. But Navvy thought Jones addressed the cougar.
+
+"Whoa!" repeated Navvy. "No savvy whoa! No savvy whoa!" which proved
+conclusively that the Navajo had understanding as well as wit.
+
+Soon we had another captive safely chained and growling away in tune
+with the others. I went back to untie the hounds, to find them sulky
+and out of sorts from being so unceremoniously treated. They noisily
+trailed the lioness into camp, where, finding her chained, they formed
+a ring around her.
+
+Thereafter the day passed in round-the-camp-fire chat and task. For
+once Jim looked at Navvy with toleration. We dressed the wound in
+Jones' head and laughed at the condition of his trousers and at his
+awkward attempts to piece them.
+
+"Mucha dam cougie," remarked Navvy. "No savvy whoa!"
+
+The lions growled all day. And Jones kept repeating: "To think how
+Shep fooled me!"
+
+
+X
+
+Next morning Jones was out bright and early, yelling at Navvy to hurry
+with the horses, calling to the hounds and lions, just as usual.
+
+Navvy had finally come to his full share of praise from all of us.
+Even Jim acknowledged that the Indian was invaluable to a hunting
+party in a country where grass and water were hard to find and wild
+horses haunted the trails.
+
+"_Tohodena! Tohodena!_ (hurry! hurry!)" said Navvy, mimicking Jones
+that morning.
+
+As we sat down to breakfast he loped off into the forest and before we
+got up the bells of the horses were jingling in the hollow.
+
+"I believe it's going to be cloudy," said Jones, "and if so we can
+hunt all day."
+
+We rode down the ridge to the left of Middle Canyon, and had trouble
+with the hounds all the way. First they ran foul of a coyote, which
+was the one and only beast they could not resist. Spreading out to
+head them off, we separated. I cut into a hollow and rode to its head,
+where I went up. I heard the hounds and presently saw a big, white
+coyote making fast time through the forest glades. It looked as if he
+would cross close in front of me, so I pulled Foxie to a standstill,
+jumped off and knelt with my rifle ready. But the sharp-eyed coyote
+saw my horse and shied off. I had not much hope to hit him so far
+away, and the five bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping,
+served only to make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted
+the hounds coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my
+companions, now hallooing from the ridge below.
+
+Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that were a day
+old, and for such trails we had no time. We reached the cedars however
+at seven o'clock, and as the sky was overcast with low dun-colored
+clouds and the air cool, we were sure it was not too late.
+
+One of the capes of the plateau between Middle and Left Canyon was a
+narrow strip of rock, covered with a dense cedar growth and cut up
+into smaller canyons, all running down inevitably toward the great
+canyon. With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out of our sight
+and hearing; and while we split to look and call for him the remainder
+of the pack found the lion trail that he had gone on, and they left
+us trying to find a way out as well as to find each other. I kept the
+hounds in hearing for some time and meanwhile I signalled to Emett who
+was on my right flank. Jones and Jim might as well have vanished off
+the globe for all I could see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully
+into which I had to lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much
+time that when I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds
+or get an answer to my signal cry.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" I called again.
+
+Away on the dry rarified air pealed the cry, piercing the cedar
+forest, splitting sharp in the vaulted canyons, rolling loud and long,
+to lose power, to die away in muffling echo. But the silence returned
+no answer.
+
+I rode on under the cedars, through a dark, gloomy forest, silent,
+almost spectral, which brought irresistibly to my mind the words
+"I found me in a gloomy wood astray." I was lost though I knew the
+direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest was all but
+impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray tangles, live cedars,
+branches touching the ground, grew close together. In this labyrinth
+I lost my bearings. I turned and turned, crossed my own back trail,
+which in desperation I followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep
+and narrow canyon.
+
+Here I fired my revolver. The echo boomed out like the report of heavy
+artillery, but no answering shot rewarded me. There was no alternative
+save to wander along the canyon and through the cedars until I found
+my companions. This I began to do, disgusted with my awkwardness in
+losing them. Turning Foxie westward I had scarcely gotten under way
+when Don came trotting toward me.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" I called. Don appeared as happy to see me as I was
+to see him. He flopped down on the ground; his dripping tongue rolled
+as he panted; covered with dust and flecked with light froth he surely
+looked to be a tired hound.
+
+"All in, eh Don!" I said dismounting. "Well, we'll rest awhile." Then
+I discovered blood on his nose, which I found to have come from a deep
+scratch. "A--ah! been pushing a lion too hard this morning? Got your
+nose scratched, didn't you? You great, crazy hound, don't you know
+some day you'll chase your last lion?"
+
+Don wagged his tail as if to say he knew it all very well. I wet my
+handkerchief from my canteen and started to wash the blood and dust
+from his nose, when he whined and licked my fingers.
+
+"Thirsty?" I asked, sitting down beside him. Denting the top of my hat
+I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him to drink. Four
+times he emptied my improvised cup before he was satisfied. Then with
+a sigh of relief he lay down again.
+
+The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and I
+sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed on
+occasional tufts of grass. During that time the hound never raised his
+sleek, dark head, which showed conclusively the nature of the silence.
+And now that I had company--as good company as any hunter ever had--I
+was once more contented.
+
+Don got up, at length of his own volition and with a wag of his tail
+set off westward along the rim. Remounting my mustang I kept as close
+to Don's heels as the rough going permitted. The hound, however,
+showed no disposition to hurry, and I let him have his way without a
+word.
+
+We came out in the notch of the great amphitheater or curve we had
+named the Bay, and I saw again the downward slope, the bold steps, the
+color and depth below.
+
+I was just about to yell a signal cry when I saw Don, with hair rising
+stiff, run forward. He took a dozen jumps, then yelping broke down the
+steep, yellow and green gorge. He disappeared before I knew what had
+happened.
+
+Shortly I found a lion track, freshly made, leading down. I believed
+I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go after him. I tied
+Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off spurs and chaps, and
+remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened a red bandana to the top
+of a dead snag to show me where to come up on my way out. Then I
+carefully strapped my canteen and camera on my back, made doubly
+secure my revolver, put on my heavy gloves, and started down. And I
+realized at once that only so lightly encumbered should I have ever
+ventured down the slope.
+
+Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there cedar
+trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A precipice
+stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and almost instantly saw
+the yellow gleam of a lion in a tree-top.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.
+
+I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay under me,
+a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering smoky canyon.
+All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope, green jumble of
+cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff walls, leaning yellow
+crags--an awful hole. But I could get down, and that was all I cared
+for. I ran along to the left, jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven
+stones with sure, swift feet, and came to where the cliff ended in
+weathered slope and scaly bench.
+
+It was like a game, going down that canyon. My heavy nailed boots
+struck fire from the rocks. My heavy gloves protected my hands as I
+slid and hung on and let go. I outfooted the avalanches and wherever I
+came to a scaly slope or bank or decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer
+delight.
+
+But all too soon my progress was barred; once under the cliff I found
+only a gradual slope and many obstacles to go round or surmount. Luck
+favored me, for I ran across a runway and keeping to it made better
+time. I heard Don long before I tried to see him, and yelled at
+intervals to let him know I was coming. A white bank of weathered
+stones led down to a clump of cedars from where Don's bay came
+spurring me to greater efforts. I flew down this bank, and through an
+opening saw the hound standing with fore feet against a cedar. The
+branches over him swayed, and I saw an indistinct, tawny form move
+downward in the air. Then succeeded the crash and rattle of stones.
+Don left the tree and disappeared.
+
+I dashed down, dodged under the cedars, threaded a maze of rocks, to
+find myself in a ravine with a bare, water-worn floor. In patches of
+sand showed the fresh tracks of Don and the lion. Running down this
+dry, clean bed was the easiest going I ever found in the canyon. Every
+rod the course jumped in a fall from four to ten feet, often more, and
+these I slid down. How I ever kept Don in hearing was a marvel, but
+still I did.
+
+The lion evidently had no further intention of taking to a tree. From
+the size of his track I concluded he was old and I feared every moment
+to hear the sounds of a fight. Jones had said that nearly always in
+the case of one hound chasing an old lion, the lion would lie in wait
+for him and kill him. And I was afraid for Don.
+
+Down, down, down, we went, till the yellow rim above seemed a thin
+band of gold. I saw that we were almost to the canyon proper, and
+I wondered what would happen when we reached it. The dark shaded
+watercourse suddenly shot out into bright light and ended in a deep
+cove, with perpendicular walls fifty feet high. I could see where
+a few rods farther on this cove opened into a huge, airy, colored
+canyon.
+
+I called the hound, wondering if he had gone to the right or left of
+the cove. His bay answered me coming from the cedars far to the right.
+I turned with all the speed left in me, for I felt the chase nearing
+an end. Tracks of hound and lion once more showed in the dust. The
+slope was steep and stones I sent rolling cracked down below. Soon I
+had a cliff above me and had to go slow and cautiously. A misstep or
+slide would have precipitated me into the cove.
+
+Almost before I knew what I was about, I stood gasping on the gigantic
+second wall of the canyon, with nothing but thin air under me, except,
+far below, faint and indistinct purple clefts, red ridges, dotted
+slopes, running down to merge in a dark, winding strip of water,
+that was the Rio Colorado. A sullen murmur soared out of the abyss.
+
+[Illustration: TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS]
+
+The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck me so
+terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its unscalable
+cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding quality of its
+silence.
+
+I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw him on a
+narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he reached me he faced
+again to the wall and barked fiercely. The hair on his neck bristled.
+I knew he did not fancy that narrow strip of rock, nor did I. But a
+sudden, grim, cold something had taken possession of me, and I stepped
+forward.
+
+"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."
+
+That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in the
+chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he took the
+lead and I closely followed.
+
+The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall, in the
+dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner of cliff
+wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed on the other
+side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by broken steps. Don
+passed the corner, looked back to see if I was coming and went on. He
+did this four times, once even stopping to wait for me.
+
+"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail out to a
+finish."
+
+I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could not but
+see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous overhanging wall
+above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I felt rather than saw
+the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting flight, with soft
+rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp of some strange cliff
+inhabitant.
+
+Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no longer
+man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying on the
+other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was beyond. Don
+slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as my fingers bit
+into the wall.
+
+To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow wind
+cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves of rock
+stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came upon a shrub
+cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it there. Don went slower
+and slower.
+
+We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a box-like space
+in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once before been confronted
+with a like situation, and had expected to find it here, so was not
+frightened. The lion looked up from his task of licking a bloody paw,
+and uttered a fierce growl. His tail began to lash to and fro; it
+knocked the little stones off the shelf. I heard them click on the
+wall. Again and again he spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a
+Tom, heavy and large.
+
+It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion, and now
+that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would follow had
+only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it was that he
+should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and focused from between
+twenty and twenty-five feet.
+
+Then a growl from Don and roar from the lion bade me come to my
+senses. I did so and my first movement after seeing the lion had risen
+threateningly was to whip out my revolver.
+
+The lion's cruel yellow eyes darkened and darkened. In an instant I
+saw my error. Jones had always said in case any one of us had to
+face a lion, never for a single instant to shift his glance. I had
+forgotten that, and in that short interval when I focused my camera
+the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or feared him, and he had
+risen. Even then in desperate lessening ambition for a great picture I
+attempted to take one, still keeping my glance on him.
+
+It was then that the appalling nature of my predicament made itself
+plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling horribly
+right in my face.
+
+Brave, noble Don, with infinitely more sense and courage than I
+possessed, faced the lion and bayed him in his teeth. I raised the
+revolver and aimed twice, each time lowering it because I feared to
+shoot in such a precarious position. To wound the lion would be the
+worst thing I could do, and I knew that only a shot through the brain
+would kill him in his tracks.
+
+"Hold him, Don, hold him!" I yelled, and I took a backward step. The
+lion put forward one big paw, his eyes now all purple blaze. I backed
+again and he came forward. Don gave ground slowly. Once the lion
+flashed a yellow paw at him. It was frightful to see the wide-spread
+claws.
+
+In the consternation of the moment I allowed the lion to back me
+across the front of the wind cave, where I saw, the moment it was too
+late, I should have taken advantage of more space to shoot him.
+
+Fright succeeded consternation, and I began to tremble. The lion was
+master of the situation. What would happen when I came to the narrow
+point on the shelf where it would be impossible for me to back around?
+I almost fainted. The thought of heroic Don saved me, and the weak
+moment passed.
+
+"By God, Don, you've got the nerve, and I must have it too!"
+
+I stopped in my tracks. The lion, appearing huge now, took slow
+catlike steps toward me, backing Don almost against my knees. He was
+so close I smelt him. His wonderful eyes, clear blue fire circled by
+yellow flame, fascinated me. Hugging the wall with my body I brought
+the revolver up, short armed, and with clinched teeth, and nerve
+strained to the breaking point, I aimed between the eyes and pulled
+the trigger.
+
+The left eye seemed to go out blankly, then followed the bellow of the
+revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered a sound that was a
+mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he rose straight up, towering
+high over my head, beating the wall heavily with his paws.
+
+In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing only the
+beast would fall over on me.
+
+But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into space.
+
+I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat. As I
+waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band and a
+sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and listened. Don
+whined once.
+
+Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time ended
+in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into the solemn
+stillness of the canyon.
+
+
+XI
+
+I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the far
+distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When I got up
+my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak sensation of a
+long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were necessary before I could
+trust myself on the narrow strip of shelf. But once around it with the
+peril passed, I braced up and soon reached the turn in the wall.
+
+After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of work, which
+I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for more hunting
+that day. We reached the rim together, and after a short rest, I
+mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.
+
+The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw the
+blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose up and
+barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions just sitting
+to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.
+
+"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it comin' to
+us to-day, and don't you forget that."
+
+Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we all
+took time between bites to talk. I told my story first, expecting my
+friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.
+
+"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever experienced,"
+declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions and they split. We
+all split and the hounds split. That tells the tale. We have nothing
+to show for our day's toil. Six lions chased, rounded up, treed,
+holed, and one lion killed, and we haven't even his skin to show. I
+did not go down but I helped Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion
+all over the lower end of the plateau. We treed him twice and I yelled
+for you fellows till my voice was gone."
+
+"Well," said Emett, "I fell in with Sounder and Jude. They were hot on
+a trail which in a mile or two turned up this way. I came on them just
+at the edge of the pines where they had treed their game. I sat under
+that pine tree for five hours, fired all my shots to make you fellows
+come, yelled myself hoarse and then tried to tie up the lion alone. He
+jumped out and ran over the rim, where neither I nor the dogs could
+follow."
+
+"Shore, I win, three of a kind," drawled Jim, as he got his pipe and
+carefully dusted the bowl. "When the stampede came, I got my hands on
+Moze and held him. I held Moze because just as the other hounds broke
+loose over to my right, I saw down into a little pocket where a
+fresh-killed deer lay half eaten. So I went down. I found two other
+carcasses layin' there, fresh killed last night, flesh all gone, hide
+gone, bones crushed, skull split open. An' damn me fellows, if that
+little pocket wasn't all torn to pieces. The sage was crushed flat.
+The ground dug up, dead snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere.
+Lion tracks like leaves, and old Sultan's was there. I let Moze loose
+and he humped the trail of several lions south over the rim. Major got
+down first an' came back with his tail between his legs. Moze went
+down and I kept close to him. It wasn't far down, but steep and rocky,
+full of holes. Moze took the trail to a dark cave. I saw the tracks of
+three lions goin' in. Then I collared Moze an' waited for you fellows.
+I waited there all day, an' nobody came to my call. Then I made for
+camp."
+
+"How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place where you
+found the carcasses?" I asked.
+
+"Lion fight sure," replied Jones. "Maybe old Sultan ran across the
+three lions feeding, and pitched into them. Such fights were common
+among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there."
+
+"What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where Jim
+chased them?"
+
+"We stand a good chance," said Jones. "Especially if it storms
+to-night."
+
+"Shore the snow storm is comin'," returned Jim.
+
+Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in the pines
+like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass. As we could not
+control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew fiercely, we extinguished
+it and went to bed. I had just settled myself comfortably to be sung
+to sleep by the concert in the pines, when Jones hailed me.
+
+"Say, what do you think?" he yelled, when I had answered him. "Emett
+is mad. He's scratching to beat the band. He's got 'em."
+
+I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.
+
+"You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"
+
+I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed and so
+did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could understand more
+English than he wanted us to suppose.
+
+Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed in--snowed
+in!"
+
+"Mucha snow--discass--no cougie--dam no bueno!" exclaimed Navvy.
+
+When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a blinding
+blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows, everything
+white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the Indian words in
+straight English.
+
+"Much snow--cold--no cougar--bad!"
+
+"Stay in bed," yelled Jones.
+
+"All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"
+
+He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off and on
+till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather breakfast,
+round a blazing bonfire.
+
+"It's going to clear up," said Jim.
+
+The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud that had
+enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit the tree tops,
+sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then rising above the trees.
+At first it moved slowly, rolling, forming, expanding, blooming like
+a column of whirling gray smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled
+onward through the forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and
+rippling, split by the trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose
+higher and higher, to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing
+glimpses of blue sky.
+
+Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts, dispelling the
+shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through the forest glade,
+gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the snow-wreathed pines.
+
+The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began to drip.
+A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved through every glade
+and feathered patches of snow floated down.
+
+A great bank of snow, sliding from the pine overhead almost buried
+the Navajo, to our infinite delight. We all sought the shelter of the
+tents, and sleep again claimed us.
+
+I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson paths in
+the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a frosty morning.
+
+"To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.
+
+While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave them
+their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions lay hidden
+in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out of sight beyond
+the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges; blue shadows gathered
+in the hollow, shaded purple and stole upward. A brief twilight
+succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit night.
+
+Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my sleeping bag,
+was I hailed from the other tent.
+
+Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones remonstrating
+in a low voice.
+
+"Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a secret no
+longer."
+
+"Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"
+
+"No, I don't," growled Jones.
+
+"Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno! bueno!" and I
+wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"
+
+The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.
+
+"Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you. It's only
+Jones has got 'em."
+
+
+XII
+
+When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising
+gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the frosty
+air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the bunches of
+sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow, resembled trees
+with brilliant blossoms.
+
+We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into which Jim
+had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we had expected,
+began to thin out, and it failed altogether under the cedars, though
+there was enough on the branches to give us a drenching.
+
+Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us the cave
+was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had better
+take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above to await
+developments.
+
+Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them close. We
+listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open up, but we were
+disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came climbing out, with
+the information that the lions had left the cave, probably the evening
+after he had chased them there.
+
+"Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt round the
+rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if necessary."
+
+So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left Canyon;
+Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we were to perform
+a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and Jude. Emett rode back
+with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle Canyon.
+
+Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost to the
+west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single track, so we
+started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the snow all gone;
+the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and Jones grumbled that
+no success would attend our efforts this morning.
+
+We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened into the
+deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our companions across the
+canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder and Jude both began to bark
+on a cliff; however, as we could find no tracks in the dust we called
+them off. Sounder obeyed reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over
+the wall.
+
+"They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the wall."
+
+Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They ran up
+and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they gone out
+of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the rim and looked
+over. The first step was short, a crumbled section of wall, and from
+it led down a long slope, dotted here and there with cedars. Both
+hounds were baying furiously.
+
+I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a lion,
+so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not yet in
+sight.
+
+"There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not lucky?"
+
+"I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that you
+don't absolutely need."
+
+Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only my camera
+and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We descended a ladder
+of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under our feet. The slope
+below us was easy, and soon we stood on a level with the lion. The
+cedar was small, and afforded no good place for him. Evidently he
+jumped from the slope to the tree, and had hung where he first
+alighted.
+
+"Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion won't stay
+treed long."
+
+I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and I moved
+aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under a tall piñon.
+High in the branches I saw a great mass of yellow, and at first glance
+thought Sounder had treed old Sultan. How I yelled! Then a second
+glance showed two lions close together.
+
+"Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a moment we
+made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the echoes bayed at
+us from the opposite walls.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but unmistakable,
+floated down to us. Across the jutting capes separating the mouths of
+these canyons, high above them on the rim wall of the opposite side of
+the Bay, stood a giant white horse silhouetted against the white
+sky. They made a brave picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in
+chorus: "Three lions treed! Three lions treed! come down--hurry!"
+
+A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had jumped. He
+ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard. Jude went tearing
+after them.
+
+"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!" yelled
+Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight among the
+trees and crags.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize it. The
+yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew fainter, telling
+me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to the bottom of the Bay.
+
+Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of the
+facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed without
+hounds, without a companion, without a gun.
+
+"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I wanted to
+run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken me with Don
+around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and fiercer. I
+pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for leaving my gun. I
+could not go for it; I would have to make the best of my error, and in
+the wildness born of the moment I swore if the lions would stay treed
+for the hounds they would stay treed for me.
+
+First I photographed them from different positions; then I took up my
+stand about on a level with them in an open place on the slope where
+they had me in plain sight. I might have been fifty feet from them.
+They showed no inclination to come down.
+
+About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the left. I
+called and called, but they passed on down the canyon bottom in the
+direction Jones had taken.
+
+Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me his
+lion had treed again.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.
+
+I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had just
+appeared.
+
+"Where--can--I--get--down?"
+
+I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on slide,
+jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally picked out a
+path.
+
+"Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don at his
+heels.
+
+"There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with your lasso,
+and come yourself."
+
+I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip noose
+free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right and left
+of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the direction of
+the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of precipices that made me
+tremble for him; but sure-footed as a goat, he went on safely down, to
+disappear far to my right.
+
+Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down the first
+step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach round a cedar
+above, was too short to extend to the landing below. He dropped,
+raising a cloud of dust, and starting the stones. Pulling one end of
+his lasso up around the cedar he gathered it in a coil on his arm and
+faced forward, following Don's trail.
+
+What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red and
+yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down, streaming
+over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant pursuing a foe. From
+time to time he sent up a yell of encouragement that wound down the
+canyon, to be answered by Jones and the baying hounds and then the
+strange echoes. At last he passed out of sight behind the crests of
+the trees; I heard him going down, down till the sounds came up faint
+and hollow.
+
+I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a hunter
+so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching them. For a
+long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays and yells below
+diminished in volume and occurrence and then ceased altogether, they
+became restless. It was then that I, remembering the lion I had held
+on top of the crag, began to bark like a hound. The lions became quiet
+once more.
+
+I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to hoarser, and
+finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately grew restless
+again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at me, and made many
+attempts to start down, each one of which I frustrated by throwing
+stones under the tree. At length he made one more determined effort,
+turned head downward, and stepped from branch to branch.
+
+I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long club in
+the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt him--make him fear me.
+If he got far enough down to jump, he would either escape or have me
+helpless. I aimed deliberately at him, and hit him square in the ribs.
+He exploded in a spit-roar that raised my hair. Directly under him I
+wielded my club, pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and,
+like the crazy fool that I was, yelled at him:
+
+"Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your old head
+for you!"
+
+Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He climbed
+to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had done, that I
+would certainly have made tracks from under the piñon, if I had not
+heard the faint yelp of a hound.
+
+I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at my lions.
+They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how strained they held
+their heads. I backed a little way up the slope. Then the faint yelp
+floated up again in the silence. Such dead, strange silence, that
+seemed never to have been broken! I saw the lions quiver, and if I
+ever heard anything in my life I heard their hearts thump. The yelp
+wafted up again, closer this time. I recognized it; it belonged to
+Don. The great hound on the back trail of the other lion was coming to
+my rescue.
+
+"It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at the lions.
+"It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me then! Pity for
+those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel fellows as they were, they
+shivered with fright. Their sides trembled. But pity did not hold me
+long; Don's yelp, now getting clear and sharp, brought back the rush
+of savage, grim sensations.
+
+A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the downward
+slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and climbing fast.
+It was Don.
+
+"Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.
+
+Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long length,
+forepaws against the piñon, his deep bay ringing defiance to the
+lions.
+
+It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me to sit
+down just then.
+
+"Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that hound, and
+you can't get away from him."
+
+Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down to
+hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming. Yelp on
+yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a black and
+yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight down the
+slope, streaked up and circled the piñon.
+
+Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep ascent,
+seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been swift.
+
+"Did you get the lion? Where's Emett?" I asked in breathless
+eagerness.
+
+"Lion tied--all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left Emett--to
+guard--him."
+
+"What are we to do now?"
+
+"Wait--till I get my breath. Think out--a plan. We can't get both
+lions--out of one tree."
+
+"All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie Sounder
+and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump, sure; he's
+almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree him again pretty
+soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good. Then, if you can get
+the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett to come up to help you,
+and I'll follow Don."
+
+Jones began the ascent of the piñon. The branches were not too close,
+affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for even a move on the
+part of the lions, the lower one began stepping down. I yelled a
+warning, but Jones did not have time to take advantage of it. He had
+half turned, meaning to swing out and drop, when the lion planted both
+forepaws upon his back. Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost
+on him.
+
+Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground, and when
+he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A cloud of dust
+rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and with great, springy
+bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his followers hot-footing it after
+him.
+
+Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied them, and
+dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action to join the
+chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in case the other lion
+jumped I could free them quickly.
+
+Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took his long
+stick, and proceeded to mount the piñon again. I waited till I saw him
+slip the noose over the lion's head, then I ran down the slope to
+yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told him to hurry to Jones'
+assistance. With that I headed up the canyon.
+
+I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his pursuers. I
+passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but fear of them was
+not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into the mouth of Left
+Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the hounds directed me. In
+the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed to come from a hundred dogs.
+
+When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a thick,
+dark piñon, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don stood up against
+me with his paws on my shoulders. These were strange actions, and
+though I marked it at the moment, I had ceased to wonder at our
+hounds. I took one picture as the lion sat in the dark shade, and then
+climbed to the low cliff and sat down. I called Don to me and held
+him. In case our quarry leaped upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put
+quickly on his trail.
+
+Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the lion--he
+looked as if it were--and one of impatience for the baying hounds, but
+for me it was a full hour. Alone with the hounds and a lion, far from
+the walks of men, walled in by the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry,
+sweet smell of cedar and piñon, I asked no more.
+
+Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were forerunners
+to Jones. I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze, and yelled for
+him to take his time. As he reached me the lion jumped and ran up the
+canyon. This suited me, for I knew he would take to a tree soon and
+the farther up he went the less distance we would have to pack him.
+From the cliff I saw him run up a slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly
+turn on his trail, and then climb into the tree and hide in its
+thickest part. Don passed him, got off the trail, and ran at fault.
+The others, so used to his leadership, were also baffled. But Jude,
+crippled and slow, brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard
+beyond where the lion turned. She opened up her deep call under the
+cedar, and in a moment the howling pack were around her.
+
+Jones and I toiled laboriously upward. He had brought my lasso, and
+he handed it to me with the significant remark that I would soon have
+need of it.
+
+The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that made Jones
+shake his head. He climbed the tree, lassoed the spitting lion and
+then leaped down to my side. By united and determined efforts we
+pulled the lion off the limb and let him down. The hounds began to
+leap at him. We both roared in a rage at them but to no use.
+
+"Hold him there!" shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso while he
+sprang forward.
+
+The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not taken a
+half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my feet or
+pulled the lasso from my hands. As it was, the choking lion, now
+within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to and fro before
+my face. He could not see me, but his frantic lunges narrowly missed
+me.
+
+If never before, Jones then showed his genius. Don had hold of the
+lion's flank, and Jones, grabbing the hound by the hind legs, threw
+him down the slope. Don fell and rolled a hundred feet before he
+caught himself. Then Jones threw old Moze rolling, and Ranger, and all
+except faithful Jude. Before they could get back he roped the lion
+again and made fast to a tree. Then he yelled for me to let go. The
+lion fell. Jones grabbed the lasso, at the same time calling for me to
+stop the hounds. As they came bounding up the steep slope, I had to
+club the noble fellows into submission.
+
+Before the lion recovered wholly from his severe choking, we had his
+paws bound fast. Then he could only heave his tawny sides, glare and
+spit at us.
+
+"Now what?" asked Jones. "Emett is watching the second lion, which we
+fastened by chain and lasso to a swinging branch. I'm all in. My heart
+won't stand any more climb."
+
+"You go to camp for the pack horses," I said briefly. "Bring them all,
+and all the packs, and Navvy, too. I'll help Emett tie up the second
+lion, and then we'll pack them both up here to this one. You take the
+hounds with you."
+
+"Can you tie up that lion?" asked Jones. "Mind you, he's loose except
+for a collar and chain. His claws haven't been clipped. Besides, it'll
+be an awful job to pack those two lions up here."
+
+"We can try," I said. "You hustle to camp. Your horse is right up back
+of here, across the point, if I don't mistake my bearings."
+
+Jones, admonishing me again, called the hounds and wearily climbed the
+slope. I waited until he was out of hearing; then began to retrace my
+trail down into the canyon. I made the descent in quick time, to find
+Emett standing guard over the lion. The beast had been tied to an
+overhanging branch that swung violently with every move he made.
+
+"When I got here," said Emett, "he was hanging over the side of that
+rock, almost choked to death. I drove him into this corner between the
+rocks and the tree, where he has been comparatively quiet. Now, what's
+up? Where is Jones? Did you get the third lion?"
+
+I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this lion
+and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones and the
+horses.
+
+"All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better get at
+it. Now I'm some worried about the lion we left below. He ought to be
+brought up, but we both can't go. This lion here will kill himself."
+
+"What will the other one weigh?"
+
+"All of one hundred and fifty pounds."
+
+"You can't pack him alone."
+
+"I'll try, and I reckon that's the best plan. Watch this fellow and
+keep him in the corner."
+
+Emett left me then, and I began a third long vigil beside a lion. The
+rest was more than welcome. An hour and a half passed before I heard
+the sliding of stones below, which told me that Emett was coming. He
+appeared on the slope almost bent double, carrying the lion, head
+downward, before him. He could climb only a few steps without lowering
+his burden and resting.
+
+I ran down to meet him. We secured a stout pole, and slipping this
+between the lion's paws, below where they were tied, we managed to
+carry him fairly well, and after several rests, got him up alongside
+the other.
+
+"Now to tie that rascal!" exclaimed Emett. "Jones said he was the
+meanest one he'd tackled, and I believe it. We'll cut a piece off of
+each lasso, and unravel them so as to get strings. I wish Jones hadn't
+tied the lasso to that swinging branch."
+
+"I'll go and untie it." Acting on this suggestion I climbed the tree
+and started out on the branch. The lion growled fiercely.
+
+"I'm afraid you'd better stop," warned Emett. "That branch is bending,
+and the lion can reach you."
+
+But despite this I slipped out a couple of yards farther, and had
+almost gotten to the knotted lasso, when the branch swayed and bent
+alarmingly. The lion sprang from his corner and crouched under me
+snarling and spitting, with every indication of leaping.
+
+"Jump! Jump! Jump!" shouted Emett hoarsely.
+
+[Illustration: BILLY IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: LION LICKING SNOWBALL]
+
+I dared not, for I could not jump far enough to get out of the lion's
+reach. I raised my legs and began to slide myself back up the branch.
+The lion leaped, missing me, but scattering the dead twigs. Then the
+beast, beside himself with fury, half leaped, half stood up, and
+reached for me. I looked down into his blazing eyes, and open mouth
+and saw his white fangs.
+
+Everything grew blurred before my eyes. I desperately fought for
+control over mind and muscle. I heard hoarse roars from Emett. Then
+I felt a hot, burning pain in my wrist, which stung all my faculties
+into keen life again.
+
+I saw the lion's beaked claws fastened in my leather wrist-band. At
+the same instant Emett dashed under the branch, and grasped the lion's
+tail. One powerful lunge of his broad shoulders tore the lion loose
+and flung him down the slope to the full extent of his lasso. Quick
+as thought I jumped down, and just in time to prevent Emett from
+attacking the lion with the heavy pole we had used.
+
+"I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" roared Emett.
+
+"No you won't," I replied, quietly, for my pain had served to soothe
+my excitement as well as to make me more determined. "We'll tie up the
+darned tiger, if he cuts us all to pieces. You know how Jones will
+give us the laugh if we fail. Here, bind up my wrist."
+
+Mention of Jones' probable ridicule and sight of my injury cooled
+Emett.
+
+"It's a nasty scratch," he said, binding my handkerchief round it.
+"The leather saved your hand from being torn off. He's an ugly brute,
+but you're right, we'll tie him. Now, let's each take a lasso and
+worry him till we get hold of a paw. Then we can stretch him out."
+
+Jones did a fiendish thing when he tied that lion to the swinging
+branch. It was almost worse than having him entirely free. He had a
+circle almost twenty feet in diameter in which he could run and leap
+at will. It seemed he was in the air all the time. First at Emett,
+than at me he sprang, mouth agape, eyes wild, claws spread. We whipped
+him with our nooses, but not one would hold. He always tore it off
+before we could draw it tight. I secured a precarious hold on one hind
+paw and straightened my lasso.
+
+"That's far enough," cried Emett. "Now hold him tight; don't lift him
+off the ground."
+
+I had backed up the slope. Emett faced the lion, noose ready, waiting
+for a favorable chance to rope a front paw. The lion crouched low and
+tense, only his long tail lashing back and forth across my lasso.
+Emett threw the loop in front of the spread paws, now half sunk into
+the dust.
+
+"Ease up; ease up," said he. "I'll tease him to jump into the noose."
+
+I let my rope sag. Emett poked a stick into the lion's face. All at
+once I saw the slack in the lasso which was tied to the lion's chain.
+Before I could yell to warn my comrade the beast leaped. My rope
+burned as it tore through my hands. The lion sailed into the air, his
+paws wide-spread like wings, and one of them struck Emett on the head
+and rolled him on the slope. I jerked back on my rope only to find it
+had slipped its hold.
+
+"He slugged me one," remarked Emett, calmly rising and picking up his
+hat. "Did he break the skin?"
+
+"No, but he tore your hat band off," I replied. "Let's keep at him."
+
+For a few moments or an hour--no one will ever know how long--we ran
+round him, raising the dust, scattering the stones, breaking the
+branches, dodging his onslaughts. He leaped at us to the full length
+of his tether, sailing right into our faces, a fierce, uncowed,
+tigerish beast. If it had not been for the collar and swivel he would
+have choked himself a hundred times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful,
+tireless, he kept on the go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling,
+till it seemed we would never catch him.
+
+"If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I felt his
+breath that time."
+
+"Lord! How I wish we had some of those fellows here who say lions are
+rank cowards!" I exclaimed.
+
+In one of his sweeping side swings the lion struck the rock and hung
+there on its flat surface with his tail hanging over.
+
+"Attract his attention," shouted Emett, "but don't get too close.
+Don't make him jump."
+
+While I slowly manoeuvered in front of the lion, Emett slipped behind
+the rock, lunged for the long tail and got a good hold of it. Then
+with a whoop he ran around the rock, carrying the kicking, squalling
+lion clear of the ground.
+
+"Now's your chance," he yelled. "Rope a hind foot! I can hold him."
+
+In a second I had a noose fast on both hind paws, and then passed my
+rope to Emett. While he held the lion I again climbed the tree, untied
+the knot that had caused so much trouble, and very shortly we had our
+obstinate captive stretched out between two trees. After that we took
+a much needed breathing spell.
+
+"Not very scientific," growled Emett, by way of apologizing for our
+crude work, "but we had to get him some way."
+
+"Emett, do you know I believe Jones put up a job on us?" I said.
+
+"Well, maybe he did. We had the job all right. But we'll make short
+work of him now."
+
+He certainly went at it in a way that alarmed me and would have
+electrified Jones. While I held the chain Emett muzzled the lion
+with a stick and a strand of lasso. His big blacksmith's hands held,
+twisted and tied with remorseless strength.
+
+"Now for the hardest part of it," said he, "packing him up."
+
+We toiled and drudged upward, resting every few yards, wet with sweat,
+boiling with heat, parching for water. We slipped and fell, got up to
+slip and fall again. The dust choked us. We senselessly risked our
+lives on the brinks of precipices. We had no thought save to get the
+lion up. One hour of unremitting labor saw our task finished, so far.
+Then we wearily went down for the other.
+
+"This one is the heaviest," gloomily said Emett.
+
+We had to climb partly sidewise with the pole in the hollow of our
+elbows. The lion dragged head downward, catching in the brush and
+on the stones. Our rests became more frequent. Emett, who had the
+downward end of the pole, and therefore thrice the weight, whistled
+when he drew breath. Half the time I saw red mist before my eyes. How
+I hated the sliding stones!
+
+"Wait," panted Emett once. "You're--younger--than me--wait!"
+
+For that Mormon giant--used all his days to strenuous toil, peril and
+privation--to ask me to wait for him, was a compliment which I valued
+more than any I had ever received.
+
+At last we dropped our burden in the shade of a cedar where the
+other lions lay, and we stretched ourselves. A long, sweet rest came
+abruptly to end with Emett's next words.
+
+"The lions are choking! They're dying of thirst! We must have water!"
+
+One glance at the poor, gasping, frothing beasts, proved to me the
+nature of our extremity.
+
+"Water in this desert! Where will we find it? Oh! why, did I forget my
+canteen!"
+
+After all our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally our
+wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for lack of a
+little water was sickening, maddening.
+
+"Think quick!" cried Emett. "I'm no good; I'm all in. But you must
+find water. It snowed yesterday. There's water somewhere."
+
+Into my mind flashed a picture of the many little pockets beaten by
+rains into the shelves and promontories of the canyon rim. With the
+thought I was on the jump. I ran; I climbed; I seemed to have wings; I
+reached the rim, and hurried along it with eager gaze. I swung down on
+a cedar branch to a projecting point of rock. Small depressions were
+everywhere still damp, but the water had evaporated. But I would not
+give up. I jumped from rock to rock, and climbed over scaly ledges,
+and set tons of yellow shale into motion. And I found on a ragged
+promontory many little, round holes, some a foot deep, all full of
+clear water. Using my handkerchief as a sponge I filled my cap.
+
+Then began my journey down. I carried the cap with both hands and
+balanced myself like a tight-rope performer. I zigzagged the slopes;
+slipped over stones; leaped fissures and traversed yellow slides.
+I safely descended places that in an ordinary moment would have
+presented insurmountable obstacles, and burst down upon Emett with an
+Indian yell of triumph.
+
+"Good!" ejaculated he. If I had not known it already, the way his face
+changed would have told me of his love for animals. He grasped a lion
+by the ears and held his head up. I saturated my handkerchief and
+squeezed the water into his mouth. He wheezed, coughed, choked, but to
+our joy he swallowed. He had to swallow. One after the other we served
+them so, seeing with unmistakable relief the sure signs of recovery.
+Their eyes cleared and brightened; the dry coughing that distressed us
+so ceased; the froth came no more. The savage fellow that had fought
+us to a standstill, and for which we had named him Spitfire, raised
+his head, the gold in his beautiful eyes darkened to fire and he
+growled his return to life and defiance.
+
+Emett and I sank back in unutterable relief.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Jones' yell came, breaking the warm quiet of the slope.
+Our comrade appeared riding down. The voice of the Indian, calling to
+Marc, mingled with the ringing of iron-shod hoofs on the stones.
+
+Jones surveyed the small level spot in the shade of the cedars. He
+gazed from the lions to us, his stern face relaxed, and his dry laugh
+cracked.
+
+"Doggone me, if you didn't do it!"
+
+
+XIII
+
+A strange procession soon emerged from Left Canyon and stranger to us
+than the lion heads bobbing out of the alfagoes was the sight of Navvy
+riding in front of the lions. I kept well in the rear, for if anything
+happened, which I calculated was more than likely, I wanted to see
+it. Before we had reached the outskirts of pines, I observed that the
+piece of lasso around Spitfire's nose had worked loose.
+
+Just as I was about to make this known to Jones, the lion opened a
+corner of his mouth and fastened his teeth in the Navajo's overalls.
+He did not catch the flesh, for when Navvy turned around he wore only
+an expression of curiosity. But when he saw Spitfire chewing him he
+uttered a shrill scream and fell sidewise off his horse.
+
+Then two difficulties presented themselves to us, to catch the
+frightened horse and persuade the Indian he had not been bitten. We
+failed in the latter. Navvy gave us and the lions a wide berth, and
+walked to camp.
+
+Jim was waiting for us, and said he had chased a lion south along the
+rim till the hounds got away from him.
+
+Spitfire, having already been chained, was the first lion we
+endeavored to introduce to our family of captives. He raised such a
+fearful row that we had to remove him some distance from the others.
+
+"We have two dog chains," said Jones, "but not a collar or a swivel
+in camp. We can't chain the lions without swivels. They'd choke
+themselves in two minutes."
+
+Once more, for the hundredth time, Emett came to our rescue with his
+inventive and mechanical skill. He took the largest pair of hobbles we
+had, and with an axe, a knife and Jones' wire nippers, fashioned two
+collars with swivels that for strength and serviceableness improved
+somewhat on those we had bought.
+
+Darkness was enveloping the forest when we finished supper. I fell
+into my bed and, despite the throbbing and burning of my wrist,
+soon lapsed into slumber. And I crawled out next morning late for
+breakfast, stiff, worn out, crippled, but happy. Six lions roaring a
+concert for me was quite conducive to contentment.
+
+Emett interestingly engaged himself on a new pair of trousers, which
+he had contrived to produce from two of our empty meal-bags. The lower
+half of his overalls had gone to decorate the cedar spikes and brush,
+and these new bag-leg trousers, while somewhat remarkable for design,
+answered the purpose well enough. Jones' coat was somewhere along the
+canyon rim, his shoes were full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his
+trousers in rags. Jim looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of
+heavy waterproofed duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring
+forth the unanimous admiration of my companions.
+
+"Well, fellows," said Jones, "there's six lions, and that's more than
+we can pack out of here. Have you had enough hunting? I have."
+
+"And I," rejoined Emett.
+
+"Shore you can bet I have," drawled Jim.
+
+"One more day, boys, and then I've done," said I. "Only one more day!"
+
+Signs of relief on the faces of my good comrades showed how they took
+this evidence of my satisfied ambition.
+
+I spent all the afternoon with the lions, photographing them,
+listening to them spit and growl, watching them fight their chains,
+and roll up like balls of fire. From different parts of the forest I
+tried to creep unsuspected upon them; but always when I peeped out
+from behind a tree or log, every pair of ears would be erect, every
+pair of eyes gleaming and suspicious.
+
+Spitfire afforded more amusement than all the others. He had indeed
+the temper of a king; he had been born for sovereignty, not slavery.
+To intimidate me he tried every manner of expression and utterance,
+and failing, he always ended with a spring in the air to the length of
+his chain. This means was always effective. I simply could not stand
+still when he leaped; and in turn I tried every artifice I could think
+of to make him back away from me, to take refuge behind his tree. I
+ran at him with a club as if I were going to kill him. He waited,
+crouching. Finally, in dire extremity, I bethought me of a red flannel
+hood that Emett had given me, saying I might use it on cold nights.
+This was indeed a weird, flaming headgear, falling like a cloak down
+over the shoulders. I put it on, and, camera in hand, started to crawl
+on all fours toward Spitfire.
+
+[Illustration: SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN
+SNAKE GULCH]
+
+I needed no one to tell me that this proceeding was entirely beyond
+his comprehension. In his astonishment he forgot to spit and growl,
+and he backed behind the little pine, from which he regarded me with
+growing perplexity. Then, having revenged myself on him, and getting a
+picture, I left him in peace.
+
+
+XIV
+
+I awoke before dawn, and lay watching the dark shadows change into
+gray, and gray into light. The Navajo chanted solemnly and low his
+morning song. I got up with the keen eagerness of the hunter who faces
+the last day of his hunt.
+
+I warmed my frozen fingers at the fire. A hot breakfast smoked on the
+red coals. We ate while Navvy fed and saddled the horses.
+
+"Shore, they'll be somethin' doin' to-day," said Jim, fatalistically.
+
+"We haven't crippled a horse yet," put in Emett hopefully. Don led the
+pack and us down the ridge, out of the pines into the sage. The sun, a
+red ball, glared out of the eastern mist, shedding a dull glow on
+the ramparts of the far canyon walls. A herd of white-tailed deer
+scattered before the hounds. Blue grouse whirred from under our
+horses' feet.
+
+"Spread out," ordered Jones, and though he meant the hounds, we all
+followed his suggestion, as the wisest course.
+
+Ranger began to work up the sage ridge to the right. Jones, Emett
+and I followed, while Jim rode away to the left. Gradually the space
+widened, and as we neared the cedars, a sharply defined, deep canyon
+separated us.
+
+We heard Don open up, then Sounder. Ranger left the trail he was
+trying to work out in the thick sage, and bounded in the direction of
+the rest of the pack. We reined in to listen.
+
+First Don, then Sounder, then Jude, then one of the pups bayed
+eagerly, telling us they were hunting hard. Suddenly the bays blended
+in one savage sound.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" cracked the cool, thin air. We saw Jim wave his hand
+from the far side of the canyon, spur his horse into action, and
+disappear into the cedars.
+
+"Stick close together," yelled Jones, as we launched forward. We made
+the mistake of not going back to cross the canyon, for the hounds soon
+went up the opposite side. As we rode on and on, the sounds of the
+chase lessened, and finally ceased. To our great chagrin we found it
+necessary to retrace our steps, and when we did get over the deep
+gully, so much time had elapsed that we despaired of coming up with
+Jim. Emett led, keeping close on Jim's trail, which showed plain in
+the dust, and we followed.
+
+Up and down ravines, over ridges, through sage flats and cedar
+forests, to and fro, around and around, we trailed Jim and the hounds.
+From time to time one of us let out a long yell.
+
+"I see a big lion track," called Jones once, and that stirred us on
+faster. Fully an hour passed before Jones halted us, saying we had
+best try a signal. I dismounted, while Emett rolled his great voice
+through the cedars.
+
+A long silence ensued. From the depths of the forest Jim's answer
+struck faintly on my ear. With a word to my companions I leaped on my
+mustang and led the way. I rode as far as I could mark a straight line
+with my eye, then stopped to wait for another cry. In this way, slowly
+but surely we closed in on Jim.
+
+We found him on the verge of the Bay, in the small glade where I had
+left my horse the day I followed Don alone down the canyon. Jim was
+engaged in binding up the leg of his horse. The baying of the hounds
+floated up over the rim.
+
+"What's up?" queried Jones.
+
+"Old Sultan. That's what," replied Jim. "We run plumb into him. We've
+had him in five trees. It ain't been long since he was in that cedar
+there. When he jumped the yellow pup was in the way an' got killed.
+My horse just managed to jump clear of the big lion, an' as it was,
+nearly broke his leg."
+
+Emett examined the leg and pronounced it badly strained, and advised
+Jim to lead the horse back to camp. Jones and I stood a moment over
+the remains of the yellow pup, and presently Emett joined us.
+
+"He was the most playful one of the pack," said Emett, and then he
+placed the limp, bloody body in a crack, and laid several slabs of
+stone over it.
+
+"Hurry after the other hounds," said Jim. "That lion will kill them
+one by one. An' look out for him!"
+
+If we needed an incentive, the danger threatening the hounds furnished
+one; but I calculated the death of the pup was enough. Emett had a
+flare in his eye, Jones looked darker and more grim than ever, and I
+had sensations that boded ill to old Sultan.
+
+"Fellows," I said, "I've been down this place, and I know where the
+old brute has gone; so come on."
+
+I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the business ahead
+was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon. Down slopes, among
+rocks, under piñons, around yellow walls, along slides, the two big
+men followed me with heavy steps. We reached the white stream-bed,
+and sliding, slipping, jumping, always down and down, we came at last
+within sound of the hounds. We found them baying wildly under a piñon
+on the brink of the deep cove.
+
+Then, at once, we all saw old Sultan close at hand. He was of immense
+size; his color was almost gray; his head huge, his paws heavy and
+round. He did not spit, nor snarl, nor growl; he did not look at the
+hounds, but kept his half-shut eyes upon us.
+
+We had no time to make a move before he left his perch and hit the
+ground with a thud. He walked by the baying hounds, looked over the
+brink of the cove, and without an instant of hesitation, leaped down.
+The rattling crash of sliding stones came up with a cloud of dust.
+Then we saw him leisurely picking his way among the rough stones.
+
+Exclamations from the three of us attested to what we thought of that
+leap.
+
+"Look the place over," called Jones. "I think we've got him."
+
+The cove was a hole hollowed out by running water. At its head, where
+the perpendicular wall curved, the height was not less than forty
+feet. The walls became higher as the cove deepened toward the canyon.
+It had a length of perhaps a hundred yards, and a width of perhaps
+half as many. The floor was mass on mass of splintered rock.
+
+"Let the hounds down on a lasso," said Jones.
+
+Easier said than done! Sounder, Ranger, Jude refused. Old Moze
+grumbled and broke away. But Don, stern and savage, allowed Jones to
+tie him in a slip noose.
+
+"It's a shame to send that grand hound to his death," protested Emett.
+
+"We'll all go down," declared Jones.
+
+"We can't. One will have to stay up here to help the other two out,"
+replied Emett.
+
+"You're the strongest; you stay up," said Jones. "Better work along
+the wall and see if you can locate the lion."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY HOME]
+
+[Illustration: RIDING WITH A NAVAJO]
+
+We let Don down into the hole. He kicked himself loose before reaching
+the bottom and then, yelping, he went out of sight among the boulders.
+Moze, as if ashamed, came whining to us. We slipped a noose around him
+and lowered him, kicking and barking, to the rocky floor. Jones made
+the lasso fast to a cedar root, and I slid down, like a flash, burning
+my hands. Jones swung himself over, wrapped his leg around the rope,
+and came down, to hit the ground with a thump. Then, lassos in hands,
+we began clambering over the broken fragments.
+
+For a few moments we were lost to sights and sounds away from our
+immediate vicinity. The bottom of the cove afforded hard going. Dead
+piñons and cedars blocked our way; the great, jagged stones offered no
+passage. We crawled, climbed, and jumped from piece to piece.
+
+A yell from Emett halted us. We saw him above, on the extreme point of
+wall. Waving his arms, he yelled unintelligible commands to us. The
+fierce baying of Don and Moze added to our desperate energy.
+
+The last jumble of splintered rock cleared, we faced a terrible and
+wonderful scene.
+
+"Look! Look!" I gasped to Jones.
+
+A wide, bare strip of stone lay a few yards beneath us; and in the
+center of this last step sat the great lion on his haunches with his
+long tail lashing out over the precipice. Back to the canyon, he
+confronted the furious hounds; his demeanor had changed to one of
+savage apprehension.
+
+When Jones and I appeared, old Sultan abruptly turned his back to the
+hounds and looked down into the canyon. He walked the whole length of
+the bare rock with his head stretched over. He was looking for a niche
+or a step whereby he might again elude his foes.
+
+Faster lashed his tail; farther and farther stretched his neck. He
+stopped, and with head bent so far over the abyss that it seemed he
+must fall, he looked and looked.
+
+How grandly he fitted the savage sublimity of that place! The
+tremendous purple canyon depths lay beneath him. He stood on the last
+step of his mighty throne. The great downward slopes had failed him.
+Majestically and slowly he turned from the deep that offered no hope.
+
+As he turned, Jones cast the noose of his lasso perfectly round the
+burly neck. Sultan roared and worked his jaws, but he did not leap.
+Jones must have expected such a move, for he fastened his rope to a
+spur of rock. Standing there, revolver gripped, hearing the baying
+hounds, the roaring lion, and Jones' yells mingled with Emett's, I had
+no idea what to do. I was in a trance of sensations.
+
+Old Sultan ran rather than leaped at us. Jones evaded the rush by
+falling behind a stone, but still did not get out of danger. Don flew
+at the lion's neck and Moze buried his teeth in a flank. Then the
+three rolled on the rock dangerously near the verge.
+
+Bellowing, Jones grasped the lasso and pulled. Still holding my
+revolver, I leaped to his assistance, and together we pulled and
+jerked. Don got away from the lion with remarkable quickness. But
+Moze, slow and dogged, could not elude the outstretched paws, which
+fastened in his side and leg. We pulled so hard we slowly raised the
+lion. Moze, never whimpering, clawed and scratched at the rock in his
+efforts to escape. The lion's red tongue protruded from his dripping
+jaws. We heard the rend of hide as our efforts, combined with those of
+Moze, loosed him from the great yellow claws.
+
+The lion, whirling and wrestling, rolled over the precipice. When the
+rope straightened with a twang, had it not been fastened to the rock,
+Jones and I would have jerked over the wall. The shock threw us to our
+knees.
+
+For a moment we did not realize the situation. Emett's yells awakened
+us.
+
+"Pull! Pull! Pull!" roared he.
+
+Then, knowing that old Sultan would hang himself in a few moments, we
+attempted to lift him. Jones pulled till his back cracked; I pulled
+till I saw red before my eyes. Again and again we tried. We could lift
+him only a few feet. Soon exhausted, we had to desist altogether. How
+Emett roared and raged from his vantage-point above! He could see the
+lion in death throes.
+
+Suddenly he quieted down with the words: "All over; all over!" Then he
+sat still, looking into space. Jones sat mopping his brow. And I, all
+my hot resentment vanished, lay on the rock, with eyes on the distant
+mesas.
+
+Presently Jones leaned over the verge with my lasso.
+
+"There," he said, "I've roped one of his hind legs. Now we'll pull him
+up a little, then we'll fasten this rope, and pull on the other."
+
+So, foot by foot, we worked the heavy lion up over the wall. He
+must have been dead, though his sides heaved. Don sniffed at him in
+disdain. Moze, dusty and bloody, with a large strip of hide hanging
+from his flank, came up growling low and deep, and gave the lion a
+last vengeful bite.
+
+"We've been fools," observed Jones, meditatively. "The excitement of
+the game made us lose our wits. I'll never rope another lion."
+
+I said nothing. While Moze licked his bloody leg and Don lay with his
+fine head on my knees, Jones began to skin old Sultan. Once more the
+strange, infinite silence enfolded the canyon. The far-off golden
+walls glistened in the sun; farther down, the purple clefts smoked.
+The many-hued peaks and mesas, aloof from each other, rose out of the
+depths. It was a grand and gloomy scene of ruin where every glistening
+descent of rock was but a page of earth's history.
+
+It brought to my mind a faint appreciation of what time really meant;
+it spoke of an age of former men; it showed me the lonesome crags
+of eagles, and the cliff lairs of lions; and it taught mutely,
+eloquently, a lesson of life--that men are still savage, still driven
+by a spirit to roam, to hunt, and to slay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+TONTO BASIN
+
+The start of a camping trip, the getting a big outfit together and
+packed, and on the move, is always a difficult and laborsome job.
+Nevertheless, for me the preparation and the actual getting under way
+have always been matters of thrilling interest. This start of my hunt
+in Arizona, September 24, 1918, was particularly momentous because I
+had brought my boy Romer with me for his first trip into the wilds.
+
+It may be that the boy was too young for such an undertaking. His
+mother feared he would be injured; his teachers presaged his utter
+ruin; his old nurse, with whom he waged war until he was free of her,
+averred that the best it could do for him would be to show what kind
+of stuff he was made of. His uncle R.C. was stoutly in favor of taking
+him. I believe the balance fell in Romer's favor when I remembered
+my own boyhood. As a youngster of three I had babbled of "bars an'
+buffers," and woven fantastic and marvelous tales of fiction about my
+imagined adventures--a habit, alas! I have never yet outgrown.
+
+Anyway we only made six miles' travel on this September twenty-fourth,
+and Romer was with us.
+
+Indeed he was omnipresent. His keen, eager joy communicated itself to
+me. Once he rode up alongside me and said: "Dad, this's great, but I'd
+rather do like Buck Duane." The boy had read all of my books, in spite
+of parents and teachers, and he knew them by heart, and invariably
+liked the outlaws and gunmen best of all.
+
+We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west, and the
+Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a cut-over pine
+forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned deadfalls made an
+aspect of blackened desolation. From a distance, however, the scene
+was superb. At sunset there was a faint wind which soon died away.
+
+My old guide on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in charge
+of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over seventy years,
+hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes still keen with fire.
+He was no longer robust, but he was tireless and willing. When he told
+a story he always began: "In the early days--" His son Lee had charge
+of the horses of which we had fourteen, two teams and ten saddle
+horses. Lee was a typical westerner of many occupations--cowboy,
+rider, rancher, cattleman. He was small, thin, supple, quick, tough
+and strong. He had a bronzed face, always chapped, a hooked nose,
+gray-blue eyes like his father's, sharp and keen.
+
+Lee had engaged the only man he could find for a cook--Joe Isbel, a
+tall, lithe cowboy, straight as an Indian, with powerful shoulders,
+round limbs, and slender waist, and Isbel was what the westerners
+called a broncho-buster. He was a prize-winning rider at all
+the rodeos. Indeed, his seat in the saddle was individual and
+incomparable. He had a rough red-blue face, hard and rugged, like the
+rocks he rode over so fearlessly, and his eyes were bright hazel,
+steady and hard. Isbel's vernacular was significant. Speaking of one
+of our horses he said: "Like a mule he'll be your friend for twenty
+years to git a chance to kick you." Speaking of another that had to be
+shod he said: "Shore, he'll step high to-morrow." Isbel appeared to be
+remarkably efficient as camp-rustler and cook, but he did not inspire
+me with confidence. In speaking of this to the Doyles I found them
+non-committal on the subject. Westerners have sensitive feelings. I
+could not tell whether they were offended or not, and I half regretted
+mentioning my lack of confidence in Isbel. As it turned out, however,
+I was amply justified.
+
+Sievert Nielsen, whom I have mentioned elsewhere, was the fourth of my
+men.
+
+Darkness had enveloped us at supper time. I was tired out, but the
+red-embered camp-fire, the cool air, the smell of wood-smoke, and the
+white stars kept me awake awhile. Romer had to be put to bed. He was
+wild with excitement. We had had a sleeping-bag made for him so that
+once snugly in it, with the flaps buckled he could not kick off the
+blankets. When we got him into it he quieted down and took exceeding
+interest in his first bed in the open. He did not, however, go quickly
+to sleep. Presently he called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle
+Rome, I coiled a lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's
+asleep you go pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's
+a rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading
+"The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones'
+cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off his mind he fell
+asleep.
+
+The hour we spent sitting around the camp-fire was the most pleasant
+of that night, though I did not know it then. The smell of wood-smoke
+and the glow of live coals stirred memories of other camp-fires. I was
+once more enveloped by the sweetness and peace of the open, listening
+to the sigh of the wind, and the faint tinkle of bells on the hobbled
+horses.
+
+An uncomfortable night indeed it turned out to be. Our covers were
+scanty and did not number among them any blankets. The bed was hard as
+a rock, and lumpy. No sleep! As the night wore on the air grew colder,
+and I could not keep warm. At four a.m. I heard the howling of
+coyotes--a thrilling and well remembered wild chorus. After that
+perfect stillness reigned. Presently I saw the morning star--big,
+blue-white, beautiful. Uncomfortable hours seemed well spent if the
+reward was sight of the morning star. How few people ever see it! How
+very few ever get a glimpse of it on a desert dawn!
+
+Just then, about five-thirty, Romer woke up and yelled lustily: "Dad!
+My nose's froze." This was a signal for me to laugh, and also to rise
+heroically. Not difficult because I wanted to stay in bed, but because
+I could hardly crawl out! Soon we had a fire roaring. At six the dawn
+was still gray. Cold and nipping air, frost on everything, pale stars,
+a gold-red light in the east were proofs that I was again in the open.
+Soon a rose-colored flush beautified the Peaks.
+
+After breakfast we had trouble with the horses. This always happened.
+But it was made worse this morning because a young cowboy who happened
+along took upon himself the task of helping Lee. I suspected he wanted
+to show off a little. In throwing his lasso to rope one, the noose
+went over the heads of two. Then he tried to hold both animals. They
+dragged him, pulled the lasso out of his hands, and stampeded the
+other horses. These two roped together thundered off with the noose
+widening. I was afraid they would split round a tree or stump, but
+fortunately the noose fell off one. As all the horses pounded off I
+heard Romer remark to Isbel: "Say, Joe, I don't see any medals on that
+cowboy." Isbel roared, and said: "Wal, Romer, you shore hit the nail,
+on the haid!"
+
+Owing to that stampede we did not get saddled and started till eleven
+o'clock. At first I was so sore and stiff from the hard bed that I
+rode a while on the wagon with Doyle. Many a mile I had ridden with
+him, and many a story he had related. This time he told about sitting
+on a jury at Prescott where they brought in as evidence bloody shirts,
+overalls, guns, knives, until there was such a pile that the table
+would not hold them. Doyle was a mine of memories of the early days.
+
+Romer's mount was a little black, white-spotted horse named Rye. Lee
+Doyle had scoured the ranches to get this pony for the youngster. Rye
+was small for a horse, about the size of an Indian mustang, and he
+was gentle, as well as strong and fast. Romer had been given riding
+lessons all that summer in the east, and upon his arrival at Flagstaff
+he informed me that he could ride. I predicted he would be in the
+wagon before noon of the second day out. He offered to bet on it.
+I told him I disapproved of betting. He seemed to me to be daring,
+adaptable, self-willed; and I was divided between pride and anxiety as
+to the outcome of this trip for him.
+
+In the afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy pond in a
+valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees stood in the water,
+and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably to the ranchers this
+mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me, who loved the beauty of
+the desert before its productiveness, it was hideous. When we passed
+Lake Mary, and farther on the last of the cut-over timber-land, we
+began to get into wonderful country. We traveled about sixteen miles,
+rather a small day's ride. Romer stayed on his horse all through that
+ride, and when we selected a camp site for the night he said to me:
+"Well, you're lucky you wouldn't bet."
+
+Camp that evening was in a valley with stately pines straggling down
+to the level. On the other slope the pines came down in groups. The
+rim of this opposite slope was high, rugged, iron-colored, with cracks
+and holes. Before supper I walked up the slope back of our camp, to
+come upon level, rocky ground for a mile, then pines again leading to
+a low, green mountain with lighter patches of aspen. The level, open
+strip was gray in color. Arizona color and Arizona country! Gray of
+sage, rocks, pines, cedars, piñons, heights and depths and plains,
+wild and open and lonely--that was Arizona.
+
+That night I obtained some rest and sleep, lying awake only a few
+hours, during which time I turned from side to side to find a soft
+place in the hard bed. Under such circumstances I always thought
+of the hard beds of the Greeks and the Spartans. Next day we rode
+twenty-three miles. On horseback trips like this it was every one for
+himself. Sometimes we would be spread out, all separated; at others we
+would be bunched; and again we would ride in couples. The morning was
+an ordeal for me, as at first I could scarcely sit my saddle; in
+the afternoon, however, riding grew to be less severe. The road led
+through a winding, shallow valley, with clumps of pine here and there,
+and cedars on the slopes. Romer rode all the way, half the time with
+his feet out of the stirrups, like a western boy born to the saddle,
+and he wanted to go fast all the time. Camp was made at a place called
+Fulton Spring. It might have been a spring once, but now it was a
+mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is necessary
+to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on sheep water--the
+water holes being tainted by sheep--and alkali water and soapy water
+of the desert, but never happily. How I hailed the clear, cold,
+swiftly-flowing springs!
+
+This third camp lay in a woods where the pines were beautiful and the
+silence noticeable. Upon asking Romer to enumerate the things I had
+called to his attention, the few times I could catch up with him on
+the day's journey, he promptly replied--two big spiders--tarantulas,
+a hawk, and Mormon Lake. This lake was another snow-melted mud-hole,
+said to contain fish. I doubted that. Perhaps the little bull-head
+catfish might survive in such muddy water, but I did not believe bass
+or perch could.
+
+One familiar feature of Arizona travel manifested itself to me that
+day--the dry air. My nails became brittle and my lips began to crack.
+I have had my lips cracked so severely that when I tried to bite bread
+they would split and bleed and hurt so that I could not eat. This
+matter of sore lips was for long a painful matter. I tried many
+remedies, and finally found one, camphor ice, that would prevent the
+drying and cracking.
+
+Next day at dawn the forest was full of the soughing of wind in the
+pines--a wind that presaged storm. No stars showed. Romer-boy piled
+out at six o'clock. I had to follow him. The sky was dark and cloudy.
+Only a faint light showed in the east and it was just light enough
+to see when we ate breakfast. Owing to strayed horses we did not get
+started till after nine o'clock.
+
+Five miles through the woods, gradually descending, led us into an
+open plain where there was a grass-bordered pond full of ducks. Here
+appeared an opportunity to get some meat. R.C. tried with shotgun and
+I with rifle, all to no avail. These ducks were shy. Romer seemed to
+evince some disdain at our failure, but he did not voice his feelings.
+We found some wild-turkey tracks, and a few feathers, which put our
+hopes high.
+
+Crossing the open ground we again entered the forest, which gradually
+grew thicker as we got down to a lower altitude. Oak trees began to
+show in swales. And then we soon began to see squirrels, big, plump,
+gray fellows, with bushy tails almost silver. They appeared wilder
+than we would have suspected, at that distance from the settlements.
+Romer was eager to hunt them, and with his usual persistence,
+succeeded at length in persuading his uncle to do so.
+
+To that end we rode out far ahead of the wagon and horses. Lee had a
+yellow dog he called Pups, a close-haired, keen-faced, muscular canine
+to which I had taken a dislike. To be fair to Pups, I had no reason
+except that he barked all the time. Pups and his barking were destined
+to make me hail them both with admiration and respect, but I had no
+idea of that then. Now this dog of Lee's would run ahead of us,
+trail squirrels, chase them, and tree them, whereupon he would bark
+vociferously. Sometimes up in the bushy top we would fail to spy the
+squirrel, but we had no doubt one was there. Romer wasted many and
+many a cartridge of the .22 Winchester trying to hit a squirrel. He
+had practiced a good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster,
+but hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at the
+tip of a branch, was no easy matter.
+
+"Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad."
+
+And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about Wetzel. Now
+Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was Romer's favorite
+hero.
+
+"Gimme the .20 gauge," finally cried Romer, in desperation, with his
+eyes flashing.
+
+Whereupon his uncle handed him the shotgun, with a word of caution
+as to the trigger. This particular squirrel was pretty high up,
+presenting no easy target. Romer stood almost directly under it,
+raised the gun nearly straight up, waved and wobbled and hesitated,
+and finally fired. Down sailed the squirrel to hit with a plump. That
+was Romer's first successful hunting experience. How proud he was of
+that gray squirrel! I suffered a pang to see the boy so radiant, so
+full of fire at the killing of a beautiful creature of the woods. Then
+again I remembered my own first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty
+little savages. In their hunting, playing, even their reading, some
+element of the wild brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy
+descendants of progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This
+incident furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before
+this trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot
+a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I was not
+hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at the spilling
+of blood. On the contrary he revels in it with a fierce, primitive
+joy.
+
+"Some shot, I'll say!" declared Romer to his uncle, loftily. And he
+said to me half a dozen times: "Say, Dad, wasn't it a grand peg?"
+
+But toward the end of that afternoon his enthusiasm waned for
+shooting, for anything, especially riding. He kept asking when the
+wagon was going to stop. Once he yelled out: "Here's a peach of a
+place to camp." Then I asked him: "Romer, are you tired?" "Naw! But
+what's the use ridin' till dark?" At length he had to give up and be
+put on the wagon. The moment was tragic for him. Soon, however, he
+brightened at something Doyle told him, and began to ply the old
+pioneer with rapid-fire questions.
+
+We pitched camp in an open flat, gray and red with short grass, and
+sheltered by towering pines on one side. Under these we set up our
+tents. The mat of pine needles was half a foot thick, soft and springy
+and fragrant. The woods appeared full of slanting rays of golden
+sunlight.
+
+This day we had supper over before sunset. Romer showed no effects
+from his long, hard ride. First he wanted to cook, then he fooled
+around the fire, bothering Isbel. I had a hard time to manage him.
+He wanted to be eternally active. He teased and begged to go
+hunting--then he compromised on target practice. R.C. and I, however,
+were too tired, and we preferred to rest beside the camp-fire.
+
+"Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for to-morrow."
+
+In disgust Romer replied: "Well, I suppose if a flock of antelope came
+along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are great hunters, I
+don't think!"
+
+After the lad had gone over to the other men R.C. turned to me and
+said reflectively: "Does he remind you of us when we were little?"
+
+To which I replied with emotion: "In him I live over again!"
+
+That is one of the beautiful things about children, so full of pathos
+and some strange, stinging joy--they bring back the days that are no
+more.
+
+This evening, despite my fatigue, I was the last one to stay up. My
+seat was most comfortable, consisting of thick folds of blankets
+against a log. How the wind mourned in the trees! How the camp-fire
+sparkled, glowed red and white! Sometimes it seemed full of blazing
+opals. Always it held faces. And stories--more stories than I can ever
+tell! Once I was stirred and inspired by the beautiful effect of the
+pine trees in outline against the starry sky when the camp-fire
+blazed up. The color of the foliage seemed indescribably blue-green,
+something never seen by day. Every line shone bright, graceful,
+curved, rounded, and all thrown with sharp relief against the sky. How
+magical, exquisitely delicate and fanciful! The great trunks were
+soft serrated brown, and the gnarled branches stood out in perfect
+proportions. All works of art must be copied of nature.
+
+Next morning early, while Romer slept, and the men had just begun to
+stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All seemed solemn
+and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest brown and green and
+gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his nocturnal habit. Then to
+my surprise I heard wild canaries. They were flying high, and to the
+south, going to their winter quarters. I wandered around among big,
+gray rocks and windfalls and clumps of young oak and majestic pines.
+More than one saucy red squirrel chattered at me.
+
+When I returned to camp my comrades were at breakfast. Romer appeared
+vastly relieved to see that I had not taken a gun with me.
+
+This morning we got an early start. We rode for hours through a
+beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces made
+riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared on the
+rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's travel, and
+the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine was thick and
+fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing. Everywhere pine
+needles dropped, shining in the sunlight like thin slants of rain.
+
+Only once or twice did I see Romer in all these morning hours; then he
+was out in front with the cowboy Isbel, riding his black pony over
+all the logs and washes he could find. I could see his feet sticking
+straight out almost even with his saddle. He did not appear to need
+stirrups. My fears gradually lessened.
+
+During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We came to a
+long, open valley where the dust lay several inches deep. It had been
+an unusually dry summer and fall--a fact that presaged poor luck for
+our hunting--and the washes and stream-beds were bleached white. We
+came to two water-holes, tanks the Arizonians called them, and they
+were vile mud-holes with green scum on the water. The horses drank,
+but I would have had to be far gone from thirst before I would have
+slaked mine there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and
+the dust rising in clouds. No wonder that ride was interminably long.
+
+At last we descended a canyon, and decided to camp in a level spot
+where several ravines met, in one of which a tiny stream of dear water
+oozed out of the gravel. The inclosure was rocky-sloped, full of caves
+and covered with pines; and the best I could say for it was that in
+case of storm the camp would be well protected. We shoveled out a deep
+hole in the gravel, so that it would fill up with water. Romer had
+evidently enjoyed himself this day. When I asked Isbel about him the
+cowboy's hard face gleamed with a smile: "Shore thet kid's all right.
+He'll make a cowpuncher!" His remark pleased me. In view of Romer's
+determination to emulate the worst bandit I ever wrote about I was
+tremendously glad to think of him as a cowboy. But as for myself I was
+tired, and the ride had been rather unprofitable, and this camp-site,
+to say the least, did not inspire me. It was neither wild nor
+beautiful nor comfortable. I went early to bed and slept like a log.
+
+The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men hunted
+from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned more about
+Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the lost horses. They
+had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained perfectly quiet, as cute
+as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail. Pups was a horse-trailing dog
+and he soon found them. I had a change of feeling for Pups, then and
+there.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN. From left to right: Edd Haught;
+Nielsen; Haught, the bear hunter; Al Doyle, pioneer Arizona guide;
+Lewis Pyle; Z.G.; George Haught; Ben Copple; Lee Doyle.]
+
+The sun was high and hot when we rode off. The pleasant and dusty
+stretches alternated. About one o'clock we halted on the edge of a deep
+wooded ravine to take our usual noonday rest. I scouted along the edge
+in the hope of seeing game of some kind. Presently I heard the
+cluck-cluck of turkeys. Slipping along to an open place I peered down to
+be thrilled by sight of four good-sized turkeys. They were walking along
+the open strip of dry stream-bed at the bottom of the ravine. One was
+chasing grasshoppers. They were fairly close. I took aim at one, and
+thought I could have hit him, but suddenly I remembered Romer and R.C.
+So I slipped back and called them.
+
+[Illustration: ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED]
+
+Hurriedly and stealthily we returned to the point where I had seen
+the turkeys. Romer had a pale face and wonderfully bright eyes; his
+actions resembled those of a stalking Indian. The turkeys were farther
+down, but still in plain sight. I told R.C. to take the boy and slip
+down, and run and hide and run till they got close enough for a shot.
+I would keep to the edge of the ravine.
+
+Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping and
+creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to reach a
+point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I might get a
+shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I lost sight of
+the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my horse I mounted him
+and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine some distance above. Here
+I hunted around for a little while. Once I heard the report of the .20
+gauge, and then several rifle shots. Upon returning I found that Lee
+and Nielsen had wasted some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the
+hill, both red and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about
+the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the
+four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a
+hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one.
+Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer
+had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching
+several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled feathers out of
+their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"
+
+We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon Doyle called
+my attention to an opening in the forest through which I could see the
+yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the great blue void below. Arizona!
+That explained the black forests, the red and yellow cliffs of rock,
+the gray cedars, the heights and depths.
+
+Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was winding, rough
+full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired out trying to keep up
+with the wagon. Romer, however, averred time and again that he was
+not tired. Still I saw him often shift his seat from one side of the
+saddle to the other.
+
+At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little
+hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone
+houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards,
+and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there long enough to rest
+a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water. I would travel
+out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.
+
+About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer invited or
+rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his victory I found
+that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath. I went back some
+distance to look for it, but did so in vain. Isbel said he would ride
+back in the morning and find it.
+
+The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was only
+because we had gotten out where we could see all around. Arizona is
+all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up to the south and
+east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with
+its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber. Westward
+lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a
+kind of magnificent bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost
+in blue haze. The vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both
+prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak,
+and juniper trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially
+the smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries,
+and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees. Since we
+had left the rim above the character of plant life had changed.
+
+We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural Bridge
+was located. A winding road descended the east side of this valley.
+A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and orchard and walnut
+trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray slope on one side, and a
+red, rugged mountain on the other. A deep gorge showed dark and wild.
+At length, just after sunset, we reached the ranch, and rode through
+orchards of peach and pear and apple trees, all colored with fruit,
+and down through grassy meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched
+camp. By the time we had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick,
+dreamy hum of insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden
+afterglow on the notch of the mountain range to the west--these were
+inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed, where
+my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.
+
+After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what delight to
+awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool and breezy and
+bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green and purple alfalfa
+fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged crags above! Romer made a
+bee-line for the peach trees. He beat his daddy only a few yards. The
+kind rancher had visited us the night before and he had told us to
+help ourselves to fruit, melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I
+made my breakfast on peaches!
+
+I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the dark green
+slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by water-cress, long
+grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one of perfectly clear
+water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on the surface. A grass of
+dark color and bunches of light green plant grew under the surface.
+Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed around and frogs as green as the
+grass blinked with jewelled eyes from the wet margins. The spring had
+a large volume that spilled over its borders with low, hollow gurgle,
+with fresh, cool splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone.
+Here was the secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty
+and life of the oasis.
+
+It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful Natural
+Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the extent of
+several acres, was the level top of this strange bridge. A meadow of
+alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like the hanging gardens of
+Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep gorge, at the bottom of
+which flowed a swift stream of water. Geologically this tremendous
+arch of limestone cannot be so very old. In comparatively recent times
+an earthquake or some seismic disturbance or some other natural force
+caused a spring of water to burst from the slope above the gorge. It
+ran down, of course, over the rim. The lime salt in the water was
+deposited, and year by year and age by age advanced toward the
+opposite side until a bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at
+the bottom kept the opening clear under the bridge.
+
+A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful
+natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy,
+broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous
+boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and
+yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray
+frogs, reminding me of those I found in the gulches of the Grand
+Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive, but most of them dead,
+lined the wet borders of the pools. A species of fish that resembled
+mullet lay in the shadow of the rocks.
+
+From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if not
+magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at least
+striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored gray, yellow,
+green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and scalloped mosaic.
+Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy scattered drops. The left
+side was dryest and large, dark caves opened up, one above the other,
+the upper being so high that it was dangerous to attempt reaching it.
+The right side was slippery and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted
+with lime salt. Doyle told us that any object left under the ceaseless
+drip, drip of the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as
+stone. The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than
+the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes. Romer
+certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone through a
+small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle pointed out the
+high cave where Indians had once lived, showing the markings of their
+fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest
+cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to
+Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his
+neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a
+boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom,
+boom, growing hollower the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer
+in some bat nests in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll
+stones and fish for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more
+on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole--I'll
+say!" he panted, breathlessly.
+
+The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and
+the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the
+lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had
+cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks
+Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or
+hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life
+there was always afternoon.
+
+Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a half
+hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many frontier
+characteristics such as old board and stone houses with high fronts,
+hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one street so wide that it
+resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson contained two stores, where I hoped
+to buy a rifle, and hoped in vain. I had not recovered my lost gun,
+and when night came my prospects of anything to hunt with appeared
+extremely slim. But we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart,
+dark-skinned rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he
+would have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
+profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I could
+not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I refused with
+thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it was that he lent
+me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me several boxes of
+ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide lasso. Whereupon
+Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say, you look like an
+Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple replied: "I am part Indian,
+sonny." Manifestly that settled his status with Romer, for he piped
+up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd better come huntin' with us."
+
+We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest ride of
+the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good camping site
+I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout everybody out. It
+was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then everybody rustled to such
+purpose that we were ready to start before dawn, and had to wait a
+little for light enough to see where we were going. This procedure
+tickled Romer immensely. I believed he imagined he was in a pioneer
+caravan. The gray breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the
+rose and silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with
+the air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as
+the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined road
+was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing indications that
+it was seldom used. From the tops of high points I could see black
+foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all leading the gaze
+toward the great yellow and red wall of the mesa, with its fringed
+borderline, wild and beckoning.
+
+We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order, over
+and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that burned
+our faces and through choking dust. The washes and stream-beds were
+bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the
+mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts. Only the manzanita looked
+fresh. That smooth red-branched and glistening green-leafed plant
+of the desert apparently flourished without rain. On all sides the
+evidences of extreme drought proved the year to be the dreaded _anno
+seco_ of the Mexicans.
+
+For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any prominent
+change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the heat and dust and
+brush-walled road. But about the middle of the afternoon we reached
+the summit of the longest hill, from which we saw ahead of us a cut up
+country, wild and rugged and beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our
+feet. We heard the faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with
+sweat, and thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast
+as we dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged
+into a swift stream of clear, cold water--granite water--to drink of
+which, and to bathe hot heads and burning feet, was a joy only known
+to the weary traveler of the desert. Romer yelled that the water was
+like that at our home in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank
+till I thought he would burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him
+from wallowing in it.
+
+Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us, and the
+aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay behind. Every mile
+grew shadier, clearer, cooler.
+
+Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several miles,
+as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to an Homeric
+recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the end of which,
+almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon such a stream as the
+one we had just passed. Then he told me about his trips down the west
+coast of Sonora, along the Gulf, where he traveled at night, at low
+tide, so that by daytime his footprints would be washed out. This
+was the land of the Seri Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were
+cannibals. I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed
+the rumors of their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of
+exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land
+of the Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data
+concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California told
+me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris
+to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was positive that
+under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism. Nielsen
+made four trips down there. He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe.
+In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on
+occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to
+barter with the Indians. These travelers did not see the worst of the
+Seris. In summer they range up the mainland, and they go naked. They
+do not want gold discovered down there. They will fight prospectors.
+They use arrows and attack at dawn. Also they poison the water-holes.
+
+Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the mainland
+opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from camp,
+returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped and made
+his way to Gyamus. Procuring assistance this man returned to the scene
+of the massacre, only to find stakes in the sand, with deep trails
+tramped around them, and blackened remains of fires, and bones
+everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once from a hiding place he
+had watched Seris tear up and devour a dead turtle that he afterward
+ascertained was putrid. He said these Seris were the greatest runners
+of all desert savages. The best of them could outrun a horse. One
+Seri, a giant seven feet tall, could outrun a deer and break its neck
+with his hands.
+
+These statements of Nielsen's were remarkable, and personally I
+believed them. Men of his stamp were honest and they had opportunities
+to learn strange and terrible facts in nature. The great naturalist
+Darwin made rather stronger claims for the barbarism of the savages of
+Terra del Fuego. Nielsen, pursuing his theme, told me how he had
+seen, with his own eyes--and they were certainly sharp and
+intelligent--Yaqui Indians leap on the bare backs of wild horses
+and locking their legs, stick there in spite of the mad plunges and
+pitches. The Gauchos of the Patagonian Pampas were famous for that
+feat of horsemanship. I asked Joe Isbel what he thought of such
+riding. And he said: "Wal, I can ride a wild steer bare-back,
+but excoose me from tacklin' a buckin' bronch without saddle an'
+stirrups." This coming from the acknowledged champion horseman of the
+southwest was assuredly significant.
+
+At five o'clock we came to the end of the road. It led to a forest
+glade, overlooking the stream we had followed, and that was as far as
+our wagon could go. The glade shone red with sumach, and surrounded
+by tall pines, with a rocky and shady glen below, it appeared a
+delightful place to camp. As I was about to unsaddle my horses I heard
+the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Pulling out my borrowed rifle, and calling
+Romer, I ran to the edge of the glade. The shady, swift stream ran
+fifty feet or so below me. Across it I saw into the woods where shade
+and gray rocks and colored brush mingled. Again I heard the turkeys
+cluck. "Look hard, son," I whispered. "They're close." R.C. came
+slipping along below us, with his rifle ready. Suddenly Romer
+stiffened, then pointed. "There! Dad!--There!" I saw two gobblers wade
+into the brook not more than a hundred and fifty feet away. Drawing
+down with fine aim I fired. The bullet splashed water all over the
+turkeys. One with loud whirr of wings flew away. The other leaped
+across the brook and ran--swift as a deer--right up the slope. As
+I tried to get the sight on him I heard other turkeys fly, and the
+crack-crack of R.C.'s gun. I shot twice at my running turkey, and all
+I did was to scatter the dirt over him, and make him run faster. R.C.
+had not done any better shooting. Romer, wonderful to relate, was so
+excited that he forgot to make fun of our marksmanship. We scouted
+around some, but the turkeys had gone. By promising to take Romer
+hunting after supper I contrived to get him back to the glade, where
+we made camp.
+
+
+II
+
+After we had unpacked and while the men were pitching the tents and
+getting supper I took Romer on a hunt up the creek. I was considerably
+pleased to see good-sized trout in the deeper pools. A little way
+above camp the creek forked. As the right-hand branch appeared to be
+larger and more attractive we followed its course. Soon the bustle
+of camp life and the sound of the horses were left far behind. Romer
+slipped along beside me stealthily as an Indian, all eyes and ears.
+
+We had not traveled thus for a quarter of a mile when my quick ear
+caught the cluck-cluck of turkeys. "Listen," I whispered, halting.
+Romer became like a statue, his dark eyes dilating, his nostrils
+quivering, his whole body strung. He was a Zane all right. A turkey
+called again; then another answered. Romer started, and nodded his
+head vehemently.
+
+"Come on now, right behind me," I whispered. "Step where I step and do
+what I do. Don't break any twigs."
+
+Cautiously we glided up the creek, listening now and then to get the
+direction, until we came to an open place where we could see some
+distance up a ridge. The turkey clucks came from across the creek
+somewhere up this open aisle of the forest. I crawled ahead several
+rods to a more advantageous point, much pleased to note that Romer
+kept noiselessly at my heels. Then from behind a stone we peeped out.
+Almost at once a turkey flew down from a tree into the open lane.
+"Look Dad!" whispered Romer, wildly. I had to hold him down. "That's a
+hen turkey," I said. "See, it's small and dull-colored. The gobblers
+are big, shiny, and they have red on their heads."
+
+Another hen turkey flew down from a rather low height. Then I made out
+grapevines, and I saw several animated dark patches among them. As I
+looked three turkeys flopped down to the ground. One was a gobbler of
+considerable size, with beautiful white and bronze feathers. Rather
+suspiciously he looked down our way. The distance was not more than a
+hundred yards. I aimed at him, feeling as I did so how Romer quivered
+beside me, but I had no confidence in Copple's rifle. The sights were
+wrong for me. The stock did not fit me. So, hoping for a closer and
+better shot, I let this opportunity pass. Of course I should have
+taken it. The gobbler clucked and began to trot up the ridge, with the
+others after him. They were not frightened, but they appeared rather
+suspicious. When they disappeared in the woods Romer and I got up, and
+hurried in pursuit. "Gee! why didn't you peg that gobbler?" broke out
+Romer, breathlessly. "Wasn't he a peach?"
+
+When we reached the top of the ridge we advanced very cautiously
+again. Another open place led to a steep, rocky hillside with cedars
+and pines growing somewhat separated. I was disappointed in not seeing
+the turkeys. Then in our anxiety and eagerness we hurried on, not
+noiselessly by any means. All of a sudden there was a rustle, and then
+a great whirr of wings. Three turkeys flew like grouse away into the
+woods. Next I saw the white gobbler running up the rocky hillside. At
+first he was in the open. Aiming as best I could I waited for him to
+stop or hesitate. But he did neither. "Peg him, Dad!" yelled Romer.
+The lad was right. My best chance I had again forfeited. To hit a
+running wild turkey with a rifle bullet was a feat I had not done
+so often as to inspire conceit. The gobbler was wise, too. For that
+matter all grown gobblers are as wise as old bucks, except in the
+spring mating season, when it is a crime to hunt them. This one, just
+as I got a bead on him, always ran behind a rock or tree or shrub.
+Finally in desperation I took a snap shot at him, hitting under him,
+making him jump. Then in rapid succession I fired four more times. I
+had the satisfaction of seeing where my bullets struck up the dust,
+even though they did go wide of the mark. After my last shot the
+gobbler disappeared.
+
+"Well, Dad, you sure throwed the dirt over him!" declared Romer.
+
+"Son, I don't believe I could hit a flock of barns with this gun," I
+replied, gazing doubtfully at the old, shiny, wire-wrapped, worn-out
+Winchester Copple had lent me. I had been told that he was a fine
+marksman and could drive a nail with it. Upon my return to camp I
+tried out the rifle, carefully, with a rest, to find that it was not
+accurate. Moreover it did not throw the bullets consistently. It shot
+high, wide, low; and right there I abandoned any further use for it.
+R.C. tried to make me take his rifle to use on the hunting trip;
+Nielsen and Lee wanted me to take theirs, but I was disgusted with
+myself and refused. "Thanks, boys," I said. "Maybe this will be a
+lesson to me."
+
+We had been up since three o'clock that morning, and the day's travel
+had been exhausting. I had just enough energy left to scrape up a
+huge, soft pile of pine needles upon which to make our bed. After
+that all was oblivion until I was awakened by the ringing strokes of
+Nielsen's axe.
+
+The morning, after the sun got up, was exceedingly delightful.
+And this camp was such a contrast to the others, so pleasant and
+attractive, that even if we had not arranged to meet Lee Haught and
+his sons here I would have stayed a while anyway. Haught was a famed
+bear hunter who lived in a log-cabin somewhere up under the rim of the
+mesa. While Lee and Nielsen rode off up the trail to find Haught I
+gave Romer his first try at rainbow trout. The water of the creek was
+low and clear, so that we could see plenty of good-sized trout. But
+they were shy. They would not rise readily to any of our flies, though
+I got several strikes. We searched under the stones for worms and
+secured a few. Whereupon Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we
+plainly saw. The trout gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the
+fine art of angling, but whenever he got a bite he always forgot
+science. He yanked this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another
+pool he hooked a big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as
+weight and strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But
+this trout nearly pulled Romer off the rock before the line broke. I
+took occasion then to deliver to the lad a lecture. In reply he said
+tearfully: "I didn't know he was so--so big."
+
+When we returned to camp, Haught and his sons were there. Even at a
+distance their horses, weapons, and persons satisfied my critical
+eye. Lee Haught was a tall, spare, superbly built man, with square
+shoulders. He had a brown face with deep lines and sunken cheeks, keen
+hazel eyes, heavy dark mustache, and hair streaked a little with gray.
+The only striking features of his apparel were his black sombrero and
+long spurs.
+
+His sons, Edd and George, were young, lean, sallow, still-faced,
+lanky-legged horsemen with clear gray eyes. They did not appear to be
+given, to much speech. Both were then waiting for the call of the army
+draft. Looking at them then, feeling the tranquil reserve and latent
+force of these Arizonians, I reflected that the Germans had failed
+in their psychology of American character. A few hundred thousand
+Americans like the Haught boys would have whipped the German army.
+
+We held a council. Haught said he would send his son Edd with Doyle,
+and by a long roundabout forest road get the wagon up on the mesa.
+With his burros and some of our horses packed we could take part of
+the outfit up the creek trail, past his cabin, and climb out on the
+rim, where we would find grass, water, wood, and plenty of game.
+
+The idea of permanent camp before sunset that very day inspired us to
+united and vigorous effort. By noon we had the pack train ready. Edd
+and Doyle climbed on the wagon to start the other way. Romer waved his
+hand: "Good-bye, Mr. Doyle, don't break down and lose the apples!"
+
+Then we were off, up the narrow trail along the creek. Haught led the
+way. Romer attached himself to the bear-hunter, and wherever the trail
+was wide enough rode beside him. R.C. and I followed. The other men
+fell in behind the pack train.
+
+The ride was hot, and for the most part all up hill. That basin could
+be likened to the ribs of a washboard: it was all hills, gorges,
+ridges and ravines. The hollows of this exceedingly rough country were
+thick with pine and oak, the ridges covered with cedar, juniper, and
+manzanita. The ground, where it was not rocky, was a dry, red clay. We
+passed Haught's log cabin and clearing of a few acres, where I saw fat
+hogs and cattle. Beyond this point the trail grew more zigzag, and
+steeper, and shadier. As we got higher up the air grew cooler. I noted
+a change in the timber. The trees grew larger, and other varieties
+appeared. We crossed a roaring brook lined by thick, green brush, very
+pleasant to the eye, and bronze-gold ferns that were beautiful. We
+passed oaks all green and yellow, and maple trees, wonderfully colored
+red and cerise. Then still higher up I espied some silver spruces,
+most exquisite trees of the mountain forests.
+
+During the latter half of the climb up to the rim I had to attend to
+the business of riding and walking. The trail was rough, steep, and
+long. Once Haught called my attention to a flat stone with a plain
+trail made by a turtle in ages past when that sandstone was wet,
+sedimentary deposit. By and bye we reached the last slopes up to the
+mesa, green, with yellow crags and cliffs, and here and there blazing
+maples to remind me again that autumn was at hand.
+
+At last we surmounted the rim, from which I saw a scene that defied
+words. It was different from any I had seen before. Black timber as
+far as eye could see! Then I saw a vast bowl inclosed by dim mountain
+ranges, with a rolling floor of forested ridges, and dark lines I knew
+to be canyons. For wild, rugged beauty I had not seen its equal.
+
+[Illustration: THE TONTO BASIN]
+
+When the pack train reached the rim we rode on, and now through a
+magnificent forest at eight thousand feet altitude. Big white and black
+clouds obscured the sun. A thunder shower caught us. There was hail, and
+the dry smell of dust, and a little cold rain. Romer would not put on
+his slicker. Haught said the drought had been the worst he had seen in
+twenty years there. Up in this odorous forestland I could not see where
+there had been lack of rain. The forest appeared thick, grassy, gold and
+yellow and green and brown. Thickets and swales of oaks and aspens were
+gorgeous in their autumn hues. The silver spruces sent down long,
+graceful branches that had to be brushed aside or stooped under as we
+rode along. Big gray squirrels with white tails and tufted ears ran up
+trees to perch on limbs and watch us go by; and other squirrels, much
+smaller and darker gray, frisked and chattered and scolded at a great
+rate.
+
+[Illustration: LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS]
+
+We passed little depressions that ran down into ravines, and these,
+Haught informed me, were the heads of canyons that sloped away from
+the rim, deepening and widening for miles. The rim of the mesa was
+its highest point, except here and there a few elevations like Black
+Butte. Geologically this mesa was an enormous fault, like the north
+rim of the Grand Canyon. During the formation of the earth, or the
+hardening of the crust, there had been a crack or slip, so that one
+edge of the crust stood up sheer above the other. We passed the heads
+of Leonard Canyon, Gentry, and Turkey Canyons, and at last, near
+time of sunset, headed down into beautifully colored, pine-sloped,
+aspen-thicketed Beaver Dam Canyon.
+
+A mile from the rim we were deep in the canyon, walled in by
+rock-strewn and pine-timbered slopes too steep for a horse to climb.
+There was a little gully on the black soil where there were no
+evidences of recent water. Haught said he had never seen Beaver Dam
+Creek dry until this season. We traveled on until we came to a wide,
+open space, where three forks of this canyon met, and where in the
+middle of this glade there rose a lengthy wooded bench, shaded and
+beautified by stately pines and silver spruce. At this point water
+appeared in the creek bed, flowing in tiny stream that soon gathered
+volume. Cold and clear and pure it was all that was needed to make
+this spot an ideal camp site. Haught said half a mile below there was
+a grassy park where the horses would graze with elk.
+
+We pitched our tents on this bench, and I chose for my location a
+space between two great monarchs of the forests, that had surely
+shaded many an Indian encampment. At the upper end of the bench rose a
+knoll, golden and green with scrub oaks, and russet-colored with its
+lichened rocks. About all we could manage that evening was to eat and
+go to bed.
+
+Morning broke cool and bright, with heavy dew. I got my boots as wet
+as if I had waded in water. This surprised me, occurring on October
+sixth, and at eight thousand feet altitude, as I had expected frost.
+Most of this day was spent in making camp, unpacking, and attending to
+the many necessary little details that make for comfort in the open.
+To be sure Romer worked very spasmodically. He spent most of his time
+on the back of one of Haught's burros, chasing and roping another. I
+had not remembered seeing the lad so happily occupied.
+
+Late in the afternoon I slipped off down the canyon alone, taking
+Haught's rifle for safety rather than a desire to kill anything. By
+no means was it impossible to meet a bad bear in that forest. Some
+distance below camp I entered a ravine and climbed up to the level,
+and soon found myself deep in the fragrant, colorful, wild forest.
+Like coming home again was it to enter that forest of silver-tipped,
+level-spreading spruce, and great, gnarled, massive pines, and
+oak-patches of green and gold, and maple thickets, with shining aspens
+standing white against the blaze of red and purple. High, wavy,
+bleached grass, brown mats of pine needles, gray-green moss waving
+from the spruces, long strands of sunlight--all these seemed to
+welcome me.
+
+At a distance there was a roar of wind through the forest; close at
+hand only a soft breeze. Rustling of twigs caused me to compose myself
+to listen and watch. Soon small gray squirrels came into view all
+around me, bright-eyed and saucy, very curious about this intruder.
+They began to chatter. Other squirrels were working in the tops of
+trees, for I heard the fall of pine cones. Then came the screech of
+blue jays. Soon they too discovered me. The male birds were superb,
+dignified, beautiful. The color was light blue all over with dark blue
+head and tufted crest. By and bye they ceased to scold me, and I was
+left to listen to the wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds
+and needles from the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this
+woody, leafy, earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by
+scent of pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace
+and rest. This golden-green forest, barred with sunlight, canopied by
+the blue sky, and melodious with its soughing moan of wind, absolutely
+filled me with content and happiness. If a stag or a bear had trotted
+out into my sight, and had showed me no animosity, not improbably I
+would have forgotten my gun. More and more as I lived in the open I
+grew reluctant to kill.
+
+Presently a porcupine waddled along some rods away, and unaware of my
+presence it passed by and climbed a spruce. I saw it climb high and
+finally lost sight of it. In searching up and down this spruce I grew
+alive to what a splendid and beautiful tree it was. Where so many
+trees grew it always seemed difficult to single out one and study
+it. This silver spruce was five feet through at the base, rugged,
+gray-seamed, thick all the way to its lofty height. Its branches
+were small, with a singular feature that they were uniform in shape,
+length, and droop. Most all spruce branches drooped toward the ground.
+That explained why they made such excellent shelters from rain. After
+a hard storm I had seen the ground dry under a thick-foliaged spruce.
+Many a time had I made a bed under one. Elk and deer stand under
+a spruce during a rain, unless there is thunder and lightning. In
+forests of high altitude, where lightning strikes many trees, I have
+never found or heard of elk and deer being killed. This particular
+spruce was a natural tent in the forest. The thick-spreading graceful
+silver plumes extended clear to the top, where they were bushiest,
+and rounded out, with all the largest branches there. Each dark gray
+branch was fringed and festooned with pale green moss, like the
+cypresses of the South.
+
+Suddenly I heard a sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy, light
+steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket nearby.
+Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the rifle. Then I
+peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the thicket. The sun was
+setting now, and though there appeared a clear golden light high
+in the forest, along the ground there were shadows. I heard leaves
+falling, rustling. Tall white aspens stood out of the thicket, and two
+of the large ones bore the old black scars of bear claws. I was sure,
+however, that no bear hid in the thicket at this moment. Presently
+whatever the animal was it pattered lightly away on the far side.
+After that I watched the quiver of the aspen leaves. Some were green,
+some yellow, some gold, but they all had the same wonderful tremor,
+the silent fluttering that gave them the most exquisite action in
+nature. The sun set, the forest darkened, reminding me of supper time.
+So I returned to camp. As I entered the open canyon Romer-boy espied
+me--manifestly he had been watching--and he yelled: "Here comes my
+Daddy now!... Say, Dad, did you get any pegs?"
+
+Next morning Haught asked me if I would like to ride around through
+the woods and probably get a shot at a deer. Romer coaxed so to go
+that I finally consented.
+
+We rode down the canyon, and presently came to a wide grassy park
+inclosed by high green-clad slopes, the features of which appeared to
+be that the timber on the west slope was mostly pine, and on the east
+slope it was mostly spruce. I could arrive at no certain reason for
+this, but I thought it must be owing to the snow lying somewhat longer
+on the east slope. The stream here was running with quite a little
+volume of water. Our horses were grazing in this park. I saw fresh
+elk tracks made the day before. Elk were quite abundant through this
+forest, Haught informed me, and were protected by law.
+
+A couple of miles down this trail the canyon narrowed, losing its
+park-like dimensions. The farther we traveled the more water there
+was in the stream, and more elk, deer, and turkey tracks in the
+sand. Every half mile or so we would come to the mouth of a small
+intersecting canyon, and at length we rode up one of these, presently
+to climb out on top. At this distance from the rim the forest was more
+open than in the vicinity of our camp, affording better riding and
+hunting. Still the thickets of aspen and young pine were so frequent
+that seldom could I see ahead more than several hundred yards.
+
+Haught led the way, I rode next and Romer kept beside me where it was
+possible to do so. There was, however, no trail. How difficult to keep
+the lad quiet! I expected of course that Haught would dismount, and
+take me to hunt on foot. After a while I gathered he did not hunt deer
+except on horseback. He explained that cowboys rounded up cattle in
+this forest in the spring and fall, and deer were not frightened at
+sound or sight of a horse. Some of the thrill and interest in the
+forest subsided for me. I did not like to hunt in a country where
+cattle ranged, no matter how wild they were. Then when we came to a
+forested ridge bare of grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the
+forest of a little more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their
+flocks up this far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and
+coyote, sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer,
+however, hated a sheep-run range.
+
+Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool, full of
+sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen could ever rob
+it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its temple-like majesty.
+So provided we did not meet any cattle or sheep I did not care whether
+or not we sighted any game. In fact I would have forgotten we were
+hunting had not Romer been along. With him continually seeing things
+it was difficult to keep from imagining that we were hunting Indians.
+The Apaches had once lived in this country Haught informed us; and it
+was a habit of theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every
+fall, thus keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how
+near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not concern
+them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than white men.
+
+We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at the far
+end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other brush. As we
+neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick and noiseless
+action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from his saddle-sheath,
+took a couple of forward steps, and leveled it. I was so struck with
+the rugged and significant picture he made that I did not dismount,
+and did not see any game until after he fired. Then as I tumbled off
+and got out my rifle I heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray
+streak with a bobbing white end flashed away out of sight to the left.
+Next I saw a deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again.
+The deer ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him.
+Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when both he
+and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time. Presently he
+returned.
+
+"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said. "Shore I
+missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why didn't you smoke
+him up?"
+
+"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense regret. "Why,
+I could have knocked him."
+
+Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had appeared
+to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see one you want
+to pile off quick."
+
+As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had seen
+anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big grove with
+thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said these were good
+places for deer to lie down, relying on their noses to scent danger
+from windward, and on their eyes in the other direction. We circled to
+go round thickets, descending somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got
+off a little to the right. Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward
+a thin line of little pines, through which I could see into the pines
+beyond. Suddenly up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off
+my horse, bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in
+a thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender trees.
+I aimed--followed him--got a bead on him--and was just about to pull
+trigger when he vanished. Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then
+Romer cried in his shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck--hurry!"
+Turning I ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just
+in time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught
+shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the thicket,
+working to our left, and presently came out into the open forest.
+Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query he replied:
+"Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail buck."
+
+Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay motionless
+under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded deep in the
+ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just beginning to get his
+winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish gray. Haught hung him up
+to a branch, spread his hind legs, and cut him down the middle. The
+hunter's dexterity with a knife made me wonder how many deer he had
+dressed in his life in the open. We lifted the deer upon the saddle of
+Haught's horse and securely tied it there with a lasso; then with the
+hunter on foot, leading the way, we rode through the forest up the
+main ridge between Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found
+the pines and spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We
+passed the heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either
+side, and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I
+could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon we
+reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat like
+real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which enterprise
+had been unsuccessful.
+
+Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started our bear
+hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack something. He sent the
+hounds down below the rim with George; and taking R.C. and me, and Lee
+and Nielsen, he led us over to what he called Horton Thicket. Never
+would I forget my first sight of that immense forest-choked canyon.
+It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy
+ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this
+abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet
+they were many. An empire of splintered cliff!
+
+High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens,
+with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes. Points
+of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and bronze. Below the
+huge gorge was full of aspens, maples, spruces--a green, crimson,
+yellow density of timber, apparently impenetrable. We were accorded
+different stations on the ledges all around the cove, and instructed
+to stay there until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My
+point was so far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
+field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee and
+Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a comfortable seat,
+if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to accept my wait for
+developments. One thing was sure--even though it were a futile way to
+hunt it seemed rich in other recompense for me. My stand towered above
+a vast colorful slope down which the wind roared as in a gale. How
+could I ever hear the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding
+across the sky. Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent
+flight; and so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.
+
+Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with frequent
+intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the close of
+afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that R.C. had left
+his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp, which was some miles
+nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave up any hope of hearing
+either the hounds or the horn, as the roar of wind had increased. Once
+I thought I heard a distant rifle shot. So I got on my horse and set
+out to find camp. I was on a promontory, the sides of which were
+indented by long ravines that were impassable except near their heads.
+In fact I had been told there was only one narrow space where it was
+possible to get off this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered
+Haught telling of this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of
+forested heads of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the
+west side, and then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I
+followed, with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the
+narrow neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp,
+arriving there at sunset.
+
+The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around under one
+of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his back-trail,
+staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it. Their baying had
+roused the bear out of his bed, and he had showed himself once or
+twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw the other bear from the rim.
+This was a big, red, cinnamon bear asleep under a pine tree on an open
+slope. Haught said when the hounds gave tongue on the other trail this
+red bear awakened, sat up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never
+been chased by hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance
+was too great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the
+result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.
+
+These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing and
+cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns) and
+berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and very few
+acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin he could
+always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot and tired
+enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight the dogs.
+
+Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx under
+the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were the
+tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill a
+cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen feet
+deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay long on
+the sunny, open ridges of the basin.
+
+That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How wonderful to
+lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and hear the marching
+and retreating gale above in the forest! Next day we expected rain or
+snow. But there was only wind, and that quieted by afternoon. So I
+took Romer off into the woods. He carried his rifle and he wore his
+chaps. I could not persuade him to part with these. They rustled on
+the brush and impeded his movements, and particularly tired him, and
+made him look like a diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly
+vain, imaginative! He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything,
+particularly bears. But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump
+and bit of color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I
+had to take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was
+unusually quick and keen.
+
+That afternoon Edd and Doyle arrived, reporting an extremely rough,
+roundabout climb up to the rim, where they had left the wagon. As it
+was impossible to haul the supplies down into the canyon they
+were packed down to camp on burros. Isbel had disapproved of this
+procedure, a circumstance that struck me with peculiar significance,
+which Lee explained by telling me Isbel was one of the peculiar breed
+of cowboys, who no sooner were they out on the range than they wanted
+to go back to town again. The truth was I had not met any of that
+breed, though I had heard of them. This peculiarity of Isbel's began
+to be related in my mind to his wastefulness as a cook. He cooked and
+threw away as much as we ate. I asked him to be careful and to go
+easy with our supplies, but I could not see that my request made any
+difference.
+
+After supper this evening R.C. heard a turkey call up on the hill east
+of camp. Then I heard it, and Romer also. We ran out a ways into the
+open to listen the better. R.C.'s ears were exceptionally keen. He
+could hear a squirrel jump a long distance in the forest. In this case
+he distinctly heard three turkeys fly up into trees. I heard one.
+Romer declared he heard a flock. Then R.C. located a big bronze and
+white gobbler on a lower limb of a huge pine. Presently I too espied
+it. Whereupon we took shot-gun and rifle, and sallied forth sure of
+fetching back to camp some wild turkey meat. Romer tagged at our
+heels.
+
+Hurrying to the slope we climbed up at least three-quarters of the
+way, as swiftly as possible. And that was work enough to make me wet
+and hot. The sun had set and twilight was upon us, so that we needs
+must hurry if we were to be successful. Locating the big gobbler
+turned out to be a task. We had to climb over brush and around rocks,
+up a steep slope, rather open; and we had to do it without being seen
+or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness, did very well indeed.
+At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the sight was thrilling.
+Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted them enough to learn how
+sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed
+as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up
+from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if
+undecided, and tried each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped
+farther up until we lost sight of him in the gnarled net-work of
+branches.
+
+R.C. wanted me to slip on alone, but I preferred to have him and Romer
+go too. So we slipped stealthily upward until we reached the level.
+Then progress was easier. I went to the left with the rifle, and R.C.
+with the .20-gauge, and Romer, went around to the right. How rapidly
+it was growing dark! Low down in the forest I could not distinguish
+objects. We circled that big pine tree, and I made rather a wide
+detour, perhaps eighty yards from it. At last I got the upper part of
+the dead pine silhouetted against the western sky. Moving to and fro I
+finally made out a large black lump way out upon a spreading branch.
+Could that be the gobbler? I studied that dark enlarged part of the
+limb with great intentness, and I had about decided that it was only
+a knot when I saw a long neck shoot out. That lump was the wise old
+turkey all right. He was almost in the top of the tree and far out
+from the trunk. No wild cat or lynx could ever surprise him there! I
+reflected upon the instinct that governed him to protect his life so
+cunningly. Safe he was from all but man and gun!
+
+When I came to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could see
+only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very high pine
+adjoining made a dark background. I changed my position, working
+around to where the background was all open sky. It proved to be
+better. By putting the sights against this open sky I could faintly
+see the front sight through the blurred ring. It was a good long shot
+even for daylight, and I had a rifle I knew nothing about. But all the
+difficulty only made a keener zest. Just then I heard Romer cry out
+excitedly, and then R.C. spoke distinctly. Far more careless than that
+they began to break twigs under their feet. The gobbler grew uneasy.
+How he stretched out his long neck! He heard them below. I called out
+low and sharp: "Stand still! Be quiet!" Then I looked again through
+the blurred peep-sight until I caught the front sight against the open
+sky. This done I moved the rifle over until I had the sight aligned
+against the dark shape. Straining my eyes I held hard--then fired. The
+big dark lump on the branch changed shape, and fell, to alight with a
+sounding thump. I heard Romer running, but could not see him. Then his
+high voice pealed out: "I got him, Dad. You made a grand peg!"
+
+Not only had Romer gotten him, but he insisted on packing him back to
+camp. The gobbler was the largest I ever killed, not indeed one of the
+huge thirty-five pounders, but a fat, heavy turkey, and quite a load
+for a boy. Romer packed him down that steep slope in the dark without
+a slip, for which performance I allowed him to stay up a while around
+the camp-fire.
+
+The Haughts came over from their camp that night and visited us. Much
+as I loved to sit alone beside a red-embered fire at night in the
+forest, or on the desert, I also liked upon occasions to have company.
+We talked and talked. Old-timer Doyle told more than one of his "in
+the early days" stories. Then Haught told us some bear stories. The
+first was about an old black bear charging and sliding down at him. He
+said no hunter should ever shoot at a bear above him, because it could
+come down at him as swiftly as a rolling rock. This time he worked the
+lever of his rifle at lightning speed, and at the last shot he "shore
+saw bear hair right before his eyes." His second story was about a
+boy who killed a bear, and was skinning it when five more bears came
+along, in single file, and made it very necessary that he climb a tree
+until they had gone. His third story was about an old she-bear that
+had two cubs. Haught happened to ride within sight of her when
+evidently she thought it time to put her cubs in a safe place. So she
+tried to get them to climb a spruce tree, and finally had to cuff and
+spank them to make them go up. In connection with this story he told
+us he had often seen she-bears spank their cubs. More thrilling was
+his fourth story about a huge grizzly, a sheep and cattle killer that
+passed through the country, leaving death behind him on the range.
+
+Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the glowing
+camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed. "Aw, Dad,
+please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining eyes would have
+weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And Haught seemed inspired by
+them.
+
+"Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle in his
+eye. "Thar was an old fellar had a ranch in Chevelon Canyon, an' he
+was always bein' pestered by mountain lions. His name was Bill Tinker.
+Now Bill was no sort of a hunter, fact was he was afeerd of lions an'
+bears, but he shore did git riled when any critters rustled around
+his cabin. One day in the fall he comes home an' seen a big she-lion
+sneakin' around. He grabbed a club, an' throwed it, and yelled to
+scare the critter away. Wal, he had an old water barrel layin' around,
+an' darned if the lion didn't run in thet barrel an' hide. Bill run
+quick an' flopped the barrel end up, so he had the lion trapped. He
+had to set on the barrel to hold it down. Shore that lion raised old
+Jasper under the barrel. Bill was plumb scared. Then he seen the
+lion's tail stick out through the bung-hole. Bill bent over an' shore
+quick tied a knot in thet long tail. Then he run fer his cabin. When
+he got to the door he looked back to see the lion tearin' down the
+hill fer the woods with the barrel bumpin' behind her. Bill said he
+never seen her again till next spring, an' she had the barrel still on
+her tail. But what was stranger'n thet Bill swore she had four cubs
+with her an' each of them had a keg on its tail."
+
+We all roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had been
+so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in the
+story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp the trick
+at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes were dark and
+dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and disappointment
+changed his mobile face, and then came mirth. He shouted as if to the
+tree-tops on high. Long after he was in bed I heard him laughing to
+himself.
+
+I was awakened a little after daylight by the lad trying to get into
+his boots. His boots were rather tight, and somehow, even in a dry
+forest, he always contrived to get them wet, so that in the morning it
+was a herculean task for him to pull them on. This occasion appeared
+more strenuous than usual. "Son, what's the idea?" I inquired. "It's
+just daylight--not time to get up." He desisted from his labors
+long enough to pant: "Uncle Rome's--gone after turkeys. Edd's going
+to--call them with--a caller--made out of a turkey's wing-bone." And
+I said: "But they've gone now." Whereupon he subsided: "Darned old
+boots! I heard Edd and Uncle Rome. I'd been ready if I could have got
+into my darned old boots.... See here, Dad, I'm gonna wear moccasins."
+
+
+III
+
+As we were sitting round the camp-fire, eating breakfast, R.C. and Edd
+returned; and R.C. carried a turkey gobbler the very size and color of
+the one I had shot the night before. R.C.'s face wore the keen, pleased
+expression characteristic of it when he had just had some unusual and
+satisfying experience.
+
+[Illustration: ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS]
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEY]
+
+"Sure was great," he said, warming his hands at the fire. "We went up
+on the hill where you killed your gobbler last night. Got there just
+in the gray light of dawn. We were careful not to make any noise. Edd
+said if there were any more turkeys they would come down at daylight.
+So we waited until it was light enough to see. Then Edd got out his
+turkey bone and began to call. Turkeys answered from the trees all
+around. By George, it was immense! Edd had picked out a thicket of
+little pines for us to hide in, and in front of us was a glade with a
+big fallen tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods
+was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he
+called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees.
+Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The
+turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my
+excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them
+pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now we
+got to do some real callin'.' I felt how tense, how cautious he was.
+When he called again there was some little difference, I don't know
+what, unless it was his call sounded more like a real turkey. They
+answered. They were gathering in front of us, and I made sure were
+coming into the glade. Edd stopped calling. Then he whispered: 'Ready
+now. Look out!'... Sure I was looking all right. This was my first
+experience calling turkeys and I simply shook all over. Suddenly I
+saw a turkey head stick up over the log. Then!--up hopped a beautiful
+gobbler. He walked along the log, looked and peered, and stretched his
+neck. Sure he was suspicious. Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be
+a warning to shoot quick. That was a hard place for me. I wanted to
+watch the gobbler. I wanted to see the others. We could hear them all
+over the glade. But this was my chance. Quickly I rose and took a peg
+at him. A cloud of feathers puffed off him. He gave a great bounce,
+flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other turkeys. With my
+eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full of big, black, flying
+things. My gobbler came down, bounced up again, got going--when with
+the second barrel I knocked him cold. Then I stood there watching the
+flock whirring every way into the forest. Must have been thirty-five
+or forty of them, all gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I
+declared myself--wild turkey is the game for me."
+
+Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled feelings of
+delight and despair. "Uncle Rome, wild turkey's the game for me, too
+... and by Gosh! I'll fix those boots of mine!"
+
+That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which I had
+decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George. Lee had his
+doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at least one
+of the others. Now his horse was too spirited for me to ride after
+hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others, so I was
+compelled to ride my own. At the last moment Lee had been disappointed
+in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for me, and so it had
+fallen about that my horse was the poorest in the outfit, which to put
+it mildly was pretty poor. I had made the best of the matter so far,
+and hoped to continue doing so.
+
+We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the forest,
+and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the other side of
+the promontory where I had gotten lost. Here Haught left us, taking
+with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom were to have stands
+along the rim. We hoped to start a bear and chase him round under the
+high points toward Horton Thicket.
+
+The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd started down
+impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind. Below me heaved
+a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world of black-green
+forestland. Far across it stood up a rugged, blue, waved range of
+mountains--the Sierra Anchas.
+
+The trail was rough, even for Arizonians, which made it for me little
+short of impassable. I got off to lead my horse. He had to be pulled
+most of the time, wherefore I lost patience with him. I loved horses,
+but not stubborn ones. All the way down the rocky trail the bunch
+grass and wild oak and manzanita were so thick that I had to crush my
+way through. At length I had descended the steep part to find Edd and
+George waiting for me below on the juniper benches. These were slopes
+of red earth or clay, bare of grass, but thick with junipers, cactus,
+and manzanita. This face of the great rim was a southern exposure,
+hot and dusty. The junipers were thick. The green of their foliage
+somewhat resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost
+lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I
+found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was that
+this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to eat the
+fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear sign. Edd said
+the tracks were cold, but all the same he had to be harsh with the
+hounds to hold them in. I counted twenty piles of bear manure under
+one juniper, and many places where bears had scraped in the soft earth
+and needles.
+
+We went on down this slope, getting into thicker brush and rougher
+ground. All at once the hounds opened up in thrilling chorus of bays
+and barks. I saw Edd jump off his horse to stoop and examine the
+ground, where evidently he had seen a bear track. "Fresh--made last
+night!" he yelled, mounting hurriedly. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" His horse leaped
+through the brush, and George followed. In an instant they were out of
+sight. Right there my trouble began. I spurred my horse after them,
+and it developed that he differed from me in regard to direction and
+going. He hated the brush. But I made him take to it and made him run.
+Dodging branches was an old story for me, and if I had been on a good
+fast horse I might have kept Edd and George in sight. As it was,
+however, I had to follow them by the sound of hoofs and breaking
+brush. From the way the hounds bayed I knew they had struck a hot
+scent. They worked down the slope, and assuredly gave me a wild ride
+to keep within hearing of them. My horse grew excited, which fact
+increased his pace, his obstinacy, and likewise my danger. Twice he
+unseated me. I tore my coat, lost my hat, scratched my face, skinned
+my knees, but somehow I managed to keep within hearing.
+
+I came to a deep brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point. Luckily
+the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding along
+the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed out an
+intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced my horse to
+go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I saw a little
+spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it, and one place where
+the bear had caved in a soft bank. Here my horse suddenly plunged and
+went to his knees in the yielding red clay. He snorted in fright. The
+bank slid with him and I tumbled off. But nothing serious happened. I
+ran down, caught him, mounted, and spurred him up the other side. Once
+up he began to run. I heard the boys yelling not far away and the
+hounds were baying up above me. They were climbing fast, working to
+the left, toward an oak thicket. It took effort to slow down my steed.
+He acted crazy and I began to suspect that he had caught a whiff of
+the bear. Most horses are afraid of bears and lions. Sight of Edd and
+George, who appeared in an open spot, somewhat quieted my mount.
+
+"Trail's gettin' hot up there," declared Edd. "That bear's bedded
+somewhere an' I'll bet the hounds jumped him. Listen to Old Tom!"
+
+How the deep sonorous bay of Old Tom awoke the echoes under the
+cliffs! And Old Dan's voice was a hoarse bellow. The other hounds
+yelped.
+
+Edd blew a mellow blast from his hunting-horn, and that awoke other
+and more melodious echoes. "There's father up on the rim," he said. I
+looked, and finally saw Haught perched like a black eagle on a crag.
+His gun flashed in the strong sunlight.
+
+Somewhere up there the hounds jumped the bear. Anybody could have told
+that. What a wild chorus! Edd and George answered to it with whoops
+as wild, and they galloped their horses over ground and through brush
+where they should have been walked. I followed, or tried to follow;
+and here my steed showed his bull-headed, obstinate nature. If he had
+been afraid but still game I would have respected him, but he was a
+coward and mean. He wanted to have his way, which was to go the other
+direction, and to rid himself of me. So we had it hot and heavy
+along that rough slope, with honors about even. As for bruises and
+scratches, however, I sustained the most. In the excitement of the
+chase and anger at the horse I forgot all about any risks. This always
+is the way in adventure. Hot racing blood governed me entirely.
+Whenever I got out in an open place, where I could ride fast and hear
+and see, then it was all intensely thrilling. Both hounds and comrades
+were above me, but apparently working down.
+
+Thus for me the necessity of hurry somewhat lessened. I slowed to a
+trot, peering everywhere, listening with all my ears. I had stopped
+yelling, because my horse had misunderstood that. We got into a
+region of oak thickets, small saplings, scrubby, close together, but
+beautiful with their autumn-tinted leaves. Next I rode through a maple
+dell, shady, cool, where the leafy floor was all rose-pink-red. My
+horse sent the colored leaves flying.
+
+Soon, however, we got into the thickets again, low live-oak and
+manzanita, which kind of brush my horse detested. I did not blame
+him for that. As the hounds began to work down my keen excitement
+increased. If they had jumped the bear and were chasing him down I
+might run upon him any moment. This both appealed to me and caused me
+apprehension. Suppose he were a bad cinnamon or a grizzly? What would
+become of me on that horse? I decided that I had better carry my rifle
+in my hand, so in case of a sudden appearance of the bear and I was
+thrown or had a fall off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I
+drew the rifle out of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that
+Haught had cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the
+need of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had
+cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a glory
+of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets. He was an
+uncomfortable horse to ride under the best circumstances; here he
+was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When he got his head, which was
+often, he carried me into thickets of manzanita that we could not
+penetrate, and had to turn back. I found that I was working high
+up the slope, and bad luck as I was having with my horse, I still
+appeared to keep fairly close to the hounds.
+
+When we topped a ridge of this slope the wind struck us strong in the
+face. The baying of the hounds rang clear and full and fierce. My
+horse stood straight up. Then he plunged back and bolted down the
+slope. His mouth was like iron. I could neither hold nor turn him.
+However perilous this ride I had to admit that at last my horse was
+running beautifully. In fact he was running away! He had gotten a hot
+scent of that bear. He hurdled rocks, leaped washes, slid down banks,
+plunged over places that made my hair stand up stiff, and worst of all
+he did not try to avoid brush or trees or cactus. Manzanita he tore
+right through, leaving my coat in strips decorating our wake. I had to
+hold on, to lie flat, to dodge and twist, and all the time watch for a
+place where I might fall off in safety. But I did not get a chance
+to fall off. A loud clamoring burst from the hounds apparently close
+behind drove my horse frantic. Before he had only run--now he flew!
+He left me hanging in the thick branches of a juniper, from which I
+dropped blind and breathless and stunned. Disengaging myself from the
+broken and hanging branches I staggered aside, rifle in hand, trying
+to recover breath and wits.
+
+Then, in that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the breaking
+of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering up with my
+half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal coming, half obscured
+by brush. It waved aside from his broad back. A shock ran over me--a
+bursting gush of hot blood that turned to ice as it rushed. "Big
+cinnamon bear!" I whispered, hoarsely.
+
+Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I could not
+clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such was my state
+that I fired. Then followed a roaring crash--a terrible breaking
+onslaught upon the brush--and the huge red mass seemed to flash down
+toward me. I worked the lever of the rifle. But I had forgotten
+Haught's caution. I did not work the lever far enough down, so that
+the next cartridge jammed in the receiver. With a second shock,
+different this time, I tried again. In vain! The terrible crashing
+of brush appeared right upon me. For an instant that seemed an age I
+stood riveted to the spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me,
+my tongue pasted to the roof of my mouth. Then I dropped the rifle
+and whirled to plunge away. Like a deer I bounded. I took prodigious
+bounds. To escape--to find a tree to leap into--that was my only
+thought. A few rods down the slope--it seemed a mile--I reached a pine
+with low branches. Like a squirrel I ran up this--straddled a limb
+high up--and gazed back.
+
+My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation. I became
+conscious of them. Racing blood, bursting heart, labored pang of
+chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary flutter of
+muscles, like a palsy--these attested to the instinctive primitive
+nature of my state. I heard the crashing of brush, the pound of soft
+jumps over to my left. With eyes that seemed magnifying I gazed to see
+a big red woolly steer plunge wildly down the slope and disappear. A
+third shock possessed me--amaze. I had mistaken a wild, frightened
+steer for a red cinnamon bear!
+
+I sat there some moments straddling that branch. Then I descended, and
+went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and securing that I
+stood a moment listening. The hounds had taken the chase around below
+me into the gorge and were drawing away. It was useless to try to
+follow them. I sat down again and gave myself up to meditation.
+
+I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would not go.
+No joke indeed! My horse had made me risk too much, my excitement had
+been too intense, my fright had been too terrible. Reality for me
+could not have been any more grave. I had risked my neck on a stubborn
+coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer for a bear, I had forgotten
+how to manipulate the borrowed rifle. These were the careless elements
+of tragedy. The thought sobered me. I took the lesson to heart. And I
+reflected on the possible point of view of the bear. He had probably
+gone to sleep on a full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink
+of spring water. Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping,
+fiendish hounds. He had to run for his life. What had he done to
+deserve such treatment? Possibly he might have killed some of Haught's
+pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me. In my sober frame of
+mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly unjustifiable murderous
+intent. I would have deserved it if the steer had really been the
+bear. Certainly I hoped the bear would outrun the hounds and escape. I
+weighed the wonderful thrill of the chase, the melody of hounds, the
+zest of spirited action, the peril to limb and life against the thing
+that they were done for, with the result that I found them sadly
+lacking. Peril to limb and life was good for man. If this had not been
+a fact my performance would have been as cowardly as that of my
+horse. Again I had rise up before my mind the spectacle of opposing
+forces--the elemental in man restrained by the spiritual. Then the old
+haunting thought returned to vex me--man in his development needed the
+exercise of brawn, muscle, bone red-blood, violence, labor and pain
+and agony. Nature recognized only the survival of the fittest of
+any species. If a man allowed a spiritual development, intellect,
+gentleness, to keep him from all hard, violent action, from tremendous
+exertion, from fierce fight with elements and beasts, and his own
+kind--would he not soon degenerate as a natural physical man?
+Evolution was a stern inevitable seeking of nature for perfection,
+for the unattainable. This perfection was something that lived and
+improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most
+perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to their
+development toward so-called civilized life their physical prowess and
+perfectness--that was to say, their strength to resist and live and
+reproduce their kind--absolutely and inevitably deteriorated.
+
+My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive
+convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I
+eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty and
+torn--that I would be happy if the bear got away--that I had lost my
+mean horse and was glad therefore--that I would have half a dozen
+horses and rifles upon my next hunt--and lastly that I would not be in
+any hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a
+tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret until
+chronicled here.
+
+Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway toward
+Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard Edd
+yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my horse,
+and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with him.
+
+"Where's the bear?" I asked.
+
+"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is tryin' to
+call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you shoot."
+
+"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied. "He left
+me--rather suddenly. And--I took a shot at what I thought was a bear."
+
+"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just goin' to
+smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."
+
+My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when I
+observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much disheveled as
+I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance certain unmistakable
+evidences that I had made a tenderfoot blunder and then run for
+my life. But Edd took my loss of hat, and torn coat, and general
+bedraggled state as a matter of course. Indeed I somehow felt a little
+pride at his acceptance of me there in the flesh.
+
+We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down into
+Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber engaged my
+sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the other dogs. "We
+lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds couldn't track him," was
+all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four blasts upon his hunting-horn,
+which were signals to those on the stands above that the hunt was over
+for the day.
+
+Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade as this
+down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large, and the
+foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through. Dark, green and
+brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We came to a huge spruce
+tree, the largest I ever saw--Edd said eight feet through at the base,
+but he was conservative. It was a gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch
+of the forest, with bleached, dead top. For many years it had been the
+home of swarms of wild honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter
+had undertaken to cut down this spruce. This explained a number of
+deeply cut notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it
+down," declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian
+axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it,
+whether we were to get any honey or not.
+
+By and bye we reached the bottom of the thicket where we crossed a
+swift clear cold brook. Here the smells seemed cool, sweet, wild with
+spruce and pine. This stream of granite water burst from a spring
+under a cliff. What a roar it made! I drank until I could drink no
+more. Huge boulders and windfalls, moved by water at flood season,
+obstructed the narrow stream-bed. We crossed to start climbing the
+north slope, and soon worked up out of the thicket upon a steep, rocky
+slope, with isolated pines. We struck a deer-trail hard to follow.
+Above me loomed the pine-tipped rim, with its crags, cliffs,
+pinnacles, and walls, all gray, seamed and stained, and in some clefts
+blazes of deep red and yellow foliage.
+
+When we surmounted the slope, and eventually reached camp, I found
+Isbel entertaining strangers, men of rough garb, evidently riders of
+the range. That was all right, but I did not like his prodigality with
+our swiftly diminishing store of eatables.
+
+To conclude about Isbel--matters pertaining to our commissary
+department, during the next few days, went from bad to worse. Doyle
+advised me not to take Isbel to task, and was rather evasive of
+reasons for so advising me. Of course I listened and attended to my
+old guide's advice, but I fretted under the restraint. We had a spell
+of bad weather, wind and rain, and hail off and on, and at length, the
+third day, a cold drizzling snow. During this spell we did but little
+hunting. The weather changed, and the day afterward I rode my mean
+horse twenty miles on a deer hunt. We saw one buck. Upon our arrival
+at camp, about four o'clock, which hour was too early for dinner, I
+was surprised and angered to find Isbel eating an elaborate meal with
+three more strange, rough-appearing men. Doyle looked serious. Nielsen
+had a sharp glint in his gray eye. As for myself, this procedure of
+our cook's was more than I could stand.
+
+"Isbel, you're discharged," I said, shortly. "Take your outfit and get
+out. Lee will lend you a pack horse."
+
+"Wal, I ain't fired," drawled Isbel. "I quit before you rode in. Beat
+you to it!"
+
+"Then if you quit it seems to me you are taking liberties with
+supplies you have no right to," I replied.
+
+"Nope. Cook of any outfit has a right to all the chuck he wants.
+That's western way."
+
+"Isbel, listen to this and then get out," I went on. "You've wasted
+our supplies just to get us to hurry and break camp. As for western
+ways I know something of them. It's a western way for a man to be
+square and honest in his dealings with an outsider. In all my years
+and in all my trips over the southwest you are the first westerner to
+give me the double-cross. You have that distinction."
+
+Then I turned my back upon him and walked to my tent. His
+acquaintances left at once, and he quickly packed and followed.
+Faithful old Doyle took up the duties of cook and we gained, rather
+than missed by the change. Our supplies, however, had been so depleted
+that we could not stay much longer on the hunt.
+
+By dint of much determination as to the manner and method of my next
+hunt I managed to persuade myself that I could make the best of this
+unlucky sojourn in the woods. No rifle, no horse worth riding, no food
+to stay out our time--it was indeed bad luck for me. After supper the
+tension relaxed. Then I realized all the men were relieved. Only Romer
+regretted loss of Isbel. When the Doyles and Haughts saw how I took
+my hard luck they seemed all the keener to make my stay pleasant and
+profitable. Little they knew that their regard was more to me than
+material benefits and comforts of the trip. To travelers of the
+desert and hunters and riders of the open there are always hard and
+uncomfortable and painful situations to be met with. And in meeting
+these, if it can be done with fortitude and spirit that win the
+respect of westerners, it is indeed a reward.
+
+Next day, in defiance of a thing which never should be
+considered--luck--I took Haught's rifle again, and my lazy, sullen,
+intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George down into Horton
+Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of fresh air and
+beautiful scenery.
+
+We dismounted and tied our horses at the brook, and while Edd took
+the hounds up into the dense thicket where the bears made their beds,
+George and I followed a trail up the brook. In exactly ten minutes the
+hounds gave tongue. They ran up the thicket, which was favorable for
+us, and from their baying I judged the bear trail to be warm. In the
+dense forest we could not see five rods ahead. George averred that he
+did not care to have a big cinnamon or a grizzly come running down
+that black thicket. And as for myself I did not want one so very
+exceedingly much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me,
+which effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their
+baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased.
+"Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With this
+exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar. Most
+hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which direction
+the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, however, like Buffalo
+Jones' famous Don, or Scott Teague's Sampson or Haught's Old Dan,
+would grow suspicious of a scent that gradually cooled, and would
+eventually give it up. Young hounds would back-track game as far as
+possible.
+
+After waiting a while we returned to our horses, and presently Edd
+came back with the pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called them off,"
+was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth of Horton
+Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had occasion to remember.
+I even saw the pine tree which I had so ignominiously climbed. How we
+ridicule and scorn some of our perfectly natural actions--afterwards!
+Edd had brought three of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of
+mischief as pups could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them
+out on the hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase to head
+them off. Edd gave them a tongue-lashing and thrashing at one and the
+same time. I felt sorry for the pups. They had been so full of frolic
+and fight. How crestfallen they appeared after Edd got through!
+"Whaddaye mean," yelled Edd, in conclusion. "Chasin' deer!... Do you
+think you're a lot of rabbit dogs?" From the way the pups eyed Edd
+so sheepishly and adoringly, I made certain they understood him
+perfectly, and humbly confessed their error.
+
+Old Tom and Old Dan had not come down off the slopes with us after the
+pups. And upon our return both the old hounds began to bay deep and
+fast. With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off, apparently frantic to
+make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole pack was in full chorus.
+Edd and George spurred into the brush, yelling encouragement to the
+hounds. This day I managed to make my horse do a little of what I
+wanted. To keep in sight of the Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but
+I did not lose sound of them. This chase led us up slope and down
+slope, through the brush and pine thickets, over bare ridges and into
+gullies; and eventually out into the basin, where the hounds got
+beyond hearing.
+
+"One of them long, lean, hungry bears," remarked Edd. "He'd outrun any
+dogs."
+
+Leisurely then we turned to the three-hour ride back to camp. Hot sun
+in the open, cool wind in the shade, dry smells of the forest, green
+and red and orange and purple of the foliage--these rendered the hours
+pleasant for me. When I reached camp I found Romer in trouble. He had
+cut his hand with a forbidden hunting knife. As he told me about it
+his face was a study and his explanation was astounding. When he
+finished I said: "You mean then that my hunting knife walked out of
+its sheath on my belt and followed you around and cut you of its own
+accord?"
+
+"Aw, I--I--it--" he floundered.
+
+Whereupon I lectured him about forbidden things and untruthfulness.
+His reply was: "But, Dad, it hurts like sixty. Won't you put somethin'
+on it?"
+
+I dressed and bandaged the trifling cut for him, telling him the while
+how little Indian boys, when cut or kicked or bruised, never showed
+that they were hurt. "Huh!" he grunted. "Guess there's no Indian in
+me.... I must take after mother!"
+
+That afternoon and night the hounds straggled in, Old Tom and Dan
+first, and then the others, one by one, fagged-out and foot-sore. Next
+morning, however, they appeared none the worse for their long chase.
+We went again to Horton Thicket to rout out a bear.
+
+This time I remained on top of the rim with R.C. and Nielsen; and we
+took up a stand across the canyon, near where my first stand had
+been. Here we idled the hours away waiting for the hounds to start
+something. While walking along the rim I happened to look across the
+big cove that cut into the promontory, and way on the other slope what
+did I espy but a black bear. He appeared to be very small, or merely a
+cub. Running back to R.C. and Nielsen I told them, and we all took up
+our rifles. It occurred to me that the distance across this cove was
+too far for accurate shooting, but it never occurred to me to jump on
+my horse and ride around the head of the cove.
+
+"He's not scared. Let's watch him," suggested R.C.
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEYS]
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS]
+
+We saw this bear walk along, poke around, dig into the ground, go behind
+trees, come out again, and finally stand up on his hind feet and
+apparently reach for berries or something on a bush. R.C. bethought
+himself of his field-glass. After one look he exclaimed: "Say, fellows,
+he's a whopper of a bear! He'll weigh five hundred pounds. Just take a
+look at him!"
+
+My turn with the glasses revealed to me that what I had imagined to be
+a cub was indeed a big bear. After Nielsen looked he said: "Never saw
+one so big in Norway."
+
+"Well, look at that black scoundrel!" exclaimed R.C. "Standing up!
+Looking around! Wagging his head!... Say, you saw him first. Suppose
+you take some pegs at him."
+
+"Wish Romer were here. I'd let him shoot at that bear," I replied.
+Then I got down on my knee, and aiming as closely as possible I fired.
+The report rang out in the stillness, making hollow echoes. We heard
+the bullet pat somewhere. So did the bear hear it. Curiously he looked
+around, as if something had struck near him. But scared he certainly
+was not. Then I shot four times in quick succession.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" ejaculated R.C. "He heard the bullets hit and
+wonders what the dickens.... Say, now he hears the reports! Look at
+him stand!"
+
+"Boys, smoke him up," I said, after the manner of Haught's vernacular.
+So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot. We had more fun
+out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us. Then he began to
+run, choosing the open slope by which he had come. I got five more
+shots at him as he crossed this space, and the last bullet puffed
+up dust under him, making him take a header down the slope into
+the thicket. Whereupon we all had a good laugh. Nielsen appeared
+particularly pleased over his first shots at a real live bear.
+
+"Say, why didn't you think to ride round there?" queried R.C.
+thoughtfully. "He didn't see us. He wasn't scared. In a few minutes
+you could have been on the rim of that slope right over him. Got him
+sure!"
+
+"R.C. why didn't you think to tell me to do that?" I retorted. "Why
+don't we ever think the right thing before it is too late?"
+
+"That's our last chance this year--I feel it in my bones," declared
+R.C. mournfully.
+
+His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at camp we
+heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught's had taken the
+trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic of influenza. The
+strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages,
+the cow-camps, the mines--everywhere. At first I thought Haught's
+informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the
+Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty
+people had succumbed in a few weeks--then I was thoroughly alarmed.
+Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it
+instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle was relieved
+and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The Haughts, naturally,
+were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the next thing was to
+consider which way to travel. The long ten-day trip down into the
+basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim again, and so on to
+Flagstaff was not to be considered at all. The roads by way of Winslow
+and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle wanted to attempt the old army
+road along the rim made by General Crook when he moved the captured
+Apaches to the reservation assigned to them. No travel over this road
+for many years! Haught looked dubious, but finally said we could chop
+our way through thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The
+matter of decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not
+easy to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been
+for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What made
+me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles or more
+along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I told Nielsen
+that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like a cowboy: "We'll
+go a-hummin'," he said. Nielsen shrugged his brawny shoulders. What
+were obstacles to this man of the desert? I realized that his look had
+decided me.
+
+"All right, men, we'll try the old Crook road," I said. "Pack what you
+can up to the wagon to-day, and to-morrow early we'll break camp."
+
+I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to theirs,
+where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of this hunting
+trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no horse, no blankets,
+no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of food supplies, and no good
+luck, except the wonderful good luck of being well, of seeing a
+magnificent country, of meeting some more fine westerners. But the
+Haughts appeared a little slow to grasp, or at least to credit my
+philosophy. We were just beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was
+that they had been unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and
+some turkeys. Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with
+many sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and
+would not want to come again.
+
+"See here, Haught," I said. "I've had a fine time. Now forget about
+this hunt. It's past. We'll plan another. Will you save next fall for
+me?"
+
+"I shore will," he replied.
+
+"Very well, then, it's settled. Say by August you and the boys cut
+a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I'll send you money in
+advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and outfit. I'll
+leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you here September
+twenty-first, along about noon."
+
+We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts laughed
+at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I heard Edd
+remark: "Not a kick!... Meet him next year at noon! What do you know
+about thet?" This remark proved that he had paid me a compliment in
+eastern slang most likely assimilated from R.C. and Romer.
+
+The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and next
+morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh, spirited,
+and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because of some
+surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all the outfit
+packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff, and the long,
+rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most auspicious start. I
+hoped that it augured well for us, but while I hoped I had a gloomy
+foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and his son George. Edd offered
+to go with us as far as he knew the country, which distance was not
+many miles. So we set out upon our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses
+in front of the lumbering wagon.
+
+We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest along the
+rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill grade that the
+bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied on. When we came to a
+long slow slant uphill, a road of loose rocks, we made about one mile
+an hour. This slow travel worked havoc upon my mind. I wanted to
+hurry. I wanted to get out of the wilds. That awful rumor about
+influenza occupied my mind and struck cold fear into my heart. What
+of my family? No making the best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset
+overtook us at a rocky ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos
+on saddle horses in front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we
+overcame that obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we
+encountered about twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him,
+whipping him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other
+horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still
+miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had to
+camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun--it should have
+been fine for me--but my gloomy obsession to hurry obscured my mind.
+I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy, after that long, hard day,
+quickly and efficiently cooking a good hot supper. Romer had enjoyed
+the day. He said he was tired, but would like to stay up beside the
+mighty camp-fire Nielsen built. I had neither energy or spirit to
+oppose him. The night was dark and cold and windy; the fire felt so
+good that I almost went asleep beside it. We had no time to put up
+tents. I made our bed, crawled into it, stretched out with infinite
+relief; and the last thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in
+beside me.
+
+Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to stir to
+get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the horses were gone;
+we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not appear worried. I groaned in
+spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed me. Lee sallied out with his yellow
+dog Pups. I had forgotten the good quality of Pups, but not my dislike
+for him. He barked vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I
+helped Edd and Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then
+Doyle called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we
+heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not believe
+my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they appeared,
+driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his head off. We all
+jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off the horses, and soon
+had them secured. Not one missing! I asked Lee how in the world he had
+found that wild bunch in less than an hour. Lee laughed. "Pups. He
+rounded them up in no time."
+
+Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick myself,
+but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat. I reproached
+myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been deceived in
+the surface appearance of people and things and dogs! Most of our
+judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.
+
+By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle--the little hill at
+which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and full of grain, he
+balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled the teams. Lee had more
+patience than I would have had. He unhitched the lead team and in
+place of the sorrel put a saddle horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried
+again and surmounted the hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead
+over as rocky and rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time
+we could see over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim
+appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly
+rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw
+deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any
+thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell
+and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country
+ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no
+urgent need of him.
+
+We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle
+horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of
+us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and
+took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident
+happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses,
+having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden
+return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either
+could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day,
+a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to
+the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have
+been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear
+down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it
+brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him! He was
+alive! He stood up--like this--wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!"
+
+Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling along,
+unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up and down the
+interminable length of three almost impassable miles. When night
+overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No grass, no water! A cold
+gale blew out of the west. It roared through the forest. It blew
+everything loose away in the darkness. It almost blew us away in our
+beds. The stars appeared radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue
+windy vault of the sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows
+crossed the weird moon-blanched forest glades.
+
+At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen, mostly
+silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice. Suddenly some
+one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact filled me with
+consternation and alarm. He might have walked in his sleep and fallen
+over the rim. What had become of him? All his outfit lay scattered
+round in his bed. In my bewilderment I imagined many things, even to
+the extreme that he might have left us in the lurch. But when I got to
+that sad pass of mind I suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream.
+My worry, my hurry had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to
+meet this situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I
+went out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities,
+and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand. That
+instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and reproached myself.
+
+Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand over the
+camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.
+
+"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got to
+thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out what was
+ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright moonlight. I
+walked all the rest of the night. And that's all, sir."
+
+I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the
+Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to
+achievement. Such men could not be defeated.
+
+"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.
+
+"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his captain.
+"Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll have to cut
+through thickets and logs. From here on the road is all grown over.
+About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge."
+
+That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I thanked
+Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The packing and
+carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated himself into my
+affections. He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me.
+We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the
+wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and
+R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road. Soon we were halted by
+thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the
+base. The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the
+reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our
+heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore
+rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny
+Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big
+axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had
+to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his
+mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the
+road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that day nor the next
+would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and
+obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.
+
+At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending
+hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together to pull the
+wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and
+men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside Romer. Nielsen and R.C.
+were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon. As I turned the
+sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the
+road.
+
+"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.
+
+But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily
+laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face turn
+white--heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the side. Romer was
+slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off the road. My heart
+sank sick within me! Surely he would be run down. As his pony Rye
+jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off
+side, struck him a glancing blow. Then the big team hurdled the log,
+the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and
+Doyle was thrown from his seat.
+
+Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The bay
+horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away. Nielsen cut
+and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came tearing down to
+grasp and hold the black.
+
+Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not know
+what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact convinced me
+of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled the log made
+any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When finally it was
+extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut in the breast made
+by a snag on the log. We could find no damage done to the wagon. The
+harness Nielsen had cut could be mended quickly. What a fortunate
+outcome to what had seemed a very grave accident! I was thankful
+indeed. But not soon would I forget sight of Romer in front of that
+plunging wagon.
+
+With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of the road,
+and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I dropped back
+and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a fiddle," he shouted.
+"This's play to what we teamsters had in the early days." And verily
+somehow I could see the truth of that. A mile farther on we made camp;
+and all of us were hungry, weary, and quiet.
+
+Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next morning
+he crawled out before any one else, and his call was cheery. I was
+scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was ashamed to lie there
+an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my eyesight was dulled by
+exhaustion when it caused me to see myself as a worn, unshaven,
+wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out with his usual alacrity.
+R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get up on all fours.
+
+We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to work and
+waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail it seemed, we
+chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that old Crook road. Not
+since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in Mexico had I labored so
+strenuously.
+
+At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed road Doyle
+had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones' ranch," Doyle
+kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North was our direction.
+And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness, the road down this ridge
+proved to be a highway compared to what we had passed. In the open
+forest we had to follow it altogether by the blazes on the trees. But
+with all our eyes alert that was easy. The grade was down hill, so
+that we traveled fast, covering four miles an hour. Occasionally a
+log or thicket halted rapid progress. Toward the end of the afternoon
+sheep and cattle trails joined the now well-defined road, and we knew
+we were approaching a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile,
+for the very good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of
+my horse. The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer
+thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep barren-looking
+canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old ruined log-cabins.
+Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold milk. For hours they
+had haunted me. When Doyle saw the broken-down cabins and corrals he
+yelled: "Boys, it's Jones' Ranch. I've been here. We're only three
+miles from Long Valley and the main road!"
+
+Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to look
+for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses had not
+slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up and down the
+canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water. Thereupon with immense
+relief and joy we pitched camp near the cabins, forgetting our aches
+and pains in the certainty of deliverance.
+
+What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We unpacked
+only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled around the
+camp-fire we waited upon Doyle's cooking. The old pioneer talked while
+he worked.
+
+"Jones' ranch!--I knew Jones in the early days. And I've heard of him
+lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner down into this
+canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and he had a gun, an
+axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and not much else. He built
+him that cabin there and began the real old pioneering of the early
+days. He raised cattle. He freighted to the settlements twice a year.
+In twenty-five years he had three strapping boys and a girl just as
+strapping. And he had a fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and
+left this ranch. He wanted to give his faithful wife and his children
+some of the comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The
+war came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army.
+I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man's first boy. Abe was a
+quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a sergeant
+asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: 'Nope, not much.' So they gave
+him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near target. Abe looked at
+it sort of funny like and he picked out the farthest target at one
+thousand yards. And he hit the bull's eye ten times straight running.
+'Hey!' gasped the sergeant, 'you long, lanky galoot! You said you
+couldn't shoot.' Abe sort of laughed. 'Reckon I was thinkin' about
+what Dad called shootin'.'... Well, Abe and his brothers got to France
+to the front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both
+his brothers were wounded. They're over there yet.... I met a man not
+long ago who'd seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he and
+his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means right
+here--Jones' Ranch!"
+
+Doyle's story affected me profoundly. What a theme for a novel! I
+walked away from the camp-fire into the dark, lonely, melancholy
+Arizona night. The ruined cabins, the broken-down corrals, the stone
+fence, the wash where water ran at wet season--all had subtly changed
+for me. Leaning in the doorway of the one-room cabin that had been
+home for these Joneses I was stirred to my depths. Their spirits
+abided in that lonely hut. At least I felt something there--something
+strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet what
+could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life of Jones,
+and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe? Abe Jones! The
+name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw the life of the
+lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the power to tell the
+simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the glory of his story.
+The moan of wind in the pines seemed a requiem for the boy who had
+prattled and romped and played under them, who had chopped and shot
+and rode under them. Into his manhood had gone something of their
+strength and nature.
+
+We sought our beds early. The night down in that deep, open canyon was
+the coldest we had experienced. I slept but little. At dawn all was
+hoar-white with frost. It crackled under foot. The air had a stinging
+bite. Yet how sweet, pure, cold to breathe!
+
+Doyle's cheery: "Come and get it," was welcome call to breakfast. Lee
+and Pups drove the horses into one of the old corrals. In an hour,
+while the frost was yet hard and white, we were ready to start. Then
+Doyle somewhat chilled our hopes: "Twenty years ago there was a bad
+road out of here. Maybe one's been made since."
+
+But one had not been made. And the old road had not been used for
+years. Right at the outset we struck a long, steep, winding, rocky
+road. We got stalled at the very foot of it. More toil! Unloading the
+wagon we packed on our saddles the whole load more than a mile up this
+last and crowning obstacle. Then it took all the horses together to
+pull the empty wagon up to a level. By that time sunset had overtaken
+us. Where had the hours gone? Nine hours to go one mile! But there had
+to be an end to our agonies. By twilight we trotted down into Long
+Valley, and crossed the main road to camp in a grove we remembered
+well. We partook of a meagre supper, but we were happy. And bed that
+night on a thick layer of soft pine needles, in a spot protected from
+the cold wind, was immensely comfortable.
+
+Lee woke the crowd next morning. "All rustle," he yelled. "Thirty-five
+miles to Mormon Lake. Good road. We'll camp there to-night."
+
+How strange that the eagerness to get home now could only be compared
+to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We made an early
+start. The team horses knew that road. They knew they were now on the
+way home. What difference that made! Jaded as they were they trotted
+along with a briskness never seen before on that trip. It began to be
+a job for us to keep up with Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider
+is accustomed to horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on
+a hard road will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot.
+Time and again I had to fall behind to a walk and then lope ahead
+to catch up. I welcomed the hills that necessitated Lee walking the
+teams.
+
+At noon we halted in a grassy grove for an hour's rest. That seemed
+a precious hour, but to start again was painful. I noticed that
+Romer-boy no longer rode out far in front, nor did he chase squirrels
+with Pups. He sagged, twisted and turned, and lolled in his saddle.
+Thereafter I tried to keep close to him. But that was not easy, for
+he suspected me of seeing how tired he was, and kept away from me.
+Thereafter I took to spying upon him from some distance behind. We
+trotted and walked, trotted and walked the long miles. Arizona miles
+were twice as long as ordinary properly measured miles. An event of
+the afternoon was to meet some Mexican sheepherders, driving a flock
+south. Nielsen got some fresh mutton from them. Toward sunset I caught
+Romer hanging over his saddle. Then I rode up to him. "Son, are you
+tired?" I asked. "Oh, Dad, I sure am, but I'm going to ride Rye to
+Mormon Lake." I believed he would accomplish it. His saddle slipped,
+letting him down. I saw him fall. When he made no effort to get up I
+was frightened. Rye stood perfectly still over him. I leaped off and
+ran to the lad. He had hit his head on a stone, drawing the blood, and
+appeared to be stunned. I lifted him, holding him up, while somebody
+got some water. We bathed his face and washed off the blood. Presently
+he revived, and smiled at me, and staggered out of my hold.
+
+"Helluva note that saddle slipped!" he complained. Manifestly he had
+acquired some of Joe Isbel's strong language. Possibly he might have
+acquired some other of the cowboy's traits, for he asked to have his
+saddle straightened and to be put on his horse. I had misgivings, but
+I could not resist him then. I lifted him upon Rye. Once more our
+cavalcade got under way.
+
+Sunset, twilight, night came as we trotted on and on. We faced a cold
+wind. The forest was black, gloomy, full of shadows. Lee gave us all
+we could do to keep up with him. At eight o'clock, two hours after
+dark, we reached the southern end of Mormon Lake. A gale, cold as ice,
+blew off the water from the north. Half a dozen huge pine trees stood
+on the only level ground near at hand. "Nielsen, fire--pronto!" I
+yelled. "Aye, sir," he shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with
+hurry and bustle to get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my
+tingling fingers, and press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few
+minutes before I thought of Romer.
+
+Nielsen had started a fire, that blazed and roared with burning pine
+needles. The blaze blew low, almost on a level with the ground, and a
+stream of red sparks flew off into the woods. I was afraid of forest
+fire. But what a welcome sight that golden flame! It lighted up a wide
+space, showing the huge pines, gloom-encircled, and a pale glimmer of
+the lake beyond. The fragrance of burning pine greeted my nostrils.
+
+Dragging my bags I hurried toward the fire. Nielsen was building a
+barricade of rocks to block the flying sparks. Suddenly I espied
+Romer. He sat on a log close to the blaze. His position struck me as
+singular, so I dropped my burdens and went to him. He had on a heavy
+coat over sweater and under coat, which made him resemble a little old
+man. His sombrero was slouched down sidewise, his gloved hands were
+folded across his knees, his body sagged a little to one side, his
+head drooped. He was asleep. I got around so I could see his face
+in the firelight. Pale, weary, a little sad, very youthful and yet
+determined! A bloody bruise showed over his temple. He had said he
+would ride all the way to Mormon Lake and he had done it. Never, never
+will that picture fade from my memory! Dear, brave, wild, little lad!
+He had made for me a magnificent success of this fruitless hunting
+trip. I hoped and prayed then that when he grew to man's estate, and
+faced the long rides down the hard roads of life, he would meet them
+and achieve them as he had the weary thirty-five Arizona miles from
+Long Valley to Mormon Lake.
+
+[Illustration: SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK]
+
+Mutton tasted good that night around our camp-fire; and Romer ate a
+generous portion. A ranger from the station near there visited us, and
+two young ranchers, who told us that the influenza epidemic was waning.
+This was news to be thankful for. Moreover, I hired the two ranchers to
+hurry us by auto to Flagstaff on the morrow. So right there at Mormon
+Lake ended our privations.
+
+Under one of the huge pines I scraped up a pile of needles, made
+Romer's bed in it, heated a blanket and wrapped him in it. Almost he
+was asleep when he said: "Some ride, Dad--Good-night."
+
+Later, beside him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks fly, and
+the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face, listening to the
+crackle of the fire and the roar of the gale.
+
+
+IV
+
+Eventually R.C. and Romer and I arrived in Los Angeles to find all
+well with our people, which fact was indeed something to rejoice over.
+Hardly had this 1918 trip ended before I began to plan for that of
+1919. But I did not realize how much in earnest I was until I received
+word that both Lee Doyle in Flagstaff and Nielsen in San Pedro were
+very ill with influenza. Lee all but died, and Nielsen, afterward,
+told me he would rather die than have the "flu" again. To my great
+relief, however, they recovered.
+
+From that time then it pleased me to begin to plan for my 1919 hunting
+trip. I can never do anything reasonably. I always overdo everything.
+But what happiness I derive from anticipation! When I am not working
+I live in dreams, partly of the past, but mostly of the future. A man
+should live only in the present.
+
+I gave Lee instructions to go about in his own way buying teams,
+saddle horses, and wagons. For Christmas I sent him a .35 Remington
+rifle. Mr. Haught got instructions to add some new dogs to his pack. I
+sent Edd also a .35 Remington, and made Nielsen presents of two guns.
+In January Nielsen and I went to Picacho, on the lower Colorado river,
+and then north to Death Valley. So that I kept in touch with these men
+and did not allow their enthusiasm to wane. For myself and R.C. I had
+the fun of ordering tents and woolen blankets, and everything that we
+did not have on our 1918 trip. But owing to the war it was difficult
+to obtain goods of any description. To make sure of getting a .30
+Gov't Winchester I ordered from four different firms, including the
+Winchester Co. None of them had such a rifle in stock, but all would
+try to find one. The upshot of this deal was that, when after months I
+despaired of getting any, they all sent me a rifle at the same time.
+So I found myself with four, all the same caliber of course, but of
+different style and finish. When I saw them and thought of the
+Haughts I had to laugh. One was beautifully engraved, and inlaid with
+gold--the most elaborate .30 Gov't the Winchester people had ever
+built. Another was a walnut-stocked, shot-gun butted, fancy checkered
+take-down. This one I presented to R.C. The third was a plain ordinary
+rifle with solid frame. And the last was a carbine model, which I gave
+to Nielsen.
+
+During the summer at Avalon I used to take the solid frame rifle, and
+climb the hills to practice on targets. At Clemente Island I used to
+shoot at the ravens. I had a grudge against ravens there for picking
+the eyes out of newly born lambs. At five hundred yards a raven was in
+danger from me. I could make one jump at even a thousand yards. These
+.30 Gov't 1906 rifles with 150-grain bullet are the most wonderful
+shooting arms I ever tried. I became expert at inanimate targets.
+
+From time to time I heard encouraging news from Lee about horses. Edd
+wrote me about lion tracks in the snow, and lynx up cedar trees, and
+gobblers four feet high, and that there was sure to be a good crop
+of acorns, and therefore some bears. He told me about a big grizzly
+cow-killer being chased and shot in Chevelon Canyon. News about
+hounds, however, was slow in coming. Dogs were difficult to find.
+At length Haught wrote me that he had secured two; and in this same
+letter he said the boys were cutting trails down under the rim.
+
+Everything pertaining to my cherished plans appeared to be turning
+out well. But during this time I spent five months at hard work and
+intense emotional strain, writing the longest novel I ever attempted;
+and I over-taxed my endurance. By the middle of June, when I finished,
+I was tired out. That would not have mattered if I had not hurt my
+back in an eleven-hour fight with a giant broadbill swordfish. This
+strain kept me from getting in my usual physical trim. I could not
+climb the hills, or exert myself. Swimming hurt me more than anything.
+So I had to be careful and wait until my back slowly got better. By
+September it had improved, but not enough to make me feel any thrills
+over horseback riding. It seemed to me that I would be compelled to
+go ahead and actually work the pain out of my back, an ordeal through
+which I had passed before, and surely dreaded.
+
+During the summer I had purchased a famous chestnut sorrel horse named
+Don Carlos. He was much in demand among the motion-picture companies
+doing western plays; and was really too fine and splendid a horse to
+be put to the risks common to the movies. I saw him first at Palm
+Springs, down in southern California, where my book _Desert Gold_ was
+being made into a motion-picture. Don would not have failed to strike
+any one as being a wonderful horse. He was tremendously high and rangy
+and powerful in build, yet graceful withal, a sleek, shiny chestnut
+red in color, with fine legs, broad chest, and a magnificent head. I
+rode him only once before I bought him, and that was before I hurt my
+back. His stride was what one would expect from sight of him; his trot
+seemed to tear me to pieces; his spirit was such that he wanted to
+prance all the time. But in spite of his spirit he was a pet. And
+how he could run! Nielsen took Don to Flagstaff by express. And when
+Nielsen wrote me he said all of Flagstaff came down to the station to
+see the famous Don Carlos. The car in which he had traveled was backed
+alongside a platform. Don refused to step on the boards they placed
+from platform to car. He did not trust them. Don's intelligence had
+been sharpened by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to
+lead, to coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would
+not go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to plunge
+and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd like quail.
+
+The day before my departure from Los Angeles was almost as terrible an
+ordeal as I anticipated would be my first day's ride on Don Carlos.
+And this ordeal consisted of listening to Romer's passionate appeals
+and importunities to let him go on the hunt. My only defence was that
+he must not be taken from school. School forsooth! He was way ahead of
+his class. If he got behind he could make it up. I talked and argued.
+Once he lost his temper, a rare thing with him, and said he would run
+away from school, ride on a freight train to Flagstaff, steal a horse
+and track me to my camp. I could not say very much in reply to this
+threat, because I remembered that I had made worse to my father, and
+carried it out. I had to talk sense to Romer. Often we had spoken of
+a wonderful hunt in Africa some day, when he was old enough; and I
+happened upon a good argument. I said: "You'll miss a year out of
+school then. It won't be so very long. Don't you think you ought to
+stay in school faithfully now?" So in the end I got away from him,
+victorious, though not wholly happy. The truth was I wanted him to go.
+
+My Jap cook Takahashi met me in Flagstaff. He was a very short, very
+broad, very muscular little fellow with a brown, strong face, more
+pleasant than usually seen in Orientals. Secretly I had made sure that
+in Takahashi I had discovered a treasure, but I was careful to conceal
+this conviction from R.C., the Doyles, and Nielsen. They were glad to
+see him with us, but they manifestly did not expect wonders.
+
+How brief the span of a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again outfitting
+for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived that old haunting
+thought about the shortness of life. But in spite of that or perhaps
+more because of it the pleasure was all the keener. In truth the only
+drawback to this start was the absence of Romer, and my poor physical
+condition. R.C. appeared to be in fine fettle.
+
+But I was not well. In the mornings I could scarcely arise, and when
+I did so I could hardly straighten myself. More than once I grew
+doubtful of my strength to undertake such a hard trip. This doubt I
+fought fiercely, for I knew that the right thing for me to do was
+to go--to stand the pain and hardship--to toil along until my old
+strength and elasticity returned. What an opportunity to try out my
+favorite theory! For I believed that labor and pain were good for
+mankind--that strenuous life in the open would cure any bodily ill.
+
+On September fourteenth Edd and George drifted into Flagstaff to join
+us, and their report of game and water and grass and acorns was so
+favorable that I would have gone if I had been unable to ride on
+anything but a wagon.
+
+
+We got away on September fifteenth at two-thirty o'clock with such an
+outfit as I had never had in all my many trips put together. We had a
+string of saddle horses besides those the men rode. They were surely a
+spirited bunch; and that first day it was indeed a job to keep them with
+us. Out of sheer defiance with myself I started on Don Carlos. He was no
+trouble, except that it took all my strength to hold him in. He tossed
+his head, champed his bit, and pranced sideways along the streets of
+Flagstaff, manifestly to show off his brand new black Mexican saddle,
+with silver trappings and tapaderos. I was sure that he did not do that
+to show me off. But Don liked to dance and prance along before a crowd,
+a habit that he had acquired with the motion pictures.
+
+Lee and Nielsen and George had their difficulties driving the free
+horses. Takahashi rode a little buckskin Navajo mustang. An evidence of
+how extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself plain in the fact
+that stirrups could not be fixed so he could reach them with his feet.
+When he used any support at all he stuck his feet through the straps
+above the stirrups. How funny his squat, broad figure looked in a
+saddle! Evidently he was not accustomed to horses. When I saw the
+mustang roll the white of his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I
+knew something would happen sooner or later.
+
+Nineteen miles on Don Carlos reduced me to a miserable aching specimen
+of manhood. But what made me endure and go on and finish to camp was the
+strange fact that the longer I rode the less my back pained. Other parts
+of my anatomy, however, grew sorer as we progressed. Don Carlos pleased
+me immensely, only I feared he was too much horse for me. A Mormon
+friend of mine, an Indian trader, looked Don over in Flagstaff, and
+pronounced him: "Shore one grand hoss!" This man had broken many wild
+horses, and his compliment pleased me. All the same the nineteen miles
+on Don hurt my vanity almost as much as my body.
+
+We camped in a cedar pasture off the main road. This road was a new one
+for us to take to our hunting grounds. I was too bunged up to help
+Nielsen pitch our tent. In fact when I sat down I was anchored. Still I
+could use my eyes, and that made life worth living. Sunset was a
+gorgeous spectacle. The San Francisco Peaks were shrouded in purple
+storm-clouds, and the west was all gold and silver, with low clouds
+rimmed in red. This sunset ended in a great flare of dull magenta with a
+background of purple.
+
+That evening was the try-out of our new chuck-box and chef. I had
+supplied the men with their own outfit and supplies, to do with as they
+liked, an arrangement I found to be most satisfactory. Takahashi was to
+take care of R.C. and me. In less than half an hour from the time the
+Jap lighted a fire he served the best supper I ever had in camp
+anywhere. R.C. lauded him to the skies. And I began to think I could
+unburden myself of my conviction.
+
+I did not awaken to the old zest and thrill of the open. Something was
+wrong with me. The sunset, the camp-fire, the dark clear night with its
+trains of stars, the distant yelp of coyotes--these seemed less to me
+than what I had hoped for. My feelings were locked round my discomfort
+and pain.
+
+About noon next day we rode out of the cedars into the open desert--a
+rolling, level land covered with fine grass, and yellow daisies, Indian
+paint brush, and a golden flowering weed. This luxuriance attested to
+the copious and recent rains. They had been a boon to dry Arizona. No
+sage showed or greasewood, and very few rocks. The sun burned hot. I
+gazed out at the desert, and the cloud pageant in the sky, trying hard
+to forget myself, and to see what I knew was there for me. Rolling
+columnar white and cream clouds, majestic and beautiful, formed storms
+off on the horizon. Sunset on the open desert that afternoon was
+singularly characteristic of Arizona--purple and gold and red, with long
+lanes of blue between the colored cloud banks.
+
+We made camp at Meteor Crater, one of the many wonders of this
+wonderland. It was a huge hole in the earth over five hundred feet deep,
+said to have been made by a meteor burying itself there. Seen from the
+outside the slope was gradual up to the edges, which were scalloped and
+irregular; on the inside the walls were precipitous. Our camp was on the
+windy desert, a long sweeping range of grass, sloping down, dotted with
+cattle, with buttes and mountains in the distance. Most of my sensations
+of the day partook of the nature of woe.
+
+September seventeenth bade fair to be my worst day--at least I did not
+see how any other could ever be so bad. Glaring hot sun--reflected heat
+from I the bare road--dust and sand and wind! Particularly hard on me
+were what the Arizonians called dust-devils, whirlwinds of sand. On and
+off I walked a good many miles, the latter of which I hobbled. Don
+Carlos did not know what to make of this. He eyed me, and nosed me, and
+tossed his head as if to say I was a strange rider for him. Like my
+mustang, Night, he would not stand to be mounted. When I touched the
+stirrup that was a signal to go. He had been trained to it. As he was
+nearly seventeen hands high, and as I could not get my foot in the
+stirrup from level ground, to mount him in my condition seemed little
+less than terrible. I always held back out of sight when I attempted
+this. Many times I failed. Once I fell flat and lay a moment in the
+dust. Don Carlos looked down upon me in a way I imagined was
+sympathetic. At least he bent his noble head and smelled at me. I
+scrambled to my feet, led him round into a low place, and drawing a deep
+breath, and nerving myself to endure the pain like a stab, I got into
+the saddle again.
+
+Two things sustained me in this ordeal, which was the crudest horseback
+ride I ever had--first, the conviction that I could cure my ills by
+enduring the agony of violent action, of hot sun, of hard bed; and
+secondly, the knowledge that after it was all over the remembrance of
+hardship and achievement would be singularly sweet. So it had been in
+the case of the five days on the old Crook road in 1918, when extreme
+worry and tremendous exertion had made the hours hideous. So it had been
+with other arduous and poignant experiences. A poet said that the crown
+of sorrow was in remembering happier times: I believed that there was a
+great deal of happiness in remembering times of stress, of despair, of
+extreme and hazardous effort. Anyway, without these two feelings in my
+mind I would have given up riding Don Carlos that day, and have
+abandoned the trip.
+
+We covered twenty-two miles by sundown, a rather poor day's showing; and
+camped on the bare flat desert, using water and wood we had packed with
+us. The last thing I remembered, as my eyes closed heavily, was what a
+blessing it was to rest and to sleep.
+
+Next day we sheered off to the southward, heading toward Chevelon Butte,
+a black cedared mountain, rising lone out of the desert, thirty miles
+away. We crossed two streams bank full of water, a circumstance I never
+before saw in Arizona. Everywhere too the grass was high. We climbed
+gradually all day, everybody sunburned and weary, the horses settling
+down to save themselves; and we camped high up on the desert plateau,
+six thousand feet above sea level, where it was windy, cool, and
+fragrant with sage and cedar. Except the first few, the hours of this
+day each marked a little less torture for me; but at that I fell off
+Don Carlos when we halted. And I was not able to do my share of the camp
+work. R.C. was not as spry and chipper as I had seen him, a fact from
+which I gathered infinite consolation. Misery loves company.
+
+A storm threatened. All the west was purple under on-coming purple
+clouds. At sight of this something strange and subtle, yet familiar,
+revived in me. It made me feel a little more like the self I thought I
+knew. So I watched the lightning flare and string along the horizon.
+Some time in the night thunder awakened me. The imminence of a severe
+storm forced us to roll out and look after the tent. What a pitch black
+night! Down through the murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag
+rope of lightning, blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving
+segments of fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash--then we
+were absolutely blind. I could not see for several moments. It rained a
+little. Only the edge of the storm touched us. Thunder rolled and boomed
+along the battlements, deep and rumbling and detonating.
+
+No dust or heat next morning! The desert floor appeared clean and damp,
+with fresh gray sage and shining bunches of cedar. We climbed into the
+high cedars, and then to the piñons, and then to the junipers and pines.
+Climbing so out of desert to forestland was a gradual and accumulating
+joy to me. What contrast in vegetation, in air, in color! Still the
+forest consisted of small trees. Not until next day did we climb farther
+to the deepening, darkening forest, and at last to the silver spruce.
+That camp, the fifth night out, was beside a lake of surface water,
+where we had our first big camp-fire.
+
+September twenty-first and ten miles from Beaver Dam Canyon, where a
+year before I had planned to meet Haught this day and date at noon! I
+could make that appointment, saddle-sore and weary as I was, but I
+doubted we could get the wagons there. The forest ground was soft. All
+the little swales were full of water. How pleasant, how welcome, how
+beautiful and lonely the wild forestland! We made advance slowly. It was
+afternoon by the time we reached the rim road, and four o'clock when we
+halted at the exact spot where we had left our wagon the year before.
+
+Lee determined to drive the wagons down over the rocky benches into
+Beaver Dam Canyon; and to that end he and the men began to cut pines,
+drag logs, and roll stones.
+
+R.C. and I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen swift
+little streams of amber water, where a year before all had been dry as
+tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of yellowing aspens. Haught
+was there to meet us. He had not changed any more than the rugged pine
+tree under which a year past we had made our agreement. He wore the same
+blue shirt and the old black sombrero.
+
+"Hello Haught," was my greeting, as I dismounted and pulled out my
+watch. "I'm four hours and a quarter late. Sorry. I could have made it,
+but didn't want to leave the wagons."
+
+"Wal, wal, I shore am glad to see you," he replied, with a keen flash in
+his hazel eyes and a smile on his craggy face. "I reckoned you'd make
+it. How are you? Look sort of fagged."
+
+"Just about all in, Haught," I replied, as we shook hands.
+
+Then Copple appeared, swaggering out of the aspens. He was the man I met
+in Payson and who so kindly had made me take his rifle. I had engaged
+him also for this hunt. A brawny man he was, with powerful shoulders,
+swarthy-skinned, and dark-eyed, looking indeed the Indian blood he
+claimed.
+
+"Wouldn't have recognized you anywhere's else," he said.
+
+These keen-eyed outdoor men at a glance saw the havoc work and pain had
+played with me. They were solicitous, and when I explained my condition
+they made light of that, and showed relief that I was not ill. "Saw wood
+an' rustle around," said Haught. And Copple said: "He needs venison an'
+bear meat."
+
+They rode back with us up to the wagons. Copple had been a freighter. He
+picked out a way to drive down into the canyon. So rough and steep it
+was that I did not believe driving down would be possible. But with axes
+and pick and shovel, and a heaving of rocks, they worked a road that Lee
+drove down. Some places were almost straight down. But the ground was
+soft, hoofs and wheels sank deeply, and though one wagon lurched almost
+over, and the heavily laden chuck-wagon almost hurdled the team, Lee
+made the bad places without accident. Two hours after our arrival, such
+was the labor of many strong hands, we reached our old camp ground. One
+thing was certain, however, and that was we would never get back up the
+way we came down.
+
+Except for a luxuriance of grass and ferns, and two babbling streams of
+water, our old camp ground had not changed. I sat down with mingled
+emotions. How familiarly beautiful and lonely this canyon glade! The
+great pines and spruces looked down upon me with a benediction. How
+serene, passionless, strong they seemed! It was only men who changed in
+brief time. The long year of worry and dread and toil and pain had
+passed. It was nothing. On the soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came
+a whispering of welcome from the forestland: "You are here again. Live
+now--in the present."
+
+Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he said,
+grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking. His ability
+excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about him. As to this
+camp-site being a joy compared to the ones stretched back along the road
+he was assuredly right. That night we did no more than eat and unroll
+our beds. But next day there set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking,
+putting up tents and flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a
+hundred odd jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one
+help him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak, and
+made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the cleverness
+of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for work.
+
+The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more than any
+one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a crosscut saw; and
+as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and a lover of them. Hence
+we had brought a crosscut saw--a long one with two handles. I remembered
+from the former year a huge dead pine that had towered bleached and
+white at the edge of the glade. It stood there still. The storms and
+blasts of another winter had not changed it in the least. It was five
+feet thick at the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the
+lower side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I saw
+the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all the way
+down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell majestically, to
+strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of this pine broke in the
+fall, but there were splinters and knots and branches enough to fill a
+wagon. These we carried up to our camp-fire.
+
+Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which served
+as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The method of using
+a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand opposite one another,
+with the log between. The handles of the saw stood upright. Each man
+should pull easily and steadily toward himself, but should not push back
+nor bear down. It looked a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous.
+But what an illusion! Nielsen and Copple were the only ones that day who
+could saw wholly through the thick log without resting. Later Takahashi
+turned out to be as good, if not better, than either of them, but we had
+that, as well as many other wonderful facts, to learn about the Jap.
+
+"Come on," said R.C. to me, invitingly. "You've been talking about this
+crosscut saw game. I'll bet you find it harder than pulling on a
+swordfish."
+
+Pride goes before a fall! I knew that in my condition I could do little
+with the saw, but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh when I had to rest.
+Perhaps no one except myself realized the weakness of my back, but the
+truth was a couple of dozen pulls on that saw almost made me collapse.
+Wherefore I grew furious with myself and swore I would do it or die. I
+sawed till I fell over--then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour
+of this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely
+sharper than the pain in my back. Also it made me wringing wet, hot as
+fire, and as breathless as if I had run a mile up hill. That experience
+determined me to stick to crosscut sawing every day. Next morning I
+approached it with enthusiasm, yet with misgivings. I could not keep my
+breath. Pain I could and did bear without letting on. But to have to
+stop was humiliating. If I tried to keep up with the sturdy Haught boys,
+or with the brawny Copple or the giant Nielsen, soon I would be
+compelled to keel over. In the sawing through a four-foot section of log
+I had to rest eight times. They all had a great deal of fun out of it,
+and I pretended to be good natured, but to me who had always been so
+vigorous and active and enduring it was not fun. It was tragic. But all
+was not gloom for me. This very afternoon Nielsen, the giant, showed
+that a stiff climb out of the canyon, at that eight thousand feet
+altitude, completely floored him. Yet I accomplished that with
+comparative ease. I could climb, which seemed proof that I was gaining.
+A man becomes used to certain labors and exercises. I thought the
+crosscut saw a wonderful tool to train a man, but it must require time.
+It harked back to pioneer days when men were men. Nielsen said he had
+lived among Mexican boys who sawed logs for nineteen cents apiece and
+earned seven dollars a day. Copple said three minutes was good time to
+saw a four-foot log in two pieces. So much for physical condition! As
+for firewood, for which our crosscut saw was intended, pitch pine and
+yellow pine and spruce were all odorous and inflammable woods, but they
+did not make good firewood. Dead aspen was good; dead oak the best. It
+burned to red hot coals with little smoke. As for camp-fires, any kind
+of dry wood pleased, smoke or no smoke. In fact I loved the smell and
+color of wood-smoke, in spite of the fact that it made my eyes smart.
+
+By October first, which was the opening day of the hunting season, I had
+labored at various exercises until I felt fit to pack a rifle through
+the woods. R.C. and I went out alone on foot. Not by any means was the
+day auspicious. The sun tried to show through a steely haze, making only
+a pale shift of sunshine. And the air was rather chilly. Enthusiasm,
+however, knew no deterrents. We walked a mile down Beaver Dam Canyon,
+then climbed the western slope. As long as the sun shone I knew the
+country fairly well, or rather my direction. We slipped along through
+the silent woods, satisfied with everything. Presently the sun broke
+through the clouds, and shone fitfully, making intervals of shadow, and
+others of golden-green verdure.
+
+Along an edge of one of the grassy parks we came across fresh deer
+tracks. Several deer had run out of the woods just ahead of us,
+evidently having winded us. One track was that of a big buck. We trailed
+these tracks across the park, then made a detour in hopes of heading the
+deer off, but failed. A huge, dark cloud scudded out of the west and let
+down a shower of fine rain. We kept dry under a spreading spruce. The
+forest then was gloomy and cool with only a faint moan of wind and
+pattering of raindrops to break the silence. The cloud passed by, the
+sun shone again, the forest glittered in its dress of diamonds. There
+had been but little frost, so that aspen and maple thickets had not yet
+taken on their cloth of gold and blaze of red. Most of the leaves were
+still on the trees, making these thickets impossible to see into. We
+hunted along the edges of these, and across the wide, open ridge from
+canyon to canyon, and saw nothing but old tracks. Black and white clouds
+rolled up and brought a squall. We took to another spruce tent for
+shelter. After this squall the sky became obscured by a field of gray
+cloud through which the sun shone dimly. This matter worried me. I was
+aware of my direction then, but if I lost the sun I would soon be in
+difficulties.
+
+Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and headed several
+ravines that ran and widened down into the big canyon. All at once R.C.
+held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened,
+but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I
+heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes and ears.
+
+R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a good
+hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip
+along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had
+never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer
+stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick
+as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and many years of still hunting,
+accounted for this faculty. As for myself, the one gift of which I was
+especially proud was my eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in
+the woods before any one who was with me. This had applied to all my
+guides except Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
+searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made my eyes
+all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game in which he
+tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen before I saw it. This
+fun for us dated back to boyhood days.
+
+Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one side, and his
+body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he said. We stood
+perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from far off in the forest
+I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling note. How thrilling, how
+lonely a sound!
+
+"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and listened.
+R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not recognized it. Just
+as the mournful howl of a wolf is the wildest, most haunting sound of
+the wilderness, so is the bugle of the elk the noblest, most melodious
+and thrilling. With tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We
+heard elk bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
+appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away. R.C. and
+I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing of elk, but that
+was no reason why we might not trail them, and have the sport of seeing
+them in their native haunts. So we stole softly through the woods,
+halting now and then to listen, pleased to note that every whistle we
+heard appeared to be closer.
+
+At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us from the
+ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk began to become
+really exciting. We did not make any noise threading that wet thicket,
+and we ascended the opposite slope very cautiously. What little wind
+there was blew from the elk toward us, so they could not scent us. Once
+up on the edge of the ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we
+heard a far-away bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had
+we miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for
+waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was almost
+silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun peeped out of the
+pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the pines in brightness. I
+opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was rendered mute by a piercing
+whistle, high-pitched and sweet and melodiously prolonged. It made my
+ears tingle and my blood dance. "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on."
+We began to steal through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets,
+peeping out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp,
+facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated by
+about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison. Passing
+through a thicket of little pines we came into an open forest full of
+glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped from tree to tree.
+Finally we stooped along for a space, and then, at a bugle blast so
+close that it made me jump, I began to crawl. My objective point was a
+fallen pine the trunk of which appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C.
+kept working a little farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I
+kept on. Still I saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting
+toward its climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of
+excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw a
+cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a hundred
+yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way, and pointed.
+But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning for me to join him. I
+ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He whispered pantingly:
+"Grandest sight--ever saw!" I peeped out.
+
+In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent bull elk,
+looking back over his shoulder. His tawny hind-quarters, then his dark
+brown, almost black shaggy shoulders and head, then his enormous spread
+of antlers, like the top of a dead cedar--these in turn fascinated my
+gaze. How graceful, stately, lordly!
+
+R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled out, took
+a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had the fun of
+imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not really want to kill
+him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp, hot gush of my blood, the
+fiery thrill along my nerves, the feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The
+bull eyed us for a second, then laid his forest of antlers back over his
+shoulders, and with singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny
+flash into the green forest.
+
+R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the glade,
+without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye caught sight
+of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on the ground, vanishing
+behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I got to where I could see
+beyond the thicket. An immense flock of turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to
+get a bead on a running turkey R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled.
+So we dashed through the forest with the turkeys running ahead of us.
+Never did they come out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just
+as I was about to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This
+happened again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting
+chance, but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys
+eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.
+
+"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like streaks. I
+couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."
+
+I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying to locate
+this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C. finally, as he
+wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some game anyhow.... Where
+are we?"
+
+It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun had
+become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the forest had
+grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The matter did not
+look serious, however, until we had wandered around for another hour
+without finding anything familiar. Then we realized we were lost. This
+sort of experience had happened to R.C. and me often; nevertheless we
+did not relish it, especially the first day out. As usual on such
+occasions R.C. argued with me about direction, and then left the
+responsibility with me. I found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one
+side from the misty rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees
+and sky and clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or
+west. After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary
+brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was pleased to
+discover that the instinct of direction I had been subtly prompted to
+take, would have helped me as much as the sun.
+
+We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead so that
+we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to a deep canyon.
+In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I recognized it. "Well,
+R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and it may not. But to make sure
+we'll follow it up to the rim. Then we can locate camp." R.C. replied
+with weary disdain. "All right, my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As
+Loren says, I'm starved to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who
+bids fair to be like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and
+before meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How
+strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!
+
+When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more heavily. We
+were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept out all night. So
+I struck forward with long stride.
+
+In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I deliberated a
+moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry, from which fact I
+decided we had better take to the left-hand fork. Grass and leaves
+appeared almost as wet as running water. Soon we were soaked to the
+skin. After two miles the canyon narrowed and thickened, so that
+traveling grew more and more laborsome. It must have been four miles
+from its mouth to where it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we
+found ourselves on familiar ground, about five miles from camp.
+Exhausted and wet and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If
+I had taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver
+Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order. R.C. said
+to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of our way." Everybody
+but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture. Takahashi said in his imperfect
+English: "Go get on more better dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good
+yes!"
+
+
+V
+
+It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in camp and
+rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning I started out on
+foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon intending to go up on
+the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the flock of turkeys.
+
+I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor acquaintances
+in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for Nielsen. Copple was
+born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south of Flagstaff, and was
+one-fourth Indian. He had a good education. His whole life had been in
+the open, which fact I did not need to be told. A cowboy when only a boy
+he had also been sheepherder, miner, freighter, and everything
+Arizonian. Eighteen years he had hunted game and prospected for gold in
+Mexico. He had been a sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served
+in the army in the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous
+life; and as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be
+a mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the violence,
+the truth of the west.
+
+Copple was inclined to be loquacious--a trait that ordinarily was rather
+distasteful to me, but in his case would be an advantage. On our way
+down the canyon not only did he give me an outline of the history of his
+life, but he talked about how he had foretold the storm just ended. The
+fresh diggings of gophers--little mounds of dirt thrown up--had
+indicated the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls;
+likewise the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of
+blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant storm.
+From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the light of the
+moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they will lie in a thicket.
+If a hunter came near the deer would lower their horns flat and remain
+motionless, unless almost ridden over. In the dark of the moon deer feed
+at early morning, lie down during the day, and feed again toward sunset,
+always alert, trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.
+
+Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place where R.C.
+and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I missed it, and we
+went on farther. Copple showed me old bear sign, an old wolf track, and
+then fresh turkey tracks. The latter reminded me that we were out
+hunting. I could carry a deadly rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of
+flower-decked Elysian fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of
+the canyon slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two
+turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took a snap
+shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low, upsetting him.
+Both of them disappeared.
+
+Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting around along
+the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep enough to be classed
+as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and still, with sunlight showing
+down in rays and gleams. While hunting I always liked to sit down here
+and there to listen and watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down.
+Opposite us the rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred
+yards. We listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant
+fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.
+
+Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is movement
+that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump, woolly beast
+walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and stand in the shade.
+
+"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing. "Lion--no, big lynx,"
+he replied. I aimed and shot just a little too swiftly. Judging by the
+puff of dust my bullet barely missed the big cat. He leaped fully
+fifteen feet. Copple fired, hitting right under his nose as he alighted.
+That whirled him back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot
+went over him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another
+prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we missed him,"
+declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that first time. Biggest
+lynx I ever saw."
+
+We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success. Then we
+climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge, and crossed
+that to see down into a beautiful valley, with stately isolated pines,
+and patches of aspens, and floor of luxuriant grass. A ravine led down
+into this long park and the mouth of it held a thicket of small pines.
+Just as we got half way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high
+grass. I peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot
+before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a
+thumping--and then turkeys appeared to be running every way.
+
+Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a big gobbler
+on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!" he called out. I
+could not see what he had done, but of course I knew he had done
+execution. It roused my ire as well as a desperate ambition. Turkeys
+were running up hill everywhere. I aimed at this one, then at that.
+Again I fired. Another miss! How that gobbler ran! He might just as well
+have flown. Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and
+me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last
+one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we
+moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of
+bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a
+fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds weight.
+
+Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two turkeys, both
+shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If you hit them in the
+body you spoil them for cooking. I used to hit all mine in the head. Let
+me give you a hunch. Always pick out a turkey running straight away from
+you or straight toward you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running
+to the side."
+
+Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at least was
+consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and after a while
+heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller, but he clucked
+anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was trying to get together
+again, and some of them were approaching us. Copple continued to call.
+Then I appreciated how fascinating R.C. had found this calling game.
+Copple got answers from all around, growing closer. But presently the
+answers ceased. "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again.
+At that moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to
+peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long shot, and
+I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate him, and aimed at
+the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however, was a few feathers. Like a
+grouse he flew across the opening and was gone. We lingered there a
+while, hoping to see or hear more of the flock, but did neither. Copple
+tried to teach me how to tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a
+lesson I did not think I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied
+their legs together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of
+about fifty pounds.
+
+All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from over the
+ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we followed a rather
+meandering course, over ridge and down dale, and through grassy parks
+and stately forests, and along the slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets.
+Copple claimed to hear deer running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps
+I dragged along before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome
+the sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one deer
+that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods. Takahashi
+hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That fine! Nice fat ones!"
+
+But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to visit
+Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds. Haught had not
+been able to secure more than two new hounds, and these named Rock and
+Buck were still unknown quantities.
+
+Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was
+a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and
+bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made
+chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames.
+This fact, and the way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared
+him to me.
+
+Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him
+enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears,
+and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as
+Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever
+demonstrative except upon sight of his master. Haught told me that if
+Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a deer they would chase it till they
+dropped; accordingly he never shot at anything except bear and lion when
+he had these hounds with him.
+
+Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years
+of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her. She was a slim,
+dark brown hound with fine and very long ears. Rock, one of the new
+hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large,
+clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression. I could not
+account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the
+other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his
+color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head
+and distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any friends,
+for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had enough to eat.
+He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup
+came near him. I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would
+not have an easy task.
+
+Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
+hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year, either in
+body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp just to hear
+himself and run any kind of a trail--how he would be the first to quit
+and come back. And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a
+scared deer.
+
+To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better. Trailer
+and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run
+and howl.
+
+If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other trail
+crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack till' the bear
+got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp with porcupine quills
+in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny pups!
+
+Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black half-shepherd,
+small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent face, with the brightest
+hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his tail seemed most comical yet
+convincing. Bobby wagged only the nether end and that most emphatically.
+He would stand up to me, holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an
+appealing beggar he was! Bobby's value to Haught was not
+inconsiderable. He was the only dog Haught ever had that would herd the
+pigs. On a bear hunt Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly
+disposition, and yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of
+the pack. He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like
+to run him.
+
+All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and
+the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the
+grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I
+had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this
+pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting
+species. But there was now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We
+might kill a big grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us
+perhaps made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I
+had not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.
+
+Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the leaves had
+scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed weeks off. A storm
+and then a cold snap would help matters wonderfully, and for these we
+hoped. Indeed the weather had not settled; hardly a day had been free of
+clouds. But despite conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every
+other day, feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them
+and ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it arrived.
+
+Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and I went
+down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and windy at
+intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy. From above Horton
+Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with scarcely any touch of autumn
+colors; from below, once in it, all seemed a darker green, cool and
+damp. Water lay in all low places. The creek roared bankfull of clear
+water.
+
+The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth, through
+thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long slopes of
+manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were not fruitful this
+year as they were last, only a few having clusters of lavender-colored
+berries. The manzanita brush appeared exceptionally beautiful with its
+vivid contrasts of crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and
+smooth, shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round
+patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground, with a
+long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows fresh every
+spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow blossoms. The honey from
+the flowers of mescal and mesquite is the best to be obtained in this
+country of innumerable bees.
+
+Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and they worked
+on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon, called See Canyon.
+After a while the country grew so rough that fast riding was impossible;
+the thickets tore and clutched at us until they finally stopped the
+horses. We got off. Edd climbed to a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round,"
+he called. "I'll walk. Take my horse back." I decided to let George take
+my horse also, and I hurried to catch up with Edd.
+
+Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as strenuous as
+keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We climbed steep slopes
+and the farther we climbed the thicker grew the brush. Often we would
+halt to listen for hounds, at which welcome intervals I endeavored to
+catch my breath. We kept the hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to
+renewed endeavors. At length we got into a belt of live-oak and
+scrub-pine brush, almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and
+here we had to bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere.
+Small stones and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears
+searching for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the
+heads of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass,
+yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We climbed and
+climbed, until my back began to give me trouble. "Reckon we--bit off--a
+big hunk," remarked Edd once, and I thought he referred to the endless
+steep and brushy slopes. By and bye the hounds came back to us one by
+one, all footsore and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our
+best prospect then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the
+forest to camp.
+
+I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up with Edd.
+His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles, so that he might
+have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in my boots and they
+caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I had a burning sensation
+all over. My legs and arms ached; the rifle weighed a ton; my feet
+seemed to take hold of the ground and stick. We could not go straight up
+owing to the nature of that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub
+forests. For hours we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward.
+Only through such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge
+of the roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.
+
+At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and there, on
+a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a bear. I saw the dust
+he raised, as he piled into the thicket below the slide. What a wild
+clamor from the hounds! We got out on the rocky slope where we could see
+and kept sharp eyes roving, but the bear went straight down hill.
+Amazing indeed was it the way the hounds drew away from us. In a few
+moments they were at the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the
+course we had been so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on
+the rim, so as to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd
+distanced me on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I
+could scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet.
+My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness and
+disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition returned
+to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very day accomplished
+a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I should have been happy.
+But I had not been used to a lame back. When I reached the rim I fell
+there, and lay there a few moments, until I could get up. Then I
+followed along after Edd whose yells to the hounds I heard, and overtook
+him upon the point of a promontory. Far below the hounds were baying.
+"They're chasin' him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for
+low country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack are
+behind."
+
+I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed was the
+panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned, rippling basin
+of timber and red rocks leading away to the mountain ranges of the Four
+Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward the yellowing sunset stood out
+long escarpments for miles, and long sloping lines of black ridges,
+leading down to the basin where there seemed to be a ripple of the
+earth, a vast upset region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and
+dark.
+
+I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a matter I
+regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure of a bee-line
+during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the forest the sunset
+gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The aspens took most of the
+color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned pink, and low along the
+western horizon of the forest the light seemed golden and blue.
+
+I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just at dark, I
+was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper, a fact that
+occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain. Undoubtedly this was
+the hardest day's work I had done since my lion hunting with Buffalo
+Jones. It did not surprise me that next day I had to forget my crosscut
+saw exercise.
+
+Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame and
+starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at supper-time.
+
+Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C. and I went
+off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure. This day was
+cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We saw two bull elk, a
+cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably agile for so heavy an
+animal. Neither of these, however, were of such magnificent proportions
+as the one R.C. and I had stalked the first day out. A few minutes later
+we scared out three more cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for
+fun, and sighted my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon
+where beaver had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like
+teeth. They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe.
+Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we could not
+find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey Canyon, however, we
+found a place where beavers had dammed the brook. Many aspens were fresh
+cut, one at least two feet thick, and all the small branches had been
+cut off and dragged to the water, where I could find no further trace of
+them. The grass was matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed
+beaver tracks.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER]
+
+[Illustration: CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA]
+
+Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer, turkey and
+bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns); and if we could
+locate the mast we would find the game. He said he had once seen a herd
+of several hundred deer migrating from one section of country to
+another. Apparently this was to find new feeding grounds.
+
+[Illustration: BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON]
+
+While we were resting under a spruce I espied a white-breasted,
+blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked
+head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a
+winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several
+more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the
+bark. Some of them saw or heard him coming and escaped, but many of them
+he caught. He went about this death-dealing business with a brisk and
+cheerful manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the
+trees from bugs and worms and beetles.
+
+Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a large
+bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared to be a
+species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black colors, a round
+head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was crippled, as it hopped
+and fluttered about in the grass. I got down to catch it. Then I
+discovered it was only tame. I could approach to within a foot of
+reaching it. Once it perched upon a low snag, and peeped at me with
+little bright dark eyes, very friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat
+there within a few feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride.
+Crossing a fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses.
+But that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual, empty
+handed as far as game was concerned.
+
+I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black and gray
+bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was it then to see
+another such bird and that one right in camp. He appeared to be as tame
+as the other. He flew and hopped around camp in such a friendly manner
+that I placed a piece of meat in a conspicuous place for him. Not long
+was he in finding it. He alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a
+great rate. Doyle claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the
+Lewis and Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one
+I've seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the open
+this statement seemed rather remarkable.
+
+We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six degrees,
+and then another change indicative of unsettled weather. It rained, and
+sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too wet to hold the snow.
+
+The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on autumn
+colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of white aspens,
+golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green pines, maples a blaze of
+vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta, rose--and slopes of dull red sumac.
+These were the beginning of Indian summer days, the melancholy days,
+with their color and silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.
+
+Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back to me dim
+mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One afternoon Copple,
+R.C., and I went as far as the east side of Gentry Canyon and worked
+down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey sign. We tied our horses, and
+slipped back against the wind. R.C. took one side of a ridge, with
+Copple and me on the other, and we worked down toward where we had seen
+the sign. After half an hour of slow, stealthy glide through the forest
+we sat down at the edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon.
+The white aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The
+wind lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both
+of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on leaves.
+Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen and tight,
+expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But none came. Leaving
+our stand we slipped into the woods, careful not to make the slightest
+sound. Such careful, slow steps were certainly not accountable for the
+rapid beat of my heart. Something gray moved among the green and yellow
+leaves. I halted, and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I
+descried what I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the
+slightest sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it
+saw us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray
+hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long ears,
+and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I had ever
+beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too, but with emotion.
+Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"
+
+His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray flash. Also
+it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I exclaimed, quite loud.
+"Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't have shot----"
+
+A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of branches--then
+a big buck deer bounded onward into the thicket. I got one snap shot at
+his fleeting blurred image and missed him. We ran ahead, but to no
+avail.
+
+"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin' behind that
+brush."
+
+"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.
+
+"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where he
+jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started after you
+shot."
+
+A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the buck had
+vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps, and it amounted
+to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a magnificent leap! It
+reminded me of the story of Hart-leap Well.
+
+As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had heard the
+buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around together for an
+hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide detour, leaving me at a
+stand in the hope they might drive some turkeys my way. I sat on a log
+until almost sunset. All the pine tips turned gold and patches of gold
+brightened the ground. Jays were squalling, gray squirrels were barking,
+red squirrels were chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones
+were dropping, leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I
+did not miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs
+of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here early
+to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some meat to
+camp."
+
+But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next, giving us
+spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine deceptive in their
+promise. Camp, however, with our big camp-fire, and little tent-stoves,
+and Takahashi, would have been delightful in almost any weather.
+Takahashi was insulted, the boys told me, because I said he was born to
+be a cook. It seemed the Jap looked down upon this culinary job.
+"Cook--that woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.
+
+As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to think more of
+the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly and I grew to like him.
+The Orientals are mystics and hard to understand. But any one could see
+that here was a Japanese who was a real man. I never saw him idle. He
+resented being told what to do, and after my first offense in this
+regard I never gave him another order. He was a wonderful cook. It
+pleased his vanity to see how good an appetite I always had. When I
+would hail him: "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply:
+"Aw, turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life tasted
+anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served us. Or he
+would say: "Pan-cakes--apple dumplings--rice puddings." No one but the
+Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him how he cooked rice over an open
+fire and he said: "I know how hot--when done." Takahashi must have
+possessed an uncanny knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean,
+efficient and saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of
+American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a revelation.
+Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters. Takahashi's ambition
+was to be a rancher in California. I learned many things about him. In
+summer he went to the Imperial Valley where he picked and packed
+cantaloupes. He could stand the intense heat. He was an expert. He
+commanded the highest wage. Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him
+was another art. He had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to
+save his money. He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he
+intended to live in the United States.
+
+Takahashi had that best of traits--generosity. Whenever he made pie or
+cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me to have for my lunch
+next day. No use to try to break him of this kindly habit! He was keen
+too, and held in particular disfavor any one who picked out the best
+portions of turkey or meat. "No like that," he would say; and I heartily
+agreed with him. Life in the open brought out the little miserable
+traits of human nature, of which no one was absolutely free.
+
+I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of firewood
+he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but most of all I liked
+his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to be a joy to me. We had some
+pop corn which we sometimes popped over the camp-fire. He was fond of it
+and he said: "You eat all time--much pop corn--just so long you keep
+mouth going all same like horse--you happy." We were troubled a good
+deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but others were
+disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk, according to westerners,
+very often had hydrophobia and would bite a sleeper. I knew of several
+men dying of rabies from this bite. Copple said he had been awakened
+twice at night by skunks biting the noses of his companions in camp.
+Copple had to choke the skunks off. One of these men died. We were
+really afraid of them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he
+had been forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now
+Takahashi slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a
+skunk awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk all
+black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid. He no run.
+He act funny--then just walk off."
+
+After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One morning
+he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take picture for me
+send my wife Sadayo."
+
+So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position, as did
+all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph him and his
+skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me, and he lifted up the
+box-trap. A furry white and black cat appeared, with remarkably bushy
+tail. What a beautiful little animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same
+like cat," said Takahashi. "Kittee--kittee." It appeared that kitty was
+not in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable Jap
+with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified manner. Then
+she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and Takahashi together.
+When she started off the Jap followed and poked her with the pole. "Take
+'nother picture." But kitty suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a
+most surprising and brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I
+yelled: "Run George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful
+little beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another
+and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased her out
+of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty thing! She make
+awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I kill her sure!"
+
+The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and we reached
+it the following morning while the frost was still white and sparkling.
+We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a deer day. I'll show you a
+buck sure. Let's stick together an' walk easy."
+
+So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was so light
+as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark ravine, taking
+half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the forest! When it was
+like this I always felt as if I had discovered something new. The big
+trees loomed stately and calm, stretching a rugged network of branches
+over us. Fortunately no saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be
+abroad to warn game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill,
+seemed to come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn
+were at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
+burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us strung
+to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the wild. R.C.,
+as might have been expected, halted us with a softly whispered:
+"Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C. heard, and presently
+we moved on as before. Presently again R.C. made us pause, with a like
+result. Somehow the forest seemed unusually wild. It provoked a
+tingling expectation. The pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed
+ridge to our left, the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to
+harbor listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
+we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge ran down
+in points to where the junction of several ravines formed the head of
+Gentry Canyon.
+
+How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for deer to
+graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and white with frost
+and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no game.
+
+Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C.
+stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my
+lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then
+crouch a little. He leaned forward--his eyes had the look of a falcon.
+Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
+tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of
+my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked--I strained
+my eyes--I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been
+gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That
+instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack.
+I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
+headlong and I heard a solid thump.
+
+"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for
+another one."
+
+No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had
+plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make
+me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that
+had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots
+of its antlers.
+
+"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the
+deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat.
+Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other
+help me hang him up."
+
+
+VI
+
+I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had
+parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and
+I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full
+of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.
+
+The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length I came
+out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees. Suddenly Don Carlos
+shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for days and he appeared more
+than usually spirited. He saw or heard something. I held him in, and
+after a moment I dismounted and drew my rifle. A crashing in brush
+somewhere near at hand excited me. Peering all around I tried to locate
+cause for the sound. Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush
+accompanied by a snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don
+Carlos snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
+the sound came from overhead.
+
+I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze arrested by a
+threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty spruce. I saw a dark form
+moving against a background of blue sky. Instantly I thought it must be
+a lynx and was about to raise my rifle when a voice as from the very
+clouds utterly astounded me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I
+dreaming? But violent threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely
+assured me that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
+you--whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the swaying top of
+that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi. For a moment I could not
+find my voice. Then I shouted:
+
+"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near
+shooting you."
+
+"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.
+
+I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing
+except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully
+one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the
+Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
+
+"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
+
+Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with
+little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun--see
+squirrel. I chase him up tree--I climb high--awful high. No good.
+Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me--get away."
+
+Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he
+considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing
+at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and
+capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful
+people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to
+sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me
+that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say--labor hard--he
+very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from
+George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
+famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable eyesight that
+he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting above the highest limb
+of a tall white oak. And he was such a splendid shot that he had often
+"barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to
+explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet
+to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so
+stun it that it would fall as if dead.
+
+"Aw my goodnish--your daddy more better shot than you!" ejaculated
+Takahashi.
+
+"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash the
+long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting days--playing days of
+boyhood were the best of life. It seemed to me that one of the few
+reasons I still had for clinging to hunting was this keen, thrilling
+hark back to early days. Books first--then guns--then fishing poles--so
+ran the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.
+
+That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on the
+spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it rained--first
+a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at five-thirty a roar of hail on
+the tent. This music did not last long. At seven o'clock the thermometer
+registered thirty-four degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was
+somewhat cloudy or foggy, with promise of clearing.
+
+We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and Nielsen went
+down with them, the rest of us waited above for developments. Scarcely
+had they more than time enough to reach the gorge below when the pack
+burst into full chorus. Haught led the way then around the rough rim for
+better vantage points. I was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten
+for me--a fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a
+cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and powerful,
+though not over medium size. One splendid feature about him was that a
+saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never slipped. And another
+feature, infinitely the most attractive to me, was his easy gait. His
+trot and lope were so comfortable and swinging, like the motion of a
+rocking-chair, that I could ride him all day with pleasure. But when it
+came to chasing after hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me
+trouble. Too eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose
+the direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad jumbles
+or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried me under low
+branches and through dense thickets, and in general showed he was
+exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but ignorant of rough
+forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and got out of hearing of
+both hounds and men, and eventually found myself lost somewhere on the
+west side of See Canyon. To get out I had to turn my back to the sun,
+travel west till I came to the rim above Horton Thicket, and from there
+return to camp, arriving rather late in the afternoon.
+
+All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I was rather
+surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high state of dudgeon.
+Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning Nielsen I learned that the
+hounds had at once struck a fresh bear track in See Canyon. Nielsen and
+Edd had not followed far before they heard a hound yelping in pain. They
+found Buck caught in a bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a
+little bear cub, caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it
+had evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and
+emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she had been
+around trying to save it or minister to it. There were trappers in See
+Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers manifestly there was no
+love lost. Edd said they had as much right to trap as we had to hunt,
+but that was not the question. There had been opportunity to tell the
+Haughts about the big number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they
+did not tell it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a
+pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky brown
+coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had suffered.
+
+This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to me. Bad
+enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat, but at least
+this is a game where the deer have all the advantage. Bad indeed it may
+be to chase bear with hounds, but that is a hard, dangerous method of
+hunting which gives it some semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts
+proved to me that I ran more risks than the bears. To set traps,
+however, to hide big iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and
+clutch wild animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or
+gnawed off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun
+or club to end the miserable business--what indeed shall I call that?
+Cruel--base--cowardly!
+
+It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed interests are
+at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes was built upon the
+brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for their furs. And in this
+fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten, beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx,
+muskrat, mink, otter, were higher by double than they had ever been.
+Trappers were going to reap a rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a
+living; but is this trapping business honest, is it manly? To my
+knowledge trappers are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but
+the public eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and
+seasons furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter
+winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay there
+is no justification for censure. But the vast number of furs go to deck
+the persons of vain women. I appreciate the beautiful contrast of fair
+skin against a background of sable fur, or silver fox, or rich, black,
+velvety seal. But beautiful women would be just as beautiful, just as
+warmly clothed in wool instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not
+long ago I met a young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels,
+and I remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She
+said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared to be
+refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was a pity women
+did not know or care where furs came from. She seemed surprised. Then I
+told her about the iron-jawed, spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs
+or on the runways of game--about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its
+food, training its young to fare for themselves--about the sudden
+terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the instinctive
+fury, the violent struggle--about the foot gnawed off by the beast that
+was too fierce to die a captive--about the hours of agony, the horrible
+thirst--the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All because
+women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath the beautiful
+coat of furs, and seemed insulted.
+
+Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming somewhere back
+along the trail hopping along on three legs. I rode on down to my camp,
+and procuring a bottle of iodine I walked back in the hope of doing Buck
+a good turn. During my absence he had reached camp, and was lying under
+an aspen, apart from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and
+more distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a trick
+played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him, as he licked
+the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as kindly as I knew how. And
+finally I sat down beside him. The trap-teeth had caught his right front
+leg just above the first joint, and from the position of the teeth marks
+and the way he moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.
+Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the bone. When
+I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled ominously. He would
+have bitten me. I patted his head with one hand, and watching my chance,
+at length with the other I poured iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept
+patting him and holding his head until the iodine had become absorbed.
+Perhaps it was only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his
+distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of something
+he did not understand. That look more than ever determined me to try to
+find some way to his affections.
+
+A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a pack outfit,
+and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called Dude Creek. "Reckon
+we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude," said Haught. "Never was in
+there but I jumped bars. Good deer an' turkey country, too."
+
+Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing shape with
+the intention of starting early the following morning. But it rained on
+and off; and the day after that we could not find Haught's burros, and
+not until the fourth morning could we start. It turned out that Buck did
+not have a broken leg and had recovered surprisingly from the injury he
+had received. Aloof as he held himself it appeared certain he did not
+want to be left behind.
+
+We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had
+encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the road, but how
+strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that
+memorable trip, that I did not remember all. Usually forest or desert
+ground I have traveled over I never forget. This ride, in the middle of
+October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make
+the forest a region of golden enchantment, was one of particular delight
+to me. I had begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night
+I had suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every
+morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and straighten out.
+Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got warmed up from riding
+or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me altogether and I forgot it.
+I had given myself heroic treatment, but my reward was in sight. My
+theory that the outdoor life would cure almost any ill of body or mind
+seemed to have earned another proof added to the long list.
+
+At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road, and had
+arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the rim, down into a
+canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were to camp.
+
+[Illustration: Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR]
+
+[Illustration: R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR]
+
+Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at the
+section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to recognize the
+point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild bear! It was a
+wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared to be at the extreme
+point of a vast ten-league promontory, rising high over the basin, where
+the rim was cut into canyons as thick as teeth of a saw. They were
+notched and v-shaped. Craggy russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and
+gold-stained rocks, old crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine
+thickets, ravines and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush
+all green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire--these indeed were the heights
+and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and beauty of
+Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak thickets, where the
+bears lived, long gray slides of weathered rocks, long slanting ridges
+of pine, descending for miles out and down into the green basin, yet
+always seeming to stand high above that rolling wilderness. The sun
+stood crossed by thin clouds--a golden blaze in a golden sky--sinking to
+meet a ragged horizon line of purple.
+
+[Illustration: ANOTHER BEAR]
+
+Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the earth,
+and with another and more striking effect of this vast tilted rim of
+mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This rim was a huge wall
+of splintered rock, a colossal cliff, towering so high above the black
+basin below that ravines and canyons resembled ripples or dimples,
+darker lines of shade. And on the other side from its very edge, where
+the pine fringe began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of
+canyons opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start
+not fifty feet from the rim.
+
+Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the fingers of
+a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep, narrow, forested by
+giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by a murmuring brook, deep
+down among the many slopes, was our camp ground, and never had I seen
+one more desirable. The wind soughed in the lofty pine tops, but not a
+breeze reached down to this sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high
+slopes our camp was shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a
+canvas fly over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left
+the sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.
+
+Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black
+night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the
+great brown pines with some weird aspect. The boys put up an old tent
+for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine
+rivals. I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed. When
+R.C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled
+between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old
+dog, you keep the skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of
+a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a
+lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to
+the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except
+for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.
+
+We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the
+hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses,
+which had been hobbled and turned loose. Lee had remained with his
+father at Beaver Dam camp. For breakfast Takahashi had venison,
+biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did
+not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung
+around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough
+to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.
+Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they
+regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a fight with
+Buck.
+
+By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still
+forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses. A
+mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude
+Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds. The rest of
+us rode out to a point there to await developments. The sun had already
+flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim
+were dark in shade. I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and
+looked, and cared not for passage of time.
+
+But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right under us
+the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes. They
+worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we
+kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his
+horse. "Saw a bar," he yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an
+open ridge. Come on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest
+kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim.
+"Ride along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep
+ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."
+
+Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R.C. and
+George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim. The hounds
+could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and
+Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I
+was going. The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of
+iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the
+golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon--all these brought
+vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along
+the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past, and
+for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died
+recently. In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand,
+he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope
+to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild
+animals--he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I
+was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
+gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever
+wholly hopeless.
+
+I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached
+out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy
+points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No
+longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and
+sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled
+under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until
+I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where
+the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere
+below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of
+the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and
+promontories--a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for
+hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a
+yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another
+point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling
+from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or
+Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the
+rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my
+left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny
+black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
+and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so
+leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I
+began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.
+Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin
+to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead
+of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to
+shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse!
+Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran
+around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
+contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I
+got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his
+shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a
+horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the
+sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I
+counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die
+hollow and faint in the deep canyons!
+
+I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R.C.'s
+boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals
+I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on
+the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed lost in immensity. Then I
+rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings
+and I were weary. At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a
+pine on the rim. Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the
+squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this
+lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of
+a flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so
+that I could study them through my field glass. They were considerably
+larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast,
+with ringed or barred neck. Haught had assured me that birds of this
+description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in
+the United States. I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks
+that darkened the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.
+
+Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful
+as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of
+clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.
+
+The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was
+high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found
+Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to
+come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story.
+Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had
+seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day.
+Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to
+George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate
+any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown
+bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said:
+"Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."
+
+One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside
+us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding
+up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got
+his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with
+eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up
+thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of
+his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes
+an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around
+under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with
+him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin'
+back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side
+high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the
+bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I
+climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the
+bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across
+an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin'
+out of the brush--a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He
+was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear
+began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle
+on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us
+stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide
+was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet
+high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big
+cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an
+hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We
+heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I
+worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept
+callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He
+sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was
+smokin' shells up on the rim?"
+
+When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we
+put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a
+silvertip."
+
+How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day
+had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions.
+I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had
+many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his
+dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"
+
+After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The
+blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the
+smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as
+usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me
+where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame
+to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay
+scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in
+such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt
+at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.
+
+Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my
+experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped
+my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own
+adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the
+Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted
+to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength
+he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.
+
+One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His
+employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their
+home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his
+anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat,
+and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the
+heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money
+matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without
+assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty
+frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any
+means a small or frail girl--rather the contrary--but she appeared
+diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long
+absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he
+gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died.
+In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.
+
+Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a
+scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set
+in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway.
+Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the
+ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young
+men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates,
+schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One
+of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the
+other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the
+midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill,
+and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship
+supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of
+solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that
+contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the
+living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his
+life afterward was he seen to smile.
+
+These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch.
+How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I
+heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the
+waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?
+
+Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his
+own--a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took
+to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed
+deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange
+simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth
+a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.
+
+Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the evening
+happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long chase after a
+bear and became separated. Bill was new at the game, and he was a
+peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking to himself! Haught finally
+rode to the edge of a ridge and espied Bill under a pine in which the
+hounds had treed a bear. Bill did not hear Haught's approach, and on the
+moment he was stalking round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung
+to a branch about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more
+full-grown bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill
+had not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill was
+yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to assassinate you.
+Chased me about a hundred miles--! An' thought you'd fool me, didn't
+you? Why, I've treed more bears than you ever saw--! You needn't look at
+me like thet, 'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you
+in a minnit an' skin your black har off, I am--"
+
+"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about the other
+two bears up in the top of the tree?"
+
+Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly astounded and
+tremendously elated to discover the other two bears. He yelled and acted
+as one demented. "Three black Jaspers! I've treed you all. An' I'm
+agoin' to assassinate you all!"
+
+"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that assassinatin' make
+up your mind not to cripple any of them. You've got to shoot straight,
+so they'll be dead when they fall. If they're only crippled, they'll
+kill the hounds."
+
+Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor
+marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with bears in
+trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him to dislodge the
+bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of the tree--apparently
+unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked them, and there arose a
+terrible uproar. Haught had to run down to save his dogs. Bill was going
+to shoot right into the melee, but Haught knocked the rifle up, and
+forbid him to use it. Then Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat
+off the hounds. Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally
+disposed of two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific
+yells he turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear
+tearing the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also.
+Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate them." Bill
+slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled. "By Golly, I'll
+skin 'em anyhow!"
+
+Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to Arizona from
+Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry offered to wager
+this dog was the best bear chaser in the country. The general impression
+Henry's hound gave was that he would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught
+took his brother Henry and some other men on a bear hunt. There were
+wagers made as to the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last
+Haught's pack struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast
+behind, Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no
+attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at Henry as
+if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll show them!" He
+loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying this race with his
+master. After a while the chase grew hotter. Then Henry's half-hound ran
+ahead a little way, and came back to look up wisely, as if to say: "Not
+time yet!" After a while, when the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's
+wonderful canine let out a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack
+and took the lead in the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear
+till he treed. Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.
+
+The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what Haught
+called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between brown and
+black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear with unusually
+large teeth and very long claws. So different from ordinary bears that
+it appeared another species. The blue bear could run like a greyhound,
+and keep it up all day and all night. Its power of endurance was
+incredible. In Haught's twenty years of hunting there he had seen a
+number of blue bears and had killed two. Haught chased one all day with
+young and fast hounds. He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the
+chase. Next day Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over
+into Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again.
+Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the blue bear
+padding along as lively as ever.
+
+I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a hundred
+bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often escaped by a
+breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not the most interesting
+to me. Haught had lived a singularly elemental life. He never knew what
+to tell me, because I did not know what to ask for, so I just waited for
+stories, experiences, woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come
+when they would. Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under
+any conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to
+camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his ears,
+look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been just where
+Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!
+
+When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up over the rim
+he used to get down in the cedar country, close to the desert. Here he
+heard of a pure black antelope that was the leader of a herd of ordinary
+color, which was a grayish white. The day came when Haught saw this
+black antelope. It was a very large, beautiful stag, the most noble and
+wild and sagacious animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to
+stalk it and kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got
+even a shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never
+heard of again.
+
+By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell, and now
+began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I envied his most
+remarkable imagination. His story had to do with hunting meat for a
+mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a rifle that he never aimed
+at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a habit of gun-fighters! Once the
+camp was out of meat, and also he was out of ammunition. Only one shell
+left! He came upon a herd of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were
+small deer and he wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around
+and waited until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to
+make sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks.
+Killed the whole five in one shot!
+
+We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and completely at
+Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal tales. He was hunting
+along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out
+to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One
+morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to
+paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was
+safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate,
+but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of
+the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out its
+head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the jaguar. First to
+give in was the cat. He let go and let out a squall. But the turtle
+started to crawl off, got going strong, and dragged the jaguar into the
+sea and drowned him. With naive earnestness Copple assured his mute
+listeners that he could show them the exact spot in Sonora where this
+happened.
+
+Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his immense
+loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really was no greater
+dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us want to see the mighty
+hunter have a fall.
+
+We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself. About
+sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We all heard him
+shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his revolver. Everybody
+said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys--maybe a dozen, if Copple got two in line!"
+And we were all glad to think so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did
+not return till dark. He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a
+remarkable hard luck story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys,
+and they were rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and
+running fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all.
+Too dark--brush--trees--running like deer. Copple had a dozen excuses.
+Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away. He shot twice. The turkey
+was a knot, and he had missed even that.
+
+Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how Copple
+had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!" the day I had
+missed so many. Then I said:
+
+"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I raised my
+voice high.
+
+"Turkey number one--Nix!... Turkey number two--missed, by Gosh!...
+Turkey number three--never touched him!... Turkey number four--No!...
+Turkey number five--_Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells_!... Turkey number
+six on the log--BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"
+
+We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter, Haught,
+rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with gold I went
+down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our horses. During the
+night our stock had been chased by a lion. We had all been awakened by
+their snorting and stampeding. We found our horses scattered, the burros
+gone, and Copple's mules still squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple
+assured me that this formation of his mules on guard was an infallible
+sign of lions prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten
+years and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the
+woods.
+
+We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty feet long,
+and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks showed in places, and
+on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in the mud, were lion tracks as
+large as the crown of my hat. How sight of them made me tingle all over!
+Here was absolute proof of the prowling of one of the great cats.
+
+Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular looking tracks,
+the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed.
+Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver
+had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but
+sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and
+wary. These dams had just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut
+for food. Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the
+water, and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside
+burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.
+
+Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could put up that
+lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged it to be a big
+one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C. preferred to keep after
+bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an off day an' chase thet lion.
+Had a burro killed here a couple of years ago."
+
+So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's Canyon lay
+to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it that day. Edd and
+Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple and I followed shortly
+afterward with the intention of descending mid-way, and then working
+along the ridge crests and promontories. The other boys remained on the
+rim to take up various stands as occasion called for.
+
+I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim. They were
+grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that made them so hard
+to travel. Right off, half way down, we started a herd of bucks. The
+noise they made sounded like cattle. We found tracks of half a dozen.
+"Lots of deer under the rim," declared Copple, his eyes gleaming.
+"They're feedin' on acorns. Here's where you'll get your big buck."
+After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close
+at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush.
+
+Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes
+toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had to cross gravel
+patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and at last, gaining the
+bench we went through the pine grove, out to a manzanita thicket, to a
+rocky point where the ledges were toppling and dangerous. The stand here
+afforded a magnificent view. We were now down in the thick of this
+sloped and canyoned and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof
+from it. The dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to
+listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black notch
+below us. We watched and listened. And presently across open patches we
+saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck following them. Thus were
+my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed. Copple yelled down to Edd that
+some of the hounds were running deer, but apparently Edd was too far
+away to hear.
+
+Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn, calling in
+the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint all of us above that
+he was going down around the point to drive the next canyon. Copple and
+I had to choose between climbing back to the rim or trying to cross the
+slopes and head the gorges, and ascend the huge ridge that separated
+Pyle's Canyon from the next canyon. I left the question to Copple, with
+the result that we stayed below.
+
+We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim we felt so
+far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in places and slippery
+in others, with deep cuts and patches of manzanita. No stranger was I to
+this beautiful treacherous Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike
+of it almost equal to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty,
+dry, and had begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were
+what continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive--that looked
+short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered miles in our
+detours and we had to travel fast because we knew Edd could round the
+base of the lower points in quick time.
+
+Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an enormous
+bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear trail. This
+track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as Haught says,"
+declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard the dogs an' got
+movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He was walkin'."
+
+I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling the feel of
+my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse the hunter in any
+man. We made sure how fresh this track was by observing twigs and sprigs
+of manzanita just broken. The wood was green, and wet with sap. Old
+Bruin had not escaped our eyes any too soon. We followed this bear
+trail, evidently one used for years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust
+a big, heavy, old grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough
+country! This fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail
+led gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and
+heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle, and rose
+from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side, rose to a bare,
+round point of gray rock, a landmark, a dome-shaped tower where the gods
+of that wild region might have kept their vigil.
+
+Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where it
+crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a canyon so deep
+and wild that it was purple. This saddle was really a remarkable
+place--a natural trail and outlet and escape for bears traveling from
+one canyon to another. Our bear tracks showed fresh, and we saw where
+they led down a steep, long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a
+dense black thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on
+each side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for a
+hunter to wait and watch.
+
+We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often
+it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the
+hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye
+Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed
+heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing
+bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds.
+Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet.
+After a while we heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We
+could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or
+more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could
+have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all
+matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks
+showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and
+weathered slides.
+
+Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up
+the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. "Let's go
+farther up," he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid
+stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us;
+to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious,
+wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes
+back and forth.
+
+Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite
+slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing
+up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a
+task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from
+an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the
+Haughts. Presently some one high on the rim answered with like yells.
+The chase was growing hotter.
+
+"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly. And I
+agreed with him.
+
+Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.
+
+"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple, with
+animation.
+
+"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.
+
+"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now look
+sharp!"
+
+I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another shot from
+above, farther off and from a different rifle, augmented our stirring
+expectation.
+
+Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down under and
+along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to keep up with him.
+We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard the spang of Haught's.30
+Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse voice bawled out: "He's goin' to
+the left--to the left!" That sent us right about face, to climbing,
+scrambling, running and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle,
+where we arrived breathless and eager.
+
+Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top of the
+bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon, climbing a
+little. Copple yelled with all his might: "Where's the bear?"
+
+"Bar everywhar!" pealed back Haught's stentorian voice. How the echoes
+clapped!
+
+Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout. "_Wehow_! I see
+him.... What a whopper!" He threw up his rifle:
+_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_.
+
+His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I strained my
+eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. "Where? Where?" I cried, wildly.
+
+"There!" shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the canyon. "He's
+goin' over the bench--above Edd.... Now he's out of sight. Watch just
+over Edd. He'll cross that bench, go round the head of the little
+canyon, an' come out on the other side, under the bare bluff.... Watch
+sharp-right by that big spruce with the dead top.... He's a grizzly an'
+as big as a horse".
+
+I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: "Ben, you saw game first
+to-day". Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry and grizzled, huge
+and round, moved out of the shadow under the spruce and turned to go
+along the edge in the open sunlight.
+
+"Oh! look at him!" I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran all over me
+and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear I could see him
+through the circle of my peep sight, but when I moved the bead of the
+front sight upon him it almost covered him up. The distance was
+far--more than a thousand yards--over half a mile--we calculated
+afterward. But I tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape
+and fired till my rifle was empty.
+
+Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. "You watch while I shoot," he said. "Tell
+me where I'm hittin'."
+
+Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I saw a puff
+of dust. "Low, Ben!" Spang rang his rifle. "High!" Again he shot, wide
+this time. He emptied his magazine. "Smoke him now!" he shouted,
+gleefully. "I'll watch while you shoot."
+
+"It's too far, Ben," I replied, as I jammed the last shell in the
+receiver.
+
+"No--no. It's only we don't hold right. Aim a little coarse," said
+Copple. "Gee, ain't he some bear! 'No scared tall' as the Jap says....
+He's one of the old sheep-killers. He'll weigh half a ton. Smoke him
+now!"
+
+My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most consumed with
+admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was he afraid. He walked
+along the rough places, trotted along the ledges, and here and there he
+halted to gaze below him. I waited for one of these halts, aimed a
+trifle high, and fired. The grizzly made a quick, angry movement and
+then jumped up on a ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.
+
+"You hit close that time," yelled Ben. "Hold the same way--a little
+coarser."
+
+My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my third,
+hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge, covered him
+with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and down the step he
+had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of brush. I shot into that. We
+heard my bullet crack the twigs. But it routed him out, and then my last
+shot hit far under him.
+
+Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the Haughts:
+"Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He's just above you--under that bluff."
+
+The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their power, but
+they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more shots, quick, yet
+deliberate, and he got through before I had reloaded; and as I began my
+third magazine Copple was so swift in reloading that his first shot
+mingled with my second. How we made the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed
+down from the rim. Somewhere from the purple depths below Nielsen's
+giant's voice rolled up. The Haughts opposite answered with their deep,
+hoarse yells. Old Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young
+hounds let out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian
+cry, high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot
+and screech at one and the same time.
+
+"Hurry, Ben," I said, as I finished my third set of five shots, the
+last shot of which was my best and knocked dirt in the face of the
+grizzly.
+
+Again he reared. This time he appeared to locate our direction. Above
+the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and echoes I imagined I heard the
+grizzly roar. He was now getting farther along the base of the bluff,
+and I saw that he would escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My
+fingers were all thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last
+chance had fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his
+magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking the
+base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap
+forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had
+reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The old grizzly slowed
+up, and looked across, and wagged his huge head.
+
+"My gun's on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still
+more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger. The grizzly gave a
+spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a
+ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed like a lassoed
+elephant.
+
+"Ben, you hit him!" I yelled, excitedly.
+
+"Only made him mad. He's not hurt.... See, he's up again.... Will you
+look at that!"
+
+The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge furry
+ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an open slide
+where he unrolled, and stretched into a run. Copple got two more shots
+before he was out of sight.
+
+"Gone!" ejaculated Copple. "An' we never fetched him!... He ain't hurt.
+Did you see him pile down an' roll off that slope?... Let's see. I got
+twenty-three shots at him. How many had you?"
+
+"I had fifteen."
+
+"Say, it was some fun, wasn't it--smokin' him along there? But we ought
+to have fetched the old sheep-killer.... Wonder what's happened to the
+other fellows."
+
+We looked about us. Not improbably the exciting moments had been few in
+number, yet they seemed long indeed. The Haughts had gotten to the top
+of the bluff, and were tearing through the brush toward the point Copple
+had designated. They reached it too late.
+
+"Where is he?" yelled Edd.
+
+"Gone!" boomed Copple. "Runnin' down the canyon. Call the dogs an' go
+down after him."
+
+When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of the pups
+and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them. Old Dan and old Tom were
+baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could be heard yelping
+somewhere else. Bear trails seemingly were abundant near our
+whereabouts. Presently the Haughts disappeared at the back of the bench
+where the old grizzly had gone down, and evidently they put the two
+hounds on his trail.
+
+"That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this ridge,"
+declared Copple. "We want to be there."
+
+So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side of the
+ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down along the slope.
+Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than riding after Edd and
+George. When soon we reached a manzanita thicket I could no longer keep
+Copple in sight. He was so powerful that he just crashed through, but I
+had to worm my way, and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a
+tight-rope performer. Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was
+the worst.
+
+In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the dome-topped end
+of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently working back up the
+canyon. There was nothing for us to do but return to our stand at the
+saddle. Copple hurried faster than ever. But I had begun to tire and I
+could not keep up with him. But as I had no wild cravings to meet that
+old grizzly face to face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did
+manage by desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight. When I reached
+our stand I was wet and exhausted. After the hot, stifling, dusty glare
+of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush, the cool
+shade was a welcome change.
+
+Somewhere all the hounds were baying. Not for some time could we locate
+the Haughts. Finally with the aid of my glass we discovered them perched
+high upon the bluff above where our grizzly had gone round. It appeared
+that Edd was pointing across the canyon and his father was manifesting a
+keen interest. We did not need the glass then to tell that they saw a
+bear. Both leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.
+Then they stood like statues.
+
+"I'll go down into the thicket," said Copple. "Maybe I can get a shot.
+An' anyway I want to see our grizzly's tracks." With that he started
+down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather than walked, and
+soon was out of my sight. After that I heard him crashing through
+thicket and brush. Soon this sound ceased. The hounds, too, had quit
+baying and the wind had lulled. Not a rustle of a leaf! All the hunters
+were likewise silent. I enjoyed a lonely hour there watching and
+listening, not however without apprehensions of a bear coming along.
+Certain I was that this canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been
+full of bears.
+
+At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite slope. The
+way he toiled along proved how rough was the going. I watched him
+through my glasses, and was again impressed with the strange difference
+between the semblance of distance and the reality. Every few steps
+Copple would halt to rest. He had to hold on to the brush and in the
+bare places where he could not reach a bush he had to dig his heels into
+the earth to keep from sliding down. In time he ascended to the place
+where our grizzly had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the
+Haughts, high above him. They answered, and soon disappeared on the far
+side of the bluff. Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of
+yellow rock. Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and then a
+wild clamor of the hounds. Some of the pack had been put on the trail of
+our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther away.
+
+This was too much for me. I decided to go down into the canyon.
+Forthwith I started. It was easy to go down! As a matter of fact it was
+hard not to slide down like a streak. That long, dark, narrow aisle
+between the spruces had no charm for me anyway. Suppose I should meet a
+bear coming up as I was sliding down! I sheered off and left the trail,
+and also Copple's tracks. This was a blunder. I came out into more open
+slope, but steeper, and harder to cling on. Ledges cropped out, cliffs
+and ravines obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to
+help me much. Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran
+down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful ones. It
+was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces. The lower down I
+got the smaller and more numerous the trees. I could see where they left
+off to the dense thicket that choked the lower part of the v-shaped
+canyon. And I was amazed at the size and density of that jungle of scrub
+oaks, maples and aspens. From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and
+gold and green, with bronze tinge.
+
+Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could see the
+dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little particles, the
+springing erect of bent grasses. In some places big sections of earth, a
+yard wide had slipped under the feet of this particular bear. He
+appeared to be working down. Right then I wanted to go up! But I could
+not climb out there. I had to go down. Soon I was under low-spreading,
+dense spruces, and I had to hold on desperately to keep from sliding.
+All the time naturally I kept a keen lookout for a bear. Every stone and
+tree trunk resembled a bear. I decided if I met a grizzly that I would
+not annoy him on that slope. I would say: "Nice bear, I won't hurt you!"
+Still the situation had some kind of charm. But to claim I was not
+frightened would not be strictly truthful. I slid over the trail of that
+bear into the trail of another one, and under the last big spruce on
+that part of the slope I found a hollow nest of pine needles and leaves,
+and if that bed was not still warm then my imagination lent considerable
+to the moment.
+
+Beyond this began the edge of the thicket. It was small pine at first,
+so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as dark as
+twilight. The ground was a slant of brown pine needles, so slippery,
+that if I could not have held on to trees and branches I never would
+have kept my feet. In this dark strip I had more than apprehensions.
+What a comfortable place to encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly
+bear! The manzanita thicket was preferable. But as Providence would have
+it I did not encounter one.
+
+Soon I worked or wormed out of the pines into the thicket of scrub oaks,
+maples and aspens. The change was welcome. Not only did the slope
+lengthen out, but the light changed from gloom to gold. There was half a
+foot of scarlet, gold, bronze, red and purple leaves on the ground, and
+every step I made I kicked acorns about to rustle and roll. Bear sign
+was everywhere, tracks and trails and beds and scratches. I kept going
+down, and the farther down I got the lighter it grew, and more
+approaching a level. One glade was strangely luminous and beautiful with
+a blending of gold and purple light made by the sun shining through the
+leaves overhead down upon the carpet of leaves on the ground. Then I
+came into a glade that reminded me of Kipling's moonlight dance of the
+wild elephants. Here the leaves and fern were rolled and matted flat,
+smooth as if done by a huge roller. Bears and bears had lolled and slept
+and played there. A little below this glade was a place, shady and cool,
+where a seep of water came from under a bank. It looked like a herd of
+cattle had stamped the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little
+ones no longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot
+long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This little
+spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of the bear pen in
+the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen for sight of bear
+trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a little too much. I thought
+it was too much because the place was lonely and dark and absolutely
+silent. I went on down to the gully that ran down the middle of the
+canyon. It was more open here. The sun got through, and there were some
+big pines.
+
+I could see the bluff that the Haughts had climbed so laboriously, and
+now I understood why they had been so slow. It was straight up, brush
+and jumbled rock, and two hundred feet over my head. Somewhere above
+that bluff was the bluff where our bear had run along.
+
+I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to deceive me, but
+I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed unwise for me to go on
+down the canyon, for if I did not meet the men I would find myself lost.
+As it was I would have my troubles climbing out.
+
+I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had come down,
+hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and not so vastly
+inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse! It was thicker,
+darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if possible, actually more bear
+sign. I had to pull myself up by holding to the trees and branches. I
+had to rest every few steps. I had to watch and listen all the time.
+Half-way up the trunks of the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent
+down-hill. They curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood
+upright. And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely
+almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course caused
+by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more interesting if
+I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter and wetter than I had
+been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with the labor and worry and
+exhaustion, my apprehensions had increased. They increased until I had
+to confess that I was scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the
+leaves somewhere below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a
+bear. I would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear
+coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score, so had
+Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had Haught. "Don't
+never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if you do he'll just
+roll up an' pile down on you!"
+
+I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to burst.
+Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding down I got
+desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would happen along to make an
+end to my misery.
+
+It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which constituted
+the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past three when finally
+I reached the saddle where we had shot at the grizzly. I rested as long
+as I dared. I had still a long way to go up that ridge to the rim, and
+how did I know whether or not I could surmount it.
+
+However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit. Then I
+started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the open, high above
+the canyons, and the vast basin still farther below, yet far indeed
+under the pine-fringed rim above. This climb was all over stone. The
+ridge was narrow-crested, yellow, splintered rock, with a few dwarf
+pines and spruces and an occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a
+sound that I did not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and
+the other hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an
+hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course
+that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high
+backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me.
+Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out. It would be a task
+equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to
+realize that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the
+task.
+
+Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the hour. This
+was one of my especial joys of the open--to be alone high on some
+promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery. The sun was still an hour
+from setting, and it had begun to soften, to grow intense, and more
+golden. There were clouds and lights that promised a magnificent sunset.
+
+So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone loose and
+watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down, to make the
+dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually start an avalanche
+that would roar down into the canyon.
+
+The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black ridges and
+canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great mountain ranges
+enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed promontories of the
+rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood out over the void. The colors
+of autumn gleamed under the cliffs, everywhere patches of gold and long
+slants of green and spots of scarlet and clefts of purple.
+
+The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had to step
+up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body. My rifle grew
+to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of lead around my waist.
+If I had been hot and wet below in the thicket I wondered what I grew on
+the last steps of this ridge. Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen
+pleasure. I did not analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be
+there.
+
+The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable, all grown
+over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by hauling myself
+up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges of rock there, and
+holding to the brush, at last, panting and spent, I reached the top.
+
+I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
+unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep and
+ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side of the
+ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around. There was
+George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own horse Stockings.
+
+Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and scarlet
+thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will seem, that the
+first object I clearly distinguished was a big black bear standing in
+an open aisle at the upper reach of the thicket close to the cliff. He
+shone black as shiny coal. He was looking down into the thicket, as if
+listening to the baying hound.
+
+I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement,
+and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his
+shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped,
+and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner
+of gray ledge.
+
+"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day--to get a
+chance like that--and miss!"
+
+All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I
+could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden
+ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of
+color--Coleridge's yellow lightning--and it extended to a bank of cloud
+that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of
+purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
+exquisitely flecked with gold.
+
+Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
+transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back
+to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located
+the spot. I just about had strength enough left to straddle him. And
+presently through the twilight shadows I caught a bright glimmer of our
+camp-fire. Supper was ready; Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the
+men were waiting for me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As
+I sat to a bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions
+seemed absolutely satisfying.
+
+George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard and seen
+a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he had overshot
+and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking a slide some four
+hundred yards down the canyon slope, and forgetting that he had a heavy
+close-range shell in his rifle instead of one of high trajectory, he had
+aimed accordingly, to undershoot half a foot and thus lose his
+opportunity. Nielsen had been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere
+he heard yells and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud
+rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd told of
+the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they had shot at the
+grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear had rolled around in his
+bed across the canyon. But the hounds got too tired to hold the trails
+late in the day. And lastly Edd said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the
+grizzly I could hear the bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure
+scared stiff for fear you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't
+scared. He said, 'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"
+
+When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's adventures
+my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was wanting on the moment
+except that my boy Romer was not there to hear.
+
+"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint
+satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from brush,
+surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we seen five bars.
+Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some of them big fellars,
+too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of this canyon. When Old Dan
+opened up first off I wanted Edd to climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin'
+an' we lost our chance. Fer pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush.
+My, but thet bar was rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild
+steer, an' he ran past us close--not a hundred yards. I never heard a
+heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an' thet
+bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the grizzly thet
+you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but Edd an' I lammed a
+couple after him jest for luck. One of the pups was nippin' his heels.
+Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet was all of thet. We plumb busted
+ourselves gettin' on top of the bench to head off your bar. Only we
+hadn't time. Then we worried along around to the top of thet higher
+bluff an' there I was so played-out I thought my day had come. We kept
+our eyes peeled, an' pretty soon I spied a big brown bar actin' queer in
+an open spot across the canyon. Edd seen him too, an' we argued about
+what thet bar was doin'. He lay in a small open place at the foot of a
+spruce. He wagged his head slow an' he made as if to roll over, an' he
+stretched his paws, an' acted shore queer. Edd said: 'Thet bar's
+crippled. He's been shot by one of the boys, an' he's tryin' to get up.'
+But I shore didn't exactly agree with Edd. So I was for watchin' him
+some more. He looked like a sick bar--raisin' his head so slow an'
+droppin' it so slow an' sort of twistin' his body. He looked like his
+back had been broke an' he was tryin' to get up, but somehow I couldn't
+believe thet. Then he lay still an' Edd swore he was dead. Shore I got
+almost to believin' thet myself, when he waked up. An' then the old
+scoundrel slid around lazy like a torn cat by the fire, and sort of
+rolled on his back an' stretched. Next he slapped at himself with his
+paws. If he wasn't sick he was shore actin' queer with thet canyon full
+of crackin' guns an' bayin' hounds an' yellin' men. I begun to get
+suspicious. Shore he must be a dyin' bear. So I said to Edd: 'Let's bast
+him a couple just fer luck.' Wal, when we shot up jumped thet sick bar
+quicker'n you could wink. An' he piled into the thicket while I was
+goin' down after another shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper
+never heard the racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed
+in thet sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like
+a kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore near
+bein' fooled. The old Jasper! We'll assassinate him fer thet!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+Five more long arduous days we put in chasing bears under the rim from
+Pyle's Canyon to Verde Canyon. In all we started over a dozen bears. But
+I was inclined to think that we chased the same bears over and over from
+one canyon to another. The boys got a good many long-range shots, which,
+however, apparently did no damage. But as for me, the harder and farther
+I tramped and the longer I watched and waited the less opportunity had I
+to shoot a bear.
+
+This circumstance weighed heavily upon the spirits of my comrades. They
+wore their boots out, as well as the feet of the hounds, trying to chase
+a bear somewhere near me. And wherever I stayed or went there was the
+place the bears avoided. Edd and Neilsen lost flesh in this daily toil.
+Haught had gloomy moments. But as for me the daily ten-or fifteen-mile
+grind up and down the steep craggy slopes had at last trained me back to
+my former vigorous condition, and I was happy. No one knew it, not even
+R.C., but the fact was I really did not care in the least whether I shot
+a bear or not. Bears were incidental to my hunting trip. I had not a
+little secret glee over the praise accorded me by Copple and Haught and
+Nielsen, who all thought that the way I persevered was remarkable. They
+would have broken their necks to get me a bear. At times R.C. when he
+was tired fell victim to discouragement and he would make some caustic
+remark: "I don't know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle
+because it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise
+up and swipe you one!"
+
+Takahashi passed from concern to grief over what he considered my bad
+luck: "My goodnish! No see bear to-day?... Maybe more better luck
+to-morrow." If I could have had some of Takahashi's luck I would
+scarcely have needed to leave camp. He borrowed Nielsen's 30-40 rifle
+and went hunting without ever having shot it. He rode the little
+buckskin mustang, that, remarkable to state, had not yet thrown him or
+kicked him. And on that occasion he led the mustang back to camp with a
+fine two-point buck on the saddle. "Camp need fresh meat," said the Jap,
+with his broad smile. "I go hunt. Ride along old road. Soon nice fat
+deer walk out from bush. Twenty steps away--maybe. I get off. I no want
+kill deer so close, so I walk on him. Deer he no scared. He jump off few
+steps--stick up his ears--look at horse all same like he thought him
+deer too. I no aim gun from shoulder. I just shoot. No good. Deer he
+run. I aim then--way front of him--shoot--deer he drop right down
+dead.... Aw, easy to get deer!"
+
+I would have given a great deal to have been able to describe Haught's
+face when the Jap finished his story of killing that deer. But such feat
+was beyond human ingenuity. "Wal," ejaculated the hunter, "in all my
+days raslin' round with fools packin' guns I never seen the likes of
+thet. No wonder the Japs licked the Russians!" This achievement of
+Takahashi's led me to suggest his hunting bear with us. "Aw sure--I kill
+bear too," he said. Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never
+made detours. He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple
+and Edd were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a
+wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man made,
+carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed as a goat,
+perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I took occasion to
+ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain climbing in Japan. "Aw
+sure. I have father own whole mountain more bigger here. I climb
+high--saw wood. Leetle boy so big." And he held his hand about a foot
+from the ground. Thus for me every day brought out some further
+interesting or humorous or remarkable feature pertaining to Takahashi.
+
+The next day added to the discouragement of my party. We drove Verde
+Canyon and ran the dogs into a nest of steel-traps. Big Foot was caught
+in one, and only the remarkable size and strength of his leg saved it
+from being broken. Nielsen found a poor, miserable, little fox in a
+trap, where it had been for days, and was nearly dead. Edd found a dead
+skunk in another. He had to call the hounds in. We returned to camp.
+That night was really the only cheerless one the men spent around the
+fire. They did not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a
+locality there could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched
+upon the countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. I let them
+all have their say. Finally Haught spoke up: "Wal, fellars, I'm
+figgerin' hard an' I reckon here's my stand. We jest naturally have to
+get Doc an' his brother a bear apiece. Shore I expected we'd get 'em a
+couple. Now, them traps we seen are all small. We didn't run across no
+bear traps. An' I reckon we can risk the dogs. We'll shore go back an'
+drive Verde Canyon. We can't do no worse than break a leg for a dog. I'd
+hate to see thet happen to Old Dan or Tom. But we'll take a chance."
+
+After that there fell a moment's silence. I could see from Edd's face
+what a serious predicament this was. Nothing was plainer than his
+fondness for the hounds. Finally he said: "Sure. We'll take a chance."
+Their devotion to my interest, their simple earnestness, warmed me to
+them. But not for all the bears under the rim would I have been
+wittingly to blame for Old Dan or Old Tom breaking a leg.
+
+"Men, I've got a better plan," I said. "We'll let the bears here rest
+for a spell. Supplies are about gone. Let's go back to Beaver Dam camp
+for a week or so. Rest up the hounds. Maybe we'll have a storm and a
+cold snap that will improve conditions. Then we'll come back here. I'll
+send Haught down to buy off the trappers. I'll pay them to spring their
+traps and let us have our hunt without risk of the hounds."
+
+Instantly the men brightened. The insurmountable obstacles seemed to
+melt away. Only Haught demurred a little at additional and unreasonable
+expense for me. But I cheered him over this hindrance, and the last part
+of that evening round the camp-fire was very pleasant.
+
+The following morning we broke camp, and all rode off, except Haught and
+his son George, who remained to hunt a strayed burro. "Reckon thet lion
+eat him. My best burro. He was the one your boy was always playin' with.
+I'm goin' to assassinate thet lion."
+
+On the way back to Beaver Dam camp I happened to be near Takahashi when
+he dismounted to shoot at a squirrel. Returning to get back in the
+saddle the Jap forgot to approach the mustang from the proper side.
+There was a scuffle between Takahashi and the mustang as to which of
+them should possess the bridle. The Jap lost this argument. Edd had to
+repair the broken bridle. I watched Takahashi and could see that he did
+not like the mustang any better than the mustang liked him. Soon the
+struggle for supremacy would take place between this ill assorted rider
+and horse. I rather felt inclined to favor the latter; nevertheless it
+was only fair to Takahashi to admit that his buckskin-colored mustang
+had some mean traits.
+
+In due time I arrived at our permanent camp, to be the last to get in.
+Lee and his father welcomed us as familiar faces in a strange land. As I
+dismounted I heard heavy thuds and cracks accompanied by fierce
+utterances in a foreign tongue. These sounds issued from the corral.
+
+"I'll bet the Jap got what was coming to him," declared Lee.
+
+We all ran toward the corral. A bunch of horses obstructed our view, and
+we could not see Takahashi until we ran round to the other side. The Jap
+had the buckskin mustang up in a corner and was vigorously whacking him
+with a huge pole. Not by any means was the mustang docile. Like a mule,
+he kicked. "Hey George," yelled Lee, "don't kill him! What's the
+matter?"
+
+Takahashi slammed the mustang one parting blow, which broke the club,
+and then he turned to us. We could see from dust and dirt on his person
+that he had lately been in close relation to the earth. Takahashi's face
+was pale except for a great red lump on his jaw. The Jap was terribly
+angry. He seemed hurt, too. With a shaking hand he pointed to the bruise
+on his jaw.
+
+"Look what he do!" exclaimed Takahashi. "He throw me off!... He kick me
+awful hard! I kill him sure next time."
+
+Lee and I managed to conceal our mirth until our irate cook had gotten
+out of hearing. "Look--what--he--do!" choked Lee, imitating Takahashi.
+Then Lee broke out and roared. I had to join him. I laughed till I
+cried. My family and friends severely criticise this primitive trait of
+mine, but I can not help it. Later I went to Takahashi and asked to
+examine his jaw, fearing it might have been broken. This fear of mine,
+however, was unfounded. Moreover the Jap had recovered from his pain and
+anger. "More better now," he said, with a grin. "Maybe my fault anyhow."
+
+Next day we rested, and the following morning was so fine and clear and
+frosty that we decided to go hunting. We rode east on the way to See
+Lake through beautiful deep forest.
+
+I saw a deer trotting away into the woods. I jumped off, jerked out my
+gun, and ran hard, hoping to see him in an opening. Lo! I jumped a herd
+of six more deer, some of them bucks. They plunged everywhere. I tried
+frantically to get my sights on one. All I could aim at was bobbing
+ears. I shot twice, and of course missed. R.C. shot four times, once at
+a running buck, and three at a small deer that he said was flying!
+
+Here Copple and Haught caught up with us. We went on, and turned off the
+road on the blazed trail to See Lake. It was pretty open forest, oaks
+and scattered pines, and a few spruce. The first park we came to was a
+flat grassy open, with places where deer licked the bare earth. Copple
+left several pounds of salt in these spots. R.C. and I went up to the
+upper end where he had seen deer before. No deer this day! But saw three
+turkeys, one an old gobbler. We lost sight of them.
+
+Then Copple and R.C. went one way and Haught and I another. We went
+clear to the rim, and then circled around, and eventually met R.C. and
+Copple. Together we started to return. Going down a little draw we found
+water, and R.C. saw where a rock had been splashed with water and was
+still wet. Then I saw a turkey track upon this rock. We slipped up the
+slope, with me in the lead. As I came out on top, I saw five big
+gobblers feeding. Strange how these game birds thrilled me! One saw me
+and started to run. Like a streak! Another edged away into pines. Then I
+espied one with his head and neck behind a tree and he was scratching
+away in the pine needles. I could not see much of him, but that little
+was not running, so I drew down upon him, tried to aim fine, and fired.
+He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and needles flying.
+Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted into a thicket.
+
+Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an ostrich in
+the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him. In vain!
+
+R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught and I went
+the other way. We could find no trace of ours. And we returned to our
+horses.
+
+Presently we heard shots. One--two--three--pause--then several more. And
+finally more, to a total number of fifteen. I could not stand that and I
+had to hurry back into the woods. I saw one old gobbler running wildly
+around as if lost, but I did not shoot at him because he seemed to be in
+line with the direction which R.C. and Copple had taken. I should have
+run after him until he went some other way.
+
+I could not find the hunters, and returned to our resting place, which
+they had reached ahead of me. They had a turkey each, gobblers about two
+years old Copple said.
+
+R.C. told an interesting story of how he had run in the direction the
+two turkeys had taken, and suddenly flushed thirty or forty more, some
+big old gobblers, but mostly young. They scattered and ran. He followed
+as fast as he could, shooting a few times. Copple could not keep up with
+him, but evidently had a few shots himself. R.C. chased most of the
+flock across several small canyons, till he came to a deep canyon. Here
+he hoped to make a killing when the turkeys ran up the far slope. But
+they flew across! And he heard them clucking over there. He crossed, and
+went on cautiously. Once he saw three turkey heads sticking above a log.
+Wise old gobblers! They protected their bodies while they watched for
+him. He tried to get sidewise to them but they ran off. Then he followed
+until once more he heard clucking.
+
+Here he sat down, just beyond the edge of a canyon, and began to call
+with his turkey wing. It thrilled him to hear his calls answered on all
+sides. Here was a wonderful opportunity. He realized that the turkeys
+were mostly young and scattered, and frightened, and wanted to come
+together. He kept calling, and as they neared him on all sides he felt
+something more than the zest of hunting. Suddenly Copple began to shoot.
+Spang! Spang! Spang! R.C. saw the dust fly under one turkey. He heard
+the bullet glance. The next shot killed a turkey. Then R.C. yelled that
+he was no turkey! Then of that scattering flock he managed to knock over
+one for himself.
+
+Copple had been deceived by the call of an amateur. That flattered R.C.,
+but he was keenly disappointed that Copple had spoiled the situation.
+
+During the day the blue sky was covered by thin flying clouds that
+gradually thickened and darkened. The wind grew keener and colder, and
+veered to the southwest. We all said storm. There was no sunset Darker
+clouds rolled up, obliterating the few stars.
+
+We went to bed. Long after that I heard the swell and roar and crash and
+lull of the wind in the pines, a sound I had learned to love in Buckskin
+Forest with Buffalo Jones. At last I fell asleep.
+
+Sometime in the night I awoke. A fine rain was pattering on the tent.
+It grew stronger. After a while I went to sleep again. Upon awakening I
+found that the storm had struck with a vengeance. It was dull gray
+daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with rain and snow.
+
+I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen the ground
+ropes, and found that it was nipping cold. My fingers ached. The storm
+increased, and then we fully appreciated the tent with stove. The rain
+roared on the tent roof, and all morning the wind increased, and the air
+grew colder. I hoped it would turn to snow.
+
+Soon indeed we were storm bound. On the third day the wind reached a
+very high velocity. The roar in the pines was stupendous. Many times I
+heard the dull crash of a falling tree. With the ground saturated by the
+copious rain, and the fury of the storm blast, a great many trees were
+felled. That night it rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now
+low, now vigorously. After morning snow began to fall. But it did not
+lay long. After a while it changed to sleet. At times the dark,
+lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and to show
+a patch of blue. These last however were soon obscured by the scudding
+gray pall. Every now and then a little shower of rain or sleet pattered
+on the tents. We looked for a clearing up.
+
+That night about eight o'clock the clouds vanished and stars shone. In
+the night the wind rose and roared. In the morning all was dark, cloudy,
+raw, cold. But the wind had died out, and there were spots of blue
+showing. These spots enlarged as the morning advanced, and about nine
+the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified the forest. "Bright sunny days
+will soon come again!"
+
+It was good to have hope and belief in that.
+
+All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good shape. Don
+lost considerable weight. He had never before been left with hobbled
+feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm of rain, sleet and snow.
+He had cut himself upon brush, and altogether had fared poorly. He
+showed plainly that he had been neglected. Don was the only horse I had
+ever known of that did not welcome the wilderness and companionship with
+his kind.
+
+We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and started back
+to Dude Creek. It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with a gale from the
+north, such a day as I could never have endured had I not become
+hardened. As it was I almost enjoyed wind and cold. What a
+transformation in the woods! The little lakes were all frozen over;
+pines, moss, grass were white with frost. The sear days had come. Not a
+leaf showed in the aspen and maple thickets. The scrub oaks were shaggy
+and ragged, gray as the rocks. From the rim the slopes looked steely and
+dark, thinned out, showing the rocks and slides.
+
+When we reached our old camp in Barber Shop Canyon we were all glad to
+see Haught's lost burro waiting for us there. Not a scratch showed on
+the shaggy lop-eared little beast. Haught for once unhobbled a burro and
+set it free without a parting kick. Nielsen too had observed this
+omission on Haught's part. Nielsen was a desert man and he knew burros.
+He said prospectors were inclined to show affection for burros by sundry
+cuffs and kicks. And Nielsen told me a story about Haught. It seemed the
+bear hunter was noted for that habit of kicking burros. Sometimes he was
+in fun and sometimes, when burros were obstinate, he was in earnest.
+Upon one occasion a big burro stayed away from camp quite a long
+time--long enough to incur Haught's displeasure. He needed the burro and
+could not find it, and all he could do was to hunt for it. Upon
+returning to camp there stood the big gray burro, lazy and fat, just as
+if he had been perfectly well behaved. Haught put a halter on the burro,
+using strong language the while, and then he proceeded to exercise his
+habit of kicking burros. He kicked this one until its fat belly gave
+forth sounds exceedingly like a bass drum. When Haught had ended his
+exercise he tied up the burro. Presently a man came running into
+Haught's camp. He appeared alarmed. He was wet and panting. Haught
+recognized him as a miner from a mine nearby. "Hey Haught," panted the
+miner, "hev you seen--your gray burro--thet big one--with white face?"
+
+"Shore, there he is," replied Haught. "Son of a gun jest rustled home."
+
+The miner appeared immensely relieved. He looked and looked at the gray
+burro as if to make sure it was there, in the solid flesh, a really
+tangible object. Then he said: "We was all afeared you'd kick the
+stuffin's out of him!... Not an hour ago he was over at the mine, an' he
+ate five sticks of dynamite! Five sticks! For Lord's sake handle him
+gently!"
+
+Haught turned pale and suddenly sat down. "Ahuh!" was all he said. But
+he had a strange hunted look. And not for a long time did he ever again
+kick a burro!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunting conditions at Dude Creek had changed greatly to our benefit. The
+trappers had pulled up stakes and gone to some other section of the
+country. There was not a hunting party within fifteen miles of our camp.
+Leaves and acorns were all down; trails were soft and easy to travel; no
+dust rose on the southern slopes; the days were cold and bright; in
+every pocket and ravine there was water for the dogs; from any stand we
+could see into the shaggy thickets where before all we could see was a
+blaze of color.
+
+In three days we drove Pyle's Canyon, Dude Creek, and the small
+adjoining canyons, chasing in all nine bears, none of which ran anywhere
+near R.C. or me. Old Dan gave out and had to rest every other day. So
+the gloom again began to settle thick over the hopes of my faithful
+friends. Long since, as in 1918, I had given up expectations of bagging
+a bear or a buck. For R.C., however, my hopes still held good. At least
+I did not give up for him. But he shared somewhat the feelings of the
+men. Still he worked harder than ever, abandoning the idea of waiting on
+one of the high stands, and took to the slopes under the rim where he
+toiled down and up all day long. It pleased me to learn, presently, that
+this activity, strenuous as it was, became a source of delight to him.
+How different such toil was from waiting and watching on the rim!
+
+On November first, a bitter cold morning, with ice in the bright air, we
+went back to Pyle's Canyon, and four of us went down with Edd and the
+hounds. We had several chases, and about the middle of the forenoon I
+found myself alone, making tracks for the saddle over-looking Bear
+Canyon. Along the south side of the slope, in the still air the sun was
+warm, but when I got up onto the saddle, in an exposed place, the wind
+soon chilled me through. I would keep my stand until I nearly froze,
+then I had to go around to the sunny sheltered side and warm up. The
+hounds finally got within hearing again, and eventually appeared to be
+in Bear Canyon, toward the mouth. I decided I ought to go round the
+ridge on the east side and see if I could hear better. Accordingly I set
+off, and the hard going over the sunny slope was just what I needed.
+When I reached the end of the ridge, under the great dome, I heard the
+hounds below me, somewhat to my left. Running and plowing down through
+the brush I gained the edge of the bluff, just in time to see some of
+the hounds passing on. They had run a bear through that thicket, and if
+I had been there sooner I would have been fortunate. But too late! I
+worked around the head of this canyon and across a wide promontory.
+Again I heard the hounds right under me. They came nearer, and soon I
+heard rolling rocks and cracking brush, which sounds I believed were
+made by a bear. After a while I espied Old Tom and Rock working up the
+canyon on a trail. Then I was sure I would get a shot. Presently,
+however, Old Tom left the trail and started back. Rock came on, climbed
+the ridge, and hearing me call he came to me. I went over to the place
+where he had climbed out and found an enormous bear track pointing in
+the direction the hounds had come. They had back-trailed him. Rock went
+back to join Old Tom. Some of the pack were baying at a great rate in
+the mouth of the next canyon. But an impassable cliff prevented me from
+working around to that point. So I had to address myself to the long
+steep climb upward. I had not gone far when I crossed the huge bear
+track that Rock and Old Tom had given up. This track was six inches wide
+and ten inches long. The bear that had made it had come down this very
+morning from over the ridge east of Bear Canyon. I trailed him up this
+ridge, over the steepest and roughest and wildest part of it, marveling
+at the enormous steps and jumps he made, and at the sagacity which
+caused him to choose this route instead of the saddle trail where I had
+waited so long. His track led up nearly to the rim and proved how he had
+climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was one of
+the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned that Sue and
+several more of the hounds had held a bear for some time in the box of
+the canyon just beyond where I had to give up. Edd and Nielsen were
+across this canyon, unable to go farther, and then yelled themselves
+hoarse, trying to call some of us. I asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure
+did," replied Edd. "One of them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to
+laugh, and told how near I had come to meeting a bear that was short,
+fat, and heavy: "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"
+
+That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more bitterly
+cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the smoke and my
+face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted myself so thoroughly
+that my clothes actually burned me as I lay down. But they heated the
+blankets and that made my bed snug and soon I was in the land of dreams.
+During the night I awoke. The wind had lulled. The canopy above was
+clear, cold, starry, beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed
+ten above zero. Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder,
+but in any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
+fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze stirring.
+
+That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
+atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised to be as
+exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would bag a bear!
+
+When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the purple basin,
+flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the slumberous shadows. What
+a glorious wilderness to greet the eye at sunrise! I suffered a pang to
+realize what men missed--what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.
+
+We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second canyon
+east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi followed to hug the
+lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George held to the rim to ride east
+in case the hounds chased a bear that way. And R.C. and I were to try to
+climb out and down a thin rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught
+knew, no one had ever been on.
+
+Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and rugged
+backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out and down--a
+very narrow knife-edge extended promontory, green with cedar and pine,
+yellow and gray with its crags and rocks. A craggy point comparable to
+some of those in the Grand Canyon! We had to study a way to get across
+the first deep fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest
+and climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little
+time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end in an
+hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle slopes we had to
+run across, for light quick steps were the only means of safe travel.
+And that was not safe! When we surmounted to the crest we found a jumble
+of weathered rocks ready to slide down on either side. Slabs, pyramids,
+columns, shale, rocks of all shapes except round, lay toppling along the
+heaved ridge. It seemed the whole ridge was ready to thunder down into
+the abyss. Half a mile down and out from the rim we felt lost, marooned.
+But there was something splendidly thrilling in our conquest of that
+narrow upflung edge of mountain. Twice R.C. thought we would have to
+abandon further progress, but I found ways to go on. How lonely and wild
+out there! No foot save an Indian's had ever trod those gray rocks or
+brown mats of pine needles.
+
+Before we reached the dip or saddle where R.C. was to make his stand the
+hounds opened up far below. The morning was perfectly still, an unusual
+occurrence there along the rim. What wild music! Then Edd's horn pealed
+out, ringing melody, a long blast keen and clear, telling us above that
+he had started a bear. That made us hurry. We arrived at the head of an
+incline leading down to R.C.'s stand. As luck would have it the place
+was ideal for a bear, but risky for a hunter. A bear could come four
+ways without being seen until he was close enough to kill a man. We
+hurried on. At the saddle there was a broad bear trail with several
+other trails leading into it. Suddenly R.C. halted me with a warning
+finger. "Listen!"
+
+I heard a faint clear rifle shot. Then another, and a fainter yell. We
+stood there and counted eleven more shots. Then the bay of the hounds
+seemed to grow closer. We had little time to pick and choose stands. I
+had yet to reach the end of the ridge--a task requiring seven-league
+boots. But I took time to choose the best possible stand for R.C. and
+that was one where a bear approaching from only the east along under the
+ridge could surprise him. In bad places like this we always tried to
+have our minds made up what to do and where to get in case of being
+charged by a wounded grizzly. In this instance there was not a rock or a
+tree near at hand. "R.C. you'll have to stand your ground and kill him,
+that's all," I declared, grimly. "But it's quiet. You can hear a bear
+coming. If you do hear one--wait--and make sure your first shot lets him
+down."
+
+"Don't worry. I could hear a squirrel coming over this ground," replied
+R.C.
+
+Then I went on, not exactly at ease in mind, but stirred and thrilled to
+the keen charged atmosphere. I had to go around under the base of a
+rocky ledge, over rough ground. Presently I dropped into a bear trail,
+well trodden. I followed it to a corner of cliff where it went down.
+Then I kept on over loose rock and bare earth washed deep in ruts. I had
+to leap these. Perhaps in ten minutes I had traveled a quarter of a mile
+or less. Then _spang_! R.C.'s rifle-shot halted me. So clear and sharp,
+so close, so startling! I was thrilled, delighted--he had gotten a
+shot. I wanted to yell my pleasure. My blood warmed and my nerves
+tingled. Swiftly my thoughts ran--bad luck was nothing--a man had only
+to stick at a thing--what a fine, sharp, wonderful day for adventure!
+How the hounds bayed! Had R.C. sighted a bear somewhere below? Suddenly
+the still air split--_spang_! R.C.'s second shot gave me a shock. My
+breast contracted. I started back. "Suppose it was a grizzly--on that
+bad side!" I muttered. _Spang_!... I began to run. A great sweeping wave
+of emotion charged over me, swelling all my veins to the bursting point.
+_Spang_! My heart came to my throat. Leaping the ruts, bounding like a
+sheep from rock to rock, I covered my back tracks. All inside me seemed
+to flutter, yet I felt cold and hard--a sickening sense of reproach that
+I had left my brother in a bad position. _Spang_! His fifth and last
+shot followed swiftly after the fourth--too swift to be accurate. So
+hurriedly a man would act in close quarters. R.C. now had an empty
+rifle!... Like a flash I crossed that slope leading to the rocks, and
+tore around the cliff at such speed that it was a wonder I did not pitch
+down and break my neck. How long--how terribly long I seemed in reaching
+the corner of cliff! Then I plunged to a halt with eyes darting
+everywhere.
+
+R.C. was not in sight. The steep curved neck of slope seemed all rocks,
+all trees, all brush. Then I heard a wild hoarse bawl and a loud
+crashing of brush. My gaze swerved to an open spot. A patch of manzanita
+seemed to blur round a big bear, standing up, fighting the branches,
+threshing and growling. But where was R.C.? Fearfully my gaze peered
+near and all around this wounded bear. "Hey there!" I yelled with all my
+might.
+
+R.C.'s answer was another _spang_. I heard the bullet hit the bear. It
+must have gone clear through him for I saw bits of fur and manzanita
+fly. The bear plunged out of the bushes--out of my sight. How he crashed
+the brush--rolled the rocks! I listened. Down and down he crashed. Then
+the sound changed somewhat. He was rolling. At last that thumping sound
+ceased, and after it the roll of rocks.
+
+"Are you--all right?" I shouted.
+
+Then, after a moment that made me breathless, I heard R.C. laugh, a
+little shakily. "Sure am.... Did you see him?"
+
+"Yes. I think he's your bear."
+
+"I'm afraid he's got away. The hounds took another bear down the canyon.
+What'll we do?"
+
+"Come on down," I said.
+
+Fifty yards or more down the slope we met. I showed him a great splotch
+of blood on a flat stone. "We'll find him not far down," I said. So we
+slid and crawled, and held to brush and rocks, following that bloody
+trail until we came to a ledge. From there I espied the bear lodged
+against a manzanita bush. He lay on his back, all four paws extended,
+and he was motionless. R.C. and I sat down right there on the ledge.
+
+"Looks pretty big--black and brown--mostly brown," I said. "I'm glad,
+old man, you stuck it out."
+
+"Big!..." exclaimed R.C. with that same peculiar little laugh. "He
+doesn't look big now. But up there he looked like a hill.... What do you
+think? He came up that very way you told me to look out for. And if I
+hadn't had ears he'd got right on me. As it was, when I heard little
+rolling stones, and then saw him, he was almost on a level with me. My
+nerve was all right. I knew I had him. And I made sure of my first shot.
+I knocked him flat. But he got up--let out an awful snarl--and plunged
+my way. I can't say I know he charged me. Only it was just the same as
+if he had!... I knocked him down again and this time he began to kick
+and jump down the slope. That was my best shot. Think I missed him the
+next three. You see I had time to get shaky. If he had kept coming at
+me--good night!... I had trouble loading. But when I got ready again I
+ran down and saw him in that bush. Wasn't far from him then. When he let
+out that bawl he saw me. I don't know much about bears, but I know he
+wanted to get at me. And I'm sure of what he'd have done.... I didn't
+miss my last shot."
+
+We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful indeed had
+been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been others not
+conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure in wild moments
+and regret the risks and spilled blood afterward?
+
+
+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
+books _Treasure Island_ and _Kidnapped_ are full of fight and the
+killing of men. _Robinson Crusoe_ is 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
+a _bola_, 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
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: (2) MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the void. How sweeping
+and grand the long sloping lines of ridges from the rim down! Away in
+the east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like uncertain mountains
+on the desert. South ranged the upheaved and wild Mazatzals. Everywhere
+beneath me, for leagues and leagues extended the timbered hills of
+green, the gray outcroppings of rocks, the red bluffs, the golden
+patches of grassy valleys, lost in the canyons. All these swept away in
+a vast billowy ocean of wilderness to become dim in the purple of
+distance. And the sun was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I
+took a last lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this
+wonderland of Arizona.
+
+[Illustration: BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL]
+
+[Illustration: THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF
+THE CACTUS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+DEATH VALLEY
+
+Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of desert-land
+in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea level, the most
+arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name from the earliest days
+of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of Mormons, numbering
+about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and
+make a short cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors
+perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that
+time became known as Death Valley.
+
+The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the world that
+the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of minerals; and since
+then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives there.
+To seek gold and to live in the lonely waste places of the earth have
+been and ever will be driving passions of men.
+
+My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On most of my
+trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate as to comrades or
+guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen were so singular that I
+think they will serve as an interesting introduction. Some years ago I
+received a letter, brief, clear and well-written, in which the writer
+stated that he had been a wanderer over the world, a sailor before the
+mast, and was now a prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone
+down into the desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the
+southwest, and knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my
+story _Desert Gold_ in which I told about a lost gold mine. And the
+point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as to where
+the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and give me half. His
+name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold
+mine existed only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon to
+see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting. To my surprise he
+came. He was a man of about thirty-five, of magnificent physique,
+weighing about one hundred and ninety, and he was so enormously broad
+across the shoulders that he did not look his five feet ten. He had a
+wonderful head, huge, round, solid, like a cannon-ball. And his bronzed
+face, his regular features, square firm jaw, and clear gray eyes,
+fearless and direct, were singularly attractive to me. Well educated,
+with a strange calm poise, and a cool courtesy, not common in Americans,
+he evidently was a man of good family, by his own choice a rolling stone
+and adventurer.
+
+Nielsen accompanied me on two trips into the wilderness of Arizona, on
+one of which he saved my life, and on the other he rescued all our party
+from a most uncomfortable and possibly hazardous situation--but these
+are tales I may tell elsewhere. In January 1919 Nielsen and I traveled
+around the desert of southern California from Palm Springs to Picacho,
+and in March we went to Death Valley.
+
+Nowadays a little railroad, the Tonapah and Tidewater Railroad, runs
+northward from the Santa Fe over the barren Mojave, and it passes within
+fifty miles of Death Valley.
+
+It was sunset when we arrived at Death Valley Junction--a weird, strange
+sunset in drooping curtains of transparent cloud, lighting up dark
+mountain ranges, some peaks of which were clear-cut and black against
+the sky, and others veiled in trailing storms, and still others white
+with snow. That night in the dingy little store I heard prospectors talk
+about float, which meant gold on the surface, and about high grade
+ores, zinc, copper, silver, lead, manganese, and about how borax was
+mined thirty years ago, and hauled out of Death Valley by teams of
+twenty mules. Next morning, while Nielsen packed the outfit, I visited
+the borax mill. It was the property of an English firm, and the work of
+hauling, grinding, roasting borax ore went on day and night. Inside it
+was as dusty and full of a powdery atmosphere as an old-fashioned flour
+mill. The ore was hauled by train from some twenty miles over toward the
+valley, and was dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the
+grinders. For an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid
+down into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced
+operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum out of
+the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five hundred sacks a
+day. The most significant thing he said was that men did not last long
+at such labor, and in the mines six months appeared to be the limit of
+human endurance. How soon I had enough of that choking air in the room
+where the borax was ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in
+huge round revolving furnaces--I found that intolerable. When I got out
+into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And that
+relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored, who were
+chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to the hard tasks of
+the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers of the borax mines and
+mills, like the stokers of ships, and coal-diggers, and blast-furnace
+hands--like thousands and millions of men, killed themselves outright or
+impaired their strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless
+others were found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with
+some phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
+it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
+wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these horny-handed
+toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining users of brawn and
+bone, these giants who breast the elements, who till the earth and
+handle iron, who fight the natural forces with their bodies.
+
+That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and greasewood
+slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill now only a smoky
+blot on the desert floor. When we reached the pass between the Black
+Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we left the road, and were soon lost
+to the works of man. How strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped
+away from me. I felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he
+stopped talking, except an occasional word to the mules.
+
+The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its name. It
+sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored strata tilted at
+an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red and
+yellow, rather dull, ran through the great drab-gray mass. This end of
+the range, an iron mountain, frowned down upon us with hard and
+formidable aspect. The peak was draped in streaky veils of rain from
+low-dropping clouds that appeared to have lodged there. All below lay
+clear and cold in the sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS]
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about three
+thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind was cold. The
+narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass deepened, widened, almost
+imperceptibly at first, and then gradually until its proportions were
+striking. It was a gully where the gravel washed down during rains, and
+where a scant vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
+struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature in
+sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I looked back,
+because as we could not see far ahead all the superb scene spread and
+towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to be a wide canyon, winding
+away from under the massive, impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The
+high side of this magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced
+west--a succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
+jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata running
+through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around the peaks.
+Shadows sailed along the slopes.
+
+[Illustration: DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED
+RIDGES TO THE STARK VALLEY OF DEATH]
+
+Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand. After
+about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not mind hard
+work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied
+my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat by depression or
+melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get tired while Nielsen kept
+on with his wonderful stride.
+
+"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained. "Slow up a
+little."
+
+Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a little
+tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere on the east
+slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were killed by
+mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at once for the
+nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one hundred and fifty
+miles. He could carry only so much of his outfit, and as some of it was
+valuable to him he discarded all his food except a few biscuits, and a
+canteen of water. Resting only a few hours, without sleep at all, he
+walked the hundred and fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed
+that Nielsen, by telling me such incidents of his own wild experience,
+inspired me to more endurance than I knew I possessed.
+
+As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to grow. It
+finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a valley running
+west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a long sweeping slant of
+earth, like the incline of a glacier, to rounded spurs. Half way up this
+slope, where the brown earth lightened there showed an outcropping of
+clay-amber and cream and cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and
+clear. This bright spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other
+clay slopes of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and
+colors indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
+hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were soon
+greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped, fantastic in
+shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak dominating all. The
+colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all stained by a descending band
+of crimson, as if a higher slope had been stabbed to let its life blood
+flow down. The softness, the richness and beauty of this texture of
+earth amazed and delighted my eyes.
+
+Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and rounded a
+sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held mute in our
+tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the left and the
+dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf,
+a hazy void, a vast stark valley that seemed streaked and ridged and
+canyoned, an abyss into which veils of rain were dropping and over which
+broken clouds hung, pierced by red and gold rays.
+
+Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at first
+sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen stood like a
+statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he strode on. I followed,
+and every second saw more and different aspects, that could not,
+however, change the first stunning impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I
+went on down the widening canyon, looking into that changing void. How
+full of color! It smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white
+washes brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
+white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze, sinister
+and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this valley, and over the
+western drooped gray veils of rain, like thinnest lacy clouds, through
+which gleams of the sun shone.
+
+Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and at last
+checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with commanding and
+magnificent view. As I did not attempt the impossible--to write down
+thoughts and sensations--afterward I could remember only a few. How
+desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of the
+earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little day seemed so
+easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to set and the
+storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene darkened, changed every
+moment, brightened, grew full of luminous red light and then streaked by
+golden gleams. The tips of the Panamint Mountains came out silver above
+the purple clouds. At sunset the moment was glorious--dark, forbidding,
+dim, weird, dismal, yet still tinged with gold. Not like any other
+scene! Dante's Inferno! Valley of Shadows! Canyon of Purple Veils!
+
+When the sun had set and all that upheaved and furrowed world of rock
+had received a mantle of gray, and a slumberous sulphurous ruddy haze
+slowly darkened to purple and black, then I realized more fully that I
+was looking down into Death Valley.
+
+Twilight was stealing down when I caught up with Nielsen. He had
+selected for our camp a protected nook near where the canyon floor bore
+some patches of sage, the stalks and roots of which would serve for
+firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain, pitched our little
+tent and made our bed all in short order. But it was dark long before
+we had supper. During the meal we talked a little, but afterward, when
+the chores were done, and the mules had become quiet, and the strange
+thick silence had settled down upon us, we did not talk at all.
+
+The night was black, with sky mostly obscured by clouds. A pale haze
+marked the west where the after glow had faded; in the south one radiant
+star crowned a mountain peak. I strolled away in the darkness and sat
+down upon a stone. How intense the silence! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like,
+dreaming, waiting, a silence of ages, burdened with the history of the
+past, awful! I strained my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or
+drop of weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This
+silence had something terrifying in it, making me a man alone on the
+earth. The great spaces, the wild places as they had been millions of
+years before! I seemed to divine how through them man might develop from
+savage to a god, and how alas! he might go back again.
+
+When I returned to camp Nielsen had gone to bed and the fire had burned
+low. I threw on some branches of sage. The fire blazed up. But it seemed
+different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no glow, no sparkle! Perhaps
+it was owing to scant and poor wood. Still I thought it was owing as
+much to the place. The sadness, the loneliness, the desolateness of this
+place weighed upon the camp-fire the same as it did upon my heart.
+
+We got up at five-thirty. At dawn the sky was a cold leaden gray, with a
+dull gold and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager and nipping, blew up
+the canyon. At six o'clock the sky brightened somewhat and the day did
+not promise so threatening.
+
+An hour later we broke camp. Traveling in the early morning was
+pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon, arriving at
+Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest. This stream of warm
+water flowed down from a gully that headed up in the Funeral Mountains.
+It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat acrid and soapy. A green thicket
+of brush was indeed welcome to the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse
+kind of grass, and arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named
+bore a pink fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite
+fragrant. Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by
+several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk. They all
+appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace Creek we came upon
+a spring of poison water. It was clear, sparkling, with a greenish cast,
+and it deposited a white crust on the margins. Nielsen, kicking around
+in the sand, unearthed a skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not
+so very old. Some thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that
+deceiving spring. The gruesome and the beautiful, the tragic and the
+sublime, go hand in hand down the naked shingle of this desolate desert.
+
+While tramping around in the neighborhood of Furnace Creek I happened
+upon an old almost obliterated trail. It led toward the ridges of clay,
+and when I had climbed it a little ways I began to get an impression
+that the slopes on the other side must run down into a basin or canyon.
+So I climbed to the top.
+
+The magnificent scenes of desert and mountain, like the splendid things
+of life, must be climbed for. In this instance I was suddenly and
+stunningly confronted by a yellow gulf of cone-shaped and fan-shaped
+ridges, all bare crinkly clay, of gold, of amber, of pink, of bronze, of
+cream, all tapering down to round-knobbed lower ridges, bleak and
+barren, yet wonderfully beautiful in their stark purity of denudation;
+until at last far down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and
+blue and ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams--the
+Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red slope,
+merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint Range, and here
+line on line, and bulge on bulge rose the bold benches, and on up the
+unscalable outcroppings of rock, like colossal ribs of the earth, on and
+up the steep slopes to where their density of blue black color began to
+thin out with streaks of white, and thence upward to the last noble
+height, where the cold pure snow gleamed against the sky.
+
+I descended into this yellow maze, this world of gullies and ridges
+where I found it difficult to keep from getting lost. I did lose my
+bearings, but as my boots made deep imprints in the soft clay I knew it
+would be easy to back-track my trail. After a while this labyrinthine
+series of channels and dunes opened into a wide space enclosed on three
+sides by denuded slopes, mostly yellow. These slopes were smooth,
+graceful, symmetrical, with tiny tracery of erosion, and each appeared
+to retain its own color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were
+always dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic
+region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled on the
+opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue, and of a
+thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the golds and
+russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its slopes were
+changing colors--a dark beautiful mouse color on one side and a strange
+pearly cream on the other. Between these great corners of the curve
+climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope and amber, to meet wonderful veins
+of green--green as the sea in sunlight--and tracery of white--and on the
+bold face of this amphitheater, high up, stood out a zigzag belt of dull
+red, the stain of which had run down to tinge the other hues. Above all
+this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast of the mountain,
+growing darker with earthy browns, up to the gray old rock ramparts.
+
+This place affected me so strangely, so irresistibly that I remained
+there a long time. Something terrible had happened there to men. I felt
+that. Something tragic was going on right then--the wearing down, the
+devastation of the old earth. How plainly that could be seen!
+Geologically it was more remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it
+was the appalling meaning, the absolutely indescribable beauty that
+overcame me. I thought of those who had been inspiration to me in my
+work, and I suffered a pang that they could not be there to see and feel
+with me.
+
+On my way out of this amphitheater a hard wind swooped down over the
+slopes, tearing up the colored dust in sheets and clouds. It seemed to
+me each gully had its mystic pall of color. I lost no time climbing out.
+What a hot choking ordeal! But I never would have missed it even had I
+known I would get lost. Looking down again the scene was vastly changed.
+A smoky weird murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through
+the shifting pall of dust!
+
+In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere growing
+warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at dusk. We followed
+the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under some cottonwood trees,
+on the west slope of the valley.
+
+The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and slept with
+very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away. I was up at
+five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A flare of pale
+gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the sunrise. The tips of
+the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose colored, and below them the
+slopes were red. The bulk of the range showed dark. All these features
+gradually brightened until the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The
+wind began to blow again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling
+leaves, and green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.
+
+Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and some dark
+velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the spreading of Furnace
+Creek over the valley slope. A man lived there, and raised this alfalfa
+for the mules of the borax miners. He lived there alone and his was
+indeed a lonely, wonderful, and terrible life. At this season a few
+Shoshone Indians were camped near, helping him in his labors. This lone
+rancher's name was Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a
+Denton, hunter and guide, whom I had met in Lower California.
+
+[Illustration: DESERT GRAVES]
+
+[Illustration: THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with difficulty, but
+the content of his speech made up for its brevity. He told us about the
+wanderers and prospectors he had rescued from death by starvation and
+thirst; he told us about the terrific noonday heat of summer; and about
+the incredible and horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the
+valley. With the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at
+midnight, below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore
+down upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
+many summers there. As for white women--Death Valley was fatal to them.
+The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains. Denton said heat
+affected men differently. Those who were meat eaters or alcohol
+drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and lungs were necessary to
+stand the heat and density of atmosphere below sea level. He told of a
+man who had visited his cabin, and had left early in the day,
+vigorous and strong. A few hours later he was found near the oasis
+unable to walk, crawling on his hands and knees, dragging a full canteen
+of water. He never knew what ailed him. It might have been heat, for the
+thermometer registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have
+been poison gas. Another man, young, of heavy and powerful build, lost
+seventy pounds weight in less than two days, and was nearly dead when
+found. The heat of Death Valley quickly dried up blood, tissue, bone.
+Denton told of a prospector who started out at dawn strong and rational,
+to return at sunset so crazy that he had to be tied to keep him out of
+the water. To have drunk his fill then would have killed him! He had to
+be fed water by spoonful. Another wanderer came staggering into the
+oasis, blind, with horrible face, and black swollen tongue protruding.
+He could not make a sound. He also had to be roped, as if he were a mad
+steer.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH
+VALLEY, THREE HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL]
+
+I met only one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He camped with
+us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular, with brown wrinkled
+face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be smiling to himself most of the
+time. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting.
+Once he nearly died of thirst, having gone from noon one day till next
+morning without water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal,
+but did not lose his senses. Finally the burros saved his life. This old
+fellow had been across Death Valley every month in the year. July was
+the worst. In that month crossing should not be attempted during the
+middle of the day.
+
+I made the acquaintance of the Shoshone Indians, or rather through
+Nielsen I met them. Nielsen had a kindly, friendly way with Indians.
+There were half a dozen families, living in squalid tents. The braves
+worked in the fields for Denton and the squaws kept to the shade with
+their numerous children. They appeared to be poor. Certainly they were a
+ragged unpicturesque group. Nielsen and I visited them, taking an
+armload of canned fruit, and boxes of sweet crackers, which they
+received with evident joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one
+of the tents. The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo
+were here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
+and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a sewing
+machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to live like
+Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another manifestation
+added to my long list of degeneration of the Indians by the whites! The
+tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I never before saw so many. In a
+corner I saw a naked Indian baby asleep on a goat skin, all his brown
+warm-tinted skin spotted black with flies.
+
+Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our camp. I was
+surprised to hear him use good English. He said he had been educated in
+a government school in California. From him I learned considerable about
+Death Valley. As he was about to depart, on the way to his labor in the
+fields, he put his hand in his ragged pocket and drew forth an old
+beaded hat band, and with calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a
+present of it. Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had
+been kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of the
+many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the story of
+the Indian--the truth, the spirit, the soul of his tragedy?
+
+Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a gravel
+ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat down while my
+companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I found a tiny flower, so
+tiny as to almost defy detection. The color resembled sage-gray and it
+had the fragrance of sage. Hard to find and wonderful to see--was its
+tiny blossom! The small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined
+and scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
+flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its unquenchable
+spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous reddening bulk of
+the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly over me.
+
+Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag
+flights--assuredly new and strange creatures to me.
+
+I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of the bleak
+lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains. Before I could
+compose myself to watch the valley I made the discovery that near me
+were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One had two stones at head and
+foot. Another had no mark at all. The one nearest me had for the head a
+flat piece of board, with lettering so effaced by weather that I could
+not decipher the inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about
+between the graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed
+to be one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these
+people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the windy
+desert slope!
+
+By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over Death
+Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints--long tapering notched
+mountains with all their rugged conformation showing. Above floated gold
+and gray and silver-edged clouds--below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy
+bronze haze, gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the
+pale desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be
+shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast scale and
+tremendous dimension! The clouds paled, turned rosy for a moment with
+the afterglow, then deepened into purple gloom. A sombre smoky sunset,
+as if this Death Valley was the gateway of hell, and its sinister shades
+were upflung from fire.
+
+The desert day was done and now the desert twilight descended. Twilight
+of hazy purple fell over the valley of shadows. The black bold lines of
+mountains ran across the sky and down into the valley and up on the
+other side. A buzzard sailed low in the foreground--fitting emblem of
+life in all that wilderness of suggested death. This fleeting hour was
+tranquil and sad. What little had it to do with the destiny of man!
+Death Valley was only a ragged rent of the old earth, from which men in
+their folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The
+air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled soul! I
+felt that I was myself here, far different from my habitual self. Why
+had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I want of the desert that was
+naked, red, sinister, sombre, forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark
+and dismal, the abode of silence and loneliness, the proof of death,
+decay, devastation and destruction, the majestic sublimity of
+desolation? The answer was that I sought the awful, the appalling and
+terrible because they harked me back to a primitive day where my blood
+and bones were bequeathed their heritage of the elements. That was the
+secret of the eternal fascination the desert exerted upon all men. It
+carried them back. It inhibited thought. It brought up the age-old
+sensations, so that I could feel, though I did not know it then, once
+again the all-satisfying state of the savage in nature.
+
+When I returned to camp night had fallen. The evening star stood high in
+the pale sky, all alone and difficult to see, yet the more beautiful for
+that. The night appeared to be warmer or perhaps it was because no wind
+blew. Nielsen got supper, and ate most of it, for I was not hungry. As I
+sat by the camp-fire a flock of little bats, the smallest I had ever
+seen, darted from the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They
+had no fear of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound.
+Later I heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have
+expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious trill
+it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas Jungle of
+Mexico. Every time I awakened that night, and it was often, I heard this
+trill. Once, too, sometime late, my listening ear caught faint mournful
+notes of a killdeer. How strange, and still sweeter than the trill! What
+a touch to the infinite silence and loneliness! A killdeer--bird of the
+swamps and marshes--what could he be doing in arid and barren Death
+Valley? Nature is mysterious and inscrutable.
+
+Next morning the marvel of nature was exemplified even more strikingly.
+Out on the hard gravel-strewn slope I found some more tiny flowers of a
+day. One was a white daisy, very frail and delicate on long thin stem
+with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals,
+a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red
+flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and
+tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very
+flat plants, smiling wanly up from the desolate earth.
+
+Nielsen and I made known to Denton our purpose to walk across the
+valley. He advised against it. Not that the heat was intense at this
+season, he explained, but there were other dangers, particularly the
+brittle salty crust of the sink-hole. Nevertheless we were not deterred
+from our purpose.
+
+So with plenty of water in canteens and a few biscuits in our pockets
+we set out. I saw the heat veils rising from the valley floor, at that
+point one hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea level. The heat
+lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told us that in summer the
+heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted leaves, burned trees to
+death as well as men. Prospectors watched for the leaden haze that
+thickened over the mountains, knowing then no man could dare the
+terrible sun. That day would be a hazed and glaring hell, leaden,
+copper, with sun blazing a sky of molten iron.
+
+A long sandy slope of mesquite extended down to the bare crinkly floor
+of the valley, and here the descent to a lower level was scarcely
+perceptible. The walking was bad. Little mounds in the salty crust made
+it hard to place a foot on the level. This crust appeared fairly strong.
+But when it rang hollow under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously.
+The color was a dirty gray and yellow. Far ahead I could see a dazzling
+white plain that looked like frost or a frozen river. The atmosphere was
+deceptive, making this plain seem far away and then close at hand.
+
+The excessively difficult walking and the thickness of the air tired me,
+so I plumped myself down to rest, and used my note-book as a means to
+conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was fatigued. Always I found
+this a very efficient excuse, and for that matter it was profitable for
+me. I have forgotten more than I have ever written.
+
+Rather overpowering, indeed, was it to sit on the floor of Death Valley,
+miles from the slopes that appeared so far away. It was flat, salty,
+alkali or borax ground, crusted and cracked. The glare hurt my eyes. I
+felt moist, hot, oppressed, in spite of a rather stiff wind. A dry odor
+pervaded the air, slightly like salty dust. Thin dust devils whirled on
+the bare flats. A valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the
+desert floor to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and
+beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass, broken by
+rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown glaciers. Seamed
+and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet surely wearing to ruin!
+From this point I could not see the snow on the peaks. The whole
+mountain range seemed an immense red barrier of beetling rock. The
+Funeral Range was farther away and therefore more impressive. Its effect
+was stupendous. Leagues of brown chocolate slopes, scarred by slashes of
+yellow and cream, and shadowed black by sailing clouds, led up to the
+magnificently peaked and jutted summits.
+
+Splendid as this was and reluctant as I felt to leave I soon joined
+Nielsen, and we proceeded onward. At last we reached the white winding
+plain, that had resembled a frozen river, and which from afar had looked
+so ghastly and stark. We found it to be a perfectly smooth stratum of
+salt glistening as if powdered. It was not solid, not stable. At
+pressure of a boot it shook like jelly. Under the white crust lay a
+yellow substance that was wet. Here appeared an obstacle we had not
+calculated upon. Nielsen ventured out on it and his feet sank in several
+inches. I did not like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice
+under a weight. Presently I ventured to take a few steps, and did not
+sink in so deeply or make such depression in the crust as Nielsen. We
+returned to the solid edge and deliberated. Nielsen said that by
+stepping quickly we could cross without any great risk, though it
+appeared reasonable that by standing still a person would sink into the
+substance.
+
+"Well, Nielsen, you go ahead," I said, with an attempt at lightness.
+"You weigh one hundred and ninety. If you go through I'll turn back!"
+
+Nielsen started with a laugh. The man courted peril. The bright face of
+danger must have been beautiful and alluring to him. I started after
+him--caught up with him--and stayed beside him. I could not have walked
+behind him over that strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have
+done so the whole adventure would have been meaningless to me.
+Nevertheless I was frightened. I felt the prickle of my skin, the
+stiffening of my hair, as well as the cold tingling thrills along my
+veins.
+
+This place was the lowest point of the valley, in that particular
+location, and must have been upwards of two hundred feet below sea
+level. The lowest spot, called the Sink Hole, lay some miles distant,
+and was the terminus of this river of salty white.
+
+We crossed it in safety. On the other side extended a long flat of
+upheaved crusts of salt and mud, full of holes and pitfalls, an
+exceedingly toilsome and painful place to travel, and for all we could
+tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to watch my feet and find
+surfaces to hold my steps. Eventually we crossed this broken field,
+reaching the edge of the gravel slope, where we were very glad indeed to
+rest.
+
+Denton had informed us that the distance was seven miles across the
+valley at the mouth of Furnace Creek. I had thought it seemed much less
+than that. But after I had toiled across it I was convinced that it was
+much more. It had taken us hours. How the time had sped! For this reason
+we did not tarry long on that side.
+
+Facing the sun we found the return trip more formidable. Hot indeed it
+was--hot enough for me to imagine how terrible Death Valley would be in
+July or August. On all sides the mountains stood up dim and obscure and
+distant in haze. The heat veils lifted in ripples, and any object not
+near at hand seemed illusive. Nielsen set a pace for me on this return
+trip. I was quicker and surer of foot than he, but he had more
+endurance. I lost strength while he kept his unimpaired. So often he had
+to wait for me. Once when I broke through the crust he happened to be
+close at hand and quickly hauled me out. I got one foot wet with some
+acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen quoted a
+prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken sharp crust of
+salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever experienced. Slopes of
+weathered rock that slip and slide are bad; cacti, and especially choya
+cacti, are worse: the jagged and corrugated surfaces of lava are still
+more hazardous and painful. But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with
+its salt crusts standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place
+for hard going that either Nielsen or I ever had encountered. I ruined
+my boots, skinned my shins, cut my hands. How those salt cuts stung! We
+crossed the upheaved plain, then the strip of white, and reached the
+crinkly floor of yellow salt. The last hour taxed my endurance almost to
+the limit. When we reached the edge of the sand and the beginning of the
+slope I was hotter and thirstier than I had ever been in my life. It
+pleased me to see Nielsen wringing wet and panting. He drank a quart of
+water apparently in one gulp. And it was significant that I took the
+longest and deepest drink of water that I had ever had.
+
+We reached camp at the end of this still hot summer day. Never had a
+camp seemed so welcome! What a wonderful thing it was to earn and
+appreciate and realize rest! The cottonwood leaves were rustling; bees
+were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in the shade, resting my
+burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled
+over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and
+after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds
+evidently were traveling north and had tarried at the oasis.
+
+Lying there I realized that I had come to love the silence, the
+loneliness, the serenity, even the tragedy of this valley of shadows.
+Death Valley was one place that could never be popular with men. It had
+been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen treasure, and for the
+wanderers of the wastelands--men who go forth to seek and to find and to
+face their souls. Perhaps most of them found death. But there was a
+death in life. Desert travelers learned the secret that men lived too
+much in the world--that in silence and loneliness and desolation there
+was something infinite, something hidden from the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12225 ***
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+  <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales of Lonely Trails, by
+  Zane Grey</title>
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12225 ***</div>
+
+  <div style="height: 8em;"></div><a name="2H_4_0001">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>TALES OF LONELY TRAILS</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    <b>BY ZANE GREY</b>
+  </center>
+
+  <center>
+    1922
+  </center><a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zgfront_m.jpg" width="448" height="720" alt=
+    "Zane Grey ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <hr>
+
+  <h2>Contents</h2>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001">CHAPTER I</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002">CHAPTER II</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003">CHAPTER III</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005">CHAPTER V</a></p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <h2>List of Illustrations</h2>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">Zane Grey</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">Z.G. After Two Months in the
+  Wilds</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0003">There Was Something Beyond
+  the White-peaked Ranges</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">Weird and Wonderful
+  Monuments in Monument Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">Sunset on the Desert</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">Cave of the Cliff
+  Dwellers</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007">This Immense Cave Would Hold
+  Trinity Church. In It Lies The Ruined Cliff Dwelling Called
+  Betatakin</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008">The Wind-worn Treacherous
+  Slopes on the Way To Nonnezoshe</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009">First Sight of the Great
+  Natural Bridge</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">Nonnezoshe</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">Pack Horses on a Sage Slope
+  in Colorado</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">The Grassy Uplands, With
+  Whiteley's Peak in The Distance</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">A Spruce-shaded,
+  Flower-skirted Lake</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">Looking Down Upon
+  Cloud-filled Valleys</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">Searching Burned-over Ranges
+  for Game</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">A Hunter's Cabin on a Frosty
+  Morning</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">The Troublesome Country,
+  Noted for Grizzly Bears</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">Under the Shadow of The
+  Flattop Mountains</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">White Aspen Tree, Showing
+  Marks of Bear Claws</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">A Black Bear Treed</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">Crossing the Colorado River
+  at The Bottom of The Grand Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">Where Rolls the
+  Colorado</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">Down the Shinumo Trail of
+  The North River</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">Camp at the Saddle</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">Buckskin Forest</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">Buffalo Jones With Sounder
+  and Ranger</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">Jones About to Lasso a
+  Mountain Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">Remains of a Deer Killed by
+  Lions</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">A Lion Tied</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">Fighting Weetahs (buffalo
+  Bulls) on Buffalo Jones's Desert Ranch</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">Hiding</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">A Drink of Cold Granite
+  Water Under the Rim</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0036">Which is the Piute?</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0037">Wild Horses Drinking on a
+  Promontory in the Grand Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0038">Jones and Emett Packing Lion
+  on Horse</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0039">Jones Climbing up to Lasso
+  Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0040">Two Lions in One
+  Tree</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0041">Jones, Emett, and the Navajo
+  With The Lions</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0042">Billy in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0043">Lion Licking
+  Snowball</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0044">Some of Our Menagerie in
+  Buckskin Forest</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0045">White Mustang Stallion With
+  his Bunch of Blacks In Snake Gulch</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0046">On the Way Home</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0047">Riding With a Navajo</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0048">The Author and his Men. From
+  Left to Right: Edd Haught; Nielsen; Haught, the Bear Hunter; Al
+  Doyle, Pioneer Arizona Guide; Lewis Pyle; Z.G.; George Haught;
+  Ben Copple; Lee Doyle.</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0049">Romer-boy on his Favorite
+  Steed</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0050">The Tonto Basin</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0051">Listening for the
+  Hounds</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0052">Zane Grey on Don
+  Carlos</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0053">Wild Turkey</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0054">Wild Turkeys</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0055">The White Quaking
+  Asps</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0056">Skunk, a Frequent and Rather
+  Dangerous Visitor in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0057">On the Rim</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0058">Where Elk, Deer, and Turkey
+  Drink</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0059">Where Bear Cross the Ridge
+  from One Canyon to Another</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0060">Climbing over the Tough
+  Manzanita</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0061">Bear in Sight Across
+  Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0062">Z.G.'s Cinnamon Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0063">R.C.'s Big Brown
+  Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0064">Another Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0065">Meat in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0067">Burros Packed for the
+  Trail</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0068">The Deadly Cholla, Most
+  Poisonous and Pain Inflicting Of The Cactus</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0069">The Colored Calico
+  Mountains</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0070">Down the Long Winding Wash
+  to Death Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0071">Desolation and Decay.
+  Looking Down over the Denuded Ridges to the Stark Valley of
+  Death</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0072">Desert Graves</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0073">The Ghastly Sweep of Death
+  Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0074">In the Center of The
+  Salt-incrusted Floor Of Death Valley, Three Hundred Feet Below
+  Sea Level</a></p>
+  <hr>
+  <a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>TALES OF LONELY TRAILS</h2><a name="2HCH0001">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    NONNEZOSHE
+  </center>
+
+  <p>John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and
+  trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe,
+  which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural
+  phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife,
+  who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years
+  succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide,
+  Al Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill
+  to take me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and
+  my party was the second one, not scientific, to make the trip.
+  Later this same year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and
+  after that the Kolb brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this
+  trip is one of the most beautiful in the West. It is a hard one
+  and not for everybody. There is no guide except Wetherill, who
+  knows how to get there. And after Doyle and I came out we
+  admitted that we would not care to try to return over our back
+  trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This is the only
+  place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find again
+  alone.</p>
+
+  <p>My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also
+  Monument Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi
+  with its great prehistoric cliff-dwellings.</p>
+
+  <p>The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red
+  flats and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored
+  and wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted
+  Desert of Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded
+  after every thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired
+  quicksand where I convinced myself we would have stuck forever
+  had it not been for Wetherill's Navajos.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and
+  bluffs, so that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too,
+  and the sand blew and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona
+  is never easy, and this grew harder and steeper. There was one
+  long slope of heavy sand that I made sure would prove too much
+  for Wetherill's pack mules. But they surmounted it apparently
+  less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a storm gathered ahead
+  of us to the north with a promise of cooling and sultry air.</p>
+
+  <p>At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged
+  red walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It
+  appeared endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds;
+  and by and bye began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had
+  overtaken us by the time we had reached the head of this canyon;
+  and my first sight of Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash
+  of lightning. It revealed a vast valley, a strange world of
+  colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptored,
+  standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the sheet
+  lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments silhouetted
+  black against that strange horizon the effect was marvelously
+  beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.</p><a name=
+  "image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg001_m.jpg" width="448" height="703" alt=
+    "Z. G. After Two Months in the Wilds ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft
+  it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another
+  aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those
+  monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once
+  have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had
+  eroded, leaving the gentle league-long slopes marked here and
+  there by upstanding pillars and columns of singular shape and
+  beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented sage-slopes under the
+  shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and across the valley,
+  and back again to the height of land. And when I had completed
+  the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and the spot
+  where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught Lucy
+  Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.</p><a name=
+  "image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg002_m.jpg" width="448" height="717" alt=
+    "There Was Something Beyond the White-peaked Ranges ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this
+  wonderful canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several
+  visits could make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I
+  had named it Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches,
+  all more or less the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to
+  tell the main canyon from one of its tributaries. The walls were
+  rugged and crumbling, of a red or yellow hue, upward of a
+  thousand feet in height, and indented by spruce-sided
+  notches.</p>
+
+  <p>There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most
+  accessible of which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more
+  picturesque spot. A huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted
+  stained wall held upon a projecting ledge or shelf the long line
+  of cliff-dwellings. These silent little stone houses with their
+  vacant black eye-like windows had strange power to make me
+  ponder, and then dream.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to
+  find the trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most
+  wonderful and beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places
+  there was no trail at all, and I encountered difficulties, but in
+  the end without much loss of time I entered the narrow rugged
+  entrance of the canyon I had named Surprise Valley. Sight of the
+  great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it might have thrilled
+  Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their imagined lives of
+  loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight of those lofty
+  walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed over me a
+  strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true. My
+  dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
+  I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red
+  walls where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and
+  I entered the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the
+  weird and sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets
+  and upon the grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment
+  free of the story I had conceived there. Something of awe and
+  sadness abided with me. I could not enter into the merry pranks
+  and investigations of my party. Surprise Valley seemed a part of
+  my past, my dreams, my very self. I left it, haunted by its
+  loneliness and silence and beauty, by the story it had given
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a
+  geyser of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old
+  Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the
+  Indian tale, the old chief resided there without complaining of
+  this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season
+  the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to
+  drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo
+  took his gun and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered
+  aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and
+  from that day never burst forth again.</p><a name="image-0004">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg003a_m.jpg" width="448" height="335" alt=
+    "Weird and Wonderful Monuments in Monument Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg003b_m.jpg" width="448" height="332" alt=
+    "Sunset on the Desert ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg004_m.jpg" width="751" height="448" alt=
+    "Cave of the Cliff Dwellers ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I
+  calculated that we were coming to the edge of the plateau. The
+  white bobbing pack-horses disappeared and then our extra
+  mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a man to use three mounts on
+  this trip. Then two of our Indians disappeared. But Wetherill
+  waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the Piute who first took
+  Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I thought we
+  had indeed reached the end of the world.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.</p>
+
+  <p>Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always
+  something so significant and impressive about an Indian when he
+  points anywhere. It is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over
+  the ranges, is a place I know, and it is far." The fact was that
+  I looked at the Piute's dark, inscrutable face before I looked
+  out into the void.</p>
+
+  <p>My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast
+  yellow and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on
+  a level with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of
+  that scene; and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the
+  realization that I dared to venture down into this wild and
+  upflung fastness. I kept looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter
+  circle of horizon till my judgment of distance was confounded and
+  my sense of proportion dwarfed one moment and magnified the
+  next.</p>
+
+  <p>Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped
+  all he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That
+  bright rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those
+  little lines of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand
+  canyons down there, and only a few have we been in. That long
+  purple ragged line is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. And
+  there, that blue fork in the red, that's where the San Juan comes
+  in. And there's Escalante Canyon."</p>
+
+  <p>I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited
+  spaces in the desert&mdash;to look with slow contracted eyes from
+  near to far.</p>
+
+  <p>The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long
+  slope, bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and
+  there a cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed
+  a green level. But I knew it was not level. This level was a
+  rolling plain, growing darker green, with lines of ravines and
+  thin, undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it
+  swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its waves in apparent darker
+  level. Round red rocks stood isolated. They resembled huge
+  grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were strangely
+  magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes, crags,
+  great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze to the
+  wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
+  thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue
+  clefts, each of which was a canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall,
+  dwarfing the lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in
+  frowning boldness, and because of its limitless deceiving
+  surfaces incomprehensible to the gaze of man. Away to the
+  eastward began a winding ragged blue line, looping back upon
+  itself, and then winding away again, growing wider and bluer.
+  This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line all its
+  length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined a
+  dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
+  Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
+  farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
+  revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther
+  westward it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas.
+  Here the canyon was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed,
+  it gaped, it lost itself and showed again in that chaos of a
+  million cliffs. And then it faded, a mere purple line, into
+  deceiving distance.</p>
+
+  <p>I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this.
+  The tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This
+  happened to be a place where so much of the desert could be seen
+  and the effect was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to
+  have no fitness here. Ruin was there and desolation and decay.
+  The meaning of the ages was flung at me. A man became nothing.
+  But when I gazed across that sublime and majestic wilderness, in
+  which the Grand Canyon was only a dim line, I strangely lost my
+  terror and something came to me across the shining spaces.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope,
+  and the rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the
+  base of the slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a
+  level bench a mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and
+  after that, rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like
+  huge swells of a monstrous sea. Indian paint brush vied in its
+  scarlet hue with the deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage.
+  Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch of cactus here and there
+  lent the green to that barren, and it was green only at a
+  distance.</p>
+
+  <p>Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The
+  wind rose and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is
+  seldom much talk on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and
+  everybody for himself. Besides, it is enough just to see; and
+  that country is conducive to silence. I looked back often, and
+  the farther out on the plain we rode the higher loomed the
+  plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead again, the lower
+  sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw pi&ntilde;on
+  patches under the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in
+  my face. We were already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock
+  squirrels scampering to their holes. Then the Indians disappeared
+  between two rounded corners of cliff.</p>
+
+  <p>I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with
+  cedars. It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we
+  dismounted to begin the ascent. It was smooth and hard, though
+  not slippery. There was not a crack. I did not see a broken piece
+  of stone. Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a
+  while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that,
+  always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around
+  me, of every shape that could be called a curve. There were
+  yellow domes far above and small red domes far below. Ridges ran
+  from one hill of rock to another. There were no abrupt breaks,
+  but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally
+  deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pi&ntilde;on. We
+  found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us
+  another wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped
+  depression between. Here footing began to be precarious for both
+  man and beast. Our mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to
+  see their slow, short, careful steps. They knew a great deal
+  better than we what the danger was. It has been such experiences
+  as this that have made me see in horses something besides beasts
+  of burden. In the ascent of the second slope it was necessary to
+  zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bulge
+  and depression.</p>
+
+  <p>Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most
+  dangerous slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of
+  the divide and many of the drops on this side were perpendicular
+  and too steep for us to see the bottom.</p><a name="image-0007">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg005_m.jpg" width="448" height="716" alt=
+    "This Immense Cave Would Hold Trinity Church. In It Lies The Ruined Cliff Dwelling Called Betatakin ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a
+  Mormon cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named
+  Chub. On the steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to
+  slide. His momentum jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill
+  and the Indian. But Joe Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a
+  Mormon he could not let go of anything he had. He began to slide
+  with the horse, holding back with all his might.</p><a name=
+  "image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg006_m.jpg" width="772" height="448" alt=
+    "The Wind-worn Treacherous Slopes on the Way To Nonnezoshe ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the
+  slope ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or
+  screaming in terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It
+  was not a place to have trouble with horses.</p>
+
+  <p>I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned
+  clear over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with
+  Joe's hold on the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick
+  as thought Joe ran sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and
+  yelled for help. I got to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas
+  ta Bega; and together we pulled Chub up out of danger. At first
+  we thought he had been choked to death. But he came to, and got
+  up, a bloody, skinned horse, but alive and safe. I have never
+  seen a more magnificent effort than Joe Lee's. Those fellows are
+  built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on those treacherous
+  slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the trip which is
+  not splendid.</p>
+
+  <p>We got over that bad place without further incident, and
+  presently came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a
+  narrow green split. This one had straight walls and wound away
+  out of sight. It was the head of a canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got
+  down into it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a
+  selection of the best levels, the best places to cross the brook,
+  the best places to climb, and it was a process of continual
+  repetition. There was no trail ahead of us, but we certainly left
+  one behind. And as Wetherill picked out the course and the
+  mustangs followed him I had all freedom to see and feel the
+  beauty, color, wildness and changing character of Nonnezoshe
+  Boco.</p>
+
+  <p>My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip
+  down this strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not
+  alike. This one did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They
+  began to lean and bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above
+  resembled a flowing blue river. Huge caverns had been hollowed
+  out by water or wind. And when the brook ran close under one of
+  these overhanging places the running water made a singular
+  indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang like a
+  hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a
+  frog&mdash;the only living creature I noted in the
+  canyon&mdash;was a weird and melancholy thing.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.</p>
+
+  <p>"How do you know?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones
+  are found above."</p>
+
+  <p>I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger
+  than the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite
+  beauty and fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I
+  had never seen.</p>
+
+  <p>"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.</p>
+
+  <p>That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the
+  summer canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the
+  green. It was impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them
+  under foot. And as the canyon deepened, and many little springs
+  added their tiny volume to the brook, every grassy bench was
+  dotted with lilies, like a green sky star-spangled. And this
+  increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the banks of purple
+  moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great mounds of yellow
+  violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-brush; the rocky
+  corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; and there were
+  ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled with little white
+  flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy air.</p>
+
+  <p>But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty,
+  the almost level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth,
+  the thickets and clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and
+  bulging walls&mdash;these features were gradually lost, and
+  Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare red and white stone steps. The
+  walls sheered away from one another, breaking into sections and
+  ledges, and rising higher and higher, and there began to be
+  manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the nature that had
+  created this old rent in the earth.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red
+  rock alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by
+  one, the mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped
+  and stumbled along over these loose, treacherous stones. The
+  hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one of
+  the mustangs failed and was left. And all the while the
+  dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character
+  changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon, leaning,
+  broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking passage,
+  with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
+  dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting
+  canyons. It jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations
+  of cavern and pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous
+  stone-shape left by avalanche or cataclysm.</p>
+
+  <p>Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of
+  boulders and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down
+  that canyon had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor,
+  in places, was bare red and white stone, polished, glistening,
+  slippery, affording treacherous foothold. And the time came when
+  Wetherill abandoned the stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and
+  cactus-covered ledges above.</p>
+
+  <p>The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined
+  amphitheater, and then apparently turned abruptly at right
+  angles. Sunset rimmed the walls.</p>
+
+  <p>I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and
+  lag. I wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the
+  Indians tired. It was with great pleasure that I observed the
+  giant Joe Lee plodding slowly along. And when I glanced behind at
+  my straggling party it was with both admiration for their
+  gameness and glee for their disheveled and weary appearance.
+  Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag myself onward
+  with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept on until I
+  heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped&mdash;was waiting for me.
+  The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view.
+  A mile beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and
+  spanning the canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of
+  the rainbow was a magnificent natural bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.</p>
+
+  <p>This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the
+  one grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first
+  give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a
+  disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived.</p>
+
+  <p>But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My
+  body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received
+  a singular and revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic
+  perception that this rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a
+  goal I had failed to reach in some former life, but had now
+  found. Here was a rainbow magnified even beyond dreams, a thing
+  not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a work of ages,
+  sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued arch
+  against the blue sky.</p><a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg007_m.jpg" width="448" height="676" alt=
+    "First Sight of the Great Natural Bridge ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg008_m.jpg" width="756" height="448" alt=
+    "Nonnezoshe ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle
+  the huge amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose
+  and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and
+  cactus hindered progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had
+  faded. All the walls turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed
+  dark.</p>
+
+  <p>We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we
+  reached it Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions.
+  He was saying his prayer to this great stone god. Then he began
+  to climb straight up the steep slope. Wetherill told me the
+  Indian would not pass under the arch.</p>
+
+  <p>When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame
+  mustangs twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to
+  fare for what scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was
+  even harder to find than grass. When our simple meal had been
+  eaten there was gloom gathering in the canyon and stars had begun
+  to blink in the pale strip of blue above the lofty walls. The
+  place was oppressive and we were mostly silent.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by
+  the bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was
+  invisible, but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock
+  upon which I composed myself, to watch, to feel.</p>
+
+  <p>A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been
+  continually looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never
+  seemed the same any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a
+  thing for immediate comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had
+  formed it&mdash;to reflect upon its meaning as to age and force
+  of nature. Yet it seemed that all I could do was to see. White
+  stars hung along the dark curved line. The rim of the arch
+  appeared to shine. The moon was up there somewhere. The far side
+  of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over its towering rim
+  showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the canyon
+  lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
+  The bridge turned to silver.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta
+  Bega. Dark, silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted,
+  with all that was spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber
+  and tranquil knowledge of his place there, he represented to me
+  that which a solitary figure of human life represents in a great
+  painting. Nonnezoshe needed life, wild life, life of its millions
+  of years&mdash;and here stood the dark and silent Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the
+  bridge. The moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired
+  blue above, and the canyon was black in shadow. At times a
+  current of wind, with all the strangeness of that strange country
+  in its moan, rushed through the great stone arch. At other times
+  there was silence such as I imagined might have dwelt deep in the
+  center of the earth. And again an owl hooted, and the sound was
+  nameless. It had a mocking echo. An echo of night, silence,
+  gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the
+  other sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to
+  see in them the meaning of life and the past&mdash;the
+  illimitable train of faces that had shone under the stars. There
+  was something nameless in that canyon, and whether or not it was
+  what the Indian embodied in the great Nonnezoshe, or the life of
+  the present, or the death of the ages, or the nature so
+  magnificently manifested in those silent, dreaming, waiting
+  walls&mdash;the truth was that there was a spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the
+  tip of the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to
+  shine. The sun had just risen high enough over some low break in
+  the wall to reach the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous
+  transformation, the gold and blue and rose and pink and purple
+  blended their hues, softly, mistily, cloudily, until once more
+  the arch was a rainbow.</p>
+
+  <p>I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth
+  this bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black
+  and mystic at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at
+  sunset a flaming curve limned against the heavens. When the race
+  of man had passed it would, perhaps, stand there still. It was
+  not for many eyes to see. The tourist, the leisurely traveler,
+  the comfort-loving motorist would never behold it. Only by toil,
+  sweat, endurance and pain could any man ever look at Nonnezoshe.
+  It seemed well to realize that the great things of life had to be
+  earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone, grand, silent,
+  beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a mute, reverent
+  farewell.</p><a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    COLORADO TRAILS
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the
+  motive were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the
+  reader who longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle
+  of fishing records that this is not that kind of story. But it
+  will be one for those who love horses and dogs, the long winding
+  dim trails, the wild flowers and the dark still woods, the
+  fragrance of spruce and the smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well
+  for those who love to angle in brown lakes or rushing brooks or
+  chase after the baying hounds or stalk the stag on his lonely
+  heights.</p><a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg009_m.jpg" width="740" height="448" alt=
+    "Pack Horses on a Sage Slope in Colorado ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road
+  and had a long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies
+  have a sweep, a limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many
+  miles we crossed no streams, and climbed and wound up barren
+  slopes. Once across the divide, however, we descended into a
+  country of black forests and green valleys. Yampa, a little
+  hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of the Bear
+  River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
+  would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very
+  wide and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It
+  seemed a deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the
+  guide, lived there. He assured me it was not quite as lively a
+  place as in the early days when it was a stage center for an old
+  and rich mining section. We stayed there at the one hotel for a
+  whole day, most of which I spent sitting on the board walk.
+  Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it seemed always
+  the same&mdash;deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old and
+  forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a
+  while.</p><a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg010_m.jpg" width="730" height="448" alt=
+    "The Grassy Uplands, With Whiteley's Peak in The Distance ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the
+  foothills, some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were
+  to meet us with saddle and pack horses. The ride was not
+  interesting until the Flattop Mountains began to loom, and we saw
+  the dark green slopes of spruce, rising to bare gray cliffs and
+  domes, spotted with white banks of snow. I felt the first cool
+  breath of mountain air, exhilarating and sweet. From that moment
+  I began to live.</p>
+
+  <p>We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so
+  rushed with his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let
+  alone gotten acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far
+  behind with our load of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the
+  foothills about noon. It appeared to be the gateway of a valley,
+  with aspen groves and ragged jack-pines on the slopes, and a
+  stream running down. Our driver called it the Stillwater. That
+  struck me as strange, for the stream was in a great hurry. R.C.
+  spied trout in it, and schools of darkish, mullet-like fish which
+  we were informed were grayling. We wished for our tackle then and
+  for time to fish.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He
+  did not resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look
+  as if he had walked right out of one of my romances of wild
+  riders. So I took a liking to him at once.</p>
+
+  <p>But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite
+  any delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important
+  part of our outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses
+  that were to carry us on such long rides was an anxious and
+  thrilling one. I have felt it many times, and it never grows any
+  weaker from experience. Many a scrubby lot of horses had turned
+  out well upon acquaintance, and some I had found hard to part
+  with at the end of trips. Up to that time, however, I had not
+  seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much concerned by the fact
+  that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty, ragged, maneless,
+  cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected, they were
+  bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them, and
+  I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any
+  one.</p>
+
+  <p>In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his
+  own mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals,
+  heavily laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face
+  and keen gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I
+  got the impression that he liked work.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let's organize," he said, briskly. "Have you picked the
+  horses you're goin' to ride?"</p>
+
+  <p>Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy
+  powerful horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble
+  head. He had escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at
+  least was one horse.</p>
+
+  <p>The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or
+  temporarily lame, and I had no choice, except to take the one it
+  would be kindest to ride.</p>
+
+  <p>"He ain't much like your Silvermane or Black Star," said
+  Teague, laughing.</p>
+
+  <p>"What do you know about them?" I asked, very much pleased at
+  this from him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I know all about them," he replied. "I'll have you the
+  best horse in this country in a few days. Fact is I've bought
+  him, an' he'll come with my cowboy, Vern.... Now, we're
+  organized. Let's move."</p><a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg011_m.jpg" width="448" height="680" alt=
+    "A Spruce-shaded, Flower-skirted Lake ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg012a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Looking Down Upon Cloud-filled Valleys ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg012b_m.jpg" width="448" height="334" alt=
+    "Searching Burned-over Ranges for Game ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which
+  towered the great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy,
+  and steep in places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little
+  breaks on the water gave evidence of feeding trout. We had
+  several miles of meadow, and then sheered off to the left up into
+  the timber. It was a spruce forest, very still and fragrant. We
+  climbed out up on a bench, and across a flat, up another bench,
+  out of the timber into the patches of snow. Here snow could be
+  felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw a fox, a badger, and
+  another furry creature, too illusive to name. One more climb
+  brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven thousand
+  feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was
+  splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark
+  and dim along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not
+  very wide at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a
+  green gulf of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here
+  again I got the suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour
+  to ride down to Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet
+  of water. The larger lake was farther down. It was big,
+  irregular, and bordered by spruce forests, and shadowed by the
+  lofty gray peaks.</p>
+
+  <p>The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm,
+  and mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It
+  was after sunset and I was too tired to have many
+  impressions.</p>
+
+  <p>Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep
+  quavering voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was
+  silent most of the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when
+  they spoke, for he was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to
+  discover that he was a good cook.</p>
+
+  <p>Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We
+  were too tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were
+  white and splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great
+  beacon lights. The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by
+  amphitheatric mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls
+  of rock. The night grew cold and very still. The bells on the
+  horses tinkled distantly. There was a soft murmur of falling
+  water. A lonesome coyote barked, and that thrilled me. Teague's
+  dogs answered this prowler, and some of them had voices to make a
+  hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had a roar like a
+  lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and I was
+  thinking about them when I fell asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and
+  nipping and frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise
+  gleamed on the tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.</p>
+
+  <p>The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however,
+  that I could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation
+  was close to ten thousand feet and the air at that height was
+  thin and rare. After each series of lusty strokes I had to rest.
+  R.C., who could handle an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat,
+  made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him,
+  and chuckled at his discomfiture.</p>
+
+  <p>After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up
+  fly rods, and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness
+  we had felt when we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The
+  lake glistened green in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the
+  foot of the magnificent black slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>The water was full of little floating particles that Teague
+  called wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like
+  eastern lakes during dog days. It did not look propitious for
+  fishing, but Teague reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the
+  head of White River. We tried the outlet first, but trout were
+  not rising there. Then we began wading and casting along a
+  shallow bar of the lake. Teague had instructed us to cast, then
+  drag the flies slowly across the surface of the water, in
+  imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and several
+  times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I had
+  strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout.
+  Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my
+  surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook
+  the fish.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right
+  over the ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave
+  him the most unaccountable fiendish pleasure.</p>
+
+  <p>"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful
+  fisherman to make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game
+  of the sea, which is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch
+  me cast!"</p>
+
+  <p>I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water
+  boiled, and he hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite
+  speechless with envy and admiration I watched him play them and
+  eventually beach them. They were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided
+  and marked with the red slash along their gills that gave them
+  their name. I did not catch any while wading, but from the bank I
+  spied one, and dropping a fly in front of his nose, I got him.
+  R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in weight, and then he
+  had a strike that broke his leader. He did not have another
+  leader, so we walked back to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the
+  forest. Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful
+  and very pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful
+  flower that is the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its
+  blue, Indian paint brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in
+  color from red to pink and from white to yellow.</p>
+
+  <p>My favorite of all wild flowers&mdash;the purple
+  asters&mdash;were there too, on tall nodding stems, with pale
+  faces held up to the light. The reflection of mountain and forest
+  in Trappers Lake was clear and beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great
+  show about beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last
+  very long. The sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge
+  under a pine. One of the blessings of outdoor life was that a man
+  could be like an Indian and do nothing. So from rest I passed to
+  dreams and from dreams to sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout.
+  The lake appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck
+  and we could not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again.
+  Here the current was swift. I found a place between two willow
+  banks where trout were breaking on the surface. It took a long
+  cast for me, but about every tenth attempt I would get a fly over
+  the right place and raise a fish. They were small, but that did
+  not detract from my gratification. The light on the water was
+  just right for me to see the trout rise, and that was a beautiful
+  sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had caught four when a
+  shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I found him
+  standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent double
+  and a long line out.</p>
+
+  <p>"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him&mdash;down there&mdash;in
+  that white water. See him flash red!... Go down there and land
+  him for me. Hurry! He's got all the line!"</p>
+
+  <p>I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream
+  was shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a
+  flashing gleam of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I
+  could not reach it without wading in. When I did this the trout
+  lunged out. He looked crimson and silver. I could have put my
+  fist in his mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation.
+  "There! He's got all the line."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.</p>
+
+  <p>He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his
+  fish. This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I
+  grasped the leader that the big trout would break it or pull
+  free. The same situation, with different kinds of fish, had
+  presented itself many times on my numberless fishing jaunts with
+  R.C. and they all crowded to my mind. Nevertheless I had no
+  choice. Plunging in to my knees I frantically reached for the
+  leader. The red trout made a surge. I missed him. R.C. yelled
+  that something would break. That was no news to me. Another
+  plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I essayed to
+  lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was tired
+  and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to
+  lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my
+  legs.</p>
+
+  <p>When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was
+  sitting on the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was
+  holding his broken leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went
+  into a rage! Blamed me for the loss of that big trout! Under such
+  circumstances it was always best to maintain silence and I did so
+  as long as I could. After his paroxysm had spent itself and he
+  had become somewhat near a rational being once more he asked
+  me:</p>
+
+  <p>"Was he big?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh&mdash;a whale of a trout!" I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Humph! Well, how big?"</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of
+  that trout. I made him out very much bigger than he actually
+  looked to me and I minutely described his beauty and wonderful
+  gaping mouth. R.C. groaned and that was my revenge.</p>
+
+  <p>We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape
+  acquaintance with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted
+  pack&mdash;four Airedales, one bloodhound and seven other hounds
+  of mixed breeds. There were also three pup hounds, white and
+  yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all pups, noisy and
+  mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied also to one
+  of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by some
+  estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of
+  him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with
+  that name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and
+  exceedingly funny. When he was approached he had a trick of
+  standing up, holding up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way,
+  with his head twisted in the most absurd manner. This was when he
+  was chained&mdash;otherwise he would have been climbing up on
+  anyone who gave him the chance. He was the most jealous dog I
+  ever saw. He could not be kept chained very long because he
+  always freed himself. At meal time he would slip noiselessly
+  behind some one and steal the first morsel he could snatch. Bill
+  was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of firewood.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then
+  saddled up to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and
+  down ridges of heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer
+  sign. Elk tracks appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we
+  left the trail to climb into heavy timber we began to look for
+  game. The forest was dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No
+  squirrels or birds or sign of life! We had a hard ride up and
+  down steep slopes. A feature was the open swaths made by
+  avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a path through the timber,
+  and the young shoots of spruce were springing up. I imagined the
+  roar made by that tremendous slide.</p>
+
+  <p>We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the
+  grass had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign
+  where the elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers
+  to get rid of the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes
+  made by an axe. The Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a
+  she-coyote that evidently had a den somewhere, for she barked
+  angrily at the dog and at us. Fox could not catch her. She led
+  him round in a circle, and we could not see her in the thick
+  brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note again.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with
+  wild asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The
+  patches of red and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere
+  we rode we were knee deep in flowers. At length we came out of
+  the heavy timber down upon Big Fish Lake. This lake was about
+  half a mile across, deep blue-green in color, with rocky shores.
+  Upon the opposite side were beaver mounds. We could see big trout
+  swimming round, but they would not rise to a fly. R.C. went out
+  in an old boat and paddled to the head of the lake and fished at
+  the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went around and up the
+  little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly through a
+  meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering banks.
+  At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds. It
+  was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as
+  cold as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several
+  big trout, and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed
+  him. Then in a swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I
+  saw a big trout lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I
+  hooked him. He was not active, but heavy and plunging, and he
+  bored in and out, and made short runs. I had not seen such
+  beautiful red colors in any fish. He made a fine fight, but at
+  last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat of about one and
+  three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green, and spotted
+  all over. That was the extent of my luck.</p>
+
+  <p>We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little
+  while to see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not.
+  A storm began to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great
+  gray clouds obscured the peaks, and at length the rain came. It
+  was cold and cutting. We sought the shelter of spruces for a
+  while, and waited. After an hour it cleared somewhat, and R.C.
+  caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all green and silver, with
+  only two slashes of red along under the gills. Then another storm
+  threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp the rain began
+  again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was raining hard
+  when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces were
+  dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes.
+  After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the
+  open places high up we could see a great green void of spruce,
+  and beyond, boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon.
+  We flushed a big blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at
+  length another big one.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of
+  scenting game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was
+  pressed down. Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump
+  of an elk protruding from behind some spruces. I beckoned for
+  R.C. and we both dismounted. Just then the elk rose and stalked
+  out. It was a magnificent bull with crowning lofty antlers. The
+  shoulders and neck appeared black. He raised his head, and
+  turning, trotted away with ease and grace for such a huge beast.
+  That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen before. We
+  were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with
+  exclamations.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the
+  lofty red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest
+  again, dim and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and
+  oppressive stillness. The forest primeval! When we rode out of
+  that into open slopes the afternoon was far advanced, and long
+  shadows lay across the distant ranges. When we reached camp,
+  supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet were exceedingly welcome.
+  I was tired.</p>
+
+  <p>Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched
+  our horses near Teague's old corral. Our intention was to hunt up
+  along the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We
+  waited, hoping the big black clouds would break. But they did
+  not. They rolled down with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and
+  a storm enveloped us. We sought shelter in a thick spruce. It
+  rained and hailed. By and bye the air grew bitterly cold, and
+  Teague suggested we give up, and ride back. So we did. The
+  mountains were dim and obscure through the gray gloom, and the
+  black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against the background.
+  The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and crashed in
+  magnificent bombardment across the heavens.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only
+  a few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the
+  weather promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the
+  mountains, first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we
+  decided to ride out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around
+  what they call the Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through
+  the spruces above Little Trappers Lake. And as we got near the
+  top it began to hail. Again the air grew cold. Once out on top I
+  found a wide expanse, green and white, level in places, but with
+  huge upheavals of ridge. There were flowers here at eleven
+  thousand feet. The view to the rear was impressive&mdash;a wide
+  up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of rocks, and patches
+  of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall, and the view to
+  the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling thick and
+  white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell into
+  the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet,
+  lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White
+  River Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope,
+  up to a bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range,
+  dark under the lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh
+  Rocky Mountain sheep tracks. A little later, going into a draw,
+  we crossed a snow-bank, solid as ice. We worked down into this
+  draw into the timber. It hailed, and rained some more, then
+  cleared. The warm sun felt good. Once down in the parks we began
+  to ride through a flower-garden. Every slope was beautiful in
+  gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks were luxuriant
+  with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the great
+  stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not see
+  one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and
+  miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length
+  we got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood
+  sear and ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with
+  fallen trees that we had difficulty in threading a way through
+  them. Patches of aspen grew on the hillside, still fresh and
+  green despite this frosty morning. Here we found a sego lily, one
+  of the most beautiful of flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian
+  paint brush. At the foot of this long burned slope we came to the
+  White River trail, and followed it up and around to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped
+  off into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then
+  paused to listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a
+  sound. It was a place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of
+  twigs, and presently heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We
+  penetrated half a mile into the spruce, pausing now and then to
+  listen. At length R.C. heard something. We stopped. After a
+  little I heard the ring of a horn on wood. It was thrilling. Then
+  came the crack of a hoof on stone, then the clatter of a loosened
+  rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer evaded us. We hunted
+  around till dark without farther sign of any game.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down
+  White River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw
+  tracks of five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we
+  climbed high up a burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen.
+  We climbed ridge after ridge, and at last got out of the burned
+  district into reaches of heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of
+  deer and elk tracks, we dismounted and left our horses. I went to
+  the left, and into some beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer
+  or elk, and many tracks. Returning to the horses, I led them into
+  a larger park, and climbed high into the open and watched. There
+  I saw some little squirrels about three inches long, and some
+  gray birds, very tame. I waited a long time before there was any
+  sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was the dog I saw first. I
+  whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted and rode on for
+  an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of huge trees,
+  windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we came out
+  at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant
+  park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we
+  ran across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small
+  band of elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we started for a few days' trip to Big Fish Lake.
+  R.C. and I went along up around the mountain. I found our old
+  trail, and was at a loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign,
+  but no live game at all.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile,
+  while R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we
+  caught four trout, one of which was fair sized.</p>
+
+  <p>Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but
+  we could not get them to take a fly.</p>
+
+  <p>The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to
+  be beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some
+  big trout in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every
+  way to get a strike. No use! In the little lake matters were
+  worse. It was full of trout up to two pounds. They would run at
+  the fly, only to refuse it. Exasperating work! We gave up and
+  returned to Big Fish. After supper we went out to try again. The
+  lake was smooth and quiet. All at once, as if by concert, the
+  trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay we began to get
+  strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The small ones
+  were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed. We caught
+  one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted wrong,
+  broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too slow,
+  and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because
+  they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to
+  imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line
+  which I could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and
+  altogether we got seven. All in that little bay, where the water
+  was shallow! In other places we could not catch a fish. I had one
+  vicious strike. The fish appeared to be feeding on a tiny black
+  gnat, which we could not imitate. This was the most trying
+  experience of all. We ought to have caught a basketful.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet
+  of Big Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for
+  grayling. The stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared
+  full of ice water and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an
+  automobile, and a camp outfit. That was enough for me. Where an
+  automobile can run, I do not belong. The fishing was poor. But
+  the beautiful open valley, flowered in gold and purple, was
+  recompense for a good deal of bad luck.</p>
+
+  <p>A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as
+  beautiful a fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker
+  or mullet, had a small mouth, dark color, and was rather a
+  sluggish-looking fish.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers
+  afforded much comfort.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down
+  over a mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I, with Teague, started for the top of the big
+  mountain on the west. I had a new horse, a roan, and he looked a
+  thoroughbred. He appeared tired. But I thought he would be great.
+  We took a trail through the woods, dark green-gray, cool and
+  verdant, odorous and still. We began to climb. Occasionally we
+  crossed parks, and little streams. Up near the long, bare slope
+  the spruce trees grew large and far apart. They were beautiful,
+  gray as if bearded with moss. Beyond this we got into the rocks
+  and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags up the slope brought us
+  to the top of a notch, where at the right lay a patch of snow.
+  The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but it had
+  timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark
+  domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out
+  of the timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard
+  struggle for life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and
+  wild, studded with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving
+  clouds.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills.</p>
+
+  <p>Away on the western rim, where we could look down upon a long
+  rugged iron-gray ridge of mountain, our guide using the glass,
+  found two big stags. We all had our fill of looking. I could see
+  them plainly with naked eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>We decided to go back to where we could climb down on that
+  side, halter the horses, leave all extra accoutrements, and stalk
+  those stags, and take a picture of them.</p>
+
+  <p>I led the way, and descended under the rim. It was up and down
+  over rough shale, and up steps of broken rocks, and down little
+  cliffs. We crossed the ridge twice, many times having to lend a
+  hand to each other.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I reached a point where I could see the stags lying
+  down. The place was an open spot on a rocky promonotory with a
+  fringe of low spruces. The stags were magnificent in size, with
+  antlers in the velvet. One had twelve points. They were lying in
+  the sun to harden their horns, according to our guide.</p>
+
+  <p>I slipped back to the others, and we all decided to have a
+  look. So we climbed up. All of us saw the stags, twitching ears
+  and tails.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we crept back, and once more I took the lead to crawl
+  round under the ledge so we could come up about even with them.
+  Here I found the hardest going yet. I came to a wind-worn crack
+  in the thin ledge, and from this I could just see the tips of the
+  antlers. I beckoned the others. Laboriously they climbed. R.C.
+  went through first. I went over next, and then came Teague.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I started to crawl down to a big rock that was our
+  objective point. We went cautiously, with bated breath and
+  pounding hearts. When we got there I peeped over to see the stags
+  still lying down. But they had heads intent and wary. Still I did
+  not think they had scented us. R.C. took a peep, and turning
+  excitedly he whispered:</p>
+
+  <p>"See only one. And he's standing!"</p>
+
+  <p>And I answered: "Let's get down around to the left where we
+  can get a better chance." It was only a few feet down. We got
+  there.</p>
+
+  <p>When he peeped over at this point he exclaimed: "They're
+  gone!"</p>
+
+  <p>It was a keen disappointment. "They winded us," I decided.</p>
+
+  <p>We looked and looked. But we could not see to our left because
+  of the bulge of rock. We climbed back. Then I saw one of the
+  stags loping leisurely off to the left. Teague was calling. He
+  said they had walked off the promontory, looking up, and stopping
+  occasionally.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we realized we must climb back along that broken ridge
+  and then up to the summit of the mountain. So we started.</p>
+
+  <p>That climb back was proof of the effect of excitement on
+  judgment. We had not calculated at all on the distance or
+  ruggedness, and we had a job before us. We got along well under
+  the western wall, and fairly well straight across through the
+  long slope of timber, where we saw sheep tracks, and expected any
+  moment to sight an old ram. But we did not find one, and when we
+  got out of the timber upon the bare sliding slope we had to halt
+  a hundred times. We could zigzag only a few steps. The altitude
+  was twelve thousand feet, and oxygen seemed scarce. I nearly
+  dropped. All the climbing appeared to come hardest on the middle
+  of my right foot, and it could scarcely have burned hotter if it
+  had been in fire. Despite the strenuous toil there were not many
+  moments that I was not aware of the vastness of the gulf below,
+  or the peaceful lakes, brown as amber, or the golden parks. And
+  nearer at hand I found magenta-colored Indian paint brush, very
+  exquisite and rare.</p>
+
+  <p>Coming out on a ledge I spied a little, dark animal with a
+  long tail. He was running along the opposite promontory about
+  three hundred yards distant. When he stopped I took a shot at him
+  and missed by apparently a scant half foot.</p>
+
+  <p>After catching our breath we climbed more and more, and still
+  more, at last to drop on the rim, hot, wet and utterly spent.</p>
+
+  <p>The air was keen, cold, and invigorating. We were soon rested,
+  and finding our horses we proceeded along the rim westward. Upon
+  rounding an out-cropping of rock we flushed a flock of
+  ptarmigan&mdash;soft gray, rock-colored birds about the size of
+  pheasants, and when they flew they showed beautiful white bands
+  on their wings. These are the rare birds that have feathered feet
+  and turn white in winter. They did not fly far, and several were
+  so tame they did not fly at all. We got our little .22 revolvers
+  and began to shoot at the nearest bird. He was some thirty feet
+  distant. But we could not hit him, and at last Fox, getting
+  disgusted, tried to catch the bird and made him fly. I felt
+  relieved, for as we were getting closer and closer with every
+  shot, it seemed possible that if the ptarmigan sat there long
+  enough we might eventually have hit him. The mystery was why we
+  shot so poorly. But this was explained by R.C., who discovered we
+  had been shooting the wrong shells.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a long hard ride down the rough winding trail. But
+  riding down was a vastly different thing from going up.</p>
+
+  <p>On September third we were up at five-thirty. It was clear and
+  cold and the red of sunrise tinged the peaks. The snow banks
+  looked pink. All the early morning scene was green, fresh, cool,
+  with that mountain rareness of atmosphere.</p>
+
+  <p>We packed to break camp, and after breakfast it took hours to
+  get our outfit in shape to start&mdash;a long string, resembling
+  a caravan. I knew that events would occur that day. First we lost
+  one of the dogs. Vern went back after him. The dogs were mostly
+  chained in pairs, to prevent their running off. Samson, the giant
+  hound, was chained to a little dog, and the others were paired
+  not according to size by any means. The poor dogs were disgusted
+  with the arrangement. It developed presently that Cain, the
+  bloodhound, a strange and wild hound much like Don of my old
+  lion-hunting days, slipped us, and was not missed for hours.
+  Teague decided to send back for him later.</p>
+
+  <p>Next in order of events, as we rode up the winding trail
+  through the spruce forest, we met Teague's cow and calf, which he
+  had kept all summer in camp. For some reason neither could be
+  left. Teague told us to ride on, and an hour later when we halted
+  to rest on the Flattop Mountain he came along with the rest of
+  the train, and in the fore was the cow alone. It was evident that
+  she was distressed and angry, for it took two men to keep her in
+  the trail. And another thing plain to me was the fact that she
+  was going to demoralize the pack horses. We were not across the
+  wide range of this flat mountain when one of the pack animals, a
+  lean and lanky sorrel, appeared suddenly to go mad, and began to
+  buck off a pack. He succeeded. This inspired a black horse, very
+  appropriately christened Nigger, to try his luck, and he shifted
+  his pack in short order. It took patience, time, and effort to
+  repack. The cow was a disorganizer. She took up as wide a trail
+  as a road. And the pack animals, some with dignity and others
+  with disgust, tried to avoid her vicinity. Going down the steep
+  forest trail on the other side the real trouble began. The pack
+  train split, ran and bolted, crashing through the trees, plunging
+  down steep places, and jumping logs. It was a wild sort of chase.
+  But luckily the packs remained intact until we were once more on
+  open, flat ground. All went well for a while, except for an
+  accident for which I was to blame. I spurred my horse, and he
+  plunged suddenly past R.C.'s mount, colliding with him, tearing
+  off my stirrup, and spraining R.C.'s ankle. This was almost a
+  serious accident, as R.C. has an old baseball ankle that required
+  favoring.</p>
+
+  <p>Next in order was the sorrel. As I saw it, he heedlessly went
+  too near the cow, which we now called Bossy, and she acted
+  somewhat like a Spanish Bull, to the effect that the sorrel was
+  scared and angered at once. He began to run and plunge and buck
+  right into the other pack animals, dropping articles from his
+  pack as he dashed along. He stampeded the train, and gave the
+  saddle horses a scare. When order was restored and the whole
+  outfit gathered together again a full hour had been lost. By this
+  time all the horses were tired, and that facilitated progress,
+  because there were no more serious breaks.</p>
+
+  <p>Down in the valley it was hot, and the ride grew long and
+  wearisome. Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful. The valley
+  was green and level, and a meandering stream formed many little
+  lakes. On one side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on
+  the other a black, spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a
+  bold, blunt peak patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in
+  the clear light. Huge white clouds sailed aloft, making dark
+  moving shadows along the great slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached our turning-off place about five o'clock, and again
+  entered the fragrant, quiet forest&mdash;a welcome change. We
+  climbed and climbed, at length coming into an open park of slopes
+  and green borders of forest, with a lake in the center. We
+  pitched camp on the skirt of the western slope, under the
+  spruces, and worked hard to get the tents up and boughs cut for
+  beds. Darkness caught us with our hands still full, and we ate
+  supper in the light of a camp-fire, with the black, deep forest
+  behind, and the pale afterglow across the lake.</p>
+
+  <p>I had a bad night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I
+  saw the moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent
+  walls, and the flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard
+  the melodious tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy
+  bawled often&mdash;a discordant break in the serenity of the
+  night. Occasionally the hounds bayed her.</p>
+
+  <p>Toward morning I slept some, and awakened with what seemed a
+  broken back. All, except R.C., were slow in crawling out. The sun
+  rose hot. This lower altitude was appreciated by all. After
+  breakfast we set to work to put the camp in order.</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon we rode off to look over the ground. We crossed
+  the park and worked up a timbered ridge remarkable for mossy,
+  bare ground, and higher up for its almost total absence of grass
+  or flowers. On the other side of this we had a fine view of Mt.
+  Dome, a high peak across a valley. Then we worked down into the
+  valley, which was full of parks and ponds and running streams. We
+  found some fresh sign of deer, and a good deal of old elk and
+  deer sign. But we saw no game of any kind. It was a tedious ride
+  back through thick forest, where I observed many trees that had
+  been barked by porcupines. Some patches were four feet from the
+  ground, indicating that the porcupine had sat on the snow when he
+  gnawed those particular places.</p>
+
+  <p>After sunset R.C. and I went off down a trail into the woods,
+  and sitting down under a huge spruce we listened. The forest was
+  solemn and still. Far down somewhere roared a stream, and that
+  was all the sound we heard. The gray shadows darkened and gloom
+  penetrated the aisles of the forest, until all the sheltered
+  places were black as pitch. The spruces looked spectral&mdash;and
+  speaking. The silence of the woods was deep, profound, and
+  primeval. It all worked on my imagination until I began to hear
+  faint sounds, and finally grand orchestral crashings of
+  melody.</p>
+
+  <p>On our return the strange creeping chill, that must be a
+  descendant of the old elemental fear, caught me at all obscure
+  curves in the trail.</p><a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg013a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "A Hunter's Cabin on a Frosty Morning ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Next day we started off early, and climbed through the woods
+  and into the parks under the Dome. We scared a deer that had
+  evidently been drinking. His fresh tracks led before us, but we
+  could not catch a glimpse of him.</p><a name="image-0017">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg013b_m.jpg" width="448" height="365" alt=
+    "The Troublesome Country, Noted for Grizzly Bears ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We climbed out of the parks, up onto the rocky ridges where
+  the spruce grew scarce, and then farther to the jumble of stones
+  that had weathered from the great peaks above, and beyond that up
+  the slope where all the vegetation was dwarfed, deformed, and
+  weird, strange manifestation of its struggle for life. Here the
+  air grew keener and cooler, and the light seemed to expand. We
+  rode on to the steep slope that led up to the gap we were to
+  cross between the Dome and its companion.</p><a name=
+  "image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg014_m.jpg" width="767" height="448" alt=
+    "Under the Shadow of The Flattop Mountains ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I saw a red fox running up the slope, and dismounting I took a
+  quick shot at three hundred yards, and scored a hit. It turned
+  out to be a cross fox, and had very pretty fur.</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the level of the deep gap the wind struck us
+  hard and cold. On that side opened an abyss, gray and shelving as
+  it led down to green timber, and then on to the yellow parks and
+  black ridges that gleamed under the opposite range.</p>
+
+  <p>We had to work round a wide amphitheater, and up a steep
+  corner to the top. This turned out to be level and smooth for a
+  long way, with a short, velvety yellow grass, like moss, spotted
+  with flowers. Here at thirteen thousand feet, the wind hit us
+  with exceeding force, and soon had us with freezing hands and
+  faces. All about us were bold black and gray peaks, with patches
+  of snow, and above them clouds of white and drab, showing blue
+  sky between. It developed that this grassy summit ascended in a
+  long gradual sweep, from the apex of which stretched a grand
+  expanse, like a plain of gold, down and down, endlessly almost,
+  and then up and up to end under a gray butte, highest of the
+  points around. The ride across here seemed to have no limit, but
+  it was beautiful, though severe on endurance. I saw another fox,
+  and dismounting, fired five shots as he ran, dusting him with
+  three bullets. We rode out to the edge of the mountain and looked
+  off. It was fearful, yet sublime. The world lay beneath us. In
+  many places we rode along the rim, and at last circled the great
+  butte, and worked up behind it on a swell of slope. Here the
+  range ran west and the drop was not sheer, but, gradual with fine
+  benches for sheep. We found many tracks and fresh sign, but did
+  not see one sheep. Meanwhile the hard wind had ceased, and the
+  sun had come out, making the ride comfortable, as far as weather
+  was concerned. We had gotten a long way from camp, and finding no
+  trail to descend in that direction we turned to retrace our
+  steps. That was about one o'clock, and we rode and rode and rode,
+  until I was so tired that I could not appreciate the scenes as I
+  had on the way up. It took six hours to get back to camp!</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning we took the hounds and rode off for bear. Eight
+  of the hounds were chained in braces, one big and one little dog
+  together, and they certainly had a hard time of it. Sampson, the
+  giant gray and brown hound, and Jim, the old black leader, were
+  free to run to and fro across the way. We rode down a few miles,
+  and into the forest. There were two long, black ridges, and here
+  we were to hunt for bear. It was the hardest kind of work,
+  turning and twisting between the trees, dodging snags, and
+  brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse among fallen logs.
+  The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich brown and black
+  muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds got caught
+  on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a scent
+  of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail
+  and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail.
+  We penetrated deep between the two ridges, and came to a little
+  lake, about thirty feet wide, surrounded by rushes and grass.
+  Here we rested the horses, and incidentally, ourselves. Fox
+  chased a duck, and it flew into the woods and hid under a log.
+  Fox trailed it, and Teague shot it just as he might have a
+  rabbit. We got two more ducks, fine big mallards, the same way.
+  It was amazing to me, and R.C. remarked that never had he seen
+  such strange and foolish ducks.</p>
+
+  <p>This forest had hundreds of trees barked by porcupines, and
+  some clear to the top. But we met only one of the animals, and he
+  left several quills in the nose of one of the pups. I was of the
+  opinion that these porcupines destroy many fine trees, as I saw a
+  number barked all around.</p>
+
+  <p>We did not see any bear sign. On the way back to camp we rode
+  out of the forest and down a wide valley, the opposite side of
+  which was open slope with patches of alder. Even at a distance I
+  could discern the color of these open glades and grassy benches.
+  They had a tinge of purple, like purple sage. When I got to them
+  I found a profusion of asters of the most exquisite shades of
+  lavender, pink and purple. That slope was long, and all the way
+  up we rode through these beautiful wild flowers. I shall never
+  forget that sight, nor the many asters that shone like stars out
+  of the green. The pink ones were new to me, and actually did not
+  seem real. I noticed my horse occasionally nipped a bunch and ate
+  them, which seemed to me almost as heartless as to tread them
+  under foot.</p>
+
+  <p>When we got up the slope and into the woods again we met a
+  storm, and traveled for an hour in the rain, and under the
+  dripping spruces, feeling the cold wet sting of swaying branches
+  as we rode by. Then the sun came out bright and the forest
+  glittered, all gold and green. The smell of the woods after a
+  rain is indescribable. It combines a rare tang of pine, spruce,
+  earth and air, all refreshed.</p>
+
+  <p>The day after, we left at eight o'clock, and rode down to the
+  main trail, and up that for five miles where we cut off to the
+  left and climbed into the timber. The woods were fresh and dewy,
+  dark and cool, and for a long time we climbed bench after bench
+  where the grass and ferns and moss made a thick, deep cover.
+  Farther up we got into fallen timber and made slow progress. At
+  timber line we tied the horses and climbed up to the pass between
+  two great mountain ramparts. Sheep tracks were in evidence, but
+  not very fresh. Teague and I climbed on top and R.C., with Vern,
+  went below just along the timber line. The climb on foot took all
+  my strength, and many times I had to halt for breath. The air was
+  cold. We stole along the rim and peered over. R.C. and Vern
+  looked like very little men far below, and the dogs resembled
+  mice.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague climbed higher, and left me on a promontory, watching
+  all around.</p>
+
+  <p>The cloud pageant was magnificent, with huge billowy white
+  masses across the valley, and to the west great black
+  thunderheads rolling up. The wind began to blow hard, carrying
+  drops of rain that stung, and the air was nipping cold. I felt
+  aloof from all the crowded world, alone on the windy heights,
+  with clouds and storm all around me.</p>
+
+  <p>When the storm threatened I went back to the horses. It broke,
+  but was not severe after all. At length R.C. and the men returned
+  and we mounted to ride back to camp. The storm blew away, leaving
+  the sky clear and blue, and the sun shone warm. We had an hour of
+  winding in and out among windfalls of timber, and jumping logs,
+  and breaking through brush. Then the way sloped down to a
+  beautiful forest, shady and green, full of mossy dells, almost
+  overgrown with ferns and low spreading ground pine or spruce. The
+  aisles of the forest were long and shaded by the stately spruces.
+  Water ran through every ravine, sometimes a brawling brook,
+  sometimes a rivulet hidden under overhanging mossy banks. We
+  scared up two lonely grouse, at long intervals. At length we got
+  into fallen timber, and from that worked into a jumble of rocks,
+  where the going was rough and dangerous.</p>
+
+  <p>The afternoon waned as we rode on and on, up and down, in and
+  out, around, and at times the horses stood almost on their heads,
+  sliding down steep places where the earth was soft and black, and
+  gave forth a dank odor. We passed ponds and swamps, and little
+  lakes. We saw where beavers had gnawed down aspens, and we just
+  escaped miring our horses in marshes, where the grass grew, rich
+  and golden, hiding the treacherous mire. The sun set, and still
+  we did not seem to get anywhere. I was afraid darkness would
+  overtake us, and we would get lost in the woods. Presently we
+  struck an old elk trail, and following that for a while, came to
+  a point where R.C. and I recognized a tree and a glade where we
+  had been before&mdash;and not far from camp&mdash;a welcome
+  discovery.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we broke camp and started across country for new
+  territory near Whitley's Peak.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode east up the mountain. After several miles along an old
+  logging road we reached the timber, and eventually the top of the
+  ridge. We went down, crossing parks and swales. There were cattle
+  pastures, and eaten over and trodden so much they had no beauty
+  left. Teague wanted to camp at a salt lick, but I did not care
+  for the place.</p>
+
+  <p>We went on. The dogs crossed a bear trail, and burst out in a
+  clamor. We had a hard time holding them.</p>
+
+  <p>The guide and I had a hot argument. I did not want to stay
+  there and chase a bear in a cow pasture.... So we went on, down
+  into ranch country, and this disgusted me further. We crossed a
+  ranch, and rode several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly,
+  and climbed a rough, rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen.
+  We crossed it, and went down for several miles, and had to camp
+  in an aspen grove, on the slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting
+  place to stay, but as there was no other we had to make the best
+  of it. The afternoon had waned. I took a gun and went off down
+  the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge. Here I heard the sound
+  of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour, but saw no game.</p>
+
+  <p>That night I had a wretched bed, one that I could hardly stay
+  in, and I passed miserable hours. I got up sore, cramped, sleepy
+  and irritable. We had to wait three hours for the horses to be
+  caught and packed. I had predicted straying horses. At last we
+  were off, and rode along the steep slope of a canyon for several
+  miles, and then struck a stream of amber-colored water. As we
+  climbed along this we came into deep spruce forest, where it was
+  pleasure to ride. I saw many dells and nooks, cool and shady,
+  full of mossy rocks and great trees. But flowers were scarce. We
+  were sorry to pass the head-springs of that stream and to go on
+  over the divide and down into the wooded, but dry and stony
+  country. We rode until late, and came at last to a park where
+  sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high
+  dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for
+  we rode into a park with many branches, where there was good
+  water and fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which
+  to pitch our tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at
+  night.</p>
+
+  <p>The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started
+  before a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses,
+  and soon we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We
+  put on our slickers. After a short ride down through the forest
+  we entered Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time
+  trying to find a forester's trail leading out of it. At last we
+  found one, but it soon petered out, and we were lost in thick
+  timber, in a driving rain, with the cold and wind increasing. But
+  we kept on.</p>
+
+  <p>This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and
+  great canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to
+  ride out of it. When we began to descend once more we struck an
+  old lumber road. More luck&mdash;the storm ceased, and presently
+  we were out on an aspen slope with a great valley beneath, and
+  high, black peaks beyond. Below the aspens were long swelling
+  slopes of sage and grass, gray and golden and green. A ranch lay
+  in the valley, and we crossed it to climb up a winding ravine,
+  once more to the aspens where we camped in the rancher's pasture.
+  It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be fairly
+  comfortable.</p>
+
+  <p>The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled.
+  There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and
+  violet-hued banks of cloud.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About
+  nine the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed
+  pastures and aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the
+  grass grew luxuriant, and the red wall of rock overhung the long
+  slopes. The view west was magnificent&mdash;a long, bulging range
+  of mountains, vast stretches of green aspen slopes, winding parks
+  of all shapes, gray and gold and green, and jutting peaks, and
+  here and there patches of autumn blaze in grass and thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with
+  water, grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of
+  mountains and valleys below.</p>
+
+  <p>We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak.
+  After the middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to
+  the touch of frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly
+  beautiful. Against a background of gray sage the gold and red and
+  purple aspen groves showed too much like exquisite paintings to
+  seem real. In the mornings the frost glistened thick and white on
+  the grass; and after the gorgeous sunsets of gold over the
+  violet-hazed ranges the air grew stingingly cold.</p>
+
+  <p>Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely
+  criticised by many writers and I was among them. I believed it a
+  cowardly business, and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs,
+  I wanted to chase the kind that could not be treed. But like many
+  another I did not know what I was writing about. I did not shoot
+  a bear out of a tree and I would not do so, except in a case of
+  hunger. All the same, leaving the tree out of consideration,
+  bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously exciting and hazardous
+  game. But my ideas about sport are changing. Hunting, in the
+  sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate
+  business.</p><a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg015_m.jpg" width="448" height="680" alt=
+    "White Aspen Tree, Showing Marks of Bear Claws ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong
+  about the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my
+  hands. All is exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent
+  up to the moment the shot is fired. After that it is another
+  matter. It is useless for sportsmen to tell me that they, in
+  particular, hunt right, conserve the game, do not go beyond the
+  limit, and all that sort of thing. I do not believe them and I
+  never met the guide who did. A rifle is made for killing. When a
+  man goes out with one he means to kill. He may keep within the
+  law, but that is not the question. It is a question of spirit,
+  and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
+  the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of
+  life is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that,
+  according to the laws of self-preservation and the survival of
+  the fittest, if a man stops all strife, all fight, then he will
+  retrograde. And that is to say if a man does not go to the wilds
+  now and then, and work hard and live some semblance of the life
+  of his progenitors, he will weaken. It seems that he will, but I
+  am not prepared now to say whether or not that would be well. The
+  Germans believe they are the race fittest to survive over all
+  others&mdash;and that has made me a little sick of this Darwin
+  business.</p><a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg016_m.jpg" width="448" height="707" alt=
+    "A Black Bear Treed ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a
+  wild chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating
+  experience, I will relate a couple of instances, and I will leave
+  it to my readers to judge whether or not it is a cowardly
+  sport.</p>
+
+  <p>One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that
+  he had surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead
+  cow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
+  delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll
+  come back to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode
+  into camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun.
+  We were glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted
+  sage that crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the
+  horses. Our guide led toward a branch of a park, and when we got
+  within perhaps a quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and
+  I go ahead on the chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to
+  this suggestion that my brother and I were well ahead of the
+  others. But we did not see any bear near the carcass of the cow.
+  Old Jim and Sampson were close behind us, and when Jim came
+  within forty yards of that carcass he put his nose up with a deep
+  and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a streak. He never went
+  near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder and raced after
+  Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come
+  on!"</p>
+
+  <p>We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to
+  the edge of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with
+  noses high. I heard a string of yelps and bellows from our
+  rear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look back!" shouted R.C.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack.
+  It surely was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like
+  the wind they passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods
+  with deep bays. I was riding Teague's best horse for this sort of
+  work and he understood the game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s
+  horse ran as fast in the woods as he did in the open. This
+  frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be careful. I yelled to
+  deaf ears. That is the first great risk&mdash;a rider is not
+  going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson with
+  the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both
+  horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases
+  with Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and
+  snags, and sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against
+  trees. For a mile the forest was comparatively open, and here we
+  had a grand and ringing run. I received two hard knocks, was
+  unseated once, but held on, and I got a stinging crack in the
+  face from a branch. R.C. added several more black-and-blue spots
+  to his already spotted anatomy, and he missed, just by an inch, a
+  solid snag that would have broken him in two. The pack stretched
+  out in wild staccato chorus, the little Airedales literally
+  screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then Sampson. Still it
+  was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather than sight.
+  They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble in the
+  windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the
+  mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear.
+  The forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the
+  dogs go down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague
+  and the others strung out along the edge of the park. They got
+  far ahead of us. When we reached the bottom of the slope they
+  were out of sight, but we could hear them yell. The hounds were
+  working around on another slope, from which craggy rocks loomed
+  above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged across the park and
+  appeared to be running off from mine. I was a little to the
+  right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we had the
+  bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his
+  knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to
+  alight all spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to
+  be hurt. When I got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be
+  patient with me, but he was in a hurry. Before we got across the
+  wet place R.C. was out of sight. I decided that instead of
+  worrying about him I had better think about myself. Once on hard
+  ground my horse fairly charged into the woods and we broke brush
+  and branches as if they had been punk. It was again open forest,
+  then a rocky slope, and then a flat ridge with aisles between the
+  trees. Here I heard the melodious notes of Teague's hunting horn,
+  and following that, the full chorus of the hounds. They had treed
+  the bear. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks here and
+  there, I caught sight of R.C. far ahead, and soon I had glimpses
+  of the other horses, and lastly, while riding full tilt, I spied
+  a big, black, glistening bear high up in a pine a hundred yards
+  or more distant.</p>
+
+  <p>Slowing down I rode up to the circle of frenzied dogs and
+  excited men. The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was
+  beaming. R.C. sat his horse, and it struck me that he looked
+  sorry for the bear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fifteen minutes!" ejaculated Teague, with a proud glance at
+  Old Jim standing with forepaws up on the pine.</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed it had been a short and ringing chase.</p>
+
+  <p>All the time while I fooled around trying to photograph the
+  treed bear, R.C. sat there on his horse, looking upward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, gentlemen, better kill him," said Teague, cheerfully.
+  "If he gets rested he'll come down."</p>
+
+  <p>It was then I suggested to R.C. that he do the shooting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not much!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>The bear looked really pretty perched up there. He was as
+  round as a barrel and black as jet and his fur shone in the
+  gleams of sunlight. His tongue hung out, and his plump sides
+  heaved, showing what a quick, hard run he had made before being
+  driven to the tree. What struck me most forcibly about him was
+  the expression in his eyes as he looked down at those devils of
+  hounds. He was scared. He realized his peril. It was utterly
+  impossible for me to see Teague's point of view.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead&mdash;and plug him," I replied to my brother. "Get
+  it over."</p>
+
+  <p>"You do it," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I won't."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why not&mdash;I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe we won't have so good a chance again&mdash;and I want
+  you to get your bear," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why it's like&mdash;murder," he protested.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, not so bad as that," I returned, weakly. "We need the
+  meat. We've not had any game meat, you know, except ducks and
+  grouse."</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do it?" he added, grimly.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I refuse."</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile the young ranchers gazed at us with wide eyes and
+  the expression on Teague's honest, ruddy face would have been
+  funny under other circumstances.</p>
+
+  <p>"That bear will come down an' mebbe kill one of my dogs," he
+  protested.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, he can come for all I care," I replied, positively, and
+  I turned away.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard R.C. curse low under his breath. Then followed the
+  spang of his .35 Remington. I wheeled in time to see the bear
+  straining upward in terrible convulsion, his head pointed high,
+  with blood spurting from his nose. Slowly he swayed and fell with
+  a heavy crash.</p><a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg017_m.jpg" width="740" height="448" alt=
+    "Crossing the Colorado River at The Bottom of The Grand Canyon ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg018_m.jpg" width="448" height="695" alt=
+    "Where Rolls the Colorado ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The next bear chase we had was entirely different
+  medicine.</p>
+
+  <p>Off in the basin under the White Slides, back of our camp, the
+  hounds struck a fresh track and in an instant were out of sight.
+  With the cowboy Vern setting the pace we plunged after them. It
+  was rough country. Bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little parks,
+  stretches of timber full of windfalls, groves of aspens so thick
+  we could scarcely squeeze through&mdash;all these obstacles soon
+  allowed the hounds to get far away. We came out into a large
+  park, right under the mountain slope, and here we sat our horses
+  listening to the chase. That trail led around the basin and back
+  near to us, up the thick green slope, where high up near a ledge
+  we heard the pack jump this bear. It sounded to us as if he had
+  been roused out of a sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll bet it's one of the big grizzlies we've heard about,"
+  said Teague.</p>
+
+  <p>That was something to my taste. I have seen a few grizzlies.
+  Riding to higher ground I kept close watch on the few open
+  patches up on the slope. The chase led toward us for a while.
+  Suddenly I saw a big bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across
+  one of these openings.</p>
+
+  <p>"Silvertip! Silvertip!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I
+  saw him!"</p>
+
+  <p>My call thrilled everybody. Vern spurred his horse and took to
+  the right. Teague advised that we climb the slope. So we made for
+  the timber. Once there we had to get off and climb on foot. It
+  was steep, rough, very hard work. I had on chaps and spurs. Soon
+  I was hot, laboring, and my heart began to hurt. We all had to
+  rest. The baying of the hounds inspirited us now and then, but
+  presently we lost it. Teague said they had gone over the ridge
+  and as soon as we got up to the top we would hear them again. We
+  struck an elk trail with fresh elk tracks in it. Teague said they
+  were just ahead of us. I never climbed so hard and fast in my
+  life. We were all tuckered out when we reached the top of the
+  ridge. Then to our great disappointment we did not hear the
+  hounds. Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded ridge
+  toward the western end, which was considerably higher. Once on a
+  bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed. The
+  big, round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me.
+  No doubt of its being a silvertip!</p>
+
+  <p>We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the
+  summit of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of
+  the pack. They were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and
+  over a wooded bench at our feet. Teague yelled as he spurred
+  down. R.C. rode hard in his tracks.</p>
+
+  <p>But my horse was new to this bear chasing. He was mettlesome,
+  and he did not want to do what I wanted. When I jabbed the spurs
+  into his flanks he nearly bucked me off. I was looking for a soft
+  place to light when he quit. Long before I got down that open
+  slope Teague and R.C. had disappeared. I had to follow their
+  tracks. This I did at a gallop, but now and then lost the tracks,
+  and had to haul in to find them. If I could have heard the hounds
+  from there I would have gone on anyway. But once down in the
+  jack-pines I could hear neither yell or bay. The pines were
+  small, close together, and tough. I hurt my hands, scratched my
+  face, barked my knees. The horse had a habit of suddenly deciding
+  to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and when
+  he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both
+  to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me. I was worked into a
+  frenzy. Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old
+  grizzly and fail to kill him! That was the reason for my
+  desperate hurry. I got a crack on the head that nearly blinded
+  me. My horse grew hot and began to run in every little open
+  space. He could scarcely be held in. And I, with the blood hot in
+  me too, did not hold him hard enough.</p>
+
+  <p>It seemed miles across that wooded bench. But at last I
+  reached another slope. Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C.
+  and Teague yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly.
+  He was growling and threshing about far below. I had missed the
+  tracks made by Teague and my brother, and it was necessary to
+  find them. That slope looked impassable. I rode back along the
+  rim, then forward. Finally I found where the ground was plowed
+  deep and here I headed my horse. He had been used to smooth roads
+  and he could not take these jumps. I went forward on his neck.
+  But I hung on and spurred him hard. The mad spirit of that chase
+  had gotten into him too. All the time I could hear the fierce
+  baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I heard a
+  savage bawl from the bear. I literally plunged, slid, broke a way
+  down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I
+  discovered the footprints of Teague and R.C. They had walked,
+  leading their horses. By this time I was so mad I would not get
+  off. I rode all the way down that steep slope of dense saplings,
+  loose rock slides and earth, and jumble of splintered cliff. That
+  he did not break my neck and his own spoke the truth about that
+  roan horse. Despite his inexperience he was great. We fell over
+  one bank, but a thicket of aspens saved us from rolling. The
+  avalanches slid from under us until I imagined that the grizzly
+  would be scared. Once as I stopped to listen I heard bear and
+  pack farther down the canyon&mdash;heard them above the roar of a
+  rushing stream. They went on and I lost the sounds of fight. But
+  R.C.'s clear thrilling call floated up to me. Probably he was
+  worried about me.</p>
+
+  <p>Then before I realized it I was at the foot of the slope, in a
+  narrow canyon bed, full of rocks and trees, with the din of
+  roaring water in my ears. I could hear nothing else. Tracks were
+  everywhere, and when I came to the first open place I was
+  thrilled. The grizzly had plunged off a sandy bar into the water,
+  and there he had fought the hounds. Signs of that battle were
+  easy to read. I saw where his huge tracks, still wet, led up the
+  opposite sandy bank.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, down stream, I did my most reckless riding. On level
+  ground the horse was splendid. Once he leaped clear across the
+  brook. Every plunge, every turn I expected to bring me upon my
+  brother and Teague and that fighting pack. More than once I
+  thought I heard the spang of the .35 and this made me urge the
+  roan faster and faster.</p>
+
+  <p>The canyon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. I had to slow
+  down to get through the trees and rocks. And suddenly I was
+  overjoyed to ride pell-mell upon R.C. and Teague with half the
+  panting hounds. The canyon had grown too rough for the horses to
+  go farther and it would have been useless for us to try on foot.
+  As I dismounted, so sore and bruised I could hardly stand, old
+  Jim came limping in to fall into the brook where he lapped and
+  lapped thirstily. Teague threw up his hands. Old Jim's return
+  meant an ended chase. The grizzly had eluded the hounds in that
+  jumble of rocks below.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, did you meet the bear?" queried Teague, eyeing me in
+  astonishment and mirth.</p>
+
+  <p>Bloody, dirty, ragged and wringing wet with sweat I must have
+  been a sight. R.C. however, did not look so very immaculate, and
+  when I saw he also was lame and scratched and black I felt
+  better.</p><a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+  </center>
+
+  <center>
+    I
+  </center>
+
+  <p>The Grand Canyon of Arizona is over two hundred miles long,
+  thirteen wide, and a mile and a half deep; a titanic gorge in
+  which mountains, tablelands, chasms and cliffs lie half veiled in
+  purple haze. It is wild and sublime, a thing of wonder, of
+  mystery; beyond all else a place to grip the heart of a man, to
+  unleash his daring spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>On April 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary
+  party and pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the
+  most isolated, inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in
+  all the canyon country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared
+  insurmountable; standing aloof from the towers and escarpments,
+  rugged and bold in outline, its forest covering like a strip of
+  black velvet, its giant granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed
+  apart from the world, haunting with its beauty, isolation and
+  wild promise.</p>
+
+  <p>The members of my party harmoniously fitted the scene. Buffalo
+  Jones, burly-shouldered, bronze-faced, and grim, proved in his
+  appearance what a lifetime on the plains could make of a man.
+  Emett was a Mormon, a massively built grey-bearded son of the
+  desert; he had lived his life on it; he had conquered it and in
+  his falcon eyes shone all its fire and freedom. Ranger Jim Owens
+  had the wiry, supple body and careless, tidy garb of the cowboy,
+  and the watchful gaze, quiet face and locked lips of the
+  frontiersman. The fourth member was a Navajo Indian, a
+  copper-skinned, raven-haired, beady-eyed desert savage.</p>
+
+  <p>I had told Emett to hire some one who could put the horses on
+  grass in the evening and then find them the next morning. In
+  northern Arizona this required more than genius. Emett secured
+  the best trailer of the desert Navajos. Jones hated an Indian;
+  and Jim, who carried an ounce of lead somewhere in his person,
+  associated this painful addition to his weight with an unfriendly
+  Apache, and swore all Indians should be dead. So between the two,
+  Emett and I had trouble in keeping our Navajo from illustrating
+  the plainsman idea of a really good Indian&mdash;a dead one.</p>
+
+  <p>While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and
+  above a hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden
+  pounding in the turf attracted our attention.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>As we all made a dive among our snorting and plunging horses
+  the sound seemed to be coming right into camp. In a moment I saw
+  a string of wild horses thundering by. A noble black stallion led
+  them, and as he ran with beautiful stride he curved his fine head
+  backward to look at us, and whistled his wild challenge.</p>
+
+  <p>Later a herd of large white-tailed deer trooped up the hollow.
+  The Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when
+  Emett told him we had not come out to kill, he looked
+  dumbfounded. Even the Indian felt it a strange departure from the
+  usual mode of hunting to travel and climb hundreds of miles over
+  hot desert and rock-ribbed canyons, to camp at last in a spot so
+  wild that deer were tame as cattle, and then not kill.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling
+  into permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the
+  all-satisfying touch to the background of forest, flowers and
+  mighty pines and sunlit patches of grass, the white tents and red
+  blankets, the sleeping hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a
+  picture like that of a hunter's dream.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, saddle up," called the never restful Jones. "Leave the
+  Indian in camp with the hounds, and we'll get the lay of the
+  land." All afternoon we spent riding the plateau. What a
+  wonderful place! We were completely bewildered with its physical
+  properties, and surprised at the abundance of wild horses and
+  mustangs, deer, coyotes, foxes, grouse and other birds, and
+  overjoyed to find innumerable lion trails. When we returned to
+  camp I drew a rough map, which Jones laid flat on the ground as
+  he called us around him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now, boys, let's get our heads together."</p>
+
+  <p>In shape the plateau resembled the ace of clubs. The center
+  and side wings were high and well wooded with heavy pines; the
+  middle wing was longest, sloped west, had no pine, but a dense
+  growth of cedar. Numerous ridges and canyons cut up this central
+  wing. Middle Canyon, the longest and deepest, bisected the
+  plateau, headed near camp, and ran parallel with two smaller
+  ones, which we named Right and Left Canyons. These three were
+  lion runways and hundreds of deer carcasses lined the thickets.
+  North Hollow was the only depression, as well as runway, on the
+  northwest rim. West Point formed the extreme western cape of the
+  plateau. To the left of West Point was a deep cut-in of the rim
+  wall, called the Bay. The three important canyons opened into it.
+  From the Bay, the south rim was regular and impassable all the
+  way round to the narrow Saddle, which connected it to the
+  mainland.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now then," said Jones, when we assured him that we were
+  pretty well informed as to the important features, "you can
+  readily see our advantage. The plateau is about nine or ten miles
+  long, and six wide at its widest. We can't get lost, at least for
+  long. We know where lions can go over the rim and we'll head them
+  off, make short cut chases, something new in lion hunting. We are
+  positive the lions can not get over the second wall, except where
+  we came up, at the Saddle. In regard to lion signs, I'm doubtful
+  of the evidence of my own eyes. This is virgin ground. No white
+  man or Indian has ever hunted lions here. We have stumbled on a
+  lion home, the breeding place of hundreds of lions that infest
+  the north rim of the canyon."</p>
+
+  <p>The old plainsman struck a big fist into the palm of his hand,
+  a rare action with him. Jim lifted his broad hat and ran his
+  fingers through his white hair. In Emett's clear desert-eagle
+  eyes shown a furtive, anxious look, which yet could not
+  overshadow the smouldering fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"If only we don't kill the horses!" he said.</p>
+
+  <p>More than anything else that remark from such a man thrilled
+  me with its subtle suggestion. He loved those beautiful horses.
+  What wild rides he saw in his mind's eye! In cold calculation we
+  perceived the wonderful possibilities never before experienced by
+  hunters, and as the wild spell clutched us my last bar of
+  restraint let down.</p>
+
+  <p>During supper we talked incessantly, and afterward around the
+  camp-fire. Twilight fell with the dark shadows sweeping under the
+  silent pines; the night wind rose and began its moan.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore there's some scent on the wind," said Jim, lighting his
+  pipe with a red ember. "See how uneasy Don is."</p>
+
+  <p>The hound raised his fine, dark head and repeatedly sniffed
+  the air, then walked to and fro as if on guard for his pack. Moze
+  ground his teeth on a bone and growled at one of the pups.
+  Sounder was sleepy, but he watched Don with suspicious eyes. The
+  other hounds, mature and somber, lay stretched before the
+  fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tie them up, Jim," said Jones, "and let's turn in."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    II
+  </center>
+
+  <p>When I awakened next morning the sound of Emett's axe rang out
+  sharply. Little streaks of light from the camp-fire played
+  between the flaps of the tent. I saw old Moze get up and stretch
+  himself. A jangle of cow-bells from the forest told me we would
+  not have to wait for the horses that morning.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"All rustle for breakfast," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever
+  brightening. Dawn broke as we saddled our horses. The pups were
+  limber, and ran to and fro on their chains, scenting the air; the
+  older hounds stood quietly waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come Navvy&mdash;come chase cougie," said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Dam! No!" replied the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let him keep camp," suggested Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right; but he'll eat us out," Emett declared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Climb up you fellows," said Jones, impatiently. "Have I got
+  everything&mdash;rope, chains, collars, wire, nippers? Yes, all
+  right. Hyar, you lazy dogs&mdash;out of this!"</p>
+
+  <p>We rode abreast down the ridge. The demeanor of the hounds
+  contrasted sharply with what it had been at the start of the hunt
+  the year before. Then they had been eager, uncertain, violent;
+  they did not know what was in the air; now they filed after Don
+  in an orderly trot.</p>
+
+  <p>We struck out of the pines at half past five. Floating mist
+  hid the lower end of the plateau. The morning had a cool touch
+  but there was no frost. Crossing Middle Canyon about half way
+  down we jogged on. Cedar trees began to show bright green against
+  the soft gray sage. We were nearing the dark line of the cedar
+  forest when Jim, who led, held up his hand in a warning check. We
+  closed in around him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Watch Don," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>The hound stood stiff, head well up, nose working, and the
+  hair on his back bristling. All the other hounds whined and kept
+  close to him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don scents a lion," whispered Jim. "I've never known him to
+  do that unless there was the scent of a lion on the wind."</p>
+
+  <p>"Hunt 'em up Don, old boy," called Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>The pack commenced to work back and forth along the ridge. We
+  neared a hollow when Don barked eagerly. Sounder answered and
+  likewise Jude. Moze's short angry "bow-wow" showed the old
+  gladiator to be in line.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ranger's gone," cried Jim. "He was farthest ahead. I'll bet
+  he's struck it. We'll know in a minute, for we're close."</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds were tearing through the sage, working harder and
+  harder, calling and answering one another, all the time getting
+  down into the hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>Don suddenly let out a string of yelps. I saw him, running
+  head up, pass into the cedars like a yellow dart. Sounder howled
+  his deep, full bay, and led the rest of the pack up the slope in
+  angry clamor.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're off!" yelled Jim, and so were we.</p>
+
+  <p>In less than a minute we had lost one another. Crashings among
+  the dry cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one
+  direction. The fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I
+  remembered that Jim had said Emett and his charger might keep the
+  pack in sight, but that none of the rest of us could.</p>
+
+  <p>It did not take me long to realize what my mustang was made
+  of. His name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a
+  fast pace on the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by
+  keeping in this trail part of the work of breaking through the
+  brush was already done for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead
+  branches, more numerous in a cedar forest than elsewhere, struck
+  and stung us as we passed. We climbed a ridge, and found the
+  cedars thinning out into open patches. Then we faced a bare slope
+  of sage and I saw Emett below on his big horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage,
+  and showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open
+  ground, with its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the
+  little mustang. I heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears.
+  Emett's trail, plain in the yellow ground showed me the way. On
+  entering the cedars again I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to
+  yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the baying of the hounds, but no answer
+  to my signal. Then I attended to the stern business of catching
+  up. For what seemed a long time, I threaded the maze of cedar,
+  galloped the open sage flats, always on Emett's track.</p>
+
+  <p>A signal cry, sharp to the right, turned me. I answered, and
+  with the exchange of signal cries found my way into an open glade
+  where Jones and Jim awaited me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here's one," said Jim. "Emett must be with the hounds.
+  Listen."</p>
+
+  <p>With the labored breathing of the horses filling our ears we
+  could hear no other sound. Dismounting, I went aside and turned
+  my ear to the breeze.</p>
+
+  <p>"I hear Don," I cried instantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Which way?" both men asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"West."</p>
+
+  <p>"Strange," said Jones. "The hound wouldn't split, would he,
+  Jim?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don leave that hot trail? Shore he wouldn't," replied Jim.
+  "But his runnin' do seem queer this morning."</p>
+
+  <p>"The breeze is freshening," I said. "There! Now listen! Don,
+  and Sounder, too."</p>
+
+  <p>The baying came closer and closer. Our horses threw up long
+  ears. It was hard to sit still and wait. At a quick cry from Jim
+  we saw Don cross the lower end of the flat.</p>
+
+  <p>No need to spur our mounts! The lifting of bridles served, and
+  away we raced. Foxie passed the others in short order. Don had
+  long disappeared, but with blended bays, Jude, Moze, and Sounder
+  broke out of the cedars hot on the trail. They, too, were out of
+  sight in a moment.</p>
+
+  <p>The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where
+  the hounds had come out of the forest, attracted and even
+  frightened me. I saw the green of a low cedar tree shake, and
+  split, to let out a huge, gaunt horse with a big man doubled over
+  his saddle. The onslaught of Emett and his desert charger stirred
+  a fear in me that checked admiration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hounds running wild," he yelled, and the dark shadows of the
+  cedars claimed him again.</p>
+
+  <p>A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett,
+  dismounted, searching the ground. Moze and Sounder were with him,
+  apparently at fault. Suddenly Moze left the little glade and
+  venting his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees.
+  Sounder sat on his haunches and yelped.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now what the hell is wrong?" growled Jones tumbling off his
+  saddle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore something is," said Jim, also dismounting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here's a lion track," interposed Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ha! and here's another," cried Jones, in great satisfaction.
+  "That's the trail we were on, and here's another crossing it at
+  right angles. Both are fresh: one isn't fifteen minutes old. Don
+  and Jude have split one way and Moze another. By George! that's
+  great of Sounder to hang fire!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Put him on the fresh trail," said Jim, vaulting into his
+  saddle.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off
+  on the trail Moze had taken. All of us got in some pretty hard
+  riding, and managed to stay within earshot of Sounder. We crossed
+  a canyon, and presently reached another which, from its depth,
+  must have been Middle Canyon. Sounder did not climb the opposite
+  slope, so we followed the rim. From a bare ridge we distinguished
+  the line of pines above us, and decided that our location was in
+  about the center of the plateau.</p>
+
+  <p>Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze. Sounder had
+  caught up with him. We came to a halt where the canyon widened
+  and was not so deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an
+  easy slope leading down. Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted
+  harsh, eager howls, and both hounds, in plain sight, began
+  working in circles.</p>
+
+  <p>"The lion has gone up somewhere," cried Jim. "Look sharp!"</p>
+
+  <p>Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and
+  looked over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to
+  return. When I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the
+  bottom of the stone wall, and jump into the low branches of a
+  cedar I knew where to look. Then I descried the lion a round
+  yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a mass of dark branches. He
+  had leaped into the tree from the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"There he is! Treed! Treed!" I yelled. "Moze has found
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Down boys, down into the canyon," shouted Jones, in sharp
+  voice. "Make a racket, we don't want him to jump."</p>
+
+  <p>How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone! For a
+  moment I could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle
+  by a strange vacillation that could have been no other thing than
+  fear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you afraid?" called Jones from below.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, but I am coming," I replied, and dismounted to plunge
+  down the hill. It may have been shame or anger that dominated me
+  then; whatever it was I made directly for the cedar, and did not
+  halt until I was under the snarling lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not too close!" warned Jones. "He might jump. It's a Tom, a
+  two-year-old, and full of fight."</p>
+
+  <p>It did not matter to me then whether he jumped or not. I knew
+  I had to be cured of my dread, and the sooner it was done the
+  better.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Moze had already climbed a third of the distance up to the
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hyar Moze! Out of there, you rascal coon chaser!" Jones
+  yelled as he threw stones and sticks at the hound. Moze, however,
+  replied with his snarly bark and climbed on steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've got to pull him out. Watch close boys and tell me if the
+  lion starts down."</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones climbed the first few branches of the tree, Tom let
+  out an ominous growl.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make ready to jump. Shore he's comin'," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, snarling viciously, started to descend. It was a
+  ticklish moment for all of us, particularly Jones. Warily he
+  backed down.</p>
+
+  <p>"Boys, maybe he's bluffing," said Jones, "Try him out. Grab
+  sticks and run at the tree and yell, as if you were going to kill
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>Not improbably the demonstration we executed under the tree
+  would have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed
+  his white fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there
+  climbed as far as he could. The forked branch on which he stood
+  swayed alarmingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here, punch Moze out," said Jim handing up a long pole.</p>
+
+  <p>The old hound hung like a leech to the tree, making it
+  difficult to dislodge him. At length he fell heavily, and venting
+  his thick battle cry, attempted to climb again.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim seized him, made him fast to the rope with which Sounder
+  had already been tied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say Emett, I've no chance here," called Jones. "You try to
+  throw at him from the rock."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett ran up the rock, coiled his lasso and cast the noose. It
+  sailed perfectly in between the branches and circled Tom's head.
+  Before it could be slipped tight he had thrown it off. Then he
+  hid behind the branches.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going farther up," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Be quick," yelled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones evidently had that in mind. When he reached the middle
+  fork of the cedar, he stood erect and extended the noose of his
+  lasso on the point of his pole. Tom, with a hiss and snap, struck
+  at it savagely. The second trial tempted the lion to saw the rope
+  with his teeth. In a flash Jones withdrew the pole, and lifted a
+  loop of the slack rope over the lion's ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull!" he yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett, at the other end of the lasso, threw his great strength
+  into action, pulling the lion out with a crash, and giving the
+  cedar such a tremendous shaking that Jones lost his footing and
+  fell heavily.</p>
+
+  <p>Thrilling as the moment was, I had to laugh, for Jones came up
+  out of a cloud of dust, as angry as a wet hornet, and made
+  prodigious leaps to get out of the reach of the whirling
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look out!" he bawled.</p>
+
+  <p>Tom, certainly none the worse for his tumble, made three
+  leaps, two at Jones, one at Jim, which was checked by the short
+  length of the rope in Emett's hands. Then for a moment, a thick
+  cloud of dust enveloped the wrestling lion, during which the
+  quick-witted Jones tied the free end of the lasso to a
+  sapling.</p>
+
+  <p>"Dod gast the luck!" yelled Jones reaching for another lasso.
+  "I didn't mean for you to pull him out of the tree. Now he'll get
+  loose or kill himself."</p>
+
+  <p>When the dust cleared away, we discovered our prize stretched
+  out at full length and frothing at the mouth. As Jones
+  approached, the lion began a series of evolutions so rapid as to
+  be almost indiscernible to the eye. I saw a wheel of dust and
+  yellow fur. Then came a thud and the lion lay inert.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones pounced upon him and loosed the lasso around his
+  neck.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think he's done for, but maybe not. He's breathing yet.
+  Here, help me tie his paws together. Look out! He's coming
+  to!"</p>
+
+  <p>The lion stirred and raised his head. Jones ran the loop of
+  the second lasso around the two hind paws and stretched the lion
+  out. While in this helpless position and with no strength and
+  hardly any breath left in him the lion was easy to handle. With
+  Emett's help Jones quickly clipped the sharp claws, tied the four
+  paws together, took off the neck lasso and substituted a collar
+  and chain.</p>
+
+  <p>"There, that's one. He'll come to all right," said Jones. "But
+  we are lucky. Emett, never pull another lion clear out of a tree.
+  Pull him over a limb and hang him there while some one below
+  ropes his hind paws. That's the only way, and if we don't stick
+  to it, somebody is going to get done for. Come, now, we'll leave
+  this fellow here and hunt up Don and Jude. They've treed another
+  lion by this time."</p>
+
+  <p>Remarkable to me was to see how, as soon as the lion lay
+  helpless, Sounder lost his interest. Moze growled, yet readily
+  left the spot. Before we reached the level, both hounds had
+  disappeared.</p><a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg019_m.jpg" width="448" height="676" alt=
+    "Down the Shinumo Trail of The North River ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg020_m.jpg" width="745" height="448" alt=
+    "Camp at the Saddle ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Hear that?" yelled Jones, digging spurs into his horse. "Hi!
+  Hi! Hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>From the cedars rang the thrilling, blending chorus of bays
+  that told of a treed lion. The forest was almost impenetrable. We
+  had to pick our way. Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing
+  the deadwood; and soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones'
+  assertion.</p>
+
+  <p>First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the
+  cedar, and the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the
+  dead top of the tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips. Quiet Jim was yelling;
+  and Emett, silent man of the desert, let from his wide cavernous
+  chest a booming roar that drowned ours.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones' next decisive action turned us from exultation to the
+  grim business of the thing. He pulled Moze out of the cedar, and
+  while he climbed up, Emett ran his rope under the collars of all
+  of the hounds. Quick as the idea flashed over me I leaped into
+  the cedar adjoining the one Jones was in, and went up hand over
+  hand. A few pulls brought me to the top, and then my blood ran
+  hot and quick, for I was level with the lion, too close for
+  comfort, but in excellent position for taking pictures.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between
+  widespread paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones'
+  gray hat came pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly
+  shoulders. The quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and
+  his lithe body crouched low on the branches. He was about to
+  jump. His open dripping jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for
+  some means of escape, his tufted tail, swinging against the twigs
+  and breaking them, manifested his extremity. The eager hounds
+  waited below, howling, leaping.</p>
+
+  <p>It bothered me considerably to keep my balance, regulate my
+  camera and watch the proceedings. Jones climbed on with his rope
+  between his teeth, and a long stick. The very next instant it
+  seemed to me, I heard the cracking of branches and saw the lion
+  biting hard at the noose which circled his neck.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I swung down, branch to branch, and dropped to the
+  ground, for I wanted to see what went on below. Above the howls
+  and yelps, I distinguished Jones' yell. Emett ran directly under
+  the lion with a spread noose in his hands. Jones pulled and
+  pulled, but the lion held on firmly. Throwing the end of the
+  lasso down to Jim, Jones yelled again, and then they both pulled.
+  The lion was too strong. Suddenly, however, the branch broke,
+  letting the lion fall, kicking frantically with all four paws.
+  Emett grasped one of the four whipping paws, and even as the
+  powerful animal sent him staggering he dexterously left the noose
+  fast on the paw. Jim and Jones in unison let go of their lasso,
+  which streaked up through the branches as the lion fell, and then
+  it dropped to the ground, where Jim made a flying grab for it.
+  Jones plunging out of the tree fell upon the rope at the same
+  instant.</p>
+
+  <p>If the action up to then had been fast, it was slow to what
+  followed. It seemed impossible for two strong men with one lasso,
+  and a giant with another, to straighten out that lion. He was all
+  over the little space under the trees at once. The dust flew, the
+  sticks snapped, the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars.
+  Jones ploughed the ground flat on his stomach, holding on with
+  one hand, with the other trying to fasten the rope to something;
+  Jim went to his knees; and on the other side of the lion, Emett's
+  huge bulk tipped a sharp angle, and then fell.</p>
+
+  <p>I shouted and ran forward, having no idea what to do, but
+  Emett rolled backward, at the same instant the other men got a
+  strong haul on the lion. Short as that moment was in which the
+  lasso slackened, it sufficed for Jones to make the rope fast to a
+  tree. Whereupon with the three men pulling on the other side of
+  the leaping lion, somehow I had flashed into my mind the game
+  that children play, called skipping the rope, for the lion and
+  lasso shot up and down.</p>
+
+  <p>This lasted for only a few seconds. They stretched the beast
+  from tree to tree, and Jones running with the third lasso, made
+  fast the front paws.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a female," said Jones, as the lion lay helpless, her
+  sides swelling; "a good-sized female. She's nearly eight feet
+  from tip to tip, but not very heavy. Hand me another rope."</p>
+
+  <p>When all four lassos had been stretched, the lioness could not
+  move. Jones strapped a collar around her neck and clipped the
+  sharp yellow claws.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now to muzzle her," he continued.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones' method of performing this most hazardous part of the
+  work was characteristic of him. He thrust a stick between her
+  open jaws, and when she crushed it to splinters he tried another,
+  and yet another, until he found one that she could not break.
+  Then while she bit on it, he placed a wire loop over her nose,
+  slowly tightening it, leaving the stick back of her big
+  canines.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds ceased their yelping and when untied, Sounder
+  wagged his tail as if to say, "Well done," and then lay down; Don
+  walked within three feet of the lion, as if she were now beneath
+  his dignity; Jude began to nurse and lick her sore paw; only Moze
+  the incorrigible retained antipathy for the captive, and he
+  growled, as always, low and deep. And on the moment, Ranger,
+  dusty and lame from travel, trotted wearily into the glade and,
+  looking at the lioness, gave one disgusted bark and flopped
+  down.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    III
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Transporting our captives to camp bade fair to make us work.
+  When Jones, who had gone after the pack horses, hove in sight on
+  the sage flat, it was plain to us that we were in for trouble.
+  The bay stallion was on the rampage.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why didn't you fetch the Indian?" growled Emett, who lost his
+  temper when matters concerning his horses went wrong. "Spread
+  out, boys, and head him off."</p>
+
+  <p>We contrived to surround the stallion, and Emett succeeded in
+  getting a halter on him.</p>
+
+  <p>"I didn't want the bay," explained Jones, "but I couldn't
+  drive the others without him. When I told that redskin that we
+  had two lions, he ran off into the woods, so I had to come
+  alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going to scalp the Navajo," said Jim, complacently.</p>
+
+  <p>These remarks were exchanged on the open ridge at the entrance
+  to the thick cedar forest. The two lions lay just within its
+  shady precincts. Emett and I, using a long pole in lieu of a
+  horse, had carried Tom up from the Canyon to where we had
+  captured the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones had brought a packsaddle and two panniers.</p><a name=
+  "image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg021_m.jpg" width="448" height="705" alt=
+    "Buckskin Forest ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg022_m.jpg" width="448" height="682" alt=
+    "Buffalo Jones With Sounder and Ranger ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>When Emett essayed to lead the horse which carried these, the
+  animal stood straight up and began to show some of his primal
+  desert instincts. It certainly was good luck that we unbuckled
+  the packsaddle straps before he left the vicinity. In about three
+  jumps he had separated himself from the panniers, which were then
+  placed upon the back of another horse. This one, a fine looking
+  beast, and amiable under surroundings where his life and health
+  were considered even a little, immediately disclaimed any
+  intention of entering the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"They scent the lions," said Jones. "I was afraid of it; never
+  had but one nag that would pack lions."</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe we can't pack them at all," replied Emett dubiously.
+  "It's certainly new to me."</p>
+
+  <p>"We've got to," Jones asserted; "try the sorrel."</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time in a serviceable and honorable life,
+  according to Emett, the sorrel broke his halter and kicked like a
+  plantation mule.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a matter of fright. Try the stallion. He doesn't look
+  afraid," said Jones, who never knew when he was beaten.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett gazed at Jones as if he had not heard right.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead, try the stallion. I like the way he looks."</p>
+
+  <p>No wonder! The big stallion looked a king of horses&mdash;just
+  what he would have been if Emett had not taken him, when a colt,
+  from his wild desert brothers. He scented the lions, and he held
+  his proud head up, his ears erect, and his large, dark eyes shone
+  fiery and expressive.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll try to lead him in and let him see the lions. We can't
+  fool him," said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Marc showed no hesitation, nor anything we expected. He stood
+  stiff-legged, and looked as if he wanted to fight.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's all right; he'll pack them," declared Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to
+  the horns, Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the
+  left pannier while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom
+  never lived. It was cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace
+  enough to be "hog-tied," as Jim called it, but to be thrust down
+  into a bag and packed on a horse was adding insult to injury. Tom
+  frothed at the mouth and seemed like a fizzing torpedo about to
+  explode. The lioness being considerably longer and larger, was
+  with difficulty gotten into the other pannier, and her head and
+  paws hung out. Both lions kept growling and snarling.</p>
+
+  <p>"I look to see Marc bolt over the rim," said Emett,
+  resignedly, as Jones took up the end of the rope halter.</p>
+
+  <p>"No siree!" sang out that worthy. "He's helping us out; he's
+  proud to show up the other nags."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones was always asserting strange traits in animals, and
+  giving them intelligence and reason. As to that, many incidents
+  coming under my observation while with him, and seen with his
+  eyes, made me incline to his claims, the fruit of a lifetime with
+  animals.</p>
+
+  <p>Marc packed the lions to camp in short order, and, quoting
+  Jones, "without turning a hair." We saw the Navajo's head
+  protruding from a tree. Emett yelled for him, and Jones and Jim
+  "hahaed" derisively; whereupon the black head vanished and did
+  not reappear. Then they unhooked one of the panniers and dumped
+  out the lioness. Jones fastened her chain to a small pine tree,
+  and as she lay powerless he pulled out the stick back of her
+  canines. This allowed the wire muzzle to fall off. She signalled
+  this freedom with a roar that showed her health to be still
+  unimpaired. The last action in releasing her from her painful
+  bonds Jones performed with sleight-of-hand dexterity. He slipped
+  the loop fastening one paw, which loosened the rope, and in a
+  twinkling let her work all of her other paws free. Up she sprang,
+  ears flat, eyes ablaze, mouth wide, once more capable of defense,
+  true to her instinct and her name.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the men lowered Tom from Marc's back I stepped closer
+  and put my face within six inches of the lion's. He promptly spat
+  on me. I had to steel my nerve to keep so close. But I wanted to
+  see a wild lion's eyes at close range. They were exquisitely
+  beautiful, their physical properties as wonderful as their
+  expression. Great half globes of tawny amber, streaked with
+  delicate wavy lines of black, surrounding pupils of intense
+  purple fire. Pictures shone and faded in the amber
+  light&mdash;the shaggy tipped plateau, the dark pines and smoky
+  canyons, the great dotted downward slopes, the yellow cliffs and
+  crags. Deep in those live pupils, changing, quickening with a
+  thousand vibrations, quivered the soul of this savage beast, the
+  wildest of all wild Nature, unquenchable love of life and
+  freedom, flame of defiance and hate.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones disposed of Tom in the same manner as he had the
+  lioness, chaining him to an adjoining small pine, where he leaped
+  and wrestled.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I saw Emett coming through the woods leading and
+  dragging the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that
+  his fear was not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no
+  wonder to me that the Navvy should hang back from this
+  sacrilegious treatment of his god. A natural wisdom, which I had
+  in common with all human beings who consider self preservation
+  the first law of life, deterred me from acquainting my august
+  companions with my belief. At least I did not want to break up
+  the camp.</p>
+
+  <p>In the remorseless grasp of Emett, forced along, the Navajo
+  dragged his feet and held his face sidewise, though his dark eyes
+  gleamed at the lions. Terror predominated among the expressions
+  of his countenance. Emett drew him within fifteen feet and held
+  him there, and with voice, and gesticulating of his free hand,
+  tried to show the poor fellow that the lions would not hurt
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy stared and muttered to himself. Here Jim had some
+  deviltry in mind, for he edged up closer; but what it was never
+  transpired, for Emett suddenly pointed to the horses and said to
+  the Indian:</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Chineago</i> (feed)."</p>
+
+  <p>It appeared when Navvy swung himself over Marc's broad back,
+  that our great stallion had laid aside his transiently noble
+  disposition and was himself again. Marc proceeded to show us how
+  truly Jim had spoken: "Shore he ain't no use for the redskin."
+  Before the Indian had fairly gotten astride, Marc dropped his
+  head, humped his shoulders, brought his feet together and began
+  to buck. Now the Navajo was a famous breaker of wild mustangs,
+  but Marc was a tougher proposition than the wildest mustang that
+  ever romped the desert. Not only was he unusually vigorous; he
+  was robust and heavy, yet exceedingly active. I had seen him roll
+  over in the dust three times each way, and do it easily&mdash;a
+  feat Emett declared he had never seen performed by another
+  horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy began to bounce. He showed his teeth and twisted his
+  sinewy hands in the horse's mane. Marc began to act like a demon;
+  he plowed the ground; apparently he bucked five feet straight up.
+  As the Indian had bounced he now began to shoot into the air. He
+  rose the last time with his heels over his head, to the full
+  extent of his arms; and on plunging down his hold broke. He spun
+  around the horse, then went hurtling to the ground some twenty
+  feet away. He sat up, and seeing Emett and Jones laughing, and
+  Jim prostrated with joy, he showed his white teeth in a smile and
+  said:</p>
+
+  <p>"No bueno dam."</p>
+
+  <p>I think all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and
+  especially when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the
+  mean Indian, patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted.
+  Marc, not being so difficult to please as Jim in the way of
+  discomfiting the Navajo, appeared satisfied for the present, and
+  trotted off down the hollow, with the string of horses ahead,
+  their bells jingling.</p>
+
+  <p>Camp-fire tasks were a necessary wage in order to earn the
+  full enjoyment and benefit of the hunting trip; and looking for
+  some task with which to turn my hand, I helped Jim feed the
+  hounds. To feed ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a
+  bone; however, our dogs were not ordinary. It took time to feed
+  them, and a prodigious amount of meat. We had packed between
+  three and four hundred pounds of wild-horse meat, which had been
+  cut into small pieces and strung on the branches of a scrub oak
+  near camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Don, as befitted a gentleman and the leader of the greatest
+  pack in the West, had to be fed by hand. I believe he would
+  rather had starved than have demeaned himself by fighting.
+  Starved he certainly would have, if Jim had thrown meat
+  indiscriminately to the ground. Sounder asserted his rights and
+  preferred large portions at a time. Jude begged with great solemn
+  eyes but was no slouch at eating for all her gentleness. Ranger,
+  because of imperfectly developed teeth rendering mastication
+  difficult, had to have his share cut into very small pieces. As
+  for Moze&mdash;well, great dogs have their faults as do great
+  men&mdash;he never got enough meat; he would fight even poor
+  crippled Jude, and steal even from the pups; when he had gotten
+  all Jim would give him, and all he could snatch, he would growl
+  away with bulging sides.</p>
+
+  <p>"How about feeding the lions?" asked Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"They'll drink to-night," replied Jones, "but won't eat for
+  days; then we'll tempt them with fresh rabbits."</p>
+
+  <p>We made a hearty meal, succeeding which Jones and I walked
+  through the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and
+  glistening, invited us westward, and after a detour of half a
+  mile we reached it. The points of the rim, striking out into the
+  immense void, always drew me irresistibly. We found the view from
+  this rock one of startling splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of
+  the middle wing extended to the west, at this moment apparently
+  running into the setting sun. The gold glare touching up the
+  millions of facets of chiseled stone, created color and
+  brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And
+  looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue,
+  bottomless depths of the Pacific.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here, help me push off this stone," I said to Jones. We
+  heaved a huge round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move.
+  Fortunately we had a little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked
+  and began to slide. Just as it toppled over I glanced at the
+  second hand of my watch. Then with eyes over the rim we waited.
+  The silence was the silence of the canyon, dead and vast,
+  intensified by our breathless earstrain. Ten long palpitating
+  seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too great for
+  sound to reach us. Fifteen
+  seconds&mdash;seventeen&mdash;eighteen&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most
+  awful bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened,
+  deadened to burst out and roll louder, then slowly, like
+  mountains on wheels, rumbled under the rim-walls, passing on and
+  on, to roar back in echo from the cliffs of the mesas. Roar and
+  rumble&mdash;roar and rumble! for two long moments the dull and
+  hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in the far-distant
+  canyons.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to
+  watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color
+  deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up
+  like a dark tide.</p>
+
+  <p>On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which
+  brought us to a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better
+  to go around. The hollow, however, was quite long and we decided
+  presently to cross it. We descended a little way when Jones
+  suddenly barred my progress with his big arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen," he whispered.</p>
+
+  <p>It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the
+  pine needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be
+  approaching under the trees.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of
+  the hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that
+  broken wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going
+  down."</p>
+
+  <p>I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down
+  like shadows.</p>
+
+  <p>"Have they scented us?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a
+  twig. They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I
+  wonder&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp
+  action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of
+  soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid
+  succession violent brushings and thumpings in the scrub of the
+  hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes!
+  Come on! Hi! Hi! Hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept
+  close to him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver.
+  Toward the bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had
+  to smash through and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And
+  farther up the hollow I saw a gray swiftly bounding object too
+  long and too low for a deer, and I hurriedly shot six times at
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for
+  quick work? It's a yearling doe."</p>
+
+  <p>In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones
+  feet. It was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the
+  wheeze of blood in its throat, and the sound, like a
+  death-rattle, affected me powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where
+  one side of the neck, low down, had been terribly lacerated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you
+  have another shot put this doe out of agony."</p>
+
+  <p>But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp
+  knife. We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The
+  peculiar sound, probably made by the intake of air through the
+  laceration of the throat, on the spur of the moment seemed
+  pitifully human.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living
+  thing was a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied
+  natural selection, the variability of animals under different
+  conditions of struggling existence, the law whereby one animal
+  struck down and devoured another. But I had never seen and heard
+  that law enacted on such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's up?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the
+  other; and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk
+  that I experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his
+  advent might mean at a time of real peril.</p><a name=
+  "image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg023_m.jpg" width="448" height="703" alt=
+    "Jones About to Lasso a Mountain Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg024_m.jpg" width="448" height="674" alt=
+    "Remains of a Deer Killed by Lions ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Emett, I've lived to see many things," replied Jones, "but
+  this is the first time I ever saw a lion jump a deer right under
+  my nose!"</p>
+
+  <p>As Emett bent over to seize the long ears of the deer, I
+  noticed the gasping had ceased.</p>
+
+  <p>"Neck broken," he said, lifting the head. "Well, I'm danged.
+  Must have been an all-fired strong lion. He'll come back, you may
+  be sure of that. Let's skin out the quarters and hang the carcass
+  up in a tree!"</p>
+
+  <p>We returned to camp in a half an hour, the richer for our walk
+  by a quantity of fresh venison. Upon being acquainted with our
+  adventure, Jim expressed himself rather more fairly than was his
+  customary way.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore that beats hell! I knowed there was a lion somewheres,
+  because Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the
+  brute."</p>
+
+  <p>I believed Jim's wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any
+  rate to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the
+  doe justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it
+  was not so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner
+  of it, and especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama
+  of the plateau. The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred
+  every night, perhaps often in the day and likely at different
+  points at the same time. Emett told how he had found fourteen
+  piles of bleached bones and dried hair in the thickets of less
+  than a mile of the hollow on which we were encamped.</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."</p>
+
+  <p>"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, <i>coco! coco!</i>" called
+  Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up
+  the fire and threw on more wood.</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Discass!</i> (cold)," he said to me. "<i>Coco, bueno</i>
+  (fire good)."</p>
+
+  <p>I replied, "Me savvy&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleep-ie?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha," I returned.</p>
+
+  <p>While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of
+  Navajo, English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw
+  the stars disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder
+  and carried a breath of snow. I like north wind best&mdash;from
+  under the warm blankets&mdash;because of the roar and lull and
+  lull and roar in the pines. Crawling into the bed presently, I
+  lay there and listened to the rising storm-wind for a long time.
+  Sometimes it swelled and crashed like the sound of a breaker on
+  the beach, but mostly, from a low incessant moan, it rose and
+  filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly lulled. This lull, despite
+  a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to sleep.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The
+  Navajo aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly
+  from under the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw
+  fleecy flakes of white drifting through the small window of my
+  tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones'
+  hopes. Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots
+  and coat I went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow.
+  The forest was beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was
+  falling. I walked to the roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits,
+  well-browned and of generous size, had just been dumped into the
+  middle of our breakfast cloth, a tarpaulin spread on the ground;
+  the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and a Dutch oven sizzled with
+  a great number of slices of venison. "Did you hear the Indian
+  chanting?" asked Jones, who sat with his horny hands to the
+  blaze.</p>
+
+  <p>"I heard his singing."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, it wasn't a song; the Navajo never sings in the morning.
+  What you heard was his morning prayer, a chant, a religious and
+  solemn ritual to the break of day. Emett says it is a custom of
+  the desert tribe. You remember how we saw the Mokis sitting on
+  the roofs of their little adobe huts in the gray of the morning.
+  They always greet the sun in that way. The Navajos chant."</p>
+
+  <p>It certainly was worth remembering, I thought, and mentally
+  observed that I would wake up thereafter and listen to the
+  Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good luck and bad!" went on Jones. "Snow is what we want, but
+  now we can't find the scent of our lion of last night."</p>
+
+  <p>Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives
+  presented sorry spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled.
+  Emett had chopped down a small pine, the branches of which he was
+  using to make shelter for the lions. While I looked on Tom tore
+  his to pieces several times, but the lioness crawled under hers
+  and began licking her chops. At length Tom, seeing that Emett
+  meant no underhand trick, backed out of the drizzling snow and
+  lay down.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett had already constructed a shack for the hounds. It was a
+  way of his to think of everything. He had the most extraordinary
+  ability. A stroke of his axe, a twist of his great hands, a turn
+  of this or that made camp a more comfortable place. And if
+  something, no matter what, got out of order or broken, there was
+  Emett to show what it was to be a man of the desert. It had been
+  my good fortune to see many able men on the trail and round the
+  camp-fire, but not one of them even approached Emett's class.
+  When I said a word to him about his knack with things, his reply
+  was illuminating: "I'm fifty-eight, and four out of every five
+  nights of my life I have slept away from home on the ground."</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Chineago!</i>" called Jim, who had begun with all of us to
+  assimilate a little of the Navajo's language.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon we fell to eating with appetite unknown to any save
+  hunters. Somehow the Indian had gravitated to me at meal times,
+  and now he sat cross-legged beside me, holding out his plate and
+  looking as hungry as Moze. At first he had always asked for the
+  same kind of food that I happened to have on my own plate. When I
+  had finished and had no desire to eat more, he gave up his
+  faculty of imitation and asked for anything he could get. The
+  Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked sweet things, sugar
+  best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get his hands on a
+  can of fruit. Although he inspired Jones with disgust and Jim
+  with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to me. He
+  called me "Mista Gay" and he pronounced the words haltingly in
+  low voice and with unmistakable respect.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's on for today?" queried Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess we may as well hang around camp and rest the hounds,"
+  replied Jones. "I did intend to go after the lion that killed the
+  deer, but this snow has taken away the scent."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore it'll stop snowin' soon," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying
+  powder; the leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew
+  brighter and brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after
+  his departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through
+  the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Something's up," said Emett instantly. "An Indian never yells
+  like that at a horse."</p><a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg025_m.jpg" width="748" height="448" alt=
+    "A Lion Tied ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg026_m.jpg" width="727" height="448" alt=
+    "Fighting Weetahs (buffalo Bulls) on Buffalo Jones's Desert Ranch">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell
+  repeated. It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells,
+  which told us he had the horses coming. He appeared off to the
+  right, riding Foxie and racing the others toward camp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Cougie&mdash;mucha big&mdash;dam!" he said leaping off the
+  mustang to confront us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," replied the Indian. "<i>Butteen, butteen</i>!"</p>
+
+  <p>"He says, trail&mdash;trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd
+  better go and see."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight
+  and hurry with the horses' oats."</p>
+
+  <p>We followed the tracks of the horses which lead southwest
+  toward the rim, and a quarter of a mile from camp we crossed a
+  lion trail running at right angles with our direction.</p>
+
+  <p>"Old Sultan!" I cried, breathlessly, recognizing that the
+  tracks had been made by a giant lion we had named Sultan. They
+  were huge, round, and deep, and with my spread hand I could not
+  reach across one of them.</p>
+
+  <p>Without a word, Jones strode off on the trail. It headed east
+  and after a short distance turned toward camp. I suppose Jones
+  knew what the lion had been about, but to Emett and me it was
+  mystifying. Two hundred yards from camp we came to a fallen pine,
+  the body of which was easily six feet high. On the side of this
+  log, almost on top, were two enormous lion tracks, imprinted in
+  the mantle of snow. From here the trail led off northeast.</p>
+
+  <p>"Darn me!" ejaculated Jones. "The big critter came right into
+  camp; he scented our lions, and raised up on this log to look
+  over."</p>
+
+  <p>Wheeling, he started for camp on the trot. Emett and I kept
+  even with him. Words were superfluous. We knew what was coming. A
+  made&mdash;to&mdash;order lion trail could not have equalled the
+  one right in the back yard of our camp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Saddle up!" said Jones, with the sharp inflection of words
+  that had come to thrill me. "Jim, Old Sultan has taken a look at
+  us since break of day."</p>
+
+  <p>I got into my chaps, rammed my little automatic into its
+  saddle holster and mounted. Foxie seemed to want to go. The
+  hounds came out of their sheds and yawned, looking at us
+  knowingly. Emett spoke a word to the Navajo, and then we were
+  trotting down through the forest. The sun had broken out warm,
+  causing water to drip off the snow laden pines. The three of us
+  rode close behind Jones, who spoke low and sternly to the
+  hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>What an opportunity to watch Don! I wondered how soon he would
+  catch the scent of the trail. He led the pack as usual and kept
+  to a leisurely dog&mdash;trot. When within twenty yards of the
+  fallen log, he stopped for an instant and held up his head,
+  though without exhibiting any suspicion or uneasiness.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind blew strong at our backs, a circumstance that
+  probably kept Don so long in ignorance of the trail. A few yards
+  further on, however, he stopped and raised his fine head. He
+  lowered it and trotted on only to stop again. His easy air of
+  satisfaction with the morning suddenly vanished. His savage
+  hunting instinct awakened through some channel to raise the short
+  yellow hair on his neck and shoulders and make it stand stiff. He
+  stood undecided with warily shifting nose, then jumped forward
+  with a yelp. Another jump brought another sharp cry from him.
+  Sounder, close behind, echoed the yelp. Jude began to whine. Then
+  Don, with a wild howl, leaped ten feet to alight on the lion
+  trail and to break into wonderfully rapid flight. The seven other
+  hounds, bunched in a black and yellow group, tore after him
+  filling the forest with their wild uproar.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett's horse bounded as I have seen a great racer leave the
+  post, and his desert brothers, loving wild bursts of speed,
+  needing no spur, kept their noses even with his flanks. The soft
+  snow, not too deep, rather facilitated than impeded this wild
+  movement, and the open forest was like a highway.</p>
+
+  <p>So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for
+  branches, vaulting the white&mdash;blanketed logs, and swerving
+  as we split to pass the pines. The mist from the melting snow
+  moistened our faces, and the rushing air cooled them with fresh,
+  soft sensation. There were moments when we rode abreast and
+  others when we sailed single file, with white ground receding,
+  vanishing behind us.</p>
+
+  <p>My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth
+  flight and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I
+  hoped we would not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a
+  thicket where he had dragged a deer, because the race was too
+  splendid a thing to cut short. Through my mind whirled with
+  inconceivable rapidity the great lion chases on which we had
+  ridden the year before. And this was another chase, only more
+  stirring, more beautiful, because it was the nature of the thing
+  to grow always with experience.</p>
+
+  <p>Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung
+  along the trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup
+  was neck and neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels,
+  leading the other pups. Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of
+  Jude.</p>
+
+  <p>But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds,
+  was not in the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned
+  due west when he began to go down the little hollows and their
+  intervening ridges. We lost ground. The pack left us behind. The
+  slope of the plateau became decided. We rode out of the pines to
+  find the snow failing in the open. Water ran in little gullies
+  and glistened on the sagebrush. A half mile further down the snow
+  had gone. We came upon the hounds running at fault, except
+  Sounder, and he had given up.</p>
+
+  <p>"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's
+  track and his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as
+  well to wait until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing
+  somewhere and it is my idea we might catch his trail as he comes
+  back."</p>
+
+  <p>The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There
+  seemed no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but
+  features of the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the
+  lower end of the plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even
+  if we found a fresh morning trail in the sand, the heat would
+  have burned out the scent.</p>
+
+  <p>So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp
+  only the shady patches were left.</p>
+
+  <p>It was almost eleven o'clock when I lay down on my bed to rest
+  awhile and fell asleep. The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard
+  Jim calling Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The
+  snow had all disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim
+  sat on his horse and Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow,
+  leading the saddle horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jones, get out," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones
+  testily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones burst out of his tent, with rumpled hair and sleepy
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"I went over to see the carcass of the deer an' found a lion
+  sittin' up in the tree, feedin' for all he was worth. Pie jumped
+  out an' ran up the hollow an' over the rim. So I rustled back for
+  you fellows. Lively now, we'll get this one sure."</p>
+
+  <p>"Was it the big fellow?" I asked</p>
+
+  <p>"No, but he ain't no kitten; an' he's a fine color, sort of
+  reddish. I never seen one just as bright. Where's Emett?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know. He was here a little while ago. Shall I signal
+  for him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't yell," cried Jones holding up his fingers. "Be quiet
+  now."</p>
+
+  <p>Without another word we finished saddling, mounted and, close
+  together, with the hounds in front, rode through the forest
+  toward the rim.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    V
+  </center>
+
+  <p>We rode in different directions toward the hollow, the better
+  to chance meeting with Emett, but none of us caught a glimpse of
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>It happened that when we headed into the hollow it was at a
+  point just above where the deer carcass hung in the scrub oak.
+  Don in spite of Jones' stern yells, let out his eager hunting
+  yelp and darted down the slope. The pack bolted after him and in
+  less than ten seconds were racing up the hollow, their thrilling,
+  blending bays a welcome spur to action. Though I spoke not a word
+  to my mustang nor had time to raise the bridle, he wheeled to one
+  side and began to run. The other horses also kept to the ridge,
+  as I could tell by the pounding of hoofs on the soft turf. The
+  hounds in full cry right under us urged our good steeds to a
+  terrific pace. It was well that the ridge afforded clear
+  going.</p>
+
+  <p>The speed at which we traveled, however, fast as it was,
+  availed not to keep up with the pack. In a short half mile, just
+  as the hollow sloped and merged into level ground, they left us
+  behind and disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My
+  mustang plunged out of the forest to the rim and dashed along,
+  apparently unmindful of the chasm. The red and yellow surface
+  blurred in a blinding glare. I heard the chorus of hounds, but as
+  its direction baffled me I trusted to my horse and I did well,
+  for soon he came to a dead halt on the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I heard the hounds below me. I had but time to see the
+  character of the place&mdash;long, yellow promontories running
+  out and slopes of weathered stone reaching up between to a level
+  with the rim&mdash;when in a dwarf pine growing just over the
+  edge I caught sight of a long, red, pantherish body.</p>
+
+  <p>I whooped to my followers now close upon me and leaping off
+  hauled out my Remington and ran to the cliff. The lion's long,
+  slender body, of a rare golden-red color, bright, clean,
+  black-tipped and white-bellied, proclaimed it a female of
+  exceeding beauty. I could have touched her with a fishing rod and
+  saw how easily she could be roped from where I stood. The tree in
+  which she had taken refuge grew from the head of a weathered
+  slope and rose close to the wall. At that point it was merely a
+  parapet of crumbling yellow rock. No doubt she had lain concealed
+  under the shelving wall and had not had time to get away before
+  the hounds were right upon her.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's going to jump," yelled Jones, in my rear, as he
+  dismounted.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a golden-red streak flash downward, heard a mad medley
+  from the hounds, a cloud of dust rose, then something bright
+  shone for a second to the right along the wall. I ran with all my
+  might to a headland of rock upon which I scrambled and saw with
+  joy that I could command the situation.</p>
+
+  <p>The lioness was not in sight, nor were the hounds. The latter,
+  however, were hot on the trail. I knew the lioness had taken to
+  another tree or a hole under the wall, and would soon be routed
+  out. This time I felt sure she would run down and I took a rapid
+  glance below. The slope inclined at a steep angle and was one
+  long slide of bits of yellow stone with many bunches of scrub oak
+  and manzanita. Those latter I saw with satisfaction, because in
+  case I had to go down they would stop the little avalanches. The
+  slope reached down perhaps five hundred yards and ended in a
+  thicket and jumble of rocks from which rose on the right a bare
+  yellow slide. This ran up to a low cliff. I hoped the lion would
+  not go that way, for it led to great broken battlements of rim.
+  Left of the slide was a patch of cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim's yell pealed out, followed by the familiar penetrating
+  howl of the pack when it sighted game. With that I saw the
+  lioness leaping down the slope and close behind her a yellow
+  hound.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go it, Don, old boy!" I yelled, wild with delight.</p>
+
+  <p>A crushing step on the stones told me Jones had arrived.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" roared he.</p>
+
+  <p>I thought then that if the lioness did not cover thirty feet
+  at every jump I was not in a condition to judge distance. She ran
+  away from Don as if he had been tied and reached the thicket
+  below a hundred yards ahead of him. And when Don leaving his
+  brave pack far up the slide entered the thicket the lioness came
+  out on the other side and bounded up the bare slope of yellow
+  shale.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shoot ahead of her! Head her off! Turn her back!" cried
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>With the word I threw forward the Remington and let drive.
+  Following the bellow of the rifle, so loud in that thin air, a
+  sharp, harsh report cracked up from below. A puff of yellow dust
+  rose in front of the lioness. I was in line, but too far ahead. I
+  fired again. The steel jacketed bullet hit a stone and spitefully
+  whined away into the canyon. I tried once more. This time I
+  struck close to the lioness. Disconcerted by a cloud of dust
+  rising before her very eyes she wheeled and ran back.</p>
+
+  <p>We had forgotten Don and suddenly he darted out of the
+  thicket, straight up the slide. Always, in every chase, we were
+  afraid the great hound would run to meet his death. We knew it
+  was coming sometime. When the lioness saw him and stopped, both
+  Jones and I felt that this was to be the end of Don.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shoot her! Shoot her!" cried Jones. "She'll kill him! She'll
+  kill him!"</p>
+
+  <p>As I knelt on the rock I had a hard contraction of my throat,
+  and then all my muscles set tight and rigid. I pulled the trigger
+  of my automatic once, twice. It was wonderful how closely the two
+  bullets followed each other, as we could tell by the almost
+  simultaneous puffs of dust rising from under the beast's nose.
+  She must have been showered and stung with gravel, for she
+  bounded off to the left and disappeared in the cedars. I had
+  missed, but the shots had served to a better end than if I had
+  killed her.</p>
+
+  <p>As Don raced up the ground where a moment before a battle and
+  probably death had awaited him, the other hounds burst from the
+  thicket. With that, a golden form seemed to stand out from the
+  green of the cedar, to move and to rise.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's treed! She's treed!" shouted Jones. "Go down and keep
+  her there while I follow."</p>
+
+  <p>From the back of the promontory where I met the main wall, I
+  let myself down a niche, foot here and there, a hand hard on the
+  soft stone, braced knee and back until I jumped to the edge of
+  the slope. The scrub oak and manzanita saved me many a fall. I
+  set some stones rolling and I beat them to the bottom. Having
+  passed the thicket, I bent my efforts to the yellow slide and
+  when I had surmounted it my breath came in labored pants. The
+  howling of the hounds guided me through the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>First I saw Moze in the branches of cedar and above him the
+  lioness. I ran out into a little open patch of stony ground at
+  the end of which the tree stood leaning over a precipice. In
+  truth the lioness was swaying over a chasm.</p>
+
+  <p>Those details I grasped in a glance, then suddenly awoke to
+  the fact that the lioness was savagely snarling at Moze.</p>
+
+  <p>"Moze! Moze! Get down!" I yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>He climbed on serenely. He was a most exasperating dog. I
+  screamed at him and hit him with a rock big enough to break his
+  bones. He kept on climbing. Here was a predicament. Moze would
+  surely get to the lioness if I did not stop him, and this seemed
+  impossible. It was out of the question for me to climb after him.
+  And if the lioness jumped she would have to pass me or come
+  straight at me. So I slipped down the safety catch on my
+  automatic and stood ready to save Moze or myself.</p>
+
+  <p>The lioness with a show of fury that startled me, descended
+  her branch a few steps, and reaching below gave Moze a sounding
+  smack with her big paw. The hound dropped as if he had been shot
+  and hit the ground with a thud. Whereupon she returned to her
+  perch.</p>
+
+  <p>This reassured me and I ran among the dogs and caught Moze
+  already starting for the tree again and tied him, with a strap I
+  always carried, to a small bush nearby. I heard the yells of my
+  companions and looking back over the tops of the cedars I saw Jim
+  riding down and higher to the left Jones sliding, falling,
+  running at a great rate. I encouraged them to keep up the good
+  work, and then gave my attention to the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>She regarded me with a cold, savage stare and showed her
+  teeth. I repaid this incivility on her part by promptly
+  photographing her from different points.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and Jim were on the spot before I expected them and both
+  were dusty and dripping with sweat. I found to my surprise that
+  my face was wet as was also my shirt. Jones carried two lassos,
+  and my canteen, which I had left on the promontory.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ain't she a beauty?" he panted, wiping his face.
+  "Wait&mdash;till I get my breath."</p>
+
+  <p>When finally he walked toward the cedar the lioness stood up
+  and growled as if she realized the entrance of the chief actor
+  upon the scene. Jones cast his lasso apparently to try her out,
+  and the noose spread out and fell over her head. As he tightened
+  the rope the lioness backed down behind a branch.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tie the dogs!" yelled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Quick!" added Jim. "She's goin' to jump."</p>
+
+  <p>Jim had only time to aid me in running my lasso under the
+  collar of Don, Sounder, Jude and one of the pups. I made them
+  fast to a cedar. I got my hands on Ranger just as Moze broke his
+  strap. I grabbed his collar and held on.</p>
+
+  <p>Right there was where trouble commenced for me. Ranger tussled
+  valiantly and Moze pulled me all over the place. Behind me I
+  heard Jones' roar and Jim's yell; the breaking of branches, the
+  howling of the other dogs. Ranger broke away from me and so
+  enabled me to get my other hand on the neck of crazy Moze. On
+  more than one occasion I had tried to hold him and had failed;
+  this time I swore I would do it if he rolled me over the
+  precipice. As to that, only a bush saved me.</p>
+
+  <p>More and louder roars and yells, hoarser howls and sharper
+  wrestling, snapping sounds told me what was going on while I
+  tried to subdue Moze. I had a grim thought that I would just as
+  lief have had hold of the lioness. The hound presently stopped
+  his plunging which gave me an opportunity to look about. The
+  little space was smoky with a smoke of dust. I saw the lioness
+  stretched out with one lasso around a bush and another around a
+  cedar with the end in the hands of Jim. He looked as if he had
+  dug up the ground. While he tied this lasso securely Jones
+  proceeded to rope the dangerous front paws.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds quieted down and I took advantage of this absence
+  of tumult to get rid of Moze.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pretty lively," said Jones, spitting gravel as I walked up.
+  Sand and dust lay thick in his beard and blackened his face. "I
+  tell you she made us root."</p>
+
+  <p>Either the lioness had been much weakened or choked, or Jones
+  had unusual luck, for we muzzled her and tied up her paws in
+  short order.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Ranger?" I asked suddenly, missing him from the
+  panting hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>"I grabbed him by the heels when he tackled the lion, and I
+  gave him a sling somewheres," replied Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Ranger put in an appearance then under the cedars limping
+  painfully.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jim, darn me, if I don't believe you pitched him over the
+  precipice!" said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Examination proved this surmise to be correct. We saw where
+  Ranger had slipped over a twenty-foot wall. If he had gone over
+  just under the cedar where the depth was much greater he would
+  never have come back.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds are choking with dust and heat," I said. When I
+  poured just a little water from my canteen into the crown of my
+  hat, the hounds began fighting around and over me and spilled the
+  water.</p>
+
+  <p>"Behave, you coyotes!" I yelled. Either they were insulted or
+  fully realized the exigency of the situation, for each one came
+  up and gratefully lapped every drop of his portion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, now comes the hell of it," said Jim appearing with a
+  long pole. "Packin' the critter out."</p>
+
+  <p>An argument arose in regard to the best way up the slope, and
+  by virtue of a majority we decided to try the direction Jim and I
+  thought best. My companions led the way, carrying the lioness
+  suspended on the pole. I brought up the rear, packing my rifle,
+  camera, lasso, canteen and a chain.</p>
+
+  <p>It was killing work. We had to rest every few steps. Often we
+  would fall. Jim laughed, Jones swore, and I groaned. Sometimes I
+  had to drop my things to help my companions. So we toiled wearily
+  up the loose, steep way.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's she shakin' like that for?" asked Jim suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones let down his end of the pole and turned quickly. Little
+  tremors quivered over the lissome body of the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's dying," cried Jim, jerking out the stick between her
+  teeth and slipping off the wire muzzle.</p>
+
+  <p>Her mouth opened and her frothy tongue lolled out. Jones
+  pointed to her quivering sides and then raised her eyelids. We
+  saw the eyes already glazing, solemnly fixed.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's gone," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Very soon she lay inert and lifeless. Then we sat beside her
+  without a word, and we could hardly for the moment have been more
+  stunned and heartbroken if it had been the tragic death of one of
+  our kind. In that wild environment, obsessed by the desire to
+  capture those beautiful cats alive, the fateful ending of the
+  successful chase was felt out of all proportion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore she's dead," said Jim. "And wasn't she a beauty? What
+  was wrong?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The heat and lack of water," replied Jones. "She choked. What
+  idiots we were! Why didn't we think to give her a drink."</p>
+
+  <p>So we passionately protested against our want of fore-thought,
+  and looked again and again with the hope that she might come to.
+  But death had stilled the wild heart. We gave up presently, still
+  did not move on. We were exhausted, and all the while the hounds
+  lay panting on the rocks, the bees hummed, the flies buzzed. The
+  red colors of the upper walls and the purple shades of the lower
+  darkened silently.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>"Shore we can't set here all night," said Jim. "Let's skin the
+  lion an' feed the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>The most astonishing thing in our eventful day was the amount
+  of meat stowed away by the dogs. Lion flesh appealed to their
+  appetites. If hungry Moze had an ounce of meat, he had ten
+  pounds. It seemed a good opportunity to see how much the old
+  gladiator could eat; and Jim and I cut chunks of meat as fast as
+  possible. Moze gulped them with absolute unconcern of such a
+  thing as mastication. At length he reached his limit, possibly
+  for the first time in his life, and looking longingly at a juicy
+  red strip Jim held out, he refused it with manifest shame. Then
+  he wobbled and fell down.</p>
+
+  <p>We called to him as we started to climb the slope, but he did
+  not come. Then the business of conquering that ascent of sliding
+  stone absorbed all our faculties and strength. Little headway
+  could we have made had it not been for the brush. We toiled up a
+  few feet only to slide back and so it went on until we were weary
+  of life.</p>
+
+  <p>When one by one we at last gained the rim and sat there to
+  recover breath, the sun was a half globe of fire burning over the
+  western ramparts. A red sunset bathed the canyon in crimson,
+  painting the walls, tinting the shadows to resemble dropping
+  mists of blood. It was beautiful and enthralling to my eyes, but
+  I turned away because it wore the mantle of tragedy.</p>
+
+  <p>Dispirited and worn out, we trooped into camp to find Emett
+  and a steaming supper. Between bites the three of us related the
+  story of the red lioness. Emett whistled long and low and then
+  expressed his regret in no light terms.</p>
+
+  <p>"Roping wild steers and mustangs is play to this work," he
+  said in conclusion.</p>
+
+  <p>I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even
+  the glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my
+  bed with eyes already glued shut.</p>
+
+  <p>A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first,
+  when only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my
+  bed, then hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was
+  dropping off again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to
+  open wide. The black night had faded to the gray of dawn. The
+  sound I recognized at once to be the Navajo's morning chant. I
+  lay there and listened. Soft and monotonous, wild and swelling,
+  but always low and strange, the savage song to the break of day
+  was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I wondered what the
+  literal meaning of his words could have been. The significance
+  needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away, to the
+  brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the
+  morning sun, to the Giver of Life&mdash;to these the Indian
+  chanted his prayer.</p>
+
+  <p>Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the
+  Navajo with his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the
+  trees, the rocks, the light and sun, and he prayed to that which
+  was divinely helpful to him in all the mystery of his
+  unintelligible life.</p>
+
+  <p>We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it
+  was to be a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question
+  arose&mdash;whether we or the hounds were the more crippled.
+  Ranger did not show himself; Don could just walk and that was
+  all; Moze was either too full or too tired to move; Sounder
+  nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.</p>
+
+  <p>After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves
+  different tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began
+  to turn the camp topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate
+  it. The wire, however, was not to be found. This was a calamity,
+  for, as we asked each other, how could we muzzle lions without
+  wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy leather straps which I had
+  bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had disappeared. We had
+  only one collar left, the one that Jones had put on the red
+  lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow
+  heated and naturally from that to become angry. It seems a
+  fatality of campers along a wild trail, like explorers in an
+  unknown land, to be prone to fight. If there is an explanation of
+  this singular fact, it must be that men at such time lose their
+  poise and veneer of civilization; in brief, they go back. At all
+  events we had it hot and heavy, with the center of attack
+  gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always losing
+  something, naturally we united in force against him.</p>
+
+  <p>Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off
+  in the woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs
+  preceded his appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten
+  a bridle on Marc, and from the way the big stallion hurled his
+  huge bulk over logs and through thickets, it appeared evident he
+  meant to usurp Jim's ambition and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett
+  yell, the Indian turned Marc toward camp. The horse slowed down
+  when he neared the glade and tried to buck. But Navvy kept his
+  head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to ungovernable rage
+  and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the dogs' shelter
+  and thundered down the ridge.</p>
+
+  <p>Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at
+  home. He was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept
+  his seat on a wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low
+  branch of a pine, sweeping the Indian off.</p>
+
+  <p>When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously
+  hurt, perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.</p>
+
+  <p>Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or
+  muscle, he certainly appeared dead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen
+  it before from just such accidents."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak.
+  Jim, who always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked
+  profoundly sorry.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's a dead Indian, all right," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain
+  and deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us
+  much relief.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's your dead Indian," exclaimed Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett stooped again and felt the Indian's back and got in
+  reward another mournful groan.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's his back," said Emett, and true to his ruling passion,
+  forever to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he
+  began to rub the Indian and call for the liniment.</p><a name=
+  "image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg027_m.jpg" width="448" height="837" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg028_m.jpg" width="448" height="686" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be
+  dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing
+  the hollow of his brown back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here we are," said Jim, returning on the run with the
+  bottle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pour some on," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the
+  Indian's back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't waste it," remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy's
+  back.</p>
+
+  <p>Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed
+  to quiver through the Indian's body; he rose at a single leap,
+  and uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw
+  an Indian or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed
+  back to us.</p>
+
+  <p>Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's your dead Indian!" ejaculated Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the hell!" exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such
+  language.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look here!" cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. "See! Don't you
+  see it?"</p>
+
+  <p>Jim fell face downward and began to shake.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" shouted Emett and I together.</p>
+
+  <p>"Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong
+  bottle!"</p>
+
+  <p>In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the
+  sward, and the forest rang with sounds of mirth.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and
+  so strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. "More snow"
+  was the verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the
+  Navajo to share my tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepie-me," I said to him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed
+  with me.</p>
+
+  <p>Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations,
+  which struck me as being singularly selfish considering they
+  would not be inconvenienced in any way.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why not?" I asked. "It's a cold night. There'll be frost if
+  not snow."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore you'll get 'em," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"There never was an Indian that didn't have 'em," added
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" I questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance
+  as to what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my
+  mind. When I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at
+  my feet as usual and he growled so deep that I could not but
+  think he, too, resented the addition to my small tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mista Gay!" came in the Indian's low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well Navvy?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepie&mdash;sleepie?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy&mdash;mucha sleepie&mdash;mucha&mdash;no bueno."</p>
+
+  <p>I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did
+  not awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent
+  was light and he had gone. I found my companions up and
+  doing.</p>
+
+  <p>We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun,
+  a red ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn
+  to gold. No snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the
+  ground. The hounds, wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they
+  detested, trotted in front. Don showed no effects of his great
+  run down the sliding slope after the red lioness; it was one of
+  his remarkable qualities that he recuperated so quickly. Ranger
+  was a little stiff, and Sounder favored his injured foot. The
+  others were as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had
+  passed the edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead,
+  he turned his horse up the bank.</p>
+
+  <p>We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest,
+  which we entered without having seen the hounds show interest in
+  anything. Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed
+  lion tracks, many of them, but too old to carry a scent. Even
+  North Hollow with its regular beaten runway failed to win a
+  murmur from the pack.</p>
+
+  <p>"Spread out," said Jones, "and look for tracks. I'll keep the
+  center and hold in the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the
+  breadth of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open
+  sage flats inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon
+  a broken sage bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I
+  discovered no track but dismounted and scrutinized the
+  surroundings carefully. A heavy body had been dragged across the
+  sage, crushing it. The ends of broken bushes were green, the
+  leaves showed bruises.</p>
+
+  <p>I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my
+  mustang I slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an
+  occasional down-trodden bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the
+  cedars again Foxie snorted. Under the first tree I found a
+  ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of grayish hairs and a split
+  skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe ears were still
+  warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even a well
+  pressed imprint of a lion's body where he had rolled or lain.</p>
+
+  <p>The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive
+  of interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then,
+  what with my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily
+  with shrill cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.</p>
+
+  <p>An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing
+  and breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He
+  arrived from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat.
+  Mutely I held up the two long ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"Get on your horse!" cried Jim after one quick glance at the
+  spread of bones and hair.</p>
+
+  <p>It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I
+  ran to Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared
+  among the sage and a string of yelps split the air.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Don!" yelled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight
+  for us! He passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and
+  disappeared like a gleam under the gloomy cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed
+  in on us from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out
+  behind Emett, fighting the branches, dodging and swerving,
+  hugging the saddle, and always sending out our sharp yells.</p>
+
+  <p>The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up
+  together found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West
+  Point.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds have gone down," he said, pointing to the
+  runway.</p>
+
+  <p>We all listened to the meaning bays.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they
+  found him under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now
+  fellows, I'll go down. It might be a good idea for you to spread
+  along the rim."</p><a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg029_m.jpg" width="448" height="790" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg030_m.jpg" width="448" height="733" alt=
+    "Hiding ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to
+  the rim as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often
+  forced us to circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls
+  below, kept pace with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused
+  Jones to dispatch Emett on the gallop for the next runway at
+  North Hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of
+  the promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my
+  mustang I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded
+  through the sage and cedar to the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very
+  sharp and bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags
+  with a crumbling bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down
+  like giant steps. From one of these I watched below. The slope
+  here under the wall was like the side of a rugged mountain.
+  Somewhere down among the dark patches of cedar and the great
+  blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the lion, but I could not
+  see one of them.</p>
+
+  <p>The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this
+  was with brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might
+  climb down. Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding,
+  clinging to what afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of
+  stone hid the sky from me part of the way. I came out a hundred
+  feet below upon a second promontory of huge slabs of yellow
+  stone. Over these I clambered, to sit with my feet swinging over
+  the last one.</p>
+
+  <p>Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the
+  canyon. In the soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow
+  walls, the black domes were less harsh than in the full noonday
+  sun, purer than in the tender shadow of twilight. Below me were
+  slopes and slides divided by ravines full of stones as large as
+  houses, with here and there a lonesome leaning crag, giving
+  irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the rolling,
+  weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full of
+  fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
+  limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers
+  wonderfully growing in crannies.</p>
+
+  <p>Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance
+  and a thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and
+  eager eyes to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was
+  mine as usual; the hounds were working up toward me. How I
+  strained my sight! Hearing a single cry I looked eastward to see
+  Jones silhouetted against the blue on a black promontory. He
+  seemed a giant primeval man overlooking the ruin of a former
+  world. I signalled him to make for my point.</p>
+
+  <p>Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He
+  was at fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his
+  left. I heard Don's clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air,
+  seemingly to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not
+  locate him. Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim.
+  Moze was next to appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble
+  of stone hid him, and then Ranger again showed. Evidently he
+  wanted to get around the bottom of a low crag, for he jumped and
+  jumped only to fall back.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon
+  the top of it was the long, slender body of a lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" I yelled till my lungs failed me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where are you?" came from above.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here! Here!" I cried seeing Jones on the rim. "Come down.
+  Climb down the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round
+  crag. He's fooled the hounds and they can't find him."</p>
+
+  <p>"I see him! I see him!" yelled Jones. Then he roared out a
+  single call for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the
+  curved broken rim wall, opening up echoes which clapped like
+  thunder.</p>
+
+  <p>While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay
+  with head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle.
+  What a place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing
+  down the broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have
+  remained safe from pursuit.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps.
+  I could not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the
+  crag. I leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the
+  varied and thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of
+  hard, panting breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As
+  Jones had set in motion bushels of stone and had already scraped
+  his feet over the rocks behind me I thought the forced
+  respiration came from him. When I turned he was yet far
+  off&mdash;too far for me to hear him breathe. I thought this
+  circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.</p>
+
+  <p>On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle
+  blast, and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent
+  up the thrice welcome news of a treed lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"There 're two! There 're two!" I yelled to Jones, now working
+  down to my right.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's treed down here. I've got him spotted!" replied Jones.
+  "You stay there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett."</p>
+
+  <p>Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim
+  far below to the left sent me an answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with
+  Jones and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone,
+  waiting impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one
+  lion and I watched the other.</p>
+
+  <p>Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could
+  have gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life
+  about him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding
+  to the throb and race of his wild blood.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes.
+  No doubt he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the
+  left of our position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to
+  toil up the other. I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds
+  hailed him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Steer to your left Jim!" I called.. "There's a lion on that
+  crag above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the
+  left&mdash;Jones is there!"</p>
+
+  <p>The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to
+  the sound rising from below without being able to see what
+  happened. My lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had
+  crouched closer to his crag, evidently believing he was unseen,
+  which obviously made it imperative for me to keep my seat and
+  hold him there as long as possible.</p>
+
+  <p>But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hyar Moze&mdash;get out of that. Catch him&mdash;hold him!
+  Damn these rotten limbs. Hand me a pole&mdash;Jones, back
+  down&mdash;back down! he's comin'&mdash;Hi! Hi! Whoop!
+  Boo&mdash;o! There&mdash;now you've got him! No, no; it slipped!
+  Now! Look out, Jim, from under&mdash;he's going to jump!"</p>
+
+  <p>A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of
+  yelps with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones' last
+  words. Then two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first
+  was the lion, the second was Don. The rest of the pack came
+  tumbling helter-skelter in their wake. Following them raced Jim
+  in long kangaroo leaps, with Jones in the rear, running for all
+  he was worth. The animated and musical procession passed up out
+  of the ravine and gradually lengthened as the lion gained and
+  Jones lost, till it passed altogether from my jealous sight.</p>
+
+  <p>On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed
+  their quarry again, as was easy to tell by their change from
+  sharp intermittent yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus.
+  Then presently all quieted down, and for long moments at a time
+  the still silence enfolded the slope. Shouts now and then floated
+  up on the wind and an occasional bark.</p>
+
+  <p>I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a
+  few minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag
+  and never moved.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks
+  of the Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far
+  beyond to where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther
+  still to the Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the
+  distance.</p>
+
+  <p>Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the
+  time I was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring
+  above would have placed me as well as my lion among the few
+  living things in the range of his all-compassing vision.
+  Therefore, all was mine, not merely the lion&mdash;for he was
+  only the means to an end&mdash;but the stupendous, unnameable
+  thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains in the shades of
+  its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming pale,
+  passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
+  the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
+  that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of
+  beauty exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by
+  right of presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to
+  keep.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!"</p>
+
+  <p>The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the
+  ridge of cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right here&mdash;have you kept your line there?" he
+  yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>"All's well&mdash;come along, come along," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved.
+  The hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could
+  not find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a
+  continual baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they
+  had tied up the lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up
+  the slope.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called
+  in warning.</p>
+
+  <p>"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.</p>
+
+  <p>I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between
+  the boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim
+  catching my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I
+  reached the bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of
+  the cliff, and soon all three of us with the hounds stood out on
+  the rocky shelf with only a narrow space between us and the
+  crouching lion.</p>
+
+  <p>Before we had a moment to speak, much less form a plan of
+  attack, the lion rose, spat at us defiantly, and deliberately
+  jumped off the crag. We heard him strike with a frightful
+  thud.</p>
+
+  <p>Surprise held us dumb. To take the leap to the slope below
+  seemed beyond any beast not endowed with wings. We saw the lion
+  bounding down the identical trail which the other lion had taken.
+  Jones came out of his momentary indecision.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold the dogs! Call them back!" he yelled hoarsely. "They'll
+  kill the lion we tied! They'll kill him!"</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds had scattered off the bench here and there,
+  everywhere, to come together on the trail below. Already they
+  were in full cry with the matchless Don at the fore. Manifestly
+  to call them back was an injustice, as well as impossible. In ten
+  seconds they were out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>In silence we waited, each listening, each feeling the tragedy
+  of the situation, each praying that they would pass by the poor,
+  helpless, bound lion. Suddenly the regular baying swelled to a
+  burst of savage, snarling fury, such as the pack made in a
+  vicious fight. This ceased&mdash;short silence ensued; Don's
+  sharp voice woke the echoes, then the regular baying
+  continued.</p>
+
+  <p>As with one thought, we all sat down. Painful as the certainty
+  was it was not so painful as that listening, hoping suspense.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore they can't be blamed," said Jim finally. "Bumping their
+  nose into a tied lion that way&mdash;how'd they know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who could guess the second lion would jump off that quick and
+  run back to our captive?" burst out Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore we might have knowed it," replied Jim. "Well, I'm goin'
+  after the pack."</p>
+
+  <p>He gathered up his lasso and strode off the bench. Jones said
+  he would climb back to the rim, and I followed Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Why the lions ran in that particular direction was clear to me
+  when I saw the trail. It was a runway, smooth and hard packed. I
+  trudged along it with rather less enjoyment than on any trail I
+  had ever followed to the canyon. Jim waited for me over the cedar
+  ridge and showed me where the captive lion lay dead. The hounds
+  had not torn him. They had killed him and passed on after the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>"He was a fine fellow, all of seven feet, we'll skin him on
+  our way back."</p>
+
+  <p>Only dogged determination coupled with a sense of duty to the
+  hounds kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had
+  been submerged. But we had to follow the pack.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim, less weighted down and perhaps less discouraged, forged
+  ahead up and down. The sun had burned all the morning coolness
+  out of the air. I perspired and panted and began to grow weary.
+  Jim's signal called me to hurry. I took to a trot and came upon
+  him and the hounds under a small cedar. The lion stood among the
+  dead branches. His sides where shaking convulsively, and his
+  short breaths could be plainly heard. He had the most blazing
+  eyes and most untamed expression of any wild creature I have ever
+  seen; and this amazed me considering I had kept him on a crag for
+  over an hour, and had come to look upon him as my own.</p>
+
+  <p>"What'll we do, Jim, now that we have him treed?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, we'll tie him up," declared Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion stayed in the cedar long enough for me to photograph
+  him twice, then he leaped down again and took to his back trail.
+  We followed as fast as we could, soon to find that the hounds had
+  put him up another cedar. From this he jumped down among the
+  dogs, scattered them as if they had been so many leaves, and
+  bounded up the slope out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>I laid aside my rifle and camera and tried to keep up with
+  Jim. The lion ran straight up the slope and treed again under the
+  wall. Before we covered half the distance he was on the go once
+  more, flying down in clouds of dust.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don is makin' him hump," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>And that alone was enough to spur us on. We would reward the
+  noble hound if we had the staying power. Don and his pack ran
+  westward this time, and along a mile of the beaten trail put him
+  up two more trees. But these we could not see and judged only by
+  the sound.</p><a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg031_m.jpg" width="448" height="704" alt=
+    "A Drink of Cold Granite Water Under the Rim ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg032_m.jpg" width="448" height="689" alt=
+    "Which is the Piute? ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Look there!" cried Jim. "Darn me if he ain't comin' right at
+  us."</p>
+
+  <p>It was true. Ahead of us the lion appeared, loping wearily. We
+  stopped in our tracks undecided. Jim drew his revolver. Once or
+  twice the lion disappeared behind stones and cedars. When he
+  sighted us he stopped, looked back, then again turning toward us,
+  he left the trail to plunge down. He had barely got out of sight
+  when old Don came pattering along the trail; then Ranger leading
+  the others. Don did not even put his nose to the ground where the
+  lion had switched, but leaped aside and went down. Here the long
+  section of slope between the lion's runway and the second wall
+  had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed into deep
+  ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled on,
+  always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped
+  fissures, we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar
+  below, and send long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood
+  at the constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second
+  wall. The side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of
+  mass on mass of broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a
+  gigantic scale. Points of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks
+  lined the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over
+  the second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds
+  seemed to be back further toward where the split narrows."</p>
+
+  <p>Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns
+  we wormed our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.</p>
+
+  <p>"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat
+  shelf some few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close
+  by, but too far for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was
+  gasping and frothing at the mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore if he'd only stay there&mdash;" said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the
+  tired beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw
+  failed of its purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up
+  painfully it seemed, and faced the dogs. That way barred he
+  turned to the cliff. Almost opposite him a shelf leaned out. He
+  looked at it, then paced to and fro like a beast in a cage.</p>
+
+  <p>He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and
+  finally concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length
+  sagged in the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and
+  strung, and he sprang like a tawny streak.</p>
+
+  <p>His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the
+  shelf and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his
+  claws scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a
+  somersault, struck twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded
+  from that to fall down, striking suddenly and then to roll, a
+  yellow wheel that lodged behind a rock and stretched out to move
+  no more.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little
+  stones rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon
+  seemed to pay tribute to the lion's unquenchable spirit and to
+  the freedom he had earned to the last.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>How long Jim and I sat there we never knew. The second
+  tragedy, not so pitiful but as heart sickening as the first,
+  crushed our spirits.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore he was a game lion," said Jim. "An' I'll have to get
+  his skin."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm all in, Jim. I couldn't climb out of that hole." I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You needn't. Rest a little, take a good drink an' leave your
+  canteen here for me; then get your things back there on the trail
+  an' climb out. We're not far from West Point. I'll go back after
+  the first lion's skin an' then climb straight up. You lead my
+  horse to the point where you came off the rim."</p>
+
+  <p>He clattered along the gorge knocking the stones and started
+  down. I watched him letting himself over the end of the huge
+  slabs until he passed out of my sight. A good, long drink revived
+  me and I began the ascent.</p>
+
+  <p>From that moment on time did not matter to me. I forgot all
+  about it. I felt only my leaden feet and my laboring chest and
+  dripping skin. I did not even notice the additional weight of my
+  rifle and camera though they must have overburdened me. I kept my
+  eyes on the lion runway and plunged away with short steps. To
+  look at these towering walls would have been to surrender.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, stumbling, bursting, sick, I gained the rim and had
+  to rest before I could mount. When I did get into the saddle I
+  almost fell from it.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and Emett were waiting for me at the promontory where I
+  had tied my horse, and were soon acquainted with the particulars
+  of my adventure, and that Jim would probably not get out for
+  hours. We made tracks for camp, and never did a place rouse in me
+  such a sense of gratefulness. Emett got dinner and left on the
+  fire a kettle of potato stew for Jim. It was almost dark when
+  that worthy came riding into camp. We never said a word as he
+  threw the two lion skins on the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fellows, you shore have missed the wind-up!" he
+  exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>We all looked at him and he looked at us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Was there any more?" I asked weakly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore! An' it beats hell! When I got the skin of the lion the
+  dogs killed I started to work up to the place I knowed you'd
+  leave my horse. It's bad climbing where you came down. I got on
+  the side of that cliff an' saw where I could work out, if I could
+  climb a smooth place. So I tried. There was little cracks an'
+  ridges for my feet and hands. All to once, just above where I
+  helped you down, I heard a growl. Looking up I saw a big lion,
+  bigger'n any we chased except Sultan, an' he was pokin' his head
+  out of a hole, an' shore telling me to come no further. I
+  couldn't let go with either hand to reach my gun, because I'd
+  have fallen, so I yelled at him with all my might. He spit at me
+  an' then walked out of the hole over the bench as proud as a lord
+  an' jumped down where I couldn't see him any more. I climbed out
+  all right but he'd gone. An' I'll tell you for a minute, he shore
+  made me sweat."</p>
+
+  <p>"By George!" I yelled, greatly excited. "I heard that lion
+  breathing. Don chased him up there. I heard hard, wheezing
+  breaths somewhere behind me, but in the excitement I didn't pay
+  any attention to them. I thought it was Jones panting, but now I
+  know what it meant."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore. He was there all the time, lookin' at you an' maybe he
+  could have reached you."</p>
+
+  <p>We were all too exhausted for more discussion and putting that
+  off until the next day we sought our beds. It was hardly any
+  wonder that I felt myself jumping even in my sleep, and started
+  up wildly more than once in the dead of night.</p><a name=
+  "image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg033_m.jpg" width="765" height="448" alt=
+    "Wild Horses Drinking on a Promontory in the Grand Canyon ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Morning found us all rather subdued, yet more inclined to a
+  philosophical resignation as regarded the difficulties of our
+  special kind of hunting. Capturing the lions on the level of the
+  plateau was easy compared to following them down into canyons and
+  bringing them up alone. We all agreed that that was next to
+  impossible. Another feature, which before we had not considered,
+  added to our perplexity and it was a dawning consciousness that
+  we would be perhaps less cruel if we killed the lions outright.
+  Jones and Emett arrayed themselves on the side that life even in
+  captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still under
+  the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end,
+  inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable
+  fact that as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of
+  intelligence.</p><a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg034a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Jones and Emett Packing Lion on Horse ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg034b_m.jpg" width="448" height="348" alt=
+    "Jones Climbing up to Lasso Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>About eleven o'clock while the others had deserted camp
+  temporarily for some reason or other, I was lounging upon an
+  odorous bed of pine needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky
+  gleamed bright azure through the openings of the great trees, a
+  dry west breeze murmured through the forest. I was lying on my
+  bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I
+  felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten
+  me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this
+  time on my breast, another bite that left no room for
+  imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my shirt,
+  and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly a thought swept on the heels of my indolent and
+  rather annoying realization. Could I have gotten from the Navajo
+  what Jim and Jones so characteristically called "'em"? I turned
+  cold all over. And on the very instant I received another bite
+  that burned like fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The return of my companions prevented any open demonstration
+  of my fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore
+  inwardly. During the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had
+  on a horsehair shirt with the ends protruding toward my skin,
+  and, in the exaggerated sensitiveness of the moment, made sure
+  "'em" were chasing up and down my back.</p>
+
+  <p>After dinner I sneaked off into the woods. I remembered that
+  Emett had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and
+  that was to disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments
+  and person. With serious mind and murderous intent I undressed.
+  In the middle of the back of my jersey I discovered several long,
+  uncanny, gray things.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature,
+  oblivious to all around, intent only on the massacre of the
+  things that had violated me. How much time flew I could not
+  guess. Great loud "Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There
+  behind me stood Jones and Emett shaking as if with the ague.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage. I had the unreasonable
+  suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones,
+  who cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and
+  Emett the sober Mormon, laughed until they cried.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was&mdash;just wondering&mdash;what your folks
+  would&mdash;think&mdash;if they&mdash;saw you&mdash;now," gurgled
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in
+  their mirth.</p>
+
+  <p>"All I hope is that you fellows will get 'em' too," I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Good Lord preserve me from that particular breed of
+  Navvy's," cried Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones wriggled all over at the mere suggestion. Now so much
+  from the old plainsman, who had confessed to intimate relations
+  with every creeping, crawling thing in the West, attested
+  powerfully to the unforgettable singularity of what I got from
+  Navvy.</p>
+
+  <p>I returned to camp determined to make the best of the
+  situation, which owing to my failure to catch all of the gray
+  devils, remained practically unchanged. Jim had been acquainted
+  with my dilemma, as was manifest in his wet eyes and broad grin
+  with which he greeted me.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I'd scalp the Navvy," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You make the Indian sleep outside after this, snow or no
+  snow," was Jones' suggestion.</p>
+
+  <p>"No I won't; I won't show a yellow streak like that. Besides,
+  I want to give 'em to you fellows."</p>
+
+  <p>A blank silence followed my statement, to which Jim
+  replied:</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore that'll be easy; Jones'll have 'em, so'll Emett, an' by
+  thunder I'm scratchin' now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Navvy, look here," I said severely, "mucha no bueno! heap
+  bad! You&mdash;me!" here I scratched myself and made signs that a
+  wooden Indian would have understood.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," he replied, sullenly, then flared up. "Heap big
+  lie."</p>
+
+  <p>He turned on his heel, erect, dignified, and walked away amid
+  the roars of my gleeful comrades.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IX
+  </center>
+
+  <p>One by one my companions sought their blankets, leaving the
+  shadows, the dying embers, the slow-rising moan of the night wind
+  to me. Old Moze got up from among the other hounds and limped
+  into my tent, where I heard him groan as he lay down. Don,
+  Sounder, and Ranger were fast asleep in well-earned rest. Shep,
+  one of the pups, whined and impatiently tossed his short chain.
+  Remembering that he had not been loose all day, I unbuckled his
+  collar and let him go.</p>
+
+  <p>He licked my hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his
+  shapely, sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the
+  circle cast by the fire and looked out into the darkening
+  shadows. It was plain that Shep's instincts were developing fast;
+  he was ambitious to hunt. But sure in my belief that he was
+  afraid of the black night and would stay in camp, I went to
+  bed.</p>
+
+  <p>The Navajo who slept with me snored serenely and Moze growled
+  in his dreams; the wind swept through the pines with an
+  intermittent rush. Some time in the after part of the night I
+  heard a distant sound. Remote, mournful, wild, it sent a chill
+  creeping over me. Borne faintly to my ears, it was a fit
+  accompaniment to the moan of the wind in the pines. It was not
+  the cry of a trailing wolf, nor the lonesome howl of a prowling
+  coyote, nor the strange, low sound, like a cough, of a hunting
+  cougar, though it had a semblance of all three. It was the bay of
+  a hound, thinned out by distance, and it served to keep me wide
+  awake. But for a while, what with the roar and swell of the wind
+  and Navvy's snores, I could hear it only at long intervals.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, in the course of an hour, I followed the sound, or
+  imagined so, from a point straight in line with my feet to one at
+  right angles with my head. Finally deciding it came from Shep,
+  and fancying he was trailing a deer or coyote, I tried to go to
+  sleep again.</p>
+
+  <p>In this I would have succeeded had not, all at once, our
+  captive lions begun to growl. That ominous, low murmuring awoke
+  me with a vengeance, for it was unusual for them to growl in the
+  middle of the night. I wondered if they, as well as the pup, had
+  gotten the scent of a prowling lion.</p>
+
+  <p>I reached down to my feet and groped in the dark for Moze.
+  Finding him, I gave him a shake. The old gladiator groaned,
+  stirred, and came out of what must have been dreams of hunting
+  meat. He slapped his tail against my bed. As luck would have it,
+  just then the wind abated to a soft moan, and clear and sharp
+  came the bay of a hound. Moze heard it, for he stopped wagging
+  his tail, his body grew tense under my hand, and he vented his
+  low, deep grumble.</p>
+
+  <p>I lay there undecided. To wake my companions was hardly to be
+  considered, and to venture off into the forest alone, where old
+  Sultan might be scouting, was not exactly to my taste. And trying
+  to think what to do, and listening for the bay of the pup, and
+  hearing mostly the lions growling and the wind roaring, I fell
+  asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey! are you ever going to get up?" some one yelled into my
+  drowsy brain. I roused and opened my eyes. The yellow, flickering
+  shadows on the wall of my tent told me that the sun had long
+  risen. I found my companions finishing breakfast. The first thing
+  I did was to look over the dogs. Shep, the black-and-white pup,
+  was missing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Shep?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, I ain't seen him this mornin'," replied Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I told what I had heard during the night.</p>
+
+  <p>"Everybody listen," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>We quieted down and sat like statues. A gentle, cool breeze,
+  barely moving the pine tips, had succeeded the night wind. The
+  sound of horses munching their oats, and an occasional clink,
+  rattle, and growl from the lions did not drown the faint but
+  unmistakable yelps of a pup.</p>
+
+  <p>"South, toward the canyon," said Jim, as Jones got up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now, it'd be funny if that little Shep, just to get even with
+  me for tying him up so often, has treed a lion all by himself,"
+  commented Jones. "And I'll bet that's just what he's done."</p>
+
+  <p>He called the hounds about him and hurried westward through
+  the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, it might be." Jim shook his head knowingly. "I reckon
+  it's only a rabbit, but anythin' might happen in this place."</p>
+
+  <p>I finished breakfast and went into my tent for
+  something&mdash;I forget what, for wild yells from Emett and Jim
+  brought me flying out again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen to that!" cried Jim, pointing west.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds had opened up; their full, wild chorus floated
+  clearly on the breeze, and above it Jones' stentorian yell
+  signaled us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, the old man can yell," continued Jim. "Grab your
+  lassos an' hump yourselves. I've got the collar an' chain."</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on, Navvy," shouted Emett. He grasped the Indian's wrist
+  and started to run, jerking Navvy into the air at every jump. I
+  caught up my camera and followed. We crossed two shallow hollows,
+  and then saw the hounds and Jones among the pines not far
+  ahead.</p>
+
+  <p>In my excitement I outran my companions and dashed into an
+  open glade. First I saw Jones waving his long arms; next the
+  dogs, noses upward, and Don actually standing on his hind legs;
+  then a dead pine with a well-known tawny shape outlined against
+  the blue sky.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurrah for Shep!" I yelled, and right vigorously did my
+  comrades join in.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's another female," said Jones, when we calmed down, "and
+  fair sized. That's the best tree for our purpose that I ever saw
+  a lion in. So spread out, boys; surround her and keep noisy."</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy broke from Emett at this juncture and ran away. But
+  evidently overcome by curiosity, he stopped to hide behind a
+  bush, from which I saw his black head protruding.</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones swung himself on the first stubby branch of the
+  pine, the lioness, some fifteen feet above, leaped to another
+  limb, and the one she had left cracked, swayed and broke. It fell
+  directly upon Jones, the blunt end striking his head and knocking
+  him out of the tree. Fortunately, he landed on his feet;
+  otherwise there would surely have been bones broken. He appeared
+  stunned, and reeled so that Emett caught him. The blood poured
+  from a wound in his head.</p>
+
+  <p>This sudden shock sobered us instantly. On examination we
+  found a long, jagged cut in Jones' scalp. We bathed it with water
+  from my canteen and with snow Jim procured from a nearby hollow,
+  eventually stopping the bleeding. I insisted on Jones coming to
+  camp to have the wound properly dressed, and he insisted on
+  having it bound with a bandana; after which he informed us that
+  he was going to climb the tree again.</p>
+
+  <p>We objected to this. Each of us declared his willingness to go
+  up and rope the lion; but Jones would not hear of it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not doubting your courage," he said. "It's only that you
+  cannot tell what move the lion would make next, and that's the
+  danger."</p>
+
+  <p>We could not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill
+  the animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the
+  tree, passed the first branch and then another. The lioness
+  changed her position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to
+  keep the tree trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out
+  on a branch in a most favorable position for roping.</p>
+
+  <p>The first cast of the lasso did the business, and Jim and
+  Emett with nimble fingers tied up the hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>"Coming," shouted Jones. He slid down, hand over hand, on the
+  rope, the lioness holding his weight with apparent ease.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make your noose ready," he yelled to Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>I had to drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal
+  from her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness,
+  hissing, snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the
+  rope out of our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed
+  her hind paws in a flash.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make fast your rope," shouted Jones. "There, that's good! Now
+  let her down&mdash;easy."</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as the lioness touched ground we let go the lasso,
+  which whipped up and over the branch. She became a round, yellow,
+  rapidly moving ball. Emett was the first to catch the loose
+  lasso, and he checked the rolling cougar. Jones leaped to assist
+  him and the two of them straightened out the struggling animal,
+  while Jim swung another noose at her. On the second throw he
+  caught a front paw.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull hard! Stretch her out!" yelled Jones. He grasped a stout
+  piece of wood and pushed it at the lioness. She caught it in her
+  mouth, making the splinters fly. Jones shoved her head back on
+  the ground and pressed his brawny knee on the bar of wood.</p>
+
+  <p>"The collar! The collar! Quick!" he called.</p>
+
+  <p>I threw chain and collar to him, which in a moment he had
+  buckled round her neck.</p>
+
+  <p>"There, we've got her!" he said. "It's only a short way over
+  to camp, so we'll drag her without muzzling."</p>
+
+  <p>As he rose the lioness lurched, and reaching him, fastened her
+  fangs in his leg. Jones roared. Emett and Jim yelled. And I,
+  though frightened, was so obsessed with the idea of getting a
+  picture that I began to fumble with the shutter of my camera.</p>
+
+  <p>"Grab the chain! Pull her off!" bawled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with
+  all my might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round
+  her neck. Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she
+  brought Jones' leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the
+  chain and jumped.</p>
+
+  <p>"**&mdash; **&mdash;!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think
+  more of a picture than of saving my life?" Having expressed this
+  not unreasonable protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made
+  fast to a small sapling.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an
+  animated center, began a march through the forest that for
+  variety of action and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever
+  beheld.</p>
+
+  <p>So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
+  straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
+  ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
+  dance, along the side lines.</p>
+
+  <p>There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the
+  ground and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs
+  and chased the two in front and dragged the one behind; others
+  when she came within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.</p>
+
+  <p>They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and
+  though Jones evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a
+  tree. There was no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of
+  the time and the fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos
+  were each thirty feet long, but even with that the men could just
+  barely keep out of her reach.</p>
+
+  <p>Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt,
+  unerringly, unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three
+  men were nearing the bottom of the second hollow, well spread
+  out, lassos taut, facing one another. Jones stumbled and the
+  lioness leaped his way. The weight of both brought Jim over,
+  sliding and slipping, with his rope slackening. The leap of the
+  lioness carried her within reach of Jones; and as he raised
+  himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for him just as
+  Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws.
+  Then she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge.
+  Jones sprang up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his
+  scarlet face, working spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed
+  how utterly unable he was to give expression to his rage. I had a
+  stitch in my side that nearly killed me, but laugh I had to
+  though I should die for it.</p>
+
+  <p>No laughing matter was it for them. They volleyed and
+  thundered back and forth meaningless words of which "hell" was
+  the only one distinguishable, and probably the word that best
+  described their situation.</p>
+
+  <p>All the while, however, they had been running from the
+  lioness, which brought them before they realized it right into
+  camp. Our captive lions cut up fearfully at the hubbub, and the
+  horses stampeded in terror.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoa!" yelled Jones, whether to his companions or to the
+  struggling cougar, no one knew. But Navvy thought Jones addressed
+  the cougar.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoa!" repeated Navvy. "No savvy whoa! No savvy whoa!" which
+  proved conclusively that the Navajo had understanding as well as
+  wit.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon we had another captive safely chained and growling away
+  in tune with the others. I went back to untie the hounds, to find
+  them sulky and out of sorts from being so unceremoniously
+  treated. They noisily trailed the lioness into camp, where,
+  finding her chained, they formed a ring around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereafter the day passed in round-the-camp-fire chat and
+  task. For once Jim looked at Navvy with toleration. We dressed
+  the wound in Jones' head and laughed at the condition of his
+  trousers and at his awkward attempts to piece them.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha dam cougie," remarked Navvy. "No savvy whoa!"</p>
+
+  <p>The lions growled all day. And Jones kept repeating: "To think
+  how Shep fooled me!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    X
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Next morning Jones was out bright and early, yelling at Navvy
+  to hurry with the horses, calling to the hounds and lions, just
+  as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy had finally come to his full share of praise from all of
+  us. Even Jim acknowledged that the Indian was invaluable to a
+  hunting party in a country where grass and water were hard to
+  find and wild horses haunted the trails.</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Tohodena! Tohodena!</i> (hurry! hurry!)" said Navvy,
+  mimicking Jones that morning.</p>
+
+  <p>As we sat down to breakfast he loped off into the forest and
+  before we got up the bells of the horses were jingling in the
+  hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"I believe it's going to be cloudy," said Jones, "and if so we
+  can hunt all day."</p>
+
+  <p>We rode down the ridge to the left of Middle Canyon, and had
+  trouble with the hounds all the way. First they ran foul of a
+  coyote, which was the one and only beast they could not resist.
+  Spreading out to head them off, we separated. I cut into a hollow
+  and rode to its head, where I went up. I heard the hounds and
+  presently saw a big, white coyote making fast time through the
+  forest glades. It looked as if he would cross close in front of
+  me, so I pulled Foxie to a standstill, jumped off and knelt with
+  my rifle ready. But the sharp-eyed coyote saw my horse and shied
+  off. I had not much hope to hit him so far away, and the five
+  bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping, served only to
+  make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted the hounds
+  coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my
+  companions, now hallooing from the ridge below.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that
+  were a day old, and for such trails we had no time. We reached
+  the cedars however at seven o'clock, and as the sky was overcast
+  with low dun-colored clouds and the air cool, we were sure it was
+  not too late.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the capes of the plateau between Middle and Left Canyon
+  was a narrow strip of rock, covered with a dense cedar growth and
+  cut up into smaller canyons, all running down inevitably toward
+  the great canyon. With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out
+  of our sight and hearing; and while we split to look and call for
+  him the remainder of the pack found the lion trail that he had
+  gone on, and they left us trying to find a way out as well as to
+  find each other. I kept the hounds in hearing for some time and
+  meanwhile I signalled to Emett who was on my right flank. Jones
+  and Jim might as well have vanished off the globe for all I could
+  see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully into which I had to
+  lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much time that when
+  I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds or get an
+  answer to my signal cry.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" I called again.</p>
+
+  <p>Away on the dry rarified air pealed the cry, piercing the
+  cedar forest, splitting sharp in the vaulted canyons, rolling
+  loud and long, to lose power, to die away in muffling echo. But
+  the silence returned no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>I rode on under the cedars, through a dark, gloomy forest,
+  silent, almost spectral, which brought irresistibly to my mind
+  the words "I found me in a gloomy wood astray." I was lost though
+  I knew the direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest
+  was all but impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray
+  tangles, live cedars, branches touching the ground, grew close
+  together. In this labyrinth I lost my bearings. I turned and
+  turned, crossed my own back trail, which in desperation I
+  followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep and narrow
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I fired my revolver. The echo boomed out like the report
+  of heavy artillery, but no answering shot rewarded me. There was
+  no alternative save to wander along the canyon and through the
+  cedars until I found my companions. This I began to do, disgusted
+  with my awkwardness in losing them. Turning Foxie westward I had
+  scarcely gotten under way when Don came trotting toward me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hello, old boy!" I called. Don appeared as happy to see me as
+  I was to see him. He flopped down on the ground; his dripping
+  tongue rolled as he panted; covered with dust and flecked with
+  light froth he surely looked to be a tired hound.</p>
+
+  <p>"All in, eh Don!" I said dismounting. "Well, we'll rest
+  awhile." Then I discovered blood on his nose, which I found to
+  have come from a deep scratch. "A&mdash;ah! been pushing a lion
+  too hard this morning? Got your nose scratched, didn't you? You
+  great, crazy hound, don't you know some day you'll chase your
+  last lion?"</p>
+
+  <p>Don wagged his tail as if to say he knew it all very well. I
+  wet my handkerchief from my canteen and started to wash the blood
+  and dust from his nose, when he whined and licked my fingers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thirsty?" I asked, sitting down beside him. Denting the top
+  of my hat I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him
+  to drink. Four times he emptied my improvised cup before he was
+  satisfied. Then with a sigh of relief he lay down again.</p>
+
+  <p>The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and
+  I sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed
+  on occasional tufts of grass. During that time the hound never
+  raised his sleek, dark head, which showed conclusively the nature
+  of the silence. And now that I had company&mdash;as good company
+  as any hunter ever had&mdash;I was once more contented.</p>
+
+  <p>Don got up, at length of his own volition and with a wag of
+  his tail set off westward along the rim. Remounting my mustang I
+  kept as close to Don's heels as the rough going permitted. The
+  hound, however, showed no disposition to hurry, and I let him
+  have his way without a word.</p>
+
+  <p>We came out in the notch of the great amphitheater or curve we
+  had named the Bay, and I saw again the downward slope, the bold
+  steps, the color and depth below.</p>
+
+  <p>I was just about to yell a signal cry when I saw Don, with
+  hair rising stiff, run forward. He took a dozen jumps, then
+  yelping broke down the steep, yellow and green gorge. He
+  disappeared before I knew what had happened.</p>
+
+  <p>Shortly I found a lion track, freshly made, leading down. I
+  believed I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go
+  after him. I tied Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off
+  spurs and chaps, and remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened
+  a red bandana to the top of a dead snag to show me where to come
+  up on my way out. Then I carefully strapped my canteen and camera
+  on my back, made doubly secure my revolver, put on my heavy
+  gloves, and started down. And I realized at once that only so
+  lightly encumbered should I have ever ventured down the
+  slope.</p>
+
+  <p>Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there
+  cedar trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A
+  precipice stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and
+  almost instantly saw the yellow gleam of a lion in a
+  tree-top.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay
+  under me, a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering
+  smoky canyon. All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope,
+  green jumble of cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff
+  walls, leaning yellow crags&mdash;an awful hole. But I could get
+  down, and that was all I cared for. I ran along to the left,
+  jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven stones with sure, swift
+  feet, and came to where the cliff ended in weathered slope and
+  scaly bench.</p>
+
+  <p>It was like a game, going down that canyon. My heavy nailed
+  boots struck fire from the rocks. My heavy gloves protected my
+  hands as I slid and hung on and let go. I outfooted the
+  avalanches and wherever I came to a scaly slope or bank or
+  decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer delight.</p>
+
+  <p>But all too soon my progress was barred; once under the cliff
+  I found only a gradual slope and many obstacles to go round or
+  surmount. Luck favored me, for I ran across a runway and keeping
+  to it made better time. I heard Don long before I tried to see
+  him, and yelled at intervals to let him know I was coming. A
+  white bank of weathered stones led down to a clump of cedars from
+  where Don's bay came spurring me to greater efforts. I flew down
+  this bank, and through an opening saw the hound standing with
+  fore feet against a cedar. The branches over him swayed, and I
+  saw an indistinct, tawny form move downward in the air. Then
+  succeeded the crash and rattle of stones. Don left the tree and
+  disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>I dashed down, dodged under the cedars, threaded a maze of
+  rocks, to find myself in a ravine with a bare, water-worn floor.
+  In patches of sand showed the fresh tracks of Don and the lion.
+  Running down this dry, clean bed was the easiest going I ever
+  found in the canyon. Every rod the course jumped in a fall from
+  four to ten feet, often more, and these I slid down. How I ever
+  kept Don in hearing was a marvel, but still I did.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion evidently had no further intention of taking to a
+  tree. From the size of his track I concluded he was old and I
+  feared every moment to hear the sounds of a fight. Jones had said
+  that nearly always in the case of one hound chasing an old lion,
+  the lion would lie in wait for him and kill him. And I was afraid
+  for Don.</p>
+
+  <p>Down, down, down, we went, till the yellow rim above seemed a
+  thin band of gold. I saw that we were almost to the canyon
+  proper, and I wondered what would happen when we reached it. The
+  dark shaded watercourse suddenly shot out into bright light and
+  ended in a deep cove, with perpendicular walls fifty feet high. I
+  could see where a few rods farther on this cove opened into a
+  huge, airy, colored canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I called the hound, wondering if he had gone to the right or
+  left of the cove. His bay answered me coming from the cedars far
+  to the right. I turned with all the speed left in me, for I felt
+  the chase nearing an end. Tracks of hound and lion once more
+  showed in the dust. The slope was steep and stones I sent rolling
+  cracked down below. Soon I had a cliff above me and had to go
+  slow and cautiously. A misstep or slide would have precipitated
+  me into the cove.</p>
+
+  <p>Almost before I knew what I was about, I stood gasping on the
+  gigantic second wall of the canyon, with nothing but thin air
+  under me, except, far below, faint and indistinct purple clefts,
+  red ridges, dotted slopes, running down to merge in a dark,
+  winding strip of water, that was the Rio Colorado. A sullen
+  murmur soared out of the abyss.</p><a name="image-0040">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg035_m.jpg" width="448" height="706" alt=
+    "Two Lions in One Tree ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg036_m.jpg" width="709" height="448" alt=
+    "Jones, Emett, and the Navajo With The Lions ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck
+  me so terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its
+  unscalable cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding
+  quality of its silence.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw
+  him on a narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he
+  reached me he faced again to the wall and barked fiercely. The
+  hair on his neck bristled. I knew he did not fancy that narrow
+  strip of rock, nor did I. But a sudden, grim, cold something had
+  taken possession of me, and I stepped forward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."</p>
+
+  <p>That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in
+  the chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he
+  took the lead and I closely followed.</p>
+
+  <p>The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall,
+  in the dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner
+  of cliff wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed
+  on the other side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by
+  broken steps. Don passed the corner, looked back to see if I was
+  coming and went on. He did this four times, once even stopping to
+  wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail
+  out to a finish."</p>
+
+  <p>I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could
+  not but see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous
+  overhanging wall above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I
+  felt rather than saw the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting
+  flight, with soft rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp
+  of some strange cliff inhabitant.</p>
+
+  <p>Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no
+  longer man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying
+  on the other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was
+  beyond. Don slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as
+  my fingers bit into the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow
+  wind cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves
+  of rock stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came
+  upon a shrub cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it
+  there. Don went slower and slower.</p>
+
+  <p>We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a
+  box-like space in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once
+  before been confronted with a like situation, and had expected to
+  find it here, so was not frightened. The lion looked up from his
+  task of licking a bloody paw, and uttered a fierce growl. His
+  tail began to lash to and fro; it knocked the little stones off
+  the shelf. I heard them click on the wall. Again and again he
+  spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a Tom, heavy and
+  large.</p>
+
+  <p>It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion,
+  and now that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would
+  follow had only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it
+  was that he should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and
+  focused from between twenty and twenty-five feet.</p>
+
+  <p>Then a growl from Don and roar from the lion bade me come to
+  my senses. I did so and my first movement after seeing the lion
+  had risen threateningly was to whip out my revolver.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion's cruel yellow eyes darkened and darkened. In an
+  instant I saw my error. Jones had always said in case any one of
+  us had to face a lion, never for a single instant to shift his
+  glance. I had forgotten that, and in that short interval when I
+  focused my camera the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or
+  feared him, and he had risen. Even then in desperate lessening
+  ambition for a great picture I attempted to take one, still
+  keeping my glance on him.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then that the appalling nature of my predicament made
+  itself plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling
+  horribly right in my face.</p>
+
+  <p>Brave, noble Don, with infinitely more sense and courage than
+  I possessed, faced the lion and bayed him in his teeth. I raised
+  the revolver and aimed twice, each time lowering it because I
+  feared to shoot in such a precarious position. To wound the lion
+  would be the worst thing I could do, and I knew that only a shot
+  through the brain would kill him in his tracks.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold him, Don, hold him!" I yelled, and I took a backward
+  step. The lion put forward one big paw, his eyes now all purple
+  blaze. I backed again and he came forward. Don gave ground
+  slowly. Once the lion flashed a yellow paw at him. It was
+  frightful to see the wide-spread claws.</p>
+
+  <p>In the consternation of the moment I allowed the lion to back
+  me across the front of the wind cave, where I saw, the moment it
+  was too late, I should have taken advantage of more space to
+  shoot him.</p>
+
+  <p>Fright succeeded consternation, and I began to tremble. The
+  lion was master of the situation. What would happen when I came
+  to the narrow point on the shelf where it would be impossible for
+  me to back around? I almost fainted. The thought of heroic Don
+  saved me, and the weak moment passed.</p>
+
+  <p>"By God, Don, you've got the nerve, and I must have it
+  too!"</p>
+
+  <p>I stopped in my tracks. The lion, appearing huge now, took
+  slow catlike steps toward me, backing Don almost against my
+  knees. He was so close I smelt him. His wonderful eyes, clear
+  blue fire circled by yellow flame, fascinated me. Hugging the
+  wall with my body I brought the revolver up, short armed, and
+  with clinched teeth, and nerve strained to the breaking point, I
+  aimed between the eyes and pulled the trigger.</p>
+
+  <p>The left eye seemed to go out blankly, then followed the
+  bellow of the revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered
+  a sound that was a mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he
+  rose straight up, towering high over my head, beating the wall
+  heavily with his paws.</p>
+
+  <p>In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing
+  only the beast would fall over on me.</p>
+
+  <p>But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into
+  space.</p>
+
+  <p>I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat.
+  As I waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band
+  and a sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and
+  listened. Don whined once.</p>
+
+  <p>Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time
+  ended in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into
+  the solemn stillness of the canyon.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the
+  far distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When
+  I got up my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak
+  sensation of a long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were
+  necessary before I could trust myself on the narrow strip of
+  shelf. But once around it with the peril passed, I braced up and
+  soon reached the turn in the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of
+  work, which I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for
+  more hunting that day. We reached the rim together, and after a
+  short rest, I mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.</p>
+
+  <p>The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw
+  the blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose
+  up and barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions
+  just sitting to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it
+  comin' to us to-day, and don't you forget that."</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we
+  all took time between bites to talk. I told my story first,
+  expecting my friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever
+  experienced," declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions
+  and they split. We all split and the hounds split. That tells the
+  tale. We have nothing to show for our day's toil. Six lions
+  chased, rounded up, treed, holed, and one lion killed, and we
+  haven't even his skin to show. I did not go down but I helped
+  Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion all over the lower end of
+  the plateau. We treed him twice and I yelled for you fellows till
+  my voice was gone."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," said Emett, "I fell in with Sounder and Jude. They
+  were hot on a trail which in a mile or two turned up this way. I
+  came on them just at the edge of the pines where they had treed
+  their game. I sat under that pine tree for five hours, fired all
+  my shots to make you fellows come, yelled myself hoarse and then
+  tried to tie up the lion alone. He jumped out and ran over the
+  rim, where neither I nor the dogs could follow."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, I win, three of a kind," drawled Jim, as he got his
+  pipe and carefully dusted the bowl. "When the stampede came, I
+  got my hands on Moze and held him. I held Moze because just as
+  the other hounds broke loose over to my right, I saw down into a
+  little pocket where a fresh-killed deer lay half eaten. So I went
+  down. I found two other carcasses layin' there, fresh killed last
+  night, flesh all gone, hide gone, bones crushed, skull split
+  open. An' damn me fellows, if that little pocket wasn't all torn
+  to pieces. The sage was crushed flat. The ground dug up, dead
+  snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere. Lion tracks like
+  leaves, and old Sultan's was there. I let Moze loose and he
+  humped the trail of several lions south over the rim. Major got
+  down first an' came back with his tail between his legs. Moze
+  went down and I kept close to him. It wasn't far down, but steep
+  and rocky, full of holes. Moze took the trail to a dark cave. I
+  saw the tracks of three lions goin' in. Then I collared Moze an'
+  waited for you fellows. I waited there all day, an' nobody came
+  to my call. Then I made for camp."</p>
+
+  <p>"How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place
+  where you found the carcasses?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion fight sure," replied Jones. "Maybe old Sultan ran across
+  the three lions feeding, and pitched into them. Such fights were
+  common among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there."</p>
+
+  <p>"What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where
+  Jim chased them?"</p>
+
+  <p>"We stand a good chance," said Jones. "Especially if it storms
+  to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore the snow storm is comin'," returned Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in
+  the pines like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass.
+  As we could not control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew
+  fiercely, we extinguished it and went to bed. I had just settled
+  myself comfortably to be sung to sleep by the concert in the
+  pines, when Jones hailed me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, what do you think?" he yelled, when I had answered him.
+  "Emett is mad. He's scratching to beat the band. He's got
+  'em."</p>
+
+  <p>I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.</p>
+
+  <p>"You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"</p>
+
+  <p>I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed
+  and so did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could
+  understand more English than he wanted us to suppose.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed
+  in&mdash;snowed in!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha snow&mdash;discass&mdash;no cougie&mdash;dam no bueno!"
+  exclaimed Navvy.</p>
+
+  <p>When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a
+  blinding blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows,
+  everything white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the
+  Indian words in straight English.</p>
+
+  <p>"Much snow&mdash;cold&mdash;no cougar&mdash;bad!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Stay in bed," yelled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"</p>
+
+  <p>He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off
+  and on till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather
+  breakfast, round a blazing bonfire.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's going to clear up," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud
+  that had enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit
+  the tree tops, sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then
+  rising above the trees. At first it moved slowly, rolling,
+  forming, expanding, blooming like a column of whirling gray
+  smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled onward through the
+  forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and rippling, split by the
+  trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose higher and higher,
+  to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing glimpses of
+  blue sky.</p>
+
+  <p>Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts,
+  dispelling the shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through
+  the forest glade, gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the
+  snow-wreathed pines.</p>
+
+  <p>The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began
+  to drip. A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved
+  through every glade and feathered patches of snow floated
+  down.</p>
+
+  <p>A great bank of snow, sliding from the pine overhead almost
+  buried the Navajo, to our infinite delight. We all sought the
+  shelter of the tents, and sleep again claimed us.</p>
+
+  <p>I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson
+  paths in the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a
+  frosty morning.</p>
+
+  <p>"To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave
+  them their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions
+  lay hidden in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out
+  of sight beyond the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges;
+  blue shadows gathered in the hollow, shaded purple and stole
+  upward. A brief twilight succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit
+  night.</p>
+
+  <p>Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my
+  sleeping bag, was I hailed from the other tent.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones
+  remonstrating in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a
+  secret no longer."</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I don't," growled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno!
+  bueno!" and I wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you.
+  It's only Jones has got 'em."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising
+  gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the
+  frosty air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the
+  bunches of sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow,
+  resembled trees with brilliant blossoms.</p>
+
+  <p>We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into
+  which Jim had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we
+  had expected, began to thin out, and it failed altogether under
+  the cedars, though there was enough on the branches to give us a
+  drenching.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us
+  the cave was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had
+  better take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above
+  to await developments.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them
+  close. We listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open
+  up, but we were disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came
+  climbing out, with the information that the lions had left the
+  cave, probably the evening after he had chased them there.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt
+  round the rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if
+  necessary."</p>
+
+  <p>So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left
+  Canyon; Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we
+  were to perform a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and
+  Jude. Emett rode back with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle
+  Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost
+  to the west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single
+  track, so we started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the
+  snow all gone; the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and
+  Jones grumbled that no success would attend our efforts this
+  morning.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened
+  into the deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our
+  companions across the canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder
+  and Jude both began to bark on a cliff; however, as we could find
+  no tracks in the dust we called them off. Sounder obeyed
+  reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the
+  wall."</p>
+
+  <p>Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They
+  ran up and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they
+  gone out of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the
+  rim and looked over. The first step was short, a crumbled section
+  of wall, and from it led down a long slope, dotted here and there
+  with cedars. Both hounds were baying furiously.</p>
+
+  <p>I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a
+  lion, so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not
+  yet in sight.</p>
+
+  <p>"There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not
+  lucky?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that
+  you don't absolutely need."</p>
+
+  <p>Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only
+  my camera and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We
+  descended a ladder of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under
+  our feet. The slope below us was easy, and soon we stood on a
+  level with the lion. The cedar was small, and afforded no good
+  place for him. Evidently he jumped from the slope to the tree,
+  and had hung where he first alighted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion
+  won't stay treed long."</p>
+
+  <p>I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and
+  I moved aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under
+  a tall pi&ntilde;on. High in the branches I saw a great mass of
+  yellow, and at first glance thought Sounder had treed old Sultan.
+  How I yelled! Then a second glance showed two lions close
+  together.</p>
+
+  <p>"Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a
+  moment we made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the
+  echoes bayed at us from the opposite walls.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but
+  unmistakable, floated down to us. Across the jutting capes
+  separating the mouths of these canyons, high above them on the
+  rim wall of the opposite side of the Bay, stood a giant white
+  horse silhouetted against the white sky. They made a brave
+  picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in chorus: "Three
+  lions treed! Three lions treed! come down&mdash;hurry!"</p>
+
+  <p>A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had
+  jumped. He ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard.
+  Jude went tearing after them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!"
+  yelled Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight
+  among the trees and crags.</p>
+
+  <p>It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize
+  it. The yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew
+  fainter, telling me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to
+  the bottom of the Bay.</p>
+
+  <p>Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of
+  the facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed
+  without hounds, without a companion, without a gun.</p>
+
+  <p>"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I
+  wanted to run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken
+  me with Don around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and
+  fiercer. I pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for
+  leaving my gun. I could not go for it; I would have to make the
+  best of my error, and in the wildness born of the moment I swore
+  if the lions would stay treed for the hounds they would stay
+  treed for me.</p>
+
+  <p>First I photographed them from different positions; then I
+  took up my stand about on a level with them in an open place on
+  the slope where they had me in plain sight. I might have been
+  fifty feet from them. They showed no inclination to come
+  down.</p>
+
+  <p>About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the
+  left. I called and called, but they passed on down the canyon
+  bottom in the direction Jones had taken.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me
+  his lion had treed again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had
+  just appeared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where&mdash;can&mdash;I&mdash;get&mdash;down?"</p>
+
+  <p>I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on
+  slide, jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally
+  picked out a path.</p>
+
+  <p>"Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don
+  at his heels.</p>
+
+  <p>"There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with
+  your lasso, and come yourself."</p>
+
+  <p>I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip
+  noose free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right
+  and left of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the
+  direction of the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of
+  precipices that made me tremble for him; but sure-footed as a
+  goat, he went on safely down, to disappear far to my right.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down
+  the first step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach
+  round a cedar above, was too short to extend to the landing
+  below. He dropped, raising a cloud of dust, and starting the
+  stones. Pulling one end of his lasso up around the cedar he
+  gathered it in a coil on his arm and faced forward, following
+  Don's trail.</p>
+
+  <p>What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red
+  and yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down,
+  streaming over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant
+  pursuing a foe. From time to time he sent up a yell of
+  encouragement that wound down the canyon, to be answered by Jones
+  and the baying hounds and then the strange echoes. At last he
+  passed out of sight behind the crests of the trees; I heard him
+  going down, down till the sounds came up faint and hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a
+  hunter so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching
+  them. For a long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays
+  and yells below diminished in volume and occurrence and then
+  ceased altogether, they became restless. It was then that I,
+  remembering the lion I had held on top of the crag, began to bark
+  like a hound. The lions became quiet once more.</p>
+
+  <p>I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to
+  hoarser, and finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately
+  grew restless again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at
+  me, and made many attempts to start down, each one of which I
+  frustrated by throwing stones under the tree. At length he made
+  one more determined effort, turned head downward, and stepped
+  from branch to branch.</p>
+
+  <p>I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long
+  club in the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt
+  him&mdash;make him fear me. If he got far enough down to jump, he
+  would either escape or have me helpless. I aimed deliberately at
+  him, and hit him square in the ribs. He exploded in a spit-roar
+  that raised my hair. Directly under him I wielded my club,
+  pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and, like the crazy
+  fool that I was, yelled at him:</p>
+
+  <p>"Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your
+  old head for you!"</p>
+
+  <p>Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He
+  climbed to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had
+  done, that I would certainly have made tracks from under the
+  pi&ntilde;on, if I had not heard the faint yelp of a hound.</p>
+
+  <p>I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at
+  my lions. They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how
+  strained they held their heads. I backed a little way up the
+  slope. Then the faint yelp floated up again in the silence. Such
+  dead, strange silence, that seemed never to have been broken! I
+  saw the lions quiver, and if I ever heard anything in my life I
+  heard their hearts thump. The yelp wafted up again, closer this
+  time. I recognized it; it belonged to Don. The great hound on the
+  back trail of the other lion was coming to my rescue.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at
+  the lions. "It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me
+  then! Pity for those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel
+  fellows as they were, they shivered with fright. Their sides
+  trembled. But pity did not hold me long; Don's yelp, now getting
+  clear and sharp, brought back the rush of savage, grim
+  sensations.</p>
+
+  <p>A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the
+  downward slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and
+  climbing fast. It was Don.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long
+  length, forepaws against the pi&ntilde;on, his deep bay ringing
+  defiance to the lions.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me
+  to sit down just then.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that
+  hound, and you can't get away from him."</p>
+
+  <p>Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down
+  to hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming.
+  Yelp on yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a
+  black and yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight
+  down the slope, streaked up and circled the pi&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep
+  ascent, seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been
+  swift.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you get the lion? Where's Emett?" I asked in breathless
+  eagerness.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion tied&mdash;all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left
+  Emett&mdash;to guard&mdash;him."</p>
+
+  <p>"What are we to do now?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Wait&mdash;till I get my breath. Think out&mdash;a plan. We
+  can't get both lions&mdash;out of one tree."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie
+  Sounder and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump,
+  sure; he's almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree
+  him again pretty soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good.
+  Then, if you can get the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett
+  to come up to help you, and I'll follow Don."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones began the ascent of the pi&ntilde;on. The branches were
+  not too close, affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for
+  even a move on the part of the lions, the lower one began
+  stepping down. I yelled a warning, but Jones did not have time to
+  take advantage of it. He had half turned, meaning to swing out
+  and drop, when the lion planted both forepaws upon his back.
+  Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost on him.</p>
+
+  <p>Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground,
+  and when he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A
+  cloud of dust rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and
+  with great, springy bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his
+  followers hot-footing it after him.</p>
+
+  <p>Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied
+  them, and dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action
+  to join the chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in
+  case the other lion jumped I could free them quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took
+  his long stick, and proceeded to mount the pi&ntilde;on again. I
+  waited till I saw him slip the noose over the lion's head, then I
+  ran down the slope to yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told
+  him to hurry to Jones' assistance. With that I headed up the
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his
+  pursuers. I passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but
+  fear of them was not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into
+  the mouth of Left Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the
+  hounds directed me. In the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed
+  to come from a hundred dogs.</p>
+
+  <p>When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a
+  thick, dark pi&ntilde;on, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don
+  stood up against me with his paws on my shoulders. These were
+  strange actions, and though I marked it at the moment, I had
+  ceased to wonder at our hounds. I took one picture as the lion
+  sat in the dark shade, and then climbed to the low cliff and sat
+  down. I called Don to me and held him. In case our quarry leaped
+  upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put quickly on his trail.</p>
+
+  <p>Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the
+  lion&mdash;he looked as if it were&mdash;and one of impatience
+  for the baying hounds, but for me it was a full hour. Alone with
+  the hounds and a lion, far from the walks of men, walled in by
+  the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry, sweet smell of cedar and
+  pi&ntilde;on, I asked no more.</p>
+
+  <p>Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were
+  forerunners to Jones. I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze,
+  and yelled for him to take his time. As he reached me the lion
+  jumped and ran up the canyon. This suited me, for I knew he would
+  take to a tree soon and the farther up he went the less distance
+  we would have to pack him. From the cliff I saw him run up a
+  slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly turn on his trail, and then
+  climb into the tree and hide in its thickest part. Don passed
+  him, got off the trail, and ran at fault. The others, so used to
+  his leadership, were also baffled. But Jude, crippled and slow,
+  brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard beyond where the
+  lion turned. She opened up her deep call under the cedar, and in
+  a moment the howling pack were around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and I toiled laboriously upward. He had brought my
+  lasso, and he handed it to me with the significant remark that I
+  would soon have need of it.</p>
+
+  <p>The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that
+  made Jones shake his head. He climbed the tree, lassoed the
+  spitting lion and then leaped down to my side. By united and
+  determined efforts we pulled the lion off the limb and let him
+  down. The hounds began to leap at him. We both roared in a rage
+  at them but to no use.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold him there!" shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso
+  while he sprang forward.</p>
+
+  <p>The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not
+  taken a half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my
+  feet or pulled the lasso from my hands. As it was, the choking
+  lion, now within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to
+  and fro before my face. He could not see me, but his frantic
+  lunges narrowly missed me.</p>
+
+  <p>If never before, Jones then showed his genius. Don had hold of
+  the lion's flank, and Jones, grabbing the hound by the hind legs,
+  threw him down the slope. Don fell and rolled a hundred feet
+  before he caught himself. Then Jones threw old Moze rolling, and
+  Ranger, and all except faithful Jude. Before they could get back
+  he roped the lion again and made fast to a tree. Then he yelled
+  for me to let go. The lion fell. Jones grabbed the lasso, at the
+  same time calling for me to stop the hounds. As they came
+  bounding up the steep slope, I had to club the noble fellows into
+  submission.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the lion recovered wholly from his severe choking, we
+  had his paws bound fast. Then he could only heave his tawny
+  sides, glare and spit at us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now what?" asked Jones. "Emett is watching the second lion,
+  which we fastened by chain and lasso to a swinging branch. I'm
+  all in. My heart won't stand any more climb."</p>
+
+  <p>"You go to camp for the pack horses," I said briefly. "Bring
+  them all, and all the packs, and Navvy, too. I'll help Emett tie
+  up the second lion, and then we'll pack them both up here to this
+  one. You take the hounds with you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Can you tie up that lion?" asked Jones. "Mind you, he's loose
+  except for a collar and chain. His claws haven't been clipped.
+  Besides, it'll be an awful job to pack those two lions up
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>"We can try," I said. "You hustle to camp. Your horse is right
+  up back of here, across the point, if I don't mistake my
+  bearings."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones, admonishing me again, called the hounds and wearily
+  climbed the slope. I waited until he was out of hearing; then
+  began to retrace my trail down into the canyon. I made the
+  descent in quick time, to find Emett standing guard over the
+  lion. The beast had been tied to an overhanging branch that swung
+  violently with every move he made.</p>
+
+  <p>"When I got here," said Emett, "he was hanging over the side
+  of that rock, almost choked to death. I drove him into this
+  corner between the rocks and the tree, where he has been
+  comparatively quiet. Now, what's up? Where is Jones? Did you get
+  the third lion?"</p>
+
+  <p>I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this
+  lion and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones
+  and the horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better
+  get at it. Now I'm some worried about the lion we left below. He
+  ought to be brought up, but we both can't go. This lion here will
+  kill himself."</p>
+
+  <p>"What will the other one weigh?"</p>
+
+  <p>"All of one hundred and fifty pounds."</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't pack him alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll try, and I reckon that's the best plan. Watch this
+  fellow and keep him in the corner."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett left me then, and I began a third long vigil beside a
+  lion. The rest was more than welcome. An hour and a half passed
+  before I heard the sliding of stones below, which told me that
+  Emett was coming. He appeared on the slope almost bent double,
+  carrying the lion, head downward, before him. He could climb only
+  a few steps without lowering his burden and resting.</p>
+
+  <p>I ran down to meet him. We secured a stout pole, and slipping
+  this between the lion's paws, below where they were tied, we
+  managed to carry him fairly well, and after several rests, got
+  him up alongside the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now to tie that rascal!" exclaimed Emett. "Jones said he was
+  the meanest one he'd tackled, and I believe it. We'll cut a piece
+  off of each lasso, and unravel them so as to get strings. I wish
+  Jones hadn't tied the lasso to that swinging branch."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go and untie it." Acting on this suggestion I climbed
+  the tree and started out on the branch. The lion growled
+  fiercely.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm afraid you'd better stop," warned Emett. "That branch is
+  bending, and the lion can reach you."</p>
+
+  <p>But despite this I slipped out a couple of yards farther, and
+  had almost gotten to the knotted lasso, when the branch swayed
+  and bent alarmingly. The lion sprang from his corner and crouched
+  under me snarling and spitting, with every indication of
+  leaping.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jump! Jump! Jump!" shouted Emett hoarsely.</p><a name=
+  "image-0042"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg037_m.jpg" width="749" height="448" alt=
+    "Billy in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg038_m.jpg" width="756" height="448" alt=
+    "Lion Licking Snowball ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I dared not, for I could not jump far enough to get out of the
+  lion's reach. I raised my legs and began to slide myself back up
+  the branch. The lion leaped, missing me, but scattering the dead
+  twigs. Then the beast, beside himself with fury, half leaped,
+  half stood up, and reached for me. I looked down into his blazing
+  eyes, and open mouth and saw his white fangs.</p>
+
+  <p>Everything grew blurred before my eyes. I desperately fought
+  for control over mind and muscle. I heard hoarse roars from
+  Emett. Then I felt a hot, burning pain in my wrist, which stung
+  all my faculties into keen life again.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw the lion's beaked claws fastened in my leather
+  wrist-band. At the same instant Emett dashed under the branch,
+  and grasped the lion's tail. One powerful lunge of his broad
+  shoulders tore the lion loose and flung him down the slope to the
+  full extent of his lasso. Quick as thought I jumped down, and
+  just in time to prevent Emett from attacking the lion with the
+  heavy pole we had used.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" roared Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"No you won't," I replied, quietly, for my pain had served to
+  soothe my excitement as well as to make me more determined.
+  "We'll tie up the darned tiger, if he cuts us all to pieces. You
+  know how Jones will give us the laugh if we fail. Here, bind up
+  my wrist."</p>
+
+  <p>Mention of Jones' probable ridicule and sight of my injury
+  cooled Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a nasty scratch," he said, binding my handkerchief round
+  it. "The leather saved your hand from being torn off. He's an
+  ugly brute, but you're right, we'll tie him. Now, let's each take
+  a lasso and worry him till we get hold of a paw. Then we can
+  stretch him out."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones did a fiendish thing when he tied that lion to the
+  swinging branch. It was almost worse than having him entirely
+  free. He had a circle almost twenty feet in diameter in which he
+  could run and leap at will. It seemed he was in the air all the
+  time. First at Emett, than at me he sprang, mouth agape, eyes
+  wild, claws spread. We whipped him with our nooses, but not one
+  would hold. He always tore it off before we could draw it tight.
+  I secured a precarious hold on one hind paw and straightened my
+  lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's far enough," cried Emett. "Now hold him tight; don't
+  lift him off the ground."</p>
+
+  <p>I had backed up the slope. Emett faced the lion, noose ready,
+  waiting for a favorable chance to rope a front paw. The lion
+  crouched low and tense, only his long tail lashing back and forth
+  across my lasso. Emett threw the loop in front of the spread
+  paws, now half sunk into the dust.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ease up; ease up," said he. "I'll tease him to jump into the
+  noose."</p>
+
+  <p>I let my rope sag. Emett poked a stick into the lion's face.
+  All at once I saw the slack in the lasso which was tied to the
+  lion's chain. Before I could yell to warn my comrade the beast
+  leaped. My rope burned as it tore through my hands. The lion
+  sailed into the air, his paws wide-spread like wings, and one of
+  them struck Emett on the head and rolled him on the slope. I
+  jerked back on my rope only to find it had slipped its hold.</p>
+
+  <p>"He slugged me one," remarked Emett, calmly rising and picking
+  up his hat. "Did he break the skin?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, but he tore your hat band off," I replied. "Let's keep at
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>For a few moments or an hour&mdash;no one will ever know how
+  long&mdash;we ran round him, raising the dust, scattering the
+  stones, breaking the branches, dodging his onslaughts. He leaped
+  at us to the full length of his tether, sailing right into our
+  faces, a fierce, uncowed, tigerish beast. If it had not been for
+  the collar and swivel he would have choked himself a hundred
+  times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful, tireless, he kept on the
+  go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling, till it seemed we would
+  never catch him.</p>
+
+  <p>"If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I
+  felt his breath that time."</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord! How I wish we had some of those fellows here who say
+  lions are rank cowards!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of his sweeping side swings the lion struck the rock
+  and hung there on its flat surface with his tail hanging
+  over.</p>
+
+  <p>"Attract his attention," shouted Emett, "but don't get too
+  close. Don't make him jump."</p>
+
+  <p>While I slowly manoeuvered in front of the lion, Emett slipped
+  behind the rock, lunged for the long tail and got a good hold of
+  it. Then with a whoop he ran around the rock, carrying the
+  kicking, squalling lion clear of the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now's your chance," he yelled. "Rope a hind foot! I can hold
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>In a second I had a noose fast on both hind paws, and then
+  passed my rope to Emett. While he held the lion I again climbed
+  the tree, untied the knot that had caused so much trouble, and
+  very shortly we had our obstinate captive stretched out between
+  two trees. After that we took a much needed breathing spell.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not very scientific," growled Emett, by way of apologizing
+  for our crude work, "but we had to get him some way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Emett, do you know I believe Jones put up a job on us?" I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, maybe he did. We had the job all right. But we'll make
+  short work of him now."</p>
+
+  <p>He certainly went at it in a way that alarmed me and would
+  have electrified Jones. While I held the chain Emett muzzled the
+  lion with a stick and a strand of lasso. His big blacksmith's
+  hands held, twisted and tied with remorseless strength.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now for the hardest part of it," said he, "packing him
+  up."</p>
+
+  <p>We toiled and drudged upward, resting every few yards, wet
+  with sweat, boiling with heat, parching for water. We slipped and
+  fell, got up to slip and fall again. The dust choked us. We
+  senselessly risked our lives on the brinks of precipices. We had
+  no thought save to get the lion up. One hour of unremitting labor
+  saw our task finished, so far. Then we wearily went down for the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>"This one is the heaviest," gloomily said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>We had to climb partly sidewise with the pole in the hollow of
+  our elbows. The lion dragged head downward, catching in the brush
+  and on the stones. Our rests became more frequent. Emett, who had
+  the downward end of the pole, and therefore thrice the weight,
+  whistled when he drew breath. Half the time I saw red mist before
+  my eyes. How I hated the sliding stones!</p>
+
+  <p>"Wait," panted Emett once. "You're&mdash;younger&mdash;than
+  me&mdash;wait!"</p>
+
+  <p>For that Mormon giant&mdash;used all his days to strenuous
+  toil, peril and privation&mdash;to ask me to wait for him, was a
+  compliment which I valued more than any I had ever received.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we dropped our burden in the shade of a cedar where
+  the other lions lay, and we stretched ourselves. A long, sweet
+  rest came abruptly to end with Emett's next words.</p>
+
+  <p>"The lions are choking! They're dying of thirst! We must have
+  water!"</p>
+
+  <p>One glance at the poor, gasping, frothing beasts, proved to me
+  the nature of our extremity.</p>
+
+  <p>"Water in this desert! Where will we find it? Oh! why, did I
+  forget my canteen!"</p>
+
+  <p>After all our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally
+  our wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for
+  lack of a little water was sickening, maddening.</p>
+
+  <p>"Think quick!" cried Emett. "I'm no good; I'm all in. But you
+  must find water. It snowed yesterday. There's water
+  somewhere."</p>
+
+  <p>Into my mind flashed a picture of the many little pockets
+  beaten by rains into the shelves and promontories of the canyon
+  rim. With the thought I was on the jump. I ran; I climbed; I
+  seemed to have wings; I reached the rim, and hurried along it
+  with eager gaze. I swung down on a cedar branch to a projecting
+  point of rock. Small depressions were everywhere still damp, but
+  the water had evaporated. But I would not give up. I jumped from
+  rock to rock, and climbed over scaly ledges, and set tons of
+  yellow shale into motion. And I found on a ragged promontory many
+  little, round holes, some a foot deep, all full of clear water.
+  Using my handkerchief as a sponge I filled my cap.</p>
+
+  <p>Then began my journey down. I carried the cap with both hands
+  and balanced myself like a tight-rope performer. I zigzagged the
+  slopes; slipped over stones; leaped fissures and traversed yellow
+  slides. I safely descended places that in an ordinary moment
+  would have presented insurmountable obstacles, and burst down
+  upon Emett with an Indian yell of triumph.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good!" ejaculated he. If I had not known it already, the way
+  his face changed would have told me of his love for animals. He
+  grasped a lion by the ears and held his head up. I saturated my
+  handkerchief and squeezed the water into his mouth. He wheezed,
+  coughed, choked, but to our joy he swallowed. He had to swallow.
+  One after the other we served them so, seeing with unmistakable
+  relief the sure signs of recovery. Their eyes cleared and
+  brightened; the dry coughing that distressed us so ceased; the
+  froth came no more. The savage fellow that had fought us to a
+  standstill, and for which we had named him Spitfire, raised his
+  head, the gold in his beautiful eyes darkened to fire and he
+  growled his return to life and defiance.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett and I sank back in unutterable relief.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" Jones' yell came, breaking the warm quiet of the
+  slope. Our comrade appeared riding down. The voice of the Indian,
+  calling to Marc, mingled with the ringing of iron-shod hoofs on
+  the stones.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones surveyed the small level spot in the shade of the
+  cedars. He gazed from the lions to us, his stern face relaxed,
+  and his dry laugh cracked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Doggone me, if you didn't do it!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>A strange procession soon emerged from Left Canyon and
+  stranger to us than the lion heads bobbing out of the alfagoes
+  was the sight of Navvy riding in front of the lions. I kept well
+  in the rear, for if anything happened, which I calculated was
+  more than likely, I wanted to see it. Before we had reached the
+  outskirts of pines, I observed that the piece of lasso around
+  Spitfire's nose had worked loose.</p>
+
+  <p>Just as I was about to make this known to Jones, the lion
+  opened a corner of his mouth and fastened his teeth in the
+  Navajo's overalls. He did not catch the flesh, for when Navvy
+  turned around he wore only an expression of curiosity. But when
+  he saw Spitfire chewing him he uttered a shrill scream and fell
+  sidewise off his horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Then two difficulties presented themselves to us, to catch the
+  frightened horse and persuade the Indian he had not been bitten.
+  We failed in the latter. Navvy gave us and the lions a wide
+  berth, and walked to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim was waiting for us, and said he had chased a lion south
+  along the rim till the hounds got away from him.</p>
+
+  <p>Spitfire, having already been chained, was the first lion we
+  endeavored to introduce to our family of captives. He raised such
+  a fearful row that we had to remove him some distance from the
+  others.</p>
+
+  <p>"We have two dog chains," said Jones, "but not a collar or a
+  swivel in camp. We can't chain the lions without swivels. They'd
+  choke themselves in two minutes."</p>
+
+  <p>Once more, for the hundredth time, Emett came to our rescue
+  with his inventive and mechanical skill. He took the largest pair
+  of hobbles we had, and with an axe, a knife and Jones' wire
+  nippers, fashioned two collars with swivels that for strength and
+  serviceableness improved somewhat on those we had bought.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness was enveloping the forest when we finished supper. I
+  fell into my bed and, despite the throbbing and burning of my
+  wrist, soon lapsed into slumber. And I crawled out next morning
+  late for breakfast, stiff, worn out, crippled, but happy. Six
+  lions roaring a concert for me was quite conducive to
+  contentment.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett interestingly engaged himself on a new pair of trousers,
+  which he had contrived to produce from two of our empty
+  meal-bags. The lower half of his overalls had gone to decorate
+  the cedar spikes and brush, and these new bag-leg trousers, while
+  somewhat remarkable for design, answered the purpose well enough.
+  Jones' coat was somewhere along the canyon rim, his shoes were
+  full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his trousers in rags. Jim
+  looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of heavy waterproofed
+  duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring forth the
+  unanimous admiration of my companions.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, fellows," said Jones, "there's six lions, and that's
+  more than we can pack out of here. Have you had enough hunting? I
+  have."</p>
+
+  <p>"And I," rejoined Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore you can bet I have," drawled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"One more day, boys, and then I've done," said I. "Only one
+  more day!"</p>
+
+  <p>Signs of relief on the faces of my good comrades showed how
+  they took this evidence of my satisfied ambition.</p>
+
+  <p>I spent all the afternoon with the lions, photographing them,
+  listening to them spit and growl, watching them fight their
+  chains, and roll up like balls of fire. From different parts of
+  the forest I tried to creep unsuspected upon them; but always
+  when I peeped out from behind a tree or log, every pair of ears
+  would be erect, every pair of eyes gleaming and suspicious.</p>
+
+  <p>Spitfire afforded more amusement than all the others. He had
+  indeed the temper of a king; he had been born for sovereignty,
+  not slavery. To intimidate me he tried every manner of expression
+  and utterance, and failing, he always ended with a spring in the
+  air to the length of his chain. This means was always effective.
+  I simply could not stand still when he leaped; and in turn I
+  tried every artifice I could think of to make him back away from
+  me, to take refuge behind his tree. I ran at him with a club as
+  if I were going to kill him. He waited, crouching. Finally, in
+  dire extremity, I bethought me of a red flannel hood that Emett
+  had given me, saying I might use it on cold nights. This was
+  indeed a weird, flaming headgear, falling like a cloak down over
+  the shoulders. I put it on, and, camera in hand, started to crawl
+  on all fours toward Spitfire.</p><a name="image-0044">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg039_m.jpg" width="744" height="448" alt=
+    "Some of Our Menagerie in Buckskin Forest ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg040_m.jpg" width="730" height="448" alt=
+    "White Mustang Stallion With his Bunch of Blacks In Snake Gulch ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I needed no one to tell me that this proceeding was entirely
+  beyond his comprehension. In his astonishment he forgot to spit
+  and growl, and he backed behind the little pine, from which he
+  regarded me with growing perplexity. Then, having revenged myself
+  on him, and getting a picture, I left him in peace.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XIV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I awoke before dawn, and lay watching the dark shadows change
+  into gray, and gray into light. The Navajo chanted solemnly and
+  low his morning song. I got up with the keen eagerness of the
+  hunter who faces the last day of his hunt.</p>
+
+  <p>I warmed my frozen fingers at the fire. A hot breakfast smoked
+  on the red coals. We ate while Navvy fed and saddled the
+  horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, they'll be somethin' doin' to-day," said Jim,
+  fatalistically.</p>
+
+  <p>"We haven't crippled a horse yet," put in Emett hopefully. Don
+  led the pack and us down the ridge, out of the pines into the
+  sage. The sun, a red ball, glared out of the eastern mist,
+  shedding a dull glow on the ramparts of the far canyon walls. A
+  herd of white-tailed deer scattered before the hounds. Blue
+  grouse whirred from under our horses' feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"Spread out," ordered Jones, and though he meant the hounds,
+  we all followed his suggestion, as the wisest course.</p>
+
+  <p>Ranger began to work up the sage ridge to the right. Jones,
+  Emett and I followed, while Jim rode away to the left. Gradually
+  the space widened, and as we neared the cedars, a sharply
+  defined, deep canyon separated us.</p>
+
+  <p>We heard Don open up, then Sounder. Ranger left the trail he
+  was trying to work out in the thick sage, and bounded in the
+  direction of the rest of the pack. We reined in to listen.</p>
+
+  <p>First Don, then Sounder, then Jude, then one of the pups bayed
+  eagerly, telling us they were hunting hard. Suddenly the bays
+  blended in one savage sound.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" cracked the cool, thin air. We saw Jim wave his
+  hand from the far side of the canyon, spur his horse into action,
+  and disappear into the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>"Stick close together," yelled Jones, as we launched forward.
+  We made the mistake of not going back to cross the canyon, for
+  the hounds soon went up the opposite side. As we rode on and on,
+  the sounds of the chase lessened, and finally ceased. To our
+  great chagrin we found it necessary to retrace our steps, and
+  when we did get over the deep gully, so much time had elapsed
+  that we despaired of coming up with Jim. Emett led, keeping close
+  on Jim's trail, which showed plain in the dust, and we
+  followed.</p>
+
+  <p>Up and down ravines, over ridges, through sage flats and cedar
+  forests, to and fro, around and around, we trailed Jim and the
+  hounds. From time to time one of us let out a long yell.</p>
+
+  <p>"I see a big lion track," called Jones once, and that stirred
+  us on faster. Fully an hour passed before Jones halted us, saying
+  we had best try a signal. I dismounted, while Emett rolled his
+  great voice through the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>A long silence ensued. From the depths of the forest Jim's
+  answer struck faintly on my ear. With a word to my companions I
+  leaped on my mustang and led the way. I rode as far as I could
+  mark a straight line with my eye, then stopped to wait for
+  another cry. In this way, slowly but surely we closed in on
+  Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>We found him on the verge of the Bay, in the small glade where
+  I had left my horse the day I followed Don alone down the canyon.
+  Jim was engaged in binding up the leg of his horse. The baying of
+  the hounds floated up over the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's up?" queried Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Old Sultan. That's what," replied Jim. "We run plumb into
+  him. We've had him in five trees. It ain't been long since he was
+  in that cedar there. When he jumped the yellow pup was in the way
+  an' got killed. My horse just managed to jump clear of the big
+  lion, an' as it was, nearly broke his leg."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett examined the leg and pronounced it badly strained, and
+  advised Jim to lead the horse back to camp. Jones and I stood a
+  moment over the remains of the yellow pup, and presently Emett
+  joined us.</p>
+
+  <p>"He was the most playful one of the pack," said Emett, and
+  then he placed the limp, bloody body in a crack, and laid several
+  slabs of stone over it.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry after the other hounds," said Jim. "That lion will kill
+  them one by one. An' look out for him!"</p>
+
+  <p>If we needed an incentive, the danger threatening the hounds
+  furnished one; but I calculated the death of the pup was enough.
+  Emett had a flare in his eye, Jones looked darker and more grim
+  than ever, and I had sensations that boded ill to old Sultan.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fellows," I said, "I've been down this place, and I know
+  where the old brute has gone; so come on."</p>
+
+  <p>I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the
+  business ahead was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon.
+  Down slopes, among rocks, under pi&ntilde;ons, around yellow
+  walls, along slides, the two big men followed me with heavy
+  steps. We reached the white stream-bed, and sliding, slipping,
+  jumping, always down and down, we came at last within sound of
+  the hounds. We found them baying wildly under a pi&ntilde;on on
+  the brink of the deep cove.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, at once, we all saw old Sultan close at hand. He was of
+  immense size; his color was almost gray; his head huge, his paws
+  heavy and round. He did not spit, nor snarl, nor growl; he did
+  not look at the hounds, but kept his half-shut eyes upon us.</p>
+
+  <p>We had no time to make a move before he left his perch and hit
+  the ground with a thud. He walked by the baying hounds, looked
+  over the brink of the cove, and without an instant of hesitation,
+  leaped down. The rattling crash of sliding stones came up with a
+  cloud of dust. Then we saw him leisurely picking his way among
+  the rough stones.</p>
+
+  <p>Exclamations from the three of us attested to what we thought
+  of that leap.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look the place over," called Jones. "I think we've got
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>The cove was a hole hollowed out by running water. At its
+  head, where the perpendicular wall curved, the height was not
+  less than forty feet. The walls became higher as the cove
+  deepened toward the canyon. It had a length of perhaps a hundred
+  yards, and a width of perhaps half as many. The floor was mass on
+  mass of splintered rock.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let the hounds down on a lasso," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Easier said than done! Sounder, Ranger, Jude refused. Old Moze
+  grumbled and broke away. But Don, stern and savage, allowed Jones
+  to tie him in a slip noose.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a shame to send that grand hound to his death,"
+  protested Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll all go down," declared Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"We can't. One will have to stay up here to help the other two
+  out," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're the strongest; you stay up," said Jones. "Better work
+  along the wall and see if you can locate the lion."</p><a name=
+  "image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg041_m.jpg" width="757" height="448" alt=
+    "On the Way Home ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg042_m.jpg" width="448" height="710" alt=
+    "Riding With a Navajo ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We let Don down into the hole. He kicked himself loose before
+  reaching the bottom and then, yelping, he went out of sight among
+  the boulders. Moze, as if ashamed, came whining to us. We slipped
+  a noose around him and lowered him, kicking and barking, to the
+  rocky floor. Jones made the lasso fast to a cedar root, and I
+  slid down, like a flash, burning my hands. Jones swung himself
+  over, wrapped his leg around the rope, and came down, to hit the
+  ground with a thump. Then, lassos in hands, we began clambering
+  over the broken fragments.</p>
+
+  <p>For a few moments we were lost to sights and sounds away from
+  our immediate vicinity. The bottom of the cove afforded hard
+  going. Dead pi&ntilde;ons and cedars blocked our way; the great,
+  jagged stones offered no passage. We crawled, climbed, and jumped
+  from piece to piece.</p>
+
+  <p>A yell from Emett halted us. We saw him above, on the extreme
+  point of wall. Waving his arms, he yelled unintelligible commands
+  to us. The fierce baying of Don and Moze added to our desperate
+  energy.</p>
+
+  <p>The last jumble of splintered rock cleared, we faced a
+  terrible and wonderful scene.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look! Look!" I gasped to Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>A wide, bare strip of stone lay a few yards beneath us; and in
+  the center of this last step sat the great lion on his haunches
+  with his long tail lashing out over the precipice. Back to the
+  canyon, he confronted the furious hounds; his demeanor had
+  changed to one of savage apprehension.</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones and I appeared, old Sultan abruptly turned his back
+  to the hounds and looked down into the canyon. He walked the
+  whole length of the bare rock with his head stretched over. He
+  was looking for a niche or a step whereby he might again elude
+  his foes.</p>
+
+  <p>Faster lashed his tail; farther and farther stretched his
+  neck. He stopped, and with head bent so far over the abyss that
+  it seemed he must fall, he looked and looked.</p>
+
+  <p>How grandly he fitted the savage sublimity of that place! The
+  tremendous purple canyon depths lay beneath him. He stood on the
+  last step of his mighty throne. The great downward slopes had
+  failed him. Majestically and slowly he turned from the deep that
+  offered no hope.</p>
+
+  <p>As he turned, Jones cast the noose of his lasso perfectly
+  round the burly neck. Sultan roared and worked his jaws, but he
+  did not leap. Jones must have expected such a move, for he
+  fastened his rope to a spur of rock. Standing there, revolver
+  gripped, hearing the baying hounds, the roaring lion, and Jones'
+  yells mingled with Emett's, I had no idea what to do. I was in a
+  trance of sensations.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Sultan ran rather than leaped at us. Jones evaded the rush
+  by falling behind a stone, but still did not get out of danger.
+  Don flew at the lion's neck and Moze buried his teeth in a flank.
+  Then the three rolled on the rock dangerously near the verge.</p>
+
+  <p>Bellowing, Jones grasped the lasso and pulled. Still holding
+  my revolver, I leaped to his assistance, and together we pulled
+  and jerked. Don got away from the lion with remarkable quickness.
+  But Moze, slow and dogged, could not elude the outstretched paws,
+  which fastened in his side and leg. We pulled so hard we slowly
+  raised the lion. Moze, never whimpering, clawed and scratched at
+  the rock in his efforts to escape. The lion's red tongue
+  protruded from his dripping jaws. We heard the rend of hide as
+  our efforts, combined with those of Moze, loosed him from the
+  great yellow claws.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, whirling and wrestling, rolled over the precipice.
+  When the rope straightened with a twang, had it not been fastened
+  to the rock, Jones and I would have jerked over the wall. The
+  shock threw us to our knees.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment we did not realize the situation. Emett's yells
+  awakened us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull! Pull! Pull!" roared he.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, knowing that old Sultan would hang himself in a few
+  moments, we attempted to lift him. Jones pulled till his back
+  cracked; I pulled till I saw red before my eyes. Again and again
+  we tried. We could lift him only a few feet. Soon exhausted, we
+  had to desist altogether. How Emett roared and raged from his
+  vantage-point above! He could see the lion in death throes.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly he quieted down with the words: "All over; all over!"
+  Then he sat still, looking into space. Jones sat mopping his
+  brow. And I, all my hot resentment vanished, lay on the rock,
+  with eyes on the distant mesas.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently Jones leaned over the verge with my lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>"There," he said, "I've roped one of his hind legs. Now we'll
+  pull him up a little, then we'll fasten this rope, and pull on
+  the other."</p>
+
+  <p>So, foot by foot, we worked the heavy lion up over the wall.
+  He must have been dead, though his sides heaved. Don sniffed at
+  him in disdain. Moze, dusty and bloody, with a large strip of
+  hide hanging from his flank, came up growling low and deep, and
+  gave the lion a last vengeful bite.</p>
+
+  <p>"We've been fools," observed Jones, meditatively. "The
+  excitement of the game made us lose our wits. I'll never rope
+  another lion."</p>
+
+  <p>I said nothing. While Moze licked his bloody leg and Don lay
+  with his fine head on my knees, Jones began to skin old Sultan.
+  Once more the strange, infinite silence enfolded the canyon. The
+  far-off golden walls glistened in the sun; farther down, the
+  purple clefts smoked. The many-hued peaks and mesas, aloof from
+  each other, rose out of the depths. It was a grand and gloomy
+  scene of ruin where every glistening descent of rock was but a
+  page of earth's history.</p>
+
+  <p>It brought to my mind a faint appreciation of what time really
+  meant; it spoke of an age of former men; it showed me the
+  lonesome crags of eagles, and the cliff lairs of lions; and it
+  taught mutely, eloquently, a lesson of life&mdash;that men are
+  still savage, still driven by a spirit to roam, to hunt, and to
+  slay.</p><a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    TONTO BASIN
+  </center>
+
+  <p>The start of a camping trip, the getting a big outfit together
+  and packed, and on the move, is always a difficult and laborsome
+  job. Nevertheless, for me the preparation and the actual getting
+  under way have always been matters of thrilling interest. This
+  start of my hunt in Arizona, September 24, 1918, was particularly
+  momentous because I had brought my boy Romer with me for his
+  first trip into the wilds.</p>
+
+  <p>It may be that the boy was too young for such an undertaking.
+  His mother feared he would be injured; his teachers presaged his
+  utter ruin; his old nurse, with whom he waged war until he was
+  free of her, averred that the best it could do for him would be
+  to show what kind of stuff he was made of. His uncle R.C. was
+  stoutly in favor of taking him. I believe the balance fell in
+  Romer's favor when I remembered my own boyhood. As a youngster of
+  three I had babbled of "bars an' buffers," and woven fantastic
+  and marvelous tales of fiction about my imagined
+  adventures&mdash;a habit, alas! I have never yet outgrown.</p>
+
+  <p>Anyway we only made six miles' travel on this September
+  twenty-fourth, and Romer was with us.</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed he was omnipresent. His keen, eager joy communicated
+  itself to me. Once he rode up alongside me and said: "Dad, this's
+  great, but I'd rather do like Buck Duane." The boy had read all
+  of my books, in spite of parents and teachers, and he knew them
+  by heart, and invariably liked the outlaws and gunmen best of
+  all.</p>
+
+  <p>We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west,
+  and the Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a
+  cut-over pine forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned
+  deadfalls made an aspect of blackened desolation. From a
+  distance, however, the scene was superb. At sunset there was a
+  faint wind which soon died away.</p>
+
+  <p>My old guide on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in
+  charge of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over
+  seventy years, hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes
+  still keen with fire. He was no longer robust, but he was
+  tireless and willing. When he told a story he always began: "In
+  the early days&mdash;" His son Lee had charge of the horses of
+  which we had fourteen, two teams and ten saddle horses. Lee was a
+  typical westerner of many occupations&mdash;cowboy, rider,
+  rancher, cattleman. He was small, thin, supple, quick, tough and
+  strong. He had a bronzed face, always chapped, a hooked nose,
+  gray-blue eyes like his father's, sharp and keen.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee had engaged the only man he could find for a
+  cook&mdash;Joe Isbel, a tall, lithe cowboy, straight as an
+  Indian, with powerful shoulders, round limbs, and slender waist,
+  and Isbel was what the westerners called a broncho-buster. He was
+  a prize-winning rider at all the rodeos. Indeed, his seat in the
+  saddle was individual and incomparable. He had a rough red-blue
+  face, hard and rugged, like the rocks he rode over so fearlessly,
+  and his eyes were bright hazel, steady and hard. Isbel's
+  vernacular was significant. Speaking of one of our horses he
+  said: "Like a mule he'll be your friend for twenty years to git a
+  chance to kick you." Speaking of another that had to be shod he
+  said: "Shore, he'll step high to-morrow." Isbel appeared to be
+  remarkably efficient as camp-rustler and cook, but he did not
+  inspire me with confidence. In speaking of this to the Doyles I
+  found them non-committal on the subject. Westerners have
+  sensitive feelings. I could not tell whether they were offended
+  or not, and I half regretted mentioning my lack of confidence in
+  Isbel. As it turned out, however, I was amply justified.</p>
+
+  <p>Sievert Nielsen, whom I have mentioned elsewhere, was the
+  fourth of my men.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness had enveloped us at supper time. I was tired out, but
+  the red-embered camp-fire, the cool air, the smell of wood-smoke,
+  and the white stars kept me awake awhile. Romer had to be put to
+  bed. He was wild with excitement. We had had a sleeping-bag made
+  for him so that once snugly in it, with the flaps buckled he
+  could not kick off the blankets. When we got him into it he
+  quieted down and took exceeding interest in his first bed in the
+  open. He did not, however, go quickly to sleep. Presently he
+  called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle Rome, I coiled a
+  lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's asleep you go
+  pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's a
+  rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading
+  "The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones'
+  cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off his mind he
+  fell asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>The hour we spent sitting around the camp-fire was the most
+  pleasant of that night, though I did not know it then. The smell
+  of wood-smoke and the glow of live coals stirred memories of
+  other camp-fires. I was once more enveloped by the sweetness and
+  peace of the open, listening to the sigh of the wind, and the
+  faint tinkle of bells on the hobbled horses.</p>
+
+  <p>An uncomfortable night indeed it turned out to be. Our covers
+  were scanty and did not number among them any blankets. The bed
+  was hard as a rock, and lumpy. No sleep! As the night wore on the
+  air grew colder, and I could not keep warm. At four a.m. I heard
+  the howling of coyotes&mdash;a thrilling and well remembered wild
+  chorus. After that perfect stillness reigned. Presently I saw the
+  morning star&mdash;big, blue-white, beautiful. Uncomfortable
+  hours seemed well spent if the reward was sight of the morning
+  star. How few people ever see it! How very few ever get a glimpse
+  of it on a desert dawn!</p>
+
+  <p>Just then, about five-thirty, Romer woke up and yelled
+  lustily: "Dad! My nose's froze." This was a signal for me to
+  laugh, and also to rise heroically. Not difficult because I
+  wanted to stay in bed, but because I could hardly crawl out! Soon
+  we had a fire roaring. At six the dawn was still gray. Cold and
+  nipping air, frost on everything, pale stars, a gold-red light in
+  the east were proofs that I was again in the open. Soon a
+  rose-colored flush beautified the Peaks.</p>
+
+  <p>After breakfast we had trouble with the horses. This always
+  happened. But it was made worse this morning because a young
+  cowboy who happened along took upon himself the task of helping
+  Lee. I suspected he wanted to show off a little. In throwing his
+  lasso to rope one, the noose went over the heads of two. Then he
+  tried to hold both animals. They dragged him, pulled the lasso
+  out of his hands, and stampeded the other horses. These two roped
+  together thundered off with the noose widening. I was afraid they
+  would split round a tree or stump, but fortunately the noose fell
+  off one. As all the horses pounded off I heard Romer remark to
+  Isbel: "Say, Joe, I don't see any medals on that cowboy." Isbel
+  roared, and said: "Wal, Romer, you shore hit the nail, on the
+  haid!"</p>
+
+  <p>Owing to that stampede we did not get saddled and started till
+  eleven o'clock. At first I was so sore and stiff from the hard
+  bed that I rode a while on the wagon with Doyle. Many a mile I
+  had ridden with him, and many a story he had related. This time
+  he told about sitting on a jury at Prescott where they brought in
+  as evidence bloody shirts, overalls, guns, knives, until there
+  was such a pile that the table would not hold them. Doyle was a
+  mine of memories of the early days.</p>
+
+  <p>Romer's mount was a little black, white-spotted horse named
+  Rye. Lee Doyle had scoured the ranches to get this pony for the
+  youngster. Rye was small for a horse, about the size of an Indian
+  mustang, and he was gentle, as well as strong and fast. Romer had
+  been given riding lessons all that summer in the east, and upon
+  his arrival at Flagstaff he informed me that he could ride. I
+  predicted he would be in the wagon before noon of the second day
+  out. He offered to bet on it. I told him I disapproved of
+  betting. He seemed to me to be daring, adaptable, self-willed;
+  and I was divided between pride and anxiety as to the outcome of
+  this trip for him.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy
+  pond in a valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees
+  stood in the water, and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably
+  to the ranchers this mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me,
+  who loved the beauty of the desert before its productiveness, it
+  was hideous. When we passed Lake Mary, and farther on the last of
+  the cut-over timber-land, we began to get into wonderful country.
+  We traveled about sixteen miles, rather a small day's ride. Romer
+  stayed on his horse all through that ride, and when we selected a
+  camp site for the night he said to me: "Well, you're lucky you
+  wouldn't bet."</p>
+
+  <p>Camp that evening was in a valley with stately pines
+  straggling down to the level. On the other slope the pines came
+  down in groups. The rim of this opposite slope was high, rugged,
+  iron-colored, with cracks and holes. Before supper I walked up
+  the slope back of our camp, to come upon level, rocky ground for
+  a mile, then pines again leading to a low, green mountain with
+  lighter patches of aspen. The level, open strip was gray in
+  color. Arizona color and Arizona country! Gray of sage, rocks,
+  pines, cedars, pi&ntilde;ons, heights and depths and plains, wild
+  and open and lonely&mdash;that was Arizona.</p>
+
+  <p>That night I obtained some rest and sleep, lying awake only a
+  few hours, during which time I turned from side to side to find a
+  soft place in the hard bed. Under such circumstances I always
+  thought of the hard beds of the Greeks and the Spartans. Next day
+  we rode twenty-three miles. On horseback trips like this it was
+  every one for himself. Sometimes we would be spread out, all
+  separated; at others we would be bunched; and again we would ride
+  in couples. The morning was an ordeal for me, as at first I could
+  scarcely sit my saddle; in the afternoon, however, riding grew to
+  be less severe. The road led through a winding, shallow valley,
+  with clumps of pine here and there, and cedars on the slopes.
+  Romer rode all the way, half the time with his feet out of the
+  stirrups, like a western boy born to the saddle, and he wanted to
+  go fast all the time. Camp was made at a place called Fulton
+  Spring. It might have been a spring once, but now it was a
+  mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is
+  necessary to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on
+  sheep water&mdash;the water holes being tainted by
+  sheep&mdash;and alkali water and soapy water of the desert, but
+  never happily. How I hailed the clear, cold, swiftly-flowing
+  springs!</p>
+
+  <p>This third camp lay in a woods where the pines were beautiful
+  and the silence noticeable. Upon asking Romer to enumerate the
+  things I had called to his attention, the few times I could catch
+  up with him on the day's journey, he promptly replied&mdash;two
+  big spiders&mdash;tarantulas, a hawk, and Mormon Lake. This lake
+  was another snow-melted mud-hole, said to contain fish. I doubted
+  that. Perhaps the little bull-head catfish might survive in such
+  muddy water, but I did not believe bass or perch could.</p>
+
+  <p>One familiar feature of Arizona travel manifested itself to me
+  that day&mdash;the dry air. My nails became brittle and my lips
+  began to crack. I have had my lips cracked so severely that when
+  I tried to bite bread they would split and bleed and hurt so that
+  I could not eat. This matter of sore lips was for long a painful
+  matter. I tried many remedies, and finally found one, camphor
+  ice, that would prevent the drying and cracking.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day at dawn the forest was full of the soughing of wind
+  in the pines&mdash;a wind that presaged storm. No stars showed.
+  Romer-boy piled out at six o'clock. I had to follow him. The sky
+  was dark and cloudy. Only a faint light showed in the east and it
+  was just light enough to see when we ate breakfast. Owing to
+  strayed horses we did not get started till after nine
+  o'clock.</p>
+
+  <p>Five miles through the woods, gradually descending, led us
+  into an open plain where there was a grass-bordered pond full of
+  ducks. Here appeared an opportunity to get some meat. R.C. tried
+  with shotgun and I with rifle, all to no avail. These ducks were
+  shy. Romer seemed to evince some disdain at our failure, but he
+  did not voice his feelings. We found some wild-turkey tracks, and
+  a few feathers, which put our hopes high.</p>
+
+  <p>Crossing the open ground we again entered the forest, which
+  gradually grew thicker as we got down to a lower altitude. Oak
+  trees began to show in swales. And then we soon began to see
+  squirrels, big, plump, gray fellows, with bushy tails almost
+  silver. They appeared wilder than we would have suspected, at
+  that distance from the settlements. Romer was eager to hunt them,
+  and with his usual persistence, succeeded at length in persuading
+  his uncle to do so.</p>
+
+  <p>To that end we rode out far ahead of the wagon and horses. Lee
+  had a yellow dog he called Pups, a close-haired, keen-faced,
+  muscular canine to which I had taken a dislike. To be fair to
+  Pups, I had no reason except that he barked all the time. Pups
+  and his barking were destined to make me hail them both with
+  admiration and respect, but I had no idea of that then. Now this
+  dog of Lee's would run ahead of us, trail squirrels, chase them,
+  and tree them, whereupon he would bark vociferously. Sometimes up
+  in the bushy top we would fail to spy the squirrel, but we had no
+  doubt one was there. Romer wasted many and many a cartridge of
+  the .22 Winchester trying to hit a squirrel. He had practiced a
+  good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster, but
+  hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at
+  the tip of a branch, was no easy matter.</p>
+
+  <p>"Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad."</p>
+
+  <p>And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about
+  Wetzel. Now Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was
+  Romer's favorite hero.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gimme the .20 gauge," finally cried Romer, in desperation,
+  with his eyes flashing.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon his uncle handed him the shotgun, with a word of
+  caution as to the trigger. This particular squirrel was pretty
+  high up, presenting no easy target. Romer stood almost directly
+  under it, raised the gun nearly straight up, waved and wobbled
+  and hesitated, and finally fired. Down sailed the squirrel to hit
+  with a plump. That was Romer's first successful hunting
+  experience. How proud he was of that gray squirrel! I suffered a
+  pang to see the boy so radiant, so full of fire at the killing of
+  a beautiful creature of the woods. Then again I remembered my own
+  first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty little savages. In their
+  hunting, playing, even their reading, some element of the wild
+  brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy descendants of
+  progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This incident
+  furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before this
+  trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot
+  a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I
+  was not hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at
+  the spilling of blood. On the contrary he revels in it with a
+  fierce, primitive joy.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some shot, I'll say!" declared Romer to his uncle, loftily.
+  And he said to me half a dozen times: "Say, Dad, wasn't it a
+  grand peg?"</p>
+
+  <p>But toward the end of that afternoon his enthusiasm waned for
+  shooting, for anything, especially riding. He kept asking when
+  the wagon was going to stop. Once he yelled out: "Here's a peach
+  of a place to camp." Then I asked him: "Romer, are you tired?"
+  "Naw! But what's the use ridin' till dark?" At length he had to
+  give up and be put on the wagon. The moment was tragic for him.
+  Soon, however, he brightened at something Doyle told him, and
+  began to ply the old pioneer with rapid-fire questions.</p>
+
+  <p>We pitched camp in an open flat, gray and red with short
+  grass, and sheltered by towering pines on one side. Under these
+  we set up our tents. The mat of pine needles was half a foot
+  thick, soft and springy and fragrant. The woods appeared full of
+  slanting rays of golden sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>This day we had supper over before sunset. Romer showed no
+  effects from his long, hard ride. First he wanted to cook, then
+  he fooled around the fire, bothering Isbel. I had a hard time to
+  manage him. He wanted to be eternally active. He teased and
+  begged to go hunting&mdash;then he compromised on target
+  practice. R.C. and I, however, were too tired, and we preferred
+  to rest beside the camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for
+  to-morrow."</p>
+
+  <p>In disgust Romer replied: "Well, I suppose if a flock of
+  antelope came along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are
+  great hunters, I don't think!"</p>
+
+  <p>After the lad had gone over to the other men R.C. turned to me
+  and said reflectively: "Does he remind you of us when we were
+  little?"</p>
+
+  <p>To which I replied with emotion: "In him I live over
+  again!"</p>
+
+  <p>That is one of the beautiful things about children, so full of
+  pathos and some strange, stinging joy&mdash;they bring back the
+  days that are no more.</p>
+
+  <p>This evening, despite my fatigue, I was the last one to stay
+  up. My seat was most comfortable, consisting of thick folds of
+  blankets against a log. How the wind mourned in the trees! How
+  the camp-fire sparkled, glowed red and white! Sometimes it seemed
+  full of blazing opals. Always it held faces. And
+  stories&mdash;more stories than I can ever tell! Once I was
+  stirred and inspired by the beautiful effect of the pine trees in
+  outline against the starry sky when the camp-fire blazed up. The
+  color of the foliage seemed indescribably blue-green, something
+  never seen by day. Every line shone bright, graceful, curved,
+  rounded, and all thrown with sharp relief against the sky. How
+  magical, exquisitely delicate and fanciful! The great trunks were
+  soft serrated brown, and the gnarled branches stood out in
+  perfect proportions. All works of art must be copied of
+  nature.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning early, while Romer slept, and the men had just
+  begun to stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All
+  seemed solemn and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest
+  brown and green and gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his
+  nocturnal habit. Then to my surprise I heard wild canaries. They
+  were flying high, and to the south, going to their winter
+  quarters. I wandered around among big, gray rocks and windfalls
+  and clumps of young oak and majestic pines. More than one saucy
+  red squirrel chattered at me.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp my comrades were at breakfast. Romer
+  appeared vastly relieved to see that I had not taken a gun with
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>This morning we got an early start. We rode for hours through
+  a beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces
+  made riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared
+  on the rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's
+  travel, and the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine
+  was thick and fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing.
+  Everywhere pine needles dropped, shining in the sunlight like
+  thin slants of rain.</p>
+
+  <p>Only once or twice did I see Romer in all these morning hours;
+  then he was out in front with the cowboy Isbel, riding his black
+  pony over all the logs and washes he could find. I could see his
+  feet sticking straight out almost even with his saddle. He did
+  not appear to need stirrups. My fears gradually lessened.</p>
+
+  <p>During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We
+  came to a long, open valley where the dust lay several inches
+  deep. It had been an unusually dry summer and fall&mdash;a fact
+  that presaged poor luck for our hunting&mdash;and the washes and
+  stream-beds were bleached white. We came to two water-holes,
+  tanks the Arizonians called them, and they were vile mud-holes
+  with green scum on the water. The horses drank, but I would have
+  had to be far gone from thirst before I would have slaked mine
+  there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and the dust
+  rising in clouds. No wonder that ride was interminably long.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we descended a canyon, and decided to camp in a level
+  spot where several ravines met, in one of which a tiny stream of
+  dear water oozed out of the gravel. The inclosure was
+  rocky-sloped, full of caves and covered with pines; and the best
+  I could say for it was that in case of storm the camp would be
+  well protected. We shoveled out a deep hole in the gravel, so
+  that it would fill up with water. Romer had evidently enjoyed
+  himself this day. When I asked Isbel about him the cowboy's hard
+  face gleamed with a smile: "Shore thet kid's all right. He'll
+  make a cowpuncher!" His remark pleased me. In view of Romer's
+  determination to emulate the worst bandit I ever wrote about I
+  was tremendously glad to think of him as a cowboy. But as for
+  myself I was tired, and the ride had been rather unprofitable,
+  and this camp-site, to say the least, did not inspire me. It was
+  neither wild nor beautiful nor comfortable. I went early to bed
+  and slept like a log.</p>
+
+  <p>The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men
+  hunted from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned
+  more about Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the
+  lost horses. They had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained
+  perfectly quiet, as cute as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail.
+  Pups was a horse-trailing dog and he soon found them. I had a
+  change of feeling for Pups, then and there.</p><a name=
+  "image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg043_m.jpg" width="689" height="448" alt=
+    "The Author and his Men. From Left to Right: Edd Haught; Nielsen; Haught, the Bear Hunter; Al Doyle, Pioneer Arizona Guide; Lewis Pyle; Z.g.; George Haught; Ben Copple; Lee Doyle. ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The sun was high and hot when we rode off. The pleasant and
+  dusty stretches alternated. About one o'clock we halted on the
+  edge of a deep wooded ravine to take our usual noonday rest. I
+  scouted along the edge in the hope of seeing game of some kind.
+  Presently I heard the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Slipping along to
+  an open place I peered down to be thrilled by sight of four
+  good-sized turkeys. They were walking along the open strip of dry
+  stream-bed at the bottom of the ravine. One was chasing
+  grasshoppers. They were fairly close. I took aim at one, and
+  thought I could have hit him, but suddenly I remembered Romer and
+  R.C. So I slipped back and called them.</p><a name="image-0049">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg044_m.jpg" width="448" height="594" alt=
+    "Romer-boy on his Favorite Steed ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Hurriedly and stealthily we returned to the point where I had
+  seen the turkeys. Romer had a pale face and wonderfully bright
+  eyes; his actions resembled those of a stalking Indian. The
+  turkeys were farther down, but still in plain sight. I told R.C.
+  to take the boy and slip down, and run and hide and run till they
+  got close enough for a shot. I would keep to the edge of the
+  ravine.</p>
+
+  <p>Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping
+  and creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to
+  reach a point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I
+  might get a shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I
+  lost sight of the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my
+  horse I mounted him and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine
+  some distance above. Here I hunted around for a little while.
+  Once I heard the report of the .20 gauge, and then several rifle
+  shots. Upon returning I found that Lee and Nielsen had wasted
+  some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the hill, both red
+  and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about the size of
+  a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the four
+  large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a
+  hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got
+  one. Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that
+  Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost
+  catching several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled
+  feathers out of their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"</p>
+
+  <p>We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon
+  Doyle called my attention to an opening in the forest through
+  which I could see the yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the
+  great blue void below. Arizona! That explained the black forests,
+  the red and yellow cliffs of rock, the gray cedars, the heights
+  and depths.</p>
+
+  <p>Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was
+  winding, rough full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired
+  out trying to keep up with the wagon. Romer, however, averred
+  time and again that he was not tired. Still I saw him often shift
+  his seat from one side of the saddle to the other.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a
+  little hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins,
+  low stone houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the
+  road, orchards, and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there
+  long enough to rest a little and drink our fill of the cold
+  granite water. I would travel out of my way to get a drink of
+  water that came from granite rock.</p>
+
+  <p>About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer
+  invited or rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his
+  victory I found that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle
+  sheath. I went back some distance to look for it, but did so in
+  vain. Isbel said he would ride back in the morning and find
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was
+  only because we had gotten out where we could see all around.
+  Arizona is all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up
+  to the south and east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of
+  the Mogollon Mesa, with its cliffs of yellow and red, and its
+  black line of timber. Westward lay fold on fold of low
+  cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a kind of magnificent
+  bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost in blue haze. The
+  vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both prickly-pear and
+  mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper
+  trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially the
+  smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries,
+  and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees.
+  Since we had left the rim above the character of plant life had
+  changed.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural
+  Bridge was located. A winding road descended the east side of
+  this valley. A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and
+  orchard and walnut trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray
+  slope on one side, and a red, rugged mountain on the other. A
+  deep gorge showed dark and wild. At length, just after sunset, we
+  reached the ranch, and rode through orchards of peach and pear
+  and apple trees, all colored with fruit, and down through grassy
+  meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched camp. By the time we
+  had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick, dreamy hum of
+  insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden afterglow on
+  the notch of the mountain range to the west&mdash;these were
+  inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed,
+  where my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.</p>
+
+  <p>After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what
+  delight to awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool
+  and breezy and bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green
+  and purple alfalfa fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged
+  crags above! Romer made a bee-line for the peach trees. He beat
+  his daddy only a few yards. The kind rancher had visited us the
+  night before and he had told us to help ourselves to fruit,
+  melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I made my breakfast on
+  peaches!</p>
+
+  <p>I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the
+  dark green slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by
+  water-cress, long grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one
+  of perfectly clear water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on
+  the surface. A grass of dark color and bunches of light green
+  plant grew under the surface. Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed
+  around and frogs as green as the grass blinked with jewelled eyes
+  from the wet margins. The spring had a large volume that spilled
+  over its borders with low, hollow gurgle, with fresh, cool
+  splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone. Here was the
+  secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty and life
+  of the oasis.</p>
+
+  <p>It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful
+  Natural Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the
+  extent of several acres, was the level top of this strange
+  bridge. A meadow of alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like
+  the hanging gardens of Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep
+  gorge, at the bottom of which flowed a swift stream of water.
+  Geologically this tremendous arch of limestone cannot be so very
+  old. In comparatively recent times an earthquake or some seismic
+  disturbance or some other natural force caused a spring of water
+  to burst from the slope above the gorge. It ran down, of course,
+  over the rim. The lime salt in the water was deposited, and year
+  by year and age by age advanced toward the opposite side until a
+  bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at the bottom kept the
+  opening clear under the bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this
+  wonderful natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone,
+  porous, craggy, broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full
+  of tremendous boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper
+  trees, red and yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I
+  espied tiny gray frogs, reminding me of those I found in the
+  gulches of the Grand Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive,
+  but most of them dead, lined the wet borders of the pools. A
+  species of fish that resembled mullet lay in the shadow of the
+  rocks.</p>
+
+  <p>From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if
+  not magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at
+  least striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored
+  gray, yellow, green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and
+  scalloped mosaic. Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy
+  scattered drops. The left side was dryest and large, dark caves
+  opened up, one above the other, the upper being so high that it
+  was dangerous to attempt reaching it. The right side was slippery
+  and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted with lime salt. Doyle
+  told us that any object left under the ceaseless drip, drip of
+  the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as stone.
+  The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than
+  the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes.
+  Romer certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone
+  through a small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle
+  pointed out the high cave where Indians had once lived, showing
+  the markings of their fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being
+  driven into the highest cave from which they had never escaped.
+  This tale was manifestly to Romer's liking and I had to use force
+  to keep him from risking his neck. A very strong breeze blew
+  under the arch. When we rolled a boulder into the large, dark
+  pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom, boom, growing hollower
+  the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer in some bat nests
+  in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll stones and fish
+  for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more on a level
+  I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole&mdash;I'll
+  say!" he panted, breathlessly.</p>
+
+  <p>The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about
+  July, and the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay
+  long on the lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago
+  and had cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of
+  the Four Peaks Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was
+  never severely cold or hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of
+  the rancher's wife that life there was always afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a
+  half hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many
+  frontier characteristics such as old board and stone houses with
+  high fronts, hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one
+  street so wide that it resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson
+  contained two stores, where I hoped to buy a rifle, and hoped in
+  vain. I had not recovered my lost gun, and when night came my
+  prospects of anything to hunt with appeared extremely slim. But
+  we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart, dark-skinned
+  rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he would
+  have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
+  profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I
+  could not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I
+  refused with thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it
+  was that he lent me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me
+  several boxes of ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide
+  lasso. Whereupon Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say,
+  you look like an Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple
+  replied: "I am part Indian, sonny." Manifestly that settled his
+  status with Romer, for he piped up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd
+  better come huntin' with us."</p>
+
+  <p>We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest
+  ride of the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good
+  camping site I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout
+  everybody out. It was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then
+  everybody rustled to such purpose that we were ready to start
+  before dawn, and had to wait a little for light enough to see
+  where we were going. This procedure tickled Romer immensely. I
+  believed he imagined he was in a pioneer caravan. The gray
+  breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the rose and
+  silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with the
+  air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as
+  the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined
+  road was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing
+  indications that it was seldom used. From the tops of high points
+  I could see black foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all
+  leading the gaze toward the great yellow and red wall of the
+  mesa, with its fringed borderline, wild and beckoning.</p>
+
+  <p>We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order,
+  over and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that
+  burned our faces and through choking dust. The washes and
+  stream-beds were bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow
+  and dust laden; the mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts.
+  Only the manzanita looked fresh. That smooth red-branched and
+  glistening green-leafed plant of the desert apparently flourished
+  without rain. On all sides the evidences of extreme drought
+  proved the year to be the dreaded <i>anno seco</i> of the
+  Mexicans.</p>
+
+  <p>For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any
+  prominent change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the
+  heat and dust and brush-walled road. But about the middle of the
+  afternoon we reached the summit of the longest hill, from which
+  we saw ahead of us a cut up country, wild and rugged and
+  beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our feet. We heard the
+  faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with sweat, and
+  thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast as we
+  dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged
+  into a swift stream of clear, cold water&mdash;granite
+  water&mdash;to drink of which, and to bathe hot heads and burning
+  feet, was a joy only known to the weary traveler of the desert.
+  Romer yelled that the water was like that at our home in the
+  mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank till I thought he would
+  burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him from wallowing in
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us,
+  and the aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay
+  behind. Every mile grew shadier, clearer, cooler.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several
+  miles, as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to
+  an Homeric recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the
+  end of which, almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon
+  such a stream as the one we had just passed. Then he told me
+  about his trips down the west coast of Sonora, along the Gulf,
+  where he traveled at night, at low tide, so that by daytime his
+  footprints would be washed out. This was the land of the Seri
+  Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were cannibals. I had read
+  considerable about them, much of which ridiculed the rumors of
+  their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of exceeding
+  interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land of the
+  Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data
+  concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California
+  told me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found
+  the Seris to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was
+  positive that under favorable circumstances they would practice
+  cannibalism. Nielsen made four trips down there. He claimed the
+  Seris were an ugly tribe. In winter they lived on Tiburon Island,
+  off which boats anchored on occasions, and crews and fishermen
+  and adventurers went ashore to barter with the Indians. These
+  travelers did not see the worst of the Seris. In summer they
+  range up the mainland, and they go naked. They do not want gold
+  discovered down there. They will fight prospectors. They use
+  arrows and attack at dawn. Also they poison the water-holes.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the
+  mainland opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from
+  camp, returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped
+  and made his way to Gyamus. Procuring assistance this man
+  returned to the scene of the massacre, only to find stakes in the
+  sand, with deep trails tramped around them, and blackened remains
+  of fires, and bones everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once
+  from a hiding place he had watched Seris tear up and devour a
+  dead turtle that he afterward ascertained was putrid. He said
+  these Seris were the greatest runners of all desert savages. The
+  best of them could outrun a horse. One Seri, a giant seven feet
+  tall, could outrun a deer and break its neck with his hands.</p>
+
+  <p>These statements of Nielsen's were remarkable, and personally
+  I believed them. Men of his stamp were honest and they had
+  opportunities to learn strange and terrible facts in nature. The
+  great naturalist Darwin made rather stronger claims for the
+  barbarism of the savages of Terra del Fuego. Nielsen, pursuing
+  his theme, told me how he had seen, with his own eyes&mdash;and
+  they were certainly sharp and intelligent&mdash;Yaqui Indians
+  leap on the bare backs of wild horses and locking their legs,
+  stick there in spite of the mad plunges and pitches. The Gauchos
+  of the Patagonian Pampas were famous for that feat of
+  horsemanship. I asked Joe Isbel what he thought of such riding.
+  And he said: "Wal, I can ride a wild steer bare-back, but excoose
+  me from tacklin' a buckin' bronch without saddle an' stirrups."
+  This coming from the acknowledged champion horseman of the
+  southwest was assuredly significant.</p>
+
+  <p>At five o'clock we came to the end of the road. It led to a
+  forest glade, overlooking the stream we had followed, and that
+  was as far as our wagon could go. The glade shone red with
+  sumach, and surrounded by tall pines, with a rocky and shady glen
+  below, it appeared a delightful place to camp. As I was about to
+  unsaddle my horses I heard the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Pulling
+  out my borrowed rifle, and calling Romer, I ran to the edge of
+  the glade. The shady, swift stream ran fifty feet or so below me.
+  Across it I saw into the woods where shade and gray rocks and
+  colored brush mingled. Again I heard the turkeys cluck. "Look
+  hard, son," I whispered. "They're close." R.C. came slipping
+  along below us, with his rifle ready. Suddenly Romer stiffened,
+  then pointed. "There! Dad!&mdash;There!" I saw two gobblers wade
+  into the brook not more than a hundred and fifty feet away.
+  Drawing down with fine aim I fired. The bullet splashed water all
+  over the turkeys. One with loud whirr of wings flew away. The
+  other leaped across the brook and ran&mdash;swift as a
+  deer&mdash;right up the slope. As I tried to get the sight on him
+  I heard other turkeys fly, and the crack-crack of R.C.'s gun. I
+  shot twice at my running turkey, and all I did was to scatter the
+  dirt over him, and make him run faster. R.C. had not done any
+  better shooting. Romer, wonderful to relate, was so excited that
+  he forgot to make fun of our marksmanship. We scouted around
+  some, but the turkeys had gone. By promising to take Romer
+  hunting after supper I contrived to get him back to the glade,
+  where we made camp.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    II
+  </center>
+
+  <p>After we had unpacked and while the men were pitching the
+  tents and getting supper I took Romer on a hunt up the creek. I
+  was considerably pleased to see good-sized trout in the deeper
+  pools. A little way above camp the creek forked. As the
+  right-hand branch appeared to be larger and more attractive we
+  followed its course. Soon the bustle of camp life and the sound
+  of the horses were left far behind. Romer slipped along beside me
+  stealthily as an Indian, all eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not traveled thus for a quarter of a mile when my quick
+  ear caught the cluck-cluck of turkeys. "Listen," I whispered,
+  halting. Romer became like a statue, his dark eyes dilating, his
+  nostrils quivering, his whole body strung. He was a Zane all
+  right. A turkey called again; then another answered. Romer
+  started, and nodded his head vehemently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on now, right behind me," I whispered. "Step where I
+  step and do what I do. Don't break any twigs."</p>
+
+  <p>Cautiously we glided up the creek, listening now and then to
+  get the direction, until we came to an open place where we could
+  see some distance up a ridge. The turkey clucks came from across
+  the creek somewhere up this open aisle of the forest. I crawled
+  ahead several rods to a more advantageous point, much pleased to
+  note that Romer kept noiselessly at my heels. Then from behind a
+  stone we peeped out. Almost at once a turkey flew down from a
+  tree into the open lane. "Look Dad!" whispered Romer, wildly. I
+  had to hold him down. "That's a hen turkey," I said. "See, it's
+  small and dull-colored. The gobblers are big, shiny, and they
+  have red on their heads."</p>
+
+  <p>Another hen turkey flew down from a rather low height. Then I
+  made out grapevines, and I saw several animated dark patches
+  among them. As I looked three turkeys flopped down to the ground.
+  One was a gobbler of considerable size, with beautiful white and
+  bronze feathers. Rather suspiciously he looked down our way. The
+  distance was not more than a hundred yards. I aimed at him,
+  feeling as I did so how Romer quivered beside me, but I had no
+  confidence in Copple's rifle. The sights were wrong for me. The
+  stock did not fit me. So, hoping for a closer and better shot, I
+  let this opportunity pass. Of course I should have taken it. The
+  gobbler clucked and began to trot up the ridge, with the others
+  after him. They were not frightened, but they appeared rather
+  suspicious. When they disappeared in the woods Romer and I got
+  up, and hurried in pursuit. "Gee! why didn't you peg that
+  gobbler?" broke out Romer, breathlessly. "Wasn't he a peach?"</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the top of the ridge we advanced very
+  cautiously again. Another open place led to a steep, rocky
+  hillside with cedars and pines growing somewhat separated. I was
+  disappointed in not seeing the turkeys. Then in our anxiety and
+  eagerness we hurried on, not noiselessly by any means. All of a
+  sudden there was a rustle, and then a great whirr of wings. Three
+  turkeys flew like grouse away into the woods. Next I saw the
+  white gobbler running up the rocky hillside. At first he was in
+  the open. Aiming as best I could I waited for him to stop or
+  hesitate. But he did neither. "Peg him, Dad!" yelled Romer. The
+  lad was right. My best chance I had again forfeited. To hit a
+  running wild turkey with a rifle bullet was a feat I had not done
+  so often as to inspire conceit. The gobbler was wise, too. For
+  that matter all grown gobblers are as wise as old bucks, except
+  in the spring mating season, when it is a crime to hunt them.
+  This one, just as I got a bead on him, always ran behind a rock
+  or tree or shrub. Finally in desperation I took a snap shot at
+  him, hitting under him, making him jump. Then in rapid succession
+  I fired four more times. I had the satisfaction of seeing where
+  my bullets struck up the dust, even though they did go wide of
+  the mark. After my last shot the gobbler disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, Dad, you sure throwed the dirt over him!" declared
+  Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Son, I don't believe I could hit a flock of barns with this
+  gun," I replied, gazing doubtfully at the old, shiny,
+  wire-wrapped, worn-out Winchester Copple had lent me. I had been
+  told that he was a fine marksman and could drive a nail with it.
+  Upon my return to camp I tried out the rifle, carefully, with a
+  rest, to find that it was not accurate. Moreover it did not throw
+  the bullets consistently. It shot high, wide, low; and right
+  there I abandoned any further use for it. R.C. tried to make me
+  take his rifle to use on the hunting trip; Nielsen and Lee wanted
+  me to take theirs, but I was disgusted with myself and refused.
+  "Thanks, boys," I said. "Maybe this will be a lesson to me."</p>
+
+  <p>We had been up since three o'clock that morning, and the day's
+  travel had been exhausting. I had just enough energy left to
+  scrape up a huge, soft pile of pine needles upon which to make
+  our bed. After that all was oblivion until I was awakened by the
+  ringing strokes of Nielsen's axe.</p>
+
+  <p>The morning, after the sun got up, was exceedingly delightful.
+  And this camp was such a contrast to the others, so pleasant and
+  attractive, that even if we had not arranged to meet Lee Haught
+  and his sons here I would have stayed a while anyway. Haught was
+  a famed bear hunter who lived in a log-cabin somewhere up under
+  the rim of the mesa. While Lee and Nielsen rode off up the trail
+  to find Haught I gave Romer his first try at rainbow trout. The
+  water of the creek was low and clear, so that we could see plenty
+  of good-sized trout. But they were shy. They would not rise
+  readily to any of our flies, though I got several strikes. We
+  searched under the stones for worms and secured a few. Whereupon
+  Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we plainly saw. The trout
+  gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the fine art of angling,
+  but whenever he got a bite he always forgot science. He yanked
+  this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another pool he hooked a
+  big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as weight and
+  strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But this
+  trout nearly pulled Romer off the rock before the line broke. I
+  took occasion then to deliver to the lad a lecture. In reply he
+  said tearfully: "I didn't know he was so&mdash;so big."</p>
+
+  <p>When we returned to camp, Haught and his sons were there. Even
+  at a distance their horses, weapons, and persons satisfied my
+  critical eye. Lee Haught was a tall, spare, superbly built man,
+  with square shoulders. He had a brown face with deep lines and
+  sunken cheeks, keen hazel eyes, heavy dark mustache, and hair
+  streaked a little with gray. The only striking features of his
+  apparel were his black sombrero and long spurs.</p>
+
+  <p>His sons, Edd and George, were young, lean, sallow,
+  still-faced, lanky-legged horsemen with clear gray eyes. They did
+  not appear to be given, to much speech. Both were then waiting
+  for the call of the army draft. Looking at them then, feeling the
+  tranquil reserve and latent force of these Arizonians, I
+  reflected that the Germans had failed in their psychology of
+  American character. A few hundred thousand Americans like the
+  Haught boys would have whipped the German army.</p>
+
+  <p>We held a council. Haught said he would send his son Edd with
+  Doyle, and by a long roundabout forest road get the wagon up on
+  the mesa. With his burros and some of our horses packed we could
+  take part of the outfit up the creek trail, past his cabin, and
+  climb out on the rim, where we would find grass, water, wood, and
+  plenty of game.</p>
+
+  <p>The idea of permanent camp before sunset that very day
+  inspired us to united and vigorous effort. By noon we had the
+  pack train ready. Edd and Doyle climbed on the wagon to start the
+  other way. Romer waved his hand: "Good-bye, Mr. Doyle, don't
+  break down and lose the apples!"</p>
+
+  <p>Then we were off, up the narrow trail along the creek. Haught
+  led the way. Romer attached himself to the bear-hunter, and
+  wherever the trail was wide enough rode beside him. R.C. and I
+  followed. The other men fell in behind the pack train.</p>
+
+  <p>The ride was hot, and for the most part all up hill. That
+  basin could be likened to the ribs of a washboard: it was all
+  hills, gorges, ridges and ravines. The hollows of this
+  exceedingly rough country were thick with pine and oak, the
+  ridges covered with cedar, juniper, and manzanita. The ground,
+  where it was not rocky, was a dry, red clay. We passed Haught's
+  log cabin and clearing of a few acres, where I saw fat hogs and
+  cattle. Beyond this point the trail grew more zigzag, and
+  steeper, and shadier. As we got higher up the air grew cooler. I
+  noted a change in the timber. The trees grew larger, and other
+  varieties appeared. We crossed a roaring brook lined by thick,
+  green brush, very pleasant to the eye, and bronze-gold ferns that
+  were beautiful. We passed oaks all green and yellow, and maple
+  trees, wonderfully colored red and cerise. Then still higher up I
+  espied some silver spruces, most exquisite trees of the mountain
+  forests.</p>
+
+  <p>During the latter half of the climb up to the rim I had to
+  attend to the business of riding and walking. The trail was
+  rough, steep, and long. Once Haught called my attention to a flat
+  stone with a plain trail made by a turtle in ages past when that
+  sandstone was wet, sedimentary deposit. By and bye we reached the
+  last slopes up to the mesa, green, with yellow crags and cliffs,
+  and here and there blazing maples to remind me again that autumn
+  was at hand.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we surmounted the rim, from which I saw a scene that
+  defied words. It was different from any I had seen before. Black
+  timber as far as eye could see! Then I saw a vast bowl inclosed
+  by dim mountain ranges, with a rolling floor of forested ridges,
+  and dark lines I knew to be canyons. For wild, rugged beauty I
+  had not seen its equal.</p><a name="image-0050"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg045_m.jpg" width="765" height="448" alt=
+    "The Tonto Basin ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>When the pack train reached the rim we rode on, and now
+  through a magnificent forest at eight thousand feet altitude. Big
+  white and black clouds obscured the sun. A thunder shower caught
+  us. There was hail, and the dry smell of dust, and a little cold
+  rain. Romer would not put on his slicker. Haught said the drought
+  had been the worst he had seen in twenty years there. Up in this
+  odorous forestland I could not see where there had been lack of
+  rain. The forest appeared thick, grassy, gold and yellow and
+  green and brown. Thickets and swales of oaks and aspens were
+  gorgeous in their autumn hues. The silver spruces sent down long,
+  graceful branches that had to be brushed aside or stooped under
+  as we rode along. Big gray squirrels with white tails and tufted
+  ears ran up trees to perch on limbs and watch us go by; and other
+  squirrels, much smaller and darker gray, frisked and chattered
+  and scolded at a great rate.</p><a name="image-0051">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg046_m.jpg" width="448" height="720" alt=
+    "Listening for the Hounds ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We passed little depressions that ran down into ravines, and
+  these, Haught informed me, were the heads of canyons that sloped
+  away from the rim, deepening and widening for miles. The rim of
+  the mesa was its highest point, except here and there a few
+  elevations like Black Butte. Geologically this mesa was an
+  enormous fault, like the north rim of the Grand Canyon. During
+  the formation of the earth, or the hardening of the crust, there
+  had been a crack or slip, so that one edge of the crust stood up
+  sheer above the other. We passed the heads of Leonard Canyon,
+  Gentry, and Turkey Canyons, and at last, near time of sunset,
+  headed down into beautifully colored, pine-sloped,
+  aspen-thicketed Beaver Dam Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>A mile from the rim we were deep in the canyon, walled in by
+  rock-strewn and pine-timbered slopes too steep for a horse to
+  climb. There was a little gully on the black soil where there
+  were no evidences of recent water. Haught said he had never seen
+  Beaver Dam Creek dry until this season. We traveled on until we
+  came to a wide, open space, where three forks of this canyon met,
+  and where in the middle of this glade there rose a lengthy wooded
+  bench, shaded and beautified by stately pines and silver spruce.
+  At this point water appeared in the creek bed, flowing in tiny
+  stream that soon gathered volume. Cold and clear and pure it was
+  all that was needed to make this spot an ideal camp site. Haught
+  said half a mile below there was a grassy park where the horses
+  would graze with elk.</p>
+
+  <p>We pitched our tents on this bench, and I chose for my
+  location a space between two great monarchs of the forests, that
+  had surely shaded many an Indian encampment. At the upper end of
+  the bench rose a knoll, golden and green with scrub oaks, and
+  russet-colored with its lichened rocks. About all we could manage
+  that evening was to eat and go to bed.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning broke cool and bright, with heavy dew. I got my boots
+  as wet as if I had waded in water. This surprised me, occurring
+  on October sixth, and at eight thousand feet altitude, as I had
+  expected frost. Most of this day was spent in making camp,
+  unpacking, and attending to the many necessary little details
+  that make for comfort in the open. To be sure Romer worked very
+  spasmodically. He spent most of his time on the back of one of
+  Haught's burros, chasing and roping another. I had not remembered
+  seeing the lad so happily occupied.</p>
+
+  <p>Late in the afternoon I slipped off down the canyon alone,
+  taking Haught's rifle for safety rather than a desire to kill
+  anything. By no means was it impossible to meet a bad bear in
+  that forest. Some distance below camp I entered a ravine and
+  climbed up to the level, and soon found myself deep in the
+  fragrant, colorful, wild forest. Like coming home again was it to
+  enter that forest of silver-tipped, level-spreading spruce, and
+  great, gnarled, massive pines, and oak-patches of green and gold,
+  and maple thickets, with shining aspens standing white against
+  the blaze of red and purple. High, wavy, bleached grass, brown
+  mats of pine needles, gray-green moss waving from the spruces,
+  long strands of sunlight&mdash;all these seemed to welcome
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>At a distance there was a roar of wind through the forest;
+  close at hand only a soft breeze. Rustling of twigs caused me to
+  compose myself to listen and watch. Soon small gray squirrels
+  came into view all around me, bright-eyed and saucy, very curious
+  about this intruder. They began to chatter. Other squirrels were
+  working in the tops of trees, for I heard the fall of pine cones.
+  Then came the screech of blue jays. Soon they too discovered me.
+  The male birds were superb, dignified, beautiful. The color was
+  light blue all over with dark blue head and tufted crest. By and
+  bye they ceased to scold me, and I was left to listen to the
+  wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds and needles from
+  the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this woody, leafy,
+  earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by scent of
+  pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace and
+  rest. This golden-green forest, barred with sunlight, canopied by
+  the blue sky, and melodious with its soughing moan of wind,
+  absolutely filled me with content and happiness. If a stag or a
+  bear had trotted out into my sight, and had showed me no
+  animosity, not improbably I would have forgotten my gun. More and
+  more as I lived in the open I grew reluctant to kill.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently a porcupine waddled along some rods away, and
+  unaware of my presence it passed by and climbed a spruce. I saw
+  it climb high and finally lost sight of it. In searching up and
+  down this spruce I grew alive to what a splendid and beautiful
+  tree it was. Where so many trees grew it always seemed difficult
+  to single out one and study it. This silver spruce was five feet
+  through at the base, rugged, gray-seamed, thick all the way to
+  its lofty height. Its branches were small, with a singular
+  feature that they were uniform in shape, length, and droop. Most
+  all spruce branches drooped toward the ground. That explained why
+  they made such excellent shelters from rain. After a hard storm I
+  had seen the ground dry under a thick-foliaged spruce. Many a
+  time had I made a bed under one. Elk and deer stand under a
+  spruce during a rain, unless there is thunder and lightning. In
+  forests of high altitude, where lightning strikes many trees, I
+  have never found or heard of elk and deer being killed. This
+  particular spruce was a natural tent in the forest. The
+  thick-spreading graceful silver plumes extended clear to the top,
+  where they were bushiest, and rounded out, with all the largest
+  branches there. Each dark gray branch was fringed and festooned
+  with pale green moss, like the cypresses of the South.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly I heard a sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy,
+  light steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket
+  nearby. Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the
+  rifle. Then I peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the
+  thicket. The sun was setting now, and though there appeared a
+  clear golden light high in the forest, along the ground there
+  were shadows. I heard leaves falling, rustling. Tall white aspens
+  stood out of the thicket, and two of the large ones bore the old
+  black scars of bear claws. I was sure, however, that no bear hid
+  in the thicket at this moment. Presently whatever the animal was
+  it pattered lightly away on the far side. After that I watched
+  the quiver of the aspen leaves. Some were green, some yellow,
+  some gold, but they all had the same wonderful tremor, the silent
+  fluttering that gave them the most exquisite action in nature.
+  The sun set, the forest darkened, reminding me of supper time. So
+  I returned to camp. As I entered the open canyon Romer-boy espied
+  me&mdash;manifestly he had been watching&mdash;and he yelled:
+  "Here comes my Daddy now!... Say, Dad, did you get any pegs?"</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning Haught asked me if I would like to ride around
+  through the woods and probably get a shot at a deer. Romer coaxed
+  so to go that I finally consented.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode down the canyon, and presently came to a wide grassy
+  park inclosed by high green-clad slopes, the features of which
+  appeared to be that the timber on the west slope was mostly pine,
+  and on the east slope it was mostly spruce. I could arrive at no
+  certain reason for this, but I thought it must be owing to the
+  snow lying somewhat longer on the east slope. The stream here was
+  running with quite a little volume of water. Our horses were
+  grazing in this park. I saw fresh elk tracks made the day before.
+  Elk were quite abundant through this forest, Haught informed me,
+  and were protected by law.</p>
+
+  <p>A couple of miles down this trail the canyon narrowed, losing
+  its park-like dimensions. The farther we traveled the more water
+  there was in the stream, and more elk, deer, and turkey tracks in
+  the sand. Every half mile or so we would come to the mouth of a
+  small intersecting canyon, and at length we rode up one of these,
+  presently to climb out on top. At this distance from the rim the
+  forest was more open than in the vicinity of our camp, affording
+  better riding and hunting. Still the thickets of aspen and young
+  pine were so frequent that seldom could I see ahead more than
+  several hundred yards.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught led the way, I rode next and Romer kept beside me where
+  it was possible to do so. There was, however, no trail. How
+  difficult to keep the lad quiet! I expected of course that Haught
+  would dismount, and take me to hunt on foot. After a while I
+  gathered he did not hunt deer except on horseback. He explained
+  that cowboys rounded up cattle in this forest in the spring and
+  fall, and deer were not frightened at sound or sight of a horse.
+  Some of the thrill and interest in the forest subsided for me. I
+  did not like to hunt in a country where cattle ranged, no matter
+  how wild they were. Then when we came to a forested ridge bare of
+  grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the forest of a little
+  more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their flocks up this
+  far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and coyote,
+  sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer, however,
+  hated a sheep-run range.</p>
+
+  <p>Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool,
+  full of sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen
+  could ever rob it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its
+  temple-like majesty. So provided we did not meet any cattle or
+  sheep I did not care whether or not we sighted any game. In fact
+  I would have forgotten we were hunting had not Romer been along.
+  With him continually seeing things it was difficult to keep from
+  imagining that we were hunting Indians. The Apaches had once
+  lived in this country Haught informed us; and it was a habit of
+  theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every fall, thus
+  keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how
+  near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not
+  concern them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than
+  white men.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at
+  the far end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other
+  brush. As we neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick
+  and noiseless action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from
+  his saddle-sheath, took a couple of forward steps, and leveled
+  it. I was so struck with the rugged and significant picture he
+  made that I did not dismount, and did not see any game until
+  after he fired. Then as I tumbled off and got out my rifle I
+  heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray streak with a bobbing
+  white end flashed away out of sight to the left. Next I saw a
+  deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again. The deer
+  ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him.
+  Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when
+  both he and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time.
+  Presently he returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said.
+  "Shore I missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why
+  didn't you smoke him up?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense
+  regret. "Why, I could have knocked him."</p>
+
+  <p>Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had
+  appeared to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see
+  one you want to pile off quick."</p>
+
+  <p>As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had
+  seen anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big
+  grove with thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said
+  these were good places for deer to lie down, relying on their
+  noses to scent danger from windward, and on their eyes in the
+  other direction. We circled to go round thickets, descending
+  somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got off a little to the right.
+  Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward a thin line of little
+  pines, through which I could see into the pines beyond. Suddenly
+  up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off my horse,
+  bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in a
+  thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender
+  trees. I aimed&mdash;followed him&mdash;got a bead on
+  him&mdash;and was just about to pull trigger when he vanished.
+  Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then Romer cried in his
+  shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck&mdash;hurry!" Turning I
+  ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just in
+  time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught
+  shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the
+  thicket, working to our left, and presently came out into the
+  open forest. Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query
+  he replied: "Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail
+  buck."</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay
+  motionless under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded
+  deep in the ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just
+  beginning to get his winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish
+  gray. Haught hung him up to a branch, spread his hind legs, and
+  cut him down the middle. The hunter's dexterity with a knife made
+  me wonder how many deer he had dressed in his life in the open.
+  We lifted the deer upon the saddle of Haught's horse and securely
+  tied it there with a lasso; then with the hunter on foot, leading
+  the way, we rode through the forest up the main ridge between
+  Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found the pines and
+  spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We passed the
+  heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either side,
+  and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I
+  could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon
+  we reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat
+  like real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which
+  enterprise had been unsuccessful.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started
+  our bear hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack
+  something. He sent the hounds down below the rim with George; and
+  taking R.C. and me, and Lee and Nielsen, he led us over to what
+  he called Horton Thicket. Never would I forget my first sight of
+  that immense forest-choked canyon. It was a great cove running up
+  from the basin into the rim. Craggy ledges, broken, ruined,
+  tottering and gray, slanted down into this abyss. The place was
+  so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet they were many.
+  An empire of splintered cliff!</p>
+
+  <p>High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with
+  lichens, with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow
+  bushes. Points of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and
+  bronze. Below the huge gorge was full of aspens, maples,
+  spruces&mdash;a green, crimson, yellow density of timber,
+  apparently impenetrable. We were accorded different stations on
+  the ledges all around the cove, and instructed to stay there
+  until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My point was so
+  far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
+  field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee
+  and Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a
+  comfortable seat, if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to
+  accept my wait for developments. One thing was sure&mdash;even
+  though it were a futile way to hunt it seemed rich in other
+  recompense for me. My stand towered above a vast colorful slope
+  down which the wind roared as in a gale. How could I ever hear
+  the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding across the sky.
+  Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent flight; and
+  so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with
+  frequent intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the
+  close of afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that
+  R.C. had left his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp,
+  which was some miles nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave
+  up any hope of hearing either the hounds or the horn, as the roar
+  of wind had increased. Once I thought I heard a distant rifle
+  shot. So I got on my horse and set out to find camp. I was on a
+  promontory, the sides of which were indented by long ravines that
+  were impassable except near their heads. In fact I had been told
+  there was only one narrow space where it was possible to get off
+  this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered Haught telling of
+  this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of forested heads
+  of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the west side, and
+  then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I followed,
+  with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the narrow
+  neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp, arriving
+  there at sunset.</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around
+  under one of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his
+  back-trail, staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it.
+  Their baying had roused the bear out of his bed, and he had
+  showed himself once or twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw
+  the other bear from the rim. This was a big, red, cinnamon bear
+  asleep under a pine tree on an open slope. Haught said when the
+  hounds gave tongue on the other trail this red bear awakened, sat
+  up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never been chased by
+  hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance was too
+  great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the
+  result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.</p>
+
+  <p>These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing
+  and cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns)
+  and berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and
+  very few acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin
+  he could always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot
+  and tired enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight
+  the dogs.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx
+  under the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were
+  the tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill
+  a cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen
+  feet deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay
+  long on the sunny, open ridges of the basin.</p>
+
+  <p>That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How
+  wonderful to lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and
+  hear the marching and retreating gale above in the forest! Next
+  day we expected rain or snow. But there was only wind, and that
+  quieted by afternoon. So I took Romer off into the woods. He
+  carried his rifle and he wore his chaps. I could not persuade him
+  to part with these. They rustled on the brush and impeded his
+  movements, and particularly tired him, and made him look like a
+  diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly vain, imaginative!
+  He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything, particularly bears.
+  But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump and bit of
+  color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I had to
+  take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was
+  unusually quick and keen.</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon Edd and Doyle arrived, reporting an extremely
+  rough, roundabout climb up to the rim, where they had left the
+  wagon. As it was impossible to haul the supplies down into the
+  canyon they were packed down to camp on burros. Isbel had
+  disapproved of this procedure, a circumstance that struck me with
+  peculiar significance, which Lee explained by telling me Isbel
+  was one of the peculiar breed of cowboys, who no sooner were they
+  out on the range than they wanted to go back to town again. The
+  truth was I had not met any of that breed, though I had heard of
+  them. This peculiarity of Isbel's began to be related in my mind
+  to his wastefulness as a cook. He cooked and threw away as much
+  as we ate. I asked him to be careful and to go easy with our
+  supplies, but I could not see that my request made any
+  difference.</p>
+
+  <p>After supper this evening R.C. heard a turkey call up on the
+  hill east of camp. Then I heard it, and Romer also. We ran out a
+  ways into the open to listen the better. R.C.'s ears were
+  exceptionally keen. He could hear a squirrel jump a long distance
+  in the forest. In this case he distinctly heard three turkeys fly
+  up into trees. I heard one. Romer declared he heard a flock. Then
+  R.C. located a big bronze and white gobbler on a lower limb of a
+  huge pine. Presently I too espied it. Whereupon we took shot-gun
+  and rifle, and sallied forth sure of fetching back to camp some
+  wild turkey meat. Romer tagged at our heels.</p>
+
+  <p>Hurrying to the slope we climbed up at least three-quarters of
+  the way, as swiftly as possible. And that was work enough to make
+  me wet and hot. The sun had set and twilight was upon us, so that
+  we needs must hurry if we were to be successful. Locating the big
+  gobbler turned out to be a task. We had to climb over brush and
+  around rocks, up a steep slope, rather open; and we had to do it
+  without being seen or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness,
+  did very well indeed. At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the
+  sight was thrilling. Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted
+  them enough to learn how sagacious and cunning and difficult to
+  stalk they were, always seemed as provocative of excitement as
+  larger game. This big fellow hopped up from limb to limb of the
+  huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if undecided, and tried
+  each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped farther up until
+  we lost sight of him in the gnarled net-work of branches.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. wanted me to slip on alone, but I preferred to have him
+  and Romer go too. So we slipped stealthily upward until we
+  reached the level. Then progress was easier. I went to the left
+  with the rifle, and R.C. with the .20-gauge, and Romer, went
+  around to the right. How rapidly it was growing dark! Low down in
+  the forest I could not distinguish objects. We circled that big
+  pine tree, and I made rather a wide detour, perhaps eighty yards
+  from it. At last I got the upper part of the dead pine
+  silhouetted against the western sky. Moving to and fro I finally
+  made out a large black lump way out upon a spreading branch.
+  Could that be the gobbler? I studied that dark enlarged part of
+  the limb with great intentness, and I had about decided that it
+  was only a knot when I saw a long neck shoot out. That lump was
+  the wise old turkey all right. He was almost in the top of the
+  tree and far out from the trunk. No wild cat or lynx could ever
+  surprise him there! I reflected upon the instinct that governed
+  him to protect his life so cunningly. Safe he was from all but
+  man and gun!</p>
+
+  <p>When I came to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could
+  see only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very
+  high pine adjoining made a dark background. I changed my
+  position, working around to where the background was all open
+  sky. It proved to be better. By putting the sights against this
+  open sky I could faintly see the front sight through the blurred
+  ring. It was a good long shot even for daylight, and I had a
+  rifle I knew nothing about. But all the difficulty only made a
+  keener zest. Just then I heard Romer cry out excitedly, and then
+  R.C. spoke distinctly. Far more careless than that they began to
+  break twigs under their feet. The gobbler grew uneasy. How he
+  stretched out his long neck! He heard them below. I called out
+  low and sharp: "Stand still! Be quiet!" Then I looked again
+  through the blurred peep-sight until I caught the front sight
+  against the open sky. This done I moved the rifle over until I
+  had the sight aligned against the dark shape. Straining my eyes I
+  held hard&mdash;then fired. The big dark lump on the branch
+  changed shape, and fell, to alight with a sounding thump. I heard
+  Romer running, but could not see him. Then his high voice pealed
+  out: "I got him, Dad. You made a grand peg!"</p>
+
+  <p>Not only had Romer gotten him, but he insisted on packing him
+  back to camp. The gobbler was the largest I ever killed, not
+  indeed one of the huge thirty-five pounders, but a fat, heavy
+  turkey, and quite a load for a boy. Romer packed him down that
+  steep slope in the dark without a slip, for which performance I
+  allowed him to stay up a while around the camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts came over from their camp that night and visited
+  us. Much as I loved to sit alone beside a red-embered fire at
+  night in the forest, or on the desert, I also liked upon
+  occasions to have company. We talked and talked. Old-timer Doyle
+  told more than one of his "in the early days" stories. Then
+  Haught told us some bear stories. The first was about an old
+  black bear charging and sliding down at him. He said no hunter
+  should ever shoot at a bear above him, because it could come down
+  at him as swiftly as a rolling rock. This time he worked the
+  lever of his rifle at lightning speed, and at the last shot he
+  "shore saw bear hair right before his eyes." His second story was
+  about a boy who killed a bear, and was skinning it when five more
+  bears came along, in single file, and made it very necessary that
+  he climb a tree until they had gone. His third story was about an
+  old she-bear that had two cubs. Haught happened to ride within
+  sight of her when evidently she thought it time to put her cubs
+  in a safe place. So she tried to get them to climb a spruce tree,
+  and finally had to cuff and spank them to make them go up. In
+  connection with this story he told us he had often seen she-bears
+  spank their cubs. More thrilling was his fourth story about a
+  huge grizzly, a sheep and cattle killer that passed through the
+  country, leaving death behind him on the range.</p>
+
+  <p>Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the
+  glowing camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed.
+  "Aw, Dad, please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining
+  eyes would have weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And
+  Haught seemed inspired by them.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle
+  in his eye. "Thar was an old fellar had a ranch in Chevelon
+  Canyon, an' he was always bein' pestered by mountain lions. His
+  name was Bill Tinker. Now Bill was no sort of a hunter, fact was
+  he was afeerd of lions an' bears, but he shore did git riled when
+  any critters rustled around his cabin. One day in the fall he
+  comes home an' seen a big she-lion sneakin' around. He grabbed a
+  club, an' throwed it, and yelled to scare the critter away. Wal,
+  he had an old water barrel layin' around, an' darned if the lion
+  didn't run in thet barrel an' hide. Bill run quick an' flopped
+  the barrel end up, so he had the lion trapped. He had to set on
+  the barrel to hold it down. Shore that lion raised old Jasper
+  under the barrel. Bill was plumb scared. Then he seen the lion's
+  tail stick out through the bung-hole. Bill bent over an' shore
+  quick tied a knot in thet long tail. Then he run fer his cabin.
+  When he got to the door he looked back to see the lion tearin'
+  down the hill fer the woods with the barrel bumpin' behind her.
+  Bill said he never seen her again till next spring, an' she had
+  the barrel still on her tail. But what was stranger'n thet Bill
+  swore she had four cubs with her an' each of them had a keg on
+  its tail."</p>
+
+  <p>We all roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had
+  been so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in
+  the story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp
+  the trick at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes
+  were dark and dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and
+  disappointment changed his mobile face, and then came mirth. He
+  shouted as if to the tree-tops on high. Long after he was in bed
+  I heard him laughing to himself.</p>
+
+  <p>I was awakened a little after daylight by the lad trying to
+  get into his boots. His boots were rather tight, and somehow,
+  even in a dry forest, he always contrived to get them wet, so
+  that in the morning it was a herculean task for him to pull them
+  on. This occasion appeared more strenuous than usual. "Son,
+  what's the idea?" I inquired. "It's just daylight&mdash;not time
+  to get up." He desisted from his labors long enough to pant:
+  "Uncle Rome's&mdash;gone after turkeys. Edd's going to&mdash;call
+  them with&mdash;a caller&mdash;made out of a turkey's wing-bone."
+  And I said: "But they've gone now." Whereupon he subsided:
+  "Darned old boots! I heard Edd and Uncle Rome. I'd been ready if
+  I could have got into my darned old boots.... See here, Dad, I'm
+  gonna wear moccasins."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    III
+  </center>
+
+  <p>As we were sitting round the camp-fire, eating breakfast, R.C.
+  and Edd returned; and R.C. carried a turkey gobbler the very size
+  and color of the one I had shot the night before. R.C.'s face
+  wore the keen, pleased expression characteristic of it when he
+  had just had some unusual and satisfying experience.</p><a name=
+  "image-0052"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg047_m.jpg" width="448" height="700" alt=
+    "Zane Grey on Don Carlos ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0053"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg048_m.jpg" width="448" height="698" alt=
+    "Wild Turkey ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Sure was great," he said, warming his hands at the fire. "We
+  went up on the hill where you killed your gobbler last night. Got
+  there just in the gray light of dawn. We were careful not to make
+  any noise. Edd said if there were any more turkeys they would
+  come down at daylight. So we waited until it was light enough to
+  see. Then Edd got out his turkey bone and began to call. Turkeys
+  answered from the trees all around. By George, it was immense!
+  Edd had picked out a thicket of little pines for us to hide in,
+  and in front of us was a glade with a big fallen tree lying
+  across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods was all gray and
+  quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he called again.
+  At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees. Next I
+  heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The
+  turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my
+  excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them
+  pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now
+  we got to do some real callin'.' I felt how tense, how cautious
+  he was. When he called again there was some little difference, I
+  don't know what, unless it was his call sounded more like a real
+  turkey. They answered. They were gathering in front of us, and I
+  made sure were coming into the glade. Edd stopped calling. Then
+  he whispered: 'Ready now. Look out!'... Sure I was looking all
+  right. This was my first experience calling turkeys and I simply
+  shook all over. Suddenly I saw a turkey head stick up over the
+  log. Then!&mdash;up hopped a beautiful gobbler. He walked along
+  the log, looked and peered, and stretched his neck. Sure he was
+  suspicious. Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be a warning to
+  shoot quick. That was a hard place for me. I wanted to watch the
+  gobbler. I wanted to see the others. We could hear them all over
+  the glade. But this was my chance. Quickly I rose and took a peg
+  at him. A cloud of feathers puffed off him. He gave a great
+  bounce, flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other
+  turkeys. With my eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full
+  of big, black, flying things. My gobbler came down, bounced up
+  again, got going&mdash;when with the second barrel I knocked him
+  cold. Then I stood there watching the flock whirring every way
+  into the forest. Must have been thirty-five or forty of them, all
+  gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I declared
+  myself&mdash;wild turkey is the game for me."</p>
+
+  <p>Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled
+  feelings of delight and despair. "Uncle Rome, wild turkey's the
+  game for me, too ... and by Gosh! I'll fix those boots of
+  mine!"</p>
+
+  <p>That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which
+  I had decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George. Lee
+  had his doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at
+  least one of the others. Now his horse was too spirited for me to
+  ride after hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others,
+  so I was compelled to ride my own. At the last moment Lee had
+  been disappointed in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for
+  me, and so it had fallen about that my horse was the poorest in
+  the outfit, which to put it mildly was pretty poor. I had made
+  the best of the matter so far, and hoped to continue doing
+  so.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the
+  forest, and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the
+  other side of the promontory where I had gotten lost. Here Haught
+  left us, taking with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom
+  were to have stands along the rim. We hoped to start a bear and
+  chase him round under the high points toward Horton Thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd
+  started down impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind.
+  Below me heaved a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world
+  of black-green forestland. Far across it stood up a rugged, blue,
+  waved range of mountains&mdash;the Sierra Anchas.</p>
+
+  <p>The trail was rough, even for Arizonians, which made it for me
+  little short of impassable. I got off to lead my horse. He had to
+  be pulled most of the time, wherefore I lost patience with him. I
+  loved horses, but not stubborn ones. All the way down the rocky
+  trail the bunch grass and wild oak and manzanita were so thick
+  that I had to crush my way through. At length I had descended the
+  steep part to find Edd and George waiting for me below on the
+  juniper benches. These were slopes of red earth or clay, bare of
+  grass, but thick with junipers, cactus, and manzanita. This face
+  of the great rim was a southern exposure, hot and dusty. The
+  junipers were thick. The green of their foliage somewhat
+  resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost
+  lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I
+  found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was
+  that this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to
+  eat the fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear
+  sign. Edd said the tracks were cold, but all the same he had to
+  be harsh with the hounds to hold them in. I counted twenty piles
+  of bear manure under one juniper, and many places where bears had
+  scraped in the soft earth and needles.</p>
+
+  <p>We went on down this slope, getting into thicker brush and
+  rougher ground. All at once the hounds opened up in thrilling
+  chorus of bays and barks. I saw Edd jump off his horse to stoop
+  and examine the ground, where evidently he had seen a bear track.
+  "Fresh&mdash;made last night!" he yelled, mounting hurriedly.
+  "Hi! Hi! Hi!" His horse leaped through the brush, and George
+  followed. In an instant they were out of sight. Right there my
+  trouble began. I spurred my horse after them, and it developed
+  that he differed from me in regard to direction and going. He
+  hated the brush. But I made him take to it and made him run.
+  Dodging branches was an old story for me, and if I had been on a
+  good fast horse I might have kept Edd and George in sight. As it
+  was, however, I had to follow them by the sound of hoofs and
+  breaking brush. From the way the hounds bayed I knew they had
+  struck a hot scent. They worked down the slope, and assuredly
+  gave me a wild ride to keep within hearing of them. My horse grew
+  excited, which fact increased his pace, his obstinacy, and
+  likewise my danger. Twice he unseated me. I tore my coat, lost my
+  hat, scratched my face, skinned my knees, but somehow I managed
+  to keep within hearing.</p>
+
+  <p>I came to a deep brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point.
+  Luckily the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding
+  along the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed
+  out an intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced
+  my horse to go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I
+  saw a little spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it,
+  and one place where the bear had caved in a soft bank. Here my
+  horse suddenly plunged and went to his knees in the yielding red
+  clay. He snorted in fright. The bank slid with him and I tumbled
+  off. But nothing serious happened. I ran down, caught him,
+  mounted, and spurred him up the other side. Once up he began to
+  run. I heard the boys yelling not far away and the hounds were
+  baying up above me. They were climbing fast, working to the left,
+  toward an oak thicket. It took effort to slow down my steed. He
+  acted crazy and I began to suspect that he had caught a whiff of
+  the bear. Most horses are afraid of bears and lions. Sight of Edd
+  and George, who appeared in an open spot, somewhat quieted my
+  mount.</p>
+
+  <p>"Trail's gettin' hot up there," declared Edd. "That bear's
+  bedded somewhere an' I'll bet the hounds jumped him. Listen to
+  Old Tom!"</p>
+
+  <p>How the deep sonorous bay of Old Tom awoke the echoes under
+  the cliffs! And Old Dan's voice was a hoarse bellow. The other
+  hounds yelped.</p>
+
+  <p>Edd blew a mellow blast from his hunting-horn, and that awoke
+  other and more melodious echoes. "There's father up on the rim,"
+  he said. I looked, and finally saw Haught perched like a black
+  eagle on a crag. His gun flashed in the strong sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>Somewhere up there the hounds jumped the bear. Anybody could
+  have told that. What a wild chorus! Edd and George answered to it
+  with whoops as wild, and they galloped their horses over ground
+  and through brush where they should have been walked. I followed,
+  or tried to follow; and here my steed showed his bull-headed,
+  obstinate nature. If he had been afraid but still game I would
+  have respected him, but he was a coward and mean. He wanted to
+  have his way, which was to go the other direction, and to rid
+  himself of me. So we had it hot and heavy along that rough slope,
+  with honors about even. As for bruises and scratches, however, I
+  sustained the most. In the excitement of the chase and anger at
+  the horse I forgot all about any risks. This always is the way in
+  adventure. Hot racing blood governed me entirely. Whenever I got
+  out in an open place, where I could ride fast and hear and see,
+  then it was all intensely thrilling. Both hounds and comrades
+  were above me, but apparently working down.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus for me the necessity of hurry somewhat lessened. I slowed
+  to a trot, peering everywhere, listening with all my ears. I had
+  stopped yelling, because my horse had misunderstood that. We got
+  into a region of oak thickets, small saplings, scrubby, close
+  together, but beautiful with their autumn-tinted leaves. Next I
+  rode through a maple dell, shady, cool, where the leafy floor was
+  all rose-pink-red. My horse sent the colored leaves flying.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon, however, we got into the thickets again, low live-oak
+  and manzanita, which kind of brush my horse detested. I did not
+  blame him for that. As the hounds began to work down my keen
+  excitement increased. If they had jumped the bear and were
+  chasing him down I might run upon him any moment. This both
+  appealed to me and caused me apprehension. Suppose he were a bad
+  cinnamon or a grizzly? What would become of me on that horse? I
+  decided that I had better carry my rifle in my hand, so in case
+  of a sudden appearance of the bear and I was thrown or had a fall
+  off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I drew the rifle out
+  of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that Haught had
+  cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the need
+  of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had
+  cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a
+  glory of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets.
+  He was an uncomfortable horse to ride under the best
+  circumstances; here he was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When
+  he got his head, which was often, he carried me into thickets of
+  manzanita that we could not penetrate, and had to turn back. I
+  found that I was working high up the slope, and bad luck as I was
+  having with my horse, I still appeared to keep fairly close to
+  the hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>When we topped a ridge of this slope the wind struck us strong
+  in the face. The baying of the hounds rang clear and full and
+  fierce. My horse stood straight up. Then he plunged back and
+  bolted down the slope. His mouth was like iron. I could neither
+  hold nor turn him. However perilous this ride I had to admit that
+  at last my horse was running beautifully. In fact he was running
+  away! He had gotten a hot scent of that bear. He hurdled rocks,
+  leaped washes, slid down banks, plunged over places that made my
+  hair stand up stiff, and worst of all he did not try to avoid
+  brush or trees or cactus. Manzanita he tore right through,
+  leaving my coat in strips decorating our wake. I had to hold on,
+  to lie flat, to dodge and twist, and all the time watch for a
+  place where I might fall off in safety. But I did not get a
+  chance to fall off. A loud clamoring burst from the hounds
+  apparently close behind drove my horse frantic. Before he had
+  only run&mdash;now he flew! He left me hanging in the thick
+  branches of a juniper, from which I dropped blind and breathless
+  and stunned. Disengaging myself from the broken and hanging
+  branches I staggered aside, rifle in hand, trying to recover
+  breath and wits.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, in that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the
+  breaking of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering
+  up with my half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal
+  coming, half obscured by brush. It waved aside from his broad
+  back. A shock ran over me&mdash;a bursting gush of hot blood that
+  turned to ice as it rushed. "Big cinnamon bear!" I whispered,
+  hoarsely.</p>
+
+  <p>Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I
+  could not clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such
+  was my state that I fired. Then followed a roaring crash&mdash;a
+  terrible breaking onslaught upon the brush&mdash;and the huge red
+  mass seemed to flash down toward me. I worked the lever of the
+  rifle. But I had forgotten Haught's caution. I did not work the
+  lever far enough down, so that the next cartridge jammed in the
+  receiver. With a second shock, different this time, I tried
+  again. In vain! The terrible crashing of brush appeared right
+  upon me. For an instant that seemed an age I stood riveted to the
+  spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me, my tongue pasted
+  to the roof of my mouth. Then I dropped the rifle and whirled to
+  plunge away. Like a deer I bounded. I took prodigious bounds. To
+  escape&mdash;to find a tree to leap into&mdash;that was my only
+  thought. A few rods down the slope&mdash;it seemed a mile&mdash;I
+  reached a pine with low branches. Like a squirrel I ran up
+  this&mdash;straddled a limb high up&mdash;and gazed back.</p>
+
+  <p>My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation.
+  I became conscious of them. Racing blood, bursting heart, labored
+  pang of chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary
+  flutter of muscles, like a palsy&mdash;these attested to the
+  instinctive primitive nature of my state. I heard the crashing of
+  brush, the pound of soft jumps over to my left. With eyes that
+  seemed magnifying I gazed to see a big red woolly steer plunge
+  wildly down the slope and disappear. A third shock possessed
+  me&mdash;amaze. I had mistaken a wild, frightened steer for a red
+  cinnamon bear!</p>
+
+  <p>I sat there some moments straddling that branch. Then I
+  descended, and went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and
+  securing that I stood a moment listening. The hounds had taken
+  the chase around below me into the gorge and were drawing away.
+  It was useless to try to follow them. I sat down again and gave
+  myself up to meditation.</p>
+
+  <p>I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would
+  not go. No joke indeed! My horse had made me risk too much, my
+  excitement had been too intense, my fright had been too terrible.
+  Reality for me could not have been any more grave. I had risked
+  my neck on a stubborn coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer
+  for a bear, I had forgotten how to manipulate the borrowed rifle.
+  These were the careless elements of tragedy. The thought sobered
+  me. I took the lesson to heart. And I reflected on the possible
+  point of view of the bear. He had probably gone to sleep on a
+  full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink of spring water.
+  Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping, fiendish
+  hounds. He had to run for his life. What had he done to deserve
+  such treatment? Possibly he might have killed some of Haught's
+  pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me. In my sober
+  frame of mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly
+  unjustifiable murderous intent. I would have deserved it if the
+  steer had really been the bear. Certainly I hoped the bear would
+  outrun the hounds and escape. I weighed the wonderful thrill of
+  the chase, the melody of hounds, the zest of spirited action, the
+  peril to limb and life against the thing that they were done for,
+  with the result that I found them sadly lacking. Peril to limb
+  and life was good for man. If this had not been a fact my
+  performance would have been as cowardly as that of my horse.
+  Again I had rise up before my mind the spectacle of opposing
+  forces&mdash;the elemental in man restrained by the spiritual.
+  Then the old haunting thought returned to vex me&mdash;man in his
+  development needed the exercise of brawn, muscle, bone red-blood,
+  violence, labor and pain and agony. Nature recognized only the
+  survival of the fittest of any species. If a man allowed a
+  spiritual development, intellect, gentleness, to keep him from
+  all hard, violent action, from tremendous exertion, from fierce
+  fight with elements and beasts, and his own kind&mdash;would he
+  not soon degenerate as a natural physical man? Evolution was a
+  stern inevitable seeking of nature for perfection, for the
+  unattainable. This perfection was something that lived and
+  improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most
+  perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to
+  their development toward so-called civilized life their physical
+  prowess and perfectness&mdash;that was to say, their strength to
+  resist and live and reproduce their kind&mdash;absolutely and
+  inevitably deteriorated.</p>
+
+  <p>My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive
+  convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I
+  eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty
+  and torn&mdash;that I would be happy if the bear got
+  away&mdash;that I had lost my mean horse and was glad
+  therefore&mdash;that I would have half a dozen horses and rifles
+  upon my next hunt&mdash;and lastly that I would not be in any
+  hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a
+  tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret
+  until chronicled here.</p>
+
+  <p>Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway
+  toward Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard
+  Edd yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my
+  horse, and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's the bear?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is
+  tryin' to call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you
+  shoot."</p>
+
+  <p>"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied.
+  "He left me&mdash;rather suddenly. And&mdash;I took a shot at
+  what I thought was a bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just
+  goin' to smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."</p>
+
+  <p>My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when
+  I observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much
+  disheveled as I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance
+  certain unmistakable evidences that I had made a tenderfoot
+  blunder and then run for my life. But Edd took my loss of hat,
+  and torn coat, and general bedraggled state as a matter of
+  course. Indeed I somehow felt a little pride at his acceptance of
+  me there in the flesh.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down
+  into Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber
+  engaged my sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the
+  other dogs. "We lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds
+  couldn't track him," was all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four
+  blasts upon his hunting-horn, which were signals to those on the
+  stands above that the hunt was over for the day.</p>
+
+  <p>Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade
+  as this down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large,
+  and the foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through.
+  Dark, green and brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We
+  came to a huge spruce tree, the largest I ever saw&mdash;Edd said
+  eight feet through at the base, but he was conservative. It was a
+  gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch of the forest, with bleached,
+  dead top. For many years it had been the home of swarms of wild
+  honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter had undertaken to
+  cut down this spruce. This explained a number of deeply cut
+  notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it down,"
+  declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian
+  axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it,
+  whether we were to get any honey or not.</p>
+
+  <p>By and bye we reached the bottom of the thicket where we
+  crossed a swift clear cold brook. Here the smells seemed cool,
+  sweet, wild with spruce and pine. This stream of granite water
+  burst from a spring under a cliff. What a roar it made! I drank
+  until I could drink no more. Huge boulders and windfalls, moved
+  by water at flood season, obstructed the narrow stream-bed. We
+  crossed to start climbing the north slope, and soon worked up out
+  of the thicket upon a steep, rocky slope, with isolated pines. We
+  struck a deer-trail hard to follow. Above me loomed the
+  pine-tipped rim, with its crags, cliffs, pinnacles, and walls,
+  all gray, seamed and stained, and in some clefts blazes of deep
+  red and yellow foliage.</p>
+
+  <p>When we surmounted the slope, and eventually reached camp, I
+  found Isbel entertaining strangers, men of rough garb, evidently
+  riders of the range. That was all right, but I did not like his
+  prodigality with our swiftly diminishing store of eatables.</p>
+
+  <p>To conclude about Isbel&mdash;matters pertaining to our
+  commissary department, during the next few days, went from bad to
+  worse. Doyle advised me not to take Isbel to task, and was rather
+  evasive of reasons for so advising me. Of course I listened and
+  attended to my old guide's advice, but I fretted under the
+  restraint. We had a spell of bad weather, wind and rain, and hail
+  off and on, and at length, the third day, a cold drizzling snow.
+  During this spell we did but little hunting. The weather changed,
+  and the day afterward I rode my mean horse twenty miles on a deer
+  hunt. We saw one buck. Upon our arrival at camp, about four
+  o'clock, which hour was too early for dinner, I was surprised and
+  angered to find Isbel eating an elaborate meal with three more
+  strange, rough-appearing men. Doyle looked serious. Nielsen had a
+  sharp glint in his gray eye. As for myself, this procedure of our
+  cook's was more than I could stand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Isbel, you're discharged," I said, shortly. "Take your outfit
+  and get out. Lee will lend you a pack horse."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, I ain't fired," drawled Isbel. "I quit before you rode
+  in. Beat you to it!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Then if you quit it seems to me you are taking liberties with
+  supplies you have no right to," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nope. Cook of any outfit has a right to all the chuck he
+  wants. That's western way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Isbel, listen to this and then get out," I went on. "You've
+  wasted our supplies just to get us to hurry and break camp. As
+  for western ways I know something of them. It's a western way for
+  a man to be square and honest in his dealings with an outsider.
+  In all my years and in all my trips over the southwest you are
+  the first westerner to give me the double-cross. You have that
+  distinction."</p>
+
+  <p>Then I turned my back upon him and walked to my tent. His
+  acquaintances left at once, and he quickly packed and followed.
+  Faithful old Doyle took up the duties of cook and we gained,
+  rather than missed by the change. Our supplies, however, had been
+  so depleted that we could not stay much longer on the hunt.</p>
+
+  <p>By dint of much determination as to the manner and method of
+  my next hunt I managed to persuade myself that I could make the
+  best of this unlucky sojourn in the woods. No rifle, no horse
+  worth riding, no food to stay out our time&mdash;it was indeed
+  bad luck for me. After supper the tension relaxed. Then I
+  realized all the men were relieved. Only Romer regretted loss of
+  Isbel. When the Doyles and Haughts saw how I took my hard luck
+  they seemed all the keener to make my stay pleasant and
+  profitable. Little they knew that their regard was more to me
+  than material benefits and comforts of the trip. To travelers of
+  the desert and hunters and riders of the open there are always
+  hard and uncomfortable and painful situations to be met with. And
+  in meeting these, if it can be done with fortitude and spirit
+  that win the respect of westerners, it is indeed a reward.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day, in defiance of a thing which never should be
+  considered&mdash;luck&mdash;I took Haught's rifle again, and my
+  lazy, sullen, intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George
+  down into Horton Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of
+  fresh air and beautiful scenery.</p>
+
+  <p>We dismounted and tied our horses at the brook, and while Edd
+  took the hounds up into the dense thicket where the bears made
+  their beds, George and I followed a trail up the brook. In
+  exactly ten minutes the hounds gave tongue. They ran up the
+  thicket, which was favorable for us, and from their baying I
+  judged the bear trail to be warm. In the dense forest we could
+  not see five rods ahead. George averred that he did not care to
+  have a big cinnamon or a grizzly come running down that black
+  thicket. And as for myself I did not want one so very exceedingly
+  much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me, which
+  effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their
+  baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased.
+  "Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With
+  this exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar.
+  Most hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which
+  direction the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, however,
+  like Buffalo Jones' famous Don, or Scott Teague's Sampson or
+  Haught's Old Dan, would grow suspicious of a scent that gradually
+  cooled, and would eventually give it up. Young hounds would
+  back-track game as far as possible.</p>
+
+  <p>After waiting a while we returned to our horses, and presently
+  Edd came back with the pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called
+  them off," was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth
+  of Horton Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had
+  occasion to remember. I even saw the pine tree which I had so
+  ignominiously climbed. How we ridicule and scorn some of our
+  perfectly natural actions&mdash;afterwards! Edd had brought three
+  of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of mischief as pups
+  could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them out on the
+  hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase to head them
+  off. Edd gave them a tongue-lashing and thrashing at one and the
+  same time. I felt sorry for the pups. They had been so full of
+  frolic and fight. How crestfallen they appeared after Edd got
+  through! "Whaddaye mean," yelled Edd, in conclusion. "Chasin'
+  deer!... Do you think you're a lot of rabbit dogs?" From the way
+  the pups eyed Edd so sheepishly and adoringly, I made certain
+  they understood him perfectly, and humbly confessed their
+  error.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Tom and Old Dan had not come down off the slopes with us
+  after the pups. And upon our return both the old hounds began to
+  bay deep and fast. With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off,
+  apparently frantic to make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole
+  pack was in full chorus. Edd and George spurred into the brush,
+  yelling encouragement to the hounds. This day I managed to make
+  my horse do a little of what I wanted. To keep in sight of the
+  Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but I did not lose sound of
+  them. This chase led us up slope and down slope, through the
+  brush and pine thickets, over bare ridges and into gullies; and
+  eventually out into the basin, where the hounds got beyond
+  hearing.</p>
+
+  <p>"One of them long, lean, hungry bears," remarked Edd. "He'd
+  outrun any dogs."</p>
+
+  <p>Leisurely then we turned to the three-hour ride back to camp.
+  Hot sun in the open, cool wind in the shade, dry smells of the
+  forest, green and red and orange and purple of the
+  foliage&mdash;these rendered the hours pleasant for me. When I
+  reached camp I found Romer in trouble. He had cut his hand with a
+  forbidden hunting knife. As he told me about it his face was a
+  study and his explanation was astounding. When he finished I
+  said: "You mean then that my hunting knife walked out of its
+  sheath on my belt and followed you around and cut you of its own
+  accord?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw, I&mdash;I&mdash;it&mdash;" he floundered.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon I lectured him about forbidden things and
+  untruthfulness. His reply was: "But, Dad, it hurts like sixty.
+  Won't you put somethin' on it?"</p>
+
+  <p>I dressed and bandaged the trifling cut for him, telling him
+  the while how little Indian boys, when cut or kicked or bruised,
+  never showed that they were hurt. "Huh!" he grunted. "Guess
+  there's no Indian in me.... I must take after mother!"</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon and night the hounds straggled in, Old Tom and
+  Dan first, and then the others, one by one, fagged-out and
+  foot-sore. Next morning, however, they appeared none the worse
+  for their long chase. We went again to Horton Thicket to rout out
+  a bear.</p>
+
+  <p>This time I remained on top of the rim with R.C. and Nielsen;
+  and we took up a stand across the canyon, near where my first
+  stand had been. Here we idled the hours away waiting for the
+  hounds to start something. While walking along the rim I happened
+  to look across the big cove that cut into the promontory, and way
+  on the other slope what did I espy but a black bear. He appeared
+  to be very small, or merely a cub. Running back to R.C. and
+  Nielsen I told them, and we all took up our rifles. It occurred
+  to me that the distance across this cove was too far for accurate
+  shooting, but it never occurred to me to jump on my horse and
+  ride around the head of the cove.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's not scared. Let's watch him," suggested R.C.</p><a name=
+  "image-0054"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg049_m.jpg" width="448" height="671" alt=
+    "Wild Turkeys ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0055"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg050_m.jpg" width="448" height="698" alt=
+    "The White Quaking Asps ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We saw this bear walk along, poke around, dig into the ground,
+  go behind trees, come out again, and finally stand up on his hind
+  feet and apparently reach for berries or something on a bush.
+  R.C. bethought himself of his field-glass. After one look he
+  exclaimed: "Say, fellows, he's a whopper of a bear! He'll weigh
+  five hundred pounds. Just take a look at him!"</p>
+
+  <p>My turn with the glasses revealed to me that what I had
+  imagined to be a cub was indeed a big bear. After Nielsen looked
+  he said: "Never saw one so big in Norway."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, look at that black scoundrel!" exclaimed R.C. "Standing
+  up! Looking around! Wagging his head!... Say, you saw him first.
+  Suppose you take some pegs at him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wish Romer were here. I'd let him shoot at that bear," I
+  replied. Then I got down on my knee, and aiming as closely as
+  possible I fired. The report rang out in the stillness, making
+  hollow echoes. We heard the bullet pat somewhere. So did the bear
+  hear it. Curiously he looked around, as if something had struck
+  near him. But scared he certainly was not. Then I shot four times
+  in quick succession.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'll be darned!" ejaculated R.C. "He heard the bullets
+  hit and wonders what the dickens.... Say, now he hears the
+  reports! Look at him stand!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Boys, smoke him up," I said, after the manner of Haught's
+  vernacular. So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot.
+  We had more fun out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us.
+  Then he began to run, choosing the open slope by which he had
+  come. I got five more shots at him as he crossed this space, and
+  the last bullet puffed up dust under him, making him take a
+  header down the slope into the thicket. Whereupon we all had a
+  good laugh. Nielsen appeared particularly pleased over his first
+  shots at a real live bear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, why didn't you think to ride round there?" queried R.C.
+  thoughtfully. "He didn't see us. He wasn't scared. In a few
+  minutes you could have been on the rim of that slope right over
+  him. Got him sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>"R.C. why didn't you think to tell me to do that?" I retorted.
+  "Why don't we ever think the right thing before it is too
+  late?"</p>
+
+  <p>"That's our last chance this year&mdash;I feel it in my
+  bones," declared R.C. mournfully.</p>
+
+  <p>His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at
+  camp we heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught's
+  had taken the trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic
+  of influenza. The strange disease was all over the country, in
+  the cities, the villages, the cow-camps, the
+  mines&mdash;everywhere. At first I thought Haught's informant was
+  exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the Indians dying
+  on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty people had
+  succumbed in a few weeks&mdash;then I was thoroughly alarmed.
+  Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I
+  made it instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle
+  was relieved and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The
+  Haughts, naturally, were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the
+  next thing was to consider which way to travel. The long ten-day
+  trip down into the basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim
+  again, and so on to Flagstaff was not to be considered at all.
+  The roads by way of Winslow and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle
+  wanted to attempt the old army road along the rim made by General
+  Crook when he moved the captured Apaches to the reservation
+  assigned to them. No travel over this road for many years! Haught
+  looked dubious, but finally said we could chop our way through
+  thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The matter of
+  decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not easy
+  to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been
+  for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What
+  made me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles
+  or more along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I
+  told Nielsen that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like
+  a cowboy: "We'll go a-hummin'," he said. Nielsen shrugged his
+  brawny shoulders. What were obstacles to this man of the desert?
+  I realized that his look had decided me.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, men, we'll try the old Crook road," I said. "Pack
+  what you can up to the wagon to-day, and to-morrow early we'll
+  break camp."</p>
+
+  <p>I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to
+  theirs, where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of
+  this hunting trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no
+  horse, no blankets, no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of
+  food supplies, and no good luck, except the wonderful good luck
+  of being well, of seeing a magnificent country, of meeting some
+  more fine westerners. But the Haughts appeared a little slow to
+  grasp, or at least to credit my philosophy. We were just
+  beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was that they had been
+  unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and some turkeys.
+  Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with many
+  sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and
+  would not want to come again.</p>
+
+  <p>"See here, Haught," I said. "I've had a fine time. Now forget
+  about this hunt. It's past. We'll plan another. Will you save
+  next fall for me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I shore will," he replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Very well, then, it's settled. Say by August you and the boys
+  cut a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I'll send you
+  money in advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and
+  outfit. I'll leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you
+  here September twenty-first, along about noon."</p>
+
+  <p>We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts
+  laughed at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I
+  heard Edd remark: "Not a kick!... Meet him next year at noon!
+  What do you know about thet?" This remark proved that he had paid
+  me a compliment in eastern slang most likely assimilated from
+  R.C. and Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and
+  next morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh,
+  spirited, and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because
+  of some surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all
+  the outfit packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff,
+  and the long, rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most
+  auspicious start. I hoped that it augured well for us, but while
+  I hoped I had a gloomy foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and
+  his son George. Edd offered to go with us as far as he knew the
+  country, which distance was not many miles. So we set out upon
+  our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses in front of the lumbering
+  wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest
+  along the rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill
+  grade that the bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied
+  on. When we came to a long slow slant uphill, a road of loose
+  rocks, we made about one mile an hour. This slow travel worked
+  havoc upon my mind. I wanted to hurry. I wanted to get out of the
+  wilds. That awful rumor about influenza occupied my mind and
+  struck cold fear into my heart. What of my family? No making the
+  best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset overtook us at a rocky
+  ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos on saddle horses in
+  front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we overcame that
+  obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we encountered about
+  twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him, whipping
+  him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other
+  horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still
+  miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had
+  to camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun&mdash;it
+  should have been fine for me&mdash;but my gloomy obsession to
+  hurry obscured my mind. I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy,
+  after that long, hard day, quickly and efficiently cooking a good
+  hot supper. Romer had enjoyed the day. He said he was tired, but
+  would like to stay up beside the mighty camp-fire Nielsen built.
+  I had neither energy or spirit to oppose him. The night was dark
+  and cold and windy; the fire felt so good that I almost went
+  asleep beside it. We had no time to put up tents. I made our bed,
+  crawled into it, stretched out with infinite relief; and the last
+  thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in beside me.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to
+  stir to get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the
+  horses were gone; we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not
+  appear worried. I groaned in spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed
+  me. Lee sallied out with his yellow dog Pups. I had forgotten the
+  good quality of Pups, but not my dislike for him. He barked
+  vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I helped Edd and
+  Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then Doyle
+  called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we
+  heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not
+  believe my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they
+  appeared, driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his
+  head off. We all jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off
+  the horses, and soon had them secured. Not one missing! I asked
+  Lee how in the world he had found that wild bunch in less than an
+  hour. Lee laughed. "Pups. He rounded them up in no time."</p>
+
+  <p>Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick
+  myself, but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat.
+  I reproached myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been
+  deceived in the surface appearance of people and things and dogs!
+  Most of our judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.</p>
+
+  <p>By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle&mdash;the
+  little hill at which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and
+  full of grain, he balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled
+  the teams. Lee had more patience than I would have had. He
+  unhitched the lead team and in place of the sorrel put a saddle
+  horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried again and surmounted the
+  hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead over as rocky and
+  rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time we could see
+  over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim appeared to
+  wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly rock-strewn,
+  with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw deer
+  tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any
+  thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us
+  farewell and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all
+  the country ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there
+  seemed to be no urgent need of him.</p>
+
+  <p>We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our
+  saddle horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it,
+  and each of us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front
+  of his saddle, and took it up the hill. Then the teams managed
+  the wagon. This incident happened four times in less than as many
+  miles. The team horses, having had a rest from hard labor, had
+  softened, and this sudden return to strenuous pulling had made
+  their shoulders sore. They either could not or would not pull. We
+  covered less than ten miles that day, a very discouraging
+  circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to the rim, a
+  splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have been
+  enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear
+  down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that
+  it brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him!
+  He was alive! He stood up&mdash;like this&mdash;wagging his head.
+  Oh! I saw him!"</p>
+
+  <p>Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling
+  along, unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up
+  and down the interminable length of three almost impassable
+  miles. When night overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No
+  grass, no water! A cold gale blew out of the west. It roared
+  through the forest. It blew everything loose away in the
+  darkness. It almost blew us away in our beds. The stars appeared
+  radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue windy vault of the
+  sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows crossed the weird
+  moon-blanched forest glades.</p>
+
+  <p>At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen,
+  mostly silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice.
+  Suddenly some one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact
+  filled me with consternation and alarm. He might have walked in
+  his sleep and fallen over the rim. What had become of him? All
+  his outfit lay scattered round in his bed. In my bewilderment I
+  imagined many things, even to the extreme that he might have left
+  us in the lurch. But when I got to that sad pass of mind I
+  suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream. My worry, my hurry
+  had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to meet this
+  situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I went
+  out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities,
+  and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand.
+  That instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and
+  reproached myself.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand
+  over the camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got
+  to thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out
+  what was ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright
+  moonlight. I walked all the rest of the night. And that's all,
+  sir."</p>
+
+  <p>I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the
+  Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to
+  achievement. Such men could not be defeated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.</p>
+
+  <p>"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his
+  captain. "Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll
+  have to cut through thickets and logs. From here on the road is
+  all grown over. About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a
+  ridge."</p>
+
+  <p>That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I
+  thanked Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The
+  packing and carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated
+  himself into my affections. He found out that he could coax meat
+  and biscuit from me. We had three axes and a hatchet; and these
+  we did not pack in the wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams
+  started Lee and Nielsen and R.C. and I went ahead to clear the
+  road. Soon we were halted by thickets of pines, some of which
+  were six inches in diameter at the base. The road had ceased to
+  be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the reason pine thickets had
+  grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times
+  had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to
+  pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen
+  seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe!
+  When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had
+  to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with
+  his mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks
+  out of the road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that
+  day nor the next would we have ever gotten far along that stretch
+  of thicketed and obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.</p>
+
+  <p>At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly
+  ascending hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together
+  to pull the wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep
+  curve, horses and men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside
+  Romer. Nielsen and R.C. were next, and Lee had fallen in behind
+  the wagon. As I turned the sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below
+  me a huge log obstructing the road.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily
+  laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face
+  turn white&mdash;heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the
+  side. Romer was slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off
+  the road. My heart sank sick within me! Surely he would be run
+  down. As his pony Rye jumped out of the way the shoulder of the
+  black horse, on the off side, struck him a glancing blow. Then
+  the big team hurdled the log, the tongue struck with a crash, the
+  wagon stopped with a lurch, and Doyle was thrown from his
+  seat.</p>
+
+  <p>Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The
+  bay horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away.
+  Nielsen cut and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came
+  tearing down to grasp and hold the black.</p>
+
+  <p>Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not
+  know what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact
+  convinced me of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled
+  the log made any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When
+  finally it was extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut
+  in the breast made by a snag on the log. We could find no damage
+  done to the wagon. The harness Nielsen had cut could be mended
+  quickly. What a fortunate outcome to what had seemed a very grave
+  accident! I was thankful indeed. But not soon would I forget
+  sight of Romer in front of that plunging wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of
+  the road, and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I
+  dropped back and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a
+  fiddle," he shouted. "This's play to what we teamsters had in the
+  early days." And verily somehow I could see the truth of that. A
+  mile farther on we made camp; and all of us were hungry, weary,
+  and quiet.</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next
+  morning he crawled out before any one else, and his call was
+  cheery. I was scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was
+  ashamed to lie there an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my
+  eyesight was dulled by exhaustion when it caused me to see myself
+  as a worn, unshaven, wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out
+  with his usual alacrity. R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get
+  up on all fours.</p>
+
+  <p>We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to
+  work and waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail
+  it seemed, we chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that
+  old Crook road. Not since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in
+  Mexico had I labored so strenuously.</p>
+
+  <p>At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed
+  road Doyle had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones'
+  ranch," Doyle kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North
+  was our direction. And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness,
+  the road down this ridge proved to be a highway compared to what
+  we had passed. In the open forest we had to follow it altogether
+  by the blazes on the trees. But with all our eyes alert that was
+  easy. The grade was down hill, so that we traveled fast, covering
+  four miles an hour. Occasionally a log or thicket halted rapid
+  progress. Toward the end of the afternoon sheep and cattle trails
+  joined the now well-defined road, and we knew we were approaching
+  a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile, for the very
+  good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of my horse.
+  The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer
+  thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep
+  barren-looking canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old
+  ruined log-cabins. Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold
+  milk. For hours they had haunted me. When Doyle saw the
+  broken-down cabins and corrals he yelled: "Boys, it's Jones'
+  Ranch. I've been here. We're only three miles from Long Valley
+  and the main road!"</p>
+
+  <p>Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to
+  look for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses
+  had not slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up
+  and down the canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water.
+  Thereupon with immense relief and joy we pitched camp near the
+  cabins, forgetting our aches and pains in the certainty of
+  deliverance.</p>
+
+  <p>What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We
+  unpacked only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled
+  around the camp-fire we waited upon Doyle's cooking. The old
+  pioneer talked while he worked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jones' ranch!&mdash;I knew Jones in the early days. And I've
+  heard of him lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner
+  down into this canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and
+  he had a gun, an axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and
+  not much else. He built him that cabin there and began the real
+  old pioneering of the early days. He raised cattle. He freighted
+  to the settlements twice a year. In twenty-five years he had
+  three strapping boys and a girl just as strapping. And he had a
+  fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and left this ranch. He
+  wanted to give his faithful wife and his children some of the
+  comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The war
+  came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army.
+  I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man's first boy. Abe was
+  a quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a
+  sergeant asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: 'Nope, not much.'
+  So they gave him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near
+  target. Abe looked at it sort of funny like and he picked out the
+  farthest target at one thousand yards. And he hit the bull's eye
+  ten times straight running. 'Hey!' gasped the sergeant, 'you
+  long, lanky galoot! You said you couldn't shoot.' Abe sort of
+  laughed. 'Reckon I was thinkin' about what Dad called
+  shootin'.'... Well, Abe and his brothers got to France to the
+  front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both his
+  brothers were wounded. They're over there yet.... I met a man not
+  long ago who'd seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he
+  and his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means
+  right here&mdash;Jones' Ranch!"</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle's story affected me profoundly. What a theme for a
+  novel! I walked away from the camp-fire into the dark, lonely,
+  melancholy Arizona night. The ruined cabins, the broken-down
+  corrals, the stone fence, the wash where water ran at wet
+  season&mdash;all had subtly changed for me. Leaning in the
+  doorway of the one-room cabin that had been home for these
+  Joneses I was stirred to my depths. Their spirits abided in that
+  lonely hut. At least I felt something there&mdash;something
+  strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet
+  what could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life
+  of Jones, and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe?
+  Abe Jones! The name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw
+  the life of the lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the
+  power to tell the simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the
+  glory of his story. The moan of wind in the pines seemed a
+  requiem for the boy who had prattled and romped and played under
+  them, who had chopped and shot and rode under them. Into his
+  manhood had gone something of their strength and nature.</p>
+
+  <p>We sought our beds early. The night down in that deep, open
+  canyon was the coldest we had experienced. I slept but little. At
+  dawn all was hoar-white with frost. It crackled under foot. The
+  air had a stinging bite. Yet how sweet, pure, cold to
+  breathe!</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle's cheery: "Come and get it," was welcome call to
+  breakfast. Lee and Pups drove the horses into one of the old
+  corrals. In an hour, while the frost was yet hard and white, we
+  were ready to start. Then Doyle somewhat chilled our hopes:
+  "Twenty years ago there was a bad road out of here. Maybe one's
+  been made since."</p>
+
+  <p>But one had not been made. And the old road had not been used
+  for years. Right at the outset we struck a long, steep, winding,
+  rocky road. We got stalled at the very foot of it. More toil!
+  Unloading the wagon we packed on our saddles the whole load more
+  than a mile up this last and crowning obstacle. Then it took all
+  the horses together to pull the empty wagon up to a level. By
+  that time sunset had overtaken us. Where had the hours gone? Nine
+  hours to go one mile! But there had to be an end to our agonies.
+  By twilight we trotted down into Long Valley, and crossed the
+  main road to camp in a grove we remembered well. We partook of a
+  meagre supper, but we were happy. And bed that night on a thick
+  layer of soft pine needles, in a spot protected from the cold
+  wind, was immensely comfortable.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee woke the crowd next morning. "All rustle," he yelled.
+  "Thirty-five miles to Mormon Lake. Good road. We'll camp there
+  to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>How strange that the eagerness to get home now could only be
+  compared to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We
+  made an early start. The team horses knew that road. They knew
+  they were now on the way home. What difference that made! Jaded
+  as they were they trotted along with a briskness never seen
+  before on that trip. It began to be a job for us to keep up with
+  Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider is accustomed to
+  horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on a hard road
+  will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot. Time and
+  again I had to fall behind to a walk and then lope ahead to catch
+  up. I welcomed the hills that necessitated Lee walking the
+  teams.</p>
+
+  <p>At noon we halted in a grassy grove for an hour's rest. That
+  seemed a precious hour, but to start again was painful. I noticed
+  that Romer-boy no longer rode out far in front, nor did he chase
+  squirrels with Pups. He sagged, twisted and turned, and lolled in
+  his saddle. Thereafter I tried to keep close to him. But that was
+  not easy, for he suspected me of seeing how tired he was, and
+  kept away from me. Thereafter I took to spying upon him from some
+  distance behind. We trotted and walked, trotted and walked the
+  long miles. Arizona miles were twice as long as ordinary properly
+  measured miles. An event of the afternoon was to meet some
+  Mexican sheepherders, driving a flock south. Nielsen got some
+  fresh mutton from them. Toward sunset I caught Romer hanging over
+  his saddle. Then I rode up to him. "Son, are you tired?" I asked.
+  "Oh, Dad, I sure am, but I'm going to ride Rye to Mormon Lake." I
+  believed he would accomplish it. His saddle slipped, letting him
+  down. I saw him fall. When he made no effort to get up I was
+  frightened. Rye stood perfectly still over him. I leaped off and
+  ran to the lad. He had hit his head on a stone, drawing the
+  blood, and appeared to be stunned. I lifted him, holding him up,
+  while somebody got some water. We bathed his face and washed off
+  the blood. Presently he revived, and smiled at me, and staggered
+  out of my hold.</p>
+
+  <p>"Helluva note that saddle slipped!" he complained. Manifestly
+  he had acquired some of Joe Isbel's strong language. Possibly he
+  might have acquired some other of the cowboy's traits, for he
+  asked to have his saddle straightened and to be put on his horse.
+  I had misgivings, but I could not resist him then. I lifted him
+  upon Rye. Once more our cavalcade got under way.</p>
+
+  <p>Sunset, twilight, night came as we trotted on and on. We faced
+  a cold wind. The forest was black, gloomy, full of shadows. Lee
+  gave us all we could do to keep up with him. At eight o'clock,
+  two hours after dark, we reached the southern end of Mormon Lake.
+  A gale, cold as ice, blew off the water from the north. Half a
+  dozen huge pine trees stood on the only level ground near at
+  hand. "Nielsen, fire&mdash;pronto!" I yelled. "Aye, sir," he
+  shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with hurry and bustle to
+  get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my tingling fingers, and
+  press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few minutes before I
+  thought of Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen had started a fire, that blazed and roared with
+  burning pine needles. The blaze blew low, almost on a level with
+  the ground, and a stream of red sparks flew off into the woods. I
+  was afraid of forest fire. But what a welcome sight that golden
+  flame! It lighted up a wide space, showing the huge pines,
+  gloom-encircled, and a pale glimmer of the lake beyond. The
+  fragrance of burning pine greeted my nostrils.</p>
+
+  <p>Dragging my bags I hurried toward the fire. Nielsen was
+  building a barricade of rocks to block the flying sparks.
+  Suddenly I espied Romer. He sat on a log close to the blaze. His
+  position struck me as singular, so I dropped my burdens and went
+  to him. He had on a heavy coat over sweater and under coat, which
+  made him resemble a little old man. His sombrero was slouched
+  down sidewise, his gloved hands were folded across his knees, his
+  body sagged a little to one side, his head drooped. He was
+  asleep. I got around so I could see his face in the firelight.
+  Pale, weary, a little sad, very youthful and yet determined! A
+  bloody bruise showed over his temple. He had said he would ride
+  all the way to Mormon Lake and he had done it. Never, never will
+  that picture fade from my memory! Dear, brave, wild, little lad!
+  He had made for me a magnificent success of this fruitless
+  hunting trip. I hoped and prayed then that when he grew to man's
+  estate, and faced the long rides down the hard roads of life, he
+  would meet them and achieve them as he had the weary thirty-five
+  Arizona miles from Long Valley to Mormon Lake.</p><a name=
+  "image-0056"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg051_m.jpg" width="448" height="687" alt=
+    "Skunk, a Frequent and Rather Dangerous Visitor in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0057"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg052a_m.jpg" width="448" height="332" alt=
+    "On the Rim ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0058"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg052b_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Where Elk, Deer, and Turkey Drink ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Mutton tasted good that night around our camp-fire; and Romer
+  ate a generous portion. A ranger from the station near there
+  visited us, and two young ranchers, who told us that the
+  influenza epidemic was waning. This was news to be thankful for.
+  Moreover, I hired the two ranchers to hurry us by auto to
+  Flagstaff on the morrow. So right there at Mormon Lake ended our
+  privations.</p>
+
+  <p>Under one of the huge pines I scraped up a pile of needles,
+  made Romer's bed in it, heated a blanket and wrapped him in it.
+  Almost he was asleep when he said: "Some ride,
+  Dad&mdash;Good-night."</p>
+
+  <p>Later, beside him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks
+  fly, and the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face,
+  listening to the crackle of the fire and the roar of the
+  gale.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Eventually R.C. and Romer and I arrived in Los Angeles to find
+  all well with our people, which fact was indeed something to
+  rejoice over. Hardly had this 1918 trip ended before I began to
+  plan for that of 1919. But I did not realize how much in earnest
+  I was until I received word that both Lee Doyle in Flagstaff and
+  Nielsen in San Pedro were very ill with influenza. Lee all but
+  died, and Nielsen, afterward, told me he would rather die than
+  have the "flu" again. To my great relief, however, they
+  recovered.</p>
+
+  <p>From that time then it pleased me to begin to plan for my 1919
+  hunting trip. I can never do anything reasonably. I always overdo
+  everything. But what happiness I derive from anticipation! When I
+  am not working I live in dreams, partly of the past, but mostly
+  of the future. A man should live only in the present.</p>
+
+  <p>I gave Lee instructions to go about in his own way buying
+  teams, saddle horses, and wagons. For Christmas I sent him a .35
+  Remington rifle. Mr. Haught got instructions to add some new dogs
+  to his pack. I sent Edd also a .35 Remington, and made Nielsen
+  presents of two guns. In January Nielsen and I went to Picacho,
+  on the lower Colorado river, and then north to Death Valley. So
+  that I kept in touch with these men and did not allow their
+  enthusiasm to wane. For myself and R.C. I had the fun of ordering
+  tents and woolen blankets, and everything that we did not have on
+  our 1918 trip. But owing to the war it was difficult to obtain
+  goods of any description. To make sure of getting a .30 Gov't
+  Winchester I ordered from four different firms, including the
+  Winchester Co. None of them had such a rifle in stock, but all
+  would try to find one. The upshot of this deal was that, when
+  after months I despaired of getting any, they all sent me a rifle
+  at the same time. So I found myself with four, all the same
+  caliber of course, but of different style and finish. When I saw
+  them and thought of the Haughts I had to laugh. One was
+  beautifully engraved, and inlaid with gold&mdash;the most
+  elaborate .30 Gov't the Winchester people had ever built. Another
+  was a walnut-stocked, shot-gun butted, fancy checkered take-down.
+  This one I presented to R.C. The third was a plain ordinary rifle
+  with solid frame. And the last was a carbine model, which I gave
+  to Nielsen.</p>
+
+  <p>During the summer at Avalon I used to take the solid frame
+  rifle, and climb the hills to practice on targets. At Clemente
+  Island I used to shoot at the ravens. I had a grudge against
+  ravens there for picking the eyes out of newly born lambs. At
+  five hundred yards a raven was in danger from me. I could make
+  one jump at even a thousand yards. These .30 Gov't 1906 rifles
+  with 150-grain bullet are the most wonderful shooting arms I ever
+  tried. I became expert at inanimate targets.</p>
+
+  <p>From time to time I heard encouraging news from Lee about
+  horses. Edd wrote me about lion tracks in the snow, and lynx up
+  cedar trees, and gobblers four feet high, and that there was sure
+  to be a good crop of acorns, and therefore some bears. He told me
+  about a big grizzly cow-killer being chased and shot in Chevelon
+  Canyon. News about hounds, however, was slow in coming. Dogs were
+  difficult to find. At length Haught wrote me that he had secured
+  two; and in this same letter he said the boys were cutting trails
+  down under the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Everything pertaining to my cherished plans appeared to be
+  turning out well. But during this time I spent five months at
+  hard work and intense emotional strain, writing the longest novel
+  I ever attempted; and I over-taxed my endurance. By the middle of
+  June, when I finished, I was tired out. That would not have
+  mattered if I had not hurt my back in an eleven-hour fight with a
+  giant broadbill swordfish. This strain kept me from getting in my
+  usual physical trim. I could not climb the hills, or exert
+  myself. Swimming hurt me more than anything. So I had to be
+  careful and wait until my back slowly got better. By September it
+  had improved, but not enough to make me feel any thrills over
+  horseback riding. It seemed to me that I would be compelled to go
+  ahead and actually work the pain out of my back, an ordeal
+  through which I had passed before, and surely dreaded.</p>
+
+  <p>During the summer I had purchased a famous chestnut sorrel
+  horse named Don Carlos. He was much in demand among the
+  motion-picture companies doing western plays; and was really too
+  fine and splendid a horse to be put to the risks common to the
+  movies. I saw him first at Palm Springs, down in southern
+  California, where my book <i>Desert Gold</i> was being made into
+  a motion-picture. Don would not have failed to strike any one as
+  being a wonderful horse. He was tremendously high and rangy and
+  powerful in build, yet graceful withal, a sleek, shiny chestnut
+  red in color, with fine legs, broad chest, and a magnificent
+  head. I rode him only once before I bought him, and that was
+  before I hurt my back. His stride was what one would expect from
+  sight of him; his trot seemed to tear me to pieces; his spirit
+  was such that he wanted to prance all the time. But in spite of
+  his spirit he was a pet. And how he could run! Nielsen took Don
+  to Flagstaff by express. And when Nielsen wrote me he said all of
+  Flagstaff came down to the station to see the famous Don Carlos.
+  The car in which he had traveled was backed alongside a platform.
+  Don refused to step on the boards they placed from platform to
+  car. He did not trust them. Don's intelligence had been sharpened
+  by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to lead, to
+  coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would not
+  go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to
+  plunge and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd
+  like quail.</p>
+
+  <p>The day before my departure from Los Angeles was almost as
+  terrible an ordeal as I anticipated would be my first day's ride
+  on Don Carlos. And this ordeal consisted of listening to Romer's
+  passionate appeals and importunities to let him go on the hunt.
+  My only defence was that he must not be taken from school. School
+  forsooth! He was way ahead of his class. If he got behind he
+  could make it up. I talked and argued. Once he lost his temper, a
+  rare thing with him, and said he would run away from school, ride
+  on a freight train to Flagstaff, steal a horse and track me to my
+  camp. I could not say very much in reply to this threat, because
+  I remembered that I had made worse to my father, and carried it
+  out. I had to talk sense to Romer. Often we had spoken of a
+  wonderful hunt in Africa some day, when he was old enough; and I
+  happened upon a good argument. I said: "You'll miss a year out of
+  school then. It won't be so very long. Don't you think you ought
+  to stay in school faithfully now?" So in the end I got away from
+  him, victorious, though not wholly happy. The truth was I wanted
+  him to go.</p>
+
+  <p>My Jap cook Takahashi met me in Flagstaff. He was a very
+  short, very broad, very muscular little fellow with a brown,
+  strong face, more pleasant than usually seen in Orientals.
+  Secretly I had made sure that in Takahashi I had discovered a
+  treasure, but I was careful to conceal this conviction from R.C.,
+  the Doyles, and Nielsen. They were glad to see him with us, but
+  they manifestly did not expect wonders.</p>
+
+  <p>How brief the span of a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again
+  outfitting for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived
+  that old haunting thought about the shortness of life. But in
+  spite of that or perhaps more because of it the pleasure was all
+  the keener. In truth the only drawback to this start was the
+  absence of Romer, and my poor physical condition. R.C. appeared
+  to be in fine fettle.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was not well. In the mornings I could scarcely arise,
+  and when I did so I could hardly straighten myself. More than
+  once I grew doubtful of my strength to undertake such a hard
+  trip. This doubt I fought fiercely, for I knew that the right
+  thing for me to do was to go&mdash;to stand the pain and
+  hardship&mdash;to toil along until my old strength and elasticity
+  returned. What an opportunity to try out my favorite theory! For
+  I believed that labor and pain were good for mankind&mdash;that
+  strenuous life in the open would cure any bodily ill.</p>
+
+  <p>On September fourteenth Edd and George drifted into Flagstaff
+  to join us, and their report of game and water and grass and
+  acorns was so favorable that I would have gone if I had been
+  unable to ride on anything but a wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>We got away on September fifteenth at two-thirty o'clock with
+  such an outfit as I had never had in all my many trips put
+  together. We had a string of saddle horses besides those the men
+  rode. They were surely a spirited bunch; and that first day it
+  was indeed a job to keep them with us. Out of sheer defiance with
+  myself I started on Don Carlos. He was no trouble, except that it
+  took all my strength to hold him in. He tossed his head, champed
+  his bit, and pranced sideways along the streets of Flagstaff,
+  manifestly to show off his brand new black Mexican saddle, with
+  silver trappings and tapaderos. I was sure that he did not do
+  that to show me off. But Don liked to dance and prance along
+  before a crowd, a habit that he had acquired with the motion
+  pictures.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee and Nielsen and George had their difficulties driving the
+  free horses. Takahashi rode a little buckskin Navajo mustang. An
+  evidence of how extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself
+  plain in the fact that stirrups could not be fixed so he could
+  reach them with his feet. When he used any support at all he
+  stuck his feet through the straps above the stirrups. How funny
+  his squat, broad figure looked in a saddle! Evidently he was not
+  accustomed to horses. When I saw the mustang roll the white of
+  his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I knew something would
+  happen sooner or later.</p>
+
+  <p>Nineteen miles on Don Carlos reduced me to a miserable aching
+  specimen of manhood. But what made me endure and go on and finish
+  to camp was the strange fact that the longer I rode the less my
+  back pained. Other parts of my anatomy, however, grew sorer as we
+  progressed. Don Carlos pleased me immensely, only I feared he was
+  too much horse for me. A Mormon friend of mine, an Indian trader,
+  looked Don over in Flagstaff, and pronounced him: "Shore one
+  grand hoss!" This man had broken many wild horses, and his
+  compliment pleased me. All the same the nineteen miles on Don
+  hurt my vanity almost as much as my body.</p>
+
+  <p>We camped in a cedar pasture off the main road. This road was
+  a new one for us to take to our hunting grounds. I was too bunged
+  up to help Nielsen pitch our tent. In fact when I sat down I was
+  anchored. Still I could use my eyes, and that made life worth
+  living. Sunset was a gorgeous spectacle. The San Francisco Peaks
+  were shrouded in purple storm-clouds, and the west was all gold
+  and silver, with low clouds rimmed in red. This sunset ended in a
+  great flare of dull magenta with a background of purple.</p>
+
+  <p>That evening was the try-out of our new chuck-box and chef. I
+  had supplied the men with their own outfit and supplies, to do
+  with as they liked, an arrangement I found to be most
+  satisfactory. Takahashi was to take care of R.C. and me. In less
+  than half an hour from the time the Jap lighted a fire he served
+  the best supper I ever had in camp anywhere. R.C. lauded him to
+  the skies. And I began to think I could unburden myself of my
+  conviction.</p>
+
+  <p>I did not awaken to the old zest and thrill of the open.
+  Something was wrong with me. The sunset, the camp-fire, the dark
+  clear night with its trains of stars, the distant yelp of
+  coyotes&mdash;these seemed less to me than what I had hoped for.
+  My feelings were locked round my discomfort and pain.</p>
+
+  <p>About noon next day we rode out of the cedars into the open
+  desert&mdash;a rolling, level land covered with fine grass, and
+  yellow daisies, Indian paint brush, and a golden flowering weed.
+  This luxuriance attested to the copious and recent rains. They
+  had been a boon to dry Arizona. No sage showed or greasewood, and
+  very few rocks. The sun burned hot. I gazed out at the desert,
+  and the cloud pageant in the sky, trying hard to forget myself,
+  and to see what I knew was there for me. Rolling columnar white
+  and cream clouds, majestic and beautiful, formed storms off on
+  the horizon. Sunset on the open desert that afternoon was
+  singularly characteristic of Arizona&mdash;purple and gold and
+  red, with long lanes of blue between the colored cloud banks.</p>
+
+  <p>We made camp at Meteor Crater, one of the many wonders of this
+  wonderland. It was a huge hole in the earth over five hundred
+  feet deep, said to have been made by a meteor burying itself
+  there. Seen from the outside the slope was gradual up to the
+  edges, which were scalloped and irregular; on the inside the
+  walls were precipitous. Our camp was on the windy desert, a long
+  sweeping range of grass, sloping down, dotted with cattle, with
+  buttes and mountains in the distance. Most of my sensations of
+  the day partook of the nature of woe.</p>
+
+  <p>September seventeenth bade fair to be my worst day&mdash;at
+  least I did not see how any other could ever be so bad. Glaring
+  hot sun&mdash;reflected heat from I the bare road&mdash;dust and
+  sand and wind! Particularly hard on me were what the Arizonians
+  called dust-devils, whirlwinds of sand. On and off I walked a
+  good many miles, the latter of which I hobbled. Don Carlos did
+  not know what to make of this. He eyed me, and nosed me, and
+  tossed his head as if to say I was a strange rider for him. Like
+  my mustang, Night, he would not stand to be mounted. When I
+  touched the stirrup that was a signal to go. He had been trained
+  to it. As he was nearly seventeen hands high, and as I could not
+  get my foot in the stirrup from level ground, to mount him in my
+  condition seemed little less than terrible. I always held back
+  out of sight when I attempted this. Many times I failed. Once I
+  fell flat and lay a moment in the dust. Don Carlos looked down
+  upon me in a way I imagined was sympathetic. At least he bent his
+  noble head and smelled at me. I scrambled to my feet, led him
+  round into a low place, and drawing a deep breath, and nerving
+  myself to endure the pain like a stab, I got into the saddle
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>Two things sustained me in this ordeal, which was the crudest
+  horseback ride I ever had&mdash;first, the conviction that I
+  could cure my ills by enduring the agony of violent action, of
+  hot sun, of hard bed; and secondly, the knowledge that after it
+  was all over the remembrance of hardship and achievement would be
+  singularly sweet. So it had been in the case of the five days on
+  the old Crook road in 1918, when extreme worry and tremendous
+  exertion had made the hours hideous. So it had been with other
+  arduous and poignant experiences. A poet said that the crown of
+  sorrow was in remembering happier times: I believed that there
+  was a great deal of happiness in remembering times of stress, of
+  despair, of extreme and hazardous effort. Anyway, without these
+  two feelings in my mind I would have given up riding Don Carlos
+  that day, and have abandoned the trip.</p>
+
+  <p>We covered twenty-two miles by sundown, a rather poor day's
+  showing; and camped on the bare flat desert, using water and wood
+  we had packed with us. The last thing I remembered, as my eyes
+  closed heavily, was what a blessing it was to rest and to
+  sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we sheered off to the southward, heading toward
+  Chevelon Butte, a black cedared mountain, rising lone out of the
+  desert, thirty miles away. We crossed two streams bank full of
+  water, a circumstance I never before saw in Arizona. Everywhere
+  too the grass was high. We climbed gradually all day, everybody
+  sunburned and weary, the horses settling down to save themselves;
+  and we camped high up on the desert plateau, six thousand feet
+  above sea level, where it was windy, cool, and fragrant with sage
+  and cedar. Except the first few, the hours of this day each
+  marked a little less torture for me; but at that I fell off Don
+  Carlos when we halted. And I was not able to do my share of the
+  camp work. R.C. was not as spry and chipper as I had seen him, a
+  fact from which I gathered infinite consolation. Misery loves
+  company.</p>
+
+  <p>A storm threatened. All the west was purple under on-coming
+  purple clouds. At sight of this something strange and subtle, yet
+  familiar, revived in me. It made me feel a little more like the
+  self I thought I knew. So I watched the lightning flare and
+  string along the horizon. Some time in the night thunder awakened
+  me. The imminence of a severe storm forced us to roll out and
+  look after the tent. What a pitch black night! Down through the
+  murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag rope of lightning,
+  blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving segments of
+  fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash&mdash;then we
+  were absolutely blind. I could not see for several moments. It
+  rained a little. Only the edge of the storm touched us. Thunder
+  rolled and boomed along the battlements, deep and rumbling and
+  detonating.</p>
+
+  <p>No dust or heat next morning! The desert floor appeared clean
+  and damp, with fresh gray sage and shining bunches of cedar. We
+  climbed into the high cedars, and then to the pi&ntilde;ons, and
+  then to the junipers and pines. Climbing so out of desert to
+  forestland was a gradual and accumulating joy to me. What
+  contrast in vegetation, in air, in color! Still the forest
+  consisted of small trees. Not until next day did we climb farther
+  to the deepening, darkening forest, and at last to the silver
+  spruce. That camp, the fifth night out, was beside a lake of
+  surface water, where we had our first big camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>September twenty-first and ten miles from Beaver Dam Canyon,
+  where a year before I had planned to meet Haught this day and
+  date at noon! I could make that appointment, saddle-sore and
+  weary as I was, but I doubted we could get the wagons there. The
+  forest ground was soft. All the little swales were full of water.
+  How pleasant, how welcome, how beautiful and lonely the wild
+  forestland! We made advance slowly. It was afternoon by the time
+  we reached the rim road, and four o'clock when we halted at the
+  exact spot where we had left our wagon the year before.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee determined to drive the wagons down over the rocky benches
+  into Beaver Dam Canyon; and to that end he and the men began to
+  cut pines, drag logs, and roll stones.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen
+  swift little streams of amber water, where a year before all had
+  been dry as tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of
+  yellowing aspens. Haught was there to meet us. He had not changed
+  any more than the rugged pine tree under which a year past we had
+  made our agreement. He wore the same blue shirt and the old black
+  sombrero.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hello Haught," was my greeting, as I dismounted and pulled
+  out my watch. "I'm four hours and a quarter late. Sorry. I could
+  have made it, but didn't want to leave the wagons."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, wal, I shore am glad to see you," he replied, with a
+  keen flash in his hazel eyes and a smile on his craggy face. "I
+  reckoned you'd make it. How are you? Look sort of fagged."</p>
+
+  <p>"Just about all in, Haught," I replied, as we shook hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Copple appeared, swaggering out of the aspens. He was the
+  man I met in Payson and who so kindly had made me take his rifle.
+  I had engaged him also for this hunt. A brawny man he was, with
+  powerful shoulders, swarthy-skinned, and dark-eyed, looking
+  indeed the Indian blood he claimed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wouldn't have recognized you anywhere's else," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>These keen-eyed outdoor men at a glance saw the havoc work and
+  pain had played with me. They were solicitous, and when I
+  explained my condition they made light of that, and showed relief
+  that I was not ill. "Saw wood an' rustle around," said Haught.
+  And Copple said: "He needs venison an' bear meat."</p>
+
+  <p>They rode back with us up to the wagons. Copple had been a
+  freighter. He picked out a way to drive down into the canyon. So
+  rough and steep it was that I did not believe driving down would
+  be possible. But with axes and pick and shovel, and a heaving of
+  rocks, they worked a road that Lee drove down. Some places were
+  almost straight down. But the ground was soft, hoofs and wheels
+  sank deeply, and though one wagon lurched almost over, and the
+  heavily laden chuck-wagon almost hurdled the team, Lee made the
+  bad places without accident. Two hours after our arrival, such
+  was the labor of many strong hands, we reached our old camp
+  ground. One thing was certain, however, and that was we would
+  never get back up the way we came down.</p>
+
+  <p>Except for a luxuriance of grass and ferns, and two babbling
+  streams of water, our old camp ground had not changed. I sat down
+  with mingled emotions. How familiarly beautiful and lonely this
+  canyon glade! The great pines and spruces looked down upon me
+  with a benediction. How serene, passionless, strong they seemed!
+  It was only men who changed in brief time. The long year of worry
+  and dread and toil and pain had passed. It was nothing. On the
+  soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came a whispering of welcome
+  from the forestland: "You are here again. Live now&mdash;in the
+  present."</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he
+  said, grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking.
+  His ability excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about
+  him. As to this camp-site being a joy compared to the ones
+  stretched back along the road he was assuredly right. That night
+  we did no more than eat and unroll our beds. But next day there
+  set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking, putting up tents and
+  flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a hundred odd
+  jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one help
+  him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak,
+  and made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the
+  cleverness of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for
+  work.</p>
+
+  <p>The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more
+  than any one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a
+  crosscut saw; and as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and
+  a lover of them. Hence we had brought a crosscut saw&mdash;a long
+  one with two handles. I remembered from the former year a huge
+  dead pine that had towered bleached and white at the edge of the
+  glade. It stood there still. The storms and blasts of another
+  winter had not changed it in the least. It was five feet thick at
+  the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the lower
+  side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I
+  saw the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all
+  the way down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell
+  majestically, to strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of
+  this pine broke in the fall, but there were splinters and knots
+  and branches enough to fill a wagon. These we carried up to our
+  camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which
+  served as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The
+  method of using a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand
+  opposite one another, with the log between. The handles of the
+  saw stood upright. Each man should pull easily and steadily
+  toward himself, but should not push back nor bear down. It looked
+  a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous. But what an
+  illusion! Nielsen and Copple were the only ones that day who
+  could saw wholly through the thick log without resting. Later
+  Takahashi turned out to be as good, if not better, than either of
+  them, but we had that, as well as many other wonderful facts, to
+  learn about the Jap.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on," said R.C. to me, invitingly. "You've been talking
+  about this crosscut saw game. I'll bet you find it harder than
+  pulling on a swordfish."</p>
+
+  <p>Pride goes before a fall! I knew that in my condition I could
+  do little with the saw, but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh
+  when I had to rest. Perhaps no one except myself realized the
+  weakness of my back, but the truth was a couple of dozen pulls on
+  that saw almost made me collapse. Wherefore I grew furious with
+  myself and swore I would do it or die. I sawed till I fell
+  over&mdash;then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour of
+  this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely
+  sharper than the pain in my back. Also it made me wringing wet,
+  hot as fire, and as breathless as if I had run a mile up hill.
+  That experience determined me to stick to crosscut sawing every
+  day. Next morning I approached it with enthusiasm, yet with
+  misgivings. I could not keep my breath. Pain I could and did bear
+  without letting on. But to have to stop was humiliating. If I
+  tried to keep up with the sturdy Haught boys, or with the brawny
+  Copple or the giant Nielsen, soon I would be compelled to keel
+  over. In the sawing through a four-foot section of log I had to
+  rest eight times. They all had a great deal of fun out of it, and
+  I pretended to be good natured, but to me who had always been so
+  vigorous and active and enduring it was not fun. It was tragic.
+  But all was not gloom for me. This very afternoon Nielsen, the
+  giant, showed that a stiff climb out of the canyon, at that eight
+  thousand feet altitude, completely floored him. Yet I
+  accomplished that with comparative ease. I could climb, which
+  seemed proof that I was gaining. A man becomes used to certain
+  labors and exercises. I thought the crosscut saw a wonderful tool
+  to train a man, but it must require time. It harked back to
+  pioneer days when men were men. Nielsen said he had lived among
+  Mexican boys who sawed logs for nineteen cents apiece and earned
+  seven dollars a day. Copple said three minutes was good time to
+  saw a four-foot log in two pieces. So much for physical
+  condition! As for firewood, for which our crosscut saw was
+  intended, pitch pine and yellow pine and spruce were all odorous
+  and inflammable woods, but they did not make good firewood. Dead
+  aspen was good; dead oak the best. It burned to red hot coals
+  with little smoke. As for camp-fires, any kind of dry wood
+  pleased, smoke or no smoke. In fact I loved the smell and color
+  of wood-smoke, in spite of the fact that it made my eyes
+  smart.</p>
+
+  <p>By October first, which was the opening day of the hunting
+  season, I had labored at various exercises until I felt fit to
+  pack a rifle through the woods. R.C. and I went out alone on
+  foot. Not by any means was the day auspicious. The sun tried to
+  show through a steely haze, making only a pale shift of sunshine.
+  And the air was rather chilly. Enthusiasm, however, knew no
+  deterrents. We walked a mile down Beaver Dam Canyon, then climbed
+  the western slope. As long as the sun shone I knew the country
+  fairly well, or rather my direction. We slipped along through the
+  silent woods, satisfied with everything. Presently the sun broke
+  through the clouds, and shone fitfully, making intervals of
+  shadow, and others of golden-green verdure.</p>
+
+  <p>Along an edge of one of the grassy parks we came across fresh
+  deer tracks. Several deer had run out of the woods just ahead of
+  us, evidently having winded us. One track was that of a big buck.
+  We trailed these tracks across the park, then made a detour in
+  hopes of heading the deer off, but failed. A huge, dark cloud
+  scudded out of the west and let down a shower of fine rain. We
+  kept dry under a spreading spruce. The forest then was gloomy and
+  cool with only a faint moan of wind and pattering of raindrops to
+  break the silence. The cloud passed by, the sun shone again, the
+  forest glittered in its dress of diamonds. There had been but
+  little frost, so that aspen and maple thickets had not yet taken
+  on their cloth of gold and blaze of red. Most of the leaves were
+  still on the trees, making these thickets impossible to see into.
+  We hunted along the edges of these, and across the wide, open
+  ridge from canyon to canyon, and saw nothing but old tracks.
+  Black and white clouds rolled up and brought a squall. We took to
+  another spruce tent for shelter. After this squall the sky became
+  obscured by a field of gray cloud through which the sun shone
+  dimly. This matter worried me. I was aware of my direction then,
+  but if I lost the sun I would soon be in difficulties.</p>
+
+  <p>Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and
+  headed several ravines that ran and widened down into the big
+  canyon. All at once R.C. held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With
+  abatement of breath I listened, but heard nothing except the
+  mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I heard a whistle," he
+  said. We went on, all eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a
+  good hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and
+  could slip along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of
+  direction that had never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to
+  learn about deer stalking. But I had never hunted with any man
+  whose ears were as quick as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and
+  many years of still hunting, accounted for this faculty. As for
+  myself, the one gift of which I was especially proud was my
+  eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in the woods before
+  any one who was with me. This had applied to all my guides except
+  Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
+  searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made
+  my eyes all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game
+  in which he tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen
+  before I saw it. This fun for us dated back to boyhood days.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one
+  side, and his body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he
+  said. We stood perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from
+  far off in the forest I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling
+  note. How thrilling, how lonely a sound!</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and
+  listened. R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not
+  recognized it. Just as the mournful howl of a wolf is the
+  wildest, most haunting sound of the wilderness, so is the bugle
+  of the elk the noblest, most melodious and thrilling. With
+  tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We heard elk
+  bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
+  appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away.
+  R.C. and I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing
+  of elk, but that was no reason why we might not trail them, and
+  have the sport of seeing them in their native haunts. So we stole
+  softly through the woods, halting now and then to listen, pleased
+  to note that every whistle we heard appeared to be closer.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us
+  from the ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk
+  began to become really exciting. We did not make any noise
+  threading that wet thicket, and we ascended the opposite slope
+  very cautiously. What little wind there was blew from the elk
+  toward us, so they could not scent us. Once up on the edge of the
+  ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we heard a far-away
+  bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had we
+  miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for
+  waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was
+  almost silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun
+  peeped out of the pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the
+  pines in brightness. I opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was
+  rendered mute by a piercing whistle, high-pitched and sweet and
+  melodiously prolonged. It made my ears tingle and my blood dance.
+  "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on." We began to steal
+  through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets, peeping
+  out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp,
+  facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated
+  by about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison.
+  Passing through a thicket of little pines we came into an open
+  forest full of glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped
+  from tree to tree. Finally we stooped along for a space, and
+  then, at a bugle blast so close that it made me jump, I began to
+  crawl. My objective point was a fallen pine the trunk of which
+  appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C. kept working a little
+  farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I kept on. Still I
+  saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting toward its
+  climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of
+  excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw
+  a cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a
+  hundred yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way,
+  and pointed. But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning
+  for me to join him. I ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He
+  whispered pantingly: "Grandest sight&mdash;ever saw!" I peeped
+  out.</p>
+
+  <p>In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent
+  bull elk, looking back over his shoulder. His tawny
+  hind-quarters, then his dark brown, almost black shaggy shoulders
+  and head, then his enormous spread of antlers, like the top of a
+  dead cedar&mdash;these in turn fascinated my gaze. How graceful,
+  stately, lordly!</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled
+  out, took a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had
+  the fun of imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not
+  really want to kill him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp,
+  hot gush of my blood, the fiery thrill along my nerves, the
+  feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The bull eyed us for a second,
+  then laid his forest of antlers back over his shoulders, and with
+  singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny flash into the
+  green forest.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the
+  glade, without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye
+  caught sight of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on
+  the ground, vanishing behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I
+  got to where I could see beyond the thicket. An immense flock of
+  turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to get a bead on a running turkey
+  R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled. So we dashed through the
+  forest with the turkeys running ahead of us. Never did they come
+  out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just as I was about
+  to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This happened
+  again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting chance,
+  but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys
+  eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.</p>
+
+  <p>"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like
+  streaks. I couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."</p>
+
+  <p>I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying
+  to locate this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C.
+  finally, as he wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some
+  game anyhow.... Where are we?"</p>
+
+  <p>It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun
+  had become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the
+  forest had grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The
+  matter did not look serious, however, until we had wandered
+  around for another hour without finding anything familiar. Then
+  we realized we were lost. This sort of experience had happened to
+  R.C. and me often; nevertheless we did not relish it, especially
+  the first day out. As usual on such occasions R.C. argued with me
+  about direction, and then left the responsibility with me. I
+  found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one side from the misty
+  rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees and sky and
+  clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or west.
+  After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary
+  brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was
+  pleased to discover that the instinct of direction I had been
+  subtly prompted to take, would have helped me as much as the
+  sun.</p>
+
+  <p>We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead
+  so that we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to
+  a deep canyon. In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I
+  recognized it. "Well, R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and
+  it may not. But to make sure we'll follow it up to the rim. Then
+  we can locate camp." R.C. replied with weary disdain. "All right,
+  my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As Loren says, I'm starved
+  to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who bids fair to be
+  like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and before
+  meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How
+  strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!</p>
+
+  <p>When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more
+  heavily. We were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept
+  out all night. So I struck forward with long stride.</p>
+
+  <p>In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I
+  deliberated a moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry,
+  from which fact I decided we had better take to the left-hand
+  fork. Grass and leaves appeared almost as wet as running water.
+  Soon we were soaked to the skin. After two miles the canyon
+  narrowed and thickened, so that traveling grew more and more
+  laborsome. It must have been four miles from its mouth to where
+  it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we found ourselves on
+  familiar ground, about five miles from camp. Exhausted and wet
+  and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If I had
+  taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver
+  Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order.
+  R.C. said to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of
+  our way." Everybody but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture.
+  Takahashi said in his imperfect English: "Go get on more better
+  dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good yes!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    V
+  </center>
+
+  <p>It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in
+  camp and rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning
+  I started out on foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon
+  intending to go up on the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the
+  flock of turkeys.</p>
+
+  <p>I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor
+  acquaintances in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for
+  Nielsen. Copple was born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south
+  of Flagstaff, and was one-fourth Indian. He had a good education.
+  His whole life had been in the open, which fact I did not need to
+  be told. A cowboy when only a boy he had also been sheepherder,
+  miner, freighter, and everything Arizonian. Eighteen years he had
+  hunted game and prospected for gold in Mexico. He had been a
+  sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served in the army in
+  the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous life; and
+  as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be a
+  mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the
+  violence, the truth of the west.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple was inclined to be loquacious&mdash;a trait that
+  ordinarily was rather distasteful to me, but in his case would be
+  an advantage. On our way down the canyon not only did he give me
+  an outline of the history of his life, but he talked about how he
+  had foretold the storm just ended. The fresh diggings of
+  gophers&mdash;little mounds of dirt thrown up&mdash;had indicated
+  the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls; likewise
+  the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of
+  blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant
+  storm. From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the
+  light of the moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they
+  will lie in a thicket. If a hunter came near the deer would lower
+  their horns flat and remain motionless, unless almost ridden
+  over. In the dark of the moon deer feed at early morning, lie
+  down during the day, and feed again toward sunset, always alert,
+  trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place
+  where R.C. and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I
+  missed it, and we went on farther. Copple showed me old bear
+  sign, an old wolf track, and then fresh turkey tracks. The latter
+  reminded me that we were out hunting. I could carry a deadly
+  rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of flower-decked Elysian
+  fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of the canyon
+  slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two
+  turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took
+  a snap shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low,
+  upsetting him. Both of them disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting
+  around along the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep
+  enough to be classed as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and
+  still, with sunlight showing down in rays and gleams. While
+  hunting I always liked to sit down here and there to listen and
+  watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down. Opposite us the
+  rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred yards. We
+  listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant
+  fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is
+  movement that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump,
+  woolly beast walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and
+  stand in the shade.</p>
+
+  <p>"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing.
+  "Lion&mdash;no, big lynx," he replied. I aimed and shot just a
+  little too swiftly. Judging by the puff of dust my bullet barely
+  missed the big cat. He leaped fully fifteen feet. Copple fired,
+  hitting right under his nose as he alighted. That whirled him
+  back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot went over
+  him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another
+  prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we
+  missed him," declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that
+  first time. Biggest lynx I ever saw."</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success.
+  Then we climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge,
+  and crossed that to see down into a beautiful valley, with
+  stately isolated pines, and patches of aspens, and floor of
+  luxuriant grass. A ravine led down into this long park and the
+  mouth of it held a thicket of small pines. Just as we got half
+  way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high grass. I
+  peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot
+  before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a
+  thumping&mdash;and then turkeys appeared to be running every
+  way.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a
+  big gobbler on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!"
+  he called out. I could not see what he had done, but of course I
+  knew he had done execution. It roused my ire as well as a
+  desperate ambition. Turkeys were running up hill everywhere. I
+  aimed at this one, then at that. Again I fired. Another miss! How
+  that gobbler ran! He might just as well have flown. Every turkey
+  contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the
+  critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last one, got
+  a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we
+  moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and
+  scattering of bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope
+  and secured him, a fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds
+  weight.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two
+  turkeys, both shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If
+  you hit them in the body you spoil them for cooking. I used to
+  hit all mine in the head. Let me give you a hunch. Always pick
+  out a turkey running straight away from you or straight toward
+  you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running to the
+  side."</p>
+
+  <p>Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at
+  least was consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and
+  after a while heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller,
+  but he clucked anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was
+  trying to get together again, and some of them were approaching
+  us. Copple continued to call. Then I appreciated how fascinating
+  R.C. had found this calling game. Copple got answers from all
+  around, growing closer. But presently the answers ceased.
+  "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again. At that
+  moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to
+  peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long
+  shot, and I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate
+  him, and aimed at the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however,
+  was a few feathers. Like a grouse he flew across the opening and
+  was gone. We lingered there a while, hoping to see or hear more
+  of the flock, but did neither. Copple tried to teach me how to
+  tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a lesson I did not think
+  I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied their legs
+  together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of about
+  fifty pounds.</p>
+
+  <p>All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from
+  over the ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we
+  followed a rather meandering course, over ridge and down dale,
+  and through grassy parks and stately forests, and along the
+  slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets. Copple claimed to hear deer
+  running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps I dragged along
+  before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome the
+  sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one
+  deer that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods.
+  Takahashi hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That
+  fine! Nice fat ones!"</p>
+
+  <p>But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to
+  visit Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds.
+  Haught had not been able to secure more than two new hounds, and
+  these named Rock and Buck were still unknown quantities.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old
+  gladiator. He was a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age
+  and wrinkled and lame, and bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put
+  on trails, or at least to be made chase bear. He loved a
+  camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames. This fact, and the
+  way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared him to me.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet
+  resembled him enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too,
+  and had crinkly ears, and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom
+  was not quite so friendly as Dan; in fact he had more dignity.
+  Still neither hound was ever demonstrative except upon sight of
+  his master. Haught told me that if Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a
+  deer they would chase it till they dropped; accordingly he never
+  shot at anything except bear and lion when he had these hounds
+  with him.</p>
+
+  <p>Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite
+  of years of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her.
+  She was a slim, dark brown hound with fine and very long ears.
+  Rock, one of the new hounds from Kentucky, was white and black,
+  and had remarkably large, clear and beautiful eyes, almost human
+  in expression. I could not account for the fact that I suspected
+  Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the other hound from Kentucky, was
+  no longer young; he had a stump tail; his color was a little
+  yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head and
+  distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any
+  friends, for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had
+  enough to eat. He stayed away from the rest of the pack and
+  growled fiercely when a pup came near him. I tried to make
+  friends with him, but found that I would not have an easy
+  task.</p>
+
+  <p>Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
+  hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year,
+  either in body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp
+  just to hear himself and run any kind of a trail&mdash;how he
+  would be the first to quit and come back. And if any one fired a
+  gun near him he would run like a scared deer.</p>
+
+  <p>To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better.
+  Trailer and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could
+  do was to run and howl.</p>
+
+  <p>If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other
+  trail crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack
+  till' the bear got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp
+  with porcupine quills in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny
+  pups!</p>
+
+  <p>Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black
+  half-shepherd, small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent
+  face, with the brightest hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his
+  tail seemed most comical yet convincing. Bobby wagged only the
+  nether end and that most emphatically. He would stand up to me,
+  holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an appealing beggar he
+  was! Bobby's value to Haught was not inconsiderable. He was the
+  only dog Haught ever had that would herd the pigs. On a bear hunt
+  Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly disposition, and
+  yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of the pack.
+  He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like to
+  run him.</p>
+
+  <p>All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of
+  hounds; and the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad
+  cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock
+  country was infested. I had nothing against the acorn-eating
+  brown or black bears. And with this pack of hounds I doubted that
+  we could hold one of the vicious fighting species. But there was
+  now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We might kill a big
+  grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us perhaps
+  made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I had
+  not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.</p>
+
+  <p>Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the
+  leaves had scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed
+  weeks off. A storm and then a cold snap would help matters
+  wonderfully, and for these we hoped. Indeed the weather had not
+  settled; hardly a day had been free of clouds. But despite
+  conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every other day,
+  feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them and
+  ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it
+  arrived.</p>
+
+  <p>Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and
+  I went down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and
+  windy at intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy.
+  From above Horton Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with
+  scarcely any touch of autumn colors; from below, once in it, all
+  seemed a darker green, cool and damp. Water lay in all low
+  places. The creek roared bankfull of clear water.</p>
+
+  <p>The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth,
+  through thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long
+  slopes of manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were
+  not fruitful this year as they were last, only a few having
+  clusters of lavender-colored berries. The manzanita brush
+  appeared exceptionally beautiful with its vivid contrasts of
+  crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and smooth,
+  shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round
+  patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground,
+  with a long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows
+  fresh every spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow
+  blossoms. The honey from the flowers of mescal and mesquite is
+  the best to be obtained in this country of innumerable bees.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and
+  they worked on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon,
+  called See Canyon. After a while the country grew so rough that
+  fast riding was impossible; the thickets tore and clutched at us
+  until they finally stopped the horses. We got off. Edd climbed to
+  a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round," he called. "I'll walk. Take
+  my horse back." I decided to let George take my horse also, and I
+  hurried to catch up with Edd.</p>
+
+  <p>Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as
+  strenuous as keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We
+  climbed steep slopes and the farther we climbed the thicker grew
+  the brush. Often we would halt to listen for hounds, at which
+  welcome intervals I endeavored to catch my breath. We kept the
+  hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to renewed endeavors. At
+  length we got into a belt of live-oak and scrub-pine brush,
+  almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and here we had to
+  bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere. Small stones
+  and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears searching
+  for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the heads
+  of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass,
+  yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We
+  climbed and climbed, until my back began to give me trouble.
+  "Reckon we&mdash;bit off&mdash;a big hunk," remarked Edd once,
+  and I thought he referred to the endless steep and brushy slopes.
+  By and bye the hounds came back to us one by one, all footsore
+  and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our best prospect
+  then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the forest to
+  camp.</p>
+
+  <p>I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up
+  with Edd. His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles,
+  so that he might have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in
+  my boots and they caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I
+  had a burning sensation all over. My legs and arms ached; the
+  rifle weighed a ton; my feet seemed to take hold of the ground
+  and stick. We could not go straight up owing to the nature of
+  that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub forests. For hours
+  we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward. Only through
+  such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge of the
+  roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and
+  there, on a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a
+  bear. I saw the dust he raised, as he piled into the thicket
+  below the slide. What a wild clamor from the hounds! We got out
+  on the rocky slope where we could see and kept sharp eyes roving,
+  but the bear went straight down hill. Amazing indeed was it the
+  way the hounds drew away from us. In a few moments they were at
+  the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the course we had been
+  so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on the rim, so as
+  to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd distanced me
+  on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I could
+  scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet.
+  My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness
+  and disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition
+  returned to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very
+  day accomplished a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I
+  should have been happy. But I had not been used to a lame back.
+  When I reached the rim I fell there, and lay there a few moments,
+  until I could get up. Then I followed along after Edd whose yells
+  to the hounds I heard, and overtook him upon the point of a
+  promontory. Far below the hounds were baying. "They're chasin'
+  him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for low
+  country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack
+  are behind."</p>
+
+  <p>I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed
+  was the panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned,
+  rippling basin of timber and red rocks leading away to the
+  mountain ranges of the Four Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward
+  the yellowing sunset stood out long escarpments for miles, and
+  long sloping lines of black ridges, leading down to the basin
+  where there seemed to be a ripple of the earth, a vast upset
+  region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and dark.</p>
+
+  <p>I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a
+  matter I regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure
+  of a bee-line during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the
+  forest the sunset gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The
+  aspens took most of the color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned
+  pink, and low along the western horizon of the forest the light
+  seemed golden and blue.</p>
+
+  <p>I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just
+  at dark, I was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper,
+  a fact that occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain.
+  Undoubtedly this was the hardest day's work I had done since my
+  lion hunting with Buffalo Jones. It did not surprise me that next
+  day I had to forget my crosscut saw exercise.</p>
+
+  <p>Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame
+  and starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at
+  supper-time.</p>
+
+  <p>Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C.
+  and I went off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure.
+  This day was cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We
+  saw two bull elk, a cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably
+  agile for so heavy an animal. Neither of these, however, were of
+  such magnificent proportions as the one R.C. and I had stalked
+  the first day out. A few minutes later we scared out three more
+  cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for fun, and sighted
+  my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon where beaver
+  had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like teeth.
+  They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe.
+  Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we
+  could not find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey
+  Canyon, however, we found a place where beavers had dammed the
+  brook. Many aspens were fresh cut, one at least two feet thick,
+  and all the small branches had been cut off and dragged to the
+  water, where I could find no further trace of them. The grass was
+  matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed beaver
+  tracks.</p><a name="image-0059"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg053a_m.jpg" width="448" height="350" alt=
+    "Where Bear Cross the Ridge from One Canyon to Another ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0060"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg053b_m.jpg" width="448" height="337" alt=
+    "Climbing over the Tough Manzanita ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer,
+  turkey and bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns);
+  and if we could locate the mast we would find the game. He said
+  he had once seen a herd of several hundred deer migrating from
+  one section of country to another. Apparently this was to find
+  new feeding grounds.</p><a name="image-0061"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg054_m.jpg" width="748" height="448" alt=
+    "Bear in Sight Across Canyon ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>While we were resting under a spruce I espied a
+  white-breasted, blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a
+  pine tree. He walked head first down the bark, pecking here and
+  there. I saw a moth or a winged insect fly off the tree, and then
+  another. Then I saw several more fly away. The bird was feeding
+  on winged insects that lived in the bark. Some of them saw or
+  heard him coming and escaped, but many of them he caught. He went
+  about this death-dealing business with a brisk and cheerful
+  manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the
+  trees from bugs and worms and beetles.</p>
+
+  <p>Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a
+  large bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared
+  to be a species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black
+  colors, a round head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was
+  crippled, as it hopped and fluttered about in the grass. I got
+  down to catch it. Then I discovered it was only tame. I could
+  approach to within a foot of reaching it. Once it perched upon a
+  low snag, and peeped at me with little bright dark eyes, very
+  friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat there within a few
+  feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride. Crossing a
+  fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses. But
+  that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual,
+  empty handed as far as game was concerned.</p>
+
+  <p>I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black
+  and gray bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was
+  it then to see another such bird and that one right in camp. He
+  appeared to be as tame as the other. He flew and hopped around
+  camp in such a friendly manner that I placed a piece of meat in a
+  conspicuous place for him. Not long was he in finding it. He
+  alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a great rate. Doyle
+  claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the Lewis and
+  Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one I've
+  seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the
+  open this statement seemed rather remarkable.</p>
+
+  <p>We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six
+  degrees, and then another change indicative of unsettled weather.
+  It rained, and sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too
+  wet to hold the snow.</p>
+
+  <p>The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on
+  autumn colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of
+  white aspens, golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green
+  pines, maples a blaze of vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta,
+  rose&mdash;and slopes of dull red sumac. These were the beginning
+  of Indian summer days, the melancholy days, with their color and
+  silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.</p>
+
+  <p>Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back
+  to me dim mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One
+  afternoon Copple, R.C., and I went as far as the east side of
+  Gentry Canyon and worked down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey
+  sign. We tied our horses, and slipped back against the wind. R.C.
+  took one side of a ridge, with Copple and me on the other, and we
+  worked down toward where we had seen the sign. After half an hour
+  of slow, stealthy glide through the forest we sat down at the
+  edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon. The white
+  aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The wind
+  lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both
+  of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on
+  leaves. Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen
+  and tight, expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But
+  none came. Leaving our stand we slipped into the woods, careful
+  not to make the slightest sound. Such careful, slow steps were
+  certainly not accountable for the rapid beat of my heart.
+  Something gray moved among the green and yellow leaves. I halted,
+  and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I descried what
+  I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the slightest
+  sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it saw
+  us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray
+  hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long
+  ears, and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I
+  had ever beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too,
+  but with emotion. Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"</p>
+
+  <p>His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray
+  flash. Also it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I
+  exclaimed, quite loud. "Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't
+  have shot&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of
+  branches&mdash;then a big buck deer bounded onward into the
+  thicket. I got one snap shot at his fleeting blurred image and
+  missed him. We ran ahead, but to no avail.</p>
+
+  <p>"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin'
+  behind that brush."</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where
+  he jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started
+  after you shot."</p>
+
+  <p>A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the
+  buck had vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps,
+  and it amounted to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a
+  magnificent leap! It reminded me of the story of Hart-leap
+  Well.</p>
+
+  <p>As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had
+  heard the buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around
+  together for an hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide
+  detour, leaving me at a stand in the hope they might drive some
+  turkeys my way. I sat on a log until almost sunset. All the pine
+  tips turned gold and patches of gold brightened the ground. Jays
+  were squalling, gray squirrels were barking, red squirrels were
+  chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones were dropping,
+  leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I did not
+  miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs
+  of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here
+  early to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some
+  meat to camp."</p>
+
+  <p>But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next,
+  giving us spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine
+  deceptive in their promise. Camp, however, with our big
+  camp-fire, and little tent-stoves, and Takahashi, would have been
+  delightful in almost any weather. Takahashi was insulted, the
+  boys told me, because I said he was born to be a cook. It seemed
+  the Jap looked down upon this culinary job. "Cook&mdash;that
+  woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.</p>
+
+  <p>As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to
+  think more of the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly
+  and I grew to like him. The Orientals are mystics and hard to
+  understand. But any one could see that here was a Japanese who
+  was a real man. I never saw him idle. He resented being told what
+  to do, and after my first offense in this regard I never gave him
+  another order. He was a wonderful cook. It pleased his vanity to
+  see how good an appetite I always had. When I would hail him:
+  "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply: "Aw,
+  turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life
+  tasted anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served
+  us. Or he would say: "Pan-cakes&mdash;apple dumplings&mdash;rice
+  puddings." No one but the Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him
+  how he cooked rice over an open fire and he said: "I know how
+  hot&mdash;when done." Takahashi must have possessed an uncanny
+  knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean, efficient and
+  saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of
+  American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a
+  revelation. Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters.
+  Takahashi's ambition was to be a rancher in California. I learned
+  many things about him. In summer he went to the Imperial Valley
+  where he picked and packed cantaloupes. He could stand the
+  intense heat. He was an expert. He commanded the highest wage.
+  Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him was another art. He
+  had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to save his money.
+  He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he intended to
+  live in the United States.</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi had that best of traits&mdash;generosity. Whenever
+  he made pie or cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me
+  to have for my lunch next day. No use to try to break him of this
+  kindly habit! He was keen too, and held in particular disfavor
+  any one who picked out the best portions of turkey or meat. "No
+  like that," he would say; and I heartily agreed with him. Life in
+  the open brought out the little miserable traits of human nature,
+  of which no one was absolutely free.</p>
+
+  <p>I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of
+  firewood he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but
+  most of all I liked his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to
+  be a joy to me. We had some pop corn which we sometimes popped
+  over the camp-fire. He was fond of it and he said: "You eat all
+  time&mdash;much pop corn&mdash;just so long you keep mouth going
+  all same like horse&mdash;you happy." We were troubled a good
+  deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but
+  others were disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk,
+  according to westerners, very often had hydrophobia and would
+  bite a sleeper. I knew of several men dying of rabies from this
+  bite. Copple said he had been awakened twice at night by skunks
+  biting the noses of his companions in camp. Copple had to choke
+  the skunks off. One of these men died. We were really afraid of
+  them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he had been
+  forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now Takahashi
+  slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a skunk
+  awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk
+  all black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid.
+  He no run. He act funny&mdash;then just walk off."</p>
+
+  <p>After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One
+  morning he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take
+  picture for me send my wife Sadayo."</p>
+
+  <p>So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position,
+  as did all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph
+  him and his skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me,
+  and he lifted up the box-trap. A furry white and black cat
+  appeared, with remarkably bushy tail. What a beautiful little
+  animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same like cat," said
+  Takahashi. "Kittee&mdash;kittee." It appeared that kitty was not
+  in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable
+  Jap with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified
+  manner. Then she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and
+  Takahashi together. When she started off the Jap followed and
+  poked her with the pole. "Take 'nother picture." But kitty
+  suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a most surprising and
+  brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I yelled: "Run
+  George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful little
+  beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another
+  and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased
+  her out of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty
+  thing! She make awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I
+  kill her sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and
+  we reached it the following morning while the frost was still
+  white and sparkling. We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a
+  deer day. I'll show you a buck sure. Let's stick together an'
+  walk easy."</p>
+
+  <p>So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was
+  so light as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark
+  ravine, taking half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the
+  forest! When it was like this I always felt as if I had
+  discovered something new. The big trees loomed stately and calm,
+  stretching a rugged network of branches over us. Fortunately no
+  saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be abroad to warn
+  game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill, seemed to
+  come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn were
+  at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
+  burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us
+  strung to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the
+  wild. R.C., as might have been expected, halted us with a softly
+  whispered: "Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C.
+  heard, and presently we moved on as before. Presently again R.C.
+  made us pause, with a like result. Somehow the forest seemed
+  unusually wild. It provoked a tingling expectation. The
+  pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed ridge to our left,
+  the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to harbor
+  listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
+  we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge
+  ran down in points to where the junction of several ravines
+  formed the head of Gentry Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for
+  deer to graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and
+  white with frost and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no
+  game.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the
+  left. R.C. stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my
+  knees and opened my lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I
+  saw R.C. stiffen, then crouch a little. He leaned
+  forward&mdash;his eyes had the look of a falcon. Then I
+  distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
+  tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the
+  tail of my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I
+  looked&mdash;I strained my eyes&mdash;I flashed them along the
+  rim of the ravine where R.C. had been gazing. A gray form seemed
+  to move into the field of my vision. That instant it leaped, and
+  R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack. I seemed
+  stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
+  headlong and I heard a solid thump.</p>
+
+  <p>"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp.
+  "Look for another one."</p>
+
+  <p>No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the
+  gray form had plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It
+  was far enough to make me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a
+  fine three-point buck that had been shot square in the back of
+  the head between and below the roots of its antlers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid
+  hold of the deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket.
+  "Fine an' fat. Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the
+  horses an' the other help me hang him up."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught,
+  and we had parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading
+  to his camp, and I to linger a while longer up there in the
+  Indian-summer woods, so full of gold and silence and fragrance on
+  that October afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length
+  I came out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees.
+  Suddenly Don Carlos shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for
+  days and he appeared more than usually spirited. He saw or heard
+  something. I held him in, and after a moment I dismounted and
+  drew my rifle. A crashing in brush somewhere near at hand excited
+  me. Peering all around I tried to locate cause for the sound.
+  Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush accompanied by a
+  snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don Carlos
+  snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
+  the sound came from overhead.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze
+  arrested by a threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty
+  spruce. I saw a dark form moving against a background of blue
+  sky. Instantly I thought it must be a lynx and was about to raise
+  my rifle when a voice as from the very clouds utterly astounded
+  me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I dreaming? But violent
+  threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely assured me
+  that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
+  you&mdash;whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the
+  swaying top of that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi.
+  For a moment I could not find my voice. Then I shouted:</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came
+  near shooting you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw hullo!&mdash;I come down now," replied Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but
+  nothing except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The
+  spruce was fully one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I
+  made a great mistake the Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned
+  from ear to ear.</p>
+
+  <p>"I no see you&mdash;no hear," he said. "You take me for big
+  cat?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing
+  up there?"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go
+  out with little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out
+  no gun&mdash;see squirrel. I chase him up tree&mdash;I climb
+  high&mdash;awful high. No good. Squirrel he too quick. He run
+  right over me&mdash;get away."</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what
+  he considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was
+  laughing at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's
+  simplicity and capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they
+  were a wonderful people. Men are men because they do things. The
+  Persians were trained to sweat freely at least once every day of
+  their lives. It seemed to me that if a man did not sweat every
+  day, which was to say&mdash;labor hard&mdash;he very surely was
+  degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from George
+  Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
+  famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable
+  eyesight that he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting
+  above the highest limb of a tall white oak. And he was such a
+  splendid shot that he had often "barked" squirrels, as was a
+  noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to explain to Takahashi
+  that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet to hit the bark
+  right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so stun it
+  that it would fall as if dead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw my goodnish&mdash;your daddy more better shot than you!"
+  ejaculated Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash
+  the long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting
+  days&mdash;playing days of boyhood were the best of life. It
+  seemed to me that one of the few reasons I still had for clinging
+  to hunting was this keen, thrilling hark back to early days.
+  Books first&mdash;then guns&mdash;then fishing poles&mdash;so ran
+  the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.</p>
+
+  <p>That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on
+  the spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it
+  rained&mdash;first a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at
+  five-thirty a roar of hail on the tent. This music did not last
+  long. At seven o'clock the thermometer registered thirty-four
+  degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was somewhat cloudy
+  or foggy, with promise of clearing.</p>
+
+  <p>We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and
+  Nielsen went down with them, the rest of us waited above for
+  developments. Scarcely had they more than time enough to reach
+  the gorge below when the pack burst into full chorus. Haught led
+  the way then around the rough rim for better vantage points. I
+  was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten for me&mdash;a
+  fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a
+  cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and
+  powerful, though not over medium size. One splendid feature about
+  him was that a saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never
+  slipped. And another feature, infinitely the most attractive to
+  me, was his easy gait. His trot and lope were so comfortable and
+  swinging, like the motion of a rocking-chair, that I could ride
+  him all day with pleasure. But when it came to chasing after
+  hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me trouble. Too
+  eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose the
+  direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad
+  jumbles or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried
+  me under low branches and through dense thickets, and in general
+  showed he was exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but
+  ignorant of rough forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and
+  got out of hearing of both hounds and men, and eventually found
+  myself lost somewhere on the west side of See Canyon. To get out
+  I had to turn my back to the sun, travel west till I came to the
+  rim above Horton Thicket, and from there return to camp, arriving
+  rather late in the afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I
+  was rather surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high
+  state of dudgeon. Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning
+  Nielsen I learned that the hounds had at once struck a fresh bear
+  track in See Canyon. Nielsen and Edd had not followed far before
+  they heard a hound yelping in pain. They found Buck caught in a
+  bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a little bear cub,
+  caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it had
+  evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and
+  emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she
+  had been around trying to save it or minister to it. There were
+  trappers in See Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers
+  manifestly there was no love lost. Edd said they had as much
+  right to trap as we had to hunt, but that was not the question.
+  There had been opportunity to tell the Haughts about the big
+  number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they did not tell
+  it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a
+  pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky
+  brown coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had
+  suffered.</p>
+
+  <p>This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to
+  me. Bad enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat,
+  but at least this is a game where the deer have all the
+  advantage. Bad indeed it may be to chase bear with hounds, but
+  that is a hard, dangerous method of hunting which gives it some
+  semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts proved to me that I
+  ran more risks than the bears. To set traps, however, to hide big
+  iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and clutch wild
+  animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or gnawed
+  off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun
+  or club to end the miserable business&mdash;what indeed shall I
+  call that? Cruel&mdash;base&mdash;cowardly!</p>
+
+  <p>It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed
+  interests are at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes
+  was built upon the brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for
+  their furs. And in this fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten,
+  beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx, muskrat, mink, otter, were higher
+  by double than they had ever been. Trappers were going to reap a
+  rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a living; but is this
+  trapping business honest, is it manly? To my knowledge trappers
+  are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but the public
+  eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and seasons
+  furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter
+  winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay
+  there is no justification for censure. But the vast number of
+  furs go to deck the persons of vain women. I appreciate the
+  beautiful contrast of fair skin against a background of sable
+  fur, or silver fox, or rich, black, velvety seal. But beautiful
+  women would be just as beautiful, just as warmly clothed in wool
+  instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not long ago I met a
+  young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels, and I
+  remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She
+  said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared
+  to be refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was
+  a pity women did not know or care where furs came from. She
+  seemed surprised. Then I told her about the iron-jawed,
+  spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs or on the runways of
+  game&mdash;about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its food,
+  training its young to fare for themselves&mdash;about the sudden
+  terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the
+  instinctive fury, the violent struggle&mdash;about the foot
+  gnawed off by the beast that was too fierce to die a
+  captive&mdash;about the hours of agony, the horrible
+  thirst&mdash;the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All
+  because women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath
+  the beautiful coat of furs, and seemed insulted.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming
+  somewhere back along the trail hopping along on three legs. I
+  rode on down to my camp, and procuring a bottle of iodine I
+  walked back in the hope of doing Buck a good turn. During my
+  absence he had reached camp, and was lying under an aspen, apart
+  from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and more
+  distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a
+  trick played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him,
+  as he licked the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as
+  kindly as I knew how. And finally I sat down beside him. The
+  trap-teeth had caught his right front leg just above the first
+  joint, and from the position of the teeth marks and the way he
+  moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.
+  Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the
+  bone. When I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled
+  ominously. He would have bitten me. I patted his head with one
+  hand, and watching my chance, at length with the other I poured
+  iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept patting him and holding
+  his head until the iodine had become absorbed. Perhaps it was
+  only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his
+  distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of
+  something he did not understand. That look more than ever
+  determined me to try to find some way to his affections.</p>
+
+  <p>A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a
+  pack outfit, and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called
+  Dude Creek. "Reckon we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude,"
+  said Haught. "Never was in there but I jumped bars. Good deer an'
+  turkey country, too."</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing
+  shape with the intention of starting early the following morning.
+  But it rained on and off; and the day after that we could not
+  find Haught's burros, and not until the fourth morning could we
+  start. It turned out that Buck did not have a broken leg and had
+  recovered surprisingly from the injury he had received. Aloof as
+  he held himself it appeared certain he did not want to be left
+  behind.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before
+  we had encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the
+  road, but how strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my
+  mental condition on that memorable trip, that I did not remember
+  all. Usually forest or desert ground I have traveled over I never
+  forget. This ride, in the middle of October, when all the colors
+  of autumn vied with the sunlight to make the forest a region of
+  golden enchantment, was one of particular delight to me. I had
+  begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night I had
+  suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every
+  morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and
+  straighten out. Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got
+  warmed up from riding or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me
+  altogether and I forgot it. I had given myself heroic treatment,
+  but my reward was in sight. My theory that the outdoor life would
+  cure almost any ill of body or mind seemed to have earned another
+  proof added to the long list.</p>
+
+  <p>At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road,
+  and had arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the
+  rim, down into a canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were
+  to camp.</p><a name="image-0062"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg055a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Z.G.'s Cinnamon Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0063"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg055b_m.jpg" width="448" height="333" alt=
+    "R.C.'s Big Brown Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at
+  the section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to
+  recognize the point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild
+  bear! It was a wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared
+  to be at the extreme point of a vast ten-league promontory,
+  rising high over the basin, where the rim was cut into canyons as
+  thick as teeth of a saw. They were notched and v-shaped. Craggy
+  russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and gold-stained rocks, old
+  crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine thickets, ravines
+  and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush all
+  green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire&mdash;these indeed were the
+  heights and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and
+  beauty of Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak
+  thickets, where the bears lived, long gray slides of weathered
+  rocks, long slanting ridges of pine, descending for miles out and
+  down into the green basin, yet always seeming to stand high above
+  that rolling wilderness. The sun stood crossed by thin
+  clouds&mdash;a golden blaze in a golden sky&mdash;sinking to meet
+  a ragged horizon line of purple.</p><a name="image-0064">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg056_m.jpg" width="448" height="713" alt=
+    "Another Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the
+  earth, and with another and more striking effect of this vast
+  tilted rim of mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This
+  rim was a huge wall of splintered rock, a colossal cliff,
+  towering so high above the black basin below that ravines and
+  canyons resembled ripples or dimples, darker lines of shade. And
+  on the other side from its very edge, where the pine fringe
+  began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of canyons
+  opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start not
+  fifty feet from the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the
+  fingers of a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep,
+  narrow, forested by giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by
+  a murmuring brook, deep down among the many slopes, was our camp
+  ground, and never had I seen one more desirable. The wind soughed
+  in the lofty pine tops, but not a breeze reached down to this
+  sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high slopes our camp was
+  shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a canvas fly
+  over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left the
+  sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.</p>
+
+  <p>Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it
+  was black night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom,
+  and invested the great brown pines with some weird aspect. The
+  boys put up an old tent for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out
+  of this shelter by his canine rivals. I took pity upon him, and
+  tied him at the foot of my bed. When R.C. and I crawled into our
+  blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled between our beds, and
+  wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old dog, you keep the
+  skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of a queer
+  sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a
+  lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines
+  close to the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night
+  grew silent, except for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of
+  brook.</p>
+
+  <p>We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the
+  brook to the hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the
+  canyon after the horses, which had been hobbled and turned loose.
+  Lee had remained with his father at Beaver Dam camp. For
+  breakfast Takahashi had venison, biscuits, griddle cakes with
+  maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did not begin on an empty
+  stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung around me this
+  morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough to be
+  convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.
+  Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they
+  regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a
+  fight with Buck.</p>
+
+  <p>By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through
+  the still forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at
+  our noses. A mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that
+  led down to Dude Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with
+  the hounds. The rest of us rode out to a point there to await
+  developments. The sun had already flooded the basin with golden
+  light; the east slopes of canyon and rim were dark in shade. I
+  sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and looked, and cared
+  not for passage of time.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right
+  under us the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of
+  bellowing echoes. They worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to
+  promontories and along these we kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught
+  gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his horse. "Saw a bar," he
+  yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an open ridge. Come
+  on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest kind of rocky
+  ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim. "Ride
+  along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep
+  ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."</p>
+
+  <p>Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple,
+  R.C. and George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim.
+  The hounds could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells
+  of Nielsen and Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under
+  me, in the direction I was going. The baying of the pack, the
+  scent of pine, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of
+  wild, broken, vast country, the golden void beneath and the
+  purple-ranged horizon&mdash;all these brought vividly and
+  thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along the
+  north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past,
+  and for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who
+  had died recently. In his last letter to me, written with a
+  death-stricken hand, he had talked of another hunt, of more
+  adventure, of his cherished hope to possess an island in the
+  north Pacific, there to propagate wild animals&mdash;he had
+  dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I was riding
+  with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
+  gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was
+  ever wholly hopeless.</p>
+
+  <p>I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps
+  reached out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended
+  to the craggy points below, where I clambered here and there,
+  looking, listening. No longer could I locate the hounds; now the
+  baying sounded clear and sharp, close at hand, and then hollow
+  and faint, and far away. I crawled under gnarled cedars, over
+  jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until I got out to a point
+  where I had such command of slopes and capes, where the scene was
+  so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere below me to
+  my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of the
+  rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons
+  and promontories&mdash;a country so wild and broken that it
+  seemed impossible for hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above
+  me, to my right, stuck out a yellow point of rim, and beyond that
+  I knew there jutted out another point, and more and more points
+  on toward the west. George was yelling from one of them, and I
+  thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or Copple. I believed for
+  the present they were too far westward along the rim, and so I
+  devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my left. But
+  once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny black
+  object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
+  and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked
+  along so leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard
+  the hounds. I began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered
+  dust all over him. Not until I had two more shots, one of which
+  struck close, did he begin to run. Then he got out of my sight. I
+  yelled and yelled to those ahead of me along the rim. Somebody
+  answered, and next somebody began to shoot. How I climbed and
+  crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse! Stockings answered
+  to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran around the
+  rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
+  contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches.
+  When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had
+  done his shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers.
+  But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from
+  far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action.
+  Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I counted seven shots. How the
+  echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the
+  deep canyons!</p>
+
+  <p>I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of
+  R.C.'s boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and
+  at intervals I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well
+  have been alone on the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed
+  lost in immensity. Then I rode westward, then back eastward, and
+  to and fro until both Stockings and I were weary. At last I gave
+  up, and took a good, long rest under a pine on the rim. Not a
+  shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the squall of a jay
+  disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this lull in the
+  excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of a
+  flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below
+  me, so that I could study them through my field glass. They were
+  considerably larger than doves, dull purple color on the back,
+  light on the breast, with ringed or barred neck. Haught had
+  assured me that birds of this description were indeed the famous
+  wild pigeons, now almost extinct in the United States. I
+  remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks that darkened
+  the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.</p>
+
+  <p>Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as
+  beautiful as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was
+  the flying of clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.</p>
+
+  <p>The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled,
+  and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my
+  way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting
+  for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to
+  return. They asked for my story. Then I learned theirs. Haught
+  had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear
+  that had crossed the ridge early in the day. Copple had worked
+  far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to George and me,
+  had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any
+  bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a
+  brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon
+  Haught said: "Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other
+  bear."</p>
+
+  <p>One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay
+  down beside us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd
+  and Nielsen plodding up. At length they reached us wet and dusty
+  and thirsty. When Edd got his breath he said: "Right off we
+  struck a hot trail. Bear with eleven-inch track. He'd come down
+  to drink last night. Hounds worked up thet yeller oak thicket,
+  an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of his bed. He run
+  down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes an' hit up
+  lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around under
+  thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with
+  him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come
+  sneakin' back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we
+  climbed the east side high enough to see. An' we were workin'
+  down when the pack bayed the bear round thet bare point. It was
+  up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I climbed on a rock. There was
+  an open rock-slide where we thought the bear would show. It was
+  five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across an' got a stand
+  higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin' out of the
+  brush&mdash;a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He
+  was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet
+  bear began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up
+  like a ruffle on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three.
+  Reckon one of us stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his
+  last jump off the slide was a header into the brush. He crossed
+  the canyon, an' climbed thet high east slope of Dude, goin' over
+  the pass where father killed the big cinnamon three years ago.
+  The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an hour or more to
+  climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We heard the
+  hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I
+  worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek.
+  I kept callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't
+  catch him. He sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's
+  all.... Now who was smokin' shells up on the rim?"</p>
+
+  <p>When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can
+  just bet we put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet
+  old Jasper of a silvertip."</p>
+
+  <p>How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to
+  camp! The day had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and
+  sensorial perceptions. I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to
+  death!" And Takahashi, who had many times heard my little boy
+  Loren yell that, grinned all over his dusky face. "Aw, lots good
+  things pretty soon!"</p>
+
+  <p>After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling
+  camp-fire. The blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed
+  white and opal, the smoke swooped down and curled away into the
+  night shadows. Old Dan, as usual, tried to sit in the fire, and
+  had to be rescued. Buck came to me where I sat with my back to a
+  pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame to-night, having run all
+  day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay scattered around in
+  range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in such an
+  environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt
+  at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of
+  stories.</p>
+
+  <p>Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told
+  some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple
+  immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising
+  ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred
+  Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic
+  traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians. Speaking
+  of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the
+  subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.</p>
+
+  <p>One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in
+  proportion. His employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One
+  time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money
+  due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor
+  overboard. That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted,
+  because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor
+  without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money
+  matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor
+  without assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman
+  of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored.
+  She was not by any means a small or frail girl&mdash;rather the
+  contrary&mdash;but she appeared diminutive beside her giant
+  husband. One day he returned from a long absence on the sea. When
+  his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a
+  tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died. In his
+  grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her
+  long.</p>
+
+  <p>Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the
+  Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar
+  night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and
+  crew to return to Norway. Two men must be left in the Arctic to
+  care for the supplies until the ship came back. The captain
+  called for volunteers. There were two young men in the crew, and
+  from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than
+  brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One of these young men
+  said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the other
+  quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the
+  midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell
+  ill, and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room
+  with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the
+  long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to
+  this sepulchre that contained his dead friend. When the ship
+  returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair
+  as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about
+  Jones' Ranch. How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is
+  human life! Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the
+  eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore.
+  Who would not be a teller of tales?</p>
+
+  <p>Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat
+  of his own&mdash;a story of incredible strength and endurance,
+  which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable
+  narrative. But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see
+  that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration. The boys
+  thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that
+  he believed what he told.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the
+  evening happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long
+  chase after a bear and became separated. Bill was new at the
+  game, and he was a peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking
+  to himself! Haught finally rode to the edge of a ridge and espied
+  Bill under a pine in which the hounds had treed a bear. Bill did
+  not hear Haught's approach, and on the moment he was stalking
+  round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung to a branch
+  about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more full-grown
+  bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill had
+  not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill
+  was yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to
+  assassinate you. Chased me about a hundred miles&mdash;! An'
+  thought you'd fool me, didn't you? Why, I've treed more bears
+  than you ever saw&mdash;! You needn't look at me like thet,
+  'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you in a
+  minnit an' skin your black har off, I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about
+  the other two bears up in the top of the tree?"</p>
+
+  <p>Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly
+  astounded and tremendously elated to discover the other two
+  bears. He yelled and acted as one demented. "Three black Jaspers!
+  I've treed you all. An' I'm agoin' to assassinate you all!"</p>
+
+  <p>"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that
+  assassinatin' make up your mind not to cripple any of them.
+  You've got to shoot straight, so they'll be dead when they fall.
+  If they're only crippled, they'll kill the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor
+  marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with
+  bears in trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him
+  to dislodge the bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of
+  the tree&mdash;apparently unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked
+  them, and there arose a terrible uproar. Haught had to run down
+  to save his dogs. Bill was going to shoot right into the melee,
+  but Haught knocked the rifle up, and forbid him to use it. Then
+  Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat off the hounds.
+  Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally disposed of
+  two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific yells he
+  turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear tearing
+  the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also.
+  Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate
+  them." Bill slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled.
+  "By Golly, I'll skin 'em anyhow!"</p>
+
+  <p>Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to
+  Arizona from Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry
+  offered to wager this dog was the best bear chaser in the
+  country. The general impression Henry's hound gave was that he
+  would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught took his brother Henry
+  and some other men on a bear hunt. There were wagers made as to
+  the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last Haught's pack
+  struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast behind,
+  Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no
+  attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at
+  Henry as if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll
+  show them!" He loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying
+  this race with his master. After a while the chase grew hotter.
+  Then Henry's half-hound ran ahead a little way, and came back to
+  look up wisely, as if to say: "Not time yet!" After a while, when
+  the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's wonderful canine let out
+  a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack and took the lead in
+  the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear till he treed.
+  Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.</p>
+
+  <p>The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what
+  Haught called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between
+  brown and black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear
+  with unusually large teeth and very long claws. So different from
+  ordinary bears that it appeared another species. The blue bear
+  could run like a greyhound, and keep it up all day and all night.
+  Its power of endurance was incredible. In Haught's twenty years
+  of hunting there he had seen a number of blue bears and had
+  killed two. Haught chased one all day with young and fast hounds.
+  He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the chase. Next day
+  Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over into
+  Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again.
+  Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the
+  blue bear padding along as lively as ever.</p>
+
+  <p>I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a
+  hundred bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often
+  escaped by a breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not
+  the most interesting to me. Haught had lived a singularly
+  elemental life. He never knew what to tell me, because I did not
+  know what to ask for, so I just waited for stories, experiences,
+  woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come when they would.
+  Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under any
+  conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to
+  camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his
+  ears, look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been
+  just where Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!</p>
+
+  <p>When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up
+  over the rim he used to get down in the cedar country, close to
+  the desert. Here he heard of a pure black antelope that was the
+  leader of a herd of ordinary color, which was a grayish white.
+  The day came when Haught saw this black antelope. It was a very
+  large, beautiful stag, the most noble and wild and sagacious
+  animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to stalk it and
+  kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got even a
+  shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never
+  heard of again.</p>
+
+  <p>By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell,
+  and now began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I
+  envied his most remarkable imagination. His story had to do with
+  hunting meat for a mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a
+  rifle that he never aimed at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a
+  habit of gun-fighters! Once the camp was out of meat, and also he
+  was out of ammunition. Only one shell left! He came upon a herd
+  of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were small deer and he
+  wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around and waited
+  until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to make
+  sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks.
+  Killed the whole five in one shot!</p>
+
+  <p>We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and
+  completely at Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal
+  tales. He was hunting along the gulf shore on the coast of
+  Sonora, where big turtles come out to bask in the sun and big
+  jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One morning he saw a jaguar
+  jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck.
+  Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was safe under
+  its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate, but
+  to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of
+  the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out
+  its head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the
+  jaguar. First to give in was the cat. He let go and let out a
+  squall. But the turtle started to crawl off, got going strong,
+  and dragged the jaguar into the sea and drowned him. With naive
+  earnestness Copple assured his mute listeners that he could show
+  them the exact spot in Sonora where this happened.</p>
+
+  <p>Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his
+  immense loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really
+  was no greater dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us
+  want to see the mighty hunter have a fall.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself.
+  About sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We
+  all heard him shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his
+  revolver. Everybody said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys&mdash;maybe a
+  dozen, if Copple got two in line!" And we were all glad to think
+  so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did not return till dark.
+  He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a remarkable hard luck
+  story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys, and they were
+  rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and running
+  fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all.
+  Too dark&mdash;brush&mdash;trees&mdash;running like deer. Copple
+  had a dozen excuses. Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away.
+  He shot twice. The turkey was a knot, and he had missed even
+  that.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how
+  Copple had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!"
+  the day I had missed so many. Then I said:</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I
+  raised my voice high.</p>
+
+  <p>"Turkey number one&mdash;Nix!... Turkey number
+  two&mdash;missed, by Gosh!... Turkey number three&mdash;never
+  touched him!... Turkey number four&mdash;No!... Turkey number
+  five&mdash;<i>Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells</i>!... Turkey number
+  six on the log&mdash;BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"</p>
+
+  <p>We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter,
+  Haught, rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his
+  mirth.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with
+  gold I went down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our
+  horses. During the night our stock had been chased by a lion. We
+  had all been awakened by their snorting and stampeding. We found
+  our horses scattered, the burros gone, and Copple's mules still
+  squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple assured me that this
+  formation of his mules on guard was an infallible sign of lions
+  prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten years
+  and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the
+  woods.</p>
+
+  <p>We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty
+  feet long, and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks
+  showed in places, and on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in
+  the mud, were lion tracks as large as the crown of my hat. How
+  sight of them made me tingle all over! Here was absolute proof of
+  the prowling of one of the great cats.</p>
+
+  <p>Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular
+  looking tracks, the front feet being five-toed, and the back
+  three-toed, and webbed. Near the slides on the bank the water was
+  muddy, showing that the beaver had been at work early. These
+  animals worked mostly at night, but sometimes at sunset and
+  sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and wary. These dams had
+  just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut for food.
+  Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the water,
+  and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside
+  burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could
+  put up that lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged
+  it to be a big one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C.
+  preferred to keep after bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an
+  off day an' chase thet lion. Had a burro killed here a couple of
+  years ago."</p>
+
+  <p>So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's
+  Canyon lay to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it
+  that day. Edd and Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple
+  and I followed shortly afterward with the intention of descending
+  mid-way, and then working along the ridge crests and
+  promontories. The other boys remained on the rim to take up
+  various stands as occasion called for.</p>
+
+  <p>I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim.
+  They were grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that
+  made them so hard to travel. Right off, half way down, we started
+  a herd of bucks. The noise they made sounded like cattle. We
+  found tracks of half a dozen. "Lots of deer under the rim,"
+  declared Copple, his eyes gleaming. "They're feedin' on acorns.
+  Here's where you'll get your big buck." After that I kept a sharp
+  lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close at hand was worth
+  a lot of bears down in the brush.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along
+  the slopes toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had
+  to cross gravel patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and
+  at last, gaining the bench we went through the pine grove, out to
+  a manzanita thicket, to a rocky point where the ledges were
+  toppling and dangerous. The stand here afforded a magnificent
+  view. We were now down in the thick of this sloped and canyoned
+  and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof from it. The
+  dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to
+  listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black
+  notch below us. We watched and listened. And presently across
+  open patches we saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck
+  following them. Thus were my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed.
+  Copple yelled down to Edd that some of the hounds were running
+  deer, but apparently Edd was too far away to hear.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn,
+  calling in the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint
+  all of us above that he was going down around the point to drive
+  the next canyon. Copple and I had to choose between climbing back
+  to the rim or trying to cross the slopes and head the gorges, and
+  ascend the huge ridge that separated Pyle's Canyon from the next
+  canyon. I left the question to Copple, with the result that we
+  stayed below.</p>
+
+  <p>We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim
+  we felt so far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in
+  places and slippery in others, with deep cuts and patches of
+  manzanita. No stranger was I to this beautiful treacherous
+  Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike of it almost equal
+  to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty, dry, and had
+  begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were what
+  continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive&mdash;that
+  looked short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered
+  miles in our detours and we had to travel fast because we knew
+  Edd could round the base of the lower points in quick time.</p>
+
+  <p>Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an
+  enormous bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear
+  trail. This track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as
+  Haught says," declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard
+  the dogs an' got movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He
+  was walkin'."</p>
+
+  <p>I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling
+  the feel of my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse
+  the hunter in any man. We made sure how fresh this track was by
+  observing twigs and sprigs of manzanita just broken. The wood was
+  green, and wet with sap. Old Bruin had not escaped our eyes any
+  too soon. We followed this bear trail, evidently one used for
+  years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust a big, heavy, old
+  grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough country! This
+  fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail led
+  gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and
+  heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle,
+  and rose from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side,
+  rose to a bare, round point of gray rock, a landmark, a
+  dome-shaped tower where the gods of that wild region might have
+  kept their vigil.</p>
+
+  <p>Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where
+  it crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a
+  canyon so deep and wild that it was purple. This saddle was
+  really a remarkable place&mdash;a natural trail and outlet and
+  escape for bears traveling from one canyon to another. Our bear
+  tracks showed fresh, and we saw where they led down a steep,
+  long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a dense black
+  thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on each
+  side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for
+  a hunter to wait and watch.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind,
+  and often it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and
+  now like the hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of
+  a horn. By and bye Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not
+  be sure. Soon we indeed heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old
+  Dan, the course, sharp, ringing bay of Old Tom, and then, less
+  clear, the chorus from the other hounds. Edd had started them on
+  a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet. After a while we
+  heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We could see a
+  part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or more
+  of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place
+  could have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges,
+  benches, all matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and
+  caves and cracks showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze
+  points, and green slopes, and weathered slides.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and
+  beyond us, up the canyon to our right, a circumstance that
+  worried Copple. "Let's go farther up," he kept saying. But I was
+  loath to leave that splendid stand. The baying of the hounds
+  appeared to swing round closer under us; to ring, to swell, to
+  thicken until it was a continuous and melodious, wild, echoing
+  roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes back and
+  forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the
+  opposite slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and
+  laboriously climbing up the steep bluff. How like snails they
+  climbed! Theirs was indeed a task. A yell pealed out now and
+  then, and though it seemed to come from an entirely different
+  direction it surely must have come from the Haughts. Presently
+  some one high on the rim answered with like yells. The chase was
+  growing hotter.</p>
+
+  <p>"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly.
+  And I agreed with him.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the
+  rim.</p>
+
+  <p>"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple,
+  with animation.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now
+  look sharp!"</p>
+
+  <p>I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another
+  shot from above, farther off and from a different rifle,
+  augmented our stirring expectation.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down
+  under and along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to
+  keep up with him. We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard
+  the spang of Haught's.30 Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse
+  voice bawled out: "He's goin' to the left&mdash;to the left!"
+  That sent us right about face, to climbing, scrambling, running
+  and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle, where we
+  arrived breathless and eager.</p>
+
+  <p>Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top
+  of the bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon,
+  climbing a little. Copple yelled with all his might: "Where's the
+  bear?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bar everywhar!" pealed back Haught's stentorian voice. How
+  the echoes clapped!</p>
+
+  <p>Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout.
+  "<i>Wehow</i>! I see him.... What a whopper!" He threw up his
+  rifle:
+  <i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>
+  spang</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I
+  strained my eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. "Where? Where?" I
+  cried, wildly.</p>
+
+  <p>"There!" shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the
+  canyon. "He's goin' over the bench&mdash;above Edd.... Now he's
+  out of sight. Watch just over Edd. He'll cross that bench, go
+  round the head of the little canyon, an' come out on the other
+  side, under the bare bluff.... Watch sharp-right by that big
+  spruce with the dead top.... He's a grizzly an' as big as a
+  horse".</p>
+
+  <p>I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: "Ben, you saw
+  game first to-day". Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry
+  and grizzled, huge and round, moved out of the shadow under the
+  spruce and turned to go along the edge in the open sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh! look at him!" I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran
+  all over me and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear
+  I could see him through the circle of my peep sight, but when I
+  moved the bead of the front sight upon him it almost covered him
+  up. The distance was far&mdash;more than a thousand
+  yards&mdash;over half a mile&mdash;we calculated afterward. But I
+  tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape and fired
+  till my rifle was empty.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. "You watch while I shoot," he
+  said. "Tell me where I'm hittin'."</p>
+
+  <p>Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I
+  saw a puff of dust. "Low, Ben!" Spang rang his rifle. "High!"
+  Again he shot, wide this time. He emptied his magazine. "Smoke
+  him now!" he shouted, gleefully. "I'll watch while you
+  shoot."</p>
+
+  <p>"It's too far, Ben," I replied, as I jammed the last shell in
+  the receiver.</p>
+
+  <p>"No&mdash;no. It's only we don't hold right. Aim a little
+  coarse," said Copple. "Gee, ain't he some bear! 'No scared tall'
+  as the Jap says.... He's one of the old sheep-killers. He'll
+  weigh half a ton. Smoke him now!"</p>
+
+  <p>My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most
+  consumed with admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was
+  he afraid. He walked along the rough places, trotted along the
+  ledges, and here and there he halted to gaze below him. I waited
+  for one of these halts, aimed a trifle high, and fired. The
+  grizzly made a quick, angry movement and then jumped up on a
+  ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.</p>
+
+  <p>"You hit close that time," yelled Ben. "Hold the same
+  way&mdash;a little coarser."</p>
+
+  <p>My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my
+  third, hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge,
+  covered him with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and
+  down the step he had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of
+  brush. I shot into that. We heard my bullet crack the twigs. But
+  it routed him out, and then my last shot hit far under him.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the
+  Haughts: "Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He's just above
+  you&mdash;under that bluff."</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their
+  power, but they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more
+  shots, quick, yet deliberate, and he got through before I had
+  reloaded; and as I began my third magazine Copple was so swift in
+  reloading that his first shot mingled with my second. How we made
+  the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed down from the rim. Somewhere
+  from the purple depths below Nielsen's giant's voice rolled up.
+  The Haughts opposite answered with their deep, hoarse yells. Old
+  Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young hounds let
+  out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian cry,
+  high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot
+  and screech at one and the same time.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry, Ben," I said, as I finished my third set of five
+  shots, the last shot of which was my best and knocked dirt in the
+  face of the grizzly.</p>
+
+  <p>Again he reared. This time he appeared to locate our
+  direction. Above the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and
+  echoes I imagined I heard the grizzly roar. He was now getting
+  farther along the base of the bluff, and I saw that he would
+  escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My fingers were all
+  thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last chance had
+  fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his
+  magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking
+  the base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it
+  snap forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly
+  as he had reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The
+  old grizzly slowed up, and looked across, and wagged his huge
+  head.</p>
+
+  <p>"My gun's on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he
+  loaded still more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger.
+  The grizzly gave a spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he
+  made a prodigious leap off a ledge, down into a patch of brush,
+  where he threshed like a lassoed elephant.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, you hit him!" I yelled, excitedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Only made him mad. He's not hurt.... See, he's up again....
+  Will you look at that!"</p>
+
+  <p>The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge
+  furry ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an
+  open slide where he unrolled, and stretched into a run. Copple
+  got two more shots before he was out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gone!" ejaculated Copple. "An' we never fetched him!... He
+  ain't hurt. Did you see him pile down an' roll off that slope?...
+  Let's see. I got twenty-three shots at him. How many had
+  you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I had fifteen."</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, it was some fun, wasn't it&mdash;smokin' him along
+  there? But we ought to have fetched the old sheep-killer....
+  Wonder what's happened to the other fellows."</p>
+
+  <p>We looked about us. Not improbably the exciting moments had
+  been few in number, yet they seemed long indeed. The Haughts had
+  gotten to the top of the bluff, and were tearing through the
+  brush toward the point Copple had designated. They reached it too
+  late.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where is he?" yelled Edd.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gone!" boomed Copple. "Runnin' down the canyon. Call the dogs
+  an' go down after him."</p>
+
+  <p>When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of
+  the pups and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them. Old Dan and
+  old Tom were baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could
+  be heard yelping somewhere else. Bear trails seemingly were
+  abundant near our whereabouts. Presently the Haughts disappeared
+  at the back of the bench where the old grizzly had gone down, and
+  evidently they put the two hounds on his trail.</p>
+
+  <p>"That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this
+  ridge," declared Copple. "We want to be there."</p>
+
+  <p>So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side
+  of the ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down
+  along the slope. Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than
+  riding after Edd and George. When soon we reached a manzanita
+  thicket I could no longer keep Copple in sight. He was so
+  powerful that he just crashed through, but I had to worm my way,
+  and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a tight-rope
+  performer. Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was the
+  worst.</p>
+
+  <p>In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the
+  dome-topped end of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently
+  working back up the canyon. There was nothing for us to do but
+  return to our stand at the saddle. Copple hurried faster than
+  ever. But I had begun to tire and I could not keep up with him.
+  But as I had no wild cravings to meet that old grizzly face to
+  face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did manage by
+  desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight. When I reached our
+  stand I was wet and exhausted. After the hot, stifling, dusty
+  glare of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush,
+  the cool shade was a welcome change.</p>
+
+  <p>Somewhere all the hounds were baying. Not for some time could
+  we locate the Haughts. Finally with the aid of my glass we
+  discovered them perched high upon the bluff above where our
+  grizzly had gone round. It appeared that Edd was pointing across
+  the canyon and his father was manifesting a keen interest. We did
+  not need the glass then to tell that they saw a bear. Both
+  leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.
+  Then they stood like statues.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go down into the thicket," said Copple. "Maybe I can get
+  a shot. An' anyway I want to see our grizzly's tracks." With that
+  he started down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather
+  than walked, and soon was out of my sight. After that I heard him
+  crashing through thicket and brush. Soon this sound ceased. The
+  hounds, too, had quit baying and the wind had lulled. Not a
+  rustle of a leaf! All the hunters were likewise silent. I enjoyed
+  a lonely hour there watching and listening, not however without
+  apprehensions of a bear coming along. Certain I was that this
+  canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been full of
+  bears.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite
+  slope. The way he toiled along proved how rough was the going. I
+  watched him through my glasses, and was again impressed with the
+  strange difference between the semblance of distance and the
+  reality. Every few steps Copple would halt to rest. He had to
+  hold on to the brush and in the bare places where he could not
+  reach a bush he had to dig his heels into the earth to keep from
+  sliding down. In time he ascended to the place where our grizzly
+  had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the Haughts, high
+  above him. They answered, and soon disappeared on the far side of
+  the bluff. Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of
+  yellow rock. Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and
+  then a wild clamor of the hounds. Some of the pack had been put
+  on the trail of our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther
+  away.</p>
+
+  <p>This was too much for me. I decided to go down into the
+  canyon. Forthwith I started. It was easy to go down! As a matter
+  of fact it was hard not to slide down like a streak. That long,
+  dark, narrow aisle between the spruces had no charm for me
+  anyway. Suppose I should meet a bear coming up as I was sliding
+  down! I sheered off and left the trail, and also Copple's tracks.
+  This was a blunder. I came out into more open slope, but steeper,
+  and harder to cling on. Ledges cropped out, cliffs and ravines
+  obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to help me
+  much. Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran
+  down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful
+  ones. It was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces.
+  The lower down I got the smaller and more numerous the trees. I
+  could see where they left off to the dense thicket that choked
+  the lower part of the v-shaped canyon. And I was amazed at the
+  size and density of that jungle of scrub oaks, maples and aspens.
+  From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and gold and green,
+  with bronze tinge.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could
+  see the dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little
+  particles, the springing erect of bent grasses. In some places
+  big sections of earth, a yard wide had slipped under the feet of
+  this particular bear. He appeared to be working down. Right then
+  I wanted to go up! But I could not climb out there. I had to go
+  down. Soon I was under low-spreading, dense spruces, and I had to
+  hold on desperately to keep from sliding. All the time naturally
+  I kept a keen lookout for a bear. Every stone and tree trunk
+  resembled a bear. I decided if I met a grizzly that I would not
+  annoy him on that slope. I would say: "Nice bear, I won't hurt
+  you!" Still the situation had some kind of charm. But to claim I
+  was not frightened would not be strictly truthful. I slid over
+  the trail of that bear into the trail of another one, and under
+  the last big spruce on that part of the slope I found a hollow
+  nest of pine needles and leaves, and if that bed was not still
+  warm then my imagination lent considerable to the moment.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond this began the edge of the thicket. It was small pine
+  at first, so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as
+  dark as twilight. The ground was a slant of brown pine needles,
+  so slippery, that if I could not have held on to trees and
+  branches I never would have kept my feet. In this dark strip I
+  had more than apprehensions. What a comfortable place to
+  encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly bear! The manzanita
+  thicket was preferable. But as Providence would have it I did not
+  encounter one.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon I worked or wormed out of the pines into the thicket of
+  scrub oaks, maples and aspens. The change was welcome. Not only
+  did the slope lengthen out, but the light changed from gloom to
+  gold. There was half a foot of scarlet, gold, bronze, red and
+  purple leaves on the ground, and every step I made I kicked
+  acorns about to rustle and roll. Bear sign was everywhere, tracks
+  and trails and beds and scratches. I kept going down, and the
+  farther down I got the lighter it grew, and more approaching a
+  level. One glade was strangely luminous and beautiful with a
+  blending of gold and purple light made by the sun shining through
+  the leaves overhead down upon the carpet of leaves on the ground.
+  Then I came into a glade that reminded me of Kipling's moonlight
+  dance of the wild elephants. Here the leaves and fern were rolled
+  and matted flat, smooth as if done by a huge roller. Bears and
+  bears had lolled and slept and played there. A little below this
+  glade was a place, shady and cool, where a seep of water came
+  from under a bank. It looked like a herd of cattle had stamped
+  the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little ones no
+  longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot
+  long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This
+  little spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of
+  the bear pen in the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen
+  for sight of bear trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a
+  little too much. I thought it was too much because the place was
+  lonely and dark and absolutely silent. I went on down to the
+  gully that ran down the middle of the canyon. It was more open
+  here. The sun got through, and there were some big pines.</p>
+
+  <p>I could see the bluff that the Haughts had climbed so
+  laboriously, and now I understood why they had been so slow. It
+  was straight up, brush and jumbled rock, and two hundred feet
+  over my head. Somewhere above that bluff was the bluff where our
+  bear had run along.</p>
+
+  <p>I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to
+  deceive me, but I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed
+  unwise for me to go on down the canyon, for if I did not meet the
+  men I would find myself lost. As it was I would have my troubles
+  climbing out.</p>
+
+  <p>I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had
+  come down, hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and
+  not so vastly inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse!
+  It was thicker, darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if
+  possible, actually more bear sign. I had to pull myself up by
+  holding to the trees and branches. I had to rest every few steps.
+  I had to watch and listen all the time. Half-way up the trunks of
+  the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent down-hill. They
+  curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood upright.
+  And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely
+  almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course
+  caused by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more
+  interesting if I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter
+  and wetter than I had been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with
+  the labor and worry and exhaustion, my apprehensions had
+  increased. They increased until I had to confess that I was
+  scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the leaves somewhere
+  below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a bear. I
+  would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear
+  coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score,
+  so had Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had
+  Haught. "Don't never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if
+  you do he'll just roll up an' pile down on you!"</p>
+
+  <p>I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to
+  burst. Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding
+  down I got desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would
+  happen along to make an end to my misery.</p>
+
+  <p>It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which
+  constituted the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past
+  three when finally I reached the saddle where we had shot at the
+  grizzly. I rested as long as I dared. I had still a long way to
+  go up that ridge to the rim, and how did I know whether or not I
+  could surmount it.</p>
+
+  <p>However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit.
+  Then I started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the
+  open, high above the canyons, and the vast basin still farther
+  below, yet far indeed under the pine-fringed rim above. This
+  climb was all over stone. The ridge was narrow-crested, yellow,
+  splintered rock, with a few dwarf pines and spruces and an
+  occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a sound that I did
+  not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and the other
+  hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an hour
+  I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of
+  course that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat
+  down on a high backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and
+  bulge of ridge above me. Using my glasses I made sure that I
+  could climb out. It would be a task equal to those of
+  lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to realize
+  that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the
+  task.</p>
+
+  <p>Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the
+  hour. This was one of my especial joys of the open&mdash;to be
+  alone high on some promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery.
+  The sun was still an hour from setting, and it had begun to
+  soften, to grow intense, and more golden. There were clouds and
+  lights that promised a magnificent sunset.</p>
+
+  <p>So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone
+  loose and watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down,
+  to make the dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually
+  start an avalanche that would roar down into the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black
+  ridges and canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great
+  mountain ranges enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed
+  promontories of the rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood
+  out over the void. The colors of autumn gleamed under the cliffs,
+  everywhere patches of gold and long slants of green and spots of
+  scarlet and clefts of purple.</p>
+
+  <p>The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had
+  to step up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body.
+  My rifle grew to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of
+  lead around my waist. If I had been hot and wet below in the
+  thicket I wondered what I grew on the last steps of this ridge.
+  Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen pleasure. I did not
+  analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be there.</p>
+
+  <p>The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable,
+  all grown over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by
+  hauling myself up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges
+  of rock there, and holding to the brush, at last, panting and
+  spent, I reached the top.</p>
+
+  <p>I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
+  unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep
+  and ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side
+  of the ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around.
+  There was George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own
+  horse Stockings.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and
+  scarlet thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will
+  seem, that the first object I clearly distinguished was a big
+  black bear standing in an open aisle at the upper reach of the
+  thicket close to the cliff. He shone black as shiny coal. He was
+  looking down into the thicket, as if listening to the baying
+  hound.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling
+  excitement, and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the
+  instant I saw his shining fur through the circle of my rear sight
+  he heard me and jumped, and my bullet missed him. Like a black
+  flash he was gone around a corner of gray ledge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long
+  day&mdash;to get a chance like that&mdash;and miss!"</p>
+
+  <p>All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of
+  which I could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a
+  glorious golden ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an
+  intense belt of color&mdash;Coleridge's yellow
+  lightning&mdash;and it extended to a bank of cloud that seemed
+  transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of purest
+  blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
+  exquisitely flecked with gold.</p>
+
+  <p>Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
+  transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the
+  rim, back to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied
+  before I located the spot. I just about had strength enough left
+  to straddle him. And presently through the twilight shadows I
+  caught a bright glimmer of our camp-fire. Supper was ready;
+  Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the men were waiting for
+  me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As I sat to a
+  bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions
+  seemed absolutely satisfying.</p>
+
+  <p>George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard
+  and seen a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he
+  had overshot and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking
+  a slide some four hundred yards down the canyon slope, and
+  forgetting that he had a heavy close-range shell in his rifle
+  instead of one of high trajectory, he had aimed accordingly, to
+  undershoot half a foot and thus lose his opportunity. Nielsen had
+  been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere he heard yells
+  and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud
+  rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd
+  told of the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they
+  had shot at the grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear
+  had rolled around in his bed across the canyon. But the hounds
+  got too tired to hold the trails late in the day. And lastly Edd
+  said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the grizzly I could hear the
+  bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure scared stiff for fear
+  you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't scared. He said,
+  'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"</p>
+
+  <p>When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's
+  adventures my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was
+  wanting on the moment except that my boy Romer was not there to
+  hear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint
+  satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from
+  brush, surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we
+  seen five bars. Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some
+  of them big fellars, too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of
+  this canyon. When Old Dan opened up first off I wanted Edd to
+  climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin' an' we lost our chance. Fer
+  pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush. My, but thet bar was
+  rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild steer, an' he
+  ran past us close&mdash;not a hundred yards. I never heard a
+  heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an'
+  thet bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the
+  grizzly thet you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but
+  Edd an' I lammed a couple after him jest for luck. One of the
+  pups was nippin' his heels. Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet
+  was all of thet. We plumb busted ourselves gettin' on top of the
+  bench to head off your bar. Only we hadn't time. Then we worried
+  along around to the top of thet higher bluff an' there I was so
+  played-out I thought my day had come. We kept our eyes peeled,
+  an' pretty soon I spied a big brown bar actin' queer in an open
+  spot across the canyon. Edd seen him too, an' we argued about
+  what thet bar was doin'. He lay in a small open place at the foot
+  of a spruce. He wagged his head slow an' he made as if to roll
+  over, an' he stretched his paws, an' acted shore queer. Edd said:
+  'Thet bar's crippled. He's been shot by one of the boys, an' he's
+  tryin' to get up.' But I shore didn't exactly agree with Edd. So
+  I was for watchin' him some more. He looked like a sick
+  bar&mdash;raisin' his head so slow an' droppin' it so slow an'
+  sort of twistin' his body. He looked like his back had been broke
+  an' he was tryin' to get up, but somehow I couldn't believe thet.
+  Then he lay still an' Edd swore he was dead. Shore I got almost
+  to believin' thet myself, when he waked up. An' then the old
+  scoundrel slid around lazy like a torn cat by the fire, and sort
+  of rolled on his back an' stretched. Next he slapped at himself
+  with his paws. If he wasn't sick he was shore actin' queer with
+  thet canyon full of crackin' guns an' bayin' hounds an' yellin'
+  men. I begun to get suspicious. Shore he must be a dyin' bear. So
+  I said to Edd: 'Let's bast him a couple just fer luck.' Wal, when
+  we shot up jumped thet sick bar quicker'n you could wink. An' he
+  piled into the thicket while I was goin' down after another
+  shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper never heard the
+  racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed in thet
+  sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like a
+  kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore
+  near bein' fooled. The old Jasper! We'll assassinate him fer
+  thet!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Five more long arduous days we put in chasing bears under the
+  rim from Pyle's Canyon to Verde Canyon. In all we started over a
+  dozen bears. But I was inclined to think that we chased the same
+  bears over and over from one canyon to another. The boys got a
+  good many long-range shots, which, however, apparently did no
+  damage. But as for me, the harder and farther I tramped and the
+  longer I watched and waited the less opportunity had I to shoot a
+  bear.</p>
+
+  <p>This circumstance weighed heavily upon the spirits of my
+  comrades. They wore their boots out, as well as the feet of the
+  hounds, trying to chase a bear somewhere near me. And wherever I
+  stayed or went there was the place the bears avoided. Edd and
+  Neilsen lost flesh in this daily toil. Haught had gloomy moments.
+  But as for me the daily ten-or fifteen-mile grind up and down the
+  steep craggy slopes had at last trained me back to my former
+  vigorous condition, and I was happy. No one knew it, not even
+  R.C., but the fact was I really did not care in the least whether
+  I shot a bear or not. Bears were incidental to my hunting trip. I
+  had not a little secret glee over the praise accorded me by
+  Copple and Haught and Nielsen, who all thought that the way I
+  persevered was remarkable. They would have broken their necks to
+  get me a bear. At times R.C. when he was tired fell victim to
+  discouragement and he would make some caustic remark: "I don't
+  know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle because
+  it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise
+  up and swipe you one!"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi passed from concern to grief over what he considered
+  my bad luck: "My goodnish! No see bear to-day?... Maybe more
+  better luck to-morrow." If I could have had some of Takahashi's
+  luck I would scarcely have needed to leave camp. He borrowed
+  Nielsen's 30-40 rifle and went hunting without ever having shot
+  it. He rode the little buckskin mustang, that, remarkable to
+  state, had not yet thrown him or kicked him. And on that occasion
+  he led the mustang back to camp with a fine two-point buck on the
+  saddle. "Camp need fresh meat," said the Jap, with his broad
+  smile. "I go hunt. Ride along old road. Soon nice fat deer walk
+  out from bush. Twenty steps away&mdash;maybe. I get off. I no
+  want kill deer so close, so I walk on him. Deer he no scared. He
+  jump off few steps&mdash;stick up his ears&mdash;look at horse
+  all same like he thought him deer too. I no aim gun from
+  shoulder. I just shoot. No good. Deer he run. I aim
+  then&mdash;way front of him&mdash;shoot&mdash;deer he drop right
+  down dead.... Aw, easy to get deer!"</p>
+
+  <p>I would have given a great deal to have been able to describe
+  Haught's face when the Jap finished his story of killing that
+  deer. But such feat was beyond human ingenuity. "Wal," ejaculated
+  the hunter, "in all my days raslin' round with fools packin' guns
+  I never seen the likes of thet. No wonder the Japs licked the
+  Russians!" This achievement of Takahashi's led me to suggest his
+  hunting bear with us. "Aw sure&mdash;I kill bear too," he said.
+  Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never made detours.
+  He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple and Edd
+  were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a
+  wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man
+  made, carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed
+  as a goat, perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I
+  took occasion to ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain
+  climbing in Japan. "Aw sure. I have father own whole mountain
+  more bigger here. I climb high&mdash;saw wood. Leetle boy so
+  big." And he held his hand about a foot from the ground. Thus for
+  me every day brought out some further interesting or humorous or
+  remarkable feature pertaining to Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day added to the discouragement of my party. We drove
+  Verde Canyon and ran the dogs into a nest of steel-traps. Big
+  Foot was caught in one, and only the remarkable size and strength
+  of his leg saved it from being broken. Nielsen found a poor,
+  miserable, little fox in a trap, where it had been for days, and
+  was nearly dead. Edd found a dead skunk in another. He had to
+  call the hounds in. We returned to camp. That night was really
+  the only cheerless one the men spent around the fire. They did
+  not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a locality there
+  could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched upon the
+  countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. I let them
+  all have their say. Finally Haught spoke up: "Wal, fellars, I'm
+  figgerin' hard an' I reckon here's my stand. We jest naturally
+  have to get Doc an' his brother a bear apiece. Shore I expected
+  we'd get 'em a couple. Now, them traps we seen are all small. We
+  didn't run across no bear traps. An' I reckon we can risk the
+  dogs. We'll shore go back an' drive Verde Canyon. We can't do no
+  worse than break a leg for a dog. I'd hate to see thet happen to
+  Old Dan or Tom. But we'll take a chance."</p>
+
+  <p>After that there fell a moment's silence. I could see from
+  Edd's face what a serious predicament this was. Nothing was
+  plainer than his fondness for the hounds. Finally he said: "Sure.
+  We'll take a chance." Their devotion to my interest, their simple
+  earnestness, warmed me to them. But not for all the bears under
+  the rim would I have been wittingly to blame for Old Dan or Old
+  Tom breaking a leg.</p>
+
+  <p>"Men, I've got a better plan," I said. "We'll let the bears
+  here rest for a spell. Supplies are about gone. Let's go back to
+  Beaver Dam camp for a week or so. Rest up the hounds. Maybe we'll
+  have a storm and a cold snap that will improve conditions. Then
+  we'll come back here. I'll send Haught down to buy off the
+  trappers. I'll pay them to spring their traps and let us have our
+  hunt without risk of the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Instantly the men brightened. The insurmountable obstacles
+  seemed to melt away. Only Haught demurred a little at additional
+  and unreasonable expense for me. But I cheered him over this
+  hindrance, and the last part of that evening round the camp-fire
+  was very pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>The following morning we broke camp, and all rode off, except
+  Haught and his son George, who remained to hunt a strayed burro.
+  "Reckon thet lion eat him. My best burro. He was the one your boy
+  was always playin' with. I'm goin' to assassinate thet lion."</p>
+
+  <p>On the way back to Beaver Dam camp I happened to be near
+  Takahashi when he dismounted to shoot at a squirrel. Returning to
+  get back in the saddle the Jap forgot to approach the mustang
+  from the proper side. There was a scuffle between Takahashi and
+  the mustang as to which of them should possess the bridle. The
+  Jap lost this argument. Edd had to repair the broken bridle. I
+  watched Takahashi and could see that he did not like the mustang
+  any better than the mustang liked him. Soon the struggle for
+  supremacy would take place between this ill assorted rider and
+  horse. I rather felt inclined to favor the latter; nevertheless
+  it was only fair to Takahashi to admit that his buckskin-colored
+  mustang had some mean traits.</p>
+
+  <p>In due time I arrived at our permanent camp, to be the last to
+  get in. Lee and his father welcomed us as familiar faces in a
+  strange land. As I dismounted I heard heavy thuds and cracks
+  accompanied by fierce utterances in a foreign tongue. These
+  sounds issued from the corral.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll bet the Jap got what was coming to him," declared
+  Lee.</p>
+
+  <p>We all ran toward the corral. A bunch of horses obstructed our
+  view, and we could not see Takahashi until we ran round to the
+  other side. The Jap had the buckskin mustang up in a corner and
+  was vigorously whacking him with a huge pole. Not by any means
+  was the mustang docile. Like a mule, he kicked. "Hey George,"
+  yelled Lee, "don't kill him! What's the matter?"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi slammed the mustang one parting blow, which broke
+  the club, and then he turned to us. We could see from dust and
+  dirt on his person that he had lately been in close relation to
+  the earth. Takahashi's face was pale except for a great red lump
+  on his jaw. The Jap was terribly angry. He seemed hurt, too. With
+  a shaking hand he pointed to the bruise on his jaw.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look what he do!" exclaimed Takahashi. "He throw me off!...
+  He kick me awful hard! I kill him sure next time."</p>
+
+  <p>Lee and I managed to conceal our mirth until our irate cook
+  had gotten out of hearing. "Look&mdash;what&mdash;he&mdash;do!"
+  choked Lee, imitating Takahashi. Then Lee broke out and roared. I
+  had to join him. I laughed till I cried. My family and friends
+  severely criticise this primitive trait of mine, but I can not
+  help it. Later I went to Takahashi and asked to examine his jaw,
+  fearing it might have been broken. This fear of mine, however,
+  was unfounded. Moreover the Jap had recovered from his pain and
+  anger. "More better now," he said, with a grin. "Maybe my fault
+  anyhow."</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rested, and the following morning was so fine and
+  clear and frosty that we decided to go hunting. We rode east on
+  the way to See Lake through beautiful deep forest.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a deer trotting away into the woods. I jumped off,
+  jerked out my gun, and ran hard, hoping to see him in an opening.
+  Lo! I jumped a herd of six more deer, some of them bucks. They
+  plunged everywhere. I tried frantically to get my sights on one.
+  All I could aim at was bobbing ears. I shot twice, and of course
+  missed. R.C. shot four times, once at a running buck, and three
+  at a small deer that he said was flying!</p>
+
+  <p>Here Copple and Haught caught up with us. We went on, and
+  turned off the road on the blazed trail to See Lake. It was
+  pretty open forest, oaks and scattered pines, and a few spruce.
+  The first park we came to was a flat grassy open, with places
+  where deer licked the bare earth. Copple left several pounds of
+  salt in these spots. R.C. and I went up to the upper end where he
+  had seen deer before. No deer this day! But saw three turkeys,
+  one an old gobbler. We lost sight of them.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Copple and R.C. went one way and Haught and I another. We
+  went clear to the rim, and then circled around, and eventually
+  met R.C. and Copple. Together we started to return. Going down a
+  little draw we found water, and R.C. saw where a rock had been
+  splashed with water and was still wet. Then I saw a turkey track
+  upon this rock. We slipped up the slope, with me in the lead. As
+  I came out on top, I saw five big gobblers feeding. Strange how
+  these game birds thrilled me! One saw me and started to run. Like
+  a streak! Another edged away into pines. Then I espied one with
+  his head and neck behind a tree and he was scratching away in the
+  pine needles. I could not see much of him, but that little was
+  not running, so I drew down upon him, tried to aim fine, and
+  fired. He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and
+  needles flying. Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted
+  into a thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an
+  ostrich in the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him.
+  In vain!</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught
+  and I went the other way. We could find no trace of ours. And we
+  returned to our horses.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently we heard shots.
+  One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;pause&mdash;then several more.
+  And finally more, to a total number of fifteen. I could not stand
+  that and I had to hurry back into the woods. I saw one old
+  gobbler running wildly around as if lost, but I did not shoot at
+  him because he seemed to be in line with the direction which R.C.
+  and Copple had taken. I should have run after him until he went
+  some other way.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not find the hunters, and returned to our resting
+  place, which they had reached ahead of me. They had a turkey
+  each, gobblers about two years old Copple said.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. told an interesting story of how he had run in the
+  direction the two turkeys had taken, and suddenly flushed thirty
+  or forty more, some big old gobblers, but mostly young. They
+  scattered and ran. He followed as fast as he could, shooting a
+  few times. Copple could not keep up with him, but evidently had a
+  few shots himself. R.C. chased most of the flock across several
+  small canyons, till he came to a deep canyon. Here he hoped to
+  make a killing when the turkeys ran up the far slope. But they
+  flew across! And he heard them clucking over there. He crossed,
+  and went on cautiously. Once he saw three turkey heads sticking
+  above a log. Wise old gobblers! They protected their bodies while
+  they watched for him. He tried to get sidewise to them but they
+  ran off. Then he followed until once more he heard clucking.</p>
+
+  <p>Here he sat down, just beyond the edge of a canyon, and began
+  to call with his turkey wing. It thrilled him to hear his calls
+  answered on all sides. Here was a wonderful opportunity. He
+  realized that the turkeys were mostly young and scattered, and
+  frightened, and wanted to come together. He kept calling, and as
+  they neared him on all sides he felt something more than the zest
+  of hunting. Suddenly Copple began to shoot. Spang! Spang! Spang!
+  R.C. saw the dust fly under one turkey. He heard the bullet
+  glance. The next shot killed a turkey. Then R.C. yelled that he
+  was no turkey! Then of that scattering flock he managed to knock
+  over one for himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple had been deceived by the call of an amateur. That
+  flattered R.C., but he was keenly disappointed that Copple had
+  spoiled the situation.</p>
+
+  <p>During the day the blue sky was covered by thin flying clouds
+  that gradually thickened and darkened. The wind grew keener and
+  colder, and veered to the southwest. We all said storm. There was
+  no sunset Darker clouds rolled up, obliterating the few
+  stars.</p>
+
+  <p>We went to bed. Long after that I heard the swell and roar and
+  crash and lull of the wind in the pines, a sound I had learned to
+  love in Buckskin Forest with Buffalo Jones. At last I fell
+  asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Sometime in the night I awoke. A fine rain was pattering on
+  the tent. It grew stronger. After a while I went to sleep again.
+  Upon awakening I found that the storm had struck with a
+  vengeance. It was dull gray daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with
+  rain and snow.</p>
+
+  <p>I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen
+  the ground ropes, and found that it was nipping cold. My fingers
+  ached. The storm increased, and then we fully appreciated the
+  tent with stove. The rain roared on the tent roof, and all
+  morning the wind increased, and the air grew colder. I hoped it
+  would turn to snow.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon indeed we were storm bound. On the third day the wind
+  reached a very high velocity. The roar in the pines was
+  stupendous. Many times I heard the dull crash of a falling tree.
+  With the ground saturated by the copious rain, and the fury of
+  the storm blast, a great many trees were felled. That night it
+  rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now low, now
+  vigorously. After morning snow began to fall. But it did not lay
+  long. After a while it changed to sleet. At times the dark,
+  lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and
+  to show a patch of blue. These last however were soon obscured by
+  the scudding gray pall. Every now and then a little shower of
+  rain or sleet pattered on the tents. We looked for a clearing
+  up.</p>
+
+  <p>That night about eight o'clock the clouds vanished and stars
+  shone. In the night the wind rose and roared. In the morning all
+  was dark, cloudy, raw, cold. But the wind had died out, and there
+  were spots of blue showing. These spots enlarged as the morning
+  advanced, and about nine the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified
+  the forest. "Bright sunny days will soon come again!"</p>
+
+  <p>It was good to have hope and belief in that.</p>
+
+  <p>All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good
+  shape. Don lost considerable weight. He had never before been
+  left with hobbled feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm
+  of rain, sleet and snow. He had cut himself upon brush, and
+  altogether had fared poorly. He showed plainly that he had been
+  neglected. Don was the only horse I had ever known of that did
+  not welcome the wilderness and companionship with his kind.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and
+  started back to Dude Creek. It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with
+  a gale from the north, such a day as I could never have endured
+  had I not become hardened. As it was I almost enjoyed wind and
+  cold. What a transformation in the woods! The little lakes were
+  all frozen over; pines, moss, grass were white with frost. The
+  sear days had come. Not a leaf showed in the aspen and maple
+  thickets. The scrub oaks were shaggy and ragged, gray as the
+  rocks. From the rim the slopes looked steely and dark, thinned
+  out, showing the rocks and slides.</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached our old camp in Barber Shop Canyon we were all
+  glad to see Haught's lost burro waiting for us there. Not a
+  scratch showed on the shaggy lop-eared little beast. Haught for
+  once unhobbled a burro and set it free without a parting kick.
+  Nielsen too had observed this omission on Haught's part. Nielsen
+  was a desert man and he knew burros. He said prospectors were
+  inclined to show affection for burros by sundry cuffs and kicks.
+  And Nielsen told me a story about Haught. It seemed the bear
+  hunter was noted for that habit of kicking burros. Sometimes he
+  was in fun and sometimes, when burros were obstinate, he was in
+  earnest. Upon one occasion a big burro stayed away from camp
+  quite a long time&mdash;long enough to incur Haught's
+  displeasure. He needed the burro and could not find it, and all
+  he could do was to hunt for it. Upon returning to camp there
+  stood the big gray burro, lazy and fat, just as if he had been
+  perfectly well behaved. Haught put a halter on the burro, using
+  strong language the while, and then he proceeded to exercise his
+  habit of kicking burros. He kicked this one until its fat belly
+  gave forth sounds exceedingly like a bass drum. When Haught had
+  ended his exercise he tied up the burro. Presently a man came
+  running into Haught's camp. He appeared alarmed. He was wet and
+  panting. Haught recognized him as a miner from a mine nearby.
+  "Hey Haught," panted the miner, "hev you seen&mdash;your gray
+  burro&mdash;thet big one&mdash;with white face?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, there he is," replied Haught. "Son of a gun jest
+  rustled home."</p>
+
+  <p>The miner appeared immensely relieved. He looked and looked at
+  the gray burro as if to make sure it was there, in the solid
+  flesh, a really tangible object. Then he said: "We was all
+  afeared you'd kick the stuffin's out of him!... Not an hour ago
+  he was over at the mine, an' he ate five sticks of dynamite! Five
+  sticks! For Lord's sake handle him gently!"</p>
+
+  <p>Haught turned pale and suddenly sat down. "Ahuh!" was all he
+  said. But he had a strange hunted look. And not for a long time
+  did he ever again kick a burro!</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Hunting conditions at Dude Creek had changed greatly to our
+  benefit. The trappers had pulled up stakes and gone to some other
+  section of the country. There was not a hunting party within
+  fifteen miles of our camp. Leaves and acorns were all down;
+  trails were soft and easy to travel; no dust rose on the southern
+  slopes; the days were cold and bright; in every pocket and ravine
+  there was water for the dogs; from any stand we could see into
+  the shaggy thickets where before all we could see was a blaze of
+  color.</p>
+
+  <p>In three days we drove Pyle's Canyon, Dude Creek, and the
+  small adjoining canyons, chasing in all nine bears, none of which
+  ran anywhere near R.C. or me. Old Dan gave out and had to rest
+  every other day. So the gloom again began to settle thick over
+  the hopes of my faithful friends. Long since, as in 1918, I had
+  given up expectations of bagging a bear or a buck. For R.C.,
+  however, my hopes still held good. At least I did not give up for
+  him. But he shared somewhat the feelings of the men. Still he
+  worked harder than ever, abandoning the idea of waiting on one of
+  the high stands, and took to the slopes under the rim where he
+  toiled down and up all day long. It pleased me to learn,
+  presently, that this activity, strenuous as it was, became a
+  source of delight to him. How different such toil was from
+  waiting and watching on the rim!</p>
+
+  <p>On November first, a bitter cold morning, with ice in the
+  bright air, we went back to Pyle's Canyon, and four of us went
+  down with Edd and the hounds. We had several chases, and about
+  the middle of the forenoon I found myself alone, making tracks
+  for the saddle over-looking Bear Canyon. Along the south side of
+  the slope, in the still air the sun was warm, but when I got up
+  onto the saddle, in an exposed place, the wind soon chilled me
+  through. I would keep my stand until I nearly froze, then I had
+  to go around to the sunny sheltered side and warm up. The hounds
+  finally got within hearing again, and eventually appeared to be
+  in Bear Canyon, toward the mouth. I decided I ought to go round
+  the ridge on the east side and see if I could hear better.
+  Accordingly I set off, and the hard going over the sunny slope
+  was just what I needed. When I reached the end of the ridge,
+  under the great dome, I heard the hounds below me, somewhat to my
+  left. Running and plowing down through the brush I gained the
+  edge of the bluff, just in time to see some of the hounds passing
+  on. They had run a bear through that thicket, and if I had been
+  there sooner I would have been fortunate. But too late! I worked
+  around the head of this canyon and across a wide promontory.
+  Again I heard the hounds right under me. They came nearer, and
+  soon I heard rolling rocks and cracking brush, which sounds I
+  believed were made by a bear. After a while I espied Old Tom and
+  Rock working up the canyon on a trail. Then I was sure I would
+  get a shot. Presently, however, Old Tom left the trail and
+  started back. Rock came on, climbed the ridge, and hearing me
+  call he came to me. I went over to the place where he had climbed
+  out and found an enormous bear track pointing in the direction
+  the hounds had come. They had back-trailed him. Rock went back to
+  join Old Tom. Some of the pack were baying at a great rate in the
+  mouth of the next canyon. But an impassable cliff prevented me
+  from working around to that point. So I had to address myself to
+  the long steep climb upward. I had not gone far when I crossed
+  the huge bear track that Rock and Old Tom had given up. This
+  track was six inches wide and ten inches long. The bear that had
+  made it had come down this very morning from over the ridge east
+  of Bear Canyon. I trailed him up this ridge, over the steepest
+  and roughest and wildest part of it, marveling at the enormous
+  steps and jumps he made, and at the sagacity which caused him to
+  choose this route instead of the saddle trail where I had waited
+  so long. His track led up nearly to the rim and proved how he had
+  climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was
+  one of the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned
+  that Sue and several more of the hounds had held a bear for some
+  time in the box of the canyon just beyond where I had to give up.
+  Edd and Nielsen were across this canyon, unable to go farther,
+  and then yelled themselves hoarse, trying to call some of us. I
+  asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure did," replied Edd. "One of
+  them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to laugh, and told how
+  near I had come to meeting a bear that was short, fat, and heavy:
+  "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"</p>
+
+  <p>That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more
+  bitterly cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the
+  smoke and my face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted
+  myself so thoroughly that my clothes actually burned me as I lay
+  down. But they heated the blankets and that made my bed snug and
+  soon I was in the land of dreams. During the night I awoke. The
+  wind had lulled. The canopy above was clear, cold, starry,
+  beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed ten above zero.
+  Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder, but in
+  any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
+  fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze
+  stirring.</p>
+
+  <p>That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
+  atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised
+  to be as exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would
+  bag a bear!</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the
+  purple basin, flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the
+  slumberous shadows. What a glorious wilderness to greet the eye
+  at sunrise! I suffered a pang to realize what men
+  missed&mdash;what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.</p>
+
+  <p>We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second
+  canyon east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi
+  followed to hug the lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George
+  held to the rim to ride east in case the hounds chased a bear
+  that way. And R.C. and I were to try to climb out and down a thin
+  rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught knew, no one had ever
+  been on.</p>
+
+  <p>Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and
+  rugged backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out
+  and down&mdash;a very narrow knife-edge extended promontory,
+  green with cedar and pine, yellow and gray with its crags and
+  rocks. A craggy point comparable to some of those in the Grand
+  Canyon! We had to study a way to get across the first deep
+  fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest and
+  climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little
+  time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end
+  in an hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle
+  slopes we had to run across, for light quick steps were the only
+  means of safe travel. And that was not safe! When we surmounted
+  to the crest we found a jumble of weathered rocks ready to slide
+  down on either side. Slabs, pyramids, columns, shale, rocks of
+  all shapes except round, lay toppling along the heaved ridge. It
+  seemed the whole ridge was ready to thunder down into the abyss.
+  Half a mile down and out from the rim we felt lost, marooned. But
+  there was something splendidly thrilling in our conquest of that
+  narrow upflung edge of mountain. Twice R.C. thought we would have
+  to abandon further progress, but I found ways to go on. How
+  lonely and wild out there! No foot save an Indian's had ever trod
+  those gray rocks or brown mats of pine needles.</p>
+
+  <p>Before we reached the dip or saddle where R.C. was to make his
+  stand the hounds opened up far below. The morning was perfectly
+  still, an unusual occurrence there along the rim. What wild
+  music! Then Edd's horn pealed out, ringing melody, a long blast
+  keen and clear, telling us above that he had started a bear. That
+  made us hurry. We arrived at the head of an incline leading down
+  to R.C.'s stand. As luck would have it the place was ideal for a
+  bear, but risky for a hunter. A bear could come four ways without
+  being seen until he was close enough to kill a man. We hurried
+  on. At the saddle there was a broad bear trail with several other
+  trails leading into it. Suddenly R.C. halted me with a warning
+  finger. "Listen!"</p>
+
+  <p>I heard a faint clear rifle shot. Then another, and a fainter
+  yell. We stood there and counted eleven more shots. Then the bay
+  of the hounds seemed to grow closer. We had little time to pick
+  and choose stands. I had yet to reach the end of the
+  ridge&mdash;a task requiring seven-league boots. But I took time
+  to choose the best possible stand for R.C. and that was one where
+  a bear approaching from only the east along under the ridge could
+  surprise him. In bad places like this we always tried to have our
+  minds made up what to do and where to get in case of being
+  charged by a wounded grizzly. In this instance there was not a
+  rock or a tree near at hand. "R.C. you'll have to stand your
+  ground and kill him, that's all," I declared, grimly. "But it's
+  quiet. You can hear a bear coming. If you do hear
+  one&mdash;wait&mdash;and make sure your first shot lets him
+  down."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't worry. I could hear a squirrel coming over this
+  ground," replied R.C.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I went on, not exactly at ease in mind, but stirred and
+  thrilled to the keen charged atmosphere. I had to go around under
+  the base of a rocky ledge, over rough ground. Presently I dropped
+  into a bear trail, well trodden. I followed it to a corner of
+  cliff where it went down. Then I kept on over loose rock and bare
+  earth washed deep in ruts. I had to leap these. Perhaps in ten
+  minutes I had traveled a quarter of a mile or less. Then
+  <i>spang</i>! R.C.'s rifle-shot halted me. So clear and sharp, so
+  close, so startling! I was thrilled, delighted&mdash;he had
+  gotten a shot. I wanted to yell my pleasure. My blood warmed and
+  my nerves tingled. Swiftly my thoughts ran&mdash;bad luck was
+  nothing&mdash;a man had only to stick at a thing&mdash;what a
+  fine, sharp, wonderful day for adventure! How the hounds bayed!
+  Had R.C. sighted a bear somewhere below? Suddenly the still air
+  split&mdash;<i>spang</i>! R.C.'s second shot gave me a shock. My
+  breast contracted. I started back. "Suppose it was a
+  grizzly&mdash;on that bad side!" I muttered. <i>Spang</i>!... I
+  began to run. A great sweeping wave of emotion charged over me,
+  swelling all my veins to the bursting point. <i>Spang</i>! My
+  heart came to my throat. Leaping the ruts, bounding like a sheep
+  from rock to rock, I covered my back tracks. All inside me seemed
+  to flutter, yet I felt cold and hard&mdash;a sickening sense of
+  reproach that I had left my brother in a bad position.
+  <i>Spang</i>! His fifth and last shot followed swiftly after the
+  fourth&mdash;too swift to be accurate. So hurriedly a man would
+  act in close quarters. R.C. now had an empty rifle!... Like a
+  flash I crossed that slope leading to the rocks, and tore around
+  the cliff at such speed that it was a wonder I did not pitch down
+  and break my neck. How long&mdash;how terribly long I seemed in
+  reaching the corner of cliff! Then I plunged to a halt with eyes
+  darting everywhere.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. was not in sight. The steep curved neck of slope seemed
+  all rocks, all trees, all brush. Then I heard a wild hoarse bawl
+  and a loud crashing of brush. My gaze swerved to an open spot. A
+  patch of manzanita seemed to blur round a big bear, standing up,
+  fighting the branches, threshing and growling. But where was
+  R.C.? Fearfully my gaze peered near and all around this wounded
+  bear. "Hey there!" I yelled with all my might.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C.'s answer was another <i>spang</i>. I heard the bullet hit
+  the bear. It must have gone clear through him for I saw bits of
+  fur and manzanita fly. The bear plunged out of the
+  bushes&mdash;out of my sight. How he crashed the
+  brush&mdash;rolled the rocks! I listened. Down and down he
+  crashed. Then the sound changed somewhat. He was rolling. At last
+  that thumping sound ceased, and after it the roll of rocks.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you&mdash;all right?" I shouted.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, after a moment that made me breathless, I heard R.C.
+  laugh, a little shakily. "Sure am.... Did you see him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I think he's your bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm afraid he's got away. The hounds took another bear down
+  the canyon. What'll we do?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on down," I said.</p>
+
+  <p>Fifty yards or more down the slope we met. I showed him a
+  great splotch of blood on a flat stone. "We'll find him not far
+  down," I said. So we slid and crawled, and held to brush and
+  rocks, following that bloody trail until we came to a ledge. From
+  there I espied the bear lodged against a manzanita bush. He lay
+  on his back, all four paws extended, and he was motionless. R.C.
+  and I sat down right there on the ledge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Looks pretty big&mdash;black and brown&mdash;mostly brown," I
+  said. "I'm glad, old man, you stuck it out."</p>
+
+  <p>"Big!..." exclaimed R.C. with that same peculiar little laugh.
+  "He doesn't look big now. But up there he looked like a hill....
+  What do you think? He came up that very way you told me to look
+  out for. And if I hadn't had ears he'd got right on me. As it
+  was, when I heard little rolling stones, and then saw him, he was
+  almost on a level with me. My nerve was all right. I knew I had
+  him. And I made sure of my first shot. I knocked him flat. But he
+  got up&mdash;let out an awful snarl&mdash;and plunged my way. I
+  can't say I know he charged me. Only it was just the same as if
+  he had!... I knocked him down again and this time he began to
+  kick and jump down the slope. That was my best shot. Think I
+  missed him the next three. You see I had time to get shaky. If he
+  had kept coming at me&mdash;good night!... I had trouble loading.
+  But when I got ready again I ran down and saw him in that bush.
+  Wasn't far from him then. When he let out that bawl he saw me. I
+  don't know much about bears, but I know he wanted to get at me.
+  And I'm sure of what he'd have done.... I didn't miss my last
+  shot."</p>
+
+  <p>We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful
+  indeed had been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been
+  others not conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure
+  in wild moments and regret the risks and spilled blood
+  afterward?</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IX
+  </center>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah-h-good!" he exclaimed, after a deep draught. "Get down an'
+  drink. Snow water an' it never goes dry."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple told me a man named Mitchell had lived in that lonely
+  place thirty years ago. Copple, as a boy, had worked for
+  him&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Deer!" he whispered, pointing. "Get off an' smoke 'em
+  up!"</p>
+
+  <p>Something shot through me&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple's horse, startled by my shot, began to snort and
+  plunge. "Good shot," yelled Copple. "He's our meat."</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>But Copple galloped up, and drawing his revolver, he shot the
+  deer through the head. It fell in a heap.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Ben, it was&mdash;strange," I replied, soberly. I caught
+  Copple's keen dark glance studying me. "When you open him
+  up&mdash;see what my bullet did, will you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"All right. Help me hang him to a snag here," returned Copple,
+  as he untied his lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;scalping, with red-hot cinders thrown upon the
+  bleeding head, and the terrible running of the gauntlet, and
+  burning at the stake.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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?</p>
+
+  <p>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 books <i>Treasure Island</i>
+  and <i>Kidnapped</i> are full of fight and the killing of men.
+  <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> is 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the red-coated English
+  and the homespun clad American; hunters&mdash;which is a kinder
+  name for trappers&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;three minutes to be exact. According to instructions
+  the American killed this buck&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>A celebrated bear hunter and guide of the northwest told me
+  that for twenty years he had been taking eastern
+  ministers&mdash;preachers of the gospel&mdash;on hunting trips
+  into the wild. He assured me that of all the bloody
+  murderers&mdash;waders in gore, as he expressed it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;which matter I doubt considerably&mdash;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&mdash;these are the
+  ordinary sensations and actions of a hunter. No ascent too
+  lofty&mdash;no descent too perilous for him then, if he is a man
+  as well as a hunter!</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the silent lonely Indian hunter of the Pampas. He
+  hunts with a <i>bola</i>, 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&mdash;the thong binds tight&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Hunting is a savage primordial instinct inherited from our
+  ancestors. It goes back through all the ages of man, and farther
+  still&mdash;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&mdash;which he never did
+  take&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the eye to see with&mdash;the ear to hear
+  with&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;consider the
+  ineradicable and permanent nature of the instinct.</p>
+
+  <p>The secret now of the instinctive joy and thrill and wildness
+  of the chase lies clear.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>What then should be the attitude of a thoughtful man toward
+  this liberation of an instinct&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;loss of
+  physical stature, of speech, perhaps of soul.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    X
+  </center>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, aren't you ever going to see him?" I cried at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" ejaculated Copple, in surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bear!" and I pointed. "This side of dead spruce."</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Watch! What will he do?&mdash;Ben, he hears the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>How singularly thrilling to see him, how slowly he walked, how
+  devoid of fear, how stately!</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, how far away is he?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"If he climbs he'll go right to R.C.'s stand," I said, gazing
+  upward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure will. There's no other saddle."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, could he see us so far?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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&mdash;wait for
+  open shots&mdash;an' make sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Doc, he's paddin' along!" warned Copple. "Smoke some of them
+  shells!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some shot!" yelled Copple. "He's your bear!"</p>
+
+  <p>But my bear continued to crash through the brush. I shot again
+  and yet again, missing both times. Apparently he was coming,
+  faster now&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't shoot," shouted Copple. "He's your bear. I never make
+  any mistakes when I see game hit."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I see him coming!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Where?... By Golly! that's another bear. He's black. Yours is
+  red.... Look sharp. Next time he shows smoke him!"</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a flash of black across an open space&mdash;I heard a
+  scattering of gravel. But I had no chance to shoot. Then both of
+  us heard a bear running in thick leaves.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's gone down the canyon," said Copple. "Now look for your
+  bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen Ben. The hounds are coming fast. There's
+  Rock.&mdash;There's Sue."</p>
+
+  <p>"I see them. Old Dan&mdash;what do you think of that old
+  dog?... There!&mdash;your red bear's still comin' ... He's bad
+  hurt."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>From the saddle of the great ridge above pealed down R.C.'s:
+  "Waahoo!"</p>
+
+  <p>I saw him silhouetted dark against the sky line. He waved and
+  I answered. Then he disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"I stopped one bear," I yelled. "Hurry. Look out for the
+  dogs!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds have quit," called Copple suddenly. "I told you he
+  was your bear."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently George Haught joined us, having come down the bed of
+  the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"All over," said R.C. "Are you glad?"</p>
+
+  <p>"For Old Dan's sake and Tom's and the bears&mdash;yes," I
+  replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me, too! But I'd never get enough of this country."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p><a name="image-0065">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg057_m.jpg" width="448" height="621" alt=
+    "Meat in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the void. How
+  sweeping and grand the long sloping lines of ridges from the rim
+  down! Away in the east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like
+  uncertain mountains on the desert. South ranged the upheaved and
+  wild Mazatzals. Everywhere beneath me, for leagues and leagues
+  extended the timbered hills of green, the gray outcroppings of
+  rocks, the red bluffs, the golden patches of grassy valleys, lost
+  in the canyons. All these swept away in a vast billowy ocean of
+  wilderness to become dim in the purple of distance. And the sun
+  was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I took a last
+  lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this wonderland of
+  Arizona.</p><a name="image-0067"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg058a_m.jpg" width="448" height="317" alt=
+    "Burros Packed for the Trail ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0068"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg058b_m.jpg" width="448" height="358" alt=
+    "The Deadly Cholla, Most Poisonous and Pain Inflicting Of The Cactus ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    DEATH VALLEY
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of
+  desert-land in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea
+  level, the most arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name
+  from the earliest days of the gold strike in California, when a
+  caravan of Mormons, numbering about seventy, struck out from Salt
+  Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and make a short cut to the gold
+  fields. All but two of these prospectors perished in the deep,
+  iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that time became
+  known as Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the
+  world that the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of
+  minerals; and since then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers
+  have lost their lives there. To seek gold and to live in the
+  lonely waste places of the earth have been and ever will be
+  driving passions of men.</p>
+
+  <p>My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On
+  most of my trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate
+  as to comrades or guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen
+  were so singular that I think they will serve as an interesting
+  introduction. Some years ago I received a letter, brief, clear
+  and well-written, in which the writer stated that he had been a
+  wanderer over the world, a sailor before the mast, and was now a
+  prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone down into the
+  desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the southwest, and
+  knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my story
+  <i>Desert Gold</i> in which I told about a lost gold mine. And
+  the point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as
+  to where the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and
+  give me half. His name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to
+  my regret the lost gold mine existed only in my imagination, but
+  if he would come to Avalon to see me perhaps we might both profit
+  by such a meeting. To my surprise he came. He was a man of about
+  thirty-five, of magnificent physique, weighing about one hundred
+  and ninety, and he was so enormously broad across the shoulders
+  that he did not look his five feet ten. He had a wonderful head,
+  huge, round, solid, like a cannon-ball. And his bronzed face, his
+  regular features, square firm jaw, and clear gray eyes, fearless
+  and direct, were singularly attractive to me. Well educated, with
+  a strange calm poise, and a cool courtesy, not common in
+  Americans, he evidently was a man of good family, by his own
+  choice a rolling stone and adventurer.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen accompanied me on two trips into the wilderness of
+  Arizona, on one of which he saved my life, and on the other he
+  rescued all our party from a most uncomfortable and possibly
+  hazardous situation&mdash;but these are tales I may tell
+  elsewhere. In January 1919 Nielsen and I traveled around the
+  desert of southern California from Palm Springs to Picacho, and
+  in March we went to Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>Nowadays a little railroad, the Tonapah and Tidewater
+  Railroad, runs northward from the Santa Fe over the barren
+  Mojave, and it passes within fifty miles of Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>It was sunset when we arrived at Death Valley Junction&mdash;a
+  weird, strange sunset in drooping curtains of transparent cloud,
+  lighting up dark mountain ranges, some peaks of which were
+  clear-cut and black against the sky, and others veiled in
+  trailing storms, and still others white with snow. That night in
+  the dingy little store I heard prospectors talk about float,
+  which meant gold on the surface, and about high grade ores, zinc,
+  copper, silver, lead, manganese, and about how borax was mined
+  thirty years ago, and hauled out of Death Valley by teams of
+  twenty mules. Next morning, while Nielsen packed the outfit, I
+  visited the borax mill. It was the property of an English firm,
+  and the work of hauling, grinding, roasting borax ore went on day
+  and night. Inside it was as dusty and full of a powdery
+  atmosphere as an old-fashioned flour mill. The ore was hauled by
+  train from some twenty miles over toward the valley, and was
+  dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the grinders. For
+  an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid down
+  into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced
+  operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum
+  out of the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five
+  hundred sacks a day. The most significant thing he said was that
+  men did not last long at such labor, and in the mines six months
+  appeared to be the limit of human endurance. How soon I had
+  enough of that choking air in the room where the borax was
+  ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in huge round
+  revolving furnaces&mdash;I found that intolerable. When I got out
+  into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And
+  that relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored,
+  who were chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to
+  the hard tasks of the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers
+  of the borax mines and mills, like the stokers of ships, and
+  coal-diggers, and blast-furnace hands&mdash;like thousands and
+  millions of men, killed themselves outright or impaired their
+  strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless others were
+  found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with some
+  phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
+  it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
+  wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these
+  horny-handed toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining
+  users of brawn and bone, these giants who breast the elements,
+  who till the earth and handle iron, who fight the natural forces
+  with their bodies.</p>
+
+  <p>That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and
+  greasewood slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill
+  now only a smoky blot on the desert floor. When we reached the
+  pass between the Black Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we
+  left the road, and were soon lost to the works of man. How
+  strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped away from me. I
+  felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he stopped
+  talking, except an occasional word to the mules.</p>
+
+  <p>The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its
+  name. It sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored
+  strata tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of
+  black and red and yellow, rather dull, ran through the great
+  drab-gray mass. This end of the range, an iron mountain, frowned
+  down upon us with hard and formidable aspect. The peak was draped
+  in streaky veils of rain from low-dropping clouds that appeared
+  to have lodged there. All below lay clear and cold in the
+  sunlight.</p><a name="image-0069"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg059a_m.jpg" width="448" height="340" alt=
+    "The Colored Calico Mountains ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0070"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg059b_m.jpg" width="448" height="347" alt=
+    "Down the Long Winding Wash to Death Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about
+  three thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind
+  was cold. The narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass
+  deepened, widened, almost imperceptibly at first, and then
+  gradually until its proportions were striking. It was a gully
+  where the gravel washed down during rains, and where a scant
+  vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
+  struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature
+  in sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I
+  looked back, because as we could not see far ahead all the superb
+  scene spread and towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to
+  be a wide canyon, winding away from under the massive,
+  impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The high side of this
+  magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced west&mdash;a
+  succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
+  jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata
+  running through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around
+  the peaks. Shadows sailed along the slopes.</p><a name=
+  "image-0071"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg060_m.jpg" width="728" height="448" alt=
+    "Desolation and Decay. Looking Down over the Denuded Ridges to the Stark Valley of Death ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand.
+  After about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not
+  mind hard work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am
+  extremely wearied my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat
+  by depression or melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get
+  tired while Nielsen kept on with his wonderful stride.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained.
+  "Slow up a little."</p>
+
+  <p>Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a
+  little tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere
+  on the east slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were
+  killed by mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at
+  once for the nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one
+  hundred and fifty miles. He could carry only so much of his
+  outfit, and as some of it was valuable to him he discarded all
+  his food except a few biscuits, and a canteen of water. Resting
+  only a few hours, without sleep at all, he walked the hundred and
+  fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed that Nielsen, by
+  telling me such incidents of his own wild experience, inspired me
+  to more endurance than I knew I possessed.</p>
+
+  <p>As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to
+  grow. It finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a
+  valley running west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a
+  long sweeping slant of earth, like the incline of a glacier, to
+  rounded spurs. Half way up this slope, where the brown earth
+  lightened there showed an outcropping of clay-amber and cream and
+  cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and clear. This bright
+  spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other clay slopes
+  of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and colors
+  indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
+  hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were
+  soon greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped,
+  fantastic in shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak
+  dominating all. The colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all
+  stained by a descending band of crimson, as if a higher slope had
+  been stabbed to let its life blood flow down. The softness, the
+  richness and beauty of this texture of earth amazed and delighted
+  my eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and
+  rounded a sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held
+  mute in our tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the
+  left and the dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see
+  far down into a gulf, a hazy void, a vast stark valley that
+  seemed streaked and ridged and canyoned, an abyss into which
+  veils of rain were dropping and over which broken clouds hung,
+  pierced by red and gold rays.</p>
+
+  <p>Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at
+  first sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen
+  stood like a statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he
+  strode on. I followed, and every second saw more and different
+  aspects, that could not, however, change the first stunning
+  impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I went on down the widening
+  canyon, looking into that changing void. How full of color! It
+  smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white washes
+  brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
+  white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze,
+  sinister and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this
+  valley, and over the western drooped gray veils of rain, like
+  thinnest lacy clouds, through which gleams of the sun shone.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and
+  at last checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with
+  commanding and magnificent view. As I did not attempt the
+  impossible&mdash;to write down thoughts and
+  sensations&mdash;afterward I could remember only a few. How
+  desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of
+  the earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little
+  day seemed so easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to
+  set and the storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene
+  darkened, changed every moment, brightened, grew full of luminous
+  red light and then streaked by golden gleams. The tips of the
+  Panamint Mountains came out silver above the purple clouds. At
+  sunset the moment was glorious&mdash;dark, forbidding, dim,
+  weird, dismal, yet still tinged with gold. Not like any other
+  scene! Dante's Inferno! Valley of Shadows! Canyon of Purple
+  Veils!</p>
+
+  <p>When the sun had set and all that upheaved and furrowed world
+  of rock had received a mantle of gray, and a slumberous
+  sulphurous ruddy haze slowly darkened to purple and black, then I
+  realized more fully that I was looking down into Death
+  Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>Twilight was stealing down when I caught up with Nielsen. He
+  had selected for our camp a protected nook near where the canyon
+  floor bore some patches of sage, the stalks and roots of which
+  would serve for firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain,
+  pitched our little tent and made our bed all in short order. But
+  it was dark long before we had supper. During the meal we talked
+  a little, but afterward, when the chores were done, and the mules
+  had become quiet, and the strange thick silence had settled down
+  upon us, we did not talk at all.</p>
+
+  <p>The night was black, with sky mostly obscured by clouds. A
+  pale haze marked the west where the after glow had faded; in the
+  south one radiant star crowned a mountain peak. I strolled away
+  in the darkness and sat down upon a stone. How intense the
+  silence! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like, dreaming, waiting, a silence
+  of ages, burdened with the history of the past, awful! I strained
+  my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or drop of
+  weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This
+  silence had something terrifying in it, making me a man alone on
+  the earth. The great spaces, the wild places as they had been
+  millions of years before! I seemed to divine how through them man
+  might develop from savage to a god, and how alas! he might go
+  back again.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp Nielsen had gone to bed and the fire
+  had burned low. I threw on some branches of sage. The fire blazed
+  up. But it seemed different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no
+  glow, no sparkle! Perhaps it was owing to scant and poor wood.
+  Still I thought it was owing as much to the place. The sadness,
+  the loneliness, the desolateness of this place weighed upon the
+  camp-fire the same as it did upon my heart.</p>
+
+  <p>We got up at five-thirty. At dawn the sky was a cold leaden
+  gray, with a dull gold and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager
+  and nipping, blew up the canyon. At six o'clock the sky
+  brightened somewhat and the day did not promise so
+  threatening.</p>
+
+  <p>An hour later we broke camp. Traveling in the early morning
+  was pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon,
+  arriving at Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest.
+  This stream of warm water flowed down from a gully that headed up
+  in the Funeral Mountains. It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat
+  acrid and soapy. A green thicket of brush was indeed welcome to
+  the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse kind of grass, and
+  arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named bore a pink
+  fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite fragrant.
+  Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by
+  several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk.
+  They all appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace
+  Creek we came upon a spring of poison water. It was clear,
+  sparkling, with a greenish cast, and it deposited a white crust
+  on the margins. Nielsen, kicking around in the sand, unearthed a
+  skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not so very old. Some
+  thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that deceiving
+  spring. The gruesome and the beautiful, the tragic and the
+  sublime, go hand in hand down the naked shingle of this desolate
+  desert.</p>
+
+  <p>While tramping around in the neighborhood of Furnace Creek I
+  happened upon an old almost obliterated trail. It led toward the
+  ridges of clay, and when I had climbed it a little ways I began
+  to get an impression that the slopes on the other side must run
+  down into a basin or canyon. So I climbed to the top.</p>
+
+  <p>The magnificent scenes of desert and mountain, like the
+  splendid things of life, must be climbed for. In this instance I
+  was suddenly and stunningly confronted by a yellow gulf of
+  cone-shaped and fan-shaped ridges, all bare crinkly clay, of
+  gold, of amber, of pink, of bronze, of cream, all tapering down
+  to round-knobbed lower ridges, bleak and barren, yet wonderfully
+  beautiful in their stark purity of denudation; until at last far
+  down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and blue and
+  ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams&mdash;the
+  Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red
+  slope, merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint
+  Range, and here line on line, and bulge on bulge rose the bold
+  benches, and on up the unscalable outcroppings of rock, like
+  colossal ribs of the earth, on and up the steep slopes to where
+  their density of blue black color began to thin out with streaks
+  of white, and thence upward to the last noble height, where the
+  cold pure snow gleamed against the sky.</p>
+
+  <p>I descended into this yellow maze, this world of gullies and
+  ridges where I found it difficult to keep from getting lost. I
+  did lose my bearings, but as my boots made deep imprints in the
+  soft clay I knew it would be easy to back-track my trail. After a
+  while this labyrinthine series of channels and dunes opened into
+  a wide space enclosed on three sides by denuded slopes, mostly
+  yellow. These slopes were smooth, graceful, symmetrical, with
+  tiny tracery of erosion, and each appeared to retain its own
+  color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were always
+  dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic
+  region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled
+  on the opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue,
+  and of a thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the
+  golds and russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its
+  slopes were changing colors&mdash;a dark beautiful mouse color on
+  one side and a strange pearly cream on the other. Between these
+  great corners of the curve climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope
+  and amber, to meet wonderful veins of green&mdash;green as the
+  sea in sunlight&mdash;and tracery of white&mdash;and on the bold
+  face of this amphitheater, high up, stood out a zigzag belt of
+  dull red, the stain of which had run down to tinge the other
+  hues. Above all this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast
+  of the mountain, growing darker with earthy browns, up to the
+  gray old rock ramparts.</p>
+
+  <p>This place affected me so strangely, so irresistibly that I
+  remained there a long time. Something terrible had happened there
+  to men. I felt that. Something tragic was going on right
+  then&mdash;the wearing down, the devastation of the old earth.
+  How plainly that could be seen! Geologically it was more
+  remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it was the appalling
+  meaning, the absolutely indescribable beauty that overcame me. I
+  thought of those who had been inspiration to me in my work, and I
+  suffered a pang that they could not be there to see and feel with
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>On my way out of this amphitheater a hard wind swooped down
+  over the slopes, tearing up the colored dust in sheets and
+  clouds. It seemed to me each gully had its mystic pall of color.
+  I lost no time climbing out. What a hot choking ordeal! But I
+  never would have missed it even had I known I would get lost.
+  Looking down again the scene was vastly changed. A smoky weird
+  murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through the
+  shifting pall of dust!</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere
+  growing warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at
+  dusk. We followed the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under
+  some cottonwood trees, on the west slope of the valley.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and
+  slept with very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away.
+  I was up at five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A
+  flare of pale gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the
+  sunrise. The tips of the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose
+  colored, and below them the slopes were red. The bulk of the
+  range showed dark. All these features gradually brightened until
+  the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The wind began to blow
+  again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling leaves, and
+  green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and
+  some dark velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the
+  spreading of Furnace Creek over the valley slope. A man lived
+  there, and raised this alfalfa for the mules of the borax miners.
+  He lived there alone and his was indeed a lonely, wonderful, and
+  terrible life. At this season a few Shoshone Indians were camped
+  near, helping him in his labors. This lone rancher's name was
+  Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a Denton, hunter and
+  guide, whom I had met in Lower California.</p><a name=
+  "image-0072"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg061a_m.jpg" width="448" height="335" alt=
+    "Desert Graves ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0073"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg061b_m.jpg" width="448" height="336" alt=
+    "The Ghastly Sweep of Death Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with
+  difficulty, but the content of his speech made up for its
+  brevity. He told us about the wanderers and prospectors he had
+  rescued from death by starvation and thirst; he told us about the
+  terrific noonday heat of summer; and about the incredible and
+  horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the valley. With
+  the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at midnight,
+  below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore down
+  upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
+  many summers there. As for white women&mdash;Death Valley was
+  fatal to them. The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains.
+  Denton said heat affected men differently. Those who were meat
+  eaters or alcohol drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and
+  lungs were necessary to stand the heat and density of atmosphere
+  below sea level. He told of a man who had visited his cabin, and
+  had left early in the day, vigorous and strong. A few hours later
+  he was found near the oasis unable to walk, crawling on his hands
+  and knees, dragging a full canteen of water. He never knew what
+  ailed him. It might have been heat, for the thermometer
+  registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have been
+  poison gas. Another man, young, of heavy and powerful build, lost
+  seventy pounds weight in less than two days, and was nearly dead
+  when found. The heat of Death Valley quickly dried up blood,
+  tissue, bone. Denton told of a prospector who started out at dawn
+  strong and rational, to return at sunset so crazy that he had to
+  be tied to keep him out of the water. To have drunk his fill then
+  would have killed him! He had to be fed water by spoonful.
+  Another wanderer came staggering into the oasis, blind, with
+  horrible face, and black swollen tongue protruding. He could not
+  make a sound. He also had to be roped, as if he were a mad
+  steer.</p><a name="image-0074"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg062_m.jpg" width="735" height="448" alt=
+    "In the Center of The Salt-incrusted Floor Of Death Valley, Three Hundred Feet Below Sea Level ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I met only one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He
+  camped with us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular,
+  with brown wrinkled face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be
+  smiling to himself most of the time. He liked to talk to his
+  burros. He was exceedingly interesting. Once he nearly died of
+  thirst, having gone from noon one day till next morning without
+  water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal, but did not
+  lose his senses. Finally the burros saved his life. This old
+  fellow had been across Death Valley every month in the year. July
+  was the worst. In that month crossing should not be attempted
+  during the middle of the day.</p>
+
+  <p>I made the acquaintance of the Shoshone Indians, or rather
+  through Nielsen I met them. Nielsen had a kindly, friendly way
+  with Indians. There were half a dozen families, living in squalid
+  tents. The braves worked in the fields for Denton and the squaws
+  kept to the shade with their numerous children. They appeared to
+  be poor. Certainly they were a ragged unpicturesque group.
+  Nielsen and I visited them, taking an armload of canned fruit,
+  and boxes of sweet crackers, which they received with evident
+  joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one of the tents.
+  The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo were
+  here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
+  and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a
+  sewing machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to
+  live like Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another
+  manifestation added to my long list of degeneration of the
+  Indians by the whites! The tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I
+  never before saw so many. In a corner I saw a naked Indian baby
+  asleep on a goat skin, all his brown warm-tinted skin spotted
+  black with flies.</p>
+
+  <p>Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our
+  camp. I was surprised to hear him use good English. He said he
+  had been educated in a government school in California. From him
+  I learned considerable about Death Valley. As he was about to
+  depart, on the way to his labor in the fields, he put his hand in
+  his ragged pocket and drew forth an old beaded hat band, and with
+  calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a present of it.
+  Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had been
+  kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of
+  the many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the
+  story of the Indian&mdash;the truth, the spirit, the soul of his
+  tragedy?</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a
+  gravel ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat
+  down while my companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I
+  found a tiny flower, so tiny as to almost defy detection. The
+  color resembled sage-gray and it had the fragrance of sage. Hard
+  to find and wonderful to see&mdash;was its tiny blossom! The
+  small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined and
+  scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
+  flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its
+  unquenchable spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous
+  reddening bulk of the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly
+  over me.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in
+  zigzag flights&mdash;assuredly new and strange creatures to
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of
+  the bleak lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains.
+  Before I could compose myself to watch the valley I made the
+  discovery that near me were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One
+  had two stones at head and foot. Another had no mark at all. The
+  one nearest me had for the head a flat piece of board, with
+  lettering so effaced by weather that I could not decipher the
+  inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about between the
+  graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed to be
+  one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these
+  people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the
+  windy desert slope!</p>
+
+  <p>By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over
+  Death Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints&mdash;long
+  tapering notched mountains with all their rugged conformation
+  showing. Above floated gold and gray and silver-edged
+  clouds&mdash;below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy bronze haze,
+  gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the pale
+  desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be
+  shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast
+  scale and tremendous dimension! The clouds paled, turned rosy for
+  a moment with the afterglow, then deepened into purple gloom. A
+  sombre smoky sunset, as if this Death Valley was the gateway of
+  hell, and its sinister shades were upflung from fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The desert day was done and now the desert twilight descended.
+  Twilight of hazy purple fell over the valley of shadows. The
+  black bold lines of mountains ran across the sky and down into
+  the valley and up on the other side. A buzzard sailed low in the
+  foreground&mdash;fitting emblem of life in all that wilderness of
+  suggested death. This fleeting hour was tranquil and sad. What
+  little had it to do with the destiny of man! Death Valley was
+  only a ragged rent of the old earth, from which men in their
+  folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The
+  air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled
+  soul! I felt that I was myself here, far different from my
+  habitual self. Why had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I
+  want of the desert that was naked, red, sinister, sombre,
+  forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark and dismal, the abode of
+  silence and loneliness, the proof of death, decay, devastation
+  and destruction, the majestic sublimity of desolation? The answer
+  was that I sought the awful, the appalling and terrible because
+  they harked me back to a primitive day where my blood and bones
+  were bequeathed their heritage of the elements. That was the
+  secret of the eternal fascination the desert exerted upon all
+  men. It carried them back. It inhibited thought. It brought up
+  the age-old sensations, so that I could feel, though I did not
+  know it then, once again the all-satisfying state of the savage
+  in nature.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp night had fallen. The evening star
+  stood high in the pale sky, all alone and difficult to see, yet
+  the more beautiful for that. The night appeared to be warmer or
+  perhaps it was because no wind blew. Nielsen got supper, and ate
+  most of it, for I was not hungry. As I sat by the camp-fire a
+  flock of little bats, the smallest I had ever seen, darted from
+  the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They had no fear
+  of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound. Later I
+  heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have
+  expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious
+  trill it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas
+  Jungle of Mexico. Every time I awakened that night, and it was
+  often, I heard this trill. Once, too, sometime late, my listening
+  ear caught faint mournful notes of a killdeer. How strange, and
+  still sweeter than the trill! What a touch to the infinite
+  silence and loneliness! A killdeer&mdash;bird of the swamps and
+  marshes&mdash;what could he be doing in arid and barren Death
+  Valley? Nature is mysterious and inscrutable.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning the marvel of nature was exemplified even more
+  strikingly. Out on the hard gravel-strewn slope I found some more
+  tiny flowers of a day. One was a white daisy, very frail and
+  delicate on long thin stem with scarcely any leaves. Another was
+  a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California
+  poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost as large as
+  a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and tiniest of all were
+  infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very flat plants,
+  smiling wanly up from the desolate earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen and I made known to Denton our purpose to walk across
+  the valley. He advised against it. Not that the heat was intense
+  at this season, he explained, but there were other dangers,
+  particularly the brittle salty crust of the sink-hole.
+  Nevertheless we were not deterred from our purpose.</p>
+
+  <p>So with plenty of water in canteens and a few biscuits in our
+  pockets we set out. I saw the heat veils rising from the valley
+  floor, at that point one hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea
+  level. The heat lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told
+  us that in summer the heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted
+  leaves, burned trees to death as well as men. Prospectors watched
+  for the leaden haze that thickened over the mountains, knowing
+  then no man could dare the terrible sun. That day would be a
+  hazed and glaring hell, leaden, copper, with sun blazing a sky of
+  molten iron.</p>
+
+  <p>A long sandy slope of mesquite extended down to the bare
+  crinkly floor of the valley, and here the descent to a lower
+  level was scarcely perceptible. The walking was bad. Little
+  mounds in the salty crust made it hard to place a foot on the
+  level. This crust appeared fairly strong. But when it rang hollow
+  under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously. The color was a
+  dirty gray and yellow. Far ahead I could see a dazzling white
+  plain that looked like frost or a frozen river. The atmosphere
+  was deceptive, making this plain seem far away and then close at
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>The excessively difficult walking and the thickness of the air
+  tired me, so I plumped myself down to rest, and used my note-book
+  as a means to conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was
+  fatigued. Always I found this a very efficient excuse, and for
+  that matter it was profitable for me. I have forgotten more than
+  I have ever written.</p>
+
+  <p>Rather overpowering, indeed, was it to sit on the floor of
+  Death Valley, miles from the slopes that appeared so far away. It
+  was flat, salty, alkali or borax ground, crusted and cracked. The
+  glare hurt my eyes. I felt moist, hot, oppressed, in spite of a
+  rather stiff wind. A dry odor pervaded the air, slightly like
+  salty dust. Thin dust devils whirled on the bare flats. A
+  valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the desert floor
+  to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and
+  beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass,
+  broken by rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown
+  glaciers. Seamed and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet
+  surely wearing to ruin! From this point I could not see the snow
+  on the peaks. The whole mountain range seemed an immense red
+  barrier of beetling rock. The Funeral Range was farther away and
+  therefore more impressive. Its effect was stupendous. Leagues of
+  brown chocolate slopes, scarred by slashes of yellow and cream,
+  and shadowed black by sailing clouds, led up to the magnificently
+  peaked and jutted summits.</p>
+
+  <p>Splendid as this was and reluctant as I felt to leave I soon
+  joined Nielsen, and we proceeded onward. At last we reached the
+  white winding plain, that had resembled a frozen river, and which
+  from afar had looked so ghastly and stark. We found it to be a
+  perfectly smooth stratum of salt glistening as if powdered. It
+  was not solid, not stable. At pressure of a boot it shook like
+  jelly. Under the white crust lay a yellow substance that was wet.
+  Here appeared an obstacle we had not calculated upon. Nielsen
+  ventured out on it and his feet sank in several inches. I did not
+  like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice under a weight.
+  Presently I ventured to take a few steps, and did not sink in so
+  deeply or make such depression in the crust as Nielsen. We
+  returned to the solid edge and deliberated. Nielsen said that by
+  stepping quickly we could cross without any great risk, though it
+  appeared reasonable that by standing still a person would sink
+  into the substance.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, Nielsen, you go ahead," I said, with an attempt at
+  lightness. "You weigh one hundred and ninety. If you go through
+  I'll turn back!"</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen started with a laugh. The man courted peril. The
+  bright face of danger must have been beautiful and alluring to
+  him. I started after him&mdash;caught up with him&mdash;and
+  stayed beside him. I could not have walked behind him over that
+  strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have done so the whole
+  adventure would have been meaningless to me. Nevertheless I was
+  frightened. I felt the prickle of my skin, the stiffening of my
+  hair, as well as the cold tingling thrills along my veins.</p>
+
+  <p>This place was the lowest point of the valley, in that
+  particular location, and must have been upwards of two hundred
+  feet below sea level. The lowest spot, called the Sink Hole, lay
+  some miles distant, and was the terminus of this river of salty
+  white.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed it in safety. On the other side extended a long
+  flat of upheaved crusts of salt and mud, full of holes and
+  pitfalls, an exceedingly toilsome and painful place to travel,
+  and for all we could tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to
+  watch my feet and find surfaces to hold my steps. Eventually we
+  crossed this broken field, reaching the edge of the gravel slope,
+  where we were very glad indeed to rest.</p>
+
+  <p>Denton had informed us that the distance was seven miles
+  across the valley at the mouth of Furnace Creek. I had thought it
+  seemed much less than that. But after I had toiled across it I
+  was convinced that it was much more. It had taken us hours. How
+  the time had sped! For this reason we did not tarry long on that
+  side.</p>
+
+  <p>Facing the sun we found the return trip more formidable. Hot
+  indeed it was&mdash;hot enough for me to imagine how terrible
+  Death Valley would be in July or August. On all sides the
+  mountains stood up dim and obscure and distant in haze. The heat
+  veils lifted in ripples, and any object not near at hand seemed
+  illusive. Nielsen set a pace for me on this return trip. I was
+  quicker and surer of foot than he, but he had more endurance. I
+  lost strength while he kept his unimpaired. So often he had to
+  wait for me. Once when I broke through the crust he happened to
+  be close at hand and quickly hauled me out. I got one foot wet
+  with some acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen
+  quoted a prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken
+  sharp crust of salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever
+  experienced. Slopes of weathered rock that slip and slide are
+  bad; cacti, and especially choya cacti, are worse: the jagged and
+  corrugated surfaces of lava are still more hazardous and painful.
+  But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with its salt crusts
+  standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place for hard
+  going that either Nielsen or I ever had encountered. I ruined my
+  boots, skinned my shins, cut my hands. How those salt cuts stung!
+  We crossed the upheaved plain, then the strip of white, and
+  reached the crinkly floor of yellow salt. The last hour taxed my
+  endurance almost to the limit. When we reached the edge of the
+  sand and the beginning of the slope I was hotter and thirstier
+  than I had ever been in my life. It pleased me to see Nielsen
+  wringing wet and panting. He drank a quart of water apparently in
+  one gulp. And it was significant that I took the longest and
+  deepest drink of water that I had ever had.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached camp at the end of this still hot summer day. Never
+  had a camp seemed so welcome! What a wonderful thing it was to
+  earn and appreciate and realize rest! The cottonwood leaves were
+  rustling; bees were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in
+  the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I
+  watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard
+  the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious
+  deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were
+  traveling north and had tarried at the oasis.</p>
+
+  <p>Lying there I realized that I had come to love the silence,
+  the loneliness, the serenity, even the tragedy of this valley of
+  shadows. Death Valley was one place that could never be popular
+  with men. It had been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen
+  treasure, and for the wanderers of the wastelands&mdash;men who
+  go forth to seek and to find and to face their souls. Perhaps
+  most of them found death. But there was a death in life. Desert
+  travelers learned the secret that men lived too much in the
+  world&mdash;that in silence and loneliness and desolation there
+  was something infinite, something hidden from the crowd.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    THE END
+  </center>
+
+  <div style="height: 6em;"></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12225 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12225 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12225)
diff --git a/old/12225-8.txt b/old/12225-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tales of lonely trails
+
+Author: Zane Grey
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [EBook #12225]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF LONELY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Nicolas Hayes and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+BY ZANE GREY
+
+
+1922
+
+[Illustration: Zane Grey]
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. NONNEZOSHE
+
+II. COLORADO TRAILS
+
+III. ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+IV. TONTO BASIN
+
+V. DEATH VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ZANE GREY
+
+Z.G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS
+
+THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE PEAKED RANGES
+
+WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY
+
+SUNSET ON THE DESERT
+
+CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS
+
+THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES THE RUINED
+CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN
+
+THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO NONNEZOSHE
+
+FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO
+
+THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE DISTANCE
+
+A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE
+
+LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS
+
+SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME
+
+A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING
+
+THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS
+
+UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS
+
+WHITE ASPEN TREE SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS
+
+A BLACK BEAR TREED
+
+CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON
+
+WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO
+
+DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER
+
+CAMP AT THE SADDLE
+
+BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER
+
+JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION
+
+REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS
+
+A LION TIED
+
+FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S DESERT RANCH
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+HIDING
+
+A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM
+
+WHICH IS THE PIUTE
+
+WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE
+
+JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION
+
+TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE
+
+JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS
+
+BILLY IN CAMP
+
+LION LICKING SNOWBALL
+
+SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN SNAKE GULCH
+
+ON THE WAY HOME
+
+RIDING WITH A NAVAJO
+
+THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN
+
+ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED
+
+THE TONTO BASIN
+
+LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS
+
+ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS
+
+WILD TURKEY
+
+WILD TURKEYS
+
+THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS
+
+THE SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP
+
+ON THE RIM
+
+WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK
+
+WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER
+
+CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA
+
+BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON
+
+Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR
+
+R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR
+
+ANOTHER BEAR
+
+MEAT IN CAMP
+
+BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL
+
+THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF THE CACTUS
+
+THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS
+
+DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY
+
+DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED RIDGES TO THE
+STARK VALLEY OF DEATH
+
+DESERT GRAVES
+
+THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY
+
+IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH VALLEY, THREE
+HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at
+Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is
+probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in
+the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her
+influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting
+the secret of the great bridge.
+
+After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al
+Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take
+me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was
+the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same
+year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb
+brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most
+beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There
+is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after
+Doyle and I came out we admitted that we would not care to try to
+return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This
+is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find
+again alone.
+
+My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument
+Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great
+prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
+
+The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats
+and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
+wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
+Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
+thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
+convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
+Wetherill's Navajos.
+
+We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so
+that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew
+and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this
+grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that
+I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
+surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
+storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
+sultry air.
+
+At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red
+walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared
+endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye
+began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the
+time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of
+Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed
+a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock,
+magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird,
+lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the
+monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect
+was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
+
+[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]
+
+Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
+its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
+beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not
+the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of
+red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
+league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
+columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
+sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
+across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I
+had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and
+the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught
+Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE-PEAKED RANGES]
+
+Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful
+canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could
+make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it
+Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less
+the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon
+from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a
+red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented
+by spruce-sided notches.
+
+There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of
+which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A
+huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a
+projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These
+silent little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows
+had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.
+
+Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the
+trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and
+beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at
+all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss
+of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named
+Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought
+it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their
+imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight
+of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed
+over me a strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true.
+My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
+I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls
+where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered
+the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and
+sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the
+grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I
+had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I
+could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party.
+Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self.
+I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the
+story it had given me.
+
+That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser
+of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had
+lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old
+chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont
+to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made
+great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses.
+Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the
+geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser
+ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.
+
+[Illustration: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY]
+
+[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE DESERT]
+
+[Illustration: CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS]
+
+Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we
+were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses
+disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a
+man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians
+disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the
+Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I
+thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.
+
+"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.
+
+Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so
+significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It
+is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I
+know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Piute's dark,
+inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.
+
+My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow
+and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level
+with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene;
+and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that
+I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept
+looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my
+judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed
+one moment and magnified the next.
+
+Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he
+said.
+
+"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright
+rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines
+of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and
+only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the Grand
+Canyon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the red, that's
+where the San Juan comes in. And there's Escalante Canyon."
+
+I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the
+desert--to look with slow contracted eyes from near to far.
+
+The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope,
+bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar.
+Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I
+knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker
+green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be
+mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its
+waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated.
+They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were
+strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes,
+crags, great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze
+to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
+thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts,
+each of which was a canyon.
+
+Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the
+lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and
+because of its limitless deceiving surfaces incomprehensible to the
+gaze of man. Away to the eastward began a winding ragged blue line,
+looping back upon itself, and then winding away again, growing wider
+and bluer. This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line
+all its length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined
+a dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
+Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
+farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
+revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther westward
+it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas. Here the canyon
+was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed, it gaped, it lost
+itself and showed again in that chaos of a million cliffs. And then it
+faded, a mere purple line, into deceiving distance.
+
+I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this. The
+tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This happened to
+be a place where so much of the desert could be seen and the effect
+was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here.
+Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages
+was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
+sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
+dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
+the shining spaces.
+
+Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
+rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
+slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
+mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
+ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
+sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
+of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
+of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
+green only at a distance.
+
+Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
+and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
+on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
+Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
+silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
+the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
+again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
+
+It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw piñon patches under
+the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
+already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
+their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
+of cliff.
+
+I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It
+ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the
+ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not
+a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and
+Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a
+swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see
+similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be
+called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes
+far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were
+no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and
+occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and piñon. We
+found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
+
+Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another
+wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between.
+Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our
+mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short,
+careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger
+was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in
+horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second
+slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking
+advantage of every bulge and depression.
+
+Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous
+slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and
+many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us
+to see the bottom.
+
+[Illustration: THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES
+THE RUINED CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN]
+
+At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon
+cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the
+steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum
+jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe
+Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of
+anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with
+all his might.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO
+NONNEZOSHE]
+
+It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope
+ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in
+terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place
+to have trouble with horses.
+
+I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear
+over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe's hold on
+the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick as thought Joe ran
+sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and yelled for help. I got
+to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas ta Bega; and together we
+pulled Chub up out of danger. At first we thought he had been choked
+to death. But he came to, and got up, a bloody, skinned horse, but
+alive and safe. I have never seen a more magnificent effort than Joe
+Lee's. Those fellows are built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on
+those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the
+trip which is not splendid.
+
+We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently
+came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green
+split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was
+the head of a canyon.
+
+"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.
+
+This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got down into
+it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a selection of
+the best levels, the best places to cross the brook, the best places
+to climb, and it was a process of continual repetition. There was no
+trail ahead of us, but we certainly left one behind. And as Wetherill
+picked out the course and the mustangs followed him I had all freedom
+to see and feel the beauty, color, wildness and changing character of
+Nonnezoshe Boco.
+
+My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip down this
+strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not alike. This one
+did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and
+bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue
+river. Huge caverns had been hollowed out by water or wind. And when
+the brook ran close under one of these overhanging places the running
+water made a singular indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a
+stone rang like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the
+croak of a frog--the only living creature I noted in the canyon--was a
+weird and melancholy thing.
+
+"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.
+
+"How do you know?" I asked.
+
+"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones are
+found above."
+
+I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger than
+the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite beauty and
+fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I had never seen.
+
+"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.
+
+That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer
+canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the green. It was
+impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under foot. And as
+the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume
+to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green
+sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself
+in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and
+great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming
+buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of
+cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled
+with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy
+air.
+
+But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
+level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
+clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and bulging walls--these
+features were gradually lost, and Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare
+red and white stone steps. The walls sheered away from one another,
+breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and
+there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the
+nature that had created this old rent in the earth.
+
+There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
+alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by one, the
+mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled
+along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil
+increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was
+left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified
+and its character changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon,
+leaning, broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking
+passage, with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
+dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting canyons. It
+jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and
+pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous stone-shape left
+by avalanche or cataclysm.
+
+Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of boulders
+and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that canyon
+had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor, in places, was
+bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording
+treacherous foothold. And the time came when Wetherill abandoned the
+stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
+
+The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined amphitheater,
+and then apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed the
+walls.
+
+I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and lag. I
+wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the Indians tired. It
+was with great pleasure that I observed the giant Joe Lee plodding
+slowly along. And when I glanced behind at my straggling party it was
+with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled
+and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag
+myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept
+on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped--was waiting for
+me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
+canyon.
+
+I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile
+beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the
+canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a
+magnificent natural bridge.
+
+"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.
+
+This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one
+grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague
+disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
+with what the mind had conceived.
+
+But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and
+brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and
+revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this
+rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in
+some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even
+beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a
+work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued
+arch against the blue sky.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE]
+
+[Illustration: NONNEZOSHE]
+
+Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle the huge
+amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging.
+The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered
+progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls
+turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed dark.
+
+We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we reached it
+Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions. He was saying his
+prayer to this great stone god. Then he began to climb straight up the
+steep slope. Wetherill told me the Indian would not pass under the
+arch.
+
+When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame mustangs
+twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to fare for what
+scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to
+find than grass. When our simple meal had been eaten there was gloom
+gathering in the canyon and stars had begun to blink in the pale strip
+of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and we were
+mostly silent.
+
+Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by the
+bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was invisible,
+but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock upon which I
+composed myself, to watch, to feel.
+
+A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been continually
+looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never seemed the same
+any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for immediate
+comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had formed it--to reflect
+upon its meaning as to age and force of nature. Yet it seemed that all
+I could do was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved
+line. The rim of the arch appeared to shine. The moon was up there
+somewhere. The far side of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over
+its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the
+canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
+The bridge turned to silver.
+
+It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta Bega. Dark,
+silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted, with all that was
+spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge
+of his place there, he represented to me that which a solitary figure
+of human life represents in a great painting. Nonnezoshe needed life,
+wild life, life of its millions of years--and here stood the dark and
+silent Indian.
+
+Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the bridge. The
+moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above, and
+the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with all
+the strangeness of that strange country in its moan, rushed through
+the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as I
+imagined might have dwelt deep in the center of the earth. And again
+an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. It had a mocking echo. An
+echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!
+
+The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other
+sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to see in them
+the meaning of life and the past--the illimitable train of faces
+that had shone under the stars. There was something nameless in that
+canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the
+great Nonnezoshe, or the life of the present, or the death of the
+ages, or the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent,
+dreaming, waiting walls--the truth was that there was a spirit.
+
+I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the tip of
+the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to shine. The sun
+had just risen high enough over some low break in the wall to reach
+the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous transformation, the gold
+and blue and rose and pink and purple blended their hues, softly,
+mistily, cloudily, until once more the arch was a rainbow.
+
+I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth this
+bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black and mystic
+at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at sunset a flaming
+curve limned against the heavens. When the race of man had passed it
+would, perhaps, stand there still. It was not for many eyes to see.
+The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would
+never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any
+man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great
+things of life had to be earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone,
+grand, silent, beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a
+mute, reverent farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+COLORADO TRAILS
+
+Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the motive
+were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the reader who
+longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle of fishing
+records that this is not that kind of story. But it will be one for
+those who love horses and dogs, the long winding dim trails, the wild
+flowers and the dark still woods, the fragrance of spruce and the
+smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well for those who love to angle in
+brown lakes or rushing brooks or chase after the baying hounds or
+stalk the stag on his lonely heights.
+
+[Illustration: PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO]
+
+We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road and had a
+long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies have a sweep, a
+limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many miles we crossed no
+streams, and climbed and wound up barren slopes. Once across the divide,
+however, we descended into a country of black forests and green valleys.
+Yampa, a little hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of
+the Bear River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
+would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very wide
+and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It seemed a
+deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the guide, lived there.
+He assured me it was not quite as lively a place as in the early days
+when it was a stage center for an old and rich mining section. We stayed
+there at the one hotel for a whole day, most of which I spent sitting on
+the board walk. Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it
+seemed always the same--deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old
+and forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a while.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE
+DISTANCE]
+
+On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills,
+some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were to meet us with
+saddle and pack horses. The ride was not interesting until the Flattop
+Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce,
+rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of
+snow. I felt the first cool breath of mountain air, exhilarating and
+sweet. From that moment I began to live.
+
+We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with
+his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let alone gotten
+acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load
+of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It
+appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged
+jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called
+it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in
+a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, and schools of darkish,
+mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. We wished for
+our tackle then and for time to fish.
+
+Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not
+resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look as if he had
+walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So I took a
+liking to him at once.
+
+But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any
+delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our
+outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses that were to carry
+us on such long rides was an anxious and thrilling one. I have felt
+it many times, and it never grows any weaker from experience. Many a
+scrubby lot of horses had turned out well upon acquaintance, and some
+I had found hard to part with at the end of trips. Up to that time,
+however, I had not seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much
+concerned by the fact that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty,
+ragged, maneless, cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected,
+they were bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them,
+and I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any one.
+
+In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his own
+mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals, heavily
+laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face and keen
+gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I got the
+impression that he liked work.
+
+"Let's organize," he said, briskly. "Have you picked the horses you're
+goin' to ride?"
+
+Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy powerful
+horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble head. He had
+escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at least was one horse.
+
+The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or temporarily lame,
+and I had no choice, except to take the one it would be kindest to
+ride.
+
+"He ain't much like your Silvermane or Black Star," said Teague,
+laughing.
+
+"What do you know about them?" I asked, very much pleased at this from
+him.
+
+"Well, I know all about them," he replied. "I'll have you the best horse
+in this country in a few days. Fact is I've bought him, an' he'll come
+with my cowboy, Vern.... Now, we're organized. Let's move."
+
+[Illustration: A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS]
+
+[Illustration: SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME]
+
+We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which towered the
+great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy, and steep in
+places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little breaks on the water
+gave evidence of feeding trout. We had several miles of meadow, and
+then sheered off to the left up into the timber. It was a spruce
+forest, very still and fragrant. We climbed out up on a bench, and
+across a flat, up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of
+snow. Here snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw
+a fox, a badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One
+more climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven
+thousand feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was
+splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim
+along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not very wide
+at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a green gulf
+of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here again I got the
+suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour to ride down to
+Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet of water. The larger
+lake was farther down. It was big, irregular, and bordered by spruce
+forests, and shadowed by the lofty gray peaks.
+
+The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm, and
+mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It was after
+sunset and I was too tired to have many impressions.
+
+Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep quavering
+voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was silent most of
+the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when they spoke, for he
+was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to discover that he was a
+good cook.
+
+Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too
+tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and
+splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights.
+The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric
+mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night
+grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly.
+There was a soft murmur of falling water. A lonesome coyote barked,
+and that thrilled me. Teague's dogs answered this prowler, and some of
+them had voices to make a hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had
+a roar like a lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and
+I was thinking about them when I fell asleep.
+
+Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and
+frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the
+tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.
+
+The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I
+could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to
+ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After
+each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle
+an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts.
+Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his
+discomfiture.
+
+After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods,
+and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when
+we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green
+in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent
+black slopes.
+
+The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called
+wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes
+during dog days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague
+reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We
+tried the outlet first, but trout were not rising there. Then we
+began wading and casting along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had
+instructed us to cast, then drag the flies slowly across the surface
+of the water, in imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and
+several times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I
+had strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout.
+Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my
+surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook the
+fish.
+
+R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the
+ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most
+unaccountable fiendish pleasure.
+
+"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful fisherman to
+make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which
+is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch me cast!"
+
+I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water boiled, and he
+hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite speechless with envy and
+admiration I watched him play them and eventually beach them. They
+were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided and marked with the red slash
+along their gills that gave them their name. I did not catch any while
+wading, but from the bank I spied one, and dropping a fly in front
+of his nose, I got him. R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in
+weight, and then he had a strike that broke his leader. He did not
+have another leader, so we walked back to camp.
+
+Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the forest.
+Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful and very
+pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful flower that is
+the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its blue, Indian paint
+brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in color from red to pink
+and from white to yellow.
+
+My favorite of all wild flowers--the purple asters--were there too,
+on tall nodding stems, with pale faces held up to the light. The
+reflection of mountain and forest in Trappers Lake was clear and
+beautiful.
+
+The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great show about
+beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last very long. The
+sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge under a pine. One of
+the blessings of outdoor life was that a man could be like an Indian
+and do nothing. So from rest I passed to dreams and from dreams to
+sleep.
+
+In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout. The lake
+appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck and we could
+not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again. Here the current
+was swift. I found a place between two willow banks where trout were
+breaking on the surface. It took a long cast for me, but about every
+tenth attempt I would get a fly over the right place and raise a fish.
+They were small, but that did not detract from my gratification. The
+light on the water was just right for me to see the trout rise, and
+that was a beautiful sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had
+caught four when a shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I
+found him standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent
+double and a long line out.
+
+"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him--down there--in that white water.
+See him flash red!... Go down there and land him for me. Hurry! He's
+got all the line!"
+
+I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream was
+shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a flashing gleam
+of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I could not reach it
+without wading in. When I did this the trout lunged out. He looked
+crimson and silver. I could have put my fist in his mouth.
+
+"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation. "There!
+He's got all the line."
+
+"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.
+
+He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his fish.
+This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I grasped
+the leader that the big trout would break it or pull free. The same
+situation, with different kinds of fish, had presented itself many
+times on my numberless fishing jaunts with R.C. and they all crowded
+to my mind. Nevertheless I had no choice. Plunging in to my knees I
+frantically reached for the leader. The red trout made a surge. I
+missed him. R.C. yelled that something would break. That was no news
+to me. Another plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I
+essayed to lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was
+tired and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to
+lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my legs.
+
+When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was sitting on
+the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was holding his broken
+leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went into a rage! Blamed me for
+the loss of that big trout! Under such circumstances it was always
+best to maintain silence and I did so as long as I could. After his
+paroxysm had spent itself and he had become somewhat near a rational
+being once more he asked me:
+
+"Was he big?"
+
+"Oh--a whale of a trout!" I replied.
+
+"Humph! Well, how big?"
+
+Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of that trout.
+I made him out very much bigger than he actually looked to me and I
+minutely described his beauty and wonderful gaping mouth. R.C. groaned
+and that was my revenge.
+
+We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape acquaintance
+with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted pack--four Airedales, one
+bloodhound and seven other hounds of mixed breeds. There were also
+three pup hounds, white and yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all
+pups, noisy and mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied
+also to one of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by
+some estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of
+him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with that
+name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and exceedingly
+funny. When he was approached he had a trick of standing up, holding
+up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way, with his head twisted in
+the most absurd manner. This was when he was chained--otherwise he
+would have been climbing up on anyone who gave him the chance. He was
+the most jealous dog I ever saw. He could not be kept chained very
+long because he always freed himself. At meal time he would slip
+noiselessly behind some one and steal the first morsel he could
+snatch. Bill was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of
+firewood.
+
+Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then saddled up
+to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and down ridges of
+heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer sign. Elk tracks
+appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we left the trail to
+climb into heavy timber we began to look for game. The forest was
+dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No squirrels or birds or
+sign of life! We had a hard ride up and down steep slopes. A feature
+was the open swaths made by avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a
+path through the timber, and the young shoots of spruce were springing
+up. I imagined the roar made by that tremendous slide.
+
+We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the grass
+had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign where the
+elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers to get rid of
+the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes made by an axe. The
+Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently
+had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox
+could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not
+see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note
+again.
+
+We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with wild
+asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The patches of red
+and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere we rode we were knee
+deep in flowers. At length we came out of the heavy timber down upon
+Big Fish Lake. This lake was about half a mile across, deep blue-green
+in color, with rocky shores. Upon the opposite side were beaver
+mounds. We could see big trout swimming round, but they would not rise
+to a fly. R.C. went out in an old boat and paddled to the head of the
+lake and fished at the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went
+around and up the little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly
+through a meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering
+banks. At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds.
+It was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as cold
+as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several big trout,
+and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed him. Then in a
+swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I saw a big trout
+lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I hooked him. He was not
+active, but heavy and plunging, and he bored in and out, and made
+short runs. I had not seen such beautiful red colors in any fish. He
+made a fine fight, but at last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat
+of about one and three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green,
+and spotted all over. That was the extent of my luck.
+
+We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little while to
+see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not. A storm began
+to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great gray clouds obscured
+the peaks, and at length the rain came. It was cold and cutting. We
+sought the shelter of spruces for a while, and waited. After an hour
+it cleared somewhat, and R.C. caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all
+green and silver, with only two slashes of red along under the gills.
+Then another storm threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp
+the rain began again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was
+raining hard when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces
+were dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes.
+After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the open
+places high up we could see a great green void of spruce, and beyond,
+boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon. We flushed a big
+blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at length another big
+one.
+
+In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of scenting
+game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was pressed down.
+Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump of an elk protruding
+from behind some spruces. I beckoned for R.C. and we both dismounted.
+Just then the elk rose and stalked out. It was a magnificent bull with
+crowning lofty antlers. The shoulders and neck appeared black. He
+raised his head, and turning, trotted away with ease and grace for
+such a huge beast. That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen
+before. We were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with
+exclamations.
+
+We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the lofty
+red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest again, dim
+and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and oppressive stillness.
+The forest primeval! When we rode out of that into open slopes the
+afternoon was far advanced, and long shadows lay across the distant
+ranges. When we reached camp, supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet
+were exceedingly welcome. I was tired.
+
+Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched our
+horses near Teague's old corral. Our intention was to hunt up along
+the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We waited, hoping
+the big black clouds would break. But they did not. They rolled down
+with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and a storm enveloped us. We
+sought shelter in a thick spruce. It rained and hailed. By and bye
+the air grew bitterly cold, and Teague suggested we give up, and ride
+back. So we did. The mountains were dim and obscure through the gray
+gloom, and the black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against
+the background. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and
+crashed in magnificent bombardment across the heavens.
+
+Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only a
+few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the weather
+promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the mountains,
+first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we decided to ride
+out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around what they call the
+Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through the spruces above Little
+Trappers Lake. And as we got near the top it began to hail. Again
+the air grew cold. Once out on top I found a wide expanse, green and
+white, level in places, but with huge upheavals of ridge. There
+were flowers here at eleven thousand feet. The view to the rear was
+impressive--a wide up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of
+rocks, and patches of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall,
+and the view to the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling
+thick and white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell
+into the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet,
+lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White River
+Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope, up to a
+bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range, dark under the
+lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh Rocky Mountain sheep
+tracks. A little later, going into a draw, we crossed a snow-bank,
+solid as ice. We worked down into this draw into the timber. It
+hailed, and rained some more, then cleared. The warm sun felt good.
+Once down in the parks we began to ride through a flower-garden. Every
+slope was beautiful in gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks
+were luxuriant with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the
+great stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not
+see one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and
+miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length we
+got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood sear and
+ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with fallen trees that
+we had difficulty in threading a way through them. Patches of aspen
+grew on the hillside, still fresh and green despite this frosty
+morning. Here we found a sego lily, one of the most beautiful of
+flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian paint brush. At the foot of this
+long burned slope we came to the White River trail, and followed it up
+and around to camp.
+
+Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped off
+into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then paused to
+listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a sound. It was a
+place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of twigs, and presently
+heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We penetrated half a mile into
+the spruce, pausing now and then to listen. At length R.C. heard
+something. We stopped. After a little I heard the ring of a horn on
+wood. It was thrilling. Then came the crack of a hoof on stone, then
+the clatter of a loosened rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer
+evaded us. We hunted around till dark without farther sign of any
+game.
+
+R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down White
+River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw tracks of
+five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we climbed high up a
+burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen. We climbed ridge after
+ridge, and at last got out of the burned district into reaches of
+heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of deer and elk tracks, we
+dismounted and left our horses. I went to the left, and into some
+beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer or elk, and many tracks.
+Returning to the horses, I led them into a larger park, and climbed
+high into the open and watched. There I saw some little squirrels
+about three inches long, and some gray birds, very tame. I waited a
+long time before there was any sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was
+the dog I saw first. I whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted
+and rode on for an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of
+huge trees, windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we
+came out at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant
+park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we ran
+across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small band of
+elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.
+
+Next day we started for a few days' trip to Big Fish Lake. R.C. and I
+went along up around the mountain. I found our old trail, and was at a
+loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign, but no live game at all.
+
+In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile, while
+R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we caught four
+trout, one of which was fair sized.
+
+Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but we could
+not get them to take a fly.
+
+The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to be
+beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some big trout
+in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every way to get a
+strike. No use! In the little lake matters were worse. It was full of
+trout up to two pounds. They would run at the fly, only to refuse it.
+Exasperating work! We gave up and returned to Big Fish. After supper
+we went out to try again. The lake was smooth and quiet. All at once,
+as if by concert, the trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay
+we began to get strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The
+small ones were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed.
+We caught one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted
+wrong, broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too
+slow, and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because
+they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to
+imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line which I
+could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and altogether we got
+seven. All in that little bay, where the water was shallow! In other
+places we could not catch a fish. I had one vicious strike. The fish
+appeared to be feeding on a tiny black gnat, which we could not
+imitate. This was the most trying experience of all. We ought to have
+caught a basketful.
+
+The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet of Big
+Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for grayling. The
+stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared full of ice water
+and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an automobile, and a camp
+outfit. That was enough for me. Where an automobile can run, I do not
+belong. The fishing was poor. But the beautiful open valley, flowered
+in gold and purple, was recompense for a good deal of bad luck.
+
+A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as beautiful a
+fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker or mullet, had a
+small mouth, dark color, and was rather a sluggish-looking fish.
+
+We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers afforded
+much comfort.
+
+Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down over a
+mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.
+
+R.C. and I, with Teague, started for the top of the big mountain on
+the west. I had a new horse, a roan, and he looked a thoroughbred.
+He appeared tired. But I thought he would be great. We took a trail
+through the woods, dark green-gray, cool and verdant, odorous and
+still. We began to climb. Occasionally we crossed parks, and little
+streams. Up near the long, bare slope the spruce trees grew large and
+far apart. They were beautiful, gray as if bearded with moss. Beyond
+this we got into the rocks and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags
+up the slope brought us to the top of a notch, where at the right lay
+a patch of snow. The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but
+it had timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark
+domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out of the
+timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard struggle for
+life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and wild, studded
+with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving clouds.
+
+Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills.
+
+Away on the western rim, where we could look down upon a long rugged
+iron-gray ridge of mountain, our guide using the glass, found two big
+stags. We all had our fill of looking. I could see them plainly with
+naked eyes.
+
+We decided to go back to where we could climb down on that side,
+halter the horses, leave all extra accoutrements, and stalk those
+stags, and take a picture of them.
+
+I led the way, and descended under the rim. It was up and down over
+rough shale, and up steps of broken rocks, and down little cliffs.
+We crossed the ridge twice, many times having to lend a hand to each
+other.
+
+At length I reached a point where I could see the stags lying down.
+The place was an open spot on a rocky promonotory with a fringe of
+low spruces. The stags were magnificent in size, with antlers in the
+velvet. One had twelve points. They were lying in the sun to harden
+their horns, according to our guide.
+
+I slipped back to the others, and we all decided to have a look. So we
+climbed up. All of us saw the stags, twitching ears and tails.
+
+Then we crept back, and once more I took the lead to crawl round under
+the ledge so we could come up about even with them. Here I found the
+hardest going yet. I came to a wind-worn crack in the thin ledge, and
+from this I could just see the tips of the antlers. I beckoned the
+others. Laboriously they climbed. R.C. went through first. I went over
+next, and then came Teague.
+
+R.C. and I started to crawl down to a big rock that was our objective
+point. We went cautiously, with bated breath and pounding hearts. When
+we got there I peeped over to see the stags still lying down. But they
+had heads intent and wary. Still I did not think they had scented us.
+R.C. took a peep, and turning excitedly he whispered:
+
+"See only one. And he's standing!"
+
+And I answered: "Let's get down around to the left where we can get a
+better chance." It was only a few feet down. We got there.
+
+When he peeped over at this point he exclaimed: "They're gone!"
+
+It was a keen disappointment. "They winded us," I decided.
+
+We looked and looked. But we could not see to our left because of the
+bulge of rock. We climbed back. Then I saw one of the stags loping
+leisurely off to the left. Teague was calling. He said they had walked
+off the promontory, looking up, and stopping occasionally.
+
+Then we realized we must climb back along that broken ridge and then
+up to the summit of the mountain. So we started.
+
+That climb back was proof of the effect of excitement on judgment. We
+had not calculated at all on the distance or ruggedness, and we had a
+job before us. We got along well under the western wall, and fairly
+well straight across through the long slope of timber, where we saw
+sheep tracks, and expected any moment to sight an old ram. But we did
+not find one, and when we got out of the timber upon the bare sliding
+slope we had to halt a hundred times. We could zigzag only a few
+steps. The altitude was twelve thousand feet, and oxygen seemed
+scarce. I nearly dropped. All the climbing appeared to come hardest on
+the middle of my right foot, and it could scarcely have burned hotter
+if it had been in fire. Despite the strenuous toil there were not many
+moments that I was not aware of the vastness of the gulf below, or the
+peaceful lakes, brown as amber, or the golden parks. And nearer at
+hand I found magenta-colored Indian paint brush, very exquisite and
+rare.
+
+Coming out on a ledge I spied a little, dark animal with a long tail.
+He was running along the opposite promontory about three hundred yards
+distant. When he stopped I took a shot at him and missed by apparently
+a scant half foot.
+
+After catching our breath we climbed more and more, and still more, at
+last to drop on the rim, hot, wet and utterly spent.
+
+The air was keen, cold, and invigorating. We were soon rested, and
+finding our horses we proceeded along the rim westward. Upon rounding
+an out-cropping of rock we flushed a flock of ptarmigan--soft gray,
+rock-colored birds about the size of pheasants, and when they flew
+they showed beautiful white bands on their wings. These are the rare
+birds that have feathered feet and turn white in winter. They did not
+fly far, and several were so tame they did not fly at all. We got our
+little .22 revolvers and began to shoot at the nearest bird. He was
+some thirty feet distant. But we could not hit him, and at last Fox,
+getting disgusted, tried to catch the bird and made him fly. I felt
+relieved, for as we were getting closer and closer with every shot, it
+seemed possible that if the ptarmigan sat there long enough we might
+eventually have hit him. The mystery was why we shot so poorly. But
+this was explained by R.C., who discovered we had been shooting the
+wrong shells.
+
+It was a long hard ride down the rough winding trail. But riding down
+was a vastly different thing from going up.
+
+On September third we were up at five-thirty. It was clear and cold
+and the red of sunrise tinged the peaks. The snow banks looked pink.
+All the early morning scene was green, fresh, cool, with that mountain
+rareness of atmosphere.
+
+We packed to break camp, and after breakfast it took hours to get our
+outfit in shape to start--a long string, resembling a caravan. I knew
+that events would occur that day. First we lost one of the dogs. Vern
+went back after him. The dogs were mostly chained in pairs, to prevent
+their running off. Samson, the giant hound, was chained to a little
+dog, and the others were paired not according to size by any means.
+The poor dogs were disgusted with the arrangement. It developed
+presently that Cain, the bloodhound, a strange and wild hound much
+like Don of my old lion-hunting days, slipped us, and was not missed
+for hours. Teague decided to send back for him later.
+
+Next in order of events, as we rode up the winding trail through the
+spruce forest, we met Teague's cow and calf, which he had kept all
+summer in camp. For some reason neither could be left. Teague told us
+to ride on, and an hour later when we halted to rest on the Flattop
+Mountain he came along with the rest of the train, and in the fore was
+the cow alone. It was evident that she was distressed and angry, for
+it took two men to keep her in the trail. And another thing plain to
+me was the fact that she was going to demoralize the pack horses. We
+were not across the wide range of this flat mountain when one of the
+pack animals, a lean and lanky sorrel, appeared suddenly to go mad,
+and began to buck off a pack. He succeeded. This inspired a black
+horse, very appropriately christened Nigger, to try his luck, and he
+shifted his pack in short order. It took patience, time, and effort to
+repack. The cow was a disorganizer. She took up as wide a trail as a
+road. And the pack animals, some with dignity and others with disgust,
+tried to avoid her vicinity. Going down the steep forest trail on
+the other side the real trouble began. The pack train split, ran and
+bolted, crashing through the trees, plunging down steep places, and
+jumping logs. It was a wild sort of chase. But luckily the packs
+remained intact until we were once more on open, flat ground. All went
+well for a while, except for an accident for which I was to blame. I
+spurred my horse, and he plunged suddenly past R.C.'s mount, colliding
+with him, tearing off my stirrup, and spraining R.C.'s ankle. This
+was almost a serious accident, as R.C. has an old baseball ankle that
+required favoring.
+
+Next in order was the sorrel. As I saw it, he heedlessly went too near
+the cow, which we now called Bossy, and she acted somewhat like a
+Spanish Bull, to the effect that the sorrel was scared and angered at
+once. He began to run and plunge and buck right into the other pack
+animals, dropping articles from his pack as he dashed along. He
+stampeded the train, and gave the saddle horses a scare. When order
+was restored and the whole outfit gathered together again a full
+hour had been lost. By this time all the horses were tired, and that
+facilitated progress, because there were no more serious breaks.
+
+Down in the valley it was hot, and the ride grew long and wearisome.
+Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful. The valley was green and
+level, and a meandering stream formed many little lakes. On one
+side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on the other a black,
+spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a bold, blunt peak
+patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in the clear light. Huge
+white clouds sailed aloft, making dark moving shadows along the great
+slopes.
+
+We reached our turning-off place about five o'clock, and again entered
+the fragrant, quiet forest--a welcome change. We climbed and climbed,
+at length coming into an open park of slopes and green borders of
+forest, with a lake in the center. We pitched camp on the skirt of the
+western slope, under the spruces, and worked hard to get the tents up
+and boughs cut for beds. Darkness caught us with our hands still full,
+and we ate supper in the light of a camp-fire, with the black, deep
+forest behind, and the pale afterglow across the lake.
+
+I had a bad night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I saw the
+moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent walls, and the
+flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard the melodious
+tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy bawled often--a
+discordant break in the serenity of the night. Occasionally the hounds
+bayed her.
+
+Toward morning I slept some, and awakened with what seemed a broken
+back. All, except R.C., were slow in crawling out. The sun rose hot.
+This lower altitude was appreciated by all. After breakfast we set to
+work to put the camp in order.
+
+That afternoon we rode off to look over the ground. We crossed the
+park and worked up a timbered ridge remarkable for mossy, bare ground,
+and higher up for its almost total absence of grass or flowers. On the
+other side of this we had a fine view of Mt. Dome, a high peak across
+a valley. Then we worked down into the valley, which was full of parks
+and ponds and running streams. We found some fresh sign of deer, and a
+good deal of old elk and deer sign. But we saw no game of any kind. It
+was a tedious ride back through thick forest, where I observed many
+trees that had been barked by porcupines. Some patches were four feet
+from the ground, indicating that the porcupine had sat on the snow
+when he gnawed those particular places.
+
+After sunset R.C. and I went off down a trail into the woods, and
+sitting down under a huge spruce we listened. The forest was solemn
+and still. Far down somewhere roared a stream, and that was all the
+sound we heard. The gray shadows darkened and gloom penetrated the
+aisles of the forest, until all the sheltered places were black as
+pitch. The spruces looked spectral--and speaking. The silence of
+the woods was deep, profound, and primeval. It all worked on my
+imagination until I began to hear faint sounds, and finally grand
+orchestral crashings of melody.
+
+On our return the strange creeping chill, that must be a descendant of
+the old elemental fear, caught me at all obscure curves in the trail.
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING]
+
+Next day we started off early, and climbed through the woods and into
+the parks under the Dome. We scared a deer that had evidently been
+drinking. His fresh tracks led before us, but we could not catch a
+glimpse of him.
+
+[Illustration: THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS]
+
+We climbed out of the parks, up onto the rocky ridges where the
+spruce grew scarce, and then farther to the jumble of stones that had
+weathered from the great peaks above, and beyond that up the slope
+where all the vegetation was dwarfed, deformed, and weird, strange
+manifestation of its struggle for life. Here the air grew keener and
+cooler, and the light seemed to expand. We rode on to the steep slope
+that led up to the gap we were to cross between the Dome and its
+companion.
+
+[Illustration: UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS]
+
+I saw a red fox running up the slope, and dismounting I took a quick
+shot at three hundred yards, and scored a hit. It turned out to be a
+cross fox, and had very pretty fur.
+
+When we reached the level of the deep gap the wind struck us hard and
+cold. On that side opened an abyss, gray and shelving as it led down
+to green timber, and then on to the yellow parks and black ridges that
+gleamed under the opposite range.
+
+We had to work round a wide amphitheater, and up a steep corner to the
+top. This turned out to be level and smooth for a long way, with a
+short, velvety yellow grass, like moss, spotted with flowers. Here at
+thirteen thousand feet, the wind hit us with exceeding force, and soon
+had us with freezing hands and faces. All about us were bold black and
+gray peaks, with patches of snow, and above them clouds of white and
+drab, showing blue sky between. It developed that this grassy summit
+ascended in a long gradual sweep, from the apex of which stretched a
+grand expanse, like a plain of gold, down and down, endlessly almost,
+and then up and up to end under a gray butte, highest of the points
+around. The ride across here seemed to have no limit, but it was
+beautiful, though severe on endurance. I saw another fox, and
+dismounting, fired five shots as he ran, dusting him with three
+bullets. We rode out to the edge of the mountain and looked off. It
+was fearful, yet sublime. The world lay beneath us. In many places we
+rode along the rim, and at last circled the great butte, and worked up
+behind it on a swell of slope. Here the range ran west and the drop
+was not sheer, but, gradual with fine benches for sheep. We found many
+tracks and fresh sign, but did not see one sheep. Meanwhile the
+hard wind had ceased, and the sun had come out, making the ride
+comfortable, as far as weather was concerned. We had gotten a long way
+from camp, and finding no trail to descend in that direction we turned
+to retrace our steps. That was about one o'clock, and we rode and rode
+and rode, until I was so tired that I could not appreciate the scenes
+as I had on the way up. It took six hours to get back to camp!
+
+Next morning we took the hounds and rode off for bear. Eight of the
+hounds were chained in braces, one big and one little dog together,
+and they certainly had a hard time of it. Sampson, the giant gray and
+brown hound, and Jim, the old black leader, were free to run to and
+fro across the way. We rode down a few miles, and into the forest.
+There were two long, black ridges, and here we were to hunt for bear.
+It was the hardest kind of work, turning and twisting between the
+trees, dodging snags, and brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse
+among fallen logs. The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich
+brown and black muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds
+got caught on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a
+scent of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail
+and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail. We
+penetrated deep between the two ridges, and came to a little lake,
+about thirty feet wide, surrounded by rushes and grass. Here we rested
+the horses, and incidentally, ourselves. Fox chased a duck, and it
+flew into the woods and hid under a log. Fox trailed it, and Teague
+shot it just as he might have a rabbit. We got two more ducks, fine
+big mallards, the same way. It was amazing to me, and R.C. remarked
+that never had he seen such strange and foolish ducks.
+
+This forest had hundreds of trees barked by porcupines, and some clear
+to the top. But we met only one of the animals, and he left several
+quills in the nose of one of the pups. I was of the opinion that these
+porcupines destroy many fine trees, as I saw a number barked all
+around.
+
+We did not see any bear sign. On the way back to camp we rode out of
+the forest and down a wide valley, the opposite side of which was open
+slope with patches of alder. Even at a distance I could discern the
+color of these open glades and grassy benches. They had a tinge of
+purple, like purple sage. When I got to them I found a profusion of
+asters of the most exquisite shades of lavender, pink and purple. That
+slope was long, and all the way up we rode through these beautiful
+wild flowers. I shall never forget that sight, nor the many asters
+that shone like stars out of the green. The pink ones were new to me,
+and actually did not seem real. I noticed my horse occasionally nipped
+a bunch and ate them, which seemed to me almost as heartless as to
+tread them under foot.
+
+When we got up the slope and into the woods again we met a storm, and
+traveled for an hour in the rain, and under the dripping spruces,
+feeling the cold wet sting of swaying branches as we rode by. Then the
+sun came out bright and the forest glittered, all gold and green. The
+smell of the woods after a rain is indescribable. It combines a rare
+tang of pine, spruce, earth and air, all refreshed.
+
+The day after, we left at eight o'clock, and rode down to the main
+trail, and up that for five miles where we cut off to the left and
+climbed into the timber. The woods were fresh and dewy, dark and cool,
+and for a long time we climbed bench after bench where the grass and
+ferns and moss made a thick, deep cover. Farther up we got into fallen
+timber and made slow progress. At timber line we tied the horses and
+climbed up to the pass between two great mountain ramparts. Sheep
+tracks were in evidence, but not very fresh. Teague and I climbed on
+top and R.C., with Vern, went below just along the timber line. The
+climb on foot took all my strength, and many times I had to halt for
+breath. The air was cold. We stole along the rim and peered over. R.C.
+and Vern looked like very little men far below, and the dogs resembled
+mice.
+
+Teague climbed higher, and left me on a promontory, watching all
+around.
+
+The cloud pageant was magnificent, with huge billowy white masses
+across the valley, and to the west great black thunderheads rolling
+up. The wind began to blow hard, carrying drops of rain that stung,
+and the air was nipping cold. I felt aloof from all the crowded world,
+alone on the windy heights, with clouds and storm all around me.
+
+When the storm threatened I went back to the horses. It broke, but
+was not severe after all. At length R.C. and the men returned and we
+mounted to ride back to camp. The storm blew away, leaving the sky
+clear and blue, and the sun shone warm. We had an hour of winding in
+and out among windfalls of timber, and jumping logs, and breaking
+through brush. Then the way sloped down to a beautiful forest, shady
+and green, full of mossy dells, almost overgrown with ferns and low
+spreading ground pine or spruce. The aisles of the forest were long
+and shaded by the stately spruces. Water ran through every ravine,
+sometimes a brawling brook, sometimes a rivulet hidden under
+overhanging mossy banks. We scared up two lonely grouse, at long
+intervals. At length we got into fallen timber, and from that worked
+into a jumble of rocks, where the going was rough and dangerous.
+
+The afternoon waned as we rode on and on, up and down, in and out,
+around, and at times the horses stood almost on their heads, sliding
+down steep places where the earth was soft and black, and gave forth a
+dank odor. We passed ponds and swamps, and little lakes. We saw where
+beavers had gnawed down aspens, and we just escaped miring our
+horses in marshes, where the grass grew, rich and golden, hiding
+the treacherous mire. The sun set, and still we did not seem to get
+anywhere. I was afraid darkness would overtake us, and we would get
+lost in the woods. Presently we struck an old elk trail, and following
+that for a while, came to a point where R.C. and I recognized a tree
+and a glade where we had been before--and not far from camp--a welcome
+discovery.
+
+Next day we broke camp and started across country for new territory
+near Whitley's Peak.
+
+We rode east up the mountain. After several miles along an old logging
+road we reached the timber, and eventually the top of the ridge. We
+went down, crossing parks and swales. There were cattle pastures, and
+eaten over and trodden so much they had no beauty left. Teague wanted
+to camp at a salt lick, but I did not care for the place.
+
+We went on. The dogs crossed a bear trail, and burst out in a clamor.
+We had a hard time holding them.
+
+The guide and I had a hot argument. I did not want to stay there and
+chase a bear in a cow pasture.... So we went on, down into ranch
+country, and this disgusted me further. We crossed a ranch, and rode
+several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly, and climbed a rough,
+rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen. We crossed it, and went
+down for several miles, and had to camp in an aspen grove, on the
+slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting place to stay, but as there
+was no other we had to make the best of it. The afternoon had waned. I
+took a gun and went off down the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge.
+Here I heard the sound of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour,
+but saw no game.
+
+That night I had a wretched bed, one that I could hardly stay in,
+and I passed miserable hours. I got up sore, cramped, sleepy and
+irritable. We had to wait three hours for the horses to be caught and
+packed. I had predicted straying horses. At last we were off, and rode
+along the steep slope of a canyon for several miles, and then struck a
+stream of amber-colored water. As we climbed along this we came into
+deep spruce forest, where it was pleasure to ride. I saw many dells
+and nooks, cool and shady, full of mossy rocks and great trees. But
+flowers were scarce. We were sorry to pass the head-springs of that
+stream and to go on over the divide and down into the wooded, but dry
+and stony country. We rode until late, and came at last to a park
+where sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high
+dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for we
+rode into a park with many branches, where there was good water and
+fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which to pitch our
+tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at night.
+
+The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started before
+a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses, and soon
+we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We put on our
+slickers. After a short ride down through the forest we entered
+Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time trying to find a
+forester's trail leading out of it. At last we found one, but it soon
+petered out, and we were lost in thick timber, in a driving rain, with
+the cold and wind increasing. But we kept on.
+
+This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and great
+canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to ride out of
+it. When we began to descend once more we struck an old lumber road.
+More luck--the storm ceased, and presently we were out on an aspen
+slope with a great valley beneath, and high, black peaks beyond. Below
+the aspens were long swelling slopes of sage and grass, gray and
+golden and green. A ranch lay in the valley, and we crossed it to
+climb up a winding ravine, once more to the aspens where we camped in
+the rancher's pasture. It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be
+fairly comfortable.
+
+The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled.
+There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and
+violet-hued banks of cloud.
+
+Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About nine
+the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed pastures and
+aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the grass grew luxuriant,
+and the red wall of rock overhung the long slopes. The view west was
+magnificent--a long, bulging range of mountains, vast stretches of
+green aspen slopes, winding parks of all shapes, gray and gold and
+green, and jutting peaks, and here and there patches of autumn blaze
+in grass and thicket.
+
+We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with water,
+grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of mountains and
+valleys below.
+
+We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak. After the
+middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to the touch of
+frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly beautiful. Against
+a background of gray sage the gold and red and purple aspen groves
+showed too much like exquisite paintings to seem real. In the mornings
+the frost glistened thick and white on the grass; and after the
+gorgeous sunsets of gold over the violet-hazed ranges the air grew
+stingingly cold.
+
+Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely criticised by
+many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business,
+and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the
+kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know
+what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I
+would not do so, except in a case of hunger. All the same, leaving the
+tree out of consideration, bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously
+exciting and hazardous game. But my ideas about sport are changing.
+Hunting, in the sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate business.
+
+[Illustration: WHITE ASPEN TREE, SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS]
+
+The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong about
+the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my hands. All is
+exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent up to the moment
+the shot is fired. After that it is another matter. It is useless for
+sportsmen to tell me that they, in particular, hunt right, conserve
+the game, do not go beyond the limit, and all that sort of thing. I do
+not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made
+for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may
+keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of
+spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
+the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life
+is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to
+the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a
+man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is
+to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard
+and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will
+weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not prepared now to say
+whether or not that would be well. The Germans believe they are the
+race fittest to survive over all others--and that has made me a
+little sick of this Darwin business.
+
+[Illustration: A BLACK BEAR TREED]
+
+To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a wild
+chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating experience, I will
+relate a couple of instances, and I will leave it to my readers to
+judge whether or not it is a cowardly sport.
+
+One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that he had
+surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead cow.
+
+"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
+delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll come
+back to-night."
+
+Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode into
+camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were
+glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that
+crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide
+led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a
+quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the
+chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that my
+brother and I were well ahead of the others. But we did not see any
+bear near the carcass of the cow. Old Jim and Sampson were close
+behind us, and when Jim came within forty yards of that carcass he
+put his nose up with a deep and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a
+streak. He never went near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder
+and raced after Jim.
+
+"They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come on!"
+
+We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to the edge
+of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with noses high. I
+heard a string of yelps and bellows from our rear.
+
+"Look back!" shouted R.C.
+
+Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack. It surely
+was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like the wind they
+passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods with deep bays. I was
+riding Teague's best horse for this sort of work and he understood the
+game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s horse ran as fast in the woods as
+he did in the open. This frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be
+careful. I yelled to deaf ears. That is the first great risk--a rider
+is not going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson
+with the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both
+horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases with
+Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and snags, and
+sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against trees. For a mile
+the forest was comparatively open, and here we had a grand and ringing
+run. I received two hard knocks, was unseated once, but held on, and
+I got a stinging crack in the face from a branch. R.C. added several
+more black-and-blue spots to his already spotted anatomy, and he
+missed, just by an inch, a solid snag that would have broken him
+in two. The pack stretched out in wild staccato chorus, the little
+Airedales literally screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then
+Sampson. Still it was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather
+than sight. They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble
+in the windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the
+mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear. The
+forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the dogs go
+down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague and the others
+strung out along the edge of the park. They got far ahead of us. When
+we reached the bottom of the slope they were out of sight, but we
+could hear them yell. The hounds were working around on another slope,
+from which craggy rocks loomed above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged
+across the park and appeared to be running off from mine. I was a
+little to the right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we
+had the bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his
+knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to alight all
+spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to be hurt. When I
+got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be patient with me, but
+he was in a hurry. Before we got across the wet place R.C. was out of
+sight. I decided that instead of worrying about him I had better think
+about myself. Once on hard ground my horse fairly charged into the
+woods and we broke brush and branches as if they had been punk. It
+was again open forest, then a rocky slope, and then a flat ridge with
+aisles between the trees. Here I heard the melodious notes of Teague's
+hunting horn, and following that, the full chorus of the hounds. They
+had treed the bear. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks
+here and there, I caught sight of R.C. far ahead, and soon I had
+glimpses of the other horses, and lastly, while riding full tilt, I
+spied a big, black, glistening bear high up in a pine a hundred yards
+or more distant.
+
+Slowing down I rode up to the circle of frenzied dogs and excited men.
+The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was beaming. R.C. sat his
+horse, and it struck me that he looked sorry for the bear.
+
+"Fifteen minutes!" ejaculated Teague, with a proud glance at Old Jim
+standing with forepaws up on the pine.
+
+Indeed it had been a short and ringing chase.
+
+All the time while I fooled around trying to photograph the treed
+bear, R.C. sat there on his horse, looking upward.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, better kill him," said Teague, cheerfully. "If he
+gets rested he'll come down."
+
+It was then I suggested to R.C. that he do the shooting.
+
+"Not much!" he exclaimed.
+
+The bear looked really pretty perched up there. He was as round as a
+barrel and black as jet and his fur shone in the gleams of sunlight.
+His tongue hung out, and his plump sides heaved, showing what a quick,
+hard run he had made before being driven to the tree. What struck me
+most forcibly about him was the expression in his eyes as he looked
+down at those devils of hounds. He was scared. He realized his peril.
+It was utterly impossible for me to see Teague's point of view.
+
+"Go ahead--and plug him," I replied to my brother. "Get it over."
+
+"You do it," he said.
+
+"No, I won't."
+
+"Why not--I'd like to know?"
+
+"Maybe we won't have so good a chance again--and I want you to get
+your bear," I replied.
+
+"Why it's like--murder," he protested.
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," I returned, weakly. "We need the meat. We've
+not had any game meat, you know, except ducks and grouse."
+
+"You won't do it?" he added, grimly.
+
+"No, I refuse."
+
+Meanwhile the young ranchers gazed at us with wide eyes and the
+expression on Teague's honest, ruddy face would have been funny under
+other circumstances.
+
+"That bear will come down an' mebbe kill one of my dogs," he
+protested.
+
+"Well, he can come for all I care," I replied, positively, and I
+turned away.
+
+I heard R.C. curse low under his breath. Then followed the spang of his
+.35 Remington. I wheeled in time to see the bear straining upward in
+terrible convulsion, his head pointed high, with blood spurting from his
+nose. Slowly he swayed and fell with a heavy crash.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO]
+
+The next bear chase we had was entirely different medicine.
+
+Off in the basin under the White Slides, back of our camp, the hounds
+struck a fresh track and in an instant were out of sight. With the
+cowboy Vern setting the pace we plunged after them. It was rough
+country. Bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little parks, stretches of timber
+full of windfalls, groves of aspens so thick we could scarcely squeeze
+through--all these obstacles soon allowed the hounds to get far away.
+We came out into a large park, right under the mountain slope, and
+here we sat our horses listening to the chase. That trail led around
+the basin and back near to us, up the thick green slope, where high up
+near a ledge we heard the pack jump this bear. It sounded to us as if
+he had been roused out of a sleep.
+
+"I'll bet it's one of the big grizzlies we've heard about," said
+Teague.
+
+That was something to my taste. I have seen a few grizzlies. Riding
+to higher ground I kept close watch on the few open patches up on the
+slope. The chase led toward us for a while. Suddenly I saw a big bear
+with a frosted coat go lumbering across one of these openings.
+
+"Silvertip! Silvertip!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I saw him!"
+
+My call thrilled everybody. Vern spurred his horse and took to the
+right. Teague advised that we climb the slope. So we made for the
+timber. Once there we had to get off and climb on foot. It was steep,
+rough, very hard work. I had on chaps and spurs. Soon I was hot,
+laboring, and my heart began to hurt. We all had to rest. The baying
+of the hounds inspirited us now and then, but presently we lost it.
+Teague said they had gone over the ridge and as soon as we got up to
+the top we would hear them again. We struck an elk trail with fresh
+elk tracks in it. Teague said they were just ahead of us. I never
+climbed so hard and fast in my life. We were all tuckered out when we
+reached the top of the ridge. Then to our great disappointment we did
+not hear the hounds. Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded
+ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher. Once on
+a bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed. The big,
+round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me. No doubt of
+its being a silvertip!
+
+We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the summit
+of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of the pack. They
+were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and over a wooded bench
+at our feet. Teague yelled as he spurred down. R.C. rode hard in his
+tracks.
+
+But my horse was new to this bear chasing. He was mettlesome, and he
+did not want to do what I wanted. When I jabbed the spurs into his
+flanks he nearly bucked me off. I was looking for a soft place to
+light when he quit. Long before I got down that open slope Teague and
+R.C. had disappeared. I had to follow their tracks. This I did at a
+gallop, but now and then lost the tracks, and had to haul in to find
+them. If I could have heard the hounds from there I would have gone on
+anyway. But once down in the jack-pines I could hear neither yell or
+bay. The pines were small, close together, and tough. I hurt my hands,
+scratched my face, barked my knees. The horse had a habit of suddenly
+deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and
+when he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both
+to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me. I was worked into a
+frenzy. Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old grizzly
+and fail to kill him! That was the reason for my desperate hurry. I
+got a crack on the head that nearly blinded me. My horse grew hot and
+began to run in every little open space. He could scarcely be held in.
+And I, with the blood hot in me too, did not hold him hard enough.
+
+It seemed miles across that wooded bench. But at last I reached
+another slope. Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C. and Teague
+yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly. He was growling
+and threshing about far below. I had missed the tracks made by Teague
+and my brother, and it was necessary to find them. That slope looked
+impassable. I rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally I found
+where the ground was plowed deep and here I headed my horse. He had
+been used to smooth roads and he could not take these jumps. I went
+forward on his neck. But I hung on and spurred him hard. The mad
+spirit of that chase had gotten into him too. All the time I could
+hear the fierce baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I
+heard a savage bawl from the bear. I literally plunged, slid, broke a
+way down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I discovered
+the footprints of Teague and R.C. They had walked, leading their
+horses. By this time I was so mad I would not get off. I rode all the
+way down that steep slope of dense saplings, loose rock slides and
+earth, and jumble of splintered cliff. That he did not break my
+neck and his own spoke the truth about that roan horse. Despite his
+inexperience he was great. We fell over one bank, but a thicket of
+aspens saved us from rolling. The avalanches slid from under us until
+I imagined that the grizzly would be scared. Once as I stopped to
+listen I heard bear and pack farther down the canyon--heard them above
+the roar of a rushing stream. They went on and I lost the sounds of
+fight. But R.C.'s clear thrilling call floated up to me. Probably he
+was worried about me.
+
+Then before I realized it I was at the foot of the slope, in a narrow
+canyon bed, full of rocks and trees, with the din of roaring water in
+my ears. I could hear nothing else. Tracks were everywhere, and when I
+came to the first open place I was thrilled. The grizzly had plunged
+off a sandy bar into the water, and there he had fought the hounds.
+Signs of that battle were easy to read. I saw where his huge tracks,
+still wet, led up the opposite sandy bank.
+
+Then, down stream, I did my most reckless riding. On level ground
+the horse was splendid. Once he leaped clear across the brook. Every
+plunge, every turn I expected to bring me upon my brother and Teague
+and that fighting pack. More than once I thought I heard the spang of
+the .35 and this made me urge the roan faster and faster.
+
+The canyon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. I had to slow down to
+get through the trees and rocks. And suddenly I was overjoyed to ride
+pell-mell upon R.C. and Teague with half the panting hounds. The
+canyon had grown too rough for the horses to go farther and it would
+have been useless for us to try on foot. As I dismounted, so sore and
+bruised I could hardly stand, old Jim came limping in to fall into the
+brook where he lapped and lapped thirstily. Teague threw up his hands.
+Old Jim's return meant an ended chase. The grizzly had eluded the
+hounds in that jumble of rocks below.
+
+"Say, did you meet the bear?" queried Teague, eyeing me in
+astonishment and mirth.
+
+Bloody, dirty, ragged and wringing wet with sweat I must have been a
+sight. R.C. however, did not look so very immaculate, and when I saw
+he also was lame and scratched and black I felt better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+I
+
+The Grand Canyon of Arizona is over two hundred miles long, thirteen
+wide, and a mile and a half deep; a titanic gorge in which mountains,
+tablelands, chasms and cliffs lie half veiled in purple haze. It is
+wild and sublime, a thing of wonder, of mystery; beyond all else a
+place to grip the heart of a man, to unleash his daring spirit.
+
+On April 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary party and
+pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the most isolated,
+inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in all the canyon
+country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared insurmountable;
+standing aloof from the towers and escarpments, rugged and bold in
+outline, its forest covering like a strip of black velvet, its giant
+granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed apart from the world,
+haunting with its beauty, isolation and wild promise.
+
+The members of my party harmoniously fitted the scene. Buffalo Jones,
+burly-shouldered, bronze-faced, and grim, proved in his appearance
+what a lifetime on the plains could make of a man. Emett was a Mormon,
+a massively built grey-bearded son of the desert; he had lived his
+life on it; he had conquered it and in his falcon eyes shone all its
+fire and freedom. Ranger Jim Owens had the wiry, supple body and
+careless, tidy garb of the cowboy, and the watchful gaze, quiet face
+and locked lips of the frontiersman. The fourth member was a Navajo
+Indian, a copper-skinned, raven-haired, beady-eyed desert savage.
+
+I had told Emett to hire some one who could put the horses on grass in
+the evening and then find them the next morning. In northern Arizona
+this required more than genius. Emett secured the best trailer of the
+desert Navajos. Jones hated an Indian; and Jim, who carried an ounce
+of lead somewhere in his person, associated this painful addition to
+his weight with an unfriendly Apache, and swore all Indians should
+be dead. So between the two, Emett and I had trouble in keeping our
+Navajo from illustrating the plainsman idea of a really good Indian--a
+dead one.
+
+While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and above a
+hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden pounding in the
+turf attracted our attention.
+
+"Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.
+
+As we all made a dive among our snorting and plunging horses the sound
+seemed to be coming right into camp. In a moment I saw a string of
+wild horses thundering by. A noble black stallion led them, and as he
+ran with beautiful stride he curved his fine head backward to look at
+us, and whistled his wild challenge.
+
+Later a herd of large white-tailed deer trooped up the hollow. The
+Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when Emett told
+him we had not come out to kill, he looked dumbfounded. Even the
+Indian felt it a strange departure from the usual mode of hunting to
+travel and climb hundreds of miles over hot desert and rock-ribbed
+canyons, to camp at last in a spot so wild that deer were tame as
+cattle, and then not kill.
+
+Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling into
+permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the all-satisfying
+touch to the background of forest, flowers and mighty pines and sunlit
+patches of grass, the white tents and red blankets, the sleeping
+hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a picture like that of a
+hunter's dream.
+
+"Come, saddle up," called the never restful Jones. "Leave the Indian
+in camp with the hounds, and we'll get the lay of the land." All
+afternoon we spent riding the plateau. What a wonderful place! We were
+completely bewildered with its physical properties, and surprised
+at the abundance of wild horses and mustangs, deer, coyotes, foxes,
+grouse and other birds, and overjoyed to find innumerable lion trails.
+When we returned to camp I drew a rough map, which Jones laid flat on
+the ground as he called us around him.
+
+"Now, boys, let's get our heads together."
+
+In shape the plateau resembled the ace of clubs. The center and side
+wings were high and well wooded with heavy pines; the middle wing
+was longest, sloped west, had no pine, but a dense growth of cedar.
+Numerous ridges and canyons cut up this central wing. Middle Canyon,
+the longest and deepest, bisected the plateau, headed near camp, and
+ran parallel with two smaller ones, which we named Right and Left
+Canyons. These three were lion runways and hundreds of deer carcasses
+lined the thickets. North Hollow was the only depression, as well as
+runway, on the northwest rim. West Point formed the extreme western
+cape of the plateau. To the left of West Point was a deep cut-in of
+the rim wall, called the Bay. The three important canyons opened into
+it. From the Bay, the south rim was regular and impassable all the way
+round to the narrow Saddle, which connected it to the mainland.
+
+"Now then," said Jones, when we assured him that we were pretty well
+informed as to the important features, "you can readily see our
+advantage. The plateau is about nine or ten miles long, and six wide
+at its widest. We can't get lost, at least for long. We know where
+lions can go over the rim and we'll head them off, make short cut
+chases, something new in lion hunting. We are positive the lions can
+not get over the second wall, except where we came up, at the Saddle.
+In regard to lion signs, I'm doubtful of the evidence of my own eyes.
+This is virgin ground. No white man or Indian has ever hunted lions
+here. We have stumbled on a lion home, the breeding place of hundreds
+of lions that infest the north rim of the canyon."
+
+The old plainsman struck a big fist into the palm of his hand, a rare
+action with him. Jim lifted his broad hat and ran his fingers through
+his white hair. In Emett's clear desert-eagle eyes shown a furtive,
+anxious look, which yet could not overshadow the smouldering fire.
+
+"If only we don't kill the horses!" he said.
+
+More than anything else that remark from such a man thrilled me with
+its subtle suggestion. He loved those beautiful horses. What wild
+rides he saw in his mind's eye! In cold calculation we perceived the
+wonderful possibilities never before experienced by hunters, and as
+the wild spell clutched us my last bar of restraint let down.
+
+During supper we talked incessantly, and afterward around the
+camp-fire. Twilight fell with the dark shadows sweeping under the
+silent pines; the night wind rose and began its moan.
+
+"Shore there's some scent on the wind," said Jim, lighting his pipe
+with a red ember. "See how uneasy Don is."
+
+The hound raised his fine, dark head and repeatedly sniffed the air,
+then walked to and fro as if on guard for his pack. Moze ground his
+teeth on a bone and growled at one of the pups. Sounder was sleepy,
+but he watched Don with suspicious eyes. The other hounds, mature and
+somber, lay stretched before the fire.
+
+"Tie them up, Jim," said Jones, "and let's turn in."
+
+
+II
+
+When I awakened next morning the sound of Emett's axe rang out
+sharply. Little streaks of light from the camp-fire played between the
+flaps of the tent. I saw old Moze get up and stretch himself. A jangle
+of cow-bells from the forest told me we would not have to wait for the
+horses that morning.
+
+"The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett.
+
+"All rustle for breakfast," called Jim.
+
+We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever brightening.
+Dawn broke as we saddled our horses. The pups were limber, and ran
+to and fro on their chains, scenting the air; the older hounds stood
+quietly waiting.
+
+"Come Navvy--come chase cougie," said Emett.
+
+"Dam! No!" replied the Indian.
+
+"Let him keep camp," suggested Jim.
+
+"All right; but he'll eat us out," Emett declared.
+
+"Climb up you fellows," said Jones, impatiently. "Have I got
+everything--rope, chains, collars, wire, nippers? Yes, all right.
+Hyar, you lazy dogs--out of this!"
+
+We rode abreast down the ridge. The demeanor of the hounds contrasted
+sharply with what it had been at the start of the hunt the year
+before. Then they had been eager, uncertain, violent; they did not
+know what was in the air; now they filed after Don in an orderly trot.
+
+We struck out of the pines at half past five. Floating mist hid the
+lower end of the plateau. The morning had a cool touch but there was
+no frost. Crossing Middle Canyon about half way down we jogged on.
+Cedar trees began to show bright green against the soft gray sage. We
+were nearing the dark line of the cedar forest when Jim, who led, held
+up his hand in a warning check. We closed in around him.
+
+"Watch Don," he said.
+
+The hound stood stiff, head well up, nose working, and the hair on his
+back bristling. All the other hounds whined and kept close to him.
+
+"Don scents a lion," whispered Jim. "I've never known him to do that
+unless there was the scent of a lion on the wind."
+
+"Hunt 'em up Don, old boy," called Jones.
+
+The pack commenced to work back and forth along the ridge. We neared
+a hollow when Don barked eagerly. Sounder answered and likewise Jude.
+Moze's short angry "bow-wow" showed the old gladiator to be in line.
+
+"Ranger's gone," cried Jim. "He was farthest ahead. I'll bet he's
+struck it. We'll know in a minute, for we're close."
+
+The hounds were tearing through the sage, working harder and harder,
+calling and answering one another, all the time getting down into the
+hollow.
+
+Don suddenly let out a string of yelps. I saw him, running head up,
+pass into the cedars like a yellow dart. Sounder howled his deep, full
+bay, and led the rest of the pack up the slope in angry clamor.
+
+"They're off!" yelled Jim, and so were we.
+
+In less than a minute we had lost one another. Crashings among the dry
+cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one direction. The
+fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I remembered that Jim had
+said Emett and his charger might keep the pack in sight, but that none
+of the rest of us could.
+
+It did not take me long to realize what my mustang was made of. His
+name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a fast pace on
+the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by keeping in this
+trail part of the work of breaking through the brush was already done
+for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead branches, more numerous in a
+cedar forest than elsewhere, struck and stung us as we passed. We
+climbed a ridge, and found the cedars thinning out into open patches.
+Then we faced a bare slope of sage and I saw Emett below on his big
+horse.
+
+Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage, and
+showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open ground, with
+its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the little mustang. I
+heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears. Emett's trail, plain
+in the yellow ground showed me the way. On entering the cedars again
+I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the
+baying of the hounds, but no answer to my signal. Then I attended to
+the stern business of catching up. For what seemed a long time, I
+threaded the maze of cedar, galloped the open sage flats, always on
+Emett's track.
+
+A signal cry, sharp to the right, turned me. I answered, and with the
+exchange of signal cries found my way into an open glade where Jones
+and Jim awaited me.
+
+"Here's one," said Jim. "Emett must be with the hounds. Listen."
+
+With the labored breathing of the horses filling our ears we could
+hear no other sound. Dismounting, I went aside and turned my ear to
+the breeze.
+
+"I hear Don," I cried instantly.
+
+"Which way?" both men asked.
+
+"West."
+
+"Strange," said Jones. "The hound wouldn't split, would he, Jim?"
+
+"Don leave that hot trail? Shore he wouldn't," replied Jim. "But his
+runnin' do seem queer this morning."
+
+"The breeze is freshening," I said. "There! Now listen! Don, and
+Sounder, too."
+
+The baying came closer and closer. Our horses threw up long ears. It
+was hard to sit still and wait. At a quick cry from Jim we saw Don
+cross the lower end of the flat.
+
+No need to spur our mounts! The lifting of bridles served, and away
+we raced. Foxie passed the others in short order. Don had long
+disappeared, but with blended bays, Jude, Moze, and Sounder broke out
+of the cedars hot on the trail. They, too, were out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where the hounds
+had come out of the forest, attracted and even frightened me. I saw
+the green of a low cedar tree shake, and split, to let out a huge,
+gaunt horse with a big man doubled over his saddle. The onslaught
+of Emett and his desert charger stirred a fear in me that checked
+admiration.
+
+"Hounds running wild," he yelled, and the dark shadows of the cedars
+claimed him again.
+
+A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett,
+dismounted, searching the ground. Moze and Sounder were with him,
+apparently at fault. Suddenly Moze left the little glade and venting
+his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees. Sounder sat on
+his haunches and yelped.
+
+"Now what the hell is wrong?" growled Jones tumbling off his saddle.
+
+"Shore something is," said Jim, also dismounting.
+
+"Here's a lion track," interposed Emett.
+
+"Ha! and here's another," cried Jones, in great satisfaction. "That's
+the trail we were on, and here's another crossing it at right angles.
+Both are fresh: one isn't fifteen minutes old. Don and Jude have split
+one way and Moze another. By George! that's great of Sounder to hang
+fire!"
+
+"Put him on the fresh trail," said Jim, vaulting into his saddle.
+
+Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off on the
+trail Moze had taken. All of us got in some pretty hard riding, and
+managed to stay within earshot of Sounder. We crossed a canyon, and
+presently reached another which, from its depth, must have been Middle
+Canyon. Sounder did not climb the opposite slope, so we followed the
+rim. From a bare ridge we distinguished the line of pines above us,
+and decided that our location was in about the center of the plateau.
+
+Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze. Sounder had caught up
+with him. We came to a halt where the canyon widened and was not so
+deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an easy slope leading
+down. Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted harsh, eager howls, and
+both hounds, in plain sight, began working in circles.
+
+"The lion has gone up somewhere," cried Jim. "Look sharp!"
+
+Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and looked
+over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to return. When
+I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the bottom of the stone
+wall, and jump into the low branches of a cedar I knew where to look.
+Then I descried the lion a round yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a
+mass of dark branches. He had leaped into the tree from the wall.
+
+"There he is! Treed! Treed!" I yelled. "Moze has found him."
+
+"Down boys, down into the canyon," shouted Jones, in sharp voice.
+"Make a racket, we don't want him to jump."
+
+How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone! For a moment I
+could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle by a strange
+vacillation that could have been no other thing than fear.
+
+"Are you afraid?" called Jones from below.
+
+"Yes, but I am coming," I replied, and dismounted to plunge down the
+hill. It may have been shame or anger that dominated me then; whatever
+it was I made directly for the cedar, and did not halt until I was
+under the snarling lion.
+
+"Not too close!" warned Jones. "He might jump. It's a Tom, a
+two-year-old, and full of fight."
+
+It did not matter to me then whether he jumped or not. I knew I had to
+be cured of my dread, and the sooner it was done the better.
+
+Old Moze had already climbed a third of the distance up to the lion.
+
+"Hyar Moze! Out of there, you rascal coon chaser!" Jones yelled as he
+threw stones and sticks at the hound. Moze, however, replied with his
+snarly bark and climbed on steadily.
+
+"I've got to pull him out. Watch close boys and tell me if the lion
+starts down."
+
+When Jones climbed the first few branches of the tree, Tom let out an
+ominous growl.
+
+"Make ready to jump. Shore he's comin'," called Jim.
+
+The lion, snarling viciously, started to descend. It was a ticklish
+moment for all of us, particularly Jones. Warily he backed down.
+
+"Boys, maybe he's bluffing," said Jones, "Try him out. Grab sticks and
+run at the tree and yell, as if you were going to kill him."
+
+Not improbably the demonstration we executed under the tree would
+have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white
+fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as
+he could. The forked branch on which he stood swayed alarmingly.
+
+"Here, punch Moze out," said Jim handing up a long pole.
+
+The old hound hung like a leech to the tree, making it difficult to
+dislodge him. At length he fell heavily, and venting his thick battle
+cry, attempted to climb again.
+
+Jim seized him, made him fast to the rope with which Sounder had
+already been tied.
+
+"Say Emett, I've no chance here," called Jones. "You try to throw at
+him from the rock."
+
+Emett ran up the rock, coiled his lasso and cast the noose. It sailed
+perfectly in between the branches and circled Tom's head. Before it
+could be slipped tight he had thrown it off. Then he hid behind the
+branches.
+
+"I'm going farther up," said Jones.
+
+"Be quick," yelled Jim.
+
+Jones evidently had that in mind. When he reached the middle fork of
+the cedar, he stood erect and extended the noose of his lasso on the
+point of his pole. Tom, with a hiss and snap, struck at it savagely.
+The second trial tempted the lion to saw the rope with his teeth. In
+a flash Jones withdrew the pole, and lifted a loop of the slack rope
+over the lion's ears.
+
+"Pull!" he yelled.
+
+Emett, at the other end of the lasso, threw his great strength into
+action, pulling the lion out with a crash, and giving the cedar such a
+tremendous shaking that Jones lost his footing and fell heavily.
+
+Thrilling as the moment was, I had to laugh, for Jones came up out of
+a cloud of dust, as angry as a wet hornet, and made prodigious leaps
+to get out of the reach of the whirling lion.
+
+"Look out!" he bawled.
+
+Tom, certainly none the worse for his tumble, made three leaps, two at
+Jones, one at Jim, which was checked by the short length of the rope
+in Emett's hands. Then for a moment, a thick cloud of dust enveloped
+the wrestling lion, during which the quick-witted Jones tied the free
+end of the lasso to a sapling.
+
+"Dod gast the luck!" yelled Jones reaching for another lasso. "I
+didn't mean for you to pull him out of the tree. Now he'll get loose
+or kill himself."
+
+When the dust cleared away, we discovered our prize stretched out at
+full length and frothing at the mouth. As Jones approached, the lion
+began a series of evolutions so rapid as to be almost indiscernible to
+the eye. I saw a wheel of dust and yellow fur. Then came a thud and
+the lion lay inert.
+
+Jones pounced upon him and loosed the lasso around his neck.
+
+"I think he's done for, but maybe not. He's breathing yet. Here, help
+me tie his paws together. Look out! He's coming to!"
+
+The lion stirred and raised his head. Jones ran the loop of the second
+lasso around the two hind paws and stretched the lion out. While in
+this helpless position and with no strength and hardly any breath left
+in him the lion was easy to handle. With Emett's help Jones quickly
+clipped the sharp claws, tied the four paws together, took off the
+neck lasso and substituted a collar and chain.
+
+"There, that's one. He'll come to all right," said Jones. "But we are
+lucky. Emett, never pull another lion clear out of a tree. Pull him over
+a limb and hang him there while some one below ropes his hind paws.
+That's the only way, and if we don't stick to it, somebody is going to
+get done for. Come, now, we'll leave this fellow here and hunt up Don
+and Jude. They've treed another lion by this time."
+
+Remarkable to me was to see how, as soon as the lion lay helpless,
+Sounder lost his interest. Moze growled, yet readily left the spot.
+Before we reached the level, both hounds had disappeared.
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER]
+
+[Illustration: CAMP AT THE SADDLE]
+
+"Hear that?" yelled Jones, digging spurs into his horse. "Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+From the cedars rang the thrilling, blending chorus of bays that told
+of a treed lion. The forest was almost impenetrable. We had to pick
+our way. Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing the deadwood; and
+soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones' assertion.
+
+First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the cedar, and
+the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the dead top of the
+tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny lion.
+
+"Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips. Quiet Jim was yelling; and
+Emett, silent man of the desert, let from his wide cavernous chest a
+booming roar that drowned ours.
+
+Jones' next decisive action turned us from exultation to the grim
+business of the thing. He pulled Moze out of the cedar, and while he
+climbed up, Emett ran his rope under the collars of all of the hounds.
+Quick as the idea flashed over me I leaped into the cedar adjoining
+the one Jones was in, and went up hand over hand. A few pulls brought
+me to the top, and then my blood ran hot and quick, for I was level
+with the lion, too close for comfort, but in excellent position for
+taking pictures.
+
+The lion, not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread
+paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came
+pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The
+quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body
+crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping
+jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his
+tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking them, manifested
+his extremity. The eager hounds waited below, howling, leaping.
+
+It bothered me considerably to keep my balance, regulate my camera
+and watch the proceedings. Jones climbed on with his rope between his
+teeth, and a long stick. The very next instant it seemed to me, I
+heard the cracking of branches and saw the lion biting hard at the
+noose which circled his neck.
+
+Here I swung down, branch to branch, and dropped to the ground, for
+I wanted to see what went on below. Above the howls and yelps, I
+distinguished Jones' yell. Emett ran directly under the lion with a
+spread noose in his hands. Jones pulled and pulled, but the lion held
+on firmly. Throwing the end of the lasso down to Jim, Jones yelled
+again, and then they both pulled. The lion was too strong. Suddenly,
+however, the branch broke, letting the lion fall, kicking frantically
+with all four paws. Emett grasped one of the four whipping paws, and
+even as the powerful animal sent him staggering he dexterously left
+the noose fast on the paw. Jim and Jones in unison let go of their
+lasso, which streaked up through the branches as the lion fell, and
+then it dropped to the ground, where Jim made a flying grab for it.
+Jones plunging out of the tree fell upon the rope at the same instant.
+
+If the action up to then had been fast, it was slow to what followed.
+It seemed impossible for two strong men with one lasso, and a giant
+with another, to straighten out that lion. He was all over the little
+space under the trees at once. The dust flew, the sticks snapped,
+the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars. Jones ploughed the
+ground flat on his stomach, holding on with one hand, with the other
+trying to fasten the rope to something; Jim went to his knees; and on
+the other side of the lion, Emett's huge bulk tipped a sharp angle,
+and then fell.
+
+I shouted and ran forward, having no idea what to do, but Emett rolled
+backward, at the same instant the other men got a strong haul on
+the lion. Short as that moment was in which the lasso slackened, it
+sufficed for Jones to make the rope fast to a tree. Whereupon with the
+three men pulling on the other side of the leaping lion, somehow I had
+flashed into my mind the game that children play, called skipping the
+rope, for the lion and lasso shot up and down.
+
+This lasted for only a few seconds. They stretched the beast from tree
+to tree, and Jones running with the third lasso, made fast the front
+paws.
+
+"It's a female," said Jones, as the lion lay helpless, her sides
+swelling; "a good-sized female. She's nearly eight feet from tip to
+tip, but not very heavy. Hand me another rope."
+
+When all four lassos had been stretched, the lioness could not move.
+Jones strapped a collar around her neck and clipped the sharp yellow
+claws.
+
+"Now to muzzle her," he continued.
+
+Jones' method of performing this most hazardous part of the work was
+characteristic of him. He thrust a stick between her open jaws, and
+when she crushed it to splinters he tried another, and yet another,
+until he found one that she could not break. Then while she bit on it,
+he placed a wire loop over her nose, slowly tightening it, leaving the
+stick back of her big canines.
+
+The hounds ceased their yelping and when untied, Sounder wagged his
+tail as if to say, "Well done," and then lay down; Don walked within
+three feet of the lion, as if she were now beneath his dignity; Jude
+began to nurse and lick her sore paw; only Moze the incorrigible
+retained antipathy for the captive, and he growled, as always, low and
+deep. And on the moment, Ranger, dusty and lame from travel, trotted
+wearily into the glade and, looking at the lioness, gave one disgusted
+bark and flopped down.
+
+
+III
+
+Transporting our captives to camp bade fair to make us work. When
+Jones, who had gone after the pack horses, hove in sight on the sage
+flat, it was plain to us that we were in for trouble. The bay stallion
+was on the rampage.
+
+"Why didn't you fetch the Indian?" growled Emett, who lost his temper
+when matters concerning his horses went wrong. "Spread out, boys, and
+head him off."
+
+We contrived to surround the stallion, and Emett succeeded in getting
+a halter on him.
+
+"I didn't want the bay," explained Jones, "but I couldn't drive the
+others without him. When I told that redskin that we had two lions, he
+ran off into the woods, so I had to come alone."
+
+"I'm going to scalp the Navajo," said Jim, complacently.
+
+These remarks were exchanged on the open ridge at the entrance to the
+thick cedar forest. The two lions lay just within its shady precincts.
+Emett and I, using a long pole in lieu of a horse, had carried Tom up
+from the Canyon to where we had captured the lioness.
+
+Jones had brought a packsaddle and two panniers.
+
+[Illustration: BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER]
+
+When Emett essayed to lead the horse which carried these, the animal
+stood straight up and began to show some of his primal desert
+instincts. It certainly was good luck that we unbuckled the packsaddle
+straps before he left the vicinity. In about three jumps he had
+separated himself from the panniers, which were then placed upon the
+back of another horse. This one, a fine looking beast, and amiable
+under surroundings where his life and health were considered even a
+little, immediately disclaimed any intention of entering the forest.
+
+"They scent the lions," said Jones. "I was afraid of it; never had but
+one nag that would pack lions."
+
+"Maybe we can't pack them at all," replied Emett dubiously. "It's
+certainly new to me."
+
+"We've got to," Jones asserted; "try the sorrel."
+
+For the first time in a serviceable and honorable life, according to
+Emett, the sorrel broke his halter and kicked like a plantation mule.
+
+"It's a matter of fright. Try the stallion. He doesn't look afraid,"
+said Jones, who never knew when he was beaten.
+
+Emett gazed at Jones as if he had not heard right.
+
+"Go ahead, try the stallion. I like the way he looks."
+
+No wonder! The big stallion looked a king of horses--just what he
+would have been if Emett had not taken him, when a colt, from his wild
+desert brothers. He scented the lions, and he held his proud head up,
+his ears erect, and his large, dark eyes shone fiery and expressive.
+
+"I'll try to lead him in and let him see the lions. We can't fool
+him," said Emett.
+
+Marc showed no hesitation, nor anything we expected. He stood
+stiff-legged, and looked as if he wanted to fight.
+
+"He's all right; he'll pack them," declared Jones.
+
+The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to the horns,
+Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the left pannier
+while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom never lived. It was
+cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as
+Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse
+was adding insult to injury. Tom frothed at the mouth and seemed like
+a fizzing torpedo about to explode. The lioness being considerably
+longer and larger, was with difficulty gotten into the other pannier,
+and her head and paws hung out. Both lions kept growling and snarling.
+
+"I look to see Marc bolt over the rim," said Emett, resignedly, as
+Jones took up the end of the rope halter.
+
+"No siree!" sang out that worthy. "He's helping us out; he's proud to
+show up the other nags."
+
+Jones was always asserting strange traits in animals, and giving them
+intelligence and reason. As to that, many incidents coming under my
+observation while with him, and seen with his eyes, made me incline to
+his claims, the fruit of a lifetime with animals.
+
+Marc packed the lions to camp in short order, and, quoting Jones,
+"without turning a hair." We saw the Navajo's head protruding from a
+tree. Emett yelled for him, and Jones and Jim "hahaed" derisively;
+whereupon the black head vanished and did not reappear. Then they
+unhooked one of the panniers and dumped out the lioness. Jones
+fastened her chain to a small pine tree, and as she lay powerless he
+pulled out the stick back of her canines. This allowed the wire muzzle
+to fall off. She signalled this freedom with a roar that showed her
+health to be still unimpaired. The last action in releasing her from
+her painful bonds Jones performed with sleight-of-hand dexterity. He
+slipped the loop fastening one paw, which loosened the rope, and in a
+twinkling let her work all of her other paws free. Up she sprang, ears
+flat, eyes ablaze, mouth wide, once more capable of defense, true to
+her instinct and her name.
+
+Before the men lowered Tom from Marc's back I stepped closer and put
+my face within six inches of the lion's. He promptly spat on me. I had
+to steel my nerve to keep so close. But I wanted to see a wild lion's
+eyes at close range. They were exquisitely beautiful, their physical
+properties as wonderful as their expression. Great half globes of
+tawny amber, streaked with delicate wavy lines of black, surrounding
+pupils of intense purple fire. Pictures shone and faded in the amber
+light--the shaggy tipped plateau, the dark pines and smoky canyons,
+the great dotted downward slopes, the yellow cliffs and crags. Deep in
+those live pupils, changing, quickening with a thousand vibrations,
+quivered the soul of this savage beast, the wildest of all wild
+Nature, unquenchable love of life and freedom, flame of defiance and
+hate.
+
+Jones disposed of Tom in the same manner as he had the lioness,
+chaining him to an adjoining small pine, where he leaped and wrestled.
+
+Presently I saw Emett coming through the woods leading and dragging
+the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that his fear was
+not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no wonder to me that
+the Navvy should hang back from this sacrilegious treatment of his
+god. A natural wisdom, which I had in common with all human beings who
+consider self preservation the first law of life, deterred me from
+acquainting my august companions with my belief. At least I did not
+want to break up the camp.
+
+In the remorseless grasp of Emett, forced along, the Navajo dragged
+his feet and held his face sidewise, though his dark eyes gleamed
+at the lions. Terror predominated among the expressions of his
+countenance. Emett drew him within fifteen feet and held him there,
+and with voice, and gesticulating of his free hand, tried to show the
+poor fellow that the lions would not hurt him.
+
+Navvy stared and muttered to himself. Here Jim had some deviltry in
+mind, for he edged up closer; but what it was never transpired, for
+Emett suddenly pointed to the horses and said to the Indian:
+
+"_Chineago_ (feed)."
+
+It appeared when Navvy swung himself over Marc's broad back, that our
+great stallion had laid aside his transiently noble disposition and
+was himself again. Marc proceeded to show us how truly Jim had spoken:
+"Shore he ain't no use for the redskin." Before the Indian had fairly
+gotten astride, Marc dropped his head, humped his shoulders, brought
+his feet together and began to buck. Now the Navajo was a famous
+breaker of wild mustangs, but Marc was a tougher proposition than the
+wildest mustang that ever romped the desert. Not only was he unusually
+vigorous; he was robust and heavy, yet exceedingly active. I had seen
+him roll over in the dust three times each way, and do it easily--a
+feat Emett declared he had never seen performed by another horse.
+
+Navvy began to bounce. He showed his teeth and twisted his sinewy
+hands in the horse's mane. Marc began to act like a demon; he plowed
+the ground; apparently he bucked five feet straight up. As the Indian
+had bounced he now began to shoot into the air. He rose the last time
+with his heels over his head, to the full extent of his arms; and on
+plunging down his hold broke. He spun around the horse, then went
+hurtling to the ground some twenty feet away. He sat up, and seeing
+Emett and Jones laughing, and Jim prostrated with joy, he showed his
+white teeth in a smile and said:
+
+"No bueno dam."
+
+I think all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and especially
+when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the mean Indian,
+patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted. Marc, not being so
+difficult to please as Jim in the way of discomfiting the Navajo,
+appeared satisfied for the present, and trotted off down the hollow,
+with the string of horses ahead, their bells jingling.
+
+Camp-fire tasks were a necessary wage in order to earn the full
+enjoyment and benefit of the hunting trip; and looking for some task
+with which to turn my hand, I helped Jim feed the hounds. To feed
+ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a bone; however, our dogs
+were not ordinary. It took time to feed them, and a prodigious amount
+of meat. We had packed between three and four hundred pounds of
+wild-horse meat, which had been cut into small pieces and strung on
+the branches of a scrub oak near camp.
+
+Don, as befitted a gentleman and the leader of the greatest pack in
+the West, had to be fed by hand. I believe he would rather had starved
+than have demeaned himself by fighting. Starved he certainly would
+have, if Jim had thrown meat indiscriminately to the ground. Sounder
+asserted his rights and preferred large portions at a time. Jude
+begged with great solemn eyes but was no slouch at eating for all her
+gentleness. Ranger, because of imperfectly developed teeth rendering
+mastication difficult, had to have his share cut into very small
+pieces. As for Moze--well, great dogs have their faults as do great
+men--he never got enough meat; he would fight even poor crippled Jude,
+and steal even from the pups; when he had gotten all Jim would give
+him, and all he could snatch, he would growl away with bulging sides.
+
+"How about feeding the lions?" asked Emett.
+
+"They'll drink to-night," replied Jones, "but won't eat for days; then
+we'll tempt them with fresh rabbits."
+
+We made a hearty meal, succeeding which Jones and I walked through
+the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and glistening,
+invited us westward, and after a detour of half a mile we reached it.
+The points of the rim, striking out into the immense void, always drew
+me irresistibly. We found the view from this rock one of startling
+splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of the middle wing extended to the
+west, at this moment apparently running into the setting sun. The gold
+glare touching up the millions of facets of chiseled stone, created
+color and brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And
+looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue, bottomless
+depths of the Pacific.
+
+"Here, help me push off this stone," I said to Jones. We heaved a huge
+round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move. Fortunately we had a
+little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked and began to slide. Just as
+it toppled over I glanced at the second hand of my watch. Then with
+eyes over the rim we waited. The silence was the silence of the
+canyon, dead and vast, intensified by our breathless earstrain. Ten
+long palpitating seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too
+great for sound to reach us. Fifteen seconds--seventeen--eighteen--
+
+With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most awful
+bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened, deadened to burst
+out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled
+under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the
+cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble--roar and rumble! for two long
+moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in
+the far-distant canyons.
+
+"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.
+
+Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the
+red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening
+downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark
+tide.
+
+On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to
+a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The
+hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
+We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress with
+his big arm.
+
+"Listen," he whispered.
+
+It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine
+needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be approaching under
+the trees.
+
+I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the
+hollow.
+
+"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.
+
+"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken
+wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."
+
+I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down like
+shadows.
+
+"Have they scented us?"
+
+"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
+They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"
+
+Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an
+indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies,
+a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings
+and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.
+
+"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
+Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to
+him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the
+bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through
+and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I
+saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer,
+and I hurriedly shot six times at it.
+
+"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for quick
+work? It's a yearling doe."
+
+In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones feet. It
+was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the wheeze of blood
+in its throat, and the sound, like a death-rattle, affected me
+powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where one side of the neck, low
+down, had been terribly lacerated.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.
+
+"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have
+another shot put this doe out of agony."
+
+But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife.
+We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound,
+probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the
+throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
+
+I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living thing was
+a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied natural
+selection, the variability of animals under different conditions of
+struggling existence, the law whereby one animal struck down and
+devoured another. But I had never seen and heard that law enacted on
+such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.
+
+Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.
+
+"What's up?" he asked quickly.
+
+He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the other;
+and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk that I
+experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his advent
+might mean at a time of real peril.
+
+[Illustration: JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION]
+
+[Illustration: REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS]
+
+"Emett, I've lived to see many things," replied Jones, "but this is
+the first time I ever saw a lion jump a deer right under my nose!"
+
+As Emett bent over to seize the long ears of the deer, I noticed the
+gasping had ceased.
+
+"Neck broken," he said, lifting the head. "Well, I'm danged. Must have
+been an all-fired strong lion. He'll come back, you may be sure of
+that. Let's skin out the quarters and hang the carcass up in a tree!"
+
+We returned to camp in a half an hour, the richer for our walk by a
+quantity of fresh venison. Upon being acquainted with our adventure,
+Jim expressed himself rather more fairly than was his customary way.
+
+"Shore that beats hell! I knowed there was a lion somewheres, because
+Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the brute."
+
+I believed Jim's wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any rate
+to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the doe
+justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it was not
+so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner of it, and
+especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama of the plateau.
+The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps
+often in the day and likely at different points at the same time.
+Emett told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried
+hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we
+were encamped.
+
+"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."
+
+"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, _coco! coco!_" called Emett.
+
+The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up the fire
+and threw on more wood.
+
+"_Discass!_ (cold)," he said to me. "_Coco, bueno_ (fire good)."
+
+I replied, "Me savvy--yes."
+
+"Sleep-ie?" he asked.
+
+"Mucha," I returned.
+
+While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of Navajo,
+English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw the stars
+disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder and carried
+a breath of snow. I like north wind best--from under the warm
+blankets--because of the roar and lull and lull and roar in the pines.
+Crawling into the bed presently, I lay there and listened to the
+rising storm-wind for a long time. Sometimes it swelled and crashed
+like the sound of a breaker on the beach, but mostly, from a low
+incessant moan, it rose and filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly
+lulled. This lull, despite a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to
+sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The Navajo
+aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly from under
+the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw fleecy flakes
+of white drifting through the small window of my tent.
+
+"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones' hopes.
+Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots and coat I
+went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow. The forest was
+beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was falling. I walked to the
+roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits, well-browned and of generous
+size, had just been dumped into the middle of our breakfast cloth, a
+tarpaulin spread on the ground; the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and
+a Dutch oven sizzled with a great number of slices of venison. "Did
+you hear the Indian chanting?" asked Jones, who sat with his horny
+hands to the blaze.
+
+"I heard his singing."
+
+"No, it wasn't a song; the Navajo never sings in the morning. What you
+heard was his morning prayer, a chant, a religious and solemn ritual
+to the break of day. Emett says it is a custom of the desert tribe.
+You remember how we saw the Mokis sitting on the roofs of their little
+adobe huts in the gray of the morning. They always greet the sun in
+that way. The Navajos chant."
+
+It certainly was worth remembering, I thought, and mentally observed
+that I would wake up thereafter and listen to the Indian.
+
+"Good luck and bad!" went on Jones. "Snow is what we want, but now we
+can't find the scent of our lion of last night."
+
+Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives presented sorry
+spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled. Emett had chopped down a
+small pine, the branches of which he was using to make shelter for the
+lions. While I looked on Tom tore his to pieces several times, but the
+lioness crawled under hers and began licking her chops. At length
+Tom, seeing that Emett meant no underhand trick, backed out of the
+drizzling snow and lay down.
+
+Emett had already constructed a shack for the hounds. It was a way of
+his to think of everything. He had the most extraordinary ability. A
+stroke of his axe, a twist of his great hands, a turn of this or that
+made camp a more comfortable place. And if something, no matter what,
+got out of order or broken, there was Emett to show what it was to be
+a man of the desert. It had been my good fortune to see many able
+men on the trail and round the camp-fire, but not one of them even
+approached Emett's class. When I said a word to him about his knack
+with things, his reply was illuminating: "I'm fifty-eight, and four
+out of every five nights of my life I have slept away from home on the
+ground."
+
+"_Chineago!_" called Jim, who had begun with all of us to assimilate a
+little of the Navajo's language.
+
+Whereupon we fell to eating with appetite unknown to any save hunters.
+Somehow the Indian had gravitated to me at meal times, and now he sat
+cross-legged beside me, holding out his plate and looking as hungry as
+Moze. At first he had always asked for the same kind of food that
+I happened to have on my own plate. When I had finished and had no
+desire to eat more, he gave up his faculty of imitation and asked for
+anything he could get. The Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked
+sweet things, sugar best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get
+his hands on a can of fruit. Although he inspired Jones with disgust
+and Jim with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to me. He
+called me "Mista Gay" and he pronounced the words haltingly in low
+voice and with unmistakable respect.
+
+"What's on for today?" queried Emett.
+
+"I guess we may as well hang around camp and rest the hounds," replied
+Jones. "I did intend to go after the lion that killed the deer, but
+this snow has taken away the scent."
+
+"Shore it'll stop snowin' soon," said Jim.
+
+The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying powder; the
+leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew brighter and
+brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.
+
+Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after his
+departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through the forest.
+
+"Something's up," said Emett instantly. "An Indian never yells like
+that at a horse."
+
+[Illustration: A LION TIED]
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S
+DESERT RANCH]
+
+We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell repeated.
+It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells, which told us he
+had the horses coming. He appeared off to the right, riding Foxie and
+racing the others toward camp.
+
+"Cougie--mucha big--dam!" he said leaping off the mustang to confront
+us.
+
+"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned Jones.
+
+"Me savvy," replied the Indian. "_Butteen, butteen_!"
+
+"He says, trail--trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd better go and
+see."
+
+"I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight and hurry
+with the horses' oats."
+
+We followed the tracks of the horses which lead southwest toward the
+rim, and a quarter of a mile from camp we crossed a lion trail running
+at right angles with our direction.
+
+"Old Sultan!" I cried, breathlessly, recognizing that the tracks had
+been made by a giant lion we had named Sultan. They were huge, round,
+and deep, and with my spread hand I could not reach across one of
+them.
+
+Without a word, Jones strode off on the trail. It headed east and
+after a short distance turned toward camp. I suppose Jones knew what
+the lion had been about, but to Emett and me it was mystifying. Two
+hundred yards from camp we came to a fallen pine, the body of which
+was easily six feet high. On the side of this log, almost on top, were
+two enormous lion tracks, imprinted in the mantle of snow. From here
+the trail led off northeast.
+
+"Darn me!" ejaculated Jones. "The big critter came right into camp; he
+scented our lions, and raised up on this log to look over."
+
+Wheeling, he started for camp on the trot. Emett and I kept even
+with him. Words were superfluous. We knew what was coming. A
+made--to--order lion trail could not have equalled the one right in
+the back yard of our camp.
+
+"Saddle up!" said Jones, with the sharp inflection of words that had
+come to thrill me. "Jim, Old Sultan has taken a look at us since break
+of day."
+
+I got into my chaps, rammed my little automatic into its saddle
+holster and mounted. Foxie seemed to want to go. The hounds came out
+of their sheds and yawned, looking at us knowingly. Emett spoke a word
+to the Navajo, and then we were trotting down through the forest. The
+sun had broken out warm, causing water to drip off the snow laden
+pines. The three of us rode close behind Jones, who spoke low and
+sternly to the hounds.
+
+What an opportunity to watch Don! I wondered how soon he would catch
+the scent of the trail. He led the pack as usual and kept to a
+leisurely dog--trot. When within twenty yards of the fallen log, he
+stopped for an instant and held up his head, though without exhibiting
+any suspicion or uneasiness.
+
+The wind blew strong at our backs, a circumstance that probably
+kept Don so long in ignorance of the trail. A few yards further on,
+however, he stopped and raised his fine head. He lowered it and
+trotted on only to stop again. His easy air of satisfaction with
+the morning suddenly vanished. His savage hunting instinct awakened
+through some channel to raise the short yellow hair on his neck and
+shoulders and make it stand stiff. He stood undecided with warily
+shifting nose, then jumped forward with a yelp. Another jump brought
+another sharp cry from him. Sounder, close behind, echoed the yelp.
+Jude began to whine. Then Don, with a wild howl, leaped ten feet to
+alight on the lion trail and to break into wonderfully rapid flight.
+The seven other hounds, bunched in a black and yellow group, tore
+after him filling the forest with their wild uproar.
+
+Emett's horse bounded as I have seen a great racer leave the post, and
+his desert brothers, loving wild bursts of speed, needing no spur,
+kept their noses even with his flanks. The soft snow, not too deep,
+rather facilitated than impeded this wild movement, and the open
+forest was like a highway.
+
+So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for branches,
+vaulting the white--blanketed logs, and swerving as we split to pass
+the pines. The mist from the melting snow moistened our faces, and the
+rushing air cooled them with fresh, soft sensation. There were moments
+when we rode abreast and others when we sailed single file, with white
+ground receding, vanishing behind us.
+
+My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth flight
+and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I hoped we would
+not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a thicket where he
+had dragged a deer, because the race was too splendid a thing to cut
+short. Through my mind whirled with inconceivable rapidity the great
+lion chases on which we had ridden the year before. And this was
+another chase, only more stirring, more beautiful, because it was the
+nature of the thing to grow always with experience.
+
+Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung along the
+trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup was neck and
+neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels, leading the other pups.
+Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of Jude.
+
+But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds, was not in
+the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned due west when he
+began to go down the little hollows and their intervening ridges. We
+lost ground. The pack left us behind. The slope of the plateau became
+decided. We rode out of the pines to find the snow failing in the
+open. Water ran in little gullies and glistened on the sagebrush. A
+half mile further down the snow had gone. We came upon the hounds
+running at fault, except Sounder, and he had given up.
+
+"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's track and
+his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as well to wait
+until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing somewhere and it is my
+idea we might catch his trail as he comes back."
+
+The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There seemed
+no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but features of
+the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the lower end of the
+plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even if we found a fresh
+morning trail in the sand, the heat would have burned out the scent.
+
+So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp only the
+shady patches were left.
+
+It was almost eleven o'clock when I lay down on my bed to rest awhile
+and fell asleep. The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard Jim calling
+Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The snow had all
+disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim sat on his horse and
+Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow, leading the saddle horses.
+
+"Jones, get out," called Jim.
+
+"Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones testily.
+
+"Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.
+
+Jones burst out of his tent, with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes.
+
+"I went over to see the carcass of the deer an' found a lion sittin'
+up in the tree, feedin' for all he was worth. Pie jumped out an' ran
+up the hollow an' over the rim. So I rustled back for you fellows.
+Lively now, we'll get this one sure."
+
+"Was it the big fellow?" I asked
+
+"No, but he ain't no kitten; an' he's a fine color, sort of reddish. I
+never seen one just as bright. Where's Emett?"
+
+"I don't know. He was here a little while ago. Shall I signal for
+him?"
+
+"Don't yell," cried Jones holding up his fingers. "Be quiet now."
+
+Without another word we finished saddling, mounted and, close
+together, with the hounds in front, rode through the forest toward the
+rim.
+
+
+V
+
+We rode in different directions toward the hollow, the better to
+chance meeting with Emett, but none of us caught a glimpse of him.
+
+It happened that when we headed into the hollow it was at a point just
+above where the deer carcass hung in the scrub oak. Don in spite of
+Jones' stern yells, let out his eager hunting yelp and darted down the
+slope. The pack bolted after him and in less than ten seconds were
+racing up the hollow, their thrilling, blending bays a welcome spur to
+action. Though I spoke not a word to my mustang nor had time to raise
+the bridle, he wheeled to one side and began to run. The other horses
+also kept to the ridge, as I could tell by the pounding of hoofs on
+the soft turf. The hounds in full cry right under us urged our good
+steeds to a terrific pace. It was well that the ridge afforded clear
+going.
+
+The speed at which we traveled, however, fast as it was, availed not
+to keep up with the pack. In a short half mile, just as the hollow
+sloped and merged into level ground, they left us behind and
+disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My mustang plunged
+out of the forest to the rim and dashed along, apparently unmindful of
+the chasm. The red and yellow surface blurred in a blinding glare. I
+heard the chorus of hounds, but as its direction baffled me I trusted
+to my horse and I did well, for soon he came to a dead halt on the
+rim.
+
+Then I heard the hounds below me. I had but time to see the character
+of the place--long, yellow promontories running out and slopes of
+weathered stone reaching up between to a level with the rim--when in a
+dwarf pine growing just over the edge I caught sight of a long, red,
+pantherish body.
+
+I whooped to my followers now close upon me and leaping off hauled out
+my Remington and ran to the cliff. The lion's long, slender body, of a
+rare golden-red color, bright, clean, black-tipped and white-bellied,
+proclaimed it a female of exceeding beauty. I could have touched her
+with a fishing rod and saw how easily she could be roped from where I
+stood. The tree in which she had taken refuge grew from the head of
+a weathered slope and rose close to the wall. At that point it was
+merely a parapet of crumbling yellow rock. No doubt she had lain
+concealed under the shelving wall and had not had time to get away
+before the hounds were right upon her.
+
+"She's going to jump," yelled Jones, in my rear, as he dismounted.
+
+I saw a golden-red streak flash downward, heard a mad medley from the
+hounds, a cloud of dust rose, then something bright shone for a second
+to the right along the wall. I ran with all my might to a headland of
+rock upon which I scrambled and saw with joy that I could command the
+situation.
+
+The lioness was not in sight, nor were the hounds. The latter,
+however, were hot on the trail. I knew the lioness had taken to
+another tree or a hole under the wall, and would soon be routed out.
+This time I felt sure she would run down and I took a rapid glance
+below. The slope inclined at a steep angle and was one long slide of
+bits of yellow stone with many bunches of scrub oak and manzanita.
+Those latter I saw with satisfaction, because in case I had to go down
+they would stop the little avalanches. The slope reached down perhaps
+five hundred yards and ended in a thicket and jumble of rocks from
+which rose on the right a bare yellow slide. This ran up to a low
+cliff. I hoped the lion would not go that way, for it led to great
+broken battlements of rim. Left of the slide was a patch of cedars.
+
+Jim's yell pealed out, followed by the familiar penetrating howl of
+the pack when it sighted game. With that I saw the lioness leaping
+down the slope and close behind her a yellow hound.
+
+"Go it, Don, old boy!" I yelled, wild with delight.
+
+A crushing step on the stones told me Jones had arrived.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" roared he.
+
+I thought then that if the lioness did not cover thirty feet at every
+jump I was not in a condition to judge distance. She ran away from Don
+as if he had been tied and reached the thicket below a hundred yards
+ahead of him. And when Don leaving his brave pack far up the slide
+entered the thicket the lioness came out on the other side and bounded
+up the bare slope of yellow shale.
+
+"Shoot ahead of her! Head her off! Turn her back!" cried Jones.
+
+With the word I threw forward the Remington and let drive. Following
+the bellow of the rifle, so loud in that thin air, a sharp, harsh
+report cracked up from below. A puff of yellow dust rose in front of
+the lioness. I was in line, but too far ahead. I fired again. The
+steel jacketed bullet hit a stone and spitefully whined away into the
+canyon. I tried once more. This time I struck close to the lioness.
+Disconcerted by a cloud of dust rising before her very eyes she
+wheeled and ran back.
+
+We had forgotten Don and suddenly he darted out of the thicket,
+straight up the slide. Always, in every chase, we were afraid the
+great hound would run to meet his death. We knew it was coming
+sometime. When the lioness saw him and stopped, both Jones and I felt
+that this was to be the end of Don.
+
+"Shoot her! Shoot her!" cried Jones. "She'll kill him! She'll kill
+him!"
+
+As I knelt on the rock I had a hard contraction of my throat, and
+then all my muscles set tight and rigid. I pulled the trigger of my
+automatic once, twice. It was wonderful how closely the two bullets
+followed each other, as we could tell by the almost simultaneous
+puffs of dust rising from under the beast's nose. She must have been
+showered and stung with gravel, for she bounded off to the left and
+disappeared in the cedars. I had missed, but the shots had served to a
+better end than if I had killed her.
+
+As Don raced up the ground where a moment before a battle and probably
+death had awaited him, the other hounds burst from the thicket. With
+that, a golden form seemed to stand out from the green of the cedar,
+to move and to rise.
+
+"She's treed! She's treed!" shouted Jones. "Go down and keep her there
+while I follow."
+
+From the back of the promontory where I met the main wall, I let
+myself down a niche, foot here and there, a hand hard on the soft
+stone, braced knee and back until I jumped to the edge of the slope.
+The scrub oak and manzanita saved me many a fall. I set some stones
+rolling and I beat them to the bottom. Having passed the thicket, I
+bent my efforts to the yellow slide and when I had surmounted it my
+breath came in labored pants. The howling of the hounds guided me
+through the cedars.
+
+First I saw Moze in the branches of cedar and above him the lioness. I
+ran out into a little open patch of stony ground at the end of which
+the tree stood leaning over a precipice. In truth the lioness was
+swaying over a chasm.
+
+Those details I grasped in a glance, then suddenly awoke to the fact
+that the lioness was savagely snarling at Moze.
+
+"Moze! Moze! Get down!" I yelled.
+
+He climbed on serenely. He was a most exasperating dog. I screamed at
+him and hit him with a rock big enough to break his bones. He kept on
+climbing. Here was a predicament. Moze would surely get to the lioness
+if I did not stop him, and this seemed impossible. It was out of the
+question for me to climb after him. And if the lioness jumped she
+would have to pass me or come straight at me. So I slipped down the
+safety catch on my automatic and stood ready to save Moze or myself.
+
+The lioness with a show of fury that startled me, descended her branch
+a few steps, and reaching below gave Moze a sounding smack with her
+big paw. The hound dropped as if he had been shot and hit the ground
+with a thud. Whereupon she returned to her perch.
+
+This reassured me and I ran among the dogs and caught Moze already
+starting for the tree again and tied him, with a strap I always carried,
+to a small bush nearby. I heard the yells of my companions
+and looking back over the tops of the cedars I saw Jim riding down and
+higher to the left Jones sliding, falling, running at a great rate. I
+encouraged them to keep up the good work, and then gave my attention to
+the lioness.
+
+She regarded me with a cold, savage stare and showed her teeth. I
+repaid this incivility on her part by promptly photographing her from
+different points.
+
+Jones and Jim were on the spot before I expected them and both were
+dusty and dripping with sweat. I found to my surprise that my face was
+wet as was also my shirt. Jones carried two lassos, and my canteen,
+which I had left on the promontory.
+
+"Ain't she a beauty?" he panted, wiping his face. "Wait--till I get my
+breath."
+
+When finally he walked toward the cedar the lioness stood up and
+growled as if she realized the entrance of the chief actor upon the
+scene. Jones cast his lasso apparently to try her out, and the noose
+spread out and fell over her head. As he tightened the rope the
+lioness backed down behind a branch.
+
+"Tie the dogs!" yelled Jones.
+
+"Quick!" added Jim. "She's goin' to jump."
+
+Jim had only time to aid me in running my lasso under the collar of
+Don, Sounder, Jude and one of the pups. I made them fast to a cedar.
+I got my hands on Ranger just as Moze broke his strap. I grabbed his
+collar and held on.
+
+Right there was where trouble commenced for me. Ranger tussled valiantly
+and Moze pulled me all over the place. Behind me I heard Jones' roar and
+Jim's yell; the breaking of branches, the howling of the other dogs.
+Ranger broke away from me and so enabled me to get my other hand on the
+neck of crazy Moze. On more than one occasion I had tried to hold him
+and had failed; this time I swore I would do it if he rolled me
+over the precipice. As to that, only a bush saved me.
+
+More and louder roars and yells, hoarser howls and sharper
+wrestling, snapping sounds told me what was going on while I tried to
+subdue Moze. I had a grim thought that I would just as lief have had
+hold of the lioness. The hound presently stopped his plunging which gave
+me an opportunity to look about. The little space was smoky with a smoke
+of dust. I saw the lioness stretched out with one lasso around a bush
+and another around a cedar with the end in the hands of Jim. He looked
+as if he had dug up the ground. While he tied this lasso securely Jones
+proceeded to rope the dangerous front paws.
+
+The hounds quieted down and I took advantage of this absence of tumult
+to get rid of Moze.
+
+"Pretty lively," said Jones, spitting gravel as I walked up. Sand and
+dust lay thick in his beard and blackened his face. "I tell you she
+made us root."
+
+Either the lioness had been much weakened or choked, or Jones had
+unusual luck, for we muzzled her and tied up her paws in short order.
+
+"Where's Ranger?" I asked suddenly, missing him from the panting
+hounds.
+
+"I grabbed him by the heels when he tackled the lion, and I gave him a
+sling somewheres," replied Jim.
+
+Ranger put in an appearance then under the cedars limping painfully.
+
+"Jim, darn me, if I don't believe you pitched him over the precipice!"
+said Jones.
+
+Examination proved this surmise to be correct. We saw where Ranger had
+slipped over a twenty-foot wall. If he had gone over just under the
+cedar where the depth was much greater he would never have come back.
+
+"The hounds are choking with dust and heat," I said. When I poured
+just a little water from my canteen into the crown of my hat, the
+hounds began fighting around and over me and spilled the water.
+
+"Behave, you coyotes!" I yelled. Either they were insulted or fully
+realized the exigency of the situation, for each one came up and
+gratefully lapped every drop of his portion.
+
+"Shore, now comes the hell of it," said Jim appearing with a long
+pole. "Packin' the critter out."
+
+An argument arose in regard to the best way up the slope, and by
+virtue of a majority we decided to try the direction Jim and I thought
+best. My companions led the way, carrying the lioness suspended on the
+pole. I brought up the rear, packing my rifle, camera, lasso, canteen
+and a chain.
+
+It was killing work. We had to rest every few steps. Often we would
+fall. Jim laughed, Jones swore, and I groaned. Sometimes I had to drop
+my things to help my companions. So we toiled wearily up the loose,
+steep way.
+
+"What's she shakin' like that for?" asked Jim suddenly.
+
+Jones let down his end of the pole and turned quickly. Little tremors
+quivered over the lissome body of the lioness.
+
+"She's dying," cried Jim, jerking out the stick between her teeth and
+slipping off the wire muzzle.
+
+Her mouth opened and her frothy tongue lolled out. Jones pointed to
+her quivering sides and then raised her eyelids. We saw the eyes
+already glazing, solemnly fixed.
+
+"She's gone," he said.
+
+Very soon she lay inert and lifeless. Then we sat beside her without
+a word, and we could hardly for the moment have been more stunned and
+heartbroken if it had been the tragic death of one of our kind.
+In that wild environment, obsessed by the desire to capture those
+beautiful cats alive, the fateful ending of the successful chase was
+felt out of all proportion.
+
+"Shore she's dead," said Jim. "And wasn't she a beauty? What was
+wrong?"
+
+"The heat and lack of water," replied Jones. "She choked. What idiots
+we were! Why didn't we think to give her a drink."
+
+So we passionately protested against our want of fore-thought, and
+looked again and again with the hope that she might come to. But death
+had stilled the wild heart. We gave up presently, still did not move
+on. We were exhausted, and all the while the hounds lay panting on the
+rocks, the bees hummed, the flies buzzed. The red colors of the upper
+walls and the purple shades of the lower darkened silently.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Shore we can't set here all night," said Jim. "Let's skin the lion
+an' feed the hounds."
+
+The most astonishing thing in our eventful day was the amount of meat
+stowed away by the dogs. Lion flesh appealed to their appetites. If
+hungry Moze had an ounce of meat, he had ten pounds. It seemed a good
+opportunity to see how much the old gladiator could eat; and Jim and I
+cut chunks of meat as fast as possible. Moze gulped them with absolute
+unconcern of such a thing as mastication. At length he reached his
+limit, possibly for the first time in his life, and looking longingly
+at a juicy red strip Jim held out, he refused it with manifest shame.
+Then he wobbled and fell down.
+
+We called to him as we started to climb the slope, but he did not
+come. Then the business of conquering that ascent of sliding stone
+absorbed all our faculties and strength. Little headway could we have
+made had it not been for the brush. We toiled up a few feet only to
+slide back and so it went on until we were weary of life.
+
+When one by one we at last gained the rim and sat there to recover
+breath, the sun was a half globe of fire burning over the western
+ramparts. A red sunset bathed the canyon in crimson, painting the
+walls, tinting the shadows to resemble dropping mists of blood. It was
+beautiful and enthralling to my eyes, but I turned away because it
+wore the mantle of tragedy.
+
+Dispirited and worn out, we trooped into camp to find Emett and a
+steaming supper. Between bites the three of us related the story of
+the red lioness. Emett whistled long and low and then expressed his
+regret in no light terms.
+
+"Roping wild steers and mustangs is play to this work," he said in
+conclusion.
+
+I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even the
+glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my bed with
+eyes already glued shut.
+
+A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first, when
+only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my bed, then
+hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was dropping off
+again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black
+night had faded to the gray of dawn. The sound I recognized at once
+to be the Navajo's morning chant. I lay there and listened. Soft and
+monotonous, wild and swelling, but always low and strange, the savage
+song to the break of day was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I
+wondered what the literal meaning of his words could have been. The
+significance needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away,
+to the brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the
+morning sun, to the Giver of Life--to these the Indian chanted his
+prayer.
+
+Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the Navajo with
+his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the trees, the rocks, the
+light and sun, and he prayed to that which was divinely helpful to him
+in all the mystery of his unintelligible life.
+
+We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it was to be
+a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question arose--whether we or the
+hounds were the more crippled. Ranger did not show himself; Don could
+just walk and that was all; Moze was either too full or too tired to
+move; Sounder nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.
+
+After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves different
+tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began to turn the camp
+topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate it. The wire, however,
+was not to be found. This was a calamity, for, as we asked each other,
+how could we muzzle lions without wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy
+leather straps which I had bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had
+disappeared. We had only one collar left, the one that Jones had put
+on the red lioness.
+
+Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow heated and
+naturally from that to become angry. It seems a fatality of campers
+along a wild trail, like explorers in an unknown land, to be prone to
+fight. If there is an explanation of this singular fact, it must be
+that men at such time lose their poise and veneer of civilization; in
+brief, they go back. At all events we had it hot and heavy, with the
+center of attack gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always
+losing something, naturally we united in force against him.
+
+Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off in the
+woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs preceded his
+appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten a bridle on Marc,
+and from the way the big stallion hurled his huge bulk over logs and
+through thickets, it appeared evident he meant to usurp Jim's ambition
+and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward
+camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to
+buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to
+ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the
+dogs' shelter and thundered down the ridge.
+
+Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at home. He
+was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept his seat on a
+wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low branch of a pine,
+sweeping the Indian off.
+
+When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously hurt,
+perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.
+
+Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or muscle,
+he certainly appeared dead.
+
+"Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen it before
+from just such accidents."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak. Jim, who
+always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked profoundly sorry.
+
+"He's a dead Indian, all right," replied Emett.
+
+We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain and
+deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us much
+relief.
+
+"That's your dead Indian," exclaimed Jones.
+
+Emett stooped again and felt the Indian's back and got in reward
+another mournful groan.
+
+"It's his back," said Emett, and true to his ruling passion, forever
+to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he began to rub
+the Indian and call for the liniment.
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be
+dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing the
+hollow of his brown back.
+
+"Here we are," said Jim, returning on the run with the bottle.
+
+"Pour some on," replied Emett.
+
+Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the Indian's
+back.
+
+"Don't waste it," remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy's back.
+
+Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed to
+quiver through the Indian's body; he rose at a single leap, and
+uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw an Indian
+or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed back to us.
+
+Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.
+
+"That's your dead Indian!" ejaculated Jim.
+
+"What the hell!" exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such language.
+
+"Look here!" cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. "See! Don't you see
+it?"
+
+Jim fell face downward and began to shake.
+
+"What?" shouted Emett and I together.
+
+"Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong bottle!"
+
+In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the sward, and
+the forest rang with sounds of mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and so
+strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. "More snow" was the
+verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the Navajo to
+share my tent.
+
+"Sleepie-me," I said to him.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed with
+me.
+
+Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations, which
+struck me as being singularly selfish considering they would not be
+inconvenienced in any way.
+
+"Why not?" I asked. "It's a cold night. There'll be frost if not
+snow."
+
+"Shore you'll get 'em," said Jim.
+
+"There never was an Indian that didn't have 'em," added Jones.
+
+"What?" I questioned.
+
+They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance as to
+what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my mind. When
+I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at my feet as usual
+and he growled so deep that I could not but think he, too, resented
+the addition to my small tent.
+
+"Mista Gay!" came in the Indian's low voice.
+
+"Well Navvy?" I asked.
+
+"Sleepie--sleepie?"
+
+"Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?"
+
+"Me savvy--mucha sleepie--mucha--no bueno."
+
+I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did not
+awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent was light
+and he had gone. I found my companions up and doing.
+
+We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun, a red
+ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn to gold. No
+snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the ground. The hounds,
+wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they detested, trotted in
+front. Don showed no effects of his great run down the sliding slope
+after the red lioness; it was one of his remarkable qualities that he
+recuperated so quickly. Ranger was a little stiff, and Sounder favored
+his injured foot. The others were as usual.
+
+Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had passed the
+edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead, he turned his
+horse up the bank.
+
+We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest, which we
+entered without having seen the hounds show interest in anything.
+Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed lion tracks, many
+of them, but too old to carry a scent. Even North Hollow with its
+regular beaten runway failed to win a murmur from the pack.
+
+"Spread out," said Jones, "and look for tracks. I'll keep the center
+and hold in the hounds."
+
+Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the breadth
+of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open sage flats
+inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon a broken sage
+bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I discovered no track but
+dismounted and scrutinized the surroundings carefully. A heavy body
+had been dragged across the sage, crushing it. The ends of broken
+bushes were green, the leaves showed bruises.
+
+I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my mustang I
+slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an occasional down-trodden
+bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the cedars again Foxie snorted.
+Under the first tree I found a ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of
+grayish hairs and a split skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe
+ears were still warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even
+a well pressed imprint of a lion's body where he had rolled or lain.
+
+The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive of
+interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then, what with
+my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily with shrill
+cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.
+
+An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing and
+breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He arrived
+from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat. Mutely I held up
+the two long ears.
+
+"Get on your horse!" cried Jim after one quick glance at the spread of
+bones and hair.
+
+It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I ran to
+Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared among the sage
+and a string of yelps split the air.
+
+"It's Don!" yelled Jim.
+
+Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight for us! He
+passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and disappeared like a
+gleam under the gloomy cedars.
+
+We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed in on us
+from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out behind Emett,
+fighting the branches, dodging and swerving, hugging the saddle, and
+always sending out our sharp yells.
+
+The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up together
+found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West Point.
+
+"The hounds have gone down," he said, pointing to the runway.
+
+We all listened to the meaning bays.
+
+"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they found him
+under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now fellows, I'll go down.
+It might be a good idea for you to spread along the rim."
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: HIDING]
+
+With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to the rim
+as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often forced us to
+circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls below, kept pace
+with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused Jones to dispatch
+Emett on the gallop for the next runway at North Hollow.
+
+Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of the
+promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my mustang
+I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded through the sage
+and cedar to the rim.
+
+Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and
+bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling
+bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From
+one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like
+the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches
+of cedar and the great blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the
+lion, but I could not see one of them.
+
+The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this was with
+brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might climb down.
+Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding, clinging to what
+afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of stone hid the sky from
+me part of the way. I came out a hundred feet below upon a second
+promontory of huge slabs of yellow stone. Over these I clambered, to
+sit with my feet swinging over the last one.
+
+Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon. In the
+soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes
+were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender
+shadow of twilight. Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines
+full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome
+leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the
+rolling, weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full
+of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
+limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully
+growing in crannies.
+
+Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance and a
+thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and eager eyes
+to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was mine as usual;
+the hounds were working up toward me. How I strained my sight! Hearing
+a single cry I looked eastward to see Jones silhouetted against the
+blue on a black promontory. He seemed a giant primeval man overlooking
+the ruin of a former world. I signalled him to make for my point.
+
+Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He was at
+fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his left. I
+heard Don's clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air, seemingly
+to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not locate him.
+Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim. Moze was next to
+appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble of stone hid him, and
+then Ranger again showed. Evidently he wanted to get around the bottom
+of a low crag, for he jumped and jumped only to fall back.
+
+Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon the top
+of it was the long, slender body of a lion.
+
+"Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" I yelled till my lungs failed me.
+
+"Where are you?" came from above.
+
+"Here! Here!" I cried seeing Jones on the rim. "Come down. Climb down
+the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round crag. He's fooled
+the hounds and they can't find him."
+
+"I see him! I see him!" yelled Jones. Then he roared out a single call
+for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the curved broken rim
+wall, opening up echoes which clapped like thunder.
+
+While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay with
+head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle. What a
+place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing down the
+broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe from
+pursuit.
+
+Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps. I could
+not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the crag. I
+leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the varied and
+thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of hard, panting
+breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As Jones had set in
+motion bushels of stone and had already scraped his feet over the
+rocks behind me I thought the forced respiration came from him. When
+I turned he was yet far off--too far for me to hear him breathe. I
+thought this circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.
+
+On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle blast,
+and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent up the thrice
+welcome news of a treed lion.
+
+"There 're two! There 're two!" I yelled to Jones, now working down to
+my right.
+
+"He's treed down here. I've got him spotted!" replied Jones. "You stay
+there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett."
+
+Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim far below
+to the left sent me an answer.
+
+The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with Jones
+and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone, waiting
+impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one lion and I
+watched the other.
+
+Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could have
+gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about
+him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the
+throb and race of his wild blood.
+
+Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes. No doubt
+he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the left of our
+position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to toil up the other.
+I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds hailed him.
+
+"Steer to your left Jim!" I called.. "There's a lion on that crag
+above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the left--Jones is
+there!"
+
+The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to the
+sound rising from below without being able to see what happened. My
+lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had crouched closer to his
+crag, evidently believing he was unseen, which obviously made it
+imperative for me to keep my seat and hold him there as long as
+possible.
+
+But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.
+
+"Hyar Moze--get out of that. Catch him--hold him! Damn these rotten
+limbs. Hand me a pole--Jones, back down--back down! he's comin'--Hi!
+Hi! Whoop! Boo--o! There--now you've got him! No, no; it slipped! Now!
+Look out, Jim, from under--he's going to jump!"
+
+A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of yelps
+with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones' last words. Then
+two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first was the lion, the
+second was Don. The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in
+their wake. Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with
+Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth. The animated
+and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually
+lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed
+altogether from my jealous sight.
+
+On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry
+again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent
+yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus. Then presently all quieted
+down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the
+slope. Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional
+bark.
+
+I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a few
+minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag and never
+moved.
+
+I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks of the
+Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far beyond to
+where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther still to the
+Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the distance.
+
+Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the time I
+was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring above would
+have placed me as well as my lion among the few living things in the
+range of his all-compassing vision. Therefore, all was mine, not
+merely the lion--for he was only the means to an end--but the
+stupendous, unnameable thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains
+in the shades of its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming
+pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
+the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
+that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty
+exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of
+presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to keep.
+
+"Waa-hoo!"
+
+The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the ridge of
+cedars.
+
+"All right here--have you kept your line there?" he yelled.
+
+"All's well--come along, come along," I replied.
+
+I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved. The
+hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could not
+find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a continual
+baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they had tied up the
+lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up the slope.
+
+"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called in
+warning.
+
+"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.
+
+I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between the
+boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim catching
+my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I reached the
+bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of the cliff, and soon
+all three of us with the hounds stood out on the rocky shelf with only
+a narrow space between us and the crouching lion.
+
+Before we had a moment to speak, much less form a plan of attack, the
+lion rose, spat at us defiantly, and deliberately jumped off the crag.
+We heard him strike with a frightful thud.
+
+Surprise held us dumb. To take the leap to the slope below seemed
+beyond any beast not endowed with wings. We saw the lion bounding down
+the identical trail which the other lion had taken. Jones came out of
+his momentary indecision.
+
+"Hold the dogs! Call them back!" he yelled hoarsely. "They'll kill the
+lion we tied! They'll kill him!"
+
+The hounds had scattered off the bench here and there, everywhere, to
+come together on the trail below. Already they were in full cry with
+the matchless Don at the fore. Manifestly to call them back was an
+injustice, as well as impossible. In ten seconds they were out of
+sight.
+
+In silence we waited, each listening, each feeling the tragedy of the
+situation, each praying that they would pass by the poor, helpless,
+bound lion. Suddenly the regular baying swelled to a burst of savage,
+snarling fury, such as the pack made in a vicious fight. This
+ceased--short silence ensued; Don's sharp voice woke the echoes, then
+the regular baying continued.
+
+As with one thought, we all sat down. Painful as the certainty was it
+was not so painful as that listening, hoping suspense.
+
+"Shore they can't be blamed," said Jim finally. "Bumping their nose
+into a tied lion that way--how'd they know?"
+
+"Who could guess the second lion would jump off that quick and run
+back to our captive?" burst out Jones.
+
+"Shore we might have knowed it," replied Jim. "Well, I'm goin' after
+the pack."
+
+He gathered up his lasso and strode off the bench. Jones said he would
+climb back to the rim, and I followed Jim.
+
+Why the lions ran in that particular direction was clear to me when
+I saw the trail. It was a runway, smooth and hard packed. I trudged
+along it with rather less enjoyment than on any trail I had ever
+followed to the canyon. Jim waited for me over the cedar ridge and
+showed me where the captive lion lay dead. The hounds had not torn
+him. They had killed him and passed on after the other.
+
+"He was a fine fellow, all of seven feet, we'll skin him on our way
+back."
+
+Only dogged determination coupled with a sense of duty to the hounds
+kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had been
+submerged. But we had to follow the pack.
+
+Jim, less weighted down and perhaps less discouraged, forged ahead up
+and down. The sun had burned all the morning coolness out of the air.
+I perspired and panted and began to grow weary. Jim's signal called me
+to hurry. I took to a trot and came upon him and the hounds under a
+small cedar. The lion stood among the dead branches. His sides where
+shaking convulsively, and his short breaths could be plainly heard.
+He had the most blazing eyes and most untamed expression of any wild
+creature I have ever seen; and this amazed me considering I had kept
+him on a crag for over an hour, and had come to look upon him as my
+own.
+
+"What'll we do, Jim, now that we have him treed?"
+
+"Shore, we'll tie him up," declared Jim.
+
+The lion stayed in the cedar long enough for me to photograph him
+twice, then he leaped down again and took to his back trail. We
+followed as fast as we could, soon to find that the hounds had put him
+up another cedar. From this he jumped down among the dogs, scattered
+them as if they had been so many leaves, and bounded up the slope out
+of sight.
+
+I laid aside my rifle and camera and tried to keep up with Jim. The
+lion ran straight up the slope and treed again under the wall. Before
+we covered half the distance he was on the go once more, flying down
+in clouds of dust.
+
+"Don is makin' him hump," said Jim.
+
+And that alone was enough to spur us on. We would reward the noble
+hound if we had the staying power. Don and his pack ran westward this
+time, and along a mile of the beaten trail put him up two more trees.
+But these we could not see and judged only by the sound.
+
+[Illustration: A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHICH IS THE PIUTE?]
+
+"Look there!" cried Jim. "Darn me if he ain't comin' right at us."
+
+It was true. Ahead of us the lion appeared, loping wearily. We stopped
+in our tracks undecided. Jim drew his revolver. Once or twice the lion
+disappeared behind stones and cedars. When he sighted us he stopped,
+looked back, then again turning toward us, he left the trail to plunge
+down. He had barely got out of sight when old Don came pattering along
+the trail; then Ranger leading the others. Don did not even put his
+nose to the ground where the lion had switched, but leaped aside and
+went down. Here the long section of slope between the lion's runway
+and the second wall had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed
+into deep ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled
+on, always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped fissures,
+we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar below, and send
+long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.
+
+A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood at the
+constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second wall. The
+side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of mass on mass of
+broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a gigantic scale. Points
+of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks lined the wall.
+
+"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over the
+second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds seemed to
+be back further toward where the split narrows."
+
+Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns we wormed
+our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.
+
+"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat shelf some
+few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close by, but too far
+for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was gasping and frothing
+at the mouth.
+
+"Shore if he'd only stay there--" said Jim.
+
+He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the tired
+beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw failed of its
+purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up painfully it seemed,
+and faced the dogs. That way barred he turned to the cliff. Almost
+opposite him a shelf leaned out. He looked at it, then paced to and
+fro like a beast in a cage.
+
+He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and finally
+concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length sagged in
+the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and strung, and he
+sprang like a tawny streak.
+
+His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the shelf
+and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his claws
+scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a somersault, struck
+twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded from that to fall down,
+striking suddenly and then to roll, a yellow wheel that lodged behind
+a rock and stretched out to move no more.
+
+The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little stones
+rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon seemed to pay
+tribute to the lion's unquenchable spirit and to the freedom he had
+earned to the last.
+
+
+VIII
+
+How long Jim and I sat there we never knew. The second tragedy, not so
+pitiful but as heart sickening as the first, crushed our spirits.
+
+"Shore he was a game lion," said Jim. "An' I'll have to get his skin."
+
+
+"I'm all in, Jim. I couldn't climb out of that hole." I said.
+
+"You needn't. Rest a little, take a good drink an' leave your canteen
+here for me; then get your things back there on the trail an' climb
+out. We're not far from West Point. I'll go back after the first
+lion's skin an' then climb straight up. You lead my horse to the point
+where you came off the rim."
+
+He clattered along the gorge knocking the stones and started down. I
+watched him letting himself over the end of the huge slabs until he
+passed out of my sight. A good, long drink revived me and I began the
+ascent.
+
+From that moment on time did not matter to me. I forgot all about it.
+I felt only my leaden feet and my laboring chest and dripping skin.
+I did not even notice the additional weight of my rifle and camera
+though they must have overburdened me. I kept my eyes on the lion
+runway and plunged away with short steps. To look at these towering
+walls would have been to surrender.
+
+At last, stumbling, bursting, sick, I gained the rim and had to rest
+before I could mount. When I did get into the saddle I almost fell
+from it.
+
+Jones and Emett were waiting for me at the promontory where I had
+tied my horse, and were soon acquainted with the particulars of my
+adventure, and that Jim would probably not get out for hours. We made
+tracks for camp, and never did a place rouse in me such a sense of
+gratefulness. Emett got dinner and left on the fire a kettle of potato
+stew for Jim. It was almost dark when that worthy came riding into
+camp. We never said a word as he threw the two lion skins on the
+ground.
+
+"Fellows, you shore have missed the wind-up!" he exclaimed.
+
+We all looked at him and he looked at us.
+
+"Was there any more?" I asked weakly.
+
+"Shore! An' it beats hell! When I got the skin of the lion the dogs
+killed I started to work up to the place I knowed you'd leave my
+horse. It's bad climbing where you came down. I got on the side of
+that cliff an' saw where I could work out, if I could climb a smooth
+place. So I tried. There was little cracks an' ridges for my feet and
+hands. All to once, just above where I helped you down, I heard a
+growl. Looking up I saw a big lion, bigger'n any we chased except
+Sultan, an' he was pokin' his head out of a hole, an' shore telling
+me to come no further. I couldn't let go with either hand to reach my
+gun, because I'd have fallen, so I yelled at him with all my might. He
+spit at me an' then walked out of the hole over the bench as proud as
+a lord an' jumped down where I couldn't see him any more. I climbed
+out all right but he'd gone. An' I'll tell you for a minute, he shore
+made me sweat."
+
+"By George!" I yelled, greatly excited. "I heard that lion breathing.
+Don chased him up there. I heard hard, wheezing breaths somewhere
+behind me, but in the excitement I didn't pay any attention to them. I
+thought it was Jones panting, but now I know what it meant."
+
+"Shore. He was there all the time, lookin' at you an' maybe he could
+have reached you."
+
+We were all too exhausted for more discussion and putting that off
+until the next day we sought our beds. It was hardly any wonder that I
+felt myself jumping even in my sleep, and started up wildly more than
+once in the dead of night.
+
+[Illustration: WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+Morning found us all rather subdued, yet more inclined to a
+philosophical resignation as regarded the difficulties of our special
+kind of hunting. Capturing the lions on the level of the plateau was
+easy compared to following them down into canyons and bringing them up
+alone. We all agreed that that was next to impossible. Another feature,
+which before we had not considered, added to our perplexity and it was a
+dawning consciousness that we would be perhaps less cruel if we killed
+the lions outright. Jones and Emett arrayed themselves on the side that
+life even in captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still
+under the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end,
+inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable fact that
+as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of intelligence.
+
+[Illustration: JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION]
+
+About eleven o'clock while the others had deserted camp temporarily
+for some reason or other, I was lounging upon an odorous bed of pine
+needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through
+the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through
+the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow
+woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I
+imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so
+afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left
+no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my
+shirt, and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.
+
+Suddenly a thought swept on the heels of my indolent and rather
+annoying realization. Could I have gotten from the Navajo what Jim and
+Jones so characteristically called "'em"? I turned cold all over. And
+on the very instant I received another bite that burned like fire.
+
+The return of my companions prevented any open demonstration of my
+fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore inwardly. During
+the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had on a horsehair shirt
+with the ends protruding toward my skin, and, in the exaggerated
+sensitiveness of the moment, made sure "'em" were chasing up and down
+my back.
+
+After dinner I sneaked off into the woods. I remembered that Emett
+had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and that was to
+disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments and person. With
+serious mind and murderous intent I undressed. In the middle of the
+back of my jersey I discovered several long, uncanny, gray things.
+
+"I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.
+
+Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature, oblivious
+to all around, intent only on the massacre of the things that had
+violated me. How much time flew I could not guess. Great loud
+"Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There behind me stood Jones
+and Emett shaking as if with the ague.
+
+"It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage. I had the unreasonable
+suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones, who
+cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and Emett the
+sober Mormon, laughed until they cried.
+
+"I was--just wondering--what your folks would--think--if they--saw
+you--now," gurgled Jones.
+
+That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in their
+mirth.
+
+"All I hope is that you fellows will get 'em' too," I said.
+
+"The Good Lord preserve me from that particular breed of Navvy's,"
+cried Emett.
+
+Jones wriggled all over at the mere suggestion. Now so much from the
+old plainsman, who had confessed to intimate relations with every
+creeping, crawling thing in the West, attested powerfully to the
+unforgettable singularity of what I got from Navvy.
+
+I returned to camp determined to make the best of the situation,
+which owing to my failure to catch all of the gray devils, remained
+practically unchanged. Jim had been acquainted with my dilemma, as was
+manifest in his wet eyes and broad grin with which he greeted me.
+
+"I think I'd scalp the Navvy," he said.
+
+"You make the Indian sleep outside after this, snow or no snow," was
+Jones' suggestion.
+
+"No I won't; I won't show a yellow streak like that. Besides, I want
+to give 'em to you fellows."
+
+A blank silence followed my statement, to which Jim replied:
+
+"Shore that'll be easy; Jones'll have 'em, so'll Emett, an' by thunder
+I'm scratchin' now."
+
+"Navvy, look here," I said severely, "mucha no bueno! heap bad!
+You--me!" here I scratched myself and made signs that a wooden Indian
+would have understood.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied, sullenly, then flared up. "Heap big lie."
+
+He turned on his heel, erect, dignified, and walked away amid the
+roars of my gleeful comrades.
+
+
+IX
+
+One by one my companions sought their blankets, leaving the shadows,
+the dying embers, the slow-rising moan of the night wind to me. Old
+Moze got up from among the other hounds and limped into my tent, where
+I heard him groan as he lay down. Don, Sounder, and Ranger were
+fast asleep in well-earned rest. Shep, one of the pups, whined and
+impatiently tossed his short chain. Remembering that he had not been
+loose all day, I unbuckled his collar and let him go.
+
+He licked my hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his shapely,
+sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the circle cast by
+the fire and looked out into the darkening shadows. It was plain that
+Shep's instincts were developing fast; he was ambitious to hunt. But
+sure in my belief that he was afraid of the black night and would stay
+in camp, I went to bed.
+
+The Navajo who slept with me snored serenely and Moze growled in his
+dreams; the wind swept through the pines with an intermittent rush.
+Some time in the after part of the night I heard a distant sound.
+Remote, mournful, wild, it sent a chill creeping over me. Borne
+faintly to my ears, it was a fit accompaniment to the moan of the wind
+in the pines. It was not the cry of a trailing wolf, nor the lonesome
+howl of a prowling coyote, nor the strange, low sound, like a cough,
+of a hunting cougar, though it had a semblance of all three. It was
+the bay of a hound, thinned out by distance, and it served to keep me
+wide awake. But for a while, what with the roar and swell of the wind
+and Navvy's snores, I could hear it only at long intervals.
+
+Still, in the course of an hour, I followed the sound, or imagined so,
+from a point straight in line with my feet to one at right angles
+with my head. Finally deciding it came from Shep, and fancying he was
+trailing a deer or coyote, I tried to go to sleep again.
+
+In this I would have succeeded had not, all at once, our captive lions
+begun to growl. That ominous, low murmuring awoke me with a vengeance,
+for it was unusual for them to growl in the middle of the night.
+I wondered if they, as well as the pup, had gotten the scent of a
+prowling lion.
+
+I reached down to my feet and groped in the dark for Moze. Finding
+him, I gave him a shake. The old gladiator groaned, stirred, and came
+out of what must have been dreams of hunting meat. He slapped his tail
+against my bed. As luck would have it, just then the wind abated to a
+soft moan, and clear and sharp came the bay of a hound. Moze heard it,
+for he stopped wagging his tail, his body grew tense under my hand,
+and he vented his low, deep grumble.
+
+I lay there undecided. To wake my companions was hardly to be
+considered, and to venture off into the forest alone, where old Sultan
+might be scouting, was not exactly to my taste. And trying to think
+what to do, and listening for the bay of the pup, and hearing mostly
+the lions growling and the wind roaring, I fell asleep.
+
+"Hey! are you ever going to get up?" some one yelled into my drowsy
+brain. I roused and opened my eyes. The yellow, flickering shadows on
+the wall of my tent told me that the sun had long risen. I found my
+companions finishing breakfast. The first thing I did was to look over
+the dogs. Shep, the black-and-white pup, was missing.
+
+"Where's Shep?" I asked.
+
+"Shore, I ain't seen him this mornin'," replied Jim.
+
+Thereupon I told what I had heard during the night.
+
+"Everybody listen," said Jones.
+
+We quieted down and sat like statues. A gentle, cool breeze, barely
+moving the pine tips, had succeeded the night wind. The sound of
+horses munching their oats, and an occasional clink, rattle, and growl
+from the lions did not drown the faint but unmistakable yelps of a
+pup.
+
+"South, toward the canyon," said Jim, as Jones got up.
+
+"Now, it'd be funny if that little Shep, just to get even with me for
+tying him up so often, has treed a lion all by himself," commented
+Jones. "And I'll bet that's just what he's done."
+
+He called the hounds about him and hurried westward through the
+forest.
+
+"Shore, it might be." Jim shook his head knowingly. "I reckon it's
+only a rabbit, but anythin' might happen in this place."
+
+I finished breakfast and went into my tent for something--I forget
+what, for wild yells from Emett and Jim brought me flying out again.
+
+"Listen to that!" cried Jim, pointing west.
+
+The hounds had opened up; their full, wild chorus floated clearly on
+the breeze, and above it Jones' stentorian yell signaled us.
+
+"Shore, the old man can yell," continued Jim. "Grab your lassos an'
+hump yourselves. I've got the collar an' chain."
+
+"Come on, Navvy," shouted Emett. He grasped the Indian's wrist and
+started to run, jerking Navvy into the air at every jump. I caught up
+my camera and followed. We crossed two shallow hollows, and then saw
+the hounds and Jones among the pines not far ahead.
+
+In my excitement I outran my companions and dashed into an open glade.
+First I saw Jones waving his long arms; next the dogs, noses upward,
+and Don actually standing on his hind legs; then a dead pine with a
+well-known tawny shape outlined against the blue sky.
+
+"Hurrah for Shep!" I yelled, and right vigorously did my comrades join
+in.
+
+"It's another female," said Jones, when we calmed down, "and fair
+sized. That's the best tree for our purpose that I ever saw a lion in.
+So spread out, boys; surround her and keep noisy."
+
+Navvy broke from Emett at this juncture and ran away. But evidently
+overcome by curiosity, he stopped to hide behind a bush, from which I
+saw his black head protruding.
+
+When Jones swung himself on the first stubby branch of the pine, the
+lioness, some fifteen feet above, leaped to another limb, and the one
+she had left cracked, swayed and broke. It fell directly upon Jones,
+the blunt end striking his head and knocking him out of the tree.
+Fortunately, he landed on his feet; otherwise there would surely have
+been bones broken. He appeared stunned, and reeled so that Emett
+caught him. The blood poured from a wound in his head.
+
+This sudden shock sobered us instantly. On examination we found a
+long, jagged cut in Jones' scalp. We bathed it with water from my
+canteen and with snow Jim procured from a nearby hollow, eventually
+stopping the bleeding. I insisted on Jones coming to camp to have the
+wound properly dressed, and he insisted on having it bound with a
+bandana; after which he informed us that he was going to climb the
+tree again.
+
+We objected to this. Each of us declared his willingness to go up and
+rope the lion; but Jones would not hear of it.
+
+"I'm not doubting your courage," he said. "It's only that you cannot
+tell what move the lion would make next, and that's the danger."
+
+We could not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill the
+animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the tree,
+passed the first branch and then another. The lioness changed her
+position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to keep the tree
+trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out on a branch in a
+most favorable position for roping.
+
+The first cast of the lasso did the business, and Jim and Emett with
+nimble fingers tied up the hounds.
+
+"Coming," shouted Jones. He slid down, hand over hand, on the rope,
+the lioness holding his weight with apparent ease.
+
+"Make your noose ready," he yelled to Emett.
+
+I had to drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal from
+her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness, hissing,
+snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the rope out of
+our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed her hind paws in a
+flash.
+
+"Make fast your rope," shouted Jones. "There, that's good! Now let her
+down--easy."
+
+As soon as the lioness touched ground we let go the lasso, which
+whipped up and over the branch. She became a round, yellow, rapidly
+moving ball. Emett was the first to catch the loose lasso, and he
+checked the rolling cougar. Jones leaped to assist him and the two of
+them straightened out the struggling animal, while Jim swung another
+noose at her. On the second throw he caught a front paw.
+
+"Pull hard! Stretch her out!" yelled Jones. He grasped a stout piece
+of wood and pushed it at the lioness. She caught it in her mouth,
+making the splinters fly. Jones shoved her head back on the ground and
+pressed his brawny knee on the bar of wood.
+
+"The collar! The collar! Quick!" he called.
+
+I threw chain and collar to him, which in a moment he had buckled
+round her neck.
+
+"There, we've got her!" he said. "It's only a short way over to camp,
+so we'll drag her without muzzling."
+
+As he rose the lioness lurched, and reaching him, fastened her
+fangs in his leg. Jones roared. Emett and Jim yelled. And I, though
+frightened, was so obsessed with the idea of getting a picture that I
+began to fumble with the shutter of my camera.
+
+"Grab the chain! Pull her off!" bawled Jones.
+
+I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with all my
+might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round her neck.
+Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she brought Jones'
+leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the chain and jumped.
+
+"**-- **--!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think more of a picture
+than of saving my life?" Having expressed this not unreasonable
+protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made fast to a small
+sapling.
+
+Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an animated
+center, began a march through the forest that for variety of action
+and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever beheld.
+
+So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
+straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
+ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
+dance, along the side lines.
+
+There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the ground
+and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs and chased
+the two in front and dragged the one behind; others when she came
+within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.
+
+They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and though Jones
+evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a tree. There was
+no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of the time and the
+fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos were each thirty feet
+long, but even with that the men could just barely keep out of her
+reach.
+
+Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly,
+unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing
+the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing
+one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The
+weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope
+slackening. The leap of the lioness carried her within reach of Jones;
+and as he raised himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for
+him just as Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.
+
+The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws. Then
+she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge. Jones sprang
+up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his scarlet face, working
+spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed how utterly unable he was
+to give expression to his rage. I had a stitch in my side that nearly
+killed me, but laugh I had to though I should die for it.
+
+No laughing matter was it for them. They volleyed and thundered
+back and forth meaningless words of which "hell" was the only one
+distinguishable, and probably the word that best described their
+situation.
+
+All the while, however, they had been running from the lioness, which
+brought them before they realized it right into camp. Our captive
+lions cut up fearfully at the hubbub, and the horses stampeded in
+terror.
+
+"Whoa!" yelled Jones, whether to his companions or to the struggling
+cougar, no one knew. But Navvy thought Jones addressed the cougar.
+
+"Whoa!" repeated Navvy. "No savvy whoa! No savvy whoa!" which proved
+conclusively that the Navajo had understanding as well as wit.
+
+Soon we had another captive safely chained and growling away in tune
+with the others. I went back to untie the hounds, to find them sulky
+and out of sorts from being so unceremoniously treated. They noisily
+trailed the lioness into camp, where, finding her chained, they formed
+a ring around her.
+
+Thereafter the day passed in round-the-camp-fire chat and task. For
+once Jim looked at Navvy with toleration. We dressed the wound in
+Jones' head and laughed at the condition of his trousers and at his
+awkward attempts to piece them.
+
+"Mucha dam cougie," remarked Navvy. "No savvy whoa!"
+
+The lions growled all day. And Jones kept repeating: "To think how
+Shep fooled me!"
+
+
+X
+
+Next morning Jones was out bright and early, yelling at Navvy to hurry
+with the horses, calling to the hounds and lions, just as usual.
+
+Navvy had finally come to his full share of praise from all of us.
+Even Jim acknowledged that the Indian was invaluable to a hunting
+party in a country where grass and water were hard to find and wild
+horses haunted the trails.
+
+"_Tohodena! Tohodena!_ (hurry! hurry!)" said Navvy, mimicking Jones
+that morning.
+
+As we sat down to breakfast he loped off into the forest and before we
+got up the bells of the horses were jingling in the hollow.
+
+"I believe it's going to be cloudy," said Jones, "and if so we can
+hunt all day."
+
+We rode down the ridge to the left of Middle Canyon, and had trouble
+with the hounds all the way. First they ran foul of a coyote, which
+was the one and only beast they could not resist. Spreading out to
+head them off, we separated. I cut into a hollow and rode to its head,
+where I went up. I heard the hounds and presently saw a big, white
+coyote making fast time through the forest glades. It looked as if he
+would cross close in front of me, so I pulled Foxie to a standstill,
+jumped off and knelt with my rifle ready. But the sharp-eyed coyote
+saw my horse and shied off. I had not much hope to hit him so far
+away, and the five bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping,
+served only to make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted
+the hounds coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my
+companions, now hallooing from the ridge below.
+
+Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that were a day
+old, and for such trails we had no time. We reached the cedars however
+at seven o'clock, and as the sky was overcast with low dun-colored
+clouds and the air cool, we were sure it was not too late.
+
+One of the capes of the plateau between Middle and Left Canyon was a
+narrow strip of rock, covered with a dense cedar growth and cut up
+into smaller canyons, all running down inevitably toward the great
+canyon. With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out of our sight
+and hearing; and while we split to look and call for him the remainder
+of the pack found the lion trail that he had gone on, and they left
+us trying to find a way out as well as to find each other. I kept the
+hounds in hearing for some time and meanwhile I signalled to Emett who
+was on my right flank. Jones and Jim might as well have vanished off
+the globe for all I could see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully
+into which I had to lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much
+time that when I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds
+or get an answer to my signal cry.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" I called again.
+
+Away on the dry rarified air pealed the cry, piercing the cedar
+forest, splitting sharp in the vaulted canyons, rolling loud and long,
+to lose power, to die away in muffling echo. But the silence returned
+no answer.
+
+I rode on under the cedars, through a dark, gloomy forest, silent,
+almost spectral, which brought irresistibly to my mind the words
+"I found me in a gloomy wood astray." I was lost though I knew the
+direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest was all but
+impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray tangles, live cedars,
+branches touching the ground, grew close together. In this labyrinth
+I lost my bearings. I turned and turned, crossed my own back trail,
+which in desperation I followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep
+and narrow canyon.
+
+Here I fired my revolver. The echo boomed out like the report of heavy
+artillery, but no answering shot rewarded me. There was no alternative
+save to wander along the canyon and through the cedars until I found
+my companions. This I began to do, disgusted with my awkwardness in
+losing them. Turning Foxie westward I had scarcely gotten under way
+when Don came trotting toward me.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" I called. Don appeared as happy to see me as I was
+to see him. He flopped down on the ground; his dripping tongue rolled
+as he panted; covered with dust and flecked with light froth he surely
+looked to be a tired hound.
+
+"All in, eh Don!" I said dismounting. "Well, we'll rest awhile." Then
+I discovered blood on his nose, which I found to have come from a deep
+scratch. "A--ah! been pushing a lion too hard this morning? Got your
+nose scratched, didn't you? You great, crazy hound, don't you know
+some day you'll chase your last lion?"
+
+Don wagged his tail as if to say he knew it all very well. I wet my
+handkerchief from my canteen and started to wash the blood and dust
+from his nose, when he whined and licked my fingers.
+
+"Thirsty?" I asked, sitting down beside him. Denting the top of my hat
+I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him to drink. Four
+times he emptied my improvised cup before he was satisfied. Then with
+a sigh of relief he lay down again.
+
+The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and I
+sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed on
+occasional tufts of grass. During that time the hound never raised his
+sleek, dark head, which showed conclusively the nature of the silence.
+And now that I had company--as good company as any hunter ever had--I
+was once more contented.
+
+Don got up, at length of his own volition and with a wag of his tail
+set off westward along the rim. Remounting my mustang I kept as close
+to Don's heels as the rough going permitted. The hound, however,
+showed no disposition to hurry, and I let him have his way without a
+word.
+
+We came out in the notch of the great amphitheater or curve we had
+named the Bay, and I saw again the downward slope, the bold steps, the
+color and depth below.
+
+I was just about to yell a signal cry when I saw Don, with hair rising
+stiff, run forward. He took a dozen jumps, then yelping broke down the
+steep, yellow and green gorge. He disappeared before I knew what had
+happened.
+
+Shortly I found a lion track, freshly made, leading down. I believed
+I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go after him. I tied
+Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off spurs and chaps, and
+remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened a red bandana to the top
+of a dead snag to show me where to come up on my way out. Then I
+carefully strapped my canteen and camera on my back, made doubly
+secure my revolver, put on my heavy gloves, and started down. And I
+realized at once that only so lightly encumbered should I have ever
+ventured down the slope.
+
+Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there cedar
+trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A precipice
+stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and almost instantly saw
+the yellow gleam of a lion in a tree-top.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.
+
+I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay under me,
+a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering smoky canyon.
+All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope, green jumble of
+cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff walls, leaning yellow
+crags--an awful hole. But I could get down, and that was all I cared
+for. I ran along to the left, jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven
+stones with sure, swift feet, and came to where the cliff ended in
+weathered slope and scaly bench.
+
+It was like a game, going down that canyon. My heavy nailed boots
+struck fire from the rocks. My heavy gloves protected my hands as I
+slid and hung on and let go. I outfooted the avalanches and wherever I
+came to a scaly slope or bank or decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer
+delight.
+
+But all too soon my progress was barred; once under the cliff I found
+only a gradual slope and many obstacles to go round or surmount. Luck
+favored me, for I ran across a runway and keeping to it made better
+time. I heard Don long before I tried to see him, and yelled at
+intervals to let him know I was coming. A white bank of weathered
+stones led down to a clump of cedars from where Don's bay came
+spurring me to greater efforts. I flew down this bank, and through an
+opening saw the hound standing with fore feet against a cedar. The
+branches over him swayed, and I saw an indistinct, tawny form move
+downward in the air. Then succeeded the crash and rattle of stones.
+Don left the tree and disappeared.
+
+I dashed down, dodged under the cedars, threaded a maze of rocks, to
+find myself in a ravine with a bare, water-worn floor. In patches of
+sand showed the fresh tracks of Don and the lion. Running down this
+dry, clean bed was the easiest going I ever found in the canyon. Every
+rod the course jumped in a fall from four to ten feet, often more, and
+these I slid down. How I ever kept Don in hearing was a marvel, but
+still I did.
+
+The lion evidently had no further intention of taking to a tree. From
+the size of his track I concluded he was old and I feared every moment
+to hear the sounds of a fight. Jones had said that nearly always in
+the case of one hound chasing an old lion, the lion would lie in wait
+for him and kill him. And I was afraid for Don.
+
+Down, down, down, we went, till the yellow rim above seemed a thin
+band of gold. I saw that we were almost to the canyon proper, and
+I wondered what would happen when we reached it. The dark shaded
+watercourse suddenly shot out into bright light and ended in a deep
+cove, with perpendicular walls fifty feet high. I could see where
+a few rods farther on this cove opened into a huge, airy, colored
+canyon.
+
+I called the hound, wondering if he had gone to the right or left of
+the cove. His bay answered me coming from the cedars far to the right.
+I turned with all the speed left in me, for I felt the chase nearing
+an end. Tracks of hound and lion once more showed in the dust. The
+slope was steep and stones I sent rolling cracked down below. Soon I
+had a cliff above me and had to go slow and cautiously. A misstep or
+slide would have precipitated me into the cove.
+
+Almost before I knew what I was about, I stood gasping on the gigantic
+second wall of the canyon, with nothing but thin air under me, except,
+far below, faint and indistinct purple clefts, red ridges, dotted
+slopes, running down to merge in a dark, winding strip of water,
+that was the Rio Colorado. A sullen murmur soared out of the abyss.
+
+[Illustration: TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS]
+
+The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck me so
+terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its unscalable
+cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding quality of its
+silence.
+
+I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw him on a
+narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he reached me he faced
+again to the wall and barked fiercely. The hair on his neck bristled.
+I knew he did not fancy that narrow strip of rock, nor did I. But a
+sudden, grim, cold something had taken possession of me, and I stepped
+forward.
+
+"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."
+
+That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in the
+chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he took the
+lead and I closely followed.
+
+The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall, in the
+dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner of cliff
+wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed on the other
+side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by broken steps. Don
+passed the corner, looked back to see if I was coming and went on. He
+did this four times, once even stopping to wait for me.
+
+"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail out to a
+finish."
+
+I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could not but
+see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous overhanging wall
+above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I felt rather than saw
+the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting flight, with soft
+rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp of some strange cliff
+inhabitant.
+
+Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no longer
+man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying on the
+other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was beyond. Don
+slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as my fingers bit
+into the wall.
+
+To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow wind
+cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves of rock
+stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came upon a shrub
+cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it there. Don went slower
+and slower.
+
+We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a box-like space
+in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once before been confronted
+with a like situation, and had expected to find it here, so was not
+frightened. The lion looked up from his task of licking a bloody paw,
+and uttered a fierce growl. His tail began to lash to and fro; it
+knocked the little stones off the shelf. I heard them click on the
+wall. Again and again he spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a
+Tom, heavy and large.
+
+It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion, and now
+that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would follow had
+only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it was that he
+should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and focused from between
+twenty and twenty-five feet.
+
+Then a growl from Don and roar from the lion bade me come to my
+senses. I did so and my first movement after seeing the lion had risen
+threateningly was to whip out my revolver.
+
+The lion's cruel yellow eyes darkened and darkened. In an instant I
+saw my error. Jones had always said in case any one of us had to
+face a lion, never for a single instant to shift his glance. I had
+forgotten that, and in that short interval when I focused my camera
+the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or feared him, and he had
+risen. Even then in desperate lessening ambition for a great picture I
+attempted to take one, still keeping my glance on him.
+
+It was then that the appalling nature of my predicament made itself
+plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling horribly
+right in my face.
+
+Brave, noble Don, with infinitely more sense and courage than I
+possessed, faced the lion and bayed him in his teeth. I raised the
+revolver and aimed twice, each time lowering it because I feared to
+shoot in such a precarious position. To wound the lion would be the
+worst thing I could do, and I knew that only a shot through the brain
+would kill him in his tracks.
+
+"Hold him, Don, hold him!" I yelled, and I took a backward step. The
+lion put forward one big paw, his eyes now all purple blaze. I backed
+again and he came forward. Don gave ground slowly. Once the lion
+flashed a yellow paw at him. It was frightful to see the wide-spread
+claws.
+
+In the consternation of the moment I allowed the lion to back me
+across the front of the wind cave, where I saw, the moment it was too
+late, I should have taken advantage of more space to shoot him.
+
+Fright succeeded consternation, and I began to tremble. The lion was
+master of the situation. What would happen when I came to the narrow
+point on the shelf where it would be impossible for me to back around?
+I almost fainted. The thought of heroic Don saved me, and the weak
+moment passed.
+
+"By God, Don, you've got the nerve, and I must have it too!"
+
+I stopped in my tracks. The lion, appearing huge now, took slow
+catlike steps toward me, backing Don almost against my knees. He was
+so close I smelt him. His wonderful eyes, clear blue fire circled by
+yellow flame, fascinated me. Hugging the wall with my body I brought
+the revolver up, short armed, and with clinched teeth, and nerve
+strained to the breaking point, I aimed between the eyes and pulled
+the trigger.
+
+The left eye seemed to go out blankly, then followed the bellow of the
+revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered a sound that was a
+mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he rose straight up, towering
+high over my head, beating the wall heavily with his paws.
+
+In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing only the
+beast would fall over on me.
+
+But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into space.
+
+I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat. As I
+waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band and a
+sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and listened. Don
+whined once.
+
+Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time ended
+in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into the solemn
+stillness of the canyon.
+
+
+XI
+
+I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the far
+distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When I got up
+my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak sensation of a
+long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were necessary before I could
+trust myself on the narrow strip of shelf. But once around it with the
+peril passed, I braced up and soon reached the turn in the wall.
+
+After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of work, which
+I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for more hunting
+that day. We reached the rim together, and after a short rest, I
+mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.
+
+The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw the
+blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose up and
+barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions just sitting
+to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.
+
+"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it comin' to
+us to-day, and don't you forget that."
+
+Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we all
+took time between bites to talk. I told my story first, expecting my
+friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.
+
+"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever experienced,"
+declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions and they split. We
+all split and the hounds split. That tells the tale. We have nothing
+to show for our day's toil. Six lions chased, rounded up, treed,
+holed, and one lion killed, and we haven't even his skin to show. I
+did not go down but I helped Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion
+all over the lower end of the plateau. We treed him twice and I yelled
+for you fellows till my voice was gone."
+
+"Well," said Emett, "I fell in with Sounder and Jude. They were hot on
+a trail which in a mile or two turned up this way. I came on them just
+at the edge of the pines where they had treed their game. I sat under
+that pine tree for five hours, fired all my shots to make you fellows
+come, yelled myself hoarse and then tried to tie up the lion alone. He
+jumped out and ran over the rim, where neither I nor the dogs could
+follow."
+
+"Shore, I win, three of a kind," drawled Jim, as he got his pipe and
+carefully dusted the bowl. "When the stampede came, I got my hands on
+Moze and held him. I held Moze because just as the other hounds broke
+loose over to my right, I saw down into a little pocket where a
+fresh-killed deer lay half eaten. So I went down. I found two other
+carcasses layin' there, fresh killed last night, flesh all gone, hide
+gone, bones crushed, skull split open. An' damn me fellows, if that
+little pocket wasn't all torn to pieces. The sage was crushed flat.
+The ground dug up, dead snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere.
+Lion tracks like leaves, and old Sultan's was there. I let Moze loose
+and he humped the trail of several lions south over the rim. Major got
+down first an' came back with his tail between his legs. Moze went
+down and I kept close to him. It wasn't far down, but steep and rocky,
+full of holes. Moze took the trail to a dark cave. I saw the tracks of
+three lions goin' in. Then I collared Moze an' waited for you fellows.
+I waited there all day, an' nobody came to my call. Then I made for
+camp."
+
+"How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place where you
+found the carcasses?" I asked.
+
+"Lion fight sure," replied Jones. "Maybe old Sultan ran across the
+three lions feeding, and pitched into them. Such fights were common
+among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there."
+
+"What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where Jim
+chased them?"
+
+"We stand a good chance," said Jones. "Especially if it storms
+to-night."
+
+"Shore the snow storm is comin'," returned Jim.
+
+Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in the pines
+like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass. As we could not
+control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew fiercely, we extinguished
+it and went to bed. I had just settled myself comfortably to be sung
+to sleep by the concert in the pines, when Jones hailed me.
+
+"Say, what do you think?" he yelled, when I had answered him. "Emett
+is mad. He's scratching to beat the band. He's got 'em."
+
+I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.
+
+"You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"
+
+I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed and so
+did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could understand more
+English than he wanted us to suppose.
+
+Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed in--snowed
+in!"
+
+"Mucha snow--discass--no cougie--dam no bueno!" exclaimed Navvy.
+
+When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a blinding
+blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows, everything
+white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the Indian words in
+straight English.
+
+"Much snow--cold--no cougar--bad!"
+
+"Stay in bed," yelled Jones.
+
+"All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"
+
+He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off and on
+till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather breakfast,
+round a blazing bonfire.
+
+"It's going to clear up," said Jim.
+
+The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud that had
+enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit the tree tops,
+sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then rising above the trees.
+At first it moved slowly, rolling, forming, expanding, blooming like
+a column of whirling gray smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled
+onward through the forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and
+rippling, split by the trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose
+higher and higher, to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing
+glimpses of blue sky.
+
+Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts, dispelling the
+shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through the forest glade,
+gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the snow-wreathed pines.
+
+The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began to drip.
+A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved through every glade
+and feathered patches of snow floated down.
+
+A great bank of snow, sliding from the pine overhead almost buried
+the Navajo, to our infinite delight. We all sought the shelter of the
+tents, and sleep again claimed us.
+
+I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson paths in
+the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a frosty morning.
+
+"To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.
+
+While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave them
+their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions lay hidden
+in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out of sight beyond
+the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges; blue shadows gathered
+in the hollow, shaded purple and stole upward. A brief twilight
+succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit night.
+
+Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my sleeping bag,
+was I hailed from the other tent.
+
+Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones remonstrating
+in a low voice.
+
+"Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a secret no
+longer."
+
+"Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"
+
+"No, I don't," growled Jones.
+
+"Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno! bueno!" and I
+wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"
+
+The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.
+
+"Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you. It's only
+Jones has got 'em."
+
+
+XII
+
+When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising
+gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the frosty
+air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the bunches of
+sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow, resembled trees
+with brilliant blossoms.
+
+We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into which Jim
+had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we had expected,
+began to thin out, and it failed altogether under the cedars, though
+there was enough on the branches to give us a drenching.
+
+Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us the cave
+was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had better
+take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above to await
+developments.
+
+Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them close. We
+listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open up, but we were
+disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came climbing out, with
+the information that the lions had left the cave, probably the evening
+after he had chased them there.
+
+"Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt round the
+rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if necessary."
+
+So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left Canyon;
+Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we were to perform
+a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and Jude. Emett rode back
+with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle Canyon.
+
+Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost to the
+west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single track, so we
+started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the snow all gone;
+the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and Jones grumbled that
+no success would attend our efforts this morning.
+
+We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened into the
+deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our companions across the
+canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder and Jude both began to bark
+on a cliff; however, as we could find no tracks in the dust we called
+them off. Sounder obeyed reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over
+the wall.
+
+"They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the wall."
+
+Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They ran up
+and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they gone out
+of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the rim and looked
+over. The first step was short, a crumbled section of wall, and from
+it led down a long slope, dotted here and there with cedars. Both
+hounds were baying furiously.
+
+I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a lion,
+so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not yet in
+sight.
+
+"There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not lucky?"
+
+"I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that you
+don't absolutely need."
+
+Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only my camera
+and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We descended a ladder
+of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under our feet. The slope
+below us was easy, and soon we stood on a level with the lion. The
+cedar was small, and afforded no good place for him. Evidently he
+jumped from the slope to the tree, and had hung where he first
+alighted.
+
+"Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion won't stay
+treed long."
+
+I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and I moved
+aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under a tall piñon.
+High in the branches I saw a great mass of yellow, and at first glance
+thought Sounder had treed old Sultan. How I yelled! Then a second
+glance showed two lions close together.
+
+"Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a moment we
+made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the echoes bayed at
+us from the opposite walls.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but unmistakable,
+floated down to us. Across the jutting capes separating the mouths of
+these canyons, high above them on the rim wall of the opposite side of
+the Bay, stood a giant white horse silhouetted against the white
+sky. They made a brave picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in
+chorus: "Three lions treed! Three lions treed! come down--hurry!"
+
+A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had jumped. He
+ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard. Jude went tearing
+after them.
+
+"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!" yelled
+Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight among the
+trees and crags.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize it. The
+yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew fainter, telling
+me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to the bottom of the Bay.
+
+Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of the
+facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed without
+hounds, without a companion, without a gun.
+
+"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I wanted to
+run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken me with Don
+around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and fiercer. I
+pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for leaving my gun. I
+could not go for it; I would have to make the best of my error, and in
+the wildness born of the moment I swore if the lions would stay treed
+for the hounds they would stay treed for me.
+
+First I photographed them from different positions; then I took up my
+stand about on a level with them in an open place on the slope where
+they had me in plain sight. I might have been fifty feet from them.
+They showed no inclination to come down.
+
+About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the left. I
+called and called, but they passed on down the canyon bottom in the
+direction Jones had taken.
+
+Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me his
+lion had treed again.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.
+
+I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had just
+appeared.
+
+"Where--can--I--get--down?"
+
+I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on slide,
+jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally picked out a
+path.
+
+"Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don at his
+heels.
+
+"There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with your lasso,
+and come yourself."
+
+I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip noose
+free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right and left
+of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the direction of
+the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of precipices that made me
+tremble for him; but sure-footed as a goat, he went on safely down, to
+disappear far to my right.
+
+Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down the first
+step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach round a cedar
+above, was too short to extend to the landing below. He dropped,
+raising a cloud of dust, and starting the stones. Pulling one end of
+his lasso up around the cedar he gathered it in a coil on his arm and
+faced forward, following Don's trail.
+
+What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red and
+yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down, streaming
+over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant pursuing a foe. From
+time to time he sent up a yell of encouragement that wound down the
+canyon, to be answered by Jones and the baying hounds and then the
+strange echoes. At last he passed out of sight behind the crests of
+the trees; I heard him going down, down till the sounds came up faint
+and hollow.
+
+I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a hunter
+so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching them. For a
+long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays and yells below
+diminished in volume and occurrence and then ceased altogether, they
+became restless. It was then that I, remembering the lion I had held
+on top of the crag, began to bark like a hound. The lions became quiet
+once more.
+
+I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to hoarser, and
+finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately grew restless
+again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at me, and made many
+attempts to start down, each one of which I frustrated by throwing
+stones under the tree. At length he made one more determined effort,
+turned head downward, and stepped from branch to branch.
+
+I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long club in
+the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt him--make him fear me.
+If he got far enough down to jump, he would either escape or have me
+helpless. I aimed deliberately at him, and hit him square in the ribs.
+He exploded in a spit-roar that raised my hair. Directly under him I
+wielded my club, pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and,
+like the crazy fool that I was, yelled at him:
+
+"Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your old head
+for you!"
+
+Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He climbed
+to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had done, that I
+would certainly have made tracks from under the piñon, if I had not
+heard the faint yelp of a hound.
+
+I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at my lions.
+They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how strained they held
+their heads. I backed a little way up the slope. Then the faint yelp
+floated up again in the silence. Such dead, strange silence, that
+seemed never to have been broken! I saw the lions quiver, and if I
+ever heard anything in my life I heard their hearts thump. The yelp
+wafted up again, closer this time. I recognized it; it belonged to
+Don. The great hound on the back trail of the other lion was coming to
+my rescue.
+
+"It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at the lions.
+"It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me then! Pity for
+those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel fellows as they were, they
+shivered with fright. Their sides trembled. But pity did not hold me
+long; Don's yelp, now getting clear and sharp, brought back the rush
+of savage, grim sensations.
+
+A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the downward
+slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and climbing fast.
+It was Don.
+
+"Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.
+
+Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long length,
+forepaws against the piñon, his deep bay ringing defiance to the
+lions.
+
+It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me to sit
+down just then.
+
+"Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that hound, and
+you can't get away from him."
+
+Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down to
+hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming. Yelp on
+yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a black and
+yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight down the
+slope, streaked up and circled the piñon.
+
+Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep ascent,
+seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been swift.
+
+"Did you get the lion? Where's Emett?" I asked in breathless
+eagerness.
+
+"Lion tied--all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left Emett--to
+guard--him."
+
+"What are we to do now?"
+
+"Wait--till I get my breath. Think out--a plan. We can't get both
+lions--out of one tree."
+
+"All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie Sounder
+and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump, sure; he's
+almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree him again pretty
+soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good. Then, if you can get
+the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett to come up to help you,
+and I'll follow Don."
+
+Jones began the ascent of the piñon. The branches were not too close,
+affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for even a move on the
+part of the lions, the lower one began stepping down. I yelled a
+warning, but Jones did not have time to take advantage of it. He had
+half turned, meaning to swing out and drop, when the lion planted both
+forepaws upon his back. Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost
+on him.
+
+Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground, and when
+he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A cloud of dust
+rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and with great, springy
+bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his followers hot-footing it after
+him.
+
+Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied them, and
+dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action to join the
+chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in case the other lion
+jumped I could free them quickly.
+
+Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took his long
+stick, and proceeded to mount the piñon again. I waited till I saw him
+slip the noose over the lion's head, then I ran down the slope to
+yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told him to hurry to Jones'
+assistance. With that I headed up the canyon.
+
+I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his pursuers. I
+passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but fear of them was
+not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into the mouth of Left
+Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the hounds directed me. In
+the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed to come from a hundred dogs.
+
+When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a thick,
+dark piñon, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don stood up against
+me with his paws on my shoulders. These were strange actions, and
+though I marked it at the moment, I had ceased to wonder at our
+hounds. I took one picture as the lion sat in the dark shade, and then
+climbed to the low cliff and sat down. I called Don to me and held
+him. In case our quarry leaped upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put
+quickly on his trail.
+
+Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the lion--he
+looked as if it were--and one of impatience for the baying hounds, but
+for me it was a full hour. Alone with the hounds and a lion, far from
+the walks of men, walled in by the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry,
+sweet smell of cedar and piñon, I asked no more.
+
+Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were forerunners
+to Jones. I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze, and yelled for
+him to take his time. As he reached me the lion jumped and ran up the
+canyon. This suited me, for I knew he would take to a tree soon and
+the farther up he went the less distance we would have to pack him.
+From the cliff I saw him run up a slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly
+turn on his trail, and then climb into the tree and hide in its
+thickest part. Don passed him, got off the trail, and ran at fault.
+The others, so used to his leadership, were also baffled. But Jude,
+crippled and slow, brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard
+beyond where the lion turned. She opened up her deep call under the
+cedar, and in a moment the howling pack were around her.
+
+Jones and I toiled laboriously upward. He had brought my lasso, and
+he handed it to me with the significant remark that I would soon have
+need of it.
+
+The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that made Jones
+shake his head. He climbed the tree, lassoed the spitting lion and
+then leaped down to my side. By united and determined efforts we
+pulled the lion off the limb and let him down. The hounds began to
+leap at him. We both roared in a rage at them but to no use.
+
+"Hold him there!" shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso while he
+sprang forward.
+
+The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not taken a
+half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my feet or
+pulled the lasso from my hands. As it was, the choking lion, now
+within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to and fro before
+my face. He could not see me, but his frantic lunges narrowly missed
+me.
+
+If never before, Jones then showed his genius. Don had hold of the
+lion's flank, and Jones, grabbing the hound by the hind legs, threw
+him down the slope. Don fell and rolled a hundred feet before he
+caught himself. Then Jones threw old Moze rolling, and Ranger, and all
+except faithful Jude. Before they could get back he roped the lion
+again and made fast to a tree. Then he yelled for me to let go. The
+lion fell. Jones grabbed the lasso, at the same time calling for me to
+stop the hounds. As they came bounding up the steep slope, I had to
+club the noble fellows into submission.
+
+Before the lion recovered wholly from his severe choking, we had his
+paws bound fast. Then he could only heave his tawny sides, glare and
+spit at us.
+
+"Now what?" asked Jones. "Emett is watching the second lion, which we
+fastened by chain and lasso to a swinging branch. I'm all in. My heart
+won't stand any more climb."
+
+"You go to camp for the pack horses," I said briefly. "Bring them all,
+and all the packs, and Navvy, too. I'll help Emett tie up the second
+lion, and then we'll pack them both up here to this one. You take the
+hounds with you."
+
+"Can you tie up that lion?" asked Jones. "Mind you, he's loose except
+for a collar and chain. His claws haven't been clipped. Besides, it'll
+be an awful job to pack those two lions up here."
+
+"We can try," I said. "You hustle to camp. Your horse is right up back
+of here, across the point, if I don't mistake my bearings."
+
+Jones, admonishing me again, called the hounds and wearily climbed the
+slope. I waited until he was out of hearing; then began to retrace my
+trail down into the canyon. I made the descent in quick time, to find
+Emett standing guard over the lion. The beast had been tied to an
+overhanging branch that swung violently with every move he made.
+
+"When I got here," said Emett, "he was hanging over the side of that
+rock, almost choked to death. I drove him into this corner between the
+rocks and the tree, where he has been comparatively quiet. Now, what's
+up? Where is Jones? Did you get the third lion?"
+
+I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this lion
+and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones and the
+horses.
+
+"All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better get at
+it. Now I'm some worried about the lion we left below. He ought to be
+brought up, but we both can't go. This lion here will kill himself."
+
+"What will the other one weigh?"
+
+"All of one hundred and fifty pounds."
+
+"You can't pack him alone."
+
+"I'll try, and I reckon that's the best plan. Watch this fellow and
+keep him in the corner."
+
+Emett left me then, and I began a third long vigil beside a lion. The
+rest was more than welcome. An hour and a half passed before I heard
+the sliding of stones below, which told me that Emett was coming. He
+appeared on the slope almost bent double, carrying the lion, head
+downward, before him. He could climb only a few steps without lowering
+his burden and resting.
+
+I ran down to meet him. We secured a stout pole, and slipping this
+between the lion's paws, below where they were tied, we managed to
+carry him fairly well, and after several rests, got him up alongside
+the other.
+
+"Now to tie that rascal!" exclaimed Emett. "Jones said he was the
+meanest one he'd tackled, and I believe it. We'll cut a piece off of
+each lasso, and unravel them so as to get strings. I wish Jones hadn't
+tied the lasso to that swinging branch."
+
+"I'll go and untie it." Acting on this suggestion I climbed the tree
+and started out on the branch. The lion growled fiercely.
+
+"I'm afraid you'd better stop," warned Emett. "That branch is bending,
+and the lion can reach you."
+
+But despite this I slipped out a couple of yards farther, and had
+almost gotten to the knotted lasso, when the branch swayed and bent
+alarmingly. The lion sprang from his corner and crouched under me
+snarling and spitting, with every indication of leaping.
+
+"Jump! Jump! Jump!" shouted Emett hoarsely.
+
+[Illustration: BILLY IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: LION LICKING SNOWBALL]
+
+I dared not, for I could not jump far enough to get out of the lion's
+reach. I raised my legs and began to slide myself back up the branch.
+The lion leaped, missing me, but scattering the dead twigs. Then the
+beast, beside himself with fury, half leaped, half stood up, and
+reached for me. I looked down into his blazing eyes, and open mouth
+and saw his white fangs.
+
+Everything grew blurred before my eyes. I desperately fought for
+control over mind and muscle. I heard hoarse roars from Emett. Then
+I felt a hot, burning pain in my wrist, which stung all my faculties
+into keen life again.
+
+I saw the lion's beaked claws fastened in my leather wrist-band. At
+the same instant Emett dashed under the branch, and grasped the lion's
+tail. One powerful lunge of his broad shoulders tore the lion loose
+and flung him down the slope to the full extent of his lasso. Quick
+as thought I jumped down, and just in time to prevent Emett from
+attacking the lion with the heavy pole we had used.
+
+"I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" roared Emett.
+
+"No you won't," I replied, quietly, for my pain had served to soothe
+my excitement as well as to make me more determined. "We'll tie up the
+darned tiger, if he cuts us all to pieces. You know how Jones will
+give us the laugh if we fail. Here, bind up my wrist."
+
+Mention of Jones' probable ridicule and sight of my injury cooled
+Emett.
+
+"It's a nasty scratch," he said, binding my handkerchief round it.
+"The leather saved your hand from being torn off. He's an ugly brute,
+but you're right, we'll tie him. Now, let's each take a lasso and
+worry him till we get hold of a paw. Then we can stretch him out."
+
+Jones did a fiendish thing when he tied that lion to the swinging
+branch. It was almost worse than having him entirely free. He had a
+circle almost twenty feet in diameter in which he could run and leap
+at will. It seemed he was in the air all the time. First at Emett,
+than at me he sprang, mouth agape, eyes wild, claws spread. We whipped
+him with our nooses, but not one would hold. He always tore it off
+before we could draw it tight. I secured a precarious hold on one hind
+paw and straightened my lasso.
+
+"That's far enough," cried Emett. "Now hold him tight; don't lift him
+off the ground."
+
+I had backed up the slope. Emett faced the lion, noose ready, waiting
+for a favorable chance to rope a front paw. The lion crouched low and
+tense, only his long tail lashing back and forth across my lasso.
+Emett threw the loop in front of the spread paws, now half sunk into
+the dust.
+
+"Ease up; ease up," said he. "I'll tease him to jump into the noose."
+
+I let my rope sag. Emett poked a stick into the lion's face. All at
+once I saw the slack in the lasso which was tied to the lion's chain.
+Before I could yell to warn my comrade the beast leaped. My rope
+burned as it tore through my hands. The lion sailed into the air, his
+paws wide-spread like wings, and one of them struck Emett on the head
+and rolled him on the slope. I jerked back on my rope only to find it
+had slipped its hold.
+
+"He slugged me one," remarked Emett, calmly rising and picking up his
+hat. "Did he break the skin?"
+
+"No, but he tore your hat band off," I replied. "Let's keep at him."
+
+For a few moments or an hour--no one will ever know how long--we ran
+round him, raising the dust, scattering the stones, breaking the
+branches, dodging his onslaughts. He leaped at us to the full length
+of his tether, sailing right into our faces, a fierce, uncowed,
+tigerish beast. If it had not been for the collar and swivel he would
+have choked himself a hundred times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful,
+tireless, he kept on the go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling,
+till it seemed we would never catch him.
+
+"If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I felt his
+breath that time."
+
+"Lord! How I wish we had some of those fellows here who say lions are
+rank cowards!" I exclaimed.
+
+In one of his sweeping side swings the lion struck the rock and hung
+there on its flat surface with his tail hanging over.
+
+"Attract his attention," shouted Emett, "but don't get too close.
+Don't make him jump."
+
+While I slowly manoeuvered in front of the lion, Emett slipped behind
+the rock, lunged for the long tail and got a good hold of it. Then
+with a whoop he ran around the rock, carrying the kicking, squalling
+lion clear of the ground.
+
+"Now's your chance," he yelled. "Rope a hind foot! I can hold him."
+
+In a second I had a noose fast on both hind paws, and then passed my
+rope to Emett. While he held the lion I again climbed the tree, untied
+the knot that had caused so much trouble, and very shortly we had our
+obstinate captive stretched out between two trees. After that we took
+a much needed breathing spell.
+
+"Not very scientific," growled Emett, by way of apologizing for our
+crude work, "but we had to get him some way."
+
+"Emett, do you know I believe Jones put up a job on us?" I said.
+
+"Well, maybe he did. We had the job all right. But we'll make short
+work of him now."
+
+He certainly went at it in a way that alarmed me and would have
+electrified Jones. While I held the chain Emett muzzled the lion
+with a stick and a strand of lasso. His big blacksmith's hands held,
+twisted and tied with remorseless strength.
+
+"Now for the hardest part of it," said he, "packing him up."
+
+We toiled and drudged upward, resting every few yards, wet with sweat,
+boiling with heat, parching for water. We slipped and fell, got up to
+slip and fall again. The dust choked us. We senselessly risked our
+lives on the brinks of precipices. We had no thought save to get the
+lion up. One hour of unremitting labor saw our task finished, so far.
+Then we wearily went down for the other.
+
+"This one is the heaviest," gloomily said Emett.
+
+We had to climb partly sidewise with the pole in the hollow of our
+elbows. The lion dragged head downward, catching in the brush and
+on the stones. Our rests became more frequent. Emett, who had the
+downward end of the pole, and therefore thrice the weight, whistled
+when he drew breath. Half the time I saw red mist before my eyes. How
+I hated the sliding stones!
+
+"Wait," panted Emett once. "You're--younger--than me--wait!"
+
+For that Mormon giant--used all his days to strenuous toil, peril and
+privation--to ask me to wait for him, was a compliment which I valued
+more than any I had ever received.
+
+At last we dropped our burden in the shade of a cedar where the
+other lions lay, and we stretched ourselves. A long, sweet rest came
+abruptly to end with Emett's next words.
+
+"The lions are choking! They're dying of thirst! We must have water!"
+
+One glance at the poor, gasping, frothing beasts, proved to me the
+nature of our extremity.
+
+"Water in this desert! Where will we find it? Oh! why, did I forget my
+canteen!"
+
+After all our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally our
+wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for lack of a
+little water was sickening, maddening.
+
+"Think quick!" cried Emett. "I'm no good; I'm all in. But you must
+find water. It snowed yesterday. There's water somewhere."
+
+Into my mind flashed a picture of the many little pockets beaten by
+rains into the shelves and promontories of the canyon rim. With the
+thought I was on the jump. I ran; I climbed; I seemed to have wings; I
+reached the rim, and hurried along it with eager gaze. I swung down on
+a cedar branch to a projecting point of rock. Small depressions were
+everywhere still damp, but the water had evaporated. But I would not
+give up. I jumped from rock to rock, and climbed over scaly ledges,
+and set tons of yellow shale into motion. And I found on a ragged
+promontory many little, round holes, some a foot deep, all full of
+clear water. Using my handkerchief as a sponge I filled my cap.
+
+Then began my journey down. I carried the cap with both hands and
+balanced myself like a tight-rope performer. I zigzagged the slopes;
+slipped over stones; leaped fissures and traversed yellow slides.
+I safely descended places that in an ordinary moment would have
+presented insurmountable obstacles, and burst down upon Emett with an
+Indian yell of triumph.
+
+"Good!" ejaculated he. If I had not known it already, the way his face
+changed would have told me of his love for animals. He grasped a lion
+by the ears and held his head up. I saturated my handkerchief and
+squeezed the water into his mouth. He wheezed, coughed, choked, but to
+our joy he swallowed. He had to swallow. One after the other we served
+them so, seeing with unmistakable relief the sure signs of recovery.
+Their eyes cleared and brightened; the dry coughing that distressed us
+so ceased; the froth came no more. The savage fellow that had fought
+us to a standstill, and for which we had named him Spitfire, raised
+his head, the gold in his beautiful eyes darkened to fire and he
+growled his return to life and defiance.
+
+Emett and I sank back in unutterable relief.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Jones' yell came, breaking the warm quiet of the slope.
+Our comrade appeared riding down. The voice of the Indian, calling to
+Marc, mingled with the ringing of iron-shod hoofs on the stones.
+
+Jones surveyed the small level spot in the shade of the cedars. He
+gazed from the lions to us, his stern face relaxed, and his dry laugh
+cracked.
+
+"Doggone me, if you didn't do it!"
+
+
+XIII
+
+A strange procession soon emerged from Left Canyon and stranger to us
+than the lion heads bobbing out of the alfagoes was the sight of Navvy
+riding in front of the lions. I kept well in the rear, for if anything
+happened, which I calculated was more than likely, I wanted to see
+it. Before we had reached the outskirts of pines, I observed that the
+piece of lasso around Spitfire's nose had worked loose.
+
+Just as I was about to make this known to Jones, the lion opened a
+corner of his mouth and fastened his teeth in the Navajo's overalls.
+He did not catch the flesh, for when Navvy turned around he wore only
+an expression of curiosity. But when he saw Spitfire chewing him he
+uttered a shrill scream and fell sidewise off his horse.
+
+Then two difficulties presented themselves to us, to catch the
+frightened horse and persuade the Indian he had not been bitten. We
+failed in the latter. Navvy gave us and the lions a wide berth, and
+walked to camp.
+
+Jim was waiting for us, and said he had chased a lion south along the
+rim till the hounds got away from him.
+
+Spitfire, having already been chained, was the first lion we
+endeavored to introduce to our family of captives. He raised such a
+fearful row that we had to remove him some distance from the others.
+
+"We have two dog chains," said Jones, "but not a collar or a swivel
+in camp. We can't chain the lions without swivels. They'd choke
+themselves in two minutes."
+
+Once more, for the hundredth time, Emett came to our rescue with his
+inventive and mechanical skill. He took the largest pair of hobbles we
+had, and with an axe, a knife and Jones' wire nippers, fashioned two
+collars with swivels that for strength and serviceableness improved
+somewhat on those we had bought.
+
+Darkness was enveloping the forest when we finished supper. I fell
+into my bed and, despite the throbbing and burning of my wrist,
+soon lapsed into slumber. And I crawled out next morning late for
+breakfast, stiff, worn out, crippled, but happy. Six lions roaring a
+concert for me was quite conducive to contentment.
+
+Emett interestingly engaged himself on a new pair of trousers, which
+he had contrived to produce from two of our empty meal-bags. The lower
+half of his overalls had gone to decorate the cedar spikes and brush,
+and these new bag-leg trousers, while somewhat remarkable for design,
+answered the purpose well enough. Jones' coat was somewhere along the
+canyon rim, his shoes were full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his
+trousers in rags. Jim looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of
+heavy waterproofed duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring
+forth the unanimous admiration of my companions.
+
+"Well, fellows," said Jones, "there's six lions, and that's more than
+we can pack out of here. Have you had enough hunting? I have."
+
+"And I," rejoined Emett.
+
+"Shore you can bet I have," drawled Jim.
+
+"One more day, boys, and then I've done," said I. "Only one more day!"
+
+Signs of relief on the faces of my good comrades showed how they took
+this evidence of my satisfied ambition.
+
+I spent all the afternoon with the lions, photographing them,
+listening to them spit and growl, watching them fight their chains,
+and roll up like balls of fire. From different parts of the forest I
+tried to creep unsuspected upon them; but always when I peeped out
+from behind a tree or log, every pair of ears would be erect, every
+pair of eyes gleaming and suspicious.
+
+Spitfire afforded more amusement than all the others. He had indeed
+the temper of a king; he had been born for sovereignty, not slavery.
+To intimidate me he tried every manner of expression and utterance,
+and failing, he always ended with a spring in the air to the length of
+his chain. This means was always effective. I simply could not stand
+still when he leaped; and in turn I tried every artifice I could think
+of to make him back away from me, to take refuge behind his tree. I
+ran at him with a club as if I were going to kill him. He waited,
+crouching. Finally, in dire extremity, I bethought me of a red flannel
+hood that Emett had given me, saying I might use it on cold nights.
+This was indeed a weird, flaming headgear, falling like a cloak down
+over the shoulders. I put it on, and, camera in hand, started to crawl
+on all fours toward Spitfire.
+
+[Illustration: SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN
+SNAKE GULCH]
+
+I needed no one to tell me that this proceeding was entirely beyond
+his comprehension. In his astonishment he forgot to spit and growl,
+and he backed behind the little pine, from which he regarded me with
+growing perplexity. Then, having revenged myself on him, and getting a
+picture, I left him in peace.
+
+
+XIV
+
+I awoke before dawn, and lay watching the dark shadows change into
+gray, and gray into light. The Navajo chanted solemnly and low his
+morning song. I got up with the keen eagerness of the hunter who faces
+the last day of his hunt.
+
+I warmed my frozen fingers at the fire. A hot breakfast smoked on the
+red coals. We ate while Navvy fed and saddled the horses.
+
+"Shore, they'll be somethin' doin' to-day," said Jim, fatalistically.
+
+"We haven't crippled a horse yet," put in Emett hopefully. Don led the
+pack and us down the ridge, out of the pines into the sage. The sun, a
+red ball, glared out of the eastern mist, shedding a dull glow on
+the ramparts of the far canyon walls. A herd of white-tailed deer
+scattered before the hounds. Blue grouse whirred from under our
+horses' feet.
+
+"Spread out," ordered Jones, and though he meant the hounds, we all
+followed his suggestion, as the wisest course.
+
+Ranger began to work up the sage ridge to the right. Jones, Emett
+and I followed, while Jim rode away to the left. Gradually the space
+widened, and as we neared the cedars, a sharply defined, deep canyon
+separated us.
+
+We heard Don open up, then Sounder. Ranger left the trail he was
+trying to work out in the thick sage, and bounded in the direction of
+the rest of the pack. We reined in to listen.
+
+First Don, then Sounder, then Jude, then one of the pups bayed
+eagerly, telling us they were hunting hard. Suddenly the bays blended
+in one savage sound.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" cracked the cool, thin air. We saw Jim wave his hand
+from the far side of the canyon, spur his horse into action, and
+disappear into the cedars.
+
+"Stick close together," yelled Jones, as we launched forward. We made
+the mistake of not going back to cross the canyon, for the hounds soon
+went up the opposite side. As we rode on and on, the sounds of the
+chase lessened, and finally ceased. To our great chagrin we found it
+necessary to retrace our steps, and when we did get over the deep
+gully, so much time had elapsed that we despaired of coming up with
+Jim. Emett led, keeping close on Jim's trail, which showed plain in
+the dust, and we followed.
+
+Up and down ravines, over ridges, through sage flats and cedar
+forests, to and fro, around and around, we trailed Jim and the hounds.
+From time to time one of us let out a long yell.
+
+"I see a big lion track," called Jones once, and that stirred us on
+faster. Fully an hour passed before Jones halted us, saying we had
+best try a signal. I dismounted, while Emett rolled his great voice
+through the cedars.
+
+A long silence ensued. From the depths of the forest Jim's answer
+struck faintly on my ear. With a word to my companions I leaped on my
+mustang and led the way. I rode as far as I could mark a straight line
+with my eye, then stopped to wait for another cry. In this way, slowly
+but surely we closed in on Jim.
+
+We found him on the verge of the Bay, in the small glade where I had
+left my horse the day I followed Don alone down the canyon. Jim was
+engaged in binding up the leg of his horse. The baying of the hounds
+floated up over the rim.
+
+"What's up?" queried Jones.
+
+"Old Sultan. That's what," replied Jim. "We run plumb into him. We've
+had him in five trees. It ain't been long since he was in that cedar
+there. When he jumped the yellow pup was in the way an' got killed.
+My horse just managed to jump clear of the big lion, an' as it was,
+nearly broke his leg."
+
+Emett examined the leg and pronounced it badly strained, and advised
+Jim to lead the horse back to camp. Jones and I stood a moment over
+the remains of the yellow pup, and presently Emett joined us.
+
+"He was the most playful one of the pack," said Emett, and then he
+placed the limp, bloody body in a crack, and laid several slabs of
+stone over it.
+
+"Hurry after the other hounds," said Jim. "That lion will kill them
+one by one. An' look out for him!"
+
+If we needed an incentive, the danger threatening the hounds furnished
+one; but I calculated the death of the pup was enough. Emett had a
+flare in his eye, Jones looked darker and more grim than ever, and I
+had sensations that boded ill to old Sultan.
+
+"Fellows," I said, "I've been down this place, and I know where the
+old brute has gone; so come on."
+
+I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the business ahead
+was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon. Down slopes, among
+rocks, under piñons, around yellow walls, along slides, the two big
+men followed me with heavy steps. We reached the white stream-bed,
+and sliding, slipping, jumping, always down and down, we came at last
+within sound of the hounds. We found them baying wildly under a piñon
+on the brink of the deep cove.
+
+Then, at once, we all saw old Sultan close at hand. He was of immense
+size; his color was almost gray; his head huge, his paws heavy and
+round. He did not spit, nor snarl, nor growl; he did not look at the
+hounds, but kept his half-shut eyes upon us.
+
+We had no time to make a move before he left his perch and hit the
+ground with a thud. He walked by the baying hounds, looked over the
+brink of the cove, and without an instant of hesitation, leaped down.
+The rattling crash of sliding stones came up with a cloud of dust.
+Then we saw him leisurely picking his way among the rough stones.
+
+Exclamations from the three of us attested to what we thought of that
+leap.
+
+"Look the place over," called Jones. "I think we've got him."
+
+The cove was a hole hollowed out by running water. At its head, where
+the perpendicular wall curved, the height was not less than forty
+feet. The walls became higher as the cove deepened toward the canyon.
+It had a length of perhaps a hundred yards, and a width of perhaps
+half as many. The floor was mass on mass of splintered rock.
+
+"Let the hounds down on a lasso," said Jones.
+
+Easier said than done! Sounder, Ranger, Jude refused. Old Moze
+grumbled and broke away. But Don, stern and savage, allowed Jones to
+tie him in a slip noose.
+
+"It's a shame to send that grand hound to his death," protested Emett.
+
+"We'll all go down," declared Jones.
+
+"We can't. One will have to stay up here to help the other two out,"
+replied Emett.
+
+"You're the strongest; you stay up," said Jones. "Better work along
+the wall and see if you can locate the lion."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY HOME]
+
+[Illustration: RIDING WITH A NAVAJO]
+
+We let Don down into the hole. He kicked himself loose before reaching
+the bottom and then, yelping, he went out of sight among the boulders.
+Moze, as if ashamed, came whining to us. We slipped a noose around him
+and lowered him, kicking and barking, to the rocky floor. Jones made
+the lasso fast to a cedar root, and I slid down, like a flash, burning
+my hands. Jones swung himself over, wrapped his leg around the rope,
+and came down, to hit the ground with a thump. Then, lassos in hands,
+we began clambering over the broken fragments.
+
+For a few moments we were lost to sights and sounds away from our
+immediate vicinity. The bottom of the cove afforded hard going. Dead
+piñons and cedars blocked our way; the great, jagged stones offered no
+passage. We crawled, climbed, and jumped from piece to piece.
+
+A yell from Emett halted us. We saw him above, on the extreme point of
+wall. Waving his arms, he yelled unintelligible commands to us. The
+fierce baying of Don and Moze added to our desperate energy.
+
+The last jumble of splintered rock cleared, we faced a terrible and
+wonderful scene.
+
+"Look! Look!" I gasped to Jones.
+
+A wide, bare strip of stone lay a few yards beneath us; and in the
+center of this last step sat the great lion on his haunches with his
+long tail lashing out over the precipice. Back to the canyon, he
+confronted the furious hounds; his demeanor had changed to one of
+savage apprehension.
+
+When Jones and I appeared, old Sultan abruptly turned his back to the
+hounds and looked down into the canyon. He walked the whole length of
+the bare rock with his head stretched over. He was looking for a niche
+or a step whereby he might again elude his foes.
+
+Faster lashed his tail; farther and farther stretched his neck. He
+stopped, and with head bent so far over the abyss that it seemed he
+must fall, he looked and looked.
+
+How grandly he fitted the savage sublimity of that place! The
+tremendous purple canyon depths lay beneath him. He stood on the last
+step of his mighty throne. The great downward slopes had failed him.
+Majestically and slowly he turned from the deep that offered no hope.
+
+As he turned, Jones cast the noose of his lasso perfectly round the
+burly neck. Sultan roared and worked his jaws, but he did not leap.
+Jones must have expected such a move, for he fastened his rope to a
+spur of rock. Standing there, revolver gripped, hearing the baying
+hounds, the roaring lion, and Jones' yells mingled with Emett's, I had
+no idea what to do. I was in a trance of sensations.
+
+Old Sultan ran rather than leaped at us. Jones evaded the rush by
+falling behind a stone, but still did not get out of danger. Don flew
+at the lion's neck and Moze buried his teeth in a flank. Then the
+three rolled on the rock dangerously near the verge.
+
+Bellowing, Jones grasped the lasso and pulled. Still holding my
+revolver, I leaped to his assistance, and together we pulled and
+jerked. Don got away from the lion with remarkable quickness. But
+Moze, slow and dogged, could not elude the outstretched paws, which
+fastened in his side and leg. We pulled so hard we slowly raised the
+lion. Moze, never whimpering, clawed and scratched at the rock in his
+efforts to escape. The lion's red tongue protruded from his dripping
+jaws. We heard the rend of hide as our efforts, combined with those of
+Moze, loosed him from the great yellow claws.
+
+The lion, whirling and wrestling, rolled over the precipice. When the
+rope straightened with a twang, had it not been fastened to the rock,
+Jones and I would have jerked over the wall. The shock threw us to our
+knees.
+
+For a moment we did not realize the situation. Emett's yells awakened
+us.
+
+"Pull! Pull! Pull!" roared he.
+
+Then, knowing that old Sultan would hang himself in a few moments, we
+attempted to lift him. Jones pulled till his back cracked; I pulled
+till I saw red before my eyes. Again and again we tried. We could lift
+him only a few feet. Soon exhausted, we had to desist altogether. How
+Emett roared and raged from his vantage-point above! He could see the
+lion in death throes.
+
+Suddenly he quieted down with the words: "All over; all over!" Then he
+sat still, looking into space. Jones sat mopping his brow. And I, all
+my hot resentment vanished, lay on the rock, with eyes on the distant
+mesas.
+
+Presently Jones leaned over the verge with my lasso.
+
+"There," he said, "I've roped one of his hind legs. Now we'll pull him
+up a little, then we'll fasten this rope, and pull on the other."
+
+So, foot by foot, we worked the heavy lion up over the wall. He
+must have been dead, though his sides heaved. Don sniffed at him in
+disdain. Moze, dusty and bloody, with a large strip of hide hanging
+from his flank, came up growling low and deep, and gave the lion a
+last vengeful bite.
+
+"We've been fools," observed Jones, meditatively. "The excitement of
+the game made us lose our wits. I'll never rope another lion."
+
+I said nothing. While Moze licked his bloody leg and Don lay with his
+fine head on my knees, Jones began to skin old Sultan. Once more the
+strange, infinite silence enfolded the canyon. The far-off golden
+walls glistened in the sun; farther down, the purple clefts smoked.
+The many-hued peaks and mesas, aloof from each other, rose out of the
+depths. It was a grand and gloomy scene of ruin where every glistening
+descent of rock was but a page of earth's history.
+
+It brought to my mind a faint appreciation of what time really meant;
+it spoke of an age of former men; it showed me the lonesome crags
+of eagles, and the cliff lairs of lions; and it taught mutely,
+eloquently, a lesson of life--that men are still savage, still driven
+by a spirit to roam, to hunt, and to slay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+TONTO BASIN
+
+The start of a camping trip, the getting a big outfit together and
+packed, and on the move, is always a difficult and laborsome job.
+Nevertheless, for me the preparation and the actual getting under way
+have always been matters of thrilling interest. This start of my hunt
+in Arizona, September 24, 1918, was particularly momentous because I
+had brought my boy Romer with me for his first trip into the wilds.
+
+It may be that the boy was too young for such an undertaking. His
+mother feared he would be injured; his teachers presaged his utter
+ruin; his old nurse, with whom he waged war until he was free of her,
+averred that the best it could do for him would be to show what kind
+of stuff he was made of. His uncle R.C. was stoutly in favor of taking
+him. I believe the balance fell in Romer's favor when I remembered
+my own boyhood. As a youngster of three I had babbled of "bars an'
+buffers," and woven fantastic and marvelous tales of fiction about my
+imagined adventures--a habit, alas! I have never yet outgrown.
+
+Anyway we only made six miles' travel on this September twenty-fourth,
+and Romer was with us.
+
+Indeed he was omnipresent. His keen, eager joy communicated itself to
+me. Once he rode up alongside me and said: "Dad, this's great, but I'd
+rather do like Buck Duane." The boy had read all of my books, in spite
+of parents and teachers, and he knew them by heart, and invariably
+liked the outlaws and gunmen best of all.
+
+We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west, and the
+Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a cut-over pine
+forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned deadfalls made an
+aspect of blackened desolation. From a distance, however, the scene
+was superb. At sunset there was a faint wind which soon died away.
+
+My old guide on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in charge
+of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over seventy years,
+hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes still keen with fire.
+He was no longer robust, but he was tireless and willing. When he told
+a story he always began: "In the early days--" His son Lee had charge
+of the horses of which we had fourteen, two teams and ten saddle
+horses. Lee was a typical westerner of many occupations--cowboy,
+rider, rancher, cattleman. He was small, thin, supple, quick, tough
+and strong. He had a bronzed face, always chapped, a hooked nose,
+gray-blue eyes like his father's, sharp and keen.
+
+Lee had engaged the only man he could find for a cook--Joe Isbel, a
+tall, lithe cowboy, straight as an Indian, with powerful shoulders,
+round limbs, and slender waist, and Isbel was what the westerners
+called a broncho-buster. He was a prize-winning rider at all
+the rodeos. Indeed, his seat in the saddle was individual and
+incomparable. He had a rough red-blue face, hard and rugged, like the
+rocks he rode over so fearlessly, and his eyes were bright hazel,
+steady and hard. Isbel's vernacular was significant. Speaking of one
+of our horses he said: "Like a mule he'll be your friend for twenty
+years to git a chance to kick you." Speaking of another that had to be
+shod he said: "Shore, he'll step high to-morrow." Isbel appeared to be
+remarkably efficient as camp-rustler and cook, but he did not inspire
+me with confidence. In speaking of this to the Doyles I found them
+non-committal on the subject. Westerners have sensitive feelings. I
+could not tell whether they were offended or not, and I half regretted
+mentioning my lack of confidence in Isbel. As it turned out, however,
+I was amply justified.
+
+Sievert Nielsen, whom I have mentioned elsewhere, was the fourth of my
+men.
+
+Darkness had enveloped us at supper time. I was tired out, but the
+red-embered camp-fire, the cool air, the smell of wood-smoke, and the
+white stars kept me awake awhile. Romer had to be put to bed. He was
+wild with excitement. We had had a sleeping-bag made for him so that
+once snugly in it, with the flaps buckled he could not kick off the
+blankets. When we got him into it he quieted down and took exceeding
+interest in his first bed in the open. He did not, however, go quickly
+to sleep. Presently he called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle
+Rome, I coiled a lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's
+asleep you go pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's
+a rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading
+"The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones'
+cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off his mind he fell
+asleep.
+
+The hour we spent sitting around the camp-fire was the most pleasant
+of that night, though I did not know it then. The smell of wood-smoke
+and the glow of live coals stirred memories of other camp-fires. I was
+once more enveloped by the sweetness and peace of the open, listening
+to the sigh of the wind, and the faint tinkle of bells on the hobbled
+horses.
+
+An uncomfortable night indeed it turned out to be. Our covers were
+scanty and did not number among them any blankets. The bed was hard as
+a rock, and lumpy. No sleep! As the night wore on the air grew colder,
+and I could not keep warm. At four a.m. I heard the howling of
+coyotes--a thrilling and well remembered wild chorus. After that
+perfect stillness reigned. Presently I saw the morning star--big,
+blue-white, beautiful. Uncomfortable hours seemed well spent if the
+reward was sight of the morning star. How few people ever see it! How
+very few ever get a glimpse of it on a desert dawn!
+
+Just then, about five-thirty, Romer woke up and yelled lustily: "Dad!
+My nose's froze." This was a signal for me to laugh, and also to rise
+heroically. Not difficult because I wanted to stay in bed, but because
+I could hardly crawl out! Soon we had a fire roaring. At six the dawn
+was still gray. Cold and nipping air, frost on everything, pale stars,
+a gold-red light in the east were proofs that I was again in the open.
+Soon a rose-colored flush beautified the Peaks.
+
+After breakfast we had trouble with the horses. This always happened.
+But it was made worse this morning because a young cowboy who happened
+along took upon himself the task of helping Lee. I suspected he wanted
+to show off a little. In throwing his lasso to rope one, the noose
+went over the heads of two. Then he tried to hold both animals. They
+dragged him, pulled the lasso out of his hands, and stampeded the
+other horses. These two roped together thundered off with the noose
+widening. I was afraid they would split round a tree or stump, but
+fortunately the noose fell off one. As all the horses pounded off I
+heard Romer remark to Isbel: "Say, Joe, I don't see any medals on that
+cowboy." Isbel roared, and said: "Wal, Romer, you shore hit the nail,
+on the haid!"
+
+Owing to that stampede we did not get saddled and started till eleven
+o'clock. At first I was so sore and stiff from the hard bed that I
+rode a while on the wagon with Doyle. Many a mile I had ridden with
+him, and many a story he had related. This time he told about sitting
+on a jury at Prescott where they brought in as evidence bloody shirts,
+overalls, guns, knives, until there was such a pile that the table
+would not hold them. Doyle was a mine of memories of the early days.
+
+Romer's mount was a little black, white-spotted horse named Rye. Lee
+Doyle had scoured the ranches to get this pony for the youngster. Rye
+was small for a horse, about the size of an Indian mustang, and he
+was gentle, as well as strong and fast. Romer had been given riding
+lessons all that summer in the east, and upon his arrival at Flagstaff
+he informed me that he could ride. I predicted he would be in the
+wagon before noon of the second day out. He offered to bet on it.
+I told him I disapproved of betting. He seemed to me to be daring,
+adaptable, self-willed; and I was divided between pride and anxiety as
+to the outcome of this trip for him.
+
+In the afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy pond in a
+valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees stood in the water,
+and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably to the ranchers this
+mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me, who loved the beauty of
+the desert before its productiveness, it was hideous. When we passed
+Lake Mary, and farther on the last of the cut-over timber-land, we
+began to get into wonderful country. We traveled about sixteen miles,
+rather a small day's ride. Romer stayed on his horse all through that
+ride, and when we selected a camp site for the night he said to me:
+"Well, you're lucky you wouldn't bet."
+
+Camp that evening was in a valley with stately pines straggling down
+to the level. On the other slope the pines came down in groups. The
+rim of this opposite slope was high, rugged, iron-colored, with cracks
+and holes. Before supper I walked up the slope back of our camp, to
+come upon level, rocky ground for a mile, then pines again leading to
+a low, green mountain with lighter patches of aspen. The level, open
+strip was gray in color. Arizona color and Arizona country! Gray of
+sage, rocks, pines, cedars, piñons, heights and depths and plains,
+wild and open and lonely--that was Arizona.
+
+That night I obtained some rest and sleep, lying awake only a few
+hours, during which time I turned from side to side to find a soft
+place in the hard bed. Under such circumstances I always thought
+of the hard beds of the Greeks and the Spartans. Next day we rode
+twenty-three miles. On horseback trips like this it was every one for
+himself. Sometimes we would be spread out, all separated; at others we
+would be bunched; and again we would ride in couples. The morning was
+an ordeal for me, as at first I could scarcely sit my saddle; in
+the afternoon, however, riding grew to be less severe. The road led
+through a winding, shallow valley, with clumps of pine here and there,
+and cedars on the slopes. Romer rode all the way, half the time with
+his feet out of the stirrups, like a western boy born to the saddle,
+and he wanted to go fast all the time. Camp was made at a place called
+Fulton Spring. It might have been a spring once, but now it was a
+mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is necessary
+to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on sheep water--the
+water holes being tainted by sheep--and alkali water and soapy water
+of the desert, but never happily. How I hailed the clear, cold,
+swiftly-flowing springs!
+
+This third camp lay in a woods where the pines were beautiful and the
+silence noticeable. Upon asking Romer to enumerate the things I had
+called to his attention, the few times I could catch up with him on
+the day's journey, he promptly replied--two big spiders--tarantulas,
+a hawk, and Mormon Lake. This lake was another snow-melted mud-hole,
+said to contain fish. I doubted that. Perhaps the little bull-head
+catfish might survive in such muddy water, but I did not believe bass
+or perch could.
+
+One familiar feature of Arizona travel manifested itself to me that
+day--the dry air. My nails became brittle and my lips began to crack.
+I have had my lips cracked so severely that when I tried to bite bread
+they would split and bleed and hurt so that I could not eat. This
+matter of sore lips was for long a painful matter. I tried many
+remedies, and finally found one, camphor ice, that would prevent the
+drying and cracking.
+
+Next day at dawn the forest was full of the soughing of wind in the
+pines--a wind that presaged storm. No stars showed. Romer-boy piled
+out at six o'clock. I had to follow him. The sky was dark and cloudy.
+Only a faint light showed in the east and it was just light enough
+to see when we ate breakfast. Owing to strayed horses we did not get
+started till after nine o'clock.
+
+Five miles through the woods, gradually descending, led us into an
+open plain where there was a grass-bordered pond full of ducks. Here
+appeared an opportunity to get some meat. R.C. tried with shotgun and
+I with rifle, all to no avail. These ducks were shy. Romer seemed to
+evince some disdain at our failure, but he did not voice his feelings.
+We found some wild-turkey tracks, and a few feathers, which put our
+hopes high.
+
+Crossing the open ground we again entered the forest, which gradually
+grew thicker as we got down to a lower altitude. Oak trees began to
+show in swales. And then we soon began to see squirrels, big, plump,
+gray fellows, with bushy tails almost silver. They appeared wilder
+than we would have suspected, at that distance from the settlements.
+Romer was eager to hunt them, and with his usual persistence,
+succeeded at length in persuading his uncle to do so.
+
+To that end we rode out far ahead of the wagon and horses. Lee had a
+yellow dog he called Pups, a close-haired, keen-faced, muscular canine
+to which I had taken a dislike. To be fair to Pups, I had no reason
+except that he barked all the time. Pups and his barking were destined
+to make me hail them both with admiration and respect, but I had no
+idea of that then. Now this dog of Lee's would run ahead of us,
+trail squirrels, chase them, and tree them, whereupon he would bark
+vociferously. Sometimes up in the bushy top we would fail to spy the
+squirrel, but we had no doubt one was there. Romer wasted many and
+many a cartridge of the .22 Winchester trying to hit a squirrel. He
+had practiced a good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster,
+but hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at the
+tip of a branch, was no easy matter.
+
+"Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad."
+
+And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about Wetzel. Now
+Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was Romer's favorite
+hero.
+
+"Gimme the .20 gauge," finally cried Romer, in desperation, with his
+eyes flashing.
+
+Whereupon his uncle handed him the shotgun, with a word of caution
+as to the trigger. This particular squirrel was pretty high up,
+presenting no easy target. Romer stood almost directly under it,
+raised the gun nearly straight up, waved and wobbled and hesitated,
+and finally fired. Down sailed the squirrel to hit with a plump. That
+was Romer's first successful hunting experience. How proud he was of
+that gray squirrel! I suffered a pang to see the boy so radiant, so
+full of fire at the killing of a beautiful creature of the woods. Then
+again I remembered my own first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty
+little savages. In their hunting, playing, even their reading, some
+element of the wild brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy
+descendants of progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This
+incident furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before
+this trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot
+a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I was not
+hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at the spilling
+of blood. On the contrary he revels in it with a fierce, primitive
+joy.
+
+"Some shot, I'll say!" declared Romer to his uncle, loftily. And he
+said to me half a dozen times: "Say, Dad, wasn't it a grand peg?"
+
+But toward the end of that afternoon his enthusiasm waned for
+shooting, for anything, especially riding. He kept asking when the
+wagon was going to stop. Once he yelled out: "Here's a peach of a
+place to camp." Then I asked him: "Romer, are you tired?" "Naw! But
+what's the use ridin' till dark?" At length he had to give up and be
+put on the wagon. The moment was tragic for him. Soon, however, he
+brightened at something Doyle told him, and began to ply the old
+pioneer with rapid-fire questions.
+
+We pitched camp in an open flat, gray and red with short grass, and
+sheltered by towering pines on one side. Under these we set up our
+tents. The mat of pine needles was half a foot thick, soft and springy
+and fragrant. The woods appeared full of slanting rays of golden
+sunlight.
+
+This day we had supper over before sunset. Romer showed no effects
+from his long, hard ride. First he wanted to cook, then he fooled
+around the fire, bothering Isbel. I had a hard time to manage him.
+He wanted to be eternally active. He teased and begged to go
+hunting--then he compromised on target practice. R.C. and I, however,
+were too tired, and we preferred to rest beside the camp-fire.
+
+"Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for to-morrow."
+
+In disgust Romer replied: "Well, I suppose if a flock of antelope came
+along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are great hunters, I
+don't think!"
+
+After the lad had gone over to the other men R.C. turned to me and
+said reflectively: "Does he remind you of us when we were little?"
+
+To which I replied with emotion: "In him I live over again!"
+
+That is one of the beautiful things about children, so full of pathos
+and some strange, stinging joy--they bring back the days that are no
+more.
+
+This evening, despite my fatigue, I was the last one to stay up. My
+seat was most comfortable, consisting of thick folds of blankets
+against a log. How the wind mourned in the trees! How the camp-fire
+sparkled, glowed red and white! Sometimes it seemed full of blazing
+opals. Always it held faces. And stories--more stories than I can ever
+tell! Once I was stirred and inspired by the beautiful effect of the
+pine trees in outline against the starry sky when the camp-fire
+blazed up. The color of the foliage seemed indescribably blue-green,
+something never seen by day. Every line shone bright, graceful,
+curved, rounded, and all thrown with sharp relief against the sky. How
+magical, exquisitely delicate and fanciful! The great trunks were
+soft serrated brown, and the gnarled branches stood out in perfect
+proportions. All works of art must be copied of nature.
+
+Next morning early, while Romer slept, and the men had just begun to
+stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All seemed solemn
+and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest brown and green and
+gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his nocturnal habit. Then to
+my surprise I heard wild canaries. They were flying high, and to the
+south, going to their winter quarters. I wandered around among big,
+gray rocks and windfalls and clumps of young oak and majestic pines.
+More than one saucy red squirrel chattered at me.
+
+When I returned to camp my comrades were at breakfast. Romer appeared
+vastly relieved to see that I had not taken a gun with me.
+
+This morning we got an early start. We rode for hours through a
+beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces made
+riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared on the
+rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's travel, and
+the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine was thick and
+fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing. Everywhere pine
+needles dropped, shining in the sunlight like thin slants of rain.
+
+Only once or twice did I see Romer in all these morning hours; then he
+was out in front with the cowboy Isbel, riding his black pony over
+all the logs and washes he could find. I could see his feet sticking
+straight out almost even with his saddle. He did not appear to need
+stirrups. My fears gradually lessened.
+
+During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We came to a
+long, open valley where the dust lay several inches deep. It had been
+an unusually dry summer and fall--a fact that presaged poor luck for
+our hunting--and the washes and stream-beds were bleached white. We
+came to two water-holes, tanks the Arizonians called them, and they
+were vile mud-holes with green scum on the water. The horses drank,
+but I would have had to be far gone from thirst before I would have
+slaked mine there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and
+the dust rising in clouds. No wonder that ride was interminably long.
+
+At last we descended a canyon, and decided to camp in a level spot
+where several ravines met, in one of which a tiny stream of dear water
+oozed out of the gravel. The inclosure was rocky-sloped, full of caves
+and covered with pines; and the best I could say for it was that in
+case of storm the camp would be well protected. We shoveled out a deep
+hole in the gravel, so that it would fill up with water. Romer had
+evidently enjoyed himself this day. When I asked Isbel about him the
+cowboy's hard face gleamed with a smile: "Shore thet kid's all right.
+He'll make a cowpuncher!" His remark pleased me. In view of Romer's
+determination to emulate the worst bandit I ever wrote about I was
+tremendously glad to think of him as a cowboy. But as for myself I was
+tired, and the ride had been rather unprofitable, and this camp-site,
+to say the least, did not inspire me. It was neither wild nor
+beautiful nor comfortable. I went early to bed and slept like a log.
+
+The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men hunted
+from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned more about
+Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the lost horses. They
+had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained perfectly quiet, as cute
+as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail. Pups was a horse-trailing dog
+and he soon found them. I had a change of feeling for Pups, then and
+there.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN. From left to right: Edd Haught;
+Nielsen; Haught, the bear hunter; Al Doyle, pioneer Arizona guide;
+Lewis Pyle; Z.G.; George Haught; Ben Copple; Lee Doyle.]
+
+The sun was high and hot when we rode off. The pleasant and dusty
+stretches alternated. About one o'clock we halted on the edge of a deep
+wooded ravine to take our usual noonday rest. I scouted along the edge
+in the hope of seeing game of some kind. Presently I heard the
+cluck-cluck of turkeys. Slipping along to an open place I peered down to
+be thrilled by sight of four good-sized turkeys. They were walking along
+the open strip of dry stream-bed at the bottom of the ravine. One was
+chasing grasshoppers. They were fairly close. I took aim at one, and
+thought I could have hit him, but suddenly I remembered Romer and R.C.
+So I slipped back and called them.
+
+[Illustration: ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED]
+
+Hurriedly and stealthily we returned to the point where I had seen
+the turkeys. Romer had a pale face and wonderfully bright eyes; his
+actions resembled those of a stalking Indian. The turkeys were farther
+down, but still in plain sight. I told R.C. to take the boy and slip
+down, and run and hide and run till they got close enough for a shot.
+I would keep to the edge of the ravine.
+
+Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping and
+creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to reach a
+point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I might get a
+shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I lost sight of
+the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my horse I mounted him
+and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine some distance above. Here
+I hunted around for a little while. Once I heard the report of the .20
+gauge, and then several rifle shots. Upon returning I found that Lee
+and Nielsen had wasted some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the
+hill, both red and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about
+the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the
+four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a
+hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one.
+Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer
+had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching
+several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled feathers out of
+their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"
+
+We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon Doyle called
+my attention to an opening in the forest through which I could see the
+yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the great blue void below. Arizona!
+That explained the black forests, the red and yellow cliffs of rock,
+the gray cedars, the heights and depths.
+
+Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was winding, rough
+full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired out trying to keep up
+with the wagon. Romer, however, averred time and again that he was
+not tired. Still I saw him often shift his seat from one side of the
+saddle to the other.
+
+At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little
+hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone
+houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards,
+and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there long enough to rest
+a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water. I would travel
+out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.
+
+About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer invited or
+rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his victory I found
+that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath. I went back some
+distance to look for it, but did so in vain. Isbel said he would ride
+back in the morning and find it.
+
+The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was only
+because we had gotten out where we could see all around. Arizona is
+all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up to the south and
+east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with
+its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber. Westward
+lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a
+kind of magnificent bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost
+in blue haze. The vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both
+prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak,
+and juniper trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially
+the smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries,
+and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees. Since we
+had left the rim above the character of plant life had changed.
+
+We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural Bridge
+was located. A winding road descended the east side of this valley.
+A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and orchard and walnut
+trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray slope on one side, and a
+red, rugged mountain on the other. A deep gorge showed dark and wild.
+At length, just after sunset, we reached the ranch, and rode through
+orchards of peach and pear and apple trees, all colored with fruit,
+and down through grassy meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched
+camp. By the time we had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick,
+dreamy hum of insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden
+afterglow on the notch of the mountain range to the west--these were
+inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed, where
+my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.
+
+After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what delight to
+awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool and breezy and
+bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green and purple alfalfa
+fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged crags above! Romer made a
+bee-line for the peach trees. He beat his daddy only a few yards. The
+kind rancher had visited us the night before and he had told us to
+help ourselves to fruit, melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I
+made my breakfast on peaches!
+
+I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the dark green
+slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by water-cress, long
+grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one of perfectly clear
+water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on the surface. A grass of
+dark color and bunches of light green plant grew under the surface.
+Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed around and frogs as green as the
+grass blinked with jewelled eyes from the wet margins. The spring had
+a large volume that spilled over its borders with low, hollow gurgle,
+with fresh, cool splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone.
+Here was the secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty
+and life of the oasis.
+
+It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful Natural
+Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the extent of
+several acres, was the level top of this strange bridge. A meadow of
+alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like the hanging gardens of
+Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep gorge, at the bottom of
+which flowed a swift stream of water. Geologically this tremendous
+arch of limestone cannot be so very old. In comparatively recent times
+an earthquake or some seismic disturbance or some other natural force
+caused a spring of water to burst from the slope above the gorge. It
+ran down, of course, over the rim. The lime salt in the water was
+deposited, and year by year and age by age advanced toward the
+opposite side until a bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at
+the bottom kept the opening clear under the bridge.
+
+A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful
+natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy,
+broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous
+boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and
+yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray
+frogs, reminding me of those I found in the gulches of the Grand
+Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive, but most of them dead,
+lined the wet borders of the pools. A species of fish that resembled
+mullet lay in the shadow of the rocks.
+
+From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if not
+magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at least
+striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored gray, yellow,
+green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and scalloped mosaic.
+Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy scattered drops. The left
+side was dryest and large, dark caves opened up, one above the other,
+the upper being so high that it was dangerous to attempt reaching it.
+The right side was slippery and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted
+with lime salt. Doyle told us that any object left under the ceaseless
+drip, drip of the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as
+stone. The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than
+the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes. Romer
+certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone through a
+small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle pointed out the
+high cave where Indians had once lived, showing the markings of their
+fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest
+cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to
+Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his
+neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a
+boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom,
+boom, growing hollower the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer
+in some bat nests in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll
+stones and fish for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more
+on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole--I'll
+say!" he panted, breathlessly.
+
+The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and
+the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the
+lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had
+cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks
+Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or
+hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life
+there was always afternoon.
+
+Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a half
+hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many frontier
+characteristics such as old board and stone houses with high fronts,
+hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one street so wide that it
+resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson contained two stores, where I hoped
+to buy a rifle, and hoped in vain. I had not recovered my lost gun,
+and when night came my prospects of anything to hunt with appeared
+extremely slim. But we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart,
+dark-skinned rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he
+would have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
+profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I could
+not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I refused with
+thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it was that he lent
+me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me several boxes of
+ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide lasso. Whereupon
+Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say, you look like an
+Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple replied: "I am part Indian,
+sonny." Manifestly that settled his status with Romer, for he piped
+up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd better come huntin' with us."
+
+We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest ride of
+the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good camping site
+I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout everybody out. It
+was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then everybody rustled to such
+purpose that we were ready to start before dawn, and had to wait a
+little for light enough to see where we were going. This procedure
+tickled Romer immensely. I believed he imagined he was in a pioneer
+caravan. The gray breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the
+rose and silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with
+the air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as
+the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined road
+was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing indications that
+it was seldom used. From the tops of high points I could see black
+foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all leading the gaze
+toward the great yellow and red wall of the mesa, with its fringed
+borderline, wild and beckoning.
+
+We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order, over
+and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that burned
+our faces and through choking dust. The washes and stream-beds were
+bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the
+mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts. Only the manzanita looked
+fresh. That smooth red-branched and glistening green-leafed plant
+of the desert apparently flourished without rain. On all sides the
+evidences of extreme drought proved the year to be the dreaded _anno
+seco_ of the Mexicans.
+
+For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any prominent
+change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the heat and dust and
+brush-walled road. But about the middle of the afternoon we reached
+the summit of the longest hill, from which we saw ahead of us a cut up
+country, wild and rugged and beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our
+feet. We heard the faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with
+sweat, and thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast
+as we dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged
+into a swift stream of clear, cold water--granite water--to drink of
+which, and to bathe hot heads and burning feet, was a joy only known
+to the weary traveler of the desert. Romer yelled that the water was
+like that at our home in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank
+till I thought he would burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him
+from wallowing in it.
+
+Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us, and the
+aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay behind. Every mile
+grew shadier, clearer, cooler.
+
+Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several miles,
+as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to an Homeric
+recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the end of which,
+almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon such a stream as the
+one we had just passed. Then he told me about his trips down the west
+coast of Sonora, along the Gulf, where he traveled at night, at low
+tide, so that by daytime his footprints would be washed out. This
+was the land of the Seri Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were
+cannibals. I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed
+the rumors of their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of
+exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land
+of the Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data
+concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California told
+me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris
+to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was positive that
+under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism. Nielsen
+made four trips down there. He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe.
+In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on
+occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to
+barter with the Indians. These travelers did not see the worst of the
+Seris. In summer they range up the mainland, and they go naked. They
+do not want gold discovered down there. They will fight prospectors.
+They use arrows and attack at dawn. Also they poison the water-holes.
+
+Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the mainland
+opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from camp,
+returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped and made
+his way to Gyamus. Procuring assistance this man returned to the scene
+of the massacre, only to find stakes in the sand, with deep trails
+tramped around them, and blackened remains of fires, and bones
+everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once from a hiding place he
+had watched Seris tear up and devour a dead turtle that he afterward
+ascertained was putrid. He said these Seris were the greatest runners
+of all desert savages. The best of them could outrun a horse. One
+Seri, a giant seven feet tall, could outrun a deer and break its neck
+with his hands.
+
+These statements of Nielsen's were remarkable, and personally I
+believed them. Men of his stamp were honest and they had opportunities
+to learn strange and terrible facts in nature. The great naturalist
+Darwin made rather stronger claims for the barbarism of the savages of
+Terra del Fuego. Nielsen, pursuing his theme, told me how he had
+seen, with his own eyes--and they were certainly sharp and
+intelligent--Yaqui Indians leap on the bare backs of wild horses
+and locking their legs, stick there in spite of the mad plunges and
+pitches. The Gauchos of the Patagonian Pampas were famous for that
+feat of horsemanship. I asked Joe Isbel what he thought of such
+riding. And he said: "Wal, I can ride a wild steer bare-back,
+but excoose me from tacklin' a buckin' bronch without saddle an'
+stirrups." This coming from the acknowledged champion horseman of the
+southwest was assuredly significant.
+
+At five o'clock we came to the end of the road. It led to a forest
+glade, overlooking the stream we had followed, and that was as far as
+our wagon could go. The glade shone red with sumach, and surrounded
+by tall pines, with a rocky and shady glen below, it appeared a
+delightful place to camp. As I was about to unsaddle my horses I heard
+the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Pulling out my borrowed rifle, and calling
+Romer, I ran to the edge of the glade. The shady, swift stream ran
+fifty feet or so below me. Across it I saw into the woods where shade
+and gray rocks and colored brush mingled. Again I heard the turkeys
+cluck. "Look hard, son," I whispered. "They're close." R.C. came
+slipping along below us, with his rifle ready. Suddenly Romer
+stiffened, then pointed. "There! Dad!--There!" I saw two gobblers wade
+into the brook not more than a hundred and fifty feet away. Drawing
+down with fine aim I fired. The bullet splashed water all over the
+turkeys. One with loud whirr of wings flew away. The other leaped
+across the brook and ran--swift as a deer--right up the slope. As
+I tried to get the sight on him I heard other turkeys fly, and the
+crack-crack of R.C.'s gun. I shot twice at my running turkey, and all
+I did was to scatter the dirt over him, and make him run faster. R.C.
+had not done any better shooting. Romer, wonderful to relate, was so
+excited that he forgot to make fun of our marksmanship. We scouted
+around some, but the turkeys had gone. By promising to take Romer
+hunting after supper I contrived to get him back to the glade, where
+we made camp.
+
+
+II
+
+After we had unpacked and while the men were pitching the tents and
+getting supper I took Romer on a hunt up the creek. I was considerably
+pleased to see good-sized trout in the deeper pools. A little way
+above camp the creek forked. As the right-hand branch appeared to be
+larger and more attractive we followed its course. Soon the bustle
+of camp life and the sound of the horses were left far behind. Romer
+slipped along beside me stealthily as an Indian, all eyes and ears.
+
+We had not traveled thus for a quarter of a mile when my quick ear
+caught the cluck-cluck of turkeys. "Listen," I whispered, halting.
+Romer became like a statue, his dark eyes dilating, his nostrils
+quivering, his whole body strung. He was a Zane all right. A turkey
+called again; then another answered. Romer started, and nodded his
+head vehemently.
+
+"Come on now, right behind me," I whispered. "Step where I step and do
+what I do. Don't break any twigs."
+
+Cautiously we glided up the creek, listening now and then to get the
+direction, until we came to an open place where we could see some
+distance up a ridge. The turkey clucks came from across the creek
+somewhere up this open aisle of the forest. I crawled ahead several
+rods to a more advantageous point, much pleased to note that Romer
+kept noiselessly at my heels. Then from behind a stone we peeped out.
+Almost at once a turkey flew down from a tree into the open lane.
+"Look Dad!" whispered Romer, wildly. I had to hold him down. "That's a
+hen turkey," I said. "See, it's small and dull-colored. The gobblers
+are big, shiny, and they have red on their heads."
+
+Another hen turkey flew down from a rather low height. Then I made out
+grapevines, and I saw several animated dark patches among them. As I
+looked three turkeys flopped down to the ground. One was a gobbler of
+considerable size, with beautiful white and bronze feathers. Rather
+suspiciously he looked down our way. The distance was not more than a
+hundred yards. I aimed at him, feeling as I did so how Romer quivered
+beside me, but I had no confidence in Copple's rifle. The sights were
+wrong for me. The stock did not fit me. So, hoping for a closer and
+better shot, I let this opportunity pass. Of course I should have
+taken it. The gobbler clucked and began to trot up the ridge, with the
+others after him. They were not frightened, but they appeared rather
+suspicious. When they disappeared in the woods Romer and I got up, and
+hurried in pursuit. "Gee! why didn't you peg that gobbler?" broke out
+Romer, breathlessly. "Wasn't he a peach?"
+
+When we reached the top of the ridge we advanced very cautiously
+again. Another open place led to a steep, rocky hillside with cedars
+and pines growing somewhat separated. I was disappointed in not seeing
+the turkeys. Then in our anxiety and eagerness we hurried on, not
+noiselessly by any means. All of a sudden there was a rustle, and then
+a great whirr of wings. Three turkeys flew like grouse away into the
+woods. Next I saw the white gobbler running up the rocky hillside. At
+first he was in the open. Aiming as best I could I waited for him to
+stop or hesitate. But he did neither. "Peg him, Dad!" yelled Romer.
+The lad was right. My best chance I had again forfeited. To hit a
+running wild turkey with a rifle bullet was a feat I had not done
+so often as to inspire conceit. The gobbler was wise, too. For that
+matter all grown gobblers are as wise as old bucks, except in the
+spring mating season, when it is a crime to hunt them. This one, just
+as I got a bead on him, always ran behind a rock or tree or shrub.
+Finally in desperation I took a snap shot at him, hitting under him,
+making him jump. Then in rapid succession I fired four more times. I
+had the satisfaction of seeing where my bullets struck up the dust,
+even though they did go wide of the mark. After my last shot the
+gobbler disappeared.
+
+"Well, Dad, you sure throwed the dirt over him!" declared Romer.
+
+"Son, I don't believe I could hit a flock of barns with this gun," I
+replied, gazing doubtfully at the old, shiny, wire-wrapped, worn-out
+Winchester Copple had lent me. I had been told that he was a fine
+marksman and could drive a nail with it. Upon my return to camp I
+tried out the rifle, carefully, with a rest, to find that it was not
+accurate. Moreover it did not throw the bullets consistently. It shot
+high, wide, low; and right there I abandoned any further use for it.
+R.C. tried to make me take his rifle to use on the hunting trip;
+Nielsen and Lee wanted me to take theirs, but I was disgusted with
+myself and refused. "Thanks, boys," I said. "Maybe this will be a
+lesson to me."
+
+We had been up since three o'clock that morning, and the day's travel
+had been exhausting. I had just enough energy left to scrape up a
+huge, soft pile of pine needles upon which to make our bed. After
+that all was oblivion until I was awakened by the ringing strokes of
+Nielsen's axe.
+
+The morning, after the sun got up, was exceedingly delightful.
+And this camp was such a contrast to the others, so pleasant and
+attractive, that even if we had not arranged to meet Lee Haught and
+his sons here I would have stayed a while anyway. Haught was a famed
+bear hunter who lived in a log-cabin somewhere up under the rim of the
+mesa. While Lee and Nielsen rode off up the trail to find Haught I
+gave Romer his first try at rainbow trout. The water of the creek was
+low and clear, so that we could see plenty of good-sized trout. But
+they were shy. They would not rise readily to any of our flies, though
+I got several strikes. We searched under the stones for worms and
+secured a few. Whereupon Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we
+plainly saw. The trout gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the
+fine art of angling, but whenever he got a bite he always forgot
+science. He yanked this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another
+pool he hooked a big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as
+weight and strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But
+this trout nearly pulled Romer off the rock before the line broke. I
+took occasion then to deliver to the lad a lecture. In reply he said
+tearfully: "I didn't know he was so--so big."
+
+When we returned to camp, Haught and his sons were there. Even at a
+distance their horses, weapons, and persons satisfied my critical
+eye. Lee Haught was a tall, spare, superbly built man, with square
+shoulders. He had a brown face with deep lines and sunken cheeks, keen
+hazel eyes, heavy dark mustache, and hair streaked a little with gray.
+The only striking features of his apparel were his black sombrero and
+long spurs.
+
+His sons, Edd and George, were young, lean, sallow, still-faced,
+lanky-legged horsemen with clear gray eyes. They did not appear to be
+given, to much speech. Both were then waiting for the call of the army
+draft. Looking at them then, feeling the tranquil reserve and latent
+force of these Arizonians, I reflected that the Germans had failed
+in their psychology of American character. A few hundred thousand
+Americans like the Haught boys would have whipped the German army.
+
+We held a council. Haught said he would send his son Edd with Doyle,
+and by a long roundabout forest road get the wagon up on the mesa.
+With his burros and some of our horses packed we could take part of
+the outfit up the creek trail, past his cabin, and climb out on the
+rim, where we would find grass, water, wood, and plenty of game.
+
+The idea of permanent camp before sunset that very day inspired us to
+united and vigorous effort. By noon we had the pack train ready. Edd
+and Doyle climbed on the wagon to start the other way. Romer waved his
+hand: "Good-bye, Mr. Doyle, don't break down and lose the apples!"
+
+Then we were off, up the narrow trail along the creek. Haught led the
+way. Romer attached himself to the bear-hunter, and wherever the trail
+was wide enough rode beside him. R.C. and I followed. The other men
+fell in behind the pack train.
+
+The ride was hot, and for the most part all up hill. That basin could
+be likened to the ribs of a washboard: it was all hills, gorges,
+ridges and ravines. The hollows of this exceedingly rough country were
+thick with pine and oak, the ridges covered with cedar, juniper, and
+manzanita. The ground, where it was not rocky, was a dry, red clay. We
+passed Haught's log cabin and clearing of a few acres, where I saw fat
+hogs and cattle. Beyond this point the trail grew more zigzag, and
+steeper, and shadier. As we got higher up the air grew cooler. I noted
+a change in the timber. The trees grew larger, and other varieties
+appeared. We crossed a roaring brook lined by thick, green brush, very
+pleasant to the eye, and bronze-gold ferns that were beautiful. We
+passed oaks all green and yellow, and maple trees, wonderfully colored
+red and cerise. Then still higher up I espied some silver spruces,
+most exquisite trees of the mountain forests.
+
+During the latter half of the climb up to the rim I had to attend to
+the business of riding and walking. The trail was rough, steep, and
+long. Once Haught called my attention to a flat stone with a plain
+trail made by a turtle in ages past when that sandstone was wet,
+sedimentary deposit. By and bye we reached the last slopes up to the
+mesa, green, with yellow crags and cliffs, and here and there blazing
+maples to remind me again that autumn was at hand.
+
+At last we surmounted the rim, from which I saw a scene that defied
+words. It was different from any I had seen before. Black timber as
+far as eye could see! Then I saw a vast bowl inclosed by dim mountain
+ranges, with a rolling floor of forested ridges, and dark lines I knew
+to be canyons. For wild, rugged beauty I had not seen its equal.
+
+[Illustration: THE TONTO BASIN]
+
+When the pack train reached the rim we rode on, and now through a
+magnificent forest at eight thousand feet altitude. Big white and black
+clouds obscured the sun. A thunder shower caught us. There was hail, and
+the dry smell of dust, and a little cold rain. Romer would not put on
+his slicker. Haught said the drought had been the worst he had seen in
+twenty years there. Up in this odorous forestland I could not see where
+there had been lack of rain. The forest appeared thick, grassy, gold and
+yellow and green and brown. Thickets and swales of oaks and aspens were
+gorgeous in their autumn hues. The silver spruces sent down long,
+graceful branches that had to be brushed aside or stooped under as we
+rode along. Big gray squirrels with white tails and tufted ears ran up
+trees to perch on limbs and watch us go by; and other squirrels, much
+smaller and darker gray, frisked and chattered and scolded at a great
+rate.
+
+[Illustration: LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS]
+
+We passed little depressions that ran down into ravines, and these,
+Haught informed me, were the heads of canyons that sloped away from
+the rim, deepening and widening for miles. The rim of the mesa was
+its highest point, except here and there a few elevations like Black
+Butte. Geologically this mesa was an enormous fault, like the north
+rim of the Grand Canyon. During the formation of the earth, or the
+hardening of the crust, there had been a crack or slip, so that one
+edge of the crust stood up sheer above the other. We passed the heads
+of Leonard Canyon, Gentry, and Turkey Canyons, and at last, near
+time of sunset, headed down into beautifully colored, pine-sloped,
+aspen-thicketed Beaver Dam Canyon.
+
+A mile from the rim we were deep in the canyon, walled in by
+rock-strewn and pine-timbered slopes too steep for a horse to climb.
+There was a little gully on the black soil where there were no
+evidences of recent water. Haught said he had never seen Beaver Dam
+Creek dry until this season. We traveled on until we came to a wide,
+open space, where three forks of this canyon met, and where in the
+middle of this glade there rose a lengthy wooded bench, shaded and
+beautified by stately pines and silver spruce. At this point water
+appeared in the creek bed, flowing in tiny stream that soon gathered
+volume. Cold and clear and pure it was all that was needed to make
+this spot an ideal camp site. Haught said half a mile below there was
+a grassy park where the horses would graze with elk.
+
+We pitched our tents on this bench, and I chose for my location a
+space between two great monarchs of the forests, that had surely
+shaded many an Indian encampment. At the upper end of the bench rose a
+knoll, golden and green with scrub oaks, and russet-colored with its
+lichened rocks. About all we could manage that evening was to eat and
+go to bed.
+
+Morning broke cool and bright, with heavy dew. I got my boots as wet
+as if I had waded in water. This surprised me, occurring on October
+sixth, and at eight thousand feet altitude, as I had expected frost.
+Most of this day was spent in making camp, unpacking, and attending to
+the many necessary little details that make for comfort in the open.
+To be sure Romer worked very spasmodically. He spent most of his time
+on the back of one of Haught's burros, chasing and roping another. I
+had not remembered seeing the lad so happily occupied.
+
+Late in the afternoon I slipped off down the canyon alone, taking
+Haught's rifle for safety rather than a desire to kill anything. By
+no means was it impossible to meet a bad bear in that forest. Some
+distance below camp I entered a ravine and climbed up to the level,
+and soon found myself deep in the fragrant, colorful, wild forest.
+Like coming home again was it to enter that forest of silver-tipped,
+level-spreading spruce, and great, gnarled, massive pines, and
+oak-patches of green and gold, and maple thickets, with shining aspens
+standing white against the blaze of red and purple. High, wavy,
+bleached grass, brown mats of pine needles, gray-green moss waving
+from the spruces, long strands of sunlight--all these seemed to
+welcome me.
+
+At a distance there was a roar of wind through the forest; close at
+hand only a soft breeze. Rustling of twigs caused me to compose myself
+to listen and watch. Soon small gray squirrels came into view all
+around me, bright-eyed and saucy, very curious about this intruder.
+They began to chatter. Other squirrels were working in the tops of
+trees, for I heard the fall of pine cones. Then came the screech of
+blue jays. Soon they too discovered me. The male birds were superb,
+dignified, beautiful. The color was light blue all over with dark blue
+head and tufted crest. By and bye they ceased to scold me, and I was
+left to listen to the wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds
+and needles from the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this
+woody, leafy, earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by
+scent of pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace
+and rest. This golden-green forest, barred with sunlight, canopied by
+the blue sky, and melodious with its soughing moan of wind, absolutely
+filled me with content and happiness. If a stag or a bear had trotted
+out into my sight, and had showed me no animosity, not improbably I
+would have forgotten my gun. More and more as I lived in the open I
+grew reluctant to kill.
+
+Presently a porcupine waddled along some rods away, and unaware of my
+presence it passed by and climbed a spruce. I saw it climb high and
+finally lost sight of it. In searching up and down this spruce I grew
+alive to what a splendid and beautiful tree it was. Where so many
+trees grew it always seemed difficult to single out one and study
+it. This silver spruce was five feet through at the base, rugged,
+gray-seamed, thick all the way to its lofty height. Its branches
+were small, with a singular feature that they were uniform in shape,
+length, and droop. Most all spruce branches drooped toward the ground.
+That explained why they made such excellent shelters from rain. After
+a hard storm I had seen the ground dry under a thick-foliaged spruce.
+Many a time had I made a bed under one. Elk and deer stand under
+a spruce during a rain, unless there is thunder and lightning. In
+forests of high altitude, where lightning strikes many trees, I have
+never found or heard of elk and deer being killed. This particular
+spruce was a natural tent in the forest. The thick-spreading graceful
+silver plumes extended clear to the top, where they were bushiest,
+and rounded out, with all the largest branches there. Each dark gray
+branch was fringed and festooned with pale green moss, like the
+cypresses of the South.
+
+Suddenly I heard a sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy, light
+steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket nearby.
+Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the rifle. Then I
+peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the thicket. The sun was
+setting now, and though there appeared a clear golden light high
+in the forest, along the ground there were shadows. I heard leaves
+falling, rustling. Tall white aspens stood out of the thicket, and two
+of the large ones bore the old black scars of bear claws. I was sure,
+however, that no bear hid in the thicket at this moment. Presently
+whatever the animal was it pattered lightly away on the far side.
+After that I watched the quiver of the aspen leaves. Some were green,
+some yellow, some gold, but they all had the same wonderful tremor,
+the silent fluttering that gave them the most exquisite action in
+nature. The sun set, the forest darkened, reminding me of supper time.
+So I returned to camp. As I entered the open canyon Romer-boy espied
+me--manifestly he had been watching--and he yelled: "Here comes my
+Daddy now!... Say, Dad, did you get any pegs?"
+
+Next morning Haught asked me if I would like to ride around through
+the woods and probably get a shot at a deer. Romer coaxed so to go
+that I finally consented.
+
+We rode down the canyon, and presently came to a wide grassy park
+inclosed by high green-clad slopes, the features of which appeared to
+be that the timber on the west slope was mostly pine, and on the east
+slope it was mostly spruce. I could arrive at no certain reason for
+this, but I thought it must be owing to the snow lying somewhat longer
+on the east slope. The stream here was running with quite a little
+volume of water. Our horses were grazing in this park. I saw fresh
+elk tracks made the day before. Elk were quite abundant through this
+forest, Haught informed me, and were protected by law.
+
+A couple of miles down this trail the canyon narrowed, losing its
+park-like dimensions. The farther we traveled the more water there
+was in the stream, and more elk, deer, and turkey tracks in the
+sand. Every half mile or so we would come to the mouth of a small
+intersecting canyon, and at length we rode up one of these, presently
+to climb out on top. At this distance from the rim the forest was more
+open than in the vicinity of our camp, affording better riding and
+hunting. Still the thickets of aspen and young pine were so frequent
+that seldom could I see ahead more than several hundred yards.
+
+Haught led the way, I rode next and Romer kept beside me where it was
+possible to do so. There was, however, no trail. How difficult to keep
+the lad quiet! I expected of course that Haught would dismount, and
+take me to hunt on foot. After a while I gathered he did not hunt deer
+except on horseback. He explained that cowboys rounded up cattle in
+this forest in the spring and fall, and deer were not frightened at
+sound or sight of a horse. Some of the thrill and interest in the
+forest subsided for me. I did not like to hunt in a country where
+cattle ranged, no matter how wild they were. Then when we came to a
+forested ridge bare of grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the
+forest of a little more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their
+flocks up this far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and
+coyote, sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer,
+however, hated a sheep-run range.
+
+Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool, full of
+sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen could ever rob
+it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its temple-like majesty.
+So provided we did not meet any cattle or sheep I did not care whether
+or not we sighted any game. In fact I would have forgotten we were
+hunting had not Romer been along. With him continually seeing things
+it was difficult to keep from imagining that we were hunting Indians.
+The Apaches had once lived in this country Haught informed us; and it
+was a habit of theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every
+fall, thus keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how
+near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not concern
+them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than white men.
+
+We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at the far
+end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other brush. As we
+neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick and noiseless
+action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from his saddle-sheath,
+took a couple of forward steps, and leveled it. I was so struck with
+the rugged and significant picture he made that I did not dismount,
+and did not see any game until after he fired. Then as I tumbled off
+and got out my rifle I heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray
+streak with a bobbing white end flashed away out of sight to the left.
+Next I saw a deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again.
+The deer ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him.
+Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when both he
+and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time. Presently he
+returned.
+
+"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said. "Shore I
+missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why didn't you smoke
+him up?"
+
+"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense regret. "Why,
+I could have knocked him."
+
+Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had appeared
+to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see one you want
+to pile off quick."
+
+As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had seen
+anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big grove with
+thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said these were good
+places for deer to lie down, relying on their noses to scent danger
+from windward, and on their eyes in the other direction. We circled to
+go round thickets, descending somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got
+off a little to the right. Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward
+a thin line of little pines, through which I could see into the pines
+beyond. Suddenly up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off
+my horse, bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in
+a thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender trees.
+I aimed--followed him--got a bead on him--and was just about to pull
+trigger when he vanished. Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then
+Romer cried in his shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck--hurry!"
+Turning I ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just
+in time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught
+shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the thicket,
+working to our left, and presently came out into the open forest.
+Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query he replied:
+"Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail buck."
+
+Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay motionless
+under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded deep in the
+ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just beginning to get his
+winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish gray. Haught hung him up
+to a branch, spread his hind legs, and cut him down the middle. The
+hunter's dexterity with a knife made me wonder how many deer he had
+dressed in his life in the open. We lifted the deer upon the saddle of
+Haught's horse and securely tied it there with a lasso; then with the
+hunter on foot, leading the way, we rode through the forest up the
+main ridge between Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found
+the pines and spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We
+passed the heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either
+side, and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I
+could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon we
+reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat like
+real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which enterprise
+had been unsuccessful.
+
+Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started our bear
+hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack something. He sent the
+hounds down below the rim with George; and taking R.C. and me, and Lee
+and Nielsen, he led us over to what he called Horton Thicket. Never
+would I forget my first sight of that immense forest-choked canyon.
+It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy
+ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this
+abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet
+they were many. An empire of splintered cliff!
+
+High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens,
+with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes. Points
+of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and bronze. Below the
+huge gorge was full of aspens, maples, spruces--a green, crimson,
+yellow density of timber, apparently impenetrable. We were accorded
+different stations on the ledges all around the cove, and instructed
+to stay there until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My
+point was so far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
+field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee and
+Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a comfortable seat,
+if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to accept my wait for
+developments. One thing was sure--even though it were a futile way to
+hunt it seemed rich in other recompense for me. My stand towered above
+a vast colorful slope down which the wind roared as in a gale. How
+could I ever hear the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding
+across the sky. Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent
+flight; and so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.
+
+Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with frequent
+intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the close of
+afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that R.C. had left
+his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp, which was some miles
+nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave up any hope of hearing
+either the hounds or the horn, as the roar of wind had increased. Once
+I thought I heard a distant rifle shot. So I got on my horse and set
+out to find camp. I was on a promontory, the sides of which were
+indented by long ravines that were impassable except near their heads.
+In fact I had been told there was only one narrow space where it was
+possible to get off this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered
+Haught telling of this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of
+forested heads of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the
+west side, and then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I
+followed, with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the
+narrow neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp,
+arriving there at sunset.
+
+The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around under one
+of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his back-trail,
+staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it. Their baying had
+roused the bear out of his bed, and he had showed himself once or
+twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw the other bear from the rim.
+This was a big, red, cinnamon bear asleep under a pine tree on an open
+slope. Haught said when the hounds gave tongue on the other trail this
+red bear awakened, sat up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never
+been chased by hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance
+was too great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the
+result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.
+
+These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing and
+cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns) and
+berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and very few
+acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin he could
+always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot and tired
+enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight the dogs.
+
+Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx under
+the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were the
+tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill a
+cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen feet
+deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay long on
+the sunny, open ridges of the basin.
+
+That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How wonderful to
+lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and hear the marching
+and retreating gale above in the forest! Next day we expected rain or
+snow. But there was only wind, and that quieted by afternoon. So I
+took Romer off into the woods. He carried his rifle and he wore his
+chaps. I could not persuade him to part with these. They rustled on
+the brush and impeded his movements, and particularly tired him, and
+made him look like a diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly
+vain, imaginative! He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything,
+particularly bears. But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump
+and bit of color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I
+had to take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was
+unusually quick and keen.
+
+That afternoon Edd and Doyle arrived, reporting an extremely rough,
+roundabout climb up to the rim, where they had left the wagon. As it
+was impossible to haul the supplies down into the canyon they
+were packed down to camp on burros. Isbel had disapproved of this
+procedure, a circumstance that struck me with peculiar significance,
+which Lee explained by telling me Isbel was one of the peculiar breed
+of cowboys, who no sooner were they out on the range than they wanted
+to go back to town again. The truth was I had not met any of that
+breed, though I had heard of them. This peculiarity of Isbel's began
+to be related in my mind to his wastefulness as a cook. He cooked and
+threw away as much as we ate. I asked him to be careful and to go
+easy with our supplies, but I could not see that my request made any
+difference.
+
+After supper this evening R.C. heard a turkey call up on the hill east
+of camp. Then I heard it, and Romer also. We ran out a ways into the
+open to listen the better. R.C.'s ears were exceptionally keen. He
+could hear a squirrel jump a long distance in the forest. In this case
+he distinctly heard three turkeys fly up into trees. I heard one.
+Romer declared he heard a flock. Then R.C. located a big bronze and
+white gobbler on a lower limb of a huge pine. Presently I too espied
+it. Whereupon we took shot-gun and rifle, and sallied forth sure of
+fetching back to camp some wild turkey meat. Romer tagged at our
+heels.
+
+Hurrying to the slope we climbed up at least three-quarters of the
+way, as swiftly as possible. And that was work enough to make me wet
+and hot. The sun had set and twilight was upon us, so that we needs
+must hurry if we were to be successful. Locating the big gobbler
+turned out to be a task. We had to climb over brush and around rocks,
+up a steep slope, rather open; and we had to do it without being seen
+or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness, did very well indeed.
+At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the sight was thrilling.
+Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted them enough to learn how
+sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed
+as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up
+from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if
+undecided, and tried each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped
+farther up until we lost sight of him in the gnarled net-work of
+branches.
+
+R.C. wanted me to slip on alone, but I preferred to have him and Romer
+go too. So we slipped stealthily upward until we reached the level.
+Then progress was easier. I went to the left with the rifle, and R.C.
+with the .20-gauge, and Romer, went around to the right. How rapidly
+it was growing dark! Low down in the forest I could not distinguish
+objects. We circled that big pine tree, and I made rather a wide
+detour, perhaps eighty yards from it. At last I got the upper part of
+the dead pine silhouetted against the western sky. Moving to and fro I
+finally made out a large black lump way out upon a spreading branch.
+Could that be the gobbler? I studied that dark enlarged part of the
+limb with great intentness, and I had about decided that it was only
+a knot when I saw a long neck shoot out. That lump was the wise old
+turkey all right. He was almost in the top of the tree and far out
+from the trunk. No wild cat or lynx could ever surprise him there! I
+reflected upon the instinct that governed him to protect his life so
+cunningly. Safe he was from all but man and gun!
+
+When I came to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could see
+only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very high pine
+adjoining made a dark background. I changed my position, working
+around to where the background was all open sky. It proved to be
+better. By putting the sights against this open sky I could faintly
+see the front sight through the blurred ring. It was a good long shot
+even for daylight, and I had a rifle I knew nothing about. But all the
+difficulty only made a keener zest. Just then I heard Romer cry out
+excitedly, and then R.C. spoke distinctly. Far more careless than that
+they began to break twigs under their feet. The gobbler grew uneasy.
+How he stretched out his long neck! He heard them below. I called out
+low and sharp: "Stand still! Be quiet!" Then I looked again through
+the blurred peep-sight until I caught the front sight against the open
+sky. This done I moved the rifle over until I had the sight aligned
+against the dark shape. Straining my eyes I held hard--then fired. The
+big dark lump on the branch changed shape, and fell, to alight with a
+sounding thump. I heard Romer running, but could not see him. Then his
+high voice pealed out: "I got him, Dad. You made a grand peg!"
+
+Not only had Romer gotten him, but he insisted on packing him back to
+camp. The gobbler was the largest I ever killed, not indeed one of the
+huge thirty-five pounders, but a fat, heavy turkey, and quite a load
+for a boy. Romer packed him down that steep slope in the dark without
+a slip, for which performance I allowed him to stay up a while around
+the camp-fire.
+
+The Haughts came over from their camp that night and visited us. Much
+as I loved to sit alone beside a red-embered fire at night in the
+forest, or on the desert, I also liked upon occasions to have company.
+We talked and talked. Old-timer Doyle told more than one of his "in
+the early days" stories. Then Haught told us some bear stories. The
+first was about an old black bear charging and sliding down at him. He
+said no hunter should ever shoot at a bear above him, because it could
+come down at him as swiftly as a rolling rock. This time he worked the
+lever of his rifle at lightning speed, and at the last shot he "shore
+saw bear hair right before his eyes." His second story was about a
+boy who killed a bear, and was skinning it when five more bears came
+along, in single file, and made it very necessary that he climb a tree
+until they had gone. His third story was about an old she-bear that
+had two cubs. Haught happened to ride within sight of her when
+evidently she thought it time to put her cubs in a safe place. So she
+tried to get them to climb a spruce tree, and finally had to cuff and
+spank them to make them go up. In connection with this story he told
+us he had often seen she-bears spank their cubs. More thrilling was
+his fourth story about a huge grizzly, a sheep and cattle killer that
+passed through the country, leaving death behind him on the range.
+
+Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the glowing
+camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed. "Aw, Dad,
+please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining eyes would have
+weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And Haught seemed inspired by
+them.
+
+"Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle in his
+eye. "Thar was an old fellar had a ranch in Chevelon Canyon, an' he
+was always bein' pestered by mountain lions. His name was Bill Tinker.
+Now Bill was no sort of a hunter, fact was he was afeerd of lions an'
+bears, but he shore did git riled when any critters rustled around
+his cabin. One day in the fall he comes home an' seen a big she-lion
+sneakin' around. He grabbed a club, an' throwed it, and yelled to
+scare the critter away. Wal, he had an old water barrel layin' around,
+an' darned if the lion didn't run in thet barrel an' hide. Bill run
+quick an' flopped the barrel end up, so he had the lion trapped. He
+had to set on the barrel to hold it down. Shore that lion raised old
+Jasper under the barrel. Bill was plumb scared. Then he seen the
+lion's tail stick out through the bung-hole. Bill bent over an' shore
+quick tied a knot in thet long tail. Then he run fer his cabin. When
+he got to the door he looked back to see the lion tearin' down the
+hill fer the woods with the barrel bumpin' behind her. Bill said he
+never seen her again till next spring, an' she had the barrel still on
+her tail. But what was stranger'n thet Bill swore she had four cubs
+with her an' each of them had a keg on its tail."
+
+We all roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had been
+so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in the
+story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp the trick
+at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes were dark and
+dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and disappointment
+changed his mobile face, and then came mirth. He shouted as if to the
+tree-tops on high. Long after he was in bed I heard him laughing to
+himself.
+
+I was awakened a little after daylight by the lad trying to get into
+his boots. His boots were rather tight, and somehow, even in a dry
+forest, he always contrived to get them wet, so that in the morning it
+was a herculean task for him to pull them on. This occasion appeared
+more strenuous than usual. "Son, what's the idea?" I inquired. "It's
+just daylight--not time to get up." He desisted from his labors
+long enough to pant: "Uncle Rome's--gone after turkeys. Edd's going
+to--call them with--a caller--made out of a turkey's wing-bone." And
+I said: "But they've gone now." Whereupon he subsided: "Darned old
+boots! I heard Edd and Uncle Rome. I'd been ready if I could have got
+into my darned old boots.... See here, Dad, I'm gonna wear moccasins."
+
+
+III
+
+As we were sitting round the camp-fire, eating breakfast, R.C. and Edd
+returned; and R.C. carried a turkey gobbler the very size and color of
+the one I had shot the night before. R.C.'s face wore the keen, pleased
+expression characteristic of it when he had just had some unusual and
+satisfying experience.
+
+[Illustration: ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS]
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEY]
+
+"Sure was great," he said, warming his hands at the fire. "We went up
+on the hill where you killed your gobbler last night. Got there just
+in the gray light of dawn. We were careful not to make any noise. Edd
+said if there were any more turkeys they would come down at daylight.
+So we waited until it was light enough to see. Then Edd got out his
+turkey bone and began to call. Turkeys answered from the trees all
+around. By George, it was immense! Edd had picked out a thicket of
+little pines for us to hide in, and in front of us was a glade with a
+big fallen tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods
+was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he
+called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees.
+Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The
+turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my
+excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them
+pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now we
+got to do some real callin'.' I felt how tense, how cautious he was.
+When he called again there was some little difference, I don't know
+what, unless it was his call sounded more like a real turkey. They
+answered. They were gathering in front of us, and I made sure were
+coming into the glade. Edd stopped calling. Then he whispered: 'Ready
+now. Look out!'... Sure I was looking all right. This was my first
+experience calling turkeys and I simply shook all over. Suddenly I
+saw a turkey head stick up over the log. Then!--up hopped a beautiful
+gobbler. He walked along the log, looked and peered, and stretched his
+neck. Sure he was suspicious. Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be
+a warning to shoot quick. That was a hard place for me. I wanted to
+watch the gobbler. I wanted to see the others. We could hear them all
+over the glade. But this was my chance. Quickly I rose and took a peg
+at him. A cloud of feathers puffed off him. He gave a great bounce,
+flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other turkeys. With my
+eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full of big, black, flying
+things. My gobbler came down, bounced up again, got going--when with
+the second barrel I knocked him cold. Then I stood there watching the
+flock whirring every way into the forest. Must have been thirty-five
+or forty of them, all gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I
+declared myself--wild turkey is the game for me."
+
+Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled feelings of
+delight and despair. "Uncle Rome, wild turkey's the game for me, too
+... and by Gosh! I'll fix those boots of mine!"
+
+That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which I had
+decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George. Lee had his
+doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at least one
+of the others. Now his horse was too spirited for me to ride after
+hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others, so I was
+compelled to ride my own. At the last moment Lee had been disappointed
+in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for me, and so it had
+fallen about that my horse was the poorest in the outfit, which to put
+it mildly was pretty poor. I had made the best of the matter so far,
+and hoped to continue doing so.
+
+We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the forest,
+and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the other side of
+the promontory where I had gotten lost. Here Haught left us, taking
+with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom were to have stands
+along the rim. We hoped to start a bear and chase him round under the
+high points toward Horton Thicket.
+
+The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd started down
+impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind. Below me heaved
+a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world of black-green
+forestland. Far across it stood up a rugged, blue, waved range of
+mountains--the Sierra Anchas.
+
+The trail was rough, even for Arizonians, which made it for me little
+short of impassable. I got off to lead my horse. He had to be pulled
+most of the time, wherefore I lost patience with him. I loved horses,
+but not stubborn ones. All the way down the rocky trail the bunch
+grass and wild oak and manzanita were so thick that I had to crush my
+way through. At length I had descended the steep part to find Edd and
+George waiting for me below on the juniper benches. These were slopes
+of red earth or clay, bare of grass, but thick with junipers, cactus,
+and manzanita. This face of the great rim was a southern exposure,
+hot and dusty. The junipers were thick. The green of their foliage
+somewhat resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost
+lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I
+found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was that
+this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to eat the
+fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear sign. Edd said
+the tracks were cold, but all the same he had to be harsh with the
+hounds to hold them in. I counted twenty piles of bear manure under
+one juniper, and many places where bears had scraped in the soft earth
+and needles.
+
+We went on down this slope, getting into thicker brush and rougher
+ground. All at once the hounds opened up in thrilling chorus of bays
+and barks. I saw Edd jump off his horse to stoop and examine the
+ground, where evidently he had seen a bear track. "Fresh--made last
+night!" he yelled, mounting hurriedly. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" His horse leaped
+through the brush, and George followed. In an instant they were out of
+sight. Right there my trouble began. I spurred my horse after them,
+and it developed that he differed from me in regard to direction and
+going. He hated the brush. But I made him take to it and made him run.
+Dodging branches was an old story for me, and if I had been on a good
+fast horse I might have kept Edd and George in sight. As it was,
+however, I had to follow them by the sound of hoofs and breaking
+brush. From the way the hounds bayed I knew they had struck a hot
+scent. They worked down the slope, and assuredly gave me a wild ride
+to keep within hearing of them. My horse grew excited, which fact
+increased his pace, his obstinacy, and likewise my danger. Twice he
+unseated me. I tore my coat, lost my hat, scratched my face, skinned
+my knees, but somehow I managed to keep within hearing.
+
+I came to a deep brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point. Luckily
+the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding along
+the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed out an
+intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced my horse to
+go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I saw a little
+spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it, and one place where
+the bear had caved in a soft bank. Here my horse suddenly plunged and
+went to his knees in the yielding red clay. He snorted in fright. The
+bank slid with him and I tumbled off. But nothing serious happened. I
+ran down, caught him, mounted, and spurred him up the other side. Once
+up he began to run. I heard the boys yelling not far away and the
+hounds were baying up above me. They were climbing fast, working to
+the left, toward an oak thicket. It took effort to slow down my steed.
+He acted crazy and I began to suspect that he had caught a whiff of
+the bear. Most horses are afraid of bears and lions. Sight of Edd and
+George, who appeared in an open spot, somewhat quieted my mount.
+
+"Trail's gettin' hot up there," declared Edd. "That bear's bedded
+somewhere an' I'll bet the hounds jumped him. Listen to Old Tom!"
+
+How the deep sonorous bay of Old Tom awoke the echoes under the
+cliffs! And Old Dan's voice was a hoarse bellow. The other hounds
+yelped.
+
+Edd blew a mellow blast from his hunting-horn, and that awoke other
+and more melodious echoes. "There's father up on the rim," he said. I
+looked, and finally saw Haught perched like a black eagle on a crag.
+His gun flashed in the strong sunlight.
+
+Somewhere up there the hounds jumped the bear. Anybody could have told
+that. What a wild chorus! Edd and George answered to it with whoops
+as wild, and they galloped their horses over ground and through brush
+where they should have been walked. I followed, or tried to follow;
+and here my steed showed his bull-headed, obstinate nature. If he had
+been afraid but still game I would have respected him, but he was a
+coward and mean. He wanted to have his way, which was to go the other
+direction, and to rid himself of me. So we had it hot and heavy
+along that rough slope, with honors about even. As for bruises and
+scratches, however, I sustained the most. In the excitement of the
+chase and anger at the horse I forgot all about any risks. This always
+is the way in adventure. Hot racing blood governed me entirely.
+Whenever I got out in an open place, where I could ride fast and hear
+and see, then it was all intensely thrilling. Both hounds and comrades
+were above me, but apparently working down.
+
+Thus for me the necessity of hurry somewhat lessened. I slowed to a
+trot, peering everywhere, listening with all my ears. I had stopped
+yelling, because my horse had misunderstood that. We got into a
+region of oak thickets, small saplings, scrubby, close together, but
+beautiful with their autumn-tinted leaves. Next I rode through a maple
+dell, shady, cool, where the leafy floor was all rose-pink-red. My
+horse sent the colored leaves flying.
+
+Soon, however, we got into the thickets again, low live-oak and
+manzanita, which kind of brush my horse detested. I did not blame
+him for that. As the hounds began to work down my keen excitement
+increased. If they had jumped the bear and were chasing him down I
+might run upon him any moment. This both appealed to me and caused me
+apprehension. Suppose he were a bad cinnamon or a grizzly? What would
+become of me on that horse? I decided that I had better carry my rifle
+in my hand, so in case of a sudden appearance of the bear and I was
+thrown or had a fall off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I
+drew the rifle out of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that
+Haught had cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the
+need of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had
+cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a glory
+of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets. He was an
+uncomfortable horse to ride under the best circumstances; here he
+was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When he got his head, which was
+often, he carried me into thickets of manzanita that we could not
+penetrate, and had to turn back. I found that I was working high
+up the slope, and bad luck as I was having with my horse, I still
+appeared to keep fairly close to the hounds.
+
+When we topped a ridge of this slope the wind struck us strong in the
+face. The baying of the hounds rang clear and full and fierce. My
+horse stood straight up. Then he plunged back and bolted down the
+slope. His mouth was like iron. I could neither hold nor turn him.
+However perilous this ride I had to admit that at last my horse was
+running beautifully. In fact he was running away! He had gotten a hot
+scent of that bear. He hurdled rocks, leaped washes, slid down banks,
+plunged over places that made my hair stand up stiff, and worst of all
+he did not try to avoid brush or trees or cactus. Manzanita he tore
+right through, leaving my coat in strips decorating our wake. I had to
+hold on, to lie flat, to dodge and twist, and all the time watch for a
+place where I might fall off in safety. But I did not get a chance
+to fall off. A loud clamoring burst from the hounds apparently close
+behind drove my horse frantic. Before he had only run--now he flew!
+He left me hanging in the thick branches of a juniper, from which I
+dropped blind and breathless and stunned. Disengaging myself from the
+broken and hanging branches I staggered aside, rifle in hand, trying
+to recover breath and wits.
+
+Then, in that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the breaking
+of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering up with my
+half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal coming, half obscured
+by brush. It waved aside from his broad back. A shock ran over me--a
+bursting gush of hot blood that turned to ice as it rushed. "Big
+cinnamon bear!" I whispered, hoarsely.
+
+Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I could not
+clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such was my state
+that I fired. Then followed a roaring crash--a terrible breaking
+onslaught upon the brush--and the huge red mass seemed to flash down
+toward me. I worked the lever of the rifle. But I had forgotten
+Haught's caution. I did not work the lever far enough down, so that
+the next cartridge jammed in the receiver. With a second shock,
+different this time, I tried again. In vain! The terrible crashing
+of brush appeared right upon me. For an instant that seemed an age I
+stood riveted to the spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me,
+my tongue pasted to the roof of my mouth. Then I dropped the rifle
+and whirled to plunge away. Like a deer I bounded. I took prodigious
+bounds. To escape--to find a tree to leap into--that was my only
+thought. A few rods down the slope--it seemed a mile--I reached a pine
+with low branches. Like a squirrel I ran up this--straddled a limb
+high up--and gazed back.
+
+My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation. I became
+conscious of them. Racing blood, bursting heart, labored pang of
+chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary flutter of
+muscles, like a palsy--these attested to the instinctive primitive
+nature of my state. I heard the crashing of brush, the pound of soft
+jumps over to my left. With eyes that seemed magnifying I gazed to see
+a big red woolly steer plunge wildly down the slope and disappear. A
+third shock possessed me--amaze. I had mistaken a wild, frightened
+steer for a red cinnamon bear!
+
+I sat there some moments straddling that branch. Then I descended, and
+went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and securing that I
+stood a moment listening. The hounds had taken the chase around below
+me into the gorge and were drawing away. It was useless to try to
+follow them. I sat down again and gave myself up to meditation.
+
+I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would not go.
+No joke indeed! My horse had made me risk too much, my excitement had
+been too intense, my fright had been too terrible. Reality for me
+could not have been any more grave. I had risked my neck on a stubborn
+coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer for a bear, I had forgotten
+how to manipulate the borrowed rifle. These were the careless elements
+of tragedy. The thought sobered me. I took the lesson to heart. And I
+reflected on the possible point of view of the bear. He had probably
+gone to sleep on a full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink
+of spring water. Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping,
+fiendish hounds. He had to run for his life. What had he done to
+deserve such treatment? Possibly he might have killed some of Haught's
+pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me. In my sober frame of
+mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly unjustifiable murderous
+intent. I would have deserved it if the steer had really been the
+bear. Certainly I hoped the bear would outrun the hounds and escape. I
+weighed the wonderful thrill of the chase, the melody of hounds, the
+zest of spirited action, the peril to limb and life against the thing
+that they were done for, with the result that I found them sadly
+lacking. Peril to limb and life was good for man. If this had not been
+a fact my performance would have been as cowardly as that of my
+horse. Again I had rise up before my mind the spectacle of opposing
+forces--the elemental in man restrained by the spiritual. Then the old
+haunting thought returned to vex me--man in his development needed the
+exercise of brawn, muscle, bone red-blood, violence, labor and pain
+and agony. Nature recognized only the survival of the fittest of
+any species. If a man allowed a spiritual development, intellect,
+gentleness, to keep him from all hard, violent action, from tremendous
+exertion, from fierce fight with elements and beasts, and his own
+kind--would he not soon degenerate as a natural physical man?
+Evolution was a stern inevitable seeking of nature for perfection,
+for the unattainable. This perfection was something that lived and
+improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most
+perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to their
+development toward so-called civilized life their physical prowess and
+perfectness--that was to say, their strength to resist and live and
+reproduce their kind--absolutely and inevitably deteriorated.
+
+My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive
+convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I
+eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty and
+torn--that I would be happy if the bear got away--that I had lost my
+mean horse and was glad therefore--that I would have half a dozen
+horses and rifles upon my next hunt--and lastly that I would not be in
+any hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a
+tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret until
+chronicled here.
+
+Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway toward
+Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard Edd
+yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my horse,
+and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with him.
+
+"Where's the bear?" I asked.
+
+"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is tryin' to
+call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you shoot."
+
+"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied. "He left
+me--rather suddenly. And--I took a shot at what I thought was a bear."
+
+"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just goin' to
+smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."
+
+My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when I
+observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much disheveled as
+I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance certain unmistakable
+evidences that I had made a tenderfoot blunder and then run for
+my life. But Edd took my loss of hat, and torn coat, and general
+bedraggled state as a matter of course. Indeed I somehow felt a little
+pride at his acceptance of me there in the flesh.
+
+We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down into
+Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber engaged my
+sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the other dogs. "We
+lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds couldn't track him," was
+all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four blasts upon his hunting-horn,
+which were signals to those on the stands above that the hunt was over
+for the day.
+
+Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade as this
+down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large, and the
+foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through. Dark, green and
+brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We came to a huge spruce
+tree, the largest I ever saw--Edd said eight feet through at the base,
+but he was conservative. It was a gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch
+of the forest, with bleached, dead top. For many years it had been the
+home of swarms of wild honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter
+had undertaken to cut down this spruce. This explained a number of
+deeply cut notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it
+down," declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian
+axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it,
+whether we were to get any honey or not.
+
+By and bye we reached the bottom of the thicket where we crossed a
+swift clear cold brook. Here the smells seemed cool, sweet, wild with
+spruce and pine. This stream of granite water burst from a spring
+under a cliff. What a roar it made! I drank until I could drink no
+more. Huge boulders and windfalls, moved by water at flood season,
+obstructed the narrow stream-bed. We crossed to start climbing the
+north slope, and soon worked up out of the thicket upon a steep, rocky
+slope, with isolated pines. We struck a deer-trail hard to follow.
+Above me loomed the pine-tipped rim, with its crags, cliffs,
+pinnacles, and walls, all gray, seamed and stained, and in some clefts
+blazes of deep red and yellow foliage.
+
+When we surmounted the slope, and eventually reached camp, I found
+Isbel entertaining strangers, men of rough garb, evidently riders of
+the range. That was all right, but I did not like his prodigality with
+our swiftly diminishing store of eatables.
+
+To conclude about Isbel--matters pertaining to our commissary
+department, during the next few days, went from bad to worse. Doyle
+advised me not to take Isbel to task, and was rather evasive of
+reasons for so advising me. Of course I listened and attended to my
+old guide's advice, but I fretted under the restraint. We had a spell
+of bad weather, wind and rain, and hail off and on, and at length, the
+third day, a cold drizzling snow. During this spell we did but little
+hunting. The weather changed, and the day afterward I rode my mean
+horse twenty miles on a deer hunt. We saw one buck. Upon our arrival
+at camp, about four o'clock, which hour was too early for dinner, I
+was surprised and angered to find Isbel eating an elaborate meal with
+three more strange, rough-appearing men. Doyle looked serious. Nielsen
+had a sharp glint in his gray eye. As for myself, this procedure of
+our cook's was more than I could stand.
+
+"Isbel, you're discharged," I said, shortly. "Take your outfit and get
+out. Lee will lend you a pack horse."
+
+"Wal, I ain't fired," drawled Isbel. "I quit before you rode in. Beat
+you to it!"
+
+"Then if you quit it seems to me you are taking liberties with
+supplies you have no right to," I replied.
+
+"Nope. Cook of any outfit has a right to all the chuck he wants.
+That's western way."
+
+"Isbel, listen to this and then get out," I went on. "You've wasted
+our supplies just to get us to hurry and break camp. As for western
+ways I know something of them. It's a western way for a man to be
+square and honest in his dealings with an outsider. In all my years
+and in all my trips over the southwest you are the first westerner to
+give me the double-cross. You have that distinction."
+
+Then I turned my back upon him and walked to my tent. His
+acquaintances left at once, and he quickly packed and followed.
+Faithful old Doyle took up the duties of cook and we gained, rather
+than missed by the change. Our supplies, however, had been so depleted
+that we could not stay much longer on the hunt.
+
+By dint of much determination as to the manner and method of my next
+hunt I managed to persuade myself that I could make the best of this
+unlucky sojourn in the woods. No rifle, no horse worth riding, no food
+to stay out our time--it was indeed bad luck for me. After supper the
+tension relaxed. Then I realized all the men were relieved. Only Romer
+regretted loss of Isbel. When the Doyles and Haughts saw how I took
+my hard luck they seemed all the keener to make my stay pleasant and
+profitable. Little they knew that their regard was more to me than
+material benefits and comforts of the trip. To travelers of the
+desert and hunters and riders of the open there are always hard and
+uncomfortable and painful situations to be met with. And in meeting
+these, if it can be done with fortitude and spirit that win the
+respect of westerners, it is indeed a reward.
+
+Next day, in defiance of a thing which never should be
+considered--luck--I took Haught's rifle again, and my lazy, sullen,
+intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George down into Horton
+Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of fresh air and
+beautiful scenery.
+
+We dismounted and tied our horses at the brook, and while Edd took
+the hounds up into the dense thicket where the bears made their beds,
+George and I followed a trail up the brook. In exactly ten minutes the
+hounds gave tongue. They ran up the thicket, which was favorable for
+us, and from their baying I judged the bear trail to be warm. In the
+dense forest we could not see five rods ahead. George averred that he
+did not care to have a big cinnamon or a grizzly come running down
+that black thicket. And as for myself I did not want one so very
+exceedingly much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me,
+which effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their
+baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased.
+"Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With this
+exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar. Most
+hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which direction
+the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, however, like Buffalo
+Jones' famous Don, or Scott Teague's Sampson or Haught's Old Dan,
+would grow suspicious of a scent that gradually cooled, and would
+eventually give it up. Young hounds would back-track game as far as
+possible.
+
+After waiting a while we returned to our horses, and presently Edd
+came back with the pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called them off,"
+was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth of Horton
+Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had occasion to remember.
+I even saw the pine tree which I had so ignominiously climbed. How we
+ridicule and scorn some of our perfectly natural actions--afterwards!
+Edd had brought three of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of
+mischief as pups could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them
+out on the hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase to head
+them off. Edd gave them a tongue-lashing and thrashing at one and the
+same time. I felt sorry for the pups. They had been so full of frolic
+and fight. How crestfallen they appeared after Edd got through!
+"Whaddaye mean," yelled Edd, in conclusion. "Chasin' deer!... Do you
+think you're a lot of rabbit dogs?" From the way the pups eyed Edd
+so sheepishly and adoringly, I made certain they understood him
+perfectly, and humbly confessed their error.
+
+Old Tom and Old Dan had not come down off the slopes with us after the
+pups. And upon our return both the old hounds began to bay deep and
+fast. With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off, apparently frantic to
+make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole pack was in full chorus.
+Edd and George spurred into the brush, yelling encouragement to the
+hounds. This day I managed to make my horse do a little of what I
+wanted. To keep in sight of the Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but
+I did not lose sound of them. This chase led us up slope and down
+slope, through the brush and pine thickets, over bare ridges and into
+gullies; and eventually out into the basin, where the hounds got
+beyond hearing.
+
+"One of them long, lean, hungry bears," remarked Edd. "He'd outrun any
+dogs."
+
+Leisurely then we turned to the three-hour ride back to camp. Hot sun
+in the open, cool wind in the shade, dry smells of the forest, green
+and red and orange and purple of the foliage--these rendered the hours
+pleasant for me. When I reached camp I found Romer in trouble. He had
+cut his hand with a forbidden hunting knife. As he told me about it
+his face was a study and his explanation was astounding. When he
+finished I said: "You mean then that my hunting knife walked out of
+its sheath on my belt and followed you around and cut you of its own
+accord?"
+
+"Aw, I--I--it--" he floundered.
+
+Whereupon I lectured him about forbidden things and untruthfulness.
+His reply was: "But, Dad, it hurts like sixty. Won't you put somethin'
+on it?"
+
+I dressed and bandaged the trifling cut for him, telling him the while
+how little Indian boys, when cut or kicked or bruised, never showed
+that they were hurt. "Huh!" he grunted. "Guess there's no Indian in
+me.... I must take after mother!"
+
+That afternoon and night the hounds straggled in, Old Tom and Dan
+first, and then the others, one by one, fagged-out and foot-sore. Next
+morning, however, they appeared none the worse for their long chase.
+We went again to Horton Thicket to rout out a bear.
+
+This time I remained on top of the rim with R.C. and Nielsen; and we
+took up a stand across the canyon, near where my first stand had
+been. Here we idled the hours away waiting for the hounds to start
+something. While walking along the rim I happened to look across the
+big cove that cut into the promontory, and way on the other slope what
+did I espy but a black bear. He appeared to be very small, or merely a
+cub. Running back to R.C. and Nielsen I told them, and we all took up
+our rifles. It occurred to me that the distance across this cove was
+too far for accurate shooting, but it never occurred to me to jump on
+my horse and ride around the head of the cove.
+
+"He's not scared. Let's watch him," suggested R.C.
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEYS]
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS]
+
+We saw this bear walk along, poke around, dig into the ground, go behind
+trees, come out again, and finally stand up on his hind feet and
+apparently reach for berries or something on a bush. R.C. bethought
+himself of his field-glass. After one look he exclaimed: "Say, fellows,
+he's a whopper of a bear! He'll weigh five hundred pounds. Just take a
+look at him!"
+
+My turn with the glasses revealed to me that what I had imagined to be
+a cub was indeed a big bear. After Nielsen looked he said: "Never saw
+one so big in Norway."
+
+"Well, look at that black scoundrel!" exclaimed R.C. "Standing up!
+Looking around! Wagging his head!... Say, you saw him first. Suppose
+you take some pegs at him."
+
+"Wish Romer were here. I'd let him shoot at that bear," I replied.
+Then I got down on my knee, and aiming as closely as possible I fired.
+The report rang out in the stillness, making hollow echoes. We heard
+the bullet pat somewhere. So did the bear hear it. Curiously he looked
+around, as if something had struck near him. But scared he certainly
+was not. Then I shot four times in quick succession.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" ejaculated R.C. "He heard the bullets hit and
+wonders what the dickens.... Say, now he hears the reports! Look at
+him stand!"
+
+"Boys, smoke him up," I said, after the manner of Haught's vernacular.
+So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot. We had more fun
+out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us. Then he began to
+run, choosing the open slope by which he had come. I got five more
+shots at him as he crossed this space, and the last bullet puffed
+up dust under him, making him take a header down the slope into
+the thicket. Whereupon we all had a good laugh. Nielsen appeared
+particularly pleased over his first shots at a real live bear.
+
+"Say, why didn't you think to ride round there?" queried R.C.
+thoughtfully. "He didn't see us. He wasn't scared. In a few minutes
+you could have been on the rim of that slope right over him. Got him
+sure!"
+
+"R.C. why didn't you think to tell me to do that?" I retorted. "Why
+don't we ever think the right thing before it is too late?"
+
+"That's our last chance this year--I feel it in my bones," declared
+R.C. mournfully.
+
+His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at camp we
+heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught's had taken the
+trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic of influenza. The
+strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages,
+the cow-camps, the mines--everywhere. At first I thought Haught's
+informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the
+Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty
+people had succumbed in a few weeks--then I was thoroughly alarmed.
+Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it
+instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle was relieved
+and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The Haughts, naturally,
+were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the next thing was to
+consider which way to travel. The long ten-day trip down into the
+basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim again, and so on to
+Flagstaff was not to be considered at all. The roads by way of Winslow
+and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle wanted to attempt the old army
+road along the rim made by General Crook when he moved the captured
+Apaches to the reservation assigned to them. No travel over this road
+for many years! Haught looked dubious, but finally said we could chop
+our way through thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The
+matter of decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not
+easy to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been
+for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What made
+me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles or more
+along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I told Nielsen
+that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like a cowboy: "We'll
+go a-hummin'," he said. Nielsen shrugged his brawny shoulders. What
+were obstacles to this man of the desert? I realized that his look had
+decided me.
+
+"All right, men, we'll try the old Crook road," I said. "Pack what you
+can up to the wagon to-day, and to-morrow early we'll break camp."
+
+I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to theirs,
+where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of this hunting
+trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no horse, no blankets,
+no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of food supplies, and no good
+luck, except the wonderful good luck of being well, of seeing a
+magnificent country, of meeting some more fine westerners. But the
+Haughts appeared a little slow to grasp, or at least to credit my
+philosophy. We were just beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was
+that they had been unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and
+some turkeys. Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with
+many sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and
+would not want to come again.
+
+"See here, Haught," I said. "I've had a fine time. Now forget about
+this hunt. It's past. We'll plan another. Will you save next fall for
+me?"
+
+"I shore will," he replied.
+
+"Very well, then, it's settled. Say by August you and the boys cut
+a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I'll send you money in
+advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and outfit. I'll
+leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you here September
+twenty-first, along about noon."
+
+We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts laughed
+at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I heard Edd
+remark: "Not a kick!... Meet him next year at noon! What do you know
+about thet?" This remark proved that he had paid me a compliment in
+eastern slang most likely assimilated from R.C. and Romer.
+
+The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and next
+morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh, spirited,
+and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because of some
+surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all the outfit
+packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff, and the long,
+rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most auspicious start. I
+hoped that it augured well for us, but while I hoped I had a gloomy
+foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and his son George. Edd offered
+to go with us as far as he knew the country, which distance was not
+many miles. So we set out upon our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses
+in front of the lumbering wagon.
+
+We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest along the
+rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill grade that the
+bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied on. When we came to a
+long slow slant uphill, a road of loose rocks, we made about one mile
+an hour. This slow travel worked havoc upon my mind. I wanted to
+hurry. I wanted to get out of the wilds. That awful rumor about
+influenza occupied my mind and struck cold fear into my heart. What
+of my family? No making the best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset
+overtook us at a rocky ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos
+on saddle horses in front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we
+overcame that obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we
+encountered about twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him,
+whipping him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other
+horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still
+miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had to
+camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun--it should have
+been fine for me--but my gloomy obsession to hurry obscured my mind.
+I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy, after that long, hard day,
+quickly and efficiently cooking a good hot supper. Romer had enjoyed
+the day. He said he was tired, but would like to stay up beside the
+mighty camp-fire Nielsen built. I had neither energy or spirit to
+oppose him. The night was dark and cold and windy; the fire felt so
+good that I almost went asleep beside it. We had no time to put up
+tents. I made our bed, crawled into it, stretched out with infinite
+relief; and the last thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in
+beside me.
+
+Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to stir to
+get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the horses were gone;
+we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not appear worried. I groaned in
+spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed me. Lee sallied out with his yellow
+dog Pups. I had forgotten the good quality of Pups, but not my dislike
+for him. He barked vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I
+helped Edd and Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then
+Doyle called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we
+heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not believe
+my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they appeared,
+driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his head off. We all
+jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off the horses, and soon
+had them secured. Not one missing! I asked Lee how in the world he had
+found that wild bunch in less than an hour. Lee laughed. "Pups. He
+rounded them up in no time."
+
+Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick myself,
+but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat. I reproached
+myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been deceived in
+the surface appearance of people and things and dogs! Most of our
+judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.
+
+By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle--the little hill at
+which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and full of grain, he
+balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled the teams. Lee had more
+patience than I would have had. He unhitched the lead team and in
+place of the sorrel put a saddle horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried
+again and surmounted the hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead
+over as rocky and rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time
+we could see over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim
+appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly
+rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw
+deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any
+thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell
+and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country
+ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no
+urgent need of him.
+
+We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle
+horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of
+us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and
+took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident
+happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses,
+having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden
+return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either
+could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day,
+a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to
+the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have
+been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear
+down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it
+brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him! He was
+alive! He stood up--like this--wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!"
+
+Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling along,
+unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up and down the
+interminable length of three almost impassable miles. When night
+overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No grass, no water! A cold
+gale blew out of the west. It roared through the forest. It blew
+everything loose away in the darkness. It almost blew us away in our
+beds. The stars appeared radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue
+windy vault of the sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows
+crossed the weird moon-blanched forest glades.
+
+At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen, mostly
+silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice. Suddenly some
+one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact filled me with
+consternation and alarm. He might have walked in his sleep and fallen
+over the rim. What had become of him? All his outfit lay scattered
+round in his bed. In my bewilderment I imagined many things, even to
+the extreme that he might have left us in the lurch. But when I got to
+that sad pass of mind I suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream.
+My worry, my hurry had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to
+meet this situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I
+went out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities,
+and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand. That
+instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and reproached myself.
+
+Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand over the
+camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.
+
+"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got to
+thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out what was
+ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright moonlight. I
+walked all the rest of the night. And that's all, sir."
+
+I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the
+Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to
+achievement. Such men could not be defeated.
+
+"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.
+
+"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his captain.
+"Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll have to cut
+through thickets and logs. From here on the road is all grown over.
+About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge."
+
+That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I thanked
+Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The packing and
+carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated himself into my
+affections. He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me.
+We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the
+wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and
+R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road. Soon we were halted by
+thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the
+base. The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the
+reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our
+heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore
+rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny
+Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big
+axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had
+to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his
+mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the
+road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that day nor the next
+would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and
+obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.
+
+At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending
+hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together to pull the
+wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and
+men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside Romer. Nielsen and R.C.
+were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon. As I turned the
+sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the
+road.
+
+"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.
+
+But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily
+laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face turn
+white--heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the side. Romer was
+slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off the road. My heart
+sank sick within me! Surely he would be run down. As his pony Rye
+jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off
+side, struck him a glancing blow. Then the big team hurdled the log,
+the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and
+Doyle was thrown from his seat.
+
+Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The bay
+horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away. Nielsen cut
+and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came tearing down to
+grasp and hold the black.
+
+Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not know
+what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact convinced me
+of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled the log made
+any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When finally it was
+extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut in the breast made
+by a snag on the log. We could find no damage done to the wagon. The
+harness Nielsen had cut could be mended quickly. What a fortunate
+outcome to what had seemed a very grave accident! I was thankful
+indeed. But not soon would I forget sight of Romer in front of that
+plunging wagon.
+
+With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of the road,
+and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I dropped back
+and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a fiddle," he shouted.
+"This's play to what we teamsters had in the early days." And verily
+somehow I could see the truth of that. A mile farther on we made camp;
+and all of us were hungry, weary, and quiet.
+
+Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next morning
+he crawled out before any one else, and his call was cheery. I was
+scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was ashamed to lie there
+an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my eyesight was dulled by
+exhaustion when it caused me to see myself as a worn, unshaven,
+wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out with his usual alacrity.
+R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get up on all fours.
+
+We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to work and
+waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail it seemed, we
+chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that old Crook road. Not
+since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in Mexico had I labored so
+strenuously.
+
+At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed road Doyle
+had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones' ranch," Doyle
+kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North was our direction.
+And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness, the road down this ridge
+proved to be a highway compared to what we had passed. In the open
+forest we had to follow it altogether by the blazes on the trees. But
+with all our eyes alert that was easy. The grade was down hill, so
+that we traveled fast, covering four miles an hour. Occasionally a
+log or thicket halted rapid progress. Toward the end of the afternoon
+sheep and cattle trails joined the now well-defined road, and we knew
+we were approaching a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile,
+for the very good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of
+my horse. The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer
+thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep barren-looking
+canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old ruined log-cabins.
+Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold milk. For hours they
+had haunted me. When Doyle saw the broken-down cabins and corrals he
+yelled: "Boys, it's Jones' Ranch. I've been here. We're only three
+miles from Long Valley and the main road!"
+
+Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to look
+for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses had not
+slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up and down the
+canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water. Thereupon with immense
+relief and joy we pitched camp near the cabins, forgetting our aches
+and pains in the certainty of deliverance.
+
+What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We unpacked
+only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled around the
+camp-fire we waited upon Doyle's cooking. The old pioneer talked while
+he worked.
+
+"Jones' ranch!--I knew Jones in the early days. And I've heard of him
+lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner down into this
+canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and he had a gun, an
+axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and not much else. He built
+him that cabin there and began the real old pioneering of the early
+days. He raised cattle. He freighted to the settlements twice a year.
+In twenty-five years he had three strapping boys and a girl just as
+strapping. And he had a fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and
+left this ranch. He wanted to give his faithful wife and his children
+some of the comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The
+war came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army.
+I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man's first boy. Abe was a
+quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a sergeant
+asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: 'Nope, not much.' So they gave
+him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near target. Abe looked at
+it sort of funny like and he picked out the farthest target at one
+thousand yards. And he hit the bull's eye ten times straight running.
+'Hey!' gasped the sergeant, 'you long, lanky galoot! You said you
+couldn't shoot.' Abe sort of laughed. 'Reckon I was thinkin' about
+what Dad called shootin'.'... Well, Abe and his brothers got to France
+to the front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both
+his brothers were wounded. They're over there yet.... I met a man not
+long ago who'd seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he and
+his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means right
+here--Jones' Ranch!"
+
+Doyle's story affected me profoundly. What a theme for a novel! I
+walked away from the camp-fire into the dark, lonely, melancholy
+Arizona night. The ruined cabins, the broken-down corrals, the stone
+fence, the wash where water ran at wet season--all had subtly changed
+for me. Leaning in the doorway of the one-room cabin that had been
+home for these Joneses I was stirred to my depths. Their spirits
+abided in that lonely hut. At least I felt something there--something
+strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet what
+could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life of Jones,
+and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe? Abe Jones! The
+name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw the life of the
+lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the power to tell the
+simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the glory of his story.
+The moan of wind in the pines seemed a requiem for the boy who had
+prattled and romped and played under them, who had chopped and shot
+and rode under them. Into his manhood had gone something of their
+strength and nature.
+
+We sought our beds early. The night down in that deep, open canyon was
+the coldest we had experienced. I slept but little. At dawn all was
+hoar-white with frost. It crackled under foot. The air had a stinging
+bite. Yet how sweet, pure, cold to breathe!
+
+Doyle's cheery: "Come and get it," was welcome call to breakfast. Lee
+and Pups drove the horses into one of the old corrals. In an hour,
+while the frost was yet hard and white, we were ready to start. Then
+Doyle somewhat chilled our hopes: "Twenty years ago there was a bad
+road out of here. Maybe one's been made since."
+
+But one had not been made. And the old road had not been used for
+years. Right at the outset we struck a long, steep, winding, rocky
+road. We got stalled at the very foot of it. More toil! Unloading the
+wagon we packed on our saddles the whole load more than a mile up this
+last and crowning obstacle. Then it took all the horses together to
+pull the empty wagon up to a level. By that time sunset had overtaken
+us. Where had the hours gone? Nine hours to go one mile! But there had
+to be an end to our agonies. By twilight we trotted down into Long
+Valley, and crossed the main road to camp in a grove we remembered
+well. We partook of a meagre supper, but we were happy. And bed that
+night on a thick layer of soft pine needles, in a spot protected from
+the cold wind, was immensely comfortable.
+
+Lee woke the crowd next morning. "All rustle," he yelled. "Thirty-five
+miles to Mormon Lake. Good road. We'll camp there to-night."
+
+How strange that the eagerness to get home now could only be compared
+to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We made an early
+start. The team horses knew that road. They knew they were now on the
+way home. What difference that made! Jaded as they were they trotted
+along with a briskness never seen before on that trip. It began to be
+a job for us to keep up with Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider
+is accustomed to horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on
+a hard road will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot.
+Time and again I had to fall behind to a walk and then lope ahead
+to catch up. I welcomed the hills that necessitated Lee walking the
+teams.
+
+At noon we halted in a grassy grove for an hour's rest. That seemed
+a precious hour, but to start again was painful. I noticed that
+Romer-boy no longer rode out far in front, nor did he chase squirrels
+with Pups. He sagged, twisted and turned, and lolled in his saddle.
+Thereafter I tried to keep close to him. But that was not easy, for
+he suspected me of seeing how tired he was, and kept away from me.
+Thereafter I took to spying upon him from some distance behind. We
+trotted and walked, trotted and walked the long miles. Arizona miles
+were twice as long as ordinary properly measured miles. An event of
+the afternoon was to meet some Mexican sheepherders, driving a flock
+south. Nielsen got some fresh mutton from them. Toward sunset I caught
+Romer hanging over his saddle. Then I rode up to him. "Son, are you
+tired?" I asked. "Oh, Dad, I sure am, but I'm going to ride Rye to
+Mormon Lake." I believed he would accomplish it. His saddle slipped,
+letting him down. I saw him fall. When he made no effort to get up I
+was frightened. Rye stood perfectly still over him. I leaped off and
+ran to the lad. He had hit his head on a stone, drawing the blood, and
+appeared to be stunned. I lifted him, holding him up, while somebody
+got some water. We bathed his face and washed off the blood. Presently
+he revived, and smiled at me, and staggered out of my hold.
+
+"Helluva note that saddle slipped!" he complained. Manifestly he had
+acquired some of Joe Isbel's strong language. Possibly he might have
+acquired some other of the cowboy's traits, for he asked to have his
+saddle straightened and to be put on his horse. I had misgivings, but
+I could not resist him then. I lifted him upon Rye. Once more our
+cavalcade got under way.
+
+Sunset, twilight, night came as we trotted on and on. We faced a cold
+wind. The forest was black, gloomy, full of shadows. Lee gave us all
+we could do to keep up with him. At eight o'clock, two hours after
+dark, we reached the southern end of Mormon Lake. A gale, cold as ice,
+blew off the water from the north. Half a dozen huge pine trees stood
+on the only level ground near at hand. "Nielsen, fire--pronto!" I
+yelled. "Aye, sir," he shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with
+hurry and bustle to get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my
+tingling fingers, and press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few
+minutes before I thought of Romer.
+
+Nielsen had started a fire, that blazed and roared with burning pine
+needles. The blaze blew low, almost on a level with the ground, and a
+stream of red sparks flew off into the woods. I was afraid of forest
+fire. But what a welcome sight that golden flame! It lighted up a wide
+space, showing the huge pines, gloom-encircled, and a pale glimmer of
+the lake beyond. The fragrance of burning pine greeted my nostrils.
+
+Dragging my bags I hurried toward the fire. Nielsen was building a
+barricade of rocks to block the flying sparks. Suddenly I espied
+Romer. He sat on a log close to the blaze. His position struck me as
+singular, so I dropped my burdens and went to him. He had on a heavy
+coat over sweater and under coat, which made him resemble a little old
+man. His sombrero was slouched down sidewise, his gloved hands were
+folded across his knees, his body sagged a little to one side, his
+head drooped. He was asleep. I got around so I could see his face
+in the firelight. Pale, weary, a little sad, very youthful and yet
+determined! A bloody bruise showed over his temple. He had said he
+would ride all the way to Mormon Lake and he had done it. Never, never
+will that picture fade from my memory! Dear, brave, wild, little lad!
+He had made for me a magnificent success of this fruitless hunting
+trip. I hoped and prayed then that when he grew to man's estate, and
+faced the long rides down the hard roads of life, he would meet them
+and achieve them as he had the weary thirty-five Arizona miles from
+Long Valley to Mormon Lake.
+
+[Illustration: SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK]
+
+Mutton tasted good that night around our camp-fire; and Romer ate a
+generous portion. A ranger from the station near there visited us, and
+two young ranchers, who told us that the influenza epidemic was waning.
+This was news to be thankful for. Moreover, I hired the two ranchers to
+hurry us by auto to Flagstaff on the morrow. So right there at Mormon
+Lake ended our privations.
+
+Under one of the huge pines I scraped up a pile of needles, made
+Romer's bed in it, heated a blanket and wrapped him in it. Almost he
+was asleep when he said: "Some ride, Dad--Good-night."
+
+Later, beside him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks fly, and
+the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face, listening to the
+crackle of the fire and the roar of the gale.
+
+
+IV
+
+Eventually R.C. and Romer and I arrived in Los Angeles to find all
+well with our people, which fact was indeed something to rejoice over.
+Hardly had this 1918 trip ended before I began to plan for that of
+1919. But I did not realize how much in earnest I was until I received
+word that both Lee Doyle in Flagstaff and Nielsen in San Pedro were
+very ill with influenza. Lee all but died, and Nielsen, afterward,
+told me he would rather die than have the "flu" again. To my great
+relief, however, they recovered.
+
+From that time then it pleased me to begin to plan for my 1919 hunting
+trip. I can never do anything reasonably. I always overdo everything.
+But what happiness I derive from anticipation! When I am not working
+I live in dreams, partly of the past, but mostly of the future. A man
+should live only in the present.
+
+I gave Lee instructions to go about in his own way buying teams,
+saddle horses, and wagons. For Christmas I sent him a .35 Remington
+rifle. Mr. Haught got instructions to add some new dogs to his pack. I
+sent Edd also a .35 Remington, and made Nielsen presents of two guns.
+In January Nielsen and I went to Picacho, on the lower Colorado river,
+and then north to Death Valley. So that I kept in touch with these men
+and did not allow their enthusiasm to wane. For myself and R.C. I had
+the fun of ordering tents and woolen blankets, and everything that we
+did not have on our 1918 trip. But owing to the war it was difficult
+to obtain goods of any description. To make sure of getting a .30
+Gov't Winchester I ordered from four different firms, including the
+Winchester Co. None of them had such a rifle in stock, but all would
+try to find one. The upshot of this deal was that, when after months I
+despaired of getting any, they all sent me a rifle at the same time.
+So I found myself with four, all the same caliber of course, but of
+different style and finish. When I saw them and thought of the
+Haughts I had to laugh. One was beautifully engraved, and inlaid with
+gold--the most elaborate .30 Gov't the Winchester people had ever
+built. Another was a walnut-stocked, shot-gun butted, fancy checkered
+take-down. This one I presented to R.C. The third was a plain ordinary
+rifle with solid frame. And the last was a carbine model, which I gave
+to Nielsen.
+
+During the summer at Avalon I used to take the solid frame rifle, and
+climb the hills to practice on targets. At Clemente Island I used to
+shoot at the ravens. I had a grudge against ravens there for picking
+the eyes out of newly born lambs. At five hundred yards a raven was in
+danger from me. I could make one jump at even a thousand yards. These
+.30 Gov't 1906 rifles with 150-grain bullet are the most wonderful
+shooting arms I ever tried. I became expert at inanimate targets.
+
+From time to time I heard encouraging news from Lee about horses. Edd
+wrote me about lion tracks in the snow, and lynx up cedar trees, and
+gobblers four feet high, and that there was sure to be a good crop
+of acorns, and therefore some bears. He told me about a big grizzly
+cow-killer being chased and shot in Chevelon Canyon. News about
+hounds, however, was slow in coming. Dogs were difficult to find.
+At length Haught wrote me that he had secured two; and in this same
+letter he said the boys were cutting trails down under the rim.
+
+Everything pertaining to my cherished plans appeared to be turning
+out well. But during this time I spent five months at hard work and
+intense emotional strain, writing the longest novel I ever attempted;
+and I over-taxed my endurance. By the middle of June, when I finished,
+I was tired out. That would not have mattered if I had not hurt my
+back in an eleven-hour fight with a giant broadbill swordfish. This
+strain kept me from getting in my usual physical trim. I could not
+climb the hills, or exert myself. Swimming hurt me more than anything.
+So I had to be careful and wait until my back slowly got better. By
+September it had improved, but not enough to make me feel any thrills
+over horseback riding. It seemed to me that I would be compelled to
+go ahead and actually work the pain out of my back, an ordeal through
+which I had passed before, and surely dreaded.
+
+During the summer I had purchased a famous chestnut sorrel horse named
+Don Carlos. He was much in demand among the motion-picture companies
+doing western plays; and was really too fine and splendid a horse to
+be put to the risks common to the movies. I saw him first at Palm
+Springs, down in southern California, where my book _Desert Gold_ was
+being made into a motion-picture. Don would not have failed to strike
+any one as being a wonderful horse. He was tremendously high and rangy
+and powerful in build, yet graceful withal, a sleek, shiny chestnut
+red in color, with fine legs, broad chest, and a magnificent head. I
+rode him only once before I bought him, and that was before I hurt my
+back. His stride was what one would expect from sight of him; his trot
+seemed to tear me to pieces; his spirit was such that he wanted to
+prance all the time. But in spite of his spirit he was a pet. And
+how he could run! Nielsen took Don to Flagstaff by express. And when
+Nielsen wrote me he said all of Flagstaff came down to the station to
+see the famous Don Carlos. The car in which he had traveled was backed
+alongside a platform. Don refused to step on the boards they placed
+from platform to car. He did not trust them. Don's intelligence had
+been sharpened by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to
+lead, to coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would
+not go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to plunge
+and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd like quail.
+
+The day before my departure from Los Angeles was almost as terrible an
+ordeal as I anticipated would be my first day's ride on Don Carlos.
+And this ordeal consisted of listening to Romer's passionate appeals
+and importunities to let him go on the hunt. My only defence was that
+he must not be taken from school. School forsooth! He was way ahead of
+his class. If he got behind he could make it up. I talked and argued.
+Once he lost his temper, a rare thing with him, and said he would run
+away from school, ride on a freight train to Flagstaff, steal a horse
+and track me to my camp. I could not say very much in reply to this
+threat, because I remembered that I had made worse to my father, and
+carried it out. I had to talk sense to Romer. Often we had spoken of
+a wonderful hunt in Africa some day, when he was old enough; and I
+happened upon a good argument. I said: "You'll miss a year out of
+school then. It won't be so very long. Don't you think you ought to
+stay in school faithfully now?" So in the end I got away from him,
+victorious, though not wholly happy. The truth was I wanted him to go.
+
+My Jap cook Takahashi met me in Flagstaff. He was a very short, very
+broad, very muscular little fellow with a brown, strong face, more
+pleasant than usually seen in Orientals. Secretly I had made sure that
+in Takahashi I had discovered a treasure, but I was careful to conceal
+this conviction from R.C., the Doyles, and Nielsen. They were glad to
+see him with us, but they manifestly did not expect wonders.
+
+How brief the span of a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again outfitting
+for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived that old haunting
+thought about the shortness of life. But in spite of that or perhaps
+more because of it the pleasure was all the keener. In truth the only
+drawback to this start was the absence of Romer, and my poor physical
+condition. R.C. appeared to be in fine fettle.
+
+But I was not well. In the mornings I could scarcely arise, and when
+I did so I could hardly straighten myself. More than once I grew
+doubtful of my strength to undertake such a hard trip. This doubt I
+fought fiercely, for I knew that the right thing for me to do was
+to go--to stand the pain and hardship--to toil along until my old
+strength and elasticity returned. What an opportunity to try out my
+favorite theory! For I believed that labor and pain were good for
+mankind--that strenuous life in the open would cure any bodily ill.
+
+On September fourteenth Edd and George drifted into Flagstaff to join
+us, and their report of game and water and grass and acorns was so
+favorable that I would have gone if I had been unable to ride on
+anything but a wagon.
+
+
+We got away on September fifteenth at two-thirty o'clock with such an
+outfit as I had never had in all my many trips put together. We had a
+string of saddle horses besides those the men rode. They were surely a
+spirited bunch; and that first day it was indeed a job to keep them with
+us. Out of sheer defiance with myself I started on Don Carlos. He was no
+trouble, except that it took all my strength to hold him in. He tossed
+his head, champed his bit, and pranced sideways along the streets of
+Flagstaff, manifestly to show off his brand new black Mexican saddle,
+with silver trappings and tapaderos. I was sure that he did not do that
+to show me off. But Don liked to dance and prance along before a crowd,
+a habit that he had acquired with the motion pictures.
+
+Lee and Nielsen and George had their difficulties driving the free
+horses. Takahashi rode a little buckskin Navajo mustang. An evidence of
+how extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself plain in the fact
+that stirrups could not be fixed so he could reach them with his feet.
+When he used any support at all he stuck his feet through the straps
+above the stirrups. How funny his squat, broad figure looked in a
+saddle! Evidently he was not accustomed to horses. When I saw the
+mustang roll the white of his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I
+knew something would happen sooner or later.
+
+Nineteen miles on Don Carlos reduced me to a miserable aching specimen
+of manhood. But what made me endure and go on and finish to camp was the
+strange fact that the longer I rode the less my back pained. Other parts
+of my anatomy, however, grew sorer as we progressed. Don Carlos pleased
+me immensely, only I feared he was too much horse for me. A Mormon
+friend of mine, an Indian trader, looked Don over in Flagstaff, and
+pronounced him: "Shore one grand hoss!" This man had broken many wild
+horses, and his compliment pleased me. All the same the nineteen miles
+on Don hurt my vanity almost as much as my body.
+
+We camped in a cedar pasture off the main road. This road was a new one
+for us to take to our hunting grounds. I was too bunged up to help
+Nielsen pitch our tent. In fact when I sat down I was anchored. Still I
+could use my eyes, and that made life worth living. Sunset was a
+gorgeous spectacle. The San Francisco Peaks were shrouded in purple
+storm-clouds, and the west was all gold and silver, with low clouds
+rimmed in red. This sunset ended in a great flare of dull magenta with a
+background of purple.
+
+That evening was the try-out of our new chuck-box and chef. I had
+supplied the men with their own outfit and supplies, to do with as they
+liked, an arrangement I found to be most satisfactory. Takahashi was to
+take care of R.C. and me. In less than half an hour from the time the
+Jap lighted a fire he served the best supper I ever had in camp
+anywhere. R.C. lauded him to the skies. And I began to think I could
+unburden myself of my conviction.
+
+I did not awaken to the old zest and thrill of the open. Something was
+wrong with me. The sunset, the camp-fire, the dark clear night with its
+trains of stars, the distant yelp of coyotes--these seemed less to me
+than what I had hoped for. My feelings were locked round my discomfort
+and pain.
+
+About noon next day we rode out of the cedars into the open desert--a
+rolling, level land covered with fine grass, and yellow daisies, Indian
+paint brush, and a golden flowering weed. This luxuriance attested to
+the copious and recent rains. They had been a boon to dry Arizona. No
+sage showed or greasewood, and very few rocks. The sun burned hot. I
+gazed out at the desert, and the cloud pageant in the sky, trying hard
+to forget myself, and to see what I knew was there for me. Rolling
+columnar white and cream clouds, majestic and beautiful, formed storms
+off on the horizon. Sunset on the open desert that afternoon was
+singularly characteristic of Arizona--purple and gold and red, with long
+lanes of blue between the colored cloud banks.
+
+We made camp at Meteor Crater, one of the many wonders of this
+wonderland. It was a huge hole in the earth over five hundred feet deep,
+said to have been made by a meteor burying itself there. Seen from the
+outside the slope was gradual up to the edges, which were scalloped and
+irregular; on the inside the walls were precipitous. Our camp was on the
+windy desert, a long sweeping range of grass, sloping down, dotted with
+cattle, with buttes and mountains in the distance. Most of my sensations
+of the day partook of the nature of woe.
+
+September seventeenth bade fair to be my worst day--at least I did not
+see how any other could ever be so bad. Glaring hot sun--reflected heat
+from I the bare road--dust and sand and wind! Particularly hard on me
+were what the Arizonians called dust-devils, whirlwinds of sand. On and
+off I walked a good many miles, the latter of which I hobbled. Don
+Carlos did not know what to make of this. He eyed me, and nosed me, and
+tossed his head as if to say I was a strange rider for him. Like my
+mustang, Night, he would not stand to be mounted. When I touched the
+stirrup that was a signal to go. He had been trained to it. As he was
+nearly seventeen hands high, and as I could not get my foot in the
+stirrup from level ground, to mount him in my condition seemed little
+less than terrible. I always held back out of sight when I attempted
+this. Many times I failed. Once I fell flat and lay a moment in the
+dust. Don Carlos looked down upon me in a way I imagined was
+sympathetic. At least he bent his noble head and smelled at me. I
+scrambled to my feet, led him round into a low place, and drawing a deep
+breath, and nerving myself to endure the pain like a stab, I got into
+the saddle again.
+
+Two things sustained me in this ordeal, which was the crudest horseback
+ride I ever had--first, the conviction that I could cure my ills by
+enduring the agony of violent action, of hot sun, of hard bed; and
+secondly, the knowledge that after it was all over the remembrance of
+hardship and achievement would be singularly sweet. So it had been in
+the case of the five days on the old Crook road in 1918, when extreme
+worry and tremendous exertion had made the hours hideous. So it had been
+with other arduous and poignant experiences. A poet said that the crown
+of sorrow was in remembering happier times: I believed that there was a
+great deal of happiness in remembering times of stress, of despair, of
+extreme and hazardous effort. Anyway, without these two feelings in my
+mind I would have given up riding Don Carlos that day, and have
+abandoned the trip.
+
+We covered twenty-two miles by sundown, a rather poor day's showing; and
+camped on the bare flat desert, using water and wood we had packed with
+us. The last thing I remembered, as my eyes closed heavily, was what a
+blessing it was to rest and to sleep.
+
+Next day we sheered off to the southward, heading toward Chevelon Butte,
+a black cedared mountain, rising lone out of the desert, thirty miles
+away. We crossed two streams bank full of water, a circumstance I never
+before saw in Arizona. Everywhere too the grass was high. We climbed
+gradually all day, everybody sunburned and weary, the horses settling
+down to save themselves; and we camped high up on the desert plateau,
+six thousand feet above sea level, where it was windy, cool, and
+fragrant with sage and cedar. Except the first few, the hours of this
+day each marked a little less torture for me; but at that I fell off
+Don Carlos when we halted. And I was not able to do my share of the camp
+work. R.C. was not as spry and chipper as I had seen him, a fact from
+which I gathered infinite consolation. Misery loves company.
+
+A storm threatened. All the west was purple under on-coming purple
+clouds. At sight of this something strange and subtle, yet familiar,
+revived in me. It made me feel a little more like the self I thought I
+knew. So I watched the lightning flare and string along the horizon.
+Some time in the night thunder awakened me. The imminence of a severe
+storm forced us to roll out and look after the tent. What a pitch black
+night! Down through the murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag
+rope of lightning, blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving
+segments of fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash--then we
+were absolutely blind. I could not see for several moments. It rained a
+little. Only the edge of the storm touched us. Thunder rolled and boomed
+along the battlements, deep and rumbling and detonating.
+
+No dust or heat next morning! The desert floor appeared clean and damp,
+with fresh gray sage and shining bunches of cedar. We climbed into the
+high cedars, and then to the piñons, and then to the junipers and pines.
+Climbing so out of desert to forestland was a gradual and accumulating
+joy to me. What contrast in vegetation, in air, in color! Still the
+forest consisted of small trees. Not until next day did we climb farther
+to the deepening, darkening forest, and at last to the silver spruce.
+That camp, the fifth night out, was beside a lake of surface water,
+where we had our first big camp-fire.
+
+September twenty-first and ten miles from Beaver Dam Canyon, where a
+year before I had planned to meet Haught this day and date at noon! I
+could make that appointment, saddle-sore and weary as I was, but I
+doubted we could get the wagons there. The forest ground was soft. All
+the little swales were full of water. How pleasant, how welcome, how
+beautiful and lonely the wild forestland! We made advance slowly. It was
+afternoon by the time we reached the rim road, and four o'clock when we
+halted at the exact spot where we had left our wagon the year before.
+
+Lee determined to drive the wagons down over the rocky benches into
+Beaver Dam Canyon; and to that end he and the men began to cut pines,
+drag logs, and roll stones.
+
+R.C. and I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen swift
+little streams of amber water, where a year before all had been dry as
+tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of yellowing aspens. Haught
+was there to meet us. He had not changed any more than the rugged pine
+tree under which a year past we had made our agreement. He wore the same
+blue shirt and the old black sombrero.
+
+"Hello Haught," was my greeting, as I dismounted and pulled out my
+watch. "I'm four hours and a quarter late. Sorry. I could have made it,
+but didn't want to leave the wagons."
+
+"Wal, wal, I shore am glad to see you," he replied, with a keen flash in
+his hazel eyes and a smile on his craggy face. "I reckoned you'd make
+it. How are you? Look sort of fagged."
+
+"Just about all in, Haught," I replied, as we shook hands.
+
+Then Copple appeared, swaggering out of the aspens. He was the man I met
+in Payson and who so kindly had made me take his rifle. I had engaged
+him also for this hunt. A brawny man he was, with powerful shoulders,
+swarthy-skinned, and dark-eyed, looking indeed the Indian blood he
+claimed.
+
+"Wouldn't have recognized you anywhere's else," he said.
+
+These keen-eyed outdoor men at a glance saw the havoc work and pain had
+played with me. They were solicitous, and when I explained my condition
+they made light of that, and showed relief that I was not ill. "Saw wood
+an' rustle around," said Haught. And Copple said: "He needs venison an'
+bear meat."
+
+They rode back with us up to the wagons. Copple had been a freighter. He
+picked out a way to drive down into the canyon. So rough and steep it
+was that I did not believe driving down would be possible. But with axes
+and pick and shovel, and a heaving of rocks, they worked a road that Lee
+drove down. Some places were almost straight down. But the ground was
+soft, hoofs and wheels sank deeply, and though one wagon lurched almost
+over, and the heavily laden chuck-wagon almost hurdled the team, Lee
+made the bad places without accident. Two hours after our arrival, such
+was the labor of many strong hands, we reached our old camp ground. One
+thing was certain, however, and that was we would never get back up the
+way we came down.
+
+Except for a luxuriance of grass and ferns, and two babbling streams of
+water, our old camp ground had not changed. I sat down with mingled
+emotions. How familiarly beautiful and lonely this canyon glade! The
+great pines and spruces looked down upon me with a benediction. How
+serene, passionless, strong they seemed! It was only men who changed in
+brief time. The long year of worry and dread and toil and pain had
+passed. It was nothing. On the soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came
+a whispering of welcome from the forestland: "You are here again. Live
+now--in the present."
+
+Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he said,
+grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking. His ability
+excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about him. As to this
+camp-site being a joy compared to the ones stretched back along the road
+he was assuredly right. That night we did no more than eat and unroll
+our beds. But next day there set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking,
+putting up tents and flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a
+hundred odd jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one
+help him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak, and
+made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the cleverness
+of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for work.
+
+The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more than any
+one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a crosscut saw; and
+as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and a lover of them. Hence
+we had brought a crosscut saw--a long one with two handles. I remembered
+from the former year a huge dead pine that had towered bleached and
+white at the edge of the glade. It stood there still. The storms and
+blasts of another winter had not changed it in the least. It was five
+feet thick at the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the
+lower side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I saw
+the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all the way
+down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell majestically, to
+strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of this pine broke in the
+fall, but there were splinters and knots and branches enough to fill a
+wagon. These we carried up to our camp-fire.
+
+Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which served
+as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The method of using
+a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand opposite one another,
+with the log between. The handles of the saw stood upright. Each man
+should pull easily and steadily toward himself, but should not push back
+nor bear down. It looked a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous.
+But what an illusion! Nielsen and Copple were the only ones that day who
+could saw wholly through the thick log without resting. Later Takahashi
+turned out to be as good, if not better, than either of them, but we had
+that, as well as many other wonderful facts, to learn about the Jap.
+
+"Come on," said R.C. to me, invitingly. "You've been talking about this
+crosscut saw game. I'll bet you find it harder than pulling on a
+swordfish."
+
+Pride goes before a fall! I knew that in my condition I could do little
+with the saw, but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh when I had to rest.
+Perhaps no one except myself realized the weakness of my back, but the
+truth was a couple of dozen pulls on that saw almost made me collapse.
+Wherefore I grew furious with myself and swore I would do it or die. I
+sawed till I fell over--then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour
+of this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely
+sharper than the pain in my back. Also it made me wringing wet, hot as
+fire, and as breathless as if I had run a mile up hill. That experience
+determined me to stick to crosscut sawing every day. Next morning I
+approached it with enthusiasm, yet with misgivings. I could not keep my
+breath. Pain I could and did bear without letting on. But to have to
+stop was humiliating. If I tried to keep up with the sturdy Haught boys,
+or with the brawny Copple or the giant Nielsen, soon I would be
+compelled to keel over. In the sawing through a four-foot section of log
+I had to rest eight times. They all had a great deal of fun out of it,
+and I pretended to be good natured, but to me who had always been so
+vigorous and active and enduring it was not fun. It was tragic. But all
+was not gloom for me. This very afternoon Nielsen, the giant, showed
+that a stiff climb out of the canyon, at that eight thousand feet
+altitude, completely floored him. Yet I accomplished that with
+comparative ease. I could climb, which seemed proof that I was gaining.
+A man becomes used to certain labors and exercises. I thought the
+crosscut saw a wonderful tool to train a man, but it must require time.
+It harked back to pioneer days when men were men. Nielsen said he had
+lived among Mexican boys who sawed logs for nineteen cents apiece and
+earned seven dollars a day. Copple said three minutes was good time to
+saw a four-foot log in two pieces. So much for physical condition! As
+for firewood, for which our crosscut saw was intended, pitch pine and
+yellow pine and spruce were all odorous and inflammable woods, but they
+did not make good firewood. Dead aspen was good; dead oak the best. It
+burned to red hot coals with little smoke. As for camp-fires, any kind
+of dry wood pleased, smoke or no smoke. In fact I loved the smell and
+color of wood-smoke, in spite of the fact that it made my eyes smart.
+
+By October first, which was the opening day of the hunting season, I had
+labored at various exercises until I felt fit to pack a rifle through
+the woods. R.C. and I went out alone on foot. Not by any means was the
+day auspicious. The sun tried to show through a steely haze, making only
+a pale shift of sunshine. And the air was rather chilly. Enthusiasm,
+however, knew no deterrents. We walked a mile down Beaver Dam Canyon,
+then climbed the western slope. As long as the sun shone I knew the
+country fairly well, or rather my direction. We slipped along through
+the silent woods, satisfied with everything. Presently the sun broke
+through the clouds, and shone fitfully, making intervals of shadow, and
+others of golden-green verdure.
+
+Along an edge of one of the grassy parks we came across fresh deer
+tracks. Several deer had run out of the woods just ahead of us,
+evidently having winded us. One track was that of a big buck. We trailed
+these tracks across the park, then made a detour in hopes of heading the
+deer off, but failed. A huge, dark cloud scudded out of the west and let
+down a shower of fine rain. We kept dry under a spreading spruce. The
+forest then was gloomy and cool with only a faint moan of wind and
+pattering of raindrops to break the silence. The cloud passed by, the
+sun shone again, the forest glittered in its dress of diamonds. There
+had been but little frost, so that aspen and maple thickets had not yet
+taken on their cloth of gold and blaze of red. Most of the leaves were
+still on the trees, making these thickets impossible to see into. We
+hunted along the edges of these, and across the wide, open ridge from
+canyon to canyon, and saw nothing but old tracks. Black and white clouds
+rolled up and brought a squall. We took to another spruce tent for
+shelter. After this squall the sky became obscured by a field of gray
+cloud through which the sun shone dimly. This matter worried me. I was
+aware of my direction then, but if I lost the sun I would soon be in
+difficulties.
+
+Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and headed several
+ravines that ran and widened down into the big canyon. All at once R.C.
+held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened,
+but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I
+heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes and ears.
+
+R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a good
+hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip
+along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had
+never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer
+stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick
+as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and many years of still hunting,
+accounted for this faculty. As for myself, the one gift of which I was
+especially proud was my eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in
+the woods before any one who was with me. This had applied to all my
+guides except Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
+searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made my eyes
+all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game in which he
+tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen before I saw it. This
+fun for us dated back to boyhood days.
+
+Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one side, and his
+body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he said. We stood
+perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from far off in the forest
+I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling note. How thrilling, how
+lonely a sound!
+
+"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and listened.
+R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not recognized it. Just
+as the mournful howl of a wolf is the wildest, most haunting sound of
+the wilderness, so is the bugle of the elk the noblest, most melodious
+and thrilling. With tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We
+heard elk bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
+appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away. R.C. and
+I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing of elk, but that
+was no reason why we might not trail them, and have the sport of seeing
+them in their native haunts. So we stole softly through the woods,
+halting now and then to listen, pleased to note that every whistle we
+heard appeared to be closer.
+
+At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us from the
+ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk began to become
+really exciting. We did not make any noise threading that wet thicket,
+and we ascended the opposite slope very cautiously. What little wind
+there was blew from the elk toward us, so they could not scent us. Once
+up on the edge of the ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we
+heard a far-away bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had
+we miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for
+waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was almost
+silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun peeped out of the
+pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the pines in brightness. I
+opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was rendered mute by a piercing
+whistle, high-pitched and sweet and melodiously prolonged. It made my
+ears tingle and my blood dance. "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on."
+We began to steal through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets,
+peeping out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp,
+facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated by
+about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison. Passing
+through a thicket of little pines we came into an open forest full of
+glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped from tree to tree.
+Finally we stooped along for a space, and then, at a bugle blast so
+close that it made me jump, I began to crawl. My objective point was a
+fallen pine the trunk of which appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C.
+kept working a little farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I
+kept on. Still I saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting
+toward its climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of
+excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw a
+cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a hundred
+yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way, and pointed.
+But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning for me to join him. I
+ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He whispered pantingly:
+"Grandest sight--ever saw!" I peeped out.
+
+In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent bull elk,
+looking back over his shoulder. His tawny hind-quarters, then his dark
+brown, almost black shaggy shoulders and head, then his enormous spread
+of antlers, like the top of a dead cedar--these in turn fascinated my
+gaze. How graceful, stately, lordly!
+
+R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled out, took
+a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had the fun of
+imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not really want to kill
+him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp, hot gush of my blood, the
+fiery thrill along my nerves, the feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The
+bull eyed us for a second, then laid his forest of antlers back over his
+shoulders, and with singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny
+flash into the green forest.
+
+R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the glade,
+without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye caught sight
+of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on the ground, vanishing
+behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I got to where I could see
+beyond the thicket. An immense flock of turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to
+get a bead on a running turkey R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled.
+So we dashed through the forest with the turkeys running ahead of us.
+Never did they come out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just
+as I was about to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This
+happened again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting
+chance, but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys
+eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.
+
+"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like streaks. I
+couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."
+
+I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying to locate
+this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C. finally, as he
+wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some game anyhow.... Where
+are we?"
+
+It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun had
+become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the forest had
+grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The matter did not
+look serious, however, until we had wandered around for another hour
+without finding anything familiar. Then we realized we were lost. This
+sort of experience had happened to R.C. and me often; nevertheless we
+did not relish it, especially the first day out. As usual on such
+occasions R.C. argued with me about direction, and then left the
+responsibility with me. I found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one
+side from the misty rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees
+and sky and clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or
+west. After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary
+brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was pleased to
+discover that the instinct of direction I had been subtly prompted to
+take, would have helped me as much as the sun.
+
+We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead so that
+we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to a deep canyon.
+In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I recognized it. "Well,
+R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and it may not. But to make sure
+we'll follow it up to the rim. Then we can locate camp." R.C. replied
+with weary disdain. "All right, my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As
+Loren says, I'm starved to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who
+bids fair to be like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and
+before meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How
+strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!
+
+When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more heavily. We
+were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept out all night. So
+I struck forward with long stride.
+
+In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I deliberated a
+moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry, from which fact I
+decided we had better take to the left-hand fork. Grass and leaves
+appeared almost as wet as running water. Soon we were soaked to the
+skin. After two miles the canyon narrowed and thickened, so that
+traveling grew more and more laborsome. It must have been four miles
+from its mouth to where it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we
+found ourselves on familiar ground, about five miles from camp.
+Exhausted and wet and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If
+I had taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver
+Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order. R.C. said
+to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of our way." Everybody
+but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture. Takahashi said in his imperfect
+English: "Go get on more better dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good
+yes!"
+
+
+V
+
+It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in camp and
+rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning I started out on
+foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon intending to go up on
+the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the flock of turkeys.
+
+I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor acquaintances
+in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for Nielsen. Copple was
+born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south of Flagstaff, and was
+one-fourth Indian. He had a good education. His whole life had been in
+the open, which fact I did not need to be told. A cowboy when only a boy
+he had also been sheepherder, miner, freighter, and everything
+Arizonian. Eighteen years he had hunted game and prospected for gold in
+Mexico. He had been a sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served
+in the army in the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous
+life; and as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be
+a mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the violence,
+the truth of the west.
+
+Copple was inclined to be loquacious--a trait that ordinarily was rather
+distasteful to me, but in his case would be an advantage. On our way
+down the canyon not only did he give me an outline of the history of his
+life, but he talked about how he had foretold the storm just ended. The
+fresh diggings of gophers--little mounds of dirt thrown up--had
+indicated the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls;
+likewise the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of
+blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant storm.
+From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the light of the
+moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they will lie in a thicket.
+If a hunter came near the deer would lower their horns flat and remain
+motionless, unless almost ridden over. In the dark of the moon deer feed
+at early morning, lie down during the day, and feed again toward sunset,
+always alert, trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.
+
+Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place where R.C.
+and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I missed it, and we
+went on farther. Copple showed me old bear sign, an old wolf track, and
+then fresh turkey tracks. The latter reminded me that we were out
+hunting. I could carry a deadly rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of
+flower-decked Elysian fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of
+the canyon slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two
+turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took a snap
+shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low, upsetting him.
+Both of them disappeared.
+
+Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting around along
+the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep enough to be classed
+as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and still, with sunlight showing
+down in rays and gleams. While hunting I always liked to sit down here
+and there to listen and watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down.
+Opposite us the rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred
+yards. We listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant
+fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.
+
+Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is movement
+that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump, woolly beast
+walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and stand in the shade.
+
+"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing. "Lion--no, big lynx,"
+he replied. I aimed and shot just a little too swiftly. Judging by the
+puff of dust my bullet barely missed the big cat. He leaped fully
+fifteen feet. Copple fired, hitting right under his nose as he alighted.
+That whirled him back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot
+went over him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another
+prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we missed him,"
+declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that first time. Biggest
+lynx I ever saw."
+
+We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success. Then we
+climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge, and crossed
+that to see down into a beautiful valley, with stately isolated pines,
+and patches of aspens, and floor of luxuriant grass. A ravine led down
+into this long park and the mouth of it held a thicket of small pines.
+Just as we got half way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high
+grass. I peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot
+before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a
+thumping--and then turkeys appeared to be running every way.
+
+Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a big gobbler
+on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!" he called out. I
+could not see what he had done, but of course I knew he had done
+execution. It roused my ire as well as a desperate ambition. Turkeys
+were running up hill everywhere. I aimed at this one, then at that.
+Again I fired. Another miss! How that gobbler ran! He might just as well
+have flown. Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and
+me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last
+one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we
+moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of
+bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a
+fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds weight.
+
+Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two turkeys, both
+shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If you hit them in the
+body you spoil them for cooking. I used to hit all mine in the head. Let
+me give you a hunch. Always pick out a turkey running straight away from
+you or straight toward you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running
+to the side."
+
+Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at least was
+consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and after a while
+heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller, but he clucked
+anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was trying to get together
+again, and some of them were approaching us. Copple continued to call.
+Then I appreciated how fascinating R.C. had found this calling game.
+Copple got answers from all around, growing closer. But presently the
+answers ceased. "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again.
+At that moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to
+peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long shot, and
+I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate him, and aimed at
+the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however, was a few feathers. Like a
+grouse he flew across the opening and was gone. We lingered there a
+while, hoping to see or hear more of the flock, but did neither. Copple
+tried to teach me how to tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a
+lesson I did not think I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied
+their legs together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of
+about fifty pounds.
+
+All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from over the
+ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we followed a rather
+meandering course, over ridge and down dale, and through grassy parks
+and stately forests, and along the slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets.
+Copple claimed to hear deer running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps
+I dragged along before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome
+the sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one deer
+that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods. Takahashi
+hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That fine! Nice fat ones!"
+
+But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to visit
+Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds. Haught had not
+been able to secure more than two new hounds, and these named Rock and
+Buck were still unknown quantities.
+
+Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was
+a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and
+bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made
+chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames.
+This fact, and the way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared
+him to me.
+
+Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him
+enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears,
+and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as
+Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever
+demonstrative except upon sight of his master. Haught told me that if
+Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a deer they would chase it till they
+dropped; accordingly he never shot at anything except bear and lion when
+he had these hounds with him.
+
+Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years
+of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her. She was a slim,
+dark brown hound with fine and very long ears. Rock, one of the new
+hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large,
+clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression. I could not
+account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the
+other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his
+color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head
+and distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any friends,
+for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had enough to eat.
+He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup
+came near him. I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would
+not have an easy task.
+
+Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
+hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year, either in
+body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp just to hear
+himself and run any kind of a trail--how he would be the first to quit
+and come back. And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a
+scared deer.
+
+To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better. Trailer
+and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run
+and howl.
+
+If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other trail
+crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack till' the bear
+got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp with porcupine quills
+in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny pups!
+
+Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black half-shepherd,
+small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent face, with the brightest
+hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his tail seemed most comical yet
+convincing. Bobby wagged only the nether end and that most emphatically.
+He would stand up to me, holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an
+appealing beggar he was! Bobby's value to Haught was not
+inconsiderable. He was the only dog Haught ever had that would herd the
+pigs. On a bear hunt Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly
+disposition, and yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of
+the pack. He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like
+to run him.
+
+All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and
+the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the
+grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I
+had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this
+pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting
+species. But there was now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We
+might kill a big grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us
+perhaps made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I
+had not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.
+
+Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the leaves had
+scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed weeks off. A storm
+and then a cold snap would help matters wonderfully, and for these we
+hoped. Indeed the weather had not settled; hardly a day had been free of
+clouds. But despite conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every
+other day, feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them
+and ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it arrived.
+
+Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and I went
+down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and windy at
+intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy. From above Horton
+Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with scarcely any touch of autumn
+colors; from below, once in it, all seemed a darker green, cool and
+damp. Water lay in all low places. The creek roared bankfull of clear
+water.
+
+The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth, through
+thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long slopes of
+manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were not fruitful this
+year as they were last, only a few having clusters of lavender-colored
+berries. The manzanita brush appeared exceptionally beautiful with its
+vivid contrasts of crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and
+smooth, shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round
+patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground, with a
+long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows fresh every
+spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow blossoms. The honey from
+the flowers of mescal and mesquite is the best to be obtained in this
+country of innumerable bees.
+
+Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and they worked
+on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon, called See Canyon.
+After a while the country grew so rough that fast riding was impossible;
+the thickets tore and clutched at us until they finally stopped the
+horses. We got off. Edd climbed to a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round,"
+he called. "I'll walk. Take my horse back." I decided to let George take
+my horse also, and I hurried to catch up with Edd.
+
+Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as strenuous as
+keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We climbed steep slopes
+and the farther we climbed the thicker grew the brush. Often we would
+halt to listen for hounds, at which welcome intervals I endeavored to
+catch my breath. We kept the hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to
+renewed endeavors. At length we got into a belt of live-oak and
+scrub-pine brush, almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and
+here we had to bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere.
+Small stones and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears
+searching for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the
+heads of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass,
+yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We climbed and
+climbed, until my back began to give me trouble. "Reckon we--bit off--a
+big hunk," remarked Edd once, and I thought he referred to the endless
+steep and brushy slopes. By and bye the hounds came back to us one by
+one, all footsore and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our
+best prospect then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the
+forest to camp.
+
+I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up with Edd.
+His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles, so that he might
+have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in my boots and they
+caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I had a burning sensation
+all over. My legs and arms ached; the rifle weighed a ton; my feet
+seemed to take hold of the ground and stick. We could not go straight up
+owing to the nature of that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub
+forests. For hours we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward.
+Only through such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge
+of the roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.
+
+At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and there, on
+a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a bear. I saw the dust
+he raised, as he piled into the thicket below the slide. What a wild
+clamor from the hounds! We got out on the rocky slope where we could see
+and kept sharp eyes roving, but the bear went straight down hill.
+Amazing indeed was it the way the hounds drew away from us. In a few
+moments they were at the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the
+course we had been so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on
+the rim, so as to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd
+distanced me on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I
+could scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet.
+My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness and
+disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition returned
+to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very day accomplished
+a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I should have been happy.
+But I had not been used to a lame back. When I reached the rim I fell
+there, and lay there a few moments, until I could get up. Then I
+followed along after Edd whose yells to the hounds I heard, and overtook
+him upon the point of a promontory. Far below the hounds were baying.
+"They're chasin' him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for
+low country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack are
+behind."
+
+I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed was the
+panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned, rippling basin
+of timber and red rocks leading away to the mountain ranges of the Four
+Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward the yellowing sunset stood out
+long escarpments for miles, and long sloping lines of black ridges,
+leading down to the basin where there seemed to be a ripple of the
+earth, a vast upset region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and
+dark.
+
+I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a matter I
+regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure of a bee-line
+during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the forest the sunset
+gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The aspens took most of the
+color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned pink, and low along the
+western horizon of the forest the light seemed golden and blue.
+
+I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just at dark, I
+was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper, a fact that
+occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain. Undoubtedly this was
+the hardest day's work I had done since my lion hunting with Buffalo
+Jones. It did not surprise me that next day I had to forget my crosscut
+saw exercise.
+
+Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame and
+starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at supper-time.
+
+Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C. and I went
+off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure. This day was
+cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We saw two bull elk, a
+cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably agile for so heavy an
+animal. Neither of these, however, were of such magnificent proportions
+as the one R.C. and I had stalked the first day out. A few minutes later
+we scared out three more cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for
+fun, and sighted my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon
+where beaver had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like
+teeth. They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe.
+Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we could not
+find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey Canyon, however, we
+found a place where beavers had dammed the brook. Many aspens were fresh
+cut, one at least two feet thick, and all the small branches had been
+cut off and dragged to the water, where I could find no further trace of
+them. The grass was matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed
+beaver tracks.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER]
+
+[Illustration: CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA]
+
+Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer, turkey and
+bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns); and if we could
+locate the mast we would find the game. He said he had once seen a herd
+of several hundred deer migrating from one section of country to
+another. Apparently this was to find new feeding grounds.
+
+[Illustration: BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON]
+
+While we were resting under a spruce I espied a white-breasted,
+blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked
+head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a
+winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several
+more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the
+bark. Some of them saw or heard him coming and escaped, but many of them
+he caught. He went about this death-dealing business with a brisk and
+cheerful manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the
+trees from bugs and worms and beetles.
+
+Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a large
+bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared to be a
+species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black colors, a round
+head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was crippled, as it hopped
+and fluttered about in the grass. I got down to catch it. Then I
+discovered it was only tame. I could approach to within a foot of
+reaching it. Once it perched upon a low snag, and peeped at me with
+little bright dark eyes, very friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat
+there within a few feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride.
+Crossing a fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses.
+But that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual, empty
+handed as far as game was concerned.
+
+I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black and gray
+bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was it then to see
+another such bird and that one right in camp. He appeared to be as tame
+as the other. He flew and hopped around camp in such a friendly manner
+that I placed a piece of meat in a conspicuous place for him. Not long
+was he in finding it. He alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a
+great rate. Doyle claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the
+Lewis and Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one
+I've seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the open
+this statement seemed rather remarkable.
+
+We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six degrees,
+and then another change indicative of unsettled weather. It rained, and
+sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too wet to hold the snow.
+
+The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on autumn
+colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of white aspens,
+golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green pines, maples a blaze of
+vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta, rose--and slopes of dull red sumac.
+These were the beginning of Indian summer days, the melancholy days,
+with their color and silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.
+
+Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back to me dim
+mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One afternoon Copple,
+R.C., and I went as far as the east side of Gentry Canyon and worked
+down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey sign. We tied our horses, and
+slipped back against the wind. R.C. took one side of a ridge, with
+Copple and me on the other, and we worked down toward where we had seen
+the sign. After half an hour of slow, stealthy glide through the forest
+we sat down at the edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon.
+The white aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The
+wind lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both
+of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on leaves.
+Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen and tight,
+expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But none came. Leaving
+our stand we slipped into the woods, careful not to make the slightest
+sound. Such careful, slow steps were certainly not accountable for the
+rapid beat of my heart. Something gray moved among the green and yellow
+leaves. I halted, and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I
+descried what I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the
+slightest sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it
+saw us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray
+hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long ears,
+and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I had ever
+beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too, but with emotion.
+Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"
+
+His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray flash. Also
+it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I exclaimed, quite loud.
+"Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't have shot----"
+
+A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of branches--then
+a big buck deer bounded onward into the thicket. I got one snap shot at
+his fleeting blurred image and missed him. We ran ahead, but to no
+avail.
+
+"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin' behind that
+brush."
+
+"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.
+
+"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where he
+jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started after you
+shot."
+
+A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the buck had
+vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps, and it amounted
+to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a magnificent leap! It
+reminded me of the story of Hart-leap Well.
+
+As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had heard the
+buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around together for an
+hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide detour, leaving me at a
+stand in the hope they might drive some turkeys my way. I sat on a log
+until almost sunset. All the pine tips turned gold and patches of gold
+brightened the ground. Jays were squalling, gray squirrels were barking,
+red squirrels were chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones
+were dropping, leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I
+did not miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs
+of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here early
+to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some meat to
+camp."
+
+But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next, giving us
+spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine deceptive in their
+promise. Camp, however, with our big camp-fire, and little tent-stoves,
+and Takahashi, would have been delightful in almost any weather.
+Takahashi was insulted, the boys told me, because I said he was born to
+be a cook. It seemed the Jap looked down upon this culinary job.
+"Cook--that woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.
+
+As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to think more of
+the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly and I grew to like him.
+The Orientals are mystics and hard to understand. But any one could see
+that here was a Japanese who was a real man. I never saw him idle. He
+resented being told what to do, and after my first offense in this
+regard I never gave him another order. He was a wonderful cook. It
+pleased his vanity to see how good an appetite I always had. When I
+would hail him: "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply:
+"Aw, turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life tasted
+anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served us. Or he
+would say: "Pan-cakes--apple dumplings--rice puddings." No one but the
+Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him how he cooked rice over an open
+fire and he said: "I know how hot--when done." Takahashi must have
+possessed an uncanny knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean,
+efficient and saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of
+American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a revelation.
+Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters. Takahashi's ambition
+was to be a rancher in California. I learned many things about him. In
+summer he went to the Imperial Valley where he picked and packed
+cantaloupes. He could stand the intense heat. He was an expert. He
+commanded the highest wage. Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him
+was another art. He had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to
+save his money. He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he
+intended to live in the United States.
+
+Takahashi had that best of traits--generosity. Whenever he made pie or
+cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me to have for my lunch
+next day. No use to try to break him of this kindly habit! He was keen
+too, and held in particular disfavor any one who picked out the best
+portions of turkey or meat. "No like that," he would say; and I heartily
+agreed with him. Life in the open brought out the little miserable
+traits of human nature, of which no one was absolutely free.
+
+I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of firewood
+he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but most of all I liked
+his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to be a joy to me. We had some
+pop corn which we sometimes popped over the camp-fire. He was fond of it
+and he said: "You eat all time--much pop corn--just so long you keep
+mouth going all same like horse--you happy." We were troubled a good
+deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but others were
+disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk, according to westerners,
+very often had hydrophobia and would bite a sleeper. I knew of several
+men dying of rabies from this bite. Copple said he had been awakened
+twice at night by skunks biting the noses of his companions in camp.
+Copple had to choke the skunks off. One of these men died. We were
+really afraid of them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he
+had been forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now
+Takahashi slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a
+skunk awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk all
+black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid. He no run.
+He act funny--then just walk off."
+
+After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One morning
+he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take picture for me
+send my wife Sadayo."
+
+So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position, as did
+all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph him and his
+skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me, and he lifted up the
+box-trap. A furry white and black cat appeared, with remarkably bushy
+tail. What a beautiful little animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same
+like cat," said Takahashi. "Kittee--kittee." It appeared that kitty was
+not in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable Jap
+with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified manner. Then
+she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and Takahashi together.
+When she started off the Jap followed and poked her with the pole. "Take
+'nother picture." But kitty suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a
+most surprising and brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I
+yelled: "Run George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful
+little beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another
+and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased her out
+of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty thing! She make
+awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I kill her sure!"
+
+The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and we reached
+it the following morning while the frost was still white and sparkling.
+We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a deer day. I'll show you a
+buck sure. Let's stick together an' walk easy."
+
+So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was so light
+as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark ravine, taking
+half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the forest! When it was
+like this I always felt as if I had discovered something new. The big
+trees loomed stately and calm, stretching a rugged network of branches
+over us. Fortunately no saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be
+abroad to warn game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill,
+seemed to come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn
+were at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
+burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us strung
+to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the wild. R.C.,
+as might have been expected, halted us with a softly whispered:
+"Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C. heard, and presently
+we moved on as before. Presently again R.C. made us pause, with a like
+result. Somehow the forest seemed unusually wild. It provoked a
+tingling expectation. The pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed
+ridge to our left, the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to
+harbor listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
+we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge ran down
+in points to where the junction of several ravines formed the head of
+Gentry Canyon.
+
+How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for deer to
+graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and white with frost
+and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no game.
+
+Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C.
+stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my
+lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then
+crouch a little. He leaned forward--his eyes had the look of a falcon.
+Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
+tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of
+my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked--I strained
+my eyes--I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been
+gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That
+instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack.
+I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
+headlong and I heard a solid thump.
+
+"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for
+another one."
+
+No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had
+plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make
+me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that
+had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots
+of its antlers.
+
+"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the
+deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat.
+Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other
+help me hang him up."
+
+
+VI
+
+I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had
+parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and
+I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full
+of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.
+
+The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length I came
+out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees. Suddenly Don Carlos
+shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for days and he appeared more
+than usually spirited. He saw or heard something. I held him in, and
+after a moment I dismounted and drew my rifle. A crashing in brush
+somewhere near at hand excited me. Peering all around I tried to locate
+cause for the sound. Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush
+accompanied by a snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don
+Carlos snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
+the sound came from overhead.
+
+I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze arrested by a
+threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty spruce. I saw a dark form
+moving against a background of blue sky. Instantly I thought it must be
+a lynx and was about to raise my rifle when a voice as from the very
+clouds utterly astounded me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I
+dreaming? But violent threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely
+assured me that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
+you--whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the swaying top of
+that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi. For a moment I could not
+find my voice. Then I shouted:
+
+"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near
+shooting you."
+
+"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.
+
+I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing
+except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully
+one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the
+Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
+
+"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
+
+Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with
+little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun--see
+squirrel. I chase him up tree--I climb high--awful high. No good.
+Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me--get away."
+
+Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he
+considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing
+at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and
+capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful
+people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to
+sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me
+that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say--labor hard--he
+very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from
+George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
+famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable eyesight that
+he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting above the highest limb
+of a tall white oak. And he was such a splendid shot that he had often
+"barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to
+explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet
+to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so
+stun it that it would fall as if dead.
+
+"Aw my goodnish--your daddy more better shot than you!" ejaculated
+Takahashi.
+
+"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash the
+long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting days--playing days of
+boyhood were the best of life. It seemed to me that one of the few
+reasons I still had for clinging to hunting was this keen, thrilling
+hark back to early days. Books first--then guns--then fishing poles--so
+ran the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.
+
+That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on the
+spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it rained--first
+a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at five-thirty a roar of hail on
+the tent. This music did not last long. At seven o'clock the thermometer
+registered thirty-four degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was
+somewhat cloudy or foggy, with promise of clearing.
+
+We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and Nielsen went
+down with them, the rest of us waited above for developments. Scarcely
+had they more than time enough to reach the gorge below when the pack
+burst into full chorus. Haught led the way then around the rough rim for
+better vantage points. I was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten
+for me--a fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a
+cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and powerful,
+though not over medium size. One splendid feature about him was that a
+saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never slipped. And another
+feature, infinitely the most attractive to me, was his easy gait. His
+trot and lope were so comfortable and swinging, like the motion of a
+rocking-chair, that I could ride him all day with pleasure. But when it
+came to chasing after hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me
+trouble. Too eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose
+the direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad jumbles
+or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried me under low
+branches and through dense thickets, and in general showed he was
+exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but ignorant of rough
+forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and got out of hearing of
+both hounds and men, and eventually found myself lost somewhere on the
+west side of See Canyon. To get out I had to turn my back to the sun,
+travel west till I came to the rim above Horton Thicket, and from there
+return to camp, arriving rather late in the afternoon.
+
+All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I was rather
+surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high state of dudgeon.
+Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning Nielsen I learned that the
+hounds had at once struck a fresh bear track in See Canyon. Nielsen and
+Edd had not followed far before they heard a hound yelping in pain. They
+found Buck caught in a bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a
+little bear cub, caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it
+had evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and
+emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she had been
+around trying to save it or minister to it. There were trappers in See
+Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers manifestly there was no
+love lost. Edd said they had as much right to trap as we had to hunt,
+but that was not the question. There had been opportunity to tell the
+Haughts about the big number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they
+did not tell it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a
+pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky brown
+coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had suffered.
+
+This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to me. Bad
+enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat, but at least
+this is a game where the deer have all the advantage. Bad indeed it may
+be to chase bear with hounds, but that is a hard, dangerous method of
+hunting which gives it some semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts
+proved to me that I ran more risks than the bears. To set traps,
+however, to hide big iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and
+clutch wild animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or
+gnawed off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun
+or club to end the miserable business--what indeed shall I call that?
+Cruel--base--cowardly!
+
+It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed interests are
+at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes was built upon the
+brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for their furs. And in this
+fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten, beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx,
+muskrat, mink, otter, were higher by double than they had ever been.
+Trappers were going to reap a rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a
+living; but is this trapping business honest, is it manly? To my
+knowledge trappers are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but
+the public eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and
+seasons furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter
+winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay there
+is no justification for censure. But the vast number of furs go to deck
+the persons of vain women. I appreciate the beautiful contrast of fair
+skin against a background of sable fur, or silver fox, or rich, black,
+velvety seal. But beautiful women would be just as beautiful, just as
+warmly clothed in wool instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not
+long ago I met a young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels,
+and I remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She
+said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared to be
+refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was a pity women
+did not know or care where furs came from. She seemed surprised. Then I
+told her about the iron-jawed, spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs
+or on the runways of game--about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its
+food, training its young to fare for themselves--about the sudden
+terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the instinctive
+fury, the violent struggle--about the foot gnawed off by the beast that
+was too fierce to die a captive--about the hours of agony, the horrible
+thirst--the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All because
+women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath the beautiful
+coat of furs, and seemed insulted.
+
+Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming somewhere back
+along the trail hopping along on three legs. I rode on down to my camp,
+and procuring a bottle of iodine I walked back in the hope of doing Buck
+a good turn. During my absence he had reached camp, and was lying under
+an aspen, apart from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and
+more distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a trick
+played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him, as he licked
+the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as kindly as I knew how. And
+finally I sat down beside him. The trap-teeth had caught his right front
+leg just above the first joint, and from the position of the teeth marks
+and the way he moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.
+Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the bone. When
+I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled ominously. He would
+have bitten me. I patted his head with one hand, and watching my chance,
+at length with the other I poured iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept
+patting him and holding his head until the iodine had become absorbed.
+Perhaps it was only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his
+distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of something
+he did not understand. That look more than ever determined me to try to
+find some way to his affections.
+
+A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a pack outfit,
+and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called Dude Creek. "Reckon
+we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude," said Haught. "Never was in
+there but I jumped bars. Good deer an' turkey country, too."
+
+Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing shape with
+the intention of starting early the following morning. But it rained on
+and off; and the day after that we could not find Haught's burros, and
+not until the fourth morning could we start. It turned out that Buck did
+not have a broken leg and had recovered surprisingly from the injury he
+had received. Aloof as he held himself it appeared certain he did not
+want to be left behind.
+
+We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had
+encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the road, but how
+strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that
+memorable trip, that I did not remember all. Usually forest or desert
+ground I have traveled over I never forget. This ride, in the middle of
+October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make
+the forest a region of golden enchantment, was one of particular delight
+to me. I had begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night
+I had suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every
+morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and straighten out.
+Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got warmed up from riding
+or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me altogether and I forgot it.
+I had given myself heroic treatment, but my reward was in sight. My
+theory that the outdoor life would cure almost any ill of body or mind
+seemed to have earned another proof added to the long list.
+
+At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road, and had
+arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the rim, down into a
+canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were to camp.
+
+[Illustration: Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR]
+
+[Illustration: R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR]
+
+Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at the
+section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to recognize the
+point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild bear! It was a
+wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared to be at the extreme
+point of a vast ten-league promontory, rising high over the basin, where
+the rim was cut into canyons as thick as teeth of a saw. They were
+notched and v-shaped. Craggy russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and
+gold-stained rocks, old crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine
+thickets, ravines and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush
+all green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire--these indeed were the heights
+and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and beauty of
+Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak thickets, where the
+bears lived, long gray slides of weathered rocks, long slanting ridges
+of pine, descending for miles out and down into the green basin, yet
+always seeming to stand high above that rolling wilderness. The sun
+stood crossed by thin clouds--a golden blaze in a golden sky--sinking to
+meet a ragged horizon line of purple.
+
+[Illustration: ANOTHER BEAR]
+
+Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the earth,
+and with another and more striking effect of this vast tilted rim of
+mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This rim was a huge wall
+of splintered rock, a colossal cliff, towering so high above the black
+basin below that ravines and canyons resembled ripples or dimples,
+darker lines of shade. And on the other side from its very edge, where
+the pine fringe began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of
+canyons opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start
+not fifty feet from the rim.
+
+Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the fingers of
+a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep, narrow, forested by
+giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by a murmuring brook, deep
+down among the many slopes, was our camp ground, and never had I seen
+one more desirable. The wind soughed in the lofty pine tops, but not a
+breeze reached down to this sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high
+slopes our camp was shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a
+canvas fly over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left
+the sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.
+
+Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black
+night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the
+great brown pines with some weird aspect. The boys put up an old tent
+for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine
+rivals. I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed. When
+R.C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled
+between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old
+dog, you keep the skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of
+a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a
+lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to
+the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except
+for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.
+
+We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the
+hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses,
+which had been hobbled and turned loose. Lee had remained with his
+father at Beaver Dam camp. For breakfast Takahashi had venison,
+biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did
+not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung
+around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough
+to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.
+Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they
+regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a fight with
+Buck.
+
+By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still
+forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses. A
+mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude
+Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds. The rest of
+us rode out to a point there to await developments. The sun had already
+flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim
+were dark in shade. I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and
+looked, and cared not for passage of time.
+
+But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right under us
+the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes. They
+worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we
+kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his
+horse. "Saw a bar," he yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an
+open ridge. Come on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest
+kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim.
+"Ride along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep
+ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."
+
+Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R.C. and
+George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim. The hounds
+could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and
+Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I
+was going. The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of
+iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the
+golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon--all these brought
+vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along
+the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past, and
+for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died
+recently. In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand,
+he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope
+to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild
+animals--he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I
+was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
+gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever
+wholly hopeless.
+
+I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached
+out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy
+points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No
+longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and
+sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled
+under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until
+I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where
+the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere
+below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of
+the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and
+promontories--a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for
+hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a
+yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another
+point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling
+from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or
+Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the
+rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my
+left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny
+black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
+and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so
+leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I
+began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.
+Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin
+to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead
+of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to
+shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse!
+Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran
+around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
+contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I
+got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his
+shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a
+horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the
+sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I
+counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die
+hollow and faint in the deep canyons!
+
+I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R.C.'s
+boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals
+I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on
+the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed lost in immensity. Then I
+rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings
+and I were weary. At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a
+pine on the rim. Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the
+squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this
+lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of
+a flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so
+that I could study them through my field glass. They were considerably
+larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast,
+with ringed or barred neck. Haught had assured me that birds of this
+description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in
+the United States. I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks
+that darkened the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.
+
+Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful
+as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of
+clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.
+
+The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was
+high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found
+Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to
+come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story.
+Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had
+seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day.
+Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to
+George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate
+any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown
+bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said:
+"Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."
+
+One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside
+us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding
+up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got
+his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with
+eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up
+thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of
+his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes
+an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around
+under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with
+him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin'
+back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side
+high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the
+bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I
+climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the
+bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across
+an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin'
+out of the brush--a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He
+was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear
+began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle
+on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us
+stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide
+was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet
+high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big
+cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an
+hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We
+heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I
+worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept
+callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He
+sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was
+smokin' shells up on the rim?"
+
+When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we
+put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a
+silvertip."
+
+How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day
+had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions.
+I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had
+many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his
+dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"
+
+After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The
+blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the
+smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as
+usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me
+where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame
+to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay
+scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in
+such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt
+at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.
+
+Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my
+experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped
+my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own
+adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the
+Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted
+to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength
+he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.
+
+One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His
+employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their
+home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his
+anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat,
+and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the
+heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money
+matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without
+assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty
+frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any
+means a small or frail girl--rather the contrary--but she appeared
+diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long
+absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he
+gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died.
+In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.
+
+Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a
+scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set
+in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway.
+Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the
+ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young
+men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates,
+schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One
+of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the
+other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the
+midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill,
+and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship
+supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of
+solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that
+contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the
+living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his
+life afterward was he seen to smile.
+
+These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch.
+How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I
+heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the
+waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?
+
+Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his
+own--a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took
+to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed
+deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange
+simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth
+a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.
+
+Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the evening
+happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long chase after a
+bear and became separated. Bill was new at the game, and he was a
+peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking to himself! Haught finally
+rode to the edge of a ridge and espied Bill under a pine in which the
+hounds had treed a bear. Bill did not hear Haught's approach, and on the
+moment he was stalking round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung
+to a branch about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more
+full-grown bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill
+had not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill was
+yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to assassinate you.
+Chased me about a hundred miles--! An' thought you'd fool me, didn't
+you? Why, I've treed more bears than you ever saw--! You needn't look at
+me like thet, 'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you
+in a minnit an' skin your black har off, I am--"
+
+"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about the other
+two bears up in the top of the tree?"
+
+Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly astounded and
+tremendously elated to discover the other two bears. He yelled and acted
+as one demented. "Three black Jaspers! I've treed you all. An' I'm
+agoin' to assassinate you all!"
+
+"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that assassinatin' make
+up your mind not to cripple any of them. You've got to shoot straight,
+so they'll be dead when they fall. If they're only crippled, they'll
+kill the hounds."
+
+Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor
+marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with bears in
+trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him to dislodge the
+bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of the tree--apparently
+unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked them, and there arose a
+terrible uproar. Haught had to run down to save his dogs. Bill was going
+to shoot right into the melee, but Haught knocked the rifle up, and
+forbid him to use it. Then Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat
+off the hounds. Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally
+disposed of two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific
+yells he turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear
+tearing the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also.
+Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate them." Bill
+slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled. "By Golly, I'll
+skin 'em anyhow!"
+
+Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to Arizona from
+Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry offered to wager
+this dog was the best bear chaser in the country. The general impression
+Henry's hound gave was that he would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught
+took his brother Henry and some other men on a bear hunt. There were
+wagers made as to the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last
+Haught's pack struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast
+behind, Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no
+attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at Henry as
+if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll show them!" He
+loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying this race with his
+master. After a while the chase grew hotter. Then Henry's half-hound ran
+ahead a little way, and came back to look up wisely, as if to say: "Not
+time yet!" After a while, when the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's
+wonderful canine let out a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack
+and took the lead in the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear
+till he treed. Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.
+
+The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what Haught
+called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between brown and
+black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear with unusually
+large teeth and very long claws. So different from ordinary bears that
+it appeared another species. The blue bear could run like a greyhound,
+and keep it up all day and all night. Its power of endurance was
+incredible. In Haught's twenty years of hunting there he had seen a
+number of blue bears and had killed two. Haught chased one all day with
+young and fast hounds. He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the
+chase. Next day Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over
+into Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again.
+Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the blue bear
+padding along as lively as ever.
+
+I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a hundred
+bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often escaped by a
+breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not the most interesting
+to me. Haught had lived a singularly elemental life. He never knew what
+to tell me, because I did not know what to ask for, so I just waited for
+stories, experiences, woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come
+when they would. Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under
+any conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to
+camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his ears,
+look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been just where
+Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!
+
+When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up over the rim
+he used to get down in the cedar country, close to the desert. Here he
+heard of a pure black antelope that was the leader of a herd of ordinary
+color, which was a grayish white. The day came when Haught saw this
+black antelope. It was a very large, beautiful stag, the most noble and
+wild and sagacious animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to
+stalk it and kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got
+even a shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never
+heard of again.
+
+By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell, and now
+began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I envied his most
+remarkable imagination. His story had to do with hunting meat for a
+mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a rifle that he never aimed
+at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a habit of gun-fighters! Once the
+camp was out of meat, and also he was out of ammunition. Only one shell
+left! He came upon a herd of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were
+small deer and he wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around
+and waited until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to
+make sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks.
+Killed the whole five in one shot!
+
+We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and completely at
+Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal tales. He was hunting
+along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out
+to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One
+morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to
+paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was
+safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate,
+but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of
+the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out its
+head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the jaguar. First to
+give in was the cat. He let go and let out a squall. But the turtle
+started to crawl off, got going strong, and dragged the jaguar into the
+sea and drowned him. With naive earnestness Copple assured his mute
+listeners that he could show them the exact spot in Sonora where this
+happened.
+
+Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his immense
+loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really was no greater
+dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us want to see the mighty
+hunter have a fall.
+
+We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself. About
+sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We all heard him
+shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his revolver. Everybody
+said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys--maybe a dozen, if Copple got two in line!"
+And we were all glad to think so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did
+not return till dark. He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a
+remarkable hard luck story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys,
+and they were rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and
+running fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all.
+Too dark--brush--trees--running like deer. Copple had a dozen excuses.
+Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away. He shot twice. The turkey
+was a knot, and he had missed even that.
+
+Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how Copple
+had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!" the day I had
+missed so many. Then I said:
+
+"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I raised my
+voice high.
+
+"Turkey number one--Nix!... Turkey number two--missed, by Gosh!...
+Turkey number three--never touched him!... Turkey number four--No!...
+Turkey number five--_Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells_!... Turkey number
+six on the log--BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"
+
+We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter, Haught,
+rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with gold I went
+down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our horses. During the
+night our stock had been chased by a lion. We had all been awakened by
+their snorting and stampeding. We found our horses scattered, the burros
+gone, and Copple's mules still squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple
+assured me that this formation of his mules on guard was an infallible
+sign of lions prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten
+years and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the
+woods.
+
+We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty feet long,
+and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks showed in places, and
+on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in the mud, were lion tracks as
+large as the crown of my hat. How sight of them made me tingle all over!
+Here was absolute proof of the prowling of one of the great cats.
+
+Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular looking tracks,
+the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed.
+Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver
+had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but
+sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and
+wary. These dams had just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut
+for food. Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the
+water, and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside
+burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.
+
+Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could put up that
+lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged it to be a big
+one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C. preferred to keep after
+bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an off day an' chase thet lion.
+Had a burro killed here a couple of years ago."
+
+So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's Canyon lay
+to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it that day. Edd and
+Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple and I followed shortly
+afterward with the intention of descending mid-way, and then working
+along the ridge crests and promontories. The other boys remained on the
+rim to take up various stands as occasion called for.
+
+I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim. They were
+grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that made them so hard
+to travel. Right off, half way down, we started a herd of bucks. The
+noise they made sounded like cattle. We found tracks of half a dozen.
+"Lots of deer under the rim," declared Copple, his eyes gleaming.
+"They're feedin' on acorns. Here's where you'll get your big buck."
+After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close
+at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush.
+
+Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes
+toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had to cross gravel
+patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and at last, gaining the
+bench we went through the pine grove, out to a manzanita thicket, to a
+rocky point where the ledges were toppling and dangerous. The stand here
+afforded a magnificent view. We were now down in the thick of this
+sloped and canyoned and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof
+from it. The dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to
+listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black notch
+below us. We watched and listened. And presently across open patches we
+saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck following them. Thus were
+my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed. Copple yelled down to Edd that
+some of the hounds were running deer, but apparently Edd was too far
+away to hear.
+
+Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn, calling in
+the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint all of us above that
+he was going down around the point to drive the next canyon. Copple and
+I had to choose between climbing back to the rim or trying to cross the
+slopes and head the gorges, and ascend the huge ridge that separated
+Pyle's Canyon from the next canyon. I left the question to Copple, with
+the result that we stayed below.
+
+We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim we felt so
+far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in places and slippery
+in others, with deep cuts and patches of manzanita. No stranger was I to
+this beautiful treacherous Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike
+of it almost equal to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty,
+dry, and had begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were
+what continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive--that looked
+short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered miles in our
+detours and we had to travel fast because we knew Edd could round the
+base of the lower points in quick time.
+
+Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an enormous
+bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear trail. This
+track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as Haught says,"
+declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard the dogs an' got
+movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He was walkin'."
+
+I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling the feel of
+my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse the hunter in any
+man. We made sure how fresh this track was by observing twigs and sprigs
+of manzanita just broken. The wood was green, and wet with sap. Old
+Bruin had not escaped our eyes any too soon. We followed this bear
+trail, evidently one used for years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust
+a big, heavy, old grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough
+country! This fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail
+led gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and
+heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle, and rose
+from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side, rose to a bare,
+round point of gray rock, a landmark, a dome-shaped tower where the gods
+of that wild region might have kept their vigil.
+
+Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where it
+crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a canyon so deep
+and wild that it was purple. This saddle was really a remarkable
+place--a natural trail and outlet and escape for bears traveling from
+one canyon to another. Our bear tracks showed fresh, and we saw where
+they led down a steep, long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a
+dense black thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on
+each side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for a
+hunter to wait and watch.
+
+We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often
+it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the
+hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye
+Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed
+heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing
+bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds.
+Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet.
+After a while we heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We
+could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or
+more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could
+have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all
+matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks
+showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and
+weathered slides.
+
+Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up
+the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. "Let's go
+farther up," he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid
+stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us;
+to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious,
+wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes
+back and forth.
+
+Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite
+slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing
+up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a
+task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from
+an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the
+Haughts. Presently some one high on the rim answered with like yells.
+The chase was growing hotter.
+
+"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly. And I
+agreed with him.
+
+Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.
+
+"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple, with
+animation.
+
+"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.
+
+"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now look
+sharp!"
+
+I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another shot from
+above, farther off and from a different rifle, augmented our stirring
+expectation.
+
+Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down under and
+along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to keep up with him.
+We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard the spang of Haught's.30
+Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse voice bawled out: "He's goin' to
+the left--to the left!" That sent us right about face, to climbing,
+scrambling, running and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle,
+where we arrived breathless and eager.
+
+Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top of the
+bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon, climbing a
+little. Copple yelled with all his might: "Where's the bear?"
+
+"Bar everywhar!" pealed back Haught's stentorian voice. How the echoes
+clapped!
+
+Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout. "_Wehow_! I see
+him.... What a whopper!" He threw up his rifle:
+_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_.
+
+His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I strained my
+eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. "Where? Where?" I cried, wildly.
+
+"There!" shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the canyon. "He's
+goin' over the bench--above Edd.... Now he's out of sight. Watch just
+over Edd. He'll cross that bench, go round the head of the little
+canyon, an' come out on the other side, under the bare bluff.... Watch
+sharp-right by that big spruce with the dead top.... He's a grizzly an'
+as big as a horse".
+
+I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: "Ben, you saw game first
+to-day". Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry and grizzled, huge
+and round, moved out of the shadow under the spruce and turned to go
+along the edge in the open sunlight.
+
+"Oh! look at him!" I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran all over me
+and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear I could see him
+through the circle of my peep sight, but when I moved the bead of the
+front sight upon him it almost covered him up. The distance was
+far--more than a thousand yards--over half a mile--we calculated
+afterward. But I tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape
+and fired till my rifle was empty.
+
+Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. "You watch while I shoot," he said. "Tell
+me where I'm hittin'."
+
+Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I saw a puff
+of dust. "Low, Ben!" Spang rang his rifle. "High!" Again he shot, wide
+this time. He emptied his magazine. "Smoke him now!" he shouted,
+gleefully. "I'll watch while you shoot."
+
+"It's too far, Ben," I replied, as I jammed the last shell in the
+receiver.
+
+"No--no. It's only we don't hold right. Aim a little coarse," said
+Copple. "Gee, ain't he some bear! 'No scared tall' as the Jap says....
+He's one of the old sheep-killers. He'll weigh half a ton. Smoke him
+now!"
+
+My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most consumed with
+admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was he afraid. He walked
+along the rough places, trotted along the ledges, and here and there he
+halted to gaze below him. I waited for one of these halts, aimed a
+trifle high, and fired. The grizzly made a quick, angry movement and
+then jumped up on a ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.
+
+"You hit close that time," yelled Ben. "Hold the same way--a little
+coarser."
+
+My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my third,
+hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge, covered him
+with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and down the step he
+had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of brush. I shot into that. We
+heard my bullet crack the twigs. But it routed him out, and then my last
+shot hit far under him.
+
+Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the Haughts:
+"Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He's just above you--under that bluff."
+
+The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their power, but
+they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more shots, quick, yet
+deliberate, and he got through before I had reloaded; and as I began my
+third magazine Copple was so swift in reloading that his first shot
+mingled with my second. How we made the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed
+down from the rim. Somewhere from the purple depths below Nielsen's
+giant's voice rolled up. The Haughts opposite answered with their deep,
+hoarse yells. Old Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young
+hounds let out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian
+cry, high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot
+and screech at one and the same time.
+
+"Hurry, Ben," I said, as I finished my third set of five shots, the
+last shot of which was my best and knocked dirt in the face of the
+grizzly.
+
+Again he reared. This time he appeared to locate our direction. Above
+the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and echoes I imagined I heard the
+grizzly roar. He was now getting farther along the base of the bluff,
+and I saw that he would escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My
+fingers were all thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last
+chance had fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his
+magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking the
+base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap
+forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had
+reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The old grizzly slowed
+up, and looked across, and wagged his huge head.
+
+"My gun's on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still
+more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger. The grizzly gave a
+spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a
+ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed like a lassoed
+elephant.
+
+"Ben, you hit him!" I yelled, excitedly.
+
+"Only made him mad. He's not hurt.... See, he's up again.... Will you
+look at that!"
+
+The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge furry
+ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an open slide
+where he unrolled, and stretched into a run. Copple got two more shots
+before he was out of sight.
+
+"Gone!" ejaculated Copple. "An' we never fetched him!... He ain't hurt.
+Did you see him pile down an' roll off that slope?... Let's see. I got
+twenty-three shots at him. How many had you?"
+
+"I had fifteen."
+
+"Say, it was some fun, wasn't it--smokin' him along there? But we ought
+to have fetched the old sheep-killer.... Wonder what's happened to the
+other fellows."
+
+We looked about us. Not improbably the exciting moments had been few in
+number, yet they seemed long indeed. The Haughts had gotten to the top
+of the bluff, and were tearing through the brush toward the point Copple
+had designated. They reached it too late.
+
+"Where is he?" yelled Edd.
+
+"Gone!" boomed Copple. "Runnin' down the canyon. Call the dogs an' go
+down after him."
+
+When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of the pups
+and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them. Old Dan and old Tom were
+baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could be heard yelping
+somewhere else. Bear trails seemingly were abundant near our
+whereabouts. Presently the Haughts disappeared at the back of the bench
+where the old grizzly had gone down, and evidently they put the two
+hounds on his trail.
+
+"That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this ridge,"
+declared Copple. "We want to be there."
+
+So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side of the
+ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down along the slope.
+Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than riding after Edd and
+George. When soon we reached a manzanita thicket I could no longer keep
+Copple in sight. He was so powerful that he just crashed through, but I
+had to worm my way, and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a
+tight-rope performer. Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was
+the worst.
+
+In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the dome-topped end
+of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently working back up the
+canyon. There was nothing for us to do but return to our stand at the
+saddle. Copple hurried faster than ever. But I had begun to tire and I
+could not keep up with him. But as I had no wild cravings to meet that
+old grizzly face to face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did
+manage by desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight. When I reached
+our stand I was wet and exhausted. After the hot, stifling, dusty glare
+of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush, the cool
+shade was a welcome change.
+
+Somewhere all the hounds were baying. Not for some time could we locate
+the Haughts. Finally with the aid of my glass we discovered them perched
+high upon the bluff above where our grizzly had gone round. It appeared
+that Edd was pointing across the canyon and his father was manifesting a
+keen interest. We did not need the glass then to tell that they saw a
+bear. Both leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.
+Then they stood like statues.
+
+"I'll go down into the thicket," said Copple. "Maybe I can get a shot.
+An' anyway I want to see our grizzly's tracks." With that he started
+down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather than walked, and
+soon was out of my sight. After that I heard him crashing through
+thicket and brush. Soon this sound ceased. The hounds, too, had quit
+baying and the wind had lulled. Not a rustle of a leaf! All the hunters
+were likewise silent. I enjoyed a lonely hour there watching and
+listening, not however without apprehensions of a bear coming along.
+Certain I was that this canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been
+full of bears.
+
+At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite slope. The
+way he toiled along proved how rough was the going. I watched him
+through my glasses, and was again impressed with the strange difference
+between the semblance of distance and the reality. Every few steps
+Copple would halt to rest. He had to hold on to the brush and in the
+bare places where he could not reach a bush he had to dig his heels into
+the earth to keep from sliding down. In time he ascended to the place
+where our grizzly had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the
+Haughts, high above him. They answered, and soon disappeared on the far
+side of the bluff. Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of
+yellow rock. Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and then a
+wild clamor of the hounds. Some of the pack had been put on the trail of
+our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther away.
+
+This was too much for me. I decided to go down into the canyon.
+Forthwith I started. It was easy to go down! As a matter of fact it was
+hard not to slide down like a streak. That long, dark, narrow aisle
+between the spruces had no charm for me anyway. Suppose I should meet a
+bear coming up as I was sliding down! I sheered off and left the trail,
+and also Copple's tracks. This was a blunder. I came out into more open
+slope, but steeper, and harder to cling on. Ledges cropped out, cliffs
+and ravines obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to
+help me much. Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran
+down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful ones. It
+was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces. The lower down I
+got the smaller and more numerous the trees. I could see where they left
+off to the dense thicket that choked the lower part of the v-shaped
+canyon. And I was amazed at the size and density of that jungle of scrub
+oaks, maples and aspens. From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and
+gold and green, with bronze tinge.
+
+Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could see the
+dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little particles, the
+springing erect of bent grasses. In some places big sections of earth, a
+yard wide had slipped under the feet of this particular bear. He
+appeared to be working down. Right then I wanted to go up! But I could
+not climb out there. I had to go down. Soon I was under low-spreading,
+dense spruces, and I had to hold on desperately to keep from sliding.
+All the time naturally I kept a keen lookout for a bear. Every stone and
+tree trunk resembled a bear. I decided if I met a grizzly that I would
+not annoy him on that slope. I would say: "Nice bear, I won't hurt you!"
+Still the situation had some kind of charm. But to claim I was not
+frightened would not be strictly truthful. I slid over the trail of that
+bear into the trail of another one, and under the last big spruce on
+that part of the slope I found a hollow nest of pine needles and leaves,
+and if that bed was not still warm then my imagination lent considerable
+to the moment.
+
+Beyond this began the edge of the thicket. It was small pine at first,
+so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as dark as
+twilight. The ground was a slant of brown pine needles, so slippery,
+that if I could not have held on to trees and branches I never would
+have kept my feet. In this dark strip I had more than apprehensions.
+What a comfortable place to encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly
+bear! The manzanita thicket was preferable. But as Providence would have
+it I did not encounter one.
+
+Soon I worked or wormed out of the pines into the thicket of scrub oaks,
+maples and aspens. The change was welcome. Not only did the slope
+lengthen out, but the light changed from gloom to gold. There was half a
+foot of scarlet, gold, bronze, red and purple leaves on the ground, and
+every step I made I kicked acorns about to rustle and roll. Bear sign
+was everywhere, tracks and trails and beds and scratches. I kept going
+down, and the farther down I got the lighter it grew, and more
+approaching a level. One glade was strangely luminous and beautiful with
+a blending of gold and purple light made by the sun shining through the
+leaves overhead down upon the carpet of leaves on the ground. Then I
+came into a glade that reminded me of Kipling's moonlight dance of the
+wild elephants. Here the leaves and fern were rolled and matted flat,
+smooth as if done by a huge roller. Bears and bears had lolled and slept
+and played there. A little below this glade was a place, shady and cool,
+where a seep of water came from under a bank. It looked like a herd of
+cattle had stamped the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little
+ones no longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot
+long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This little
+spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of the bear pen in
+the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen for sight of bear
+trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a little too much. I thought
+it was too much because the place was lonely and dark and absolutely
+silent. I went on down to the gully that ran down the middle of the
+canyon. It was more open here. The sun got through, and there were some
+big pines.
+
+I could see the bluff that the Haughts had climbed so laboriously, and
+now I understood why they had been so slow. It was straight up, brush
+and jumbled rock, and two hundred feet over my head. Somewhere above
+that bluff was the bluff where our bear had run along.
+
+I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to deceive me, but
+I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed unwise for me to go on
+down the canyon, for if I did not meet the men I would find myself lost.
+As it was I would have my troubles climbing out.
+
+I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had come down,
+hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and not so vastly
+inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse! It was thicker,
+darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if possible, actually more bear
+sign. I had to pull myself up by holding to the trees and branches. I
+had to rest every few steps. I had to watch and listen all the time.
+Half-way up the trunks of the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent
+down-hill. They curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood
+upright. And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely
+almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course caused
+by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more interesting if
+I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter and wetter than I had
+been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with the labor and worry and
+exhaustion, my apprehensions had increased. They increased until I had
+to confess that I was scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the
+leaves somewhere below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a
+bear. I would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear
+coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score, so had
+Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had Haught. "Don't
+never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if you do he'll just
+roll up an' pile down on you!"
+
+I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to burst.
+Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding down I got
+desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would happen along to make an
+end to my misery.
+
+It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which constituted
+the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past three when finally
+I reached the saddle where we had shot at the grizzly. I rested as long
+as I dared. I had still a long way to go up that ridge to the rim, and
+how did I know whether or not I could surmount it.
+
+However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit. Then I
+started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the open, high above
+the canyons, and the vast basin still farther below, yet far indeed
+under the pine-fringed rim above. This climb was all over stone. The
+ridge was narrow-crested, yellow, splintered rock, with a few dwarf
+pines and spruces and an occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a
+sound that I did not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and
+the other hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an
+hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course
+that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high
+backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me.
+Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out. It would be a task
+equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to
+realize that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the
+task.
+
+Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the hour. This
+was one of my especial joys of the open--to be alone high on some
+promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery. The sun was still an hour
+from setting, and it had begun to soften, to grow intense, and more
+golden. There were clouds and lights that promised a magnificent sunset.
+
+So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone loose and
+watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down, to make the
+dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually start an avalanche
+that would roar down into the canyon.
+
+The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black ridges and
+canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great mountain ranges
+enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed promontories of the
+rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood out over the void. The colors
+of autumn gleamed under the cliffs, everywhere patches of gold and long
+slants of green and spots of scarlet and clefts of purple.
+
+The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had to step
+up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body. My rifle grew
+to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of lead around my waist.
+If I had been hot and wet below in the thicket I wondered what I grew on
+the last steps of this ridge. Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen
+pleasure. I did not analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be
+there.
+
+The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable, all grown
+over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by hauling myself
+up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges of rock there, and
+holding to the brush, at last, panting and spent, I reached the top.
+
+I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
+unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep and
+ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side of the
+ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around. There was
+George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own horse Stockings.
+
+Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and scarlet
+thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will seem, that the
+first object I clearly distinguished was a big black bear standing in
+an open aisle at the upper reach of the thicket close to the cliff. He
+shone black as shiny coal. He was looking down into the thicket, as if
+listening to the baying hound.
+
+I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement,
+and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his
+shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped,
+and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner
+of gray ledge.
+
+"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day--to get a
+chance like that--and miss!"
+
+All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I
+could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden
+ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of
+color--Coleridge's yellow lightning--and it extended to a bank of cloud
+that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of
+purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
+exquisitely flecked with gold.
+
+Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
+transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back
+to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located
+the spot. I just about had strength enough left to straddle him. And
+presently through the twilight shadows I caught a bright glimmer of our
+camp-fire. Supper was ready; Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the
+men were waiting for me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As
+I sat to a bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions
+seemed absolutely satisfying.
+
+George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard and seen
+a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he had overshot
+and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking a slide some four
+hundred yards down the canyon slope, and forgetting that he had a heavy
+close-range shell in his rifle instead of one of high trajectory, he had
+aimed accordingly, to undershoot half a foot and thus lose his
+opportunity. Nielsen had been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere
+he heard yells and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud
+rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd told of
+the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they had shot at the
+grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear had rolled around in his
+bed across the canyon. But the hounds got too tired to hold the trails
+late in the day. And lastly Edd said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the
+grizzly I could hear the bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure
+scared stiff for fear you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't
+scared. He said, 'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"
+
+When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's adventures
+my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was wanting on the moment
+except that my boy Romer was not there to hear.
+
+"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint
+satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from brush,
+surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we seen five bars.
+Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some of them big fellars,
+too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of this canyon. When Old Dan
+opened up first off I wanted Edd to climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin'
+an' we lost our chance. Fer pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush.
+My, but thet bar was rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild
+steer, an' he ran past us close--not a hundred yards. I never heard a
+heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an' thet
+bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the grizzly thet
+you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but Edd an' I lammed a
+couple after him jest for luck. One of the pups was nippin' his heels.
+Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet was all of thet. We plumb busted
+ourselves gettin' on top of the bench to head off your bar. Only we
+hadn't time. Then we worried along around to the top of thet higher
+bluff an' there I was so played-out I thought my day had come. We kept
+our eyes peeled, an' pretty soon I spied a big brown bar actin' queer in
+an open spot across the canyon. Edd seen him too, an' we argued about
+what thet bar was doin'. He lay in a small open place at the foot of a
+spruce. He wagged his head slow an' he made as if to roll over, an' he
+stretched his paws, an' acted shore queer. Edd said: 'Thet bar's
+crippled. He's been shot by one of the boys, an' he's tryin' to get up.'
+But I shore didn't exactly agree with Edd. So I was for watchin' him
+some more. He looked like a sick bar--raisin' his head so slow an'
+droppin' it so slow an' sort of twistin' his body. He looked like his
+back had been broke an' he was tryin' to get up, but somehow I couldn't
+believe thet. Then he lay still an' Edd swore he was dead. Shore I got
+almost to believin' thet myself, when he waked up. An' then the old
+scoundrel slid around lazy like a torn cat by the fire, and sort of
+rolled on his back an' stretched. Next he slapped at himself with his
+paws. If he wasn't sick he was shore actin' queer with thet canyon full
+of crackin' guns an' bayin' hounds an' yellin' men. I begun to get
+suspicious. Shore he must be a dyin' bear. So I said to Edd: 'Let's bast
+him a couple just fer luck.' Wal, when we shot up jumped thet sick bar
+quicker'n you could wink. An' he piled into the thicket while I was
+goin' down after another shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper
+never heard the racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed
+in thet sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like
+a kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore near
+bein' fooled. The old Jasper! We'll assassinate him fer thet!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+Five more long arduous days we put in chasing bears under the rim from
+Pyle's Canyon to Verde Canyon. In all we started over a dozen bears. But
+I was inclined to think that we chased the same bears over and over from
+one canyon to another. The boys got a good many long-range shots, which,
+however, apparently did no damage. But as for me, the harder and farther
+I tramped and the longer I watched and waited the less opportunity had I
+to shoot a bear.
+
+This circumstance weighed heavily upon the spirits of my comrades. They
+wore their boots out, as well as the feet of the hounds, trying to chase
+a bear somewhere near me. And wherever I stayed or went there was the
+place the bears avoided. Edd and Neilsen lost flesh in this daily toil.
+Haught had gloomy moments. But as for me the daily ten-or fifteen-mile
+grind up and down the steep craggy slopes had at last trained me back to
+my former vigorous condition, and I was happy. No one knew it, not even
+R.C., but the fact was I really did not care in the least whether I shot
+a bear or not. Bears were incidental to my hunting trip. I had not a
+little secret glee over the praise accorded me by Copple and Haught and
+Nielsen, who all thought that the way I persevered was remarkable. They
+would have broken their necks to get me a bear. At times R.C. when he
+was tired fell victim to discouragement and he would make some caustic
+remark: "I don't know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle
+because it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise
+up and swipe you one!"
+
+Takahashi passed from concern to grief over what he considered my bad
+luck: "My goodnish! No see bear to-day?... Maybe more better luck
+to-morrow." If I could have had some of Takahashi's luck I would
+scarcely have needed to leave camp. He borrowed Nielsen's 30-40 rifle
+and went hunting without ever having shot it. He rode the little
+buckskin mustang, that, remarkable to state, had not yet thrown him or
+kicked him. And on that occasion he led the mustang back to camp with a
+fine two-point buck on the saddle. "Camp need fresh meat," said the Jap,
+with his broad smile. "I go hunt. Ride along old road. Soon nice fat
+deer walk out from bush. Twenty steps away--maybe. I get off. I no want
+kill deer so close, so I walk on him. Deer he no scared. He jump off few
+steps--stick up his ears--look at horse all same like he thought him
+deer too. I no aim gun from shoulder. I just shoot. No good. Deer he
+run. I aim then--way front of him--shoot--deer he drop right down
+dead.... Aw, easy to get deer!"
+
+I would have given a great deal to have been able to describe Haught's
+face when the Jap finished his story of killing that deer. But such feat
+was beyond human ingenuity. "Wal," ejaculated the hunter, "in all my
+days raslin' round with fools packin' guns I never seen the likes of
+thet. No wonder the Japs licked the Russians!" This achievement of
+Takahashi's led me to suggest his hunting bear with us. "Aw sure--I kill
+bear too," he said. Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never
+made detours. He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple
+and Edd were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a
+wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man made,
+carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed as a goat,
+perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I took occasion to
+ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain climbing in Japan. "Aw
+sure. I have father own whole mountain more bigger here. I climb
+high--saw wood. Leetle boy so big." And he held his hand about a foot
+from the ground. Thus for me every day brought out some further
+interesting or humorous or remarkable feature pertaining to Takahashi.
+
+The next day added to the discouragement of my party. We drove Verde
+Canyon and ran the dogs into a nest of steel-traps. Big Foot was caught
+in one, and only the remarkable size and strength of his leg saved it
+from being broken. Nielsen found a poor, miserable, little fox in a
+trap, where it had been for days, and was nearly dead. Edd found a dead
+skunk in another. He had to call the hounds in. We returned to camp.
+That night was really the only cheerless one the men spent around the
+fire. They did not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a
+locality there could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched
+upon the countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. I let them
+all have their say. Finally Haught spoke up: "Wal, fellars, I'm
+figgerin' hard an' I reckon here's my stand. We jest naturally have to
+get Doc an' his brother a bear apiece. Shore I expected we'd get 'em a
+couple. Now, them traps we seen are all small. We didn't run across no
+bear traps. An' I reckon we can risk the dogs. We'll shore go back an'
+drive Verde Canyon. We can't do no worse than break a leg for a dog. I'd
+hate to see thet happen to Old Dan or Tom. But we'll take a chance."
+
+After that there fell a moment's silence. I could see from Edd's face
+what a serious predicament this was. Nothing was plainer than his
+fondness for the hounds. Finally he said: "Sure. We'll take a chance."
+Their devotion to my interest, their simple earnestness, warmed me to
+them. But not for all the bears under the rim would I have been
+wittingly to blame for Old Dan or Old Tom breaking a leg.
+
+"Men, I've got a better plan," I said. "We'll let the bears here rest
+for a spell. Supplies are about gone. Let's go back to Beaver Dam camp
+for a week or so. Rest up the hounds. Maybe we'll have a storm and a
+cold snap that will improve conditions. Then we'll come back here. I'll
+send Haught down to buy off the trappers. I'll pay them to spring their
+traps and let us have our hunt without risk of the hounds."
+
+Instantly the men brightened. The insurmountable obstacles seemed to
+melt away. Only Haught demurred a little at additional and unreasonable
+expense for me. But I cheered him over this hindrance, and the last part
+of that evening round the camp-fire was very pleasant.
+
+The following morning we broke camp, and all rode off, except Haught and
+his son George, who remained to hunt a strayed burro. "Reckon thet lion
+eat him. My best burro. He was the one your boy was always playin' with.
+I'm goin' to assassinate thet lion."
+
+On the way back to Beaver Dam camp I happened to be near Takahashi when
+he dismounted to shoot at a squirrel. Returning to get back in the
+saddle the Jap forgot to approach the mustang from the proper side.
+There was a scuffle between Takahashi and the mustang as to which of
+them should possess the bridle. The Jap lost this argument. Edd had to
+repair the broken bridle. I watched Takahashi and could see that he did
+not like the mustang any better than the mustang liked him. Soon the
+struggle for supremacy would take place between this ill assorted rider
+and horse. I rather felt inclined to favor the latter; nevertheless it
+was only fair to Takahashi to admit that his buckskin-colored mustang
+had some mean traits.
+
+In due time I arrived at our permanent camp, to be the last to get in.
+Lee and his father welcomed us as familiar faces in a strange land. As I
+dismounted I heard heavy thuds and cracks accompanied by fierce
+utterances in a foreign tongue. These sounds issued from the corral.
+
+"I'll bet the Jap got what was coming to him," declared Lee.
+
+We all ran toward the corral. A bunch of horses obstructed our view, and
+we could not see Takahashi until we ran round to the other side. The Jap
+had the buckskin mustang up in a corner and was vigorously whacking him
+with a huge pole. Not by any means was the mustang docile. Like a mule,
+he kicked. "Hey George," yelled Lee, "don't kill him! What's the
+matter?"
+
+Takahashi slammed the mustang one parting blow, which broke the club,
+and then he turned to us. We could see from dust and dirt on his person
+that he had lately been in close relation to the earth. Takahashi's face
+was pale except for a great red lump on his jaw. The Jap was terribly
+angry. He seemed hurt, too. With a shaking hand he pointed to the bruise
+on his jaw.
+
+"Look what he do!" exclaimed Takahashi. "He throw me off!... He kick me
+awful hard! I kill him sure next time."
+
+Lee and I managed to conceal our mirth until our irate cook had gotten
+out of hearing. "Look--what--he--do!" choked Lee, imitating Takahashi.
+Then Lee broke out and roared. I had to join him. I laughed till I
+cried. My family and friends severely criticise this primitive trait of
+mine, but I can not help it. Later I went to Takahashi and asked to
+examine his jaw, fearing it might have been broken. This fear of mine,
+however, was unfounded. Moreover the Jap had recovered from his pain and
+anger. "More better now," he said, with a grin. "Maybe my fault anyhow."
+
+Next day we rested, and the following morning was so fine and clear and
+frosty that we decided to go hunting. We rode east on the way to See
+Lake through beautiful deep forest.
+
+I saw a deer trotting away into the woods. I jumped off, jerked out my
+gun, and ran hard, hoping to see him in an opening. Lo! I jumped a herd
+of six more deer, some of them bucks. They plunged everywhere. I tried
+frantically to get my sights on one. All I could aim at was bobbing
+ears. I shot twice, and of course missed. R.C. shot four times, once at
+a running buck, and three at a small deer that he said was flying!
+
+Here Copple and Haught caught up with us. We went on, and turned off the
+road on the blazed trail to See Lake. It was pretty open forest, oaks
+and scattered pines, and a few spruce. The first park we came to was a
+flat grassy open, with places where deer licked the bare earth. Copple
+left several pounds of salt in these spots. R.C. and I went up to the
+upper end where he had seen deer before. No deer this day! But saw three
+turkeys, one an old gobbler. We lost sight of them.
+
+Then Copple and R.C. went one way and Haught and I another. We went
+clear to the rim, and then circled around, and eventually met R.C. and
+Copple. Together we started to return. Going down a little draw we found
+water, and R.C. saw where a rock had been splashed with water and was
+still wet. Then I saw a turkey track upon this rock. We slipped up the
+slope, with me in the lead. As I came out on top, I saw five big
+gobblers feeding. Strange how these game birds thrilled me! One saw me
+and started to run. Like a streak! Another edged away into pines. Then I
+espied one with his head and neck behind a tree and he was scratching
+away in the pine needles. I could not see much of him, but that little
+was not running, so I drew down upon him, tried to aim fine, and fired.
+He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and needles flying.
+Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted into a thicket.
+
+Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an ostrich in
+the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him. In vain!
+
+R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught and I went
+the other way. We could find no trace of ours. And we returned to our
+horses.
+
+Presently we heard shots. One--two--three--pause--then several more. And
+finally more, to a total number of fifteen. I could not stand that and I
+had to hurry back into the woods. I saw one old gobbler running wildly
+around as if lost, but I did not shoot at him because he seemed to be in
+line with the direction which R.C. and Copple had taken. I should have
+run after him until he went some other way.
+
+I could not find the hunters, and returned to our resting place, which
+they had reached ahead of me. They had a turkey each, gobblers about two
+years old Copple said.
+
+R.C. told an interesting story of how he had run in the direction the
+two turkeys had taken, and suddenly flushed thirty or forty more, some
+big old gobblers, but mostly young. They scattered and ran. He followed
+as fast as he could, shooting a few times. Copple could not keep up with
+him, but evidently had a few shots himself. R.C. chased most of the
+flock across several small canyons, till he came to a deep canyon. Here
+he hoped to make a killing when the turkeys ran up the far slope. But
+they flew across! And he heard them clucking over there. He crossed, and
+went on cautiously. Once he saw three turkey heads sticking above a log.
+Wise old gobblers! They protected their bodies while they watched for
+him. He tried to get sidewise to them but they ran off. Then he followed
+until once more he heard clucking.
+
+Here he sat down, just beyond the edge of a canyon, and began to call
+with his turkey wing. It thrilled him to hear his calls answered on all
+sides. Here was a wonderful opportunity. He realized that the turkeys
+were mostly young and scattered, and frightened, and wanted to come
+together. He kept calling, and as they neared him on all sides he felt
+something more than the zest of hunting. Suddenly Copple began to shoot.
+Spang! Spang! Spang! R.C. saw the dust fly under one turkey. He heard
+the bullet glance. The next shot killed a turkey. Then R.C. yelled that
+he was no turkey! Then of that scattering flock he managed to knock over
+one for himself.
+
+Copple had been deceived by the call of an amateur. That flattered R.C.,
+but he was keenly disappointed that Copple had spoiled the situation.
+
+During the day the blue sky was covered by thin flying clouds that
+gradually thickened and darkened. The wind grew keener and colder, and
+veered to the southwest. We all said storm. There was no sunset Darker
+clouds rolled up, obliterating the few stars.
+
+We went to bed. Long after that I heard the swell and roar and crash and
+lull of the wind in the pines, a sound I had learned to love in Buckskin
+Forest with Buffalo Jones. At last I fell asleep.
+
+Sometime in the night I awoke. A fine rain was pattering on the tent.
+It grew stronger. After a while I went to sleep again. Upon awakening I
+found that the storm had struck with a vengeance. It was dull gray
+daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with rain and snow.
+
+I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen the ground
+ropes, and found that it was nipping cold. My fingers ached. The storm
+increased, and then we fully appreciated the tent with stove. The rain
+roared on the tent roof, and all morning the wind increased, and the air
+grew colder. I hoped it would turn to snow.
+
+Soon indeed we were storm bound. On the third day the wind reached a
+very high velocity. The roar in the pines was stupendous. Many times I
+heard the dull crash of a falling tree. With the ground saturated by the
+copious rain, and the fury of the storm blast, a great many trees were
+felled. That night it rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now
+low, now vigorously. After morning snow began to fall. But it did not
+lay long. After a while it changed to sleet. At times the dark,
+lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and to show
+a patch of blue. These last however were soon obscured by the scudding
+gray pall. Every now and then a little shower of rain or sleet pattered
+on the tents. We looked for a clearing up.
+
+That night about eight o'clock the clouds vanished and stars shone. In
+the night the wind rose and roared. In the morning all was dark, cloudy,
+raw, cold. But the wind had died out, and there were spots of blue
+showing. These spots enlarged as the morning advanced, and about nine
+the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified the forest. "Bright sunny days
+will soon come again!"
+
+It was good to have hope and belief in that.
+
+All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good shape. Don
+lost considerable weight. He had never before been left with hobbled
+feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm of rain, sleet and snow.
+He had cut himself upon brush, and altogether had fared poorly. He
+showed plainly that he had been neglected. Don was the only horse I had
+ever known of that did not welcome the wilderness and companionship with
+his kind.
+
+We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and started back
+to Dude Creek. It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with a gale from the
+north, such a day as I could never have endured had I not become
+hardened. As it was I almost enjoyed wind and cold. What a
+transformation in the woods! The little lakes were all frozen over;
+pines, moss, grass were white with frost. The sear days had come. Not a
+leaf showed in the aspen and maple thickets. The scrub oaks were shaggy
+and ragged, gray as the rocks. From the rim the slopes looked steely and
+dark, thinned out, showing the rocks and slides.
+
+When we reached our old camp in Barber Shop Canyon we were all glad to
+see Haught's lost burro waiting for us there. Not a scratch showed on
+the shaggy lop-eared little beast. Haught for once unhobbled a burro and
+set it free without a parting kick. Nielsen too had observed this
+omission on Haught's part. Nielsen was a desert man and he knew burros.
+He said prospectors were inclined to show affection for burros by sundry
+cuffs and kicks. And Nielsen told me a story about Haught. It seemed the
+bear hunter was noted for that habit of kicking burros. Sometimes he was
+in fun and sometimes, when burros were obstinate, he was in earnest.
+Upon one occasion a big burro stayed away from camp quite a long
+time--long enough to incur Haught's displeasure. He needed the burro and
+could not find it, and all he could do was to hunt for it. Upon
+returning to camp there stood the big gray burro, lazy and fat, just as
+if he had been perfectly well behaved. Haught put a halter on the burro,
+using strong language the while, and then he proceeded to exercise his
+habit of kicking burros. He kicked this one until its fat belly gave
+forth sounds exceedingly like a bass drum. When Haught had ended his
+exercise he tied up the burro. Presently a man came running into
+Haught's camp. He appeared alarmed. He was wet and panting. Haught
+recognized him as a miner from a mine nearby. "Hey Haught," panted the
+miner, "hev you seen--your gray burro--thet big one--with white face?"
+
+"Shore, there he is," replied Haught. "Son of a gun jest rustled home."
+
+The miner appeared immensely relieved. He looked and looked at the gray
+burro as if to make sure it was there, in the solid flesh, a really
+tangible object. Then he said: "We was all afeared you'd kick the
+stuffin's out of him!... Not an hour ago he was over at the mine, an' he
+ate five sticks of dynamite! Five sticks! For Lord's sake handle him
+gently!"
+
+Haught turned pale and suddenly sat down. "Ahuh!" was all he said. But
+he had a strange hunted look. And not for a long time did he ever again
+kick a burro!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunting conditions at Dude Creek had changed greatly to our benefit. The
+trappers had pulled up stakes and gone to some other section of the
+country. There was not a hunting party within fifteen miles of our camp.
+Leaves and acorns were all down; trails were soft and easy to travel; no
+dust rose on the southern slopes; the days were cold and bright; in
+every pocket and ravine there was water for the dogs; from any stand we
+could see into the shaggy thickets where before all we could see was a
+blaze of color.
+
+In three days we drove Pyle's Canyon, Dude Creek, and the small
+adjoining canyons, chasing in all nine bears, none of which ran anywhere
+near R.C. or me. Old Dan gave out and had to rest every other day. So
+the gloom again began to settle thick over the hopes of my faithful
+friends. Long since, as in 1918, I had given up expectations of bagging
+a bear or a buck. For R.C., however, my hopes still held good. At least
+I did not give up for him. But he shared somewhat the feelings of the
+men. Still he worked harder than ever, abandoning the idea of waiting on
+one of the high stands, and took to the slopes under the rim where he
+toiled down and up all day long. It pleased me to learn, presently, that
+this activity, strenuous as it was, became a source of delight to him.
+How different such toil was from waiting and watching on the rim!
+
+On November first, a bitter cold morning, with ice in the bright air, we
+went back to Pyle's Canyon, and four of us went down with Edd and the
+hounds. We had several chases, and about the middle of the forenoon I
+found myself alone, making tracks for the saddle over-looking Bear
+Canyon. Along the south side of the slope, in the still air the sun was
+warm, but when I got up onto the saddle, in an exposed place, the wind
+soon chilled me through. I would keep my stand until I nearly froze,
+then I had to go around to the sunny sheltered side and warm up. The
+hounds finally got within hearing again, and eventually appeared to be
+in Bear Canyon, toward the mouth. I decided I ought to go round the
+ridge on the east side and see if I could hear better. Accordingly I set
+off, and the hard going over the sunny slope was just what I needed.
+When I reached the end of the ridge, under the great dome, I heard the
+hounds below me, somewhat to my left. Running and plowing down through
+the brush I gained the edge of the bluff, just in time to see some of
+the hounds passing on. They had run a bear through that thicket, and if
+I had been there sooner I would have been fortunate. But too late! I
+worked around the head of this canyon and across a wide promontory.
+Again I heard the hounds right under me. They came nearer, and soon I
+heard rolling rocks and cracking brush, which sounds I believed were
+made by a bear. After a while I espied Old Tom and Rock working up the
+canyon on a trail. Then I was sure I would get a shot. Presently,
+however, Old Tom left the trail and started back. Rock came on, climbed
+the ridge, and hearing me call he came to me. I went over to the place
+where he had climbed out and found an enormous bear track pointing in
+the direction the hounds had come. They had back-trailed him. Rock went
+back to join Old Tom. Some of the pack were baying at a great rate in
+the mouth of the next canyon. But an impassable cliff prevented me from
+working around to that point. So I had to address myself to the long
+steep climb upward. I had not gone far when I crossed the huge bear
+track that Rock and Old Tom had given up. This track was six inches wide
+and ten inches long. The bear that had made it had come down this very
+morning from over the ridge east of Bear Canyon. I trailed him up this
+ridge, over the steepest and roughest and wildest part of it, marveling
+at the enormous steps and jumps he made, and at the sagacity which
+caused him to choose this route instead of the saddle trail where I had
+waited so long. His track led up nearly to the rim and proved how he had
+climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was one of
+the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned that Sue and
+several more of the hounds had held a bear for some time in the box of
+the canyon just beyond where I had to give up. Edd and Nielsen were
+across this canyon, unable to go farther, and then yelled themselves
+hoarse, trying to call some of us. I asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure
+did," replied Edd. "One of them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to
+laugh, and told how near I had come to meeting a bear that was short,
+fat, and heavy: "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"
+
+That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more bitterly
+cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the smoke and my
+face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted myself so thoroughly
+that my clothes actually burned me as I lay down. But they heated the
+blankets and that made my bed snug and soon I was in the land of dreams.
+During the night I awoke. The wind had lulled. The canopy above was
+clear, cold, starry, beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed
+ten above zero. Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder,
+but in any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
+fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze stirring.
+
+That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
+atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised to be as
+exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would bag a bear!
+
+When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the purple basin,
+flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the slumberous shadows. What
+a glorious wilderness to greet the eye at sunrise! I suffered a pang to
+realize what men missed--what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.
+
+We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second canyon
+east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi followed to hug the
+lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George held to the rim to ride east
+in case the hounds chased a bear that way. And R.C. and I were to try to
+climb out and down a thin rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught
+knew, no one had ever been on.
+
+Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and rugged
+backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out and down--a
+very narrow knife-edge extended promontory, green with cedar and pine,
+yellow and gray with its crags and rocks. A craggy point comparable to
+some of those in the Grand Canyon! We had to study a way to get across
+the first deep fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest
+and climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little
+time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end in an
+hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle slopes we had to
+run across, for light quick steps were the only means of safe travel.
+And that was not safe! When we surmounted to the crest we found a jumble
+of weathered rocks ready to slide down on either side. Slabs, pyramids,
+columns, shale, rocks of all shapes except round, lay toppling along the
+heaved ridge. It seemed the whole ridge was ready to thunder down into
+the abyss. Half a mile down and out from the rim we felt lost, marooned.
+But there was something splendidly thrilling in our conquest of that
+narrow upflung edge of mountain. Twice R.C. thought we would have to
+abandon further progress, but I found ways to go on. How lonely and wild
+out there! No foot save an Indian's had ever trod those gray rocks or
+brown mats of pine needles.
+
+Before we reached the dip or saddle where R.C. was to make his stand the
+hounds opened up far below. The morning was perfectly still, an unusual
+occurrence there along the rim. What wild music! Then Edd's horn pealed
+out, ringing melody, a long blast keen and clear, telling us above that
+he had started a bear. That made us hurry. We arrived at the head of an
+incline leading down to R.C.'s stand. As luck would have it the place
+was ideal for a bear, but risky for a hunter. A bear could come four
+ways without being seen until he was close enough to kill a man. We
+hurried on. At the saddle there was a broad bear trail with several
+other trails leading into it. Suddenly R.C. halted me with a warning
+finger. "Listen!"
+
+I heard a faint clear rifle shot. Then another, and a fainter yell. We
+stood there and counted eleven more shots. Then the bay of the hounds
+seemed to grow closer. We had little time to pick and choose stands. I
+had yet to reach the end of the ridge--a task requiring seven-league
+boots. But I took time to choose the best possible stand for R.C. and
+that was one where a bear approaching from only the east along under the
+ridge could surprise him. In bad places like this we always tried to
+have our minds made up what to do and where to get in case of being
+charged by a wounded grizzly. In this instance there was not a rock or a
+tree near at hand. "R.C. you'll have to stand your ground and kill him,
+that's all," I declared, grimly. "But it's quiet. You can hear a bear
+coming. If you do hear one--wait--and make sure your first shot lets him
+down."
+
+"Don't worry. I could hear a squirrel coming over this ground," replied
+R.C.
+
+Then I went on, not exactly at ease in mind, but stirred and thrilled to
+the keen charged atmosphere. I had to go around under the base of a
+rocky ledge, over rough ground. Presently I dropped into a bear trail,
+well trodden. I followed it to a corner of cliff where it went down.
+Then I kept on over loose rock and bare earth washed deep in ruts. I had
+to leap these. Perhaps in ten minutes I had traveled a quarter of a mile
+or less. Then _spang_! R.C.'s rifle-shot halted me. So clear and sharp,
+so close, so startling! I was thrilled, delighted--he had gotten a
+shot. I wanted to yell my pleasure. My blood warmed and my nerves
+tingled. Swiftly my thoughts ran--bad luck was nothing--a man had only
+to stick at a thing--what a fine, sharp, wonderful day for adventure!
+How the hounds bayed! Had R.C. sighted a bear somewhere below? Suddenly
+the still air split--_spang_! R.C.'s second shot gave me a shock. My
+breast contracted. I started back. "Suppose it was a grizzly--on that
+bad side!" I muttered. _Spang_!... I began to run. A great sweeping wave
+of emotion charged over me, swelling all my veins to the bursting point.
+_Spang_! My heart came to my throat. Leaping the ruts, bounding like a
+sheep from rock to rock, I covered my back tracks. All inside me seemed
+to flutter, yet I felt cold and hard--a sickening sense of reproach that
+I had left my brother in a bad position. _Spang_! His fifth and last
+shot followed swiftly after the fourth--too swift to be accurate. So
+hurriedly a man would act in close quarters. R.C. now had an empty
+rifle!... Like a flash I crossed that slope leading to the rocks, and
+tore around the cliff at such speed that it was a wonder I did not pitch
+down and break my neck. How long--how terribly long I seemed in reaching
+the corner of cliff! Then I plunged to a halt with eyes darting
+everywhere.
+
+R.C. was not in sight. The steep curved neck of slope seemed all rocks,
+all trees, all brush. Then I heard a wild hoarse bawl and a loud
+crashing of brush. My gaze swerved to an open spot. A patch of manzanita
+seemed to blur round a big bear, standing up, fighting the branches,
+threshing and growling. But where was R.C.? Fearfully my gaze peered
+near and all around this wounded bear. "Hey there!" I yelled with all my
+might.
+
+R.C.'s answer was another _spang_. I heard the bullet hit the bear. It
+must have gone clear through him for I saw bits of fur and manzanita
+fly. The bear plunged out of the bushes--out of my sight. How he crashed
+the brush--rolled the rocks! I listened. Down and down he crashed. Then
+the sound changed somewhat. He was rolling. At last that thumping sound
+ceased, and after it the roll of rocks.
+
+"Are you--all right?" I shouted.
+
+Then, after a moment that made me breathless, I heard R.C. laugh, a
+little shakily. "Sure am.... Did you see him?"
+
+"Yes. I think he's your bear."
+
+"I'm afraid he's got away. The hounds took another bear down the canyon.
+What'll we do?"
+
+"Come on down," I said.
+
+Fifty yards or more down the slope we met. I showed him a great splotch
+of blood on a flat stone. "We'll find him not far down," I said. So we
+slid and crawled, and held to brush and rocks, following that bloody
+trail until we came to a ledge. From there I espied the bear lodged
+against a manzanita bush. He lay on his back, all four paws extended,
+and he was motionless. R.C. and I sat down right there on the ledge.
+
+"Looks pretty big--black and brown--mostly brown," I said. "I'm glad,
+old man, you stuck it out."
+
+"Big!..." exclaimed R.C. with that same peculiar little laugh. "He
+doesn't look big now. But up there he looked like a hill.... What do you
+think? He came up that very way you told me to look out for. And if I
+hadn't had ears he'd got right on me. As it was, when I heard little
+rolling stones, and then saw him, he was almost on a level with me. My
+nerve was all right. I knew I had him. And I made sure of my first shot.
+I knocked him flat. But he got up--let out an awful snarl--and plunged
+my way. I can't say I know he charged me. Only it was just the same as
+if he had!... I knocked him down again and this time he began to kick
+and jump down the slope. That was my best shot. Think I missed him the
+next three. You see I had time to get shaky. If he had kept coming at
+me--good night!... I had trouble loading. But when I got ready again I
+ran down and saw him in that bush. Wasn't far from him then. When he let
+out that bawl he saw me. I don't know much about bears, but I know he
+wanted to get at me. And I'm sure of what he'd have done.... I didn't
+miss my last shot."
+
+We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful indeed had
+been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been others not
+conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure in wild moments
+and regret the risks and spilled blood afterward?
+
+
+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
+books _Treasure Island_ and _Kidnapped_ are full of fight and the
+killing of men. _Robinson Crusoe_ is 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
+a _bola_, 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
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: (2) MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the void. How sweeping
+and grand the long sloping lines of ridges from the rim down! Away in
+the east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like uncertain mountains
+on the desert. South ranged the upheaved and wild Mazatzals. Everywhere
+beneath me, for leagues and leagues extended the timbered hills of
+green, the gray outcroppings of rocks, the red bluffs, the golden
+patches of grassy valleys, lost in the canyons. All these swept away in
+a vast billowy ocean of wilderness to become dim in the purple of
+distance. And the sun was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I
+took a last lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this
+wonderland of Arizona.
+
+[Illustration: BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL]
+
+[Illustration: THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF
+THE CACTUS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+DEATH VALLEY
+
+Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of desert-land
+in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea level, the most
+arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name from the earliest days
+of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of Mormons, numbering
+about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and
+make a short cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors
+perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that
+time became known as Death Valley.
+
+The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the world that
+the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of minerals; and since
+then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives there.
+To seek gold and to live in the lonely waste places of the earth have
+been and ever will be driving passions of men.
+
+My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On most of my
+trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate as to comrades or
+guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen were so singular that I
+think they will serve as an interesting introduction. Some years ago I
+received a letter, brief, clear and well-written, in which the writer
+stated that he had been a wanderer over the world, a sailor before the
+mast, and was now a prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone
+down into the desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the
+southwest, and knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my
+story _Desert Gold_ in which I told about a lost gold mine. And the
+point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as to where
+the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and give me half. His
+name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold
+mine existed only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon to
+see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting. To my surprise he
+came. He was a man of about thirty-five, of magnificent physique,
+weighing about one hundred and ninety, and he was so enormously broad
+across the shoulders that he did not look his five feet ten. He had a
+wonderful head, huge, round, solid, like a cannon-ball. And his bronzed
+face, his regular features, square firm jaw, and clear gray eyes,
+fearless and direct, were singularly attractive to me. Well educated,
+with a strange calm poise, and a cool courtesy, not common in Americans,
+he evidently was a man of good family, by his own choice a rolling stone
+and adventurer.
+
+Nielsen accompanied me on two trips into the wilderness of Arizona, on
+one of which he saved my life, and on the other he rescued all our party
+from a most uncomfortable and possibly hazardous situation--but these
+are tales I may tell elsewhere. In January 1919 Nielsen and I traveled
+around the desert of southern California from Palm Springs to Picacho,
+and in March we went to Death Valley.
+
+Nowadays a little railroad, the Tonapah and Tidewater Railroad, runs
+northward from the Santa Fe over the barren Mojave, and it passes within
+fifty miles of Death Valley.
+
+It was sunset when we arrived at Death Valley Junction--a weird, strange
+sunset in drooping curtains of transparent cloud, lighting up dark
+mountain ranges, some peaks of which were clear-cut and black against
+the sky, and others veiled in trailing storms, and still others white
+with snow. That night in the dingy little store I heard prospectors talk
+about float, which meant gold on the surface, and about high grade
+ores, zinc, copper, silver, lead, manganese, and about how borax was
+mined thirty years ago, and hauled out of Death Valley by teams of
+twenty mules. Next morning, while Nielsen packed the outfit, I visited
+the borax mill. It was the property of an English firm, and the work of
+hauling, grinding, roasting borax ore went on day and night. Inside it
+was as dusty and full of a powdery atmosphere as an old-fashioned flour
+mill. The ore was hauled by train from some twenty miles over toward the
+valley, and was dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the
+grinders. For an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid
+down into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced
+operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum out of
+the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five hundred sacks a
+day. The most significant thing he said was that men did not last long
+at such labor, and in the mines six months appeared to be the limit of
+human endurance. How soon I had enough of that choking air in the room
+where the borax was ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in
+huge round revolving furnaces--I found that intolerable. When I got out
+into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And that
+relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored, who were
+chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to the hard tasks of
+the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers of the borax mines and
+mills, like the stokers of ships, and coal-diggers, and blast-furnace
+hands--like thousands and millions of men, killed themselves outright or
+impaired their strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless
+others were found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with
+some phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
+it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
+wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these horny-handed
+toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining users of brawn and
+bone, these giants who breast the elements, who till the earth and
+handle iron, who fight the natural forces with their bodies.
+
+That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and greasewood
+slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill now only a smoky
+blot on the desert floor. When we reached the pass between the Black
+Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we left the road, and were soon lost
+to the works of man. How strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped
+away from me. I felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he
+stopped talking, except an occasional word to the mules.
+
+The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its name. It
+sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored strata tilted at
+an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red and
+yellow, rather dull, ran through the great drab-gray mass. This end of
+the range, an iron mountain, frowned down upon us with hard and
+formidable aspect. The peak was draped in streaky veils of rain from
+low-dropping clouds that appeared to have lodged there. All below lay
+clear and cold in the sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS]
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about three
+thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind was cold. The
+narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass deepened, widened, almost
+imperceptibly at first, and then gradually until its proportions were
+striking. It was a gully where the gravel washed down during rains, and
+where a scant vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
+struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature in
+sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I looked back,
+because as we could not see far ahead all the superb scene spread and
+towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to be a wide canyon, winding
+away from under the massive, impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The
+high side of this magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced
+west--a succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
+jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata running
+through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around the peaks.
+Shadows sailed along the slopes.
+
+[Illustration: DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED
+RIDGES TO THE STARK VALLEY OF DEATH]
+
+Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand. After
+about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not mind hard
+work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied
+my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat by depression or
+melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get tired while Nielsen kept
+on with his wonderful stride.
+
+"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained. "Slow up a
+little."
+
+Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a little
+tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere on the east
+slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were killed by
+mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at once for the
+nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one hundred and fifty
+miles. He could carry only so much of his outfit, and as some of it was
+valuable to him he discarded all his food except a few biscuits, and a
+canteen of water. Resting only a few hours, without sleep at all, he
+walked the hundred and fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed
+that Nielsen, by telling me such incidents of his own wild experience,
+inspired me to more endurance than I knew I possessed.
+
+As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to grow. It
+finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a valley running
+west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a long sweeping slant of
+earth, like the incline of a glacier, to rounded spurs. Half way up this
+slope, where the brown earth lightened there showed an outcropping of
+clay-amber and cream and cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and
+clear. This bright spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other
+clay slopes of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and
+colors indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
+hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were soon
+greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped, fantastic in
+shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak dominating all. The
+colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all stained by a descending band
+of crimson, as if a higher slope had been stabbed to let its life blood
+flow down. The softness, the richness and beauty of this texture of
+earth amazed and delighted my eyes.
+
+Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and rounded a
+sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held mute in our
+tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the left and the
+dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf,
+a hazy void, a vast stark valley that seemed streaked and ridged and
+canyoned, an abyss into which veils of rain were dropping and over which
+broken clouds hung, pierced by red and gold rays.
+
+Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at first
+sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen stood like a
+statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he strode on. I followed,
+and every second saw more and different aspects, that could not,
+however, change the first stunning impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I
+went on down the widening canyon, looking into that changing void. How
+full of color! It smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white
+washes brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
+white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze, sinister
+and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this valley, and over the
+western drooped gray veils of rain, like thinnest lacy clouds, through
+which gleams of the sun shone.
+
+Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and at last
+checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with commanding and
+magnificent view. As I did not attempt the impossible--to write down
+thoughts and sensations--afterward I could remember only a few. How
+desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of the
+earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little day seemed so
+easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to set and the
+storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene darkened, changed every
+moment, brightened, grew full of luminous red light and then streaked by
+golden gleams. The tips of the Panamint Mountains came out silver above
+the purple clouds. At sunset the moment was glorious--dark, forbidding,
+dim, weird, dismal, yet still tinged with gold. Not like any other
+scene! Dante's Inferno! Valley of Shadows! Canyon of Purple Veils!
+
+When the sun had set and all that upheaved and furrowed world of rock
+had received a mantle of gray, and a slumberous sulphurous ruddy haze
+slowly darkened to purple and black, then I realized more fully that I
+was looking down into Death Valley.
+
+Twilight was stealing down when I caught up with Nielsen. He had
+selected for our camp a protected nook near where the canyon floor bore
+some patches of sage, the stalks and roots of which would serve for
+firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain, pitched our little
+tent and made our bed all in short order. But it was dark long before
+we had supper. During the meal we talked a little, but afterward, when
+the chores were done, and the mules had become quiet, and the strange
+thick silence had settled down upon us, we did not talk at all.
+
+The night was black, with sky mostly obscured by clouds. A pale haze
+marked the west where the after glow had faded; in the south one radiant
+star crowned a mountain peak. I strolled away in the darkness and sat
+down upon a stone. How intense the silence! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like,
+dreaming, waiting, a silence of ages, burdened with the history of the
+past, awful! I strained my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or
+drop of weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This
+silence had something terrifying in it, making me a man alone on the
+earth. The great spaces, the wild places as they had been millions of
+years before! I seemed to divine how through them man might develop from
+savage to a god, and how alas! he might go back again.
+
+When I returned to camp Nielsen had gone to bed and the fire had burned
+low. I threw on some branches of sage. The fire blazed up. But it seemed
+different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no glow, no sparkle! Perhaps
+it was owing to scant and poor wood. Still I thought it was owing as
+much to the place. The sadness, the loneliness, the desolateness of this
+place weighed upon the camp-fire the same as it did upon my heart.
+
+We got up at five-thirty. At dawn the sky was a cold leaden gray, with a
+dull gold and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager and nipping, blew up
+the canyon. At six o'clock the sky brightened somewhat and the day did
+not promise so threatening.
+
+An hour later we broke camp. Traveling in the early morning was
+pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon, arriving at
+Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest. This stream of warm
+water flowed down from a gully that headed up in the Funeral Mountains.
+It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat acrid and soapy. A green thicket
+of brush was indeed welcome to the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse
+kind of grass, and arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named
+bore a pink fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite
+fragrant. Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by
+several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk. They all
+appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace Creek we came upon
+a spring of poison water. It was clear, sparkling, with a greenish cast,
+and it deposited a white crust on the margins. Nielsen, kicking around
+in the sand, unearthed a skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not
+so very old. Some thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that
+deceiving spring. The gruesome and the beautiful, the tragic and the
+sublime, go hand in hand down the naked shingle of this desolate desert.
+
+While tramping around in the neighborhood of Furnace Creek I happened
+upon an old almost obliterated trail. It led toward the ridges of clay,
+and when I had climbed it a little ways I began to get an impression
+that the slopes on the other side must run down into a basin or canyon.
+So I climbed to the top.
+
+The magnificent scenes of desert and mountain, like the splendid things
+of life, must be climbed for. In this instance I was suddenly and
+stunningly confronted by a yellow gulf of cone-shaped and fan-shaped
+ridges, all bare crinkly clay, of gold, of amber, of pink, of bronze, of
+cream, all tapering down to round-knobbed lower ridges, bleak and
+barren, yet wonderfully beautiful in their stark purity of denudation;
+until at last far down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and
+blue and ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams--the
+Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red slope,
+merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint Range, and here
+line on line, and bulge on bulge rose the bold benches, and on up the
+unscalable outcroppings of rock, like colossal ribs of the earth, on and
+up the steep slopes to where their density of blue black color began to
+thin out with streaks of white, and thence upward to the last noble
+height, where the cold pure snow gleamed against the sky.
+
+I descended into this yellow maze, this world of gullies and ridges
+where I found it difficult to keep from getting lost. I did lose my
+bearings, but as my boots made deep imprints in the soft clay I knew it
+would be easy to back-track my trail. After a while this labyrinthine
+series of channels and dunes opened into a wide space enclosed on three
+sides by denuded slopes, mostly yellow. These slopes were smooth,
+graceful, symmetrical, with tiny tracery of erosion, and each appeared
+to retain its own color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were
+always dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic
+region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled on the
+opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue, and of a
+thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the golds and
+russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its slopes were
+changing colors--a dark beautiful mouse color on one side and a strange
+pearly cream on the other. Between these great corners of the curve
+climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope and amber, to meet wonderful veins
+of green--green as the sea in sunlight--and tracery of white--and on the
+bold face of this amphitheater, high up, stood out a zigzag belt of dull
+red, the stain of which had run down to tinge the other hues. Above all
+this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast of the mountain,
+growing darker with earthy browns, up to the gray old rock ramparts.
+
+This place affected me so strangely, so irresistibly that I remained
+there a long time. Something terrible had happened there to men. I felt
+that. Something tragic was going on right then--the wearing down, the
+devastation of the old earth. How plainly that could be seen!
+Geologically it was more remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it
+was the appalling meaning, the absolutely indescribable beauty that
+overcame me. I thought of those who had been inspiration to me in my
+work, and I suffered a pang that they could not be there to see and feel
+with me.
+
+On my way out of this amphitheater a hard wind swooped down over the
+slopes, tearing up the colored dust in sheets and clouds. It seemed to
+me each gully had its mystic pall of color. I lost no time climbing out.
+What a hot choking ordeal! But I never would have missed it even had I
+known I would get lost. Looking down again the scene was vastly changed.
+A smoky weird murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through
+the shifting pall of dust!
+
+In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere growing
+warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at dusk. We followed
+the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under some cottonwood trees,
+on the west slope of the valley.
+
+The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and slept with
+very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away. I was up at
+five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A flare of pale
+gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the sunrise. The tips of
+the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose colored, and below them the
+slopes were red. The bulk of the range showed dark. All these features
+gradually brightened until the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The
+wind began to blow again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling
+leaves, and green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.
+
+Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and some dark
+velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the spreading of Furnace
+Creek over the valley slope. A man lived there, and raised this alfalfa
+for the mules of the borax miners. He lived there alone and his was
+indeed a lonely, wonderful, and terrible life. At this season a few
+Shoshone Indians were camped near, helping him in his labors. This lone
+rancher's name was Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a
+Denton, hunter and guide, whom I had met in Lower California.
+
+[Illustration: DESERT GRAVES]
+
+[Illustration: THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with difficulty, but
+the content of his speech made up for its brevity. He told us about the
+wanderers and prospectors he had rescued from death by starvation and
+thirst; he told us about the terrific noonday heat of summer; and about
+the incredible and horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the
+valley. With the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at
+midnight, below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore
+down upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
+many summers there. As for white women--Death Valley was fatal to them.
+The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains. Denton said heat
+affected men differently. Those who were meat eaters or alcohol
+drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and lungs were necessary to
+stand the heat and density of atmosphere below sea level. He told of a
+man who had visited his cabin, and had left early in the day,
+vigorous and strong. A few hours later he was found near the oasis
+unable to walk, crawling on his hands and knees, dragging a full canteen
+of water. He never knew what ailed him. It might have been heat, for the
+thermometer registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have
+been poison gas. Another man, young, of heavy and powerful build, lost
+seventy pounds weight in less than two days, and was nearly dead when
+found. The heat of Death Valley quickly dried up blood, tissue, bone.
+Denton told of a prospector who started out at dawn strong and rational,
+to return at sunset so crazy that he had to be tied to keep him out of
+the water. To have drunk his fill then would have killed him! He had to
+be fed water by spoonful. Another wanderer came staggering into the
+oasis, blind, with horrible face, and black swollen tongue protruding.
+He could not make a sound. He also had to be roped, as if he were a mad
+steer.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH
+VALLEY, THREE HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL]
+
+I met only one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He camped with
+us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular, with brown wrinkled
+face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be smiling to himself most of the
+time. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting.
+Once he nearly died of thirst, having gone from noon one day till next
+morning without water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal,
+but did not lose his senses. Finally the burros saved his life. This old
+fellow had been across Death Valley every month in the year. July was
+the worst. In that month crossing should not be attempted during the
+middle of the day.
+
+I made the acquaintance of the Shoshone Indians, or rather through
+Nielsen I met them. Nielsen had a kindly, friendly way with Indians.
+There were half a dozen families, living in squalid tents. The braves
+worked in the fields for Denton and the squaws kept to the shade with
+their numerous children. They appeared to be poor. Certainly they were a
+ragged unpicturesque group. Nielsen and I visited them, taking an
+armload of canned fruit, and boxes of sweet crackers, which they
+received with evident joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one
+of the tents. The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo
+were here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
+and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a sewing
+machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to live like
+Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another manifestation
+added to my long list of degeneration of the Indians by the whites! The
+tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I never before saw so many. In a
+corner I saw a naked Indian baby asleep on a goat skin, all his brown
+warm-tinted skin spotted black with flies.
+
+Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our camp. I was
+surprised to hear him use good English. He said he had been educated in
+a government school in California. From him I learned considerable about
+Death Valley. As he was about to depart, on the way to his labor in the
+fields, he put his hand in his ragged pocket and drew forth an old
+beaded hat band, and with calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a
+present of it. Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had
+been kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of the
+many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the story of
+the Indian--the truth, the spirit, the soul of his tragedy?
+
+Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a gravel
+ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat down while my
+companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I found a tiny flower, so
+tiny as to almost defy detection. The color resembled sage-gray and it
+had the fragrance of sage. Hard to find and wonderful to see--was its
+tiny blossom! The small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined
+and scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
+flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its unquenchable
+spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous reddening bulk of
+the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly over me.
+
+Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag
+flights--assuredly new and strange creatures to me.
+
+I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of the bleak
+lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains. Before I could
+compose myself to watch the valley I made the discovery that near me
+were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One had two stones at head and
+foot. Another had no mark at all. The one nearest me had for the head a
+flat piece of board, with lettering so effaced by weather that I could
+not decipher the inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about
+between the graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed
+to be one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these
+people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the windy
+desert slope!
+
+By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over Death
+Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints--long tapering notched
+mountains with all their rugged conformation showing. Above floated gold
+and gray and silver-edged clouds--below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy
+bronze haze, gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the
+pale desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be
+shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast scale and
+tremendous dimension! The clouds paled, turned rosy for a moment with
+the afterglow, then deepened into purple gloom. A sombre smoky sunset,
+as if this Death Valley was the gateway of hell, and its sinister shades
+were upflung from fire.
+
+The desert day was done and now the desert twilight descended. Twilight
+of hazy purple fell over the valley of shadows. The black bold lines of
+mountains ran across the sky and down into the valley and up on the
+other side. A buzzard sailed low in the foreground--fitting emblem of
+life in all that wilderness of suggested death. This fleeting hour was
+tranquil and sad. What little had it to do with the destiny of man!
+Death Valley was only a ragged rent of the old earth, from which men in
+their folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The
+air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled soul! I
+felt that I was myself here, far different from my habitual self. Why
+had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I want of the desert that was
+naked, red, sinister, sombre, forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark
+and dismal, the abode of silence and loneliness, the proof of death,
+decay, devastation and destruction, the majestic sublimity of
+desolation? The answer was that I sought the awful, the appalling and
+terrible because they harked me back to a primitive day where my blood
+and bones were bequeathed their heritage of the elements. That was the
+secret of the eternal fascination the desert exerted upon all men. It
+carried them back. It inhibited thought. It brought up the age-old
+sensations, so that I could feel, though I did not know it then, once
+again the all-satisfying state of the savage in nature.
+
+When I returned to camp night had fallen. The evening star stood high in
+the pale sky, all alone and difficult to see, yet the more beautiful for
+that. The night appeared to be warmer or perhaps it was because no wind
+blew. Nielsen got supper, and ate most of it, for I was not hungry. As I
+sat by the camp-fire a flock of little bats, the smallest I had ever
+seen, darted from the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They
+had no fear of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound.
+Later I heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have
+expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious trill
+it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas Jungle of
+Mexico. Every time I awakened that night, and it was often, I heard this
+trill. Once, too, sometime late, my listening ear caught faint mournful
+notes of a killdeer. How strange, and still sweeter than the trill! What
+a touch to the infinite silence and loneliness! A killdeer--bird of the
+swamps and marshes--what could he be doing in arid and barren Death
+Valley? Nature is mysterious and inscrutable.
+
+Next morning the marvel of nature was exemplified even more strikingly.
+Out on the hard gravel-strewn slope I found some more tiny flowers of a
+day. One was a white daisy, very frail and delicate on long thin stem
+with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals,
+a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red
+flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and
+tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very
+flat plants, smiling wanly up from the desolate earth.
+
+Nielsen and I made known to Denton our purpose to walk across the
+valley. He advised against it. Not that the heat was intense at this
+season, he explained, but there were other dangers, particularly the
+brittle salty crust of the sink-hole. Nevertheless we were not deterred
+from our purpose.
+
+So with plenty of water in canteens and a few biscuits in our pockets
+we set out. I saw the heat veils rising from the valley floor, at that
+point one hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea level. The heat
+lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told us that in summer the
+heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted leaves, burned trees to
+death as well as men. Prospectors watched for the leaden haze that
+thickened over the mountains, knowing then no man could dare the
+terrible sun. That day would be a hazed and glaring hell, leaden,
+copper, with sun blazing a sky of molten iron.
+
+A long sandy slope of mesquite extended down to the bare crinkly floor
+of the valley, and here the descent to a lower level was scarcely
+perceptible. The walking was bad. Little mounds in the salty crust made
+it hard to place a foot on the level. This crust appeared fairly strong.
+But when it rang hollow under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously.
+The color was a dirty gray and yellow. Far ahead I could see a dazzling
+white plain that looked like frost or a frozen river. The atmosphere was
+deceptive, making this plain seem far away and then close at hand.
+
+The excessively difficult walking and the thickness of the air tired me,
+so I plumped myself down to rest, and used my note-book as a means to
+conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was fatigued. Always I found
+this a very efficient excuse, and for that matter it was profitable for
+me. I have forgotten more than I have ever written.
+
+Rather overpowering, indeed, was it to sit on the floor of Death Valley,
+miles from the slopes that appeared so far away. It was flat, salty,
+alkali or borax ground, crusted and cracked. The glare hurt my eyes. I
+felt moist, hot, oppressed, in spite of a rather stiff wind. A dry odor
+pervaded the air, slightly like salty dust. Thin dust devils whirled on
+the bare flats. A valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the
+desert floor to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and
+beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass, broken by
+rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown glaciers. Seamed
+and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet surely wearing to ruin!
+From this point I could not see the snow on the peaks. The whole
+mountain range seemed an immense red barrier of beetling rock. The
+Funeral Range was farther away and therefore more impressive. Its effect
+was stupendous. Leagues of brown chocolate slopes, scarred by slashes of
+yellow and cream, and shadowed black by sailing clouds, led up to the
+magnificently peaked and jutted summits.
+
+Splendid as this was and reluctant as I felt to leave I soon joined
+Nielsen, and we proceeded onward. At last we reached the white winding
+plain, that had resembled a frozen river, and which from afar had looked
+so ghastly and stark. We found it to be a perfectly smooth stratum of
+salt glistening as if powdered. It was not solid, not stable. At
+pressure of a boot it shook like jelly. Under the white crust lay a
+yellow substance that was wet. Here appeared an obstacle we had not
+calculated upon. Nielsen ventured out on it and his feet sank in several
+inches. I did not like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice
+under a weight. Presently I ventured to take a few steps, and did not
+sink in so deeply or make such depression in the crust as Nielsen. We
+returned to the solid edge and deliberated. Nielsen said that by
+stepping quickly we could cross without any great risk, though it
+appeared reasonable that by standing still a person would sink into the
+substance.
+
+"Well, Nielsen, you go ahead," I said, with an attempt at lightness.
+"You weigh one hundred and ninety. If you go through I'll turn back!"
+
+Nielsen started with a laugh. The man courted peril. The bright face of
+danger must have been beautiful and alluring to him. I started after
+him--caught up with him--and stayed beside him. I could not have walked
+behind him over that strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have
+done so the whole adventure would have been meaningless to me.
+Nevertheless I was frightened. I felt the prickle of my skin, the
+stiffening of my hair, as well as the cold tingling thrills along my
+veins.
+
+This place was the lowest point of the valley, in that particular
+location, and must have been upwards of two hundred feet below sea
+level. The lowest spot, called the Sink Hole, lay some miles distant,
+and was the terminus of this river of salty white.
+
+We crossed it in safety. On the other side extended a long flat of
+upheaved crusts of salt and mud, full of holes and pitfalls, an
+exceedingly toilsome and painful place to travel, and for all we could
+tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to watch my feet and find
+surfaces to hold my steps. Eventually we crossed this broken field,
+reaching the edge of the gravel slope, where we were very glad indeed to
+rest.
+
+Denton had informed us that the distance was seven miles across the
+valley at the mouth of Furnace Creek. I had thought it seemed much less
+than that. But after I had toiled across it I was convinced that it was
+much more. It had taken us hours. How the time had sped! For this reason
+we did not tarry long on that side.
+
+Facing the sun we found the return trip more formidable. Hot indeed it
+was--hot enough for me to imagine how terrible Death Valley would be in
+July or August. On all sides the mountains stood up dim and obscure and
+distant in haze. The heat veils lifted in ripples, and any object not
+near at hand seemed illusive. Nielsen set a pace for me on this return
+trip. I was quicker and surer of foot than he, but he had more
+endurance. I lost strength while he kept his unimpaired. So often he had
+to wait for me. Once when I broke through the crust he happened to be
+close at hand and quickly hauled me out. I got one foot wet with some
+acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen quoted a
+prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken sharp crust of
+salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever experienced. Slopes of
+weathered rock that slip and slide are bad; cacti, and especially choya
+cacti, are worse: the jagged and corrugated surfaces of lava are still
+more hazardous and painful. But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with
+its salt crusts standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place
+for hard going that either Nielsen or I ever had encountered. I ruined
+my boots, skinned my shins, cut my hands. How those salt cuts stung! We
+crossed the upheaved plain, then the strip of white, and reached the
+crinkly floor of yellow salt. The last hour taxed my endurance almost to
+the limit. When we reached the edge of the sand and the beginning of the
+slope I was hotter and thirstier than I had ever been in my life. It
+pleased me to see Nielsen wringing wet and panting. He drank a quart of
+water apparently in one gulp. And it was significant that I took the
+longest and deepest drink of water that I had ever had.
+
+We reached camp at the end of this still hot summer day. Never had a
+camp seemed so welcome! What a wonderful thing it was to earn and
+appreciate and realize rest! The cottonwood leaves were rustling; bees
+were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in the shade, resting my
+burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled
+over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and
+after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds
+evidently were traveling north and had tarried at the oasis.
+
+Lying there I realized that I had come to love the silence, the
+loneliness, the serenity, even the tragedy of this valley of shadows.
+Death Valley was one place that could never be popular with men. It had
+been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen treasure, and for the
+wanderers of the wastelands--men who go forth to seek and to find and to
+face their souls. Perhaps most of them found death. But there was a
+death in life. Desert travelers learned the secret that men lived too
+much in the world--that in silence and loneliness and desolation there
+was something infinite, something hidden from the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
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+  Zane Grey</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tales of lonely trails
+
+Author: Zane Grey
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [EBook #12225]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF LONELY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Nicolas Hayes and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+  <div style="height: 8em;"></div><a name="2H_4_0001">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>TALES OF LONELY TRAILS</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    <b>BY ZANE GREY</b>
+  </center>
+
+  <center>
+    1922
+  </center><a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zgfront_m.jpg" width="448" height="720" alt=
+    "Zane Grey ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <hr>
+
+  <h2>Contents</h2>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001">CHAPTER I</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002">CHAPTER II</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003">CHAPTER III</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005">CHAPTER V</a></p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <h2>List of Illustrations</h2>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">Zane Grey</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">Z.G. After Two Months in the
+  Wilds</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0003">There Was Something Beyond
+  the White-peaked Ranges</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">Weird and Wonderful
+  Monuments in Monument Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">Sunset on the Desert</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">Cave of the Cliff
+  Dwellers</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007">This Immense Cave Would Hold
+  Trinity Church. In It Lies The Ruined Cliff Dwelling Called
+  Betatakin</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008">The Wind-worn Treacherous
+  Slopes on the Way To Nonnezoshe</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009">First Sight of the Great
+  Natural Bridge</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">Nonnezoshe</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">Pack Horses on a Sage Slope
+  in Colorado</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">The Grassy Uplands, With
+  Whiteley's Peak in The Distance</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">A Spruce-shaded,
+  Flower-skirted Lake</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0014">Looking Down Upon
+  Cloud-filled Valleys</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">Searching Burned-over Ranges
+  for Game</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">A Hunter's Cabin on a Frosty
+  Morning</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">The Troublesome Country,
+  Noted for Grizzly Bears</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">Under the Shadow of The
+  Flattop Mountains</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">White Aspen Tree, Showing
+  Marks of Bear Claws</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0020">A Black Bear Treed</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0021">Crossing the Colorado River
+  at The Bottom of The Grand Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0022">Where Rolls the
+  Colorado</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0023">Down the Shinumo Trail of
+  The North River</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0024">Camp at the Saddle</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0025">Buckskin Forest</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0026">Buffalo Jones With Sounder
+  and Ranger</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0027">Jones About to Lasso a
+  Mountain Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0028">Remains of a Deer Killed by
+  Lions</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0029">A Lion Tied</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0030">Fighting Weetahs (buffalo
+  Bulls) on Buffalo Jones's Desert Ranch</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0031">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0032">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0033">Treed Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0034">Hiding</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0035">A Drink of Cold Granite
+  Water Under the Rim</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0036">Which is the Piute?</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0037">Wild Horses Drinking on a
+  Promontory in the Grand Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0038">Jones and Emett Packing Lion
+  on Horse</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0039">Jones Climbing up to Lasso
+  Lion</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0040">Two Lions in One
+  Tree</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0041">Jones, Emett, and the Navajo
+  With The Lions</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0042">Billy in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0043">Lion Licking
+  Snowball</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0044">Some of Our Menagerie in
+  Buckskin Forest</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0045">White Mustang Stallion With
+  his Bunch of Blacks In Snake Gulch</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0046">On the Way Home</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0047">Riding With a Navajo</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0048">The Author and his Men. From
+  Left to Right: Edd Haught; Nielsen; Haught, the Bear Hunter; Al
+  Doyle, Pioneer Arizona Guide; Lewis Pyle; Z.G.; George Haught;
+  Ben Copple; Lee Doyle.</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0049">Romer-boy on his Favorite
+  Steed</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0050">The Tonto Basin</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0051">Listening for the
+  Hounds</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0052">Zane Grey on Don
+  Carlos</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0053">Wild Turkey</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0054">Wild Turkeys</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0055">The White Quaking
+  Asps</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0056">Skunk, a Frequent and Rather
+  Dangerous Visitor in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0057">On the Rim</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0058">Where Elk, Deer, and Turkey
+  Drink</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0059">Where Bear Cross the Ridge
+  from One Canyon to Another</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0060">Climbing over the Tough
+  Manzanita</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0061">Bear in Sight Across
+  Canyon</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0062">Z.G.'s Cinnamon Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0063">R.C.'s Big Brown
+  Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0064">Another Bear</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0065">Meat in Camp</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0067">Burros Packed for the
+  Trail</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0068">The Deadly Cholla, Most
+  Poisonous and Pain Inflicting Of The Cactus</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0069">The Colored Calico
+  Mountains</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0070">Down the Long Winding Wash
+  to Death Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0071">Desolation and Decay.
+  Looking Down over the Denuded Ridges to the Stark Valley of
+  Death</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0072">Desert Graves</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0073">The Ghastly Sweep of Death
+  Valley</a></p>
+
+  <p class="toc"><a href="#image-0074">In the Center of The
+  Salt-incrusted Floor Of Death Valley, Three Hundred Feet Below
+  Sea Level</a></p>
+  <hr>
+  <a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>TALES OF LONELY TRAILS</h2><a name="2HCH0001">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    NONNEZOSHE
+  </center>
+
+  <p>John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and
+  trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe,
+  which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural
+  phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife,
+  who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years
+  succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide,
+  Al Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill
+  to take me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and
+  my party was the second one, not scientific, to make the trip.
+  Later this same year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and
+  after that the Kolb brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this
+  trip is one of the most beautiful in the West. It is a hard one
+  and not for everybody. There is no guide except Wetherill, who
+  knows how to get there. And after Doyle and I came out we
+  admitted that we would not care to try to return over our back
+  trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This is the only
+  place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find again
+  alone.</p>
+
+  <p>My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also
+  Monument Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi
+  with its great prehistoric cliff-dwellings.</p>
+
+  <p>The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red
+  flats and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored
+  and wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted
+  Desert of Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded
+  after every thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired
+  quicksand where I convinced myself we would have stuck forever
+  had it not been for Wetherill's Navajos.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and
+  bluffs, so that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too,
+  and the sand blew and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona
+  is never easy, and this grew harder and steeper. There was one
+  long slope of heavy sand that I made sure would prove too much
+  for Wetherill's pack mules. But they surmounted it apparently
+  less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a storm gathered ahead
+  of us to the north with a promise of cooling and sultry air.</p>
+
+  <p>At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged
+  red walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It
+  appeared endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds;
+  and by and bye began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had
+  overtaken us by the time we had reached the head of this canyon;
+  and my first sight of Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash
+  of lightning. It revealed a vast valley, a strange world of
+  colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptored,
+  standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the sheet
+  lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments silhouetted
+  black against that strange horizon the effect was marvelously
+  beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.</p><a name=
+  "image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg001_m.jpg" width="448" height="703" alt=
+    "Z. G. After Two Months in the Wilds ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft
+  it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another
+  aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those
+  monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once
+  have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had
+  eroded, leaving the gentle league-long slopes marked here and
+  there by upstanding pillars and columns of singular shape and
+  beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented sage-slopes under the
+  shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and across the valley,
+  and back again to the height of land. And when I had completed
+  the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and the spot
+  where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught Lucy
+  Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.</p><a name=
+  "image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg002_m.jpg" width="448" height="717" alt=
+    "There Was Something Beyond the White-peaked Ranges ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this
+  wonderful canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several
+  visits could make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I
+  had named it Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches,
+  all more or less the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to
+  tell the main canyon from one of its tributaries. The walls were
+  rugged and crumbling, of a red or yellow hue, upward of a
+  thousand feet in height, and indented by spruce-sided
+  notches.</p>
+
+  <p>There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most
+  accessible of which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more
+  picturesque spot. A huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted
+  stained wall held upon a projecting ledge or shelf the long line
+  of cliff-dwellings. These silent little stone houses with their
+  vacant black eye-like windows had strange power to make me
+  ponder, and then dream.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to
+  find the trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most
+  wonderful and beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places
+  there was no trail at all, and I encountered difficulties, but in
+  the end without much loss of time I entered the narrow rugged
+  entrance of the canyon I had named Surprise Valley. Sight of the
+  great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it might have thrilled
+  Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their imagined lives of
+  loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight of those lofty
+  walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed over me a
+  strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true. My
+  dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
+  I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red
+  walls where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and
+  I entered the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the
+  weird and sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets
+  and upon the grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment
+  free of the story I had conceived there. Something of awe and
+  sadness abided with me. I could not enter into the merry pranks
+  and investigations of my party. Surprise Valley seemed a part of
+  my past, my dreams, my very self. I left it, haunted by its
+  loneliness and silence and beauty, by the story it had given
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a
+  geyser of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old
+  Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the
+  Indian tale, the old chief resided there without complaining of
+  this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season
+  the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to
+  drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo
+  took his gun and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered
+  aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and
+  from that day never burst forth again.</p><a name="image-0004">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg003a_m.jpg" width="448" height="335" alt=
+    "Weird and Wonderful Monuments in Monument Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg003b_m.jpg" width="448" height="332" alt=
+    "Sunset on the Desert ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg004_m.jpg" width="751" height="448" alt=
+    "Cave of the Cliff Dwellers ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I
+  calculated that we were coming to the edge of the plateau. The
+  white bobbing pack-horses disappeared and then our extra
+  mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a man to use three mounts on
+  this trip. Then two of our Indians disappeared. But Wetherill
+  waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the Piute who first took
+  Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I thought we
+  had indeed reached the end of the world.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.</p>
+
+  <p>Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always
+  something so significant and impressive about an Indian when he
+  points anywhere. It is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over
+  the ranges, is a place I know, and it is far." The fact was that
+  I looked at the Piute's dark, inscrutable face before I looked
+  out into the void.</p>
+
+  <p>My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast
+  yellow and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on
+  a level with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of
+  that scene; and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the
+  realization that I dared to venture down into this wild and
+  upflung fastness. I kept looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter
+  circle of horizon till my judgment of distance was confounded and
+  my sense of proportion dwarfed one moment and magnified the
+  next.</p>
+
+  <p>Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped
+  all he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That
+  bright rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those
+  little lines of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand
+  canyons down there, and only a few have we been in. That long
+  purple ragged line is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. And
+  there, that blue fork in the red, that's where the San Juan comes
+  in. And there's Escalante Canyon."</p>
+
+  <p>I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited
+  spaces in the desert&mdash;to look with slow contracted eyes from
+  near to far.</p>
+
+  <p>The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long
+  slope, bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and
+  there a cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed
+  a green level. But I knew it was not level. This level was a
+  rolling plain, growing darker green, with lines of ravines and
+  thin, undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it
+  swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its waves in apparent darker
+  level. Round red rocks stood isolated. They resembled huge
+  grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were strangely
+  magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes, crags,
+  great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze to the
+  wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
+  thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue
+  clefts, each of which was a canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall,
+  dwarfing the lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in
+  frowning boldness, and because of its limitless deceiving
+  surfaces incomprehensible to the gaze of man. Away to the
+  eastward began a winding ragged blue line, looping back upon
+  itself, and then winding away again, growing wider and bluer.
+  This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line all its
+  length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined a
+  dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
+  Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
+  farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
+  revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther
+  westward it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas.
+  Here the canyon was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed,
+  it gaped, it lost itself and showed again in that chaos of a
+  million cliffs. And then it faded, a mere purple line, into
+  deceiving distance.</p>
+
+  <p>I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this.
+  The tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This
+  happened to be a place where so much of the desert could be seen
+  and the effect was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to
+  have no fitness here. Ruin was there and desolation and decay.
+  The meaning of the ages was flung at me. A man became nothing.
+  But when I gazed across that sublime and majestic wilderness, in
+  which the Grand Canyon was only a dim line, I strangely lost my
+  terror and something came to me across the shining spaces.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope,
+  and the rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the
+  base of the slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a
+  level bench a mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and
+  after that, rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like
+  huge swells of a monstrous sea. Indian paint brush vied in its
+  scarlet hue with the deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage.
+  Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch of cactus here and there
+  lent the green to that barren, and it was green only at a
+  distance.</p>
+
+  <p>Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The
+  wind rose and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is
+  seldom much talk on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and
+  everybody for himself. Besides, it is enough just to see; and
+  that country is conducive to silence. I looked back often, and
+  the farther out on the plain we rode the higher loomed the
+  plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead again, the lower
+  sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw pi&ntilde;on
+  patches under the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in
+  my face. We were already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock
+  squirrels scampering to their holes. Then the Indians disappeared
+  between two rounded corners of cliff.</p>
+
+  <p>I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with
+  cedars. It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we
+  dismounted to begin the ascent. It was smooth and hard, though
+  not slippery. There was not a crack. I did not see a broken piece
+  of stone. Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a
+  while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that,
+  always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around
+  me, of every shape that could be called a curve. There were
+  yellow domes far above and small red domes far below. Ridges ran
+  from one hill of rock to another. There were no abrupt breaks,
+  but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally
+  deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pi&ntilde;on. We
+  found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us
+  another wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped
+  depression between. Here footing began to be precarious for both
+  man and beast. Our mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to
+  see their slow, short, careful steps. They knew a great deal
+  better than we what the danger was. It has been such experiences
+  as this that have made me see in horses something besides beasts
+  of burden. In the ascent of the second slope it was necessary to
+  zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bulge
+  and depression.</p>
+
+  <p>Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most
+  dangerous slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of
+  the divide and many of the drops on this side were perpendicular
+  and too steep for us to see the bottom.</p><a name="image-0007">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg005_m.jpg" width="448" height="716" alt=
+    "This Immense Cave Would Hold Trinity Church. In It Lies The Ruined Cliff Dwelling Called Betatakin ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a
+  Mormon cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named
+  Chub. On the steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to
+  slide. His momentum jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill
+  and the Indian. But Joe Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a
+  Mormon he could not let go of anything he had. He began to slide
+  with the horse, holding back with all his might.</p><a name=
+  "image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg006_m.jpg" width="772" height="448" alt=
+    "The Wind-worn Treacherous Slopes on the Way To Nonnezoshe ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the
+  slope ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or
+  screaming in terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It
+  was not a place to have trouble with horses.</p>
+
+  <p>I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned
+  clear over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with
+  Joe's hold on the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick
+  as thought Joe ran sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and
+  yelled for help. I got to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas
+  ta Bega; and together we pulled Chub up out of danger. At first
+  we thought he had been choked to death. But he came to, and got
+  up, a bloody, skinned horse, but alive and safe. I have never
+  seen a more magnificent effort than Joe Lee's. Those fellows are
+  built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on those treacherous
+  slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the trip which is
+  not splendid.</p>
+
+  <p>We got over that bad place without further incident, and
+  presently came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a
+  narrow green split. This one had straight walls and wound away
+  out of sight. It was the head of a canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got
+  down into it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a
+  selection of the best levels, the best places to cross the brook,
+  the best places to climb, and it was a process of continual
+  repetition. There was no trail ahead of us, but we certainly left
+  one behind. And as Wetherill picked out the course and the
+  mustangs followed him I had all freedom to see and feel the
+  beauty, color, wildness and changing character of Nonnezoshe
+  Boco.</p>
+
+  <p>My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip
+  down this strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not
+  alike. This one did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They
+  began to lean and bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above
+  resembled a flowing blue river. Huge caverns had been hollowed
+  out by water or wind. And when the brook ran close under one of
+  these overhanging places the running water made a singular
+  indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang like a
+  hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a
+  frog&mdash;the only living creature I noted in the
+  canyon&mdash;was a weird and melancholy thing.</p>
+
+  <p>"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.</p>
+
+  <p>"How do you know?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones
+  are found above."</p>
+
+  <p>I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger
+  than the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite
+  beauty and fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I
+  had never seen.</p>
+
+  <p>"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.</p>
+
+  <p>That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the
+  summer canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the
+  green. It was impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them
+  under foot. And as the canyon deepened, and many little springs
+  added their tiny volume to the brook, every grassy bench was
+  dotted with lilies, like a green sky star-spangled. And this
+  increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the banks of purple
+  moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great mounds of yellow
+  violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-brush; the rocky
+  corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; and there were
+  ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled with little white
+  flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy air.</p>
+
+  <p>But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty,
+  the almost level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth,
+  the thickets and clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and
+  bulging walls&mdash;these features were gradually lost, and
+  Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare red and white stone steps. The
+  walls sheered away from one another, breaking into sections and
+  ledges, and rising higher and higher, and there began to be
+  manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the nature that had
+  created this old rent in the earth.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red
+  rock alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by
+  one, the mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped
+  and stumbled along over these loose, treacherous stones. The
+  hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one of
+  the mustangs failed and was left. And all the while the
+  dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character
+  changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon, leaning,
+  broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking passage,
+  with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
+  dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting
+  canyons. It jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations
+  of cavern and pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous
+  stone-shape left by avalanche or cataclysm.</p>
+
+  <p>Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of
+  boulders and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down
+  that canyon had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor,
+  in places, was bare red and white stone, polished, glistening,
+  slippery, affording treacherous foothold. And the time came when
+  Wetherill abandoned the stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and
+  cactus-covered ledges above.</p>
+
+  <p>The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined
+  amphitheater, and then apparently turned abruptly at right
+  angles. Sunset rimmed the walls.</p>
+
+  <p>I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and
+  lag. I wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the
+  Indians tired. It was with great pleasure that I observed the
+  giant Joe Lee plodding slowly along. And when I glanced behind at
+  my straggling party it was with both admiration for their
+  gameness and glee for their disheveled and weary appearance.
+  Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag myself onward
+  with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept on until I
+  heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped&mdash;was waiting for me.
+  The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view.
+  A mile beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and
+  spanning the canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of
+  the rainbow was a magnificent natural bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.</p>
+
+  <p>This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the
+  one grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first
+  give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a
+  disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived.</p>
+
+  <p>But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My
+  body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received
+  a singular and revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic
+  perception that this rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a
+  goal I had failed to reach in some former life, but had now
+  found. Here was a rainbow magnified even beyond dreams, a thing
+  not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a work of ages,
+  sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued arch
+  against the blue sky.</p><a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg007_m.jpg" width="448" height="676" alt=
+    "First Sight of the Great Natural Bridge ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg008_m.jpg" width="756" height="448" alt=
+    "Nonnezoshe ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle
+  the huge amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose
+  and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and
+  cactus hindered progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had
+  faded. All the walls turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed
+  dark.</p>
+
+  <p>We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we
+  reached it Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions.
+  He was saying his prayer to this great stone god. Then he began
+  to climb straight up the steep slope. Wetherill told me the
+  Indian would not pass under the arch.</p>
+
+  <p>When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame
+  mustangs twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to
+  fare for what scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was
+  even harder to find than grass. When our simple meal had been
+  eaten there was gloom gathering in the canyon and stars had begun
+  to blink in the pale strip of blue above the lofty walls. The
+  place was oppressive and we were mostly silent.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by
+  the bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was
+  invisible, but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock
+  upon which I composed myself, to watch, to feel.</p>
+
+  <p>A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been
+  continually looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never
+  seemed the same any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a
+  thing for immediate comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had
+  formed it&mdash;to reflect upon its meaning as to age and force
+  of nature. Yet it seemed that all I could do was to see. White
+  stars hung along the dark curved line. The rim of the arch
+  appeared to shine. The moon was up there somewhere. The far side
+  of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over its towering rim
+  showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the canyon
+  lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
+  The bridge turned to silver.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta
+  Bega. Dark, silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted,
+  with all that was spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber
+  and tranquil knowledge of his place there, he represented to me
+  that which a solitary figure of human life represents in a great
+  painting. Nonnezoshe needed life, wild life, life of its millions
+  of years&mdash;and here stood the dark and silent Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the
+  bridge. The moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired
+  blue above, and the canyon was black in shadow. At times a
+  current of wind, with all the strangeness of that strange country
+  in its moan, rushed through the great stone arch. At other times
+  there was silence such as I imagined might have dwelt deep in the
+  center of the earth. And again an owl hooted, and the sound was
+  nameless. It had a mocking echo. An echo of night, silence,
+  gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the
+  other sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to
+  see in them the meaning of life and the past&mdash;the
+  illimitable train of faces that had shone under the stars. There
+  was something nameless in that canyon, and whether or not it was
+  what the Indian embodied in the great Nonnezoshe, or the life of
+  the present, or the death of the ages, or the nature so
+  magnificently manifested in those silent, dreaming, waiting
+  walls&mdash;the truth was that there was a spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the
+  tip of the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to
+  shine. The sun had just risen high enough over some low break in
+  the wall to reach the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous
+  transformation, the gold and blue and rose and pink and purple
+  blended their hues, softly, mistily, cloudily, until once more
+  the arch was a rainbow.</p>
+
+  <p>I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth
+  this bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black
+  and mystic at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at
+  sunset a flaming curve limned against the heavens. When the race
+  of man had passed it would, perhaps, stand there still. It was
+  not for many eyes to see. The tourist, the leisurely traveler,
+  the comfort-loving motorist would never behold it. Only by toil,
+  sweat, endurance and pain could any man ever look at Nonnezoshe.
+  It seemed well to realize that the great things of life had to be
+  earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone, grand, silent,
+  beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a mute, reverent
+  farewell.</p><a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    COLORADO TRAILS
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the
+  motive were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the
+  reader who longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle
+  of fishing records that this is not that kind of story. But it
+  will be one for those who love horses and dogs, the long winding
+  dim trails, the wild flowers and the dark still woods, the
+  fragrance of spruce and the smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well
+  for those who love to angle in brown lakes or rushing brooks or
+  chase after the baying hounds or stalk the stag on his lonely
+  heights.</p><a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg009_m.jpg" width="740" height="448" alt=
+    "Pack Horses on a Sage Slope in Colorado ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road
+  and had a long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies
+  have a sweep, a limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many
+  miles we crossed no streams, and climbed and wound up barren
+  slopes. Once across the divide, however, we descended into a
+  country of black forests and green valleys. Yampa, a little
+  hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of the Bear
+  River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
+  would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very
+  wide and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It
+  seemed a deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the
+  guide, lived there. He assured me it was not quite as lively a
+  place as in the early days when it was a stage center for an old
+  and rich mining section. We stayed there at the one hotel for a
+  whole day, most of which I spent sitting on the board walk.
+  Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it seemed always
+  the same&mdash;deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old and
+  forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a
+  while.</p><a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg010_m.jpg" width="730" height="448" alt=
+    "The Grassy Uplands, With Whiteley's Peak in The Distance ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the
+  foothills, some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were
+  to meet us with saddle and pack horses. The ride was not
+  interesting until the Flattop Mountains began to loom, and we saw
+  the dark green slopes of spruce, rising to bare gray cliffs and
+  domes, spotted with white banks of snow. I felt the first cool
+  breath of mountain air, exhilarating and sweet. From that moment
+  I began to live.</p>
+
+  <p>We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so
+  rushed with his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let
+  alone gotten acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far
+  behind with our load of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the
+  foothills about noon. It appeared to be the gateway of a valley,
+  with aspen groves and ragged jack-pines on the slopes, and a
+  stream running down. Our driver called it the Stillwater. That
+  struck me as strange, for the stream was in a great hurry. R.C.
+  spied trout in it, and schools of darkish, mullet-like fish which
+  we were informed were grayling. We wished for our tackle then and
+  for time to fish.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He
+  did not resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look
+  as if he had walked right out of one of my romances of wild
+  riders. So I took a liking to him at once.</p>
+
+  <p>But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite
+  any delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important
+  part of our outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses
+  that were to carry us on such long rides was an anxious and
+  thrilling one. I have felt it many times, and it never grows any
+  weaker from experience. Many a scrubby lot of horses had turned
+  out well upon acquaintance, and some I had found hard to part
+  with at the end of trips. Up to that time, however, I had not
+  seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much concerned by the fact
+  that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty, ragged, maneless,
+  cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected, they were
+  bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them, and
+  I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any
+  one.</p>
+
+  <p>In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his
+  own mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals,
+  heavily laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face
+  and keen gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I
+  got the impression that he liked work.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let's organize," he said, briskly. "Have you picked the
+  horses you're goin' to ride?"</p>
+
+  <p>Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy
+  powerful horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble
+  head. He had escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at
+  least was one horse.</p>
+
+  <p>The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or
+  temporarily lame, and I had no choice, except to take the one it
+  would be kindest to ride.</p>
+
+  <p>"He ain't much like your Silvermane or Black Star," said
+  Teague, laughing.</p>
+
+  <p>"What do you know about them?" I asked, very much pleased at
+  this from him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I know all about them," he replied. "I'll have you the
+  best horse in this country in a few days. Fact is I've bought
+  him, an' he'll come with my cowboy, Vern.... Now, we're
+  organized. Let's move."</p><a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg011_m.jpg" width="448" height="680" alt=
+    "A Spruce-shaded, Flower-skirted Lake ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg012a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Looking Down Upon Cloud-filled Valleys ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg012b_m.jpg" width="448" height="334" alt=
+    "Searching Burned-over Ranges for Game ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which
+  towered the great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy,
+  and steep in places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little
+  breaks on the water gave evidence of feeding trout. We had
+  several miles of meadow, and then sheered off to the left up into
+  the timber. It was a spruce forest, very still and fragrant. We
+  climbed out up on a bench, and across a flat, up another bench,
+  out of the timber into the patches of snow. Here snow could be
+  felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw a fox, a badger, and
+  another furry creature, too illusive to name. One more climb
+  brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven thousand
+  feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was
+  splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark
+  and dim along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not
+  very wide at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a
+  green gulf of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here
+  again I got the suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour
+  to ride down to Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet
+  of water. The larger lake was farther down. It was big,
+  irregular, and bordered by spruce forests, and shadowed by the
+  lofty gray peaks.</p>
+
+  <p>The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm,
+  and mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It
+  was after sunset and I was too tired to have many
+  impressions.</p>
+
+  <p>Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep
+  quavering voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was
+  silent most of the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when
+  they spoke, for he was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to
+  discover that he was a good cook.</p>
+
+  <p>Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We
+  were too tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were
+  white and splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great
+  beacon lights. The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by
+  amphitheatric mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls
+  of rock. The night grew cold and very still. The bells on the
+  horses tinkled distantly. There was a soft murmur of falling
+  water. A lonesome coyote barked, and that thrilled me. Teague's
+  dogs answered this prowler, and some of them had voices to make a
+  hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had a roar like a
+  lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and I was
+  thinking about them when I fell asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and
+  nipping and frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise
+  gleamed on the tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.</p>
+
+  <p>The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however,
+  that I could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation
+  was close to ten thousand feet and the air at that height was
+  thin and rare. After each series of lusty strokes I had to rest.
+  R.C., who could handle an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat,
+  made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him,
+  and chuckled at his discomfiture.</p>
+
+  <p>After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up
+  fly rods, and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness
+  we had felt when we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The
+  lake glistened green in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the
+  foot of the magnificent black slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>The water was full of little floating particles that Teague
+  called wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like
+  eastern lakes during dog days. It did not look propitious for
+  fishing, but Teague reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the
+  head of White River. We tried the outlet first, but trout were
+  not rising there. Then we began wading and casting along a
+  shallow bar of the lake. Teague had instructed us to cast, then
+  drag the flies slowly across the surface of the water, in
+  imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and several
+  times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I had
+  strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout.
+  Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my
+  surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook
+  the fish.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right
+  over the ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave
+  him the most unaccountable fiendish pleasure.</p>
+
+  <p>"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful
+  fisherman to make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game
+  of the sea, which is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch
+  me cast!"</p>
+
+  <p>I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water
+  boiled, and he hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite
+  speechless with envy and admiration I watched him play them and
+  eventually beach them. They were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided
+  and marked with the red slash along their gills that gave them
+  their name. I did not catch any while wading, but from the bank I
+  spied one, and dropping a fly in front of his nose, I got him.
+  R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in weight, and then he
+  had a strike that broke his leader. He did not have another
+  leader, so we walked back to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the
+  forest. Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful
+  and very pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful
+  flower that is the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its
+  blue, Indian paint brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in
+  color from red to pink and from white to yellow.</p>
+
+  <p>My favorite of all wild flowers&mdash;the purple
+  asters&mdash;were there too, on tall nodding stems, with pale
+  faces held up to the light. The reflection of mountain and forest
+  in Trappers Lake was clear and beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great
+  show about beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last
+  very long. The sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge
+  under a pine. One of the blessings of outdoor life was that a man
+  could be like an Indian and do nothing. So from rest I passed to
+  dreams and from dreams to sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout.
+  The lake appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck
+  and we could not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again.
+  Here the current was swift. I found a place between two willow
+  banks where trout were breaking on the surface. It took a long
+  cast for me, but about every tenth attempt I would get a fly over
+  the right place and raise a fish. They were small, but that did
+  not detract from my gratification. The light on the water was
+  just right for me to see the trout rise, and that was a beautiful
+  sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had caught four when a
+  shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I found him
+  standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent double
+  and a long line out.</p>
+
+  <p>"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him&mdash;down there&mdash;in
+  that white water. See him flash red!... Go down there and land
+  him for me. Hurry! He's got all the line!"</p>
+
+  <p>I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream
+  was shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a
+  flashing gleam of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I
+  could not reach it without wading in. When I did this the trout
+  lunged out. He looked crimson and silver. I could have put my
+  fist in his mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation.
+  "There! He's got all the line."</p>
+
+  <p>"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.</p>
+
+  <p>He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his
+  fish. This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I
+  grasped the leader that the big trout would break it or pull
+  free. The same situation, with different kinds of fish, had
+  presented itself many times on my numberless fishing jaunts with
+  R.C. and they all crowded to my mind. Nevertheless I had no
+  choice. Plunging in to my knees I frantically reached for the
+  leader. The red trout made a surge. I missed him. R.C. yelled
+  that something would break. That was no news to me. Another
+  plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I essayed to
+  lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was tired
+  and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to
+  lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my
+  legs.</p>
+
+  <p>When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was
+  sitting on the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was
+  holding his broken leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went
+  into a rage! Blamed me for the loss of that big trout! Under such
+  circumstances it was always best to maintain silence and I did so
+  as long as I could. After his paroxysm had spent itself and he
+  had become somewhat near a rational being once more he asked
+  me:</p>
+
+  <p>"Was he big?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh&mdash;a whale of a trout!" I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Humph! Well, how big?"</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of
+  that trout. I made him out very much bigger than he actually
+  looked to me and I minutely described his beauty and wonderful
+  gaping mouth. R.C. groaned and that was my revenge.</p>
+
+  <p>We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape
+  acquaintance with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted
+  pack&mdash;four Airedales, one bloodhound and seven other hounds
+  of mixed breeds. There were also three pup hounds, white and
+  yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all pups, noisy and
+  mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied also to one
+  of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by some
+  estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of
+  him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with
+  that name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and
+  exceedingly funny. When he was approached he had a trick of
+  standing up, holding up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way,
+  with his head twisted in the most absurd manner. This was when he
+  was chained&mdash;otherwise he would have been climbing up on
+  anyone who gave him the chance. He was the most jealous dog I
+  ever saw. He could not be kept chained very long because he
+  always freed himself. At meal time he would slip noiselessly
+  behind some one and steal the first morsel he could snatch. Bill
+  was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of firewood.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then
+  saddled up to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and
+  down ridges of heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer
+  sign. Elk tracks appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we
+  left the trail to climb into heavy timber we began to look for
+  game. The forest was dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No
+  squirrels or birds or sign of life! We had a hard ride up and
+  down steep slopes. A feature was the open swaths made by
+  avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a path through the timber,
+  and the young shoots of spruce were springing up. I imagined the
+  roar made by that tremendous slide.</p>
+
+  <p>We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the
+  grass had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign
+  where the elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers
+  to get rid of the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes
+  made by an axe. The Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a
+  she-coyote that evidently had a den somewhere, for she barked
+  angrily at the dog and at us. Fox could not catch her. She led
+  him round in a circle, and we could not see her in the thick
+  brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note again.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with
+  wild asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The
+  patches of red and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere
+  we rode we were knee deep in flowers. At length we came out of
+  the heavy timber down upon Big Fish Lake. This lake was about
+  half a mile across, deep blue-green in color, with rocky shores.
+  Upon the opposite side were beaver mounds. We could see big trout
+  swimming round, but they would not rise to a fly. R.C. went out
+  in an old boat and paddled to the head of the lake and fished at
+  the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went around and up the
+  little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly through a
+  meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering banks.
+  At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds. It
+  was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as
+  cold as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several
+  big trout, and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed
+  him. Then in a swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I
+  saw a big trout lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I
+  hooked him. He was not active, but heavy and plunging, and he
+  bored in and out, and made short runs. I had not seen such
+  beautiful red colors in any fish. He made a fine fight, but at
+  last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat of about one and
+  three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green, and spotted
+  all over. That was the extent of my luck.</p>
+
+  <p>We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little
+  while to see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not.
+  A storm began to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great
+  gray clouds obscured the peaks, and at length the rain came. It
+  was cold and cutting. We sought the shelter of spruces for a
+  while, and waited. After an hour it cleared somewhat, and R.C.
+  caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all green and silver, with
+  only two slashes of red along under the gills. Then another storm
+  threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp the rain began
+  again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was raining hard
+  when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces were
+  dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes.
+  After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the
+  open places high up we could see a great green void of spruce,
+  and beyond, boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon.
+  We flushed a big blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at
+  length another big one.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of
+  scenting game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was
+  pressed down. Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump
+  of an elk protruding from behind some spruces. I beckoned for
+  R.C. and we both dismounted. Just then the elk rose and stalked
+  out. It was a magnificent bull with crowning lofty antlers. The
+  shoulders and neck appeared black. He raised his head, and
+  turning, trotted away with ease and grace for such a huge beast.
+  That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen before. We
+  were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with
+  exclamations.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the
+  lofty red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest
+  again, dim and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and
+  oppressive stillness. The forest primeval! When we rode out of
+  that into open slopes the afternoon was far advanced, and long
+  shadows lay across the distant ranges. When we reached camp,
+  supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet were exceedingly welcome.
+  I was tired.</p>
+
+  <p>Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched
+  our horses near Teague's old corral. Our intention was to hunt up
+  along the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We
+  waited, hoping the big black clouds would break. But they did
+  not. They rolled down with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and
+  a storm enveloped us. We sought shelter in a thick spruce. It
+  rained and hailed. By and bye the air grew bitterly cold, and
+  Teague suggested we give up, and ride back. So we did. The
+  mountains were dim and obscure through the gray gloom, and the
+  black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against the background.
+  The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and crashed in
+  magnificent bombardment across the heavens.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only
+  a few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the
+  weather promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the
+  mountains, first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we
+  decided to ride out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around
+  what they call the Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through
+  the spruces above Little Trappers Lake. And as we got near the
+  top it began to hail. Again the air grew cold. Once out on top I
+  found a wide expanse, green and white, level in places, but with
+  huge upheavals of ridge. There were flowers here at eleven
+  thousand feet. The view to the rear was impressive&mdash;a wide
+  up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of rocks, and patches
+  of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall, and the view to
+  the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling thick and
+  white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell into
+  the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet,
+  lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White
+  River Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope,
+  up to a bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range,
+  dark under the lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh
+  Rocky Mountain sheep tracks. A little later, going into a draw,
+  we crossed a snow-bank, solid as ice. We worked down into this
+  draw into the timber. It hailed, and rained some more, then
+  cleared. The warm sun felt good. Once down in the parks we began
+  to ride through a flower-garden. Every slope was beautiful in
+  gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks were luxuriant
+  with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the great
+  stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not see
+  one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and
+  miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length
+  we got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood
+  sear and ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with
+  fallen trees that we had difficulty in threading a way through
+  them. Patches of aspen grew on the hillside, still fresh and
+  green despite this frosty morning. Here we found a sego lily, one
+  of the most beautiful of flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian
+  paint brush. At the foot of this long burned slope we came to the
+  White River trail, and followed it up and around to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped
+  off into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then
+  paused to listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a
+  sound. It was a place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of
+  twigs, and presently heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We
+  penetrated half a mile into the spruce, pausing now and then to
+  listen. At length R.C. heard something. We stopped. After a
+  little I heard the ring of a horn on wood. It was thrilling. Then
+  came the crack of a hoof on stone, then the clatter of a loosened
+  rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer evaded us. We hunted
+  around till dark without farther sign of any game.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down
+  White River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw
+  tracks of five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we
+  climbed high up a burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen.
+  We climbed ridge after ridge, and at last got out of the burned
+  district into reaches of heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of
+  deer and elk tracks, we dismounted and left our horses. I went to
+  the left, and into some beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer
+  or elk, and many tracks. Returning to the horses, I led them into
+  a larger park, and climbed high into the open and watched. There
+  I saw some little squirrels about three inches long, and some
+  gray birds, very tame. I waited a long time before there was any
+  sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was the dog I saw first. I
+  whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted and rode on for
+  an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of huge trees,
+  windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we came out
+  at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant
+  park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we
+  ran across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small
+  band of elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we started for a few days' trip to Big Fish Lake.
+  R.C. and I went along up around the mountain. I found our old
+  trail, and was at a loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign,
+  but no live game at all.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile,
+  while R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we
+  caught four trout, one of which was fair sized.</p>
+
+  <p>Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but
+  we could not get them to take a fly.</p>
+
+  <p>The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to
+  be beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some
+  big trout in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every
+  way to get a strike. No use! In the little lake matters were
+  worse. It was full of trout up to two pounds. They would run at
+  the fly, only to refuse it. Exasperating work! We gave up and
+  returned to Big Fish. After supper we went out to try again. The
+  lake was smooth and quiet. All at once, as if by concert, the
+  trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay we began to get
+  strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The small ones
+  were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed. We caught
+  one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted wrong,
+  broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too slow,
+  and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because
+  they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to
+  imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line
+  which I could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and
+  altogether we got seven. All in that little bay, where the water
+  was shallow! In other places we could not catch a fish. I had one
+  vicious strike. The fish appeared to be feeding on a tiny black
+  gnat, which we could not imitate. This was the most trying
+  experience of all. We ought to have caught a basketful.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet
+  of Big Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for
+  grayling. The stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared
+  full of ice water and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an
+  automobile, and a camp outfit. That was enough for me. Where an
+  automobile can run, I do not belong. The fishing was poor. But
+  the beautiful open valley, flowered in gold and purple, was
+  recompense for a good deal of bad luck.</p>
+
+  <p>A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as
+  beautiful a fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker
+  or mullet, had a small mouth, dark color, and was rather a
+  sluggish-looking fish.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers
+  afforded much comfort.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down
+  over a mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I, with Teague, started for the top of the big
+  mountain on the west. I had a new horse, a roan, and he looked a
+  thoroughbred. He appeared tired. But I thought he would be great.
+  We took a trail through the woods, dark green-gray, cool and
+  verdant, odorous and still. We began to climb. Occasionally we
+  crossed parks, and little streams. Up near the long, bare slope
+  the spruce trees grew large and far apart. They were beautiful,
+  gray as if bearded with moss. Beyond this we got into the rocks
+  and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags up the slope brought us
+  to the top of a notch, where at the right lay a patch of snow.
+  The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but it had
+  timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark
+  domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out
+  of the timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard
+  struggle for life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and
+  wild, studded with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving
+  clouds.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills.</p>
+
+  <p>Away on the western rim, where we could look down upon a long
+  rugged iron-gray ridge of mountain, our guide using the glass,
+  found two big stags. We all had our fill of looking. I could see
+  them plainly with naked eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>We decided to go back to where we could climb down on that
+  side, halter the horses, leave all extra accoutrements, and stalk
+  those stags, and take a picture of them.</p>
+
+  <p>I led the way, and descended under the rim. It was up and down
+  over rough shale, and up steps of broken rocks, and down little
+  cliffs. We crossed the ridge twice, many times having to lend a
+  hand to each other.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I reached a point where I could see the stags lying
+  down. The place was an open spot on a rocky promonotory with a
+  fringe of low spruces. The stags were magnificent in size, with
+  antlers in the velvet. One had twelve points. They were lying in
+  the sun to harden their horns, according to our guide.</p>
+
+  <p>I slipped back to the others, and we all decided to have a
+  look. So we climbed up. All of us saw the stags, twitching ears
+  and tails.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we crept back, and once more I took the lead to crawl
+  round under the ledge so we could come up about even with them.
+  Here I found the hardest going yet. I came to a wind-worn crack
+  in the thin ledge, and from this I could just see the tips of the
+  antlers. I beckoned the others. Laboriously they climbed. R.C.
+  went through first. I went over next, and then came Teague.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I started to crawl down to a big rock that was our
+  objective point. We went cautiously, with bated breath and
+  pounding hearts. When we got there I peeped over to see the stags
+  still lying down. But they had heads intent and wary. Still I did
+  not think they had scented us. R.C. took a peep, and turning
+  excitedly he whispered:</p>
+
+  <p>"See only one. And he's standing!"</p>
+
+  <p>And I answered: "Let's get down around to the left where we
+  can get a better chance." It was only a few feet down. We got
+  there.</p>
+
+  <p>When he peeped over at this point he exclaimed: "They're
+  gone!"</p>
+
+  <p>It was a keen disappointment. "They winded us," I decided.</p>
+
+  <p>We looked and looked. But we could not see to our left because
+  of the bulge of rock. We climbed back. Then I saw one of the
+  stags loping leisurely off to the left. Teague was calling. He
+  said they had walked off the promontory, looking up, and stopping
+  occasionally.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we realized we must climb back along that broken ridge
+  and then up to the summit of the mountain. So we started.</p>
+
+  <p>That climb back was proof of the effect of excitement on
+  judgment. We had not calculated at all on the distance or
+  ruggedness, and we had a job before us. We got along well under
+  the western wall, and fairly well straight across through the
+  long slope of timber, where we saw sheep tracks, and expected any
+  moment to sight an old ram. But we did not find one, and when we
+  got out of the timber upon the bare sliding slope we had to halt
+  a hundred times. We could zigzag only a few steps. The altitude
+  was twelve thousand feet, and oxygen seemed scarce. I nearly
+  dropped. All the climbing appeared to come hardest on the middle
+  of my right foot, and it could scarcely have burned hotter if it
+  had been in fire. Despite the strenuous toil there were not many
+  moments that I was not aware of the vastness of the gulf below,
+  or the peaceful lakes, brown as amber, or the golden parks. And
+  nearer at hand I found magenta-colored Indian paint brush, very
+  exquisite and rare.</p>
+
+  <p>Coming out on a ledge I spied a little, dark animal with a
+  long tail. He was running along the opposite promontory about
+  three hundred yards distant. When he stopped I took a shot at him
+  and missed by apparently a scant half foot.</p>
+
+  <p>After catching our breath we climbed more and more, and still
+  more, at last to drop on the rim, hot, wet and utterly spent.</p>
+
+  <p>The air was keen, cold, and invigorating. We were soon rested,
+  and finding our horses we proceeded along the rim westward. Upon
+  rounding an out-cropping of rock we flushed a flock of
+  ptarmigan&mdash;soft gray, rock-colored birds about the size of
+  pheasants, and when they flew they showed beautiful white bands
+  on their wings. These are the rare birds that have feathered feet
+  and turn white in winter. They did not fly far, and several were
+  so tame they did not fly at all. We got our little .22 revolvers
+  and began to shoot at the nearest bird. He was some thirty feet
+  distant. But we could not hit him, and at last Fox, getting
+  disgusted, tried to catch the bird and made him fly. I felt
+  relieved, for as we were getting closer and closer with every
+  shot, it seemed possible that if the ptarmigan sat there long
+  enough we might eventually have hit him. The mystery was why we
+  shot so poorly. But this was explained by R.C., who discovered we
+  had been shooting the wrong shells.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a long hard ride down the rough winding trail. But
+  riding down was a vastly different thing from going up.</p>
+
+  <p>On September third we were up at five-thirty. It was clear and
+  cold and the red of sunrise tinged the peaks. The snow banks
+  looked pink. All the early morning scene was green, fresh, cool,
+  with that mountain rareness of atmosphere.</p>
+
+  <p>We packed to break camp, and after breakfast it took hours to
+  get our outfit in shape to start&mdash;a long string, resembling
+  a caravan. I knew that events would occur that day. First we lost
+  one of the dogs. Vern went back after him. The dogs were mostly
+  chained in pairs, to prevent their running off. Samson, the giant
+  hound, was chained to a little dog, and the others were paired
+  not according to size by any means. The poor dogs were disgusted
+  with the arrangement. It developed presently that Cain, the
+  bloodhound, a strange and wild hound much like Don of my old
+  lion-hunting days, slipped us, and was not missed for hours.
+  Teague decided to send back for him later.</p>
+
+  <p>Next in order of events, as we rode up the winding trail
+  through the spruce forest, we met Teague's cow and calf, which he
+  had kept all summer in camp. For some reason neither could be
+  left. Teague told us to ride on, and an hour later when we halted
+  to rest on the Flattop Mountain he came along with the rest of
+  the train, and in the fore was the cow alone. It was evident that
+  she was distressed and angry, for it took two men to keep her in
+  the trail. And another thing plain to me was the fact that she
+  was going to demoralize the pack horses. We were not across the
+  wide range of this flat mountain when one of the pack animals, a
+  lean and lanky sorrel, appeared suddenly to go mad, and began to
+  buck off a pack. He succeeded. This inspired a black horse, very
+  appropriately christened Nigger, to try his luck, and he shifted
+  his pack in short order. It took patience, time, and effort to
+  repack. The cow was a disorganizer. She took up as wide a trail
+  as a road. And the pack animals, some with dignity and others
+  with disgust, tried to avoid her vicinity. Going down the steep
+  forest trail on the other side the real trouble began. The pack
+  train split, ran and bolted, crashing through the trees, plunging
+  down steep places, and jumping logs. It was a wild sort of chase.
+  But luckily the packs remained intact until we were once more on
+  open, flat ground. All went well for a while, except for an
+  accident for which I was to blame. I spurred my horse, and he
+  plunged suddenly past R.C.'s mount, colliding with him, tearing
+  off my stirrup, and spraining R.C.'s ankle. This was almost a
+  serious accident, as R.C. has an old baseball ankle that required
+  favoring.</p>
+
+  <p>Next in order was the sorrel. As I saw it, he heedlessly went
+  too near the cow, which we now called Bossy, and she acted
+  somewhat like a Spanish Bull, to the effect that the sorrel was
+  scared and angered at once. He began to run and plunge and buck
+  right into the other pack animals, dropping articles from his
+  pack as he dashed along. He stampeded the train, and gave the
+  saddle horses a scare. When order was restored and the whole
+  outfit gathered together again a full hour had been lost. By this
+  time all the horses were tired, and that facilitated progress,
+  because there were no more serious breaks.</p>
+
+  <p>Down in the valley it was hot, and the ride grew long and
+  wearisome. Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful. The valley
+  was green and level, and a meandering stream formed many little
+  lakes. On one side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on
+  the other a black, spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a
+  bold, blunt peak patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in
+  the clear light. Huge white clouds sailed aloft, making dark
+  moving shadows along the great slopes.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached our turning-off place about five o'clock, and again
+  entered the fragrant, quiet forest&mdash;a welcome change. We
+  climbed and climbed, at length coming into an open park of slopes
+  and green borders of forest, with a lake in the center. We
+  pitched camp on the skirt of the western slope, under the
+  spruces, and worked hard to get the tents up and boughs cut for
+  beds. Darkness caught us with our hands still full, and we ate
+  supper in the light of a camp-fire, with the black, deep forest
+  behind, and the pale afterglow across the lake.</p>
+
+  <p>I had a bad night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I
+  saw the moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent
+  walls, and the flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard
+  the melodious tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy
+  bawled often&mdash;a discordant break in the serenity of the
+  night. Occasionally the hounds bayed her.</p>
+
+  <p>Toward morning I slept some, and awakened with what seemed a
+  broken back. All, except R.C., were slow in crawling out. The sun
+  rose hot. This lower altitude was appreciated by all. After
+  breakfast we set to work to put the camp in order.</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon we rode off to look over the ground. We crossed
+  the park and worked up a timbered ridge remarkable for mossy,
+  bare ground, and higher up for its almost total absence of grass
+  or flowers. On the other side of this we had a fine view of Mt.
+  Dome, a high peak across a valley. Then we worked down into the
+  valley, which was full of parks and ponds and running streams. We
+  found some fresh sign of deer, and a good deal of old elk and
+  deer sign. But we saw no game of any kind. It was a tedious ride
+  back through thick forest, where I observed many trees that had
+  been barked by porcupines. Some patches were four feet from the
+  ground, indicating that the porcupine had sat on the snow when he
+  gnawed those particular places.</p>
+
+  <p>After sunset R.C. and I went off down a trail into the woods,
+  and sitting down under a huge spruce we listened. The forest was
+  solemn and still. Far down somewhere roared a stream, and that
+  was all the sound we heard. The gray shadows darkened and gloom
+  penetrated the aisles of the forest, until all the sheltered
+  places were black as pitch. The spruces looked spectral&mdash;and
+  speaking. The silence of the woods was deep, profound, and
+  primeval. It all worked on my imagination until I began to hear
+  faint sounds, and finally grand orchestral crashings of
+  melody.</p>
+
+  <p>On our return the strange creeping chill, that must be a
+  descendant of the old elemental fear, caught me at all obscure
+  curves in the trail.</p><a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg013a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "A Hunter's Cabin on a Frosty Morning ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Next day we started off early, and climbed through the woods
+  and into the parks under the Dome. We scared a deer that had
+  evidently been drinking. His fresh tracks led before us, but we
+  could not catch a glimpse of him.</p><a name="image-0017">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg013b_m.jpg" width="448" height="365" alt=
+    "The Troublesome Country, Noted for Grizzly Bears ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We climbed out of the parks, up onto the rocky ridges where
+  the spruce grew scarce, and then farther to the jumble of stones
+  that had weathered from the great peaks above, and beyond that up
+  the slope where all the vegetation was dwarfed, deformed, and
+  weird, strange manifestation of its struggle for life. Here the
+  air grew keener and cooler, and the light seemed to expand. We
+  rode on to the steep slope that led up to the gap we were to
+  cross between the Dome and its companion.</p><a name=
+  "image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg014_m.jpg" width="767" height="448" alt=
+    "Under the Shadow of The Flattop Mountains ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I saw a red fox running up the slope, and dismounting I took a
+  quick shot at three hundred yards, and scored a hit. It turned
+  out to be a cross fox, and had very pretty fur.</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the level of the deep gap the wind struck us
+  hard and cold. On that side opened an abyss, gray and shelving as
+  it led down to green timber, and then on to the yellow parks and
+  black ridges that gleamed under the opposite range.</p>
+
+  <p>We had to work round a wide amphitheater, and up a steep
+  corner to the top. This turned out to be level and smooth for a
+  long way, with a short, velvety yellow grass, like moss, spotted
+  with flowers. Here at thirteen thousand feet, the wind hit us
+  with exceeding force, and soon had us with freezing hands and
+  faces. All about us were bold black and gray peaks, with patches
+  of snow, and above them clouds of white and drab, showing blue
+  sky between. It developed that this grassy summit ascended in a
+  long gradual sweep, from the apex of which stretched a grand
+  expanse, like a plain of gold, down and down, endlessly almost,
+  and then up and up to end under a gray butte, highest of the
+  points around. The ride across here seemed to have no limit, but
+  it was beautiful, though severe on endurance. I saw another fox,
+  and dismounting, fired five shots as he ran, dusting him with
+  three bullets. We rode out to the edge of the mountain and looked
+  off. It was fearful, yet sublime. The world lay beneath us. In
+  many places we rode along the rim, and at last circled the great
+  butte, and worked up behind it on a swell of slope. Here the
+  range ran west and the drop was not sheer, but, gradual with fine
+  benches for sheep. We found many tracks and fresh sign, but did
+  not see one sheep. Meanwhile the hard wind had ceased, and the
+  sun had come out, making the ride comfortable, as far as weather
+  was concerned. We had gotten a long way from camp, and finding no
+  trail to descend in that direction we turned to retrace our
+  steps. That was about one o'clock, and we rode and rode and rode,
+  until I was so tired that I could not appreciate the scenes as I
+  had on the way up. It took six hours to get back to camp!</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning we took the hounds and rode off for bear. Eight
+  of the hounds were chained in braces, one big and one little dog
+  together, and they certainly had a hard time of it. Sampson, the
+  giant gray and brown hound, and Jim, the old black leader, were
+  free to run to and fro across the way. We rode down a few miles,
+  and into the forest. There were two long, black ridges, and here
+  we were to hunt for bear. It was the hardest kind of work,
+  turning and twisting between the trees, dodging snags, and
+  brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse among fallen logs.
+  The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich brown and black
+  muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds got caught
+  on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a scent
+  of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail
+  and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail.
+  We penetrated deep between the two ridges, and came to a little
+  lake, about thirty feet wide, surrounded by rushes and grass.
+  Here we rested the horses, and incidentally, ourselves. Fox
+  chased a duck, and it flew into the woods and hid under a log.
+  Fox trailed it, and Teague shot it just as he might have a
+  rabbit. We got two more ducks, fine big mallards, the same way.
+  It was amazing to me, and R.C. remarked that never had he seen
+  such strange and foolish ducks.</p>
+
+  <p>This forest had hundreds of trees barked by porcupines, and
+  some clear to the top. But we met only one of the animals, and he
+  left several quills in the nose of one of the pups. I was of the
+  opinion that these porcupines destroy many fine trees, as I saw a
+  number barked all around.</p>
+
+  <p>We did not see any bear sign. On the way back to camp we rode
+  out of the forest and down a wide valley, the opposite side of
+  which was open slope with patches of alder. Even at a distance I
+  could discern the color of these open glades and grassy benches.
+  They had a tinge of purple, like purple sage. When I got to them
+  I found a profusion of asters of the most exquisite shades of
+  lavender, pink and purple. That slope was long, and all the way
+  up we rode through these beautiful wild flowers. I shall never
+  forget that sight, nor the many asters that shone like stars out
+  of the green. The pink ones were new to me, and actually did not
+  seem real. I noticed my horse occasionally nipped a bunch and ate
+  them, which seemed to me almost as heartless as to tread them
+  under foot.</p>
+
+  <p>When we got up the slope and into the woods again we met a
+  storm, and traveled for an hour in the rain, and under the
+  dripping spruces, feeling the cold wet sting of swaying branches
+  as we rode by. Then the sun came out bright and the forest
+  glittered, all gold and green. The smell of the woods after a
+  rain is indescribable. It combines a rare tang of pine, spruce,
+  earth and air, all refreshed.</p>
+
+  <p>The day after, we left at eight o'clock, and rode down to the
+  main trail, and up that for five miles where we cut off to the
+  left and climbed into the timber. The woods were fresh and dewy,
+  dark and cool, and for a long time we climbed bench after bench
+  where the grass and ferns and moss made a thick, deep cover.
+  Farther up we got into fallen timber and made slow progress. At
+  timber line we tied the horses and climbed up to the pass between
+  two great mountain ramparts. Sheep tracks were in evidence, but
+  not very fresh. Teague and I climbed on top and R.C., with Vern,
+  went below just along the timber line. The climb on foot took all
+  my strength, and many times I had to halt for breath. The air was
+  cold. We stole along the rim and peered over. R.C. and Vern
+  looked like very little men far below, and the dogs resembled
+  mice.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague climbed higher, and left me on a promontory, watching
+  all around.</p>
+
+  <p>The cloud pageant was magnificent, with huge billowy white
+  masses across the valley, and to the west great black
+  thunderheads rolling up. The wind began to blow hard, carrying
+  drops of rain that stung, and the air was nipping cold. I felt
+  aloof from all the crowded world, alone on the windy heights,
+  with clouds and storm all around me.</p>
+
+  <p>When the storm threatened I went back to the horses. It broke,
+  but was not severe after all. At length R.C. and the men returned
+  and we mounted to ride back to camp. The storm blew away, leaving
+  the sky clear and blue, and the sun shone warm. We had an hour of
+  winding in and out among windfalls of timber, and jumping logs,
+  and breaking through brush. Then the way sloped down to a
+  beautiful forest, shady and green, full of mossy dells, almost
+  overgrown with ferns and low spreading ground pine or spruce. The
+  aisles of the forest were long and shaded by the stately spruces.
+  Water ran through every ravine, sometimes a brawling brook,
+  sometimes a rivulet hidden under overhanging mossy banks. We
+  scared up two lonely grouse, at long intervals. At length we got
+  into fallen timber, and from that worked into a jumble of rocks,
+  where the going was rough and dangerous.</p>
+
+  <p>The afternoon waned as we rode on and on, up and down, in and
+  out, around, and at times the horses stood almost on their heads,
+  sliding down steep places where the earth was soft and black, and
+  gave forth a dank odor. We passed ponds and swamps, and little
+  lakes. We saw where beavers had gnawed down aspens, and we just
+  escaped miring our horses in marshes, where the grass grew, rich
+  and golden, hiding the treacherous mire. The sun set, and still
+  we did not seem to get anywhere. I was afraid darkness would
+  overtake us, and we would get lost in the woods. Presently we
+  struck an old elk trail, and following that for a while, came to
+  a point where R.C. and I recognized a tree and a glade where we
+  had been before&mdash;and not far from camp&mdash;a welcome
+  discovery.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we broke camp and started across country for new
+  territory near Whitley's Peak.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode east up the mountain. After several miles along an old
+  logging road we reached the timber, and eventually the top of the
+  ridge. We went down, crossing parks and swales. There were cattle
+  pastures, and eaten over and trodden so much they had no beauty
+  left. Teague wanted to camp at a salt lick, but I did not care
+  for the place.</p>
+
+  <p>We went on. The dogs crossed a bear trail, and burst out in a
+  clamor. We had a hard time holding them.</p>
+
+  <p>The guide and I had a hot argument. I did not want to stay
+  there and chase a bear in a cow pasture.... So we went on, down
+  into ranch country, and this disgusted me further. We crossed a
+  ranch, and rode several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly,
+  and climbed a rough, rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen.
+  We crossed it, and went down for several miles, and had to camp
+  in an aspen grove, on the slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting
+  place to stay, but as there was no other we had to make the best
+  of it. The afternoon had waned. I took a gun and went off down
+  the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge. Here I heard the sound
+  of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour, but saw no game.</p>
+
+  <p>That night I had a wretched bed, one that I could hardly stay
+  in, and I passed miserable hours. I got up sore, cramped, sleepy
+  and irritable. We had to wait three hours for the horses to be
+  caught and packed. I had predicted straying horses. At last we
+  were off, and rode along the steep slope of a canyon for several
+  miles, and then struck a stream of amber-colored water. As we
+  climbed along this we came into deep spruce forest, where it was
+  pleasure to ride. I saw many dells and nooks, cool and shady,
+  full of mossy rocks and great trees. But flowers were scarce. We
+  were sorry to pass the head-springs of that stream and to go on
+  over the divide and down into the wooded, but dry and stony
+  country. We rode until late, and came at last to a park where
+  sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high
+  dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for
+  we rode into a park with many branches, where there was good
+  water and fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which
+  to pitch our tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at
+  night.</p>
+
+  <p>The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started
+  before a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses,
+  and soon we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We
+  put on our slickers. After a short ride down through the forest
+  we entered Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time
+  trying to find a forester's trail leading out of it. At last we
+  found one, but it soon petered out, and we were lost in thick
+  timber, in a driving rain, with the cold and wind increasing. But
+  we kept on.</p>
+
+  <p>This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and
+  great canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to
+  ride out of it. When we began to descend once more we struck an
+  old lumber road. More luck&mdash;the storm ceased, and presently
+  we were out on an aspen slope with a great valley beneath, and
+  high, black peaks beyond. Below the aspens were long swelling
+  slopes of sage and grass, gray and golden and green. A ranch lay
+  in the valley, and we crossed it to climb up a winding ravine,
+  once more to the aspens where we camped in the rancher's pasture.
+  It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be fairly
+  comfortable.</p>
+
+  <p>The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled.
+  There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and
+  violet-hued banks of cloud.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About
+  nine the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed
+  pastures and aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the
+  grass grew luxuriant, and the red wall of rock overhung the long
+  slopes. The view west was magnificent&mdash;a long, bulging range
+  of mountains, vast stretches of green aspen slopes, winding parks
+  of all shapes, gray and gold and green, and jutting peaks, and
+  here and there patches of autumn blaze in grass and thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with
+  water, grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of
+  mountains and valleys below.</p>
+
+  <p>We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak.
+  After the middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to
+  the touch of frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly
+  beautiful. Against a background of gray sage the gold and red and
+  purple aspen groves showed too much like exquisite paintings to
+  seem real. In the mornings the frost glistened thick and white on
+  the grass; and after the gorgeous sunsets of gold over the
+  violet-hazed ranges the air grew stingingly cold.</p>
+
+  <p>Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely
+  criticised by many writers and I was among them. I believed it a
+  cowardly business, and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs,
+  I wanted to chase the kind that could not be treed. But like many
+  another I did not know what I was writing about. I did not shoot
+  a bear out of a tree and I would not do so, except in a case of
+  hunger. All the same, leaving the tree out of consideration,
+  bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously exciting and hazardous
+  game. But my ideas about sport are changing. Hunting, in the
+  sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate
+  business.</p><a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg015_m.jpg" width="448" height="680" alt=
+    "White Aspen Tree, Showing Marks of Bear Claws ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong
+  about the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my
+  hands. All is exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent
+  up to the moment the shot is fired. After that it is another
+  matter. It is useless for sportsmen to tell me that they, in
+  particular, hunt right, conserve the game, do not go beyond the
+  limit, and all that sort of thing. I do not believe them and I
+  never met the guide who did. A rifle is made for killing. When a
+  man goes out with one he means to kill. He may keep within the
+  law, but that is not the question. It is a question of spirit,
+  and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
+  the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of
+  life is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that,
+  according to the laws of self-preservation and the survival of
+  the fittest, if a man stops all strife, all fight, then he will
+  retrograde. And that is to say if a man does not go to the wilds
+  now and then, and work hard and live some semblance of the life
+  of his progenitors, he will weaken. It seems that he will, but I
+  am not prepared now to say whether or not that would be well. The
+  Germans believe they are the race fittest to survive over all
+  others&mdash;and that has made me a little sick of this Darwin
+  business.</p><a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg016_m.jpg" width="448" height="707" alt=
+    "A Black Bear Treed ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a
+  wild chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating
+  experience, I will relate a couple of instances, and I will leave
+  it to my readers to judge whether or not it is a cowardly
+  sport.</p>
+
+  <p>One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that
+  he had surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead
+  cow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
+  delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll
+  come back to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode
+  into camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun.
+  We were glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted
+  sage that crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the
+  horses. Our guide led toward a branch of a park, and when we got
+  within perhaps a quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and
+  I go ahead on the chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to
+  this suggestion that my brother and I were well ahead of the
+  others. But we did not see any bear near the carcass of the cow.
+  Old Jim and Sampson were close behind us, and when Jim came
+  within forty yards of that carcass he put his nose up with a deep
+  and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a streak. He never went
+  near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder and raced after
+  Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come
+  on!"</p>
+
+  <p>We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to
+  the edge of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with
+  noses high. I heard a string of yelps and bellows from our
+  rear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look back!" shouted R.C.</p>
+
+  <p>Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack.
+  It surely was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like
+  the wind they passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods
+  with deep bays. I was riding Teague's best horse for this sort of
+  work and he understood the game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s
+  horse ran as fast in the woods as he did in the open. This
+  frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be careful. I yelled to
+  deaf ears. That is the first great risk&mdash;a rider is not
+  going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson with
+  the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both
+  horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases
+  with Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and
+  snags, and sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against
+  trees. For a mile the forest was comparatively open, and here we
+  had a grand and ringing run. I received two hard knocks, was
+  unseated once, but held on, and I got a stinging crack in the
+  face from a branch. R.C. added several more black-and-blue spots
+  to his already spotted anatomy, and he missed, just by an inch, a
+  solid snag that would have broken him in two. The pack stretched
+  out in wild staccato chorus, the little Airedales literally
+  screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then Sampson. Still it
+  was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather than sight.
+  They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble in the
+  windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the
+  mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear.
+  The forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the
+  dogs go down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague
+  and the others strung out along the edge of the park. They got
+  far ahead of us. When we reached the bottom of the slope they
+  were out of sight, but we could hear them yell. The hounds were
+  working around on another slope, from which craggy rocks loomed
+  above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged across the park and
+  appeared to be running off from mine. I was a little to the
+  right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we had the
+  bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his
+  knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to
+  alight all spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to
+  be hurt. When I got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be
+  patient with me, but he was in a hurry. Before we got across the
+  wet place R.C. was out of sight. I decided that instead of
+  worrying about him I had better think about myself. Once on hard
+  ground my horse fairly charged into the woods and we broke brush
+  and branches as if they had been punk. It was again open forest,
+  then a rocky slope, and then a flat ridge with aisles between the
+  trees. Here I heard the melodious notes of Teague's hunting horn,
+  and following that, the full chorus of the hounds. They had treed
+  the bear. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks here and
+  there, I caught sight of R.C. far ahead, and soon I had glimpses
+  of the other horses, and lastly, while riding full tilt, I spied
+  a big, black, glistening bear high up in a pine a hundred yards
+  or more distant.</p>
+
+  <p>Slowing down I rode up to the circle of frenzied dogs and
+  excited men. The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was
+  beaming. R.C. sat his horse, and it struck me that he looked
+  sorry for the bear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fifteen minutes!" ejaculated Teague, with a proud glance at
+  Old Jim standing with forepaws up on the pine.</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed it had been a short and ringing chase.</p>
+
+  <p>All the time while I fooled around trying to photograph the
+  treed bear, R.C. sat there on his horse, looking upward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, gentlemen, better kill him," said Teague, cheerfully.
+  "If he gets rested he'll come down."</p>
+
+  <p>It was then I suggested to R.C. that he do the shooting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not much!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>The bear looked really pretty perched up there. He was as
+  round as a barrel and black as jet and his fur shone in the
+  gleams of sunlight. His tongue hung out, and his plump sides
+  heaved, showing what a quick, hard run he had made before being
+  driven to the tree. What struck me most forcibly about him was
+  the expression in his eyes as he looked down at those devils of
+  hounds. He was scared. He realized his peril. It was utterly
+  impossible for me to see Teague's point of view.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead&mdash;and plug him," I replied to my brother. "Get
+  it over."</p>
+
+  <p>"You do it," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I won't."</p>
+
+  <p>"Why not&mdash;I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe we won't have so good a chance again&mdash;and I want
+  you to get your bear," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why it's like&mdash;murder," he protested.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh, not so bad as that," I returned, weakly. "We need the
+  meat. We've not had any game meat, you know, except ducks and
+  grouse."</p>
+
+  <p>"You won't do it?" he added, grimly.</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I refuse."</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile the young ranchers gazed at us with wide eyes and
+  the expression on Teague's honest, ruddy face would have been
+  funny under other circumstances.</p>
+
+  <p>"That bear will come down an' mebbe kill one of my dogs," he
+  protested.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, he can come for all I care," I replied, positively, and
+  I turned away.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard R.C. curse low under his breath. Then followed the
+  spang of his .35 Remington. I wheeled in time to see the bear
+  straining upward in terrible convulsion, his head pointed high,
+  with blood spurting from his nose. Slowly he swayed and fell with
+  a heavy crash.</p><a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg017_m.jpg" width="740" height="448" alt=
+    "Crossing the Colorado River at The Bottom of The Grand Canyon ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg018_m.jpg" width="448" height="695" alt=
+    "Where Rolls the Colorado ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The next bear chase we had was entirely different
+  medicine.</p>
+
+  <p>Off in the basin under the White Slides, back of our camp, the
+  hounds struck a fresh track and in an instant were out of sight.
+  With the cowboy Vern setting the pace we plunged after them. It
+  was rough country. Bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little parks,
+  stretches of timber full of windfalls, groves of aspens so thick
+  we could scarcely squeeze through&mdash;all these obstacles soon
+  allowed the hounds to get far away. We came out into a large
+  park, right under the mountain slope, and here we sat our horses
+  listening to the chase. That trail led around the basin and back
+  near to us, up the thick green slope, where high up near a ledge
+  we heard the pack jump this bear. It sounded to us as if he had
+  been roused out of a sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll bet it's one of the big grizzlies we've heard about,"
+  said Teague.</p>
+
+  <p>That was something to my taste. I have seen a few grizzlies.
+  Riding to higher ground I kept close watch on the few open
+  patches up on the slope. The chase led toward us for a while.
+  Suddenly I saw a big bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across
+  one of these openings.</p>
+
+  <p>"Silvertip! Silvertip!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I
+  saw him!"</p>
+
+  <p>My call thrilled everybody. Vern spurred his horse and took to
+  the right. Teague advised that we climb the slope. So we made for
+  the timber. Once there we had to get off and climb on foot. It
+  was steep, rough, very hard work. I had on chaps and spurs. Soon
+  I was hot, laboring, and my heart began to hurt. We all had to
+  rest. The baying of the hounds inspirited us now and then, but
+  presently we lost it. Teague said they had gone over the ridge
+  and as soon as we got up to the top we would hear them again. We
+  struck an elk trail with fresh elk tracks in it. Teague said they
+  were just ahead of us. I never climbed so hard and fast in my
+  life. We were all tuckered out when we reached the top of the
+  ridge. Then to our great disappointment we did not hear the
+  hounds. Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded ridge
+  toward the western end, which was considerably higher. Once on a
+  bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed. The
+  big, round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me.
+  No doubt of its being a silvertip!</p>
+
+  <p>We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the
+  summit of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of
+  the pack. They were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and
+  over a wooded bench at our feet. Teague yelled as he spurred
+  down. R.C. rode hard in his tracks.</p>
+
+  <p>But my horse was new to this bear chasing. He was mettlesome,
+  and he did not want to do what I wanted. When I jabbed the spurs
+  into his flanks he nearly bucked me off. I was looking for a soft
+  place to light when he quit. Long before I got down that open
+  slope Teague and R.C. had disappeared. I had to follow their
+  tracks. This I did at a gallop, but now and then lost the tracks,
+  and had to haul in to find them. If I could have heard the hounds
+  from there I would have gone on anyway. But once down in the
+  jack-pines I could hear neither yell or bay. The pines were
+  small, close together, and tough. I hurt my hands, scratched my
+  face, barked my knees. The horse had a habit of suddenly deciding
+  to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and when
+  he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both
+  to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me. I was worked into a
+  frenzy. Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old
+  grizzly and fail to kill him! That was the reason for my
+  desperate hurry. I got a crack on the head that nearly blinded
+  me. My horse grew hot and began to run in every little open
+  space. He could scarcely be held in. And I, with the blood hot in
+  me too, did not hold him hard enough.</p>
+
+  <p>It seemed miles across that wooded bench. But at last I
+  reached another slope. Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C.
+  and Teague yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly.
+  He was growling and threshing about far below. I had missed the
+  tracks made by Teague and my brother, and it was necessary to
+  find them. That slope looked impassable. I rode back along the
+  rim, then forward. Finally I found where the ground was plowed
+  deep and here I headed my horse. He had been used to smooth roads
+  and he could not take these jumps. I went forward on his neck.
+  But I hung on and spurred him hard. The mad spirit of that chase
+  had gotten into him too. All the time I could hear the fierce
+  baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I heard a
+  savage bawl from the bear. I literally plunged, slid, broke a way
+  down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I
+  discovered the footprints of Teague and R.C. They had walked,
+  leading their horses. By this time I was so mad I would not get
+  off. I rode all the way down that steep slope of dense saplings,
+  loose rock slides and earth, and jumble of splintered cliff. That
+  he did not break my neck and his own spoke the truth about that
+  roan horse. Despite his inexperience he was great. We fell over
+  one bank, but a thicket of aspens saved us from rolling. The
+  avalanches slid from under us until I imagined that the grizzly
+  would be scared. Once as I stopped to listen I heard bear and
+  pack farther down the canyon&mdash;heard them above the roar of a
+  rushing stream. They went on and I lost the sounds of fight. But
+  R.C.'s clear thrilling call floated up to me. Probably he was
+  worried about me.</p>
+
+  <p>Then before I realized it I was at the foot of the slope, in a
+  narrow canyon bed, full of rocks and trees, with the din of
+  roaring water in my ears. I could hear nothing else. Tracks were
+  everywhere, and when I came to the first open place I was
+  thrilled. The grizzly had plunged off a sandy bar into the water,
+  and there he had fought the hounds. Signs of that battle were
+  easy to read. I saw where his huge tracks, still wet, led up the
+  opposite sandy bank.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, down stream, I did my most reckless riding. On level
+  ground the horse was splendid. Once he leaped clear across the
+  brook. Every plunge, every turn I expected to bring me upon my
+  brother and Teague and that fighting pack. More than once I
+  thought I heard the spang of the .35 and this made me urge the
+  roan faster and faster.</p>
+
+  <p>The canyon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. I had to slow
+  down to get through the trees and rocks. And suddenly I was
+  overjoyed to ride pell-mell upon R.C. and Teague with half the
+  panting hounds. The canyon had grown too rough for the horses to
+  go farther and it would have been useless for us to try on foot.
+  As I dismounted, so sore and bruised I could hardly stand, old
+  Jim came limping in to fall into the brook where he lapped and
+  lapped thirstily. Teague threw up his hands. Old Jim's return
+  meant an ended chase. The grizzly had eluded the hounds in that
+  jumble of rocks below.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, did you meet the bear?" queried Teague, eyeing me in
+  astonishment and mirth.</p>
+
+  <p>Bloody, dirty, ragged and wringing wet with sweat I must have
+  been a sight. R.C. however, did not look so very immaculate, and
+  when I saw he also was lame and scratched and black I felt
+  better.</p><a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+  </center>
+
+  <center>
+    I
+  </center>
+
+  <p>The Grand Canyon of Arizona is over two hundred miles long,
+  thirteen wide, and a mile and a half deep; a titanic gorge in
+  which mountains, tablelands, chasms and cliffs lie half veiled in
+  purple haze. It is wild and sublime, a thing of wonder, of
+  mystery; beyond all else a place to grip the heart of a man, to
+  unleash his daring spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>On April 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary
+  party and pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the
+  most isolated, inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in
+  all the canyon country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared
+  insurmountable; standing aloof from the towers and escarpments,
+  rugged and bold in outline, its forest covering like a strip of
+  black velvet, its giant granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed
+  apart from the world, haunting with its beauty, isolation and
+  wild promise.</p>
+
+  <p>The members of my party harmoniously fitted the scene. Buffalo
+  Jones, burly-shouldered, bronze-faced, and grim, proved in his
+  appearance what a lifetime on the plains could make of a man.
+  Emett was a Mormon, a massively built grey-bearded son of the
+  desert; he had lived his life on it; he had conquered it and in
+  his falcon eyes shone all its fire and freedom. Ranger Jim Owens
+  had the wiry, supple body and careless, tidy garb of the cowboy,
+  and the watchful gaze, quiet face and locked lips of the
+  frontiersman. The fourth member was a Navajo Indian, a
+  copper-skinned, raven-haired, beady-eyed desert savage.</p>
+
+  <p>I had told Emett to hire some one who could put the horses on
+  grass in the evening and then find them the next morning. In
+  northern Arizona this required more than genius. Emett secured
+  the best trailer of the desert Navajos. Jones hated an Indian;
+  and Jim, who carried an ounce of lead somewhere in his person,
+  associated this painful addition to his weight with an unfriendly
+  Apache, and swore all Indians should be dead. So between the two,
+  Emett and I had trouble in keeping our Navajo from illustrating
+  the plainsman idea of a really good Indian&mdash;a dead one.</p>
+
+  <p>While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and
+  above a hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden
+  pounding in the turf attracted our attention.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>As we all made a dive among our snorting and plunging horses
+  the sound seemed to be coming right into camp. In a moment I saw
+  a string of wild horses thundering by. A noble black stallion led
+  them, and as he ran with beautiful stride he curved his fine head
+  backward to look at us, and whistled his wild challenge.</p>
+
+  <p>Later a herd of large white-tailed deer trooped up the hollow.
+  The Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when
+  Emett told him we had not come out to kill, he looked
+  dumbfounded. Even the Indian felt it a strange departure from the
+  usual mode of hunting to travel and climb hundreds of miles over
+  hot desert and rock-ribbed canyons, to camp at last in a spot so
+  wild that deer were tame as cattle, and then not kill.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling
+  into permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the
+  all-satisfying touch to the background of forest, flowers and
+  mighty pines and sunlit patches of grass, the white tents and red
+  blankets, the sleeping hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a
+  picture like that of a hunter's dream.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come, saddle up," called the never restful Jones. "Leave the
+  Indian in camp with the hounds, and we'll get the lay of the
+  land." All afternoon we spent riding the plateau. What a
+  wonderful place! We were completely bewildered with its physical
+  properties, and surprised at the abundance of wild horses and
+  mustangs, deer, coyotes, foxes, grouse and other birds, and
+  overjoyed to find innumerable lion trails. When we returned to
+  camp I drew a rough map, which Jones laid flat on the ground as
+  he called us around him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now, boys, let's get our heads together."</p>
+
+  <p>In shape the plateau resembled the ace of clubs. The center
+  and side wings were high and well wooded with heavy pines; the
+  middle wing was longest, sloped west, had no pine, but a dense
+  growth of cedar. Numerous ridges and canyons cut up this central
+  wing. Middle Canyon, the longest and deepest, bisected the
+  plateau, headed near camp, and ran parallel with two smaller
+  ones, which we named Right and Left Canyons. These three were
+  lion runways and hundreds of deer carcasses lined the thickets.
+  North Hollow was the only depression, as well as runway, on the
+  northwest rim. West Point formed the extreme western cape of the
+  plateau. To the left of West Point was a deep cut-in of the rim
+  wall, called the Bay. The three important canyons opened into it.
+  From the Bay, the south rim was regular and impassable all the
+  way round to the narrow Saddle, which connected it to the
+  mainland.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now then," said Jones, when we assured him that we were
+  pretty well informed as to the important features, "you can
+  readily see our advantage. The plateau is about nine or ten miles
+  long, and six wide at its widest. We can't get lost, at least for
+  long. We know where lions can go over the rim and we'll head them
+  off, make short cut chases, something new in lion hunting. We are
+  positive the lions can not get over the second wall, except where
+  we came up, at the Saddle. In regard to lion signs, I'm doubtful
+  of the evidence of my own eyes. This is virgin ground. No white
+  man or Indian has ever hunted lions here. We have stumbled on a
+  lion home, the breeding place of hundreds of lions that infest
+  the north rim of the canyon."</p>
+
+  <p>The old plainsman struck a big fist into the palm of his hand,
+  a rare action with him. Jim lifted his broad hat and ran his
+  fingers through his white hair. In Emett's clear desert-eagle
+  eyes shown a furtive, anxious look, which yet could not
+  overshadow the smouldering fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"If only we don't kill the horses!" he said.</p>
+
+  <p>More than anything else that remark from such a man thrilled
+  me with its subtle suggestion. He loved those beautiful horses.
+  What wild rides he saw in his mind's eye! In cold calculation we
+  perceived the wonderful possibilities never before experienced by
+  hunters, and as the wild spell clutched us my last bar of
+  restraint let down.</p>
+
+  <p>During supper we talked incessantly, and afterward around the
+  camp-fire. Twilight fell with the dark shadows sweeping under the
+  silent pines; the night wind rose and began its moan.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore there's some scent on the wind," said Jim, lighting his
+  pipe with a red ember. "See how uneasy Don is."</p>
+
+  <p>The hound raised his fine, dark head and repeatedly sniffed
+  the air, then walked to and fro as if on guard for his pack. Moze
+  ground his teeth on a bone and growled at one of the pups.
+  Sounder was sleepy, but he watched Don with suspicious eyes. The
+  other hounds, mature and somber, lay stretched before the
+  fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tie them up, Jim," said Jones, "and let's turn in."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    II
+  </center>
+
+  <p>When I awakened next morning the sound of Emett's axe rang out
+  sharply. Little streaks of light from the camp-fire played
+  between the flaps of the tent. I saw old Moze get up and stretch
+  himself. A jangle of cow-bells from the forest told me we would
+  not have to wait for the horses that morning.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"All rustle for breakfast," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever
+  brightening. Dawn broke as we saddled our horses. The pups were
+  limber, and ran to and fro on their chains, scenting the air; the
+  older hounds stood quietly waiting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come Navvy&mdash;come chase cougie," said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Dam! No!" replied the Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let him keep camp," suggested Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right; but he'll eat us out," Emett declared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Climb up you fellows," said Jones, impatiently. "Have I got
+  everything&mdash;rope, chains, collars, wire, nippers? Yes, all
+  right. Hyar, you lazy dogs&mdash;out of this!"</p>
+
+  <p>We rode abreast down the ridge. The demeanor of the hounds
+  contrasted sharply with what it had been at the start of the hunt
+  the year before. Then they had been eager, uncertain, violent;
+  they did not know what was in the air; now they filed after Don
+  in an orderly trot.</p>
+
+  <p>We struck out of the pines at half past five. Floating mist
+  hid the lower end of the plateau. The morning had a cool touch
+  but there was no frost. Crossing Middle Canyon about half way
+  down we jogged on. Cedar trees began to show bright green against
+  the soft gray sage. We were nearing the dark line of the cedar
+  forest when Jim, who led, held up his hand in a warning check. We
+  closed in around him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Watch Don," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>The hound stood stiff, head well up, nose working, and the
+  hair on his back bristling. All the other hounds whined and kept
+  close to him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don scents a lion," whispered Jim. "I've never known him to
+  do that unless there was the scent of a lion on the wind."</p>
+
+  <p>"Hunt 'em up Don, old boy," called Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>The pack commenced to work back and forth along the ridge. We
+  neared a hollow when Don barked eagerly. Sounder answered and
+  likewise Jude. Moze's short angry "bow-wow" showed the old
+  gladiator to be in line.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ranger's gone," cried Jim. "He was farthest ahead. I'll bet
+  he's struck it. We'll know in a minute, for we're close."</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds were tearing through the sage, working harder and
+  harder, calling and answering one another, all the time getting
+  down into the hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>Don suddenly let out a string of yelps. I saw him, running
+  head up, pass into the cedars like a yellow dart. Sounder howled
+  his deep, full bay, and led the rest of the pack up the slope in
+  angry clamor.</p>
+
+  <p>"They're off!" yelled Jim, and so were we.</p>
+
+  <p>In less than a minute we had lost one another. Crashings among
+  the dry cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one
+  direction. The fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I
+  remembered that Jim had said Emett and his charger might keep the
+  pack in sight, but that none of the rest of us could.</p>
+
+  <p>It did not take me long to realize what my mustang was made
+  of. His name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a
+  fast pace on the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by
+  keeping in this trail part of the work of breaking through the
+  brush was already done for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead
+  branches, more numerous in a cedar forest than elsewhere, struck
+  and stung us as we passed. We climbed a ridge, and found the
+  cedars thinning out into open patches. Then we faced a bare slope
+  of sage and I saw Emett below on his big horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage,
+  and showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open
+  ground, with its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the
+  little mustang. I heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears.
+  Emett's trail, plain in the yellow ground showed me the way. On
+  entering the cedars again I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to
+  yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the baying of the hounds, but no answer
+  to my signal. Then I attended to the stern business of catching
+  up. For what seemed a long time, I threaded the maze of cedar,
+  galloped the open sage flats, always on Emett's track.</p>
+
+  <p>A signal cry, sharp to the right, turned me. I answered, and
+  with the exchange of signal cries found my way into an open glade
+  where Jones and Jim awaited me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here's one," said Jim. "Emett must be with the hounds.
+  Listen."</p>
+
+  <p>With the labored breathing of the horses filling our ears we
+  could hear no other sound. Dismounting, I went aside and turned
+  my ear to the breeze.</p>
+
+  <p>"I hear Don," I cried instantly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Which way?" both men asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"West."</p>
+
+  <p>"Strange," said Jones. "The hound wouldn't split, would he,
+  Jim?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don leave that hot trail? Shore he wouldn't," replied Jim.
+  "But his runnin' do seem queer this morning."</p>
+
+  <p>"The breeze is freshening," I said. "There! Now listen! Don,
+  and Sounder, too."</p>
+
+  <p>The baying came closer and closer. Our horses threw up long
+  ears. It was hard to sit still and wait. At a quick cry from Jim
+  we saw Don cross the lower end of the flat.</p>
+
+  <p>No need to spur our mounts! The lifting of bridles served, and
+  away we raced. Foxie passed the others in short order. Don had
+  long disappeared, but with blended bays, Jude, Moze, and Sounder
+  broke out of the cedars hot on the trail. They, too, were out of
+  sight in a moment.</p>
+
+  <p>The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where
+  the hounds had come out of the forest, attracted and even
+  frightened me. I saw the green of a low cedar tree shake, and
+  split, to let out a huge, gaunt horse with a big man doubled over
+  his saddle. The onslaught of Emett and his desert charger stirred
+  a fear in me that checked admiration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hounds running wild," he yelled, and the dark shadows of the
+  cedars claimed him again.</p>
+
+  <p>A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett,
+  dismounted, searching the ground. Moze and Sounder were with him,
+  apparently at fault. Suddenly Moze left the little glade and
+  venting his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees.
+  Sounder sat on his haunches and yelped.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now what the hell is wrong?" growled Jones tumbling off his
+  saddle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore something is," said Jim, also dismounting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here's a lion track," interposed Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ha! and here's another," cried Jones, in great satisfaction.
+  "That's the trail we were on, and here's another crossing it at
+  right angles. Both are fresh: one isn't fifteen minutes old. Don
+  and Jude have split one way and Moze another. By George! that's
+  great of Sounder to hang fire!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Put him on the fresh trail," said Jim, vaulting into his
+  saddle.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off
+  on the trail Moze had taken. All of us got in some pretty hard
+  riding, and managed to stay within earshot of Sounder. We crossed
+  a canyon, and presently reached another which, from its depth,
+  must have been Middle Canyon. Sounder did not climb the opposite
+  slope, so we followed the rim. From a bare ridge we distinguished
+  the line of pines above us, and decided that our location was in
+  about the center of the plateau.</p>
+
+  <p>Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze. Sounder had
+  caught up with him. We came to a halt where the canyon widened
+  and was not so deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an
+  easy slope leading down. Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted
+  harsh, eager howls, and both hounds, in plain sight, began
+  working in circles.</p>
+
+  <p>"The lion has gone up somewhere," cried Jim. "Look sharp!"</p>
+
+  <p>Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and
+  looked over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to
+  return. When I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the
+  bottom of the stone wall, and jump into the low branches of a
+  cedar I knew where to look. Then I descried the lion a round
+  yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a mass of dark branches. He
+  had leaped into the tree from the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"There he is! Treed! Treed!" I yelled. "Moze has found
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Down boys, down into the canyon," shouted Jones, in sharp
+  voice. "Make a racket, we don't want him to jump."</p>
+
+  <p>How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone! For a
+  moment I could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle
+  by a strange vacillation that could have been no other thing than
+  fear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you afraid?" called Jones from below.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, but I am coming," I replied, and dismounted to plunge
+  down the hill. It may have been shame or anger that dominated me
+  then; whatever it was I made directly for the cedar, and did not
+  halt until I was under the snarling lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not too close!" warned Jones. "He might jump. It's a Tom, a
+  two-year-old, and full of fight."</p>
+
+  <p>It did not matter to me then whether he jumped or not. I knew
+  I had to be cured of my dread, and the sooner it was done the
+  better.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Moze had already climbed a third of the distance up to the
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hyar Moze! Out of there, you rascal coon chaser!" Jones
+  yelled as he threw stones and sticks at the hound. Moze, however,
+  replied with his snarly bark and climbed on steadily.</p>
+
+  <p>"I've got to pull him out. Watch close boys and tell me if the
+  lion starts down."</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones climbed the first few branches of the tree, Tom let
+  out an ominous growl.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make ready to jump. Shore he's comin'," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, snarling viciously, started to descend. It was a
+  ticklish moment for all of us, particularly Jones. Warily he
+  backed down.</p>
+
+  <p>"Boys, maybe he's bluffing," said Jones, "Try him out. Grab
+  sticks and run at the tree and yell, as if you were going to kill
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>Not improbably the demonstration we executed under the tree
+  would have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed
+  his white fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there
+  climbed as far as he could. The forked branch on which he stood
+  swayed alarmingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here, punch Moze out," said Jim handing up a long pole.</p>
+
+  <p>The old hound hung like a leech to the tree, making it
+  difficult to dislodge him. At length he fell heavily, and venting
+  his thick battle cry, attempted to climb again.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim seized him, made him fast to the rope with which Sounder
+  had already been tied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say Emett, I've no chance here," called Jones. "You try to
+  throw at him from the rock."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett ran up the rock, coiled his lasso and cast the noose. It
+  sailed perfectly in between the branches and circled Tom's head.
+  Before it could be slipped tight he had thrown it off. Then he
+  hid behind the branches.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going farther up," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Be quick," yelled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones evidently had that in mind. When he reached the middle
+  fork of the cedar, he stood erect and extended the noose of his
+  lasso on the point of his pole. Tom, with a hiss and snap, struck
+  at it savagely. The second trial tempted the lion to saw the rope
+  with his teeth. In a flash Jones withdrew the pole, and lifted a
+  loop of the slack rope over the lion's ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull!" he yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett, at the other end of the lasso, threw his great strength
+  into action, pulling the lion out with a crash, and giving the
+  cedar such a tremendous shaking that Jones lost his footing and
+  fell heavily.</p>
+
+  <p>Thrilling as the moment was, I had to laugh, for Jones came up
+  out of a cloud of dust, as angry as a wet hornet, and made
+  prodigious leaps to get out of the reach of the whirling
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look out!" he bawled.</p>
+
+  <p>Tom, certainly none the worse for his tumble, made three
+  leaps, two at Jones, one at Jim, which was checked by the short
+  length of the rope in Emett's hands. Then for a moment, a thick
+  cloud of dust enveloped the wrestling lion, during which the
+  quick-witted Jones tied the free end of the lasso to a
+  sapling.</p>
+
+  <p>"Dod gast the luck!" yelled Jones reaching for another lasso.
+  "I didn't mean for you to pull him out of the tree. Now he'll get
+  loose or kill himself."</p>
+
+  <p>When the dust cleared away, we discovered our prize stretched
+  out at full length and frothing at the mouth. As Jones
+  approached, the lion began a series of evolutions so rapid as to
+  be almost indiscernible to the eye. I saw a wheel of dust and
+  yellow fur. Then came a thud and the lion lay inert.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones pounced upon him and loosed the lasso around his
+  neck.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think he's done for, but maybe not. He's breathing yet.
+  Here, help me tie his paws together. Look out! He's coming
+  to!"</p>
+
+  <p>The lion stirred and raised his head. Jones ran the loop of
+  the second lasso around the two hind paws and stretched the lion
+  out. While in this helpless position and with no strength and
+  hardly any breath left in him the lion was easy to handle. With
+  Emett's help Jones quickly clipped the sharp claws, tied the four
+  paws together, took off the neck lasso and substituted a collar
+  and chain.</p>
+
+  <p>"There, that's one. He'll come to all right," said Jones. "But
+  we are lucky. Emett, never pull another lion clear out of a tree.
+  Pull him over a limb and hang him there while some one below
+  ropes his hind paws. That's the only way, and if we don't stick
+  to it, somebody is going to get done for. Come, now, we'll leave
+  this fellow here and hunt up Don and Jude. They've treed another
+  lion by this time."</p>
+
+  <p>Remarkable to me was to see how, as soon as the lion lay
+  helpless, Sounder lost his interest. Moze growled, yet readily
+  left the spot. Before we reached the level, both hounds had
+  disappeared.</p><a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg019_m.jpg" width="448" height="676" alt=
+    "Down the Shinumo Trail of The North River ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg020_m.jpg" width="745" height="448" alt=
+    "Camp at the Saddle ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Hear that?" yelled Jones, digging spurs into his horse. "Hi!
+  Hi! Hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>From the cedars rang the thrilling, blending chorus of bays
+  that told of a treed lion. The forest was almost impenetrable. We
+  had to pick our way. Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing
+  the deadwood; and soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones'
+  assertion.</p>
+
+  <p>First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the
+  cedar, and the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the
+  dead top of the tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny
+  lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips. Quiet Jim was yelling;
+  and Emett, silent man of the desert, let from his wide cavernous
+  chest a booming roar that drowned ours.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones' next decisive action turned us from exultation to the
+  grim business of the thing. He pulled Moze out of the cedar, and
+  while he climbed up, Emett ran his rope under the collars of all
+  of the hounds. Quick as the idea flashed over me I leaped into
+  the cedar adjoining the one Jones was in, and went up hand over
+  hand. A few pulls brought me to the top, and then my blood ran
+  hot and quick, for I was level with the lion, too close for
+  comfort, but in excellent position for taking pictures.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between
+  widespread paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones'
+  gray hat came pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly
+  shoulders. The quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and
+  his lithe body crouched low on the branches. He was about to
+  jump. His open dripping jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for
+  some means of escape, his tufted tail, swinging against the twigs
+  and breaking them, manifested his extremity. The eager hounds
+  waited below, howling, leaping.</p>
+
+  <p>It bothered me considerably to keep my balance, regulate my
+  camera and watch the proceedings. Jones climbed on with his rope
+  between his teeth, and a long stick. The very next instant it
+  seemed to me, I heard the cracking of branches and saw the lion
+  biting hard at the noose which circled his neck.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I swung down, branch to branch, and dropped to the
+  ground, for I wanted to see what went on below. Above the howls
+  and yelps, I distinguished Jones' yell. Emett ran directly under
+  the lion with a spread noose in his hands. Jones pulled and
+  pulled, but the lion held on firmly. Throwing the end of the
+  lasso down to Jim, Jones yelled again, and then they both pulled.
+  The lion was too strong. Suddenly, however, the branch broke,
+  letting the lion fall, kicking frantically with all four paws.
+  Emett grasped one of the four whipping paws, and even as the
+  powerful animal sent him staggering he dexterously left the noose
+  fast on the paw. Jim and Jones in unison let go of their lasso,
+  which streaked up through the branches as the lion fell, and then
+  it dropped to the ground, where Jim made a flying grab for it.
+  Jones plunging out of the tree fell upon the rope at the same
+  instant.</p>
+
+  <p>If the action up to then had been fast, it was slow to what
+  followed. It seemed impossible for two strong men with one lasso,
+  and a giant with another, to straighten out that lion. He was all
+  over the little space under the trees at once. The dust flew, the
+  sticks snapped, the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars.
+  Jones ploughed the ground flat on his stomach, holding on with
+  one hand, with the other trying to fasten the rope to something;
+  Jim went to his knees; and on the other side of the lion, Emett's
+  huge bulk tipped a sharp angle, and then fell.</p>
+
+  <p>I shouted and ran forward, having no idea what to do, but
+  Emett rolled backward, at the same instant the other men got a
+  strong haul on the lion. Short as that moment was in which the
+  lasso slackened, it sufficed for Jones to make the rope fast to a
+  tree. Whereupon with the three men pulling on the other side of
+  the leaping lion, somehow I had flashed into my mind the game
+  that children play, called skipping the rope, for the lion and
+  lasso shot up and down.</p>
+
+  <p>This lasted for only a few seconds. They stretched the beast
+  from tree to tree, and Jones running with the third lasso, made
+  fast the front paws.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a female," said Jones, as the lion lay helpless, her
+  sides swelling; "a good-sized female. She's nearly eight feet
+  from tip to tip, but not very heavy. Hand me another rope."</p>
+
+  <p>When all four lassos had been stretched, the lioness could not
+  move. Jones strapped a collar around her neck and clipped the
+  sharp yellow claws.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now to muzzle her," he continued.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones' method of performing this most hazardous part of the
+  work was characteristic of him. He thrust a stick between her
+  open jaws, and when she crushed it to splinters he tried another,
+  and yet another, until he found one that she could not break.
+  Then while she bit on it, he placed a wire loop over her nose,
+  slowly tightening it, leaving the stick back of her big
+  canines.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds ceased their yelping and when untied, Sounder
+  wagged his tail as if to say, "Well done," and then lay down; Don
+  walked within three feet of the lion, as if she were now beneath
+  his dignity; Jude began to nurse and lick her sore paw; only Moze
+  the incorrigible retained antipathy for the captive, and he
+  growled, as always, low and deep. And on the moment, Ranger,
+  dusty and lame from travel, trotted wearily into the glade and,
+  looking at the lioness, gave one disgusted bark and flopped
+  down.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    III
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Transporting our captives to camp bade fair to make us work.
+  When Jones, who had gone after the pack horses, hove in sight on
+  the sage flat, it was plain to us that we were in for trouble.
+  The bay stallion was on the rampage.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why didn't you fetch the Indian?" growled Emett, who lost his
+  temper when matters concerning his horses went wrong. "Spread
+  out, boys, and head him off."</p>
+
+  <p>We contrived to surround the stallion, and Emett succeeded in
+  getting a halter on him.</p>
+
+  <p>"I didn't want the bay," explained Jones, "but I couldn't
+  drive the others without him. When I told that redskin that we
+  had two lions, he ran off into the woods, so I had to come
+  alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm going to scalp the Navajo," said Jim, complacently.</p>
+
+  <p>These remarks were exchanged on the open ridge at the entrance
+  to the thick cedar forest. The two lions lay just within its
+  shady precincts. Emett and I, using a long pole in lieu of a
+  horse, had carried Tom up from the Canyon to where we had
+  captured the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones had brought a packsaddle and two panniers.</p><a name=
+  "image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg021_m.jpg" width="448" height="705" alt=
+    "Buckskin Forest ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg022_m.jpg" width="448" height="682" alt=
+    "Buffalo Jones With Sounder and Ranger ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>When Emett essayed to lead the horse which carried these, the
+  animal stood straight up and began to show some of his primal
+  desert instincts. It certainly was good luck that we unbuckled
+  the packsaddle straps before he left the vicinity. In about three
+  jumps he had separated himself from the panniers, which were then
+  placed upon the back of another horse. This one, a fine looking
+  beast, and amiable under surroundings where his life and health
+  were considered even a little, immediately disclaimed any
+  intention of entering the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"They scent the lions," said Jones. "I was afraid of it; never
+  had but one nag that would pack lions."</p>
+
+  <p>"Maybe we can't pack them at all," replied Emett dubiously.
+  "It's certainly new to me."</p>
+
+  <p>"We've got to," Jones asserted; "try the sorrel."</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time in a serviceable and honorable life,
+  according to Emett, the sorrel broke his halter and kicked like a
+  plantation mule.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a matter of fright. Try the stallion. He doesn't look
+  afraid," said Jones, who never knew when he was beaten.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett gazed at Jones as if he had not heard right.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go ahead, try the stallion. I like the way he looks."</p>
+
+  <p>No wonder! The big stallion looked a king of horses&mdash;just
+  what he would have been if Emett had not taken him, when a colt,
+  from his wild desert brothers. He scented the lions, and he held
+  his proud head up, his ears erect, and his large, dark eyes shone
+  fiery and expressive.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll try to lead him in and let him see the lions. We can't
+  fool him," said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Marc showed no hesitation, nor anything we expected. He stood
+  stiff-legged, and looked as if he wanted to fight.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's all right; he'll pack them," declared Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to
+  the horns, Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the
+  left pannier while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom
+  never lived. It was cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace
+  enough to be "hog-tied," as Jim called it, but to be thrust down
+  into a bag and packed on a horse was adding insult to injury. Tom
+  frothed at the mouth and seemed like a fizzing torpedo about to
+  explode. The lioness being considerably longer and larger, was
+  with difficulty gotten into the other pannier, and her head and
+  paws hung out. Both lions kept growling and snarling.</p>
+
+  <p>"I look to see Marc bolt over the rim," said Emett,
+  resignedly, as Jones took up the end of the rope halter.</p>
+
+  <p>"No siree!" sang out that worthy. "He's helping us out; he's
+  proud to show up the other nags."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones was always asserting strange traits in animals, and
+  giving them intelligence and reason. As to that, many incidents
+  coming under my observation while with him, and seen with his
+  eyes, made me incline to his claims, the fruit of a lifetime with
+  animals.</p>
+
+  <p>Marc packed the lions to camp in short order, and, quoting
+  Jones, "without turning a hair." We saw the Navajo's head
+  protruding from a tree. Emett yelled for him, and Jones and Jim
+  "hahaed" derisively; whereupon the black head vanished and did
+  not reappear. Then they unhooked one of the panniers and dumped
+  out the lioness. Jones fastened her chain to a small pine tree,
+  and as she lay powerless he pulled out the stick back of her
+  canines. This allowed the wire muzzle to fall off. She signalled
+  this freedom with a roar that showed her health to be still
+  unimpaired. The last action in releasing her from her painful
+  bonds Jones performed with sleight-of-hand dexterity. He slipped
+  the loop fastening one paw, which loosened the rope, and in a
+  twinkling let her work all of her other paws free. Up she sprang,
+  ears flat, eyes ablaze, mouth wide, once more capable of defense,
+  true to her instinct and her name.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the men lowered Tom from Marc's back I stepped closer
+  and put my face within six inches of the lion's. He promptly spat
+  on me. I had to steel my nerve to keep so close. But I wanted to
+  see a wild lion's eyes at close range. They were exquisitely
+  beautiful, their physical properties as wonderful as their
+  expression. Great half globes of tawny amber, streaked with
+  delicate wavy lines of black, surrounding pupils of intense
+  purple fire. Pictures shone and faded in the amber
+  light&mdash;the shaggy tipped plateau, the dark pines and smoky
+  canyons, the great dotted downward slopes, the yellow cliffs and
+  crags. Deep in those live pupils, changing, quickening with a
+  thousand vibrations, quivered the soul of this savage beast, the
+  wildest of all wild Nature, unquenchable love of life and
+  freedom, flame of defiance and hate.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones disposed of Tom in the same manner as he had the
+  lioness, chaining him to an adjoining small pine, where he leaped
+  and wrestled.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I saw Emett coming through the woods leading and
+  dragging the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that
+  his fear was not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no
+  wonder to me that the Navvy should hang back from this
+  sacrilegious treatment of his god. A natural wisdom, which I had
+  in common with all human beings who consider self preservation
+  the first law of life, deterred me from acquainting my august
+  companions with my belief. At least I did not want to break up
+  the camp.</p>
+
+  <p>In the remorseless grasp of Emett, forced along, the Navajo
+  dragged his feet and held his face sidewise, though his dark eyes
+  gleamed at the lions. Terror predominated among the expressions
+  of his countenance. Emett drew him within fifteen feet and held
+  him there, and with voice, and gesticulating of his free hand,
+  tried to show the poor fellow that the lions would not hurt
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy stared and muttered to himself. Here Jim had some
+  deviltry in mind, for he edged up closer; but what it was never
+  transpired, for Emett suddenly pointed to the horses and said to
+  the Indian:</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Chineago</i> (feed)."</p>
+
+  <p>It appeared when Navvy swung himself over Marc's broad back,
+  that our great stallion had laid aside his transiently noble
+  disposition and was himself again. Marc proceeded to show us how
+  truly Jim had spoken: "Shore he ain't no use for the redskin."
+  Before the Indian had fairly gotten astride, Marc dropped his
+  head, humped his shoulders, brought his feet together and began
+  to buck. Now the Navajo was a famous breaker of wild mustangs,
+  but Marc was a tougher proposition than the wildest mustang that
+  ever romped the desert. Not only was he unusually vigorous; he
+  was robust and heavy, yet exceedingly active. I had seen him roll
+  over in the dust three times each way, and do it easily&mdash;a
+  feat Emett declared he had never seen performed by another
+  horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy began to bounce. He showed his teeth and twisted his
+  sinewy hands in the horse's mane. Marc began to act like a demon;
+  he plowed the ground; apparently he bucked five feet straight up.
+  As the Indian had bounced he now began to shoot into the air. He
+  rose the last time with his heels over his head, to the full
+  extent of his arms; and on plunging down his hold broke. He spun
+  around the horse, then went hurtling to the ground some twenty
+  feet away. He sat up, and seeing Emett and Jones laughing, and
+  Jim prostrated with joy, he showed his white teeth in a smile and
+  said:</p>
+
+  <p>"No bueno dam."</p>
+
+  <p>I think all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and
+  especially when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the
+  mean Indian, patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted.
+  Marc, not being so difficult to please as Jim in the way of
+  discomfiting the Navajo, appeared satisfied for the present, and
+  trotted off down the hollow, with the string of horses ahead,
+  their bells jingling.</p>
+
+  <p>Camp-fire tasks were a necessary wage in order to earn the
+  full enjoyment and benefit of the hunting trip; and looking for
+  some task with which to turn my hand, I helped Jim feed the
+  hounds. To feed ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a
+  bone; however, our dogs were not ordinary. It took time to feed
+  them, and a prodigious amount of meat. We had packed between
+  three and four hundred pounds of wild-horse meat, which had been
+  cut into small pieces and strung on the branches of a scrub oak
+  near camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Don, as befitted a gentleman and the leader of the greatest
+  pack in the West, had to be fed by hand. I believe he would
+  rather had starved than have demeaned himself by fighting.
+  Starved he certainly would have, if Jim had thrown meat
+  indiscriminately to the ground. Sounder asserted his rights and
+  preferred large portions at a time. Jude begged with great solemn
+  eyes but was no slouch at eating for all her gentleness. Ranger,
+  because of imperfectly developed teeth rendering mastication
+  difficult, had to have his share cut into very small pieces. As
+  for Moze&mdash;well, great dogs have their faults as do great
+  men&mdash;he never got enough meat; he would fight even poor
+  crippled Jude, and steal even from the pups; when he had gotten
+  all Jim would give him, and all he could snatch, he would growl
+  away with bulging sides.</p>
+
+  <p>"How about feeding the lions?" asked Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"They'll drink to-night," replied Jones, "but won't eat for
+  days; then we'll tempt them with fresh rabbits."</p>
+
+  <p>We made a hearty meal, succeeding which Jones and I walked
+  through the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and
+  glistening, invited us westward, and after a detour of half a
+  mile we reached it. The points of the rim, striking out into the
+  immense void, always drew me irresistibly. We found the view from
+  this rock one of startling splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of
+  the middle wing extended to the west, at this moment apparently
+  running into the setting sun. The gold glare touching up the
+  millions of facets of chiseled stone, created color and
+  brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And
+  looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue,
+  bottomless depths of the Pacific.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here, help me push off this stone," I said to Jones. We
+  heaved a huge round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move.
+  Fortunately we had a little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked
+  and began to slide. Just as it toppled over I glanced at the
+  second hand of my watch. Then with eyes over the rim we waited.
+  The silence was the silence of the canyon, dead and vast,
+  intensified by our breathless earstrain. Ten long palpitating
+  seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too great for
+  sound to reach us. Fifteen
+  seconds&mdash;seventeen&mdash;eighteen&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most
+  awful bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened,
+  deadened to burst out and roll louder, then slowly, like
+  mountains on wheels, rumbled under the rim-walls, passing on and
+  on, to roar back in echo from the cliffs of the mesas. Roar and
+  rumble&mdash;roar and rumble! for two long moments the dull and
+  hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in the far-distant
+  canyons.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to
+  watch the red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color
+  deepening downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up
+  like a dark tide.</p>
+
+  <p>On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which
+  brought us to a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better
+  to go around. The hollow, however, was quite long and we decided
+  presently to cross it. We descended a little way when Jones
+  suddenly barred my progress with his big arm.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen," he whispered.</p>
+
+  <p>It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the
+  pine needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be
+  approaching under the trees.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of
+  the hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that
+  broken wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going
+  down."</p>
+
+  <p>I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down
+  like shadows.</p>
+
+  <p>"Have they scented us?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a
+  twig. They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I
+  wonder&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp
+  action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of
+  soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid
+  succession violent brushings and thumpings in the scrub of the
+  hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes!
+  Come on! Hi! Hi! Hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept
+  close to him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver.
+  Toward the bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had
+  to smash through and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And
+  farther up the hollow I saw a gray swiftly bounding object too
+  long and too low for a deer, and I hurriedly shot six times at
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for
+  quick work? It's a yearling doe."</p>
+
+  <p>In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones
+  feet. It was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the
+  wheeze of blood in its throat, and the sound, like a
+  death-rattle, affected me powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where
+  one side of the neck, low down, had been terribly lacerated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you
+  have another shot put this doe out of agony."</p>
+
+  <p>But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp
+  knife. We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The
+  peculiar sound, probably made by the intake of air through the
+  laceration of the throat, on the spur of the moment seemed
+  pitifully human.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living
+  thing was a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied
+  natural selection, the variability of animals under different
+  conditions of struggling existence, the law whereby one animal
+  struck down and devoured another. But I had never seen and heard
+  that law enacted on such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's up?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the
+  other; and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk
+  that I experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his
+  advent might mean at a time of real peril.</p><a name=
+  "image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg023_m.jpg" width="448" height="703" alt=
+    "Jones About to Lasso a Mountain Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg024_m.jpg" width="448" height="674" alt=
+    "Remains of a Deer Killed by Lions ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Emett, I've lived to see many things," replied Jones, "but
+  this is the first time I ever saw a lion jump a deer right under
+  my nose!"</p>
+
+  <p>As Emett bent over to seize the long ears of the deer, I
+  noticed the gasping had ceased.</p>
+
+  <p>"Neck broken," he said, lifting the head. "Well, I'm danged.
+  Must have been an all-fired strong lion. He'll come back, you may
+  be sure of that. Let's skin out the quarters and hang the carcass
+  up in a tree!"</p>
+
+  <p>We returned to camp in a half an hour, the richer for our walk
+  by a quantity of fresh venison. Upon being acquainted with our
+  adventure, Jim expressed himself rather more fairly than was his
+  customary way.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore that beats hell! I knowed there was a lion somewheres,
+  because Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the
+  brute."</p>
+
+  <p>I believed Jim's wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any
+  rate to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the
+  doe justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it
+  was not so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner
+  of it, and especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama
+  of the plateau. The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred
+  every night, perhaps often in the day and likely at different
+  points at the same time. Emett told how he had found fourteen
+  piles of bleached bones and dried hair in the thickets of less
+  than a mile of the hollow on which we were encamped.</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."</p>
+
+  <p>"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, <i>coco! coco!</i>" called
+  Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up
+  the fire and threw on more wood.</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Discass!</i> (cold)," he said to me. "<i>Coco, bueno</i>
+  (fire good)."</p>
+
+  <p>I replied, "Me savvy&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleep-ie?" he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha," I returned.</p>
+
+  <p>While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of
+  Navajo, English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw
+  the stars disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder
+  and carried a breath of snow. I like north wind best&mdash;from
+  under the warm blankets&mdash;because of the roar and lull and
+  lull and roar in the pines. Crawling into the bed presently, I
+  lay there and listened to the rising storm-wind for a long time.
+  Sometimes it swelled and crashed like the sound of a breaker on
+  the beach, but mostly, from a low incessant moan, it rose and
+  filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly lulled. This lull, despite
+  a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to sleep.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The
+  Navajo aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly
+  from under the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw
+  fleecy flakes of white drifting through the small window of my
+  tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones'
+  hopes. Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots
+  and coat I went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow.
+  The forest was beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was
+  falling. I walked to the roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits,
+  well-browned and of generous size, had just been dumped into the
+  middle of our breakfast cloth, a tarpaulin spread on the ground;
+  the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and a Dutch oven sizzled with
+  a great number of slices of venison. "Did you hear the Indian
+  chanting?" asked Jones, who sat with his horny hands to the
+  blaze.</p>
+
+  <p>"I heard his singing."</p>
+
+  <p>"No, it wasn't a song; the Navajo never sings in the morning.
+  What you heard was his morning prayer, a chant, a religious and
+  solemn ritual to the break of day. Emett says it is a custom of
+  the desert tribe. You remember how we saw the Mokis sitting on
+  the roofs of their little adobe huts in the gray of the morning.
+  They always greet the sun in that way. The Navajos chant."</p>
+
+  <p>It certainly was worth remembering, I thought, and mentally
+  observed that I would wake up thereafter and listen to the
+  Indian.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good luck and bad!" went on Jones. "Snow is what we want, but
+  now we can't find the scent of our lion of last night."</p>
+
+  <p>Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives
+  presented sorry spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled.
+  Emett had chopped down a small pine, the branches of which he was
+  using to make shelter for the lions. While I looked on Tom tore
+  his to pieces several times, but the lioness crawled under hers
+  and began licking her chops. At length Tom, seeing that Emett
+  meant no underhand trick, backed out of the drizzling snow and
+  lay down.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett had already constructed a shack for the hounds. It was a
+  way of his to think of everything. He had the most extraordinary
+  ability. A stroke of his axe, a twist of his great hands, a turn
+  of this or that made camp a more comfortable place. And if
+  something, no matter what, got out of order or broken, there was
+  Emett to show what it was to be a man of the desert. It had been
+  my good fortune to see many able men on the trail and round the
+  camp-fire, but not one of them even approached Emett's class.
+  When I said a word to him about his knack with things, his reply
+  was illuminating: "I'm fifty-eight, and four out of every five
+  nights of my life I have slept away from home on the ground."</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Chineago!</i>" called Jim, who had begun with all of us to
+  assimilate a little of the Navajo's language.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon we fell to eating with appetite unknown to any save
+  hunters. Somehow the Indian had gravitated to me at meal times,
+  and now he sat cross-legged beside me, holding out his plate and
+  looking as hungry as Moze. At first he had always asked for the
+  same kind of food that I happened to have on my own plate. When I
+  had finished and had no desire to eat more, he gave up his
+  faculty of imitation and asked for anything he could get. The
+  Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked sweet things, sugar
+  best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get his hands on a
+  can of fruit. Although he inspired Jones with disgust and Jim
+  with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to me. He
+  called me "Mista Gay" and he pronounced the words haltingly in
+  low voice and with unmistakable respect.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's on for today?" queried Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess we may as well hang around camp and rest the hounds,"
+  replied Jones. "I did intend to go after the lion that killed the
+  deer, but this snow has taken away the scent."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore it'll stop snowin' soon," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying
+  powder; the leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew
+  brighter and brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after
+  his departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through
+  the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Something's up," said Emett instantly. "An Indian never yells
+  like that at a horse."</p><a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg025_m.jpg" width="748" height="448" alt=
+    "A Lion Tied ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg026_m.jpg" width="727" height="448" alt=
+    "Fighting Weetahs (buffalo Bulls) on Buffalo Jones's Desert Ranch">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell
+  repeated. It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells,
+  which told us he had the horses coming. He appeared off to the
+  right, riding Foxie and racing the others toward camp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Cougie&mdash;mucha big&mdash;dam!" he said leaping off the
+  mustang to confront us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," replied the Indian. "<i>Butteen, butteen</i>!"</p>
+
+  <p>"He says, trail&mdash;trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd
+  better go and see."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight
+  and hurry with the horses' oats."</p>
+
+  <p>We followed the tracks of the horses which lead southwest
+  toward the rim, and a quarter of a mile from camp we crossed a
+  lion trail running at right angles with our direction.</p>
+
+  <p>"Old Sultan!" I cried, breathlessly, recognizing that the
+  tracks had been made by a giant lion we had named Sultan. They
+  were huge, round, and deep, and with my spread hand I could not
+  reach across one of them.</p>
+
+  <p>Without a word, Jones strode off on the trail. It headed east
+  and after a short distance turned toward camp. I suppose Jones
+  knew what the lion had been about, but to Emett and me it was
+  mystifying. Two hundred yards from camp we came to a fallen pine,
+  the body of which was easily six feet high. On the side of this
+  log, almost on top, were two enormous lion tracks, imprinted in
+  the mantle of snow. From here the trail led off northeast.</p>
+
+  <p>"Darn me!" ejaculated Jones. "The big critter came right into
+  camp; he scented our lions, and raised up on this log to look
+  over."</p>
+
+  <p>Wheeling, he started for camp on the trot. Emett and I kept
+  even with him. Words were superfluous. We knew what was coming. A
+  made&mdash;to&mdash;order lion trail could not have equalled the
+  one right in the back yard of our camp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Saddle up!" said Jones, with the sharp inflection of words
+  that had come to thrill me. "Jim, Old Sultan has taken a look at
+  us since break of day."</p>
+
+  <p>I got into my chaps, rammed my little automatic into its
+  saddle holster and mounted. Foxie seemed to want to go. The
+  hounds came out of their sheds and yawned, looking at us
+  knowingly. Emett spoke a word to the Navajo, and then we were
+  trotting down through the forest. The sun had broken out warm,
+  causing water to drip off the snow laden pines. The three of us
+  rode close behind Jones, who spoke low and sternly to the
+  hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>What an opportunity to watch Don! I wondered how soon he would
+  catch the scent of the trail. He led the pack as usual and kept
+  to a leisurely dog&mdash;trot. When within twenty yards of the
+  fallen log, he stopped for an instant and held up his head,
+  though without exhibiting any suspicion or uneasiness.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind blew strong at our backs, a circumstance that
+  probably kept Don so long in ignorance of the trail. A few yards
+  further on, however, he stopped and raised his fine head. He
+  lowered it and trotted on only to stop again. His easy air of
+  satisfaction with the morning suddenly vanished. His savage
+  hunting instinct awakened through some channel to raise the short
+  yellow hair on his neck and shoulders and make it stand stiff. He
+  stood undecided with warily shifting nose, then jumped forward
+  with a yelp. Another jump brought another sharp cry from him.
+  Sounder, close behind, echoed the yelp. Jude began to whine. Then
+  Don, with a wild howl, leaped ten feet to alight on the lion
+  trail and to break into wonderfully rapid flight. The seven other
+  hounds, bunched in a black and yellow group, tore after him
+  filling the forest with their wild uproar.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett's horse bounded as I have seen a great racer leave the
+  post, and his desert brothers, loving wild bursts of speed,
+  needing no spur, kept their noses even with his flanks. The soft
+  snow, not too deep, rather facilitated than impeded this wild
+  movement, and the open forest was like a highway.</p>
+
+  <p>So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for
+  branches, vaulting the white&mdash;blanketed logs, and swerving
+  as we split to pass the pines. The mist from the melting snow
+  moistened our faces, and the rushing air cooled them with fresh,
+  soft sensation. There were moments when we rode abreast and
+  others when we sailed single file, with white ground receding,
+  vanishing behind us.</p>
+
+  <p>My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth
+  flight and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I
+  hoped we would not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a
+  thicket where he had dragged a deer, because the race was too
+  splendid a thing to cut short. Through my mind whirled with
+  inconceivable rapidity the great lion chases on which we had
+  ridden the year before. And this was another chase, only more
+  stirring, more beautiful, because it was the nature of the thing
+  to grow always with experience.</p>
+
+  <p>Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung
+  along the trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup
+  was neck and neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels,
+  leading the other pups. Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of
+  Jude.</p>
+
+  <p>But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds,
+  was not in the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned
+  due west when he began to go down the little hollows and their
+  intervening ridges. We lost ground. The pack left us behind. The
+  slope of the plateau became decided. We rode out of the pines to
+  find the snow failing in the open. Water ran in little gullies
+  and glistened on the sagebrush. A half mile further down the snow
+  had gone. We came upon the hounds running at fault, except
+  Sounder, and he had given up.</p>
+
+  <p>"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's
+  track and his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as
+  well to wait until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing
+  somewhere and it is my idea we might catch his trail as he comes
+  back."</p>
+
+  <p>The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There
+  seemed no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but
+  features of the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the
+  lower end of the plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even
+  if we found a fresh morning trail in the sand, the heat would
+  have burned out the scent.</p>
+
+  <p>So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp
+  only the shady patches were left.</p>
+
+  <p>It was almost eleven o'clock when I lay down on my bed to rest
+  awhile and fell asleep. The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard
+  Jim calling Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The
+  snow had all disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim
+  sat on his horse and Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow,
+  leading the saddle horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jones, get out," called Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones
+  testily.</p>
+
+  <p>"Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones burst out of his tent, with rumpled hair and sleepy
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>"I went over to see the carcass of the deer an' found a lion
+  sittin' up in the tree, feedin' for all he was worth. Pie jumped
+  out an' ran up the hollow an' over the rim. So I rustled back for
+  you fellows. Lively now, we'll get this one sure."</p>
+
+  <p>"Was it the big fellow?" I asked</p>
+
+  <p>"No, but he ain't no kitten; an' he's a fine color, sort of
+  reddish. I never seen one just as bright. Where's Emett?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I don't know. He was here a little while ago. Shall I signal
+  for him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't yell," cried Jones holding up his fingers. "Be quiet
+  now."</p>
+
+  <p>Without another word we finished saddling, mounted and, close
+  together, with the hounds in front, rode through the forest
+  toward the rim.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    V
+  </center>
+
+  <p>We rode in different directions toward the hollow, the better
+  to chance meeting with Emett, but none of us caught a glimpse of
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>It happened that when we headed into the hollow it was at a
+  point just above where the deer carcass hung in the scrub oak.
+  Don in spite of Jones' stern yells, let out his eager hunting
+  yelp and darted down the slope. The pack bolted after him and in
+  less than ten seconds were racing up the hollow, their thrilling,
+  blending bays a welcome spur to action. Though I spoke not a word
+  to my mustang nor had time to raise the bridle, he wheeled to one
+  side and began to run. The other horses also kept to the ridge,
+  as I could tell by the pounding of hoofs on the soft turf. The
+  hounds in full cry right under us urged our good steeds to a
+  terrific pace. It was well that the ridge afforded clear
+  going.</p>
+
+  <p>The speed at which we traveled, however, fast as it was,
+  availed not to keep up with the pack. In a short half mile, just
+  as the hollow sloped and merged into level ground, they left us
+  behind and disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My
+  mustang plunged out of the forest to the rim and dashed along,
+  apparently unmindful of the chasm. The red and yellow surface
+  blurred in a blinding glare. I heard the chorus of hounds, but as
+  its direction baffled me I trusted to my horse and I did well,
+  for soon he came to a dead halt on the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I heard the hounds below me. I had but time to see the
+  character of the place&mdash;long, yellow promontories running
+  out and slopes of weathered stone reaching up between to a level
+  with the rim&mdash;when in a dwarf pine growing just over the
+  edge I caught sight of a long, red, pantherish body.</p>
+
+  <p>I whooped to my followers now close upon me and leaping off
+  hauled out my Remington and ran to the cliff. The lion's long,
+  slender body, of a rare golden-red color, bright, clean,
+  black-tipped and white-bellied, proclaimed it a female of
+  exceeding beauty. I could have touched her with a fishing rod and
+  saw how easily she could be roped from where I stood. The tree in
+  which she had taken refuge grew from the head of a weathered
+  slope and rose close to the wall. At that point it was merely a
+  parapet of crumbling yellow rock. No doubt she had lain concealed
+  under the shelving wall and had not had time to get away before
+  the hounds were right upon her.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's going to jump," yelled Jones, in my rear, as he
+  dismounted.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a golden-red streak flash downward, heard a mad medley
+  from the hounds, a cloud of dust rose, then something bright
+  shone for a second to the right along the wall. I ran with all my
+  might to a headland of rock upon which I scrambled and saw with
+  joy that I could command the situation.</p>
+
+  <p>The lioness was not in sight, nor were the hounds. The latter,
+  however, were hot on the trail. I knew the lioness had taken to
+  another tree or a hole under the wall, and would soon be routed
+  out. This time I felt sure she would run down and I took a rapid
+  glance below. The slope inclined at a steep angle and was one
+  long slide of bits of yellow stone with many bunches of scrub oak
+  and manzanita. Those latter I saw with satisfaction, because in
+  case I had to go down they would stop the little avalanches. The
+  slope reached down perhaps five hundred yards and ended in a
+  thicket and jumble of rocks from which rose on the right a bare
+  yellow slide. This ran up to a low cliff. I hoped the lion would
+  not go that way, for it led to great broken battlements of rim.
+  Left of the slide was a patch of cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim's yell pealed out, followed by the familiar penetrating
+  howl of the pack when it sighted game. With that I saw the
+  lioness leaping down the slope and close behind her a yellow
+  hound.</p>
+
+  <p>"Go it, Don, old boy!" I yelled, wild with delight.</p>
+
+  <p>A crushing step on the stones told me Jones had arrived.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" roared he.</p>
+
+  <p>I thought then that if the lioness did not cover thirty feet
+  at every jump I was not in a condition to judge distance. She ran
+  away from Don as if he had been tied and reached the thicket
+  below a hundred yards ahead of him. And when Don leaving his
+  brave pack far up the slide entered the thicket the lioness came
+  out on the other side and bounded up the bare slope of yellow
+  shale.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shoot ahead of her! Head her off! Turn her back!" cried
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>With the word I threw forward the Remington and let drive.
+  Following the bellow of the rifle, so loud in that thin air, a
+  sharp, harsh report cracked up from below. A puff of yellow dust
+  rose in front of the lioness. I was in line, but too far ahead. I
+  fired again. The steel jacketed bullet hit a stone and spitefully
+  whined away into the canyon. I tried once more. This time I
+  struck close to the lioness. Disconcerted by a cloud of dust
+  rising before her very eyes she wheeled and ran back.</p>
+
+  <p>We had forgotten Don and suddenly he darted out of the
+  thicket, straight up the slide. Always, in every chase, we were
+  afraid the great hound would run to meet his death. We knew it
+  was coming sometime. When the lioness saw him and stopped, both
+  Jones and I felt that this was to be the end of Don.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shoot her! Shoot her!" cried Jones. "She'll kill him! She'll
+  kill him!"</p>
+
+  <p>As I knelt on the rock I had a hard contraction of my throat,
+  and then all my muscles set tight and rigid. I pulled the trigger
+  of my automatic once, twice. It was wonderful how closely the two
+  bullets followed each other, as we could tell by the almost
+  simultaneous puffs of dust rising from under the beast's nose.
+  She must have been showered and stung with gravel, for she
+  bounded off to the left and disappeared in the cedars. I had
+  missed, but the shots had served to a better end than if I had
+  killed her.</p>
+
+  <p>As Don raced up the ground where a moment before a battle and
+  probably death had awaited him, the other hounds burst from the
+  thicket. With that, a golden form seemed to stand out from the
+  green of the cedar, to move and to rise.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's treed! She's treed!" shouted Jones. "Go down and keep
+  her there while I follow."</p>
+
+  <p>From the back of the promontory where I met the main wall, I
+  let myself down a niche, foot here and there, a hand hard on the
+  soft stone, braced knee and back until I jumped to the edge of
+  the slope. The scrub oak and manzanita saved me many a fall. I
+  set some stones rolling and I beat them to the bottom. Having
+  passed the thicket, I bent my efforts to the yellow slide and
+  when I had surmounted it my breath came in labored pants. The
+  howling of the hounds guided me through the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>First I saw Moze in the branches of cedar and above him the
+  lioness. I ran out into a little open patch of stony ground at
+  the end of which the tree stood leaning over a precipice. In
+  truth the lioness was swaying over a chasm.</p>
+
+  <p>Those details I grasped in a glance, then suddenly awoke to
+  the fact that the lioness was savagely snarling at Moze.</p>
+
+  <p>"Moze! Moze! Get down!" I yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>He climbed on serenely. He was a most exasperating dog. I
+  screamed at him and hit him with a rock big enough to break his
+  bones. He kept on climbing. Here was a predicament. Moze would
+  surely get to the lioness if I did not stop him, and this seemed
+  impossible. It was out of the question for me to climb after him.
+  And if the lioness jumped she would have to pass me or come
+  straight at me. So I slipped down the safety catch on my
+  automatic and stood ready to save Moze or myself.</p>
+
+  <p>The lioness with a show of fury that startled me, descended
+  her branch a few steps, and reaching below gave Moze a sounding
+  smack with her big paw. The hound dropped as if he had been shot
+  and hit the ground with a thud. Whereupon she returned to her
+  perch.</p>
+
+  <p>This reassured me and I ran among the dogs and caught Moze
+  already starting for the tree again and tied him, with a strap I
+  always carried, to a small bush nearby. I heard the yells of my
+  companions and looking back over the tops of the cedars I saw Jim
+  riding down and higher to the left Jones sliding, falling,
+  running at a great rate. I encouraged them to keep up the good
+  work, and then gave my attention to the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>She regarded me with a cold, savage stare and showed her
+  teeth. I repaid this incivility on her part by promptly
+  photographing her from different points.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and Jim were on the spot before I expected them and both
+  were dusty and dripping with sweat. I found to my surprise that
+  my face was wet as was also my shirt. Jones carried two lassos,
+  and my canteen, which I had left on the promontory.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ain't she a beauty?" he panted, wiping his face.
+  "Wait&mdash;till I get my breath."</p>
+
+  <p>When finally he walked toward the cedar the lioness stood up
+  and growled as if she realized the entrance of the chief actor
+  upon the scene. Jones cast his lasso apparently to try her out,
+  and the noose spread out and fell over her head. As he tightened
+  the rope the lioness backed down behind a branch.</p>
+
+  <p>"Tie the dogs!" yelled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Quick!" added Jim. "She's goin' to jump."</p>
+
+  <p>Jim had only time to aid me in running my lasso under the
+  collar of Don, Sounder, Jude and one of the pups. I made them
+  fast to a cedar. I got my hands on Ranger just as Moze broke his
+  strap. I grabbed his collar and held on.</p>
+
+  <p>Right there was where trouble commenced for me. Ranger tussled
+  valiantly and Moze pulled me all over the place. Behind me I
+  heard Jones' roar and Jim's yell; the breaking of branches, the
+  howling of the other dogs. Ranger broke away from me and so
+  enabled me to get my other hand on the neck of crazy Moze. On
+  more than one occasion I had tried to hold him and had failed;
+  this time I swore I would do it if he rolled me over the
+  precipice. As to that, only a bush saved me.</p>
+
+  <p>More and louder roars and yells, hoarser howls and sharper
+  wrestling, snapping sounds told me what was going on while I
+  tried to subdue Moze. I had a grim thought that I would just as
+  lief have had hold of the lioness. The hound presently stopped
+  his plunging which gave me an opportunity to look about. The
+  little space was smoky with a smoke of dust. I saw the lioness
+  stretched out with one lasso around a bush and another around a
+  cedar with the end in the hands of Jim. He looked as if he had
+  dug up the ground. While he tied this lasso securely Jones
+  proceeded to rope the dangerous front paws.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds quieted down and I took advantage of this absence
+  of tumult to get rid of Moze.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pretty lively," said Jones, spitting gravel as I walked up.
+  Sand and dust lay thick in his beard and blackened his face. "I
+  tell you she made us root."</p>
+
+  <p>Either the lioness had been much weakened or choked, or Jones
+  had unusual luck, for we muzzled her and tied up her paws in
+  short order.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Ranger?" I asked suddenly, missing him from the
+  panting hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>"I grabbed him by the heels when he tackled the lion, and I
+  gave him a sling somewheres," replied Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Ranger put in an appearance then under the cedars limping
+  painfully.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jim, darn me, if I don't believe you pitched him over the
+  precipice!" said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Examination proved this surmise to be correct. We saw where
+  Ranger had slipped over a twenty-foot wall. If he had gone over
+  just under the cedar where the depth was much greater he would
+  never have come back.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds are choking with dust and heat," I said. When I
+  poured just a little water from my canteen into the crown of my
+  hat, the hounds began fighting around and over me and spilled the
+  water.</p>
+
+  <p>"Behave, you coyotes!" I yelled. Either they were insulted or
+  fully realized the exigency of the situation, for each one came
+  up and gratefully lapped every drop of his portion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, now comes the hell of it," said Jim appearing with a
+  long pole. "Packin' the critter out."</p>
+
+  <p>An argument arose in regard to the best way up the slope, and
+  by virtue of a majority we decided to try the direction Jim and I
+  thought best. My companions led the way, carrying the lioness
+  suspended on the pole. I brought up the rear, packing my rifle,
+  camera, lasso, canteen and a chain.</p>
+
+  <p>It was killing work. We had to rest every few steps. Often we
+  would fall. Jim laughed, Jones swore, and I groaned. Sometimes I
+  had to drop my things to help my companions. So we toiled wearily
+  up the loose, steep way.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's she shakin' like that for?" asked Jim suddenly.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones let down his end of the pole and turned quickly. Little
+  tremors quivered over the lissome body of the lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's dying," cried Jim, jerking out the stick between her
+  teeth and slipping off the wire muzzle.</p>
+
+  <p>Her mouth opened and her frothy tongue lolled out. Jones
+  pointed to her quivering sides and then raised her eyelids. We
+  saw the eyes already glazing, solemnly fixed.</p>
+
+  <p>"She's gone," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>Very soon she lay inert and lifeless. Then we sat beside her
+  without a word, and we could hardly for the moment have been more
+  stunned and heartbroken if it had been the tragic death of one of
+  our kind. In that wild environment, obsessed by the desire to
+  capture those beautiful cats alive, the fateful ending of the
+  successful chase was felt out of all proportion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore she's dead," said Jim. "And wasn't she a beauty? What
+  was wrong?"</p>
+
+  <p>"The heat and lack of water," replied Jones. "She choked. What
+  idiots we were! Why didn't we think to give her a drink."</p>
+
+  <p>So we passionately protested against our want of fore-thought,
+  and looked again and again with the hope that she might come to.
+  But death had stilled the wild heart. We gave up presently, still
+  did not move on. We were exhausted, and all the while the hounds
+  lay panting on the rocks, the bees hummed, the flies buzzed. The
+  red colors of the upper walls and the purple shades of the lower
+  darkened silently.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>"Shore we can't set here all night," said Jim. "Let's skin the
+  lion an' feed the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>The most astonishing thing in our eventful day was the amount
+  of meat stowed away by the dogs. Lion flesh appealed to their
+  appetites. If hungry Moze had an ounce of meat, he had ten
+  pounds. It seemed a good opportunity to see how much the old
+  gladiator could eat; and Jim and I cut chunks of meat as fast as
+  possible. Moze gulped them with absolute unconcern of such a
+  thing as mastication. At length he reached his limit, possibly
+  for the first time in his life, and looking longingly at a juicy
+  red strip Jim held out, he refused it with manifest shame. Then
+  he wobbled and fell down.</p>
+
+  <p>We called to him as we started to climb the slope, but he did
+  not come. Then the business of conquering that ascent of sliding
+  stone absorbed all our faculties and strength. Little headway
+  could we have made had it not been for the brush. We toiled up a
+  few feet only to slide back and so it went on until we were weary
+  of life.</p>
+
+  <p>When one by one we at last gained the rim and sat there to
+  recover breath, the sun was a half globe of fire burning over the
+  western ramparts. A red sunset bathed the canyon in crimson,
+  painting the walls, tinting the shadows to resemble dropping
+  mists of blood. It was beautiful and enthralling to my eyes, but
+  I turned away because it wore the mantle of tragedy.</p>
+
+  <p>Dispirited and worn out, we trooped into camp to find Emett
+  and a steaming supper. Between bites the three of us related the
+  story of the red lioness. Emett whistled long and low and then
+  expressed his regret in no light terms.</p>
+
+  <p>"Roping wild steers and mustangs is play to this work," he
+  said in conclusion.</p>
+
+  <p>I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even
+  the glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my
+  bed with eyes already glued shut.</p>
+
+  <p>A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first,
+  when only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my
+  bed, then hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was
+  dropping off again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to
+  open wide. The black night had faded to the gray of dawn. The
+  sound I recognized at once to be the Navajo's morning chant. I
+  lay there and listened. Soft and monotonous, wild and swelling,
+  but always low and strange, the savage song to the break of day
+  was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I wondered what the
+  literal meaning of his words could have been. The significance
+  needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away, to the
+  brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the
+  morning sun, to the Giver of Life&mdash;to these the Indian
+  chanted his prayer.</p>
+
+  <p>Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the
+  Navajo with his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the
+  trees, the rocks, the light and sun, and he prayed to that which
+  was divinely helpful to him in all the mystery of his
+  unintelligible life.</p>
+
+  <p>We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it
+  was to be a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question
+  arose&mdash;whether we or the hounds were the more crippled.
+  Ranger did not show himself; Don could just walk and that was
+  all; Moze was either too full or too tired to move; Sounder
+  nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.</p>
+
+  <p>After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves
+  different tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began
+  to turn the camp topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate
+  it. The wire, however, was not to be found. This was a calamity,
+  for, as we asked each other, how could we muzzle lions without
+  wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy leather straps which I had
+  bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had disappeared. We had
+  only one collar left, the one that Jones had put on the red
+  lioness.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow
+  heated and naturally from that to become angry. It seems a
+  fatality of campers along a wild trail, like explorers in an
+  unknown land, to be prone to fight. If there is an explanation of
+  this singular fact, it must be that men at such time lose their
+  poise and veneer of civilization; in brief, they go back. At all
+  events we had it hot and heavy, with the center of attack
+  gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always losing
+  something, naturally we united in force against him.</p>
+
+  <p>Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off
+  in the woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs
+  preceded his appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten
+  a bridle on Marc, and from the way the big stallion hurled his
+  huge bulk over logs and through thickets, it appeared evident he
+  meant to usurp Jim's ambition and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett
+  yell, the Indian turned Marc toward camp. The horse slowed down
+  when he neared the glade and tried to buck. But Navvy kept his
+  head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to ungovernable rage
+  and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the dogs' shelter
+  and thundered down the ridge.</p>
+
+  <p>Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at
+  home. He was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept
+  his seat on a wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low
+  branch of a pine, sweeping the Indian off.</p>
+
+  <p>When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously
+  hurt, perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.</p>
+
+  <p>Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or
+  muscle, he certainly appeared dead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen
+  it before from just such accidents."</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak.
+  Jim, who always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked
+  profoundly sorry.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's a dead Indian, all right," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain
+  and deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us
+  much relief.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's your dead Indian," exclaimed Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett stooped again and felt the Indian's back and got in
+  reward another mournful groan.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's his back," said Emett, and true to his ruling passion,
+  forever to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he
+  began to rub the Indian and call for the liniment.</p><a name=
+  "image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg027_m.jpg" width="448" height="837" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg028_m.jpg" width="448" height="686" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be
+  dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing
+  the hollow of his brown back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here we are," said Jim, returning on the run with the
+  bottle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pour some on," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the
+  Indian's back.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't waste it," remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy's
+  back.</p>
+
+  <p>Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed
+  to quiver through the Indian's body; he rose at a single leap,
+  and uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw
+  an Indian or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed
+  back to us.</p>
+
+  <p>Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's your dead Indian!" ejaculated Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"What the hell!" exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such
+  language.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look here!" cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. "See! Don't you
+  see it?"</p>
+
+  <p>Jim fell face downward and began to shake.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" shouted Emett and I together.</p>
+
+  <p>"Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong
+  bottle!"</p>
+
+  <p>In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the
+  sward, and the forest rang with sounds of mirth.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and
+  so strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. "More snow"
+  was the verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the
+  Navajo to share my tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepie-me," I said to him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed
+  with me.</p>
+
+  <p>Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations,
+  which struck me as being singularly selfish considering they
+  would not be inconvenienced in any way.</p>
+
+  <p>"Why not?" I asked. "It's a cold night. There'll be frost if
+  not snow."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore you'll get 'em," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"There never was an Indian that didn't have 'em," added
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" I questioned.</p>
+
+  <p>They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance
+  as to what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my
+  mind. When I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at
+  my feet as usual and he growled so deep that I could not but
+  think he, too, resented the addition to my small tent.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mista Gay!" came in the Indian's low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well Navvy?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sleepie&mdash;sleepie?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy&mdash;mucha sleepie&mdash;mucha&mdash;no bueno."</p>
+
+  <p>I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did
+  not awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent
+  was light and he had gone. I found my companions up and
+  doing.</p>
+
+  <p>We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun,
+  a red ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn
+  to gold. No snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the
+  ground. The hounds, wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they
+  detested, trotted in front. Don showed no effects of his great
+  run down the sliding slope after the red lioness; it was one of
+  his remarkable qualities that he recuperated so quickly. Ranger
+  was a little stiff, and Sounder favored his injured foot. The
+  others were as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had
+  passed the edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead,
+  he turned his horse up the bank.</p>
+
+  <p>We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest,
+  which we entered without having seen the hounds show interest in
+  anything. Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed
+  lion tracks, many of them, but too old to carry a scent. Even
+  North Hollow with its regular beaten runway failed to win a
+  murmur from the pack.</p>
+
+  <p>"Spread out," said Jones, "and look for tracks. I'll keep the
+  center and hold in the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the
+  breadth of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open
+  sage flats inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon
+  a broken sage bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I
+  discovered no track but dismounted and scrutinized the
+  surroundings carefully. A heavy body had been dragged across the
+  sage, crushing it. The ends of broken bushes were green, the
+  leaves showed bruises.</p>
+
+  <p>I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my
+  mustang I slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an
+  occasional down-trodden bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the
+  cedars again Foxie snorted. Under the first tree I found a
+  ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of grayish hairs and a split
+  skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe ears were still
+  warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even a well
+  pressed imprint of a lion's body where he had rolled or lain.</p>
+
+  <p>The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive
+  of interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then,
+  what with my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily
+  with shrill cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.</p>
+
+  <p>An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing
+  and breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He
+  arrived from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat.
+  Mutely I held up the two long ears.</p>
+
+  <p>"Get on your horse!" cried Jim after one quick glance at the
+  spread of bones and hair.</p>
+
+  <p>It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I
+  ran to Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared
+  among the sage and a string of yelps split the air.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Don!" yelled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight
+  for us! He passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and
+  disappeared like a gleam under the gloomy cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed
+  in on us from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out
+  behind Emett, fighting the branches, dodging and swerving,
+  hugging the saddle, and always sending out our sharp yells.</p>
+
+  <p>The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up
+  together found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West
+  Point.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds have gone down," he said, pointing to the
+  runway.</p>
+
+  <p>We all listened to the meaning bays.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they
+  found him under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now
+  fellows, I'll go down. It might be a good idea for you to spread
+  along the rim."</p><a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg029_m.jpg" width="448" height="790" alt=
+    "Treed Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg030_m.jpg" width="448" height="733" alt=
+    "Hiding ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to
+  the rim as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often
+  forced us to circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls
+  below, kept pace with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused
+  Jones to dispatch Emett on the gallop for the next runway at
+  North Hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of
+  the promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my
+  mustang I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded
+  through the sage and cedar to the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very
+  sharp and bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags
+  with a crumbling bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down
+  like giant steps. From one of these I watched below. The slope
+  here under the wall was like the side of a rugged mountain.
+  Somewhere down among the dark patches of cedar and the great
+  blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the lion, but I could not
+  see one of them.</p>
+
+  <p>The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this
+  was with brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might
+  climb down. Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding,
+  clinging to what afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of
+  stone hid the sky from me part of the way. I came out a hundred
+  feet below upon a second promontory of huge slabs of yellow
+  stone. Over these I clambered, to sit with my feet swinging over
+  the last one.</p>
+
+  <p>Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the
+  canyon. In the soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow
+  walls, the black domes were less harsh than in the full noonday
+  sun, purer than in the tender shadow of twilight. Below me were
+  slopes and slides divided by ravines full of stones as large as
+  houses, with here and there a lonesome leaning crag, giving
+  irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the rolling,
+  weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full of
+  fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
+  limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers
+  wonderfully growing in crannies.</p>
+
+  <p>Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance
+  and a thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and
+  eager eyes to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was
+  mine as usual; the hounds were working up toward me. How I
+  strained my sight! Hearing a single cry I looked eastward to see
+  Jones silhouetted against the blue on a black promontory. He
+  seemed a giant primeval man overlooking the ruin of a former
+  world. I signalled him to make for my point.</p>
+
+  <p>Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He
+  was at fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his
+  left. I heard Don's clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air,
+  seemingly to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not
+  locate him. Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim.
+  Moze was next to appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble
+  of stone hid him, and then Ranger again showed. Evidently he
+  wanted to get around the bottom of a low crag, for he jumped and
+  jumped only to fall back.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon
+  the top of it was the long, slender body of a lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" I yelled till my lungs failed me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where are you?" came from above.</p>
+
+  <p>"Here! Here!" I cried seeing Jones on the rim. "Come down.
+  Climb down the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round
+  crag. He's fooled the hounds and they can't find him."</p>
+
+  <p>"I see him! I see him!" yelled Jones. Then he roared out a
+  single call for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the
+  curved broken rim wall, opening up echoes which clapped like
+  thunder.</p>
+
+  <p>While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay
+  with head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle.
+  What a place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing
+  down the broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have
+  remained safe from pursuit.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps.
+  I could not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the
+  crag. I leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the
+  varied and thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of
+  hard, panting breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As
+  Jones had set in motion bushels of stone and had already scraped
+  his feet over the rocks behind me I thought the forced
+  respiration came from him. When I turned he was yet far
+  off&mdash;too far for me to hear him breathe. I thought this
+  circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.</p>
+
+  <p>On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle
+  blast, and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent
+  up the thrice welcome news of a treed lion.</p>
+
+  <p>"There 're two! There 're two!" I yelled to Jones, now working
+  down to my right.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's treed down here. I've got him spotted!" replied Jones.
+  "You stay there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett."</p>
+
+  <p>Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim
+  far below to the left sent me an answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with
+  Jones and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone,
+  waiting impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one
+  lion and I watched the other.</p>
+
+  <p>Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could
+  have gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life
+  about him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding
+  to the throb and race of his wild blood.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes.
+  No doubt he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the
+  left of our position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to
+  toil up the other. I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds
+  hailed him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Steer to your left Jim!" I called.. "There's a lion on that
+  crag above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the
+  left&mdash;Jones is there!"</p>
+
+  <p>The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to
+  the sound rising from below without being able to see what
+  happened. My lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had
+  crouched closer to his crag, evidently believing he was unseen,
+  which obviously made it imperative for me to keep my seat and
+  hold him there as long as possible.</p>
+
+  <p>But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hyar Moze&mdash;get out of that. Catch him&mdash;hold him!
+  Damn these rotten limbs. Hand me a pole&mdash;Jones, back
+  down&mdash;back down! he's comin'&mdash;Hi! Hi! Whoop!
+  Boo&mdash;o! There&mdash;now you've got him! No, no; it slipped!
+  Now! Look out, Jim, from under&mdash;he's going to jump!"</p>
+
+  <p>A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of
+  yelps with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones' last
+  words. Then two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first
+  was the lion, the second was Don. The rest of the pack came
+  tumbling helter-skelter in their wake. Following them raced Jim
+  in long kangaroo leaps, with Jones in the rear, running for all
+  he was worth. The animated and musical procession passed up out
+  of the ravine and gradually lengthened as the lion gained and
+  Jones lost, till it passed altogether from my jealous sight.</p>
+
+  <p>On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed
+  their quarry again, as was easy to tell by their change from
+  sharp intermittent yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus.
+  Then presently all quieted down, and for long moments at a time
+  the still silence enfolded the slope. Shouts now and then floated
+  up on the wind and an occasional bark.</p>
+
+  <p>I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a
+  few minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag
+  and never moved.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks
+  of the Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far
+  beyond to where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther
+  still to the Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the
+  distance.</p>
+
+  <p>Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the
+  time I was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring
+  above would have placed me as well as my lion among the few
+  living things in the range of his all-compassing vision.
+  Therefore, all was mine, not merely the lion&mdash;for he was
+  only the means to an end&mdash;but the stupendous, unnameable
+  thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains in the shades of
+  its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming pale,
+  passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
+  the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
+  that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of
+  beauty exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by
+  right of presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to
+  keep.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!"</p>
+
+  <p>The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the
+  ridge of cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right here&mdash;have you kept your line there?" he
+  yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>"All's well&mdash;come along, come along," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved.
+  The hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could
+  not find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a
+  continual baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they
+  had tied up the lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up
+  the slope.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called
+  in warning.</p>
+
+  <p>"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.</p>
+
+  <p>I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between
+  the boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim
+  catching my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I
+  reached the bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of
+  the cliff, and soon all three of us with the hounds stood out on
+  the rocky shelf with only a narrow space between us and the
+  crouching lion.</p>
+
+  <p>Before we had a moment to speak, much less form a plan of
+  attack, the lion rose, spat at us defiantly, and deliberately
+  jumped off the crag. We heard him strike with a frightful
+  thud.</p>
+
+  <p>Surprise held us dumb. To take the leap to the slope below
+  seemed beyond any beast not endowed with wings. We saw the lion
+  bounding down the identical trail which the other lion had taken.
+  Jones came out of his momentary indecision.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold the dogs! Call them back!" he yelled hoarsely. "They'll
+  kill the lion we tied! They'll kill him!"</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds had scattered off the bench here and there,
+  everywhere, to come together on the trail below. Already they
+  were in full cry with the matchless Don at the fore. Manifestly
+  to call them back was an injustice, as well as impossible. In ten
+  seconds they were out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>In silence we waited, each listening, each feeling the tragedy
+  of the situation, each praying that they would pass by the poor,
+  helpless, bound lion. Suddenly the regular baying swelled to a
+  burst of savage, snarling fury, such as the pack made in a
+  vicious fight. This ceased&mdash;short silence ensued; Don's
+  sharp voice woke the echoes, then the regular baying
+  continued.</p>
+
+  <p>As with one thought, we all sat down. Painful as the certainty
+  was it was not so painful as that listening, hoping suspense.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore they can't be blamed," said Jim finally. "Bumping their
+  nose into a tied lion that way&mdash;how'd they know?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Who could guess the second lion would jump off that quick and
+  run back to our captive?" burst out Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore we might have knowed it," replied Jim. "Well, I'm goin'
+  after the pack."</p>
+
+  <p>He gathered up his lasso and strode off the bench. Jones said
+  he would climb back to the rim, and I followed Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Why the lions ran in that particular direction was clear to me
+  when I saw the trail. It was a runway, smooth and hard packed. I
+  trudged along it with rather less enjoyment than on any trail I
+  had ever followed to the canyon. Jim waited for me over the cedar
+  ridge and showed me where the captive lion lay dead. The hounds
+  had not torn him. They had killed him and passed on after the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>"He was a fine fellow, all of seven feet, we'll skin him on
+  our way back."</p>
+
+  <p>Only dogged determination coupled with a sense of duty to the
+  hounds kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had
+  been submerged. But we had to follow the pack.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim, less weighted down and perhaps less discouraged, forged
+  ahead up and down. The sun had burned all the morning coolness
+  out of the air. I perspired and panted and began to grow weary.
+  Jim's signal called me to hurry. I took to a trot and came upon
+  him and the hounds under a small cedar. The lion stood among the
+  dead branches. His sides where shaking convulsively, and his
+  short breaths could be plainly heard. He had the most blazing
+  eyes and most untamed expression of any wild creature I have ever
+  seen; and this amazed me considering I had kept him on a crag for
+  over an hour, and had come to look upon him as my own.</p>
+
+  <p>"What'll we do, Jim, now that we have him treed?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, we'll tie him up," declared Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion stayed in the cedar long enough for me to photograph
+  him twice, then he leaped down again and took to his back trail.
+  We followed as fast as we could, soon to find that the hounds had
+  put him up another cedar. From this he jumped down among the
+  dogs, scattered them as if they had been so many leaves, and
+  bounded up the slope out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>I laid aside my rifle and camera and tried to keep up with
+  Jim. The lion ran straight up the slope and treed again under the
+  wall. Before we covered half the distance he was on the go once
+  more, flying down in clouds of dust.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don is makin' him hump," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>And that alone was enough to spur us on. We would reward the
+  noble hound if we had the staying power. Don and his pack ran
+  westward this time, and along a mile of the beaten trail put him
+  up two more trees. But these we could not see and judged only by
+  the sound.</p><a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg031_m.jpg" width="448" height="704" alt=
+    "A Drink of Cold Granite Water Under the Rim ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg032_m.jpg" width="448" height="689" alt=
+    "Which is the Piute? ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Look there!" cried Jim. "Darn me if he ain't comin' right at
+  us."</p>
+
+  <p>It was true. Ahead of us the lion appeared, loping wearily. We
+  stopped in our tracks undecided. Jim drew his revolver. Once or
+  twice the lion disappeared behind stones and cedars. When he
+  sighted us he stopped, looked back, then again turning toward us,
+  he left the trail to plunge down. He had barely got out of sight
+  when old Don came pattering along the trail; then Ranger leading
+  the others. Don did not even put his nose to the ground where the
+  lion had switched, but leaped aside and went down. Here the long
+  section of slope between the lion's runway and the second wall
+  had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed into deep
+  ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled on,
+  always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped
+  fissures, we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar
+  below, and send long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood
+  at the constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second
+  wall. The side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of
+  mass on mass of broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a
+  gigantic scale. Points of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks
+  lined the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over
+  the second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds
+  seemed to be back further toward where the split narrows."</p>
+
+  <p>Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns
+  we wormed our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.</p>
+
+  <p>"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat
+  shelf some few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close
+  by, but too far for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was
+  gasping and frothing at the mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore if he'd only stay there&mdash;" said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the
+  tired beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw
+  failed of its purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up
+  painfully it seemed, and faced the dogs. That way barred he
+  turned to the cliff. Almost opposite him a shelf leaned out. He
+  looked at it, then paced to and fro like a beast in a cage.</p>
+
+  <p>He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and
+  finally concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length
+  sagged in the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and
+  strung, and he sprang like a tawny streak.</p>
+
+  <p>His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the
+  shelf and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his
+  claws scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a
+  somersault, struck twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded
+  from that to fall down, striking suddenly and then to roll, a
+  yellow wheel that lodged behind a rock and stretched out to move
+  no more.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little
+  stones rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon
+  seemed to pay tribute to the lion's unquenchable spirit and to
+  the freedom he had earned to the last.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>How long Jim and I sat there we never knew. The second
+  tragedy, not so pitiful but as heart sickening as the first,
+  crushed our spirits.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore he was a game lion," said Jim. "An' I'll have to get
+  his skin."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm all in, Jim. I couldn't climb out of that hole." I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You needn't. Rest a little, take a good drink an' leave your
+  canteen here for me; then get your things back there on the trail
+  an' climb out. We're not far from West Point. I'll go back after
+  the first lion's skin an' then climb straight up. You lead my
+  horse to the point where you came off the rim."</p>
+
+  <p>He clattered along the gorge knocking the stones and started
+  down. I watched him letting himself over the end of the huge
+  slabs until he passed out of my sight. A good, long drink revived
+  me and I began the ascent.</p>
+
+  <p>From that moment on time did not matter to me. I forgot all
+  about it. I felt only my leaden feet and my laboring chest and
+  dripping skin. I did not even notice the additional weight of my
+  rifle and camera though they must have overburdened me. I kept my
+  eyes on the lion runway and plunged away with short steps. To
+  look at these towering walls would have been to surrender.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, stumbling, bursting, sick, I gained the rim and had
+  to rest before I could mount. When I did get into the saddle I
+  almost fell from it.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and Emett were waiting for me at the promontory where I
+  had tied my horse, and were soon acquainted with the particulars
+  of my adventure, and that Jim would probably not get out for
+  hours. We made tracks for camp, and never did a place rouse in me
+  such a sense of gratefulness. Emett got dinner and left on the
+  fire a kettle of potato stew for Jim. It was almost dark when
+  that worthy came riding into camp. We never said a word as he
+  threw the two lion skins on the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fellows, you shore have missed the wind-up!" he
+  exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>We all looked at him and he looked at us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Was there any more?" I asked weakly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore! An' it beats hell! When I got the skin of the lion the
+  dogs killed I started to work up to the place I knowed you'd
+  leave my horse. It's bad climbing where you came down. I got on
+  the side of that cliff an' saw where I could work out, if I could
+  climb a smooth place. So I tried. There was little cracks an'
+  ridges for my feet and hands. All to once, just above where I
+  helped you down, I heard a growl. Looking up I saw a big lion,
+  bigger'n any we chased except Sultan, an' he was pokin' his head
+  out of a hole, an' shore telling me to come no further. I
+  couldn't let go with either hand to reach my gun, because I'd
+  have fallen, so I yelled at him with all my might. He spit at me
+  an' then walked out of the hole over the bench as proud as a lord
+  an' jumped down where I couldn't see him any more. I climbed out
+  all right but he'd gone. An' I'll tell you for a minute, he shore
+  made me sweat."</p>
+
+  <p>"By George!" I yelled, greatly excited. "I heard that lion
+  breathing. Don chased him up there. I heard hard, wheezing
+  breaths somewhere behind me, but in the excitement I didn't pay
+  any attention to them. I thought it was Jones panting, but now I
+  know what it meant."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore. He was there all the time, lookin' at you an' maybe he
+  could have reached you."</p>
+
+  <p>We were all too exhausted for more discussion and putting that
+  off until the next day we sought our beds. It was hardly any
+  wonder that I felt myself jumping even in my sleep, and started
+  up wildly more than once in the dead of night.</p><a name=
+  "image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg033_m.jpg" width="765" height="448" alt=
+    "Wild Horses Drinking on a Promontory in the Grand Canyon ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Morning found us all rather subdued, yet more inclined to a
+  philosophical resignation as regarded the difficulties of our
+  special kind of hunting. Capturing the lions on the level of the
+  plateau was easy compared to following them down into canyons and
+  bringing them up alone. We all agreed that that was next to
+  impossible. Another feature, which before we had not considered,
+  added to our perplexity and it was a dawning consciousness that
+  we would be perhaps less cruel if we killed the lions outright.
+  Jones and Emett arrayed themselves on the side that life even in
+  captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still under
+  the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end,
+  inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable
+  fact that as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of
+  intelligence.</p><a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg034a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Jones and Emett Packing Lion on Horse ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg034b_m.jpg" width="448" height="348" alt=
+    "Jones Climbing up to Lasso Lion ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>About eleven o'clock while the others had deserted camp
+  temporarily for some reason or other, I was lounging upon an
+  odorous bed of pine needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky
+  gleamed bright azure through the openings of the great trees, a
+  dry west breeze murmured through the forest. I was lying on my
+  bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I
+  felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten
+  me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this
+  time on my breast, another bite that left no room for
+  imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my shirt,
+  and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly a thought swept on the heels of my indolent and
+  rather annoying realization. Could I have gotten from the Navajo
+  what Jim and Jones so characteristically called "'em"? I turned
+  cold all over. And on the very instant I received another bite
+  that burned like fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The return of my companions prevented any open demonstration
+  of my fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore
+  inwardly. During the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had
+  on a horsehair shirt with the ends protruding toward my skin,
+  and, in the exaggerated sensitiveness of the moment, made sure
+  "'em" were chasing up and down my back.</p>
+
+  <p>After dinner I sneaked off into the woods. I remembered that
+  Emett had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and
+  that was to disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments
+  and person. With serious mind and murderous intent I undressed.
+  In the middle of the back of my jersey I discovered several long,
+  uncanny, gray things.</p>
+
+  <p>"I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature,
+  oblivious to all around, intent only on the massacre of the
+  things that had violated me. How much time flew I could not
+  guess. Great loud "Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There
+  behind me stood Jones and Emett shaking as if with the ague.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage. I had the unreasonable
+  suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones,
+  who cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and
+  Emett the sober Mormon, laughed until they cried.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was&mdash;just wondering&mdash;what your folks
+  would&mdash;think&mdash;if they&mdash;saw you&mdash;now," gurgled
+  Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in
+  their mirth.</p>
+
+  <p>"All I hope is that you fellows will get 'em' too," I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Good Lord preserve me from that particular breed of
+  Navvy's," cried Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones wriggled all over at the mere suggestion. Now so much
+  from the old plainsman, who had confessed to intimate relations
+  with every creeping, crawling thing in the West, attested
+  powerfully to the unforgettable singularity of what I got from
+  Navvy.</p>
+
+  <p>I returned to camp determined to make the best of the
+  situation, which owing to my failure to catch all of the gray
+  devils, remained practically unchanged. Jim had been acquainted
+  with my dilemma, as was manifest in his wet eyes and broad grin
+  with which he greeted me.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think I'd scalp the Navvy," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>"You make the Indian sleep outside after this, snow or no
+  snow," was Jones' suggestion.</p>
+
+  <p>"No I won't; I won't show a yellow streak like that. Besides,
+  I want to give 'em to you fellows."</p>
+
+  <p>A blank silence followed my statement, to which Jim
+  replied:</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore that'll be easy; Jones'll have 'em, so'll Emett, an' by
+  thunder I'm scratchin' now."</p>
+
+  <p>"Navvy, look here," I said severely, "mucha no bueno! heap
+  bad! You&mdash;me!" here I scratched myself and made signs that a
+  wooden Indian would have understood.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me savvy," he replied, sullenly, then flared up. "Heap big
+  lie."</p>
+
+  <p>He turned on his heel, erect, dignified, and walked away amid
+  the roars of my gleeful comrades.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IX
+  </center>
+
+  <p>One by one my companions sought their blankets, leaving the
+  shadows, the dying embers, the slow-rising moan of the night wind
+  to me. Old Moze got up from among the other hounds and limped
+  into my tent, where I heard him groan as he lay down. Don,
+  Sounder, and Ranger were fast asleep in well-earned rest. Shep,
+  one of the pups, whined and impatiently tossed his short chain.
+  Remembering that he had not been loose all day, I unbuckled his
+  collar and let him go.</p>
+
+  <p>He licked my hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his
+  shapely, sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the
+  circle cast by the fire and looked out into the darkening
+  shadows. It was plain that Shep's instincts were developing fast;
+  he was ambitious to hunt. But sure in my belief that he was
+  afraid of the black night and would stay in camp, I went to
+  bed.</p>
+
+  <p>The Navajo who slept with me snored serenely and Moze growled
+  in his dreams; the wind swept through the pines with an
+  intermittent rush. Some time in the after part of the night I
+  heard a distant sound. Remote, mournful, wild, it sent a chill
+  creeping over me. Borne faintly to my ears, it was a fit
+  accompaniment to the moan of the wind in the pines. It was not
+  the cry of a trailing wolf, nor the lonesome howl of a prowling
+  coyote, nor the strange, low sound, like a cough, of a hunting
+  cougar, though it had a semblance of all three. It was the bay of
+  a hound, thinned out by distance, and it served to keep me wide
+  awake. But for a while, what with the roar and swell of the wind
+  and Navvy's snores, I could hear it only at long intervals.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, in the course of an hour, I followed the sound, or
+  imagined so, from a point straight in line with my feet to one at
+  right angles with my head. Finally deciding it came from Shep,
+  and fancying he was trailing a deer or coyote, I tried to go to
+  sleep again.</p>
+
+  <p>In this I would have succeeded had not, all at once, our
+  captive lions begun to growl. That ominous, low murmuring awoke
+  me with a vengeance, for it was unusual for them to growl in the
+  middle of the night. I wondered if they, as well as the pup, had
+  gotten the scent of a prowling lion.</p>
+
+  <p>I reached down to my feet and groped in the dark for Moze.
+  Finding him, I gave him a shake. The old gladiator groaned,
+  stirred, and came out of what must have been dreams of hunting
+  meat. He slapped his tail against my bed. As luck would have it,
+  just then the wind abated to a soft moan, and clear and sharp
+  came the bay of a hound. Moze heard it, for he stopped wagging
+  his tail, his body grew tense under my hand, and he vented his
+  low, deep grumble.</p>
+
+  <p>I lay there undecided. To wake my companions was hardly to be
+  considered, and to venture off into the forest alone, where old
+  Sultan might be scouting, was not exactly to my taste. And trying
+  to think what to do, and listening for the bay of the pup, and
+  hearing mostly the lions growling and the wind roaring, I fell
+  asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey! are you ever going to get up?" some one yelled into my
+  drowsy brain. I roused and opened my eyes. The yellow, flickering
+  shadows on the wall of my tent told me that the sun had long
+  risen. I found my companions finishing breakfast. The first thing
+  I did was to look over the dogs. Shep, the black-and-white pup,
+  was missing.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Shep?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, I ain't seen him this mornin'," replied Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I told what I had heard during the night.</p>
+
+  <p>"Everybody listen," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>We quieted down and sat like statues. A gentle, cool breeze,
+  barely moving the pine tips, had succeeded the night wind. The
+  sound of horses munching their oats, and an occasional clink,
+  rattle, and growl from the lions did not drown the faint but
+  unmistakable yelps of a pup.</p>
+
+  <p>"South, toward the canyon," said Jim, as Jones got up.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now, it'd be funny if that little Shep, just to get even with
+  me for tying him up so often, has treed a lion all by himself,"
+  commented Jones. "And I'll bet that's just what he's done."</p>
+
+  <p>He called the hounds about him and hurried westward through
+  the forest.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, it might be." Jim shook his head knowingly. "I reckon
+  it's only a rabbit, but anythin' might happen in this place."</p>
+
+  <p>I finished breakfast and went into my tent for
+  something&mdash;I forget what, for wild yells from Emett and Jim
+  brought me flying out again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen to that!" cried Jim, pointing west.</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds had opened up; their full, wild chorus floated
+  clearly on the breeze, and above it Jones' stentorian yell
+  signaled us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, the old man can yell," continued Jim. "Grab your
+  lassos an' hump yourselves. I've got the collar an' chain."</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on, Navvy," shouted Emett. He grasped the Indian's wrist
+  and started to run, jerking Navvy into the air at every jump. I
+  caught up my camera and followed. We crossed two shallow hollows,
+  and then saw the hounds and Jones among the pines not far
+  ahead.</p>
+
+  <p>In my excitement I outran my companions and dashed into an
+  open glade. First I saw Jones waving his long arms; next the
+  dogs, noses upward, and Don actually standing on his hind legs;
+  then a dead pine with a well-known tawny shape outlined against
+  the blue sky.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurrah for Shep!" I yelled, and right vigorously did my
+  comrades join in.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's another female," said Jones, when we calmed down, "and
+  fair sized. That's the best tree for our purpose that I ever saw
+  a lion in. So spread out, boys; surround her and keep noisy."</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy broke from Emett at this juncture and ran away. But
+  evidently overcome by curiosity, he stopped to hide behind a
+  bush, from which I saw his black head protruding.</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones swung himself on the first stubby branch of the
+  pine, the lioness, some fifteen feet above, leaped to another
+  limb, and the one she had left cracked, swayed and broke. It fell
+  directly upon Jones, the blunt end striking his head and knocking
+  him out of the tree. Fortunately, he landed on his feet;
+  otherwise there would surely have been bones broken. He appeared
+  stunned, and reeled so that Emett caught him. The blood poured
+  from a wound in his head.</p>
+
+  <p>This sudden shock sobered us instantly. On examination we
+  found a long, jagged cut in Jones' scalp. We bathed it with water
+  from my canteen and with snow Jim procured from a nearby hollow,
+  eventually stopping the bleeding. I insisted on Jones coming to
+  camp to have the wound properly dressed, and he insisted on
+  having it bound with a bandana; after which he informed us that
+  he was going to climb the tree again.</p>
+
+  <p>We objected to this. Each of us declared his willingness to go
+  up and rope the lion; but Jones would not hear of it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm not doubting your courage," he said. "It's only that you
+  cannot tell what move the lion would make next, and that's the
+  danger."</p>
+
+  <p>We could not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill
+  the animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the
+  tree, passed the first branch and then another. The lioness
+  changed her position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to
+  keep the tree trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out
+  on a branch in a most favorable position for roping.</p>
+
+  <p>The first cast of the lasso did the business, and Jim and
+  Emett with nimble fingers tied up the hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>"Coming," shouted Jones. He slid down, hand over hand, on the
+  rope, the lioness holding his weight with apparent ease.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make your noose ready," he yelled to Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>I had to drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal
+  from her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness,
+  hissing, snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the
+  rope out of our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed
+  her hind paws in a flash.</p>
+
+  <p>"Make fast your rope," shouted Jones. "There, that's good! Now
+  let her down&mdash;easy."</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as the lioness touched ground we let go the lasso,
+  which whipped up and over the branch. She became a round, yellow,
+  rapidly moving ball. Emett was the first to catch the loose
+  lasso, and he checked the rolling cougar. Jones leaped to assist
+  him and the two of them straightened out the struggling animal,
+  while Jim swung another noose at her. On the second throw he
+  caught a front paw.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull hard! Stretch her out!" yelled Jones. He grasped a stout
+  piece of wood and pushed it at the lioness. She caught it in her
+  mouth, making the splinters fly. Jones shoved her head back on
+  the ground and pressed his brawny knee on the bar of wood.</p>
+
+  <p>"The collar! The collar! Quick!" he called.</p>
+
+  <p>I threw chain and collar to him, which in a moment he had
+  buckled round her neck.</p>
+
+  <p>"There, we've got her!" he said. "It's only a short way over
+  to camp, so we'll drag her without muzzling."</p>
+
+  <p>As he rose the lioness lurched, and reaching him, fastened her
+  fangs in his leg. Jones roared. Emett and Jim yelled. And I,
+  though frightened, was so obsessed with the idea of getting a
+  picture that I began to fumble with the shutter of my camera.</p>
+
+  <p>"Grab the chain! Pull her off!" bawled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with
+  all my might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round
+  her neck. Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she
+  brought Jones' leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the
+  chain and jumped.</p>
+
+  <p>"**&mdash; **&mdash;!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think
+  more of a picture than of saving my life?" Having expressed this
+  not unreasonable protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made
+  fast to a small sapling.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an
+  animated center, began a march through the forest that for
+  variety of action and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever
+  beheld.</p>
+
+  <p>So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
+  straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
+  ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
+  dance, along the side lines.</p>
+
+  <p>There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the
+  ground and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs
+  and chased the two in front and dragged the one behind; others
+  when she came within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.</p>
+
+  <p>They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and
+  though Jones evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a
+  tree. There was no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of
+  the time and the fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos
+  were each thirty feet long, but even with that the men could just
+  barely keep out of her reach.</p>
+
+  <p>Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt,
+  unerringly, unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three
+  men were nearing the bottom of the second hollow, well spread
+  out, lassos taut, facing one another. Jones stumbled and the
+  lioness leaped his way. The weight of both brought Jim over,
+  sliding and slipping, with his rope slackening. The leap of the
+  lioness carried her within reach of Jones; and as he raised
+  himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for him just as
+  Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws.
+  Then she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge.
+  Jones sprang up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his
+  scarlet face, working spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed
+  how utterly unable he was to give expression to his rage. I had a
+  stitch in my side that nearly killed me, but laugh I had to
+  though I should die for it.</p>
+
+  <p>No laughing matter was it for them. They volleyed and
+  thundered back and forth meaningless words of which "hell" was
+  the only one distinguishable, and probably the word that best
+  described their situation.</p>
+
+  <p>All the while, however, they had been running from the
+  lioness, which brought them before they realized it right into
+  camp. Our captive lions cut up fearfully at the hubbub, and the
+  horses stampeded in terror.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoa!" yelled Jones, whether to his companions or to the
+  struggling cougar, no one knew. But Navvy thought Jones addressed
+  the cougar.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whoa!" repeated Navvy. "No savvy whoa! No savvy whoa!" which
+  proved conclusively that the Navajo had understanding as well as
+  wit.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon we had another captive safely chained and growling away
+  in tune with the others. I went back to untie the hounds, to find
+  them sulky and out of sorts from being so unceremoniously
+  treated. They noisily trailed the lioness into camp, where,
+  finding her chained, they formed a ring around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereafter the day passed in round-the-camp-fire chat and
+  task. For once Jim looked at Navvy with toleration. We dressed
+  the wound in Jones' head and laughed at the condition of his
+  trousers and at his awkward attempts to piece them.</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha dam cougie," remarked Navvy. "No savvy whoa!"</p>
+
+  <p>The lions growled all day. And Jones kept repeating: "To think
+  how Shep fooled me!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    X
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Next morning Jones was out bright and early, yelling at Navvy
+  to hurry with the horses, calling to the hounds and lions, just
+  as usual.</p>
+
+  <p>Navvy had finally come to his full share of praise from all of
+  us. Even Jim acknowledged that the Indian was invaluable to a
+  hunting party in a country where grass and water were hard to
+  find and wild horses haunted the trails.</p>
+
+  <p>"<i>Tohodena! Tohodena!</i> (hurry! hurry!)" said Navvy,
+  mimicking Jones that morning.</p>
+
+  <p>As we sat down to breakfast he loped off into the forest and
+  before we got up the bells of the horses were jingling in the
+  hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>"I believe it's going to be cloudy," said Jones, "and if so we
+  can hunt all day."</p>
+
+  <p>We rode down the ridge to the left of Middle Canyon, and had
+  trouble with the hounds all the way. First they ran foul of a
+  coyote, which was the one and only beast they could not resist.
+  Spreading out to head them off, we separated. I cut into a hollow
+  and rode to its head, where I went up. I heard the hounds and
+  presently saw a big, white coyote making fast time through the
+  forest glades. It looked as if he would cross close in front of
+  me, so I pulled Foxie to a standstill, jumped off and knelt with
+  my rifle ready. But the sharp-eyed coyote saw my horse and shied
+  off. I had not much hope to hit him so far away, and the five
+  bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping, served only to
+  make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted the hounds
+  coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my
+  companions, now hallooing from the ridge below.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that
+  were a day old, and for such trails we had no time. We reached
+  the cedars however at seven o'clock, and as the sky was overcast
+  with low dun-colored clouds and the air cool, we were sure it was
+  not too late.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the capes of the plateau between Middle and Left Canyon
+  was a narrow strip of rock, covered with a dense cedar growth and
+  cut up into smaller canyons, all running down inevitably toward
+  the great canyon. With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out
+  of our sight and hearing; and while we split to look and call for
+  him the remainder of the pack found the lion trail that he had
+  gone on, and they left us trying to find a way out as well as to
+  find each other. I kept the hounds in hearing for some time and
+  meanwhile I signalled to Emett who was on my right flank. Jones
+  and Jim might as well have vanished off the globe for all I could
+  see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully into which I had to
+  lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much time that when
+  I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds or get an
+  answer to my signal cry.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" I called again.</p>
+
+  <p>Away on the dry rarified air pealed the cry, piercing the
+  cedar forest, splitting sharp in the vaulted canyons, rolling
+  loud and long, to lose power, to die away in muffling echo. But
+  the silence returned no answer.</p>
+
+  <p>I rode on under the cedars, through a dark, gloomy forest,
+  silent, almost spectral, which brought irresistibly to my mind
+  the words "I found me in a gloomy wood astray." I was lost though
+  I knew the direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest
+  was all but impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray
+  tangles, live cedars, branches touching the ground, grew close
+  together. In this labyrinth I lost my bearings. I turned and
+  turned, crossed my own back trail, which in desperation I
+  followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep and narrow
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Here I fired my revolver. The echo boomed out like the report
+  of heavy artillery, but no answering shot rewarded me. There was
+  no alternative save to wander along the canyon and through the
+  cedars until I found my companions. This I began to do, disgusted
+  with my awkwardness in losing them. Turning Foxie westward I had
+  scarcely gotten under way when Don came trotting toward me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hello, old boy!" I called. Don appeared as happy to see me as
+  I was to see him. He flopped down on the ground; his dripping
+  tongue rolled as he panted; covered with dust and flecked with
+  light froth he surely looked to be a tired hound.</p>
+
+  <p>"All in, eh Don!" I said dismounting. "Well, we'll rest
+  awhile." Then I discovered blood on his nose, which I found to
+  have come from a deep scratch. "A&mdash;ah! been pushing a lion
+  too hard this morning? Got your nose scratched, didn't you? You
+  great, crazy hound, don't you know some day you'll chase your
+  last lion?"</p>
+
+  <p>Don wagged his tail as if to say he knew it all very well. I
+  wet my handkerchief from my canteen and started to wash the blood
+  and dust from his nose, when he whined and licked my fingers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thirsty?" I asked, sitting down beside him. Denting the top
+  of my hat I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him
+  to drink. Four times he emptied my improvised cup before he was
+  satisfied. Then with a sigh of relief he lay down again.</p>
+
+  <p>The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and
+  I sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed
+  on occasional tufts of grass. During that time the hound never
+  raised his sleek, dark head, which showed conclusively the nature
+  of the silence. And now that I had company&mdash;as good company
+  as any hunter ever had&mdash;I was once more contented.</p>
+
+  <p>Don got up, at length of his own volition and with a wag of
+  his tail set off westward along the rim. Remounting my mustang I
+  kept as close to Don's heels as the rough going permitted. The
+  hound, however, showed no disposition to hurry, and I let him
+  have his way without a word.</p>
+
+  <p>We came out in the notch of the great amphitheater or curve we
+  had named the Bay, and I saw again the downward slope, the bold
+  steps, the color and depth below.</p>
+
+  <p>I was just about to yell a signal cry when I saw Don, with
+  hair rising stiff, run forward. He took a dozen jumps, then
+  yelping broke down the steep, yellow and green gorge. He
+  disappeared before I knew what had happened.</p>
+
+  <p>Shortly I found a lion track, freshly made, leading down. I
+  believed I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go
+  after him. I tied Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off
+  spurs and chaps, and remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened
+  a red bandana to the top of a dead snag to show me where to come
+  up on my way out. Then I carefully strapped my canteen and camera
+  on my back, made doubly secure my revolver, put on my heavy
+  gloves, and started down. And I realized at once that only so
+  lightly encumbered should I have ever ventured down the
+  slope.</p>
+
+  <p>Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there
+  cedar trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A
+  precipice stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and
+  almost instantly saw the yellow gleam of a lion in a
+  tree-top.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.</p>
+
+  <p>I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay
+  under me, a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering
+  smoky canyon. All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope,
+  green jumble of cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff
+  walls, leaning yellow crags&mdash;an awful hole. But I could get
+  down, and that was all I cared for. I ran along to the left,
+  jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven stones with sure, swift
+  feet, and came to where the cliff ended in weathered slope and
+  scaly bench.</p>
+
+  <p>It was like a game, going down that canyon. My heavy nailed
+  boots struck fire from the rocks. My heavy gloves protected my
+  hands as I slid and hung on and let go. I outfooted the
+  avalanches and wherever I came to a scaly slope or bank or
+  decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer delight.</p>
+
+  <p>But all too soon my progress was barred; once under the cliff
+  I found only a gradual slope and many obstacles to go round or
+  surmount. Luck favored me, for I ran across a runway and keeping
+  to it made better time. I heard Don long before I tried to see
+  him, and yelled at intervals to let him know I was coming. A
+  white bank of weathered stones led down to a clump of cedars from
+  where Don's bay came spurring me to greater efforts. I flew down
+  this bank, and through an opening saw the hound standing with
+  fore feet against a cedar. The branches over him swayed, and I
+  saw an indistinct, tawny form move downward in the air. Then
+  succeeded the crash and rattle of stones. Don left the tree and
+  disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>I dashed down, dodged under the cedars, threaded a maze of
+  rocks, to find myself in a ravine with a bare, water-worn floor.
+  In patches of sand showed the fresh tracks of Don and the lion.
+  Running down this dry, clean bed was the easiest going I ever
+  found in the canyon. Every rod the course jumped in a fall from
+  four to ten feet, often more, and these I slid down. How I ever
+  kept Don in hearing was a marvel, but still I did.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion evidently had no further intention of taking to a
+  tree. From the size of his track I concluded he was old and I
+  feared every moment to hear the sounds of a fight. Jones had said
+  that nearly always in the case of one hound chasing an old lion,
+  the lion would lie in wait for him and kill him. And I was afraid
+  for Don.</p>
+
+  <p>Down, down, down, we went, till the yellow rim above seemed a
+  thin band of gold. I saw that we were almost to the canyon
+  proper, and I wondered what would happen when we reached it. The
+  dark shaded watercourse suddenly shot out into bright light and
+  ended in a deep cove, with perpendicular walls fifty feet high. I
+  could see where a few rods farther on this cove opened into a
+  huge, airy, colored canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I called the hound, wondering if he had gone to the right or
+  left of the cove. His bay answered me coming from the cedars far
+  to the right. I turned with all the speed left in me, for I felt
+  the chase nearing an end. Tracks of hound and lion once more
+  showed in the dust. The slope was steep and stones I sent rolling
+  cracked down below. Soon I had a cliff above me and had to go
+  slow and cautiously. A misstep or slide would have precipitated
+  me into the cove.</p>
+
+  <p>Almost before I knew what I was about, I stood gasping on the
+  gigantic second wall of the canyon, with nothing but thin air
+  under me, except, far below, faint and indistinct purple clefts,
+  red ridges, dotted slopes, running down to merge in a dark,
+  winding strip of water, that was the Rio Colorado. A sullen
+  murmur soared out of the abyss.</p><a name="image-0040">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg035_m.jpg" width="448" height="706" alt=
+    "Two Lions in One Tree ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg036_m.jpg" width="709" height="448" alt=
+    "Jones, Emett, and the Navajo With The Lions ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck
+  me so terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its
+  unscalable cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding
+  quality of its silence.</p>
+
+  <p>I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw
+  him on a narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he
+  reached me he faced again to the wall and barked fiercely. The
+  hair on his neck bristled. I knew he did not fancy that narrow
+  strip of rock, nor did I. But a sudden, grim, cold something had
+  taken possession of me, and I stepped forward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."</p>
+
+  <p>That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in
+  the chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he
+  took the lead and I closely followed.</p>
+
+  <p>The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall,
+  in the dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner
+  of cliff wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed
+  on the other side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by
+  broken steps. Don passed the corner, looked back to see if I was
+  coming and went on. He did this four times, once even stopping to
+  wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail
+  out to a finish."</p>
+
+  <p>I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could
+  not but see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous
+  overhanging wall above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I
+  felt rather than saw the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting
+  flight, with soft rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp
+  of some strange cliff inhabitant.</p>
+
+  <p>Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no
+  longer man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying
+  on the other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was
+  beyond. Don slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as
+  my fingers bit into the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow
+  wind cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves
+  of rock stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came
+  upon a shrub cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it
+  there. Don went slower and slower.</p>
+
+  <p>We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a
+  box-like space in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once
+  before been confronted with a like situation, and had expected to
+  find it here, so was not frightened. The lion looked up from his
+  task of licking a bloody paw, and uttered a fierce growl. His
+  tail began to lash to and fro; it knocked the little stones off
+  the shelf. I heard them click on the wall. Again and again he
+  spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a Tom, heavy and
+  large.</p>
+
+  <p>It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion,
+  and now that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would
+  follow had only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it
+  was that he should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and
+  focused from between twenty and twenty-five feet.</p>
+
+  <p>Then a growl from Don and roar from the lion bade me come to
+  my senses. I did so and my first movement after seeing the lion
+  had risen threateningly was to whip out my revolver.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion's cruel yellow eyes darkened and darkened. In an
+  instant I saw my error. Jones had always said in case any one of
+  us had to face a lion, never for a single instant to shift his
+  glance. I had forgotten that, and in that short interval when I
+  focused my camera the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or
+  feared him, and he had risen. Even then in desperate lessening
+  ambition for a great picture I attempted to take one, still
+  keeping my glance on him.</p>
+
+  <p>It was then that the appalling nature of my predicament made
+  itself plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling
+  horribly right in my face.</p>
+
+  <p>Brave, noble Don, with infinitely more sense and courage than
+  I possessed, faced the lion and bayed him in his teeth. I raised
+  the revolver and aimed twice, each time lowering it because I
+  feared to shoot in such a precarious position. To wound the lion
+  would be the worst thing I could do, and I knew that only a shot
+  through the brain would kill him in his tracks.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold him, Don, hold him!" I yelled, and I took a backward
+  step. The lion put forward one big paw, his eyes now all purple
+  blaze. I backed again and he came forward. Don gave ground
+  slowly. Once the lion flashed a yellow paw at him. It was
+  frightful to see the wide-spread claws.</p>
+
+  <p>In the consternation of the moment I allowed the lion to back
+  me across the front of the wind cave, where I saw, the moment it
+  was too late, I should have taken advantage of more space to
+  shoot him.</p>
+
+  <p>Fright succeeded consternation, and I began to tremble. The
+  lion was master of the situation. What would happen when I came
+  to the narrow point on the shelf where it would be impossible for
+  me to back around? I almost fainted. The thought of heroic Don
+  saved me, and the weak moment passed.</p>
+
+  <p>"By God, Don, you've got the nerve, and I must have it
+  too!"</p>
+
+  <p>I stopped in my tracks. The lion, appearing huge now, took
+  slow catlike steps toward me, backing Don almost against my
+  knees. He was so close I smelt him. His wonderful eyes, clear
+  blue fire circled by yellow flame, fascinated me. Hugging the
+  wall with my body I brought the revolver up, short armed, and
+  with clinched teeth, and nerve strained to the breaking point, I
+  aimed between the eyes and pulled the trigger.</p>
+
+  <p>The left eye seemed to go out blankly, then followed the
+  bellow of the revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered
+  a sound that was a mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he
+  rose straight up, towering high over my head, beating the wall
+  heavily with his paws.</p>
+
+  <p>In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing
+  only the beast would fall over on me.</p>
+
+  <p>But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into
+  space.</p>
+
+  <p>I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat.
+  As I waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band
+  and a sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and
+  listened. Don whined once.</p>
+
+  <p>Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time
+  ended in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into
+  the solemn stillness of the canyon.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the
+  far distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When
+  I got up my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak
+  sensation of a long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were
+  necessary before I could trust myself on the narrow strip of
+  shelf. But once around it with the peril passed, I braced up and
+  soon reached the turn in the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of
+  work, which I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for
+  more hunting that day. We reached the rim together, and after a
+  short rest, I mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.</p>
+
+  <p>The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw
+  the blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose
+  up and barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions
+  just sitting to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it
+  comin' to us to-day, and don't you forget that."</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we
+  all took time between bites to talk. I told my story first,
+  expecting my friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever
+  experienced," declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions
+  and they split. We all split and the hounds split. That tells the
+  tale. We have nothing to show for our day's toil. Six lions
+  chased, rounded up, treed, holed, and one lion killed, and we
+  haven't even his skin to show. I did not go down but I helped
+  Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion all over the lower end of
+  the plateau. We treed him twice and I yelled for you fellows till
+  my voice was gone."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well," said Emett, "I fell in with Sounder and Jude. They
+  were hot on a trail which in a mile or two turned up this way. I
+  came on them just at the edge of the pines where they had treed
+  their game. I sat under that pine tree for five hours, fired all
+  my shots to make you fellows come, yelled myself hoarse and then
+  tried to tie up the lion alone. He jumped out and ran over the
+  rim, where neither I nor the dogs could follow."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, I win, three of a kind," drawled Jim, as he got his
+  pipe and carefully dusted the bowl. "When the stampede came, I
+  got my hands on Moze and held him. I held Moze because just as
+  the other hounds broke loose over to my right, I saw down into a
+  little pocket where a fresh-killed deer lay half eaten. So I went
+  down. I found two other carcasses layin' there, fresh killed last
+  night, flesh all gone, hide gone, bones crushed, skull split
+  open. An' damn me fellows, if that little pocket wasn't all torn
+  to pieces. The sage was crushed flat. The ground dug up, dead
+  snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere. Lion tracks like
+  leaves, and old Sultan's was there. I let Moze loose and he
+  humped the trail of several lions south over the rim. Major got
+  down first an' came back with his tail between his legs. Moze
+  went down and I kept close to him. It wasn't far down, but steep
+  and rocky, full of holes. Moze took the trail to a dark cave. I
+  saw the tracks of three lions goin' in. Then I collared Moze an'
+  waited for you fellows. I waited there all day, an' nobody came
+  to my call. Then I made for camp."</p>
+
+  <p>"How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place
+  where you found the carcasses?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion fight sure," replied Jones. "Maybe old Sultan ran across
+  the three lions feeding, and pitched into them. Such fights were
+  common among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there."</p>
+
+  <p>"What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where
+  Jim chased them?"</p>
+
+  <p>"We stand a good chance," said Jones. "Especially if it storms
+  to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore the snow storm is comin'," returned Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in
+  the pines like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass.
+  As we could not control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew
+  fiercely, we extinguished it and went to bed. I had just settled
+  myself comfortably to be sung to sleep by the concert in the
+  pines, when Jones hailed me.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, what do you think?" he yelled, when I had answered him.
+  "Emett is mad. He's scratching to beat the band. He's got
+  'em."</p>
+
+  <p>I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.</p>
+
+  <p>"You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"</p>
+
+  <p>I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed
+  and so did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could
+  understand more English than he wanted us to suppose.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed
+  in&mdash;snowed in!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Mucha snow&mdash;discass&mdash;no cougie&mdash;dam no bueno!"
+  exclaimed Navvy.</p>
+
+  <p>When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a
+  blinding blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows,
+  everything white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the
+  Indian words in straight English.</p>
+
+  <p>"Much snow&mdash;cold&mdash;no cougar&mdash;bad!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Stay in bed," yelled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"</p>
+
+  <p>He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off
+  and on till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather
+  breakfast, round a blazing bonfire.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's going to clear up," said Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud
+  that had enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit
+  the tree tops, sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then
+  rising above the trees. At first it moved slowly, rolling,
+  forming, expanding, blooming like a column of whirling gray
+  smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled onward through the
+  forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and rippling, split by the
+  trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose higher and higher,
+  to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing glimpses of
+  blue sky.</p>
+
+  <p>Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts,
+  dispelling the shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through
+  the forest glade, gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the
+  snow-wreathed pines.</p>
+
+  <p>The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began
+  to drip. A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved
+  through every glade and feathered patches of snow floated
+  down.</p>
+
+  <p>A great bank of snow, sliding from the pine overhead almost
+  buried the Navajo, to our infinite delight. We all sought the
+  shelter of the tents, and sleep again claimed us.</p>
+
+  <p>I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson
+  paths in the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a
+  frosty morning.</p>
+
+  <p>"To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave
+  them their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions
+  lay hidden in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out
+  of sight beyond the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges;
+  blue shadows gathered in the hollow, shaded purple and stole
+  upward. A brief twilight succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit
+  night.</p>
+
+  <p>Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my
+  sleeping bag, was I hailed from the other tent.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones
+  remonstrating in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a
+  secret no longer."</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, I don't," growled Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno!
+  bueno!" and I wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"</p>
+
+  <p>The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you.
+  It's only Jones has got 'em."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising
+  gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the
+  frosty air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the
+  bunches of sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow,
+  resembled trees with brilliant blossoms.</p>
+
+  <p>We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into
+  which Jim had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we
+  had expected, began to thin out, and it failed altogether under
+  the cedars, though there was enough on the branches to give us a
+  drenching.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us
+  the cave was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had
+  better take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above
+  to await developments.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them
+  close. We listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open
+  up, but we were disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came
+  climbing out, with the information that the lions had left the
+  cave, probably the evening after he had chased them there.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt
+  round the rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if
+  necessary."</p>
+
+  <p>So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left
+  Canyon; Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we
+  were to perform a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and
+  Jude. Emett rode back with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle
+  Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost
+  to the west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single
+  track, so we started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the
+  snow all gone; the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and
+  Jones grumbled that no success would attend our efforts this
+  morning.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened
+  into the deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our
+  companions across the canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder
+  and Jude both began to bark on a cliff; however, as we could find
+  no tracks in the dust we called them off. Sounder obeyed
+  reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over the wall.</p>
+
+  <p>"They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the
+  wall."</p>
+
+  <p>Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They
+  ran up and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they
+  gone out of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the
+  rim and looked over. The first step was short, a crumbled section
+  of wall, and from it led down a long slope, dotted here and there
+  with cedars. Both hounds were baying furiously.</p>
+
+  <p>I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a
+  lion, so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not
+  yet in sight.</p>
+
+  <p>"There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not
+  lucky?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that
+  you don't absolutely need."</p>
+
+  <p>Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only
+  my camera and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We
+  descended a ladder of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under
+  our feet. The slope below us was easy, and soon we stood on a
+  level with the lion. The cedar was small, and afforded no good
+  place for him. Evidently he jumped from the slope to the tree,
+  and had hung where he first alighted.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion
+  won't stay treed long."</p>
+
+  <p>I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and
+  I moved aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under
+  a tall pi&ntilde;on. High in the branches I saw a great mass of
+  yellow, and at first glance thought Sounder had treed old Sultan.
+  How I yelled! Then a second glance showed two lions close
+  together.</p>
+
+  <p>"Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a
+  moment we made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the
+  echoes bayed at us from the opposite walls.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but
+  unmistakable, floated down to us. Across the jutting capes
+  separating the mouths of these canyons, high above them on the
+  rim wall of the opposite side of the Bay, stood a giant white
+  horse silhouetted against the white sky. They made a brave
+  picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in chorus: "Three
+  lions treed! Three lions treed! come down&mdash;hurry!"</p>
+
+  <p>A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had
+  jumped. He ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard.
+  Jude went tearing after them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!"
+  yelled Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight
+  among the trees and crags.</p>
+
+  <p>It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize
+  it. The yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew
+  fainter, telling me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to
+  the bottom of the Bay.</p>
+
+  <p>Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of
+  the facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed
+  without hounds, without a companion, without a gun.</p>
+
+  <p>"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I
+  wanted to run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken
+  me with Don around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and
+  fiercer. I pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for
+  leaving my gun. I could not go for it; I would have to make the
+  best of my error, and in the wildness born of the moment I swore
+  if the lions would stay treed for the hounds they would stay
+  treed for me.</p>
+
+  <p>First I photographed them from different positions; then I
+  took up my stand about on a level with them in an open place on
+  the slope where they had me in plain sight. I might have been
+  fifty feet from them. They showed no inclination to come
+  down.</p>
+
+  <p>About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the
+  left. I called and called, but they passed on down the canyon
+  bottom in the direction Jones had taken.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me
+  his lion had treed again.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had
+  just appeared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where&mdash;can&mdash;I&mdash;get&mdash;down?"</p>
+
+  <p>I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on
+  slide, jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally
+  picked out a path.</p>
+
+  <p>"Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don
+  at his heels.</p>
+
+  <p>"There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with
+  your lasso, and come yourself."</p>
+
+  <p>I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip
+  noose free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right
+  and left of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the
+  direction of the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of
+  precipices that made me tremble for him; but sure-footed as a
+  goat, he went on safely down, to disappear far to my right.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down
+  the first step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach
+  round a cedar above, was too short to extend to the landing
+  below. He dropped, raising a cloud of dust, and starting the
+  stones. Pulling one end of his lasso up around the cedar he
+  gathered it in a coil on his arm and faced forward, following
+  Don's trail.</p>
+
+  <p>What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red
+  and yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down,
+  streaming over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant
+  pursuing a foe. From time to time he sent up a yell of
+  encouragement that wound down the canyon, to be answered by Jones
+  and the baying hounds and then the strange echoes. At last he
+  passed out of sight behind the crests of the trees; I heard him
+  going down, down till the sounds came up faint and hollow.</p>
+
+  <p>I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a
+  hunter so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching
+  them. For a long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays
+  and yells below diminished in volume and occurrence and then
+  ceased altogether, they became restless. It was then that I,
+  remembering the lion I had held on top of the crag, began to bark
+  like a hound. The lions became quiet once more.</p>
+
+  <p>I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to
+  hoarser, and finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately
+  grew restless again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at
+  me, and made many attempts to start down, each one of which I
+  frustrated by throwing stones under the tree. At length he made
+  one more determined effort, turned head downward, and stepped
+  from branch to branch.</p>
+
+  <p>I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long
+  club in the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt
+  him&mdash;make him fear me. If he got far enough down to jump, he
+  would either escape or have me helpless. I aimed deliberately at
+  him, and hit him square in the ribs. He exploded in a spit-roar
+  that raised my hair. Directly under him I wielded my club,
+  pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and, like the crazy
+  fool that I was, yelled at him:</p>
+
+  <p>"Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your
+  old head for you!"</p>
+
+  <p>Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He
+  climbed to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had
+  done, that I would certainly have made tracks from under the
+  pi&ntilde;on, if I had not heard the faint yelp of a hound.</p>
+
+  <p>I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at
+  my lions. They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how
+  strained they held their heads. I backed a little way up the
+  slope. Then the faint yelp floated up again in the silence. Such
+  dead, strange silence, that seemed never to have been broken! I
+  saw the lions quiver, and if I ever heard anything in my life I
+  heard their hearts thump. The yelp wafted up again, closer this
+  time. I recognized it; it belonged to Don. The great hound on the
+  back trail of the other lion was coming to my rescue.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at
+  the lions. "It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me
+  then! Pity for those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel
+  fellows as they were, they shivered with fright. Their sides
+  trembled. But pity did not hold me long; Don's yelp, now getting
+  clear and sharp, brought back the rush of savage, grim
+  sensations.</p>
+
+  <p>A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the
+  downward slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and
+  climbing fast. It was Don.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.</p>
+
+  <p>Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long
+  length, forepaws against the pi&ntilde;on, his deep bay ringing
+  defiance to the lions.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me
+  to sit down just then.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that
+  hound, and you can't get away from him."</p>
+
+  <p>Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down
+  to hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming.
+  Yelp on yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a
+  black and yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight
+  down the slope, streaked up and circled the pi&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep
+  ascent, seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been
+  swift.</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you get the lion? Where's Emett?" I asked in breathless
+  eagerness.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lion tied&mdash;all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left
+  Emett&mdash;to guard&mdash;him."</p>
+
+  <p>"What are we to do now?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Wait&mdash;till I get my breath. Think out&mdash;a plan. We
+  can't get both lions&mdash;out of one tree."</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie
+  Sounder and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump,
+  sure; he's almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree
+  him again pretty soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good.
+  Then, if you can get the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett
+  to come up to help you, and I'll follow Don."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones began the ascent of the pi&ntilde;on. The branches were
+  not too close, affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for
+  even a move on the part of the lions, the lower one began
+  stepping down. I yelled a warning, but Jones did not have time to
+  take advantage of it. He had half turned, meaning to swing out
+  and drop, when the lion planted both forepaws upon his back.
+  Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost on him.</p>
+
+  <p>Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground,
+  and when he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A
+  cloud of dust rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and
+  with great, springy bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his
+  followers hot-footing it after him.</p>
+
+  <p>Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied
+  them, and dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action
+  to join the chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in
+  case the other lion jumped I could free them quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took
+  his long stick, and proceeded to mount the pi&ntilde;on again. I
+  waited till I saw him slip the noose over the lion's head, then I
+  ran down the slope to yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told
+  him to hurry to Jones' assistance. With that I headed up the
+  canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his
+  pursuers. I passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but
+  fear of them was not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into
+  the mouth of Left Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the
+  hounds directed me. In the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed
+  to come from a hundred dogs.</p>
+
+  <p>When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a
+  thick, dark pi&ntilde;on, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don
+  stood up against me with his paws on my shoulders. These were
+  strange actions, and though I marked it at the moment, I had
+  ceased to wonder at our hounds. I took one picture as the lion
+  sat in the dark shade, and then climbed to the low cliff and sat
+  down. I called Don to me and held him. In case our quarry leaped
+  upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put quickly on his trail.</p>
+
+  <p>Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the
+  lion&mdash;he looked as if it were&mdash;and one of impatience
+  for the baying hounds, but for me it was a full hour. Alone with
+  the hounds and a lion, far from the walks of men, walled in by
+  the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry, sweet smell of cedar and
+  pi&ntilde;on, I asked no more.</p>
+
+  <p>Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were
+  forerunners to Jones. I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze,
+  and yelled for him to take his time. As he reached me the lion
+  jumped and ran up the canyon. This suited me, for I knew he would
+  take to a tree soon and the farther up he went the less distance
+  we would have to pack him. From the cliff I saw him run up a
+  slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly turn on his trail, and then
+  climb into the tree and hide in its thickest part. Don passed
+  him, got off the trail, and ran at fault. The others, so used to
+  his leadership, were also baffled. But Jude, crippled and slow,
+  brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard beyond where the
+  lion turned. She opened up her deep call under the cedar, and in
+  a moment the howling pack were around her.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones and I toiled laboriously upward. He had brought my
+  lasso, and he handed it to me with the significant remark that I
+  would soon have need of it.</p>
+
+  <p>The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that
+  made Jones shake his head. He climbed the tree, lassoed the
+  spitting lion and then leaped down to my side. By united and
+  determined efforts we pulled the lion off the limb and let him
+  down. The hounds began to leap at him. We both roared in a rage
+  at them but to no use.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hold him there!" shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso
+  while he sprang forward.</p>
+
+  <p>The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not
+  taken a half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my
+  feet or pulled the lasso from my hands. As it was, the choking
+  lion, now within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to
+  and fro before my face. He could not see me, but his frantic
+  lunges narrowly missed me.</p>
+
+  <p>If never before, Jones then showed his genius. Don had hold of
+  the lion's flank, and Jones, grabbing the hound by the hind legs,
+  threw him down the slope. Don fell and rolled a hundred feet
+  before he caught himself. Then Jones threw old Moze rolling, and
+  Ranger, and all except faithful Jude. Before they could get back
+  he roped the lion again and made fast to a tree. Then he yelled
+  for me to let go. The lion fell. Jones grabbed the lasso, at the
+  same time calling for me to stop the hounds. As they came
+  bounding up the steep slope, I had to club the noble fellows into
+  submission.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the lion recovered wholly from his severe choking, we
+  had his paws bound fast. Then he could only heave his tawny
+  sides, glare and spit at us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now what?" asked Jones. "Emett is watching the second lion,
+  which we fastened by chain and lasso to a swinging branch. I'm
+  all in. My heart won't stand any more climb."</p>
+
+  <p>"You go to camp for the pack horses," I said briefly. "Bring
+  them all, and all the packs, and Navvy, too. I'll help Emett tie
+  up the second lion, and then we'll pack them both up here to this
+  one. You take the hounds with you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Can you tie up that lion?" asked Jones. "Mind you, he's loose
+  except for a collar and chain. His claws haven't been clipped.
+  Besides, it'll be an awful job to pack those two lions up
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p>"We can try," I said. "You hustle to camp. Your horse is right
+  up back of here, across the point, if I don't mistake my
+  bearings."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones, admonishing me again, called the hounds and wearily
+  climbed the slope. I waited until he was out of hearing; then
+  began to retrace my trail down into the canyon. I made the
+  descent in quick time, to find Emett standing guard over the
+  lion. The beast had been tied to an overhanging branch that swung
+  violently with every move he made.</p>
+
+  <p>"When I got here," said Emett, "he was hanging over the side
+  of that rock, almost choked to death. I drove him into this
+  corner between the rocks and the tree, where he has been
+  comparatively quiet. Now, what's up? Where is Jones? Did you get
+  the third lion?"</p>
+
+  <p>I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this
+  lion and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones
+  and the horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better
+  get at it. Now I'm some worried about the lion we left below. He
+  ought to be brought up, but we both can't go. This lion here will
+  kill himself."</p>
+
+  <p>"What will the other one weigh?"</p>
+
+  <p>"All of one hundred and fifty pounds."</p>
+
+  <p>"You can't pack him alone."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll try, and I reckon that's the best plan. Watch this
+  fellow and keep him in the corner."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett left me then, and I began a third long vigil beside a
+  lion. The rest was more than welcome. An hour and a half passed
+  before I heard the sliding of stones below, which told me that
+  Emett was coming. He appeared on the slope almost bent double,
+  carrying the lion, head downward, before him. He could climb only
+  a few steps without lowering his burden and resting.</p>
+
+  <p>I ran down to meet him. We secured a stout pole, and slipping
+  this between the lion's paws, below where they were tied, we
+  managed to carry him fairly well, and after several rests, got
+  him up alongside the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now to tie that rascal!" exclaimed Emett. "Jones said he was
+  the meanest one he'd tackled, and I believe it. We'll cut a piece
+  off of each lasso, and unravel them so as to get strings. I wish
+  Jones hadn't tied the lasso to that swinging branch."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go and untie it." Acting on this suggestion I climbed
+  the tree and started out on the branch. The lion growled
+  fiercely.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm afraid you'd better stop," warned Emett. "That branch is
+  bending, and the lion can reach you."</p>
+
+  <p>But despite this I slipped out a couple of yards farther, and
+  had almost gotten to the knotted lasso, when the branch swayed
+  and bent alarmingly. The lion sprang from his corner and crouched
+  under me snarling and spitting, with every indication of
+  leaping.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jump! Jump! Jump!" shouted Emett hoarsely.</p><a name=
+  "image-0042"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg037_m.jpg" width="749" height="448" alt=
+    "Billy in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg038_m.jpg" width="756" height="448" alt=
+    "Lion Licking Snowball ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I dared not, for I could not jump far enough to get out of the
+  lion's reach. I raised my legs and began to slide myself back up
+  the branch. The lion leaped, missing me, but scattering the dead
+  twigs. Then the beast, beside himself with fury, half leaped,
+  half stood up, and reached for me. I looked down into his blazing
+  eyes, and open mouth and saw his white fangs.</p>
+
+  <p>Everything grew blurred before my eyes. I desperately fought
+  for control over mind and muscle. I heard hoarse roars from
+  Emett. Then I felt a hot, burning pain in my wrist, which stung
+  all my faculties into keen life again.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw the lion's beaked claws fastened in my leather
+  wrist-band. At the same instant Emett dashed under the branch,
+  and grasped the lion's tail. One powerful lunge of his broad
+  shoulders tore the lion loose and flung him down the slope to the
+  full extent of his lasso. Quick as thought I jumped down, and
+  just in time to prevent Emett from attacking the lion with the
+  heavy pole we had used.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" roared Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"No you won't," I replied, quietly, for my pain had served to
+  soothe my excitement as well as to make me more determined.
+  "We'll tie up the darned tiger, if he cuts us all to pieces. You
+  know how Jones will give us the laugh if we fail. Here, bind up
+  my wrist."</p>
+
+  <p>Mention of Jones' probable ridicule and sight of my injury
+  cooled Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a nasty scratch," he said, binding my handkerchief round
+  it. "The leather saved your hand from being torn off. He's an
+  ugly brute, but you're right, we'll tie him. Now, let's each take
+  a lasso and worry him till we get hold of a paw. Then we can
+  stretch him out."</p>
+
+  <p>Jones did a fiendish thing when he tied that lion to the
+  swinging branch. It was almost worse than having him entirely
+  free. He had a circle almost twenty feet in diameter in which he
+  could run and leap at will. It seemed he was in the air all the
+  time. First at Emett, than at me he sprang, mouth agape, eyes
+  wild, claws spread. We whipped him with our nooses, but not one
+  would hold. He always tore it off before we could draw it tight.
+  I secured a precarious hold on one hind paw and straightened my
+  lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>"That's far enough," cried Emett. "Now hold him tight; don't
+  lift him off the ground."</p>
+
+  <p>I had backed up the slope. Emett faced the lion, noose ready,
+  waiting for a favorable chance to rope a front paw. The lion
+  crouched low and tense, only his long tail lashing back and forth
+  across my lasso. Emett threw the loop in front of the spread
+  paws, now half sunk into the dust.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ease up; ease up," said he. "I'll tease him to jump into the
+  noose."</p>
+
+  <p>I let my rope sag. Emett poked a stick into the lion's face.
+  All at once I saw the slack in the lasso which was tied to the
+  lion's chain. Before I could yell to warn my comrade the beast
+  leaped. My rope burned as it tore through my hands. The lion
+  sailed into the air, his paws wide-spread like wings, and one of
+  them struck Emett on the head and rolled him on the slope. I
+  jerked back on my rope only to find it had slipped its hold.</p>
+
+  <p>"He slugged me one," remarked Emett, calmly rising and picking
+  up his hat. "Did he break the skin?"</p>
+
+  <p>"No, but he tore your hat band off," I replied. "Let's keep at
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>For a few moments or an hour&mdash;no one will ever know how
+  long&mdash;we ran round him, raising the dust, scattering the
+  stones, breaking the branches, dodging his onslaughts. He leaped
+  at us to the full length of his tether, sailing right into our
+  faces, a fierce, uncowed, tigerish beast. If it had not been for
+  the collar and swivel he would have choked himself a hundred
+  times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful, tireless, he kept on the
+  go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling, till it seemed we would
+  never catch him.</p>
+
+  <p>"If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I
+  felt his breath that time."</p>
+
+  <p>"Lord! How I wish we had some of those fellows here who say
+  lions are rank cowards!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of his sweeping side swings the lion struck the rock
+  and hung there on its flat surface with his tail hanging
+  over.</p>
+
+  <p>"Attract his attention," shouted Emett, "but don't get too
+  close. Don't make him jump."</p>
+
+  <p>While I slowly manoeuvered in front of the lion, Emett slipped
+  behind the rock, lunged for the long tail and got a good hold of
+  it. Then with a whoop he ran around the rock, carrying the
+  kicking, squalling lion clear of the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now's your chance," he yelled. "Rope a hind foot! I can hold
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>In a second I had a noose fast on both hind paws, and then
+  passed my rope to Emett. While he held the lion I again climbed
+  the tree, untied the knot that had caused so much trouble, and
+  very shortly we had our obstinate captive stretched out between
+  two trees. After that we took a much needed breathing spell.</p>
+
+  <p>"Not very scientific," growled Emett, by way of apologizing
+  for our crude work, "but we had to get him some way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Emett, do you know I believe Jones put up a job on us?" I
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, maybe he did. We had the job all right. But we'll make
+  short work of him now."</p>
+
+  <p>He certainly went at it in a way that alarmed me and would
+  have electrified Jones. While I held the chain Emett muzzled the
+  lion with a stick and a strand of lasso. His big blacksmith's
+  hands held, twisted and tied with remorseless strength.</p>
+
+  <p>"Now for the hardest part of it," said he, "packing him
+  up."</p>
+
+  <p>We toiled and drudged upward, resting every few yards, wet
+  with sweat, boiling with heat, parching for water. We slipped and
+  fell, got up to slip and fall again. The dust choked us. We
+  senselessly risked our lives on the brinks of precipices. We had
+  no thought save to get the lion up. One hour of unremitting labor
+  saw our task finished, so far. Then we wearily went down for the
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>"This one is the heaviest," gloomily said Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>We had to climb partly sidewise with the pole in the hollow of
+  our elbows. The lion dragged head downward, catching in the brush
+  and on the stones. Our rests became more frequent. Emett, who had
+  the downward end of the pole, and therefore thrice the weight,
+  whistled when he drew breath. Half the time I saw red mist before
+  my eyes. How I hated the sliding stones!</p>
+
+  <p>"Wait," panted Emett once. "You're&mdash;younger&mdash;than
+  me&mdash;wait!"</p>
+
+  <p>For that Mormon giant&mdash;used all his days to strenuous
+  toil, peril and privation&mdash;to ask me to wait for him, was a
+  compliment which I valued more than any I had ever received.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we dropped our burden in the shade of a cedar where
+  the other lions lay, and we stretched ourselves. A long, sweet
+  rest came abruptly to end with Emett's next words.</p>
+
+  <p>"The lions are choking! They're dying of thirst! We must have
+  water!"</p>
+
+  <p>One glance at the poor, gasping, frothing beasts, proved to me
+  the nature of our extremity.</p>
+
+  <p>"Water in this desert! Where will we find it? Oh! why, did I
+  forget my canteen!"</p>
+
+  <p>After all our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally
+  our wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for
+  lack of a little water was sickening, maddening.</p>
+
+  <p>"Think quick!" cried Emett. "I'm no good; I'm all in. But you
+  must find water. It snowed yesterday. There's water
+  somewhere."</p>
+
+  <p>Into my mind flashed a picture of the many little pockets
+  beaten by rains into the shelves and promontories of the canyon
+  rim. With the thought I was on the jump. I ran; I climbed; I
+  seemed to have wings; I reached the rim, and hurried along it
+  with eager gaze. I swung down on a cedar branch to a projecting
+  point of rock. Small depressions were everywhere still damp, but
+  the water had evaporated. But I would not give up. I jumped from
+  rock to rock, and climbed over scaly ledges, and set tons of
+  yellow shale into motion. And I found on a ragged promontory many
+  little, round holes, some a foot deep, all full of clear water.
+  Using my handkerchief as a sponge I filled my cap.</p>
+
+  <p>Then began my journey down. I carried the cap with both hands
+  and balanced myself like a tight-rope performer. I zigzagged the
+  slopes; slipped over stones; leaped fissures and traversed yellow
+  slides. I safely descended places that in an ordinary moment
+  would have presented insurmountable obstacles, and burst down
+  upon Emett with an Indian yell of triumph.</p>
+
+  <p>"Good!" ejaculated he. If I had not known it already, the way
+  his face changed would have told me of his love for animals. He
+  grasped a lion by the ears and held his head up. I saturated my
+  handkerchief and squeezed the water into his mouth. He wheezed,
+  coughed, choked, but to our joy he swallowed. He had to swallow.
+  One after the other we served them so, seeing with unmistakable
+  relief the sure signs of recovery. Their eyes cleared and
+  brightened; the dry coughing that distressed us so ceased; the
+  froth came no more. The savage fellow that had fought us to a
+  standstill, and for which we had named him Spitfire, raised his
+  head, the gold in his beautiful eyes darkened to fire and he
+  growled his return to life and defiance.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett and I sank back in unutterable relief.</p>
+
+  <p>"Waa-hoo!" Jones' yell came, breaking the warm quiet of the
+  slope. Our comrade appeared riding down. The voice of the Indian,
+  calling to Marc, mingled with the ringing of iron-shod hoofs on
+  the stones.</p>
+
+  <p>Jones surveyed the small level spot in the shade of the
+  cedars. He gazed from the lions to us, his stern face relaxed,
+  and his dry laugh cracked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Doggone me, if you didn't do it!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>A strange procession soon emerged from Left Canyon and
+  stranger to us than the lion heads bobbing out of the alfagoes
+  was the sight of Navvy riding in front of the lions. I kept well
+  in the rear, for if anything happened, which I calculated was
+  more than likely, I wanted to see it. Before we had reached the
+  outskirts of pines, I observed that the piece of lasso around
+  Spitfire's nose had worked loose.</p>
+
+  <p>Just as I was about to make this known to Jones, the lion
+  opened a corner of his mouth and fastened his teeth in the
+  Navajo's overalls. He did not catch the flesh, for when Navvy
+  turned around he wore only an expression of curiosity. But when
+  he saw Spitfire chewing him he uttered a shrill scream and fell
+  sidewise off his horse.</p>
+
+  <p>Then two difficulties presented themselves to us, to catch the
+  frightened horse and persuade the Indian he had not been bitten.
+  We failed in the latter. Navvy gave us and the lions a wide
+  berth, and walked to camp.</p>
+
+  <p>Jim was waiting for us, and said he had chased a lion south
+  along the rim till the hounds got away from him.</p>
+
+  <p>Spitfire, having already been chained, was the first lion we
+  endeavored to introduce to our family of captives. He raised such
+  a fearful row that we had to remove him some distance from the
+  others.</p>
+
+  <p>"We have two dog chains," said Jones, "but not a collar or a
+  swivel in camp. We can't chain the lions without swivels. They'd
+  choke themselves in two minutes."</p>
+
+  <p>Once more, for the hundredth time, Emett came to our rescue
+  with his inventive and mechanical skill. He took the largest pair
+  of hobbles we had, and with an axe, a knife and Jones' wire
+  nippers, fashioned two collars with swivels that for strength and
+  serviceableness improved somewhat on those we had bought.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness was enveloping the forest when we finished supper. I
+  fell into my bed and, despite the throbbing and burning of my
+  wrist, soon lapsed into slumber. And I crawled out next morning
+  late for breakfast, stiff, worn out, crippled, but happy. Six
+  lions roaring a concert for me was quite conducive to
+  contentment.</p>
+
+  <p>Emett interestingly engaged himself on a new pair of trousers,
+  which he had contrived to produce from two of our empty
+  meal-bags. The lower half of his overalls had gone to decorate
+  the cedar spikes and brush, and these new bag-leg trousers, while
+  somewhat remarkable for design, answered the purpose well enough.
+  Jones' coat was somewhere along the canyon rim, his shoes were
+  full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his trousers in rags. Jim
+  looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of heavy waterproofed
+  duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring forth the
+  unanimous admiration of my companions.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, fellows," said Jones, "there's six lions, and that's
+  more than we can pack out of here. Have you had enough hunting? I
+  have."</p>
+
+  <p>"And I," rejoined Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore you can bet I have," drawled Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>"One more day, boys, and then I've done," said I. "Only one
+  more day!"</p>
+
+  <p>Signs of relief on the faces of my good comrades showed how
+  they took this evidence of my satisfied ambition.</p>
+
+  <p>I spent all the afternoon with the lions, photographing them,
+  listening to them spit and growl, watching them fight their
+  chains, and roll up like balls of fire. From different parts of
+  the forest I tried to creep unsuspected upon them; but always
+  when I peeped out from behind a tree or log, every pair of ears
+  would be erect, every pair of eyes gleaming and suspicious.</p>
+
+  <p>Spitfire afforded more amusement than all the others. He had
+  indeed the temper of a king; he had been born for sovereignty,
+  not slavery. To intimidate me he tried every manner of expression
+  and utterance, and failing, he always ended with a spring in the
+  air to the length of his chain. This means was always effective.
+  I simply could not stand still when he leaped; and in turn I
+  tried every artifice I could think of to make him back away from
+  me, to take refuge behind his tree. I ran at him with a club as
+  if I were going to kill him. He waited, crouching. Finally, in
+  dire extremity, I bethought me of a red flannel hood that Emett
+  had given me, saying I might use it on cold nights. This was
+  indeed a weird, flaming headgear, falling like a cloak down over
+  the shoulders. I put it on, and, camera in hand, started to crawl
+  on all fours toward Spitfire.</p><a name="image-0044">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg039_m.jpg" width="744" height="448" alt=
+    "Some of Our Menagerie in Buckskin Forest ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg040_m.jpg" width="730" height="448" alt=
+    "White Mustang Stallion With his Bunch of Blacks In Snake Gulch ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I needed no one to tell me that this proceeding was entirely
+  beyond his comprehension. In his astonishment he forgot to spit
+  and growl, and he backed behind the little pine, from which he
+  regarded me with growing perplexity. Then, having revenged myself
+  on him, and getting a picture, I left him in peace.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    XIV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I awoke before dawn, and lay watching the dark shadows change
+  into gray, and gray into light. The Navajo chanted solemnly and
+  low his morning song. I got up with the keen eagerness of the
+  hunter who faces the last day of his hunt.</p>
+
+  <p>I warmed my frozen fingers at the fire. A hot breakfast smoked
+  on the red coals. We ate while Navvy fed and saddled the
+  horses.</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, they'll be somethin' doin' to-day," said Jim,
+  fatalistically.</p>
+
+  <p>"We haven't crippled a horse yet," put in Emett hopefully. Don
+  led the pack and us down the ridge, out of the pines into the
+  sage. The sun, a red ball, glared out of the eastern mist,
+  shedding a dull glow on the ramparts of the far canyon walls. A
+  herd of white-tailed deer scattered before the hounds. Blue
+  grouse whirred from under our horses' feet.</p>
+
+  <p>"Spread out," ordered Jones, and though he meant the hounds,
+  we all followed his suggestion, as the wisest course.</p>
+
+  <p>Ranger began to work up the sage ridge to the right. Jones,
+  Emett and I followed, while Jim rode away to the left. Gradually
+  the space widened, and as we neared the cedars, a sharply
+  defined, deep canyon separated us.</p>
+
+  <p>We heard Don open up, then Sounder. Ranger left the trail he
+  was trying to work out in the thick sage, and bounded in the
+  direction of the rest of the pack. We reined in to listen.</p>
+
+  <p>First Don, then Sounder, then Jude, then one of the pups bayed
+  eagerly, telling us they were hunting hard. Suddenly the bays
+  blended in one savage sound.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hi! Hi! Hi!" cracked the cool, thin air. We saw Jim wave his
+  hand from the far side of the canyon, spur his horse into action,
+  and disappear into the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>"Stick close together," yelled Jones, as we launched forward.
+  We made the mistake of not going back to cross the canyon, for
+  the hounds soon went up the opposite side. As we rode on and on,
+  the sounds of the chase lessened, and finally ceased. To our
+  great chagrin we found it necessary to retrace our steps, and
+  when we did get over the deep gully, so much time had elapsed
+  that we despaired of coming up with Jim. Emett led, keeping close
+  on Jim's trail, which showed plain in the dust, and we
+  followed.</p>
+
+  <p>Up and down ravines, over ridges, through sage flats and cedar
+  forests, to and fro, around and around, we trailed Jim and the
+  hounds. From time to time one of us let out a long yell.</p>
+
+  <p>"I see a big lion track," called Jones once, and that stirred
+  us on faster. Fully an hour passed before Jones halted us, saying
+  we had best try a signal. I dismounted, while Emett rolled his
+  great voice through the cedars.</p>
+
+  <p>A long silence ensued. From the depths of the forest Jim's
+  answer struck faintly on my ear. With a word to my companions I
+  leaped on my mustang and led the way. I rode as far as I could
+  mark a straight line with my eye, then stopped to wait for
+  another cry. In this way, slowly but surely we closed in on
+  Jim.</p>
+
+  <p>We found him on the verge of the Bay, in the small glade where
+  I had left my horse the day I followed Don alone down the canyon.
+  Jim was engaged in binding up the leg of his horse. The baying of
+  the hounds floated up over the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>"What's up?" queried Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"Old Sultan. That's what," replied Jim. "We run plumb into
+  him. We've had him in five trees. It ain't been long since he was
+  in that cedar there. When he jumped the yellow pup was in the way
+  an' got killed. My horse just managed to jump clear of the big
+  lion, an' as it was, nearly broke his leg."</p>
+
+  <p>Emett examined the leg and pronounced it badly strained, and
+  advised Jim to lead the horse back to camp. Jones and I stood a
+  moment over the remains of the yellow pup, and presently Emett
+  joined us.</p>
+
+  <p>"He was the most playful one of the pack," said Emett, and
+  then he placed the limp, bloody body in a crack, and laid several
+  slabs of stone over it.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry after the other hounds," said Jim. "That lion will kill
+  them one by one. An' look out for him!"</p>
+
+  <p>If we needed an incentive, the danger threatening the hounds
+  furnished one; but I calculated the death of the pup was enough.
+  Emett had a flare in his eye, Jones looked darker and more grim
+  than ever, and I had sensations that boded ill to old Sultan.</p>
+
+  <p>"Fellows," I said, "I've been down this place, and I know
+  where the old brute has gone; so come on."</p>
+
+  <p>I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the
+  business ahead was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon.
+  Down slopes, among rocks, under pi&ntilde;ons, around yellow
+  walls, along slides, the two big men followed me with heavy
+  steps. We reached the white stream-bed, and sliding, slipping,
+  jumping, always down and down, we came at last within sound of
+  the hounds. We found them baying wildly under a pi&ntilde;on on
+  the brink of the deep cove.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, at once, we all saw old Sultan close at hand. He was of
+  immense size; his color was almost gray; his head huge, his paws
+  heavy and round. He did not spit, nor snarl, nor growl; he did
+  not look at the hounds, but kept his half-shut eyes upon us.</p>
+
+  <p>We had no time to make a move before he left his perch and hit
+  the ground with a thud. He walked by the baying hounds, looked
+  over the brink of the cove, and without an instant of hesitation,
+  leaped down. The rattling crash of sliding stones came up with a
+  cloud of dust. Then we saw him leisurely picking his way among
+  the rough stones.</p>
+
+  <p>Exclamations from the three of us attested to what we thought
+  of that leap.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look the place over," called Jones. "I think we've got
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>The cove was a hole hollowed out by running water. At its
+  head, where the perpendicular wall curved, the height was not
+  less than forty feet. The walls became higher as the cove
+  deepened toward the canyon. It had a length of perhaps a hundred
+  yards, and a width of perhaps half as many. The floor was mass on
+  mass of splintered rock.</p>
+
+  <p>"Let the hounds down on a lasso," said Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>Easier said than done! Sounder, Ranger, Jude refused. Old Moze
+  grumbled and broke away. But Don, stern and savage, allowed Jones
+  to tie him in a slip noose.</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a shame to send that grand hound to his death,"
+  protested Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"We'll all go down," declared Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>"We can't. One will have to stay up here to help the other two
+  out," replied Emett.</p>
+
+  <p>"You're the strongest; you stay up," said Jones. "Better work
+  along the wall and see if you can locate the lion."</p><a name=
+  "image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg041_m.jpg" width="757" height="448" alt=
+    "On the Way Home ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg042_m.jpg" width="448" height="710" alt=
+    "Riding With a Navajo ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We let Don down into the hole. He kicked himself loose before
+  reaching the bottom and then, yelping, he went out of sight among
+  the boulders. Moze, as if ashamed, came whining to us. We slipped
+  a noose around him and lowered him, kicking and barking, to the
+  rocky floor. Jones made the lasso fast to a cedar root, and I
+  slid down, like a flash, burning my hands. Jones swung himself
+  over, wrapped his leg around the rope, and came down, to hit the
+  ground with a thump. Then, lassos in hands, we began clambering
+  over the broken fragments.</p>
+
+  <p>For a few moments we were lost to sights and sounds away from
+  our immediate vicinity. The bottom of the cove afforded hard
+  going. Dead pi&ntilde;ons and cedars blocked our way; the great,
+  jagged stones offered no passage. We crawled, climbed, and jumped
+  from piece to piece.</p>
+
+  <p>A yell from Emett halted us. We saw him above, on the extreme
+  point of wall. Waving his arms, he yelled unintelligible commands
+  to us. The fierce baying of Don and Moze added to our desperate
+  energy.</p>
+
+  <p>The last jumble of splintered rock cleared, we faced a
+  terrible and wonderful scene.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look! Look!" I gasped to Jones.</p>
+
+  <p>A wide, bare strip of stone lay a few yards beneath us; and in
+  the center of this last step sat the great lion on his haunches
+  with his long tail lashing out over the precipice. Back to the
+  canyon, he confronted the furious hounds; his demeanor had
+  changed to one of savage apprehension.</p>
+
+  <p>When Jones and I appeared, old Sultan abruptly turned his back
+  to the hounds and looked down into the canyon. He walked the
+  whole length of the bare rock with his head stretched over. He
+  was looking for a niche or a step whereby he might again elude
+  his foes.</p>
+
+  <p>Faster lashed his tail; farther and farther stretched his
+  neck. He stopped, and with head bent so far over the abyss that
+  it seemed he must fall, he looked and looked.</p>
+
+  <p>How grandly he fitted the savage sublimity of that place! The
+  tremendous purple canyon depths lay beneath him. He stood on the
+  last step of his mighty throne. The great downward slopes had
+  failed him. Majestically and slowly he turned from the deep that
+  offered no hope.</p>
+
+  <p>As he turned, Jones cast the noose of his lasso perfectly
+  round the burly neck. Sultan roared and worked his jaws, but he
+  did not leap. Jones must have expected such a move, for he
+  fastened his rope to a spur of rock. Standing there, revolver
+  gripped, hearing the baying hounds, the roaring lion, and Jones'
+  yells mingled with Emett's, I had no idea what to do. I was in a
+  trance of sensations.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Sultan ran rather than leaped at us. Jones evaded the rush
+  by falling behind a stone, but still did not get out of danger.
+  Don flew at the lion's neck and Moze buried his teeth in a flank.
+  Then the three rolled on the rock dangerously near the verge.</p>
+
+  <p>Bellowing, Jones grasped the lasso and pulled. Still holding
+  my revolver, I leaped to his assistance, and together we pulled
+  and jerked. Don got away from the lion with remarkable quickness.
+  But Moze, slow and dogged, could not elude the outstretched paws,
+  which fastened in his side and leg. We pulled so hard we slowly
+  raised the lion. Moze, never whimpering, clawed and scratched at
+  the rock in his efforts to escape. The lion's red tongue
+  protruded from his dripping jaws. We heard the rend of hide as
+  our efforts, combined with those of Moze, loosed him from the
+  great yellow claws.</p>
+
+  <p>The lion, whirling and wrestling, rolled over the precipice.
+  When the rope straightened with a twang, had it not been fastened
+  to the rock, Jones and I would have jerked over the wall. The
+  shock threw us to our knees.</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment we did not realize the situation. Emett's yells
+  awakened us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pull! Pull! Pull!" roared he.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, knowing that old Sultan would hang himself in a few
+  moments, we attempted to lift him. Jones pulled till his back
+  cracked; I pulled till I saw red before my eyes. Again and again
+  we tried. We could lift him only a few feet. Soon exhausted, we
+  had to desist altogether. How Emett roared and raged from his
+  vantage-point above! He could see the lion in death throes.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly he quieted down with the words: "All over; all over!"
+  Then he sat still, looking into space. Jones sat mopping his
+  brow. And I, all my hot resentment vanished, lay on the rock,
+  with eyes on the distant mesas.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently Jones leaned over the verge with my lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>"There," he said, "I've roped one of his hind legs. Now we'll
+  pull him up a little, then we'll fasten this rope, and pull on
+  the other."</p>
+
+  <p>So, foot by foot, we worked the heavy lion up over the wall.
+  He must have been dead, though his sides heaved. Don sniffed at
+  him in disdain. Moze, dusty and bloody, with a large strip of
+  hide hanging from his flank, came up growling low and deep, and
+  gave the lion a last vengeful bite.</p>
+
+  <p>"We've been fools," observed Jones, meditatively. "The
+  excitement of the game made us lose our wits. I'll never rope
+  another lion."</p>
+
+  <p>I said nothing. While Moze licked his bloody leg and Don lay
+  with his fine head on my knees, Jones began to skin old Sultan.
+  Once more the strange, infinite silence enfolded the canyon. The
+  far-off golden walls glistened in the sun; farther down, the
+  purple clefts smoked. The many-hued peaks and mesas, aloof from
+  each other, rose out of the depths. It was a grand and gloomy
+  scene of ruin where every glistening descent of rock was but a
+  page of earth's history.</p>
+
+  <p>It brought to my mind a faint appreciation of what time really
+  meant; it spoke of an age of former men; it showed me the
+  lonesome crags of eagles, and the cliff lairs of lions; and it
+  taught mutely, eloquently, a lesson of life&mdash;that men are
+  still savage, still driven by a spirit to roam, to hunt, and to
+  slay.</p><a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    TONTO BASIN
+  </center>
+
+  <p>The start of a camping trip, the getting a big outfit together
+  and packed, and on the move, is always a difficult and laborsome
+  job. Nevertheless, for me the preparation and the actual getting
+  under way have always been matters of thrilling interest. This
+  start of my hunt in Arizona, September 24, 1918, was particularly
+  momentous because I had brought my boy Romer with me for his
+  first trip into the wilds.</p>
+
+  <p>It may be that the boy was too young for such an undertaking.
+  His mother feared he would be injured; his teachers presaged his
+  utter ruin; his old nurse, with whom he waged war until he was
+  free of her, averred that the best it could do for him would be
+  to show what kind of stuff he was made of. His uncle R.C. was
+  stoutly in favor of taking him. I believe the balance fell in
+  Romer's favor when I remembered my own boyhood. As a youngster of
+  three I had babbled of "bars an' buffers," and woven fantastic
+  and marvelous tales of fiction about my imagined
+  adventures&mdash;a habit, alas! I have never yet outgrown.</p>
+
+  <p>Anyway we only made six miles' travel on this September
+  twenty-fourth, and Romer was with us.</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed he was omnipresent. His keen, eager joy communicated
+  itself to me. Once he rode up alongside me and said: "Dad, this's
+  great, but I'd rather do like Buck Duane." The boy had read all
+  of my books, in spite of parents and teachers, and he knew them
+  by heart, and invariably liked the outlaws and gunmen best of
+  all.</p>
+
+  <p>We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west,
+  and the Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a
+  cut-over pine forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned
+  deadfalls made an aspect of blackened desolation. From a
+  distance, however, the scene was superb. At sunset there was a
+  faint wind which soon died away.</p>
+
+  <p>My old guide on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in
+  charge of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over
+  seventy years, hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes
+  still keen with fire. He was no longer robust, but he was
+  tireless and willing. When he told a story he always began: "In
+  the early days&mdash;" His son Lee had charge of the horses of
+  which we had fourteen, two teams and ten saddle horses. Lee was a
+  typical westerner of many occupations&mdash;cowboy, rider,
+  rancher, cattleman. He was small, thin, supple, quick, tough and
+  strong. He had a bronzed face, always chapped, a hooked nose,
+  gray-blue eyes like his father's, sharp and keen.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee had engaged the only man he could find for a
+  cook&mdash;Joe Isbel, a tall, lithe cowboy, straight as an
+  Indian, with powerful shoulders, round limbs, and slender waist,
+  and Isbel was what the westerners called a broncho-buster. He was
+  a prize-winning rider at all the rodeos. Indeed, his seat in the
+  saddle was individual and incomparable. He had a rough red-blue
+  face, hard and rugged, like the rocks he rode over so fearlessly,
+  and his eyes were bright hazel, steady and hard. Isbel's
+  vernacular was significant. Speaking of one of our horses he
+  said: "Like a mule he'll be your friend for twenty years to git a
+  chance to kick you." Speaking of another that had to be shod he
+  said: "Shore, he'll step high to-morrow." Isbel appeared to be
+  remarkably efficient as camp-rustler and cook, but he did not
+  inspire me with confidence. In speaking of this to the Doyles I
+  found them non-committal on the subject. Westerners have
+  sensitive feelings. I could not tell whether they were offended
+  or not, and I half regretted mentioning my lack of confidence in
+  Isbel. As it turned out, however, I was amply justified.</p>
+
+  <p>Sievert Nielsen, whom I have mentioned elsewhere, was the
+  fourth of my men.</p>
+
+  <p>Darkness had enveloped us at supper time. I was tired out, but
+  the red-embered camp-fire, the cool air, the smell of wood-smoke,
+  and the white stars kept me awake awhile. Romer had to be put to
+  bed. He was wild with excitement. We had had a sleeping-bag made
+  for him so that once snugly in it, with the flaps buckled he
+  could not kick off the blankets. When we got him into it he
+  quieted down and took exceeding interest in his first bed in the
+  open. He did not, however, go quickly to sleep. Presently he
+  called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle Rome, I coiled a
+  lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's asleep you go
+  pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's a
+  rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading
+  "The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones'
+  cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off his mind he
+  fell asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>The hour we spent sitting around the camp-fire was the most
+  pleasant of that night, though I did not know it then. The smell
+  of wood-smoke and the glow of live coals stirred memories of
+  other camp-fires. I was once more enveloped by the sweetness and
+  peace of the open, listening to the sigh of the wind, and the
+  faint tinkle of bells on the hobbled horses.</p>
+
+  <p>An uncomfortable night indeed it turned out to be. Our covers
+  were scanty and did not number among them any blankets. The bed
+  was hard as a rock, and lumpy. No sleep! As the night wore on the
+  air grew colder, and I could not keep warm. At four a.m. I heard
+  the howling of coyotes&mdash;a thrilling and well remembered wild
+  chorus. After that perfect stillness reigned. Presently I saw the
+  morning star&mdash;big, blue-white, beautiful. Uncomfortable
+  hours seemed well spent if the reward was sight of the morning
+  star. How few people ever see it! How very few ever get a glimpse
+  of it on a desert dawn!</p>
+
+  <p>Just then, about five-thirty, Romer woke up and yelled
+  lustily: "Dad! My nose's froze." This was a signal for me to
+  laugh, and also to rise heroically. Not difficult because I
+  wanted to stay in bed, but because I could hardly crawl out! Soon
+  we had a fire roaring. At six the dawn was still gray. Cold and
+  nipping air, frost on everything, pale stars, a gold-red light in
+  the east were proofs that I was again in the open. Soon a
+  rose-colored flush beautified the Peaks.</p>
+
+  <p>After breakfast we had trouble with the horses. This always
+  happened. But it was made worse this morning because a young
+  cowboy who happened along took upon himself the task of helping
+  Lee. I suspected he wanted to show off a little. In throwing his
+  lasso to rope one, the noose went over the heads of two. Then he
+  tried to hold both animals. They dragged him, pulled the lasso
+  out of his hands, and stampeded the other horses. These two roped
+  together thundered off with the noose widening. I was afraid they
+  would split round a tree or stump, but fortunately the noose fell
+  off one. As all the horses pounded off I heard Romer remark to
+  Isbel: "Say, Joe, I don't see any medals on that cowboy." Isbel
+  roared, and said: "Wal, Romer, you shore hit the nail, on the
+  haid!"</p>
+
+  <p>Owing to that stampede we did not get saddled and started till
+  eleven o'clock. At first I was so sore and stiff from the hard
+  bed that I rode a while on the wagon with Doyle. Many a mile I
+  had ridden with him, and many a story he had related. This time
+  he told about sitting on a jury at Prescott where they brought in
+  as evidence bloody shirts, overalls, guns, knives, until there
+  was such a pile that the table would not hold them. Doyle was a
+  mine of memories of the early days.</p>
+
+  <p>Romer's mount was a little black, white-spotted horse named
+  Rye. Lee Doyle had scoured the ranches to get this pony for the
+  youngster. Rye was small for a horse, about the size of an Indian
+  mustang, and he was gentle, as well as strong and fast. Romer had
+  been given riding lessons all that summer in the east, and upon
+  his arrival at Flagstaff he informed me that he could ride. I
+  predicted he would be in the wagon before noon of the second day
+  out. He offered to bet on it. I told him I disapproved of
+  betting. He seemed to me to be daring, adaptable, self-willed;
+  and I was divided between pride and anxiety as to the outcome of
+  this trip for him.</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy
+  pond in a valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees
+  stood in the water, and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably
+  to the ranchers this mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me,
+  who loved the beauty of the desert before its productiveness, it
+  was hideous. When we passed Lake Mary, and farther on the last of
+  the cut-over timber-land, we began to get into wonderful country.
+  We traveled about sixteen miles, rather a small day's ride. Romer
+  stayed on his horse all through that ride, and when we selected a
+  camp site for the night he said to me: "Well, you're lucky you
+  wouldn't bet."</p>
+
+  <p>Camp that evening was in a valley with stately pines
+  straggling down to the level. On the other slope the pines came
+  down in groups. The rim of this opposite slope was high, rugged,
+  iron-colored, with cracks and holes. Before supper I walked up
+  the slope back of our camp, to come upon level, rocky ground for
+  a mile, then pines again leading to a low, green mountain with
+  lighter patches of aspen. The level, open strip was gray in
+  color. Arizona color and Arizona country! Gray of sage, rocks,
+  pines, cedars, pi&ntilde;ons, heights and depths and plains, wild
+  and open and lonely&mdash;that was Arizona.</p>
+
+  <p>That night I obtained some rest and sleep, lying awake only a
+  few hours, during which time I turned from side to side to find a
+  soft place in the hard bed. Under such circumstances I always
+  thought of the hard beds of the Greeks and the Spartans. Next day
+  we rode twenty-three miles. On horseback trips like this it was
+  every one for himself. Sometimes we would be spread out, all
+  separated; at others we would be bunched; and again we would ride
+  in couples. The morning was an ordeal for me, as at first I could
+  scarcely sit my saddle; in the afternoon, however, riding grew to
+  be less severe. The road led through a winding, shallow valley,
+  with clumps of pine here and there, and cedars on the slopes.
+  Romer rode all the way, half the time with his feet out of the
+  stirrups, like a western boy born to the saddle, and he wanted to
+  go fast all the time. Camp was made at a place called Fulton
+  Spring. It might have been a spring once, but now it was a
+  mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is
+  necessary to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on
+  sheep water&mdash;the water holes being tainted by
+  sheep&mdash;and alkali water and soapy water of the desert, but
+  never happily. How I hailed the clear, cold, swiftly-flowing
+  springs!</p>
+
+  <p>This third camp lay in a woods where the pines were beautiful
+  and the silence noticeable. Upon asking Romer to enumerate the
+  things I had called to his attention, the few times I could catch
+  up with him on the day's journey, he promptly replied&mdash;two
+  big spiders&mdash;tarantulas, a hawk, and Mormon Lake. This lake
+  was another snow-melted mud-hole, said to contain fish. I doubted
+  that. Perhaps the little bull-head catfish might survive in such
+  muddy water, but I did not believe bass or perch could.</p>
+
+  <p>One familiar feature of Arizona travel manifested itself to me
+  that day&mdash;the dry air. My nails became brittle and my lips
+  began to crack. I have had my lips cracked so severely that when
+  I tried to bite bread they would split and bleed and hurt so that
+  I could not eat. This matter of sore lips was for long a painful
+  matter. I tried many remedies, and finally found one, camphor
+  ice, that would prevent the drying and cracking.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day at dawn the forest was full of the soughing of wind
+  in the pines&mdash;a wind that presaged storm. No stars showed.
+  Romer-boy piled out at six o'clock. I had to follow him. The sky
+  was dark and cloudy. Only a faint light showed in the east and it
+  was just light enough to see when we ate breakfast. Owing to
+  strayed horses we did not get started till after nine
+  o'clock.</p>
+
+  <p>Five miles through the woods, gradually descending, led us
+  into an open plain where there was a grass-bordered pond full of
+  ducks. Here appeared an opportunity to get some meat. R.C. tried
+  with shotgun and I with rifle, all to no avail. These ducks were
+  shy. Romer seemed to evince some disdain at our failure, but he
+  did not voice his feelings. We found some wild-turkey tracks, and
+  a few feathers, which put our hopes high.</p>
+
+  <p>Crossing the open ground we again entered the forest, which
+  gradually grew thicker as we got down to a lower altitude. Oak
+  trees began to show in swales. And then we soon began to see
+  squirrels, big, plump, gray fellows, with bushy tails almost
+  silver. They appeared wilder than we would have suspected, at
+  that distance from the settlements. Romer was eager to hunt them,
+  and with his usual persistence, succeeded at length in persuading
+  his uncle to do so.</p>
+
+  <p>To that end we rode out far ahead of the wagon and horses. Lee
+  had a yellow dog he called Pups, a close-haired, keen-faced,
+  muscular canine to which I had taken a dislike. To be fair to
+  Pups, I had no reason except that he barked all the time. Pups
+  and his barking were destined to make me hail them both with
+  admiration and respect, but I had no idea of that then. Now this
+  dog of Lee's would run ahead of us, trail squirrels, chase them,
+  and tree them, whereupon he would bark vociferously. Sometimes up
+  in the bushy top we would fail to spy the squirrel, but we had no
+  doubt one was there. Romer wasted many and many a cartridge of
+  the .22 Winchester trying to hit a squirrel. He had practiced a
+  good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster, but
+  hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at
+  the tip of a branch, was no easy matter.</p>
+
+  <p>"Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad."</p>
+
+  <p>And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about
+  Wetzel. Now Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was
+  Romer's favorite hero.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gimme the .20 gauge," finally cried Romer, in desperation,
+  with his eyes flashing.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon his uncle handed him the shotgun, with a word of
+  caution as to the trigger. This particular squirrel was pretty
+  high up, presenting no easy target. Romer stood almost directly
+  under it, raised the gun nearly straight up, waved and wobbled
+  and hesitated, and finally fired. Down sailed the squirrel to hit
+  with a plump. That was Romer's first successful hunting
+  experience. How proud he was of that gray squirrel! I suffered a
+  pang to see the boy so radiant, so full of fire at the killing of
+  a beautiful creature of the woods. Then again I remembered my own
+  first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty little savages. In their
+  hunting, playing, even their reading, some element of the wild
+  brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy descendants of
+  progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This incident
+  furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before this
+  trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot
+  a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I
+  was not hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at
+  the spilling of blood. On the contrary he revels in it with a
+  fierce, primitive joy.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some shot, I'll say!" declared Romer to his uncle, loftily.
+  And he said to me half a dozen times: "Say, Dad, wasn't it a
+  grand peg?"</p>
+
+  <p>But toward the end of that afternoon his enthusiasm waned for
+  shooting, for anything, especially riding. He kept asking when
+  the wagon was going to stop. Once he yelled out: "Here's a peach
+  of a place to camp." Then I asked him: "Romer, are you tired?"
+  "Naw! But what's the use ridin' till dark?" At length he had to
+  give up and be put on the wagon. The moment was tragic for him.
+  Soon, however, he brightened at something Doyle told him, and
+  began to ply the old pioneer with rapid-fire questions.</p>
+
+  <p>We pitched camp in an open flat, gray and red with short
+  grass, and sheltered by towering pines on one side. Under these
+  we set up our tents. The mat of pine needles was half a foot
+  thick, soft and springy and fragrant. The woods appeared full of
+  slanting rays of golden sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>This day we had supper over before sunset. Romer showed no
+  effects from his long, hard ride. First he wanted to cook, then
+  he fooled around the fire, bothering Isbel. I had a hard time to
+  manage him. He wanted to be eternally active. He teased and
+  begged to go hunting&mdash;then he compromised on target
+  practice. R.C. and I, however, were too tired, and we preferred
+  to rest beside the camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for
+  to-morrow."</p>
+
+  <p>In disgust Romer replied: "Well, I suppose if a flock of
+  antelope came along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are
+  great hunters, I don't think!"</p>
+
+  <p>After the lad had gone over to the other men R.C. turned to me
+  and said reflectively: "Does he remind you of us when we were
+  little?"</p>
+
+  <p>To which I replied with emotion: "In him I live over
+  again!"</p>
+
+  <p>That is one of the beautiful things about children, so full of
+  pathos and some strange, stinging joy&mdash;they bring back the
+  days that are no more.</p>
+
+  <p>This evening, despite my fatigue, I was the last one to stay
+  up. My seat was most comfortable, consisting of thick folds of
+  blankets against a log. How the wind mourned in the trees! How
+  the camp-fire sparkled, glowed red and white! Sometimes it seemed
+  full of blazing opals. Always it held faces. And
+  stories&mdash;more stories than I can ever tell! Once I was
+  stirred and inspired by the beautiful effect of the pine trees in
+  outline against the starry sky when the camp-fire blazed up. The
+  color of the foliage seemed indescribably blue-green, something
+  never seen by day. Every line shone bright, graceful, curved,
+  rounded, and all thrown with sharp relief against the sky. How
+  magical, exquisitely delicate and fanciful! The great trunks were
+  soft serrated brown, and the gnarled branches stood out in
+  perfect proportions. All works of art must be copied of
+  nature.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning early, while Romer slept, and the men had just
+  begun to stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All
+  seemed solemn and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest
+  brown and green and gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his
+  nocturnal habit. Then to my surprise I heard wild canaries. They
+  were flying high, and to the south, going to their winter
+  quarters. I wandered around among big, gray rocks and windfalls
+  and clumps of young oak and majestic pines. More than one saucy
+  red squirrel chattered at me.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp my comrades were at breakfast. Romer
+  appeared vastly relieved to see that I had not taken a gun with
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>This morning we got an early start. We rode for hours through
+  a beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces
+  made riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared
+  on the rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's
+  travel, and the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine
+  was thick and fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing.
+  Everywhere pine needles dropped, shining in the sunlight like
+  thin slants of rain.</p>
+
+  <p>Only once or twice did I see Romer in all these morning hours;
+  then he was out in front with the cowboy Isbel, riding his black
+  pony over all the logs and washes he could find. I could see his
+  feet sticking straight out almost even with his saddle. He did
+  not appear to need stirrups. My fears gradually lessened.</p>
+
+  <p>During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We
+  came to a long, open valley where the dust lay several inches
+  deep. It had been an unusually dry summer and fall&mdash;a fact
+  that presaged poor luck for our hunting&mdash;and the washes and
+  stream-beds were bleached white. We came to two water-holes,
+  tanks the Arizonians called them, and they were vile mud-holes
+  with green scum on the water. The horses drank, but I would have
+  had to be far gone from thirst before I would have slaked mine
+  there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and the dust
+  rising in clouds. No wonder that ride was interminably long.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we descended a canyon, and decided to camp in a level
+  spot where several ravines met, in one of which a tiny stream of
+  dear water oozed out of the gravel. The inclosure was
+  rocky-sloped, full of caves and covered with pines; and the best
+  I could say for it was that in case of storm the camp would be
+  well protected. We shoveled out a deep hole in the gravel, so
+  that it would fill up with water. Romer had evidently enjoyed
+  himself this day. When I asked Isbel about him the cowboy's hard
+  face gleamed with a smile: "Shore thet kid's all right. He'll
+  make a cowpuncher!" His remark pleased me. In view of Romer's
+  determination to emulate the worst bandit I ever wrote about I
+  was tremendously glad to think of him as a cowboy. But as for
+  myself I was tired, and the ride had been rather unprofitable,
+  and this camp-site, to say the least, did not inspire me. It was
+  neither wild nor beautiful nor comfortable. I went early to bed
+  and slept like a log.</p>
+
+  <p>The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men
+  hunted from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned
+  more about Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the
+  lost horses. They had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained
+  perfectly quiet, as cute as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail.
+  Pups was a horse-trailing dog and he soon found them. I had a
+  change of feeling for Pups, then and there.</p><a name=
+  "image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg043_m.jpg" width="689" height="448" alt=
+    "The Author and his Men. From Left to Right: Edd Haught; Nielsen; Haught, the Bear Hunter; Al Doyle, Pioneer Arizona Guide; Lewis Pyle; Z.g.; George Haught; Ben Copple; Lee Doyle. ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The sun was high and hot when we rode off. The pleasant and
+  dusty stretches alternated. About one o'clock we halted on the
+  edge of a deep wooded ravine to take our usual noonday rest. I
+  scouted along the edge in the hope of seeing game of some kind.
+  Presently I heard the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Slipping along to
+  an open place I peered down to be thrilled by sight of four
+  good-sized turkeys. They were walking along the open strip of dry
+  stream-bed at the bottom of the ravine. One was chasing
+  grasshoppers. They were fairly close. I took aim at one, and
+  thought I could have hit him, but suddenly I remembered Romer and
+  R.C. So I slipped back and called them.</p><a name="image-0049">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg044_m.jpg" width="448" height="594" alt=
+    "Romer-boy on his Favorite Steed ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Hurriedly and stealthily we returned to the point where I had
+  seen the turkeys. Romer had a pale face and wonderfully bright
+  eyes; his actions resembled those of a stalking Indian. The
+  turkeys were farther down, but still in plain sight. I told R.C.
+  to take the boy and slip down, and run and hide and run till they
+  got close enough for a shot. I would keep to the edge of the
+  ravine.</p>
+
+  <p>Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping
+  and creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to
+  reach a point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I
+  might get a shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I
+  lost sight of the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my
+  horse I mounted him and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine
+  some distance above. Here I hunted around for a little while.
+  Once I heard the report of the .20 gauge, and then several rifle
+  shots. Upon returning I found that Lee and Nielsen had wasted
+  some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the hill, both red
+  and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about the size of
+  a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the four
+  large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a
+  hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got
+  one. Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that
+  Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost
+  catching several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled
+  feathers out of their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"</p>
+
+  <p>We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon
+  Doyle called my attention to an opening in the forest through
+  which I could see the yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the
+  great blue void below. Arizona! That explained the black forests,
+  the red and yellow cliffs of rock, the gray cedars, the heights
+  and depths.</p>
+
+  <p>Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was
+  winding, rough full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired
+  out trying to keep up with the wagon. Romer, however, averred
+  time and again that he was not tired. Still I saw him often shift
+  his seat from one side of the saddle to the other.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a
+  little hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins,
+  low stone houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the
+  road, orchards, and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there
+  long enough to rest a little and drink our fill of the cold
+  granite water. I would travel out of my way to get a drink of
+  water that came from granite rock.</p>
+
+  <p>About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer
+  invited or rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his
+  victory I found that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle
+  sheath. I went back some distance to look for it, but did so in
+  vain. Isbel said he would ride back in the morning and find
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was
+  only because we had gotten out where we could see all around.
+  Arizona is all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up
+  to the south and east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of
+  the Mogollon Mesa, with its cliffs of yellow and red, and its
+  black line of timber. Westward lay fold on fold of low
+  cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a kind of magnificent
+  bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost in blue haze. The
+  vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both prickly-pear and
+  mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper
+  trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially the
+  smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries,
+  and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees.
+  Since we had left the rim above the character of plant life had
+  changed.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural
+  Bridge was located. A winding road descended the east side of
+  this valley. A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and
+  orchard and walnut trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray
+  slope on one side, and a red, rugged mountain on the other. A
+  deep gorge showed dark and wild. At length, just after sunset, we
+  reached the ranch, and rode through orchards of peach and pear
+  and apple trees, all colored with fruit, and down through grassy
+  meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched camp. By the time we
+  had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick, dreamy hum of
+  insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden afterglow on
+  the notch of the mountain range to the west&mdash;these were
+  inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed,
+  where my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.</p>
+
+  <p>After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what
+  delight to awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool
+  and breezy and bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green
+  and purple alfalfa fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged
+  crags above! Romer made a bee-line for the peach trees. He beat
+  his daddy only a few yards. The kind rancher had visited us the
+  night before and he had told us to help ourselves to fruit,
+  melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I made my breakfast on
+  peaches!</p>
+
+  <p>I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the
+  dark green slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by
+  water-cress, long grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one
+  of perfectly clear water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on
+  the surface. A grass of dark color and bunches of light green
+  plant grew under the surface. Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed
+  around and frogs as green as the grass blinked with jewelled eyes
+  from the wet margins. The spring had a large volume that spilled
+  over its borders with low, hollow gurgle, with fresh, cool
+  splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone. Here was the
+  secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty and life
+  of the oasis.</p>
+
+  <p>It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful
+  Natural Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the
+  extent of several acres, was the level top of this strange
+  bridge. A meadow of alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like
+  the hanging gardens of Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep
+  gorge, at the bottom of which flowed a swift stream of water.
+  Geologically this tremendous arch of limestone cannot be so very
+  old. In comparatively recent times an earthquake or some seismic
+  disturbance or some other natural force caused a spring of water
+  to burst from the slope above the gorge. It ran down, of course,
+  over the rim. The lime salt in the water was deposited, and year
+  by year and age by age advanced toward the opposite side until a
+  bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at the bottom kept the
+  opening clear under the bridge.</p>
+
+  <p>A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this
+  wonderful natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone,
+  porous, craggy, broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full
+  of tremendous boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper
+  trees, red and yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I
+  espied tiny gray frogs, reminding me of those I found in the
+  gulches of the Grand Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive,
+  but most of them dead, lined the wet borders of the pools. A
+  species of fish that resembled mullet lay in the shadow of the
+  rocks.</p>
+
+  <p>From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if
+  not magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at
+  least striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored
+  gray, yellow, green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and
+  scalloped mosaic. Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy
+  scattered drops. The left side was dryest and large, dark caves
+  opened up, one above the other, the upper being so high that it
+  was dangerous to attempt reaching it. The right side was slippery
+  and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted with lime salt. Doyle
+  told us that any object left under the ceaseless drip, drip of
+  the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as stone.
+  The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than
+  the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes.
+  Romer certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone
+  through a small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle
+  pointed out the high cave where Indians had once lived, showing
+  the markings of their fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being
+  driven into the highest cave from which they had never escaped.
+  This tale was manifestly to Romer's liking and I had to use force
+  to keep him from risking his neck. A very strong breeze blew
+  under the arch. When we rolled a boulder into the large, dark
+  pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom, boom, growing hollower
+  the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer in some bat nests
+  in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll stones and fish
+  for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more on a level
+  I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole&mdash;I'll
+  say!" he panted, breathlessly.</p>
+
+  <p>The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about
+  July, and the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay
+  long on the lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago
+  and had cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of
+  the Four Peaks Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was
+  never severely cold or hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of
+  the rancher's wife that life there was always afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a
+  half hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many
+  frontier characteristics such as old board and stone houses with
+  high fronts, hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one
+  street so wide that it resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson
+  contained two stores, where I hoped to buy a rifle, and hoped in
+  vain. I had not recovered my lost gun, and when night came my
+  prospects of anything to hunt with appeared extremely slim. But
+  we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart, dark-skinned
+  rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he would
+  have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
+  profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I
+  could not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I
+  refused with thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it
+  was that he lent me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me
+  several boxes of ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide
+  lasso. Whereupon Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say,
+  you look like an Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple
+  replied: "I am part Indian, sonny." Manifestly that settled his
+  status with Romer, for he piped up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd
+  better come huntin' with us."</p>
+
+  <p>We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest
+  ride of the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good
+  camping site I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout
+  everybody out. It was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then
+  everybody rustled to such purpose that we were ready to start
+  before dawn, and had to wait a little for light enough to see
+  where we were going. This procedure tickled Romer immensely. I
+  believed he imagined he was in a pioneer caravan. The gray
+  breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the rose and
+  silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with the
+  air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as
+  the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined
+  road was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing
+  indications that it was seldom used. From the tops of high points
+  I could see black foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all
+  leading the gaze toward the great yellow and red wall of the
+  mesa, with its fringed borderline, wild and beckoning.</p>
+
+  <p>We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order,
+  over and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that
+  burned our faces and through choking dust. The washes and
+  stream-beds were bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow
+  and dust laden; the mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts.
+  Only the manzanita looked fresh. That smooth red-branched and
+  glistening green-leafed plant of the desert apparently flourished
+  without rain. On all sides the evidences of extreme drought
+  proved the year to be the dreaded <i>anno seco</i> of the
+  Mexicans.</p>
+
+  <p>For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any
+  prominent change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the
+  heat and dust and brush-walled road. But about the middle of the
+  afternoon we reached the summit of the longest hill, from which
+  we saw ahead of us a cut up country, wild and rugged and
+  beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our feet. We heard the
+  faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with sweat, and
+  thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast as we
+  dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged
+  into a swift stream of clear, cold water&mdash;granite
+  water&mdash;to drink of which, and to bathe hot heads and burning
+  feet, was a joy only known to the weary traveler of the desert.
+  Romer yelled that the water was like that at our home in the
+  mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank till I thought he would
+  burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him from wallowing in
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us,
+  and the aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay
+  behind. Every mile grew shadier, clearer, cooler.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several
+  miles, as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to
+  an Homeric recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the
+  end of which, almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon
+  such a stream as the one we had just passed. Then he told me
+  about his trips down the west coast of Sonora, along the Gulf,
+  where he traveled at night, at low tide, so that by daytime his
+  footprints would be washed out. This was the land of the Seri
+  Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were cannibals. I had read
+  considerable about them, much of which ridiculed the rumors of
+  their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of exceeding
+  interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land of the
+  Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data
+  concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California
+  told me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found
+  the Seris to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was
+  positive that under favorable circumstances they would practice
+  cannibalism. Nielsen made four trips down there. He claimed the
+  Seris were an ugly tribe. In winter they lived on Tiburon Island,
+  off which boats anchored on occasions, and crews and fishermen
+  and adventurers went ashore to barter with the Indians. These
+  travelers did not see the worst of the Seris. In summer they
+  range up the mainland, and they go naked. They do not want gold
+  discovered down there. They will fight prospectors. They use
+  arrows and attack at dawn. Also they poison the water-holes.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the
+  mainland opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from
+  camp, returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped
+  and made his way to Gyamus. Procuring assistance this man
+  returned to the scene of the massacre, only to find stakes in the
+  sand, with deep trails tramped around them, and blackened remains
+  of fires, and bones everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once
+  from a hiding place he had watched Seris tear up and devour a
+  dead turtle that he afterward ascertained was putrid. He said
+  these Seris were the greatest runners of all desert savages. The
+  best of them could outrun a horse. One Seri, a giant seven feet
+  tall, could outrun a deer and break its neck with his hands.</p>
+
+  <p>These statements of Nielsen's were remarkable, and personally
+  I believed them. Men of his stamp were honest and they had
+  opportunities to learn strange and terrible facts in nature. The
+  great naturalist Darwin made rather stronger claims for the
+  barbarism of the savages of Terra del Fuego. Nielsen, pursuing
+  his theme, told me how he had seen, with his own eyes&mdash;and
+  they were certainly sharp and intelligent&mdash;Yaqui Indians
+  leap on the bare backs of wild horses and locking their legs,
+  stick there in spite of the mad plunges and pitches. The Gauchos
+  of the Patagonian Pampas were famous for that feat of
+  horsemanship. I asked Joe Isbel what he thought of such riding.
+  And he said: "Wal, I can ride a wild steer bare-back, but excoose
+  me from tacklin' a buckin' bronch without saddle an' stirrups."
+  This coming from the acknowledged champion horseman of the
+  southwest was assuredly significant.</p>
+
+  <p>At five o'clock we came to the end of the road. It led to a
+  forest glade, overlooking the stream we had followed, and that
+  was as far as our wagon could go. The glade shone red with
+  sumach, and surrounded by tall pines, with a rocky and shady glen
+  below, it appeared a delightful place to camp. As I was about to
+  unsaddle my horses I heard the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Pulling
+  out my borrowed rifle, and calling Romer, I ran to the edge of
+  the glade. The shady, swift stream ran fifty feet or so below me.
+  Across it I saw into the woods where shade and gray rocks and
+  colored brush mingled. Again I heard the turkeys cluck. "Look
+  hard, son," I whispered. "They're close." R.C. came slipping
+  along below us, with his rifle ready. Suddenly Romer stiffened,
+  then pointed. "There! Dad!&mdash;There!" I saw two gobblers wade
+  into the brook not more than a hundred and fifty feet away.
+  Drawing down with fine aim I fired. The bullet splashed water all
+  over the turkeys. One with loud whirr of wings flew away. The
+  other leaped across the brook and ran&mdash;swift as a
+  deer&mdash;right up the slope. As I tried to get the sight on him
+  I heard other turkeys fly, and the crack-crack of R.C.'s gun. I
+  shot twice at my running turkey, and all I did was to scatter the
+  dirt over him, and make him run faster. R.C. had not done any
+  better shooting. Romer, wonderful to relate, was so excited that
+  he forgot to make fun of our marksmanship. We scouted around
+  some, but the turkeys had gone. By promising to take Romer
+  hunting after supper I contrived to get him back to the glade,
+  where we made camp.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    II
+  </center>
+
+  <p>After we had unpacked and while the men were pitching the
+  tents and getting supper I took Romer on a hunt up the creek. I
+  was considerably pleased to see good-sized trout in the deeper
+  pools. A little way above camp the creek forked. As the
+  right-hand branch appeared to be larger and more attractive we
+  followed its course. Soon the bustle of camp life and the sound
+  of the horses were left far behind. Romer slipped along beside me
+  stealthily as an Indian, all eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>We had not traveled thus for a quarter of a mile when my quick
+  ear caught the cluck-cluck of turkeys. "Listen," I whispered,
+  halting. Romer became like a statue, his dark eyes dilating, his
+  nostrils quivering, his whole body strung. He was a Zane all
+  right. A turkey called again; then another answered. Romer
+  started, and nodded his head vehemently.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on now, right behind me," I whispered. "Step where I
+  step and do what I do. Don't break any twigs."</p>
+
+  <p>Cautiously we glided up the creek, listening now and then to
+  get the direction, until we came to an open place where we could
+  see some distance up a ridge. The turkey clucks came from across
+  the creek somewhere up this open aisle of the forest. I crawled
+  ahead several rods to a more advantageous point, much pleased to
+  note that Romer kept noiselessly at my heels. Then from behind a
+  stone we peeped out. Almost at once a turkey flew down from a
+  tree into the open lane. "Look Dad!" whispered Romer, wildly. I
+  had to hold him down. "That's a hen turkey," I said. "See, it's
+  small and dull-colored. The gobblers are big, shiny, and they
+  have red on their heads."</p>
+
+  <p>Another hen turkey flew down from a rather low height. Then I
+  made out grapevines, and I saw several animated dark patches
+  among them. As I looked three turkeys flopped down to the ground.
+  One was a gobbler of considerable size, with beautiful white and
+  bronze feathers. Rather suspiciously he looked down our way. The
+  distance was not more than a hundred yards. I aimed at him,
+  feeling as I did so how Romer quivered beside me, but I had no
+  confidence in Copple's rifle. The sights were wrong for me. The
+  stock did not fit me. So, hoping for a closer and better shot, I
+  let this opportunity pass. Of course I should have taken it. The
+  gobbler clucked and began to trot up the ridge, with the others
+  after him. They were not frightened, but they appeared rather
+  suspicious. When they disappeared in the woods Romer and I got
+  up, and hurried in pursuit. "Gee! why didn't you peg that
+  gobbler?" broke out Romer, breathlessly. "Wasn't he a peach?"</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the top of the ridge we advanced very
+  cautiously again. Another open place led to a steep, rocky
+  hillside with cedars and pines growing somewhat separated. I was
+  disappointed in not seeing the turkeys. Then in our anxiety and
+  eagerness we hurried on, not noiselessly by any means. All of a
+  sudden there was a rustle, and then a great whirr of wings. Three
+  turkeys flew like grouse away into the woods. Next I saw the
+  white gobbler running up the rocky hillside. At first he was in
+  the open. Aiming as best I could I waited for him to stop or
+  hesitate. But he did neither. "Peg him, Dad!" yelled Romer. The
+  lad was right. My best chance I had again forfeited. To hit a
+  running wild turkey with a rifle bullet was a feat I had not done
+  so often as to inspire conceit. The gobbler was wise, too. For
+  that matter all grown gobblers are as wise as old bucks, except
+  in the spring mating season, when it is a crime to hunt them.
+  This one, just as I got a bead on him, always ran behind a rock
+  or tree or shrub. Finally in desperation I took a snap shot at
+  him, hitting under him, making him jump. Then in rapid succession
+  I fired four more times. I had the satisfaction of seeing where
+  my bullets struck up the dust, even though they did go wide of
+  the mark. After my last shot the gobbler disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, Dad, you sure throwed the dirt over him!" declared
+  Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>"Son, I don't believe I could hit a flock of barns with this
+  gun," I replied, gazing doubtfully at the old, shiny,
+  wire-wrapped, worn-out Winchester Copple had lent me. I had been
+  told that he was a fine marksman and could drive a nail with it.
+  Upon my return to camp I tried out the rifle, carefully, with a
+  rest, to find that it was not accurate. Moreover it did not throw
+  the bullets consistently. It shot high, wide, low; and right
+  there I abandoned any further use for it. R.C. tried to make me
+  take his rifle to use on the hunting trip; Nielsen and Lee wanted
+  me to take theirs, but I was disgusted with myself and refused.
+  "Thanks, boys," I said. "Maybe this will be a lesson to me."</p>
+
+  <p>We had been up since three o'clock that morning, and the day's
+  travel had been exhausting. I had just enough energy left to
+  scrape up a huge, soft pile of pine needles upon which to make
+  our bed. After that all was oblivion until I was awakened by the
+  ringing strokes of Nielsen's axe.</p>
+
+  <p>The morning, after the sun got up, was exceedingly delightful.
+  And this camp was such a contrast to the others, so pleasant and
+  attractive, that even if we had not arranged to meet Lee Haught
+  and his sons here I would have stayed a while anyway. Haught was
+  a famed bear hunter who lived in a log-cabin somewhere up under
+  the rim of the mesa. While Lee and Nielsen rode off up the trail
+  to find Haught I gave Romer his first try at rainbow trout. The
+  water of the creek was low and clear, so that we could see plenty
+  of good-sized trout. But they were shy. They would not rise
+  readily to any of our flies, though I got several strikes. We
+  searched under the stones for worms and secured a few. Whereupon
+  Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we plainly saw. The trout
+  gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the fine art of angling,
+  but whenever he got a bite he always forgot science. He yanked
+  this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another pool he hooked a
+  big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as weight and
+  strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But this
+  trout nearly pulled Romer off the rock before the line broke. I
+  took occasion then to deliver to the lad a lecture. In reply he
+  said tearfully: "I didn't know he was so&mdash;so big."</p>
+
+  <p>When we returned to camp, Haught and his sons were there. Even
+  at a distance their horses, weapons, and persons satisfied my
+  critical eye. Lee Haught was a tall, spare, superbly built man,
+  with square shoulders. He had a brown face with deep lines and
+  sunken cheeks, keen hazel eyes, heavy dark mustache, and hair
+  streaked a little with gray. The only striking features of his
+  apparel were his black sombrero and long spurs.</p>
+
+  <p>His sons, Edd and George, were young, lean, sallow,
+  still-faced, lanky-legged horsemen with clear gray eyes. They did
+  not appear to be given, to much speech. Both were then waiting
+  for the call of the army draft. Looking at them then, feeling the
+  tranquil reserve and latent force of these Arizonians, I
+  reflected that the Germans had failed in their psychology of
+  American character. A few hundred thousand Americans like the
+  Haught boys would have whipped the German army.</p>
+
+  <p>We held a council. Haught said he would send his son Edd with
+  Doyle, and by a long roundabout forest road get the wagon up on
+  the mesa. With his burros and some of our horses packed we could
+  take part of the outfit up the creek trail, past his cabin, and
+  climb out on the rim, where we would find grass, water, wood, and
+  plenty of game.</p>
+
+  <p>The idea of permanent camp before sunset that very day
+  inspired us to united and vigorous effort. By noon we had the
+  pack train ready. Edd and Doyle climbed on the wagon to start the
+  other way. Romer waved his hand: "Good-bye, Mr. Doyle, don't
+  break down and lose the apples!"</p>
+
+  <p>Then we were off, up the narrow trail along the creek. Haught
+  led the way. Romer attached himself to the bear-hunter, and
+  wherever the trail was wide enough rode beside him. R.C. and I
+  followed. The other men fell in behind the pack train.</p>
+
+  <p>The ride was hot, and for the most part all up hill. That
+  basin could be likened to the ribs of a washboard: it was all
+  hills, gorges, ridges and ravines. The hollows of this
+  exceedingly rough country were thick with pine and oak, the
+  ridges covered with cedar, juniper, and manzanita. The ground,
+  where it was not rocky, was a dry, red clay. We passed Haught's
+  log cabin and clearing of a few acres, where I saw fat hogs and
+  cattle. Beyond this point the trail grew more zigzag, and
+  steeper, and shadier. As we got higher up the air grew cooler. I
+  noted a change in the timber. The trees grew larger, and other
+  varieties appeared. We crossed a roaring brook lined by thick,
+  green brush, very pleasant to the eye, and bronze-gold ferns that
+  were beautiful. We passed oaks all green and yellow, and maple
+  trees, wonderfully colored red and cerise. Then still higher up I
+  espied some silver spruces, most exquisite trees of the mountain
+  forests.</p>
+
+  <p>During the latter half of the climb up to the rim I had to
+  attend to the business of riding and walking. The trail was
+  rough, steep, and long. Once Haught called my attention to a flat
+  stone with a plain trail made by a turtle in ages past when that
+  sandstone was wet, sedimentary deposit. By and bye we reached the
+  last slopes up to the mesa, green, with yellow crags and cliffs,
+  and here and there blazing maples to remind me again that autumn
+  was at hand.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we surmounted the rim, from which I saw a scene that
+  defied words. It was different from any I had seen before. Black
+  timber as far as eye could see! Then I saw a vast bowl inclosed
+  by dim mountain ranges, with a rolling floor of forested ridges,
+  and dark lines I knew to be canyons. For wild, rugged beauty I
+  had not seen its equal.</p><a name="image-0050"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg045_m.jpg" width="765" height="448" alt=
+    "The Tonto Basin ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>When the pack train reached the rim we rode on, and now
+  through a magnificent forest at eight thousand feet altitude. Big
+  white and black clouds obscured the sun. A thunder shower caught
+  us. There was hail, and the dry smell of dust, and a little cold
+  rain. Romer would not put on his slicker. Haught said the drought
+  had been the worst he had seen in twenty years there. Up in this
+  odorous forestland I could not see where there had been lack of
+  rain. The forest appeared thick, grassy, gold and yellow and
+  green and brown. Thickets and swales of oaks and aspens were
+  gorgeous in their autumn hues. The silver spruces sent down long,
+  graceful branches that had to be brushed aside or stooped under
+  as we rode along. Big gray squirrels with white tails and tufted
+  ears ran up trees to perch on limbs and watch us go by; and other
+  squirrels, much smaller and darker gray, frisked and chattered
+  and scolded at a great rate.</p><a name="image-0051">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg046_m.jpg" width="448" height="720" alt=
+    "Listening for the Hounds ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We passed little depressions that ran down into ravines, and
+  these, Haught informed me, were the heads of canyons that sloped
+  away from the rim, deepening and widening for miles. The rim of
+  the mesa was its highest point, except here and there a few
+  elevations like Black Butte. Geologically this mesa was an
+  enormous fault, like the north rim of the Grand Canyon. During
+  the formation of the earth, or the hardening of the crust, there
+  had been a crack or slip, so that one edge of the crust stood up
+  sheer above the other. We passed the heads of Leonard Canyon,
+  Gentry, and Turkey Canyons, and at last, near time of sunset,
+  headed down into beautifully colored, pine-sloped,
+  aspen-thicketed Beaver Dam Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>A mile from the rim we were deep in the canyon, walled in by
+  rock-strewn and pine-timbered slopes too steep for a horse to
+  climb. There was a little gully on the black soil where there
+  were no evidences of recent water. Haught said he had never seen
+  Beaver Dam Creek dry until this season. We traveled on until we
+  came to a wide, open space, where three forks of this canyon met,
+  and where in the middle of this glade there rose a lengthy wooded
+  bench, shaded and beautified by stately pines and silver spruce.
+  At this point water appeared in the creek bed, flowing in tiny
+  stream that soon gathered volume. Cold and clear and pure it was
+  all that was needed to make this spot an ideal camp site. Haught
+  said half a mile below there was a grassy park where the horses
+  would graze with elk.</p>
+
+  <p>We pitched our tents on this bench, and I chose for my
+  location a space between two great monarchs of the forests, that
+  had surely shaded many an Indian encampment. At the upper end of
+  the bench rose a knoll, golden and green with scrub oaks, and
+  russet-colored with its lichened rocks. About all we could manage
+  that evening was to eat and go to bed.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning broke cool and bright, with heavy dew. I got my boots
+  as wet as if I had waded in water. This surprised me, occurring
+  on October sixth, and at eight thousand feet altitude, as I had
+  expected frost. Most of this day was spent in making camp,
+  unpacking, and attending to the many necessary little details
+  that make for comfort in the open. To be sure Romer worked very
+  spasmodically. He spent most of his time on the back of one of
+  Haught's burros, chasing and roping another. I had not remembered
+  seeing the lad so happily occupied.</p>
+
+  <p>Late in the afternoon I slipped off down the canyon alone,
+  taking Haught's rifle for safety rather than a desire to kill
+  anything. By no means was it impossible to meet a bad bear in
+  that forest. Some distance below camp I entered a ravine and
+  climbed up to the level, and soon found myself deep in the
+  fragrant, colorful, wild forest. Like coming home again was it to
+  enter that forest of silver-tipped, level-spreading spruce, and
+  great, gnarled, massive pines, and oak-patches of green and gold,
+  and maple thickets, with shining aspens standing white against
+  the blaze of red and purple. High, wavy, bleached grass, brown
+  mats of pine needles, gray-green moss waving from the spruces,
+  long strands of sunlight&mdash;all these seemed to welcome
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>At a distance there was a roar of wind through the forest;
+  close at hand only a soft breeze. Rustling of twigs caused me to
+  compose myself to listen and watch. Soon small gray squirrels
+  came into view all around me, bright-eyed and saucy, very curious
+  about this intruder. They began to chatter. Other squirrels were
+  working in the tops of trees, for I heard the fall of pine cones.
+  Then came the screech of blue jays. Soon they too discovered me.
+  The male birds were superb, dignified, beautiful. The color was
+  light blue all over with dark blue head and tufted crest. By and
+  bye they ceased to scold me, and I was left to listen to the
+  wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds and needles from
+  the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this woody, leafy,
+  earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by scent of
+  pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace and
+  rest. This golden-green forest, barred with sunlight, canopied by
+  the blue sky, and melodious with its soughing moan of wind,
+  absolutely filled me with content and happiness. If a stag or a
+  bear had trotted out into my sight, and had showed me no
+  animosity, not improbably I would have forgotten my gun. More and
+  more as I lived in the open I grew reluctant to kill.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently a porcupine waddled along some rods away, and
+  unaware of my presence it passed by and climbed a spruce. I saw
+  it climb high and finally lost sight of it. In searching up and
+  down this spruce I grew alive to what a splendid and beautiful
+  tree it was. Where so many trees grew it always seemed difficult
+  to single out one and study it. This silver spruce was five feet
+  through at the base, rugged, gray-seamed, thick all the way to
+  its lofty height. Its branches were small, with a singular
+  feature that they were uniform in shape, length, and droop. Most
+  all spruce branches drooped toward the ground. That explained why
+  they made such excellent shelters from rain. After a hard storm I
+  had seen the ground dry under a thick-foliaged spruce. Many a
+  time had I made a bed under one. Elk and deer stand under a
+  spruce during a rain, unless there is thunder and lightning. In
+  forests of high altitude, where lightning strikes many trees, I
+  have never found or heard of elk and deer being killed. This
+  particular spruce was a natural tent in the forest. The
+  thick-spreading graceful silver plumes extended clear to the top,
+  where they were bushiest, and rounded out, with all the largest
+  branches there. Each dark gray branch was fringed and festooned
+  with pale green moss, like the cypresses of the South.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly I heard a sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy,
+  light steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket
+  nearby. Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the
+  rifle. Then I peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the
+  thicket. The sun was setting now, and though there appeared a
+  clear golden light high in the forest, along the ground there
+  were shadows. I heard leaves falling, rustling. Tall white aspens
+  stood out of the thicket, and two of the large ones bore the old
+  black scars of bear claws. I was sure, however, that no bear hid
+  in the thicket at this moment. Presently whatever the animal was
+  it pattered lightly away on the far side. After that I watched
+  the quiver of the aspen leaves. Some were green, some yellow,
+  some gold, but they all had the same wonderful tremor, the silent
+  fluttering that gave them the most exquisite action in nature.
+  The sun set, the forest darkened, reminding me of supper time. So
+  I returned to camp. As I entered the open canyon Romer-boy espied
+  me&mdash;manifestly he had been watching&mdash;and he yelled:
+  "Here comes my Daddy now!... Say, Dad, did you get any pegs?"</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning Haught asked me if I would like to ride around
+  through the woods and probably get a shot at a deer. Romer coaxed
+  so to go that I finally consented.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode down the canyon, and presently came to a wide grassy
+  park inclosed by high green-clad slopes, the features of which
+  appeared to be that the timber on the west slope was mostly pine,
+  and on the east slope it was mostly spruce. I could arrive at no
+  certain reason for this, but I thought it must be owing to the
+  snow lying somewhat longer on the east slope. The stream here was
+  running with quite a little volume of water. Our horses were
+  grazing in this park. I saw fresh elk tracks made the day before.
+  Elk were quite abundant through this forest, Haught informed me,
+  and were protected by law.</p>
+
+  <p>A couple of miles down this trail the canyon narrowed, losing
+  its park-like dimensions. The farther we traveled the more water
+  there was in the stream, and more elk, deer, and turkey tracks in
+  the sand. Every half mile or so we would come to the mouth of a
+  small intersecting canyon, and at length we rode up one of these,
+  presently to climb out on top. At this distance from the rim the
+  forest was more open than in the vicinity of our camp, affording
+  better riding and hunting. Still the thickets of aspen and young
+  pine were so frequent that seldom could I see ahead more than
+  several hundred yards.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught led the way, I rode next and Romer kept beside me where
+  it was possible to do so. There was, however, no trail. How
+  difficult to keep the lad quiet! I expected of course that Haught
+  would dismount, and take me to hunt on foot. After a while I
+  gathered he did not hunt deer except on horseback. He explained
+  that cowboys rounded up cattle in this forest in the spring and
+  fall, and deer were not frightened at sound or sight of a horse.
+  Some of the thrill and interest in the forest subsided for me. I
+  did not like to hunt in a country where cattle ranged, no matter
+  how wild they were. Then when we came to a forested ridge bare of
+  grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the forest of a little
+  more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their flocks up this
+  far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and coyote,
+  sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer, however,
+  hated a sheep-run range.</p>
+
+  <p>Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool,
+  full of sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen
+  could ever rob it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its
+  temple-like majesty. So provided we did not meet any cattle or
+  sheep I did not care whether or not we sighted any game. In fact
+  I would have forgotten we were hunting had not Romer been along.
+  With him continually seeing things it was difficult to keep from
+  imagining that we were hunting Indians. The Apaches had once
+  lived in this country Haught informed us; and it was a habit of
+  theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every fall, thus
+  keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how
+  near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not
+  concern them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than
+  white men.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at
+  the far end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other
+  brush. As we neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick
+  and noiseless action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from
+  his saddle-sheath, took a couple of forward steps, and leveled
+  it. I was so struck with the rugged and significant picture he
+  made that I did not dismount, and did not see any game until
+  after he fired. Then as I tumbled off and got out my rifle I
+  heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray streak with a bobbing
+  white end flashed away out of sight to the left. Next I saw a
+  deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again. The deer
+  ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him.
+  Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when
+  both he and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time.
+  Presently he returned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said.
+  "Shore I missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why
+  didn't you smoke him up?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense
+  regret. "Why, I could have knocked him."</p>
+
+  <p>Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had
+  appeared to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see
+  one you want to pile off quick."</p>
+
+  <p>As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had
+  seen anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big
+  grove with thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said
+  these were good places for deer to lie down, relying on their
+  noses to scent danger from windward, and on their eyes in the
+  other direction. We circled to go round thickets, descending
+  somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got off a little to the right.
+  Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward a thin line of little
+  pines, through which I could see into the pines beyond. Suddenly
+  up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off my horse,
+  bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in a
+  thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender
+  trees. I aimed&mdash;followed him&mdash;got a bead on
+  him&mdash;and was just about to pull trigger when he vanished.
+  Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then Romer cried in his
+  shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck&mdash;hurry!" Turning I
+  ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just in
+  time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught
+  shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the
+  thicket, working to our left, and presently came out into the
+  open forest. Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query
+  he replied: "Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail
+  buck."</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay
+  motionless under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded
+  deep in the ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just
+  beginning to get his winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish
+  gray. Haught hung him up to a branch, spread his hind legs, and
+  cut him down the middle. The hunter's dexterity with a knife made
+  me wonder how many deer he had dressed in his life in the open.
+  We lifted the deer upon the saddle of Haught's horse and securely
+  tied it there with a lasso; then with the hunter on foot, leading
+  the way, we rode through the forest up the main ridge between
+  Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found the pines and
+  spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We passed the
+  heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either side,
+  and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I
+  could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon
+  we reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat
+  like real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which
+  enterprise had been unsuccessful.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started
+  our bear hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack
+  something. He sent the hounds down below the rim with George; and
+  taking R.C. and me, and Lee and Nielsen, he led us over to what
+  he called Horton Thicket. Never would I forget my first sight of
+  that immense forest-choked canyon. It was a great cove running up
+  from the basin into the rim. Craggy ledges, broken, ruined,
+  tottering and gray, slanted down into this abyss. The place was
+  so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet they were many.
+  An empire of splintered cliff!</p>
+
+  <p>High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with
+  lichens, with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow
+  bushes. Points of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and
+  bronze. Below the huge gorge was full of aspens, maples,
+  spruces&mdash;a green, crimson, yellow density of timber,
+  apparently impenetrable. We were accorded different stations on
+  the ledges all around the cove, and instructed to stay there
+  until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My point was so
+  far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
+  field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee
+  and Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a
+  comfortable seat, if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to
+  accept my wait for developments. One thing was sure&mdash;even
+  though it were a futile way to hunt it seemed rich in other
+  recompense for me. My stand towered above a vast colorful slope
+  down which the wind roared as in a gale. How could I ever hear
+  the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding across the sky.
+  Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent flight; and
+  so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with
+  frequent intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the
+  close of afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that
+  R.C. had left his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp,
+  which was some miles nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave
+  up any hope of hearing either the hounds or the horn, as the roar
+  of wind had increased. Once I thought I heard a distant rifle
+  shot. So I got on my horse and set out to find camp. I was on a
+  promontory, the sides of which were indented by long ravines that
+  were impassable except near their heads. In fact I had been told
+  there was only one narrow space where it was possible to get off
+  this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered Haught telling of
+  this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of forested heads
+  of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the west side, and
+  then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I followed,
+  with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the narrow
+  neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp, arriving
+  there at sunset.</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around
+  under one of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his
+  back-trail, staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it.
+  Their baying had roused the bear out of his bed, and he had
+  showed himself once or twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw
+  the other bear from the rim. This was a big, red, cinnamon bear
+  asleep under a pine tree on an open slope. Haught said when the
+  hounds gave tongue on the other trail this red bear awakened, sat
+  up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never been chased by
+  hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance was too
+  great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the
+  result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.</p>
+
+  <p>These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing
+  and cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns)
+  and berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and
+  very few acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin
+  he could always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot
+  and tired enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight
+  the dogs.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx
+  under the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were
+  the tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill
+  a cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen
+  feet deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay
+  long on the sunny, open ridges of the basin.</p>
+
+  <p>That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How
+  wonderful to lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and
+  hear the marching and retreating gale above in the forest! Next
+  day we expected rain or snow. But there was only wind, and that
+  quieted by afternoon. So I took Romer off into the woods. He
+  carried his rifle and he wore his chaps. I could not persuade him
+  to part with these. They rustled on the brush and impeded his
+  movements, and particularly tired him, and made him look like a
+  diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly vain, imaginative!
+  He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything, particularly bears.
+  But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump and bit of
+  color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I had to
+  take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was
+  unusually quick and keen.</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon Edd and Doyle arrived, reporting an extremely
+  rough, roundabout climb up to the rim, where they had left the
+  wagon. As it was impossible to haul the supplies down into the
+  canyon they were packed down to camp on burros. Isbel had
+  disapproved of this procedure, a circumstance that struck me with
+  peculiar significance, which Lee explained by telling me Isbel
+  was one of the peculiar breed of cowboys, who no sooner were they
+  out on the range than they wanted to go back to town again. The
+  truth was I had not met any of that breed, though I had heard of
+  them. This peculiarity of Isbel's began to be related in my mind
+  to his wastefulness as a cook. He cooked and threw away as much
+  as we ate. I asked him to be careful and to go easy with our
+  supplies, but I could not see that my request made any
+  difference.</p>
+
+  <p>After supper this evening R.C. heard a turkey call up on the
+  hill east of camp. Then I heard it, and Romer also. We ran out a
+  ways into the open to listen the better. R.C.'s ears were
+  exceptionally keen. He could hear a squirrel jump a long distance
+  in the forest. In this case he distinctly heard three turkeys fly
+  up into trees. I heard one. Romer declared he heard a flock. Then
+  R.C. located a big bronze and white gobbler on a lower limb of a
+  huge pine. Presently I too espied it. Whereupon we took shot-gun
+  and rifle, and sallied forth sure of fetching back to camp some
+  wild turkey meat. Romer tagged at our heels.</p>
+
+  <p>Hurrying to the slope we climbed up at least three-quarters of
+  the way, as swiftly as possible. And that was work enough to make
+  me wet and hot. The sun had set and twilight was upon us, so that
+  we needs must hurry if we were to be successful. Locating the big
+  gobbler turned out to be a task. We had to climb over brush and
+  around rocks, up a steep slope, rather open; and we had to do it
+  without being seen or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness,
+  did very well indeed. At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the
+  sight was thrilling. Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted
+  them enough to learn how sagacious and cunning and difficult to
+  stalk they were, always seemed as provocative of excitement as
+  larger game. This big fellow hopped up from limb to limb of the
+  huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if undecided, and tried
+  each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped farther up until
+  we lost sight of him in the gnarled net-work of branches.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. wanted me to slip on alone, but I preferred to have him
+  and Romer go too. So we slipped stealthily upward until we
+  reached the level. Then progress was easier. I went to the left
+  with the rifle, and R.C. with the .20-gauge, and Romer, went
+  around to the right. How rapidly it was growing dark! Low down in
+  the forest I could not distinguish objects. We circled that big
+  pine tree, and I made rather a wide detour, perhaps eighty yards
+  from it. At last I got the upper part of the dead pine
+  silhouetted against the western sky. Moving to and fro I finally
+  made out a large black lump way out upon a spreading branch.
+  Could that be the gobbler? I studied that dark enlarged part of
+  the limb with great intentness, and I had about decided that it
+  was only a knot when I saw a long neck shoot out. That lump was
+  the wise old turkey all right. He was almost in the top of the
+  tree and far out from the trunk. No wild cat or lynx could ever
+  surprise him there! I reflected upon the instinct that governed
+  him to protect his life so cunningly. Safe he was from all but
+  man and gun!</p>
+
+  <p>When I came to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could
+  see only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very
+  high pine adjoining made a dark background. I changed my
+  position, working around to where the background was all open
+  sky. It proved to be better. By putting the sights against this
+  open sky I could faintly see the front sight through the blurred
+  ring. It was a good long shot even for daylight, and I had a
+  rifle I knew nothing about. But all the difficulty only made a
+  keener zest. Just then I heard Romer cry out excitedly, and then
+  R.C. spoke distinctly. Far more careless than that they began to
+  break twigs under their feet. The gobbler grew uneasy. How he
+  stretched out his long neck! He heard them below. I called out
+  low and sharp: "Stand still! Be quiet!" Then I looked again
+  through the blurred peep-sight until I caught the front sight
+  against the open sky. This done I moved the rifle over until I
+  had the sight aligned against the dark shape. Straining my eyes I
+  held hard&mdash;then fired. The big dark lump on the branch
+  changed shape, and fell, to alight with a sounding thump. I heard
+  Romer running, but could not see him. Then his high voice pealed
+  out: "I got him, Dad. You made a grand peg!"</p>
+
+  <p>Not only had Romer gotten him, but he insisted on packing him
+  back to camp. The gobbler was the largest I ever killed, not
+  indeed one of the huge thirty-five pounders, but a fat, heavy
+  turkey, and quite a load for a boy. Romer packed him down that
+  steep slope in the dark without a slip, for which performance I
+  allowed him to stay up a while around the camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts came over from their camp that night and visited
+  us. Much as I loved to sit alone beside a red-embered fire at
+  night in the forest, or on the desert, I also liked upon
+  occasions to have company. We talked and talked. Old-timer Doyle
+  told more than one of his "in the early days" stories. Then
+  Haught told us some bear stories. The first was about an old
+  black bear charging and sliding down at him. He said no hunter
+  should ever shoot at a bear above him, because it could come down
+  at him as swiftly as a rolling rock. This time he worked the
+  lever of his rifle at lightning speed, and at the last shot he
+  "shore saw bear hair right before his eyes." His second story was
+  about a boy who killed a bear, and was skinning it when five more
+  bears came along, in single file, and made it very necessary that
+  he climb a tree until they had gone. His third story was about an
+  old she-bear that had two cubs. Haught happened to ride within
+  sight of her when evidently she thought it time to put her cubs
+  in a safe place. So she tried to get them to climb a spruce tree,
+  and finally had to cuff and spank them to make them go up. In
+  connection with this story he told us he had often seen she-bears
+  spank their cubs. More thrilling was his fourth story about a
+  huge grizzly, a sheep and cattle killer that passed through the
+  country, leaving death behind him on the range.</p>
+
+  <p>Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the
+  glowing camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed.
+  "Aw, Dad, please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining
+  eyes would have weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And
+  Haught seemed inspired by them.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle
+  in his eye. "Thar was an old fellar had a ranch in Chevelon
+  Canyon, an' he was always bein' pestered by mountain lions. His
+  name was Bill Tinker. Now Bill was no sort of a hunter, fact was
+  he was afeerd of lions an' bears, but he shore did git riled when
+  any critters rustled around his cabin. One day in the fall he
+  comes home an' seen a big she-lion sneakin' around. He grabbed a
+  club, an' throwed it, and yelled to scare the critter away. Wal,
+  he had an old water barrel layin' around, an' darned if the lion
+  didn't run in thet barrel an' hide. Bill run quick an' flopped
+  the barrel end up, so he had the lion trapped. He had to set on
+  the barrel to hold it down. Shore that lion raised old Jasper
+  under the barrel. Bill was plumb scared. Then he seen the lion's
+  tail stick out through the bung-hole. Bill bent over an' shore
+  quick tied a knot in thet long tail. Then he run fer his cabin.
+  When he got to the door he looked back to see the lion tearin'
+  down the hill fer the woods with the barrel bumpin' behind her.
+  Bill said he never seen her again till next spring, an' she had
+  the barrel still on her tail. But what was stranger'n thet Bill
+  swore she had four cubs with her an' each of them had a keg on
+  its tail."</p>
+
+  <p>We all roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had
+  been so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in
+  the story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp
+  the trick at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes
+  were dark and dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and
+  disappointment changed his mobile face, and then came mirth. He
+  shouted as if to the tree-tops on high. Long after he was in bed
+  I heard him laughing to himself.</p>
+
+  <p>I was awakened a little after daylight by the lad trying to
+  get into his boots. His boots were rather tight, and somehow,
+  even in a dry forest, he always contrived to get them wet, so
+  that in the morning it was a herculean task for him to pull them
+  on. This occasion appeared more strenuous than usual. "Son,
+  what's the idea?" I inquired. "It's just daylight&mdash;not time
+  to get up." He desisted from his labors long enough to pant:
+  "Uncle Rome's&mdash;gone after turkeys. Edd's going to&mdash;call
+  them with&mdash;a caller&mdash;made out of a turkey's wing-bone."
+  And I said: "But they've gone now." Whereupon he subsided:
+  "Darned old boots! I heard Edd and Uncle Rome. I'd been ready if
+  I could have got into my darned old boots.... See here, Dad, I'm
+  gonna wear moccasins."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    III
+  </center>
+
+  <p>As we were sitting round the camp-fire, eating breakfast, R.C.
+  and Edd returned; and R.C. carried a turkey gobbler the very size
+  and color of the one I had shot the night before. R.C.'s face
+  wore the keen, pleased expression characteristic of it when he
+  had just had some unusual and satisfying experience.</p><a name=
+  "image-0052"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg047_m.jpg" width="448" height="700" alt=
+    "Zane Grey on Don Carlos ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0053"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg048_m.jpg" width="448" height="698" alt=
+    "Wild Turkey ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>"Sure was great," he said, warming his hands at the fire. "We
+  went up on the hill where you killed your gobbler last night. Got
+  there just in the gray light of dawn. We were careful not to make
+  any noise. Edd said if there were any more turkeys they would
+  come down at daylight. So we waited until it was light enough to
+  see. Then Edd got out his turkey bone and began to call. Turkeys
+  answered from the trees all around. By George, it was immense!
+  Edd had picked out a thicket of little pines for us to hide in,
+  and in front of us was a glade with a big fallen tree lying
+  across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods was all gray and
+  quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he called again.
+  At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees. Next I
+  heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The
+  turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my
+  excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them
+  pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now
+  we got to do some real callin'.' I felt how tense, how cautious
+  he was. When he called again there was some little difference, I
+  don't know what, unless it was his call sounded more like a real
+  turkey. They answered. They were gathering in front of us, and I
+  made sure were coming into the glade. Edd stopped calling. Then
+  he whispered: 'Ready now. Look out!'... Sure I was looking all
+  right. This was my first experience calling turkeys and I simply
+  shook all over. Suddenly I saw a turkey head stick up over the
+  log. Then!&mdash;up hopped a beautiful gobbler. He walked along
+  the log, looked and peered, and stretched his neck. Sure he was
+  suspicious. Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be a warning to
+  shoot quick. That was a hard place for me. I wanted to watch the
+  gobbler. I wanted to see the others. We could hear them all over
+  the glade. But this was my chance. Quickly I rose and took a peg
+  at him. A cloud of feathers puffed off him. He gave a great
+  bounce, flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other
+  turkeys. With my eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full
+  of big, black, flying things. My gobbler came down, bounced up
+  again, got going&mdash;when with the second barrel I knocked him
+  cold. Then I stood there watching the flock whirring every way
+  into the forest. Must have been thirty-five or forty of them, all
+  gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I declared
+  myself&mdash;wild turkey is the game for me."</p>
+
+  <p>Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled
+  feelings of delight and despair. "Uncle Rome, wild turkey's the
+  game for me, too ... and by Gosh! I'll fix those boots of
+  mine!"</p>
+
+  <p>That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which
+  I had decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George. Lee
+  had his doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at
+  least one of the others. Now his horse was too spirited for me to
+  ride after hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others,
+  so I was compelled to ride my own. At the last moment Lee had
+  been disappointed in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for
+  me, and so it had fallen about that my horse was the poorest in
+  the outfit, which to put it mildly was pretty poor. I had made
+  the best of the matter so far, and hoped to continue doing
+  so.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the
+  forest, and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the
+  other side of the promontory where I had gotten lost. Here Haught
+  left us, taking with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom
+  were to have stands along the rim. We hoped to start a bear and
+  chase him round under the high points toward Horton Thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd
+  started down impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind.
+  Below me heaved a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world
+  of black-green forestland. Far across it stood up a rugged, blue,
+  waved range of mountains&mdash;the Sierra Anchas.</p>
+
+  <p>The trail was rough, even for Arizonians, which made it for me
+  little short of impassable. I got off to lead my horse. He had to
+  be pulled most of the time, wherefore I lost patience with him. I
+  loved horses, but not stubborn ones. All the way down the rocky
+  trail the bunch grass and wild oak and manzanita were so thick
+  that I had to crush my way through. At length I had descended the
+  steep part to find Edd and George waiting for me below on the
+  juniper benches. These were slopes of red earth or clay, bare of
+  grass, but thick with junipers, cactus, and manzanita. This face
+  of the great rim was a southern exposure, hot and dusty. The
+  junipers were thick. The green of their foliage somewhat
+  resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost
+  lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I
+  found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was
+  that this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to
+  eat the fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear
+  sign. Edd said the tracks were cold, but all the same he had to
+  be harsh with the hounds to hold them in. I counted twenty piles
+  of bear manure under one juniper, and many places where bears had
+  scraped in the soft earth and needles.</p>
+
+  <p>We went on down this slope, getting into thicker brush and
+  rougher ground. All at once the hounds opened up in thrilling
+  chorus of bays and barks. I saw Edd jump off his horse to stoop
+  and examine the ground, where evidently he had seen a bear track.
+  "Fresh&mdash;made last night!" he yelled, mounting hurriedly.
+  "Hi! Hi! Hi!" His horse leaped through the brush, and George
+  followed. In an instant they were out of sight. Right there my
+  trouble began. I spurred my horse after them, and it developed
+  that he differed from me in regard to direction and going. He
+  hated the brush. But I made him take to it and made him run.
+  Dodging branches was an old story for me, and if I had been on a
+  good fast horse I might have kept Edd and George in sight. As it
+  was, however, I had to follow them by the sound of hoofs and
+  breaking brush. From the way the hounds bayed I knew they had
+  struck a hot scent. They worked down the slope, and assuredly
+  gave me a wild ride to keep within hearing of them. My horse grew
+  excited, which fact increased his pace, his obstinacy, and
+  likewise my danger. Twice he unseated me. I tore my coat, lost my
+  hat, scratched my face, skinned my knees, but somehow I managed
+  to keep within hearing.</p>
+
+  <p>I came to a deep brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point.
+  Luckily the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding
+  along the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed
+  out an intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced
+  my horse to go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I
+  saw a little spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it,
+  and one place where the bear had caved in a soft bank. Here my
+  horse suddenly plunged and went to his knees in the yielding red
+  clay. He snorted in fright. The bank slid with him and I tumbled
+  off. But nothing serious happened. I ran down, caught him,
+  mounted, and spurred him up the other side. Once up he began to
+  run. I heard the boys yelling not far away and the hounds were
+  baying up above me. They were climbing fast, working to the left,
+  toward an oak thicket. It took effort to slow down my steed. He
+  acted crazy and I began to suspect that he had caught a whiff of
+  the bear. Most horses are afraid of bears and lions. Sight of Edd
+  and George, who appeared in an open spot, somewhat quieted my
+  mount.</p>
+
+  <p>"Trail's gettin' hot up there," declared Edd. "That bear's
+  bedded somewhere an' I'll bet the hounds jumped him. Listen to
+  Old Tom!"</p>
+
+  <p>How the deep sonorous bay of Old Tom awoke the echoes under
+  the cliffs! And Old Dan's voice was a hoarse bellow. The other
+  hounds yelped.</p>
+
+  <p>Edd blew a mellow blast from his hunting-horn, and that awoke
+  other and more melodious echoes. "There's father up on the rim,"
+  he said. I looked, and finally saw Haught perched like a black
+  eagle on a crag. His gun flashed in the strong sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>Somewhere up there the hounds jumped the bear. Anybody could
+  have told that. What a wild chorus! Edd and George answered to it
+  with whoops as wild, and they galloped their horses over ground
+  and through brush where they should have been walked. I followed,
+  or tried to follow; and here my steed showed his bull-headed,
+  obstinate nature. If he had been afraid but still game I would
+  have respected him, but he was a coward and mean. He wanted to
+  have his way, which was to go the other direction, and to rid
+  himself of me. So we had it hot and heavy along that rough slope,
+  with honors about even. As for bruises and scratches, however, I
+  sustained the most. In the excitement of the chase and anger at
+  the horse I forgot all about any risks. This always is the way in
+  adventure. Hot racing blood governed me entirely. Whenever I got
+  out in an open place, where I could ride fast and hear and see,
+  then it was all intensely thrilling. Both hounds and comrades
+  were above me, but apparently working down.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus for me the necessity of hurry somewhat lessened. I slowed
+  to a trot, peering everywhere, listening with all my ears. I had
+  stopped yelling, because my horse had misunderstood that. We got
+  into a region of oak thickets, small saplings, scrubby, close
+  together, but beautiful with their autumn-tinted leaves. Next I
+  rode through a maple dell, shady, cool, where the leafy floor was
+  all rose-pink-red. My horse sent the colored leaves flying.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon, however, we got into the thickets again, low live-oak
+  and manzanita, which kind of brush my horse detested. I did not
+  blame him for that. As the hounds began to work down my keen
+  excitement increased. If they had jumped the bear and were
+  chasing him down I might run upon him any moment. This both
+  appealed to me and caused me apprehension. Suppose he were a bad
+  cinnamon or a grizzly? What would become of me on that horse? I
+  decided that I had better carry my rifle in my hand, so in case
+  of a sudden appearance of the bear and I was thrown or had a fall
+  off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I drew the rifle out
+  of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that Haught had
+  cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the need
+  of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had
+  cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a
+  glory of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets.
+  He was an uncomfortable horse to ride under the best
+  circumstances; here he was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When
+  he got his head, which was often, he carried me into thickets of
+  manzanita that we could not penetrate, and had to turn back. I
+  found that I was working high up the slope, and bad luck as I was
+  having with my horse, I still appeared to keep fairly close to
+  the hounds.</p>
+
+  <p>When we topped a ridge of this slope the wind struck us strong
+  in the face. The baying of the hounds rang clear and full and
+  fierce. My horse stood straight up. Then he plunged back and
+  bolted down the slope. His mouth was like iron. I could neither
+  hold nor turn him. However perilous this ride I had to admit that
+  at last my horse was running beautifully. In fact he was running
+  away! He had gotten a hot scent of that bear. He hurdled rocks,
+  leaped washes, slid down banks, plunged over places that made my
+  hair stand up stiff, and worst of all he did not try to avoid
+  brush or trees or cactus. Manzanita he tore right through,
+  leaving my coat in strips decorating our wake. I had to hold on,
+  to lie flat, to dodge and twist, and all the time watch for a
+  place where I might fall off in safety. But I did not get a
+  chance to fall off. A loud clamoring burst from the hounds
+  apparently close behind drove my horse frantic. Before he had
+  only run&mdash;now he flew! He left me hanging in the thick
+  branches of a juniper, from which I dropped blind and breathless
+  and stunned. Disengaging myself from the broken and hanging
+  branches I staggered aside, rifle in hand, trying to recover
+  breath and wits.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, in that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the
+  breaking of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering
+  up with my half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal
+  coming, half obscured by brush. It waved aside from his broad
+  back. A shock ran over me&mdash;a bursting gush of hot blood that
+  turned to ice as it rushed. "Big cinnamon bear!" I whispered,
+  hoarsely.</p>
+
+  <p>Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I
+  could not clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such
+  was my state that I fired. Then followed a roaring crash&mdash;a
+  terrible breaking onslaught upon the brush&mdash;and the huge red
+  mass seemed to flash down toward me. I worked the lever of the
+  rifle. But I had forgotten Haught's caution. I did not work the
+  lever far enough down, so that the next cartridge jammed in the
+  receiver. With a second shock, different this time, I tried
+  again. In vain! The terrible crashing of brush appeared right
+  upon me. For an instant that seemed an age I stood riveted to the
+  spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me, my tongue pasted
+  to the roof of my mouth. Then I dropped the rifle and whirled to
+  plunge away. Like a deer I bounded. I took prodigious bounds. To
+  escape&mdash;to find a tree to leap into&mdash;that was my only
+  thought. A few rods down the slope&mdash;it seemed a mile&mdash;I
+  reached a pine with low branches. Like a squirrel I ran up
+  this&mdash;straddled a limb high up&mdash;and gazed back.</p>
+
+  <p>My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation.
+  I became conscious of them. Racing blood, bursting heart, labored
+  pang of chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary
+  flutter of muscles, like a palsy&mdash;these attested to the
+  instinctive primitive nature of my state. I heard the crashing of
+  brush, the pound of soft jumps over to my left. With eyes that
+  seemed magnifying I gazed to see a big red woolly steer plunge
+  wildly down the slope and disappear. A third shock possessed
+  me&mdash;amaze. I had mistaken a wild, frightened steer for a red
+  cinnamon bear!</p>
+
+  <p>I sat there some moments straddling that branch. Then I
+  descended, and went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and
+  securing that I stood a moment listening. The hounds had taken
+  the chase around below me into the gorge and were drawing away.
+  It was useless to try to follow them. I sat down again and gave
+  myself up to meditation.</p>
+
+  <p>I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would
+  not go. No joke indeed! My horse had made me risk too much, my
+  excitement had been too intense, my fright had been too terrible.
+  Reality for me could not have been any more grave. I had risked
+  my neck on a stubborn coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer
+  for a bear, I had forgotten how to manipulate the borrowed rifle.
+  These were the careless elements of tragedy. The thought sobered
+  me. I took the lesson to heart. And I reflected on the possible
+  point of view of the bear. He had probably gone to sleep on a
+  full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink of spring water.
+  Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping, fiendish
+  hounds. He had to run for his life. What had he done to deserve
+  such treatment? Possibly he might have killed some of Haught's
+  pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me. In my sober
+  frame of mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly
+  unjustifiable murderous intent. I would have deserved it if the
+  steer had really been the bear. Certainly I hoped the bear would
+  outrun the hounds and escape. I weighed the wonderful thrill of
+  the chase, the melody of hounds, the zest of spirited action, the
+  peril to limb and life against the thing that they were done for,
+  with the result that I found them sadly lacking. Peril to limb
+  and life was good for man. If this had not been a fact my
+  performance would have been as cowardly as that of my horse.
+  Again I had rise up before my mind the spectacle of opposing
+  forces&mdash;the elemental in man restrained by the spiritual.
+  Then the old haunting thought returned to vex me&mdash;man in his
+  development needed the exercise of brawn, muscle, bone red-blood,
+  violence, labor and pain and agony. Nature recognized only the
+  survival of the fittest of any species. If a man allowed a
+  spiritual development, intellect, gentleness, to keep him from
+  all hard, violent action, from tremendous exertion, from fierce
+  fight with elements and beasts, and his own kind&mdash;would he
+  not soon degenerate as a natural physical man? Evolution was a
+  stern inevitable seeking of nature for perfection, for the
+  unattainable. This perfection was something that lived and
+  improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most
+  perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to
+  their development toward so-called civilized life their physical
+  prowess and perfectness&mdash;that was to say, their strength to
+  resist and live and reproduce their kind&mdash;absolutely and
+  inevitably deteriorated.</p>
+
+  <p>My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive
+  convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I
+  eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty
+  and torn&mdash;that I would be happy if the bear got
+  away&mdash;that I had lost my mean horse and was glad
+  therefore&mdash;that I would have half a dozen horses and rifles
+  upon my next hunt&mdash;and lastly that I would not be in any
+  hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a
+  tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret
+  until chronicled here.</p>
+
+  <p>Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway
+  toward Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard
+  Edd yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my
+  horse, and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where's the bear?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is
+  tryin' to call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you
+  shoot."</p>
+
+  <p>"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied.
+  "He left me&mdash;rather suddenly. And&mdash;I took a shot at
+  what I thought was a bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just
+  goin' to smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."</p>
+
+  <p>My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when
+  I observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much
+  disheveled as I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance
+  certain unmistakable evidences that I had made a tenderfoot
+  blunder and then run for my life. But Edd took my loss of hat,
+  and torn coat, and general bedraggled state as a matter of
+  course. Indeed I somehow felt a little pride at his acceptance of
+  me there in the flesh.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down
+  into Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber
+  engaged my sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the
+  other dogs. "We lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds
+  couldn't track him," was all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four
+  blasts upon his hunting-horn, which were signals to those on the
+  stands above that the hunt was over for the day.</p>
+
+  <p>Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade
+  as this down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large,
+  and the foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through.
+  Dark, green and brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We
+  came to a huge spruce tree, the largest I ever saw&mdash;Edd said
+  eight feet through at the base, but he was conservative. It was a
+  gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch of the forest, with bleached,
+  dead top. For many years it had been the home of swarms of wild
+  honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter had undertaken to
+  cut down this spruce. This explained a number of deeply cut
+  notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it down,"
+  declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian
+  axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it,
+  whether we were to get any honey or not.</p>
+
+  <p>By and bye we reached the bottom of the thicket where we
+  crossed a swift clear cold brook. Here the smells seemed cool,
+  sweet, wild with spruce and pine. This stream of granite water
+  burst from a spring under a cliff. What a roar it made! I drank
+  until I could drink no more. Huge boulders and windfalls, moved
+  by water at flood season, obstructed the narrow stream-bed. We
+  crossed to start climbing the north slope, and soon worked up out
+  of the thicket upon a steep, rocky slope, with isolated pines. We
+  struck a deer-trail hard to follow. Above me loomed the
+  pine-tipped rim, with its crags, cliffs, pinnacles, and walls,
+  all gray, seamed and stained, and in some clefts blazes of deep
+  red and yellow foliage.</p>
+
+  <p>When we surmounted the slope, and eventually reached camp, I
+  found Isbel entertaining strangers, men of rough garb, evidently
+  riders of the range. That was all right, but I did not like his
+  prodigality with our swiftly diminishing store of eatables.</p>
+
+  <p>To conclude about Isbel&mdash;matters pertaining to our
+  commissary department, during the next few days, went from bad to
+  worse. Doyle advised me not to take Isbel to task, and was rather
+  evasive of reasons for so advising me. Of course I listened and
+  attended to my old guide's advice, but I fretted under the
+  restraint. We had a spell of bad weather, wind and rain, and hail
+  off and on, and at length, the third day, a cold drizzling snow.
+  During this spell we did but little hunting. The weather changed,
+  and the day afterward I rode my mean horse twenty miles on a deer
+  hunt. We saw one buck. Upon our arrival at camp, about four
+  o'clock, which hour was too early for dinner, I was surprised and
+  angered to find Isbel eating an elaborate meal with three more
+  strange, rough-appearing men. Doyle looked serious. Nielsen had a
+  sharp glint in his gray eye. As for myself, this procedure of our
+  cook's was more than I could stand.</p>
+
+  <p>"Isbel, you're discharged," I said, shortly. "Take your outfit
+  and get out. Lee will lend you a pack horse."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, I ain't fired," drawled Isbel. "I quit before you rode
+  in. Beat you to it!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Then if you quit it seems to me you are taking liberties with
+  supplies you have no right to," I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nope. Cook of any outfit has a right to all the chuck he
+  wants. That's western way."</p>
+
+  <p>"Isbel, listen to this and then get out," I went on. "You've
+  wasted our supplies just to get us to hurry and break camp. As
+  for western ways I know something of them. It's a western way for
+  a man to be square and honest in his dealings with an outsider.
+  In all my years and in all my trips over the southwest you are
+  the first westerner to give me the double-cross. You have that
+  distinction."</p>
+
+  <p>Then I turned my back upon him and walked to my tent. His
+  acquaintances left at once, and he quickly packed and followed.
+  Faithful old Doyle took up the duties of cook and we gained,
+  rather than missed by the change. Our supplies, however, had been
+  so depleted that we could not stay much longer on the hunt.</p>
+
+  <p>By dint of much determination as to the manner and method of
+  my next hunt I managed to persuade myself that I could make the
+  best of this unlucky sojourn in the woods. No rifle, no horse
+  worth riding, no food to stay out our time&mdash;it was indeed
+  bad luck for me. After supper the tension relaxed. Then I
+  realized all the men were relieved. Only Romer regretted loss of
+  Isbel. When the Doyles and Haughts saw how I took my hard luck
+  they seemed all the keener to make my stay pleasant and
+  profitable. Little they knew that their regard was more to me
+  than material benefits and comforts of the trip. To travelers of
+  the desert and hunters and riders of the open there are always
+  hard and uncomfortable and painful situations to be met with. And
+  in meeting these, if it can be done with fortitude and spirit
+  that win the respect of westerners, it is indeed a reward.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day, in defiance of a thing which never should be
+  considered&mdash;luck&mdash;I took Haught's rifle again, and my
+  lazy, sullen, intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George
+  down into Horton Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of
+  fresh air and beautiful scenery.</p>
+
+  <p>We dismounted and tied our horses at the brook, and while Edd
+  took the hounds up into the dense thicket where the bears made
+  their beds, George and I followed a trail up the brook. In
+  exactly ten minutes the hounds gave tongue. They ran up the
+  thicket, which was favorable for us, and from their baying I
+  judged the bear trail to be warm. In the dense forest we could
+  not see five rods ahead. George averred that he did not care to
+  have a big cinnamon or a grizzly come running down that black
+  thicket. And as for myself I did not want one so very exceedingly
+  much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me, which
+  effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their
+  baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased.
+  "Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With
+  this exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar.
+  Most hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which
+  direction the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, however,
+  like Buffalo Jones' famous Don, or Scott Teague's Sampson or
+  Haught's Old Dan, would grow suspicious of a scent that gradually
+  cooled, and would eventually give it up. Young hounds would
+  back-track game as far as possible.</p>
+
+  <p>After waiting a while we returned to our horses, and presently
+  Edd came back with the pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called
+  them off," was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth
+  of Horton Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had
+  occasion to remember. I even saw the pine tree which I had so
+  ignominiously climbed. How we ridicule and scorn some of our
+  perfectly natural actions&mdash;afterwards! Edd had brought three
+  of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of mischief as pups
+  could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them out on the
+  hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase to head them
+  off. Edd gave them a tongue-lashing and thrashing at one and the
+  same time. I felt sorry for the pups. They had been so full of
+  frolic and fight. How crestfallen they appeared after Edd got
+  through! "Whaddaye mean," yelled Edd, in conclusion. "Chasin'
+  deer!... Do you think you're a lot of rabbit dogs?" From the way
+  the pups eyed Edd so sheepishly and adoringly, I made certain
+  they understood him perfectly, and humbly confessed their
+  error.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Tom and Old Dan had not come down off the slopes with us
+  after the pups. And upon our return both the old hounds began to
+  bay deep and fast. With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off,
+  apparently frantic to make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole
+  pack was in full chorus. Edd and George spurred into the brush,
+  yelling encouragement to the hounds. This day I managed to make
+  my horse do a little of what I wanted. To keep in sight of the
+  Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but I did not lose sound of
+  them. This chase led us up slope and down slope, through the
+  brush and pine thickets, over bare ridges and into gullies; and
+  eventually out into the basin, where the hounds got beyond
+  hearing.</p>
+
+  <p>"One of them long, lean, hungry bears," remarked Edd. "He'd
+  outrun any dogs."</p>
+
+  <p>Leisurely then we turned to the three-hour ride back to camp.
+  Hot sun in the open, cool wind in the shade, dry smells of the
+  forest, green and red and orange and purple of the
+  foliage&mdash;these rendered the hours pleasant for me. When I
+  reached camp I found Romer in trouble. He had cut his hand with a
+  forbidden hunting knife. As he told me about it his face was a
+  study and his explanation was astounding. When he finished I
+  said: "You mean then that my hunting knife walked out of its
+  sheath on my belt and followed you around and cut you of its own
+  accord?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw, I&mdash;I&mdash;it&mdash;" he floundered.</p>
+
+  <p>Whereupon I lectured him about forbidden things and
+  untruthfulness. His reply was: "But, Dad, it hurts like sixty.
+  Won't you put somethin' on it?"</p>
+
+  <p>I dressed and bandaged the trifling cut for him, telling him
+  the while how little Indian boys, when cut or kicked or bruised,
+  never showed that they were hurt. "Huh!" he grunted. "Guess
+  there's no Indian in me.... I must take after mother!"</p>
+
+  <p>That afternoon and night the hounds straggled in, Old Tom and
+  Dan first, and then the others, one by one, fagged-out and
+  foot-sore. Next morning, however, they appeared none the worse
+  for their long chase. We went again to Horton Thicket to rout out
+  a bear.</p>
+
+  <p>This time I remained on top of the rim with R.C. and Nielsen;
+  and we took up a stand across the canyon, near where my first
+  stand had been. Here we idled the hours away waiting for the
+  hounds to start something. While walking along the rim I happened
+  to look across the big cove that cut into the promontory, and way
+  on the other slope what did I espy but a black bear. He appeared
+  to be very small, or merely a cub. Running back to R.C. and
+  Nielsen I told them, and we all took up our rifles. It occurred
+  to me that the distance across this cove was too far for accurate
+  shooting, but it never occurred to me to jump on my horse and
+  ride around the head of the cove.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's not scared. Let's watch him," suggested R.C.</p><a name=
+  "image-0054"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg049_m.jpg" width="448" height="671" alt=
+    "Wild Turkeys ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0055"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg050_m.jpg" width="448" height="698" alt=
+    "The White Quaking Asps ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We saw this bear walk along, poke around, dig into the ground,
+  go behind trees, come out again, and finally stand up on his hind
+  feet and apparently reach for berries or something on a bush.
+  R.C. bethought himself of his field-glass. After one look he
+  exclaimed: "Say, fellows, he's a whopper of a bear! He'll weigh
+  five hundred pounds. Just take a look at him!"</p>
+
+  <p>My turn with the glasses revealed to me that what I had
+  imagined to be a cub was indeed a big bear. After Nielsen looked
+  he said: "Never saw one so big in Norway."</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, look at that black scoundrel!" exclaimed R.C. "Standing
+  up! Looking around! Wagging his head!... Say, you saw him first.
+  Suppose you take some pegs at him."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wish Romer were here. I'd let him shoot at that bear," I
+  replied. Then I got down on my knee, and aiming as closely as
+  possible I fired. The report rang out in the stillness, making
+  hollow echoes. We heard the bullet pat somewhere. So did the bear
+  hear it. Curiously he looked around, as if something had struck
+  near him. But scared he certainly was not. Then I shot four times
+  in quick succession.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, I'll be darned!" ejaculated R.C. "He heard the bullets
+  hit and wonders what the dickens.... Say, now he hears the
+  reports! Look at him stand!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Boys, smoke him up," I said, after the manner of Haught's
+  vernacular. So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot.
+  We had more fun out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us.
+  Then he began to run, choosing the open slope by which he had
+  come. I got five more shots at him as he crossed this space, and
+  the last bullet puffed up dust under him, making him take a
+  header down the slope into the thicket. Whereupon we all had a
+  good laugh. Nielsen appeared particularly pleased over his first
+  shots at a real live bear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, why didn't you think to ride round there?" queried R.C.
+  thoughtfully. "He didn't see us. He wasn't scared. In a few
+  minutes you could have been on the rim of that slope right over
+  him. Got him sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>"R.C. why didn't you think to tell me to do that?" I retorted.
+  "Why don't we ever think the right thing before it is too
+  late?"</p>
+
+  <p>"That's our last chance this year&mdash;I feel it in my
+  bones," declared R.C. mournfully.</p>
+
+  <p>His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at
+  camp we heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught's
+  had taken the trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic
+  of influenza. The strange disease was all over the country, in
+  the cities, the villages, the cow-camps, the
+  mines&mdash;everywhere. At first I thought Haught's informant was
+  exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the Indians dying
+  on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty people had
+  succumbed in a few weeks&mdash;then I was thoroughly alarmed.
+  Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I
+  made it instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle
+  was relieved and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The
+  Haughts, naturally, were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the
+  next thing was to consider which way to travel. The long ten-day
+  trip down into the basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim
+  again, and so on to Flagstaff was not to be considered at all.
+  The roads by way of Winslow and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle
+  wanted to attempt the old army road along the rim made by General
+  Crook when he moved the captured Apaches to the reservation
+  assigned to them. No travel over this road for many years! Haught
+  looked dubious, but finally said we could chop our way through
+  thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The matter of
+  decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not easy
+  to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been
+  for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What
+  made me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles
+  or more along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I
+  told Nielsen that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like
+  a cowboy: "We'll go a-hummin'," he said. Nielsen shrugged his
+  brawny shoulders. What were obstacles to this man of the desert?
+  I realized that his look had decided me.</p>
+
+  <p>"All right, men, we'll try the old Crook road," I said. "Pack
+  what you can up to the wagon to-day, and to-morrow early we'll
+  break camp."</p>
+
+  <p>I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to
+  theirs, where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of
+  this hunting trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no
+  horse, no blankets, no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of
+  food supplies, and no good luck, except the wonderful good luck
+  of being well, of seeing a magnificent country, of meeting some
+  more fine westerners. But the Haughts appeared a little slow to
+  grasp, or at least to credit my philosophy. We were just
+  beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was that they had been
+  unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and some turkeys.
+  Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with many
+  sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and
+  would not want to come again.</p>
+
+  <p>"See here, Haught," I said. "I've had a fine time. Now forget
+  about this hunt. It's past. We'll plan another. Will you save
+  next fall for me?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I shore will," he replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Very well, then, it's settled. Say by August you and the boys
+  cut a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I'll send you
+  money in advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and
+  outfit. I'll leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you
+  here September twenty-first, along about noon."</p>
+
+  <p>We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts
+  laughed at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I
+  heard Edd remark: "Not a kick!... Meet him next year at noon!
+  What do you know about thet?" This remark proved that he had paid
+  me a compliment in eastern slang most likely assimilated from
+  R.C. and Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and
+  next morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh,
+  spirited, and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because
+  of some surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all
+  the outfit packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff,
+  and the long, rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most
+  auspicious start. I hoped that it augured well for us, but while
+  I hoped I had a gloomy foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and
+  his son George. Edd offered to go with us as far as he knew the
+  country, which distance was not many miles. So we set out upon
+  our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses in front of the lumbering
+  wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest
+  along the rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill
+  grade that the bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied
+  on. When we came to a long slow slant uphill, a road of loose
+  rocks, we made about one mile an hour. This slow travel worked
+  havoc upon my mind. I wanted to hurry. I wanted to get out of the
+  wilds. That awful rumor about influenza occupied my mind and
+  struck cold fear into my heart. What of my family? No making the
+  best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset overtook us at a rocky
+  ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos on saddle horses in
+  front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we overcame that
+  obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we encountered about
+  twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him, whipping
+  him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other
+  horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still
+  miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had
+  to camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun&mdash;it
+  should have been fine for me&mdash;but my gloomy obsession to
+  hurry obscured my mind. I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy,
+  after that long, hard day, quickly and efficiently cooking a good
+  hot supper. Romer had enjoyed the day. He said he was tired, but
+  would like to stay up beside the mighty camp-fire Nielsen built.
+  I had neither energy or spirit to oppose him. The night was dark
+  and cold and windy; the fire felt so good that I almost went
+  asleep beside it. We had no time to put up tents. I made our bed,
+  crawled into it, stretched out with infinite relief; and the last
+  thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in beside me.</p>
+
+  <p>Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to
+  stir to get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the
+  horses were gone; we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not
+  appear worried. I groaned in spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed
+  me. Lee sallied out with his yellow dog Pups. I had forgotten the
+  good quality of Pups, but not my dislike for him. He barked
+  vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I helped Edd and
+  Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then Doyle
+  called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we
+  heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not
+  believe my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they
+  appeared, driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his
+  head off. We all jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off
+  the horses, and soon had them secured. Not one missing! I asked
+  Lee how in the world he had found that wild bunch in less than an
+  hour. Lee laughed. "Pups. He rounded them up in no time."</p>
+
+  <p>Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick
+  myself, but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat.
+  I reproached myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been
+  deceived in the surface appearance of people and things and dogs!
+  Most of our judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.</p>
+
+  <p>By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle&mdash;the
+  little hill at which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and
+  full of grain, he balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled
+  the teams. Lee had more patience than I would have had. He
+  unhitched the lead team and in place of the sorrel put a saddle
+  horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried again and surmounted the
+  hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead over as rocky and
+  rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time we could see
+  over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim appeared to
+  wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly rock-strewn,
+  with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw deer
+  tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any
+  thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us
+  farewell and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all
+  the country ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there
+  seemed to be no urgent need of him.</p>
+
+  <p>We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our
+  saddle horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it,
+  and each of us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front
+  of his saddle, and took it up the hill. Then the teams managed
+  the wagon. This incident happened four times in less than as many
+  miles. The team horses, having had a rest from hard labor, had
+  softened, and this sudden return to strenuous pulling had made
+  their shoulders sore. They either could not or would not pull. We
+  covered less than ten miles that day, a very discouraging
+  circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to the rim, a
+  splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have been
+  enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear
+  down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that
+  it brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him!
+  He was alive! He stood up&mdash;like this&mdash;wagging his head.
+  Oh! I saw him!"</p>
+
+  <p>Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling
+  along, unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up
+  and down the interminable length of three almost impassable
+  miles. When night overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No
+  grass, no water! A cold gale blew out of the west. It roared
+  through the forest. It blew everything loose away in the
+  darkness. It almost blew us away in our beds. The stars appeared
+  radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue windy vault of the
+  sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows crossed the weird
+  moon-blanched forest glades.</p>
+
+  <p>At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen,
+  mostly silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice.
+  Suddenly some one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact
+  filled me with consternation and alarm. He might have walked in
+  his sleep and fallen over the rim. What had become of him? All
+  his outfit lay scattered round in his bed. In my bewilderment I
+  imagined many things, even to the extreme that he might have left
+  us in the lurch. But when I got to that sad pass of mind I
+  suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream. My worry, my hurry
+  had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to meet this
+  situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I went
+  out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities,
+  and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand.
+  That instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and
+  reproached myself.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand
+  over the camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got
+  to thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out
+  what was ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright
+  moonlight. I walked all the rest of the night. And that's all,
+  sir."</p>
+
+  <p>I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the
+  Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to
+  achievement. Such men could not be defeated.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.</p>
+
+  <p>"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his
+  captain. "Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll
+  have to cut through thickets and logs. From here on the road is
+  all grown over. About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a
+  ridge."</p>
+
+  <p>That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I
+  thanked Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The
+  packing and carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated
+  himself into my affections. He found out that he could coax meat
+  and biscuit from me. We had three axes and a hatchet; and these
+  we did not pack in the wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams
+  started Lee and Nielsen and R.C. and I went ahead to clear the
+  road. Soon we were halted by thickets of pines, some of which
+  were six inches in diameter at the base. The road had ceased to
+  be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the reason pine thickets had
+  grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times
+  had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to
+  pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen
+  seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe!
+  When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had
+  to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with
+  his mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks
+  out of the road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that
+  day nor the next would we have ever gotten far along that stretch
+  of thicketed and obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.</p>
+
+  <p>At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly
+  ascending hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together
+  to pull the wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep
+  curve, horses and men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside
+  Romer. Nielsen and R.C. were next, and Lee had fallen in behind
+  the wagon. As I turned the sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below
+  me a huge log obstructing the road.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily
+  laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face
+  turn white&mdash;heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the
+  side. Romer was slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off
+  the road. My heart sank sick within me! Surely he would be run
+  down. As his pony Rye jumped out of the way the shoulder of the
+  black horse, on the off side, struck him a glancing blow. Then
+  the big team hurdled the log, the tongue struck with a crash, the
+  wagon stopped with a lurch, and Doyle was thrown from his
+  seat.</p>
+
+  <p>Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The
+  bay horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away.
+  Nielsen cut and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came
+  tearing down to grasp and hold the black.</p>
+
+  <p>Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not
+  know what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact
+  convinced me of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled
+  the log made any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When
+  finally it was extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut
+  in the breast made by a snag on the log. We could find no damage
+  done to the wagon. The harness Nielsen had cut could be mended
+  quickly. What a fortunate outcome to what had seemed a very grave
+  accident! I was thankful indeed. But not soon would I forget
+  sight of Romer in front of that plunging wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of
+  the road, and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I
+  dropped back and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a
+  fiddle," he shouted. "This's play to what we teamsters had in the
+  early days." And verily somehow I could see the truth of that. A
+  mile farther on we made camp; and all of us were hungry, weary,
+  and quiet.</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next
+  morning he crawled out before any one else, and his call was
+  cheery. I was scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was
+  ashamed to lie there an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my
+  eyesight was dulled by exhaustion when it caused me to see myself
+  as a worn, unshaven, wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out
+  with his usual alacrity. R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get
+  up on all fours.</p>
+
+  <p>We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to
+  work and waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail
+  it seemed, we chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that
+  old Crook road. Not since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in
+  Mexico had I labored so strenuously.</p>
+
+  <p>At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed
+  road Doyle had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones'
+  ranch," Doyle kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North
+  was our direction. And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness,
+  the road down this ridge proved to be a highway compared to what
+  we had passed. In the open forest we had to follow it altogether
+  by the blazes on the trees. But with all our eyes alert that was
+  easy. The grade was down hill, so that we traveled fast, covering
+  four miles an hour. Occasionally a log or thicket halted rapid
+  progress. Toward the end of the afternoon sheep and cattle trails
+  joined the now well-defined road, and we knew we were approaching
+  a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile, for the very
+  good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of my horse.
+  The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer
+  thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep
+  barren-looking canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old
+  ruined log-cabins. Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold
+  milk. For hours they had haunted me. When Doyle saw the
+  broken-down cabins and corrals he yelled: "Boys, it's Jones'
+  Ranch. I've been here. We're only three miles from Long Valley
+  and the main road!"</p>
+
+  <p>Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to
+  look for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses
+  had not slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up
+  and down the canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water.
+  Thereupon with immense relief and joy we pitched camp near the
+  cabins, forgetting our aches and pains in the certainty of
+  deliverance.</p>
+
+  <p>What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We
+  unpacked only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled
+  around the camp-fire we waited upon Doyle's cooking. The old
+  pioneer talked while he worked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Jones' ranch!&mdash;I knew Jones in the early days. And I've
+  heard of him lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner
+  down into this canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and
+  he had a gun, an axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and
+  not much else. He built him that cabin there and began the real
+  old pioneering of the early days. He raised cattle. He freighted
+  to the settlements twice a year. In twenty-five years he had
+  three strapping boys and a girl just as strapping. And he had a
+  fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and left this ranch. He
+  wanted to give his faithful wife and his children some of the
+  comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The war
+  came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army.
+  I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man's first boy. Abe was
+  a quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a
+  sergeant asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: 'Nope, not much.'
+  So they gave him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near
+  target. Abe looked at it sort of funny like and he picked out the
+  farthest target at one thousand yards. And he hit the bull's eye
+  ten times straight running. 'Hey!' gasped the sergeant, 'you
+  long, lanky galoot! You said you couldn't shoot.' Abe sort of
+  laughed. 'Reckon I was thinkin' about what Dad called
+  shootin'.'... Well, Abe and his brothers got to France to the
+  front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both his
+  brothers were wounded. They're over there yet.... I met a man not
+  long ago who'd seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he
+  and his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means
+  right here&mdash;Jones' Ranch!"</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle's story affected me profoundly. What a theme for a
+  novel! I walked away from the camp-fire into the dark, lonely,
+  melancholy Arizona night. The ruined cabins, the broken-down
+  corrals, the stone fence, the wash where water ran at wet
+  season&mdash;all had subtly changed for me. Leaning in the
+  doorway of the one-room cabin that had been home for these
+  Joneses I was stirred to my depths. Their spirits abided in that
+  lonely hut. At least I felt something there&mdash;something
+  strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet
+  what could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life
+  of Jones, and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe?
+  Abe Jones! The name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw
+  the life of the lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the
+  power to tell the simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the
+  glory of his story. The moan of wind in the pines seemed a
+  requiem for the boy who had prattled and romped and played under
+  them, who had chopped and shot and rode under them. Into his
+  manhood had gone something of their strength and nature.</p>
+
+  <p>We sought our beds early. The night down in that deep, open
+  canyon was the coldest we had experienced. I slept but little. At
+  dawn all was hoar-white with frost. It crackled under foot. The
+  air had a stinging bite. Yet how sweet, pure, cold to
+  breathe!</p>
+
+  <p>Doyle's cheery: "Come and get it," was welcome call to
+  breakfast. Lee and Pups drove the horses into one of the old
+  corrals. In an hour, while the frost was yet hard and white, we
+  were ready to start. Then Doyle somewhat chilled our hopes:
+  "Twenty years ago there was a bad road out of here. Maybe one's
+  been made since."</p>
+
+  <p>But one had not been made. And the old road had not been used
+  for years. Right at the outset we struck a long, steep, winding,
+  rocky road. We got stalled at the very foot of it. More toil!
+  Unloading the wagon we packed on our saddles the whole load more
+  than a mile up this last and crowning obstacle. Then it took all
+  the horses together to pull the empty wagon up to a level. By
+  that time sunset had overtaken us. Where had the hours gone? Nine
+  hours to go one mile! But there had to be an end to our agonies.
+  By twilight we trotted down into Long Valley, and crossed the
+  main road to camp in a grove we remembered well. We partook of a
+  meagre supper, but we were happy. And bed that night on a thick
+  layer of soft pine needles, in a spot protected from the cold
+  wind, was immensely comfortable.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee woke the crowd next morning. "All rustle," he yelled.
+  "Thirty-five miles to Mormon Lake. Good road. We'll camp there
+  to-night."</p>
+
+  <p>How strange that the eagerness to get home now could only be
+  compared to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We
+  made an early start. The team horses knew that road. They knew
+  they were now on the way home. What difference that made! Jaded
+  as they were they trotted along with a briskness never seen
+  before on that trip. It began to be a job for us to keep up with
+  Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider is accustomed to
+  horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on a hard road
+  will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot. Time and
+  again I had to fall behind to a walk and then lope ahead to catch
+  up. I welcomed the hills that necessitated Lee walking the
+  teams.</p>
+
+  <p>At noon we halted in a grassy grove for an hour's rest. That
+  seemed a precious hour, but to start again was painful. I noticed
+  that Romer-boy no longer rode out far in front, nor did he chase
+  squirrels with Pups. He sagged, twisted and turned, and lolled in
+  his saddle. Thereafter I tried to keep close to him. But that was
+  not easy, for he suspected me of seeing how tired he was, and
+  kept away from me. Thereafter I took to spying upon him from some
+  distance behind. We trotted and walked, trotted and walked the
+  long miles. Arizona miles were twice as long as ordinary properly
+  measured miles. An event of the afternoon was to meet some
+  Mexican sheepherders, driving a flock south. Nielsen got some
+  fresh mutton from them. Toward sunset I caught Romer hanging over
+  his saddle. Then I rode up to him. "Son, are you tired?" I asked.
+  "Oh, Dad, I sure am, but I'm going to ride Rye to Mormon Lake." I
+  believed he would accomplish it. His saddle slipped, letting him
+  down. I saw him fall. When he made no effort to get up I was
+  frightened. Rye stood perfectly still over him. I leaped off and
+  ran to the lad. He had hit his head on a stone, drawing the
+  blood, and appeared to be stunned. I lifted him, holding him up,
+  while somebody got some water. We bathed his face and washed off
+  the blood. Presently he revived, and smiled at me, and staggered
+  out of my hold.</p>
+
+  <p>"Helluva note that saddle slipped!" he complained. Manifestly
+  he had acquired some of Joe Isbel's strong language. Possibly he
+  might have acquired some other of the cowboy's traits, for he
+  asked to have his saddle straightened and to be put on his horse.
+  I had misgivings, but I could not resist him then. I lifted him
+  upon Rye. Once more our cavalcade got under way.</p>
+
+  <p>Sunset, twilight, night came as we trotted on and on. We faced
+  a cold wind. The forest was black, gloomy, full of shadows. Lee
+  gave us all we could do to keep up with him. At eight o'clock,
+  two hours after dark, we reached the southern end of Mormon Lake.
+  A gale, cold as ice, blew off the water from the north. Half a
+  dozen huge pine trees stood on the only level ground near at
+  hand. "Nielsen, fire&mdash;pronto!" I yelled. "Aye, sir," he
+  shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with hurry and bustle to
+  get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my tingling fingers, and
+  press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few minutes before I
+  thought of Romer.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen had started a fire, that blazed and roared with
+  burning pine needles. The blaze blew low, almost on a level with
+  the ground, and a stream of red sparks flew off into the woods. I
+  was afraid of forest fire. But what a welcome sight that golden
+  flame! It lighted up a wide space, showing the huge pines,
+  gloom-encircled, and a pale glimmer of the lake beyond. The
+  fragrance of burning pine greeted my nostrils.</p>
+
+  <p>Dragging my bags I hurried toward the fire. Nielsen was
+  building a barricade of rocks to block the flying sparks.
+  Suddenly I espied Romer. He sat on a log close to the blaze. His
+  position struck me as singular, so I dropped my burdens and went
+  to him. He had on a heavy coat over sweater and under coat, which
+  made him resemble a little old man. His sombrero was slouched
+  down sidewise, his gloved hands were folded across his knees, his
+  body sagged a little to one side, his head drooped. He was
+  asleep. I got around so I could see his face in the firelight.
+  Pale, weary, a little sad, very youthful and yet determined! A
+  bloody bruise showed over his temple. He had said he would ride
+  all the way to Mormon Lake and he had done it. Never, never will
+  that picture fade from my memory! Dear, brave, wild, little lad!
+  He had made for me a magnificent success of this fruitless
+  hunting trip. I hoped and prayed then that when he grew to man's
+  estate, and faced the long rides down the hard roads of life, he
+  would meet them and achieve them as he had the weary thirty-five
+  Arizona miles from Long Valley to Mormon Lake.</p><a name=
+  "image-0056"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg051_m.jpg" width="448" height="687" alt=
+    "Skunk, a Frequent and Rather Dangerous Visitor in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0057"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg052a_m.jpg" width="448" height="332" alt=
+    "On the Rim ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0058"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg052b_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Where Elk, Deer, and Turkey Drink ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Mutton tasted good that night around our camp-fire; and Romer
+  ate a generous portion. A ranger from the station near there
+  visited us, and two young ranchers, who told us that the
+  influenza epidemic was waning. This was news to be thankful for.
+  Moreover, I hired the two ranchers to hurry us by auto to
+  Flagstaff on the morrow. So right there at Mormon Lake ended our
+  privations.</p>
+
+  <p>Under one of the huge pines I scraped up a pile of needles,
+  made Romer's bed in it, heated a blanket and wrapped him in it.
+  Almost he was asleep when he said: "Some ride,
+  Dad&mdash;Good-night."</p>
+
+  <p>Later, beside him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks
+  fly, and the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face,
+  listening to the crackle of the fire and the roar of the
+  gale.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IV
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Eventually R.C. and Romer and I arrived in Los Angeles to find
+  all well with our people, which fact was indeed something to
+  rejoice over. Hardly had this 1918 trip ended before I began to
+  plan for that of 1919. But I did not realize how much in earnest
+  I was until I received word that both Lee Doyle in Flagstaff and
+  Nielsen in San Pedro were very ill with influenza. Lee all but
+  died, and Nielsen, afterward, told me he would rather die than
+  have the "flu" again. To my great relief, however, they
+  recovered.</p>
+
+  <p>From that time then it pleased me to begin to plan for my 1919
+  hunting trip. I can never do anything reasonably. I always overdo
+  everything. But what happiness I derive from anticipation! When I
+  am not working I live in dreams, partly of the past, but mostly
+  of the future. A man should live only in the present.</p>
+
+  <p>I gave Lee instructions to go about in his own way buying
+  teams, saddle horses, and wagons. For Christmas I sent him a .35
+  Remington rifle. Mr. Haught got instructions to add some new dogs
+  to his pack. I sent Edd also a .35 Remington, and made Nielsen
+  presents of two guns. In January Nielsen and I went to Picacho,
+  on the lower Colorado river, and then north to Death Valley. So
+  that I kept in touch with these men and did not allow their
+  enthusiasm to wane. For myself and R.C. I had the fun of ordering
+  tents and woolen blankets, and everything that we did not have on
+  our 1918 trip. But owing to the war it was difficult to obtain
+  goods of any description. To make sure of getting a .30 Gov't
+  Winchester I ordered from four different firms, including the
+  Winchester Co. None of them had such a rifle in stock, but all
+  would try to find one. The upshot of this deal was that, when
+  after months I despaired of getting any, they all sent me a rifle
+  at the same time. So I found myself with four, all the same
+  caliber of course, but of different style and finish. When I saw
+  them and thought of the Haughts I had to laugh. One was
+  beautifully engraved, and inlaid with gold&mdash;the most
+  elaborate .30 Gov't the Winchester people had ever built. Another
+  was a walnut-stocked, shot-gun butted, fancy checkered take-down.
+  This one I presented to R.C. The third was a plain ordinary rifle
+  with solid frame. And the last was a carbine model, which I gave
+  to Nielsen.</p>
+
+  <p>During the summer at Avalon I used to take the solid frame
+  rifle, and climb the hills to practice on targets. At Clemente
+  Island I used to shoot at the ravens. I had a grudge against
+  ravens there for picking the eyes out of newly born lambs. At
+  five hundred yards a raven was in danger from me. I could make
+  one jump at even a thousand yards. These .30 Gov't 1906 rifles
+  with 150-grain bullet are the most wonderful shooting arms I ever
+  tried. I became expert at inanimate targets.</p>
+
+  <p>From time to time I heard encouraging news from Lee about
+  horses. Edd wrote me about lion tracks in the snow, and lynx up
+  cedar trees, and gobblers four feet high, and that there was sure
+  to be a good crop of acorns, and therefore some bears. He told me
+  about a big grizzly cow-killer being chased and shot in Chevelon
+  Canyon. News about hounds, however, was slow in coming. Dogs were
+  difficult to find. At length Haught wrote me that he had secured
+  two; and in this same letter he said the boys were cutting trails
+  down under the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Everything pertaining to my cherished plans appeared to be
+  turning out well. But during this time I spent five months at
+  hard work and intense emotional strain, writing the longest novel
+  I ever attempted; and I over-taxed my endurance. By the middle of
+  June, when I finished, I was tired out. That would not have
+  mattered if I had not hurt my back in an eleven-hour fight with a
+  giant broadbill swordfish. This strain kept me from getting in my
+  usual physical trim. I could not climb the hills, or exert
+  myself. Swimming hurt me more than anything. So I had to be
+  careful and wait until my back slowly got better. By September it
+  had improved, but not enough to make me feel any thrills over
+  horseback riding. It seemed to me that I would be compelled to go
+  ahead and actually work the pain out of my back, an ordeal
+  through which I had passed before, and surely dreaded.</p>
+
+  <p>During the summer I had purchased a famous chestnut sorrel
+  horse named Don Carlos. He was much in demand among the
+  motion-picture companies doing western plays; and was really too
+  fine and splendid a horse to be put to the risks common to the
+  movies. I saw him first at Palm Springs, down in southern
+  California, where my book <i>Desert Gold</i> was being made into
+  a motion-picture. Don would not have failed to strike any one as
+  being a wonderful horse. He was tremendously high and rangy and
+  powerful in build, yet graceful withal, a sleek, shiny chestnut
+  red in color, with fine legs, broad chest, and a magnificent
+  head. I rode him only once before I bought him, and that was
+  before I hurt my back. His stride was what one would expect from
+  sight of him; his trot seemed to tear me to pieces; his spirit
+  was such that he wanted to prance all the time. But in spite of
+  his spirit he was a pet. And how he could run! Nielsen took Don
+  to Flagstaff by express. And when Nielsen wrote me he said all of
+  Flagstaff came down to the station to see the famous Don Carlos.
+  The car in which he had traveled was backed alongside a platform.
+  Don refused to step on the boards they placed from platform to
+  car. He did not trust them. Don's intelligence had been sharpened
+  by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to lead, to
+  coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would not
+  go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to
+  plunge and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd
+  like quail.</p>
+
+  <p>The day before my departure from Los Angeles was almost as
+  terrible an ordeal as I anticipated would be my first day's ride
+  on Don Carlos. And this ordeal consisted of listening to Romer's
+  passionate appeals and importunities to let him go on the hunt.
+  My only defence was that he must not be taken from school. School
+  forsooth! He was way ahead of his class. If he got behind he
+  could make it up. I talked and argued. Once he lost his temper, a
+  rare thing with him, and said he would run away from school, ride
+  on a freight train to Flagstaff, steal a horse and track me to my
+  camp. I could not say very much in reply to this threat, because
+  I remembered that I had made worse to my father, and carried it
+  out. I had to talk sense to Romer. Often we had spoken of a
+  wonderful hunt in Africa some day, when he was old enough; and I
+  happened upon a good argument. I said: "You'll miss a year out of
+  school then. It won't be so very long. Don't you think you ought
+  to stay in school faithfully now?" So in the end I got away from
+  him, victorious, though not wholly happy. The truth was I wanted
+  him to go.</p>
+
+  <p>My Jap cook Takahashi met me in Flagstaff. He was a very
+  short, very broad, very muscular little fellow with a brown,
+  strong face, more pleasant than usually seen in Orientals.
+  Secretly I had made sure that in Takahashi I had discovered a
+  treasure, but I was careful to conceal this conviction from R.C.,
+  the Doyles, and Nielsen. They were glad to see him with us, but
+  they manifestly did not expect wonders.</p>
+
+  <p>How brief the span of a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again
+  outfitting for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived
+  that old haunting thought about the shortness of life. But in
+  spite of that or perhaps more because of it the pleasure was all
+  the keener. In truth the only drawback to this start was the
+  absence of Romer, and my poor physical condition. R.C. appeared
+  to be in fine fettle.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was not well. In the mornings I could scarcely arise,
+  and when I did so I could hardly straighten myself. More than
+  once I grew doubtful of my strength to undertake such a hard
+  trip. This doubt I fought fiercely, for I knew that the right
+  thing for me to do was to go&mdash;to stand the pain and
+  hardship&mdash;to toil along until my old strength and elasticity
+  returned. What an opportunity to try out my favorite theory! For
+  I believed that labor and pain were good for mankind&mdash;that
+  strenuous life in the open would cure any bodily ill.</p>
+
+  <p>On September fourteenth Edd and George drifted into Flagstaff
+  to join us, and their report of game and water and grass and
+  acorns was so favorable that I would have gone if I had been
+  unable to ride on anything but a wagon.</p>
+
+  <p>We got away on September fifteenth at two-thirty o'clock with
+  such an outfit as I had never had in all my many trips put
+  together. We had a string of saddle horses besides those the men
+  rode. They were surely a spirited bunch; and that first day it
+  was indeed a job to keep them with us. Out of sheer defiance with
+  myself I started on Don Carlos. He was no trouble, except that it
+  took all my strength to hold him in. He tossed his head, champed
+  his bit, and pranced sideways along the streets of Flagstaff,
+  manifestly to show off his brand new black Mexican saddle, with
+  silver trappings and tapaderos. I was sure that he did not do
+  that to show me off. But Don liked to dance and prance along
+  before a crowd, a habit that he had acquired with the motion
+  pictures.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee and Nielsen and George had their difficulties driving the
+  free horses. Takahashi rode a little buckskin Navajo mustang. An
+  evidence of how extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself
+  plain in the fact that stirrups could not be fixed so he could
+  reach them with his feet. When he used any support at all he
+  stuck his feet through the straps above the stirrups. How funny
+  his squat, broad figure looked in a saddle! Evidently he was not
+  accustomed to horses. When I saw the mustang roll the white of
+  his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I knew something would
+  happen sooner or later.</p>
+
+  <p>Nineteen miles on Don Carlos reduced me to a miserable aching
+  specimen of manhood. But what made me endure and go on and finish
+  to camp was the strange fact that the longer I rode the less my
+  back pained. Other parts of my anatomy, however, grew sorer as we
+  progressed. Don Carlos pleased me immensely, only I feared he was
+  too much horse for me. A Mormon friend of mine, an Indian trader,
+  looked Don over in Flagstaff, and pronounced him: "Shore one
+  grand hoss!" This man had broken many wild horses, and his
+  compliment pleased me. All the same the nineteen miles on Don
+  hurt my vanity almost as much as my body.</p>
+
+  <p>We camped in a cedar pasture off the main road. This road was
+  a new one for us to take to our hunting grounds. I was too bunged
+  up to help Nielsen pitch our tent. In fact when I sat down I was
+  anchored. Still I could use my eyes, and that made life worth
+  living. Sunset was a gorgeous spectacle. The San Francisco Peaks
+  were shrouded in purple storm-clouds, and the west was all gold
+  and silver, with low clouds rimmed in red. This sunset ended in a
+  great flare of dull magenta with a background of purple.</p>
+
+  <p>That evening was the try-out of our new chuck-box and chef. I
+  had supplied the men with their own outfit and supplies, to do
+  with as they liked, an arrangement I found to be most
+  satisfactory. Takahashi was to take care of R.C. and me. In less
+  than half an hour from the time the Jap lighted a fire he served
+  the best supper I ever had in camp anywhere. R.C. lauded him to
+  the skies. And I began to think I could unburden myself of my
+  conviction.</p>
+
+  <p>I did not awaken to the old zest and thrill of the open.
+  Something was wrong with me. The sunset, the camp-fire, the dark
+  clear night with its trains of stars, the distant yelp of
+  coyotes&mdash;these seemed less to me than what I had hoped for.
+  My feelings were locked round my discomfort and pain.</p>
+
+  <p>About noon next day we rode out of the cedars into the open
+  desert&mdash;a rolling, level land covered with fine grass, and
+  yellow daisies, Indian paint brush, and a golden flowering weed.
+  This luxuriance attested to the copious and recent rains. They
+  had been a boon to dry Arizona. No sage showed or greasewood, and
+  very few rocks. The sun burned hot. I gazed out at the desert,
+  and the cloud pageant in the sky, trying hard to forget myself,
+  and to see what I knew was there for me. Rolling columnar white
+  and cream clouds, majestic and beautiful, formed storms off on
+  the horizon. Sunset on the open desert that afternoon was
+  singularly characteristic of Arizona&mdash;purple and gold and
+  red, with long lanes of blue between the colored cloud banks.</p>
+
+  <p>We made camp at Meteor Crater, one of the many wonders of this
+  wonderland. It was a huge hole in the earth over five hundred
+  feet deep, said to have been made by a meteor burying itself
+  there. Seen from the outside the slope was gradual up to the
+  edges, which were scalloped and irregular; on the inside the
+  walls were precipitous. Our camp was on the windy desert, a long
+  sweeping range of grass, sloping down, dotted with cattle, with
+  buttes and mountains in the distance. Most of my sensations of
+  the day partook of the nature of woe.</p>
+
+  <p>September seventeenth bade fair to be my worst day&mdash;at
+  least I did not see how any other could ever be so bad. Glaring
+  hot sun&mdash;reflected heat from I the bare road&mdash;dust and
+  sand and wind! Particularly hard on me were what the Arizonians
+  called dust-devils, whirlwinds of sand. On and off I walked a
+  good many miles, the latter of which I hobbled. Don Carlos did
+  not know what to make of this. He eyed me, and nosed me, and
+  tossed his head as if to say I was a strange rider for him. Like
+  my mustang, Night, he would not stand to be mounted. When I
+  touched the stirrup that was a signal to go. He had been trained
+  to it. As he was nearly seventeen hands high, and as I could not
+  get my foot in the stirrup from level ground, to mount him in my
+  condition seemed little less than terrible. I always held back
+  out of sight when I attempted this. Many times I failed. Once I
+  fell flat and lay a moment in the dust. Don Carlos looked down
+  upon me in a way I imagined was sympathetic. At least he bent his
+  noble head and smelled at me. I scrambled to my feet, led him
+  round into a low place, and drawing a deep breath, and nerving
+  myself to endure the pain like a stab, I got into the saddle
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>Two things sustained me in this ordeal, which was the crudest
+  horseback ride I ever had&mdash;first, the conviction that I
+  could cure my ills by enduring the agony of violent action, of
+  hot sun, of hard bed; and secondly, the knowledge that after it
+  was all over the remembrance of hardship and achievement would be
+  singularly sweet. So it had been in the case of the five days on
+  the old Crook road in 1918, when extreme worry and tremendous
+  exertion had made the hours hideous. So it had been with other
+  arduous and poignant experiences. A poet said that the crown of
+  sorrow was in remembering happier times: I believed that there
+  was a great deal of happiness in remembering times of stress, of
+  despair, of extreme and hazardous effort. Anyway, without these
+  two feelings in my mind I would have given up riding Don Carlos
+  that day, and have abandoned the trip.</p>
+
+  <p>We covered twenty-two miles by sundown, a rather poor day's
+  showing; and camped on the bare flat desert, using water and wood
+  we had packed with us. The last thing I remembered, as my eyes
+  closed heavily, was what a blessing it was to rest and to
+  sleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we sheered off to the southward, heading toward
+  Chevelon Butte, a black cedared mountain, rising lone out of the
+  desert, thirty miles away. We crossed two streams bank full of
+  water, a circumstance I never before saw in Arizona. Everywhere
+  too the grass was high. We climbed gradually all day, everybody
+  sunburned and weary, the horses settling down to save themselves;
+  and we camped high up on the desert plateau, six thousand feet
+  above sea level, where it was windy, cool, and fragrant with sage
+  and cedar. Except the first few, the hours of this day each
+  marked a little less torture for me; but at that I fell off Don
+  Carlos when we halted. And I was not able to do my share of the
+  camp work. R.C. was not as spry and chipper as I had seen him, a
+  fact from which I gathered infinite consolation. Misery loves
+  company.</p>
+
+  <p>A storm threatened. All the west was purple under on-coming
+  purple clouds. At sight of this something strange and subtle, yet
+  familiar, revived in me. It made me feel a little more like the
+  self I thought I knew. So I watched the lightning flare and
+  string along the horizon. Some time in the night thunder awakened
+  me. The imminence of a severe storm forced us to roll out and
+  look after the tent. What a pitch black night! Down through the
+  murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag rope of lightning,
+  blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving segments of
+  fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash&mdash;then we
+  were absolutely blind. I could not see for several moments. It
+  rained a little. Only the edge of the storm touched us. Thunder
+  rolled and boomed along the battlements, deep and rumbling and
+  detonating.</p>
+
+  <p>No dust or heat next morning! The desert floor appeared clean
+  and damp, with fresh gray sage and shining bunches of cedar. We
+  climbed into the high cedars, and then to the pi&ntilde;ons, and
+  then to the junipers and pines. Climbing so out of desert to
+  forestland was a gradual and accumulating joy to me. What
+  contrast in vegetation, in air, in color! Still the forest
+  consisted of small trees. Not until next day did we climb farther
+  to the deepening, darkening forest, and at last to the silver
+  spruce. That camp, the fifth night out, was beside a lake of
+  surface water, where we had our first big camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>September twenty-first and ten miles from Beaver Dam Canyon,
+  where a year before I had planned to meet Haught this day and
+  date at noon! I could make that appointment, saddle-sore and
+  weary as I was, but I doubted we could get the wagons there. The
+  forest ground was soft. All the little swales were full of water.
+  How pleasant, how welcome, how beautiful and lonely the wild
+  forestland! We made advance slowly. It was afternoon by the time
+  we reached the rim road, and four o'clock when we halted at the
+  exact spot where we had left our wagon the year before.</p>
+
+  <p>Lee determined to drive the wagons down over the rocky benches
+  into Beaver Dam Canyon; and to that end he and the men began to
+  cut pines, drag logs, and roll stones.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen
+  swift little streams of amber water, where a year before all had
+  been dry as tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of
+  yellowing aspens. Haught was there to meet us. He had not changed
+  any more than the rugged pine tree under which a year past we had
+  made our agreement. He wore the same blue shirt and the old black
+  sombrero.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hello Haught," was my greeting, as I dismounted and pulled
+  out my watch. "I'm four hours and a quarter late. Sorry. I could
+  have made it, but didn't want to leave the wagons."</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, wal, I shore am glad to see you," he replied, with a
+  keen flash in his hazel eyes and a smile on his craggy face. "I
+  reckoned you'd make it. How are you? Look sort of fagged."</p>
+
+  <p>"Just about all in, Haught," I replied, as we shook hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Copple appeared, swaggering out of the aspens. He was the
+  man I met in Payson and who so kindly had made me take his rifle.
+  I had engaged him also for this hunt. A brawny man he was, with
+  powerful shoulders, swarthy-skinned, and dark-eyed, looking
+  indeed the Indian blood he claimed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wouldn't have recognized you anywhere's else," he said.</p>
+
+  <p>These keen-eyed outdoor men at a glance saw the havoc work and
+  pain had played with me. They were solicitous, and when I
+  explained my condition they made light of that, and showed relief
+  that I was not ill. "Saw wood an' rustle around," said Haught.
+  And Copple said: "He needs venison an' bear meat."</p>
+
+  <p>They rode back with us up to the wagons. Copple had been a
+  freighter. He picked out a way to drive down into the canyon. So
+  rough and steep it was that I did not believe driving down would
+  be possible. But with axes and pick and shovel, and a heaving of
+  rocks, they worked a road that Lee drove down. Some places were
+  almost straight down. But the ground was soft, hoofs and wheels
+  sank deeply, and though one wagon lurched almost over, and the
+  heavily laden chuck-wagon almost hurdled the team, Lee made the
+  bad places without accident. Two hours after our arrival, such
+  was the labor of many strong hands, we reached our old camp
+  ground. One thing was certain, however, and that was we would
+  never get back up the way we came down.</p>
+
+  <p>Except for a luxuriance of grass and ferns, and two babbling
+  streams of water, our old camp ground had not changed. I sat down
+  with mingled emotions. How familiarly beautiful and lonely this
+  canyon glade! The great pines and spruces looked down upon me
+  with a benediction. How serene, passionless, strong they seemed!
+  It was only men who changed in brief time. The long year of worry
+  and dread and toil and pain had passed. It was nothing. On the
+  soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came a whispering of welcome
+  from the forestland: "You are here again. Live now&mdash;in the
+  present."</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he
+  said, grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking.
+  His ability excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about
+  him. As to this camp-site being a joy compared to the ones
+  stretched back along the road he was assuredly right. That night
+  we did no more than eat and unroll our beds. But next day there
+  set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking, putting up tents and
+  flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a hundred odd
+  jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one help
+  him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak,
+  and made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the
+  cleverness of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for
+  work.</p>
+
+  <p>The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more
+  than any one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a
+  crosscut saw; and as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and
+  a lover of them. Hence we had brought a crosscut saw&mdash;a long
+  one with two handles. I remembered from the former year a huge
+  dead pine that had towered bleached and white at the edge of the
+  glade. It stood there still. The storms and blasts of another
+  winter had not changed it in the least. It was five feet thick at
+  the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the lower
+  side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I
+  saw the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all
+  the way down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell
+  majestically, to strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of
+  this pine broke in the fall, but there were splinters and knots
+  and branches enough to fill a wagon. These we carried up to our
+  camp-fire.</p>
+
+  <p>Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which
+  served as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The
+  method of using a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand
+  opposite one another, with the log between. The handles of the
+  saw stood upright. Each man should pull easily and steadily
+  toward himself, but should not push back nor bear down. It looked
+  a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous. But what an
+  illusion! Nielsen and Copple were the only ones that day who
+  could saw wholly through the thick log without resting. Later
+  Takahashi turned out to be as good, if not better, than either of
+  them, but we had that, as well as many other wonderful facts, to
+  learn about the Jap.</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on," said R.C. to me, invitingly. "You've been talking
+  about this crosscut saw game. I'll bet you find it harder than
+  pulling on a swordfish."</p>
+
+  <p>Pride goes before a fall! I knew that in my condition I could
+  do little with the saw, but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh
+  when I had to rest. Perhaps no one except myself realized the
+  weakness of my back, but the truth was a couple of dozen pulls on
+  that saw almost made me collapse. Wherefore I grew furious with
+  myself and swore I would do it or die. I sawed till I fell
+  over&mdash;then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour of
+  this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely
+  sharper than the pain in my back. Also it made me wringing wet,
+  hot as fire, and as breathless as if I had run a mile up hill.
+  That experience determined me to stick to crosscut sawing every
+  day. Next morning I approached it with enthusiasm, yet with
+  misgivings. I could not keep my breath. Pain I could and did bear
+  without letting on. But to have to stop was humiliating. If I
+  tried to keep up with the sturdy Haught boys, or with the brawny
+  Copple or the giant Nielsen, soon I would be compelled to keel
+  over. In the sawing through a four-foot section of log I had to
+  rest eight times. They all had a great deal of fun out of it, and
+  I pretended to be good natured, but to me who had always been so
+  vigorous and active and enduring it was not fun. It was tragic.
+  But all was not gloom for me. This very afternoon Nielsen, the
+  giant, showed that a stiff climb out of the canyon, at that eight
+  thousand feet altitude, completely floored him. Yet I
+  accomplished that with comparative ease. I could climb, which
+  seemed proof that I was gaining. A man becomes used to certain
+  labors and exercises. I thought the crosscut saw a wonderful tool
+  to train a man, but it must require time. It harked back to
+  pioneer days when men were men. Nielsen said he had lived among
+  Mexican boys who sawed logs for nineteen cents apiece and earned
+  seven dollars a day. Copple said three minutes was good time to
+  saw a four-foot log in two pieces. So much for physical
+  condition! As for firewood, for which our crosscut saw was
+  intended, pitch pine and yellow pine and spruce were all odorous
+  and inflammable woods, but they did not make good firewood. Dead
+  aspen was good; dead oak the best. It burned to red hot coals
+  with little smoke. As for camp-fires, any kind of dry wood
+  pleased, smoke or no smoke. In fact I loved the smell and color
+  of wood-smoke, in spite of the fact that it made my eyes
+  smart.</p>
+
+  <p>By October first, which was the opening day of the hunting
+  season, I had labored at various exercises until I felt fit to
+  pack a rifle through the woods. R.C. and I went out alone on
+  foot. Not by any means was the day auspicious. The sun tried to
+  show through a steely haze, making only a pale shift of sunshine.
+  And the air was rather chilly. Enthusiasm, however, knew no
+  deterrents. We walked a mile down Beaver Dam Canyon, then climbed
+  the western slope. As long as the sun shone I knew the country
+  fairly well, or rather my direction. We slipped along through the
+  silent woods, satisfied with everything. Presently the sun broke
+  through the clouds, and shone fitfully, making intervals of
+  shadow, and others of golden-green verdure.</p>
+
+  <p>Along an edge of one of the grassy parks we came across fresh
+  deer tracks. Several deer had run out of the woods just ahead of
+  us, evidently having winded us. One track was that of a big buck.
+  We trailed these tracks across the park, then made a detour in
+  hopes of heading the deer off, but failed. A huge, dark cloud
+  scudded out of the west and let down a shower of fine rain. We
+  kept dry under a spreading spruce. The forest then was gloomy and
+  cool with only a faint moan of wind and pattering of raindrops to
+  break the silence. The cloud passed by, the sun shone again, the
+  forest glittered in its dress of diamonds. There had been but
+  little frost, so that aspen and maple thickets had not yet taken
+  on their cloth of gold and blaze of red. Most of the leaves were
+  still on the trees, making these thickets impossible to see into.
+  We hunted along the edges of these, and across the wide, open
+  ridge from canyon to canyon, and saw nothing but old tracks.
+  Black and white clouds rolled up and brought a squall. We took to
+  another spruce tent for shelter. After this squall the sky became
+  obscured by a field of gray cloud through which the sun shone
+  dimly. This matter worried me. I was aware of my direction then,
+  but if I lost the sun I would soon be in difficulties.</p>
+
+  <p>Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and
+  headed several ravines that ran and widened down into the big
+  canyon. All at once R.C. held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With
+  abatement of breath I listened, but heard nothing except the
+  mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I heard a whistle," he
+  said. We went on, all eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a
+  good hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and
+  could slip along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of
+  direction that had never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to
+  learn about deer stalking. But I had never hunted with any man
+  whose ears were as quick as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and
+  many years of still hunting, accounted for this faculty. As for
+  myself, the one gift of which I was especially proud was my
+  eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in the woods before
+  any one who was with me. This had applied to all my guides except
+  Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
+  searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made
+  my eyes all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game
+  in which he tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen
+  before I saw it. This fun for us dated back to boyhood days.</p>
+
+  <p>Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one
+  side, and his body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he
+  said. We stood perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from
+  far off in the forest I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling
+  note. How thrilling, how lonely a sound!</p>
+
+  <p>"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and
+  listened. R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not
+  recognized it. Just as the mournful howl of a wolf is the
+  wildest, most haunting sound of the wilderness, so is the bugle
+  of the elk the noblest, most melodious and thrilling. With
+  tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We heard elk
+  bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
+  appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away.
+  R.C. and I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing
+  of elk, but that was no reason why we might not trail them, and
+  have the sport of seeing them in their native haunts. So we stole
+  softly through the woods, halting now and then to listen, pleased
+  to note that every whistle we heard appeared to be closer.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us
+  from the ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk
+  began to become really exciting. We did not make any noise
+  threading that wet thicket, and we ascended the opposite slope
+  very cautiously. What little wind there was blew from the elk
+  toward us, so they could not scent us. Once up on the edge of the
+  ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we heard a far-away
+  bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had we
+  miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for
+  waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was
+  almost silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun
+  peeped out of the pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the
+  pines in brightness. I opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was
+  rendered mute by a piercing whistle, high-pitched and sweet and
+  melodiously prolonged. It made my ears tingle and my blood dance.
+  "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on." We began to steal
+  through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets, peeping
+  out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp,
+  facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated
+  by about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison.
+  Passing through a thicket of little pines we came into an open
+  forest full of glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped
+  from tree to tree. Finally we stooped along for a space, and
+  then, at a bugle blast so close that it made me jump, I began to
+  crawl. My objective point was a fallen pine the trunk of which
+  appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C. kept working a little
+  farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I kept on. Still I
+  saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting toward its
+  climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of
+  excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw
+  a cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a
+  hundred yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way,
+  and pointed. But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning
+  for me to join him. I ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He
+  whispered pantingly: "Grandest sight&mdash;ever saw!" I peeped
+  out.</p>
+
+  <p>In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent
+  bull elk, looking back over his shoulder. His tawny
+  hind-quarters, then his dark brown, almost black shaggy shoulders
+  and head, then his enormous spread of antlers, like the top of a
+  dead cedar&mdash;these in turn fascinated my gaze. How graceful,
+  stately, lordly!</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled
+  out, took a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had
+  the fun of imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not
+  really want to kill him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp,
+  hot gush of my blood, the fiery thrill along my nerves, the
+  feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The bull eyed us for a second,
+  then laid his forest of antlers back over his shoulders, and with
+  singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny flash into the
+  green forest.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the
+  glade, without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye
+  caught sight of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on
+  the ground, vanishing behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I
+  got to where I could see beyond the thicket. An immense flock of
+  turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to get a bead on a running turkey
+  R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled. So we dashed through the
+  forest with the turkeys running ahead of us. Never did they come
+  out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just as I was about
+  to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This happened
+  again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting chance,
+  but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys
+  eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.</p>
+
+  <p>"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like
+  streaks. I couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."</p>
+
+  <p>I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying
+  to locate this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C.
+  finally, as he wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some
+  game anyhow.... Where are we?"</p>
+
+  <p>It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun
+  had become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the
+  forest had grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The
+  matter did not look serious, however, until we had wandered
+  around for another hour without finding anything familiar. Then
+  we realized we were lost. This sort of experience had happened to
+  R.C. and me often; nevertheless we did not relish it, especially
+  the first day out. As usual on such occasions R.C. argued with me
+  about direction, and then left the responsibility with me. I
+  found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one side from the misty
+  rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees and sky and
+  clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or west.
+  After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary
+  brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was
+  pleased to discover that the instinct of direction I had been
+  subtly prompted to take, would have helped me as much as the
+  sun.</p>
+
+  <p>We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead
+  so that we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to
+  a deep canyon. In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I
+  recognized it. "Well, R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and
+  it may not. But to make sure we'll follow it up to the rim. Then
+  we can locate camp." R.C. replied with weary disdain. "All right,
+  my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As Loren says, I'm starved
+  to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who bids fair to be
+  like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and before
+  meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How
+  strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!</p>
+
+  <p>When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more
+  heavily. We were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept
+  out all night. So I struck forward with long stride.</p>
+
+  <p>In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I
+  deliberated a moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry,
+  from which fact I decided we had better take to the left-hand
+  fork. Grass and leaves appeared almost as wet as running water.
+  Soon we were soaked to the skin. After two miles the canyon
+  narrowed and thickened, so that traveling grew more and more
+  laborsome. It must have been four miles from its mouth to where
+  it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we found ourselves on
+  familiar ground, about five miles from camp. Exhausted and wet
+  and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If I had
+  taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver
+  Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order.
+  R.C. said to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of
+  our way." Everybody but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture.
+  Takahashi said in his imperfect English: "Go get on more better
+  dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good yes!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    V
+  </center>
+
+  <p>It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in
+  camp and rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning
+  I started out on foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon
+  intending to go up on the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the
+  flock of turkeys.</p>
+
+  <p>I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor
+  acquaintances in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for
+  Nielsen. Copple was born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south
+  of Flagstaff, and was one-fourth Indian. He had a good education.
+  His whole life had been in the open, which fact I did not need to
+  be told. A cowboy when only a boy he had also been sheepherder,
+  miner, freighter, and everything Arizonian. Eighteen years he had
+  hunted game and prospected for gold in Mexico. He had been a
+  sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served in the army in
+  the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous life; and
+  as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be a
+  mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the
+  violence, the truth of the west.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple was inclined to be loquacious&mdash;a trait that
+  ordinarily was rather distasteful to me, but in his case would be
+  an advantage. On our way down the canyon not only did he give me
+  an outline of the history of his life, but he talked about how he
+  had foretold the storm just ended. The fresh diggings of
+  gophers&mdash;little mounds of dirt thrown up&mdash;had indicated
+  the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls; likewise
+  the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of
+  blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant
+  storm. From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the
+  light of the moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they
+  will lie in a thicket. If a hunter came near the deer would lower
+  their horns flat and remain motionless, unless almost ridden
+  over. In the dark of the moon deer feed at early morning, lie
+  down during the day, and feed again toward sunset, always alert,
+  trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place
+  where R.C. and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I
+  missed it, and we went on farther. Copple showed me old bear
+  sign, an old wolf track, and then fresh turkey tracks. The latter
+  reminded me that we were out hunting. I could carry a deadly
+  rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of flower-decked Elysian
+  fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of the canyon
+  slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two
+  turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took
+  a snap shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low,
+  upsetting him. Both of them disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting
+  around along the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep
+  enough to be classed as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and
+  still, with sunlight showing down in rays and gleams. While
+  hunting I always liked to sit down here and there to listen and
+  watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down. Opposite us the
+  rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred yards. We
+  listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant
+  fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is
+  movement that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump,
+  woolly beast walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and
+  stand in the shade.</p>
+
+  <p>"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing.
+  "Lion&mdash;no, big lynx," he replied. I aimed and shot just a
+  little too swiftly. Judging by the puff of dust my bullet barely
+  missed the big cat. He leaped fully fifteen feet. Copple fired,
+  hitting right under his nose as he alighted. That whirled him
+  back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot went over
+  him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another
+  prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we
+  missed him," declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that
+  first time. Biggest lynx I ever saw."</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success.
+  Then we climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge,
+  and crossed that to see down into a beautiful valley, with
+  stately isolated pines, and patches of aspens, and floor of
+  luxuriant grass. A ravine led down into this long park and the
+  mouth of it held a thicket of small pines. Just as we got half
+  way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high grass. I
+  peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot
+  before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a
+  thumping&mdash;and then turkeys appeared to be running every
+  way.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a
+  big gobbler on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!"
+  he called out. I could not see what he had done, but of course I
+  knew he had done execution. It roused my ire as well as a
+  desperate ambition. Turkeys were running up hill everywhere. I
+  aimed at this one, then at that. Again I fired. Another miss! How
+  that gobbler ran! He might just as well have flown. Every turkey
+  contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the
+  critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last one, got
+  a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we
+  moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and
+  scattering of bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope
+  and secured him, a fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds
+  weight.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two
+  turkeys, both shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If
+  you hit them in the body you spoil them for cooking. I used to
+  hit all mine in the head. Let me give you a hunch. Always pick
+  out a turkey running straight away from you or straight toward
+  you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running to the
+  side."</p>
+
+  <p>Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at
+  least was consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and
+  after a while heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller,
+  but he clucked anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was
+  trying to get together again, and some of them were approaching
+  us. Copple continued to call. Then I appreciated how fascinating
+  R.C. had found this calling game. Copple got answers from all
+  around, growing closer. But presently the answers ceased.
+  "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again. At that
+  moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to
+  peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long
+  shot, and I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate
+  him, and aimed at the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however,
+  was a few feathers. Like a grouse he flew across the opening and
+  was gone. We lingered there a while, hoping to see or hear more
+  of the flock, but did neither. Copple tried to teach me how to
+  tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a lesson I did not think
+  I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied their legs
+  together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of about
+  fifty pounds.</p>
+
+  <p>All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from
+  over the ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we
+  followed a rather meandering course, over ridge and down dale,
+  and through grassy parks and stately forests, and along the
+  slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets. Copple claimed to hear deer
+  running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps I dragged along
+  before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome the
+  sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one
+  deer that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods.
+  Takahashi hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That
+  fine! Nice fat ones!"</p>
+
+  <p>But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to
+  visit Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds.
+  Haught had not been able to secure more than two new hounds, and
+  these named Rock and Buck were still unknown quantities.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old
+  gladiator. He was a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age
+  and wrinkled and lame, and bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put
+  on trails, or at least to be made chase bear. He loved a
+  camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames. This fact, and the
+  way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared him to me.</p>
+
+  <p>Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet
+  resembled him enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too,
+  and had crinkly ears, and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom
+  was not quite so friendly as Dan; in fact he had more dignity.
+  Still neither hound was ever demonstrative except upon sight of
+  his master. Haught told me that if Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a
+  deer they would chase it till they dropped; accordingly he never
+  shot at anything except bear and lion when he had these hounds
+  with him.</p>
+
+  <p>Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite
+  of years of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her.
+  She was a slim, dark brown hound with fine and very long ears.
+  Rock, one of the new hounds from Kentucky, was white and black,
+  and had remarkably large, clear and beautiful eyes, almost human
+  in expression. I could not account for the fact that I suspected
+  Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the other hound from Kentucky, was
+  no longer young; he had a stump tail; his color was a little
+  yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head and
+  distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any
+  friends, for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had
+  enough to eat. He stayed away from the rest of the pack and
+  growled fiercely when a pup came near him. I tried to make
+  friends with him, but found that I would not have an easy
+  task.</p>
+
+  <p>Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
+  hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year,
+  either in body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp
+  just to hear himself and run any kind of a trail&mdash;how he
+  would be the first to quit and come back. And if any one fired a
+  gun near him he would run like a scared deer.</p>
+
+  <p>To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better.
+  Trailer and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could
+  do was to run and howl.</p>
+
+  <p>If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other
+  trail crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack
+  till' the bear got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp
+  with porcupine quills in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny
+  pups!</p>
+
+  <p>Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black
+  half-shepherd, small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent
+  face, with the brightest hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his
+  tail seemed most comical yet convincing. Bobby wagged only the
+  nether end and that most emphatically. He would stand up to me,
+  holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an appealing beggar he
+  was! Bobby's value to Haught was not inconsiderable. He was the
+  only dog Haught ever had that would herd the pigs. On a bear hunt
+  Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly disposition, and
+  yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of the pack.
+  He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like to
+  run him.</p>
+
+  <p>All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of
+  hounds; and the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad
+  cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock
+  country was infested. I had nothing against the acorn-eating
+  brown or black bears. And with this pack of hounds I doubted that
+  we could hold one of the vicious fighting species. But there was
+  now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We might kill a big
+  grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us perhaps
+  made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I had
+  not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.</p>
+
+  <p>Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the
+  leaves had scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed
+  weeks off. A storm and then a cold snap would help matters
+  wonderfully, and for these we hoped. Indeed the weather had not
+  settled; hardly a day had been free of clouds. But despite
+  conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every other day,
+  feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them and
+  ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it
+  arrived.</p>
+
+  <p>Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and
+  I went down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and
+  windy at intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy.
+  From above Horton Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with
+  scarcely any touch of autumn colors; from below, once in it, all
+  seemed a darker green, cool and damp. Water lay in all low
+  places. The creek roared bankfull of clear water.</p>
+
+  <p>The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth,
+  through thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long
+  slopes of manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were
+  not fruitful this year as they were last, only a few having
+  clusters of lavender-colored berries. The manzanita brush
+  appeared exceptionally beautiful with its vivid contrasts of
+  crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and smooth,
+  shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round
+  patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground,
+  with a long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows
+  fresh every spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow
+  blossoms. The honey from the flowers of mescal and mesquite is
+  the best to be obtained in this country of innumerable bees.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and
+  they worked on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon,
+  called See Canyon. After a while the country grew so rough that
+  fast riding was impossible; the thickets tore and clutched at us
+  until they finally stopped the horses. We got off. Edd climbed to
+  a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round," he called. "I'll walk. Take
+  my horse back." I decided to let George take my horse also, and I
+  hurried to catch up with Edd.</p>
+
+  <p>Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as
+  strenuous as keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We
+  climbed steep slopes and the farther we climbed the thicker grew
+  the brush. Often we would halt to listen for hounds, at which
+  welcome intervals I endeavored to catch my breath. We kept the
+  hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to renewed endeavors. At
+  length we got into a belt of live-oak and scrub-pine brush,
+  almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and here we had to
+  bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere. Small stones
+  and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears searching
+  for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the heads
+  of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass,
+  yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We
+  climbed and climbed, until my back began to give me trouble.
+  "Reckon we&mdash;bit off&mdash;a big hunk," remarked Edd once,
+  and I thought he referred to the endless steep and brushy slopes.
+  By and bye the hounds came back to us one by one, all footsore
+  and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our best prospect
+  then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the forest to
+  camp.</p>
+
+  <p>I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up
+  with Edd. His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles,
+  so that he might have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in
+  my boots and they caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I
+  had a burning sensation all over. My legs and arms ached; the
+  rifle weighed a ton; my feet seemed to take hold of the ground
+  and stick. We could not go straight up owing to the nature of
+  that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub forests. For hours
+  we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward. Only through
+  such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge of the
+  roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.</p>
+
+  <p>At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and
+  there, on a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a
+  bear. I saw the dust he raised, as he piled into the thicket
+  below the slide. What a wild clamor from the hounds! We got out
+  on the rocky slope where we could see and kept sharp eyes roving,
+  but the bear went straight down hill. Amazing indeed was it the
+  way the hounds drew away from us. In a few moments they were at
+  the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the course we had been
+  so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on the rim, so as
+  to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd distanced me
+  on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I could
+  scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet.
+  My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness
+  and disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition
+  returned to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very
+  day accomplished a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I
+  should have been happy. But I had not been used to a lame back.
+  When I reached the rim I fell there, and lay there a few moments,
+  until I could get up. Then I followed along after Edd whose yells
+  to the hounds I heard, and overtook him upon the point of a
+  promontory. Far below the hounds were baying. "They're chasin'
+  him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for low
+  country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack
+  are behind."</p>
+
+  <p>I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed
+  was the panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned,
+  rippling basin of timber and red rocks leading away to the
+  mountain ranges of the Four Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward
+  the yellowing sunset stood out long escarpments for miles, and
+  long sloping lines of black ridges, leading down to the basin
+  where there seemed to be a ripple of the earth, a vast upset
+  region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and dark.</p>
+
+  <p>I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a
+  matter I regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure
+  of a bee-line during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the
+  forest the sunset gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The
+  aspens took most of the color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned
+  pink, and low along the western horizon of the forest the light
+  seemed golden and blue.</p>
+
+  <p>I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just
+  at dark, I was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper,
+  a fact that occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain.
+  Undoubtedly this was the hardest day's work I had done since my
+  lion hunting with Buffalo Jones. It did not surprise me that next
+  day I had to forget my crosscut saw exercise.</p>
+
+  <p>Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame
+  and starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at
+  supper-time.</p>
+
+  <p>Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C.
+  and I went off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure.
+  This day was cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We
+  saw two bull elk, a cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably
+  agile for so heavy an animal. Neither of these, however, were of
+  such magnificent proportions as the one R.C. and I had stalked
+  the first day out. A few minutes later we scared out three more
+  cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for fun, and sighted
+  my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon where beaver
+  had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like teeth.
+  They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe.
+  Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we
+  could not find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey
+  Canyon, however, we found a place where beavers had dammed the
+  brook. Many aspens were fresh cut, one at least two feet thick,
+  and all the small branches had been cut off and dragged to the
+  water, where I could find no further trace of them. The grass was
+  matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed beaver
+  tracks.</p><a name="image-0059"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg053a_m.jpg" width="448" height="350" alt=
+    "Where Bear Cross the Ridge from One Canyon to Another ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0060"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg053b_m.jpg" width="448" height="337" alt=
+    "Climbing over the Tough Manzanita ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer,
+  turkey and bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns);
+  and if we could locate the mast we would find the game. He said
+  he had once seen a herd of several hundred deer migrating from
+  one section of country to another. Apparently this was to find
+  new feeding grounds.</p><a name="image-0061"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg054_m.jpg" width="748" height="448" alt=
+    "Bear in Sight Across Canyon ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>While we were resting under a spruce I espied a
+  white-breasted, blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a
+  pine tree. He walked head first down the bark, pecking here and
+  there. I saw a moth or a winged insect fly off the tree, and then
+  another. Then I saw several more fly away. The bird was feeding
+  on winged insects that lived in the bark. Some of them saw or
+  heard him coming and escaped, but many of them he caught. He went
+  about this death-dealing business with a brisk and cheerful
+  manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the
+  trees from bugs and worms and beetles.</p>
+
+  <p>Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a
+  large bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared
+  to be a species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black
+  colors, a round head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was
+  crippled, as it hopped and fluttered about in the grass. I got
+  down to catch it. Then I discovered it was only tame. I could
+  approach to within a foot of reaching it. Once it perched upon a
+  low snag, and peeped at me with little bright dark eyes, very
+  friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat there within a few
+  feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride. Crossing a
+  fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses. But
+  that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual,
+  empty handed as far as game was concerned.</p>
+
+  <p>I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black
+  and gray bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was
+  it then to see another such bird and that one right in camp. He
+  appeared to be as tame as the other. He flew and hopped around
+  camp in such a friendly manner that I placed a piece of meat in a
+  conspicuous place for him. Not long was he in finding it. He
+  alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a great rate. Doyle
+  claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the Lewis and
+  Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one I've
+  seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the
+  open this statement seemed rather remarkable.</p>
+
+  <p>We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six
+  degrees, and then another change indicative of unsettled weather.
+  It rained, and sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too
+  wet to hold the snow.</p>
+
+  <p>The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on
+  autumn colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of
+  white aspens, golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green
+  pines, maples a blaze of vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta,
+  rose&mdash;and slopes of dull red sumac. These were the beginning
+  of Indian summer days, the melancholy days, with their color and
+  silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.</p>
+
+  <p>Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back
+  to me dim mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One
+  afternoon Copple, R.C., and I went as far as the east side of
+  Gentry Canyon and worked down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey
+  sign. We tied our horses, and slipped back against the wind. R.C.
+  took one side of a ridge, with Copple and me on the other, and we
+  worked down toward where we had seen the sign. After half an hour
+  of slow, stealthy glide through the forest we sat down at the
+  edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon. The white
+  aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The wind
+  lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both
+  of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on
+  leaves. Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen
+  and tight, expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But
+  none came. Leaving our stand we slipped into the woods, careful
+  not to make the slightest sound. Such careful, slow steps were
+  certainly not accountable for the rapid beat of my heart.
+  Something gray moved among the green and yellow leaves. I halted,
+  and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I descried what
+  I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the slightest
+  sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it saw
+  us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray
+  hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long
+  ears, and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I
+  had ever beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too,
+  but with emotion. Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"</p>
+
+  <p>His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray
+  flash. Also it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I
+  exclaimed, quite loud. "Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't
+  have shot&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of
+  branches&mdash;then a big buck deer bounded onward into the
+  thicket. I got one snap shot at his fleeting blurred image and
+  missed him. We ran ahead, but to no avail.</p>
+
+  <p>"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin'
+  behind that brush."</p>
+
+  <p>"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where
+  he jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started
+  after you shot."</p>
+
+  <p>A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the
+  buck had vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps,
+  and it amounted to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a
+  magnificent leap! It reminded me of the story of Hart-leap
+  Well.</p>
+
+  <p>As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had
+  heard the buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around
+  together for an hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide
+  detour, leaving me at a stand in the hope they might drive some
+  turkeys my way. I sat on a log until almost sunset. All the pine
+  tips turned gold and patches of gold brightened the ground. Jays
+  were squalling, gray squirrels were barking, red squirrels were
+  chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones were dropping,
+  leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I did not
+  miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs
+  of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here
+  early to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some
+  meat to camp."</p>
+
+  <p>But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next,
+  giving us spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine
+  deceptive in their promise. Camp, however, with our big
+  camp-fire, and little tent-stoves, and Takahashi, would have been
+  delightful in almost any weather. Takahashi was insulted, the
+  boys told me, because I said he was born to be a cook. It seemed
+  the Jap looked down upon this culinary job. "Cook&mdash;that
+  woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.</p>
+
+  <p>As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to
+  think more of the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly
+  and I grew to like him. The Orientals are mystics and hard to
+  understand. But any one could see that here was a Japanese who
+  was a real man. I never saw him idle. He resented being told what
+  to do, and after my first offense in this regard I never gave him
+  another order. He was a wonderful cook. It pleased his vanity to
+  see how good an appetite I always had. When I would hail him:
+  "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply: "Aw,
+  turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life
+  tasted anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served
+  us. Or he would say: "Pan-cakes&mdash;apple dumplings&mdash;rice
+  puddings." No one but the Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him
+  how he cooked rice over an open fire and he said: "I know how
+  hot&mdash;when done." Takahashi must have possessed an uncanny
+  knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean, efficient and
+  saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of
+  American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a
+  revelation. Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters.
+  Takahashi's ambition was to be a rancher in California. I learned
+  many things about him. In summer he went to the Imperial Valley
+  where he picked and packed cantaloupes. He could stand the
+  intense heat. He was an expert. He commanded the highest wage.
+  Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him was another art. He
+  had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to save his money.
+  He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he intended to
+  live in the United States.</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi had that best of traits&mdash;generosity. Whenever
+  he made pie or cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me
+  to have for my lunch next day. No use to try to break him of this
+  kindly habit! He was keen too, and held in particular disfavor
+  any one who picked out the best portions of turkey or meat. "No
+  like that," he would say; and I heartily agreed with him. Life in
+  the open brought out the little miserable traits of human nature,
+  of which no one was absolutely free.</p>
+
+  <p>I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of
+  firewood he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but
+  most of all I liked his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to
+  be a joy to me. We had some pop corn which we sometimes popped
+  over the camp-fire. He was fond of it and he said: "You eat all
+  time&mdash;much pop corn&mdash;just so long you keep mouth going
+  all same like horse&mdash;you happy." We were troubled a good
+  deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but
+  others were disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk,
+  according to westerners, very often had hydrophobia and would
+  bite a sleeper. I knew of several men dying of rabies from this
+  bite. Copple said he had been awakened twice at night by skunks
+  biting the noses of his companions in camp. Copple had to choke
+  the skunks off. One of these men died. We were really afraid of
+  them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he had been
+  forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now Takahashi
+  slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a skunk
+  awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk
+  all black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid.
+  He no run. He act funny&mdash;then just walk off."</p>
+
+  <p>After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One
+  morning he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take
+  picture for me send my wife Sadayo."</p>
+
+  <p>So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position,
+  as did all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph
+  him and his skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me,
+  and he lifted up the box-trap. A furry white and black cat
+  appeared, with remarkably bushy tail. What a beautiful little
+  animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same like cat," said
+  Takahashi. "Kittee&mdash;kittee." It appeared that kitty was not
+  in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable
+  Jap with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified
+  manner. Then she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and
+  Takahashi together. When she started off the Jap followed and
+  poked her with the pole. "Take 'nother picture." But kitty
+  suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a most surprising and
+  brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I yelled: "Run
+  George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful little
+  beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another
+  and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased
+  her out of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty
+  thing! She make awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I
+  kill her sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and
+  we reached it the following morning while the frost was still
+  white and sparkling. We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a
+  deer day. I'll show you a buck sure. Let's stick together an'
+  walk easy."</p>
+
+  <p>So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was
+  so light as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark
+  ravine, taking half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the
+  forest! When it was like this I always felt as if I had
+  discovered something new. The big trees loomed stately and calm,
+  stretching a rugged network of branches over us. Fortunately no
+  saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be abroad to warn
+  game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill, seemed to
+  come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn were
+  at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
+  burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us
+  strung to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the
+  wild. R.C., as might have been expected, halted us with a softly
+  whispered: "Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C.
+  heard, and presently we moved on as before. Presently again R.C.
+  made us pause, with a like result. Somehow the forest seemed
+  unusually wild. It provoked a tingling expectation. The
+  pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed ridge to our left,
+  the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to harbor
+  listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
+  we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge
+  ran down in points to where the junction of several ravines
+  formed the head of Gentry Canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for
+  deer to graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and
+  white with frost and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no
+  game.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the
+  left. R.C. stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my
+  knees and opened my lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I
+  saw R.C. stiffen, then crouch a little. He leaned
+  forward&mdash;his eyes had the look of a falcon. Then I
+  distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
+  tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the
+  tail of my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I
+  looked&mdash;I strained my eyes&mdash;I flashed them along the
+  rim of the ravine where R.C. had been gazing. A gray form seemed
+  to move into the field of my vision. That instant it leaped, and
+  R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack. I seemed
+  stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
+  headlong and I heard a solid thump.</p>
+
+  <p>"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp.
+  "Look for another one."</p>
+
+  <p>No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the
+  gray form had plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It
+  was far enough to make me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a
+  fine three-point buck that had been shot square in the back of
+  the head between and below the roots of its antlers.</p>
+
+  <p>"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid
+  hold of the deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket.
+  "Fine an' fat. Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the
+  horses an' the other help me hang him up."</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VI
+  </center>
+
+  <p>I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught,
+  and we had parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading
+  to his camp, and I to linger a while longer up there in the
+  Indian-summer woods, so full of gold and silence and fragrance on
+  that October afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length
+  I came out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees.
+  Suddenly Don Carlos shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for
+  days and he appeared more than usually spirited. He saw or heard
+  something. I held him in, and after a moment I dismounted and
+  drew my rifle. A crashing in brush somewhere near at hand excited
+  me. Peering all around I tried to locate cause for the sound.
+  Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush accompanied by a
+  snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don Carlos
+  snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
+  the sound came from overhead.</p>
+
+  <p>I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze
+  arrested by a threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty
+  spruce. I saw a dark form moving against a background of blue
+  sky. Instantly I thought it must be a lynx and was about to raise
+  my rifle when a voice as from the very clouds utterly astounded
+  me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I dreaming? But violent
+  threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely assured me
+  that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
+  you&mdash;whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the
+  swaying top of that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi.
+  For a moment I could not find my voice. Then I shouted:</p>
+
+  <p>"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came
+  near shooting you."</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw hullo!&mdash;I come down now," replied Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but
+  nothing except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The
+  spruce was fully one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I
+  made a great mistake the Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned
+  from ear to ear.</p>
+
+  <p>"I no see you&mdash;no hear," he said. "You take me for big
+  cat?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing
+  up there?"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go
+  out with little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out
+  no gun&mdash;see squirrel. I chase him up tree&mdash;I climb
+  high&mdash;awful high. No good. Squirrel he too quick. He run
+  right over me&mdash;get away."</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what
+  he considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was
+  laughing at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's
+  simplicity and capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they
+  were a wonderful people. Men are men because they do things. The
+  Persians were trained to sweat freely at least once every day of
+  their lives. It seemed to me that if a man did not sweat every
+  day, which was to say&mdash;labor hard&mdash;he very surely was
+  degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from George
+  Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
+  famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable
+  eyesight that he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting
+  above the highest limb of a tall white oak. And he was such a
+  splendid shot that he had often "barked" squirrels, as was a
+  noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to explain to Takahashi
+  that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet to hit the bark
+  right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so stun it
+  that it would fall as if dead.</p>
+
+  <p>"Aw my goodnish&mdash;your daddy more better shot than you!"
+  ejaculated Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash
+  the long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting
+  days&mdash;playing days of boyhood were the best of life. It
+  seemed to me that one of the few reasons I still had for clinging
+  to hunting was this keen, thrilling hark back to early days.
+  Books first&mdash;then guns&mdash;then fishing poles&mdash;so ran
+  the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.</p>
+
+  <p>That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on
+  the spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it
+  rained&mdash;first a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at
+  five-thirty a roar of hail on the tent. This music did not last
+  long. At seven o'clock the thermometer registered thirty-four
+  degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was somewhat cloudy
+  or foggy, with promise of clearing.</p>
+
+  <p>We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and
+  Nielsen went down with them, the rest of us waited above for
+  developments. Scarcely had they more than time enough to reach
+  the gorge below when the pack burst into full chorus. Haught led
+  the way then around the rough rim for better vantage points. I
+  was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten for me&mdash;a
+  fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a
+  cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and
+  powerful, though not over medium size. One splendid feature about
+  him was that a saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never
+  slipped. And another feature, infinitely the most attractive to
+  me, was his easy gait. His trot and lope were so comfortable and
+  swinging, like the motion of a rocking-chair, that I could ride
+  him all day with pleasure. But when it came to chasing after
+  hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me trouble. Too
+  eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose the
+  direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad
+  jumbles or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried
+  me under low branches and through dense thickets, and in general
+  showed he was exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but
+  ignorant of rough forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and
+  got out of hearing of both hounds and men, and eventually found
+  myself lost somewhere on the west side of See Canyon. To get out
+  I had to turn my back to the sun, travel west till I came to the
+  rim above Horton Thicket, and from there return to camp, arriving
+  rather late in the afternoon.</p>
+
+  <p>All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I
+  was rather surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high
+  state of dudgeon. Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning
+  Nielsen I learned that the hounds had at once struck a fresh bear
+  track in See Canyon. Nielsen and Edd had not followed far before
+  they heard a hound yelping in pain. They found Buck caught in a
+  bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a little bear cub,
+  caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it had
+  evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and
+  emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she
+  had been around trying to save it or minister to it. There were
+  trappers in See Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers
+  manifestly there was no love lost. Edd said they had as much
+  right to trap as we had to hunt, but that was not the question.
+  There had been opportunity to tell the Haughts about the big
+  number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they did not tell
+  it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a
+  pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky
+  brown coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had
+  suffered.</p>
+
+  <p>This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to
+  me. Bad enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat,
+  but at least this is a game where the deer have all the
+  advantage. Bad indeed it may be to chase bear with hounds, but
+  that is a hard, dangerous method of hunting which gives it some
+  semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts proved to me that I
+  ran more risks than the bears. To set traps, however, to hide big
+  iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and clutch wild
+  animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or gnawed
+  off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun
+  or club to end the miserable business&mdash;what indeed shall I
+  call that? Cruel&mdash;base&mdash;cowardly!</p>
+
+  <p>It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed
+  interests are at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes
+  was built upon the brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for
+  their furs. And in this fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten,
+  beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx, muskrat, mink, otter, were higher
+  by double than they had ever been. Trappers were going to reap a
+  rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a living; but is this
+  trapping business honest, is it manly? To my knowledge trappers
+  are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but the public
+  eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and seasons
+  furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter
+  winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay
+  there is no justification for censure. But the vast number of
+  furs go to deck the persons of vain women. I appreciate the
+  beautiful contrast of fair skin against a background of sable
+  fur, or silver fox, or rich, black, velvety seal. But beautiful
+  women would be just as beautiful, just as warmly clothed in wool
+  instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not long ago I met a
+  young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels, and I
+  remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She
+  said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared
+  to be refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was
+  a pity women did not know or care where furs came from. She
+  seemed surprised. Then I told her about the iron-jawed,
+  spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs or on the runways of
+  game&mdash;about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its food,
+  training its young to fare for themselves&mdash;about the sudden
+  terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the
+  instinctive fury, the violent struggle&mdash;about the foot
+  gnawed off by the beast that was too fierce to die a
+  captive&mdash;about the hours of agony, the horrible
+  thirst&mdash;the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All
+  because women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath
+  the beautiful coat of furs, and seemed insulted.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming
+  somewhere back along the trail hopping along on three legs. I
+  rode on down to my camp, and procuring a bottle of iodine I
+  walked back in the hope of doing Buck a good turn. During my
+  absence he had reached camp, and was lying under an aspen, apart
+  from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and more
+  distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a
+  trick played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him,
+  as he licked the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as
+  kindly as I knew how. And finally I sat down beside him. The
+  trap-teeth had caught his right front leg just above the first
+  joint, and from the position of the teeth marks and the way he
+  moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.
+  Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the
+  bone. When I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled
+  ominously. He would have bitten me. I patted his head with one
+  hand, and watching my chance, at length with the other I poured
+  iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept patting him and holding
+  his head until the iodine had become absorbed. Perhaps it was
+  only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his
+  distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of
+  something he did not understand. That look more than ever
+  determined me to try to find some way to his affections.</p>
+
+  <p>A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a
+  pack outfit, and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called
+  Dude Creek. "Reckon we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude,"
+  said Haught. "Never was in there but I jumped bars. Good deer an'
+  turkey country, too."</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing
+  shape with the intention of starting early the following morning.
+  But it rained on and off; and the day after that we could not
+  find Haught's burros, and not until the fourth morning could we
+  start. It turned out that Buck did not have a broken leg and had
+  recovered surprisingly from the injury he had received. Aloof as
+  he held himself it appeared certain he did not want to be left
+  behind.</p>
+
+  <p>We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before
+  we had encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the
+  road, but how strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my
+  mental condition on that memorable trip, that I did not remember
+  all. Usually forest or desert ground I have traveled over I never
+  forget. This ride, in the middle of October, when all the colors
+  of autumn vied with the sunlight to make the forest a region of
+  golden enchantment, was one of particular delight to me. I had
+  begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night I had
+  suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every
+  morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and
+  straighten out. Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got
+  warmed up from riding or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me
+  altogether and I forgot it. I had given myself heroic treatment,
+  but my reward was in sight. My theory that the outdoor life would
+  cure almost any ill of body or mind seemed to have earned another
+  proof added to the long list.</p>
+
+  <p>At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road,
+  and had arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the
+  rim, down into a canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were
+  to camp.</p><a name="image-0062"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg055a_m.jpg" width="448" height="339" alt=
+    "Z.G.'s Cinnamon Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0063"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg055b_m.jpg" width="448" height="333" alt=
+    "R.C.'s Big Brown Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at
+  the section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to
+  recognize the point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild
+  bear! It was a wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared
+  to be at the extreme point of a vast ten-league promontory,
+  rising high over the basin, where the rim was cut into canyons as
+  thick as teeth of a saw. They were notched and v-shaped. Craggy
+  russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and gold-stained rocks, old
+  crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine thickets, ravines
+  and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush all
+  green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire&mdash;these indeed were the
+  heights and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and
+  beauty of Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak
+  thickets, where the bears lived, long gray slides of weathered
+  rocks, long slanting ridges of pine, descending for miles out and
+  down into the green basin, yet always seeming to stand high above
+  that rolling wilderness. The sun stood crossed by thin
+  clouds&mdash;a golden blaze in a golden sky&mdash;sinking to meet
+  a ragged horizon line of purple.</p><a name="image-0064">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg056_m.jpg" width="448" height="713" alt=
+    "Another Bear ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the
+  earth, and with another and more striking effect of this vast
+  tilted rim of mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This
+  rim was a huge wall of splintered rock, a colossal cliff,
+  towering so high above the black basin below that ravines and
+  canyons resembled ripples or dimples, darker lines of shade. And
+  on the other side from its very edge, where the pine fringe
+  began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of canyons
+  opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start not
+  fifty feet from the rim.</p>
+
+  <p>Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the
+  fingers of a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep,
+  narrow, forested by giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by
+  a murmuring brook, deep down among the many slopes, was our camp
+  ground, and never had I seen one more desirable. The wind soughed
+  in the lofty pine tops, but not a breeze reached down to this
+  sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high slopes our camp was
+  shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a canvas fly
+  over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left the
+  sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.</p>
+
+  <p>Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it
+  was black night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom,
+  and invested the great brown pines with some weird aspect. The
+  boys put up an old tent for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out
+  of this shelter by his canine rivals. I took pity upon him, and
+  tied him at the foot of my bed. When R.C. and I crawled into our
+  blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled between our beds, and
+  wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old dog, you keep the
+  skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of a queer
+  sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a
+  lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines
+  close to the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night
+  grew silent, except for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of
+  brook.</p>
+
+  <p>We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the
+  brook to the hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the
+  canyon after the horses, which had been hobbled and turned loose.
+  Lee had remained with his father at Beaver Dam camp. For
+  breakfast Takahashi had venison, biscuits, griddle cakes with
+  maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did not begin on an empty
+  stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung around me this
+  morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough to be
+  convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.
+  Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they
+  regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a
+  fight with Buck.</p>
+
+  <p>By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through
+  the still forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at
+  our noses. A mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that
+  led down to Dude Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with
+  the hounds. The rest of us rode out to a point there to await
+  developments. The sun had already flooded the basin with golden
+  light; the east slopes of canyon and rim were dark in shade. I
+  sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and looked, and cared
+  not for passage of time.</p>
+
+  <p>But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right
+  under us the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of
+  bellowing echoes. They worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to
+  promontories and along these we kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught
+  gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his horse. "Saw a bar," he
+  yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an open ridge. Come
+  on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest kind of rocky
+  ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim. "Ride
+  along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep
+  ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."</p>
+
+  <p>Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple,
+  R.C. and George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim.
+  The hounds could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells
+  of Nielsen and Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under
+  me, in the direction I was going. The baying of the pack, the
+  scent of pine, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of
+  wild, broken, vast country, the golden void beneath and the
+  purple-ranged horizon&mdash;all these brought vividly and
+  thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along the
+  north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past,
+  and for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who
+  had died recently. In his last letter to me, written with a
+  death-stricken hand, he had talked of another hunt, of more
+  adventure, of his cherished hope to possess an island in the
+  north Pacific, there to propagate wild animals&mdash;he had
+  dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I was riding
+  with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
+  gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was
+  ever wholly hopeless.</p>
+
+  <p>I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps
+  reached out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended
+  to the craggy points below, where I clambered here and there,
+  looking, listening. No longer could I locate the hounds; now the
+  baying sounded clear and sharp, close at hand, and then hollow
+  and faint, and far away. I crawled under gnarled cedars, over
+  jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until I got out to a point
+  where I had such command of slopes and capes, where the scene was
+  so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere below me to
+  my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of the
+  rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons
+  and promontories&mdash;a country so wild and broken that it
+  seemed impossible for hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above
+  me, to my right, stuck out a yellow point of rim, and beyond that
+  I knew there jutted out another point, and more and more points
+  on toward the west. George was yelling from one of them, and I
+  thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or Copple. I believed for
+  the present they were too far westward along the rim, and so I
+  devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my left. But
+  once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny black
+  object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
+  and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked
+  along so leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard
+  the hounds. I began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered
+  dust all over him. Not until I had two more shots, one of which
+  struck close, did he begin to run. Then he got out of my sight. I
+  yelled and yelled to those ahead of me along the rim. Somebody
+  answered, and next somebody began to shoot. How I climbed and
+  crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse! Stockings answered
+  to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran around the
+  rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
+  contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches.
+  When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had
+  done his shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers.
+  But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from
+  far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action.
+  Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I counted seven shots. How the
+  echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the
+  deep canyons!</p>
+
+  <p>I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of
+  R.C.'s boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and
+  at intervals I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well
+  have been alone on the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed
+  lost in immensity. Then I rode westward, then back eastward, and
+  to and fro until both Stockings and I were weary. At last I gave
+  up, and took a good, long rest under a pine on the rim. Not a
+  shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the squall of a jay
+  disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this lull in the
+  excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of a
+  flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below
+  me, so that I could study them through my field glass. They were
+  considerably larger than doves, dull purple color on the back,
+  light on the breast, with ringed or barred neck. Haught had
+  assured me that birds of this description were indeed the famous
+  wild pigeons, now almost extinct in the United States. I
+  remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks that darkened
+  the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.</p>
+
+  <p>Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as
+  beautiful as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was
+  the flying of clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.</p>
+
+  <p>The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled,
+  and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my
+  way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting
+  for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to
+  return. They asked for my story. Then I learned theirs. Haught
+  had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear
+  that had crossed the ridge early in the day. Copple had worked
+  far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to George and me,
+  had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any
+  bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a
+  brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon
+  Haught said: "Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other
+  bear."</p>
+
+  <p>One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay
+  down beside us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd
+  and Nielsen plodding up. At length they reached us wet and dusty
+  and thirsty. When Edd got his breath he said: "Right off we
+  struck a hot trail. Bear with eleven-inch track. He'd come down
+  to drink last night. Hounds worked up thet yeller oak thicket,
+  an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of his bed. He run
+  down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes an' hit up
+  lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around under
+  thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with
+  him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come
+  sneakin' back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we
+  climbed the east side high enough to see. An' we were workin'
+  down when the pack bayed the bear round thet bare point. It was
+  up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I climbed on a rock. There was
+  an open rock-slide where we thought the bear would show. It was
+  five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across an' got a stand
+  higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin' out of the
+  brush&mdash;a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He
+  was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet
+  bear began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up
+  like a ruffle on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three.
+  Reckon one of us stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his
+  last jump off the slide was a header into the brush. He crossed
+  the canyon, an' climbed thet high east slope of Dude, goin' over
+  the pass where father killed the big cinnamon three years ago.
+  The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an hour or more to
+  climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We heard the
+  hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I
+  worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek.
+  I kept callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't
+  catch him. He sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's
+  all.... Now who was smokin' shells up on the rim?"</p>
+
+  <p>When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can
+  just bet we put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet
+  old Jasper of a silvertip."</p>
+
+  <p>How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to
+  camp! The day had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and
+  sensorial perceptions. I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to
+  death!" And Takahashi, who had many times heard my little boy
+  Loren yell that, grinned all over his dusky face. "Aw, lots good
+  things pretty soon!"</p>
+
+  <p>After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling
+  camp-fire. The blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed
+  white and opal, the smoke swooped down and curled away into the
+  night shadows. Old Dan, as usual, tried to sit in the fire, and
+  had to be rescued. Buck came to me where I sat with my back to a
+  pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame to-night, having run all
+  day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay scattered around in
+  range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in such an
+  environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt
+  at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of
+  stories.</p>
+
+  <p>Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told
+  some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple
+  immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising
+  ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred
+  Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic
+  traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians. Speaking
+  of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the
+  subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.</p>
+
+  <p>One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in
+  proportion. His employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One
+  time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money
+  due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor
+  overboard. That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted,
+  because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor
+  without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money
+  matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor
+  without assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman
+  of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored.
+  She was not by any means a small or frail girl&mdash;rather the
+  contrary&mdash;but she appeared diminutive beside her giant
+  husband. One day he returned from a long absence on the sea. When
+  his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a
+  tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died. In his
+  grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her
+  long.</p>
+
+  <p>Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the
+  Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar
+  night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and
+  crew to return to Norway. Two men must be left in the Arctic to
+  care for the supplies until the ship came back. The captain
+  called for volunteers. There were two young men in the crew, and
+  from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than
+  brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One of these young men
+  said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the other
+  quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the
+  midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell
+  ill, and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room
+  with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the
+  long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to
+  this sepulchre that contained his dead friend. When the ship
+  returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair
+  as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about
+  Jones' Ranch. How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is
+  human life! Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the
+  eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore.
+  Who would not be a teller of tales?</p>
+
+  <p>Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat
+  of his own&mdash;a story of incredible strength and endurance,
+  which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable
+  narrative. But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see
+  that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration. The boys
+  thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that
+  he believed what he told.</p>
+
+  <p>Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the
+  evening happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long
+  chase after a bear and became separated. Bill was new at the
+  game, and he was a peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking
+  to himself! Haught finally rode to the edge of a ridge and espied
+  Bill under a pine in which the hounds had treed a bear. Bill did
+  not hear Haught's approach, and on the moment he was stalking
+  round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung to a branch
+  about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more full-grown
+  bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill had
+  not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill
+  was yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to
+  assassinate you. Chased me about a hundred miles&mdash;! An'
+  thought you'd fool me, didn't you? Why, I've treed more bears
+  than you ever saw&mdash;! You needn't look at me like thet,
+  'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you in a
+  minnit an' skin your black har off, I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about
+  the other two bears up in the top of the tree?"</p>
+
+  <p>Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly
+  astounded and tremendously elated to discover the other two
+  bears. He yelled and acted as one demented. "Three black Jaspers!
+  I've treed you all. An' I'm agoin' to assassinate you all!"</p>
+
+  <p>"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that
+  assassinatin' make up your mind not to cripple any of them.
+  You've got to shoot straight, so they'll be dead when they fall.
+  If they're only crippled, they'll kill the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor
+  marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with
+  bears in trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him
+  to dislodge the bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of
+  the tree&mdash;apparently unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked
+  them, and there arose a terrible uproar. Haught had to run down
+  to save his dogs. Bill was going to shoot right into the melee,
+  but Haught knocked the rifle up, and forbid him to use it. Then
+  Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat off the hounds.
+  Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally disposed of
+  two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific yells he
+  turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear tearing
+  the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also.
+  Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate
+  them." Bill slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled.
+  "By Golly, I'll skin 'em anyhow!"</p>
+
+  <p>Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to
+  Arizona from Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry
+  offered to wager this dog was the best bear chaser in the
+  country. The general impression Henry's hound gave was that he
+  would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught took his brother Henry
+  and some other men on a bear hunt. There were wagers made as to
+  the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last Haught's pack
+  struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast behind,
+  Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no
+  attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at
+  Henry as if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll
+  show them!" He loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying
+  this race with his master. After a while the chase grew hotter.
+  Then Henry's half-hound ran ahead a little way, and came back to
+  look up wisely, as if to say: "Not time yet!" After a while, when
+  the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's wonderful canine let out
+  a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack and took the lead in
+  the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear till he treed.
+  Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.</p>
+
+  <p>The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what
+  Haught called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between
+  brown and black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear
+  with unusually large teeth and very long claws. So different from
+  ordinary bears that it appeared another species. The blue bear
+  could run like a greyhound, and keep it up all day and all night.
+  Its power of endurance was incredible. In Haught's twenty years
+  of hunting there he had seen a number of blue bears and had
+  killed two. Haught chased one all day with young and fast hounds.
+  He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the chase. Next day
+  Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over into
+  Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again.
+  Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the
+  blue bear padding along as lively as ever.</p>
+
+  <p>I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a
+  hundred bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often
+  escaped by a breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not
+  the most interesting to me. Haught had lived a singularly
+  elemental life. He never knew what to tell me, because I did not
+  know what to ask for, so I just waited for stories, experiences,
+  woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come when they would.
+  Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under any
+  conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to
+  camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his
+  ears, look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been
+  just where Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!</p>
+
+  <p>When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up
+  over the rim he used to get down in the cedar country, close to
+  the desert. Here he heard of a pure black antelope that was the
+  leader of a herd of ordinary color, which was a grayish white.
+  The day came when Haught saw this black antelope. It was a very
+  large, beautiful stag, the most noble and wild and sagacious
+  animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to stalk it and
+  kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got even a
+  shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never
+  heard of again.</p>
+
+  <p>By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell,
+  and now began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I
+  envied his most remarkable imagination. His story had to do with
+  hunting meat for a mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a
+  rifle that he never aimed at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a
+  habit of gun-fighters! Once the camp was out of meat, and also he
+  was out of ammunition. Only one shell left! He came upon a herd
+  of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were small deer and he
+  wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around and waited
+  until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to make
+  sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks.
+  Killed the whole five in one shot!</p>
+
+  <p>We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and
+  completely at Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal
+  tales. He was hunting along the gulf shore on the coast of
+  Sonora, where big turtles come out to bask in the sun and big
+  jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One morning he saw a jaguar
+  jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck.
+  Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was safe under
+  its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate, but
+  to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of
+  the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out
+  its head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the
+  jaguar. First to give in was the cat. He let go and let out a
+  squall. But the turtle started to crawl off, got going strong,
+  and dragged the jaguar into the sea and drowned him. With naive
+  earnestness Copple assured his mute listeners that he could show
+  them the exact spot in Sonora where this happened.</p>
+
+  <p>Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his
+  immense loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really
+  was no greater dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us
+  want to see the mighty hunter have a fall.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself.
+  About sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We
+  all heard him shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his
+  revolver. Everybody said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys&mdash;maybe a
+  dozen, if Copple got two in line!" And we were all glad to think
+  so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did not return till dark.
+  He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a remarkable hard luck
+  story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys, and they were
+  rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and running
+  fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all.
+  Too dark&mdash;brush&mdash;trees&mdash;running like deer. Copple
+  had a dozen excuses. Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away.
+  He shot twice. The turkey was a knot, and he had missed even
+  that.</p>
+
+  <p>Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how
+  Copple had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!"
+  the day I had missed so many. Then I said:</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I
+  raised my voice high.</p>
+
+  <p>"Turkey number one&mdash;Nix!... Turkey number
+  two&mdash;missed, by Gosh!... Turkey number three&mdash;never
+  touched him!... Turkey number four&mdash;No!... Turkey number
+  five&mdash;<i>Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells</i>!... Turkey number
+  six on the log&mdash;BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"</p>
+
+  <p>We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter,
+  Haught, rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his
+  mirth.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with
+  gold I went down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our
+  horses. During the night our stock had been chased by a lion. We
+  had all been awakened by their snorting and stampeding. We found
+  our horses scattered, the burros gone, and Copple's mules still
+  squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple assured me that this
+  formation of his mules on guard was an infallible sign of lions
+  prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten years
+  and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the
+  woods.</p>
+
+  <p>We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty
+  feet long, and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks
+  showed in places, and on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in
+  the mud, were lion tracks as large as the crown of my hat. How
+  sight of them made me tingle all over! Here was absolute proof of
+  the prowling of one of the great cats.</p>
+
+  <p>Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular
+  looking tracks, the front feet being five-toed, and the back
+  three-toed, and webbed. Near the slides on the bank the water was
+  muddy, showing that the beaver had been at work early. These
+  animals worked mostly at night, but sometimes at sunset and
+  sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and wary. These dams had
+  just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut for food.
+  Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the water,
+  and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside
+  burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could
+  put up that lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged
+  it to be a big one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C.
+  preferred to keep after bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an
+  off day an' chase thet lion. Had a burro killed here a couple of
+  years ago."</p>
+
+  <p>So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's
+  Canyon lay to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it
+  that day. Edd and Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple
+  and I followed shortly afterward with the intention of descending
+  mid-way, and then working along the ridge crests and
+  promontories. The other boys remained on the rim to take up
+  various stands as occasion called for.</p>
+
+  <p>I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim.
+  They were grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that
+  made them so hard to travel. Right off, half way down, we started
+  a herd of bucks. The noise they made sounded like cattle. We
+  found tracks of half a dozen. "Lots of deer under the rim,"
+  declared Copple, his eyes gleaming. "They're feedin' on acorns.
+  Here's where you'll get your big buck." After that I kept a sharp
+  lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close at hand was worth
+  a lot of bears down in the brush.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along
+  the slopes toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had
+  to cross gravel patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and
+  at last, gaining the bench we went through the pine grove, out to
+  a manzanita thicket, to a rocky point where the ledges were
+  toppling and dangerous. The stand here afforded a magnificent
+  view. We were now down in the thick of this sloped and canyoned
+  and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof from it. The
+  dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to
+  listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black
+  notch below us. We watched and listened. And presently across
+  open patches we saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck
+  following them. Thus were my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed.
+  Copple yelled down to Edd that some of the hounds were running
+  deer, but apparently Edd was too far away to hear.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn,
+  calling in the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint
+  all of us above that he was going down around the point to drive
+  the next canyon. Copple and I had to choose between climbing back
+  to the rim or trying to cross the slopes and head the gorges, and
+  ascend the huge ridge that separated Pyle's Canyon from the next
+  canyon. I left the question to Copple, with the result that we
+  stayed below.</p>
+
+  <p>We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim
+  we felt so far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in
+  places and slippery in others, with deep cuts and patches of
+  manzanita. No stranger was I to this beautiful treacherous
+  Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike of it almost equal
+  to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty, dry, and had
+  begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were what
+  continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive&mdash;that
+  looked short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered
+  miles in our detours and we had to travel fast because we knew
+  Edd could round the base of the lower points in quick time.</p>
+
+  <p>Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an
+  enormous bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear
+  trail. This track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as
+  Haught says," declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard
+  the dogs an' got movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He
+  was walkin'."</p>
+
+  <p>I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling
+  the feel of my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse
+  the hunter in any man. We made sure how fresh this track was by
+  observing twigs and sprigs of manzanita just broken. The wood was
+  green, and wet with sap. Old Bruin had not escaped our eyes any
+  too soon. We followed this bear trail, evidently one used for
+  years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust a big, heavy, old
+  grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough country! This
+  fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail led
+  gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and
+  heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle,
+  and rose from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side,
+  rose to a bare, round point of gray rock, a landmark, a
+  dome-shaped tower where the gods of that wild region might have
+  kept their vigil.</p>
+
+  <p>Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where
+  it crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a
+  canyon so deep and wild that it was purple. This saddle was
+  really a remarkable place&mdash;a natural trail and outlet and
+  escape for bears traveling from one canyon to another. Our bear
+  tracks showed fresh, and we saw where they led down a steep,
+  long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a dense black
+  thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on each
+  side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for
+  a hunter to wait and watch.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind,
+  and often it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and
+  now like the hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of
+  a horn. By and bye Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not
+  be sure. Soon we indeed heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old
+  Dan, the course, sharp, ringing bay of Old Tom, and then, less
+  clear, the chorus from the other hounds. Edd had started them on
+  a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet. After a while we
+  heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We could see a
+  part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or more
+  of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place
+  could have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges,
+  benches, all matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and
+  caves and cracks showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze
+  points, and green slopes, and weathered slides.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and
+  beyond us, up the canyon to our right, a circumstance that
+  worried Copple. "Let's go farther up," he kept saying. But I was
+  loath to leave that splendid stand. The baying of the hounds
+  appeared to swing round closer under us; to ring, to swell, to
+  thicken until it was a continuous and melodious, wild, echoing
+  roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes back and
+  forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the
+  opposite slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and
+  laboriously climbing up the steep bluff. How like snails they
+  climbed! Theirs was indeed a task. A yell pealed out now and
+  then, and though it seemed to come from an entirely different
+  direction it surely must have come from the Haughts. Presently
+  some one high on the rim answered with like yells. The chase was
+  growing hotter.</p>
+
+  <p>"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly.
+  And I agreed with him.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the
+  rim.</p>
+
+  <p>"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple,
+  with animation.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now
+  look sharp!"</p>
+
+  <p>I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another
+  shot from above, farther off and from a different rifle,
+  augmented our stirring expectation.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down
+  under and along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to
+  keep up with him. We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard
+  the spang of Haught's.30 Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse
+  voice bawled out: "He's goin' to the left&mdash;to the left!"
+  That sent us right about face, to climbing, scrambling, running
+  and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle, where we
+  arrived breathless and eager.</p>
+
+  <p>Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top
+  of the bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon,
+  climbing a little. Copple yelled with all his might: "Where's the
+  bear?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Bar everywhar!" pealed back Haught's stentorian voice. How
+  the echoes clapped!</p>
+
+  <p>Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout.
+  "<i>Wehow</i>! I see him.... What a whopper!" He threw up his
+  rifle:
+  <i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>spang</i>&mdash;<i>
+  spang</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I
+  strained my eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. "Where? Where?" I
+  cried, wildly.</p>
+
+  <p>"There!" shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the
+  canyon. "He's goin' over the bench&mdash;above Edd.... Now he's
+  out of sight. Watch just over Edd. He'll cross that bench, go
+  round the head of the little canyon, an' come out on the other
+  side, under the bare bluff.... Watch sharp-right by that big
+  spruce with the dead top.... He's a grizzly an' as big as a
+  horse".</p>
+
+  <p>I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: "Ben, you saw
+  game first to-day". Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry
+  and grizzled, huge and round, moved out of the shadow under the
+  spruce and turned to go along the edge in the open sunlight.</p>
+
+  <p>"Oh! look at him!" I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran
+  all over me and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear
+  I could see him through the circle of my peep sight, but when I
+  moved the bead of the front sight upon him it almost covered him
+  up. The distance was far&mdash;more than a thousand
+  yards&mdash;over half a mile&mdash;we calculated afterward. But I
+  tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape and fired
+  till my rifle was empty.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. "You watch while I shoot," he
+  said. "Tell me where I'm hittin'."</p>
+
+  <p>Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I
+  saw a puff of dust. "Low, Ben!" Spang rang his rifle. "High!"
+  Again he shot, wide this time. He emptied his magazine. "Smoke
+  him now!" he shouted, gleefully. "I'll watch while you
+  shoot."</p>
+
+  <p>"It's too far, Ben," I replied, as I jammed the last shell in
+  the receiver.</p>
+
+  <p>"No&mdash;no. It's only we don't hold right. Aim a little
+  coarse," said Copple. "Gee, ain't he some bear! 'No scared tall'
+  as the Jap says.... He's one of the old sheep-killers. He'll
+  weigh half a ton. Smoke him now!"</p>
+
+  <p>My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most
+  consumed with admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was
+  he afraid. He walked along the rough places, trotted along the
+  ledges, and here and there he halted to gaze below him. I waited
+  for one of these halts, aimed a trifle high, and fired. The
+  grizzly made a quick, angry movement and then jumped up on a
+  ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.</p>
+
+  <p>"You hit close that time," yelled Ben. "Hold the same
+  way&mdash;a little coarser."</p>
+
+  <p>My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my
+  third, hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge,
+  covered him with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and
+  down the step he had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of
+  brush. I shot into that. We heard my bullet crack the twigs. But
+  it routed him out, and then my last shot hit far under him.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the
+  Haughts: "Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He's just above
+  you&mdash;under that bluff."</p>
+
+  <p>The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their
+  power, but they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more
+  shots, quick, yet deliberate, and he got through before I had
+  reloaded; and as I began my third magazine Copple was so swift in
+  reloading that his first shot mingled with my second. How we made
+  the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed down from the rim. Somewhere
+  from the purple depths below Nielsen's giant's voice rolled up.
+  The Haughts opposite answered with their deep, hoarse yells. Old
+  Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young hounds let
+  out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian cry,
+  high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot
+  and screech at one and the same time.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hurry, Ben," I said, as I finished my third set of five
+  shots, the last shot of which was my best and knocked dirt in the
+  face of the grizzly.</p>
+
+  <p>Again he reared. This time he appeared to locate our
+  direction. Above the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and
+  echoes I imagined I heard the grizzly roar. He was now getting
+  farther along the base of the bluff, and I saw that he would
+  escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My fingers were all
+  thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last chance had
+  fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his
+  magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking
+  the base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it
+  snap forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly
+  as he had reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The
+  old grizzly slowed up, and looked across, and wagged his huge
+  head.</p>
+
+  <p>"My gun's on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he
+  loaded still more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger.
+  The grizzly gave a spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he
+  made a prodigious leap off a ledge, down into a patch of brush,
+  where he threshed like a lassoed elephant.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, you hit him!" I yelled, excitedly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Only made him mad. He's not hurt.... See, he's up again....
+  Will you look at that!"</p>
+
+  <p>The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge
+  furry ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an
+  open slide where he unrolled, and stretched into a run. Copple
+  got two more shots before he was out of sight.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gone!" ejaculated Copple. "An' we never fetched him!... He
+  ain't hurt. Did you see him pile down an' roll off that slope?...
+  Let's see. I got twenty-three shots at him. How many had
+  you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"I had fifteen."</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, it was some fun, wasn't it&mdash;smokin' him along
+  there? But we ought to have fetched the old sheep-killer....
+  Wonder what's happened to the other fellows."</p>
+
+  <p>We looked about us. Not improbably the exciting moments had
+  been few in number, yet they seemed long indeed. The Haughts had
+  gotten to the top of the bluff, and were tearing through the
+  brush toward the point Copple had designated. They reached it too
+  late.</p>
+
+  <p>"Where is he?" yelled Edd.</p>
+
+  <p>"Gone!" boomed Copple. "Runnin' down the canyon. Call the dogs
+  an' go down after him."</p>
+
+  <p>When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of
+  the pups and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them. Old Dan and
+  old Tom were baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could
+  be heard yelping somewhere else. Bear trails seemingly were
+  abundant near our whereabouts. Presently the Haughts disappeared
+  at the back of the bench where the old grizzly had gone down, and
+  evidently they put the two hounds on his trail.</p>
+
+  <p>"That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this
+  ridge," declared Copple. "We want to be there."</p>
+
+  <p>So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side
+  of the ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down
+  along the slope. Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than
+  riding after Edd and George. When soon we reached a manzanita
+  thicket I could no longer keep Copple in sight. He was so
+  powerful that he just crashed through, but I had to worm my way,
+  and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a tight-rope
+  performer. Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was the
+  worst.</p>
+
+  <p>In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the
+  dome-topped end of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently
+  working back up the canyon. There was nothing for us to do but
+  return to our stand at the saddle. Copple hurried faster than
+  ever. But I had begun to tire and I could not keep up with him.
+  But as I had no wild cravings to meet that old grizzly face to
+  face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did manage by
+  desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight. When I reached our
+  stand I was wet and exhausted. After the hot, stifling, dusty
+  glare of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush,
+  the cool shade was a welcome change.</p>
+
+  <p>Somewhere all the hounds were baying. Not for some time could
+  we locate the Haughts. Finally with the aid of my glass we
+  discovered them perched high upon the bluff above where our
+  grizzly had gone round. It appeared that Edd was pointing across
+  the canyon and his father was manifesting a keen interest. We did
+  not need the glass then to tell that they saw a bear. Both
+  leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.
+  Then they stood like statues.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll go down into the thicket," said Copple. "Maybe I can get
+  a shot. An' anyway I want to see our grizzly's tracks." With that
+  he started down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather
+  than walked, and soon was out of my sight. After that I heard him
+  crashing through thicket and brush. Soon this sound ceased. The
+  hounds, too, had quit baying and the wind had lulled. Not a
+  rustle of a leaf! All the hunters were likewise silent. I enjoyed
+  a lonely hour there watching and listening, not however without
+  apprehensions of a bear coming along. Certain I was that this
+  canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been full of
+  bears.</p>
+
+  <p>At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite
+  slope. The way he toiled along proved how rough was the going. I
+  watched him through my glasses, and was again impressed with the
+  strange difference between the semblance of distance and the
+  reality. Every few steps Copple would halt to rest. He had to
+  hold on to the brush and in the bare places where he could not
+  reach a bush he had to dig his heels into the earth to keep from
+  sliding down. In time he ascended to the place where our grizzly
+  had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the Haughts, high
+  above him. They answered, and soon disappeared on the far side of
+  the bluff. Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of
+  yellow rock. Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and
+  then a wild clamor of the hounds. Some of the pack had been put
+  on the trail of our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther
+  away.</p>
+
+  <p>This was too much for me. I decided to go down into the
+  canyon. Forthwith I started. It was easy to go down! As a matter
+  of fact it was hard not to slide down like a streak. That long,
+  dark, narrow aisle between the spruces had no charm for me
+  anyway. Suppose I should meet a bear coming up as I was sliding
+  down! I sheered off and left the trail, and also Copple's tracks.
+  This was a blunder. I came out into more open slope, but steeper,
+  and harder to cling on. Ledges cropped out, cliffs and ravines
+  obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to help me
+  much. Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran
+  down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful
+  ones. It was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces.
+  The lower down I got the smaller and more numerous the trees. I
+  could see where they left off to the dense thicket that choked
+  the lower part of the v-shaped canyon. And I was amazed at the
+  size and density of that jungle of scrub oaks, maples and aspens.
+  From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and gold and green,
+  with bronze tinge.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could
+  see the dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little
+  particles, the springing erect of bent grasses. In some places
+  big sections of earth, a yard wide had slipped under the feet of
+  this particular bear. He appeared to be working down. Right then
+  I wanted to go up! But I could not climb out there. I had to go
+  down. Soon I was under low-spreading, dense spruces, and I had to
+  hold on desperately to keep from sliding. All the time naturally
+  I kept a keen lookout for a bear. Every stone and tree trunk
+  resembled a bear. I decided if I met a grizzly that I would not
+  annoy him on that slope. I would say: "Nice bear, I won't hurt
+  you!" Still the situation had some kind of charm. But to claim I
+  was not frightened would not be strictly truthful. I slid over
+  the trail of that bear into the trail of another one, and under
+  the last big spruce on that part of the slope I found a hollow
+  nest of pine needles and leaves, and if that bed was not still
+  warm then my imagination lent considerable to the moment.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond this began the edge of the thicket. It was small pine
+  at first, so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as
+  dark as twilight. The ground was a slant of brown pine needles,
+  so slippery, that if I could not have held on to trees and
+  branches I never would have kept my feet. In this dark strip I
+  had more than apprehensions. What a comfortable place to
+  encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly bear! The manzanita
+  thicket was preferable. But as Providence would have it I did not
+  encounter one.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon I worked or wormed out of the pines into the thicket of
+  scrub oaks, maples and aspens. The change was welcome. Not only
+  did the slope lengthen out, but the light changed from gloom to
+  gold. There was half a foot of scarlet, gold, bronze, red and
+  purple leaves on the ground, and every step I made I kicked
+  acorns about to rustle and roll. Bear sign was everywhere, tracks
+  and trails and beds and scratches. I kept going down, and the
+  farther down I got the lighter it grew, and more approaching a
+  level. One glade was strangely luminous and beautiful with a
+  blending of gold and purple light made by the sun shining through
+  the leaves overhead down upon the carpet of leaves on the ground.
+  Then I came into a glade that reminded me of Kipling's moonlight
+  dance of the wild elephants. Here the leaves and fern were rolled
+  and matted flat, smooth as if done by a huge roller. Bears and
+  bears had lolled and slept and played there. A little below this
+  glade was a place, shady and cool, where a seep of water came
+  from under a bank. It looked like a herd of cattle had stamped
+  the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little ones no
+  longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot
+  long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This
+  little spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of
+  the bear pen in the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen
+  for sight of bear trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a
+  little too much. I thought it was too much because the place was
+  lonely and dark and absolutely silent. I went on down to the
+  gully that ran down the middle of the canyon. It was more open
+  here. The sun got through, and there were some big pines.</p>
+
+  <p>I could see the bluff that the Haughts had climbed so
+  laboriously, and now I understood why they had been so slow. It
+  was straight up, brush and jumbled rock, and two hundred feet
+  over my head. Somewhere above that bluff was the bluff where our
+  bear had run along.</p>
+
+  <p>I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to
+  deceive me, but I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed
+  unwise for me to go on down the canyon, for if I did not meet the
+  men I would find myself lost. As it was I would have my troubles
+  climbing out.</p>
+
+  <p>I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had
+  come down, hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and
+  not so vastly inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse!
+  It was thicker, darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if
+  possible, actually more bear sign. I had to pull myself up by
+  holding to the trees and branches. I had to rest every few steps.
+  I had to watch and listen all the time. Half-way up the trunks of
+  the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent down-hill. They
+  curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood upright.
+  And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely
+  almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course
+  caused by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more
+  interesting if I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter
+  and wetter than I had been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with
+  the labor and worry and exhaustion, my apprehensions had
+  increased. They increased until I had to confess that I was
+  scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the leaves somewhere
+  below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a bear. I
+  would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear
+  coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score,
+  so had Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had
+  Haught. "Don't never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if
+  you do he'll just roll up an' pile down on you!"</p>
+
+  <p>I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to
+  burst. Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding
+  down I got desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would
+  happen along to make an end to my misery.</p>
+
+  <p>It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which
+  constituted the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past
+  three when finally I reached the saddle where we had shot at the
+  grizzly. I rested as long as I dared. I had still a long way to
+  go up that ridge to the rim, and how did I know whether or not I
+  could surmount it.</p>
+
+  <p>However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit.
+  Then I started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the
+  open, high above the canyons, and the vast basin still farther
+  below, yet far indeed under the pine-fringed rim above. This
+  climb was all over stone. The ridge was narrow-crested, yellow,
+  splintered rock, with a few dwarf pines and spruces and an
+  occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a sound that I did
+  not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and the other
+  hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an hour
+  I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of
+  course that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat
+  down on a high backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and
+  bulge of ridge above me. Using my glasses I made sure that I
+  could climb out. It would be a task equal to those of
+  lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to realize
+  that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the
+  task.</p>
+
+  <p>Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the
+  hour. This was one of my especial joys of the open&mdash;to be
+  alone high on some promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery.
+  The sun was still an hour from setting, and it had begun to
+  soften, to grow intense, and more golden. There were clouds and
+  lights that promised a magnificent sunset.</p>
+
+  <p>So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone
+  loose and watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down,
+  to make the dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually
+  start an avalanche that would roar down into the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black
+  ridges and canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great
+  mountain ranges enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed
+  promontories of the rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood
+  out over the void. The colors of autumn gleamed under the cliffs,
+  everywhere patches of gold and long slants of green and spots of
+  scarlet and clefts of purple.</p>
+
+  <p>The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had
+  to step up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body.
+  My rifle grew to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of
+  lead around my waist. If I had been hot and wet below in the
+  thicket I wondered what I grew on the last steps of this ridge.
+  Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen pleasure. I did not
+  analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be there.</p>
+
+  <p>The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable,
+  all grown over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by
+  hauling myself up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges
+  of rock there, and holding to the brush, at last, panting and
+  spent, I reached the top.</p>
+
+  <p>I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
+  unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep
+  and ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side
+  of the ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around.
+  There was George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own
+  horse Stockings.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and
+  scarlet thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will
+  seem, that the first object I clearly distinguished was a big
+  black bear standing in an open aisle at the upper reach of the
+  thicket close to the cliff. He shone black as shiny coal. He was
+  looking down into the thicket, as if listening to the baying
+  hound.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling
+  excitement, and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the
+  instant I saw his shining fur through the circle of my rear sight
+  he heard me and jumped, and my bullet missed him. Like a black
+  flash he was gone around a corner of gray ledge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long
+  day&mdash;to get a chance like that&mdash;and miss!"</p>
+
+  <p>All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of
+  which I could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a
+  glorious golden ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an
+  intense belt of color&mdash;Coleridge's yellow
+  lightning&mdash;and it extended to a bank of cloud that seemed
+  transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of purest
+  blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
+  exquisitely flecked with gold.</p>
+
+  <p>Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
+  transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the
+  rim, back to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied
+  before I located the spot. I just about had strength enough left
+  to straddle him. And presently through the twilight shadows I
+  caught a bright glimmer of our camp-fire. Supper was ready;
+  Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the men were waiting for
+  me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As I sat to a
+  bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions
+  seemed absolutely satisfying.</p>
+
+  <p>George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard
+  and seen a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he
+  had overshot and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking
+  a slide some four hundred yards down the canyon slope, and
+  forgetting that he had a heavy close-range shell in his rifle
+  instead of one of high trajectory, he had aimed accordingly, to
+  undershoot half a foot and thus lose his opportunity. Nielsen had
+  been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere he heard yells
+  and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud
+  rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd
+  told of the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they
+  had shot at the grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear
+  had rolled around in his bed across the canyon. But the hounds
+  got too tired to hold the trails late in the day. And lastly Edd
+  said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the grizzly I could hear the
+  bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure scared stiff for fear
+  you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't scared. He said,
+  'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"</p>
+
+  <p>When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's
+  adventures my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was
+  wanting on the moment except that my boy Romer was not there to
+  hear.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint
+  satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from
+  brush, surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we
+  seen five bars. Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some
+  of them big fellars, too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of
+  this canyon. When Old Dan opened up first off I wanted Edd to
+  climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin' an' we lost our chance. Fer
+  pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush. My, but thet bar was
+  rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild steer, an' he
+  ran past us close&mdash;not a hundred yards. I never heard a
+  heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an'
+  thet bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the
+  grizzly thet you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but
+  Edd an' I lammed a couple after him jest for luck. One of the
+  pups was nippin' his heels. Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet
+  was all of thet. We plumb busted ourselves gettin' on top of the
+  bench to head off your bar. Only we hadn't time. Then we worried
+  along around to the top of thet higher bluff an' there I was so
+  played-out I thought my day had come. We kept our eyes peeled,
+  an' pretty soon I spied a big brown bar actin' queer in an open
+  spot across the canyon. Edd seen him too, an' we argued about
+  what thet bar was doin'. He lay in a small open place at the foot
+  of a spruce. He wagged his head slow an' he made as if to roll
+  over, an' he stretched his paws, an' acted shore queer. Edd said:
+  'Thet bar's crippled. He's been shot by one of the boys, an' he's
+  tryin' to get up.' But I shore didn't exactly agree with Edd. So
+  I was for watchin' him some more. He looked like a sick
+  bar&mdash;raisin' his head so slow an' droppin' it so slow an'
+  sort of twistin' his body. He looked like his back had been broke
+  an' he was tryin' to get up, but somehow I couldn't believe thet.
+  Then he lay still an' Edd swore he was dead. Shore I got almost
+  to believin' thet myself, when he waked up. An' then the old
+  scoundrel slid around lazy like a torn cat by the fire, and sort
+  of rolled on his back an' stretched. Next he slapped at himself
+  with his paws. If he wasn't sick he was shore actin' queer with
+  thet canyon full of crackin' guns an' bayin' hounds an' yellin'
+  men. I begun to get suspicious. Shore he must be a dyin' bear. So
+  I said to Edd: 'Let's bast him a couple just fer luck.' Wal, when
+  we shot up jumped thet sick bar quicker'n you could wink. An' he
+  piled into the thicket while I was goin' down after another
+  shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper never heard the
+  racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed in thet
+  sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like a
+  kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore
+  near bein' fooled. The old Jasper! We'll assassinate him fer
+  thet!"</p>
+
+  <center>
+    VIII
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Five more long arduous days we put in chasing bears under the
+  rim from Pyle's Canyon to Verde Canyon. In all we started over a
+  dozen bears. But I was inclined to think that we chased the same
+  bears over and over from one canyon to another. The boys got a
+  good many long-range shots, which, however, apparently did no
+  damage. But as for me, the harder and farther I tramped and the
+  longer I watched and waited the less opportunity had I to shoot a
+  bear.</p>
+
+  <p>This circumstance weighed heavily upon the spirits of my
+  comrades. They wore their boots out, as well as the feet of the
+  hounds, trying to chase a bear somewhere near me. And wherever I
+  stayed or went there was the place the bears avoided. Edd and
+  Neilsen lost flesh in this daily toil. Haught had gloomy moments.
+  But as for me the daily ten-or fifteen-mile grind up and down the
+  steep craggy slopes had at last trained me back to my former
+  vigorous condition, and I was happy. No one knew it, not even
+  R.C., but the fact was I really did not care in the least whether
+  I shot a bear or not. Bears were incidental to my hunting trip. I
+  had not a little secret glee over the praise accorded me by
+  Copple and Haught and Nielsen, who all thought that the way I
+  persevered was remarkable. They would have broken their necks to
+  get me a bear. At times R.C. when he was tired fell victim to
+  discouragement and he would make some caustic remark: "I don't
+  know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle because
+  it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise
+  up and swipe you one!"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi passed from concern to grief over what he considered
+  my bad luck: "My goodnish! No see bear to-day?... Maybe more
+  better luck to-morrow." If I could have had some of Takahashi's
+  luck I would scarcely have needed to leave camp. He borrowed
+  Nielsen's 30-40 rifle and went hunting without ever having shot
+  it. He rode the little buckskin mustang, that, remarkable to
+  state, had not yet thrown him or kicked him. And on that occasion
+  he led the mustang back to camp with a fine two-point buck on the
+  saddle. "Camp need fresh meat," said the Jap, with his broad
+  smile. "I go hunt. Ride along old road. Soon nice fat deer walk
+  out from bush. Twenty steps away&mdash;maybe. I get off. I no
+  want kill deer so close, so I walk on him. Deer he no scared. He
+  jump off few steps&mdash;stick up his ears&mdash;look at horse
+  all same like he thought him deer too. I no aim gun from
+  shoulder. I just shoot. No good. Deer he run. I aim
+  then&mdash;way front of him&mdash;shoot&mdash;deer he drop right
+  down dead.... Aw, easy to get deer!"</p>
+
+  <p>I would have given a great deal to have been able to describe
+  Haught's face when the Jap finished his story of killing that
+  deer. But such feat was beyond human ingenuity. "Wal," ejaculated
+  the hunter, "in all my days raslin' round with fools packin' guns
+  I never seen the likes of thet. No wonder the Japs licked the
+  Russians!" This achievement of Takahashi's led me to suggest his
+  hunting bear with us. "Aw sure&mdash;I kill bear too," he said.
+  Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never made detours.
+  He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple and Edd
+  were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a
+  wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man
+  made, carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed
+  as a goat, perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I
+  took occasion to ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain
+  climbing in Japan. "Aw sure. I have father own whole mountain
+  more bigger here. I climb high&mdash;saw wood. Leetle boy so
+  big." And he held his hand about a foot from the ground. Thus for
+  me every day brought out some further interesting or humorous or
+  remarkable feature pertaining to Takahashi.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day added to the discouragement of my party. We drove
+  Verde Canyon and ran the dogs into a nest of steel-traps. Big
+  Foot was caught in one, and only the remarkable size and strength
+  of his leg saved it from being broken. Nielsen found a poor,
+  miserable, little fox in a trap, where it had been for days, and
+  was nearly dead. Edd found a dead skunk in another. He had to
+  call the hounds in. We returned to camp. That night was really
+  the only cheerless one the men spent around the fire. They did
+  not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a locality there
+  could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched upon the
+  countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. I let them
+  all have their say. Finally Haught spoke up: "Wal, fellars, I'm
+  figgerin' hard an' I reckon here's my stand. We jest naturally
+  have to get Doc an' his brother a bear apiece. Shore I expected
+  we'd get 'em a couple. Now, them traps we seen are all small. We
+  didn't run across no bear traps. An' I reckon we can risk the
+  dogs. We'll shore go back an' drive Verde Canyon. We can't do no
+  worse than break a leg for a dog. I'd hate to see thet happen to
+  Old Dan or Tom. But we'll take a chance."</p>
+
+  <p>After that there fell a moment's silence. I could see from
+  Edd's face what a serious predicament this was. Nothing was
+  plainer than his fondness for the hounds. Finally he said: "Sure.
+  We'll take a chance." Their devotion to my interest, their simple
+  earnestness, warmed me to them. But not for all the bears under
+  the rim would I have been wittingly to blame for Old Dan or Old
+  Tom breaking a leg.</p>
+
+  <p>"Men, I've got a better plan," I said. "We'll let the bears
+  here rest for a spell. Supplies are about gone. Let's go back to
+  Beaver Dam camp for a week or so. Rest up the hounds. Maybe we'll
+  have a storm and a cold snap that will improve conditions. Then
+  we'll come back here. I'll send Haught down to buy off the
+  trappers. I'll pay them to spring their traps and let us have our
+  hunt without risk of the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>Instantly the men brightened. The insurmountable obstacles
+  seemed to melt away. Only Haught demurred a little at additional
+  and unreasonable expense for me. But I cheered him over this
+  hindrance, and the last part of that evening round the camp-fire
+  was very pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>The following morning we broke camp, and all rode off, except
+  Haught and his son George, who remained to hunt a strayed burro.
+  "Reckon thet lion eat him. My best burro. He was the one your boy
+  was always playin' with. I'm goin' to assassinate thet lion."</p>
+
+  <p>On the way back to Beaver Dam camp I happened to be near
+  Takahashi when he dismounted to shoot at a squirrel. Returning to
+  get back in the saddle the Jap forgot to approach the mustang
+  from the proper side. There was a scuffle between Takahashi and
+  the mustang as to which of them should possess the bridle. The
+  Jap lost this argument. Edd had to repair the broken bridle. I
+  watched Takahashi and could see that he did not like the mustang
+  any better than the mustang liked him. Soon the struggle for
+  supremacy would take place between this ill assorted rider and
+  horse. I rather felt inclined to favor the latter; nevertheless
+  it was only fair to Takahashi to admit that his buckskin-colored
+  mustang had some mean traits.</p>
+
+  <p>In due time I arrived at our permanent camp, to be the last to
+  get in. Lee and his father welcomed us as familiar faces in a
+  strange land. As I dismounted I heard heavy thuds and cracks
+  accompanied by fierce utterances in a foreign tongue. These
+  sounds issued from the corral.</p>
+
+  <p>"I'll bet the Jap got what was coming to him," declared
+  Lee.</p>
+
+  <p>We all ran toward the corral. A bunch of horses obstructed our
+  view, and we could not see Takahashi until we ran round to the
+  other side. The Jap had the buckskin mustang up in a corner and
+  was vigorously whacking him with a huge pole. Not by any means
+  was the mustang docile. Like a mule, he kicked. "Hey George,"
+  yelled Lee, "don't kill him! What's the matter?"</p>
+
+  <p>Takahashi slammed the mustang one parting blow, which broke
+  the club, and then he turned to us. We could see from dust and
+  dirt on his person that he had lately been in close relation to
+  the earth. Takahashi's face was pale except for a great red lump
+  on his jaw. The Jap was terribly angry. He seemed hurt, too. With
+  a shaking hand he pointed to the bruise on his jaw.</p>
+
+  <p>"Look what he do!" exclaimed Takahashi. "He throw me off!...
+  He kick me awful hard! I kill him sure next time."</p>
+
+  <p>Lee and I managed to conceal our mirth until our irate cook
+  had gotten out of hearing. "Look&mdash;what&mdash;he&mdash;do!"
+  choked Lee, imitating Takahashi. Then Lee broke out and roared. I
+  had to join him. I laughed till I cried. My family and friends
+  severely criticise this primitive trait of mine, but I can not
+  help it. Later I went to Takahashi and asked to examine his jaw,
+  fearing it might have been broken. This fear of mine, however,
+  was unfounded. Moreover the Jap had recovered from his pain and
+  anger. "More better now," he said, with a grin. "Maybe my fault
+  anyhow."</p>
+
+  <p>Next day we rested, and the following morning was so fine and
+  clear and frosty that we decided to go hunting. We rode east on
+  the way to See Lake through beautiful deep forest.</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a deer trotting away into the woods. I jumped off,
+  jerked out my gun, and ran hard, hoping to see him in an opening.
+  Lo! I jumped a herd of six more deer, some of them bucks. They
+  plunged everywhere. I tried frantically to get my sights on one.
+  All I could aim at was bobbing ears. I shot twice, and of course
+  missed. R.C. shot four times, once at a running buck, and three
+  at a small deer that he said was flying!</p>
+
+  <p>Here Copple and Haught caught up with us. We went on, and
+  turned off the road on the blazed trail to See Lake. It was
+  pretty open forest, oaks and scattered pines, and a few spruce.
+  The first park we came to was a flat grassy open, with places
+  where deer licked the bare earth. Copple left several pounds of
+  salt in these spots. R.C. and I went up to the upper end where he
+  had seen deer before. No deer this day! But saw three turkeys,
+  one an old gobbler. We lost sight of them.</p>
+
+  <p>Then Copple and R.C. went one way and Haught and I another. We
+  went clear to the rim, and then circled around, and eventually
+  met R.C. and Copple. Together we started to return. Going down a
+  little draw we found water, and R.C. saw where a rock had been
+  splashed with water and was still wet. Then I saw a turkey track
+  upon this rock. We slipped up the slope, with me in the lead. As
+  I came out on top, I saw five big gobblers feeding. Strange how
+  these game birds thrilled me! One saw me and started to run. Like
+  a streak! Another edged away into pines. Then I espied one with
+  his head and neck behind a tree and he was scratching away in the
+  pine needles. I could not see much of him, but that little was
+  not running, so I drew down upon him, tried to aim fine, and
+  fired. He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and
+  needles flying. Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted
+  into a thicket.</p>
+
+  <p>Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an
+  ostrich in the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him.
+  In vain!</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught
+  and I went the other way. We could find no trace of ours. And we
+  returned to our horses.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently we heard shots.
+  One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;pause&mdash;then several more.
+  And finally more, to a total number of fifteen. I could not stand
+  that and I had to hurry back into the woods. I saw one old
+  gobbler running wildly around as if lost, but I did not shoot at
+  him because he seemed to be in line with the direction which R.C.
+  and Copple had taken. I should have run after him until he went
+  some other way.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not find the hunters, and returned to our resting
+  place, which they had reached ahead of me. They had a turkey
+  each, gobblers about two years old Copple said.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. told an interesting story of how he had run in the
+  direction the two turkeys had taken, and suddenly flushed thirty
+  or forty more, some big old gobblers, but mostly young. They
+  scattered and ran. He followed as fast as he could, shooting a
+  few times. Copple could not keep up with him, but evidently had a
+  few shots himself. R.C. chased most of the flock across several
+  small canyons, till he came to a deep canyon. Here he hoped to
+  make a killing when the turkeys ran up the far slope. But they
+  flew across! And he heard them clucking over there. He crossed,
+  and went on cautiously. Once he saw three turkey heads sticking
+  above a log. Wise old gobblers! They protected their bodies while
+  they watched for him. He tried to get sidewise to them but they
+  ran off. Then he followed until once more he heard clucking.</p>
+
+  <p>Here he sat down, just beyond the edge of a canyon, and began
+  to call with his turkey wing. It thrilled him to hear his calls
+  answered on all sides. Here was a wonderful opportunity. He
+  realized that the turkeys were mostly young and scattered, and
+  frightened, and wanted to come together. He kept calling, and as
+  they neared him on all sides he felt something more than the zest
+  of hunting. Suddenly Copple began to shoot. Spang! Spang! Spang!
+  R.C. saw the dust fly under one turkey. He heard the bullet
+  glance. The next shot killed a turkey. Then R.C. yelled that he
+  was no turkey! Then of that scattering flock he managed to knock
+  over one for himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple had been deceived by the call of an amateur. That
+  flattered R.C., but he was keenly disappointed that Copple had
+  spoiled the situation.</p>
+
+  <p>During the day the blue sky was covered by thin flying clouds
+  that gradually thickened and darkened. The wind grew keener and
+  colder, and veered to the southwest. We all said storm. There was
+  no sunset Darker clouds rolled up, obliterating the few
+  stars.</p>
+
+  <p>We went to bed. Long after that I heard the swell and roar and
+  crash and lull of the wind in the pines, a sound I had learned to
+  love in Buckskin Forest with Buffalo Jones. At last I fell
+  asleep.</p>
+
+  <p>Sometime in the night I awoke. A fine rain was pattering on
+  the tent. It grew stronger. After a while I went to sleep again.
+  Upon awakening I found that the storm had struck with a
+  vengeance. It was dull gray daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with
+  rain and snow.</p>
+
+  <p>I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen
+  the ground ropes, and found that it was nipping cold. My fingers
+  ached. The storm increased, and then we fully appreciated the
+  tent with stove. The rain roared on the tent roof, and all
+  morning the wind increased, and the air grew colder. I hoped it
+  would turn to snow.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon indeed we were storm bound. On the third day the wind
+  reached a very high velocity. The roar in the pines was
+  stupendous. Many times I heard the dull crash of a falling tree.
+  With the ground saturated by the copious rain, and the fury of
+  the storm blast, a great many trees were felled. That night it
+  rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now low, now
+  vigorously. After morning snow began to fall. But it did not lay
+  long. After a while it changed to sleet. At times the dark,
+  lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and
+  to show a patch of blue. These last however were soon obscured by
+  the scudding gray pall. Every now and then a little shower of
+  rain or sleet pattered on the tents. We looked for a clearing
+  up.</p>
+
+  <p>That night about eight o'clock the clouds vanished and stars
+  shone. In the night the wind rose and roared. In the morning all
+  was dark, cloudy, raw, cold. But the wind had died out, and there
+  were spots of blue showing. These spots enlarged as the morning
+  advanced, and about nine the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified
+  the forest. "Bright sunny days will soon come again!"</p>
+
+  <p>It was good to have hope and belief in that.</p>
+
+  <p>All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good
+  shape. Don lost considerable weight. He had never before been
+  left with hobbled feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm
+  of rain, sleet and snow. He had cut himself upon brush, and
+  altogether had fared poorly. He showed plainly that he had been
+  neglected. Don was the only horse I had ever known of that did
+  not welcome the wilderness and companionship with his kind.</p>
+
+  <p>We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and
+  started back to Dude Creek. It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with
+  a gale from the north, such a day as I could never have endured
+  had I not become hardened. As it was I almost enjoyed wind and
+  cold. What a transformation in the woods! The little lakes were
+  all frozen over; pines, moss, grass were white with frost. The
+  sear days had come. Not a leaf showed in the aspen and maple
+  thickets. The scrub oaks were shaggy and ragged, gray as the
+  rocks. From the rim the slopes looked steely and dark, thinned
+  out, showing the rocks and slides.</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached our old camp in Barber Shop Canyon we were all
+  glad to see Haught's lost burro waiting for us there. Not a
+  scratch showed on the shaggy lop-eared little beast. Haught for
+  once unhobbled a burro and set it free without a parting kick.
+  Nielsen too had observed this omission on Haught's part. Nielsen
+  was a desert man and he knew burros. He said prospectors were
+  inclined to show affection for burros by sundry cuffs and kicks.
+  And Nielsen told me a story about Haught. It seemed the bear
+  hunter was noted for that habit of kicking burros. Sometimes he
+  was in fun and sometimes, when burros were obstinate, he was in
+  earnest. Upon one occasion a big burro stayed away from camp
+  quite a long time&mdash;long enough to incur Haught's
+  displeasure. He needed the burro and could not find it, and all
+  he could do was to hunt for it. Upon returning to camp there
+  stood the big gray burro, lazy and fat, just as if he had been
+  perfectly well behaved. Haught put a halter on the burro, using
+  strong language the while, and then he proceeded to exercise his
+  habit of kicking burros. He kicked this one until its fat belly
+  gave forth sounds exceedingly like a bass drum. When Haught had
+  ended his exercise he tied up the burro. Presently a man came
+  running into Haught's camp. He appeared alarmed. He was wet and
+  panting. Haught recognized him as a miner from a mine nearby.
+  "Hey Haught," panted the miner, "hev you seen&mdash;your gray
+  burro&mdash;thet big one&mdash;with white face?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Shore, there he is," replied Haught. "Son of a gun jest
+  rustled home."</p>
+
+  <p>The miner appeared immensely relieved. He looked and looked at
+  the gray burro as if to make sure it was there, in the solid
+  flesh, a really tangible object. Then he said: "We was all
+  afeared you'd kick the stuffin's out of him!... Not an hour ago
+  he was over at the mine, an' he ate five sticks of dynamite! Five
+  sticks! For Lord's sake handle him gently!"</p>
+
+  <p>Haught turned pale and suddenly sat down. "Ahuh!" was all he
+  said. But he had a strange hunted look. And not for a long time
+  did he ever again kick a burro!</p>
+  <hr>
+
+  <p>Hunting conditions at Dude Creek had changed greatly to our
+  benefit. The trappers had pulled up stakes and gone to some other
+  section of the country. There was not a hunting party within
+  fifteen miles of our camp. Leaves and acorns were all down;
+  trails were soft and easy to travel; no dust rose on the southern
+  slopes; the days were cold and bright; in every pocket and ravine
+  there was water for the dogs; from any stand we could see into
+  the shaggy thickets where before all we could see was a blaze of
+  color.</p>
+
+  <p>In three days we drove Pyle's Canyon, Dude Creek, and the
+  small adjoining canyons, chasing in all nine bears, none of which
+  ran anywhere near R.C. or me. Old Dan gave out and had to rest
+  every other day. So the gloom again began to settle thick over
+  the hopes of my faithful friends. Long since, as in 1918, I had
+  given up expectations of bagging a bear or a buck. For R.C.,
+  however, my hopes still held good. At least I did not give up for
+  him. But he shared somewhat the feelings of the men. Still he
+  worked harder than ever, abandoning the idea of waiting on one of
+  the high stands, and took to the slopes under the rim where he
+  toiled down and up all day long. It pleased me to learn,
+  presently, that this activity, strenuous as it was, became a
+  source of delight to him. How different such toil was from
+  waiting and watching on the rim!</p>
+
+  <p>On November first, a bitter cold morning, with ice in the
+  bright air, we went back to Pyle's Canyon, and four of us went
+  down with Edd and the hounds. We had several chases, and about
+  the middle of the forenoon I found myself alone, making tracks
+  for the saddle over-looking Bear Canyon. Along the south side of
+  the slope, in the still air the sun was warm, but when I got up
+  onto the saddle, in an exposed place, the wind soon chilled me
+  through. I would keep my stand until I nearly froze, then I had
+  to go around to the sunny sheltered side and warm up. The hounds
+  finally got within hearing again, and eventually appeared to be
+  in Bear Canyon, toward the mouth. I decided I ought to go round
+  the ridge on the east side and see if I could hear better.
+  Accordingly I set off, and the hard going over the sunny slope
+  was just what I needed. When I reached the end of the ridge,
+  under the great dome, I heard the hounds below me, somewhat to my
+  left. Running and plowing down through the brush I gained the
+  edge of the bluff, just in time to see some of the hounds passing
+  on. They had run a bear through that thicket, and if I had been
+  there sooner I would have been fortunate. But too late! I worked
+  around the head of this canyon and across a wide promontory.
+  Again I heard the hounds right under me. They came nearer, and
+  soon I heard rolling rocks and cracking brush, which sounds I
+  believed were made by a bear. After a while I espied Old Tom and
+  Rock working up the canyon on a trail. Then I was sure I would
+  get a shot. Presently, however, Old Tom left the trail and
+  started back. Rock came on, climbed the ridge, and hearing me
+  call he came to me. I went over to the place where he had climbed
+  out and found an enormous bear track pointing in the direction
+  the hounds had come. They had back-trailed him. Rock went back to
+  join Old Tom. Some of the pack were baying at a great rate in the
+  mouth of the next canyon. But an impassable cliff prevented me
+  from working around to that point. So I had to address myself to
+  the long steep climb upward. I had not gone far when I crossed
+  the huge bear track that Rock and Old Tom had given up. This
+  track was six inches wide and ten inches long. The bear that had
+  made it had come down this very morning from over the ridge east
+  of Bear Canyon. I trailed him up this ridge, over the steepest
+  and roughest and wildest part of it, marveling at the enormous
+  steps and jumps he made, and at the sagacity which caused him to
+  choose this route instead of the saddle trail where I had waited
+  so long. His track led up nearly to the rim and proved how he had
+  climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was
+  one of the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned
+  that Sue and several more of the hounds had held a bear for some
+  time in the box of the canyon just beyond where I had to give up.
+  Edd and Nielsen were across this canyon, unable to go farther,
+  and then yelled themselves hoarse, trying to call some of us. I
+  asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure did," replied Edd. "One of
+  them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to laugh, and told how
+  near I had come to meeting a bear that was short, fat, and heavy:
+  "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"</p>
+
+  <p>That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more
+  bitterly cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the
+  smoke and my face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted
+  myself so thoroughly that my clothes actually burned me as I lay
+  down. But they heated the blankets and that made my bed snug and
+  soon I was in the land of dreams. During the night I awoke. The
+  wind had lulled. The canopy above was clear, cold, starry,
+  beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed ten above zero.
+  Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder, but in
+  any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
+  fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze
+  stirring.</p>
+
+  <p>That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
+  atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised
+  to be as exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would
+  bag a bear!</p>
+
+  <p>When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the
+  purple basin, flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the
+  slumberous shadows. What a glorious wilderness to greet the eye
+  at sunrise! I suffered a pang to realize what men
+  missed&mdash;what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.</p>
+
+  <p>We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second
+  canyon east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi
+  followed to hug the lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George
+  held to the rim to ride east in case the hounds chased a bear
+  that way. And R.C. and I were to try to climb out and down a thin
+  rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught knew, no one had ever
+  been on.</p>
+
+  <p>Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and
+  rugged backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out
+  and down&mdash;a very narrow knife-edge extended promontory,
+  green with cedar and pine, yellow and gray with its crags and
+  rocks. A craggy point comparable to some of those in the Grand
+  Canyon! We had to study a way to get across the first deep
+  fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest and
+  climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little
+  time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end
+  in an hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle
+  slopes we had to run across, for light quick steps were the only
+  means of safe travel. And that was not safe! When we surmounted
+  to the crest we found a jumble of weathered rocks ready to slide
+  down on either side. Slabs, pyramids, columns, shale, rocks of
+  all shapes except round, lay toppling along the heaved ridge. It
+  seemed the whole ridge was ready to thunder down into the abyss.
+  Half a mile down and out from the rim we felt lost, marooned. But
+  there was something splendidly thrilling in our conquest of that
+  narrow upflung edge of mountain. Twice R.C. thought we would have
+  to abandon further progress, but I found ways to go on. How
+  lonely and wild out there! No foot save an Indian's had ever trod
+  those gray rocks or brown mats of pine needles.</p>
+
+  <p>Before we reached the dip or saddle where R.C. was to make his
+  stand the hounds opened up far below. The morning was perfectly
+  still, an unusual occurrence there along the rim. What wild
+  music! Then Edd's horn pealed out, ringing melody, a long blast
+  keen and clear, telling us above that he had started a bear. That
+  made us hurry. We arrived at the head of an incline leading down
+  to R.C.'s stand. As luck would have it the place was ideal for a
+  bear, but risky for a hunter. A bear could come four ways without
+  being seen until he was close enough to kill a man. We hurried
+  on. At the saddle there was a broad bear trail with several other
+  trails leading into it. Suddenly R.C. halted me with a warning
+  finger. "Listen!"</p>
+
+  <p>I heard a faint clear rifle shot. Then another, and a fainter
+  yell. We stood there and counted eleven more shots. Then the bay
+  of the hounds seemed to grow closer. We had little time to pick
+  and choose stands. I had yet to reach the end of the
+  ridge&mdash;a task requiring seven-league boots. But I took time
+  to choose the best possible stand for R.C. and that was one where
+  a bear approaching from only the east along under the ridge could
+  surprise him. In bad places like this we always tried to have our
+  minds made up what to do and where to get in case of being
+  charged by a wounded grizzly. In this instance there was not a
+  rock or a tree near at hand. "R.C. you'll have to stand your
+  ground and kill him, that's all," I declared, grimly. "But it's
+  quiet. You can hear a bear coming. If you do hear
+  one&mdash;wait&mdash;and make sure your first shot lets him
+  down."</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't worry. I could hear a squirrel coming over this
+  ground," replied R.C.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I went on, not exactly at ease in mind, but stirred and
+  thrilled to the keen charged atmosphere. I had to go around under
+  the base of a rocky ledge, over rough ground. Presently I dropped
+  into a bear trail, well trodden. I followed it to a corner of
+  cliff where it went down. Then I kept on over loose rock and bare
+  earth washed deep in ruts. I had to leap these. Perhaps in ten
+  minutes I had traveled a quarter of a mile or less. Then
+  <i>spang</i>! R.C.'s rifle-shot halted me. So clear and sharp, so
+  close, so startling! I was thrilled, delighted&mdash;he had
+  gotten a shot. I wanted to yell my pleasure. My blood warmed and
+  my nerves tingled. Swiftly my thoughts ran&mdash;bad luck was
+  nothing&mdash;a man had only to stick at a thing&mdash;what a
+  fine, sharp, wonderful day for adventure! How the hounds bayed!
+  Had R.C. sighted a bear somewhere below? Suddenly the still air
+  split&mdash;<i>spang</i>! R.C.'s second shot gave me a shock. My
+  breast contracted. I started back. "Suppose it was a
+  grizzly&mdash;on that bad side!" I muttered. <i>Spang</i>!... I
+  began to run. A great sweeping wave of emotion charged over me,
+  swelling all my veins to the bursting point. <i>Spang</i>! My
+  heart came to my throat. Leaping the ruts, bounding like a sheep
+  from rock to rock, I covered my back tracks. All inside me seemed
+  to flutter, yet I felt cold and hard&mdash;a sickening sense of
+  reproach that I had left my brother in a bad position.
+  <i>Spang</i>! His fifth and last shot followed swiftly after the
+  fourth&mdash;too swift to be accurate. So hurriedly a man would
+  act in close quarters. R.C. now had an empty rifle!... Like a
+  flash I crossed that slope leading to the rocks, and tore around
+  the cliff at such speed that it was a wonder I did not pitch down
+  and break my neck. How long&mdash;how terribly long I seemed in
+  reaching the corner of cliff! Then I plunged to a halt with eyes
+  darting everywhere.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C. was not in sight. The steep curved neck of slope seemed
+  all rocks, all trees, all brush. Then I heard a wild hoarse bawl
+  and a loud crashing of brush. My gaze swerved to an open spot. A
+  patch of manzanita seemed to blur round a big bear, standing up,
+  fighting the branches, threshing and growling. But where was
+  R.C.? Fearfully my gaze peered near and all around this wounded
+  bear. "Hey there!" I yelled with all my might.</p>
+
+  <p>R.C.'s answer was another <i>spang</i>. I heard the bullet hit
+  the bear. It must have gone clear through him for I saw bits of
+  fur and manzanita fly. The bear plunged out of the
+  bushes&mdash;out of my sight. How he crashed the
+  brush&mdash;rolled the rocks! I listened. Down and down he
+  crashed. Then the sound changed somewhat. He was rolling. At last
+  that thumping sound ceased, and after it the roll of rocks.</p>
+
+  <p>"Are you&mdash;all right?" I shouted.</p>
+
+  <p>Then, after a moment that made me breathless, I heard R.C.
+  laugh, a little shakily. "Sure am.... Did you see him?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes. I think he's your bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"I'm afraid he's got away. The hounds took another bear down
+  the canyon. What'll we do?"</p>
+
+  <p>"Come on down," I said.</p>
+
+  <p>Fifty yards or more down the slope we met. I showed him a
+  great splotch of blood on a flat stone. "We'll find him not far
+  down," I said. So we slid and crawled, and held to brush and
+  rocks, following that bloody trail until we came to a ledge. From
+  there I espied the bear lodged against a manzanita bush. He lay
+  on his back, all four paws extended, and he was motionless. R.C.
+  and I sat down right there on the ledge.</p>
+
+  <p>"Looks pretty big&mdash;black and brown&mdash;mostly brown," I
+  said. "I'm glad, old man, you stuck it out."</p>
+
+  <p>"Big!..." exclaimed R.C. with that same peculiar little laugh.
+  "He doesn't look big now. But up there he looked like a hill....
+  What do you think? He came up that very way you told me to look
+  out for. And if I hadn't had ears he'd got right on me. As it
+  was, when I heard little rolling stones, and then saw him, he was
+  almost on a level with me. My nerve was all right. I knew I had
+  him. And I made sure of my first shot. I knocked him flat. But he
+  got up&mdash;let out an awful snarl&mdash;and plunged my way. I
+  can't say I know he charged me. Only it was just the same as if
+  he had!... I knocked him down again and this time he began to
+  kick and jump down the slope. That was my best shot. Think I
+  missed him the next three. You see I had time to get shaky. If he
+  had kept coming at me&mdash;good night!... I had trouble loading.
+  But when I got ready again I ran down and saw him in that bush.
+  Wasn't far from him then. When he let out that bawl he saw me. I
+  don't know much about bears, but I know he wanted to get at me.
+  And I'm sure of what he'd have done.... I didn't miss my last
+  shot."</p>
+
+  <p>We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful
+  indeed had been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been
+  others not conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure
+  in wild moments and regret the risks and spilled blood
+  afterward?</p>
+
+  <center>
+    IX
+  </center>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ah-h-good!" he exclaimed, after a deep draught. "Get down an'
+  drink. Snow water an' it never goes dry."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple told me a man named Mitchell had lived in that lonely
+  place thirty years ago. Copple, as a boy, had worked for
+  him&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Deer!" he whispered, pointing. "Get off an' smoke 'em
+  up!"</p>
+
+  <p>Something shot through me&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Copple's horse, startled by my shot, began to snort and
+  plunge. "Good shot," yelled Copple. "He's our meat."</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>But Copple galloped up, and drawing his revolver, he shot the
+  deer through the head. It fell in a heap.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Yes, Ben, it was&mdash;strange," I replied, soberly. I caught
+  Copple's keen dark glance studying me. "When you open him
+  up&mdash;see what my bullet did, will you?"</p>
+
+  <p>"All right. Help me hang him to a snag here," returned Copple,
+  as he untied his lasso.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;scalping, with red-hot cinders thrown upon the
+  bleeding head, and the terrible running of the gauntlet, and
+  burning at the stake.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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?</p>
+
+  <p>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 books <i>Treasure Island</i>
+  and <i>Kidnapped</i> are full of fight and the killing of men.
+  <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> is 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the red-coated English
+  and the homespun clad American; hunters&mdash;which is a kinder
+  name for trappers&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;three minutes to be exact. According to instructions
+  the American killed this buck&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>A celebrated bear hunter and guide of the northwest told me
+  that for twenty years he had been taking eastern
+  ministers&mdash;preachers of the gospel&mdash;on hunting trips
+  into the wild. He assured me that of all the bloody
+  murderers&mdash;waders in gore, as he expressed it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;which matter I doubt considerably&mdash;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&mdash;these are the
+  ordinary sensations and actions of a hunter. No ascent too
+  lofty&mdash;no descent too perilous for him then, if he is a man
+  as well as a hunter!</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the silent lonely Indian hunter of the Pampas. He
+  hunts with a <i>bola</i>, 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&mdash;the thong binds tight&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Hunting is a savage primordial instinct inherited from our
+  ancestors. It goes back through all the ages of man, and farther
+  still&mdash;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&mdash;which he never did
+  take&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;the eye to see with&mdash;the ear to hear
+  with&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;consider the
+  ineradicable and permanent nature of the instinct.</p>
+
+  <p>The secret now of the instinctive joy and thrill and wildness
+  of the chase lies clear.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>What then should be the attitude of a thoughtful man toward
+  this liberation of an instinct&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;loss of
+  physical stature, of speech, perhaps of soul.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    X
+  </center>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, aren't you ever going to see him?" I cried at last.</p>
+
+  <p>"What?" ejaculated Copple, in surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>"Bear!" and I pointed. "This side of dead spruce."</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Watch! What will he do?&mdash;Ben, he hears the hounds."</p>
+
+  <p>How singularly thrilling to see him, how slowly he walked, how
+  devoid of fear, how stately!</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, how far away is he?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"If he climbs he'll go right to R.C.'s stand," I said, gazing
+  upward.</p>
+
+  <p>"Sure will. There's no other saddle."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Ben, could he see us so far?" I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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&mdash;wait for
+  open shots&mdash;an' make sure!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Doc, he's paddin' along!" warned Copple. "Smoke some of them
+  shells!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Some shot!" yelled Copple. "He's your bear!"</p>
+
+  <p>But my bear continued to crash through the brush. I shot again
+  and yet again, missing both times. Apparently he was coming,
+  faster now&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>"Don't shoot," shouted Copple. "He's your bear. I never make
+  any mistakes when I see game hit."</p>
+
+  <p>"But I see him coming!"</p>
+
+  <p>"Where?... By Golly! that's another bear. He's black. Yours is
+  red.... Look sharp. Next time he shows smoke him!"</p>
+
+  <p>I saw a flash of black across an open space&mdash;I heard a
+  scattering of gravel. But I had no chance to shoot. Then both of
+  us heard a bear running in thick leaves.</p>
+
+  <p>"He's gone down the canyon," said Copple. "Now look for your
+  bear."</p>
+
+  <p>"Listen Ben. The hounds are coming fast. There's
+  Rock.&mdash;There's Sue."</p>
+
+  <p>"I see them. Old Dan&mdash;what do you think of that old
+  dog?... There!&mdash;your red bear's still comin' ... He's bad
+  hurt."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>From the saddle of the great ridge above pealed down R.C.'s:
+  "Waahoo!"</p>
+
+  <p>I saw him silhouetted dark against the sky line. He waved and
+  I answered. Then he disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p>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!</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"I stopped one bear," I yelled. "Hurry. Look out for the
+  dogs!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"The hounds have quit," called Copple suddenly. "I told you he
+  was your bear."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Presently George Haught joined us, having come down the bed of
+  the canyon.</p>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>"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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>"All over," said R.C. "Are you glad?"</p>
+
+  <p>"For Old Dan's sake and Tom's and the bears&mdash;yes," I
+  replied.</p>
+
+  <p>"Me, too! But I'd never get enough of this country."</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p><a name="image-0065">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg057_m.jpg" width="448" height="621" alt=
+    "Meat in Camp ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the void. How
+  sweeping and grand the long sloping lines of ridges from the rim
+  down! Away in the east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like
+  uncertain mountains on the desert. South ranged the upheaved and
+  wild Mazatzals. Everywhere beneath me, for leagues and leagues
+  extended the timbered hills of green, the gray outcroppings of
+  rocks, the red bluffs, the golden patches of grassy valleys, lost
+  in the canyons. All these swept away in a vast billowy ocean of
+  wilderness to become dim in the purple of distance. And the sun
+  was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I took a last
+  lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this wonderland of
+  Arizona.</p><a name="image-0067"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg058a_m.jpg" width="448" height="317" alt=
+    "Burros Packed for the Trail ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0068"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg058b_m.jpg" width="448" height="358" alt=
+    "The Deadly Cholla, Most Poisonous and Pain Inflicting Of The Cactus ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <div style="height: 4em;"></div>
+
+  <h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+  <center>
+    DEATH VALLEY
+  </center>
+
+  <p>Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of
+  desert-land in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea
+  level, the most arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name
+  from the earliest days of the gold strike in California, when a
+  caravan of Mormons, numbering about seventy, struck out from Salt
+  Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and make a short cut to the gold
+  fields. All but two of these prospectors perished in the deep,
+  iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that time became
+  known as Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the
+  world that the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of
+  minerals; and since then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers
+  have lost their lives there. To seek gold and to live in the
+  lonely waste places of the earth have been and ever will be
+  driving passions of men.</p>
+
+  <p>My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On
+  most of my trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate
+  as to comrades or guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen
+  were so singular that I think they will serve as an interesting
+  introduction. Some years ago I received a letter, brief, clear
+  and well-written, in which the writer stated that he had been a
+  wanderer over the world, a sailor before the mast, and was now a
+  prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone down into the
+  desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the southwest, and
+  knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my story
+  <i>Desert Gold</i> in which I told about a lost gold mine. And
+  the point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as
+  to where the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and
+  give me half. His name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to
+  my regret the lost gold mine existed only in my imagination, but
+  if he would come to Avalon to see me perhaps we might both profit
+  by such a meeting. To my surprise he came. He was a man of about
+  thirty-five, of magnificent physique, weighing about one hundred
+  and ninety, and he was so enormously broad across the shoulders
+  that he did not look his five feet ten. He had a wonderful head,
+  huge, round, solid, like a cannon-ball. And his bronzed face, his
+  regular features, square firm jaw, and clear gray eyes, fearless
+  and direct, were singularly attractive to me. Well educated, with
+  a strange calm poise, and a cool courtesy, not common in
+  Americans, he evidently was a man of good family, by his own
+  choice a rolling stone and adventurer.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen accompanied me on two trips into the wilderness of
+  Arizona, on one of which he saved my life, and on the other he
+  rescued all our party from a most uncomfortable and possibly
+  hazardous situation&mdash;but these are tales I may tell
+  elsewhere. In January 1919 Nielsen and I traveled around the
+  desert of southern California from Palm Springs to Picacho, and
+  in March we went to Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>Nowadays a little railroad, the Tonapah and Tidewater
+  Railroad, runs northward from the Santa Fe over the barren
+  Mojave, and it passes within fifty miles of Death Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>It was sunset when we arrived at Death Valley Junction&mdash;a
+  weird, strange sunset in drooping curtains of transparent cloud,
+  lighting up dark mountain ranges, some peaks of which were
+  clear-cut and black against the sky, and others veiled in
+  trailing storms, and still others white with snow. That night in
+  the dingy little store I heard prospectors talk about float,
+  which meant gold on the surface, and about high grade ores, zinc,
+  copper, silver, lead, manganese, and about how borax was mined
+  thirty years ago, and hauled out of Death Valley by teams of
+  twenty mules. Next morning, while Nielsen packed the outfit, I
+  visited the borax mill. It was the property of an English firm,
+  and the work of hauling, grinding, roasting borax ore went on day
+  and night. Inside it was as dusty and full of a powdery
+  atmosphere as an old-fashioned flour mill. The ore was hauled by
+  train from some twenty miles over toward the valley, and was
+  dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the grinders. For
+  an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid down
+  into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced
+  operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum
+  out of the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five
+  hundred sacks a day. The most significant thing he said was that
+  men did not last long at such labor, and in the mines six months
+  appeared to be the limit of human endurance. How soon I had
+  enough of that choking air in the room where the borax was
+  ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in huge round
+  revolving furnaces&mdash;I found that intolerable. When I got out
+  into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And
+  that relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored,
+  who were chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to
+  the hard tasks of the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers
+  of the borax mines and mills, like the stokers of ships, and
+  coal-diggers, and blast-furnace hands&mdash;like thousands and
+  millions of men, killed themselves outright or impaired their
+  strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless others were
+  found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with some
+  phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
+  it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
+  wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these
+  horny-handed toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining
+  users of brawn and bone, these giants who breast the elements,
+  who till the earth and handle iron, who fight the natural forces
+  with their bodies.</p>
+
+  <p>That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and
+  greasewood slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill
+  now only a smoky blot on the desert floor. When we reached the
+  pass between the Black Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we
+  left the road, and were soon lost to the works of man. How
+  strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped away from me. I
+  felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he stopped
+  talking, except an occasional word to the mules.</p>
+
+  <p>The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its
+  name. It sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored
+  strata tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of
+  black and red and yellow, rather dull, ran through the great
+  drab-gray mass. This end of the range, an iron mountain, frowned
+  down upon us with hard and formidable aspect. The peak was draped
+  in streaky veils of rain from low-dropping clouds that appeared
+  to have lodged there. All below lay clear and cold in the
+  sunlight.</p><a name="image-0069"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg059a_m.jpg" width="448" height="340" alt=
+    "The Colored Calico Mountains ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0070"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg059b_m.jpg" width="448" height="347" alt=
+    "Down the Long Winding Wash to Death Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about
+  three thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind
+  was cold. The narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass
+  deepened, widened, almost imperceptibly at first, and then
+  gradually until its proportions were striking. It was a gully
+  where the gravel washed down during rains, and where a scant
+  vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
+  struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature
+  in sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I
+  looked back, because as we could not see far ahead all the superb
+  scene spread and towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to
+  be a wide canyon, winding away from under the massive,
+  impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The high side of this
+  magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced west&mdash;a
+  succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
+  jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata
+  running through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around
+  the peaks. Shadows sailed along the slopes.</p><a name=
+  "image-0071"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg060_m.jpg" width="728" height="448" alt=
+    "Desolation and Decay. Looking Down over the Denuded Ridges to the Stark Valley of Death ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand.
+  After about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not
+  mind hard work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am
+  extremely wearied my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat
+  by depression or melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get
+  tired while Nielsen kept on with his wonderful stride.</p>
+
+  <p>"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained.
+  "Slow up a little."</p>
+
+  <p>Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a
+  little tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere
+  on the east slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were
+  killed by mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at
+  once for the nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one
+  hundred and fifty miles. He could carry only so much of his
+  outfit, and as some of it was valuable to him he discarded all
+  his food except a few biscuits, and a canteen of water. Resting
+  only a few hours, without sleep at all, he walked the hundred and
+  fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed that Nielsen, by
+  telling me such incidents of his own wild experience, inspired me
+  to more endurance than I knew I possessed.</p>
+
+  <p>As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to
+  grow. It finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a
+  valley running west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a
+  long sweeping slant of earth, like the incline of a glacier, to
+  rounded spurs. Half way up this slope, where the brown earth
+  lightened there showed an outcropping of clay-amber and cream and
+  cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and clear. This bright
+  spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other clay slopes
+  of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and colors
+  indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
+  hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were
+  soon greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped,
+  fantastic in shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak
+  dominating all. The colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all
+  stained by a descending band of crimson, as if a higher slope had
+  been stabbed to let its life blood flow down. The softness, the
+  richness and beauty of this texture of earth amazed and delighted
+  my eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and
+  rounded a sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held
+  mute in our tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the
+  left and the dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see
+  far down into a gulf, a hazy void, a vast stark valley that
+  seemed streaked and ridged and canyoned, an abyss into which
+  veils of rain were dropping and over which broken clouds hung,
+  pierced by red and gold rays.</p>
+
+  <p>Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at
+  first sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen
+  stood like a statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he
+  strode on. I followed, and every second saw more and different
+  aspects, that could not, however, change the first stunning
+  impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I went on down the widening
+  canyon, looking into that changing void. How full of color! It
+  smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white washes
+  brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
+  white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze,
+  sinister and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this
+  valley, and over the western drooped gray veils of rain, like
+  thinnest lacy clouds, through which gleams of the sun shone.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and
+  at last checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with
+  commanding and magnificent view. As I did not attempt the
+  impossible&mdash;to write down thoughts and
+  sensations&mdash;afterward I could remember only a few. How
+  desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of
+  the earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little
+  day seemed so easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to
+  set and the storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene
+  darkened, changed every moment, brightened, grew full of luminous
+  red light and then streaked by golden gleams. The tips of the
+  Panamint Mountains came out silver above the purple clouds. At
+  sunset the moment was glorious&mdash;dark, forbidding, dim,
+  weird, dismal, yet still tinged with gold. Not like any other
+  scene! Dante's Inferno! Valley of Shadows! Canyon of Purple
+  Veils!</p>
+
+  <p>When the sun had set and all that upheaved and furrowed world
+  of rock had received a mantle of gray, and a slumberous
+  sulphurous ruddy haze slowly darkened to purple and black, then I
+  realized more fully that I was looking down into Death
+  Valley.</p>
+
+  <p>Twilight was stealing down when I caught up with Nielsen. He
+  had selected for our camp a protected nook near where the canyon
+  floor bore some patches of sage, the stalks and roots of which
+  would serve for firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain,
+  pitched our little tent and made our bed all in short order. But
+  it was dark long before we had supper. During the meal we talked
+  a little, but afterward, when the chores were done, and the mules
+  had become quiet, and the strange thick silence had settled down
+  upon us, we did not talk at all.</p>
+
+  <p>The night was black, with sky mostly obscured by clouds. A
+  pale haze marked the west where the after glow had faded; in the
+  south one radiant star crowned a mountain peak. I strolled away
+  in the darkness and sat down upon a stone. How intense the
+  silence! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like, dreaming, waiting, a silence
+  of ages, burdened with the history of the past, awful! I strained
+  my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or drop of
+  weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This
+  silence had something terrifying in it, making me a man alone on
+  the earth. The great spaces, the wild places as they had been
+  millions of years before! I seemed to divine how through them man
+  might develop from savage to a god, and how alas! he might go
+  back again.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp Nielsen had gone to bed and the fire
+  had burned low. I threw on some branches of sage. The fire blazed
+  up. But it seemed different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no
+  glow, no sparkle! Perhaps it was owing to scant and poor wood.
+  Still I thought it was owing as much to the place. The sadness,
+  the loneliness, the desolateness of this place weighed upon the
+  camp-fire the same as it did upon my heart.</p>
+
+  <p>We got up at five-thirty. At dawn the sky was a cold leaden
+  gray, with a dull gold and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager
+  and nipping, blew up the canyon. At six o'clock the sky
+  brightened somewhat and the day did not promise so
+  threatening.</p>
+
+  <p>An hour later we broke camp. Traveling in the early morning
+  was pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon,
+  arriving at Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest.
+  This stream of warm water flowed down from a gully that headed up
+  in the Funeral Mountains. It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat
+  acrid and soapy. A green thicket of brush was indeed welcome to
+  the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse kind of grass, and
+  arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named bore a pink
+  fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite fragrant.
+  Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by
+  several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk.
+  They all appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace
+  Creek we came upon a spring of poison water. It was clear,
+  sparkling, with a greenish cast, and it deposited a white crust
+  on the margins. Nielsen, kicking around in the sand, unearthed a
+  skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not so very old. Some
+  thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that deceiving
+  spring. The gruesome and the beautiful, the tragic and the
+  sublime, go hand in hand down the naked shingle of this desolate
+  desert.</p>
+
+  <p>While tramping around in the neighborhood of Furnace Creek I
+  happened upon an old almost obliterated trail. It led toward the
+  ridges of clay, and when I had climbed it a little ways I began
+  to get an impression that the slopes on the other side must run
+  down into a basin or canyon. So I climbed to the top.</p>
+
+  <p>The magnificent scenes of desert and mountain, like the
+  splendid things of life, must be climbed for. In this instance I
+  was suddenly and stunningly confronted by a yellow gulf of
+  cone-shaped and fan-shaped ridges, all bare crinkly clay, of
+  gold, of amber, of pink, of bronze, of cream, all tapering down
+  to round-knobbed lower ridges, bleak and barren, yet wonderfully
+  beautiful in their stark purity of denudation; until at last far
+  down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and blue and
+  ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams&mdash;the
+  Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red
+  slope, merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint
+  Range, and here line on line, and bulge on bulge rose the bold
+  benches, and on up the unscalable outcroppings of rock, like
+  colossal ribs of the earth, on and up the steep slopes to where
+  their density of blue black color began to thin out with streaks
+  of white, and thence upward to the last noble height, where the
+  cold pure snow gleamed against the sky.</p>
+
+  <p>I descended into this yellow maze, this world of gullies and
+  ridges where I found it difficult to keep from getting lost. I
+  did lose my bearings, but as my boots made deep imprints in the
+  soft clay I knew it would be easy to back-track my trail. After a
+  while this labyrinthine series of channels and dunes opened into
+  a wide space enclosed on three sides by denuded slopes, mostly
+  yellow. These slopes were smooth, graceful, symmetrical, with
+  tiny tracery of erosion, and each appeared to retain its own
+  color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were always
+  dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic
+  region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled
+  on the opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue,
+  and of a thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the
+  golds and russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its
+  slopes were changing colors&mdash;a dark beautiful mouse color on
+  one side and a strange pearly cream on the other. Between these
+  great corners of the curve climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope
+  and amber, to meet wonderful veins of green&mdash;green as the
+  sea in sunlight&mdash;and tracery of white&mdash;and on the bold
+  face of this amphitheater, high up, stood out a zigzag belt of
+  dull red, the stain of which had run down to tinge the other
+  hues. Above all this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast
+  of the mountain, growing darker with earthy browns, up to the
+  gray old rock ramparts.</p>
+
+  <p>This place affected me so strangely, so irresistibly that I
+  remained there a long time. Something terrible had happened there
+  to men. I felt that. Something tragic was going on right
+  then&mdash;the wearing down, the devastation of the old earth.
+  How plainly that could be seen! Geologically it was more
+  remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it was the appalling
+  meaning, the absolutely indescribable beauty that overcame me. I
+  thought of those who had been inspiration to me in my work, and I
+  suffered a pang that they could not be there to see and feel with
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>On my way out of this amphitheater a hard wind swooped down
+  over the slopes, tearing up the colored dust in sheets and
+  clouds. It seemed to me each gully had its mystic pall of color.
+  I lost no time climbing out. What a hot choking ordeal! But I
+  never would have missed it even had I known I would get lost.
+  Looking down again the scene was vastly changed. A smoky weird
+  murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through the
+  shifting pall of dust!</p>
+
+  <p>In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere
+  growing warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at
+  dusk. We followed the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under
+  some cottonwood trees, on the west slope of the valley.</p>
+
+  <p>The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and
+  slept with very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away.
+  I was up at five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A
+  flare of pale gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the
+  sunrise. The tips of the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose
+  colored, and below them the slopes were red. The bulk of the
+  range showed dark. All these features gradually brightened until
+  the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The wind began to blow
+  again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling leaves, and
+  green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.</p>
+
+  <p>Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and
+  some dark velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the
+  spreading of Furnace Creek over the valley slope. A man lived
+  there, and raised this alfalfa for the mules of the borax miners.
+  He lived there alone and his was indeed a lonely, wonderful, and
+  terrible life. At this season a few Shoshone Indians were camped
+  near, helping him in his labors. This lone rancher's name was
+  Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a Denton, hunter and
+  guide, whom I had met in Lower California.</p><a name=
+  "image-0072"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg061a_m.jpg" width="448" height="335" alt=
+    "Desert Graves ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+  <a name="image-0073"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg061b_m.jpg" width="448" height="336" alt=
+    "The Ghastly Sweep of Death Valley ">
+  </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with
+  difficulty, but the content of his speech made up for its
+  brevity. He told us about the wanderers and prospectors he had
+  rescued from death by starvation and thirst; he told us about the
+  terrific noonday heat of summer; and about the incredible and
+  horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the valley. With
+  the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at midnight,
+  below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore down
+  upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
+  many summers there. As for white women&mdash;Death Valley was
+  fatal to them. The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains.
+  Denton said heat affected men differently. Those who were meat
+  eaters or alcohol drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and
+  lungs were necessary to stand the heat and density of atmosphere
+  below sea level. He told of a man who had visited his cabin, and
+  had left early in the day, vigorous and strong. A few hours later
+  he was found near the oasis unable to walk, crawling on his hands
+  and knees, dragging a full canteen of water. He never knew what
+  ailed him. It might have been heat, for the thermometer
+  registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have been
+  poison gas. Another man, young, of heavy and powerful build, lost
+  seventy pounds weight in less than two days, and was nearly dead
+  when found. The heat of Death Valley quickly dried up blood,
+  tissue, bone. Denton told of a prospector who started out at dawn
+  strong and rational, to return at sunset so crazy that he had to
+  be tied to keep him out of the water. To have drunk his fill then
+  would have killed him! He had to be fed water by spoonful.
+  Another wanderer came staggering into the oasis, blind, with
+  horrible face, and black swollen tongue protruding. He could not
+  make a sound. He also had to be roped, as if he were a mad
+  steer.</p><a name="image-0074"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <center>
+    <img src="./images/zg062_m.jpg" width="735" height="448" alt=
+    "In the Center of The Salt-incrusted Floor Of Death Valley, Three Hundred Feet Below Sea Level ">
+    </center><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I met only one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He
+  camped with us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular,
+  with brown wrinkled face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be
+  smiling to himself most of the time. He liked to talk to his
+  burros. He was exceedingly interesting. Once he nearly died of
+  thirst, having gone from noon one day till next morning without
+  water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal, but did not
+  lose his senses. Finally the burros saved his life. This old
+  fellow had been across Death Valley every month in the year. July
+  was the worst. In that month crossing should not be attempted
+  during the middle of the day.</p>
+
+  <p>I made the acquaintance of the Shoshone Indians, or rather
+  through Nielsen I met them. Nielsen had a kindly, friendly way
+  with Indians. There were half a dozen families, living in squalid
+  tents. The braves worked in the fields for Denton and the squaws
+  kept to the shade with their numerous children. They appeared to
+  be poor. Certainly they were a ragged unpicturesque group.
+  Nielsen and I visited them, taking an armload of canned fruit,
+  and boxes of sweet crackers, which they received with evident
+  joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one of the tents.
+  The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo were
+  here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
+  and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a
+  sewing machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to
+  live like Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another
+  manifestation added to my long list of degeneration of the
+  Indians by the whites! The tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I
+  never before saw so many. In a corner I saw a naked Indian baby
+  asleep on a goat skin, all his brown warm-tinted skin spotted
+  black with flies.</p>
+
+  <p>Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our
+  camp. I was surprised to hear him use good English. He said he
+  had been educated in a government school in California. From him
+  I learned considerable about Death Valley. As he was about to
+  depart, on the way to his labor in the fields, he put his hand in
+  his ragged pocket and drew forth an old beaded hat band, and with
+  calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a present of it.
+  Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had been
+  kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of
+  the many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the
+  story of the Indian&mdash;the truth, the spirit, the soul of his
+  tragedy?</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a
+  gravel ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat
+  down while my companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I
+  found a tiny flower, so tiny as to almost defy detection. The
+  color resembled sage-gray and it had the fragrance of sage. Hard
+  to find and wonderful to see&mdash;was its tiny blossom! The
+  small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined and
+  scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
+  flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its
+  unquenchable spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous
+  reddening bulk of the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly
+  over me.</p>
+
+  <p>Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in
+  zigzag flights&mdash;assuredly new and strange creatures to
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of
+  the bleak lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains.
+  Before I could compose myself to watch the valley I made the
+  discovery that near me were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One
+  had two stones at head and foot. Another had no mark at all. The
+  one nearest me had for the head a flat piece of board, with
+  lettering so effaced by weather that I could not decipher the
+  inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about between the
+  graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed to be
+  one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these
+  people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the
+  windy desert slope!</p>
+
+  <p>By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over
+  Death Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints&mdash;long
+  tapering notched mountains with all their rugged conformation
+  showing. Above floated gold and gray and silver-edged
+  clouds&mdash;below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy bronze haze,
+  gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the pale
+  desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be
+  shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast
+  scale and tremendous dimension! The clouds paled, turned rosy for
+  a moment with the afterglow, then deepened into purple gloom. A
+  sombre smoky sunset, as if this Death Valley was the gateway of
+  hell, and its sinister shades were upflung from fire.</p>
+
+  <p>The desert day was done and now the desert twilight descended.
+  Twilight of hazy purple fell over the valley of shadows. The
+  black bold lines of mountains ran across the sky and down into
+  the valley and up on the other side. A buzzard sailed low in the
+  foreground&mdash;fitting emblem of life in all that wilderness of
+  suggested death. This fleeting hour was tranquil and sad. What
+  little had it to do with the destiny of man! Death Valley was
+  only a ragged rent of the old earth, from which men in their
+  folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The
+  air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled
+  soul! I felt that I was myself here, far different from my
+  habitual self. Why had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I
+  want of the desert that was naked, red, sinister, sombre,
+  forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark and dismal, the abode of
+  silence and loneliness, the proof of death, decay, devastation
+  and destruction, the majestic sublimity of desolation? The answer
+  was that I sought the awful, the appalling and terrible because
+  they harked me back to a primitive day where my blood and bones
+  were bequeathed their heritage of the elements. That was the
+  secret of the eternal fascination the desert exerted upon all
+  men. It carried them back. It inhibited thought. It brought up
+  the age-old sensations, so that I could feel, though I did not
+  know it then, once again the all-satisfying state of the savage
+  in nature.</p>
+
+  <p>When I returned to camp night had fallen. The evening star
+  stood high in the pale sky, all alone and difficult to see, yet
+  the more beautiful for that. The night appeared to be warmer or
+  perhaps it was because no wind blew. Nielsen got supper, and ate
+  most of it, for I was not hungry. As I sat by the camp-fire a
+  flock of little bats, the smallest I had ever seen, darted from
+  the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They had no fear
+  of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound. Later I
+  heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have
+  expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious
+  trill it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas
+  Jungle of Mexico. Every time I awakened that night, and it was
+  often, I heard this trill. Once, too, sometime late, my listening
+  ear caught faint mournful notes of a killdeer. How strange, and
+  still sweeter than the trill! What a touch to the infinite
+  silence and loneliness! A killdeer&mdash;bird of the swamps and
+  marshes&mdash;what could he be doing in arid and barren Death
+  Valley? Nature is mysterious and inscrutable.</p>
+
+  <p>Next morning the marvel of nature was exemplified even more
+  strikingly. Out on the hard gravel-strewn slope I found some more
+  tiny flowers of a day. One was a white daisy, very frail and
+  delicate on long thin stem with scarcely any leaves. Another was
+  a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California
+  poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost as large as
+  a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and tiniest of all were
+  infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very flat plants,
+  smiling wanly up from the desolate earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen and I made known to Denton our purpose to walk across
+  the valley. He advised against it. Not that the heat was intense
+  at this season, he explained, but there were other dangers,
+  particularly the brittle salty crust of the sink-hole.
+  Nevertheless we were not deterred from our purpose.</p>
+
+  <p>So with plenty of water in canteens and a few biscuits in our
+  pockets we set out. I saw the heat veils rising from the valley
+  floor, at that point one hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea
+  level. The heat lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told
+  us that in summer the heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted
+  leaves, burned trees to death as well as men. Prospectors watched
+  for the leaden haze that thickened over the mountains, knowing
+  then no man could dare the terrible sun. That day would be a
+  hazed and glaring hell, leaden, copper, with sun blazing a sky of
+  molten iron.</p>
+
+  <p>A long sandy slope of mesquite extended down to the bare
+  crinkly floor of the valley, and here the descent to a lower
+  level was scarcely perceptible. The walking was bad. Little
+  mounds in the salty crust made it hard to place a foot on the
+  level. This crust appeared fairly strong. But when it rang hollow
+  under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously. The color was a
+  dirty gray and yellow. Far ahead I could see a dazzling white
+  plain that looked like frost or a frozen river. The atmosphere
+  was deceptive, making this plain seem far away and then close at
+  hand.</p>
+
+  <p>The excessively difficult walking and the thickness of the air
+  tired me, so I plumped myself down to rest, and used my note-book
+  as a means to conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was
+  fatigued. Always I found this a very efficient excuse, and for
+  that matter it was profitable for me. I have forgotten more than
+  I have ever written.</p>
+
+  <p>Rather overpowering, indeed, was it to sit on the floor of
+  Death Valley, miles from the slopes that appeared so far away. It
+  was flat, salty, alkali or borax ground, crusted and cracked. The
+  glare hurt my eyes. I felt moist, hot, oppressed, in spite of a
+  rather stiff wind. A dry odor pervaded the air, slightly like
+  salty dust. Thin dust devils whirled on the bare flats. A
+  valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the desert floor
+  to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and
+  beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass,
+  broken by rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown
+  glaciers. Seamed and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet
+  surely wearing to ruin! From this point I could not see the snow
+  on the peaks. The whole mountain range seemed an immense red
+  barrier of beetling rock. The Funeral Range was farther away and
+  therefore more impressive. Its effect was stupendous. Leagues of
+  brown chocolate slopes, scarred by slashes of yellow and cream,
+  and shadowed black by sailing clouds, led up to the magnificently
+  peaked and jutted summits.</p>
+
+  <p>Splendid as this was and reluctant as I felt to leave I soon
+  joined Nielsen, and we proceeded onward. At last we reached the
+  white winding plain, that had resembled a frozen river, and which
+  from afar had looked so ghastly and stark. We found it to be a
+  perfectly smooth stratum of salt glistening as if powdered. It
+  was not solid, not stable. At pressure of a boot it shook like
+  jelly. Under the white crust lay a yellow substance that was wet.
+  Here appeared an obstacle we had not calculated upon. Nielsen
+  ventured out on it and his feet sank in several inches. I did not
+  like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice under a weight.
+  Presently I ventured to take a few steps, and did not sink in so
+  deeply or make such depression in the crust as Nielsen. We
+  returned to the solid edge and deliberated. Nielsen said that by
+  stepping quickly we could cross without any great risk, though it
+  appeared reasonable that by standing still a person would sink
+  into the substance.</p>
+
+  <p>"Well, Nielsen, you go ahead," I said, with an attempt at
+  lightness. "You weigh one hundred and ninety. If you go through
+  I'll turn back!"</p>
+
+  <p>Nielsen started with a laugh. The man courted peril. The
+  bright face of danger must have been beautiful and alluring to
+  him. I started after him&mdash;caught up with him&mdash;and
+  stayed beside him. I could not have walked behind him over that
+  strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have done so the whole
+  adventure would have been meaningless to me. Nevertheless I was
+  frightened. I felt the prickle of my skin, the stiffening of my
+  hair, as well as the cold tingling thrills along my veins.</p>
+
+  <p>This place was the lowest point of the valley, in that
+  particular location, and must have been upwards of two hundred
+  feet below sea level. The lowest spot, called the Sink Hole, lay
+  some miles distant, and was the terminus of this river of salty
+  white.</p>
+
+  <p>We crossed it in safety. On the other side extended a long
+  flat of upheaved crusts of salt and mud, full of holes and
+  pitfalls, an exceedingly toilsome and painful place to travel,
+  and for all we could tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to
+  watch my feet and find surfaces to hold my steps. Eventually we
+  crossed this broken field, reaching the edge of the gravel slope,
+  where we were very glad indeed to rest.</p>
+
+  <p>Denton had informed us that the distance was seven miles
+  across the valley at the mouth of Furnace Creek. I had thought it
+  seemed much less than that. But after I had toiled across it I
+  was convinced that it was much more. It had taken us hours. How
+  the time had sped! For this reason we did not tarry long on that
+  side.</p>
+
+  <p>Facing the sun we found the return trip more formidable. Hot
+  indeed it was&mdash;hot enough for me to imagine how terrible
+  Death Valley would be in July or August. On all sides the
+  mountains stood up dim and obscure and distant in haze. The heat
+  veils lifted in ripples, and any object not near at hand seemed
+  illusive. Nielsen set a pace for me on this return trip. I was
+  quicker and surer of foot than he, but he had more endurance. I
+  lost strength while he kept his unimpaired. So often he had to
+  wait for me. Once when I broke through the crust he happened to
+  be close at hand and quickly hauled me out. I got one foot wet
+  with some acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen
+  quoted a prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken
+  sharp crust of salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever
+  experienced. Slopes of weathered rock that slip and slide are
+  bad; cacti, and especially choya cacti, are worse: the jagged and
+  corrugated surfaces of lava are still more hazardous and painful.
+  But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with its salt crusts
+  standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place for hard
+  going that either Nielsen or I ever had encountered. I ruined my
+  boots, skinned my shins, cut my hands. How those salt cuts stung!
+  We crossed the upheaved plain, then the strip of white, and
+  reached the crinkly floor of yellow salt. The last hour taxed my
+  endurance almost to the limit. When we reached the edge of the
+  sand and the beginning of the slope I was hotter and thirstier
+  than I had ever been in my life. It pleased me to see Nielsen
+  wringing wet and panting. He drank a quart of water apparently in
+  one gulp. And it was significant that I took the longest and
+  deepest drink of water that I had ever had.</p>
+
+  <p>We reached camp at the end of this still hot summer day. Never
+  had a camp seemed so welcome! What a wonderful thing it was to
+  earn and appreciate and realize rest! The cottonwood leaves were
+  rustling; bees were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in
+  the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I
+  watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard
+  the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious
+  deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were
+  traveling north and had tarried at the oasis.</p>
+
+  <p>Lying there I realized that I had come to love the silence,
+  the loneliness, the serenity, even the tragedy of this valley of
+  shadows. Death Valley was one place that could never be popular
+  with men. It had been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen
+  treasure, and for the wanderers of the wastelands&mdash;men who
+  go forth to seek and to find and to face their souls. Perhaps
+  most of them found death. But there was a death in life. Desert
+  travelers learned the secret that men lived too much in the
+  world&mdash;that in silence and loneliness and desolation there
+  was something infinite, something hidden from the crowd.</p>
+
+  <center>
+    THE END
+  </center>
+
+  <div style="height: 6em;"></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tales of lonely trails
+
+Author: Zane Grey
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [EBook #12225]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF LONELY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Nicolas Hayes and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+BY ZANE GREY
+
+
+1922
+
+[Illustration: Zane Grey]
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. NONNEZOSHE
+
+II. COLORADO TRAILS
+
+III. ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+IV. TONTO BASIN
+
+V. DEATH VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ZANE GREY
+
+Z.G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS
+
+THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE PEAKED RANGES
+
+WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY
+
+SUNSET ON THE DESERT
+
+CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS
+
+THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES THE RUINED
+CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN
+
+THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO NONNEZOSHE
+
+FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO
+
+THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE DISTANCE
+
+A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE
+
+LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS
+
+SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME
+
+A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING
+
+THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS
+
+UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS
+
+WHITE ASPEN TREE SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS
+
+A BLACK BEAR TREED
+
+CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON
+
+WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO
+
+DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER
+
+CAMP AT THE SADDLE
+
+BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER
+
+JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION
+
+REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS
+
+A LION TIED
+
+FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S DESERT RANCH
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+TREED LION
+
+HIDING
+
+A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM
+
+WHICH IS THE PIUTE
+
+WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE
+
+JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION
+
+TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE
+
+JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS
+
+BILLY IN CAMP
+
+LION LICKING SNOWBALL
+
+SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST
+
+WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN SNAKE GULCH
+
+ON THE WAY HOME
+
+RIDING WITH A NAVAJO
+
+THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN
+
+ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED
+
+THE TONTO BASIN
+
+LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS
+
+ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS
+
+WILD TURKEY
+
+WILD TURKEYS
+
+THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS
+
+THE SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP
+
+ON THE RIM
+
+WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK
+
+WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER
+
+CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA
+
+BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON
+
+Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR
+
+R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR
+
+ANOTHER BEAR
+
+MEAT IN CAMP
+
+BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL
+
+THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF THE CACTUS
+
+THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS
+
+DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY
+
+DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED RIDGES TO THE
+STARK VALLEY OF DEATH
+
+DESERT GRAVES
+
+THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY
+
+IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH VALLEY, THREE
+HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+NONNEZOSHE
+
+John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at
+Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is
+probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in
+the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her
+influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting
+the secret of the great bridge.
+
+After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al
+Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take
+me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was
+the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same
+year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb
+brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most
+beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There
+is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after
+Doyle and I came out we admitted that we would not care to try to
+return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This
+is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find
+again alone.
+
+My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument
+Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great
+prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
+
+The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats
+and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
+wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
+Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
+thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
+convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
+Wetherill's Navajos.
+
+We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so
+that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew
+and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this
+grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that
+I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
+surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
+storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
+sultry air.
+
+At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red
+walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared
+endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye
+began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the
+time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of
+Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed
+a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock,
+magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird,
+lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the
+monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect
+was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
+
+[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]
+
+Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
+its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
+beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not
+the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of
+red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
+league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
+columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
+sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
+across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I
+had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and
+the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught
+Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
+
+[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE-PEAKED RANGES]
+
+Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful
+canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could
+make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it
+Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less
+the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon
+from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a
+red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented
+by spruce-sided notches.
+
+There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of
+which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A
+huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a
+projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These
+silent little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows
+had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.
+
+Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the
+trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and
+beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at
+all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss
+of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named
+Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought
+it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their
+imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight
+of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed
+over me a strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true.
+My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
+I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls
+where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered
+the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and
+sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the
+grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I
+had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I
+could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party.
+Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self.
+I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the
+story it had given me.
+
+That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser
+of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had
+lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old
+chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont
+to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made
+great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses.
+Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the
+geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser
+ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.
+
+[Illustration: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY]
+
+[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE DESERT]
+
+[Illustration: CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS]
+
+Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we
+were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses
+disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a
+man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians
+disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the
+Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I
+thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.
+
+"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.
+
+Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so
+significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It
+is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I
+know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Piute's dark,
+inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.
+
+My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow
+and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level
+with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene;
+and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that
+I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept
+looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my
+judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed
+one moment and magnified the next.
+
+Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he
+said.
+
+"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright
+rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines
+of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and
+only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the Grand
+Canyon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the red, that's
+where the San Juan comes in. And there's Escalante Canyon."
+
+I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the
+desert--to look with slow contracted eyes from near to far.
+
+The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope,
+bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar.
+Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I
+knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker
+green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be
+mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its
+waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated.
+They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were
+strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes,
+crags, great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze
+to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
+thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts,
+each of which was a canyon.
+
+Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the
+lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and
+because of its limitless deceiving surfaces incomprehensible to the
+gaze of man. Away to the eastward began a winding ragged blue line,
+looping back upon itself, and then winding away again, growing wider
+and bluer. This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line
+all its length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined
+a dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
+Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
+farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
+revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther westward
+it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas. Here the canyon
+was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed, it gaped, it lost
+itself and showed again in that chaos of a million cliffs. And then it
+faded, a mere purple line, into deceiving distance.
+
+I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this. The
+tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This happened to
+be a place where so much of the desert could be seen and the effect
+was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here.
+Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages
+was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
+sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
+dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
+the shining spaces.
+
+Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
+rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
+slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
+mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
+ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
+sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
+of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
+of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
+green only at a distance.
+
+Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
+and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
+on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
+Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
+silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
+the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
+again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
+
+It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw pinon patches under
+the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
+already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
+their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
+of cliff.
+
+I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It
+ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the
+ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not
+a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and
+Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a
+swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see
+similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be
+called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes
+far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were
+no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and
+occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pinon. We
+found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
+
+Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another
+wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between.
+Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our
+mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short,
+careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger
+was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in
+horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second
+slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking
+advantage of every bulge and depression.
+
+Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous
+slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and
+many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us
+to see the bottom.
+
+[Illustration: THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES
+THE RUINED CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN]
+
+At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon
+cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the
+steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum
+jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe
+Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of
+anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with
+all his might.
+
+[Illustration: THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO
+NONNEZOSHE]
+
+It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope
+ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in
+terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place
+to have trouble with horses.
+
+I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear
+over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe's hold on
+the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick as thought Joe ran
+sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and yelled for help. I got
+to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas ta Bega; and together we
+pulled Chub up out of danger. At first we thought he had been choked
+to death. But he came to, and got up, a bloody, skinned horse, but
+alive and safe. I have never seen a more magnificent effort than Joe
+Lee's. Those fellows are built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on
+those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the
+trip which is not splendid.
+
+We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently
+came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green
+split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was
+the head of a canyon.
+
+"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.
+
+This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got down into
+it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a selection of
+the best levels, the best places to cross the brook, the best places
+to climb, and it was a process of continual repetition. There was no
+trail ahead of us, but we certainly left one behind. And as Wetherill
+picked out the course and the mustangs followed him I had all freedom
+to see and feel the beauty, color, wildness and changing character of
+Nonnezoshe Boco.
+
+My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip down this
+strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not alike. This one
+did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and
+bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue
+river. Huge caverns had been hollowed out by water or wind. And when
+the brook ran close under one of these overhanging places the running
+water made a singular indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a
+stone rang like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the
+croak of a frog--the only living creature I noted in the canyon--was a
+weird and melancholy thing.
+
+"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.
+
+"How do you know?" I asked.
+
+"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones are
+found above."
+
+I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger than
+the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite beauty and
+fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I had never seen.
+
+"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.
+
+That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer
+canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the green. It was
+impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under foot. And as
+the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume
+to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green
+sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself
+in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and
+great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming
+buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of
+cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled
+with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy
+air.
+
+But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
+level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
+clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and bulging walls--these
+features were gradually lost, and Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare
+red and white stone steps. The walls sheered away from one another,
+breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and
+there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the
+nature that had created this old rent in the earth.
+
+There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
+alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by one, the
+mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled
+along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil
+increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was
+left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified
+and its character changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon,
+leaning, broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking
+passage, with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
+dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting canyons. It
+jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and
+pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous stone-shape left
+by avalanche or cataclysm.
+
+Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of boulders
+and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that canyon
+had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor, in places, was
+bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording
+treacherous foothold. And the time came when Wetherill abandoned the
+stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
+
+The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined amphitheater,
+and then apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed the
+walls.
+
+I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and lag. I
+wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the Indians tired. It
+was with great pleasure that I observed the giant Joe Lee plodding
+slowly along. And when I glanced behind at my straggling party it was
+with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled
+and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag
+myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept
+on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped--was waiting for
+me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
+canyon.
+
+I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile
+beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the
+canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a
+magnificent natural bridge.
+
+"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.
+
+This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one
+grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague
+disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
+with what the mind had conceived.
+
+But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and
+brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and
+revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this
+rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in
+some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even
+beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a
+work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued
+arch against the blue sky.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE]
+
+[Illustration: NONNEZOSHE]
+
+Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle the huge
+amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging.
+The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered
+progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls
+turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed dark.
+
+We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we reached it
+Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions. He was saying his
+prayer to this great stone god. Then he began to climb straight up the
+steep slope. Wetherill told me the Indian would not pass under the
+arch.
+
+When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame mustangs
+twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to fare for what
+scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to
+find than grass. When our simple meal had been eaten there was gloom
+gathering in the canyon and stars had begun to blink in the pale strip
+of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and we were
+mostly silent.
+
+Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by the
+bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was invisible,
+but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock upon which I
+composed myself, to watch, to feel.
+
+A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been continually
+looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never seemed the same
+any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for immediate
+comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had formed it--to reflect
+upon its meaning as to age and force of nature. Yet it seemed that all
+I could do was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved
+line. The rim of the arch appeared to shine. The moon was up there
+somewhere. The far side of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over
+its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the
+canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
+The bridge turned to silver.
+
+It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta Bega. Dark,
+silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted, with all that was
+spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge
+of his place there, he represented to me that which a solitary figure
+of human life represents in a great painting. Nonnezoshe needed life,
+wild life, life of its millions of years--and here stood the dark and
+silent Indian.
+
+Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the bridge. The
+moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above, and
+the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with all
+the strangeness of that strange country in its moan, rushed through
+the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as I
+imagined might have dwelt deep in the center of the earth. And again
+an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. It had a mocking echo. An
+echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!
+
+The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other
+sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to see in them
+the meaning of life and the past--the illimitable train of faces
+that had shone under the stars. There was something nameless in that
+canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the
+great Nonnezoshe, or the life of the present, or the death of the
+ages, or the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent,
+dreaming, waiting walls--the truth was that there was a spirit.
+
+I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the tip of
+the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to shine. The sun
+had just risen high enough over some low break in the wall to reach
+the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous transformation, the gold
+and blue and rose and pink and purple blended their hues, softly,
+mistily, cloudily, until once more the arch was a rainbow.
+
+I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth this
+bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black and mystic
+at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at sunset a flaming
+curve limned against the heavens. When the race of man had passed it
+would, perhaps, stand there still. It was not for many eyes to see.
+The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would
+never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any
+man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great
+things of life had to be earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone,
+grand, silent, beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a
+mute, reverent farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+COLORADO TRAILS
+
+Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the motive
+were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the reader who
+longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle of fishing
+records that this is not that kind of story. But it will be one for
+those who love horses and dogs, the long winding dim trails, the wild
+flowers and the dark still woods, the fragrance of spruce and the
+smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well for those who love to angle in
+brown lakes or rushing brooks or chase after the baying hounds or
+stalk the stag on his lonely heights.
+
+[Illustration: PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO]
+
+We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road and had a
+long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies have a sweep, a
+limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many miles we crossed no
+streams, and climbed and wound up barren slopes. Once across the divide,
+however, we descended into a country of black forests and green valleys.
+Yampa, a little hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of
+the Bear River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
+would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very wide
+and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It seemed a
+deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the guide, lived there.
+He assured me it was not quite as lively a place as in the early days
+when it was a stage center for an old and rich mining section. We stayed
+there at the one hotel for a whole day, most of which I spent sitting on
+the board walk. Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it
+seemed always the same--deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old
+and forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a while.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE
+DISTANCE]
+
+On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills,
+some fifteen miles westward, where Teague's men were to meet us with
+saddle and pack horses. The ride was not interesting until the Flattop
+Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce,
+rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of
+snow. I felt the first cool breath of mountain air, exhilarating and
+sweet. From that moment I began to live.
+
+We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with
+his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let alone gotten
+acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load
+of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It
+appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged
+jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called
+it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in
+a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, and schools of darkish,
+mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. We wished for
+our tackle then and for time to fish.
+
+Teague's man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not
+resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look as if he had
+walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So I took a
+liking to him at once.
+
+But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any
+delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our
+outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses that were to carry
+us on such long rides was an anxious and thrilling one. I have felt
+it many times, and it never grows any weaker from experience. Many a
+scrubby lot of horses had turned out well upon acquaintance, and some
+I had found hard to part with at the end of trips. Up to that time,
+however, I had not seen a bear hunter's horses; and I was much
+concerned by the fact that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty,
+ragged, maneless, cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected,
+they were bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them,
+and I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any one.
+
+In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his own
+mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals, heavily
+laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face and keen
+gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I got the
+impression that he liked work.
+
+"Let's organize," he said, briskly. "Have you picked the horses you're
+goin' to ride?"
+
+Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy powerful
+horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble head. He had
+escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at least was one horse.
+
+The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or temporarily lame,
+and I had no choice, except to take the one it would be kindest to
+ride.
+
+"He ain't much like your Silvermane or Black Star," said Teague,
+laughing.
+
+"What do you know about them?" I asked, very much pleased at this from
+him.
+
+"Well, I know all about them," he replied. "I'll have you the best horse
+in this country in a few days. Fact is I've bought him, an' he'll come
+with my cowboy, Vern.... Now, we're organized. Let's move."
+
+[Illustration: A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS]
+
+[Illustration: SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME]
+
+We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which towered the
+great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy, and steep in
+places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little breaks on the water
+gave evidence of feeding trout. We had several miles of meadow, and
+then sheered off to the left up into the timber. It was a spruce
+forest, very still and fragrant. We climbed out up on a bench, and
+across a flat, up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of
+snow. Here snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw
+a fox, a badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One
+more climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven
+thousand feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was
+splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim
+along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not very wide
+at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a green gulf
+of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here again I got the
+suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour to ride down to
+Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet of water. The larger
+lake was farther down. It was big, irregular, and bordered by spruce
+forests, and shadowed by the lofty gray peaks.
+
+The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm, and
+mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It was after
+sunset and I was too tired to have many impressions.
+
+Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep quavering
+voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was silent most of
+the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when they spoke, for he
+was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to discover that he was a
+good cook.
+
+Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too
+tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and
+splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights.
+The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric
+mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night
+grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly.
+There was a soft murmur of falling water. A lonesome coyote barked,
+and that thrilled me. Teague's dogs answered this prowler, and some of
+them had voices to make a hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had
+a roar like a lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and
+I was thinking about them when I fell asleep.
+
+Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and
+frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the
+tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.
+
+The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I
+could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to
+ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After
+each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle
+an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts.
+Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his
+discomfiture.
+
+After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods,
+and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when
+we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green
+in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent
+black slopes.
+
+The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called
+wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes
+during dog days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague
+reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We
+tried the outlet first, but trout were not rising there. Then we
+began wading and casting along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had
+instructed us to cast, then drag the flies slowly across the surface
+of the water, in imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and
+several times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I
+had strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout.
+Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my
+surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook the
+fish.
+
+R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the
+ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most
+unaccountable fiendish pleasure.
+
+"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful fisherman to
+make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which
+is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch me cast!"
+
+I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water boiled, and he
+hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite speechless with envy and
+admiration I watched him play them and eventually beach them. They
+were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided and marked with the red slash
+along their gills that gave them their name. I did not catch any while
+wading, but from the bank I spied one, and dropping a fly in front
+of his nose, I got him. R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in
+weight, and then he had a strike that broke his leader. He did not
+have another leader, so we walked back to camp.
+
+Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the forest.
+Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful and very
+pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful flower that is
+the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its blue, Indian paint
+brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in color from red to pink
+and from white to yellow.
+
+My favorite of all wild flowers--the purple asters--were there too,
+on tall nodding stems, with pale faces held up to the light. The
+reflection of mountain and forest in Trappers Lake was clear and
+beautiful.
+
+The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great show about
+beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last very long. The
+sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge under a pine. One of
+the blessings of outdoor life was that a man could be like an Indian
+and do nothing. So from rest I passed to dreams and from dreams to
+sleep.
+
+In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout. The lake
+appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck and we could
+not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again. Here the current
+was swift. I found a place between two willow banks where trout were
+breaking on the surface. It took a long cast for me, but about every
+tenth attempt I would get a fly over the right place and raise a fish.
+They were small, but that did not detract from my gratification. The
+light on the water was just right for me to see the trout rise, and
+that was a beautiful sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had
+caught four when a shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I
+found him standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent
+double and a long line out.
+
+"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him--down there--in that white water.
+See him flash red!... Go down there and land him for me. Hurry! He's
+got all the line!"
+
+I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream was
+shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a flashing gleam
+of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I could not reach it
+without wading in. When I did this the trout lunged out. He looked
+crimson and silver. I could have put my fist in his mouth.
+
+"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation. "There!
+He's got all the line."
+
+"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.
+
+He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his fish.
+This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I grasped
+the leader that the big trout would break it or pull free. The same
+situation, with different kinds of fish, had presented itself many
+times on my numberless fishing jaunts with R.C. and they all crowded
+to my mind. Nevertheless I had no choice. Plunging in to my knees I
+frantically reached for the leader. The red trout made a surge. I
+missed him. R.C. yelled that something would break. That was no news
+to me. Another plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I
+essayed to lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was
+tired and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to
+lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my legs.
+
+When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was sitting on
+the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was holding his broken
+leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went into a rage! Blamed me for
+the loss of that big trout! Under such circumstances it was always
+best to maintain silence and I did so as long as I could. After his
+paroxysm had spent itself and he had become somewhat near a rational
+being once more he asked me:
+
+"Was he big?"
+
+"Oh--a whale of a trout!" I replied.
+
+"Humph! Well, how big?"
+
+Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of that trout.
+I made him out very much bigger than he actually looked to me and I
+minutely described his beauty and wonderful gaping mouth. R.C. groaned
+and that was my revenge.
+
+We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape acquaintance
+with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted pack--four Airedales, one
+bloodhound and seven other hounds of mixed breeds. There were also
+three pup hounds, white and yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all
+pups, noisy and mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied
+also to one of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by
+some estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of
+him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with that
+name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and exceedingly
+funny. When he was approached he had a trick of standing up, holding
+up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way, with his head twisted in
+the most absurd manner. This was when he was chained--otherwise he
+would have been climbing up on anyone who gave him the chance. He was
+the most jealous dog I ever saw. He could not be kept chained very
+long because he always freed himself. At meal time he would slip
+noiselessly behind some one and steal the first morsel he could
+snatch. Bill was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of
+firewood.
+
+Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then saddled up
+to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and down ridges of
+heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer sign. Elk tracks
+appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we left the trail to
+climb into heavy timber we began to look for game. The forest was
+dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No squirrels or birds or
+sign of life! We had a hard ride up and down steep slopes. A feature
+was the open swaths made by avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a
+path through the timber, and the young shoots of spruce were springing
+up. I imagined the roar made by that tremendous slide.
+
+We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the grass
+had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign where the
+elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers to get rid of
+the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes made by an axe. The
+Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently
+had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox
+could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not
+see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note
+again.
+
+We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with wild
+asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The patches of red
+and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere we rode we were knee
+deep in flowers. At length we came out of the heavy timber down upon
+Big Fish Lake. This lake was about half a mile across, deep blue-green
+in color, with rocky shores. Upon the opposite side were beaver
+mounds. We could see big trout swimming round, but they would not rise
+to a fly. R.C. went out in an old boat and paddled to the head of the
+lake and fished at the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went
+around and up the little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly
+through a meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering
+banks. At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds.
+It was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as cold
+as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several big trout,
+and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed him. Then in a
+swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I saw a big trout
+lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I hooked him. He was not
+active, but heavy and plunging, and he bored in and out, and made
+short runs. I had not seen such beautiful red colors in any fish. He
+made a fine fight, but at last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat
+of about one and three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green,
+and spotted all over. That was the extent of my luck.
+
+We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little while to
+see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not. A storm began
+to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great gray clouds obscured
+the peaks, and at length the rain came. It was cold and cutting. We
+sought the shelter of spruces for a while, and waited. After an hour
+it cleared somewhat, and R.C. caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all
+green and silver, with only two slashes of red along under the gills.
+Then another storm threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp
+the rain began again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was
+raining hard when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces
+were dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes.
+After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the open
+places high up we could see a great green void of spruce, and beyond,
+boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon. We flushed a big
+blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at length another big
+one.
+
+In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of scenting
+game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was pressed down.
+Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump of an elk protruding
+from behind some spruces. I beckoned for R.C. and we both dismounted.
+Just then the elk rose and stalked out. It was a magnificent bull with
+crowning lofty antlers. The shoulders and neck appeared black. He
+raised his head, and turning, trotted away with ease and grace for
+such a huge beast. That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen
+before. We were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with
+exclamations.
+
+We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the lofty
+red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest again, dim
+and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and oppressive stillness.
+The forest primeval! When we rode out of that into open slopes the
+afternoon was far advanced, and long shadows lay across the distant
+ranges. When we reached camp, supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet
+were exceedingly welcome. I was tired.
+
+Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched our
+horses near Teague's old corral. Our intention was to hunt up along
+the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We waited, hoping
+the big black clouds would break. But they did not. They rolled down
+with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and a storm enveloped us. We
+sought shelter in a thick spruce. It rained and hailed. By and bye
+the air grew bitterly cold, and Teague suggested we give up, and ride
+back. So we did. The mountains were dim and obscure through the gray
+gloom, and the black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against
+the background. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and
+crashed in magnificent bombardment across the heavens.
+
+Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only a
+few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the weather
+promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the mountains,
+first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we decided to ride
+out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around what they call the
+Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through the spruces above Little
+Trappers Lake. And as we got near the top it began to hail. Again
+the air grew cold. Once out on top I found a wide expanse, green and
+white, level in places, but with huge upheavals of ridge. There
+were flowers here at eleven thousand feet. The view to the rear was
+impressive--a wide up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of
+rocks, and patches of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall,
+and the view to the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling
+thick and white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell
+into the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet,
+lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White River
+Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope, up to a
+bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range, dark under the
+lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh Rocky Mountain sheep
+tracks. A little later, going into a draw, we crossed a snow-bank,
+solid as ice. We worked down into this draw into the timber. It
+hailed, and rained some more, then cleared. The warm sun felt good.
+Once down in the parks we began to ride through a flower-garden. Every
+slope was beautiful in gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks
+were luxuriant with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the
+great stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not
+see one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and
+miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length we
+got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood sear and
+ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with fallen trees that
+we had difficulty in threading a way through them. Patches of aspen
+grew on the hillside, still fresh and green despite this frosty
+morning. Here we found a sego lily, one of the most beautiful of
+flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian paint brush. At the foot of this
+long burned slope we came to the White River trail, and followed it up
+and around to camp.
+
+Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped off
+into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then paused to
+listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a sound. It was a
+place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of twigs, and presently
+heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We penetrated half a mile into
+the spruce, pausing now and then to listen. At length R.C. heard
+something. We stopped. After a little I heard the ring of a horn on
+wood. It was thrilling. Then came the crack of a hoof on stone, then
+the clatter of a loosened rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer
+evaded us. We hunted around till dark without farther sign of any
+game.
+
+R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down White
+River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw tracks of
+five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we climbed high up a
+burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen. We climbed ridge after
+ridge, and at last got out of the burned district into reaches of
+heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of deer and elk tracks, we
+dismounted and left our horses. I went to the left, and into some
+beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer or elk, and many tracks.
+Returning to the horses, I led them into a larger park, and climbed
+high into the open and watched. There I saw some little squirrels
+about three inches long, and some gray birds, very tame. I waited a
+long time before there was any sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was
+the dog I saw first. I whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted
+and rode on for an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of
+huge trees, windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we
+came out at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant
+park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we ran
+across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small band of
+elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.
+
+Next day we started for a few days' trip to Big Fish Lake. R.C. and I
+went along up around the mountain. I found our old trail, and was at a
+loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign, but no live game at all.
+
+In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile, while
+R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we caught four
+trout, one of which was fair sized.
+
+Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but we could
+not get them to take a fly.
+
+The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to be
+beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some big trout
+in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every way to get a
+strike. No use! In the little lake matters were worse. It was full of
+trout up to two pounds. They would run at the fly, only to refuse it.
+Exasperating work! We gave up and returned to Big Fish. After supper
+we went out to try again. The lake was smooth and quiet. All at once,
+as if by concert, the trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay
+we began to get strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The
+small ones were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed.
+We caught one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted
+wrong, broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too
+slow, and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because
+they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to
+imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line which I
+could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and altogether we got
+seven. All in that little bay, where the water was shallow! In other
+places we could not catch a fish. I had one vicious strike. The fish
+appeared to be feeding on a tiny black gnat, which we could not
+imitate. This was the most trying experience of all. We ought to have
+caught a basketful.
+
+The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet of Big
+Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for grayling. The
+stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared full of ice water
+and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an automobile, and a camp
+outfit. That was enough for me. Where an automobile can run, I do not
+belong. The fishing was poor. But the beautiful open valley, flowered
+in gold and purple, was recompense for a good deal of bad luck.
+
+A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as beautiful a
+fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker or mullet, had a
+small mouth, dark color, and was rather a sluggish-looking fish.
+
+We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers afforded
+much comfort.
+
+Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down over a
+mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.
+
+R.C. and I, with Teague, started for the top of the big mountain on
+the west. I had a new horse, a roan, and he looked a thoroughbred.
+He appeared tired. But I thought he would be great. We took a trail
+through the woods, dark green-gray, cool and verdant, odorous and
+still. We began to climb. Occasionally we crossed parks, and little
+streams. Up near the long, bare slope the spruce trees grew large and
+far apart. They were beautiful, gray as if bearded with moss. Beyond
+this we got into the rocks and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags
+up the slope brought us to the top of a notch, where at the right lay
+a patch of snow. The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but
+it had timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark
+domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out of the
+timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard struggle for
+life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and wild, studded
+with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving clouds.
+
+Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills.
+
+Away on the western rim, where we could look down upon a long rugged
+iron-gray ridge of mountain, our guide using the glass, found two big
+stags. We all had our fill of looking. I could see them plainly with
+naked eyes.
+
+We decided to go back to where we could climb down on that side,
+halter the horses, leave all extra accoutrements, and stalk those
+stags, and take a picture of them.
+
+I led the way, and descended under the rim. It was up and down over
+rough shale, and up steps of broken rocks, and down little cliffs.
+We crossed the ridge twice, many times having to lend a hand to each
+other.
+
+At length I reached a point where I could see the stags lying down.
+The place was an open spot on a rocky promonotory with a fringe of
+low spruces. The stags were magnificent in size, with antlers in the
+velvet. One had twelve points. They were lying in the sun to harden
+their horns, according to our guide.
+
+I slipped back to the others, and we all decided to have a look. So we
+climbed up. All of us saw the stags, twitching ears and tails.
+
+Then we crept back, and once more I took the lead to crawl round under
+the ledge so we could come up about even with them. Here I found the
+hardest going yet. I came to a wind-worn crack in the thin ledge, and
+from this I could just see the tips of the antlers. I beckoned the
+others. Laboriously they climbed. R.C. went through first. I went over
+next, and then came Teague.
+
+R.C. and I started to crawl down to a big rock that was our objective
+point. We went cautiously, with bated breath and pounding hearts. When
+we got there I peeped over to see the stags still lying down. But they
+had heads intent and wary. Still I did not think they had scented us.
+R.C. took a peep, and turning excitedly he whispered:
+
+"See only one. And he's standing!"
+
+And I answered: "Let's get down around to the left where we can get a
+better chance." It was only a few feet down. We got there.
+
+When he peeped over at this point he exclaimed: "They're gone!"
+
+It was a keen disappointment. "They winded us," I decided.
+
+We looked and looked. But we could not see to our left because of the
+bulge of rock. We climbed back. Then I saw one of the stags loping
+leisurely off to the left. Teague was calling. He said they had walked
+off the promontory, looking up, and stopping occasionally.
+
+Then we realized we must climb back along that broken ridge and then
+up to the summit of the mountain. So we started.
+
+That climb back was proof of the effect of excitement on judgment. We
+had not calculated at all on the distance or ruggedness, and we had a
+job before us. We got along well under the western wall, and fairly
+well straight across through the long slope of timber, where we saw
+sheep tracks, and expected any moment to sight an old ram. But we did
+not find one, and when we got out of the timber upon the bare sliding
+slope we had to halt a hundred times. We could zigzag only a few
+steps. The altitude was twelve thousand feet, and oxygen seemed
+scarce. I nearly dropped. All the climbing appeared to come hardest on
+the middle of my right foot, and it could scarcely have burned hotter
+if it had been in fire. Despite the strenuous toil there were not many
+moments that I was not aware of the vastness of the gulf below, or the
+peaceful lakes, brown as amber, or the golden parks. And nearer at
+hand I found magenta-colored Indian paint brush, very exquisite and
+rare.
+
+Coming out on a ledge I spied a little, dark animal with a long tail.
+He was running along the opposite promontory about three hundred yards
+distant. When he stopped I took a shot at him and missed by apparently
+a scant half foot.
+
+After catching our breath we climbed more and more, and still more, at
+last to drop on the rim, hot, wet and utterly spent.
+
+The air was keen, cold, and invigorating. We were soon rested, and
+finding our horses we proceeded along the rim westward. Upon rounding
+an out-cropping of rock we flushed a flock of ptarmigan--soft gray,
+rock-colored birds about the size of pheasants, and when they flew
+they showed beautiful white bands on their wings. These are the rare
+birds that have feathered feet and turn white in winter. They did not
+fly far, and several were so tame they did not fly at all. We got our
+little .22 revolvers and began to shoot at the nearest bird. He was
+some thirty feet distant. But we could not hit him, and at last Fox,
+getting disgusted, tried to catch the bird and made him fly. I felt
+relieved, for as we were getting closer and closer with every shot, it
+seemed possible that if the ptarmigan sat there long enough we might
+eventually have hit him. The mystery was why we shot so poorly. But
+this was explained by R.C., who discovered we had been shooting the
+wrong shells.
+
+It was a long hard ride down the rough winding trail. But riding down
+was a vastly different thing from going up.
+
+On September third we were up at five-thirty. It was clear and cold
+and the red of sunrise tinged the peaks. The snow banks looked pink.
+All the early morning scene was green, fresh, cool, with that mountain
+rareness of atmosphere.
+
+We packed to break camp, and after breakfast it took hours to get our
+outfit in shape to start--a long string, resembling a caravan. I knew
+that events would occur that day. First we lost one of the dogs. Vern
+went back after him. The dogs were mostly chained in pairs, to prevent
+their running off. Samson, the giant hound, was chained to a little
+dog, and the others were paired not according to size by any means.
+The poor dogs were disgusted with the arrangement. It developed
+presently that Cain, the bloodhound, a strange and wild hound much
+like Don of my old lion-hunting days, slipped us, and was not missed
+for hours. Teague decided to send back for him later.
+
+Next in order of events, as we rode up the winding trail through the
+spruce forest, we met Teague's cow and calf, which he had kept all
+summer in camp. For some reason neither could be left. Teague told us
+to ride on, and an hour later when we halted to rest on the Flattop
+Mountain he came along with the rest of the train, and in the fore was
+the cow alone. It was evident that she was distressed and angry, for
+it took two men to keep her in the trail. And another thing plain to
+me was the fact that she was going to demoralize the pack horses. We
+were not across the wide range of this flat mountain when one of the
+pack animals, a lean and lanky sorrel, appeared suddenly to go mad,
+and began to buck off a pack. He succeeded. This inspired a black
+horse, very appropriately christened Nigger, to try his luck, and he
+shifted his pack in short order. It took patience, time, and effort to
+repack. The cow was a disorganizer. She took up as wide a trail as a
+road. And the pack animals, some with dignity and others with disgust,
+tried to avoid her vicinity. Going down the steep forest trail on
+the other side the real trouble began. The pack train split, ran and
+bolted, crashing through the trees, plunging down steep places, and
+jumping logs. It was a wild sort of chase. But luckily the packs
+remained intact until we were once more on open, flat ground. All went
+well for a while, except for an accident for which I was to blame. I
+spurred my horse, and he plunged suddenly past R.C.'s mount, colliding
+with him, tearing off my stirrup, and spraining R.C.'s ankle. This
+was almost a serious accident, as R.C. has an old baseball ankle that
+required favoring.
+
+Next in order was the sorrel. As I saw it, he heedlessly went too near
+the cow, which we now called Bossy, and she acted somewhat like a
+Spanish Bull, to the effect that the sorrel was scared and angered at
+once. He began to run and plunge and buck right into the other pack
+animals, dropping articles from his pack as he dashed along. He
+stampeded the train, and gave the saddle horses a scare. When order
+was restored and the whole outfit gathered together again a full
+hour had been lost. By this time all the horses were tired, and that
+facilitated progress, because there were no more serious breaks.
+
+Down in the valley it was hot, and the ride grew long and wearisome.
+Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful. The valley was green and
+level, and a meandering stream formed many little lakes. On one
+side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on the other a black,
+spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a bold, blunt peak
+patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in the clear light. Huge
+white clouds sailed aloft, making dark moving shadows along the great
+slopes.
+
+We reached our turning-off place about five o'clock, and again entered
+the fragrant, quiet forest--a welcome change. We climbed and climbed,
+at length coming into an open park of slopes and green borders of
+forest, with a lake in the center. We pitched camp on the skirt of the
+western slope, under the spruces, and worked hard to get the tents up
+and boughs cut for beds. Darkness caught us with our hands still full,
+and we ate supper in the light of a camp-fire, with the black, deep
+forest behind, and the pale afterglow across the lake.
+
+I had a bad night, being too tired to sleep well. Many times I saw the
+moon shadows of spruce branches trembling on the tent walls, and the
+flickering shadows of the dying camp-fire. I heard the melodious
+tinkle of the bells on the hobbled horses. Bossy bawled often--a
+discordant break in the serenity of the night. Occasionally the hounds
+bayed her.
+
+Toward morning I slept some, and awakened with what seemed a broken
+back. All, except R.C., were slow in crawling out. The sun rose hot.
+This lower altitude was appreciated by all. After breakfast we set to
+work to put the camp in order.
+
+That afternoon we rode off to look over the ground. We crossed the
+park and worked up a timbered ridge remarkable for mossy, bare ground,
+and higher up for its almost total absence of grass or flowers. On the
+other side of this we had a fine view of Mt. Dome, a high peak across
+a valley. Then we worked down into the valley, which was full of parks
+and ponds and running streams. We found some fresh sign of deer, and a
+good deal of old elk and deer sign. But we saw no game of any kind. It
+was a tedious ride back through thick forest, where I observed many
+trees that had been barked by porcupines. Some patches were four feet
+from the ground, indicating that the porcupine had sat on the snow
+when he gnawed those particular places.
+
+After sunset R.C. and I went off down a trail into the woods, and
+sitting down under a huge spruce we listened. The forest was solemn
+and still. Far down somewhere roared a stream, and that was all the
+sound we heard. The gray shadows darkened and gloom penetrated the
+aisles of the forest, until all the sheltered places were black as
+pitch. The spruces looked spectral--and speaking. The silence of
+the woods was deep, profound, and primeval. It all worked on my
+imagination until I began to hear faint sounds, and finally grand
+orchestral crashings of melody.
+
+On our return the strange creeping chill, that must be a descendant of
+the old elemental fear, caught me at all obscure curves in the trail.
+
+[Illustration: A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING]
+
+Next day we started off early, and climbed through the woods and into
+the parks under the Dome. We scared a deer that had evidently been
+drinking. His fresh tracks led before us, but we could not catch a
+glimpse of him.
+
+[Illustration: THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS]
+
+We climbed out of the parks, up onto the rocky ridges where the
+spruce grew scarce, and then farther to the jumble of stones that had
+weathered from the great peaks above, and beyond that up the slope
+where all the vegetation was dwarfed, deformed, and weird, strange
+manifestation of its struggle for life. Here the air grew keener and
+cooler, and the light seemed to expand. We rode on to the steep slope
+that led up to the gap we were to cross between the Dome and its
+companion.
+
+[Illustration: UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS]
+
+I saw a red fox running up the slope, and dismounting I took a quick
+shot at three hundred yards, and scored a hit. It turned out to be a
+cross fox, and had very pretty fur.
+
+When we reached the level of the deep gap the wind struck us hard and
+cold. On that side opened an abyss, gray and shelving as it led down
+to green timber, and then on to the yellow parks and black ridges that
+gleamed under the opposite range.
+
+We had to work round a wide amphitheater, and up a steep corner to the
+top. This turned out to be level and smooth for a long way, with a
+short, velvety yellow grass, like moss, spotted with flowers. Here at
+thirteen thousand feet, the wind hit us with exceeding force, and soon
+had us with freezing hands and faces. All about us were bold black and
+gray peaks, with patches of snow, and above them clouds of white and
+drab, showing blue sky between. It developed that this grassy summit
+ascended in a long gradual sweep, from the apex of which stretched a
+grand expanse, like a plain of gold, down and down, endlessly almost,
+and then up and up to end under a gray butte, highest of the points
+around. The ride across here seemed to have no limit, but it was
+beautiful, though severe on endurance. I saw another fox, and
+dismounting, fired five shots as he ran, dusting him with three
+bullets. We rode out to the edge of the mountain and looked off. It
+was fearful, yet sublime. The world lay beneath us. In many places we
+rode along the rim, and at last circled the great butte, and worked up
+behind it on a swell of slope. Here the range ran west and the drop
+was not sheer, but, gradual with fine benches for sheep. We found many
+tracks and fresh sign, but did not see one sheep. Meanwhile the
+hard wind had ceased, and the sun had come out, making the ride
+comfortable, as far as weather was concerned. We had gotten a long way
+from camp, and finding no trail to descend in that direction we turned
+to retrace our steps. That was about one o'clock, and we rode and rode
+and rode, until I was so tired that I could not appreciate the scenes
+as I had on the way up. It took six hours to get back to camp!
+
+Next morning we took the hounds and rode off for bear. Eight of the
+hounds were chained in braces, one big and one little dog together,
+and they certainly had a hard time of it. Sampson, the giant gray and
+brown hound, and Jim, the old black leader, were free to run to and
+fro across the way. We rode down a few miles, and into the forest.
+There were two long, black ridges, and here we were to hunt for bear.
+It was the hardest kind of work, turning and twisting between the
+trees, dodging snags, and brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse
+among fallen logs. The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich
+brown and black muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds
+got caught on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a
+scent of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail
+and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail. We
+penetrated deep between the two ridges, and came to a little lake,
+about thirty feet wide, surrounded by rushes and grass. Here we rested
+the horses, and incidentally, ourselves. Fox chased a duck, and it
+flew into the woods and hid under a log. Fox trailed it, and Teague
+shot it just as he might have a rabbit. We got two more ducks, fine
+big mallards, the same way. It was amazing to me, and R.C. remarked
+that never had he seen such strange and foolish ducks.
+
+This forest had hundreds of trees barked by porcupines, and some clear
+to the top. But we met only one of the animals, and he left several
+quills in the nose of one of the pups. I was of the opinion that these
+porcupines destroy many fine trees, as I saw a number barked all
+around.
+
+We did not see any bear sign. On the way back to camp we rode out of
+the forest and down a wide valley, the opposite side of which was open
+slope with patches of alder. Even at a distance I could discern the
+color of these open glades and grassy benches. They had a tinge of
+purple, like purple sage. When I got to them I found a profusion of
+asters of the most exquisite shades of lavender, pink and purple. That
+slope was long, and all the way up we rode through these beautiful
+wild flowers. I shall never forget that sight, nor the many asters
+that shone like stars out of the green. The pink ones were new to me,
+and actually did not seem real. I noticed my horse occasionally nipped
+a bunch and ate them, which seemed to me almost as heartless as to
+tread them under foot.
+
+When we got up the slope and into the woods again we met a storm, and
+traveled for an hour in the rain, and under the dripping spruces,
+feeling the cold wet sting of swaying branches as we rode by. Then the
+sun came out bright and the forest glittered, all gold and green. The
+smell of the woods after a rain is indescribable. It combines a rare
+tang of pine, spruce, earth and air, all refreshed.
+
+The day after, we left at eight o'clock, and rode down to the main
+trail, and up that for five miles where we cut off to the left and
+climbed into the timber. The woods were fresh and dewy, dark and cool,
+and for a long time we climbed bench after bench where the grass and
+ferns and moss made a thick, deep cover. Farther up we got into fallen
+timber and made slow progress. At timber line we tied the horses and
+climbed up to the pass between two great mountain ramparts. Sheep
+tracks were in evidence, but not very fresh. Teague and I climbed on
+top and R.C., with Vern, went below just along the timber line. The
+climb on foot took all my strength, and many times I had to halt for
+breath. The air was cold. We stole along the rim and peered over. R.C.
+and Vern looked like very little men far below, and the dogs resembled
+mice.
+
+Teague climbed higher, and left me on a promontory, watching all
+around.
+
+The cloud pageant was magnificent, with huge billowy white masses
+across the valley, and to the west great black thunderheads rolling
+up. The wind began to blow hard, carrying drops of rain that stung,
+and the air was nipping cold. I felt aloof from all the crowded world,
+alone on the windy heights, with clouds and storm all around me.
+
+When the storm threatened I went back to the horses. It broke, but
+was not severe after all. At length R.C. and the men returned and we
+mounted to ride back to camp. The storm blew away, leaving the sky
+clear and blue, and the sun shone warm. We had an hour of winding in
+and out among windfalls of timber, and jumping logs, and breaking
+through brush. Then the way sloped down to a beautiful forest, shady
+and green, full of mossy dells, almost overgrown with ferns and low
+spreading ground pine or spruce. The aisles of the forest were long
+and shaded by the stately spruces. Water ran through every ravine,
+sometimes a brawling brook, sometimes a rivulet hidden under
+overhanging mossy banks. We scared up two lonely grouse, at long
+intervals. At length we got into fallen timber, and from that worked
+into a jumble of rocks, where the going was rough and dangerous.
+
+The afternoon waned as we rode on and on, up and down, in and out,
+around, and at times the horses stood almost on their heads, sliding
+down steep places where the earth was soft and black, and gave forth a
+dank odor. We passed ponds and swamps, and little lakes. We saw where
+beavers had gnawed down aspens, and we just escaped miring our
+horses in marshes, where the grass grew, rich and golden, hiding
+the treacherous mire. The sun set, and still we did not seem to get
+anywhere. I was afraid darkness would overtake us, and we would get
+lost in the woods. Presently we struck an old elk trail, and following
+that for a while, came to a point where R.C. and I recognized a tree
+and a glade where we had been before--and not far from camp--a welcome
+discovery.
+
+Next day we broke camp and started across country for new territory
+near Whitley's Peak.
+
+We rode east up the mountain. After several miles along an old logging
+road we reached the timber, and eventually the top of the ridge. We
+went down, crossing parks and swales. There were cattle pastures, and
+eaten over and trodden so much they had no beauty left. Teague wanted
+to camp at a salt lick, but I did not care for the place.
+
+We went on. The dogs crossed a bear trail, and burst out in a clamor.
+We had a hard time holding them.
+
+The guide and I had a hot argument. I did not want to stay there and
+chase a bear in a cow pasture.... So we went on, down into ranch
+country, and this disgusted me further. We crossed a ranch, and rode
+several miles on a highway, then turned abruptly, and climbed a rough,
+rocky ridge, covered with brush and aspen. We crossed it, and went
+down for several miles, and had to camp in an aspen grove, on the
+slope of a ravine. It was an uninviting place to stay, but as there
+was no other we had to make the best of it. The afternoon had waned. I
+took a gun and went off down the ravine, until I came to a deep gorge.
+Here I heard the sound of a brawling brook. I sat down for an hour,
+but saw no game.
+
+That night I had a wretched bed, one that I could hardly stay in,
+and I passed miserable hours. I got up sore, cramped, sleepy and
+irritable. We had to wait three hours for the horses to be caught and
+packed. I had predicted straying horses. At last we were off, and rode
+along the steep slope of a canyon for several miles, and then struck a
+stream of amber-colored water. As we climbed along this we came into
+deep spruce forest, where it was pleasure to ride. I saw many dells
+and nooks, cool and shady, full of mossy rocks and great trees. But
+flowers were scarce. We were sorry to pass the head-springs of that
+stream and to go on over the divide and down into the wooded, but dry
+and stony country. We rode until late, and came at last to a park
+where sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high
+dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for we
+rode into a park with many branches, where there was good water and
+fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which to pitch our
+tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at night.
+
+The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started before
+a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses, and soon
+we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We put on our
+slickers. After a short ride down through the forest we entered
+Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time trying to find a
+forester's trail leading out of it. At last we found one, but it soon
+petered out, and we were lost in thick timber, in a driving rain, with
+the cold and wind increasing. But we kept on.
+
+This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and great
+canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to ride out of
+it. When we began to descend once more we struck an old lumber road.
+More luck--the storm ceased, and presently we were out on an aspen
+slope with a great valley beneath, and high, black peaks beyond. Below
+the aspens were long swelling slopes of sage and grass, gray and
+golden and green. A ranch lay in the valley, and we crossed it to
+climb up a winding ravine, once more to the aspens where we camped in
+the rancher's pasture. It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be
+fairly comfortable.
+
+The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled.
+There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and
+violet-hued banks of cloud.
+
+Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About nine
+the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed pastures and
+aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the grass grew luxuriant,
+and the red wall of rock overhung the long slopes. The view west was
+magnificent--a long, bulging range of mountains, vast stretches of
+green aspen slopes, winding parks of all shapes, gray and gold and
+green, and jutting peaks, and here and there patches of autumn blaze
+in grass and thicket.
+
+We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with water,
+grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of mountains and
+valleys below.
+
+We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak. After the
+middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to the touch of
+frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly beautiful. Against
+a background of gray sage the gold and red and purple aspen groves
+showed too much like exquisite paintings to seem real. In the mornings
+the frost glistened thick and white on the grass; and after the
+gorgeous sunsets of gold over the violet-hazed ranges the air grew
+stingingly cold.
+
+Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely criticised by
+many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business,
+and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the
+kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know
+what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I
+would not do so, except in a case of hunger. All the same, leaving the
+tree out of consideration, bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously
+exciting and hazardous game. But my ideas about sport are changing.
+Hunting, in the sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate business.
+
+[Illustration: WHITE ASPEN TREE, SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS]
+
+The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong about
+the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my hands. All is
+exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent up to the moment
+the shot is fired. After that it is another matter. It is useless for
+sportsmen to tell me that they, in particular, hunt right, conserve
+the game, do not go beyond the limit, and all that sort of thing. I do
+not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made
+for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may
+keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of
+spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
+the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life
+is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to
+the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a
+man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is
+to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard
+and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will
+weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not prepared now to say
+whether or not that would be well. The Germans believe they are the
+race fittest to survive over all others--and that has made me a
+little sick of this Darwin business.
+
+[Illustration: A BLACK BEAR TREED]
+
+To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a wild
+chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating experience, I will
+relate a couple of instances, and I will leave it to my readers to
+judge whether or not it is a cowardly sport.
+
+One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that he had
+surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead cow.
+
+"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
+delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll come
+back to-night."
+
+Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode into
+camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were
+glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that
+crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide
+led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a
+quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the
+chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that my
+brother and I were well ahead of the others. But we did not see any
+bear near the carcass of the cow. Old Jim and Sampson were close
+behind us, and when Jim came within forty yards of that carcass he
+put his nose up with a deep and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a
+streak. He never went near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder
+and raced after Jim.
+
+"They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come on!"
+
+We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to the edge
+of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with noses high. I
+heard a string of yelps and bellows from our rear.
+
+"Look back!" shouted R.C.
+
+Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack. It surely
+was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like the wind they
+passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods with deep bays. I was
+riding Teague's best horse for this sort of work and he understood the
+game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s horse ran as fast in the woods as
+he did in the open. This frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be
+careful. I yelled to deaf ears. That is the first great risk--a rider
+is not going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson
+with the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both
+horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases with
+Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and snags, and
+sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against trees. For a mile
+the forest was comparatively open, and here we had a grand and ringing
+run. I received two hard knocks, was unseated once, but held on, and
+I got a stinging crack in the face from a branch. R.C. added several
+more black-and-blue spots to his already spotted anatomy, and he
+missed, just by an inch, a solid snag that would have broken him
+in two. The pack stretched out in wild staccato chorus, the little
+Airedales literally screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then
+Sampson. Still it was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather
+than sight. They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble
+in the windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the
+mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear. The
+forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the dogs go
+down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague and the others
+strung out along the edge of the park. They got far ahead of us. When
+we reached the bottom of the slope they were out of sight, but we
+could hear them yell. The hounds were working around on another slope,
+from which craggy rocks loomed above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged
+across the park and appeared to be running off from mine. I was a
+little to the right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we
+had the bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his
+knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to alight all
+spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to be hurt. When I
+got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be patient with me, but
+he was in a hurry. Before we got across the wet place R.C. was out of
+sight. I decided that instead of worrying about him I had better think
+about myself. Once on hard ground my horse fairly charged into the
+woods and we broke brush and branches as if they had been punk. It
+was again open forest, then a rocky slope, and then a flat ridge with
+aisles between the trees. Here I heard the melodious notes of Teague's
+hunting horn, and following that, the full chorus of the hounds. They
+had treed the bear. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks
+here and there, I caught sight of R.C. far ahead, and soon I had
+glimpses of the other horses, and lastly, while riding full tilt, I
+spied a big, black, glistening bear high up in a pine a hundred yards
+or more distant.
+
+Slowing down I rode up to the circle of frenzied dogs and excited men.
+The boys were all jabbering at once. Teague was beaming. R.C. sat his
+horse, and it struck me that he looked sorry for the bear.
+
+"Fifteen minutes!" ejaculated Teague, with a proud glance at Old Jim
+standing with forepaws up on the pine.
+
+Indeed it had been a short and ringing chase.
+
+All the time while I fooled around trying to photograph the treed
+bear, R.C. sat there on his horse, looking upward.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, better kill him," said Teague, cheerfully. "If he
+gets rested he'll come down."
+
+It was then I suggested to R.C. that he do the shooting.
+
+"Not much!" he exclaimed.
+
+The bear looked really pretty perched up there. He was as round as a
+barrel and black as jet and his fur shone in the gleams of sunlight.
+His tongue hung out, and his plump sides heaved, showing what a quick,
+hard run he had made before being driven to the tree. What struck me
+most forcibly about him was the expression in his eyes as he looked
+down at those devils of hounds. He was scared. He realized his peril.
+It was utterly impossible for me to see Teague's point of view.
+
+"Go ahead--and plug him," I replied to my brother. "Get it over."
+
+"You do it," he said.
+
+"No, I won't."
+
+"Why not--I'd like to know?"
+
+"Maybe we won't have so good a chance again--and I want you to get
+your bear," I replied.
+
+"Why it's like--murder," he protested.
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," I returned, weakly. "We need the meat. We've
+not had any game meat, you know, except ducks and grouse."
+
+"You won't do it?" he added, grimly.
+
+"No, I refuse."
+
+Meanwhile the young ranchers gazed at us with wide eyes and the
+expression on Teague's honest, ruddy face would have been funny under
+other circumstances.
+
+"That bear will come down an' mebbe kill one of my dogs," he
+protested.
+
+"Well, he can come for all I care," I replied, positively, and I
+turned away.
+
+I heard R.C. curse low under his breath. Then followed the spang of his
+.35 Remington. I wheeled in time to see the bear straining upward in
+terrible convulsion, his head pointed high, with blood spurting from his
+nose. Slowly he swayed and fell with a heavy crash.
+
+[Illustration: CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO]
+
+The next bear chase we had was entirely different medicine.
+
+Off in the basin under the White Slides, back of our camp, the hounds
+struck a fresh track and in an instant were out of sight. With the
+cowboy Vern setting the pace we plunged after them. It was rough
+country. Bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little parks, stretches of timber
+full of windfalls, groves of aspens so thick we could scarcely squeeze
+through--all these obstacles soon allowed the hounds to get far away.
+We came out into a large park, right under the mountain slope, and
+here we sat our horses listening to the chase. That trail led around
+the basin and back near to us, up the thick green slope, where high up
+near a ledge we heard the pack jump this bear. It sounded to us as if
+he had been roused out of a sleep.
+
+"I'll bet it's one of the big grizzlies we've heard about," said
+Teague.
+
+That was something to my taste. I have seen a few grizzlies. Riding
+to higher ground I kept close watch on the few open patches up on the
+slope. The chase led toward us for a while. Suddenly I saw a big bear
+with a frosted coat go lumbering across one of these openings.
+
+"Silvertip! Silvertip!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I saw him!"
+
+My call thrilled everybody. Vern spurred his horse and took to the
+right. Teague advised that we climb the slope. So we made for the
+timber. Once there we had to get off and climb on foot. It was steep,
+rough, very hard work. I had on chaps and spurs. Soon I was hot,
+laboring, and my heart began to hurt. We all had to rest. The baying
+of the hounds inspirited us now and then, but presently we lost it.
+Teague said they had gone over the ridge and as soon as we got up to
+the top we would hear them again. We struck an elk trail with fresh
+elk tracks in it. Teague said they were just ahead of us. I never
+climbed so hard and fast in my life. We were all tuckered out when we
+reached the top of the ridge. Then to our great disappointment we did
+not hear the hounds. Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded
+ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher. Once on
+a bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed. The big,
+round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me. No doubt of
+its being a silvertip!
+
+We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the summit
+of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of the pack. They
+were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and over a wooded bench
+at our feet. Teague yelled as he spurred down. R.C. rode hard in his
+tracks.
+
+But my horse was new to this bear chasing. He was mettlesome, and he
+did not want to do what I wanted. When I jabbed the spurs into his
+flanks he nearly bucked me off. I was looking for a soft place to
+light when he quit. Long before I got down that open slope Teague and
+R.C. had disappeared. I had to follow their tracks. This I did at a
+gallop, but now and then lost the tracks, and had to haul in to find
+them. If I could have heard the hounds from there I would have gone on
+anyway. But once down in the jack-pines I could hear neither yell or
+bay. The pines were small, close together, and tough. I hurt my hands,
+scratched my face, barked my knees. The horse had a habit of suddenly
+deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and
+when he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both
+to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me. I was worked into a
+frenzy. Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old grizzly
+and fail to kill him! That was the reason for my desperate hurry. I
+got a crack on the head that nearly blinded me. My horse grew hot and
+began to run in every little open space. He could scarcely be held in.
+And I, with the blood hot in me too, did not hold him hard enough.
+
+It seemed miles across that wooded bench. But at last I reached
+another slope. Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C. and Teague
+yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly. He was growling
+and threshing about far below. I had missed the tracks made by Teague
+and my brother, and it was necessary to find them. That slope looked
+impassable. I rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally I found
+where the ground was plowed deep and here I headed my horse. He had
+been used to smooth roads and he could not take these jumps. I went
+forward on his neck. But I hung on and spurred him hard. The mad
+spirit of that chase had gotten into him too. All the time I could
+hear the fierce baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I
+heard a savage bawl from the bear. I literally plunged, slid, broke a
+way down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I discovered
+the footprints of Teague and R.C. They had walked, leading their
+horses. By this time I was so mad I would not get off. I rode all the
+way down that steep slope of dense saplings, loose rock slides and
+earth, and jumble of splintered cliff. That he did not break my
+neck and his own spoke the truth about that roan horse. Despite his
+inexperience he was great. We fell over one bank, but a thicket of
+aspens saved us from rolling. The avalanches slid from under us until
+I imagined that the grizzly would be scared. Once as I stopped to
+listen I heard bear and pack farther down the canyon--heard them above
+the roar of a rushing stream. They went on and I lost the sounds of
+fight. But R.C.'s clear thrilling call floated up to me. Probably he
+was worried about me.
+
+Then before I realized it I was at the foot of the slope, in a narrow
+canyon bed, full of rocks and trees, with the din of roaring water in
+my ears. I could hear nothing else. Tracks were everywhere, and when I
+came to the first open place I was thrilled. The grizzly had plunged
+off a sandy bar into the water, and there he had fought the hounds.
+Signs of that battle were easy to read. I saw where his huge tracks,
+still wet, led up the opposite sandy bank.
+
+Then, down stream, I did my most reckless riding. On level ground
+the horse was splendid. Once he leaped clear across the brook. Every
+plunge, every turn I expected to bring me upon my brother and Teague
+and that fighting pack. More than once I thought I heard the spang of
+the .35 and this made me urge the roan faster and faster.
+
+The canyon narrowed, the stream-bed deepened. I had to slow down to
+get through the trees and rocks. And suddenly I was overjoyed to ride
+pell-mell upon R.C. and Teague with half the panting hounds. The
+canyon had grown too rough for the horses to go farther and it would
+have been useless for us to try on foot. As I dismounted, so sore and
+bruised I could hardly stand, old Jim came limping in to fall into the
+brook where he lapped and lapped thirstily. Teague threw up his hands.
+Old Jim's return meant an ended chase. The grizzly had eluded the
+hounds in that jumble of rocks below.
+
+"Say, did you meet the bear?" queried Teague, eyeing me in
+astonishment and mirth.
+
+Bloody, dirty, ragged and wringing wet with sweat I must have been a
+sight. R.C. however, did not look so very immaculate, and when I saw
+he also was lame and scratched and black I felt better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
+
+I
+
+The Grand Canyon of Arizona is over two hundred miles long, thirteen
+wide, and a mile and a half deep; a titanic gorge in which mountains,
+tablelands, chasms and cliffs lie half veiled in purple haze. It is
+wild and sublime, a thing of wonder, of mystery; beyond all else a
+place to grip the heart of a man, to unleash his daring spirit.
+
+On April 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary party and
+pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the most isolated,
+inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in all the canyon
+country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared insurmountable;
+standing aloof from the towers and escarpments, rugged and bold in
+outline, its forest covering like a strip of black velvet, its giant
+granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed apart from the world,
+haunting with its beauty, isolation and wild promise.
+
+The members of my party harmoniously fitted the scene. Buffalo Jones,
+burly-shouldered, bronze-faced, and grim, proved in his appearance
+what a lifetime on the plains could make of a man. Emett was a Mormon,
+a massively built grey-bearded son of the desert; he had lived his
+life on it; he had conquered it and in his falcon eyes shone all its
+fire and freedom. Ranger Jim Owens had the wiry, supple body and
+careless, tidy garb of the cowboy, and the watchful gaze, quiet face
+and locked lips of the frontiersman. The fourth member was a Navajo
+Indian, a copper-skinned, raven-haired, beady-eyed desert savage.
+
+I had told Emett to hire some one who could put the horses on grass in
+the evening and then find them the next morning. In northern Arizona
+this required more than genius. Emett secured the best trailer of the
+desert Navajos. Jones hated an Indian; and Jim, who carried an ounce
+of lead somewhere in his person, associated this painful addition to
+his weight with an unfriendly Apache, and swore all Indians should
+be dead. So between the two, Emett and I had trouble in keeping our
+Navajo from illustrating the plainsman idea of a really good Indian--a
+dead one.
+
+While we were pitching camp among magnificent pine trees, and above a
+hollow where a heavy bank of snow still lay, a sodden pounding in the
+turf attracted our attention.
+
+"Hold the horses!" yelled Emett.
+
+As we all made a dive among our snorting and plunging horses the sound
+seemed to be coming right into camp. In a moment I saw a string of
+wild horses thundering by. A noble black stallion led them, and as he
+ran with beautiful stride he curved his fine head backward to look at
+us, and whistled his wild challenge.
+
+Later a herd of large white-tailed deer trooped up the hollow. The
+Navajo grew much excited and wanted me to shoot, and when Emett told
+him we had not come out to kill, he looked dumbfounded. Even the
+Indian felt it a strange departure from the usual mode of hunting to
+travel and climb hundreds of miles over hot desert and rock-ribbed
+canyons, to camp at last in a spot so wild that deer were tame as
+cattle, and then not kill.
+
+Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling into
+permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the all-satisfying
+touch to the background of forest, flowers and mighty pines and sunlit
+patches of grass, the white tents and red blankets, the sleeping
+hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a picture like that of a
+hunter's dream.
+
+"Come, saddle up," called the never restful Jones. "Leave the Indian
+in camp with the hounds, and we'll get the lay of the land." All
+afternoon we spent riding the plateau. What a wonderful place! We were
+completely bewildered with its physical properties, and surprised
+at the abundance of wild horses and mustangs, deer, coyotes, foxes,
+grouse and other birds, and overjoyed to find innumerable lion trails.
+When we returned to camp I drew a rough map, which Jones laid flat on
+the ground as he called us around him.
+
+"Now, boys, let's get our heads together."
+
+In shape the plateau resembled the ace of clubs. The center and side
+wings were high and well wooded with heavy pines; the middle wing
+was longest, sloped west, had no pine, but a dense growth of cedar.
+Numerous ridges and canyons cut up this central wing. Middle Canyon,
+the longest and deepest, bisected the plateau, headed near camp, and
+ran parallel with two smaller ones, which we named Right and Left
+Canyons. These three were lion runways and hundreds of deer carcasses
+lined the thickets. North Hollow was the only depression, as well as
+runway, on the northwest rim. West Point formed the extreme western
+cape of the plateau. To the left of West Point was a deep cut-in of
+the rim wall, called the Bay. The three important canyons opened into
+it. From the Bay, the south rim was regular and impassable all the way
+round to the narrow Saddle, which connected it to the mainland.
+
+"Now then," said Jones, when we assured him that we were pretty well
+informed as to the important features, "you can readily see our
+advantage. The plateau is about nine or ten miles long, and six wide
+at its widest. We can't get lost, at least for long. We know where
+lions can go over the rim and we'll head them off, make short cut
+chases, something new in lion hunting. We are positive the lions can
+not get over the second wall, except where we came up, at the Saddle.
+In regard to lion signs, I'm doubtful of the evidence of my own eyes.
+This is virgin ground. No white man or Indian has ever hunted lions
+here. We have stumbled on a lion home, the breeding place of hundreds
+of lions that infest the north rim of the canyon."
+
+The old plainsman struck a big fist into the palm of his hand, a rare
+action with him. Jim lifted his broad hat and ran his fingers through
+his white hair. In Emett's clear desert-eagle eyes shown a furtive,
+anxious look, which yet could not overshadow the smouldering fire.
+
+"If only we don't kill the horses!" he said.
+
+More than anything else that remark from such a man thrilled me with
+its subtle suggestion. He loved those beautiful horses. What wild
+rides he saw in his mind's eye! In cold calculation we perceived the
+wonderful possibilities never before experienced by hunters, and as
+the wild spell clutched us my last bar of restraint let down.
+
+During supper we talked incessantly, and afterward around the
+camp-fire. Twilight fell with the dark shadows sweeping under the
+silent pines; the night wind rose and began its moan.
+
+"Shore there's some scent on the wind," said Jim, lighting his pipe
+with a red ember. "See how uneasy Don is."
+
+The hound raised his fine, dark head and repeatedly sniffed the air,
+then walked to and fro as if on guard for his pack. Moze ground his
+teeth on a bone and growled at one of the pups. Sounder was sleepy,
+but he watched Don with suspicious eyes. The other hounds, mature and
+somber, lay stretched before the fire.
+
+"Tie them up, Jim," said Jones, "and let's turn in."
+
+
+II
+
+When I awakened next morning the sound of Emett's axe rang out
+sharply. Little streaks of light from the camp-fire played between the
+flaps of the tent. I saw old Moze get up and stretch himself. A jangle
+of cow-bells from the forest told me we would not have to wait for the
+horses that morning.
+
+"The Injun's all right," Jones remarked to Emett.
+
+"All rustle for breakfast," called Jim.
+
+We ate in the semi-darkness with the gray shadow ever brightening.
+Dawn broke as we saddled our horses. The pups were limber, and ran
+to and fro on their chains, scenting the air; the older hounds stood
+quietly waiting.
+
+"Come Navvy--come chase cougie," said Emett.
+
+"Dam! No!" replied the Indian.
+
+"Let him keep camp," suggested Jim.
+
+"All right; but he'll eat us out," Emett declared.
+
+"Climb up you fellows," said Jones, impatiently. "Have I got
+everything--rope, chains, collars, wire, nippers? Yes, all right.
+Hyar, you lazy dogs--out of this!"
+
+We rode abreast down the ridge. The demeanor of the hounds contrasted
+sharply with what it had been at the start of the hunt the year
+before. Then they had been eager, uncertain, violent; they did not
+know what was in the air; now they filed after Don in an orderly trot.
+
+We struck out of the pines at half past five. Floating mist hid the
+lower end of the plateau. The morning had a cool touch but there was
+no frost. Crossing Middle Canyon about half way down we jogged on.
+Cedar trees began to show bright green against the soft gray sage. We
+were nearing the dark line of the cedar forest when Jim, who led, held
+up his hand in a warning check. We closed in around him.
+
+"Watch Don," he said.
+
+The hound stood stiff, head well up, nose working, and the hair on his
+back bristling. All the other hounds whined and kept close to him.
+
+"Don scents a lion," whispered Jim. "I've never known him to do that
+unless there was the scent of a lion on the wind."
+
+"Hunt 'em up Don, old boy," called Jones.
+
+The pack commenced to work back and forth along the ridge. We neared
+a hollow when Don barked eagerly. Sounder answered and likewise Jude.
+Moze's short angry "bow-wow" showed the old gladiator to be in line.
+
+"Ranger's gone," cried Jim. "He was farthest ahead. I'll bet he's
+struck it. We'll know in a minute, for we're close."
+
+The hounds were tearing through the sage, working harder and harder,
+calling and answering one another, all the time getting down into the
+hollow.
+
+Don suddenly let out a string of yelps. I saw him, running head up,
+pass into the cedars like a yellow dart. Sounder howled his deep, full
+bay, and led the rest of the pack up the slope in angry clamor.
+
+"They're off!" yelled Jim, and so were we.
+
+In less than a minute we had lost one another. Crashings among the dry
+cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one direction. The
+fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I remembered that Jim had
+said Emett and his charger might keep the pack in sight, but that none
+of the rest of us could.
+
+It did not take me long to realize what my mustang was made of. His
+name was Foxie, which suited him well. He carried me at a fast pace on
+the trail of some one; and he seemed to know that by keeping in this
+trail part of the work of breaking through the brush was already done
+for him. Nevertheless, the sharp dead branches, more numerous in a
+cedar forest than elsewhere, struck and stung us as we passed. We
+climbed a ridge, and found the cedars thinning out into open patches.
+Then we faced a bare slope of sage and I saw Emett below on his big
+horse.
+
+Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage, and
+showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open ground, with
+its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the little mustang. I
+heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears. Emett's trail, plain
+in the yellow ground showed me the way. On entering the cedars again
+I pulled Foxie in and stopped twice to yell "waa-hoo!" I heard the
+baying of the hounds, but no answer to my signal. Then I attended to
+the stern business of catching up. For what seemed a long time, I
+threaded the maze of cedar, galloped the open sage flats, always on
+Emett's track.
+
+A signal cry, sharp to the right, turned me. I answered, and with the
+exchange of signal cries found my way into an open glade where Jones
+and Jim awaited me.
+
+"Here's one," said Jim. "Emett must be with the hounds. Listen."
+
+With the labored breathing of the horses filling our ears we could
+hear no other sound. Dismounting, I went aside and turned my ear to
+the breeze.
+
+"I hear Don," I cried instantly.
+
+"Which way?" both men asked.
+
+"West."
+
+"Strange," said Jones. "The hound wouldn't split, would he, Jim?"
+
+"Don leave that hot trail? Shore he wouldn't," replied Jim. "But his
+runnin' do seem queer this morning."
+
+"The breeze is freshening," I said. "There! Now listen! Don, and
+Sounder, too."
+
+The baying came closer and closer. Our horses threw up long ears. It
+was hard to sit still and wait. At a quick cry from Jim we saw Don
+cross the lower end of the flat.
+
+No need to spur our mounts! The lifting of bridles served, and away
+we raced. Foxie passed the others in short order. Don had long
+disappeared, but with blended bays, Jude, Moze, and Sounder broke out
+of the cedars hot on the trail. They, too, were out of sight in a
+moment.
+
+The crash of breaking brush and thunder of hoofs from where the hounds
+had come out of the forest, attracted and even frightened me. I saw
+the green of a low cedar tree shake, and split, to let out a huge,
+gaunt horse with a big man doubled over his saddle. The onslaught
+of Emett and his desert charger stirred a fear in me that checked
+admiration.
+
+"Hounds running wild," he yelled, and the dark shadows of the cedars
+claimed him again.
+
+A hundred yards within the forest we came again upon Emett,
+dismounted, searching the ground. Moze and Sounder were with him,
+apparently at fault. Suddenly Moze left the little glade and venting
+his sullen, quick bark, disappeared under the trees. Sounder sat on
+his haunches and yelped.
+
+"Now what the hell is wrong?" growled Jones tumbling off his saddle.
+
+"Shore something is," said Jim, also dismounting.
+
+"Here's a lion track," interposed Emett.
+
+"Ha! and here's another," cried Jones, in great satisfaction. "That's
+the trail we were on, and here's another crossing it at right angles.
+Both are fresh: one isn't fifteen minutes old. Don and Jude have split
+one way and Moze another. By George! that's great of Sounder to hang
+fire!"
+
+"Put him on the fresh trail," said Jim, vaulting into his saddle.
+
+Jones complied, with the result that we saw Sounder start off on the
+trail Moze had taken. All of us got in some pretty hard riding, and
+managed to stay within earshot of Sounder. We crossed a canyon, and
+presently reached another which, from its depth, must have been Middle
+Canyon. Sounder did not climb the opposite slope, so we followed the
+rim. From a bare ridge we distinguished the line of pines above us,
+and decided that our location was in about the center of the plateau.
+
+Very little time elapsed before we heard Moze. Sounder had caught up
+with him. We came to a halt where the canyon widened and was not so
+deep, with cliffs and cedars opposite us, and an easy slope leading
+down. Sounder bayed incessantly; Moze emitted harsh, eager howls, and
+both hounds, in plain sight, began working in circles.
+
+"The lion has gone up somewhere," cried Jim. "Look sharp!"
+
+Repeatedly Moze worked to the edge of a low wall of stone and looked
+over; then he barked and ran back to the slope, only to return. When
+I saw him slide down a steep place, make for the bottom of the stone
+wall, and jump into the low branches of a cedar I knew where to look.
+Then I descried the lion a round yellow ball, cunningly curled up in a
+mass of dark branches. He had leaped into the tree from the wall.
+
+"There he is! Treed! Treed!" I yelled. "Moze has found him."
+
+"Down boys, down into the canyon," shouted Jones, in sharp voice.
+"Make a racket, we don't want him to jump."
+
+How he and Jim and Emett rolled and cracked the stone! For a moment I
+could not get off my horse; I was chained to my saddle by a strange
+vacillation that could have been no other thing than fear.
+
+"Are you afraid?" called Jones from below.
+
+"Yes, but I am coming," I replied, and dismounted to plunge down the
+hill. It may have been shame or anger that dominated me then; whatever
+it was I made directly for the cedar, and did not halt until I was
+under the snarling lion.
+
+"Not too close!" warned Jones. "He might jump. It's a Tom, a
+two-year-old, and full of fight."
+
+It did not matter to me then whether he jumped or not. I knew I had to
+be cured of my dread, and the sooner it was done the better.
+
+Old Moze had already climbed a third of the distance up to the lion.
+
+"Hyar Moze! Out of there, you rascal coon chaser!" Jones yelled as he
+threw stones and sticks at the hound. Moze, however, replied with his
+snarly bark and climbed on steadily.
+
+"I've got to pull him out. Watch close boys and tell me if the lion
+starts down."
+
+When Jones climbed the first few branches of the tree, Tom let out an
+ominous growl.
+
+"Make ready to jump. Shore he's comin'," called Jim.
+
+The lion, snarling viciously, started to descend. It was a ticklish
+moment for all of us, particularly Jones. Warily he backed down.
+
+"Boys, maybe he's bluffing," said Jones, "Try him out. Grab sticks and
+run at the tree and yell, as if you were going to kill him."
+
+Not improbably the demonstration we executed under the tree would
+have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white
+fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as
+he could. The forked branch on which he stood swayed alarmingly.
+
+"Here, punch Moze out," said Jim handing up a long pole.
+
+The old hound hung like a leech to the tree, making it difficult to
+dislodge him. At length he fell heavily, and venting his thick battle
+cry, attempted to climb again.
+
+Jim seized him, made him fast to the rope with which Sounder had
+already been tied.
+
+"Say Emett, I've no chance here," called Jones. "You try to throw at
+him from the rock."
+
+Emett ran up the rock, coiled his lasso and cast the noose. It sailed
+perfectly in between the branches and circled Tom's head. Before it
+could be slipped tight he had thrown it off. Then he hid behind the
+branches.
+
+"I'm going farther up," said Jones.
+
+"Be quick," yelled Jim.
+
+Jones evidently had that in mind. When he reached the middle fork of
+the cedar, he stood erect and extended the noose of his lasso on the
+point of his pole. Tom, with a hiss and snap, struck at it savagely.
+The second trial tempted the lion to saw the rope with his teeth. In
+a flash Jones withdrew the pole, and lifted a loop of the slack rope
+over the lion's ears.
+
+"Pull!" he yelled.
+
+Emett, at the other end of the lasso, threw his great strength into
+action, pulling the lion out with a crash, and giving the cedar such a
+tremendous shaking that Jones lost his footing and fell heavily.
+
+Thrilling as the moment was, I had to laugh, for Jones came up out of
+a cloud of dust, as angry as a wet hornet, and made prodigious leaps
+to get out of the reach of the whirling lion.
+
+"Look out!" he bawled.
+
+Tom, certainly none the worse for his tumble, made three leaps, two at
+Jones, one at Jim, which was checked by the short length of the rope
+in Emett's hands. Then for a moment, a thick cloud of dust enveloped
+the wrestling lion, during which the quick-witted Jones tied the free
+end of the lasso to a sapling.
+
+"Dod gast the luck!" yelled Jones reaching for another lasso. "I
+didn't mean for you to pull him out of the tree. Now he'll get loose
+or kill himself."
+
+When the dust cleared away, we discovered our prize stretched out at
+full length and frothing at the mouth. As Jones approached, the lion
+began a series of evolutions so rapid as to be almost indiscernible to
+the eye. I saw a wheel of dust and yellow fur. Then came a thud and
+the lion lay inert.
+
+Jones pounced upon him and loosed the lasso around his neck.
+
+"I think he's done for, but maybe not. He's breathing yet. Here, help
+me tie his paws together. Look out! He's coming to!"
+
+The lion stirred and raised his head. Jones ran the loop of the second
+lasso around the two hind paws and stretched the lion out. While in
+this helpless position and with no strength and hardly any breath left
+in him the lion was easy to handle. With Emett's help Jones quickly
+clipped the sharp claws, tied the four paws together, took off the
+neck lasso and substituted a collar and chain.
+
+"There, that's one. He'll come to all right," said Jones. "But we are
+lucky. Emett, never pull another lion clear out of a tree. Pull him over
+a limb and hang him there while some one below ropes his hind paws.
+That's the only way, and if we don't stick to it, somebody is going to
+get done for. Come, now, we'll leave this fellow here and hunt up Don
+and Jude. They've treed another lion by this time."
+
+Remarkable to me was to see how, as soon as the lion lay helpless,
+Sounder lost his interest. Moze growled, yet readily left the spot.
+Before we reached the level, both hounds had disappeared.
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER]
+
+[Illustration: CAMP AT THE SADDLE]
+
+"Hear that?" yelled Jones, digging spurs into his horse. "Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+From the cedars rang the thrilling, blending chorus of bays that told
+of a treed lion. The forest was almost impenetrable. We had to pick
+our way. Emett forged ahead; we heard him smashing the deadwood; and
+soon a yell proclaimed the truth of Jones' assertion.
+
+First I saw the men looking upward; then Moze climbing the cedar, and
+the other hounds with noses skyward; and last, in the dead top of the
+tree, a dark blot against the blue, a big tawny lion.
+
+"Whoop!" The yell leaped past my lips. Quiet Jim was yelling; and
+Emett, silent man of the desert, let from his wide cavernous chest a
+booming roar that drowned ours.
+
+Jones' next decisive action turned us from exultation to the grim
+business of the thing. He pulled Moze out of the cedar, and while he
+climbed up, Emett ran his rope under the collars of all of the hounds.
+Quick as the idea flashed over me I leaped into the cedar adjoining
+the one Jones was in, and went up hand over hand. A few pulls brought
+me to the top, and then my blood ran hot and quick, for I was level
+with the lion, too close for comfort, but in excellent position for
+taking pictures.
+
+The lion, not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread
+paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came
+pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The
+quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body
+crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping
+jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his
+tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking them, manifested
+his extremity. The eager hounds waited below, howling, leaping.
+
+It bothered me considerably to keep my balance, regulate my camera
+and watch the proceedings. Jones climbed on with his rope between his
+teeth, and a long stick. The very next instant it seemed to me, I
+heard the cracking of branches and saw the lion biting hard at the
+noose which circled his neck.
+
+Here I swung down, branch to branch, and dropped to the ground, for
+I wanted to see what went on below. Above the howls and yelps, I
+distinguished Jones' yell. Emett ran directly under the lion with a
+spread noose in his hands. Jones pulled and pulled, but the lion held
+on firmly. Throwing the end of the lasso down to Jim, Jones yelled
+again, and then they both pulled. The lion was too strong. Suddenly,
+however, the branch broke, letting the lion fall, kicking frantically
+with all four paws. Emett grasped one of the four whipping paws, and
+even as the powerful animal sent him staggering he dexterously left
+the noose fast on the paw. Jim and Jones in unison let go of their
+lasso, which streaked up through the branches as the lion fell, and
+then it dropped to the ground, where Jim made a flying grab for it.
+Jones plunging out of the tree fell upon the rope at the same instant.
+
+If the action up to then had been fast, it was slow to what followed.
+It seemed impossible for two strong men with one lasso, and a giant
+with another, to straighten out that lion. He was all over the little
+space under the trees at once. The dust flew, the sticks snapped,
+the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars. Jones ploughed the
+ground flat on his stomach, holding on with one hand, with the other
+trying to fasten the rope to something; Jim went to his knees; and on
+the other side of the lion, Emett's huge bulk tipped a sharp angle,
+and then fell.
+
+I shouted and ran forward, having no idea what to do, but Emett rolled
+backward, at the same instant the other men got a strong haul on
+the lion. Short as that moment was in which the lasso slackened, it
+sufficed for Jones to make the rope fast to a tree. Whereupon with the
+three men pulling on the other side of the leaping lion, somehow I had
+flashed into my mind the game that children play, called skipping the
+rope, for the lion and lasso shot up and down.
+
+This lasted for only a few seconds. They stretched the beast from tree
+to tree, and Jones running with the third lasso, made fast the front
+paws.
+
+"It's a female," said Jones, as the lion lay helpless, her sides
+swelling; "a good-sized female. She's nearly eight feet from tip to
+tip, but not very heavy. Hand me another rope."
+
+When all four lassos had been stretched, the lioness could not move.
+Jones strapped a collar around her neck and clipped the sharp yellow
+claws.
+
+"Now to muzzle her," he continued.
+
+Jones' method of performing this most hazardous part of the work was
+characteristic of him. He thrust a stick between her open jaws, and
+when she crushed it to splinters he tried another, and yet another,
+until he found one that she could not break. Then while she bit on it,
+he placed a wire loop over her nose, slowly tightening it, leaving the
+stick back of her big canines.
+
+The hounds ceased their yelping and when untied, Sounder wagged his
+tail as if to say, "Well done," and then lay down; Don walked within
+three feet of the lion, as if she were now beneath his dignity; Jude
+began to nurse and lick her sore paw; only Moze the incorrigible
+retained antipathy for the captive, and he growled, as always, low and
+deep. And on the moment, Ranger, dusty and lame from travel, trotted
+wearily into the glade and, looking at the lioness, gave one disgusted
+bark and flopped down.
+
+
+III
+
+Transporting our captives to camp bade fair to make us work. When
+Jones, who had gone after the pack horses, hove in sight on the sage
+flat, it was plain to us that we were in for trouble. The bay stallion
+was on the rampage.
+
+"Why didn't you fetch the Indian?" growled Emett, who lost his temper
+when matters concerning his horses went wrong. "Spread out, boys, and
+head him off."
+
+We contrived to surround the stallion, and Emett succeeded in getting
+a halter on him.
+
+"I didn't want the bay," explained Jones, "but I couldn't drive the
+others without him. When I told that redskin that we had two lions, he
+ran off into the woods, so I had to come alone."
+
+"I'm going to scalp the Navajo," said Jim, complacently.
+
+These remarks were exchanged on the open ridge at the entrance to the
+thick cedar forest. The two lions lay just within its shady precincts.
+Emett and I, using a long pole in lieu of a horse, had carried Tom up
+from the Canyon to where we had captured the lioness.
+
+Jones had brought a packsaddle and two panniers.
+
+[Illustration: BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER]
+
+When Emett essayed to lead the horse which carried these, the animal
+stood straight up and began to show some of his primal desert
+instincts. It certainly was good luck that we unbuckled the packsaddle
+straps before he left the vicinity. In about three jumps he had
+separated himself from the panniers, which were then placed upon the
+back of another horse. This one, a fine looking beast, and amiable
+under surroundings where his life and health were considered even a
+little, immediately disclaimed any intention of entering the forest.
+
+"They scent the lions," said Jones. "I was afraid of it; never had but
+one nag that would pack lions."
+
+"Maybe we can't pack them at all," replied Emett dubiously. "It's
+certainly new to me."
+
+"We've got to," Jones asserted; "try the sorrel."
+
+For the first time in a serviceable and honorable life, according to
+Emett, the sorrel broke his halter and kicked like a plantation mule.
+
+"It's a matter of fright. Try the stallion. He doesn't look afraid,"
+said Jones, who never knew when he was beaten.
+
+Emett gazed at Jones as if he had not heard right.
+
+"Go ahead, try the stallion. I like the way he looks."
+
+No wonder! The big stallion looked a king of horses--just what he
+would have been if Emett had not taken him, when a colt, from his wild
+desert brothers. He scented the lions, and he held his proud head up,
+his ears erect, and his large, dark eyes shone fiery and expressive.
+
+"I'll try to lead him in and let him see the lions. We can't fool
+him," said Emett.
+
+Marc showed no hesitation, nor anything we expected. He stood
+stiff-legged, and looked as if he wanted to fight.
+
+"He's all right; he'll pack them," declared Jones.
+
+The packsaddle being strapped on and the panniers hooked to the horns,
+Jones and Jim lifted Tom and shoved him down into the left pannier
+while Emett held the horse. A madder lion than Tom never lived. It was
+cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as
+Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse
+was adding insult to injury. Tom frothed at the mouth and seemed like
+a fizzing torpedo about to explode. The lioness being considerably
+longer and larger, was with difficulty gotten into the other pannier,
+and her head and paws hung out. Both lions kept growling and snarling.
+
+"I look to see Marc bolt over the rim," said Emett, resignedly, as
+Jones took up the end of the rope halter.
+
+"No siree!" sang out that worthy. "He's helping us out; he's proud to
+show up the other nags."
+
+Jones was always asserting strange traits in animals, and giving them
+intelligence and reason. As to that, many incidents coming under my
+observation while with him, and seen with his eyes, made me incline to
+his claims, the fruit of a lifetime with animals.
+
+Marc packed the lions to camp in short order, and, quoting Jones,
+"without turning a hair." We saw the Navajo's head protruding from a
+tree. Emett yelled for him, and Jones and Jim "hahaed" derisively;
+whereupon the black head vanished and did not reappear. Then they
+unhooked one of the panniers and dumped out the lioness. Jones
+fastened her chain to a small pine tree, and as she lay powerless he
+pulled out the stick back of her canines. This allowed the wire muzzle
+to fall off. She signalled this freedom with a roar that showed her
+health to be still unimpaired. The last action in releasing her from
+her painful bonds Jones performed with sleight-of-hand dexterity. He
+slipped the loop fastening one paw, which loosened the rope, and in a
+twinkling let her work all of her other paws free. Up she sprang, ears
+flat, eyes ablaze, mouth wide, once more capable of defense, true to
+her instinct and her name.
+
+Before the men lowered Tom from Marc's back I stepped closer and put
+my face within six inches of the lion's. He promptly spat on me. I had
+to steel my nerve to keep so close. But I wanted to see a wild lion's
+eyes at close range. They were exquisitely beautiful, their physical
+properties as wonderful as their expression. Great half globes of
+tawny amber, streaked with delicate wavy lines of black, surrounding
+pupils of intense purple fire. Pictures shone and faded in the amber
+light--the shaggy tipped plateau, the dark pines and smoky canyons,
+the great dotted downward slopes, the yellow cliffs and crags. Deep in
+those live pupils, changing, quickening with a thousand vibrations,
+quivered the soul of this savage beast, the wildest of all wild
+Nature, unquenchable love of life and freedom, flame of defiance and
+hate.
+
+Jones disposed of Tom in the same manner as he had the lioness,
+chaining him to an adjoining small pine, where he leaped and wrestled.
+
+Presently I saw Emett coming through the woods leading and dragging
+the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that his fear was
+not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no wonder to me that
+the Navvy should hang back from this sacrilegious treatment of his
+god. A natural wisdom, which I had in common with all human beings who
+consider self preservation the first law of life, deterred me from
+acquainting my august companions with my belief. At least I did not
+want to break up the camp.
+
+In the remorseless grasp of Emett, forced along, the Navajo dragged
+his feet and held his face sidewise, though his dark eyes gleamed
+at the lions. Terror predominated among the expressions of his
+countenance. Emett drew him within fifteen feet and held him there,
+and with voice, and gesticulating of his free hand, tried to show the
+poor fellow that the lions would not hurt him.
+
+Navvy stared and muttered to himself. Here Jim had some deviltry in
+mind, for he edged up closer; but what it was never transpired, for
+Emett suddenly pointed to the horses and said to the Indian:
+
+"_Chineago_ (feed)."
+
+It appeared when Navvy swung himself over Marc's broad back, that our
+great stallion had laid aside his transiently noble disposition and
+was himself again. Marc proceeded to show us how truly Jim had spoken:
+"Shore he ain't no use for the redskin." Before the Indian had fairly
+gotten astride, Marc dropped his head, humped his shoulders, brought
+his feet together and began to buck. Now the Navajo was a famous
+breaker of wild mustangs, but Marc was a tougher proposition than the
+wildest mustang that ever romped the desert. Not only was he unusually
+vigorous; he was robust and heavy, yet exceedingly active. I had seen
+him roll over in the dust three times each way, and do it easily--a
+feat Emett declared he had never seen performed by another horse.
+
+Navvy began to bounce. He showed his teeth and twisted his sinewy
+hands in the horse's mane. Marc began to act like a demon; he plowed
+the ground; apparently he bucked five feet straight up. As the Indian
+had bounced he now began to shoot into the air. He rose the last time
+with his heels over his head, to the full extent of his arms; and on
+plunging down his hold broke. He spun around the horse, then went
+hurtling to the ground some twenty feet away. He sat up, and seeing
+Emett and Jones laughing, and Jim prostrated with joy, he showed his
+white teeth in a smile and said:
+
+"No bueno dam."
+
+I think all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and especially
+when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the mean Indian,
+patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted. Marc, not being so
+difficult to please as Jim in the way of discomfiting the Navajo,
+appeared satisfied for the present, and trotted off down the hollow,
+with the string of horses ahead, their bells jingling.
+
+Camp-fire tasks were a necessary wage in order to earn the full
+enjoyment and benefit of the hunting trip; and looking for some task
+with which to turn my hand, I helped Jim feed the hounds. To feed
+ordinary dogs is a matter of throwing them a bone; however, our dogs
+were not ordinary. It took time to feed them, and a prodigious amount
+of meat. We had packed between three and four hundred pounds of
+wild-horse meat, which had been cut into small pieces and strung on
+the branches of a scrub oak near camp.
+
+Don, as befitted a gentleman and the leader of the greatest pack in
+the West, had to be fed by hand. I believe he would rather had starved
+than have demeaned himself by fighting. Starved he certainly would
+have, if Jim had thrown meat indiscriminately to the ground. Sounder
+asserted his rights and preferred large portions at a time. Jude
+begged with great solemn eyes but was no slouch at eating for all her
+gentleness. Ranger, because of imperfectly developed teeth rendering
+mastication difficult, had to have his share cut into very small
+pieces. As for Moze--well, great dogs have their faults as do great
+men--he never got enough meat; he would fight even poor crippled Jude,
+and steal even from the pups; when he had gotten all Jim would give
+him, and all he could snatch, he would growl away with bulging sides.
+
+"How about feeding the lions?" asked Emett.
+
+"They'll drink to-night," replied Jones, "but won't eat for days; then
+we'll tempt them with fresh rabbits."
+
+We made a hearty meal, succeeding which Jones and I walked through
+the woods toward the rim. A yellow promontory, huge and glistening,
+invited us westward, and after a detour of half a mile we reached it.
+The points of the rim, striking out into the immense void, always drew
+me irresistibly. We found the view from this rock one of startling
+splendor. The corrugated rim-wall of the middle wing extended to the
+west, at this moment apparently running into the setting sun. The gold
+glare touching up the millions of facets of chiseled stone, created
+color and brilliance too glorious and intense for the gaze of men. And
+looking downward was like looking into the placid, blue, bottomless
+depths of the Pacific.
+
+"Here, help me push off this stone," I said to Jones. We heaved a huge
+round stone, and were encouraged to feel it move. Fortunately we had a
+little slope; the boulder groaned, rocked and began to slide. Just as
+it toppled over I glanced at the second hand of my watch. Then with
+eyes over the rim we waited. The silence was the silence of the
+canyon, dead and vast, intensified by our breathless earstrain. Ten
+long palpitating seconds and no sound! I gave up. The distance was too
+great for sound to reach us. Fifteen seconds--seventeen--eighteen--
+
+With that a puff of air seemed to rise, and on it the most awful
+bellow of thunderous roar. It rolled up and widened, deadened to burst
+out and roll louder, then slowly, like mountains on wheels, rumbled
+under the rim-walls, passing on and on, to roar back in echo from the
+cliffs of the mesas. Roar and rumble--roar and rumble! for two long
+moments the dull and hollow echoes rolled at us, to die away slowly in
+the far-distant canyons.
+
+"That's a darned deep hole," commented Jones.
+
+Twilight stole down on us idling there, silent, content to watch the
+red glow pass away from the buttes and peaks, the color deepening
+downward to meet the ebon shades of night creeping up like a dark
+tide.
+
+On turning toward the camp we essayed a short cut, which brought us to
+a deep hollow with stony walls, which seemed better to go around. The
+hollow, however, was quite long and we decided presently to cross it.
+We descended a little way when Jones suddenly barred my progress with
+his big arm.
+
+"Listen," he whispered.
+
+It was quiet in the woods; only a faint breeze stirred the pine
+needles; and the weird, gray darkness seemed to be approaching under
+the trees.
+
+I heard the patter of light, hard hoofs on the scaly sides of the
+hollow.
+
+"Deer?" I asked my companion in a low voice.
+
+"Yes; see," he replied, pointing ahead, "just right under that broken
+wall of rock; right there on this side; they're going down."
+
+I descried gray objects the color of the rocks, moving down like
+shadows.
+
+"Have they scented us?"
+
+"Hardly; the breeze is against us. Maybe they heard us break a twig.
+They've stopped, but they are not looking our way. Now I wonder--"
+
+Rattling of stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an
+indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies,
+a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings
+and thumpings in the scrub of the hollow.
+
+"Lion jumped a deer," yelled Jones. "Right under our eyes! Come on!
+Hi! Hi! Hi!"
+
+He ran down the incline yelling all of the way, and I kept close to
+him, adding my yells to his, and gripping my revolver. Toward the
+bottom the thicket barred our progress so that we had to smash through
+and I came out a little ahead of Jones. And farther up the hollow I
+saw a gray swiftly bounding object too long and too low for a deer,
+and I hurriedly shot six times at it.
+
+"By George! Come here," called my companion. "How's this for quick
+work? It's a yearling doe."
+
+In another moment I leaned over a gray mass huddled at Jones feet. It
+was a deer gasping and choking. I plainly heard the wheeze of blood
+in its throat, and the sound, like a death-rattle, affected me
+powerfully. Bending closer, I saw where one side of the neck, low
+down, had been terribly lacerated.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" pealed down the slope.
+
+"That's Emett," cried Jones, answering the signal. "If you have
+another shot put this doe out of agony."
+
+But I had not a shot left, nor did either of us have a clasp knife.
+We stood there while the doe gasped and quivered. The peculiar sound,
+probably made by the intake of air through the laceration of the
+throat, on the spur of the moment seemed pitifully human.
+
+I felt that the struggle for life and death in any living thing was
+a horrible spectacle. With great interest I had studied natural
+selection, the variability of animals under different conditions of
+struggling existence, the law whereby one animal struck down and
+devoured another. But I had never seen and heard that law enacted on
+such a scale; and suddenly I abhorred it.
+
+Emett strode to us through the gathering darkness.
+
+"What's up?" he asked quickly.
+
+He carried my Remington in one hand and his Winchester in the other;
+and he moved so assuredly and loomed up so big in the dusk that I
+experienced a sudden little rush of feeling as to what his advent
+might mean at a time of real peril.
+
+[Illustration: JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION]
+
+[Illustration: REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS]
+
+"Emett, I've lived to see many things," replied Jones, "but this is
+the first time I ever saw a lion jump a deer right under my nose!"
+
+As Emett bent over to seize the long ears of the deer, I noticed the
+gasping had ceased.
+
+"Neck broken," he said, lifting the head. "Well, I'm danged. Must have
+been an all-fired strong lion. He'll come back, you may be sure of
+that. Let's skin out the quarters and hang the carcass up in a tree!"
+
+We returned to camp in a half an hour, the richer for our walk by a
+quantity of fresh venison. Upon being acquainted with our adventure,
+Jim expressed himself rather more fairly than was his customary way.
+
+"Shore that beats hell! I knowed there was a lion somewheres, because
+Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the brute."
+
+I believed Jim's wish found an echo in all our hearts. At any rate
+to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the doe
+justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it was not
+so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner of it, and
+especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama of the plateau.
+The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps
+often in the day and likely at different points at the same time.
+Emett told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried
+hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we
+were encamped.
+
+"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."
+
+"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, _coco! coco!_" called Emett.
+
+The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up the fire
+and threw on more wood.
+
+"_Discass!_ (cold)," he said to me. "_Coco, bueno_ (fire good)."
+
+I replied, "Me savvy--yes."
+
+"Sleep-ie?" he asked.
+
+"Mucha," I returned.
+
+While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of Navajo,
+English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw the stars
+disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder and carried
+a breath of snow. I like north wind best--from under the warm
+blankets--because of the roar and lull and lull and roar in the pines.
+Crawling into the bed presently, I lay there and listened to the
+rising storm-wind for a long time. Sometimes it swelled and crashed
+like the sound of a breaker on the beach, but mostly, from a low
+incessant moan, it rose and filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly
+lulled. This lull, despite a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to
+sleep.
+
+
+IV
+
+To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The Navajo
+aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly from under
+the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw fleecy flakes
+of white drifting through the small window of my tent.
+
+"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones' hopes.
+Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots and coat I
+went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow. The forest was
+beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was falling. I walked to the
+roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits, well-browned and of generous
+size, had just been dumped into the middle of our breakfast cloth, a
+tarpaulin spread on the ground; the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and
+a Dutch oven sizzled with a great number of slices of venison. "Did
+you hear the Indian chanting?" asked Jones, who sat with his horny
+hands to the blaze.
+
+"I heard his singing."
+
+"No, it wasn't a song; the Navajo never sings in the morning. What you
+heard was his morning prayer, a chant, a religious and solemn ritual
+to the break of day. Emett says it is a custom of the desert tribe.
+You remember how we saw the Mokis sitting on the roofs of their little
+adobe huts in the gray of the morning. They always greet the sun in
+that way. The Navajos chant."
+
+It certainly was worth remembering, I thought, and mentally observed
+that I would wake up thereafter and listen to the Indian.
+
+"Good luck and bad!" went on Jones. "Snow is what we want, but now we
+can't find the scent of our lion of last night."
+
+Low growls and snarls attracted me. Both our captives presented sorry
+spectacles; they were wet, dirty, bedraggled. Emett had chopped down a
+small pine, the branches of which he was using to make shelter for the
+lions. While I looked on Tom tore his to pieces several times, but the
+lioness crawled under hers and began licking her chops. At length
+Tom, seeing that Emett meant no underhand trick, backed out of the
+drizzling snow and lay down.
+
+Emett had already constructed a shack for the hounds. It was a way of
+his to think of everything. He had the most extraordinary ability. A
+stroke of his axe, a twist of his great hands, a turn of this or that
+made camp a more comfortable place. And if something, no matter what,
+got out of order or broken, there was Emett to show what it was to be
+a man of the desert. It had been my good fortune to see many able
+men on the trail and round the camp-fire, but not one of them even
+approached Emett's class. When I said a word to him about his knack
+with things, his reply was illuminating: "I'm fifty-eight, and four
+out of every five nights of my life I have slept away from home on the
+ground."
+
+"_Chineago!_" called Jim, who had begun with all of us to assimilate a
+little of the Navajo's language.
+
+Whereupon we fell to eating with appetite unknown to any save hunters.
+Somehow the Indian had gravitated to me at meal times, and now he sat
+cross-legged beside me, holding out his plate and looking as hungry as
+Moze. At first he had always asked for the same kind of food that
+I happened to have on my own plate. When I had finished and had no
+desire to eat more, he gave up his faculty of imitation and asked for
+anything he could get. The Navajo had a marvelous appetite. He liked
+sweet things, sugar best of all. It was a fatal error to let him get
+his hands on a can of fruit. Although he inspired Jones with disgust
+and Jim with worse, he was a source of unfailing pleasure to me. He
+called me "Mista Gay" and he pronounced the words haltingly in low
+voice and with unmistakable respect.
+
+"What's on for today?" queried Emett.
+
+"I guess we may as well hang around camp and rest the hounds," replied
+Jones. "I did intend to go after the lion that killed the deer, but
+this snow has taken away the scent."
+
+"Shore it'll stop snowin' soon," said Jim.
+
+The falling snow had thinned out and looked like flying powder; the
+leaden clouds, rolling close to the tree-tops, grew brighter and
+brighter; bits of azure sky shone through rifts.
+
+Navvy had tramped off to find the horses, and not long after his
+departure he sent out a prolonged yell that echoed through the forest.
+
+"Something's up," said Emett instantly. "An Indian never yells like
+that at a horse."
+
+[Illustration: A LION TIED]
+
+[Illustration: FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S
+DESERT RANCH]
+
+We waited quietly for a moment, expecting to hear the yell repeated.
+It was not, though we soon heard the jangle of bells, which told us he
+had the horses coming. He appeared off to the right, riding Foxie and
+racing the others toward camp.
+
+"Cougie--mucha big--dam!" he said leaping off the mustang to confront
+us.
+
+"Emett, does he mean he saw a cougar or a track?" questioned Jones.
+
+"Me savvy," replied the Indian. "_Butteen, butteen_!"
+
+"He says, trail--trail," put in Emett. "I guess I'd better go and
+see."
+
+"I'll go with you," said Jones. "Jim, keep the hounds tight and hurry
+with the horses' oats."
+
+We followed the tracks of the horses which lead southwest toward the
+rim, and a quarter of a mile from camp we crossed a lion trail running
+at right angles with our direction.
+
+"Old Sultan!" I cried, breathlessly, recognizing that the tracks had
+been made by a giant lion we had named Sultan. They were huge, round,
+and deep, and with my spread hand I could not reach across one of
+them.
+
+Without a word, Jones strode off on the trail. It headed east and
+after a short distance turned toward camp. I suppose Jones knew what
+the lion had been about, but to Emett and me it was mystifying. Two
+hundred yards from camp we came to a fallen pine, the body of which
+was easily six feet high. On the side of this log, almost on top, were
+two enormous lion tracks, imprinted in the mantle of snow. From here
+the trail led off northeast.
+
+"Darn me!" ejaculated Jones. "The big critter came right into camp; he
+scented our lions, and raised up on this log to look over."
+
+Wheeling, he started for camp on the trot. Emett and I kept even
+with him. Words were superfluous. We knew what was coming. A
+made--to--order lion trail could not have equalled the one right in
+the back yard of our camp.
+
+"Saddle up!" said Jones, with the sharp inflection of words that had
+come to thrill me. "Jim, Old Sultan has taken a look at us since break
+of day."
+
+I got into my chaps, rammed my little automatic into its saddle
+holster and mounted. Foxie seemed to want to go. The hounds came out
+of their sheds and yawned, looking at us knowingly. Emett spoke a word
+to the Navajo, and then we were trotting down through the forest. The
+sun had broken out warm, causing water to drip off the snow laden
+pines. The three of us rode close behind Jones, who spoke low and
+sternly to the hounds.
+
+What an opportunity to watch Don! I wondered how soon he would catch
+the scent of the trail. He led the pack as usual and kept to a
+leisurely dog--trot. When within twenty yards of the fallen log, he
+stopped for an instant and held up his head, though without exhibiting
+any suspicion or uneasiness.
+
+The wind blew strong at our backs, a circumstance that probably
+kept Don so long in ignorance of the trail. A few yards further on,
+however, he stopped and raised his fine head. He lowered it and
+trotted on only to stop again. His easy air of satisfaction with
+the morning suddenly vanished. His savage hunting instinct awakened
+through some channel to raise the short yellow hair on his neck and
+shoulders and make it stand stiff. He stood undecided with warily
+shifting nose, then jumped forward with a yelp. Another jump brought
+another sharp cry from him. Sounder, close behind, echoed the yelp.
+Jude began to whine. Then Don, with a wild howl, leaped ten feet to
+alight on the lion trail and to break into wonderfully rapid flight.
+The seven other hounds, bunched in a black and yellow group, tore
+after him filling the forest with their wild uproar.
+
+Emett's horse bounded as I have seen a great racer leave the post, and
+his desert brothers, loving wild bursts of speed, needing no spur,
+kept their noses even with his flanks. The soft snow, not too deep,
+rather facilitated than impeded this wild movement, and the open
+forest was like a highway.
+
+So we rode, bending low in the saddle, keen eyes alert for branches,
+vaulting the white--blanketed logs, and swerving as we split to pass
+the pines. The mist from the melting snow moistened our faces, and the
+rushing air cooled them with fresh, soft sensation. There were moments
+when we rode abreast and others when we sailed single file, with white
+ground receding, vanishing behind us.
+
+My feeling was one of glorious excitation in the swift, smooth flight
+and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I hoped we would
+not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a thicket where he
+had dragged a deer, because the race was too splendid a thing to cut
+short. Through my mind whirled with inconceivable rapidity the great
+lion chases on which we had ridden the year before. And this was
+another chase, only more stirring, more beautiful, because it was the
+nature of the thing to grow always with experience.
+
+Don slipped out of sight among the pines. The others strung along the
+trail, glinted across the sunlit patches. The black pup was neck and
+neck with Ranger. Sounder ran at their heels, leading the other pups.
+Moze dashed on doggedly ahead of Jude.
+
+But for us to keep to the open forest, close to the hounds, was not in
+the nature of a lion chase. Old Sultan's trail turned due west when he
+began to go down the little hollows and their intervening ridges. We
+lost ground. The pack left us behind. The slope of the plateau became
+decided. We rode out of the pines to find the snow failing in the
+open. Water ran in little gullies and glistened on the sagebrush. A
+half mile further down the snow had gone. We came upon the hounds
+running at fault, except Sounder, and he had given up.
+
+"All over," sang out Jones, turning his horse. "The lion's track and
+his scent have gone with the snow. I reckon we'll do as well to wait
+until to-morrow. He's down in the middle wing somewhere and it is my
+idea we might catch his trail as he comes back."
+
+The sudden dashing aside of our hopes was exasperating. There seemed
+no help for it; abrupt ending to exciting chases were but features of
+the lion hunt. The warm sun had been hours on the lower end of the
+plateau, where the snow never lay long; and even if we found a fresh
+morning trail in the sand, the heat would have burned out the scent.
+
+So rapidly did the snow thaw that by the time we reached camp only the
+shady patches were left.
+
+It was almost eleven o'clock when I lay down on my bed to rest awhile
+and fell asleep. The tramp of a horse awakened me. I heard Jim calling
+Jones. Thinking it was time to eat I went out. The snow had all
+disappeared and the forest was brown as ever. Jim sat on his horse and
+Navvy appeared riding up to the hollow, leading the saddle horses.
+
+"Jones, get out," called Jim.
+
+"Can't you let a fellow sleep? I'm not hungry," replied Jones testily.
+
+"Get out and saddle up," continued Jim.
+
+Jones burst out of his tent, with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes.
+
+"I went over to see the carcass of the deer an' found a lion sittin'
+up in the tree, feedin' for all he was worth. Pie jumped out an' ran
+up the hollow an' over the rim. So I rustled back for you fellows.
+Lively now, we'll get this one sure."
+
+"Was it the big fellow?" I asked
+
+"No, but he ain't no kitten; an' he's a fine color, sort of reddish. I
+never seen one just as bright. Where's Emett?"
+
+"I don't know. He was here a little while ago. Shall I signal for
+him?"
+
+"Don't yell," cried Jones holding up his fingers. "Be quiet now."
+
+Without another word we finished saddling, mounted and, close
+together, with the hounds in front, rode through the forest toward the
+rim.
+
+
+V
+
+We rode in different directions toward the hollow, the better to
+chance meeting with Emett, but none of us caught a glimpse of him.
+
+It happened that when we headed into the hollow it was at a point just
+above where the deer carcass hung in the scrub oak. Don in spite of
+Jones' stern yells, let out his eager hunting yelp and darted down the
+slope. The pack bolted after him and in less than ten seconds were
+racing up the hollow, their thrilling, blending bays a welcome spur to
+action. Though I spoke not a word to my mustang nor had time to raise
+the bridle, he wheeled to one side and began to run. The other horses
+also kept to the ridge, as I could tell by the pounding of hoofs on
+the soft turf. The hounds in full cry right under us urged our good
+steeds to a terrific pace. It was well that the ridge afforded clear
+going.
+
+The speed at which we traveled, however, fast as it was, availed not
+to keep up with the pack. In a short half mile, just as the hollow
+sloped and merged into level ground, they left us behind and
+disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My mustang plunged
+out of the forest to the rim and dashed along, apparently unmindful of
+the chasm. The red and yellow surface blurred in a blinding glare. I
+heard the chorus of hounds, but as its direction baffled me I trusted
+to my horse and I did well, for soon he came to a dead halt on the
+rim.
+
+Then I heard the hounds below me. I had but time to see the character
+of the place--long, yellow promontories running out and slopes of
+weathered stone reaching up between to a level with the rim--when in a
+dwarf pine growing just over the edge I caught sight of a long, red,
+pantherish body.
+
+I whooped to my followers now close upon me and leaping off hauled out
+my Remington and ran to the cliff. The lion's long, slender body, of a
+rare golden-red color, bright, clean, black-tipped and white-bellied,
+proclaimed it a female of exceeding beauty. I could have touched her
+with a fishing rod and saw how easily she could be roped from where I
+stood. The tree in which she had taken refuge grew from the head of
+a weathered slope and rose close to the wall. At that point it was
+merely a parapet of crumbling yellow rock. No doubt she had lain
+concealed under the shelving wall and had not had time to get away
+before the hounds were right upon her.
+
+"She's going to jump," yelled Jones, in my rear, as he dismounted.
+
+I saw a golden-red streak flash downward, heard a mad medley from the
+hounds, a cloud of dust rose, then something bright shone for a second
+to the right along the wall. I ran with all my might to a headland of
+rock upon which I scrambled and saw with joy that I could command the
+situation.
+
+The lioness was not in sight, nor were the hounds. The latter,
+however, were hot on the trail. I knew the lioness had taken to
+another tree or a hole under the wall, and would soon be routed out.
+This time I felt sure she would run down and I took a rapid glance
+below. The slope inclined at a steep angle and was one long slide of
+bits of yellow stone with many bunches of scrub oak and manzanita.
+Those latter I saw with satisfaction, because in case I had to go down
+they would stop the little avalanches. The slope reached down perhaps
+five hundred yards and ended in a thicket and jumble of rocks from
+which rose on the right a bare yellow slide. This ran up to a low
+cliff. I hoped the lion would not go that way, for it led to great
+broken battlements of rim. Left of the slide was a patch of cedars.
+
+Jim's yell pealed out, followed by the familiar penetrating howl of
+the pack when it sighted game. With that I saw the lioness leaping
+down the slope and close behind her a yellow hound.
+
+"Go it, Don, old boy!" I yelled, wild with delight.
+
+A crushing step on the stones told me Jones had arrived.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" roared he.
+
+I thought then that if the lioness did not cover thirty feet at every
+jump I was not in a condition to judge distance. She ran away from Don
+as if he had been tied and reached the thicket below a hundred yards
+ahead of him. And when Don leaving his brave pack far up the slide
+entered the thicket the lioness came out on the other side and bounded
+up the bare slope of yellow shale.
+
+"Shoot ahead of her! Head her off! Turn her back!" cried Jones.
+
+With the word I threw forward the Remington and let drive. Following
+the bellow of the rifle, so loud in that thin air, a sharp, harsh
+report cracked up from below. A puff of yellow dust rose in front of
+the lioness. I was in line, but too far ahead. I fired again. The
+steel jacketed bullet hit a stone and spitefully whined away into the
+canyon. I tried once more. This time I struck close to the lioness.
+Disconcerted by a cloud of dust rising before her very eyes she
+wheeled and ran back.
+
+We had forgotten Don and suddenly he darted out of the thicket,
+straight up the slide. Always, in every chase, we were afraid the
+great hound would run to meet his death. We knew it was coming
+sometime. When the lioness saw him and stopped, both Jones and I felt
+that this was to be the end of Don.
+
+"Shoot her! Shoot her!" cried Jones. "She'll kill him! She'll kill
+him!"
+
+As I knelt on the rock I had a hard contraction of my throat, and
+then all my muscles set tight and rigid. I pulled the trigger of my
+automatic once, twice. It was wonderful how closely the two bullets
+followed each other, as we could tell by the almost simultaneous
+puffs of dust rising from under the beast's nose. She must have been
+showered and stung with gravel, for she bounded off to the left and
+disappeared in the cedars. I had missed, but the shots had served to a
+better end than if I had killed her.
+
+As Don raced up the ground where a moment before a battle and probably
+death had awaited him, the other hounds burst from the thicket. With
+that, a golden form seemed to stand out from the green of the cedar,
+to move and to rise.
+
+"She's treed! She's treed!" shouted Jones. "Go down and keep her there
+while I follow."
+
+From the back of the promontory where I met the main wall, I let
+myself down a niche, foot here and there, a hand hard on the soft
+stone, braced knee and back until I jumped to the edge of the slope.
+The scrub oak and manzanita saved me many a fall. I set some stones
+rolling and I beat them to the bottom. Having passed the thicket, I
+bent my efforts to the yellow slide and when I had surmounted it my
+breath came in labored pants. The howling of the hounds guided me
+through the cedars.
+
+First I saw Moze in the branches of cedar and above him the lioness. I
+ran out into a little open patch of stony ground at the end of which
+the tree stood leaning over a precipice. In truth the lioness was
+swaying over a chasm.
+
+Those details I grasped in a glance, then suddenly awoke to the fact
+that the lioness was savagely snarling at Moze.
+
+"Moze! Moze! Get down!" I yelled.
+
+He climbed on serenely. He was a most exasperating dog. I screamed at
+him and hit him with a rock big enough to break his bones. He kept on
+climbing. Here was a predicament. Moze would surely get to the lioness
+if I did not stop him, and this seemed impossible. It was out of the
+question for me to climb after him. And if the lioness jumped she
+would have to pass me or come straight at me. So I slipped down the
+safety catch on my automatic and stood ready to save Moze or myself.
+
+The lioness with a show of fury that startled me, descended her branch
+a few steps, and reaching below gave Moze a sounding smack with her
+big paw. The hound dropped as if he had been shot and hit the ground
+with a thud. Whereupon she returned to her perch.
+
+This reassured me and I ran among the dogs and caught Moze already
+starting for the tree again and tied him, with a strap I always carried,
+to a small bush nearby. I heard the yells of my companions
+and looking back over the tops of the cedars I saw Jim riding down and
+higher to the left Jones sliding, falling, running at a great rate. I
+encouraged them to keep up the good work, and then gave my attention to
+the lioness.
+
+She regarded me with a cold, savage stare and showed her teeth. I
+repaid this incivility on her part by promptly photographing her from
+different points.
+
+Jones and Jim were on the spot before I expected them and both were
+dusty and dripping with sweat. I found to my surprise that my face was
+wet as was also my shirt. Jones carried two lassos, and my canteen,
+which I had left on the promontory.
+
+"Ain't she a beauty?" he panted, wiping his face. "Wait--till I get my
+breath."
+
+When finally he walked toward the cedar the lioness stood up and
+growled as if she realized the entrance of the chief actor upon the
+scene. Jones cast his lasso apparently to try her out, and the noose
+spread out and fell over her head. As he tightened the rope the
+lioness backed down behind a branch.
+
+"Tie the dogs!" yelled Jones.
+
+"Quick!" added Jim. "She's goin' to jump."
+
+Jim had only time to aid me in running my lasso under the collar of
+Don, Sounder, Jude and one of the pups. I made them fast to a cedar.
+I got my hands on Ranger just as Moze broke his strap. I grabbed his
+collar and held on.
+
+Right there was where trouble commenced for me. Ranger tussled valiantly
+and Moze pulled me all over the place. Behind me I heard Jones' roar and
+Jim's yell; the breaking of branches, the howling of the other dogs.
+Ranger broke away from me and so enabled me to get my other hand on the
+neck of crazy Moze. On more than one occasion I had tried to hold him
+and had failed; this time I swore I would do it if he rolled me
+over the precipice. As to that, only a bush saved me.
+
+More and louder roars and yells, hoarser howls and sharper
+wrestling, snapping sounds told me what was going on while I tried to
+subdue Moze. I had a grim thought that I would just as lief have had
+hold of the lioness. The hound presently stopped his plunging which gave
+me an opportunity to look about. The little space was smoky with a smoke
+of dust. I saw the lioness stretched out with one lasso around a bush
+and another around a cedar with the end in the hands of Jim. He looked
+as if he had dug up the ground. While he tied this lasso securely Jones
+proceeded to rope the dangerous front paws.
+
+The hounds quieted down and I took advantage of this absence of tumult
+to get rid of Moze.
+
+"Pretty lively," said Jones, spitting gravel as I walked up. Sand and
+dust lay thick in his beard and blackened his face. "I tell you she
+made us root."
+
+Either the lioness had been much weakened or choked, or Jones had
+unusual luck, for we muzzled her and tied up her paws in short order.
+
+"Where's Ranger?" I asked suddenly, missing him from the panting
+hounds.
+
+"I grabbed him by the heels when he tackled the lion, and I gave him a
+sling somewheres," replied Jim.
+
+Ranger put in an appearance then under the cedars limping painfully.
+
+"Jim, darn me, if I don't believe you pitched him over the precipice!"
+said Jones.
+
+Examination proved this surmise to be correct. We saw where Ranger had
+slipped over a twenty-foot wall. If he had gone over just under the
+cedar where the depth was much greater he would never have come back.
+
+"The hounds are choking with dust and heat," I said. When I poured
+just a little water from my canteen into the crown of my hat, the
+hounds began fighting around and over me and spilled the water.
+
+"Behave, you coyotes!" I yelled. Either they were insulted or fully
+realized the exigency of the situation, for each one came up and
+gratefully lapped every drop of his portion.
+
+"Shore, now comes the hell of it," said Jim appearing with a long
+pole. "Packin' the critter out."
+
+An argument arose in regard to the best way up the slope, and by
+virtue of a majority we decided to try the direction Jim and I thought
+best. My companions led the way, carrying the lioness suspended on the
+pole. I brought up the rear, packing my rifle, camera, lasso, canteen
+and a chain.
+
+It was killing work. We had to rest every few steps. Often we would
+fall. Jim laughed, Jones swore, and I groaned. Sometimes I had to drop
+my things to help my companions. So we toiled wearily up the loose,
+steep way.
+
+"What's she shakin' like that for?" asked Jim suddenly.
+
+Jones let down his end of the pole and turned quickly. Little tremors
+quivered over the lissome body of the lioness.
+
+"She's dying," cried Jim, jerking out the stick between her teeth and
+slipping off the wire muzzle.
+
+Her mouth opened and her frothy tongue lolled out. Jones pointed to
+her quivering sides and then raised her eyelids. We saw the eyes
+already glazing, solemnly fixed.
+
+"She's gone," he said.
+
+Very soon she lay inert and lifeless. Then we sat beside her without
+a word, and we could hardly for the moment have been more stunned and
+heartbroken if it had been the tragic death of one of our kind.
+In that wild environment, obsessed by the desire to capture those
+beautiful cats alive, the fateful ending of the successful chase was
+felt out of all proportion.
+
+"Shore she's dead," said Jim. "And wasn't she a beauty? What was
+wrong?"
+
+"The heat and lack of water," replied Jones. "She choked. What idiots
+we were! Why didn't we think to give her a drink."
+
+So we passionately protested against our want of fore-thought, and
+looked again and again with the hope that she might come to. But death
+had stilled the wild heart. We gave up presently, still did not move
+on. We were exhausted, and all the while the hounds lay panting on the
+rocks, the bees hummed, the flies buzzed. The red colors of the upper
+walls and the purple shades of the lower darkened silently.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Shore we can't set here all night," said Jim. "Let's skin the lion
+an' feed the hounds."
+
+The most astonishing thing in our eventful day was the amount of meat
+stowed away by the dogs. Lion flesh appealed to their appetites. If
+hungry Moze had an ounce of meat, he had ten pounds. It seemed a good
+opportunity to see how much the old gladiator could eat; and Jim and I
+cut chunks of meat as fast as possible. Moze gulped them with absolute
+unconcern of such a thing as mastication. At length he reached his
+limit, possibly for the first time in his life, and looking longingly
+at a juicy red strip Jim held out, he refused it with manifest shame.
+Then he wobbled and fell down.
+
+We called to him as we started to climb the slope, but he did not
+come. Then the business of conquering that ascent of sliding stone
+absorbed all our faculties and strength. Little headway could we have
+made had it not been for the brush. We toiled up a few feet only to
+slide back and so it went on until we were weary of life.
+
+When one by one we at last gained the rim and sat there to recover
+breath, the sun was a half globe of fire burning over the western
+ramparts. A red sunset bathed the canyon in crimson, painting the
+walls, tinting the shadows to resemble dropping mists of blood. It was
+beautiful and enthralling to my eyes, but I turned away because it
+wore the mantle of tragedy.
+
+Dispirited and worn out, we trooped into camp to find Emett and a
+steaming supper. Between bites the three of us related the story of
+the red lioness. Emett whistled long and low and then expressed his
+regret in no light terms.
+
+"Roping wild steers and mustangs is play to this work," he said in
+conclusion.
+
+I was too tired to tease our captive lions that evening; even the
+glowing camp-fire tempted me in vain, and I crawled into my bed with
+eyes already glued shut.
+
+A heavy weight on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first, when
+only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my bed, then
+hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was dropping off
+again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black
+night had faded to the gray of dawn. The sound I recognized at once
+to be the Navajo's morning chant. I lay there and listened. Soft and
+monotonous, wild and swelling, but always low and strange, the savage
+song to the break of day was exquisitely beautiful and harmonious. I
+wondered what the literal meaning of his words could have been. The
+significance needed no translation. To the black shadows fading away,
+to the brightening of the gray light, to the glow of the east, to the
+morning sun, to the Giver of Life--to these the Indian chanted his
+prayer.
+
+Could there have been a better prayer? Pagan or not, the Navajo with
+his forefathers felt the spiritual power of the trees, the rocks, the
+light and sun, and he prayed to that which was divinely helpful to him
+in all the mystery of his unintelligible life.
+
+We did not crawl out that morning as early as usual, for it was to be
+a day of rest. When we did, a mooted question arose--whether we or the
+hounds were the more crippled. Ranger did not show himself; Don could
+just walk and that was all; Moze was either too full or too tired to
+move; Sounder nursed a foot and Jude favored her lame leg.
+
+After lunch we brightened up somewhat and set ourselves different
+tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began to turn the camp
+topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate it. The wire, however,
+was not to be found. This was a calamity, for, as we asked each other,
+how could we muzzle lions without wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy
+leather straps which I had bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had
+disappeared. We had only one collar left, the one that Jones had put
+on the red lioness.
+
+Whereupon we began to blame each other, to argue, to grow heated and
+naturally from that to become angry. It seems a fatality of campers
+along a wild trail, like explorers in an unknown land, to be prone to
+fight. If there is an explanation of this singular fact, it must be
+that men at such time lose their poise and veneer of civilization; in
+brief, they go back. At all events we had it hot and heavy, with the
+center of attack gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always
+losing something, naturally we united in force against him.
+
+Fortunately, we were interrupted by yells from the Navajo off in the
+woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs preceded his
+appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten a bridle on Marc,
+and from the way the big stallion hurled his huge bulk over logs and
+through thickets, it appeared evident he meant to usurp Jim's ambition
+and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward
+camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to
+buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to
+ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the
+dogs' shelter and thundered down the ridge.
+
+Now the Navajo, with the bridle in his hand was thoroughly at home. He
+was getting his revenge on Marc, and he would have kept his seat on a
+wild mustang, but Marc swerved suddenly under a low branch of a pine,
+sweeping the Indian off.
+
+When Navvy did not rise we began to fear he had been seriously hurt,
+perhaps killed, and we ran to where he lay.
+
+Face downward, hands outstretched, with no movement of body or muscle,
+he certainly appeared dead.
+
+"Badly hurt," said Emett, "probably back broken. I have seen it before
+from just such accidents."
+
+"Oh no!" cried Jones, and I felt so deeply I could not speak. Jim, who
+always wanted Navvy to be a dead Indian, looked profoundly sorry.
+
+"He's a dead Indian, all right," replied Emett.
+
+We rose from our stooping postures and stood around, uncertain and
+deeply grieved, until a mournful groan from Navvy afforded us much
+relief.
+
+"That's your dead Indian," exclaimed Jones.
+
+Emett stooped again and felt the Indian's back and got in reward
+another mournful groan.
+
+"It's his back," said Emett, and true to his ruling passion, forever
+to minister to the needs of horses, men, and things, he began to rub
+the Indian and call for the liniment.
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+Jim went to fetch it, while I, still believing the Navvy to be
+dangerously hurt, knelt by him and pulled up his shirt, exposing the
+hollow of his brown back.
+
+"Here we are," said Jim, returning on the run with the bottle.
+
+"Pour some on," replied Emett.
+
+Jim removed the cork and soused the liniment all over the Indian's
+back.
+
+"Don't waste it," remonstrated Emett, starting to rub Navvy's back.
+
+Then occurred a most extraordinary thing. A convulsion seemed to
+quiver through the Indian's body; he rose at a single leap, and
+uttering a wild, piercing yell broke into a run. I never saw an Indian
+or anybody else run so fleetly. Yell after yell pealed back to us.
+
+Absolutely dumfounded we all gazed at each other.
+
+"That's your dead Indian!" ejaculated Jim.
+
+"What the hell!" exclaimed Emett, who seldom used such language.
+
+"Look here!" cried Jones, grabbing the bottle. "See! Don't you see
+it?"
+
+Jim fell face downward and began to shake.
+
+"What?" shouted Emett and I together.
+
+"Turpentine, you idiots! Turpentine! Jim brought the wrong bottle!"
+
+In another second three more forms lay stretched out on the sward, and
+the forest rang with sounds of mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+That night the wind switched and blew cold from the north, and so
+strong that the camp-fire roared like a furnace. "More snow" was the
+verdict of all of us, and in view of this, I invited the Navajo to
+share my tent.
+
+"Sleepie-me," I said to him.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed with
+me.
+
+Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations, which
+struck me as being singularly selfish considering they would not be
+inconvenienced in any way.
+
+"Why not?" I asked. "It's a cold night. There'll be frost if not
+snow."
+
+"Shore you'll get 'em," said Jim.
+
+"There never was an Indian that didn't have 'em," added Jones.
+
+"What?" I questioned.
+
+They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance as to
+what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my mind. When
+I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy. Moze lay at my feet as usual
+and he growled so deep that I could not but think he, too, resented
+the addition to my small tent.
+
+"Mista Gay!" came in the Indian's low voice.
+
+"Well Navvy?" I asked.
+
+"Sleepie--sleepie?"
+
+"Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired. Are you?"
+
+"Me savvy--mucha sleepie--mucha--no bueno."
+
+I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad. He did not
+awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent was light
+and he had gone. I found my companions up and doing.
+
+We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun, a red
+ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn to gold. No
+snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the ground. The hounds,
+wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they detested, trotted in
+front. Don showed no effects of his great run down the sliding slope
+after the red lioness; it was one of his remarkable qualities that he
+recuperated so quickly. Ranger was a little stiff, and Sounder favored
+his injured foot. The others were as usual.
+
+Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had passed the
+edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead, he turned his
+horse up the bank.
+
+We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest, which we
+entered without having seen the hounds show interest in anything.
+Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed lion tracks, many
+of them, but too old to carry a scent. Even North Hollow with its
+regular beaten runway failed to win a murmur from the pack.
+
+"Spread out," said Jones, "and look for tracks. I'll keep the center
+and hold in the hounds."
+
+Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the breadth
+of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open sage flats
+inclined to the rim. In one of those flats I came upon a broken sage
+bush, the grass being thick thereabout. I discovered no track but
+dismounted and scrutinized the surroundings carefully. A heavy body
+had been dragged across the sage, crushing it. The ends of broken
+bushes were green, the leaves showed bruises.
+
+I began to feel like Don when he scented game. Leading my mustang I
+slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an occasional down-trodden
+bush or tuft of grass. As I neared the cedars again Foxie snorted.
+Under the first tree I found a ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of
+grayish hairs and a split skull. The bones, were yet wet; two long doe
+ears were still warm. Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even
+a well pressed imprint of a lion's body where he had rolled or lain.
+
+The two yells I sent ringing into the forest were productive of
+interesting results. Answers came from near and far. Then, what with
+my calling and the replies, the forest rang so steadily with shrill
+cries that the echoes had no chance to follow.
+
+An elephant in the jungle could not have caused more crashing and
+breaking of brush than did Emett as he made his way to me. He arrived
+from the forest just as Jim galloped across the flat. Mutely I held up
+the two long ears.
+
+"Get on your horse!" cried Jim after one quick glance at the spread of
+bones and hair.
+
+It was well he said that, for I might have been left behind. I ran to
+Foxie and vaulted upon him. A flash of yellow appeared among the sage
+and a string of yelps split the air.
+
+"It's Don!" yelled Jim.
+
+Well we knew that. What a sight to see him running straight for us! He
+passed, a savage yellow wolf in his ferocity, and disappeared like a
+gleam under the gloomy cedars.
+
+We spurred after him. The other hounds sped by. Jones closed in on us
+from the left, and in a few minutes we were strung out behind Emett,
+fighting the branches, dodging and swerving, hugging the saddle, and
+always sending out our sharp yells.
+
+The race was furious but short. The three of us coming up together
+found Emett dismounted on the extreme end of West Point.
+
+"The hounds have gone down," he said, pointing to the runway.
+
+We all listened to the meaning bays.
+
+"Shore they've got him up!" asserted Jim. "Like as not they found him
+under the rim here, sleeping off his gorge. Now fellows, I'll go down.
+It might be a good idea for you to spread along the rim."
+
+[Illustration: TREED LION]
+
+[Illustration: HIDING]
+
+With that we turned our horses eastward and rode as close to the rim
+as possible. Clumps of cedars and deep fissures often forced us to
+circle them. The hounds, traveling under the walls below, kept pace
+with us and then forged ahead, which fact caused Jones to dispatch
+Emett on the gallop for the next runway at North Hollow.
+
+Soon Jones bade me dismount and make my way out upon one of the
+promontories, while he rode a little farther on. As I tied my mustang
+I heard the hounds, faint and far beneath. I waded through the sage
+and cedar to the rim.
+
+Cape after cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and
+bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling
+bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From
+one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like
+the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches
+of cedar and the great blocks of stone the hounds were hunting the
+lion, but I could not see one of them.
+
+The promontory I had chosen had a split, and choked as this was with
+brush, rock, and shale, it seemed a place where I might climb down.
+Once started, I could not turn back, and sliding, clinging to what
+afforded, I worked down the crack. A wall of stone hid the sky from
+me part of the way. I came out a hundred feet below upon a second
+promontory of huge slabs of yellow stone. Over these I clambered, to
+sit with my feet swinging over the last one.
+
+Straight before my gaze yawned the awful expanse of the canyon. In the
+soft morning light the red mesas, the yellow walls, the black domes
+were less harsh than in the full noonday sun, purer than in the tender
+shadow of twilight. Below me were slopes and slides divided by ravines
+full of stones as large as houses, with here and there a lonesome
+leaning crag, giving irresistible proof of the downward trend, of the
+rolling, weathering ruins of the rim. Above the wall bulged out full
+of fissures, ragged and rotten shelves, toppling columns of yellow
+limestone, beaded with quartz and colored by wild flowers wonderfully
+growing in crannies.
+
+Wild and rare as was this environment, I gave it but a glance and a
+thought. The bay of the hounds caused me to bend sharp and eager eyes
+to the open spaces of stone and slide below. Luck was mine as usual;
+the hounds were working up toward me. How I strained my sight! Hearing
+a single cry I looked eastward to see Jones silhouetted against the
+blue on a black promontory. He seemed a giant primeval man overlooking
+the ruin of a former world. I signalled him to make for my point.
+
+Black Ranger hove in sight at the top of a yellow slide. He was at
+fault but hunting hard. Jude and Sounder bayed off to his left. I
+heard Don's clear voice, permeating the thin, cool air, seemingly
+to leave a quality of wildness upon it; yet I could not locate him.
+Ranger disappeared. Then for a time I only heard Jim. Moze was next to
+appear and he, too, was upward bound. A jumble of stone hid him, and
+then Ranger again showed. Evidently he wanted to get around the bottom
+of a low crag, for he jumped and jumped only to fall back.
+
+Quite naturally my eyes searched that crag. Stretched out upon the top
+of it was the long, slender body of a lion.
+
+"Hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" I yelled till my lungs failed me.
+
+"Where are you?" came from above.
+
+"Here! Here!" I cried seeing Jones on the rim. "Come down. Climb down
+the crack. The lion is here; on top of that round crag. He's fooled
+the hounds and they can't find him."
+
+"I see him! I see him!" yelled Jones. Then he roared out a single call
+for Emett that pealed like a clear clarion along the curved broken rim
+wall, opening up echoes which clapped like thunder.
+
+While Jones clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay with
+head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle. What a
+place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing down the
+broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe from
+pursuit.
+
+Suddenly, right under my feet, Don opened his string of yelps. I could
+not see him but decided he must be above the lion on the crag. I
+leaned over as far as I dared. At that moment among the varied and
+thrilling sounds about me I became vaguely aware of hard, panting
+breaths, like coughs somewhere in my vicinity. As Jones had set in
+motion bushels of stone and had already scraped his feet over the
+rocks behind me I thought the forced respiration came from him. When
+I turned he was yet far off--too far for me to hear him breathe. I
+thought this circumstance strange but straightway forgot it.
+
+On the moment from my right somewhere Don pealed out his bugle blast,
+and immediately after Sounder and Jude joining him, sent up the thrice
+welcome news of a treed lion.
+
+"There 're two! There 're two!" I yelled to Jones, now working down to
+my right.
+
+"He's treed down here. I've got him spotted!" replied Jones. "You stay
+there and watch your lion. Yell for Emett."
+
+Signal after signal for Emett earned no response, though Jim far below
+to the left sent me an answer.
+
+The next few minutes, or more likely half an hour, passed with Jones
+and me separated from each other by a wall of broken stone, waiting
+impatiently for Jim and Emett, while the hounds bayed one lion and I
+watched the other.
+
+Calmness was impossible under such circumstances. No man could have
+gazed into that marvel of color and distance, with wild life about
+him, with wild sounds ringing in his ears, without yielding to the
+throb and race of his wild blood.
+
+Emett did not come. Jim had not answered a yell for minutes. No doubt
+he needed his breath. He came into sight just to the left of our
+position, and he ran down one side of the ravine to toil up the other.
+I hailed him, Jones hailed him and the hounds hailed him.
+
+"Steer to your left Jim!" I called.. "There's a lion on that crag
+above you. He might jump. Round the cliff to the left--Jones is
+there!"
+
+The most painful task it was for me to sit there and listen to the
+sound rising from below without being able to see what happened. My
+lion had peeped up once, and, seeing me, had crouched closer to his
+crag, evidently believing he was unseen, which obviously made it
+imperative for me to keep my seat and hold him there as long as
+possible.
+
+But to hear the various exclamations thrilled me enough.
+
+"Hyar Moze--get out of that. Catch him--hold him! Damn these rotten
+limbs. Hand me a pole--Jones, back down--back down! he's comin'--Hi!
+Hi! Whoop! Boo--o! There--now you've got him! No, no; it slipped! Now!
+Look out, Jim, from under--he's going to jump!"
+
+A smashing and rattling of loose stones and a fiery burst of yelps
+with trumpet-like yells followed close upon Jones' last words. Then
+two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first was the lion, the
+second was Don. The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in
+their wake. Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with
+Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth. The animated
+and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually
+lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed
+altogether from my jealous sight.
+
+On the other side of the ridge of cedars the hounds treed their quarry
+again, as was easy to tell by their change from sharp intermittent
+yelping to an unbroken, full, deep chorus. Then presently all quieted
+down, and for long moments at a time the still silence enfolded the
+slope. Shouts now and then floated up on the wind and an occasional
+bark.
+
+I sat there for an hour by my watch, though it seemed only a few
+minutes, and all that time my lion lay crouched on his crag and never
+moved.
+
+I looked across the curve of the canyon to the purple breaks of the
+Siwash and the shaggy side of Buckskin Mountain and far beyond to
+where Kanab Canyon opened its dark mouth, and farther still to the
+Pink Cliffs of Utah, weird and dim in the distance.
+
+Something swelled within my breast at the thought that for the time I
+was part of that wild scene. The eye of an eagle soaring above would
+have placed me as well as my lion among the few living things in the
+range of his all-compassing vision. Therefore, all was mine, not
+merely the lion--for he was only the means to an end--but the
+stupendous, unnameable thing beneath me, this chasm that hid mountains
+in the shades of its cliffs, and the granite tombs, some gleaming
+pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and
+the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all
+that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty
+exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of
+presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind to keep.
+
+"Waa-hoo!"
+
+The cry lifted itself out of the depths. I saw Jones on the ridge of
+cedars.
+
+"All right here--have you kept your line there?" he yelled.
+
+"All's well--come along, come along," I replied.
+
+I watched them coming, and all the while my lion never moved. The
+hounds reached the base of the cliff under me, but they could not
+find the lion, though they scented him, for they kept up a continual
+baying. Jim got up to the shelf under me and said they had tied up the
+lion and left him below. Jones toiled slowly up the slope.
+
+"Some one ought to stay down there; he might jump," I called in
+warning.
+
+"That crag is forty feet high on this side," he replied.
+
+I clambered back over the uneven mass, let myself down between the
+boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim catching
+my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I reached the
+bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of the cliff, and soon
+all three of us with the hounds stood out on the rocky shelf with only
+a narrow space between us and the crouching lion.
+
+Before we had a moment to speak, much less form a plan of attack, the
+lion rose, spat at us defiantly, and deliberately jumped off the crag.
+We heard him strike with a frightful thud.
+
+Surprise held us dumb. To take the leap to the slope below seemed
+beyond any beast not endowed with wings. We saw the lion bounding down
+the identical trail which the other lion had taken. Jones came out of
+his momentary indecision.
+
+"Hold the dogs! Call them back!" he yelled hoarsely. "They'll kill the
+lion we tied! They'll kill him!"
+
+The hounds had scattered off the bench here and there, everywhere, to
+come together on the trail below. Already they were in full cry with
+the matchless Don at the fore. Manifestly to call them back was an
+injustice, as well as impossible. In ten seconds they were out of
+sight.
+
+In silence we waited, each listening, each feeling the tragedy of the
+situation, each praying that they would pass by the poor, helpless,
+bound lion. Suddenly the regular baying swelled to a burst of savage,
+snarling fury, such as the pack made in a vicious fight. This
+ceased--short silence ensued; Don's sharp voice woke the echoes, then
+the regular baying continued.
+
+As with one thought, we all sat down. Painful as the certainty was it
+was not so painful as that listening, hoping suspense.
+
+"Shore they can't be blamed," said Jim finally. "Bumping their nose
+into a tied lion that way--how'd they know?"
+
+"Who could guess the second lion would jump off that quick and run
+back to our captive?" burst out Jones.
+
+"Shore we might have knowed it," replied Jim. "Well, I'm goin' after
+the pack."
+
+He gathered up his lasso and strode off the bench. Jones said he would
+climb back to the rim, and I followed Jim.
+
+Why the lions ran in that particular direction was clear to me when
+I saw the trail. It was a runway, smooth and hard packed. I trudged
+along it with rather less enjoyment than on any trail I had ever
+followed to the canyon. Jim waited for me over the cedar ridge and
+showed me where the captive lion lay dead. The hounds had not torn
+him. They had killed him and passed on after the other.
+
+"He was a fine fellow, all of seven feet, we'll skin him on our way
+back."
+
+Only dogged determination coupled with a sense of duty to the hounds
+kept us on that trail. For the time being enthusiasm had been
+submerged. But we had to follow the pack.
+
+Jim, less weighted down and perhaps less discouraged, forged ahead up
+and down. The sun had burned all the morning coolness out of the air.
+I perspired and panted and began to grow weary. Jim's signal called me
+to hurry. I took to a trot and came upon him and the hounds under a
+small cedar. The lion stood among the dead branches. His sides where
+shaking convulsively, and his short breaths could be plainly heard.
+He had the most blazing eyes and most untamed expression of any wild
+creature I have ever seen; and this amazed me considering I had kept
+him on a crag for over an hour, and had come to look upon him as my
+own.
+
+"What'll we do, Jim, now that we have him treed?"
+
+"Shore, we'll tie him up," declared Jim.
+
+The lion stayed in the cedar long enough for me to photograph him
+twice, then he leaped down again and took to his back trail. We
+followed as fast as we could, soon to find that the hounds had put him
+up another cedar. From this he jumped down among the dogs, scattered
+them as if they had been so many leaves, and bounded up the slope out
+of sight.
+
+I laid aside my rifle and camera and tried to keep up with Jim. The
+lion ran straight up the slope and treed again under the wall. Before
+we covered half the distance he was on the go once more, flying down
+in clouds of dust.
+
+"Don is makin' him hump," said Jim.
+
+And that alone was enough to spur us on. We would reward the noble
+hound if we had the staying power. Don and his pack ran westward this
+time, and along a mile of the beaten trail put him up two more trees.
+But these we could not see and judged only by the sound.
+
+[Illustration: A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHICH IS THE PIUTE?]
+
+"Look there!" cried Jim. "Darn me if he ain't comin' right at us."
+
+It was true. Ahead of us the lion appeared, loping wearily. We stopped
+in our tracks undecided. Jim drew his revolver. Once or twice the lion
+disappeared behind stones and cedars. When he sighted us he stopped,
+looked back, then again turning toward us, he left the trail to plunge
+down. He had barely got out of sight when old Don came pattering along
+the trail; then Ranger leading the others. Don did not even put his
+nose to the ground where the lion had switched, but leaped aside and
+went down. Here the long section of slope between the lion's runway
+and the second wall had been weathered and worn, racked and convulsed
+into deep ravines, with ridges between. We climbed and fell and toiled
+on, always with the bay of the hounds in our ears. We leaped fissures,
+we loosened avalanches, rolling them to crash and roar below, and send
+long, rumbling echoes out into the canyon.
+
+A gorge in the yellow rock opened suddenly before us. We stood at the
+constricted neck of one of the great splits in the second wall. The
+side opposite was almost perpendicular, and formed of mass on mass of
+broken stones. This was a weathered slope on a gigantic scale. Points
+of cliffs jutted out; caves and cracks lined the wall.
+
+"This is a rough place," said Jim; "but a lion could get over the
+second wall here, an' I believe a man could too. The hounds seemed to
+be back further toward where the split narrows."
+
+Through densely massed cedars and thickets of prickly thorns we wormed
+our way to come out at the neck of the gorge.
+
+"There ye are!" sang out Jim. The hounds were all on a flat shelf some
+few feet below us, and on a sharp point of rock close by, but too far
+for the dogs to reach, crouched the lion. He was gasping and frothing
+at the mouth.
+
+"Shore if he'd only stay there--" said Jim.
+
+He loosened his lasso, and stationing himself just above the tired
+beast he prepared to cast down the loop. The first throw failed of its
+purpose, but the rope hit the lion. He got up painfully it seemed,
+and faced the dogs. That way barred he turned to the cliff. Almost
+opposite him a shelf leaned out. He looked at it, then paced to and
+fro like a beast in a cage.
+
+He looked again at the hounds, then up at us, all around, and finally
+concentrated his attention on the shelf; his long length sagged in
+the middle, he stretched low, his muscles gathered and strung, and he
+sprang like a tawny streak.
+
+His aim was true, the whole forepart of his body landed on the shelf
+and he hung there. Then he slipped. We distinctly heard his claws
+scrape the hard, smooth rock. He fell, turning a somersault, struck
+twenty feet below on the rough slant, bounded from that to fall down,
+striking suddenly and then to roll, a yellow wheel that lodged behind
+a rock and stretched out to move no more.
+
+The hounds were silent; Jim and I were silent; a few little stones
+rattled, then were still. The dead silence of the canyon seemed to pay
+tribute to the lion's unquenchable spirit and to the freedom he had
+earned to the last.
+
+
+VIII
+
+How long Jim and I sat there we never knew. The second tragedy, not so
+pitiful but as heart sickening as the first, crushed our spirits.
+
+"Shore he was a game lion," said Jim. "An' I'll have to get his skin."
+
+
+"I'm all in, Jim. I couldn't climb out of that hole." I said.
+
+"You needn't. Rest a little, take a good drink an' leave your canteen
+here for me; then get your things back there on the trail an' climb
+out. We're not far from West Point. I'll go back after the first
+lion's skin an' then climb straight up. You lead my horse to the point
+where you came off the rim."
+
+He clattered along the gorge knocking the stones and started down. I
+watched him letting himself over the end of the huge slabs until he
+passed out of my sight. A good, long drink revived me and I began the
+ascent.
+
+From that moment on time did not matter to me. I forgot all about it.
+I felt only my leaden feet and my laboring chest and dripping skin.
+I did not even notice the additional weight of my rifle and camera
+though they must have overburdened me. I kept my eyes on the lion
+runway and plunged away with short steps. To look at these towering
+walls would have been to surrender.
+
+At last, stumbling, bursting, sick, I gained the rim and had to rest
+before I could mount. When I did get into the saddle I almost fell
+from it.
+
+Jones and Emett were waiting for me at the promontory where I had
+tied my horse, and were soon acquainted with the particulars of my
+adventure, and that Jim would probably not get out for hours. We made
+tracks for camp, and never did a place rouse in me such a sense of
+gratefulness. Emett got dinner and left on the fire a kettle of potato
+stew for Jim. It was almost dark when that worthy came riding into
+camp. We never said a word as he threw the two lion skins on the
+ground.
+
+"Fellows, you shore have missed the wind-up!" he exclaimed.
+
+We all looked at him and he looked at us.
+
+"Was there any more?" I asked weakly.
+
+"Shore! An' it beats hell! When I got the skin of the lion the dogs
+killed I started to work up to the place I knowed you'd leave my
+horse. It's bad climbing where you came down. I got on the side of
+that cliff an' saw where I could work out, if I could climb a smooth
+place. So I tried. There was little cracks an' ridges for my feet and
+hands. All to once, just above where I helped you down, I heard a
+growl. Looking up I saw a big lion, bigger'n any we chased except
+Sultan, an' he was pokin' his head out of a hole, an' shore telling
+me to come no further. I couldn't let go with either hand to reach my
+gun, because I'd have fallen, so I yelled at him with all my might. He
+spit at me an' then walked out of the hole over the bench as proud as
+a lord an' jumped down where I couldn't see him any more. I climbed
+out all right but he'd gone. An' I'll tell you for a minute, he shore
+made me sweat."
+
+"By George!" I yelled, greatly excited. "I heard that lion breathing.
+Don chased him up there. I heard hard, wheezing breaths somewhere
+behind me, but in the excitement I didn't pay any attention to them. I
+thought it was Jones panting, but now I know what it meant."
+
+"Shore. He was there all the time, lookin' at you an' maybe he could
+have reached you."
+
+We were all too exhausted for more discussion and putting that off
+until the next day we sought our beds. It was hardly any wonder that I
+felt myself jumping even in my sleep, and started up wildly more than
+once in the dead of night.
+
+[Illustration: WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND
+CANYON]
+
+Morning found us all rather subdued, yet more inclined to a
+philosophical resignation as regarded the difficulties of our special
+kind of hunting. Capturing the lions on the level of the plateau was
+easy compared to following them down into canyons and bringing them up
+alone. We all agreed that that was next to impossible. Another feature,
+which before we had not considered, added to our perplexity and it was a
+dawning consciousness that we would be perhaps less cruel if we killed
+the lions outright. Jones and Emett arrayed themselves on the side that
+life even in captivity was preferable; while Jim and I, no doubt still
+under the poignant influence of the last lion's heroic race and end,
+inclined to freedom or death. We compromised on the reasonable fact that
+as yet we had shown only a jackass kind of intelligence.
+
+[Illustration: JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION]
+
+About eleven o'clock while the others had deserted camp temporarily
+for some reason or other, I was lounging upon an odorous bed of pine
+needles. The sun shone warmly, the sky gleamed bright azure through
+the openings of the great trees, a dry west breeze murmured through
+the forest. I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow
+woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I
+imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so
+afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left
+no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my
+shirt, and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.
+
+Suddenly a thought swept on the heels of my indolent and rather
+annoying realization. Could I have gotten from the Navajo what Jim and
+Jones so characteristically called "'em"? I turned cold all over. And
+on the very instant I received another bite that burned like fire.
+
+The return of my companions prevented any open demonstration of my
+fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore inwardly. During
+the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had on a horsehair shirt
+with the ends protruding toward my skin, and, in the exaggerated
+sensitiveness of the moment, made sure "'em" were chasing up and down
+my back.
+
+After dinner I sneaked off into the woods. I remembered that Emett
+had said there was only one way to get rid of "'em," and that was to
+disrobe and make a microscopical search of garments and person. With
+serious mind and murderous intent I undressed. In the middle of the
+back of my jersey I discovered several long, uncanny, gray things.
+
+"I guess I got 'em," I said gravely.
+
+Then I sat on a pine log in a state of unadorned nature, oblivious
+to all around, intent only on the massacre of the things that had
+violated me. How much time flew I could not guess. Great loud
+"Haw-haws!" roused me to consternation. There behind me stood Jones
+and Emett shaking as if with the ague.
+
+"It's not funny!" I shouted in a rage. I had the unreasonable
+suspicion that they had followed me to see my humiliation. Jones, who
+cracked a smile about as often as the equinoxes came, and Emett the
+sober Mormon, laughed until they cried.
+
+"I was--just wondering--what your folks would--think--if they--saw
+you--now," gurgled Jones.
+
+That brought to me the humor of the thing, and I joined in their
+mirth.
+
+"All I hope is that you fellows will get 'em' too," I said.
+
+"The Good Lord preserve me from that particular breed of Navvy's,"
+cried Emett.
+
+Jones wriggled all over at the mere suggestion. Now so much from the
+old plainsman, who had confessed to intimate relations with every
+creeping, crawling thing in the West, attested powerfully to the
+unforgettable singularity of what I got from Navvy.
+
+I returned to camp determined to make the best of the situation,
+which owing to my failure to catch all of the gray devils, remained
+practically unchanged. Jim had been acquainted with my dilemma, as was
+manifest in his wet eyes and broad grin with which he greeted me.
+
+"I think I'd scalp the Navvy," he said.
+
+"You make the Indian sleep outside after this, snow or no snow," was
+Jones' suggestion.
+
+"No I won't; I won't show a yellow streak like that. Besides, I want
+to give 'em to you fellows."
+
+A blank silence followed my statement, to which Jim replied:
+
+"Shore that'll be easy; Jones'll have 'em, so'll Emett, an' by thunder
+I'm scratchin' now."
+
+"Navvy, look here," I said severely, "mucha no bueno! heap bad!
+You--me!" here I scratched myself and made signs that a wooden Indian
+would have understood.
+
+"Me savvy," he replied, sullenly, then flared up. "Heap big lie."
+
+He turned on his heel, erect, dignified, and walked away amid the
+roars of my gleeful comrades.
+
+
+IX
+
+One by one my companions sought their blankets, leaving the shadows,
+the dying embers, the slow-rising moan of the night wind to me. Old
+Moze got up from among the other hounds and limped into my tent, where
+I heard him groan as he lay down. Don, Sounder, and Ranger were
+fast asleep in well-earned rest. Shep, one of the pups, whined and
+impatiently tossed his short chain. Remembering that he had not been
+loose all day, I unbuckled his collar and let him go.
+
+He licked my hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his shapely,
+sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the circle cast by
+the fire and looked out into the darkening shadows. It was plain that
+Shep's instincts were developing fast; he was ambitious to hunt. But
+sure in my belief that he was afraid of the black night and would stay
+in camp, I went to bed.
+
+The Navajo who slept with me snored serenely and Moze growled in his
+dreams; the wind swept through the pines with an intermittent rush.
+Some time in the after part of the night I heard a distant sound.
+Remote, mournful, wild, it sent a chill creeping over me. Borne
+faintly to my ears, it was a fit accompaniment to the moan of the wind
+in the pines. It was not the cry of a trailing wolf, nor the lonesome
+howl of a prowling coyote, nor the strange, low sound, like a cough,
+of a hunting cougar, though it had a semblance of all three. It was
+the bay of a hound, thinned out by distance, and it served to keep me
+wide awake. But for a while, what with the roar and swell of the wind
+and Navvy's snores, I could hear it only at long intervals.
+
+Still, in the course of an hour, I followed the sound, or imagined so,
+from a point straight in line with my feet to one at right angles
+with my head. Finally deciding it came from Shep, and fancying he was
+trailing a deer or coyote, I tried to go to sleep again.
+
+In this I would have succeeded had not, all at once, our captive lions
+begun to growl. That ominous, low murmuring awoke me with a vengeance,
+for it was unusual for them to growl in the middle of the night.
+I wondered if they, as well as the pup, had gotten the scent of a
+prowling lion.
+
+I reached down to my feet and groped in the dark for Moze. Finding
+him, I gave him a shake. The old gladiator groaned, stirred, and came
+out of what must have been dreams of hunting meat. He slapped his tail
+against my bed. As luck would have it, just then the wind abated to a
+soft moan, and clear and sharp came the bay of a hound. Moze heard it,
+for he stopped wagging his tail, his body grew tense under my hand,
+and he vented his low, deep grumble.
+
+I lay there undecided. To wake my companions was hardly to be
+considered, and to venture off into the forest alone, where old Sultan
+might be scouting, was not exactly to my taste. And trying to think
+what to do, and listening for the bay of the pup, and hearing mostly
+the lions growling and the wind roaring, I fell asleep.
+
+"Hey! are you ever going to get up?" some one yelled into my drowsy
+brain. I roused and opened my eyes. The yellow, flickering shadows on
+the wall of my tent told me that the sun had long risen. I found my
+companions finishing breakfast. The first thing I did was to look over
+the dogs. Shep, the black-and-white pup, was missing.
+
+"Where's Shep?" I asked.
+
+"Shore, I ain't seen him this mornin'," replied Jim.
+
+Thereupon I told what I had heard during the night.
+
+"Everybody listen," said Jones.
+
+We quieted down and sat like statues. A gentle, cool breeze, barely
+moving the pine tips, had succeeded the night wind. The sound of
+horses munching their oats, and an occasional clink, rattle, and growl
+from the lions did not drown the faint but unmistakable yelps of a
+pup.
+
+"South, toward the canyon," said Jim, as Jones got up.
+
+"Now, it'd be funny if that little Shep, just to get even with me for
+tying him up so often, has treed a lion all by himself," commented
+Jones. "And I'll bet that's just what he's done."
+
+He called the hounds about him and hurried westward through the
+forest.
+
+"Shore, it might be." Jim shook his head knowingly. "I reckon it's
+only a rabbit, but anythin' might happen in this place."
+
+I finished breakfast and went into my tent for something--I forget
+what, for wild yells from Emett and Jim brought me flying out again.
+
+"Listen to that!" cried Jim, pointing west.
+
+The hounds had opened up; their full, wild chorus floated clearly on
+the breeze, and above it Jones' stentorian yell signaled us.
+
+"Shore, the old man can yell," continued Jim. "Grab your lassos an'
+hump yourselves. I've got the collar an' chain."
+
+"Come on, Navvy," shouted Emett. He grasped the Indian's wrist and
+started to run, jerking Navvy into the air at every jump. I caught up
+my camera and followed. We crossed two shallow hollows, and then saw
+the hounds and Jones among the pines not far ahead.
+
+In my excitement I outran my companions and dashed into an open glade.
+First I saw Jones waving his long arms; next the dogs, noses upward,
+and Don actually standing on his hind legs; then a dead pine with a
+well-known tawny shape outlined against the blue sky.
+
+"Hurrah for Shep!" I yelled, and right vigorously did my comrades join
+in.
+
+"It's another female," said Jones, when we calmed down, "and fair
+sized. That's the best tree for our purpose that I ever saw a lion in.
+So spread out, boys; surround her and keep noisy."
+
+Navvy broke from Emett at this juncture and ran away. But evidently
+overcome by curiosity, he stopped to hide behind a bush, from which I
+saw his black head protruding.
+
+When Jones swung himself on the first stubby branch of the pine, the
+lioness, some fifteen feet above, leaped to another limb, and the one
+she had left cracked, swayed and broke. It fell directly upon Jones,
+the blunt end striking his head and knocking him out of the tree.
+Fortunately, he landed on his feet; otherwise there would surely have
+been bones broken. He appeared stunned, and reeled so that Emett
+caught him. The blood poured from a wound in his head.
+
+This sudden shock sobered us instantly. On examination we found a
+long, jagged cut in Jones' scalp. We bathed it with water from my
+canteen and with snow Jim procured from a nearby hollow, eventually
+stopping the bleeding. I insisted on Jones coming to camp to have the
+wound properly dressed, and he insisted on having it bound with a
+bandana; after which he informed us that he was going to climb the
+tree again.
+
+We objected to this. Each of us declared his willingness to go up and
+rope the lion; but Jones would not hear of it.
+
+"I'm not doubting your courage," he said. "It's only that you cannot
+tell what move the lion would make next, and that's the danger."
+
+We could not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill the
+animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the tree,
+passed the first branch and then another. The lioness changed her
+position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to keep the tree
+trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out on a branch in a
+most favorable position for roping.
+
+The first cast of the lasso did the business, and Jim and Emett with
+nimble fingers tied up the hounds.
+
+"Coming," shouted Jones. He slid down, hand over hand, on the rope,
+the lioness holding his weight with apparent ease.
+
+"Make your noose ready," he yelled to Emett.
+
+I had to drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal from
+her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness, hissing,
+snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the rope out of
+our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed her hind paws in a
+flash.
+
+"Make fast your rope," shouted Jones. "There, that's good! Now let her
+down--easy."
+
+As soon as the lioness touched ground we let go the lasso, which
+whipped up and over the branch. She became a round, yellow, rapidly
+moving ball. Emett was the first to catch the loose lasso, and he
+checked the rolling cougar. Jones leaped to assist him and the two of
+them straightened out the struggling animal, while Jim swung another
+noose at her. On the second throw he caught a front paw.
+
+"Pull hard! Stretch her out!" yelled Jones. He grasped a stout piece
+of wood and pushed it at the lioness. She caught it in her mouth,
+making the splinters fly. Jones shoved her head back on the ground and
+pressed his brawny knee on the bar of wood.
+
+"The collar! The collar! Quick!" he called.
+
+I threw chain and collar to him, which in a moment he had buckled
+round her neck.
+
+"There, we've got her!" he said. "It's only a short way over to camp,
+so we'll drag her without muzzling."
+
+As he rose the lioness lurched, and reaching him, fastened her
+fangs in his leg. Jones roared. Emett and Jim yelled. And I, though
+frightened, was so obsessed with the idea of getting a picture that I
+began to fumble with the shutter of my camera.
+
+"Grab the chain! Pull her off!" bawled Jones.
+
+I ran in, took up the chain with both hands, and tugged with all my
+might. Emett, too, had all his weight on the lasso round her neck.
+Between the two of us we choked her hold loose, but she brought Jones'
+leather leggin in her teeth. Then I dropped the chain and jumped.
+
+"**-- **--!" exploded Jones to me. "Do you think more of a picture
+than of saving my life?" Having expressed this not unreasonable
+protest, he untied the lasso that Emett had made fast to a small
+sapling.
+
+Then the three men, forming points of a triangle around an animated
+center, began a march through the forest that for variety of action
+and splendid vociferation beat any show I ever beheld.
+
+So rare was it that the Navajo came out of his retreat and,
+straightway forgetting his reverence and fear, began to execute a
+ghost-dance, or war-dance, or at any rate some kind of an Indian
+dance, along the side lines.
+
+There were moments when the lioness had Jim and Jones on the ground
+and Emett wobbling; others when she ran on her bound legs and chased
+the two in front and dragged the one behind; others when she came
+within an ace of getting her teeth in somebody.
+
+They had caught a Tartar. They dared not let her go, and though Jones
+evidently ordered it, no one made fast his rope to a tree. There was
+no opportunity. She was in the air three parts of the time and the
+fourth she was invisible for dust. The lassos were each thirty feet
+long, but even with that the men could just barely keep out of her
+reach.
+
+Then came the climax, as it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly,
+unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing
+the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing
+one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The
+weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope
+slackening. The leap of the lioness carried her within reach of Jones;
+and as he raised himself, back toward her, she reached a big paw for
+him just as Emett threw all his bull strength and bulk on his lasso.
+
+The seat of Jones' trousers came away with the lioness' claws. Then
+she fell backward, overcome by Emett's desperate lunge. Jones sprang
+up with the velocity of an Arab tumbler, and his scarlet face, working
+spasmodically, and his moving lips, showed how utterly unable he was
+to give expression to his rage. I had a stitch in my side that nearly
+killed me, but laugh I had to though I should die for it.
+
+No laughing matter was it for them. They volleyed and thundered
+back and forth meaningless words of which "hell" was the only one
+distinguishable, and probably the word that best described their
+situation.
+
+All the while, however, they had been running from the lioness, which
+brought them before they realized it right into camp. Our captive
+lions cut up fearfully at the hubbub, and the horses stampeded in
+terror.
+
+"Whoa!" yelled Jones, whether to his companions or to the struggling
+cougar, no one knew. But Navvy thought Jones addressed the cougar.
+
+"Whoa!" repeated Navvy. "No savvy whoa! No savvy whoa!" which proved
+conclusively that the Navajo had understanding as well as wit.
+
+Soon we had another captive safely chained and growling away in tune
+with the others. I went back to untie the hounds, to find them sulky
+and out of sorts from being so unceremoniously treated. They noisily
+trailed the lioness into camp, where, finding her chained, they formed
+a ring around her.
+
+Thereafter the day passed in round-the-camp-fire chat and task. For
+once Jim looked at Navvy with toleration. We dressed the wound in
+Jones' head and laughed at the condition of his trousers and at his
+awkward attempts to piece them.
+
+"Mucha dam cougie," remarked Navvy. "No savvy whoa!"
+
+The lions growled all day. And Jones kept repeating: "To think how
+Shep fooled me!"
+
+
+X
+
+Next morning Jones was out bright and early, yelling at Navvy to hurry
+with the horses, calling to the hounds and lions, just as usual.
+
+Navvy had finally come to his full share of praise from all of us.
+Even Jim acknowledged that the Indian was invaluable to a hunting
+party in a country where grass and water were hard to find and wild
+horses haunted the trails.
+
+"_Tohodena! Tohodena!_ (hurry! hurry!)" said Navvy, mimicking Jones
+that morning.
+
+As we sat down to breakfast he loped off into the forest and before we
+got up the bells of the horses were jingling in the hollow.
+
+"I believe it's going to be cloudy," said Jones, "and if so we can
+hunt all day."
+
+We rode down the ridge to the left of Middle Canyon, and had trouble
+with the hounds all the way. First they ran foul of a coyote, which
+was the one and only beast they could not resist. Spreading out to
+head them off, we separated. I cut into a hollow and rode to its head,
+where I went up. I heard the hounds and presently saw a big, white
+coyote making fast time through the forest glades. It looked as if he
+would cross close in front of me, so I pulled Foxie to a standstill,
+jumped off and knelt with my rifle ready. But the sharp-eyed coyote
+saw my horse and shied off. I had not much hope to hit him so far
+away, and the five bullets I sent after him, singing and zipping,
+served only to make him run faster. I mounted Foxie and intercepted
+the hounds coming up sharply on the trail, and turned them toward my
+companions, now hallooing from the ridge below.
+
+Then the pack lost a good hour on several lion tracks that were a day
+old, and for such trails we had no time. We reached the cedars however
+at seven o'clock, and as the sky was overcast with low dun-colored
+clouds and the air cool, we were sure it was not too late.
+
+One of the capes of the plateau between Middle and Left Canyon was a
+narrow strip of rock, covered with a dense cedar growth and cut up
+into smaller canyons, all running down inevitably toward the great
+canyon. With but a single bark to warn us, Don got out of our sight
+and hearing; and while we split to look and call for him the remainder
+of the pack found the lion trail that he had gone on, and they left
+us trying to find a way out as well as to find each other. I kept the
+hounds in hearing for some time and meanwhile I signalled to Emett who
+was on my right flank. Jones and Jim might as well have vanished off
+the globe for all I could see or hear of them. A deep, narrow gully
+into which I had to lead Foxie and carefully coax him out took so much
+time that when I once more reached a level I could not hear the hounds
+or get an answer to my signal cry.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" I called again.
+
+Away on the dry rarified air pealed the cry, piercing the cedar
+forest, splitting sharp in the vaulted canyons, rolling loud and long,
+to lose power, to die away in muffling echo. But the silence returned
+no answer.
+
+I rode on under the cedars, through a dark, gloomy forest, silent,
+almost spectral, which brought irresistibly to my mind the words
+"I found me in a gloomy wood astray." I was lost though I knew the
+direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest was all but
+impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray tangles, live cedars,
+branches touching the ground, grew close together. In this labyrinth
+I lost my bearings. I turned and turned, crossed my own back trail,
+which in desperation I followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep
+and narrow canyon.
+
+Here I fired my revolver. The echo boomed out like the report of heavy
+artillery, but no answering shot rewarded me. There was no alternative
+save to wander along the canyon and through the cedars until I found
+my companions. This I began to do, disgusted with my awkwardness in
+losing them. Turning Foxie westward I had scarcely gotten under way
+when Don came trotting toward me.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" I called. Don appeared as happy to see me as I was
+to see him. He flopped down on the ground; his dripping tongue rolled
+as he panted; covered with dust and flecked with light froth he surely
+looked to be a tired hound.
+
+"All in, eh Don!" I said dismounting. "Well, we'll rest awhile." Then
+I discovered blood on his nose, which I found to have come from a deep
+scratch. "A--ah! been pushing a lion too hard this morning? Got your
+nose scratched, didn't you? You great, crazy hound, don't you know
+some day you'll chase your last lion?"
+
+Don wagged his tail as if to say he knew it all very well. I wet my
+handkerchief from my canteen and started to wash the blood and dust
+from his nose, when he whined and licked my fingers.
+
+"Thirsty?" I asked, sitting down beside him. Denting the top of my hat
+I poured in as much water as it would hold and gave him to drink. Four
+times he emptied my improvised cup before he was satisfied. Then with
+a sigh of relief he lay down again.
+
+The three of us rested there for perhaps half an hour, Don and I
+sitting quietly on the wall of the canyon, while Foxie browsed on
+occasional tufts of grass. During that time the hound never raised his
+sleek, dark head, which showed conclusively the nature of the silence.
+And now that I had company--as good company as any hunter ever had--I
+was once more contented.
+
+Don got up, at length of his own volition and with a wag of his tail
+set off westward along the rim. Remounting my mustang I kept as close
+to Don's heels as the rough going permitted. The hound, however,
+showed no disposition to hurry, and I let him have his way without a
+word.
+
+We came out in the notch of the great amphitheater or curve we had
+named the Bay, and I saw again the downward slope, the bold steps, the
+color and depth below.
+
+I was just about to yell a signal cry when I saw Don, with hair rising
+stiff, run forward. He took a dozen jumps, then yelping broke down the
+steep, yellow and green gorge. He disappeared before I knew what had
+happened.
+
+Shortly I found a lion track, freshly made, leading down. I believed
+I could follow wherever Don led, so I decided to go after him. I tied
+Foxie securely, removed my coat, kicked off spurs and chaps, and
+remembering past unnecessary toil, fastened a red bandana to the top
+of a dead snag to show me where to come up on my way out. Then I
+carefully strapped my canteen and camera on my back, made doubly
+secure my revolver, put on my heavy gloves, and started down. And I
+realized at once that only so lightly encumbered should I have ever
+ventured down the slope.
+
+Little benches of rock, grassy on top, with here and there cedar
+trees, led steeply down for perhaps five hundred feet. A precipice
+stopped me. From it I heard Don baying below, and almost instantly saw
+the yellow gleam of a lion in a tree-top.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I yelled in wild encouragement.
+
+I felt it would be wise to look before I leaped. The Bay lay under me,
+a mile wide where it opened into the great slumbering smoky canyon.
+All below was chaos of splintered stone and slope, green jumble of
+cedar, ruined, detached, sliding, standing cliff walls, leaning yellow
+crags--an awful hole. But I could get down, and that was all I cared
+for. I ran along to the left, jumping cracks, bounding over the uneven
+stones with sure, swift feet, and came to where the cliff ended in
+weathered slope and scaly bench.
+
+It was like a game, going down that canyon. My heavy nailed boots
+struck fire from the rocks. My heavy gloves protected my hands as I
+slid and hung on and let go. I outfooted the avalanches and wherever I
+came to a scaly slope or bank or decayed rock, I leaped down in sheer
+delight.
+
+But all too soon my progress was barred; once under the cliff I found
+only a gradual slope and many obstacles to go round or surmount. Luck
+favored me, for I ran across a runway and keeping to it made better
+time. I heard Don long before I tried to see him, and yelled at
+intervals to let him know I was coming. A white bank of weathered
+stones led down to a clump of cedars from where Don's bay came
+spurring me to greater efforts. I flew down this bank, and through an
+opening saw the hound standing with fore feet against a cedar. The
+branches over him swayed, and I saw an indistinct, tawny form move
+downward in the air. Then succeeded the crash and rattle of stones.
+Don left the tree and disappeared.
+
+I dashed down, dodged under the cedars, threaded a maze of rocks, to
+find myself in a ravine with a bare, water-worn floor. In patches of
+sand showed the fresh tracks of Don and the lion. Running down this
+dry, clean bed was the easiest going I ever found in the canyon. Every
+rod the course jumped in a fall from four to ten feet, often more, and
+these I slid down. How I ever kept Don in hearing was a marvel, but
+still I did.
+
+The lion evidently had no further intention of taking to a tree. From
+the size of his track I concluded he was old and I feared every moment
+to hear the sounds of a fight. Jones had said that nearly always in
+the case of one hound chasing an old lion, the lion would lie in wait
+for him and kill him. And I was afraid for Don.
+
+Down, down, down, we went, till the yellow rim above seemed a thin
+band of gold. I saw that we were almost to the canyon proper, and
+I wondered what would happen when we reached it. The dark shaded
+watercourse suddenly shot out into bright light and ended in a deep
+cove, with perpendicular walls fifty feet high. I could see where
+a few rods farther on this cove opened into a huge, airy, colored
+canyon.
+
+I called the hound, wondering if he had gone to the right or left of
+the cove. His bay answered me coming from the cedars far to the right.
+I turned with all the speed left in me, for I felt the chase nearing
+an end. Tracks of hound and lion once more showed in the dust. The
+slope was steep and stones I sent rolling cracked down below. Soon I
+had a cliff above me and had to go slow and cautiously. A misstep or
+slide would have precipitated me into the cove.
+
+Almost before I knew what I was about, I stood gasping on the gigantic
+second wall of the canyon, with nothing but thin air under me, except,
+far below, faint and indistinct purple clefts, red ridges, dotted
+slopes, running down to merge in a dark, winding strip of water,
+that was the Rio Colorado. A sullen murmur soared out of the abyss.
+
+[Illustration: TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE]
+
+[Illustration: JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS]
+
+The coloring of my mood changed. Never had the canyon struck me so
+terribly with its illimitable space, its dread depth, its unscalable
+cliffs, and particularly with the desolate, forbidding quality of its
+silence.
+
+I heard Don bark. Turning the corner of the cliff wall I saw him on a
+narrow shelf. He was coming toward me and when he reached me he faced
+again to the wall and barked fiercely. The hair on his neck bristled.
+I knew he did not fancy that narrow strip of rock, nor did I. But a
+sudden, grim, cold something had taken possession of me, and I stepped
+forward.
+
+"Come on, Don, old fellow, we've got him corralled."
+
+That was the first instance I ever knew of Don's hesitation in the
+chase of a lion. I had to coax him to me. But once started he took the
+lead and I closely followed.
+
+The shelf was twenty feet wide and upon it close to the wall, in the
+dust, were the deep imprints of the lion. A jutting corner of cliff
+wall hid my view. I peeped around it. The shelf narrowed on the other
+side to a yard in width, and climbed gradually by broken steps. Don
+passed the corner, looked back to see if I was coming and went on. He
+did this four times, once even stopping to wait for me.
+
+"I'm with you Don!" I grimly muttered. "We'll see this trail out to a
+finish."
+
+I had now no eyes for the wonders of the place, though I could not but
+see as I bent a piercing gaze ahead the ponderous overhanging wall
+above, and sense the bottomless depth below. I felt rather than saw
+the canyon swallows, sweeping by in darting flight, with soft
+rustle of wings, and I heard the shrill chirp of some strange cliff
+inhabitant.
+
+Don ceased barking. How strange that seemed to me! We were no longer
+man and hound, but companions, brothers, each one relying on the
+other. A protruding corner shut us from sight of what was beyond. Don
+slipped around. I had to go sidewise and shuddered as my fingers bit
+into the wall.
+
+To my surprise I soon found myself on the floor of a shallow wind
+cave. The lion trail led straight across it and on. Shelves of rock
+stuck out above under which I hurriedly walked. I came upon a shrub
+cedar growing in a niche and marveled to see it there. Don went slower
+and slower.
+
+We suddenly rounded a point, to see the lion lying in a box-like space
+in the wall. The shelf ended there. I had once before been confronted
+with a like situation, and had expected to find it here, so was not
+frightened. The lion looked up from his task of licking a bloody paw,
+and uttered a fierce growl. His tail began to lash to and fro; it
+knocked the little stones off the shelf. I heard them click on the
+wall. Again and again he spat, showing great, white fangs. He was a
+Tom, heavy and large.
+
+It had been my purpose, of course, to photograph this lion, and now
+that we had cornered him I proposed to do it. What would follow had
+only hazily formed in my mind, but the nucleus of it was that he
+should go free. I got my camera, opened it, and focused from between
+twenty and twenty-five feet.
+
+Then a growl from Don and roar from the lion bade me come to my
+senses. I did so and my first movement after seeing the lion had risen
+threateningly was to whip out my revolver.
+
+The lion's cruel yellow eyes darkened and darkened. In an instant I
+saw my error. Jones had always said in case any one of us had to
+face a lion, never for a single instant to shift his glance. I had
+forgotten that, and in that short interval when I focused my camera
+the lion had seen I meant him no harm, or feared him, and he had
+risen. Even then in desperate lessening ambition for a great picture I
+attempted to take one, still keeping my glance on him.
+
+It was then that the appalling nature of my predicament made itself
+plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling horribly
+right in my face.
+
+Brave, noble Don, with infinitely more sense and courage than I
+possessed, faced the lion and bayed him in his teeth. I raised the
+revolver and aimed twice, each time lowering it because I feared to
+shoot in such a precarious position. To wound the lion would be the
+worst thing I could do, and I knew that only a shot through the brain
+would kill him in his tracks.
+
+"Hold him, Don, hold him!" I yelled, and I took a backward step. The
+lion put forward one big paw, his eyes now all purple blaze. I backed
+again and he came forward. Don gave ground slowly. Once the lion
+flashed a yellow paw at him. It was frightful to see the wide-spread
+claws.
+
+In the consternation of the moment I allowed the lion to back me
+across the front of the wind cave, where I saw, the moment it was too
+late, I should have taken advantage of more space to shoot him.
+
+Fright succeeded consternation, and I began to tremble. The lion was
+master of the situation. What would happen when I came to the narrow
+point on the shelf where it would be impossible for me to back around?
+I almost fainted. The thought of heroic Don saved me, and the weak
+moment passed.
+
+"By God, Don, you've got the nerve, and I must have it too!"
+
+I stopped in my tracks. The lion, appearing huge now, took slow
+catlike steps toward me, backing Don almost against my knees. He was
+so close I smelt him. His wonderful eyes, clear blue fire circled by
+yellow flame, fascinated me. Hugging the wall with my body I brought
+the revolver up, short armed, and with clinched teeth, and nerve
+strained to the breaking point, I aimed between the eyes and pulled
+the trigger.
+
+The left eye seemed to go out blankly, then followed the bellow of the
+revolver and the smell of powder. The lion uttered a sound that was a
+mingling of snarls, howls and roars and he rose straight up, towering
+high over my head, beating the wall heavily with his paws.
+
+In helpless terror I stood there forgetting weapon, fearing only the
+beast would fall over on me.
+
+But in death agony he bounded out from the wall to fall into space.
+
+I sank down on the shelf, legs powerless, body in cold sweat. As I
+waited, slowly my mind freed itself from a tight iron band and a
+sickening relief filled my soul. Tensely I waited and listened. Don
+whined once.
+
+Would the lion never strike? What seemed a long period of time ended
+in a low, distant roar of sliding rock, quickly dying into the solemn
+stillness of the canyon.
+
+
+XI
+
+I lay there for some moments slowly recovering, eyes on the far
+distant escarpments, now darkly red and repellent to me. When I got up
+my legs were still shaky and I had the strange, weak sensation of a
+long bed-ridden invalid. Three attempts were necessary before I could
+trust myself on the narrow strip of shelf. But once around it with the
+peril passed, I braced up and soon reached the turn in the wall.
+
+After that the ascent out of the Bay was only a matter of work, which
+I gave with a will. Don did not evince any desire for more hunting
+that day. We reached the rim together, and after a short rest, I
+mounted my horse, and we turned for camp.
+
+The sun had long slanted toward the western horizon when I saw the
+blue smoke of our camp-fire among the pines. The hounds rose up and
+barked as Don trotted in to the blaze, and my companions just sitting
+to a dinner, gave me a noisy greeting.
+
+"Shore, we'd began to get worried," said Jim. "We all had it comin' to
+us to-day, and don't you forget that."
+
+Dinner lasted for a long hour. Besides being half famished we all
+took time between bites to talk. I told my story first, expecting my
+friends to be overwhelmed, but they were not.
+
+"It's been the greatest day of lion hunting that I ever experienced,"
+declared Jones. "We ran bang into a nest of lions and they split. We
+all split and the hounds split. That tells the tale. We have nothing
+to show for our day's toil. Six lions chased, rounded up, treed,
+holed, and one lion killed, and we haven't even his skin to show. I
+did not go down but I helped Ranger and two of the pups chase a lion
+all over the lower end of the plateau. We treed him twice and I yelled
+for you fellows till my voice was gone."
+
+"Well," said Emett, "I fell in with Sounder and Jude. They were hot on
+a trail which in a mile or two turned up this way. I came on them just
+at the edge of the pines where they had treed their game. I sat under
+that pine tree for five hours, fired all my shots to make you fellows
+come, yelled myself hoarse and then tried to tie up the lion alone. He
+jumped out and ran over the rim, where neither I nor the dogs could
+follow."
+
+"Shore, I win, three of a kind," drawled Jim, as he got his pipe and
+carefully dusted the bowl. "When the stampede came, I got my hands on
+Moze and held him. I held Moze because just as the other hounds broke
+loose over to my right, I saw down into a little pocket where a
+fresh-killed deer lay half eaten. So I went down. I found two other
+carcasses layin' there, fresh killed last night, flesh all gone, hide
+gone, bones crushed, skull split open. An' damn me fellows, if that
+little pocket wasn't all torn to pieces. The sage was crushed flat.
+The ground dug up, dead snags broken, and blood and hair everywhere.
+Lion tracks like leaves, and old Sultan's was there. I let Moze loose
+and he humped the trail of several lions south over the rim. Major got
+down first an' came back with his tail between his legs. Moze went
+down and I kept close to him. It wasn't far down, but steep and rocky,
+full of holes. Moze took the trail to a dark cave. I saw the tracks of
+three lions goin' in. Then I collared Moze an' waited for you fellows.
+I waited there all day, an' nobody came to my call. Then I made for
+camp."
+
+"How do you account for the torn-up appearance of the place where you
+found the carcasses?" I asked.
+
+"Lion fight sure," replied Jones. "Maybe old Sultan ran across the
+three lions feeding, and pitched into them. Such fights were common
+among the lions in Yellowstone Park when I was there."
+
+"What chance have we to find those three lions in a cave where Jim
+chased them?"
+
+"We stand a good chance," said Jones. "Especially if it storms
+to-night."
+
+"Shore the snow storm is comin'," returned Jim.
+
+Darkness clapped down on us suddenly, and the wind roared in the pines
+like a mighty river tearing its way down a rocky pass. As we could not
+control the camp-fire, sparks of which blew fiercely, we extinguished
+it and went to bed. I had just settled myself comfortably to be sung
+to sleep by the concert in the pines, when Jones hailed me.
+
+"Say, what do you think?" he yelled, when I had answered him. "Emett
+is mad. He's scratching to beat the band. He's got 'em."
+
+I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.
+
+"You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"
+
+I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed and so
+did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could understand more
+English than he wanted us to suppose.
+
+Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed in--snowed
+in!"
+
+"Mucha snow--discass--no cougie--dam no bueno!" exclaimed Navvy.
+
+When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a blinding
+blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows, everything
+white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the Indian words in
+straight English.
+
+"Much snow--cold--no cougar--bad!"
+
+"Stay in bed," yelled Jones.
+
+"All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"
+
+He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off and on
+till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather breakfast,
+round a blazing bonfire.
+
+"It's going to clear up," said Jim.
+
+The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud that had
+enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit the tree tops,
+sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then rising above the trees.
+At first it moved slowly, rolling, forming, expanding, blooming like
+a column of whirling gray smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled
+onward through the forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and
+rippling, split by the trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose
+higher and higher, to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing
+glimpses of blue sky.
+
+Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts, dispelling the
+shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through the forest glade,
+gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the snow-wreathed pines.
+
+The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began to drip.
+A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved through every glade
+and feathered patches of snow floated down.
+
+A great bank of snow, sliding from the pine overhead almost buried
+the Navajo, to our infinite delight. We all sought the shelter of the
+tents, and sleep again claimed us.
+
+I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson paths in
+the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a frosty morning.
+
+"To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.
+
+While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave them
+their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions lay hidden
+in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out of sight beyond
+the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges; blue shadows gathered
+in the hollow, shaded purple and stole upward. A brief twilight
+succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit night.
+
+Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my sleeping bag,
+was I hailed from the other tent.
+
+Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones remonstrating
+in a low voice.
+
+"Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a secret no
+longer."
+
+"Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"
+
+"No, I don't," growled Jones.
+
+"Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno! bueno!" and I
+wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"
+
+The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.
+
+"Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you. It's only
+Jones has got 'em."
+
+
+XII
+
+When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising
+gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the frosty
+air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the bunches of
+sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow, resembled trees
+with brilliant blossoms.
+
+We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into which Jim
+had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we had expected,
+began to thin out, and it failed altogether under the cedars, though
+there was enough on the branches to give us a drenching.
+
+Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us the cave
+was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had better
+take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above to await
+developments.
+
+Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them close. We
+listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open up, but we were
+disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came climbing out, with
+the information that the lions had left the cave, probably the evening
+after he had chased them there.
+
+"Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt round the
+rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if necessary."
+
+So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left Canyon;
+Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we were to perform
+a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and Jude. Emett rode back
+with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle Canyon.
+
+Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost to the
+west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single track, so we
+started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the snow all gone;
+the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and Jones grumbled that
+no success would attend our efforts this morning.
+
+We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened into the
+deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our companions across the
+canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder and Jude both began to bark
+on a cliff; however, as we could find no tracks in the dust we called
+them off. Sounder obeyed reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over
+the wall.
+
+"They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the wall."
+
+Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They ran up
+and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they gone out
+of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the rim and looked
+over. The first step was short, a crumbled section of wall, and from
+it led down a long slope, dotted here and there with cedars. Both
+hounds were baying furiously.
+
+I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a lion,
+so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not yet in
+sight.
+
+"There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not lucky?"
+
+"I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that you
+don't absolutely need."
+
+Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only my camera
+and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We descended a ladder
+of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under our feet. The slope
+below us was easy, and soon we stood on a level with the lion. The
+cedar was small, and afforded no good place for him. Evidently he
+jumped from the slope to the tree, and had hung where he first
+alighted.
+
+"Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion won't stay
+treed long."
+
+I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and I moved
+aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under a tall pinon.
+High in the branches I saw a great mass of yellow, and at first glance
+thought Sounder had treed old Sultan. How I yelled! Then a second
+glance showed two lions close together.
+
+"Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a moment we
+made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the echoes bayed at
+us from the opposite walls.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but unmistakable,
+floated down to us. Across the jutting capes separating the mouths of
+these canyons, high above them on the rim wall of the opposite side of
+the Bay, stood a giant white horse silhouetted against the white
+sky. They made a brave picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in
+chorus: "Three lions treed! Three lions treed! come down--hurry!"
+
+A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had jumped. He
+ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard. Jude went tearing
+after them.
+
+"I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!" yelled
+Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight among the
+trees and crags.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize it. The
+yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew fainter, telling
+me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to the bottom of the Bay.
+
+Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of the
+facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed without
+hounds, without a companion, without a gun.
+
+"This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I wanted to
+run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken me with Don
+around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and fiercer. I
+pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for leaving my gun. I
+could not go for it; I would have to make the best of my error, and in
+the wildness born of the moment I swore if the lions would stay treed
+for the hounds they would stay treed for me.
+
+First I photographed them from different positions; then I took up my
+stand about on a level with them in an open place on the slope where
+they had me in plain sight. I might have been fifty feet from them.
+They showed no inclination to come down.
+
+About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the left. I
+called and called, but they passed on down the canyon bottom in the
+direction Jones had taken.
+
+Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me his
+lion had treed again.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.
+
+I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had just
+appeared.
+
+"Where--can--I--get--down?"
+
+I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on slide,
+jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally picked out a
+path.
+
+"Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don at his
+heels.
+
+"There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with your lasso,
+and come yourself."
+
+I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip noose
+free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right and left
+of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the direction of
+the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of precipices that made me
+tremble for him; but sure-footed as a goat, he went on safely down, to
+disappear far to my right.
+
+Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down the first
+step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach round a cedar
+above, was too short to extend to the landing below. He dropped,
+raising a cloud of dust, and starting the stones. Pulling one end of
+his lasso up around the cedar he gathered it in a coil on his arm and
+faced forward, following Don's trail.
+
+What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red and
+yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down, streaming
+over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant pursuing a foe. From
+time to time he sent up a yell of encouragement that wound down the
+canyon, to be answered by Jones and the baying hounds and then the
+strange echoes. At last he passed out of sight behind the crests of
+the trees; I heard him going down, down till the sounds came up faint
+and hollow.
+
+I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a hunter
+so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching them. For a
+long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays and yells below
+diminished in volume and occurrence and then ceased altogether, they
+became restless. It was then that I, remembering the lion I had held
+on top of the crag, began to bark like a hound. The lions became quiet
+once more.
+
+I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to hoarser, and
+finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately grew restless
+again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at me, and made many
+attempts to start down, each one of which I frustrated by throwing
+stones under the tree. At length he made one more determined effort,
+turned head downward, and stepped from branch to branch.
+
+I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long club in
+the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt him--make him fear me.
+If he got far enough down to jump, he would either escape or have me
+helpless. I aimed deliberately at him, and hit him square in the ribs.
+He exploded in a spit-roar that raised my hair. Directly under him I
+wielded my club, pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and,
+like the crazy fool that I was, yelled at him:
+
+"Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your old head
+for you!"
+
+Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He climbed
+to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had done, that I
+would certainly have made tracks from under the pinon, if I had not
+heard the faint yelp of a hound.
+
+I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at my lions.
+They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how strained they held
+their heads. I backed a little way up the slope. Then the faint yelp
+floated up again in the silence. Such dead, strange silence, that
+seemed never to have been broken! I saw the lions quiver, and if I
+ever heard anything in my life I heard their hearts thump. The yelp
+wafted up again, closer this time. I recognized it; it belonged to
+Don. The great hound on the back trail of the other lion was coming to
+my rescue.
+
+"It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at the lions.
+"It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me then! Pity for
+those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel fellows as they were, they
+shivered with fright. Their sides trembled. But pity did not hold me
+long; Don's yelp, now getting clear and sharp, brought back the rush
+of savage, grim sensations.
+
+A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the downward
+slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and climbing fast.
+It was Don.
+
+"Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.
+
+Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long length,
+forepaws against the pinon, his deep bay ringing defiance to the
+lions.
+
+It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me to sit
+down just then.
+
+"Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that hound, and
+you can't get away from him."
+
+Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down to
+hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming. Yelp on
+yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a black and
+yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight down the
+slope, streaked up and circled the pinon.
+
+Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep ascent,
+seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been swift.
+
+"Did you get the lion? Where's Emett?" I asked in breathless
+eagerness.
+
+"Lion tied--all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left Emett--to
+guard--him."
+
+"What are we to do now?"
+
+"Wait--till I get my breath. Think out--a plan. We can't get both
+lions--out of one tree."
+
+"All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie Sounder
+and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump, sure; he's
+almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree him again pretty
+soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good. Then, if you can get
+the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett to come up to help you,
+and I'll follow Don."
+
+Jones began the ascent of the pinon. The branches were not too close,
+affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for even a move on the
+part of the lions, the lower one began stepping down. I yelled a
+warning, but Jones did not have time to take advantage of it. He had
+half turned, meaning to swing out and drop, when the lion planted both
+forepaws upon his back. Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost
+on him.
+
+Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground, and when
+he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A cloud of dust
+rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and with great, springy
+bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his followers hot-footing it after
+him.
+
+Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied them, and
+dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action to join the
+chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in case the other lion
+jumped I could free them quickly.
+
+Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took his long
+stick, and proceeded to mount the pinon again. I waited till I saw him
+slip the noose over the lion's head, then I ran down the slope to
+yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told him to hurry to Jones'
+assistance. With that I headed up the canyon.
+
+I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his pursuers. I
+passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but fear of them was
+not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into the mouth of Left
+Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the hounds directed me. In
+the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed to come from a hundred dogs.
+
+When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a thick,
+dark pinon, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don stood up against
+me with his paws on my shoulders. These were strange actions, and
+though I marked it at the moment, I had ceased to wonder at our
+hounds. I took one picture as the lion sat in the dark shade, and then
+climbed to the low cliff and sat down. I called Don to me and held
+him. In case our quarry leaped upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put
+quickly on his trail.
+
+Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the lion--he
+looked as if it were--and one of impatience for the baying hounds, but
+for me it was a full hour. Alone with the hounds and a lion, far from
+the walks of men, walled in by the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry,
+sweet smell of cedar and pinon, I asked no more.
+
+Sounder and Moze, vociferously venting their arrival, were forerunners
+to Jones. I saw his gray locks waving in the breeze, and yelled for
+him to take his time. As he reached me the lion jumped and ran up the
+canyon. This suited me, for I knew he would take to a tree soon and
+the farther up he went the less distance we would have to pack him.
+From the cliff I saw him run up a slope, pass a big cedar, cunningly
+turn on his trail, and then climb into the tree and hide in its
+thickest part. Don passed him, got off the trail, and ran at fault.
+The others, so used to his leadership, were also baffled. But Jude,
+crippled and slow, brought up the rear, and she did not go a yard
+beyond where the lion turned. She opened up her deep call under the
+cedar, and in a moment the howling pack were around her.
+
+Jones and I toiled laboriously upward. He had brought my lasso, and
+he handed it to me with the significant remark that I would soon have
+need of it.
+
+The cedar was bushy and overhung a yellow, bare slope that made Jones
+shake his head. He climbed the tree, lassoed the spitting lion and
+then leaped down to my side. By united and determined efforts we
+pulled the lion off the limb and let him down. The hounds began to
+leap at him. We both roared in a rage at them but to no use.
+
+"Hold him there!" shouted Jones, leaving me with the lasso while he
+sprang forward.
+
+The weight of the animal dragged me forward and, had I not taken a
+half hitch round a dead snag, would have lifted me off my feet or
+pulled the lasso from my hands. As it was, the choking lion, now
+within reach of the furious, leaping hounds, swung to and fro before
+my face. He could not see me, but his frantic lunges narrowly missed
+me.
+
+If never before, Jones then showed his genius. Don had hold of the
+lion's flank, and Jones, grabbing the hound by the hind legs, threw
+him down the slope. Don fell and rolled a hundred feet before he
+caught himself. Then Jones threw old Moze rolling, and Ranger, and all
+except faithful Jude. Before they could get back he roped the lion
+again and made fast to a tree. Then he yelled for me to let go. The
+lion fell. Jones grabbed the lasso, at the same time calling for me to
+stop the hounds. As they came bounding up the steep slope, I had to
+club the noble fellows into submission.
+
+Before the lion recovered wholly from his severe choking, we had his
+paws bound fast. Then he could only heave his tawny sides, glare and
+spit at us.
+
+"Now what?" asked Jones. "Emett is watching the second lion, which we
+fastened by chain and lasso to a swinging branch. I'm all in. My heart
+won't stand any more climb."
+
+"You go to camp for the pack horses," I said briefly. "Bring them all,
+and all the packs, and Navvy, too. I'll help Emett tie up the second
+lion, and then we'll pack them both up here to this one. You take the
+hounds with you."
+
+"Can you tie up that lion?" asked Jones. "Mind you, he's loose except
+for a collar and chain. His claws haven't been clipped. Besides, it'll
+be an awful job to pack those two lions up here."
+
+"We can try," I said. "You hustle to camp. Your horse is right up back
+of here, across the point, if I don't mistake my bearings."
+
+Jones, admonishing me again, called the hounds and wearily climbed the
+slope. I waited until he was out of hearing; then began to retrace my
+trail down into the canyon. I made the descent in quick time, to find
+Emett standing guard over the lion. The beast had been tied to an
+overhanging branch that swung violently with every move he made.
+
+"When I got here," said Emett, "he was hanging over the side of that
+rock, almost choked to death. I drove him into this corner between the
+rocks and the tree, where he has been comparatively quiet. Now, what's
+up? Where is Jones? Did you get the third lion?"
+
+I related what had occurred, and then said we were to tie this lion
+and pack him with the other one up the canyon, to meet Jones and the
+horses.
+
+"All right," replied Emett, with a grim laugh. "We'd better get at
+it. Now I'm some worried about the lion we left below. He ought to be
+brought up, but we both can't go. This lion here will kill himself."
+
+"What will the other one weigh?"
+
+"All of one hundred and fifty pounds."
+
+"You can't pack him alone."
+
+"I'll try, and I reckon that's the best plan. Watch this fellow and
+keep him in the corner."
+
+Emett left me then, and I began a third long vigil beside a lion. The
+rest was more than welcome. An hour and a half passed before I heard
+the sliding of stones below, which told me that Emett was coming. He
+appeared on the slope almost bent double, carrying the lion, head
+downward, before him. He could climb only a few steps without lowering
+his burden and resting.
+
+I ran down to meet him. We secured a stout pole, and slipping this
+between the lion's paws, below where they were tied, we managed to
+carry him fairly well, and after several rests, got him up alongside
+the other.
+
+"Now to tie that rascal!" exclaimed Emett. "Jones said he was the
+meanest one he'd tackled, and I believe it. We'll cut a piece off of
+each lasso, and unravel them so as to get strings. I wish Jones hadn't
+tied the lasso to that swinging branch."
+
+"I'll go and untie it." Acting on this suggestion I climbed the tree
+and started out on the branch. The lion growled fiercely.
+
+"I'm afraid you'd better stop," warned Emett. "That branch is bending,
+and the lion can reach you."
+
+But despite this I slipped out a couple of yards farther, and had
+almost gotten to the knotted lasso, when the branch swayed and bent
+alarmingly. The lion sprang from his corner and crouched under me
+snarling and spitting, with every indication of leaping.
+
+"Jump! Jump! Jump!" shouted Emett hoarsely.
+
+[Illustration: BILLY IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: LION LICKING SNOWBALL]
+
+I dared not, for I could not jump far enough to get out of the lion's
+reach. I raised my legs and began to slide myself back up the branch.
+The lion leaped, missing me, but scattering the dead twigs. Then the
+beast, beside himself with fury, half leaped, half stood up, and
+reached for me. I looked down into his blazing eyes, and open mouth
+and saw his white fangs.
+
+Everything grew blurred before my eyes. I desperately fought for
+control over mind and muscle. I heard hoarse roars from Emett. Then
+I felt a hot, burning pain in my wrist, which stung all my faculties
+into keen life again.
+
+I saw the lion's beaked claws fastened in my leather wrist-band. At
+the same instant Emett dashed under the branch, and grasped the lion's
+tail. One powerful lunge of his broad shoulders tore the lion loose
+and flung him down the slope to the full extent of his lasso. Quick
+as thought I jumped down, and just in time to prevent Emett from
+attacking the lion with the heavy pole we had used.
+
+"I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" roared Emett.
+
+"No you won't," I replied, quietly, for my pain had served to soothe
+my excitement as well as to make me more determined. "We'll tie up the
+darned tiger, if he cuts us all to pieces. You know how Jones will
+give us the laugh if we fail. Here, bind up my wrist."
+
+Mention of Jones' probable ridicule and sight of my injury cooled
+Emett.
+
+"It's a nasty scratch," he said, binding my handkerchief round it.
+"The leather saved your hand from being torn off. He's an ugly brute,
+but you're right, we'll tie him. Now, let's each take a lasso and
+worry him till we get hold of a paw. Then we can stretch him out."
+
+Jones did a fiendish thing when he tied that lion to the swinging
+branch. It was almost worse than having him entirely free. He had a
+circle almost twenty feet in diameter in which he could run and leap
+at will. It seemed he was in the air all the time. First at Emett,
+than at me he sprang, mouth agape, eyes wild, claws spread. We whipped
+him with our nooses, but not one would hold. He always tore it off
+before we could draw it tight. I secured a precarious hold on one hind
+paw and straightened my lasso.
+
+"That's far enough," cried Emett. "Now hold him tight; don't lift him
+off the ground."
+
+I had backed up the slope. Emett faced the lion, noose ready, waiting
+for a favorable chance to rope a front paw. The lion crouched low and
+tense, only his long tail lashing back and forth across my lasso.
+Emett threw the loop in front of the spread paws, now half sunk into
+the dust.
+
+"Ease up; ease up," said he. "I'll tease him to jump into the noose."
+
+I let my rope sag. Emett poked a stick into the lion's face. All at
+once I saw the slack in the lasso which was tied to the lion's chain.
+Before I could yell to warn my comrade the beast leaped. My rope
+burned as it tore through my hands. The lion sailed into the air, his
+paws wide-spread like wings, and one of them struck Emett on the head
+and rolled him on the slope. I jerked back on my rope only to find it
+had slipped its hold.
+
+"He slugged me one," remarked Emett, calmly rising and picking up his
+hat. "Did he break the skin?"
+
+"No, but he tore your hat band off," I replied. "Let's keep at him."
+
+For a few moments or an hour--no one will ever know how long--we ran
+round him, raising the dust, scattering the stones, breaking the
+branches, dodging his onslaughts. He leaped at us to the full length
+of his tether, sailing right into our faces, a fierce, uncowed,
+tigerish beast. If it had not been for the collar and swivel he would
+have choked himself a hundred times. Quick as a cat, supple, powerful,
+tireless, he kept on the go, whirling, bounding, leaping, rolling,
+till it seemed we would never catch him.
+
+"If anything breaks, he'll get one of us," cried Emett. "I felt his
+breath that time."
+
+"Lord! How I wish we had some of those fellows here who say lions are
+rank cowards!" I exclaimed.
+
+In one of his sweeping side swings the lion struck the rock and hung
+there on its flat surface with his tail hanging over.
+
+"Attract his attention," shouted Emett, "but don't get too close.
+Don't make him jump."
+
+While I slowly manoeuvered in front of the lion, Emett slipped behind
+the rock, lunged for the long tail and got a good hold of it. Then
+with a whoop he ran around the rock, carrying the kicking, squalling
+lion clear of the ground.
+
+"Now's your chance," he yelled. "Rope a hind foot! I can hold him."
+
+In a second I had a noose fast on both hind paws, and then passed my
+rope to Emett. While he held the lion I again climbed the tree, untied
+the knot that had caused so much trouble, and very shortly we had our
+obstinate captive stretched out between two trees. After that we took
+a much needed breathing spell.
+
+"Not very scientific," growled Emett, by way of apologizing for our
+crude work, "but we had to get him some way."
+
+"Emett, do you know I believe Jones put up a job on us?" I said.
+
+"Well, maybe he did. We had the job all right. But we'll make short
+work of him now."
+
+He certainly went at it in a way that alarmed me and would have
+electrified Jones. While I held the chain Emett muzzled the lion
+with a stick and a strand of lasso. His big blacksmith's hands held,
+twisted and tied with remorseless strength.
+
+"Now for the hardest part of it," said he, "packing him up."
+
+We toiled and drudged upward, resting every few yards, wet with sweat,
+boiling with heat, parching for water. We slipped and fell, got up to
+slip and fall again. The dust choked us. We senselessly risked our
+lives on the brinks of precipices. We had no thought save to get the
+lion up. One hour of unremitting labor saw our task finished, so far.
+Then we wearily went down for the other.
+
+"This one is the heaviest," gloomily said Emett.
+
+We had to climb partly sidewise with the pole in the hollow of our
+elbows. The lion dragged head downward, catching in the brush and
+on the stones. Our rests became more frequent. Emett, who had the
+downward end of the pole, and therefore thrice the weight, whistled
+when he drew breath. Half the time I saw red mist before my eyes. How
+I hated the sliding stones!
+
+"Wait," panted Emett once. "You're--younger--than me--wait!"
+
+For that Mormon giant--used all his days to strenuous toil, peril and
+privation--to ask me to wait for him, was a compliment which I valued
+more than any I had ever received.
+
+At last we dropped our burden in the shade of a cedar where the
+other lions lay, and we stretched ourselves. A long, sweet rest came
+abruptly to end with Emett's next words.
+
+"The lions are choking! They're dying of thirst! We must have water!"
+
+One glance at the poor, gasping, frothing beasts, proved to me the
+nature of our extremity.
+
+"Water in this desert! Where will we find it? Oh! why, did I forget my
+canteen!"
+
+After all our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally our
+wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for lack of a
+little water was sickening, maddening.
+
+"Think quick!" cried Emett. "I'm no good; I'm all in. But you must
+find water. It snowed yesterday. There's water somewhere."
+
+Into my mind flashed a picture of the many little pockets beaten by
+rains into the shelves and promontories of the canyon rim. With the
+thought I was on the jump. I ran; I climbed; I seemed to have wings; I
+reached the rim, and hurried along it with eager gaze. I swung down on
+a cedar branch to a projecting point of rock. Small depressions were
+everywhere still damp, but the water had evaporated. But I would not
+give up. I jumped from rock to rock, and climbed over scaly ledges,
+and set tons of yellow shale into motion. And I found on a ragged
+promontory many little, round holes, some a foot deep, all full of
+clear water. Using my handkerchief as a sponge I filled my cap.
+
+Then began my journey down. I carried the cap with both hands and
+balanced myself like a tight-rope performer. I zigzagged the slopes;
+slipped over stones; leaped fissures and traversed yellow slides.
+I safely descended places that in an ordinary moment would have
+presented insurmountable obstacles, and burst down upon Emett with an
+Indian yell of triumph.
+
+"Good!" ejaculated he. If I had not known it already, the way his face
+changed would have told me of his love for animals. He grasped a lion
+by the ears and held his head up. I saturated my handkerchief and
+squeezed the water into his mouth. He wheezed, coughed, choked, but to
+our joy he swallowed. He had to swallow. One after the other we served
+them so, seeing with unmistakable relief the sure signs of recovery.
+Their eyes cleared and brightened; the dry coughing that distressed us
+so ceased; the froth came no more. The savage fellow that had fought
+us to a standstill, and for which we had named him Spitfire, raised
+his head, the gold in his beautiful eyes darkened to fire and he
+growled his return to life and defiance.
+
+Emett and I sank back in unutterable relief.
+
+"Waa-hoo!" Jones' yell came, breaking the warm quiet of the slope.
+Our comrade appeared riding down. The voice of the Indian, calling to
+Marc, mingled with the ringing of iron-shod hoofs on the stones.
+
+Jones surveyed the small level spot in the shade of the cedars. He
+gazed from the lions to us, his stern face relaxed, and his dry laugh
+cracked.
+
+"Doggone me, if you didn't do it!"
+
+
+XIII
+
+A strange procession soon emerged from Left Canyon and stranger to us
+than the lion heads bobbing out of the alfagoes was the sight of Navvy
+riding in front of the lions. I kept well in the rear, for if anything
+happened, which I calculated was more than likely, I wanted to see
+it. Before we had reached the outskirts of pines, I observed that the
+piece of lasso around Spitfire's nose had worked loose.
+
+Just as I was about to make this known to Jones, the lion opened a
+corner of his mouth and fastened his teeth in the Navajo's overalls.
+He did not catch the flesh, for when Navvy turned around he wore only
+an expression of curiosity. But when he saw Spitfire chewing him he
+uttered a shrill scream and fell sidewise off his horse.
+
+Then two difficulties presented themselves to us, to catch the
+frightened horse and persuade the Indian he had not been bitten. We
+failed in the latter. Navvy gave us and the lions a wide berth, and
+walked to camp.
+
+Jim was waiting for us, and said he had chased a lion south along the
+rim till the hounds got away from him.
+
+Spitfire, having already been chained, was the first lion we
+endeavored to introduce to our family of captives. He raised such a
+fearful row that we had to remove him some distance from the others.
+
+"We have two dog chains," said Jones, "but not a collar or a swivel
+in camp. We can't chain the lions without swivels. They'd choke
+themselves in two minutes."
+
+Once more, for the hundredth time, Emett came to our rescue with his
+inventive and mechanical skill. He took the largest pair of hobbles we
+had, and with an axe, a knife and Jones' wire nippers, fashioned two
+collars with swivels that for strength and serviceableness improved
+somewhat on those we had bought.
+
+Darkness was enveloping the forest when we finished supper. I fell
+into my bed and, despite the throbbing and burning of my wrist,
+soon lapsed into slumber. And I crawled out next morning late for
+breakfast, stiff, worn out, crippled, but happy. Six lions roaring a
+concert for me was quite conducive to contentment.
+
+Emett interestingly engaged himself on a new pair of trousers, which
+he had contrived to produce from two of our empty meal-bags. The lower
+half of his overalls had gone to decorate the cedar spikes and brush,
+and these new bag-leg trousers, while somewhat remarkable for design,
+answered the purpose well enough. Jones' coat was somewhere along the
+canyon rim, his shoes were full of holes, his shirt in strips, and his
+trousers in rags. Jim looked like a scarecrow. My clothes, being of
+heavy waterproofed duck, had stood the hard usage in a manner to bring
+forth the unanimous admiration of my companions.
+
+"Well, fellows," said Jones, "there's six lions, and that's more than
+we can pack out of here. Have you had enough hunting? I have."
+
+"And I," rejoined Emett.
+
+"Shore you can bet I have," drawled Jim.
+
+"One more day, boys, and then I've done," said I. "Only one more day!"
+
+Signs of relief on the faces of my good comrades showed how they took
+this evidence of my satisfied ambition.
+
+I spent all the afternoon with the lions, photographing them,
+listening to them spit and growl, watching them fight their chains,
+and roll up like balls of fire. From different parts of the forest I
+tried to creep unsuspected upon them; but always when I peeped out
+from behind a tree or log, every pair of ears would be erect, every
+pair of eyes gleaming and suspicious.
+
+Spitfire afforded more amusement than all the others. He had indeed
+the temper of a king; he had been born for sovereignty, not slavery.
+To intimidate me he tried every manner of expression and utterance,
+and failing, he always ended with a spring in the air to the length of
+his chain. This means was always effective. I simply could not stand
+still when he leaped; and in turn I tried every artifice I could think
+of to make him back away from me, to take refuge behind his tree. I
+ran at him with a club as if I were going to kill him. He waited,
+crouching. Finally, in dire extremity, I bethought me of a red flannel
+hood that Emett had given me, saying I might use it on cold nights.
+This was indeed a weird, flaming headgear, falling like a cloak down
+over the shoulders. I put it on, and, camera in hand, started to crawl
+on all fours toward Spitfire.
+
+[Illustration: SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST]
+
+[Illustration: WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN
+SNAKE GULCH]
+
+I needed no one to tell me that this proceeding was entirely beyond
+his comprehension. In his astonishment he forgot to spit and growl,
+and he backed behind the little pine, from which he regarded me with
+growing perplexity. Then, having revenged myself on him, and getting a
+picture, I left him in peace.
+
+
+XIV
+
+I awoke before dawn, and lay watching the dark shadows change into
+gray, and gray into light. The Navajo chanted solemnly and low his
+morning song. I got up with the keen eagerness of the hunter who faces
+the last day of his hunt.
+
+I warmed my frozen fingers at the fire. A hot breakfast smoked on the
+red coals. We ate while Navvy fed and saddled the horses.
+
+"Shore, they'll be somethin' doin' to-day," said Jim, fatalistically.
+
+"We haven't crippled a horse yet," put in Emett hopefully. Don led the
+pack and us down the ridge, out of the pines into the sage. The sun, a
+red ball, glared out of the eastern mist, shedding a dull glow on
+the ramparts of the far canyon walls. A herd of white-tailed deer
+scattered before the hounds. Blue grouse whirred from under our
+horses' feet.
+
+"Spread out," ordered Jones, and though he meant the hounds, we all
+followed his suggestion, as the wisest course.
+
+Ranger began to work up the sage ridge to the right. Jones, Emett
+and I followed, while Jim rode away to the left. Gradually the space
+widened, and as we neared the cedars, a sharply defined, deep canyon
+separated us.
+
+We heard Don open up, then Sounder. Ranger left the trail he was
+trying to work out in the thick sage, and bounded in the direction of
+the rest of the pack. We reined in to listen.
+
+First Don, then Sounder, then Jude, then one of the pups bayed
+eagerly, telling us they were hunting hard. Suddenly the bays blended
+in one savage sound.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi!" cracked the cool, thin air. We saw Jim wave his hand
+from the far side of the canyon, spur his horse into action, and
+disappear into the cedars.
+
+"Stick close together," yelled Jones, as we launched forward. We made
+the mistake of not going back to cross the canyon, for the hounds soon
+went up the opposite side. As we rode on and on, the sounds of the
+chase lessened, and finally ceased. To our great chagrin we found it
+necessary to retrace our steps, and when we did get over the deep
+gully, so much time had elapsed that we despaired of coming up with
+Jim. Emett led, keeping close on Jim's trail, which showed plain in
+the dust, and we followed.
+
+Up and down ravines, over ridges, through sage flats and cedar
+forests, to and fro, around and around, we trailed Jim and the hounds.
+From time to time one of us let out a long yell.
+
+"I see a big lion track," called Jones once, and that stirred us on
+faster. Fully an hour passed before Jones halted us, saying we had
+best try a signal. I dismounted, while Emett rolled his great voice
+through the cedars.
+
+A long silence ensued. From the depths of the forest Jim's answer
+struck faintly on my ear. With a word to my companions I leaped on my
+mustang and led the way. I rode as far as I could mark a straight line
+with my eye, then stopped to wait for another cry. In this way, slowly
+but surely we closed in on Jim.
+
+We found him on the verge of the Bay, in the small glade where I had
+left my horse the day I followed Don alone down the canyon. Jim was
+engaged in binding up the leg of his horse. The baying of the hounds
+floated up over the rim.
+
+"What's up?" queried Jones.
+
+"Old Sultan. That's what," replied Jim. "We run plumb into him. We've
+had him in five trees. It ain't been long since he was in that cedar
+there. When he jumped the yellow pup was in the way an' got killed.
+My horse just managed to jump clear of the big lion, an' as it was,
+nearly broke his leg."
+
+Emett examined the leg and pronounced it badly strained, and advised
+Jim to lead the horse back to camp. Jones and I stood a moment over
+the remains of the yellow pup, and presently Emett joined us.
+
+"He was the most playful one of the pack," said Emett, and then he
+placed the limp, bloody body in a crack, and laid several slabs of
+stone over it.
+
+"Hurry after the other hounds," said Jim. "That lion will kill them
+one by one. An' look out for him!"
+
+If we needed an incentive, the danger threatening the hounds furnished
+one; but I calculated the death of the pup was enough. Emett had a
+flare in his eye, Jones looked darker and more grim than ever, and I
+had sensations that boded ill to old Sultan.
+
+"Fellows," I said, "I've been down this place, and I know where the
+old brute has gone; so come on."
+
+I laid aside my coat, chaps and rifle, feeling that the business ahead
+was stern and difficult. Then I faced the canyon. Down slopes, among
+rocks, under pinons, around yellow walls, along slides, the two big
+men followed me with heavy steps. We reached the white stream-bed,
+and sliding, slipping, jumping, always down and down, we came at last
+within sound of the hounds. We found them baying wildly under a pinon
+on the brink of the deep cove.
+
+Then, at once, we all saw old Sultan close at hand. He was of immense
+size; his color was almost gray; his head huge, his paws heavy and
+round. He did not spit, nor snarl, nor growl; he did not look at the
+hounds, but kept his half-shut eyes upon us.
+
+We had no time to make a move before he left his perch and hit the
+ground with a thud. He walked by the baying hounds, looked over the
+brink of the cove, and without an instant of hesitation, leaped down.
+The rattling crash of sliding stones came up with a cloud of dust.
+Then we saw him leisurely picking his way among the rough stones.
+
+Exclamations from the three of us attested to what we thought of that
+leap.
+
+"Look the place over," called Jones. "I think we've got him."
+
+The cove was a hole hollowed out by running water. At its head, where
+the perpendicular wall curved, the height was not less than forty
+feet. The walls became higher as the cove deepened toward the canyon.
+It had a length of perhaps a hundred yards, and a width of perhaps
+half as many. The floor was mass on mass of splintered rock.
+
+"Let the hounds down on a lasso," said Jones.
+
+Easier said than done! Sounder, Ranger, Jude refused. Old Moze
+grumbled and broke away. But Don, stern and savage, allowed Jones to
+tie him in a slip noose.
+
+"It's a shame to send that grand hound to his death," protested Emett.
+
+"We'll all go down," declared Jones.
+
+"We can't. One will have to stay up here to help the other two out,"
+replied Emett.
+
+"You're the strongest; you stay up," said Jones. "Better work along
+the wall and see if you can locate the lion."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY HOME]
+
+[Illustration: RIDING WITH A NAVAJO]
+
+We let Don down into the hole. He kicked himself loose before reaching
+the bottom and then, yelping, he went out of sight among the boulders.
+Moze, as if ashamed, came whining to us. We slipped a noose around him
+and lowered him, kicking and barking, to the rocky floor. Jones made
+the lasso fast to a cedar root, and I slid down, like a flash, burning
+my hands. Jones swung himself over, wrapped his leg around the rope,
+and came down, to hit the ground with a thump. Then, lassos in hands,
+we began clambering over the broken fragments.
+
+For a few moments we were lost to sights and sounds away from our
+immediate vicinity. The bottom of the cove afforded hard going. Dead
+pinons and cedars blocked our way; the great, jagged stones offered no
+passage. We crawled, climbed, and jumped from piece to piece.
+
+A yell from Emett halted us. We saw him above, on the extreme point of
+wall. Waving his arms, he yelled unintelligible commands to us. The
+fierce baying of Don and Moze added to our desperate energy.
+
+The last jumble of splintered rock cleared, we faced a terrible and
+wonderful scene.
+
+"Look! Look!" I gasped to Jones.
+
+A wide, bare strip of stone lay a few yards beneath us; and in the
+center of this last step sat the great lion on his haunches with his
+long tail lashing out over the precipice. Back to the canyon, he
+confronted the furious hounds; his demeanor had changed to one of
+savage apprehension.
+
+When Jones and I appeared, old Sultan abruptly turned his back to the
+hounds and looked down into the canyon. He walked the whole length of
+the bare rock with his head stretched over. He was looking for a niche
+or a step whereby he might again elude his foes.
+
+Faster lashed his tail; farther and farther stretched his neck. He
+stopped, and with head bent so far over the abyss that it seemed he
+must fall, he looked and looked.
+
+How grandly he fitted the savage sublimity of that place! The
+tremendous purple canyon depths lay beneath him. He stood on the last
+step of his mighty throne. The great downward slopes had failed him.
+Majestically and slowly he turned from the deep that offered no hope.
+
+As he turned, Jones cast the noose of his lasso perfectly round the
+burly neck. Sultan roared and worked his jaws, but he did not leap.
+Jones must have expected such a move, for he fastened his rope to a
+spur of rock. Standing there, revolver gripped, hearing the baying
+hounds, the roaring lion, and Jones' yells mingled with Emett's, I had
+no idea what to do. I was in a trance of sensations.
+
+Old Sultan ran rather than leaped at us. Jones evaded the rush by
+falling behind a stone, but still did not get out of danger. Don flew
+at the lion's neck and Moze buried his teeth in a flank. Then the
+three rolled on the rock dangerously near the verge.
+
+Bellowing, Jones grasped the lasso and pulled. Still holding my
+revolver, I leaped to his assistance, and together we pulled and
+jerked. Don got away from the lion with remarkable quickness. But
+Moze, slow and dogged, could not elude the outstretched paws, which
+fastened in his side and leg. We pulled so hard we slowly raised the
+lion. Moze, never whimpering, clawed and scratched at the rock in his
+efforts to escape. The lion's red tongue protruded from his dripping
+jaws. We heard the rend of hide as our efforts, combined with those of
+Moze, loosed him from the great yellow claws.
+
+The lion, whirling and wrestling, rolled over the precipice. When the
+rope straightened with a twang, had it not been fastened to the rock,
+Jones and I would have jerked over the wall. The shock threw us to our
+knees.
+
+For a moment we did not realize the situation. Emett's yells awakened
+us.
+
+"Pull! Pull! Pull!" roared he.
+
+Then, knowing that old Sultan would hang himself in a few moments, we
+attempted to lift him. Jones pulled till his back cracked; I pulled
+till I saw red before my eyes. Again and again we tried. We could lift
+him only a few feet. Soon exhausted, we had to desist altogether. How
+Emett roared and raged from his vantage-point above! He could see the
+lion in death throes.
+
+Suddenly he quieted down with the words: "All over; all over!" Then he
+sat still, looking into space. Jones sat mopping his brow. And I, all
+my hot resentment vanished, lay on the rock, with eyes on the distant
+mesas.
+
+Presently Jones leaned over the verge with my lasso.
+
+"There," he said, "I've roped one of his hind legs. Now we'll pull him
+up a little, then we'll fasten this rope, and pull on the other."
+
+So, foot by foot, we worked the heavy lion up over the wall. He
+must have been dead, though his sides heaved. Don sniffed at him in
+disdain. Moze, dusty and bloody, with a large strip of hide hanging
+from his flank, came up growling low and deep, and gave the lion a
+last vengeful bite.
+
+"We've been fools," observed Jones, meditatively. "The excitement of
+the game made us lose our wits. I'll never rope another lion."
+
+I said nothing. While Moze licked his bloody leg and Don lay with his
+fine head on my knees, Jones began to skin old Sultan. Once more the
+strange, infinite silence enfolded the canyon. The far-off golden
+walls glistened in the sun; farther down, the purple clefts smoked.
+The many-hued peaks and mesas, aloof from each other, rose out of the
+depths. It was a grand and gloomy scene of ruin where every glistening
+descent of rock was but a page of earth's history.
+
+It brought to my mind a faint appreciation of what time really meant;
+it spoke of an age of former men; it showed me the lonesome crags
+of eagles, and the cliff lairs of lions; and it taught mutely,
+eloquently, a lesson of life--that men are still savage, still driven
+by a spirit to roam, to hunt, and to slay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+TONTO BASIN
+
+The start of a camping trip, the getting a big outfit together and
+packed, and on the move, is always a difficult and laborsome job.
+Nevertheless, for me the preparation and the actual getting under way
+have always been matters of thrilling interest. This start of my hunt
+in Arizona, September 24, 1918, was particularly momentous because I
+had brought my boy Romer with me for his first trip into the wilds.
+
+It may be that the boy was too young for such an undertaking. His
+mother feared he would be injured; his teachers presaged his utter
+ruin; his old nurse, with whom he waged war until he was free of her,
+averred that the best it could do for him would be to show what kind
+of stuff he was made of. His uncle R.C. was stoutly in favor of taking
+him. I believe the balance fell in Romer's favor when I remembered
+my own boyhood. As a youngster of three I had babbled of "bars an'
+buffers," and woven fantastic and marvelous tales of fiction about my
+imagined adventures--a habit, alas! I have never yet outgrown.
+
+Anyway we only made six miles' travel on this September twenty-fourth,
+and Romer was with us.
+
+Indeed he was omnipresent. His keen, eager joy communicated itself to
+me. Once he rode up alongside me and said: "Dad, this's great, but I'd
+rather do like Buck Duane." The boy had read all of my books, in spite
+of parents and teachers, and he knew them by heart, and invariably
+liked the outlaws and gunmen best of all.
+
+We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west, and the
+Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a cut-over pine
+forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned deadfalls made an
+aspect of blackened desolation. From a distance, however, the scene
+was superb. At sunset there was a faint wind which soon died away.
+
+My old guide on so many trips across the Painted Desert was in charge
+of the outfit. He was a wiry, gray, old pioneer, over seventy years,
+hollow-cheeked and bronzed, with blue-gray eyes still keen with fire.
+He was no longer robust, but he was tireless and willing. When he told
+a story he always began: "In the early days--" His son Lee had charge
+of the horses of which we had fourteen, two teams and ten saddle
+horses. Lee was a typical westerner of many occupations--cowboy,
+rider, rancher, cattleman. He was small, thin, supple, quick, tough
+and strong. He had a bronzed face, always chapped, a hooked nose,
+gray-blue eyes like his father's, sharp and keen.
+
+Lee had engaged the only man he could find for a cook--Joe Isbel, a
+tall, lithe cowboy, straight as an Indian, with powerful shoulders,
+round limbs, and slender waist, and Isbel was what the westerners
+called a broncho-buster. He was a prize-winning rider at all
+the rodeos. Indeed, his seat in the saddle was individual and
+incomparable. He had a rough red-blue face, hard and rugged, like the
+rocks he rode over so fearlessly, and his eyes were bright hazel,
+steady and hard. Isbel's vernacular was significant. Speaking of one
+of our horses he said: "Like a mule he'll be your friend for twenty
+years to git a chance to kick you." Speaking of another that had to be
+shod he said: "Shore, he'll step high to-morrow." Isbel appeared to be
+remarkably efficient as camp-rustler and cook, but he did not inspire
+me with confidence. In speaking of this to the Doyles I found them
+non-committal on the subject. Westerners have sensitive feelings. I
+could not tell whether they were offended or not, and I half regretted
+mentioning my lack of confidence in Isbel. As it turned out, however,
+I was amply justified.
+
+Sievert Nielsen, whom I have mentioned elsewhere, was the fourth of my
+men.
+
+Darkness had enveloped us at supper time. I was tired out, but the
+red-embered camp-fire, the cool air, the smell of wood-smoke, and the
+white stars kept me awake awhile. Romer had to be put to bed. He was
+wild with excitement. We had had a sleeping-bag made for him so that
+once snugly in it, with the flaps buckled he could not kick off the
+blankets. When we got him into it he quieted down and took exceeding
+interest in his first bed in the open. He did not, however, go quickly
+to sleep. Presently he called R.C. over and whispered: "Say, Uncle
+Rome, I coiled a lasso an' put it under Nielsen's bed. When he's
+asleep you go pull it. He's tenderfoot like Dad was. He'll think it's
+a rattlesnake." This trick Romer must have remembered from reading
+"The Last of the Plainsmen," where I related what Buffalo Jones'
+cowboys did to me. Once Romer got that secret off his mind he fell
+asleep.
+
+The hour we spent sitting around the camp-fire was the most pleasant
+of that night, though I did not know it then. The smell of wood-smoke
+and the glow of live coals stirred memories of other camp-fires. I was
+once more enveloped by the sweetness and peace of the open, listening
+to the sigh of the wind, and the faint tinkle of bells on the hobbled
+horses.
+
+An uncomfortable night indeed it turned out to be. Our covers were
+scanty and did not number among them any blankets. The bed was hard as
+a rock, and lumpy. No sleep! As the night wore on the air grew colder,
+and I could not keep warm. At four a.m. I heard the howling of
+coyotes--a thrilling and well remembered wild chorus. After that
+perfect stillness reigned. Presently I saw the morning star--big,
+blue-white, beautiful. Uncomfortable hours seemed well spent if the
+reward was sight of the morning star. How few people ever see it! How
+very few ever get a glimpse of it on a desert dawn!
+
+Just then, about five-thirty, Romer woke up and yelled lustily: "Dad!
+My nose's froze." This was a signal for me to laugh, and also to rise
+heroically. Not difficult because I wanted to stay in bed, but because
+I could hardly crawl out! Soon we had a fire roaring. At six the dawn
+was still gray. Cold and nipping air, frost on everything, pale stars,
+a gold-red light in the east were proofs that I was again in the open.
+Soon a rose-colored flush beautified the Peaks.
+
+After breakfast we had trouble with the horses. This always happened.
+But it was made worse this morning because a young cowboy who happened
+along took upon himself the task of helping Lee. I suspected he wanted
+to show off a little. In throwing his lasso to rope one, the noose
+went over the heads of two. Then he tried to hold both animals. They
+dragged him, pulled the lasso out of his hands, and stampeded the
+other horses. These two roped together thundered off with the noose
+widening. I was afraid they would split round a tree or stump, but
+fortunately the noose fell off one. As all the horses pounded off I
+heard Romer remark to Isbel: "Say, Joe, I don't see any medals on that
+cowboy." Isbel roared, and said: "Wal, Romer, you shore hit the nail,
+on the haid!"
+
+Owing to that stampede we did not get saddled and started till eleven
+o'clock. At first I was so sore and stiff from the hard bed that I
+rode a while on the wagon with Doyle. Many a mile I had ridden with
+him, and many a story he had related. This time he told about sitting
+on a jury at Prescott where they brought in as evidence bloody shirts,
+overalls, guns, knives, until there was such a pile that the table
+would not hold them. Doyle was a mine of memories of the early days.
+
+Romer's mount was a little black, white-spotted horse named Rye. Lee
+Doyle had scoured the ranches to get this pony for the youngster. Rye
+was small for a horse, about the size of an Indian mustang, and he
+was gentle, as well as strong and fast. Romer had been given riding
+lessons all that summer in the east, and upon his arrival at Flagstaff
+he informed me that he could ride. I predicted he would be in the
+wagon before noon of the second day out. He offered to bet on it.
+I told him I disapproved of betting. He seemed to me to be daring,
+adaptable, self-willed; and I was divided between pride and anxiety as
+to the outcome of this trip for him.
+
+In the afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy pond in a
+valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees stood in the water,
+and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably to the ranchers this
+mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me, who loved the beauty of
+the desert before its productiveness, it was hideous. When we passed
+Lake Mary, and farther on the last of the cut-over timber-land, we
+began to get into wonderful country. We traveled about sixteen miles,
+rather a small day's ride. Romer stayed on his horse all through that
+ride, and when we selected a camp site for the night he said to me:
+"Well, you're lucky you wouldn't bet."
+
+Camp that evening was in a valley with stately pines straggling down
+to the level. On the other slope the pines came down in groups. The
+rim of this opposite slope was high, rugged, iron-colored, with cracks
+and holes. Before supper I walked up the slope back of our camp, to
+come upon level, rocky ground for a mile, then pines again leading to
+a low, green mountain with lighter patches of aspen. The level, open
+strip was gray in color. Arizona color and Arizona country! Gray of
+sage, rocks, pines, cedars, pinons, heights and depths and plains,
+wild and open and lonely--that was Arizona.
+
+That night I obtained some rest and sleep, lying awake only a few
+hours, during which time I turned from side to side to find a soft
+place in the hard bed. Under such circumstances I always thought
+of the hard beds of the Greeks and the Spartans. Next day we rode
+twenty-three miles. On horseback trips like this it was every one for
+himself. Sometimes we would be spread out, all separated; at others we
+would be bunched; and again we would ride in couples. The morning was
+an ordeal for me, as at first I could scarcely sit my saddle; in
+the afternoon, however, riding grew to be less severe. The road led
+through a winding, shallow valley, with clumps of pine here and there,
+and cedars on the slopes. Romer rode all the way, half the time with
+his feet out of the stirrups, like a western boy born to the saddle,
+and he wanted to go fast all the time. Camp was made at a place called
+Fulton Spring. It might have been a spring once, but now it was a
+mud-hole with a dead cow lying in it. Clear, cold water is necessary
+to my pleasure, if not to my health. I have lived on sheep water--the
+water holes being tainted by sheep--and alkali water and soapy water
+of the desert, but never happily. How I hailed the clear, cold,
+swiftly-flowing springs!
+
+This third camp lay in a woods where the pines were beautiful and the
+silence noticeable. Upon asking Romer to enumerate the things I had
+called to his attention, the few times I could catch up with him on
+the day's journey, he promptly replied--two big spiders--tarantulas,
+a hawk, and Mormon Lake. This lake was another snow-melted mud-hole,
+said to contain fish. I doubted that. Perhaps the little bull-head
+catfish might survive in such muddy water, but I did not believe bass
+or perch could.
+
+One familiar feature of Arizona travel manifested itself to me that
+day--the dry air. My nails became brittle and my lips began to crack.
+I have had my lips cracked so severely that when I tried to bite bread
+they would split and bleed and hurt so that I could not eat. This
+matter of sore lips was for long a painful matter. I tried many
+remedies, and finally found one, camphor ice, that would prevent the
+drying and cracking.
+
+Next day at dawn the forest was full of the soughing of wind in the
+pines--a wind that presaged storm. No stars showed. Romer-boy piled
+out at six o'clock. I had to follow him. The sky was dark and cloudy.
+Only a faint light showed in the east and it was just light enough
+to see when we ate breakfast. Owing to strayed horses we did not get
+started till after nine o'clock.
+
+Five miles through the woods, gradually descending, led us into an
+open plain where there was a grass-bordered pond full of ducks. Here
+appeared an opportunity to get some meat. R.C. tried with shotgun and
+I with rifle, all to no avail. These ducks were shy. Romer seemed to
+evince some disdain at our failure, but he did not voice his feelings.
+We found some wild-turkey tracks, and a few feathers, which put our
+hopes high.
+
+Crossing the open ground we again entered the forest, which gradually
+grew thicker as we got down to a lower altitude. Oak trees began to
+show in swales. And then we soon began to see squirrels, big, plump,
+gray fellows, with bushy tails almost silver. They appeared wilder
+than we would have suspected, at that distance from the settlements.
+Romer was eager to hunt them, and with his usual persistence,
+succeeded at length in persuading his uncle to do so.
+
+To that end we rode out far ahead of the wagon and horses. Lee had a
+yellow dog he called Pups, a close-haired, keen-faced, muscular canine
+to which I had taken a dislike. To be fair to Pups, I had no reason
+except that he barked all the time. Pups and his barking were destined
+to make me hail them both with admiration and respect, but I had no
+idea of that then. Now this dog of Lee's would run ahead of us,
+trail squirrels, chase them, and tree them, whereupon he would bark
+vociferously. Sometimes up in the bushy top we would fail to spy the
+squirrel, but we had no doubt one was there. Romer wasted many and
+many a cartridge of the .22 Winchester trying to hit a squirrel. He
+had practiced a good deal, and was a fairly good shot for a youngster,
+but hitting a little gray ball of fur high on a tree, or waving at the
+tip of a branch, was no easy matter.
+
+"Son," I said, "you don't take after your Dad."
+
+And his uncle tried the lad's temper by teasing him about Wetzel. Now
+Wetzel, the great Indian killer of frontier days, was Romer's favorite
+hero.
+
+"Gimme the .20 gauge," finally cried Romer, in desperation, with his
+eyes flashing.
+
+Whereupon his uncle handed him the shotgun, with a word of caution
+as to the trigger. This particular squirrel was pretty high up,
+presenting no easy target. Romer stood almost directly under it,
+raised the gun nearly straight up, waved and wobbled and hesitated,
+and finally fired. Down sailed the squirrel to hit with a plump. That
+was Romer's first successful hunting experience. How proud he was of
+that gray squirrel! I suffered a pang to see the boy so radiant, so
+full of fire at the killing of a beautiful creature of the woods. Then
+again I remembered my own first sensations. Boys are blood-thirsty
+little savages. In their hunting, playing, even their reading, some
+element of the wild brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy
+descendants of progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This
+incident furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before
+this trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot
+a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I was not
+hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at the spilling
+of blood. On the contrary he revels in it with a fierce, primitive
+joy.
+
+"Some shot, I'll say!" declared Romer to his uncle, loftily. And he
+said to me half a dozen times: "Say, Dad, wasn't it a grand peg?"
+
+But toward the end of that afternoon his enthusiasm waned for
+shooting, for anything, especially riding. He kept asking when the
+wagon was going to stop. Once he yelled out: "Here's a peach of a
+place to camp." Then I asked him: "Romer, are you tired?" "Naw! But
+what's the use ridin' till dark?" At length he had to give up and be
+put on the wagon. The moment was tragic for him. Soon, however, he
+brightened at something Doyle told him, and began to ply the old
+pioneer with rapid-fire questions.
+
+We pitched camp in an open flat, gray and red with short grass, and
+sheltered by towering pines on one side. Under these we set up our
+tents. The mat of pine needles was half a foot thick, soft and springy
+and fragrant. The woods appeared full of slanting rays of golden
+sunlight.
+
+This day we had supper over before sunset. Romer showed no effects
+from his long, hard ride. First he wanted to cook, then he fooled
+around the fire, bothering Isbel. I had a hard time to manage him.
+He wanted to be eternally active. He teased and begged to go
+hunting--then he compromised on target practice. R.C. and I, however,
+were too tired, and we preferred to rest beside the camp-fire.
+
+"Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for to-morrow."
+
+In disgust Romer replied: "Well, I suppose if a flock of antelope came
+along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are great hunters, I
+don't think!"
+
+After the lad had gone over to the other men R.C. turned to me and
+said reflectively: "Does he remind you of us when we were little?"
+
+To which I replied with emotion: "In him I live over again!"
+
+That is one of the beautiful things about children, so full of pathos
+and some strange, stinging joy--they bring back the days that are no
+more.
+
+This evening, despite my fatigue, I was the last one to stay up. My
+seat was most comfortable, consisting of thick folds of blankets
+against a log. How the wind mourned in the trees! How the camp-fire
+sparkled, glowed red and white! Sometimes it seemed full of blazing
+opals. Always it held faces. And stories--more stories than I can ever
+tell! Once I was stirred and inspired by the beautiful effect of the
+pine trees in outline against the starry sky when the camp-fire
+blazed up. The color of the foliage seemed indescribably blue-green,
+something never seen by day. Every line shone bright, graceful,
+curved, rounded, and all thrown with sharp relief against the sky. How
+magical, exquisitely delicate and fanciful! The great trunks were
+soft serrated brown, and the gnarled branches stood out in perfect
+proportions. All works of art must be copied of nature.
+
+Next morning early, while Romer slept, and the men had just begun to
+stir, I went apart from the camp out into the woods. All seemed solemn
+and still and cool, with the aisles of the forest brown and green and
+gold. I heard an owl, perhaps belated in his nocturnal habit. Then to
+my surprise I heard wild canaries. They were flying high, and to the
+south, going to their winter quarters. I wandered around among big,
+gray rocks and windfalls and clumps of young oak and majestic pines.
+More than one saucy red squirrel chattered at me.
+
+When I returned to camp my comrades were at breakfast. Romer appeared
+vastly relieved to see that I had not taken a gun with me.
+
+This morning we got an early start. We rode for hours through a
+beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces made
+riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared on the
+rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's travel, and
+the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine was thick and
+fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing. Everywhere pine
+needles dropped, shining in the sunlight like thin slants of rain.
+
+Only once or twice did I see Romer in all these morning hours; then he
+was out in front with the cowboy Isbel, riding his black pony over
+all the logs and washes he could find. I could see his feet sticking
+straight out almost even with his saddle. He did not appear to need
+stirrups. My fears gradually lessened.
+
+During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We came to a
+long, open valley where the dust lay several inches deep. It had been
+an unusually dry summer and fall--a fact that presaged poor luck for
+our hunting--and the washes and stream-beds were bleached white. We
+came to two water-holes, tanks the Arizonians called them, and they
+were vile mud-holes with green scum on the water. The horses drank,
+but I would have had to be far gone from thirst before I would have
+slaked mine there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and
+the dust rising in clouds. No wonder that ride was interminably long.
+
+At last we descended a canyon, and decided to camp in a level spot
+where several ravines met, in one of which a tiny stream of dear water
+oozed out of the gravel. The inclosure was rocky-sloped, full of caves
+and covered with pines; and the best I could say for it was that in
+case of storm the camp would be well protected. We shoveled out a deep
+hole in the gravel, so that it would fill up with water. Romer had
+evidently enjoyed himself this day. When I asked Isbel about him the
+cowboy's hard face gleamed with a smile: "Shore thet kid's all right.
+He'll make a cowpuncher!" His remark pleased me. In view of Romer's
+determination to emulate the worst bandit I ever wrote about I was
+tremendously glad to think of him as a cowboy. But as for myself I was
+tired, and the ride had been rather unprofitable, and this camp-site,
+to say the least, did not inspire me. It was neither wild nor
+beautiful nor comfortable. I went early to bed and slept like a log.
+
+The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men hunted
+from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned more about
+Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the lost horses. They
+had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained perfectly quiet, as cute
+as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail. Pups was a horse-trailing dog
+and he soon found them. I had a change of feeling for Pups, then and
+there.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN. From left to right: Edd Haught;
+Nielsen; Haught, the bear hunter; Al Doyle, pioneer Arizona guide;
+Lewis Pyle; Z.G.; George Haught; Ben Copple; Lee Doyle.]
+
+The sun was high and hot when we rode off. The pleasant and dusty
+stretches alternated. About one o'clock we halted on the edge of a deep
+wooded ravine to take our usual noonday rest. I scouted along the edge
+in the hope of seeing game of some kind. Presently I heard the
+cluck-cluck of turkeys. Slipping along to an open place I peered down to
+be thrilled by sight of four good-sized turkeys. They were walking along
+the open strip of dry stream-bed at the bottom of the ravine. One was
+chasing grasshoppers. They were fairly close. I took aim at one, and
+thought I could have hit him, but suddenly I remembered Romer and R.C.
+So I slipped back and called them.
+
+[Illustration: ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED]
+
+Hurriedly and stealthily we returned to the point where I had seen
+the turkeys. Romer had a pale face and wonderfully bright eyes; his
+actions resembled those of a stalking Indian. The turkeys were farther
+down, but still in plain sight. I told R.C. to take the boy and slip
+down, and run and hide and run till they got close enough for a shot.
+I would keep to the edge of the ravine.
+
+Some moments later I saw R.C. and the boy running and stooping and
+creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to reach a
+point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I might get a
+shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I lost sight of
+the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my horse I mounted him
+and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine some distance above. Here
+I hunted around for a little while. Once I heard the report of the .20
+gauge, and then several rifle shots. Upon returning I found that Lee
+and Nielsen had wasted some shells. R.C. and Romer came wagging up the
+hill, both red and wet and tired. R.C. carried a small turkey, about
+the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the
+four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a
+hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one.
+Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer
+had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching
+several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled feathers out of
+their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"
+
+We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon Doyle called
+my attention to an opening in the forest through which I could see the
+yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the great blue void below. Arizona!
+That explained the black forests, the red and yellow cliffs of rock,
+the gray cedars, the heights and depths.
+
+Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was winding, rough
+full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired out trying to keep up
+with the wagon. Romer, however, averred time and again that he was
+not tired. Still I saw him often shift his seat from one side of the
+saddle to the other.
+
+At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little
+hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone
+houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards,
+and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there long enough to rest
+a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water. I would travel
+out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.
+
+About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer invited or
+rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his victory I found
+that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath. I went back some
+distance to look for it, but did so in vain. Isbel said he would ride
+back in the morning and find it.
+
+The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was only
+because we had gotten out where we could see all around. Arizona is
+all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up to the south and
+east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with
+its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber. Westward
+lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a
+kind of magnificent bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost
+in blue haze. The vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both
+prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak,
+and juniper trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially
+the smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries,
+and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees. Since we
+had left the rim above the character of plant life had changed.
+
+We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural Bridge
+was located. A winding road descended the east side of this valley.
+A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and orchard and walnut
+trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray slope on one side, and a
+red, rugged mountain on the other. A deep gorge showed dark and wild.
+At length, just after sunset, we reached the ranch, and rode through
+orchards of peach and pear and apple trees, all colored with fruit,
+and down through grassy meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched
+camp. By the time we had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick,
+dreamy hum of insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden
+afterglow on the notch of the mountain range to the west--these were
+inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed, where
+my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.
+
+After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what delight to
+awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool and breezy and
+bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green and purple alfalfa
+fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged crags above! Romer made a
+bee-line for the peach trees. He beat his daddy only a few yards. The
+kind rancher had visited us the night before and he had told us to
+help ourselves to fruit, melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I
+made my breakfast on peaches!
+
+I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the dark green
+slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by water-cress, long
+grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one of perfectly clear
+water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on the surface. A grass of
+dark color and bunches of light green plant grew under the surface.
+Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed around and frogs as green as the
+grass blinked with jewelled eyes from the wet margins. The spring had
+a large volume that spilled over its borders with low, hollow gurgle,
+with fresh, cool splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone.
+Here was the secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty
+and life of the oasis.
+
+It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful Natural
+Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the extent of
+several acres, was the level top of this strange bridge. A meadow of
+alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like the hanging gardens of
+Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep gorge, at the bottom of
+which flowed a swift stream of water. Geologically this tremendous
+arch of limestone cannot be so very old. In comparatively recent times
+an earthquake or some seismic disturbance or some other natural force
+caused a spring of water to burst from the slope above the gorge. It
+ran down, of course, over the rim. The lime salt in the water was
+deposited, and year by year and age by age advanced toward the
+opposite side until a bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at
+the bottom kept the opening clear under the bridge.
+
+A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful
+natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy,
+broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous
+boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and
+yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray
+frogs, reminding me of those I found in the gulches of the Grand
+Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive, but most of them dead,
+lined the wet borders of the pools. A species of fish that resembled
+mullet lay in the shadow of the rocks.
+
+From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if not
+magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at least
+striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored gray, yellow,
+green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and scalloped mosaic.
+Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy scattered drops. The left
+side was dryest and large, dark caves opened up, one above the other,
+the upper being so high that it was dangerous to attempt reaching it.
+The right side was slippery and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted
+with lime salt. Doyle told us that any object left under the ceaseless
+drip, drip of the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as
+stone. The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than
+the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes. Romer
+certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone through a
+small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle pointed out the
+high cave where Indians had once lived, showing the markings of their
+fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest
+cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to
+Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his
+neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a
+boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom,
+boom, growing hollower the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer
+in some bat nests in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll
+stones and fish for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more
+on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole--I'll
+say!" he panted, breathlessly.
+
+The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and
+the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the
+lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had
+cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks
+Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or
+hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life
+there was always afternoon.
+
+Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a half
+hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many frontier
+characteristics such as old board and stone houses with high fronts,
+hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one street so wide that it
+resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson contained two stores, where I hoped
+to buy a rifle, and hoped in vain. I had not recovered my lost gun,
+and when night came my prospects of anything to hunt with appeared
+extremely slim. But we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart,
+dark-skinned rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he
+would have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
+profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I could
+not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I refused with
+thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it was that he lent
+me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me several boxes of
+ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide lasso. Whereupon
+Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say, you look like an
+Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple replied: "I am part Indian,
+sonny." Manifestly that settled his status with Romer, for he piped
+up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd better come huntin' with us."
+
+We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest ride of
+the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good camping site
+I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout everybody out. It
+was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then everybody rustled to such
+purpose that we were ready to start before dawn, and had to wait a
+little for light enough to see where we were going. This procedure
+tickled Romer immensely. I believed he imagined he was in a pioneer
+caravan. The gray breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the
+rose and silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with
+the air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as
+the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined road
+was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing indications that
+it was seldom used. From the tops of high points I could see black
+foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all leading the gaze
+toward the great yellow and red wall of the mesa, with its fringed
+borderline, wild and beckoning.
+
+We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order, over
+and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that burned
+our faces and through choking dust. The washes and stream-beds were
+bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the
+mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts. Only the manzanita looked
+fresh. That smooth red-branched and glistening green-leafed plant
+of the desert apparently flourished without rain. On all sides the
+evidences of extreme drought proved the year to be the dreaded _anno
+seco_ of the Mexicans.
+
+For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any prominent
+change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the heat and dust and
+brush-walled road. But about the middle of the afternoon we reached
+the summit of the longest hill, from which we saw ahead of us a cut up
+country, wild and rugged and beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our
+feet. We heard the faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with
+sweat, and thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast
+as we dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged
+into a swift stream of clear, cold water--granite water--to drink of
+which, and to bathe hot heads and burning feet, was a joy only known
+to the weary traveler of the desert. Romer yelled that the water was
+like that at our home in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank
+till I thought he would burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him
+from wallowing in it.
+
+Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us, and the
+aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay behind. Every mile
+grew shadier, clearer, cooler.
+
+Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several miles,
+as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to an Homeric
+recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the end of which,
+almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon such a stream as the
+one we had just passed. Then he told me about his trips down the west
+coast of Sonora, along the Gulf, where he traveled at night, at low
+tide, so that by daytime his footprints would be washed out. This
+was the land of the Seri Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were
+cannibals. I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed
+the rumors of their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of
+exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land
+of the Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data
+concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California told
+me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris
+to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was positive that
+under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism. Nielsen
+made four trips down there. He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe.
+In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on
+occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to
+barter with the Indians. These travelers did not see the worst of the
+Seris. In summer they range up the mainland, and they go naked. They
+do not want gold discovered down there. They will fight prospectors.
+They use arrows and attack at dawn. Also they poison the water-holes.
+
+Nielsen told of some men who were massacred by Seris on the mainland
+opposite Tiburon Island. One man, who had gone away from camp,
+returned to hear the attack upon his companions. He escaped and made
+his way to Gyamus. Procuring assistance this man returned to the scene
+of the massacre, only to find stakes in the sand, with deep trails
+tramped around them, and blackened remains of fires, and bones
+everywhere. Nielsen went on to say that once from a hiding place he
+had watched Seris tear up and devour a dead turtle that he afterward
+ascertained was putrid. He said these Seris were the greatest runners
+of all desert savages. The best of them could outrun a horse. One
+Seri, a giant seven feet tall, could outrun a deer and break its neck
+with his hands.
+
+These statements of Nielsen's were remarkable, and personally I
+believed them. Men of his stamp were honest and they had opportunities
+to learn strange and terrible facts in nature. The great naturalist
+Darwin made rather stronger claims for the barbarism of the savages of
+Terra del Fuego. Nielsen, pursuing his theme, told me how he had
+seen, with his own eyes--and they were certainly sharp and
+intelligent--Yaqui Indians leap on the bare backs of wild horses
+and locking their legs, stick there in spite of the mad plunges and
+pitches. The Gauchos of the Patagonian Pampas were famous for that
+feat of horsemanship. I asked Joe Isbel what he thought of such
+riding. And he said: "Wal, I can ride a wild steer bare-back,
+but excoose me from tacklin' a buckin' bronch without saddle an'
+stirrups." This coming from the acknowledged champion horseman of the
+southwest was assuredly significant.
+
+At five o'clock we came to the end of the road. It led to a forest
+glade, overlooking the stream we had followed, and that was as far as
+our wagon could go. The glade shone red with sumach, and surrounded
+by tall pines, with a rocky and shady glen below, it appeared a
+delightful place to camp. As I was about to unsaddle my horses I heard
+the cluck-cluck of turkeys. Pulling out my borrowed rifle, and calling
+Romer, I ran to the edge of the glade. The shady, swift stream ran
+fifty feet or so below me. Across it I saw into the woods where shade
+and gray rocks and colored brush mingled. Again I heard the turkeys
+cluck. "Look hard, son," I whispered. "They're close." R.C. came
+slipping along below us, with his rifle ready. Suddenly Romer
+stiffened, then pointed. "There! Dad!--There!" I saw two gobblers wade
+into the brook not more than a hundred and fifty feet away. Drawing
+down with fine aim I fired. The bullet splashed water all over the
+turkeys. One with loud whirr of wings flew away. The other leaped
+across the brook and ran--swift as a deer--right up the slope. As
+I tried to get the sight on him I heard other turkeys fly, and the
+crack-crack of R.C.'s gun. I shot twice at my running turkey, and all
+I did was to scatter the dirt over him, and make him run faster. R.C.
+had not done any better shooting. Romer, wonderful to relate, was so
+excited that he forgot to make fun of our marksmanship. We scouted
+around some, but the turkeys had gone. By promising to take Romer
+hunting after supper I contrived to get him back to the glade, where
+we made camp.
+
+
+II
+
+After we had unpacked and while the men were pitching the tents and
+getting supper I took Romer on a hunt up the creek. I was considerably
+pleased to see good-sized trout in the deeper pools. A little way
+above camp the creek forked. As the right-hand branch appeared to be
+larger and more attractive we followed its course. Soon the bustle
+of camp life and the sound of the horses were left far behind. Romer
+slipped along beside me stealthily as an Indian, all eyes and ears.
+
+We had not traveled thus for a quarter of a mile when my quick ear
+caught the cluck-cluck of turkeys. "Listen," I whispered, halting.
+Romer became like a statue, his dark eyes dilating, his nostrils
+quivering, his whole body strung. He was a Zane all right. A turkey
+called again; then another answered. Romer started, and nodded his
+head vehemently.
+
+"Come on now, right behind me," I whispered. "Step where I step and do
+what I do. Don't break any twigs."
+
+Cautiously we glided up the creek, listening now and then to get the
+direction, until we came to an open place where we could see some
+distance up a ridge. The turkey clucks came from across the creek
+somewhere up this open aisle of the forest. I crawled ahead several
+rods to a more advantageous point, much pleased to note that Romer
+kept noiselessly at my heels. Then from behind a stone we peeped out.
+Almost at once a turkey flew down from a tree into the open lane.
+"Look Dad!" whispered Romer, wildly. I had to hold him down. "That's a
+hen turkey," I said. "See, it's small and dull-colored. The gobblers
+are big, shiny, and they have red on their heads."
+
+Another hen turkey flew down from a rather low height. Then I made out
+grapevines, and I saw several animated dark patches among them. As I
+looked three turkeys flopped down to the ground. One was a gobbler of
+considerable size, with beautiful white and bronze feathers. Rather
+suspiciously he looked down our way. The distance was not more than a
+hundred yards. I aimed at him, feeling as I did so how Romer quivered
+beside me, but I had no confidence in Copple's rifle. The sights were
+wrong for me. The stock did not fit me. So, hoping for a closer and
+better shot, I let this opportunity pass. Of course I should have
+taken it. The gobbler clucked and began to trot up the ridge, with the
+others after him. They were not frightened, but they appeared rather
+suspicious. When they disappeared in the woods Romer and I got up, and
+hurried in pursuit. "Gee! why didn't you peg that gobbler?" broke out
+Romer, breathlessly. "Wasn't he a peach?"
+
+When we reached the top of the ridge we advanced very cautiously
+again. Another open place led to a steep, rocky hillside with cedars
+and pines growing somewhat separated. I was disappointed in not seeing
+the turkeys. Then in our anxiety and eagerness we hurried on, not
+noiselessly by any means. All of a sudden there was a rustle, and then
+a great whirr of wings. Three turkeys flew like grouse away into the
+woods. Next I saw the white gobbler running up the rocky hillside. At
+first he was in the open. Aiming as best I could I waited for him to
+stop or hesitate. But he did neither. "Peg him, Dad!" yelled Romer.
+The lad was right. My best chance I had again forfeited. To hit a
+running wild turkey with a rifle bullet was a feat I had not done
+so often as to inspire conceit. The gobbler was wise, too. For that
+matter all grown gobblers are as wise as old bucks, except in the
+spring mating season, when it is a crime to hunt them. This one, just
+as I got a bead on him, always ran behind a rock or tree or shrub.
+Finally in desperation I took a snap shot at him, hitting under him,
+making him jump. Then in rapid succession I fired four more times. I
+had the satisfaction of seeing where my bullets struck up the dust,
+even though they did go wide of the mark. After my last shot the
+gobbler disappeared.
+
+"Well, Dad, you sure throwed the dirt over him!" declared Romer.
+
+"Son, I don't believe I could hit a flock of barns with this gun," I
+replied, gazing doubtfully at the old, shiny, wire-wrapped, worn-out
+Winchester Copple had lent me. I had been told that he was a fine
+marksman and could drive a nail with it. Upon my return to camp I
+tried out the rifle, carefully, with a rest, to find that it was not
+accurate. Moreover it did not throw the bullets consistently. It shot
+high, wide, low; and right there I abandoned any further use for it.
+R.C. tried to make me take his rifle to use on the hunting trip;
+Nielsen and Lee wanted me to take theirs, but I was disgusted with
+myself and refused. "Thanks, boys," I said. "Maybe this will be a
+lesson to me."
+
+We had been up since three o'clock that morning, and the day's travel
+had been exhausting. I had just enough energy left to scrape up a
+huge, soft pile of pine needles upon which to make our bed. After
+that all was oblivion until I was awakened by the ringing strokes of
+Nielsen's axe.
+
+The morning, after the sun got up, was exceedingly delightful.
+And this camp was such a contrast to the others, so pleasant and
+attractive, that even if we had not arranged to meet Lee Haught and
+his sons here I would have stayed a while anyway. Haught was a famed
+bear hunter who lived in a log-cabin somewhere up under the rim of the
+mesa. While Lee and Nielsen rode off up the trail to find Haught I
+gave Romer his first try at rainbow trout. The water of the creek was
+low and clear, so that we could see plenty of good-sized trout. But
+they were shy. They would not rise readily to any of our flies, though
+I got several strikes. We searched under the stones for worms and
+secured a few. Whereupon Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we
+plainly saw. The trout gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the
+fine art of angling, but whenever he got a bite he always forgot
+science. He yanked this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another
+pool he hooked a big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as
+weight and strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But
+this trout nearly pulled Romer off the rock before the line broke. I
+took occasion then to deliver to the lad a lecture. In reply he said
+tearfully: "I didn't know he was so--so big."
+
+When we returned to camp, Haught and his sons were there. Even at a
+distance their horses, weapons, and persons satisfied my critical
+eye. Lee Haught was a tall, spare, superbly built man, with square
+shoulders. He had a brown face with deep lines and sunken cheeks, keen
+hazel eyes, heavy dark mustache, and hair streaked a little with gray.
+The only striking features of his apparel were his black sombrero and
+long spurs.
+
+His sons, Edd and George, were young, lean, sallow, still-faced,
+lanky-legged horsemen with clear gray eyes. They did not appear to be
+given, to much speech. Both were then waiting for the call of the army
+draft. Looking at them then, feeling the tranquil reserve and latent
+force of these Arizonians, I reflected that the Germans had failed
+in their psychology of American character. A few hundred thousand
+Americans like the Haught boys would have whipped the German army.
+
+We held a council. Haught said he would send his son Edd with Doyle,
+and by a long roundabout forest road get the wagon up on the mesa.
+With his burros and some of our horses packed we could take part of
+the outfit up the creek trail, past his cabin, and climb out on the
+rim, where we would find grass, water, wood, and plenty of game.
+
+The idea of permanent camp before sunset that very day inspired us to
+united and vigorous effort. By noon we had the pack train ready. Edd
+and Doyle climbed on the wagon to start the other way. Romer waved his
+hand: "Good-bye, Mr. Doyle, don't break down and lose the apples!"
+
+Then we were off, up the narrow trail along the creek. Haught led the
+way. Romer attached himself to the bear-hunter, and wherever the trail
+was wide enough rode beside him. R.C. and I followed. The other men
+fell in behind the pack train.
+
+The ride was hot, and for the most part all up hill. That basin could
+be likened to the ribs of a washboard: it was all hills, gorges,
+ridges and ravines. The hollows of this exceedingly rough country were
+thick with pine and oak, the ridges covered with cedar, juniper, and
+manzanita. The ground, where it was not rocky, was a dry, red clay. We
+passed Haught's log cabin and clearing of a few acres, where I saw fat
+hogs and cattle. Beyond this point the trail grew more zigzag, and
+steeper, and shadier. As we got higher up the air grew cooler. I noted
+a change in the timber. The trees grew larger, and other varieties
+appeared. We crossed a roaring brook lined by thick, green brush, very
+pleasant to the eye, and bronze-gold ferns that were beautiful. We
+passed oaks all green and yellow, and maple trees, wonderfully colored
+red and cerise. Then still higher up I espied some silver spruces,
+most exquisite trees of the mountain forests.
+
+During the latter half of the climb up to the rim I had to attend to
+the business of riding and walking. The trail was rough, steep, and
+long. Once Haught called my attention to a flat stone with a plain
+trail made by a turtle in ages past when that sandstone was wet,
+sedimentary deposit. By and bye we reached the last slopes up to the
+mesa, green, with yellow crags and cliffs, and here and there blazing
+maples to remind me again that autumn was at hand.
+
+At last we surmounted the rim, from which I saw a scene that defied
+words. It was different from any I had seen before. Black timber as
+far as eye could see! Then I saw a vast bowl inclosed by dim mountain
+ranges, with a rolling floor of forested ridges, and dark lines I knew
+to be canyons. For wild, rugged beauty I had not seen its equal.
+
+[Illustration: THE TONTO BASIN]
+
+When the pack train reached the rim we rode on, and now through a
+magnificent forest at eight thousand feet altitude. Big white and black
+clouds obscured the sun. A thunder shower caught us. There was hail, and
+the dry smell of dust, and a little cold rain. Romer would not put on
+his slicker. Haught said the drought had been the worst he had seen in
+twenty years there. Up in this odorous forestland I could not see where
+there had been lack of rain. The forest appeared thick, grassy, gold and
+yellow and green and brown. Thickets and swales of oaks and aspens were
+gorgeous in their autumn hues. The silver spruces sent down long,
+graceful branches that had to be brushed aside or stooped under as we
+rode along. Big gray squirrels with white tails and tufted ears ran up
+trees to perch on limbs and watch us go by; and other squirrels, much
+smaller and darker gray, frisked and chattered and scolded at a great
+rate.
+
+[Illustration: LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS]
+
+We passed little depressions that ran down into ravines, and these,
+Haught informed me, were the heads of canyons that sloped away from
+the rim, deepening and widening for miles. The rim of the mesa was
+its highest point, except here and there a few elevations like Black
+Butte. Geologically this mesa was an enormous fault, like the north
+rim of the Grand Canyon. During the formation of the earth, or the
+hardening of the crust, there had been a crack or slip, so that one
+edge of the crust stood up sheer above the other. We passed the heads
+of Leonard Canyon, Gentry, and Turkey Canyons, and at last, near
+time of sunset, headed down into beautifully colored, pine-sloped,
+aspen-thicketed Beaver Dam Canyon.
+
+A mile from the rim we were deep in the canyon, walled in by
+rock-strewn and pine-timbered slopes too steep for a horse to climb.
+There was a little gully on the black soil where there were no
+evidences of recent water. Haught said he had never seen Beaver Dam
+Creek dry until this season. We traveled on until we came to a wide,
+open space, where three forks of this canyon met, and where in the
+middle of this glade there rose a lengthy wooded bench, shaded and
+beautified by stately pines and silver spruce. At this point water
+appeared in the creek bed, flowing in tiny stream that soon gathered
+volume. Cold and clear and pure it was all that was needed to make
+this spot an ideal camp site. Haught said half a mile below there was
+a grassy park where the horses would graze with elk.
+
+We pitched our tents on this bench, and I chose for my location a
+space between two great monarchs of the forests, that had surely
+shaded many an Indian encampment. At the upper end of the bench rose a
+knoll, golden and green with scrub oaks, and russet-colored with its
+lichened rocks. About all we could manage that evening was to eat and
+go to bed.
+
+Morning broke cool and bright, with heavy dew. I got my boots as wet
+as if I had waded in water. This surprised me, occurring on October
+sixth, and at eight thousand feet altitude, as I had expected frost.
+Most of this day was spent in making camp, unpacking, and attending to
+the many necessary little details that make for comfort in the open.
+To be sure Romer worked very spasmodically. He spent most of his time
+on the back of one of Haught's burros, chasing and roping another. I
+had not remembered seeing the lad so happily occupied.
+
+Late in the afternoon I slipped off down the canyon alone, taking
+Haught's rifle for safety rather than a desire to kill anything. By
+no means was it impossible to meet a bad bear in that forest. Some
+distance below camp I entered a ravine and climbed up to the level,
+and soon found myself deep in the fragrant, colorful, wild forest.
+Like coming home again was it to enter that forest of silver-tipped,
+level-spreading spruce, and great, gnarled, massive pines, and
+oak-patches of green and gold, and maple thickets, with shining aspens
+standing white against the blaze of red and purple. High, wavy,
+bleached grass, brown mats of pine needles, gray-green moss waving
+from the spruces, long strands of sunlight--all these seemed to
+welcome me.
+
+At a distance there was a roar of wind through the forest; close at
+hand only a soft breeze. Rustling of twigs caused me to compose myself
+to listen and watch. Soon small gray squirrels came into view all
+around me, bright-eyed and saucy, very curious about this intruder.
+They began to chatter. Other squirrels were working in the tops of
+trees, for I heard the fall of pine cones. Then came the screech of
+blue jays. Soon they too discovered me. The male birds were superb,
+dignified, beautiful. The color was light blue all over with dark blue
+head and tufted crest. By and bye they ceased to scold me, and I was
+left to listen to the wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds
+and needles from the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this
+woody, leafy, earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by
+scent of pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace
+and rest. This golden-green forest, barred with sunlight, canopied by
+the blue sky, and melodious with its soughing moan of wind, absolutely
+filled me with content and happiness. If a stag or a bear had trotted
+out into my sight, and had showed me no animosity, not improbably I
+would have forgotten my gun. More and more as I lived in the open I
+grew reluctant to kill.
+
+Presently a porcupine waddled along some rods away, and unaware of my
+presence it passed by and climbed a spruce. I saw it climb high and
+finally lost sight of it. In searching up and down this spruce I grew
+alive to what a splendid and beautiful tree it was. Where so many
+trees grew it always seemed difficult to single out one and study
+it. This silver spruce was five feet through at the base, rugged,
+gray-seamed, thick all the way to its lofty height. Its branches
+were small, with a singular feature that they were uniform in shape,
+length, and droop. Most all spruce branches drooped toward the ground.
+That explained why they made such excellent shelters from rain. After
+a hard storm I had seen the ground dry under a thick-foliaged spruce.
+Many a time had I made a bed under one. Elk and deer stand under
+a spruce during a rain, unless there is thunder and lightning. In
+forests of high altitude, where lightning strikes many trees, I have
+never found or heard of elk and deer being killed. This particular
+spruce was a natural tent in the forest. The thick-spreading graceful
+silver plumes extended clear to the top, where they were bushiest,
+and rounded out, with all the largest branches there. Each dark gray
+branch was fringed and festooned with pale green moss, like the
+cypresses of the South.
+
+Suddenly I heard a sharp snapping of twigs and then stealthy, light
+steps. An animal of some species was moving in the thicket nearby.
+Naturally I sustained a thrill, and bethought me of the rifle. Then I
+peered keenly into the red rose shadows of the thicket. The sun was
+setting now, and though there appeared a clear golden light high
+in the forest, along the ground there were shadows. I heard leaves
+falling, rustling. Tall white aspens stood out of the thicket, and two
+of the large ones bore the old black scars of bear claws. I was sure,
+however, that no bear hid in the thicket at this moment. Presently
+whatever the animal was it pattered lightly away on the far side.
+After that I watched the quiver of the aspen leaves. Some were green,
+some yellow, some gold, but they all had the same wonderful tremor,
+the silent fluttering that gave them the most exquisite action in
+nature. The sun set, the forest darkened, reminding me of supper time.
+So I returned to camp. As I entered the open canyon Romer-boy espied
+me--manifestly he had been watching--and he yelled: "Here comes my
+Daddy now!... Say, Dad, did you get any pegs?"
+
+Next morning Haught asked me if I would like to ride around through
+the woods and probably get a shot at a deer. Romer coaxed so to go
+that I finally consented.
+
+We rode down the canyon, and presently came to a wide grassy park
+inclosed by high green-clad slopes, the features of which appeared to
+be that the timber on the west slope was mostly pine, and on the east
+slope it was mostly spruce. I could arrive at no certain reason for
+this, but I thought it must be owing to the snow lying somewhat longer
+on the east slope. The stream here was running with quite a little
+volume of water. Our horses were grazing in this park. I saw fresh
+elk tracks made the day before. Elk were quite abundant through this
+forest, Haught informed me, and were protected by law.
+
+A couple of miles down this trail the canyon narrowed, losing its
+park-like dimensions. The farther we traveled the more water there
+was in the stream, and more elk, deer, and turkey tracks in the
+sand. Every half mile or so we would come to the mouth of a small
+intersecting canyon, and at length we rode up one of these, presently
+to climb out on top. At this distance from the rim the forest was more
+open than in the vicinity of our camp, affording better riding and
+hunting. Still the thickets of aspen and young pine were so frequent
+that seldom could I see ahead more than several hundred yards.
+
+Haught led the way, I rode next and Romer kept beside me where it was
+possible to do so. There was, however, no trail. How difficult to keep
+the lad quiet! I expected of course that Haught would dismount, and
+take me to hunt on foot. After a while I gathered he did not hunt deer
+except on horseback. He explained that cowboys rounded up cattle in
+this forest in the spring and fall, and deer were not frightened at
+sound or sight of a horse. Some of the thrill and interest in the
+forest subsided for me. I did not like to hunt in a country where
+cattle ranged, no matter how wild they were. Then when we came to a
+forested ridge bare of grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the
+forest of a little more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their
+flocks up this far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and
+coyote, sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer,
+however, hated a sheep-run range.
+
+Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool, full of
+sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen could ever rob
+it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its temple-like majesty.
+So provided we did not meet any cattle or sheep I did not care whether
+or not we sighted any game. In fact I would have forgotten we were
+hunting had not Romer been along. With him continually seeing things
+it was difficult to keep from imagining that we were hunting Indians.
+The Apaches had once lived in this country Haught informed us; and it
+was a habit of theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every
+fall, thus keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how
+near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not concern
+them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than white men.
+
+We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at the far
+end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other brush. As we
+neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick and noiseless
+action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from his saddle-sheath,
+took a couple of forward steps, and leveled it. I was so struck with
+the rugged and significant picture he made that I did not dismount,
+and did not see any game until after he fired. Then as I tumbled off
+and got out my rifle I heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray
+streak with a bobbing white end flashed away out of sight to the left.
+Next I saw a deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again.
+The deer ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him.
+Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when both he
+and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time. Presently he
+returned.
+
+"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said. "Shore I
+missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why didn't you smoke
+him up?"
+
+"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense regret. "Why,
+I could have knocked him."
+
+Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had appeared
+to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see one you want
+to pile off quick."
+
+As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had seen
+anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big grove with
+thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said these were good
+places for deer to lie down, relying on their noses to scent danger
+from windward, and on their eyes in the other direction. We circled to
+go round thickets, descending somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got
+off a little to the right. Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward
+a thin line of little pines, through which I could see into the pines
+beyond. Suddenly up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off
+my horse, bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in
+a thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender trees.
+I aimed--followed him--got a bead on him--and was just about to pull
+trigger when he vanished. Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then
+Romer cried in his shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck--hurry!"
+Turning I ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just
+in time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught
+shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the thicket,
+working to our left, and presently came out into the open forest.
+Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query he replied:
+"Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail buck."
+
+Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay motionless
+under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded deep in the
+ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just beginning to get his
+winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish gray. Haught hung him up
+to a branch, spread his hind legs, and cut him down the middle. The
+hunter's dexterity with a knife made me wonder how many deer he had
+dressed in his life in the open. We lifted the deer upon the saddle of
+Haught's horse and securely tied it there with a lasso; then with the
+hunter on foot, leading the way, we rode through the forest up the
+main ridge between Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found
+the pines and spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We
+passed the heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either
+side, and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I
+could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon we
+reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat like
+real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which enterprise
+had been unsuccessful.
+
+Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started our bear
+hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack something. He sent the
+hounds down below the rim with George; and taking R.C. and me, and Lee
+and Nielsen, he led us over to what he called Horton Thicket. Never
+would I forget my first sight of that immense forest-choked canyon.
+It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy
+ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this
+abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet
+they were many. An empire of splintered cliff!
+
+High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens,
+with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes. Points
+of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and bronze. Below the
+huge gorge was full of aspens, maples, spruces--a green, crimson,
+yellow density of timber, apparently impenetrable. We were accorded
+different stations on the ledges all around the cove, and instructed
+to stay there until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My
+point was so far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
+field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee and
+Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a comfortable seat,
+if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to accept my wait for
+developments. One thing was sure--even though it were a futile way to
+hunt it seemed rich in other recompense for me. My stand towered above
+a vast colorful slope down which the wind roared as in a gale. How
+could I ever hear the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding
+across the sky. Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent
+flight; and so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.
+
+Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with frequent
+intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the close of
+afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that R.C. had left
+his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp, which was some miles
+nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave up any hope of hearing
+either the hounds or the horn, as the roar of wind had increased. Once
+I thought I heard a distant rifle shot. So I got on my horse and set
+out to find camp. I was on a promontory, the sides of which were
+indented by long ravines that were impassable except near their heads.
+In fact I had been told there was only one narrow space where it was
+possible to get off this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered
+Haught telling of this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of
+forested heads of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the
+west side, and then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I
+followed, with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the
+narrow neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp,
+arriving there at sunset.
+
+The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around under one
+of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his back-trail,
+staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it. Their baying had
+roused the bear out of his bed, and he had showed himself once or
+twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw the other bear from the rim.
+This was a big, red, cinnamon bear asleep under a pine tree on an open
+slope. Haught said when the hounds gave tongue on the other trail this
+red bear awakened, sat up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never
+been chased by hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance
+was too great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the
+result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.
+
+These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing and
+cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns) and
+berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and very few
+acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin he could
+always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot and tired
+enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight the dogs.
+
+Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx under
+the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were the
+tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill a
+cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen feet
+deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay long on
+the sunny, open ridges of the basin.
+
+That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How wonderful to
+lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and hear the marching
+and retreating gale above in the forest! Next day we expected rain or
+snow. But there was only wind, and that quieted by afternoon. So I
+took Romer off into the woods. He carried his rifle and he wore his
+chaps. I could not persuade him to part with these. They rustled on
+the brush and impeded his movements, and particularly tired him, and
+made him look like a diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly
+vain, imaginative! He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything,
+particularly bears. But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump
+and bit of color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I
+had to take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was
+unusually quick and keen.
+
+That afternoon Edd and Doyle arrived, reporting an extremely rough,
+roundabout climb up to the rim, where they had left the wagon. As it
+was impossible to haul the supplies down into the canyon they
+were packed down to camp on burros. Isbel had disapproved of this
+procedure, a circumstance that struck me with peculiar significance,
+which Lee explained by telling me Isbel was one of the peculiar breed
+of cowboys, who no sooner were they out on the range than they wanted
+to go back to town again. The truth was I had not met any of that
+breed, though I had heard of them. This peculiarity of Isbel's began
+to be related in my mind to his wastefulness as a cook. He cooked and
+threw away as much as we ate. I asked him to be careful and to go
+easy with our supplies, but I could not see that my request made any
+difference.
+
+After supper this evening R.C. heard a turkey call up on the hill east
+of camp. Then I heard it, and Romer also. We ran out a ways into the
+open to listen the better. R.C.'s ears were exceptionally keen. He
+could hear a squirrel jump a long distance in the forest. In this case
+he distinctly heard three turkeys fly up into trees. I heard one.
+Romer declared he heard a flock. Then R.C. located a big bronze and
+white gobbler on a lower limb of a huge pine. Presently I too espied
+it. Whereupon we took shot-gun and rifle, and sallied forth sure of
+fetching back to camp some wild turkey meat. Romer tagged at our
+heels.
+
+Hurrying to the slope we climbed up at least three-quarters of the
+way, as swiftly as possible. And that was work enough to make me wet
+and hot. The sun had set and twilight was upon us, so that we needs
+must hurry if we were to be successful. Locating the big gobbler
+turned out to be a task. We had to climb over brush and around rocks,
+up a steep slope, rather open; and we had to do it without being seen
+or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness, did very well indeed.
+At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the sight was thrilling.
+Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted them enough to learn how
+sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed
+as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up
+from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if
+undecided, and tried each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped
+farther up until we lost sight of him in the gnarled net-work of
+branches.
+
+R.C. wanted me to slip on alone, but I preferred to have him and Romer
+go too. So we slipped stealthily upward until we reached the level.
+Then progress was easier. I went to the left with the rifle, and R.C.
+with the .20-gauge, and Romer, went around to the right. How rapidly
+it was growing dark! Low down in the forest I could not distinguish
+objects. We circled that big pine tree, and I made rather a wide
+detour, perhaps eighty yards from it. At last I got the upper part of
+the dead pine silhouetted against the western sky. Moving to and fro I
+finally made out a large black lump way out upon a spreading branch.
+Could that be the gobbler? I studied that dark enlarged part of the
+limb with great intentness, and I had about decided that it was only
+a knot when I saw a long neck shoot out. That lump was the wise old
+turkey all right. He was almost in the top of the tree and far out
+from the trunk. No wild cat or lynx could ever surprise him there! I
+reflected upon the instinct that governed him to protect his life so
+cunningly. Safe he was from all but man and gun!
+
+When I came to aim at him with the rifle I found that I could see
+only a blur of sights. Other branches and the tip of a very high pine
+adjoining made a dark background. I changed my position, working
+around to where the background was all open sky. It proved to be
+better. By putting the sights against this open sky I could faintly
+see the front sight through the blurred ring. It was a good long shot
+even for daylight, and I had a rifle I knew nothing about. But all the
+difficulty only made a keener zest. Just then I heard Romer cry out
+excitedly, and then R.C. spoke distinctly. Far more careless than that
+they began to break twigs under their feet. The gobbler grew uneasy.
+How he stretched out his long neck! He heard them below. I called out
+low and sharp: "Stand still! Be quiet!" Then I looked again through
+the blurred peep-sight until I caught the front sight against the open
+sky. This done I moved the rifle over until I had the sight aligned
+against the dark shape. Straining my eyes I held hard--then fired. The
+big dark lump on the branch changed shape, and fell, to alight with a
+sounding thump. I heard Romer running, but could not see him. Then his
+high voice pealed out: "I got him, Dad. You made a grand peg!"
+
+Not only had Romer gotten him, but he insisted on packing him back to
+camp. The gobbler was the largest I ever killed, not indeed one of the
+huge thirty-five pounders, but a fat, heavy turkey, and quite a load
+for a boy. Romer packed him down that steep slope in the dark without
+a slip, for which performance I allowed him to stay up a while around
+the camp-fire.
+
+The Haughts came over from their camp that night and visited us. Much
+as I loved to sit alone beside a red-embered fire at night in the
+forest, or on the desert, I also liked upon occasions to have company.
+We talked and talked. Old-timer Doyle told more than one of his "in
+the early days" stories. Then Haught told us some bear stories. The
+first was about an old black bear charging and sliding down at him. He
+said no hunter should ever shoot at a bear above him, because it could
+come down at him as swiftly as a rolling rock. This time he worked the
+lever of his rifle at lightning speed, and at the last shot he "shore
+saw bear hair right before his eyes." His second story was about a
+boy who killed a bear, and was skinning it when five more bears came
+along, in single file, and made it very necessary that he climb a tree
+until they had gone. His third story was about an old she-bear that
+had two cubs. Haught happened to ride within sight of her when
+evidently she thought it time to put her cubs in a safe place. So she
+tried to get them to climb a spruce tree, and finally had to cuff and
+spank them to make them go up. In connection with this story he told
+us he had often seen she-bears spank their cubs. More thrilling was
+his fourth story about a huge grizzly, a sheep and cattle killer that
+passed through the country, leaving death behind him on the range.
+
+Romer's enjoyment of this story-telling hour around the glowing
+camp-fire was equalled by his reluctance to go to bed. "Aw, Dad,
+please let me hear one more," he pleaded. His shining eyes would have
+weakened a sterner discipline than mine. And Haught seemed inspired by
+them.
+
+"Wal now, listen to this hyar," he began again, with a twinkle in his
+eye. "Thar was an old fellar had a ranch in Chevelon Canyon, an' he
+was always bein' pestered by mountain lions. His name was Bill Tinker.
+Now Bill was no sort of a hunter, fact was he was afeerd of lions an'
+bears, but he shore did git riled when any critters rustled around
+his cabin. One day in the fall he comes home an' seen a big she-lion
+sneakin' around. He grabbed a club, an' throwed it, and yelled to
+scare the critter away. Wal, he had an old water barrel layin' around,
+an' darned if the lion didn't run in thet barrel an' hide. Bill run
+quick an' flopped the barrel end up, so he had the lion trapped. He
+had to set on the barrel to hold it down. Shore that lion raised old
+Jasper under the barrel. Bill was plumb scared. Then he seen the
+lion's tail stick out through the bung-hole. Bill bent over an' shore
+quick tied a knot in thet long tail. Then he run fer his cabin. When
+he got to the door he looked back to see the lion tearin' down the
+hill fer the woods with the barrel bumpin' behind her. Bill said he
+never seen her again till next spring, an' she had the barrel still on
+her tail. But what was stranger'n thet Bill swore she had four cubs
+with her an' each of them had a keg on its tail."
+
+We all roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had been
+so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in the
+story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp the trick
+at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes were dark and
+dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and disappointment
+changed his mobile face, and then came mirth. He shouted as if to the
+tree-tops on high. Long after he was in bed I heard him laughing to
+himself.
+
+I was awakened a little after daylight by the lad trying to get into
+his boots. His boots were rather tight, and somehow, even in a dry
+forest, he always contrived to get them wet, so that in the morning it
+was a herculean task for him to pull them on. This occasion appeared
+more strenuous than usual. "Son, what's the idea?" I inquired. "It's
+just daylight--not time to get up." He desisted from his labors
+long enough to pant: "Uncle Rome's--gone after turkeys. Edd's going
+to--call them with--a caller--made out of a turkey's wing-bone." And
+I said: "But they've gone now." Whereupon he subsided: "Darned old
+boots! I heard Edd and Uncle Rome. I'd been ready if I could have got
+into my darned old boots.... See here, Dad, I'm gonna wear moccasins."
+
+
+III
+
+As we were sitting round the camp-fire, eating breakfast, R.C. and Edd
+returned; and R.C. carried a turkey gobbler the very size and color of
+the one I had shot the night before. R.C.'s face wore the keen, pleased
+expression characteristic of it when he had just had some unusual and
+satisfying experience.
+
+[Illustration: ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS]
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEY]
+
+"Sure was great," he said, warming his hands at the fire. "We went up
+on the hill where you killed your gobbler last night. Got there just
+in the gray light of dawn. We were careful not to make any noise. Edd
+said if there were any more turkeys they would come down at daylight.
+So we waited until it was light enough to see. Then Edd got out his
+turkey bone and began to call. Turkeys answered from the trees all
+around. By George, it was immense! Edd had picked out a thicket of
+little pines for us to hide in, and in front of us was a glade with a
+big fallen tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods
+was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he
+called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees.
+Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The
+turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my
+excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them
+pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now we
+got to do some real callin'.' I felt how tense, how cautious he was.
+When he called again there was some little difference, I don't know
+what, unless it was his call sounded more like a real turkey. They
+answered. They were gathering in front of us, and I made sure were
+coming into the glade. Edd stopped calling. Then he whispered: 'Ready
+now. Look out!'... Sure I was looking all right. This was my first
+experience calling turkeys and I simply shook all over. Suddenly I
+saw a turkey head stick up over the log. Then!--up hopped a beautiful
+gobbler. He walked along the log, looked and peered, and stretched his
+neck. Sure he was suspicious. Edd gave me a hunch, which I took to be
+a warning to shoot quick. That was a hard place for me. I wanted to
+watch the gobbler. I wanted to see the others. We could hear them all
+over the glade. But this was my chance. Quickly I rose and took a peg
+at him. A cloud of feathers puffed off him. He gave a great bounce,
+flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other turkeys. With my
+eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full of big, black, flying
+things. My gobbler came down, bounced up again, got going--when with
+the second barrel I knocked him cold. Then I stood there watching the
+flock whirring every way into the forest. Must have been thirty-five
+or forty of them, all gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I
+declared myself--wild turkey is the game for me."
+
+Romer manifestly listened to this narrative with mingled feelings of
+delight and despair. "Uncle Rome, wild turkey's the game for me, too
+... and by Gosh! I'll fix those boots of mine!"
+
+That morning we were scheduled for another bear hunt, on which I had
+decided to go down under the rim with Edd and George. Lee had his
+doubts about my horse, and desired me to take his, or at least one
+of the others. Now his horse was too spirited for me to ride after
+hounds, and I did not want to take one of the others, so I was
+compelled to ride my own. At the last moment Lee had been disappointed
+in getting a mustang he particularly wanted for me, and so it had
+fallen about that my horse was the poorest in the outfit, which to put
+it mildly was pretty poor. I had made the best of the matter so far,
+and hoped to continue doing so.
+
+We rode up the east slope of Beaver Dam Canyon, through the forest,
+and out along the rim for five or six miles, way on the other side of
+the promontory where I had gotten lost. Here Haught left us, taking
+with him R.C. and Lee and Nielsen, all of whom were to have stands
+along the rim. We hoped to start a bear and chase him round under the
+high points toward Horton Thicket.
+
+The magnificent view from the head of a trail where Edd started down
+impressed me so powerfully that I lagged behind. Below me heaved
+a split, tossed, dimpled, waving, rolling world of black-green
+forestland. Far across it stood up a rugged, blue, waved range of
+mountains--the Sierra Anchas.
+
+The trail was rough, even for Arizonians, which made it for me little
+short of impassable. I got off to lead my horse. He had to be pulled
+most of the time, wherefore I lost patience with him. I loved horses,
+but not stubborn ones. All the way down the rocky trail the bunch
+grass and wild oak and manzanita were so thick that I had to crush my
+way through. At length I had descended the steep part to find Edd and
+George waiting for me below on the juniper benches. These were slopes
+of red earth or clay, bare of grass, but thick with junipers, cactus,
+and manzanita. This face of the great rim was a southern exposure,
+hot and dusty. The junipers were thick. The green of their foliage
+somewhat resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost
+lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I
+found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was that
+this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to eat the
+fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear sign. Edd said
+the tracks were cold, but all the same he had to be harsh with the
+hounds to hold them in. I counted twenty piles of bear manure under
+one juniper, and many places where bears had scraped in the soft earth
+and needles.
+
+We went on down this slope, getting into thicker brush and rougher
+ground. All at once the hounds opened up in thrilling chorus of bays
+and barks. I saw Edd jump off his horse to stoop and examine the
+ground, where evidently he had seen a bear track. "Fresh--made last
+night!" he yelled, mounting hurriedly. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" His horse leaped
+through the brush, and George followed. In an instant they were out of
+sight. Right there my trouble began. I spurred my horse after them,
+and it developed that he differed from me in regard to direction and
+going. He hated the brush. But I made him take to it and made him run.
+Dodging branches was an old story for me, and if I had been on a good
+fast horse I might have kept Edd and George in sight. As it was,
+however, I had to follow them by the sound of hoofs and breaking
+brush. From the way the hounds bayed I knew they had struck a hot
+scent. They worked down the slope, and assuredly gave me a wild ride
+to keep within hearing of them. My horse grew excited, which fact
+increased his pace, his obstinacy, and likewise my danger. Twice he
+unseated me. I tore my coat, lost my hat, scratched my face, skinned
+my knees, but somehow I managed to keep within hearing.
+
+I came to a deep brush-choked gorge, impassable at that point. Luckily
+the hounds turned here and started back my way. By riding along
+the edge of this gorge I kept up with them. They climbed out an
+intersecting ravine and up on the opposite side. I forced my horse to
+go down this rather steep soft slope. At the bottom I saw a little
+spring of water with fresh bear tracks around it, and one place where
+the bear had caved in a soft bank. Here my horse suddenly plunged and
+went to his knees in the yielding red clay. He snorted in fright. The
+bank slid with him and I tumbled off. But nothing serious happened. I
+ran down, caught him, mounted, and spurred him up the other side. Once
+up he began to run. I heard the boys yelling not far away and the
+hounds were baying up above me. They were climbing fast, working to
+the left, toward an oak thicket. It took effort to slow down my steed.
+He acted crazy and I began to suspect that he had caught a whiff of
+the bear. Most horses are afraid of bears and lions. Sight of Edd and
+George, who appeared in an open spot, somewhat quieted my mount.
+
+"Trail's gettin' hot up there," declared Edd. "That bear's bedded
+somewhere an' I'll bet the hounds jumped him. Listen to Old Tom!"
+
+How the deep sonorous bay of Old Tom awoke the echoes under the
+cliffs! And Old Dan's voice was a hoarse bellow. The other hounds
+yelped.
+
+Edd blew a mellow blast from his hunting-horn, and that awoke other
+and more melodious echoes. "There's father up on the rim," he said. I
+looked, and finally saw Haught perched like a black eagle on a crag.
+His gun flashed in the strong sunlight.
+
+Somewhere up there the hounds jumped the bear. Anybody could have told
+that. What a wild chorus! Edd and George answered to it with whoops
+as wild, and they galloped their horses over ground and through brush
+where they should have been walked. I followed, or tried to follow;
+and here my steed showed his bull-headed, obstinate nature. If he had
+been afraid but still game I would have respected him, but he was a
+coward and mean. He wanted to have his way, which was to go the other
+direction, and to rid himself of me. So we had it hot and heavy
+along that rough slope, with honors about even. As for bruises and
+scratches, however, I sustained the most. In the excitement of the
+chase and anger at the horse I forgot all about any risks. This always
+is the way in adventure. Hot racing blood governed me entirely.
+Whenever I got out in an open place, where I could ride fast and hear
+and see, then it was all intensely thrilling. Both hounds and comrades
+were above me, but apparently working down.
+
+Thus for me the necessity of hurry somewhat lessened. I slowed to a
+trot, peering everywhere, listening with all my ears. I had stopped
+yelling, because my horse had misunderstood that. We got into a
+region of oak thickets, small saplings, scrubby, close together, but
+beautiful with their autumn-tinted leaves. Next I rode through a maple
+dell, shady, cool, where the leafy floor was all rose-pink-red. My
+horse sent the colored leaves flying.
+
+Soon, however, we got into the thickets again, low live-oak and
+manzanita, which kind of brush my horse detested. I did not blame
+him for that. As the hounds began to work down my keen excitement
+increased. If they had jumped the bear and were chasing him down I
+might run upon him any moment. This both appealed to me and caused me
+apprehension. Suppose he were a bad cinnamon or a grizzly? What would
+become of me on that horse? I decided that I had better carry my rifle
+in my hand, so in case of a sudden appearance of the bear and I was
+thrown or had a fall off, then I would be prepared. So forthwith I
+drew the rifle out of the scabbard, remembering as I did so that
+Haught had cautioned me, in case of close quarters with a bear and the
+need of quick shooting, to jerk the lever down hard. If my horse had
+cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a glory
+of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets. He was an
+uncomfortable horse to ride under the best circumstances; here he
+was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When he got his head, which was
+often, he carried me into thickets of manzanita that we could not
+penetrate, and had to turn back. I found that I was working high
+up the slope, and bad luck as I was having with my horse, I still
+appeared to keep fairly close to the hounds.
+
+When we topped a ridge of this slope the wind struck us strong in the
+face. The baying of the hounds rang clear and full and fierce. My
+horse stood straight up. Then he plunged back and bolted down the
+slope. His mouth was like iron. I could neither hold nor turn him.
+However perilous this ride I had to admit that at last my horse was
+running beautifully. In fact he was running away! He had gotten a hot
+scent of that bear. He hurdled rocks, leaped washes, slid down banks,
+plunged over places that made my hair stand up stiff, and worst of all
+he did not try to avoid brush or trees or cactus. Manzanita he tore
+right through, leaving my coat in strips decorating our wake. I had to
+hold on, to lie flat, to dodge and twist, and all the time watch for a
+place where I might fall off in safety. But I did not get a chance
+to fall off. A loud clamoring burst from the hounds apparently close
+behind drove my horse frantic. Before he had only run--now he flew!
+He left me hanging in the thick branches of a juniper, from which I
+dropped blind and breathless and stunned. Disengaging myself from the
+broken and hanging branches I staggered aside, rifle in hand, trying
+to recover breath and wits.
+
+Then, in that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the breaking
+of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering up with my
+half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal coming, half obscured
+by brush. It waved aside from his broad back. A shock ran over me--a
+bursting gush of hot blood that turned to ice as it rushed. "Big
+cinnamon bear!" I whispered, hoarsely.
+
+Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I could not
+clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such was my state
+that I fired. Then followed a roaring crash--a terrible breaking
+onslaught upon the brush--and the huge red mass seemed to flash down
+toward me. I worked the lever of the rifle. But I had forgotten
+Haught's caution. I did not work the lever far enough down, so that
+the next cartridge jammed in the receiver. With a second shock,
+different this time, I tried again. In vain! The terrible crashing
+of brush appeared right upon me. For an instant that seemed an age I
+stood riveted to the spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me,
+my tongue pasted to the roof of my mouth. Then I dropped the rifle
+and whirled to plunge away. Like a deer I bounded. I took prodigious
+bounds. To escape--to find a tree to leap into--that was my only
+thought. A few rods down the slope--it seemed a mile--I reached a pine
+with low branches. Like a squirrel I ran up this--straddled a limb
+high up--and gazed back.
+
+My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation. I became
+conscious of them. Racing blood, bursting heart, labored pang of
+chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary flutter of
+muscles, like a palsy--these attested to the instinctive primitive
+nature of my state. I heard the crashing of brush, the pound of soft
+jumps over to my left. With eyes that seemed magnifying I gazed to see
+a big red woolly steer plunge wildly down the slope and disappear. A
+third shock possessed me--amaze. I had mistaken a wild, frightened
+steer for a red cinnamon bear!
+
+I sat there some moments straddling that branch. Then I descended, and
+went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and securing that I
+stood a moment listening. The hounds had taken the chase around below
+me into the gorge and were drawing away. It was useless to try to
+follow them. I sat down again and gave myself up to meditation.
+
+I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would not go.
+No joke indeed! My horse had made me risk too much, my excitement had
+been too intense, my fright had been too terrible. Reality for me
+could not have been any more grave. I had risked my neck on a stubborn
+coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer for a bear, I had forgotten
+how to manipulate the borrowed rifle. These were the careless elements
+of tragedy. The thought sobered me. I took the lesson to heart. And I
+reflected on the possible point of view of the bear. He had probably
+gone to sleep on a full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink
+of spring water. Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping,
+fiendish hounds. He had to run for his life. What had he done to
+deserve such treatment? Possibly he might have killed some of Haught's
+pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me. In my sober frame of
+mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly unjustifiable murderous
+intent. I would have deserved it if the steer had really been the
+bear. Certainly I hoped the bear would outrun the hounds and escape. I
+weighed the wonderful thrill of the chase, the melody of hounds, the
+zest of spirited action, the peril to limb and life against the thing
+that they were done for, with the result that I found them sadly
+lacking. Peril to limb and life was good for man. If this had not been
+a fact my performance would have been as cowardly as that of my
+horse. Again I had rise up before my mind the spectacle of opposing
+forces--the elemental in man restrained by the spiritual. Then the old
+haunting thought returned to vex me--man in his development needed the
+exercise of brawn, muscle, bone red-blood, violence, labor and pain
+and agony. Nature recognized only the survival of the fittest of
+any species. If a man allowed a spiritual development, intellect,
+gentleness, to keep him from all hard, violent action, from tremendous
+exertion, from fierce fight with elements and beasts, and his own
+kind--would he not soon degenerate as a natural physical man?
+Evolution was a stern inevitable seeking of nature for perfection,
+for the unattainable. This perfection was something that lived and
+improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most
+perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to their
+development toward so-called civilized life their physical prowess and
+perfectness--that was to say, their strength to resist and live and
+reproduce their kind--absolutely and inevitably deteriorated.
+
+My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive
+convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I
+eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty and
+torn--that I would be happy if the bear got away--that I had lost my
+mean horse and was glad therefore--that I would have half a dozen
+horses and rifles upon my next hunt--and lastly that I would not be in
+any hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a
+tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret until
+chronicled here.
+
+Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway toward
+Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard Edd
+yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my horse,
+and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with him.
+
+"Where's the bear?" I asked.
+
+"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is tryin' to
+call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you shoot."
+
+"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied. "He left
+me--rather suddenly. And--I took a shot at what I thought was a bear."
+
+"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just goin' to
+smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."
+
+My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when I
+observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much disheveled as
+I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance certain unmistakable
+evidences that I had made a tenderfoot blunder and then run for
+my life. But Edd took my loss of hat, and torn coat, and general
+bedraggled state as a matter of course. Indeed I somehow felt a little
+pride at his acceptance of me there in the flesh.
+
+We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down into
+Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber engaged my
+sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the other dogs. "We
+lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds couldn't track him," was
+all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four blasts upon his hunting-horn,
+which were signals to those on the stands above that the hunt was over
+for the day.
+
+Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade as this
+down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large, and the
+foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through. Dark, green and
+brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We came to a huge spruce
+tree, the largest I ever saw--Edd said eight feet through at the base,
+but he was conservative. It was a gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch
+of the forest, with bleached, dead top. For many years it had been the
+home of swarms of wild honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter
+had undertaken to cut down this spruce. This explained a number of
+deeply cut notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it
+down," declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian
+axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it,
+whether we were to get any honey or not.
+
+By and bye we reached the bottom of the thicket where we crossed a
+swift clear cold brook. Here the smells seemed cool, sweet, wild with
+spruce and pine. This stream of granite water burst from a spring
+under a cliff. What a roar it made! I drank until I could drink no
+more. Huge boulders and windfalls, moved by water at flood season,
+obstructed the narrow stream-bed. We crossed to start climbing the
+north slope, and soon worked up out of the thicket upon a steep, rocky
+slope, with isolated pines. We struck a deer-trail hard to follow.
+Above me loomed the pine-tipped rim, with its crags, cliffs,
+pinnacles, and walls, all gray, seamed and stained, and in some clefts
+blazes of deep red and yellow foliage.
+
+When we surmounted the slope, and eventually reached camp, I found
+Isbel entertaining strangers, men of rough garb, evidently riders of
+the range. That was all right, but I did not like his prodigality with
+our swiftly diminishing store of eatables.
+
+To conclude about Isbel--matters pertaining to our commissary
+department, during the next few days, went from bad to worse. Doyle
+advised me not to take Isbel to task, and was rather evasive of
+reasons for so advising me. Of course I listened and attended to my
+old guide's advice, but I fretted under the restraint. We had a spell
+of bad weather, wind and rain, and hail off and on, and at length, the
+third day, a cold drizzling snow. During this spell we did but little
+hunting. The weather changed, and the day afterward I rode my mean
+horse twenty miles on a deer hunt. We saw one buck. Upon our arrival
+at camp, about four o'clock, which hour was too early for dinner, I
+was surprised and angered to find Isbel eating an elaborate meal with
+three more strange, rough-appearing men. Doyle looked serious. Nielsen
+had a sharp glint in his gray eye. As for myself, this procedure of
+our cook's was more than I could stand.
+
+"Isbel, you're discharged," I said, shortly. "Take your outfit and get
+out. Lee will lend you a pack horse."
+
+"Wal, I ain't fired," drawled Isbel. "I quit before you rode in. Beat
+you to it!"
+
+"Then if you quit it seems to me you are taking liberties with
+supplies you have no right to," I replied.
+
+"Nope. Cook of any outfit has a right to all the chuck he wants.
+That's western way."
+
+"Isbel, listen to this and then get out," I went on. "You've wasted
+our supplies just to get us to hurry and break camp. As for western
+ways I know something of them. It's a western way for a man to be
+square and honest in his dealings with an outsider. In all my years
+and in all my trips over the southwest you are the first westerner to
+give me the double-cross. You have that distinction."
+
+Then I turned my back upon him and walked to my tent. His
+acquaintances left at once, and he quickly packed and followed.
+Faithful old Doyle took up the duties of cook and we gained, rather
+than missed by the change. Our supplies, however, had been so depleted
+that we could not stay much longer on the hunt.
+
+By dint of much determination as to the manner and method of my next
+hunt I managed to persuade myself that I could make the best of this
+unlucky sojourn in the woods. No rifle, no horse worth riding, no food
+to stay out our time--it was indeed bad luck for me. After supper the
+tension relaxed. Then I realized all the men were relieved. Only Romer
+regretted loss of Isbel. When the Doyles and Haughts saw how I took
+my hard luck they seemed all the keener to make my stay pleasant and
+profitable. Little they knew that their regard was more to me than
+material benefits and comforts of the trip. To travelers of the
+desert and hunters and riders of the open there are always hard and
+uncomfortable and painful situations to be met with. And in meeting
+these, if it can be done with fortitude and spirit that win the
+respect of westerners, it is indeed a reward.
+
+Next day, in defiance of a thing which never should be
+considered--luck--I took Haught's rifle again, and my lazy, sullen,
+intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George down into Horton
+Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of fresh air and
+beautiful scenery.
+
+We dismounted and tied our horses at the brook, and while Edd took
+the hounds up into the dense thicket where the bears made their beds,
+George and I followed a trail up the brook. In exactly ten minutes the
+hounds gave tongue. They ran up the thicket, which was favorable for
+us, and from their baying I judged the bear trail to be warm. In the
+dense forest we could not see five rods ahead. George averred that he
+did not care to have a big cinnamon or a grizzly come running down
+that black thicket. And as for myself I did not want one so very
+exceedingly much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me,
+which effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their
+baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased.
+"Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With this
+exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar. Most
+hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which direction
+the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, however, like Buffalo
+Jones' famous Don, or Scott Teague's Sampson or Haught's Old Dan,
+would grow suspicious of a scent that gradually cooled, and would
+eventually give it up. Young hounds would back-track game as far as
+possible.
+
+After waiting a while we returned to our horses, and presently Edd
+came back with the pack. "Big bear, but cold trail. Called them off,"
+was all he said. We mounted and rode across the mouth of Horton
+Thicket round to the juniper slopes, which I had occasion to remember.
+I even saw the pine tree which I had so ignominiously climbed. How we
+ridicule and scorn some of our perfectly natural actions--afterwards!
+Edd had brought three of the pups that day, two-year-olds as full of
+mischief as pups could be. They jumped a bunch of deer and chased them
+out on the hard red cedar covered ridges. We had a merry chase to head
+them off. Edd gave them a tongue-lashing and thrashing at one and the
+same time. I felt sorry for the pups. They had been so full of frolic
+and fight. How crestfallen they appeared after Edd got through!
+"Whaddaye mean," yelled Edd, in conclusion. "Chasin' deer!... Do you
+think you're a lot of rabbit dogs?" From the way the pups eyed Edd
+so sheepishly and adoringly, I made certain they understood him
+perfectly, and humbly confessed their error.
+
+Old Tom and Old Dan had not come down off the slopes with us after the
+pups. And upon our return both the old hounds began to bay deep and
+fast. With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off, apparently frantic to
+make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole pack was in full chorus.
+Edd and George spurred into the brush, yelling encouragement to the
+hounds. This day I managed to make my horse do a little of what I
+wanted. To keep in sight of the Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but
+I did not lose sound of them. This chase led us up slope and down
+slope, through the brush and pine thickets, over bare ridges and into
+gullies; and eventually out into the basin, where the hounds got
+beyond hearing.
+
+"One of them long, lean, hungry bears," remarked Edd. "He'd outrun any
+dogs."
+
+Leisurely then we turned to the three-hour ride back to camp. Hot sun
+in the open, cool wind in the shade, dry smells of the forest, green
+and red and orange and purple of the foliage--these rendered the hours
+pleasant for me. When I reached camp I found Romer in trouble. He had
+cut his hand with a forbidden hunting knife. As he told me about it
+his face was a study and his explanation was astounding. When he
+finished I said: "You mean then that my hunting knife walked out of
+its sheath on my belt and followed you around and cut you of its own
+accord?"
+
+"Aw, I--I--it--" he floundered.
+
+Whereupon I lectured him about forbidden things and untruthfulness.
+His reply was: "But, Dad, it hurts like sixty. Won't you put somethin'
+on it?"
+
+I dressed and bandaged the trifling cut for him, telling him the while
+how little Indian boys, when cut or kicked or bruised, never showed
+that they were hurt. "Huh!" he grunted. "Guess there's no Indian in
+me.... I must take after mother!"
+
+That afternoon and night the hounds straggled in, Old Tom and Dan
+first, and then the others, one by one, fagged-out and foot-sore. Next
+morning, however, they appeared none the worse for their long chase.
+We went again to Horton Thicket to rout out a bear.
+
+This time I remained on top of the rim with R.C. and Nielsen; and we
+took up a stand across the canyon, near where my first stand had
+been. Here we idled the hours away waiting for the hounds to start
+something. While walking along the rim I happened to look across the
+big cove that cut into the promontory, and way on the other slope what
+did I espy but a black bear. He appeared to be very small, or merely a
+cub. Running back to R.C. and Nielsen I told them, and we all took up
+our rifles. It occurred to me that the distance across this cove was
+too far for accurate shooting, but it never occurred to me to jump on
+my horse and ride around the head of the cove.
+
+"He's not scared. Let's watch him," suggested R.C.
+
+[Illustration: WILD TURKEYS]
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS]
+
+We saw this bear walk along, poke around, dig into the ground, go behind
+trees, come out again, and finally stand up on his hind feet and
+apparently reach for berries or something on a bush. R.C. bethought
+himself of his field-glass. After one look he exclaimed: "Say, fellows,
+he's a whopper of a bear! He'll weigh five hundred pounds. Just take a
+look at him!"
+
+My turn with the glasses revealed to me that what I had imagined to be
+a cub was indeed a big bear. After Nielsen looked he said: "Never saw
+one so big in Norway."
+
+"Well, look at that black scoundrel!" exclaimed R.C. "Standing up!
+Looking around! Wagging his head!... Say, you saw him first. Suppose
+you take some pegs at him."
+
+"Wish Romer were here. I'd let him shoot at that bear," I replied.
+Then I got down on my knee, and aiming as closely as possible I fired.
+The report rang out in the stillness, making hollow echoes. We heard
+the bullet pat somewhere. So did the bear hear it. Curiously he looked
+around, as if something had struck near him. But scared he certainly
+was not. Then I shot four times in quick succession.
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" ejaculated R.C. "He heard the bullets hit and
+wonders what the dickens.... Say, now he hears the reports! Look at
+him stand!"
+
+"Boys, smoke him up," I said, after the manner of Haught's vernacular.
+So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot. We had more fun
+out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us. Then he began to
+run, choosing the open slope by which he had come. I got five more
+shots at him as he crossed this space, and the last bullet puffed
+up dust under him, making him take a header down the slope into
+the thicket. Whereupon we all had a good laugh. Nielsen appeared
+particularly pleased over his first shots at a real live bear.
+
+"Say, why didn't you think to ride round there?" queried R.C.
+thoughtfully. "He didn't see us. He wasn't scared. In a few minutes
+you could have been on the rim of that slope right over him. Got him
+sure!"
+
+"R.C. why didn't you think to tell me to do that?" I retorted. "Why
+don't we ever think the right thing before it is too late?"
+
+"That's our last chance this year--I feel it in my bones," declared
+R.C. mournfully.
+
+His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at camp we
+heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught's had taken the
+trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic of influenza. The
+strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages,
+the cow-camps, the mines--everywhere. At first I thought Haught's
+informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the
+Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty
+people had succumbed in a few weeks--then I was thoroughly alarmed.
+Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it
+instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle was relieved
+and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The Haughts, naturally,
+were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the next thing was to
+consider which way to travel. The long ten-day trip down into the
+basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim again, and so on to
+Flagstaff was not to be considered at all. The roads by way of Winslow
+and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle wanted to attempt the old army
+road along the rim made by General Crook when he moved the captured
+Apaches to the reservation assigned to them. No travel over this road
+for many years! Haught looked dubious, but finally said we could chop
+our way through thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The
+matter of decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not
+easy to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been
+for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What made
+me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles or more
+along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I told Nielsen
+that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like a cowboy: "We'll
+go a-hummin'," he said. Nielsen shrugged his brawny shoulders. What
+were obstacles to this man of the desert? I realized that his look had
+decided me.
+
+"All right, men, we'll try the old Crook road," I said. "Pack what you
+can up to the wagon to-day, and to-morrow early we'll break camp."
+
+I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to theirs,
+where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of this hunting
+trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no horse, no blankets,
+no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of food supplies, and no good
+luck, except the wonderful good luck of being well, of seeing a
+magnificent country, of meeting some more fine westerners. But the
+Haughts appeared a little slow to grasp, or at least to credit my
+philosophy. We were just beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was
+that they had been unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and
+some turkeys. Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with
+many sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and
+would not want to come again.
+
+"See here, Haught," I said. "I've had a fine time. Now forget about
+this hunt. It's past. We'll plan another. Will you save next fall for
+me?"
+
+"I shore will," he replied.
+
+"Very well, then, it's settled. Say by August you and the boys cut
+a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I'll send you money in
+advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and outfit. I'll
+leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you here September
+twenty-first, along about noon."
+
+We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts laughed
+at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I heard Edd
+remark: "Not a kick!... Meet him next year at noon! What do you know
+about thet?" This remark proved that he had paid me a compliment in
+eastern slang most likely assimilated from R.C. and Romer.
+
+The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and next
+morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh, spirited,
+and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because of some
+surreptitious trick of Romer's. But by noon we had all the outfit
+packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff, and the long,
+rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most auspicious start. I
+hoped that it augured well for us, but while I hoped I had a gloomy
+foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and his son George. Edd offered
+to go with us as far as he knew the country, which distance was not
+many miles. So we set out upon our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses
+in front of the lumbering wagon.
+
+We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest along the
+rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill grade that the
+bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied on. When we came to a
+long slow slant uphill, a road of loose rocks, we made about one mile
+an hour. This slow travel worked havoc upon my mind. I wanted to
+hurry. I wanted to get out of the wilds. That awful rumor about
+influenza occupied my mind and struck cold fear into my heart. What
+of my family? No making the best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset
+overtook us at a rocky ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos
+on saddle horses in front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we
+overcame that obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we
+encountered about twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him,
+whipping him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other
+horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still
+miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had to
+camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun--it should have
+been fine for me--but my gloomy obsession to hurry obscured my mind.
+I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy, after that long, hard day,
+quickly and efficiently cooking a good hot supper. Romer had enjoyed
+the day. He said he was tired, but would like to stay up beside the
+mighty camp-fire Nielsen built. I had neither energy or spirit to
+oppose him. The night was dark and cold and windy; the fire felt so
+good that I almost went asleep beside it. We had no time to put up
+tents. I made our bed, crawled into it, stretched out with infinite
+relief; and the last thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in
+beside me.
+
+Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to stir to
+get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the horses were gone;
+we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not appear worried. I groaned in
+spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed me. Lee sallied out with his yellow
+dog Pups. I had forgotten the good quality of Pups, but not my dislike
+for him. He barked vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I
+helped Edd and Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then
+Doyle called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we
+heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not believe
+my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they appeared,
+driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his head off. We all
+jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off the horses, and soon
+had them secured. Not one missing! I asked Lee how in the world he had
+found that wild bunch in less than an hour. Lee laughed. "Pups. He
+rounded them up in no time."
+
+Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick myself,
+but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat. I reproached
+myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been deceived in
+the surface appearance of people and things and dogs! Most of our
+judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.
+
+By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle--the little hill at
+which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and full of grain, he
+balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled the teams. Lee had more
+patience than I would have had. He unhitched the lead team and in
+place of the sorrel put a saddle horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried
+again and surmounted the hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead
+over as rocky and rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time
+we could see over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim
+appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly
+rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw
+deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any
+thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell
+and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country
+ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no
+urgent need of him.
+
+We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle
+horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of
+us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and
+took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident
+happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses,
+having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden
+return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either
+could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day,
+a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to
+the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have
+been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear
+down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it
+brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him! He was
+alive! He stood up--like this--wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!"
+
+Our next day's progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling along,
+unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up and down the
+interminable length of three almost impassable miles. When night
+overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No grass, no water! A cold
+gale blew out of the west. It roared through the forest. It blew
+everything loose away in the darkness. It almost blew us away in our
+beds. The stars appeared radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue
+windy vault of the sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows
+crossed the weird moon-blanched forest glades.
+
+At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen, mostly
+silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice. Suddenly some
+one discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact filled me with
+consternation and alarm. He might have walked in his sleep and fallen
+over the rim. What had become of him? All his outfit lay scattered
+round in his bed. In my bewilderment I imagined many things, even to
+the extreme that he might have left us in the lurch. But when I got to
+that sad pass of mind I suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream.
+My worry, my hurry had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to
+meet this situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I
+went out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities,
+and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand. That
+instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and reproached myself.
+
+Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand over the
+camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.
+
+"Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn't sleep. I got to
+thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out what was
+ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright moonlight. I
+walked all the rest of the night. And that's all, sir."
+
+I liked Nielsen's looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the
+Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to
+achievement. Such men could not be defeated.
+
+"Well, what did you find out?" I inquired.
+
+"Change of conditions, sir," he replied, as a mate to his captain.
+"Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we'll have to cut
+through thickets and logs. From here on the road is all grown over.
+About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge."
+
+That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I thanked
+Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The packing and
+carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated himself into my
+affections. He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me.
+We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the
+wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and
+R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road. Soon we were halted by
+thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the
+base. The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the
+reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our
+heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore
+rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny
+Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big
+axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had
+to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his
+mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the
+road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that day nor the next
+would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and
+obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.
+
+At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending
+hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together to pull the
+wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and
+men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside Romer. Nielsen and R.C.
+were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon. As I turned the
+sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the
+road.
+
+"Look out! Stop!" I yelled, looking back.
+
+But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily
+laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle's face turn
+white--heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the side. Romer was
+slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off the road. My heart
+sank sick within me! Surely he would be run down. As his pony Rye
+jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off
+side, struck him a glancing blow. Then the big team hurdled the log,
+the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and
+Doyle was thrown from his seat.
+
+Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The bay
+horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away. Nielsen cut
+and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came tearing down to
+grasp and hold the black.
+
+Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not know
+what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact convinced me
+of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled the log made
+any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When finally it was
+extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut in the breast made
+by a snag on the log. We could find no damage done to the wagon. The
+harness Nielsen had cut could be mended quickly. What a fortunate
+outcome to what had seemed a very grave accident! I was thankful
+indeed. But not soon would I forget sight of Romer in front of that
+plunging wagon.
+
+With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of the road,
+and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I dropped back
+and asked Doyle if he was all right. "Fine as a fiddle," he shouted.
+"This's play to what we teamsters had in the early days." And verily
+somehow I could see the truth of that. A mile farther on we made camp;
+and all of us were hungry, weary, and quiet.
+
+Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next morning
+he crawled out before any one else, and his call was cheery. I was
+scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was ashamed to lie there
+an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my eyesight was dulled by
+exhaustion when it caused me to see myself as a worn, unshaven,
+wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out with his usual alacrity.
+R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get up on all fours.
+
+We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to work and
+waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail it seemed, we
+chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that old Crook road. Not
+since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in Mexico had I labored so
+strenuously.
+
+At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed road Doyle
+had some vague knowledge of. "It must lead to Jones' ranch," Doyle
+kept saying. "Anyway, we've got to take it." North was our direction.
+And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness, the road down this ridge
+proved to be a highway compared to what we had passed. In the open
+forest we had to follow it altogether by the blazes on the trees. But
+with all our eyes alert that was easy. The grade was down hill, so
+that we traveled fast, covering four miles an hour. Occasionally a
+log or thicket halted rapid progress. Toward the end of the afternoon
+sheep and cattle trails joined the now well-defined road, and we knew
+we were approaching a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile,
+for the very good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of
+my horse. The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer
+thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep barren-looking
+canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old ruined log-cabins.
+Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold milk. For hours they
+had haunted me. When Doyle saw the broken-down cabins and corrals he
+yelled: "Boys, it's Jones' Ranch. I've been here. We're only three
+miles from Long Valley and the main road!"
+
+Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to look
+for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses had not
+slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up and down the
+canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water. Thereupon with immense
+relief and joy we pitched camp near the cabins, forgetting our aches
+and pains in the certainty of deliverance.
+
+What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We unpacked
+only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled around the
+camp-fire we waited upon Doyle's cooking. The old pioneer talked while
+he worked.
+
+"Jones' ranch!--I knew Jones in the early days. And I've heard of him
+lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner down into this
+canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and he had a gun, an
+axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and not much else. He built
+him that cabin there and began the real old pioneering of the early
+days. He raised cattle. He freighted to the settlements twice a year.
+In twenty-five years he had three strapping boys and a girl just as
+strapping. And he had a fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and
+left this ranch. He wanted to give his faithful wife and his children
+some of the comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The
+war came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army.
+I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man's first boy. Abe was a
+quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a sergeant
+asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: 'Nope, not much.' So they gave
+him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near target. Abe looked at
+it sort of funny like and he picked out the farthest target at one
+thousand yards. And he hit the bull's eye ten times straight running.
+'Hey!' gasped the sergeant, 'you long, lanky galoot! You said you
+couldn't shoot.' Abe sort of laughed. 'Reckon I was thinkin' about
+what Dad called shootin'.'... Well, Abe and his brothers got to France
+to the front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both
+his brothers were wounded. They're over there yet.... I met a man not
+long ago who'd seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he and
+his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means right
+here--Jones' Ranch!"
+
+Doyle's story affected me profoundly. What a theme for a novel! I
+walked away from the camp-fire into the dark, lonely, melancholy
+Arizona night. The ruined cabins, the broken-down corrals, the stone
+fence, the wash where water ran at wet season--all had subtly changed
+for me. Leaning in the doorway of the one-room cabin that had been
+home for these Joneses I was stirred to my depths. Their spirits
+abided in that lonely hut. At least I felt something there--something
+strange, great, simple, inevitable, tragic as life itself. Yet what
+could have been more beautiful, more splendid than the life of Jones,
+and his wife, and daughter, and sons, especially Abe? Abe Jones! The
+name haunted me. In one clear divining flash I saw the life of the
+lad. I yearned with tremendous passion for the power to tell the
+simplicity, the ruggedness, the pathos and the glory of his story.
+The moan of wind in the pines seemed a requiem for the boy who had
+prattled and romped and played under them, who had chopped and shot
+and rode under them. Into his manhood had gone something of their
+strength and nature.
+
+We sought our beds early. The night down in that deep, open canyon was
+the coldest we had experienced. I slept but little. At dawn all was
+hoar-white with frost. It crackled under foot. The air had a stinging
+bite. Yet how sweet, pure, cold to breathe!
+
+Doyle's cheery: "Come and get it," was welcome call to breakfast. Lee
+and Pups drove the horses into one of the old corrals. In an hour,
+while the frost was yet hard and white, we were ready to start. Then
+Doyle somewhat chilled our hopes: "Twenty years ago there was a bad
+road out of here. Maybe one's been made since."
+
+But one had not been made. And the old road had not been used for
+years. Right at the outset we struck a long, steep, winding, rocky
+road. We got stalled at the very foot of it. More toil! Unloading the
+wagon we packed on our saddles the whole load more than a mile up this
+last and crowning obstacle. Then it took all the horses together to
+pull the empty wagon up to a level. By that time sunset had overtaken
+us. Where had the hours gone? Nine hours to go one mile! But there had
+to be an end to our agonies. By twilight we trotted down into Long
+Valley, and crossed the main road to camp in a grove we remembered
+well. We partook of a meagre supper, but we were happy. And bed that
+night on a thick layer of soft pine needles, in a spot protected from
+the cold wind, was immensely comfortable.
+
+Lee woke the crowd next morning. "All rustle," he yelled. "Thirty-five
+miles to Mormon Lake. Good road. We'll camp there to-night."
+
+How strange that the eagerness to get home now could only be compared
+to the wild desire for the woods a few weeks back! We made an early
+start. The team horses knew that road. They knew they were now on the
+way home. What difference that made! Jaded as they were they trotted
+along with a briskness never seen before on that trip. It began to be
+a job for us to keep up with Lee, who was on the wagon. Unless a rider
+is accustomed to horseback almost all of the time a continuous trot on
+a hard road will soon stove him up. My horse had an atrocious trot.
+Time and again I had to fall behind to a walk and then lope ahead
+to catch up. I welcomed the hills that necessitated Lee walking the
+teams.
+
+At noon we halted in a grassy grove for an hour's rest. That seemed
+a precious hour, but to start again was painful. I noticed that
+Romer-boy no longer rode out far in front, nor did he chase squirrels
+with Pups. He sagged, twisted and turned, and lolled in his saddle.
+Thereafter I tried to keep close to him. But that was not easy, for
+he suspected me of seeing how tired he was, and kept away from me.
+Thereafter I took to spying upon him from some distance behind. We
+trotted and walked, trotted and walked the long miles. Arizona miles
+were twice as long as ordinary properly measured miles. An event of
+the afternoon was to meet some Mexican sheepherders, driving a flock
+south. Nielsen got some fresh mutton from them. Toward sunset I caught
+Romer hanging over his saddle. Then I rode up to him. "Son, are you
+tired?" I asked. "Oh, Dad, I sure am, but I'm going to ride Rye to
+Mormon Lake." I believed he would accomplish it. His saddle slipped,
+letting him down. I saw him fall. When he made no effort to get up I
+was frightened. Rye stood perfectly still over him. I leaped off and
+ran to the lad. He had hit his head on a stone, drawing the blood, and
+appeared to be stunned. I lifted him, holding him up, while somebody
+got some water. We bathed his face and washed off the blood. Presently
+he revived, and smiled at me, and staggered out of my hold.
+
+"Helluva note that saddle slipped!" he complained. Manifestly he had
+acquired some of Joe Isbel's strong language. Possibly he might have
+acquired some other of the cowboy's traits, for he asked to have his
+saddle straightened and to be put on his horse. I had misgivings, but
+I could not resist him then. I lifted him upon Rye. Once more our
+cavalcade got under way.
+
+Sunset, twilight, night came as we trotted on and on. We faced a cold
+wind. The forest was black, gloomy, full of shadows. Lee gave us all
+we could do to keep up with him. At eight o'clock, two hours after
+dark, we reached the southern end of Mormon Lake. A gale, cold as ice,
+blew off the water from the north. Half a dozen huge pine trees stood
+on the only level ground near at hand. "Nielsen, fire--pronto!" I
+yelled. "Aye, sir," he shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with
+hurry and bustle to get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my
+tingling fingers, and press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few
+minutes before I thought of Romer.
+
+Nielsen had started a fire, that blazed and roared with burning pine
+needles. The blaze blew low, almost on a level with the ground, and a
+stream of red sparks flew off into the woods. I was afraid of forest
+fire. But what a welcome sight that golden flame! It lighted up a wide
+space, showing the huge pines, gloom-encircled, and a pale glimmer of
+the lake beyond. The fragrance of burning pine greeted my nostrils.
+
+Dragging my bags I hurried toward the fire. Nielsen was building a
+barricade of rocks to block the flying sparks. Suddenly I espied
+Romer. He sat on a log close to the blaze. His position struck me as
+singular, so I dropped my burdens and went to him. He had on a heavy
+coat over sweater and under coat, which made him resemble a little old
+man. His sombrero was slouched down sidewise, his gloved hands were
+folded across his knees, his body sagged a little to one side, his
+head drooped. He was asleep. I got around so I could see his face
+in the firelight. Pale, weary, a little sad, very youthful and yet
+determined! A bloody bruise showed over his temple. He had said he
+would ride all the way to Mormon Lake and he had done it. Never, never
+will that picture fade from my memory! Dear, brave, wild, little lad!
+He had made for me a magnificent success of this fruitless hunting
+trip. I hoped and prayed then that when he grew to man's estate, and
+faced the long rides down the hard roads of life, he would meet them
+and achieve them as he had the weary thirty-five Arizona miles from
+Long Valley to Mormon Lake.
+
+[Illustration: SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE RIM]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK]
+
+Mutton tasted good that night around our camp-fire; and Romer ate a
+generous portion. A ranger from the station near there visited us, and
+two young ranchers, who told us that the influenza epidemic was waning.
+This was news to be thankful for. Moreover, I hired the two ranchers to
+hurry us by auto to Flagstaff on the morrow. So right there at Mormon
+Lake ended our privations.
+
+Under one of the huge pines I scraped up a pile of needles, made
+Romer's bed in it, heated a blanket and wrapped him in it. Almost he
+was asleep when he said: "Some ride, Dad--Good-night."
+
+Later, beside him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks fly, and
+the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face, listening to the
+crackle of the fire and the roar of the gale.
+
+
+IV
+
+Eventually R.C. and Romer and I arrived in Los Angeles to find all
+well with our people, which fact was indeed something to rejoice over.
+Hardly had this 1918 trip ended before I began to plan for that of
+1919. But I did not realize how much in earnest I was until I received
+word that both Lee Doyle in Flagstaff and Nielsen in San Pedro were
+very ill with influenza. Lee all but died, and Nielsen, afterward,
+told me he would rather die than have the "flu" again. To my great
+relief, however, they recovered.
+
+From that time then it pleased me to begin to plan for my 1919 hunting
+trip. I can never do anything reasonably. I always overdo everything.
+But what happiness I derive from anticipation! When I am not working
+I live in dreams, partly of the past, but mostly of the future. A man
+should live only in the present.
+
+I gave Lee instructions to go about in his own way buying teams,
+saddle horses, and wagons. For Christmas I sent him a .35 Remington
+rifle. Mr. Haught got instructions to add some new dogs to his pack. I
+sent Edd also a .35 Remington, and made Nielsen presents of two guns.
+In January Nielsen and I went to Picacho, on the lower Colorado river,
+and then north to Death Valley. So that I kept in touch with these men
+and did not allow their enthusiasm to wane. For myself and R.C. I had
+the fun of ordering tents and woolen blankets, and everything that we
+did not have on our 1918 trip. But owing to the war it was difficult
+to obtain goods of any description. To make sure of getting a .30
+Gov't Winchester I ordered from four different firms, including the
+Winchester Co. None of them had such a rifle in stock, but all would
+try to find one. The upshot of this deal was that, when after months I
+despaired of getting any, they all sent me a rifle at the same time.
+So I found myself with four, all the same caliber of course, but of
+different style and finish. When I saw them and thought of the
+Haughts I had to laugh. One was beautifully engraved, and inlaid with
+gold--the most elaborate .30 Gov't the Winchester people had ever
+built. Another was a walnut-stocked, shot-gun butted, fancy checkered
+take-down. This one I presented to R.C. The third was a plain ordinary
+rifle with solid frame. And the last was a carbine model, which I gave
+to Nielsen.
+
+During the summer at Avalon I used to take the solid frame rifle, and
+climb the hills to practice on targets. At Clemente Island I used to
+shoot at the ravens. I had a grudge against ravens there for picking
+the eyes out of newly born lambs. At five hundred yards a raven was in
+danger from me. I could make one jump at even a thousand yards. These
+.30 Gov't 1906 rifles with 150-grain bullet are the most wonderful
+shooting arms I ever tried. I became expert at inanimate targets.
+
+From time to time I heard encouraging news from Lee about horses. Edd
+wrote me about lion tracks in the snow, and lynx up cedar trees, and
+gobblers four feet high, and that there was sure to be a good crop
+of acorns, and therefore some bears. He told me about a big grizzly
+cow-killer being chased and shot in Chevelon Canyon. News about
+hounds, however, was slow in coming. Dogs were difficult to find.
+At length Haught wrote me that he had secured two; and in this same
+letter he said the boys were cutting trails down under the rim.
+
+Everything pertaining to my cherished plans appeared to be turning
+out well. But during this time I spent five months at hard work and
+intense emotional strain, writing the longest novel I ever attempted;
+and I over-taxed my endurance. By the middle of June, when I finished,
+I was tired out. That would not have mattered if I had not hurt my
+back in an eleven-hour fight with a giant broadbill swordfish. This
+strain kept me from getting in my usual physical trim. I could not
+climb the hills, or exert myself. Swimming hurt me more than anything.
+So I had to be careful and wait until my back slowly got better. By
+September it had improved, but not enough to make me feel any thrills
+over horseback riding. It seemed to me that I would be compelled to
+go ahead and actually work the pain out of my back, an ordeal through
+which I had passed before, and surely dreaded.
+
+During the summer I had purchased a famous chestnut sorrel horse named
+Don Carlos. He was much in demand among the motion-picture companies
+doing western plays; and was really too fine and splendid a horse to
+be put to the risks common to the movies. I saw him first at Palm
+Springs, down in southern California, where my book _Desert Gold_ was
+being made into a motion-picture. Don would not have failed to strike
+any one as being a wonderful horse. He was tremendously high and rangy
+and powerful in build, yet graceful withal, a sleek, shiny chestnut
+red in color, with fine legs, broad chest, and a magnificent head. I
+rode him only once before I bought him, and that was before I hurt my
+back. His stride was what one would expect from sight of him; his trot
+seemed to tear me to pieces; his spirit was such that he wanted to
+prance all the time. But in spite of his spirit he was a pet. And
+how he could run! Nielsen took Don to Flagstaff by express. And when
+Nielsen wrote me he said all of Flagstaff came down to the station to
+see the famous Don Carlos. The car in which he had traveled was backed
+alongside a platform. Don refused to step on the boards they placed
+from platform to car. He did not trust them. Don's intelligence had
+been sharpened by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to
+lead, to coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would
+not go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to plunge
+and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd like quail.
+
+The day before my departure from Los Angeles was almost as terrible an
+ordeal as I anticipated would be my first day's ride on Don Carlos.
+And this ordeal consisted of listening to Romer's passionate appeals
+and importunities to let him go on the hunt. My only defence was that
+he must not be taken from school. School forsooth! He was way ahead of
+his class. If he got behind he could make it up. I talked and argued.
+Once he lost his temper, a rare thing with him, and said he would run
+away from school, ride on a freight train to Flagstaff, steal a horse
+and track me to my camp. I could not say very much in reply to this
+threat, because I remembered that I had made worse to my father, and
+carried it out. I had to talk sense to Romer. Often we had spoken of
+a wonderful hunt in Africa some day, when he was old enough; and I
+happened upon a good argument. I said: "You'll miss a year out of
+school then. It won't be so very long. Don't you think you ought to
+stay in school faithfully now?" So in the end I got away from him,
+victorious, though not wholly happy. The truth was I wanted him to go.
+
+My Jap cook Takahashi met me in Flagstaff. He was a very short, very
+broad, very muscular little fellow with a brown, strong face, more
+pleasant than usually seen in Orientals. Secretly I had made sure that
+in Takahashi I had discovered a treasure, but I was careful to conceal
+this conviction from R.C., the Doyles, and Nielsen. They were glad to
+see him with us, but they manifestly did not expect wonders.
+
+How brief the span of a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again outfitting
+for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived that old haunting
+thought about the shortness of life. But in spite of that or perhaps
+more because of it the pleasure was all the keener. In truth the only
+drawback to this start was the absence of Romer, and my poor physical
+condition. R.C. appeared to be in fine fettle.
+
+But I was not well. In the mornings I could scarcely arise, and when
+I did so I could hardly straighten myself. More than once I grew
+doubtful of my strength to undertake such a hard trip. This doubt I
+fought fiercely, for I knew that the right thing for me to do was
+to go--to stand the pain and hardship--to toil along until my old
+strength and elasticity returned. What an opportunity to try out my
+favorite theory! For I believed that labor and pain were good for
+mankind--that strenuous life in the open would cure any bodily ill.
+
+On September fourteenth Edd and George drifted into Flagstaff to join
+us, and their report of game and water and grass and acorns was so
+favorable that I would have gone if I had been unable to ride on
+anything but a wagon.
+
+
+We got away on September fifteenth at two-thirty o'clock with such an
+outfit as I had never had in all my many trips put together. We had a
+string of saddle horses besides those the men rode. They were surely a
+spirited bunch; and that first day it was indeed a job to keep them with
+us. Out of sheer defiance with myself I started on Don Carlos. He was no
+trouble, except that it took all my strength to hold him in. He tossed
+his head, champed his bit, and pranced sideways along the streets of
+Flagstaff, manifestly to show off his brand new black Mexican saddle,
+with silver trappings and tapaderos. I was sure that he did not do that
+to show me off. But Don liked to dance and prance along before a crowd,
+a habit that he had acquired with the motion pictures.
+
+Lee and Nielsen and George had their difficulties driving the free
+horses. Takahashi rode a little buckskin Navajo mustang. An evidence of
+how extremely short the Jap's legs were made itself plain in the fact
+that stirrups could not be fixed so he could reach them with his feet.
+When he used any support at all he stuck his feet through the straps
+above the stirrups. How funny his squat, broad figure looked in a
+saddle! Evidently he was not accustomed to horses. When I saw the
+mustang roll the white of his eyes and glance back at Takahashi then I
+knew something would happen sooner or later.
+
+Nineteen miles on Don Carlos reduced me to a miserable aching specimen
+of manhood. But what made me endure and go on and finish to camp was the
+strange fact that the longer I rode the less my back pained. Other parts
+of my anatomy, however, grew sorer as we progressed. Don Carlos pleased
+me immensely, only I feared he was too much horse for me. A Mormon
+friend of mine, an Indian trader, looked Don over in Flagstaff, and
+pronounced him: "Shore one grand hoss!" This man had broken many wild
+horses, and his compliment pleased me. All the same the nineteen miles
+on Don hurt my vanity almost as much as my body.
+
+We camped in a cedar pasture off the main road. This road was a new one
+for us to take to our hunting grounds. I was too bunged up to help
+Nielsen pitch our tent. In fact when I sat down I was anchored. Still I
+could use my eyes, and that made life worth living. Sunset was a
+gorgeous spectacle. The San Francisco Peaks were shrouded in purple
+storm-clouds, and the west was all gold and silver, with low clouds
+rimmed in red. This sunset ended in a great flare of dull magenta with a
+background of purple.
+
+That evening was the try-out of our new chuck-box and chef. I had
+supplied the men with their own outfit and supplies, to do with as they
+liked, an arrangement I found to be most satisfactory. Takahashi was to
+take care of R.C. and me. In less than half an hour from the time the
+Jap lighted a fire he served the best supper I ever had in camp
+anywhere. R.C. lauded him to the skies. And I began to think I could
+unburden myself of my conviction.
+
+I did not awaken to the old zest and thrill of the open. Something was
+wrong with me. The sunset, the camp-fire, the dark clear night with its
+trains of stars, the distant yelp of coyotes--these seemed less to me
+than what I had hoped for. My feelings were locked round my discomfort
+and pain.
+
+About noon next day we rode out of the cedars into the open desert--a
+rolling, level land covered with fine grass, and yellow daisies, Indian
+paint brush, and a golden flowering weed. This luxuriance attested to
+the copious and recent rains. They had been a boon to dry Arizona. No
+sage showed or greasewood, and very few rocks. The sun burned hot. I
+gazed out at the desert, and the cloud pageant in the sky, trying hard
+to forget myself, and to see what I knew was there for me. Rolling
+columnar white and cream clouds, majestic and beautiful, formed storms
+off on the horizon. Sunset on the open desert that afternoon was
+singularly characteristic of Arizona--purple and gold and red, with long
+lanes of blue between the colored cloud banks.
+
+We made camp at Meteor Crater, one of the many wonders of this
+wonderland. It was a huge hole in the earth over five hundred feet deep,
+said to have been made by a meteor burying itself there. Seen from the
+outside the slope was gradual up to the edges, which were scalloped and
+irregular; on the inside the walls were precipitous. Our camp was on the
+windy desert, a long sweeping range of grass, sloping down, dotted with
+cattle, with buttes and mountains in the distance. Most of my sensations
+of the day partook of the nature of woe.
+
+September seventeenth bade fair to be my worst day--at least I did not
+see how any other could ever be so bad. Glaring hot sun--reflected heat
+from I the bare road--dust and sand and wind! Particularly hard on me
+were what the Arizonians called dust-devils, whirlwinds of sand. On and
+off I walked a good many miles, the latter of which I hobbled. Don
+Carlos did not know what to make of this. He eyed me, and nosed me, and
+tossed his head as if to say I was a strange rider for him. Like my
+mustang, Night, he would not stand to be mounted. When I touched the
+stirrup that was a signal to go. He had been trained to it. As he was
+nearly seventeen hands high, and as I could not get my foot in the
+stirrup from level ground, to mount him in my condition seemed little
+less than terrible. I always held back out of sight when I attempted
+this. Many times I failed. Once I fell flat and lay a moment in the
+dust. Don Carlos looked down upon me in a way I imagined was
+sympathetic. At least he bent his noble head and smelled at me. I
+scrambled to my feet, led him round into a low place, and drawing a deep
+breath, and nerving myself to endure the pain like a stab, I got into
+the saddle again.
+
+Two things sustained me in this ordeal, which was the crudest horseback
+ride I ever had--first, the conviction that I could cure my ills by
+enduring the agony of violent action, of hot sun, of hard bed; and
+secondly, the knowledge that after it was all over the remembrance of
+hardship and achievement would be singularly sweet. So it had been in
+the case of the five days on the old Crook road in 1918, when extreme
+worry and tremendous exertion had made the hours hideous. So it had been
+with other arduous and poignant experiences. A poet said that the crown
+of sorrow was in remembering happier times: I believed that there was a
+great deal of happiness in remembering times of stress, of despair, of
+extreme and hazardous effort. Anyway, without these two feelings in my
+mind I would have given up riding Don Carlos that day, and have
+abandoned the trip.
+
+We covered twenty-two miles by sundown, a rather poor day's showing; and
+camped on the bare flat desert, using water and wood we had packed with
+us. The last thing I remembered, as my eyes closed heavily, was what a
+blessing it was to rest and to sleep.
+
+Next day we sheered off to the southward, heading toward Chevelon Butte,
+a black cedared mountain, rising lone out of the desert, thirty miles
+away. We crossed two streams bank full of water, a circumstance I never
+before saw in Arizona. Everywhere too the grass was high. We climbed
+gradually all day, everybody sunburned and weary, the horses settling
+down to save themselves; and we camped high up on the desert plateau,
+six thousand feet above sea level, where it was windy, cool, and
+fragrant with sage and cedar. Except the first few, the hours of this
+day each marked a little less torture for me; but at that I fell off
+Don Carlos when we halted. And I was not able to do my share of the camp
+work. R.C. was not as spry and chipper as I had seen him, a fact from
+which I gathered infinite consolation. Misery loves company.
+
+A storm threatened. All the west was purple under on-coming purple
+clouds. At sight of this something strange and subtle, yet familiar,
+revived in me. It made me feel a little more like the self I thought I
+knew. So I watched the lightning flare and string along the horizon.
+Some time in the night thunder awakened me. The imminence of a severe
+storm forced us to roll out and look after the tent. What a pitch black
+night! Down through the murky, weird blackness shot a wonderful zigzag
+rope of lightning, blue-white, dazzling; and it disintegrated, leaving
+segments of fire in the air. All this showed in a swift flash--then we
+were absolutely blind. I could not see for several moments. It rained a
+little. Only the edge of the storm touched us. Thunder rolled and boomed
+along the battlements, deep and rumbling and detonating.
+
+No dust or heat next morning! The desert floor appeared clean and damp,
+with fresh gray sage and shining bunches of cedar. We climbed into the
+high cedars, and then to the pinons, and then to the junipers and pines.
+Climbing so out of desert to forestland was a gradual and accumulating
+joy to me. What contrast in vegetation, in air, in color! Still the
+forest consisted of small trees. Not until next day did we climb farther
+to the deepening, darkening forest, and at last to the silver spruce.
+That camp, the fifth night out, was beside a lake of surface water,
+where we had our first big camp-fire.
+
+September twenty-first and ten miles from Beaver Dam Canyon, where a
+year before I had planned to meet Haught this day and date at noon! I
+could make that appointment, saddle-sore and weary as I was, but I
+doubted we could get the wagons there. The forest ground was soft. All
+the little swales were full of water. How pleasant, how welcome, how
+beautiful and lonely the wild forestland! We made advance slowly. It was
+afternoon by the time we reached the rim road, and four o'clock when we
+halted at the exact spot where we had left our wagon the year before.
+
+Lee determined to drive the wagons down over the rocky benches into
+Beaver Dam Canyon; and to that end he and the men began to cut pines,
+drag logs, and roll stones.
+
+R.C. and I rode down through the forest, crossing half a dozen swift
+little streams of amber water, where a year before all had been dry as
+tinder. We found Haught's camp in a grove of yellowing aspens. Haught
+was there to meet us. He had not changed any more than the rugged pine
+tree under which a year past we had made our agreement. He wore the same
+blue shirt and the old black sombrero.
+
+"Hello Haught," was my greeting, as I dismounted and pulled out my
+watch. "I'm four hours and a quarter late. Sorry. I could have made it,
+but didn't want to leave the wagons."
+
+"Wal, wal, I shore am glad to see you," he replied, with a keen flash in
+his hazel eyes and a smile on his craggy face. "I reckoned you'd make
+it. How are you? Look sort of fagged."
+
+"Just about all in, Haught," I replied, as we shook hands.
+
+Then Copple appeared, swaggering out of the aspens. He was the man I met
+in Payson and who so kindly had made me take his rifle. I had engaged
+him also for this hunt. A brawny man he was, with powerful shoulders,
+swarthy-skinned, and dark-eyed, looking indeed the Indian blood he
+claimed.
+
+"Wouldn't have recognized you anywhere's else," he said.
+
+These keen-eyed outdoor men at a glance saw the havoc work and pain had
+played with me. They were solicitous, and when I explained my condition
+they made light of that, and showed relief that I was not ill. "Saw wood
+an' rustle around," said Haught. And Copple said: "He needs venison an'
+bear meat."
+
+They rode back with us up to the wagons. Copple had been a freighter. He
+picked out a way to drive down into the canyon. So rough and steep it
+was that I did not believe driving down would be possible. But with axes
+and pick and shovel, and a heaving of rocks, they worked a road that Lee
+drove down. Some places were almost straight down. But the ground was
+soft, hoofs and wheels sank deeply, and though one wagon lurched almost
+over, and the heavily laden chuck-wagon almost hurdled the team, Lee
+made the bad places without accident. Two hours after our arrival, such
+was the labor of many strong hands, we reached our old camp ground. One
+thing was certain, however, and that was we would never get back up the
+way we came down.
+
+Except for a luxuriance of grass and ferns, and two babbling streams of
+water, our old camp ground had not changed. I sat down with mingled
+emotions. How familiarly beautiful and lonely this canyon glade! The
+great pines and spruces looked down upon me with a benediction. How
+serene, passionless, strong they seemed! It was only men who changed in
+brief time. The long year of worry and dread and toil and pain had
+passed. It was nothing. On the soft, fragrant, pine-scented breeze came
+a whispering of welcome from the forestland: "You are here again. Live
+now--in the present."
+
+Takahashi beamed upon me: "More better place to camp," he said,
+grinning. Already the Jap had won my admiration and liking. His ability
+excited my interest, and I wanted to know more about him. As to this
+camp-site being a joy compared to the ones stretched back along the road
+he was assuredly right. That night we did no more than eat and unroll
+our beds. But next day there set in the pleasant tasks of unpacking,
+putting up tents and flies, cutting spruce for thick, soft beds, and a
+hundred odd jobs dear to every camper. Takahashi would not have any one
+help him. He dug a wide space for fires, erected a stone windbreak, and
+made two ovens out of baked mud, the like of which, and the cleverness
+of which I had never seen. He was a whirlwind for work.
+
+The matter of firewood always concerned Nielsen and me more than any
+one. Nielsen was a Norwegian, raised as a boy to use a crosscut saw; and
+as for me I was a connoisseur in camp-fires and a lover of them. Hence
+we had brought a crosscut saw--a long one with two handles. I remembered
+from the former year a huge dead pine that had towered bleached and
+white at the edge of the glade. It stood there still. The storms and
+blasts of another winter had not changed it in the least. It was five
+feet thick at the base and solid. Nielsen chopped a notch in it on the
+lower side, and then he and Edd began to saw into it on the other. I saw
+the first tremor of the lofty top. Then soon it shivered all the way
+down, gave forth a loud crack, swayed slowly, and fell majestically, to
+strike with a thundering crash. Only the top of this pine broke in the
+fall, but there were splinters and knots and branches enough to fill a
+wagon. These we carried up to our camp-fire.
+
+Then the boys sawed off half a dozen four-foot sections, which served
+as fine, solid, flat tables for comfort around camp. The method of using
+a crosscut saw was for two men to take a stand opposite one another,
+with the log between. The handles of the saw stood upright. Each man
+should pull easily and steadily toward himself, but should not push back
+nor bear down. It looked a rhythmic, manly exercise, and not arduous.
+But what an illusion! Nielsen and Copple were the only ones that day who
+could saw wholly through the thick log without resting. Later Takahashi
+turned out to be as good, if not better, than either of them, but we had
+that, as well as many other wonderful facts, to learn about the Jap.
+
+"Come on," said R.C. to me, invitingly. "You've been talking about this
+crosscut saw game. I'll bet you find it harder than pulling on a
+swordfish."
+
+Pride goes before a fall! I knew that in my condition I could do little
+with the saw, but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh when I had to rest.
+Perhaps no one except myself realized the weakness of my back, but the
+truth was a couple of dozen pulls on that saw almost made me collapse.
+Wherefore I grew furious with myself and swore I would do it or die. I
+sawed till I fell over--then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour
+of this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely
+sharper than the pain in my back. Also it made me wringing wet, hot as
+fire, and as breathless as if I had run a mile up hill. That experience
+determined me to stick to crosscut sawing every day. Next morning I
+approached it with enthusiasm, yet with misgivings. I could not keep my
+breath. Pain I could and did bear without letting on. But to have to
+stop was humiliating. If I tried to keep up with the sturdy Haught boys,
+or with the brawny Copple or the giant Nielsen, soon I would be
+compelled to keel over. In the sawing through a four-foot section of log
+I had to rest eight times. They all had a great deal of fun out of it,
+and I pretended to be good natured, but to me who had always been so
+vigorous and active and enduring it was not fun. It was tragic. But all
+was not gloom for me. This very afternoon Nielsen, the giant, showed
+that a stiff climb out of the canyon, at that eight thousand feet
+altitude, completely floored him. Yet I accomplished that with
+comparative ease. I could climb, which seemed proof that I was gaining.
+A man becomes used to certain labors and exercises. I thought the
+crosscut saw a wonderful tool to train a man, but it must require time.
+It harked back to pioneer days when men were men. Nielsen said he had
+lived among Mexican boys who sawed logs for nineteen cents apiece and
+earned seven dollars a day. Copple said three minutes was good time to
+saw a four-foot log in two pieces. So much for physical condition! As
+for firewood, for which our crosscut saw was intended, pitch pine and
+yellow pine and spruce were all odorous and inflammable woods, but they
+did not make good firewood. Dead aspen was good; dead oak the best. It
+burned to red hot coals with little smoke. As for camp-fires, any kind
+of dry wood pleased, smoke or no smoke. In fact I loved the smell and
+color of wood-smoke, in spite of the fact that it made my eyes smart.
+
+By October first, which was the opening day of the hunting season, I had
+labored at various exercises until I felt fit to pack a rifle through
+the woods. R.C. and I went out alone on foot. Not by any means was the
+day auspicious. The sun tried to show through a steely haze, making only
+a pale shift of sunshine. And the air was rather chilly. Enthusiasm,
+however, knew no deterrents. We walked a mile down Beaver Dam Canyon,
+then climbed the western slope. As long as the sun shone I knew the
+country fairly well, or rather my direction. We slipped along through
+the silent woods, satisfied with everything. Presently the sun broke
+through the clouds, and shone fitfully, making intervals of shadow, and
+others of golden-green verdure.
+
+Along an edge of one of the grassy parks we came across fresh deer
+tracks. Several deer had run out of the woods just ahead of us,
+evidently having winded us. One track was that of a big buck. We trailed
+these tracks across the park, then made a detour in hopes of heading the
+deer off, but failed. A huge, dark cloud scudded out of the west and let
+down a shower of fine rain. We kept dry under a spreading spruce. The
+forest then was gloomy and cool with only a faint moan of wind and
+pattering of raindrops to break the silence. The cloud passed by, the
+sun shone again, the forest glittered in its dress of diamonds. There
+had been but little frost, so that aspen and maple thickets had not yet
+taken on their cloth of gold and blaze of red. Most of the leaves were
+still on the trees, making these thickets impossible to see into. We
+hunted along the edges of these, and across the wide, open ridge from
+canyon to canyon, and saw nothing but old tracks. Black and white clouds
+rolled up and brought a squall. We took to another spruce tent for
+shelter. After this squall the sky became obscured by a field of gray
+cloud through which the sun shone dimly. This matter worried me. I was
+aware of my direction then, but if I lost the sun I would soon be in
+difficulties.
+
+Gradually we worked back along the ridge toward camp, and headed several
+ravines that ran and widened down into the big canyon. All at once R.C.
+held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened,
+but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I
+heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes and ears.
+
+R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a good
+hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip
+along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had
+never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer
+stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick
+as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and many years of still hunting,
+accounted for this faculty. As for myself, the one gift of which I was
+especially proud was my eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in
+the woods before any one who was with me. This had applied to all my
+guides except Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
+searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made my eyes
+all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game in which he
+tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen before I saw it. This
+fun for us dated back to boyhood days.
+
+Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one side, and his
+body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he said. We stood
+perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from far off in the forest
+I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling note. How thrilling, how
+lonely a sound!
+
+"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and listened.
+R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not recognized it. Just
+as the mournful howl of a wolf is the wildest, most haunting sound of
+the wilderness, so is the bugle of the elk the noblest, most melodious
+and thrilling. With tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We
+heard elk bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
+appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away. R.C. and
+I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing of elk, but that
+was no reason why we might not trail them, and have the sport of seeing
+them in their native haunts. So we stole softly through the woods,
+halting now and then to listen, pleased to note that every whistle we
+heard appeared to be closer.
+
+At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us from the
+ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk began to become
+really exciting. We did not make any noise threading that wet thicket,
+and we ascended the opposite slope very cautiously. What little wind
+there was blew from the elk toward us, so they could not scent us. Once
+up on the edge of the ridge we halted to listen. After a long time we
+heard a far-away bugle, then another at least half a mile distant. Had
+we miscalculated? R.C. was for working down the ridge and I was for
+waiting there a few moments. So we sat down again. The forest was almost
+silent now. Somewhere a squirrel was barking. The sun peeped out of the
+pale clouds, lighted the glades, rimmed the pines in brightness. I
+opened my lips to speak to R.C. when I was rendered mute by a piercing
+whistle, high-pitched and sweet and melodiously prolonged. It made my
+ears tingle and my blood dance. "Right close," whispered R.C. "Come on."
+We began to steal through the forest, keeping behind trees and thickets,
+peeping out, and making no more sound than shadows. The ground was damp,
+facilitating our noiseless stalk. In this way we became separated by
+about thirty steps, but we walked on and halted in unison. Passing
+through a thicket of little pines we came into an open forest full of
+glades. Keenly I peered everywhere, as I slipped from tree to tree.
+Finally we stooped along for a space, and then, at a bugle blast so
+close that it made me jump, I began to crawl. My objective point was a
+fallen pine the trunk of which appeared high enough to conceal me. R.C.
+kept working a little farther to the right. Once he beckoned me, but I
+kept on. Still I saw him drop down to crawl. Our stalk was getting
+toward its climax. My state was one of quivering intensity of thrill, of
+excitement, of pleasure. Reaching my log I peeped over it. I saw a
+cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a hundred
+yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way, and pointed.
+But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning for me to join him. I
+ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He whispered pantingly:
+"Grandest sight--ever saw!" I peeped out.
+
+In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent bull elk,
+looking back over his shoulder. His tawny hind-quarters, then his dark
+brown, almost black shaggy shoulders and head, then his enormous spread
+of antlers, like the top of a dead cedar--these in turn fascinated my
+gaze. How graceful, stately, lordly!
+
+R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled out, took
+a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had the fun of
+imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not really want to kill
+him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp, hot gush of my blood, the
+fiery thrill along my nerves, the feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The
+bull eyed us for a second, then laid his forest of antlers back over his
+shoulders, and with singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny
+flash into the green forest.
+
+R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the glade,
+without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye caught sight
+of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on the ground, vanishing
+behind a thicket. I called R.C. and ran. I got to where I could see
+beyond the thicket. An immense flock of turkeys! I yelled. As I tried to
+get a bead on a running turkey R.C. joined me. "Chase 'em!" he yelled.
+So we dashed through the forest with the turkeys running ahead of us.
+Never did they come out clear in the open. I halted to shoot, but just
+as I was about to press the trigger, my moving target vanished. This
+happened again. No use to shoot at random! I had a third fleeting
+chance, but absolutely could not grasp it. Then the big flock of turkeys
+eluded us in an impenetrable, brushy ravine.
+
+"By George!" exclaimed R.C. "Can you beat that? They run like streaks. I
+couldn't aim. These wild turkeys are great."
+
+I echoed his sentiments. We prowled around for an hour trying to locate
+this flock again, but all in vain. "Well," said R.C. finally, as he
+wiped his perspiring face, "it's good to see some game anyhow.... Where
+are we?"
+
+It developed that our whereabouts was a mystery to me. The sun had
+become completely obliterated, a fine rain was falling, the forest had
+grown wet and dismal. We had gotten turned around. The matter did not
+look serious, however, until we had wandered around for another hour
+without finding anything familiar. Then we realized we were lost. This
+sort of experience had happened to R.C. and me often; nevertheless we
+did not relish it, especially the first day out. As usual on such
+occasions R.C. argued with me about direction, and then left the
+responsibility with me. I found an open spot, somewhat sheltered on one
+side from the misty rain, and there I stationed myself to study trees
+and sky and clouds for some clue to help me decide what was north or
+west. After a while I had the good fortune to see a momentary
+brightening through the clouds. I located the sun, and was pleased to
+discover that the instinct of direction I had been subtly prompted to
+take, would have helped me as much as the sun.
+
+We faced east and walked fast, and I took note of trees ahead so that
+we should not get off a straight line. At last we came to a deep canyon.
+In the gray misty rain I could not be sure I recognized it. "Well,
+R.C.," I said, "this may be our canyon, and it may not. But to make sure
+we'll follow it up to the rim. Then we can locate camp." R.C. replied
+with weary disdain. "All right, my redskin brother, lead me to camp. As
+Loren says, I'm starved to death." Loren is my three-year-old boy, who
+bids fair to be like his brother Romer. He has an enormous appetite and
+before meal times he complains bitterly: "I'm starv-ved to death!" How
+strange to remember him while I was lost in the forest!
+
+When we had descended into the canyon rain was falling more heavily. We
+were in for it. But I determined we would not be kept out all night. So
+I struck forward with long stride.
+
+In half an hour we came to where the canyon forked. I deliberated a
+moment. Not one familiar landmark could I descry, from which fact I
+decided we had better take to the left-hand fork. Grass and leaves
+appeared almost as wet as running water. Soon we were soaked to the
+skin. After two miles the canyon narrowed and thickened, so that
+traveling grew more and more laborsome. It must have been four miles
+from its mouth to where it headed up near the rim. Once out of it we
+found ourselves on familiar ground, about five miles from camp.
+Exhausted and wet and nearly frozen we reached camp just before dark. If
+I had taken the right-hand fork of the canyon, which was really Beaver
+Dam Canyon, we would have gotten back to camp in short order. R.C. said
+to the boys: "Well, Doc dragged me nine miles out of our way." Everybody
+but the Jap enjoyed my discomfiture. Takahashi said in his imperfect
+English: "Go get on more better dry clothes. Soon hot supper. Maybe good
+yes!"
+
+
+V
+
+It rained the following day, making a good excuse to stay in camp and
+rest beside the little tent-stove. And the next morning I started out on
+foot with Copple. We went down Beaver Dam Canyon intending to go up on
+the ridge where R.C. and I had seen the flock of turkeys.
+
+I considered Copple an addition to my long list of outdoor acquaintances
+in the west, and believed him a worthy partner for Nielsen. Copple was
+born near Oak Creek, some twenty miles south of Flagstaff, and was
+one-fourth Indian. He had a good education. His whole life had been in
+the open, which fact I did not need to be told. A cowboy when only a boy
+he had also been sheepherder, miner, freighter, and everything
+Arizonian. Eighteen years he had hunted game and prospected for gold in
+Mexico. He had been a sailor and fireman on the Pacific, he had served
+in the army in the Philippines. Altogether his had been an adventurous
+life; and as Doyle had been a mine of memories for me so would Copple be
+a mine of information. Such men have taught me the wonder, the violence,
+the truth of the west.
+
+Copple was inclined to be loquacious--a trait that ordinarily was rather
+distasteful to me, but in his case would be an advantage. On our way
+down the canyon not only did he give me an outline of the history of his
+life, but he talked about how he had foretold the storm just ended. The
+fresh diggings of gophers--little mounds of dirt thrown up--had
+indicated the approach of the storm; so had the hooting of owls;
+likewise the twittering of snowbirds at that season; also the feeding of
+blackbirds near horses. Particularly a wind from the south meant storm.
+From that he passed to a discussion of deer. During the light of the
+moon deer feed at night; and in the day time they will lie in a thicket.
+If a hunter came near the deer would lower their horns flat and remain
+motionless, unless almost ridden over. In the dark of the moon deer feed
+at early morning, lie down during the day, and feed again toward sunset,
+always alert, trusting to nose more than eyes and ears.
+
+Copple was so interesting that I must have passed the place where R.C.
+and I had come down into the canyon; at any rate I missed it, and we
+went on farther. Copple showed me old bear sign, an old wolf track, and
+then fresh turkey tracks. The latter reminded me that we were out
+hunting. I could carry a deadly rifle in my hands, yet dream dreams of
+flower-decked Elysian fields. We climbed a wooded bench or low step of
+the canyon slope, and though Copple and I were side by side I saw two
+turkeys before he did. They were running swiftly up hill. I took a snap
+shot at the lower one, but missed. My bullet struck low, upsetting him.
+Both of them disappeared.
+
+Then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and in scouting around along
+the heavily timbered edges we came to a ravine deep enough to be classed
+as a canyon. Here the forest was dark and still, with sunlight showing
+down in rays and gleams. While hunting I always liked to sit down here
+and there to listen and watch. Copple liked this too. So we sat down.
+Opposite us the rocky edge of the other slope was about two hundred
+yards. We listened to jays and squirrels. I made note of the significant
+fact that as soon as we began to hunt Copple became silent.
+
+Presently my roving eye caught sight of a moving object. It is movement
+that always attracts my eye in the woods. I saw a plump, woolly beast
+walk out upon the edge of the opposite slope and stand in the shade.
+
+"Copple, is that a sheep?" I whispered, pointing. "Lion--no, big lynx,"
+he replied. I aimed and shot just a little too swiftly. Judging by the
+puff of dust my bullet barely missed the big cat. He leaped fully
+fifteen feet. Copple fired, hitting right under his nose as he alighted.
+That whirled him back. He bounced like a rubber ball. My second shot
+went over him, and Copple's hit between his legs. Then with another
+prodigious bound he disappeared in a thicket. "By golly! we missed him,"
+declared Copple. "But you must have shaved him that first time. Biggest
+lynx I ever saw."
+
+We crossed the canyon and hunted for him, but without success. Then we
+climbed an open grassy forest slope, up to a level ridge, and crossed
+that to see down into a beautiful valley, with stately isolated pines,
+and patches of aspens, and floor of luxuriant grass. A ravine led down
+into this long park and the mouth of it held a thicket of small pines.
+Just as we got half way out I saw bobbing black objects above the high
+grass. I peered sharply. These objects were turkey heads. I got a shot
+before Copple saw them. There was a bouncing, a whirring, a
+thumping--and then turkeys appeared to be running every way.
+
+Copple fired. "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a big gobbler
+on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!" he called out. I
+could not see what he had done, but of course I knew he had done
+execution. It roused my ire as well as a desperate ambition. Turkeys
+were running up hill everywhere. I aimed at this one, then at that.
+Again I fired. Another miss! How that gobbler ran! He might just as well
+have flown. Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and
+me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last
+one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we
+moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of
+bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a
+fine gobbler of about fifteen pounds weight.
+
+Upon my return to Copple I found he had collected his two turkeys, both
+shot in the neck in the same place. He said: "If you hit them in the
+body you spoil them for cooking. I used to hit all mine in the head. Let
+me give you a hunch. Always pick out a turkey running straight away from
+you or straight toward you. Never crossways. You can't hit them running
+to the side."
+
+Then he bluntly complimented me upon my eyesight. That at least was
+consolation for my poor shooting. We rested there, and after a while
+heard a turkey cluck. Copple had no turkey-caller, but he clucked
+anyhow. We heard answers. The flock evidently was trying to get together
+again, and some of them were approaching us. Copple continued to call.
+Then I appreciated how fascinating R.C. had found this calling game.
+Copple got answers from all around, growing closer. But presently the
+answers ceased. "They're on to me," he whispered and did not call again.
+At that moment a young gobbler ran swiftly down the slope and stopped to
+peer around, his long neck stretching. It was not a very long shot, and
+I, scorning to do less than Copple, tried to emulate him, and aimed at
+the neck of the gobbler. All I got, however, was a few feathers. Like a
+grouse he flew across the opening and was gone. We lingered there a
+while, hoping to see or hear more of the flock, but did neither. Copple
+tried to teach me how to tell the age of turkeys from their feet, a
+lesson I did not think I would assimilate in one hunting season. He tied
+their legs together and hung them over his shoulder, a net weight of
+about fifty pounds.
+
+All the way up that valley we saw elk tracks, and once from over the
+ridge I heard a bugle. On our return toward camp we followed a rather
+meandering course, over ridge and down dale, and through grassy parks
+and stately forests, and along the slowly coloring maple-aspen thickets.
+Copple claimed to hear deer running, but I did not. Many tired footsteps
+I dragged along before we finally reached Beaver Dam Canyon. How welcome
+the sight of camp! R.C. had ridden miles with Edd, and had seen one deer
+that they said was still enjoying his freedom in the woods. Takahashi
+hailed sight of the turkeys with: "That fine! That fine! Nice fat ones!"
+
+But tired as I was that night I still had enthusiasm enough to visit
+Haught's camp, and renew acquaintance with the hounds. Haught had not
+been able to secure more than two new hounds, and these named Rock and
+Buck were still unknown quantities.
+
+Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was
+a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and
+bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made
+chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames.
+This fact, and the way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared
+him to me.
+
+Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him
+enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears,
+and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as
+Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever
+demonstrative except upon sight of his master. Haught told me that if
+Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a deer they would chase it till they
+dropped; accordingly he never shot at anything except bear and lion when
+he had these hounds with him.
+
+Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years
+of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her. She was a slim,
+dark brown hound with fine and very long ears. Rock, one of the new
+hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large,
+clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression. I could not
+account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the
+other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his
+color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head
+and distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any friends,
+for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had enough to eat.
+He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup
+came near him. I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would
+not have an easy task.
+
+Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
+hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year, either in
+body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp just to hear
+himself and run any kind of a trail--how he would be the first to quit
+and come back. And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a
+scared deer.
+
+To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better. Trailer
+and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run
+and howl.
+
+If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other trail
+crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack till' the bear
+got away. Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp with porcupine quills
+in his nose. Of all the whipped and funny pups!
+
+Bobby was the dog I liked best. He was a curly black half-shepherd,
+small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent face, with the brightest
+hazel eyes. His manner of wagging his tail seemed most comical yet
+convincing. Bobby wagged only the nether end and that most emphatically.
+He would stand up to me, holding out his forepaws, and beg. What an
+appealing beggar he was! Bobby's value to Haught was not
+inconsiderable. He was the only dog Haught ever had that would herd the
+pigs. On a bear hunt Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly
+disposition, and yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of
+the pack. He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like
+to run him.
+
+All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and
+the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the
+grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I
+had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this
+pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting
+species. But there was now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We
+might kill a big grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us
+perhaps made for more determined effort. I regretted, however, that I
+had not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.
+
+Frost was late this fall. The acorns had hardly ripened, the leaves had
+scarcely colored; and really good bear hunting seemed weeks off. A storm
+and then a cold snap would help matters wonderfully, and for these we
+hoped. Indeed the weather had not settled; hardly a day had been free of
+clouds. But despite conditions we decided to start in bear hunting every
+other day, feeling that at least we could train the pack, and get them
+and ourselves in better shape for a favorable time when it arrived.
+
+Accordingly next day we sallied forth for Horton Thicket, and I went
+down with Edd and George. It was a fine day, sunny and windy at
+intervals. The new trail the boys had made was boggy. From above Horton
+Thicket looked dark, green, verdant, with scarcely any touch of autumn
+colors; from below, once in it, all seemed a darker green, cool and
+damp. Water lay in all low places. The creek roared bankfull of clear
+water.
+
+The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth, through
+thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long slopes of
+manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak. Junipers were not fruitful this
+year as they were last, only a few having clusters of lavender-colored
+berries. The manzanita brush appeared exceptionally beautiful with its
+vivid contrasts of crimson and green leaves, orange-colored berries, and
+smooth, shiny bark of a chocolate red. The mescal consisted of round
+patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground, with a
+long dead stalk standing or broken down. This stalk grows fresh every
+spring, when it is laden with beautiful yellow blossoms. The honey from
+the flowers of mescal and mesquite is the best to be obtained in this
+country of innumerable bees.
+
+Presently the hounds opened up on some kind of a trail and they worked
+on it around under the ledges toward the next canyon, called See Canyon.
+After a while the country grew so rough that fast riding was impossible;
+the thickets tore and clutched at us until they finally stopped the
+horses. We got off. Edd climbed to a ridge-top. "Pack gone way round,"
+he called. "I'll walk. Take my horse back." I decided to let George take
+my horse also, and I hurried to catch up with Edd.
+
+Following that long-legged Arizonian on foot was almost as strenuous as
+keeping him in sight on horseback. I managed it. We climbed steep slopes
+and the farther we climbed the thicker grew the brush. Often we would
+halt to listen for hounds, at which welcome intervals I endeavored to
+catch my breath. We kept the hounds in hearing, which fact incited us to
+renewed endeavors. At length we got into a belt of live-oak and
+scrub-pine brush, almost as difficult to penetrate as manzanita, and
+here we had to bend and crawl. Bear and deer tracks led everywhere.
+Small stones and large stones had been lifted and displaced by bears
+searching for grubs. These slopes were dry; we found no water at the
+heads of ravines, yet the red earth was rich in bearded, tufted grass,
+yellow daisies and purple asters, and a wan blue flower. We climbed and
+climbed, until my back began to give me trouble. "Reckon we--bit off--a
+big hunk," remarked Edd once, and I thought he referred to the endless
+steep and brushy slopes. By and bye the hounds came back to us one by
+one, all footsore and weary. Manifestly the bear had outrun them. Our
+best prospect then was to climb on to the rim and strike across the
+forest to camp.
+
+I noticed that tired as I was I had less trouble to keep up with Edd.
+His boots wore very slippery on grass and pine-needles, so that he might
+have been trying to climb on ice. I had nails in my boots and they
+caught hold. Hotter and wetter I grew until I had a burning sensation
+all over. My legs and arms ached; the rifle weighed a ton; my feet
+seemed to take hold of the ground and stick. We could not go straight up
+owing to the nature of that jumble of broken cliffs and matted scrub
+forests. For hours we toiled onward, upward, downward, and then upward.
+Only through such experience could I have gained an adequate knowledge
+of the roughness and vastness of this rim-rock country.
+
+At last we arrived at the base of the gray leaning crags, and there, on
+a long slide of weathered rock the hounds jumped a bear. I saw the dust
+he raised, as he piled into the thicket below the slide. What a wild
+clamor from the hounds! We got out on the rocky slope where we could see
+and kept sharp eyes roving, but the bear went straight down hill.
+Amazing indeed was it the way the hounds drew away from us. In a few
+moments they were at the foot of the slopes, tearing back over the
+course we had been so many hours in coming. Then we set out to get on
+the rim, so as to follow along it, and keep track of the chase. Edd
+distanced me on the rocks. I had to stop often. My breast labored and I
+could scarcely breathe. I sweat so freely that my rifle stock was wet.
+My hardest battle was in fighting a tendency to utter weariness and
+disgust. My old poignant feelings about my physical condition returned
+to vex me. As a matter of fact I had already that very day accomplished
+a climb not at all easy for the Arizonian, and I should have been happy.
+But I had not been used to a lame back. When I reached the rim I fell
+there, and lay there a few moments, until I could get up. Then I
+followed along after Edd whose yells to the hounds I heard, and overtook
+him upon the point of a promontory. Far below the hounds were baying.
+"They're chasin' him all right," declared Edd, grimly. "He's headin' for
+low country. I think Sue stopped him once. But the rest of the pack are
+behind."
+
+I had never been on the point of this promontory. Grand indeed was the
+panorama. Under me yawned a dark-green, smoky-canyoned, rippling basin
+of timber and red rocks leading away to the mountain ranges of the Four
+Peaks and Mazatzals. Westward, toward the yellowing sunset stood out
+long escarpments for miles, and long sloping lines of black ridges,
+leading down to the basin where there seemed to be a ripple of the
+earth, a vast upset region of canyon and ridge, wild and lonely and
+dark.
+
+I did not get to see the sunset from that wonderful point, a matter I
+regretted. We were far from camp, and Edd was not sure of a bee-line
+during daylight, let alone after dark. Deep in the forest the sunset
+gold and red burned on grass and leaf. The aspens took most of the
+color. Swift-flying wisps of cloud turned pink, and low along the
+western horizon of the forest the light seemed golden and blue.
+
+I was almost exhausted, and by the time we reached camp, just at dark, I
+was wholly exhausted. My voice had sunk to a whisper, a fact that
+occasioned R.C. some concern until I could explain. Undoubtedly this was
+the hardest day's work I had done since my lion hunting with Buffalo
+Jones. It did not surprise me that next day I had to forget my crosscut
+saw exercise.
+
+Late that afternoon the hounds came straggling into camp, lame and
+starved. Sue was the last one in, arriving at supper-time.
+
+Another day found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C. and I went
+off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure. This day was
+cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We saw two bull elk, a
+cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably agile for so heavy an
+animal. Neither of these, however, were of such magnificent proportions
+as the one R.C. and I had stalked the first day out. A few minutes later
+we scared out three more cows and three yearlings. I dismounted just for
+fun, and sighted my rifle at four of them. Next we came to a canyon
+where beaver had cut aspen trees. These animals must have chisel-like
+teeth. They left chippings somewhat similar to those cut by an axe.
+Aspen bark was their winter food. In this particular spot we could not
+find a dam or slide. When we rode down into Turkey Canyon, however, we
+found a place where beavers had dammed the brook. Many aspens were fresh
+cut, one at least two feet thick, and all the small branches had been
+cut off and dragged to the water, where I could find no further trace of
+them. The grass was matted down, and on the bare bits of ground showed
+beaver tracks.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER]
+
+[Illustration: CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA]
+
+Game appeared to be scarce. Haught had told us that deer, turkey and
+bear had all gone to feed on the mast (fallen acorns); and if we could
+locate the mast we would find the game. He said he had once seen a herd
+of several hundred deer migrating from one section of country to
+another. Apparently this was to find new feeding grounds.
+
+[Illustration: BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON]
+
+While we were resting under a spruce I espied a white-breasted,
+blue-headed, gray-backed little bird at work on a pine tree. He walked
+head first down the bark, pecking here and there. I saw a moth or a
+winged insect fly off the tree, and then another. Then I saw several
+more fly away. The bird was feeding on winged insects that lived in the
+bark. Some of them saw or heard him coming and escaped, but many of them
+he caught. He went about this death-dealing business with a brisk and
+cheerful manner. No doubt nature had developed him to help protect the
+trees from bugs and worms and beetles.
+
+Later that day, in an open grassy canyon, we came upon quite a large
+bird, near the size of a pigeon, which I thought appeared to be a
+species of jay or magpie. This bird had gray and black colors, a round
+head, and a stout bill. At first I thought it was crippled, as it hopped
+and fluttered about in the grass. I got down to catch it. Then I
+discovered it was only tame. I could approach to within a foot of
+reaching it. Once it perched upon a low snag, and peeped at me with
+little bright dark eyes, very friendly, as if he liked my company. I sat
+there within a few feet of him for quite a while. We resumed our ride.
+Crossing a fresh buck track caused us to dismount, and tie our horses.
+But that buck was too wary for us. We returned to camp as usual, empty
+handed as far as game was concerned.
+
+I forgot to say anything to Haught or Doyle about the black and gray
+bird that had so interested me. Quite a coincidence was it then to see
+another such bird and that one right in camp. He appeared to be as tame
+as the other. He flew and hopped around camp in such a friendly manner
+that I placed a piece of meat in a conspicuous place for him. Not long
+was he in finding it. He alighted on it, and pecked and pulled at a
+great rate. Doyle claimed it was a Clark crow, named after one of the
+Lewis and Clark expedition. "It's a rare bird," said Doyle. "First one
+I've seen in thirty years." As Doyle spent most of his time in the open
+this statement seemed rather remarkable.
+
+We had frost on two mornings, temperature as low as twenty-six degrees,
+and then another change indicative of unsettled weather. It rained, and
+sleeted, and then snowed, but the ground was too wet to hold the snow.
+
+The wilderness began all at once, as if by magic, to take on autumn
+colors. Then the forest became an enchanted region of white aspens,
+golden-green aspens, purple spruces, dark green pines, maples a blaze of
+vermilion, cerise, scarlet, magenta, rose--and slopes of dull red sumac.
+These were the beginning of Indian summer days, the melancholy days,
+with their color and silence and beauty and fragrance and mystery.
+
+Hunting then became quite a dream for me, as if it called back to me dim
+mystic days in the woods of some past weird world. One afternoon Copple,
+R.C., and I went as far as the east side of Gentry Canyon and worked
+down. Copple found fresh deer and turkey sign. We tied our horses, and
+slipped back against the wind. R.C. took one side of a ridge, with
+Copple and me on the other, and we worked down toward where we had seen
+the sign. After half an hour of slow, stealthy glide through the forest
+we sat down at the edge of a park, expecting R.C. to come along soon.
+The white aspens were all bare, and oak leaves were rustling down. The
+wind lulled a while, then softly roared in the pines. All at once both
+of us heard a stick crack, and light steps of a walking deer on leaves.
+Copple whispered: "Get ready to shoot." We waited, keen and tight,
+expecting to see a deer walk out into the open. But none came. Leaving
+our stand we slipped into the woods, careful not to make the slightest
+sound. Such careful, slow steps were certainly not accountable for the
+rapid beat of my heart. Something gray moved among the green and yellow
+leaves. I halted, and held Copple back. Then not twenty paces away I
+descried what I thought was a fawn. It glided toward us without the
+slightest sound. Suddenly, half emerging from some maple saplings, it
+saw us and seemed stricken to stone. Not ten steps from me! Soft gray
+hue, slender graceful neck and body, sleek small head with long ears,
+and great dark distended eyes, wilder than any wild eyes I had ever
+beheld. I saw it quiver all over. I was quivering too, but with emotion.
+Copple whispered: "Yearlin' buck. Shoot!"
+
+His whisper, low as it was, made the deer leap like a gray flash. Also
+it broke the spell for me. "Year old buck!" I exclaimed, quite loud.
+"Thought he was a fawn. But I couldn't have shot----"
+
+A crash of brush interrupted me. Thump of hoofs, crack of branches--then
+a big buck deer bounded onward into the thicket. I got one snap shot at
+his fleeting blurred image and missed him. We ran ahead, but to no
+avail.
+
+"Four-point buck," said Copple. "He must have been standin' behind that
+brush."
+
+"Did you see his horns?" I gasped, incredulously.
+
+"Sure. But he was runnin' some. Let's go down this slope where he
+jumped.... Now will you look at that! Here's where he started after you
+shot."
+
+A gentle slope, rather open, led down to the thicket where the buck had
+vanished. We measured the first of his downhill jumps, and it amounted
+to eighteen of my rather short steps. What a magnificent leap! It
+reminded me of the story of Hart-leap Well.
+
+As we retraced our steps R.C. met us, reporting that he had heard the
+buck running, but could not see him. We scouted around together for an
+hour, then R.C. and Copple started off on a wide detour, leaving me at a
+stand in the hope they might drive some turkeys my way. I sat on a log
+until almost sunset. All the pine tips turned gold and patches of gold
+brightened the ground. Jays were squalling, gray squirrels were barking,
+red squirrels were chattering, snowbirds were twittering, pine cones
+were dropping, leaves were rustling. But there were no turkeys, and I
+did not miss them. R.C. and Copple returned to tell me there were signs
+of turkeys and deer all over the ridge. "We'll ride over here early
+to-morrow," said Copple, "an' I'll bet my gun we pack some meat to
+camp."
+
+But the unsettled weather claimed the next day and the next, giving us
+spells of rain and sleet, and periods of sunshine deceptive in their
+promise. Camp, however, with our big camp-fire, and little tent-stoves,
+and Takahashi, would have been delightful in almost any weather.
+Takahashi was insulted, the boys told me, because I said he was born to
+be a cook. It seemed the Jap looked down upon this culinary job.
+"Cook--that woman joob!" he said, contemptuously.
+
+As I became better acquainted with Takahashi I learned to think more of
+the Japanese. I studied Takahashi very earnestly and I grew to like him.
+The Orientals are mystics and hard to understand. But any one could see
+that here was a Japanese who was a real man. I never saw him idle. He
+resented being told what to do, and after my first offense in this
+regard I never gave him another order. He was a wonderful cook. It
+pleased his vanity to see how good an appetite I always had. When I
+would hail him: "George, what you got to eat?" he would grin and reply:
+"Aw, turkee!" Then I would let out a yell, for I never in my life tasted
+anything so good as the roast wild turkey Takahashi served us. Or he
+would say: "Pan-cakes--apple dumplings--rice puddings." No one but the
+Japs know how to cook rice. I asked him how he cooked rice over an open
+fire and he said: "I know how hot--when done." Takahashi must have
+possessed an uncanny knowledge of the effects of heat. How swift, clean,
+efficient and saving he was! He never wasted anything. In these days of
+American prodigality a frugal cook like Takahashi was a revelation.
+Seldom are the real producers of food ever wasters. Takahashi's ambition
+was to be a rancher in California. I learned many things about him. In
+summer he went to the Imperial Valley where he picked and packed
+cantaloupes. He could stand the intense heat. He was an expert. He
+commanded the highest wage. Then he was a raisin-picker, which for him
+was another art. He had accumulated a little fortune and knew how to
+save his money. He would have been a millionaire in Japan, but he
+intended to live in the United States.
+
+Takahashi had that best of traits--generosity. Whenever he made pie or
+cake or doughnuts he always saved his share for me to have for my lunch
+next day. No use to try to break him of this kindly habit! He was keen
+too, and held in particular disfavor any one who picked out the best
+portions of turkey or meat. "No like that," he would say; and I heartily
+agreed with him. Life in the open brought out the little miserable
+traits of human nature, of which no one was absolutely free.
+
+I admired Takahashi's cooking, I admired the enormous pile of firewood
+he always had chopped, I admired his generosity; but most of all I liked
+his cheerfulness and good humor. He grew to be a joy to me. We had some
+pop corn which we sometimes popped over the camp-fire. He was fond of it
+and he said: "You eat all time--much pop corn--just so long you keep
+mouth going all same like horse--you happy." We were troubled a good
+deal by skunks. Now some skunks were not bad neighbors, but others were
+disgusting and dangerous. The hog-nosed skunk, according to westerners,
+very often had hydrophobia and would bite a sleeper. I knew of several
+men dying of rabies from this bite. Copple said he had been awakened
+twice at night by skunks biting the noses of his companions in camp.
+Copple had to choke the skunks off. One of these men died. We were
+really afraid of them. Doyle said one had visited him in his tent and he
+had been forced to cover his head until he nearly smothered. Now
+Takahashi slept in the tent with the store of supplies. One night a
+skunk awakened him. In reporting this to me the Jap said: "See skunk all
+black and white at tent door. I flash light. Skunk no 'fraid. He no run.
+He act funny--then just walk off."
+
+After that experience Takahashi set a box-trap for skunks. One morning
+he said with a huge grin: "I catch skunk. Want you take picture for me
+send my wife Sadayo."
+
+So I got my camera, and being careful to take a safe position, as did
+all the boys, I told Takahashi I was ready to photograph him and his
+skunk. He got a pole that was too short to suit me, and he lifted up the
+box-trap. A furry white and black cat appeared, with remarkably bushy
+tail. What a beautiful little animal to bear such opprobrium! "All same
+like cat," said Takahashi. "Kittee--kittee." It appeared that kitty was
+not in the least afraid. On the contrary she surveyed the formidable Jap
+with his pole, and her other enemies in a calm, dignified manner. Then
+she turned away. Here I tried to photograph her and Takahashi together.
+When she started off the Jap followed and poked her with the pole. "Take
+'nother picture." But kitty suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a
+most surprising and brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I
+yelled: "Run George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful
+little beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another
+and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased her out
+of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty thing! She make
+awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I kill her sure!"
+
+The head of Gentry Canyon was about five miles from camp, and we reached
+it the following morning while the frost was still white and sparkling.
+We tied our horses. Copple said: "This is a deer day. I'll show you a
+buck sure. Let's stick together an' walk easy."
+
+So we made sure to work against the wind, which, however, was so light
+as almost to be imperceptible, and stole along the dark ravine, taking
+half a dozen steps or so at a time. How still the forest! When it was
+like this I always felt as if I had discovered something new. The big
+trees loomed stately and calm, stretching a rugged network of branches
+over us. Fortunately no saucy squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be
+abroad to warn game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill,
+seemed to come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn
+were at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
+burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us strung
+to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the wild. R.C.,
+as might have been expected, halted us with a softly whispered:
+"Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C. heard, and presently
+we moved on as before. Presently again R.C. made us pause, with a like
+result. Somehow the forest seemed unusually wild. It provoked a
+tingling expectation. The pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed
+ridge to our left, the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to
+harbor listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
+we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge ran down
+in points to where the junction of several ravines formed the head of
+Gentry Canyon.
+
+How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for deer to
+graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and white with frost
+and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no game.
+
+Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C.
+stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my
+lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then
+crouch a little. He leaned forward--his eyes had the look of a falcon.
+Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
+tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of
+my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked--I strained
+my eyes--I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been
+gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That
+instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack.
+I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
+headlong and I heard a solid thump.
+
+"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for
+another one."
+
+No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had
+plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make
+me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that
+had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots
+of its antlers.
+
+"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the
+deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat.
+Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other
+help me hang him up."
+
+
+VI
+
+I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had
+parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and
+I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full
+of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.
+
+The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length I came
+out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees. Suddenly Don Carlos
+shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for days and he appeared more
+than usually spirited. He saw or heard something. I held him in, and
+after a moment I dismounted and drew my rifle. A crashing in brush
+somewhere near at hand excited me. Peering all around I tried to locate
+cause for the sound. Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush
+accompanied by a snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don
+Carlos snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
+the sound came from overhead.
+
+I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze arrested by a
+threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty spruce. I saw a dark form
+moving against a background of blue sky. Instantly I thought it must be
+a lynx and was about to raise my rifle when a voice as from the very
+clouds utterly astounded me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I
+dreaming? But violent threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely
+assured me that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
+you--whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the swaying top of
+that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi. For a moment I could not
+find my voice. Then I shouted:
+
+"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near
+shooting you."
+
+"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.
+
+I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing
+except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully
+one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the
+Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
+
+"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
+
+Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with
+little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun--see
+squirrel. I chase him up tree--I climb high--awful high. No good.
+Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me--get away."
+
+Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he
+considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing
+at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and
+capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful
+people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to
+sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me
+that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say--labor hard--he
+very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from
+George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
+famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable eyesight that
+he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting above the highest limb
+of a tall white oak. And he was such a splendid shot that he had often
+"barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to
+explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet
+to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so
+stun it that it would fall as if dead.
+
+"Aw my goodnish--your daddy more better shot than you!" ejaculated
+Takahashi.
+
+"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash the
+long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting days--playing days of
+boyhood were the best of life. It seemed to me that one of the few
+reasons I still had for clinging to hunting was this keen, thrilling
+hark back to early days. Books first--then guns--then fishing poles--so
+ran the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.
+
+That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on the
+spectral spruces. During the night there came a change; it rained--first
+a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at five-thirty a roar of hail on
+the tent. This music did not last long. At seven o'clock the thermometer
+registered thirty-four degrees, but there was no frost. The morning was
+somewhat cloudy or foggy, with promise of clearing.
+
+We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and Nielsen went
+down with them, the rest of us waited above for developments. Scarcely
+had they more than time enough to reach the gorge below when the pack
+burst into full chorus. Haught led the way then around the rough rim for
+better vantage points. I was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten
+for me--a fine, spirited animal named Stockings. Probably he had been a
+cavalry horse. He was a bay with white feet, well built and powerful,
+though not over medium size. One splendid feature about him was that a
+saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never slipped. And another
+feature, infinitely the most attractive to me, was his easy gait. His
+trot and lope were so comfortable and swinging, like the motion of a
+rocking-chair, that I could ride him all day with pleasure. But when it
+came to chasing after hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me
+trouble. Too eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose
+the direction. He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad jumbles
+or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried me under low
+branches and through dense thickets, and in general showed he was
+exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but ignorant of rough
+forest travel. Owing to this I fell behind, and got out of hearing of
+both hounds and men, and eventually found myself lost somewhere on the
+west side of See Canyon. To get out I had to turn my back to the sun,
+travel west till I came to the rim above Horton Thicket, and from there
+return to camp, arriving rather late in the afternoon.
+
+All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck. I was rather
+surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high state of dudgeon.
+Edd looked pale and angry. Upon questioning Nielsen I learned that the
+hounds had at once struck a fresh bear track in See Canyon. Nielsen and
+Edd had not followed far before they heard a hound yelping in pain. They
+found Buck caught in a bear trap. The rest of the hounds came upon a
+little bear cub, caught in another trap, and killed it. Nielsen said it
+had evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and
+emaciated. Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she had been
+around trying to save it or minister to it. There were trappers in See
+Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers manifestly there was no
+love lost. Edd said they had as much right to trap as we had to hunt,
+but that was not the question. There had been opportunity to tell the
+Haughts about the big number four bear traps set in See Canyon. But they
+did not tell it. Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp. It was a
+pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky brown
+coat. No one had to look at it twice to see how it had suffered.
+
+This matter of trapping wild animals is singularly hateful to me. Bad
+enough is it to stalk deer to shoot them for their meat, but at least
+this is a game where the deer have all the advantage. Bad indeed it may
+be to chase bear with hounds, but that is a hard, dangerous method of
+hunting which gives it some semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts
+proved to me that I ran more risks than the bears. To set traps,
+however, to hide big iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and
+clutch wild animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or
+gnawed off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun
+or club to end the miserable business--what indeed shall I call that?
+Cruel--base--cowardly!
+
+It cannot be defended on moral grounds. But vast moneyed interests are
+at stake. One of the greatest of American fortunes was built upon the
+brutal, merciless trapping of wild animals for their furs. And in this
+fall of 1919 the prices of fox, marten, beaver, raccoon, skunk, lynx,
+muskrat, mink, otter, were higher by double than they had ever been.
+Trappers were going to reap a rich harvest. Well, everybody must make a
+living; but is this trapping business honest, is it manly? To my
+knowledge trappers are hardened. Market fishermen are hardened, too, but
+the public eat fish. They do not eat furs. Now in cold climates and
+seasons furs are valuable to protect people who must battle with winter
+winds and sleet and ice; and against their use by such I daresay there
+is no justification for censure. But the vast number of furs go to deck
+the persons of vain women. I appreciate the beautiful contrast of fair
+skin against a background of sable fur, or silver fox, or rich, black,
+velvety seal. But beautiful women would be just as beautiful, just as
+warmly clothed in wool instead of fur. And infinitely better women! Not
+long ago I met a young woman in one of New York's fashionable hotels,
+and I remarked about the exquisite evening coat of fur she wore. She
+said she loved furs. She certainly was handsome, and she appeared to be
+refined, cultured, a girl of high class. And I said it was a pity women
+did not know or care where furs came from. She seemed surprised. Then I
+told her about the iron-jawed, spike-toothed traps hidden by the springs
+or on the runways of game--about the fox or beaver or marten seeking its
+food, training its young to fare for themselves--about the sudden
+terrible clutch of the trap, and then the frantic fear, the instinctive
+fury, the violent struggle--about the foot gnawed off by the beast that
+was too fierce to die a captive--about the hours of agony, the horrible
+thirst--the horrible days till death. And I concluded: "All because
+women are luxurious and vain!" She shuddered underneath the beautiful
+coat of furs, and seemed insulted.
+
+Upon inquiry I learned from Nielsen that Buck was coming somewhere back
+along the trail hopping along on three legs. I rode on down to my camp,
+and procuring a bottle of iodine I walked back in the hope of doing Buck
+a good turn. During my absence he had reached camp, and was lying under
+an aspen, apart from the other hounds. Buck looked meaner and uglier and
+more distrustful than ever. Evidently this injury to his leg was a trick
+played upon him by his arch enemy man. I stood beside him, as he licked
+the swollen, bloody leg, and talked to him, as kindly as I knew how. And
+finally I sat down beside him. The trap-teeth had caught his right front
+leg just above the first joint, and from the position of the teeth marks
+and the way he moved his leg I had hopes that the bone was not broken.
+Apparently the big teeth had gone through on each side of the bone. When
+I tried gently to touch the swollen leg Buck growled ominously. He would
+have bitten me. I patted his head with one hand, and watching my chance,
+at length with the other I poured iodine over the open cuts. Then I kept
+patting him and holding his head until the iodine had become absorbed.
+Perhaps it was only my fancy, but it seemed that the ugly gleam in his
+distrustful eyes had become sheepish, as if he was ashamed of something
+he did not understand. That look more than ever determined me to try to
+find some way to his affections.
+
+A camp-fire council that night resulted in plans to take a pack outfit,
+and ride west along the rim to a place Haught called Dude Creek. "Reckon
+we'll shore smoke up some bars along Dude," said Haught. "Never was in
+there but I jumped bars. Good deer an' turkey country, too."
+
+Next day we rested the hounds, and got things into packing shape with
+the intention of starting early the following morning. But it rained on
+and off; and the day after that we could not find Haught's burros, and
+not until the fourth morning could we start. It turned out that Buck did
+not have a broken leg and had recovered surprisingly from the injury he
+had received. Aloof as he held himself it appeared certain he did not
+want to be left behind.
+
+We rode all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had
+encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the road, but how
+strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that
+memorable trip, that I did not remember all. Usually forest or desert
+ground I have traveled over I never forget. This ride, in the middle of
+October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make
+the forest a region of golden enchantment, was one of particular delight
+to me. I had begun to work and wear out the pain in my back. Every night
+I had suffered a little less and slept a little better, and every
+morning I had less and less of a struggle to get up and straighten out.
+Many a groan had I smothered. But now, when I got warmed up from riding
+or walking or sawing wood, the pain left me altogether and I forgot it.
+I had given myself heroic treatment, but my reward was in sight. My
+theory that the outdoor life would cure almost any ill of body or mind
+seemed to have earned another proof added to the long list.
+
+At sunset we had covered about sixteen miles of rough road, and had
+arrived at a point where we were to turn away from the rim, down into a
+canyon named Barber Shop Canyon, where we were to camp.
+
+[Illustration: Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR]
+
+[Illustration: R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR]
+
+Before turning aside I rode out to the rim for a look down at the
+section of country we were to hunt. What a pleasure to recognize the
+point from which Romer-boy had seen his first wild bear! It was a
+wonderful section of rim-rock country. I appeared to be at the extreme
+point of a vast ten-league promontory, rising high over the basin, where
+the rim was cut into canyons as thick as teeth of a saw. They were
+notched and v-shaped. Craggy russet-lichened cliffs, yellow and
+gold-stained rocks, old crumbling ruins of pinnacles crowned by pine
+thickets, ravines and gullies and canyons, choked with trees and brush
+all green-gold, purple-red, scarlet-fire--these indeed were the heights
+and depths, the wild, lonely ruggedness, the color and beauty of
+Arizona land. There were long, steep slopes of oak thickets, where the
+bears lived, long gray slides of weathered rocks, long slanting ridges
+of pine, descending for miles out and down into the green basin, yet
+always seeming to stand high above that rolling wilderness. The sun
+stood crossed by thin clouds--a golden blaze in a golden sky--sinking to
+meet a ragged horizon line of purple.
+
+[Illustration: ANOTHER BEAR]
+
+Here again was I confronted with the majesty and beauty of the earth,
+and with another and more striking effect of this vast tilted rim of
+mesa. I could see many miles to west and east. This rim was a huge wall
+of splintered rock, a colossal cliff, towering so high above the black
+basin below that ravines and canyons resembled ripples or dimples,
+darker lines of shade. And on the other side from its very edge, where
+the pine fringe began, it sloped gradually to the north, with heads of
+canyons opening almost at the crest. I saw one ravine begin its start
+not fifty feet from the rim.
+
+Barber Shop Canyon had five heads, all running down like the fingers of
+a hand, to form the main canyon, which was deep, narrow, forested by
+giant pines. A round, level dell, watered by a murmuring brook, deep
+down among the many slopes, was our camp ground, and never had I seen
+one more desirable. The wind soughed in the lofty pine tops, but not a
+breeze reached down to this sheltered nook. With sunset gold on the high
+slopes our camp was shrouded in twilight shadows. R.C. and I stretched a
+canvas fly over a rope from tree to tree, staked down the ends, and left
+the sides open. Under this we unrolled our beds.
+
+Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black
+night. A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the
+great brown pines with some weird aspect. The boys put up an old tent
+for the hounds. Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine
+rivals. I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed. When
+R.C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled
+between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined. "Well, Buck, old
+dog, you keep the skunks away," said R.C. And Buck emitted some kind of
+a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a
+lion away. From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to
+the white stars. Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except
+for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.
+
+We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the
+hot camp-fire. George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses,
+which had been hobbled and turned loose. Lee had remained with his
+father at Beaver Dam camp. For breakfast Takahashi had venison,
+biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa. I certainly did
+not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day. Buck hung
+around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough
+to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change. Then I fed him.
+Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they
+regarded with extreme disfavor. And the pups tried to pick a fight with
+Buck.
+
+By eight o'clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still
+forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses. A
+mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude
+Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds. The rest of
+us rode out to a point there to await developments. The sun had already
+flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim
+were dark in shade. I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and
+looked, and cared not for passage of time.
+
+But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams. Right under us
+the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes. They
+worked down. Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we
+kept our gaze. Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his
+horse. "Saw a bar," he yelled. "Just got a glimpse of him crossin' an
+open ridge. Come on." We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest
+kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim.
+"Ride along, you fellars," he said, "an' each pick out a stand. Keep
+ahead of the dogs an' look sharp."
+
+Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R.C. and
+George Haught having got ahead of me. I kept to the rim. The hounds
+could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and
+Edd. Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I
+was going. The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of
+iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the
+golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon--all these brought
+vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along
+the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt a pang, both for the past, and
+for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died
+recently. In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand,
+he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope
+to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild
+animals--he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I
+was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
+gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever
+wholly hopeless.
+
+I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached
+out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy
+points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No
+longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and
+sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled
+under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until
+I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where
+the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere
+below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of
+the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and
+promontories--a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for
+hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a
+yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another
+point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling
+from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or
+Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the
+rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my
+left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny
+black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
+and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so
+leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I
+began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.
+Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin
+to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead
+of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to
+shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse!
+Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran
+around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
+contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I
+got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his
+shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a
+horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far below rang the
+sharp spangs of rifles in quick action. Nielsen and Edd were shooting. I
+counted seven shots. How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die
+hollow and faint in the deep canyons!
+
+I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R.C.'s
+boots. Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals
+I yelled. For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on
+the windy rim of the world. My voice seemed lost in immensity. Then I
+rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings
+and I were weary. At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a
+pine on the rim. Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the
+squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour. I profited by this
+lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of
+a flock of wild pigeons. They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so
+that I could study them through my field glass. They were considerably
+larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast,
+with ringed or barred neck. Haught had assured me that birds of this
+description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in
+the United States. I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks
+that darkened the skies. These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.
+
+Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful
+as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of
+clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.
+
+The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was
+high time for me to bestir myself toward camp. On my way back I found
+Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to
+come up over the rim, and for me to return. They asked for my story.
+Then I learned theirs. Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had
+seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day.
+Copple had worked far westward, to no avail. R.C. had been close to
+George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate
+any bear. To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown
+bear when I had supposed it was my black one. Whereupon Haught said:
+"Reckon Edd an' Nielsen smoked up some other bear."
+
+One by one the hounds climbed over the rim and wearily lay down beside
+us. Down the long, grassy, cedared aisle I saw Edd and Nielsen plodding
+up. At length they reached us wet and dusty and thirsty. When Edd got
+his breath he said: "Right off we struck a hot trail. Bear with
+eleven-inch track. He'd come down to drink last night. Hounds worked up
+thet yeller oak thicket, an' somewhere Sue an' Rock jumped him out of
+his bed. He run down, an' he made some racket. Took to the low slopes
+an' hit up lively all the way down Dude, then crossed, climbed around
+under thet bare point of rock. Here some of the hounds caught up with
+him. We heard a pup yelp, an' after a while Kaiser Bill come sneakin'
+back. It was awful thick down in the canyon so we climbed the east side
+high enough to see. An' we were workin' down when the pack bayed the
+bear round thet bare point. It was up an' across from us. Nielsen an' I
+climbed on a rock. There was an open rock-slide where we thought the
+bear would show. It was five hundred yards. We ought to have gone across
+an' got a stand higher up. Well, pretty soon we saw him come paddlin'
+out of the brush--a big grizzly, almost black, with a frosty back. He
+was a silvertip all right. Niels an' I began to shoot. An' thet bear
+began to hump himself. He was mad, too. His fur stood up like a ruffle
+on his neck. Niels got four shots an' I got three. Reckon one of us
+stung him a little. Lordy, how he run! An' his last jump off the slide
+was a header into the brush. He crossed the canyon, an' climbed thet
+high east slope of Dude, goin' over the pass where father killed the big
+cinnamon three years ago. The hounds stuck to his trail. It took us an
+hour or more to climb up to thet pass. Broad bear trail goes over. We
+heard the hounds 'way down in the canyon on the other side. Niels an' I
+worked along the ridge, down an' around, an' back to Dude Creek. I kept
+callin' the hounds till they all came back. They couldn't catch him. He
+sure was a jack-rabbit for runnin'. Reckon thet's all.... Now who was
+smokin' shells up on the rim?"
+
+When all was told and talked over Haught said: "Wal, you can just bet we
+put up two brown bears an' one black bear, an' thet old Jasper of a
+silvertip."
+
+How hungry and thirsty and tired I was when we got back to camp! The day
+had been singularly rich in exciting thrills and sensorial perceptions.
+I called to the Jap: "I'm starv-ved to death!" And Takahashi, who had
+many times heard my little boy Loren yell that, grinned all over his
+dusky face. "Aw, lots good things pretty soon!"
+
+After supper we lounged around a cheerful, crackling camp-fire. The
+blaze roared in the breeze, the red embers glowed white and opal, the
+smoke swooped down and curled away into the night shadows. Old Dan, as
+usual, tried to sit in the fire, and had to be rescued. Buck came to me
+where I sat with my back to a pine, my feet to the warmth. He was lame
+to-night, having run all day on that injured leg. The other dogs lay
+scattered around in range of the heat. Natural indeed was it then, in
+such an environment, after talking over the auspicious start of our hunt
+at Dude Creek, that we should drift to the telling of stories.
+
+Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my
+experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico. Copple immediately topped
+my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own
+adventures in northern Mexico. These stirred Nielsen to talk about the
+Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted
+to the Yuma Indians. Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength
+he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.
+
+One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion. His
+employer was a captain of a fishing boat. One time, on the way to their
+home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his
+anger he heaved the anchor overboard. That of course halted the boat,
+and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the
+heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade. Finally the money
+matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without
+assistance. Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty
+frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored. She was not by any
+means a small or frail girl--rather the contrary--but she appeared
+diminutive beside her giant husband. One day he returned from a long
+absence on the sea. When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he
+gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died.
+In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.
+
+Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a
+scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set
+in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway.
+Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the
+ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young
+men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates,
+schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One
+of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the
+other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the
+midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill,
+and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship
+supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of
+solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that
+contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the
+living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his
+life afterward was he seen to smile.
+
+These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch.
+How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I
+heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the
+waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?
+
+Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his
+own--a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took
+to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed
+deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange
+simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth
+a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.
+
+Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the evening
+happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long chase after a
+bear and became separated. Bill was new at the game, and he was a
+peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking to himself! Haught finally
+rode to the edge of a ridge and espied Bill under a pine in which the
+hounds had treed a bear. Bill did not hear Haught's approach, and on the
+moment he was stalking round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung
+to a branch about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more
+full-grown bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill
+had not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill was
+yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to assassinate you.
+Chased me about a hundred miles--! An' thought you'd fool me, didn't
+you? Why, I've treed more bears than you ever saw--! You needn't look at
+me like thet, 'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you
+in a minnit an' skin your black har off, I am--"
+
+"Bill," interrupted Haught, "what are you goin' to do about the other
+two bears up in the top of the tree?"
+
+Bill was amazed to hear and see his brother, and greatly astounded and
+tremendously elated to discover the other two bears. He yelled and acted
+as one demented. "Three black Jaspers! I've treed you all. An' I'm
+agoin' to assassinate you all!"
+
+"See here, Bill," said Haught, "before you begin that assassinatin' make
+up your mind not to cripple any of them. You've got to shoot straight,
+so they'll be dead when they fall. If they're only crippled, they'll
+kill the hounds."
+
+Bill was insulted at any suggestions as to his possible poor
+marksmanship. But this happened to be his first experience with bears in
+trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him to dislodge the
+bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of the tree--apparently
+unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked them, and there arose a
+terrible uproar. Haught had to run down to save his dogs. Bill was going
+to shoot right into the melee, but Haught knocked the rifle up, and
+forbid him to use it. Then Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat
+off the hounds. Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally
+disposed of two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific
+yells he turned to see Bill climbing a tree with a big black bear
+tearing the seat out of his pants. Haught disposed of this bear also.
+Then he said: "Bill, I thought you was goin' to assassinate them." Bill
+slid down out of the tree, very pale and disheveled. "By Golly, I'll
+skin 'em anyhow!"
+
+Haught had another brother named Henry, who had come to Arizona from
+Texas, and had brought a half-hound with him. Henry offered to wager
+this dog was the best bear chaser in the country. The general impression
+Henry's hound gave was that he would not chase a rabbit. Finally Haught
+took his brother Henry and some other men on a bear hunt. There were
+wagers made as to the quality of Henry's half-hound. When at last
+Haught's pack struck a hot scent, and were off with the men riding fast
+behind, Henry's half-breed loped alongside his master, paying no
+attention to the wild baying of the pack. He would look up at Henry as
+if to say: "No hurry, boss. Wait a little. Then I'll show them!" He
+loped along, wagging his tail, evidently enjoying this race with his
+master. After a while the chase grew hotter. Then Henry's half-hound ran
+ahead a little way, and came back to look up wisely, as if to say: "Not
+time yet!" After a while, when the chase grew very hot indeed, Henry's
+wonderful canine let out a wild yelp, darted ahead, overtook the pack
+and took the lead in the chase, literally chewing the heels of the bear
+till he treed. Haught and his friends lost all the wagers.
+
+The most remarkable bears in this part of Arizona were what Haught
+called blue bears, possibly some kind of a cross between brown and
+black. This species was a long, slim, blue-furred bear with unusually
+large teeth and very long claws. So different from ordinary bears that
+it appeared another species. The blue bear could run like a greyhound,
+and keep it up all day and all night. Its power of endurance was
+incredible. In Haught's twenty years of hunting there he had seen a
+number of blue bears and had killed two. Haught chased one all day with
+young and fast hounds. He went to camp, but the hounds stuck to the
+chase. Next day Haught followed the hounds and bear from Dude Creek over
+into Verde Canyon, back to Dude Creek, and then back to Verde again.
+Here Haught gave out, and was on his way home when he met the blue bear
+padding along as lively as ever.
+
+I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a hundred
+bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often escaped by a
+breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not the most interesting
+to me. Haught had lived a singularly elemental life. He never knew what
+to tell me, because I did not know what to ask for, so I just waited for
+stories, experiences, woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come
+when they would. Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under
+any conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to
+camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his ears,
+look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been just where
+Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!
+
+When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up over the rim
+he used to get down in the cedar country, close to the desert. Here he
+heard of a pure black antelope that was the leader of a herd of ordinary
+color, which was a grayish white. The day came when Haught saw this
+black antelope. It was a very large, beautiful stag, the most noble and
+wild and sagacious animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to
+stalk it and kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got
+even a shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never
+heard of again.
+
+By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell, and now
+began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I envied his most
+remarkable imagination. His story had to do with hunting meat for a
+mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a rifle that he never aimed
+at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a habit of gun-fighters! Once the
+camp was out of meat, and also he was out of ammunition. Only one shell
+left! He came upon a herd of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were
+small deer and he wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around
+and waited until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to
+make sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks.
+Killed the whole five in one shot!
+
+We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and completely at
+Copple's mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal tales. He was hunting
+along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out
+to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One
+morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to
+paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was
+safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate,
+but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of
+the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out its
+head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the jaguar. First to
+give in was the cat. He let go and let out a squall. But the turtle
+started to crawl off, got going strong, and dragged the jaguar into the
+sea and drowned him. With naive earnestness Copple assured his mute
+listeners that he could show them the exact spot in Sonora where this
+happened.
+
+Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his immense
+loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really was no greater
+dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us want to see the mighty
+hunter have a fall.
+
+We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself. About
+sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We all heard him
+shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his revolver. Everybody
+said: "Turkeys! Ten turkeys--maybe a dozen, if Copple got two in line!"
+And we were all glad to think so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did
+not return till dark. He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a
+remarkable hard luck story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys,
+and they were rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and
+running fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all.
+Too dark--brush--trees--running like deer. Copple had a dozen excuses.
+Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away. He shot twice. The turkey
+was a knot, and he had missed even that.
+
+Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how Copple
+had called out: "Turkey number one! Turkey number two!" the day I had
+missed so many. Then I said:
+
+"Ben, you must have yelled out to-night like this." And I raised my
+voice high.
+
+"Turkey number one--Nix!... Turkey number two--missed, by Gosh!...
+Turkey number three--never touched him!... Turkey number four--No!...
+Turkey number five--_Aw, I'm shootin' blank shells_!... Turkey number
+six on the log--BY THUNDER, I CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT!"
+
+We all had our fun at Copple's expense. The old bear hunter, Haught,
+rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his mirth.
+
+
+VII
+
+Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with gold I went
+down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our horses. During the
+night our stock had been chased by a lion. We had all been awakened by
+their snorting and stampeding. We found our horses scattered, the burros
+gone, and Copple's mules still squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple
+assured me that this formation of his mules on guard was an infallible
+sign of lions prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten
+years and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the
+woods.
+
+We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty feet long,
+and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks showed in places, and
+on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in the mud, were lion tracks as
+large as the crown of my hat. How sight of them made me tingle all over!
+Here was absolute proof of the prowling of one of the great cats.
+
+Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular looking tracks,
+the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed.
+Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver
+had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but
+sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and
+wary. These dams had just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut
+for food. Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the
+water, and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside
+burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.
+
+Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could put up that
+lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged it to be a big
+one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C. preferred to keep after
+bears. "Wal," said Haught, "I'll take an off day an' chase thet lion.
+Had a burro killed here a couple of years ago."
+
+So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle's Canyon lay
+to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it that day. Edd and
+Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple and I followed shortly
+afterward with the intention of descending mid-way, and then working
+along the ridge crests and promontories. The other boys remained on the
+rim to take up various stands as occasion called for.
+
+I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim. They were
+grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that made them so hard
+to travel. Right off, half way down, we started a herd of bucks. The
+noise they made sounded like cattle. We found tracks of half a dozen.
+"Lots of deer under the rim," declared Copple, his eyes gleaming.
+"They're feedin' on acorns. Here's where you'll get your big buck."
+After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close
+at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush.
+
+Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes
+toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had to cross gravel
+patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and at last, gaining the
+bench we went through the pine grove, out to a manzanita thicket, to a
+rocky point where the ledges were toppling and dangerous. The stand here
+afforded a magnificent view. We were now down in the thick of this
+sloped and canyoned and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof
+from it. The dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to
+listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black notch
+below us. We watched and listened. And presently across open patches we
+saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck following them. Thus were
+my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed. Copple yelled down to Edd that
+some of the hounds were running deer, but apparently Edd was too far
+away to hear.
+
+Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd's horn, calling in
+the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint all of us above that
+he was going down around the point to drive the next canyon. Copple and
+I had to choose between climbing back to the rim or trying to cross the
+slopes and head the gorges, and ascend the huge ridge that separated
+Pyle's Canyon from the next canyon. I left the question to Copple, with
+the result that we stayed below.
+
+We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim we felt so
+far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in places and slippery
+in others, with deep cuts and patches of manzanita. No stranger was I to
+this beautiful treacherous Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike
+of it almost equal to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty,
+dry, and had begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were
+what continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive--that looked
+short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered miles in our
+detours and we had to travel fast because we knew Edd could round the
+base of the lower points in quick time.
+
+Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an enormous
+bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear trail. This
+track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as Haught says,"
+declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard the dogs an' got
+movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He was walkin'."
+
+I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling the feel of
+my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse the hunter in any
+man. We made sure how fresh this track was by observing twigs and sprigs
+of manzanita just broken. The wood was green, and wet with sap. Old
+Bruin had not escaped our eyes any too soon. We followed this bear
+trail, evidently one used for years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust
+a big, heavy, old grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough
+country! This fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail
+led gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and
+heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle, and rose
+from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side, rose to a bare,
+round point of gray rock, a landmark, a dome-shaped tower where the gods
+of that wild region might have kept their vigil.
+
+Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where it
+crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a canyon so deep
+and wild that it was purple. This saddle was really a remarkable
+place--a natural trail and outlet and escape for bears traveling from
+one canyon to another. Our bear tracks showed fresh, and we saw where
+they led down a steep, long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a
+dense black thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on
+each side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for a
+hunter to wait and watch.
+
+We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often
+it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the
+hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye
+Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed
+heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing
+bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds.
+Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet.
+After a while we heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We
+could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or
+more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could
+have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all
+matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks
+showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and
+weathered slides.
+
+Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up
+the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. "Let's go
+farther up," he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid
+stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us;
+to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious,
+wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes
+back and forth.
+
+Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite
+slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing
+up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a
+task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from
+an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the
+Haughts. Presently some one high on the rim answered with like yells.
+The chase was growing hotter.
+
+"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly. And I
+agreed with him.
+
+Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.
+
+"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple, with
+animation.
+
+"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.
+
+"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now look
+sharp!"
+
+I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another shot from
+above, farther off and from a different rifle, augmented our stirring
+expectation.
+
+Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down under and
+along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to keep up with him.
+We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard the spang of Haught's.30
+Gov't. Following this his big, hoarse voice bawled out: "He's goin' to
+the left--to the left!" That sent us right about face, to climbing,
+scrambling, running and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle,
+where we arrived breathless and eager.
+
+Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top of the
+bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon, climbing a
+little. Copple yelled with all his might: "Where's the bear?"
+
+"Bar everywhar!" pealed back Haught's stentorian voice. How the echoes
+clapped!
+
+Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout. "_Wehow_! I see
+him.... What a whopper!" He threw up his rifle:
+_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_--_spang_.
+
+His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I strained my
+eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. "Where? Where?" I cried, wildly.
+
+"There!" shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the canyon. "He's
+goin' over the bench--above Edd.... Now he's out of sight. Watch just
+over Edd. He'll cross that bench, go round the head of the little
+canyon, an' come out on the other side, under the bare bluff.... Watch
+sharp-right by that big spruce with the dead top.... He's a grizzly an'
+as big as a horse".
+
+I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: "Ben, you saw game first
+to-day". Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry and grizzled, huge
+and round, moved out of the shadow under the spruce and turned to go
+along the edge in the open sunlight.
+
+"Oh! look at him!" I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran all over me
+and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear I could see him
+through the circle of my peep sight, but when I moved the bead of the
+front sight upon him it almost covered him up. The distance was
+far--more than a thousand yards--over half a mile--we calculated
+afterward. But I tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape
+and fired till my rifle was empty.
+
+Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. "You watch while I shoot," he said. "Tell
+me where I'm hittin'."
+
+Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I saw a puff
+of dust. "Low, Ben!" Spang rang his rifle. "High!" Again he shot, wide
+this time. He emptied his magazine. "Smoke him now!" he shouted,
+gleefully. "I'll watch while you shoot."
+
+"It's too far, Ben," I replied, as I jammed the last shell in the
+receiver.
+
+"No--no. It's only we don't hold right. Aim a little coarse," said
+Copple. "Gee, ain't he some bear! 'No scared tall' as the Jap says....
+He's one of the old sheep-killers. He'll weigh half a ton. Smoke him
+now!"
+
+My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most consumed with
+admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was he afraid. He walked
+along the rough places, trotted along the ledges, and here and there he
+halted to gaze below him. I waited for one of these halts, aimed a
+trifle high, and fired. The grizzly made a quick, angry movement and
+then jumped up on a ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.
+
+"You hit close that time," yelled Ben. "Hold the same way--a little
+coarser."
+
+My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my third,
+hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge, covered him
+with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and down the step he
+had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of brush. I shot into that. We
+heard my bullet crack the twigs. But it routed him out, and then my last
+shot hit far under him.
+
+Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the Haughts:
+"Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He's just above you--under that bluff."
+
+The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their power, but
+they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more shots, quick, yet
+deliberate, and he got through before I had reloaded; and as I began my
+third magazine Copple was so swift in reloading that his first shot
+mingled with my second. How we made the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed
+down from the rim. Somewhere from the purple depths below Nielsen's
+giant's voice rolled up. The Haughts opposite answered with their deep,
+hoarse yells. Old Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young
+hounds let out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian
+cry, high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot
+and screech at one and the same time.
+
+"Hurry, Ben," I said, as I finished my third set of five shots, the
+last shot of which was my best and knocked dirt in the face of the
+grizzly.
+
+Again he reared. This time he appeared to locate our direction. Above
+the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and echoes I imagined I heard the
+grizzly roar. He was now getting farther along the base of the bluff,
+and I saw that he would escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My
+fingers were all thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last
+chance had fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his
+magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking the
+base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap
+forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had
+reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The old grizzly slowed
+up, and looked across, and wagged his huge head.
+
+"My gun's on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still
+more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger. The grizzly gave a
+spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a
+ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed like a lassoed
+elephant.
+
+"Ben, you hit him!" I yelled, excitedly.
+
+"Only made him mad. He's not hurt.... See, he's up again.... Will you
+look at that!"
+
+The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge furry
+ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an open slide
+where he unrolled, and stretched into a run. Copple got two more shots
+before he was out of sight.
+
+"Gone!" ejaculated Copple. "An' we never fetched him!... He ain't hurt.
+Did you see him pile down an' roll off that slope?... Let's see. I got
+twenty-three shots at him. How many had you?"
+
+"I had fifteen."
+
+"Say, it was some fun, wasn't it--smokin' him along there? But we ought
+to have fetched the old sheep-killer.... Wonder what's happened to the
+other fellows."
+
+We looked about us. Not improbably the exciting moments had been few in
+number, yet they seemed long indeed. The Haughts had gotten to the top
+of the bluff, and were tearing through the brush toward the point Copple
+had designated. They reached it too late.
+
+"Where is he?" yelled Edd.
+
+"Gone!" boomed Copple. "Runnin' down the canyon. Call the dogs an' go
+down after him."
+
+When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of the pups
+and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them. Old Dan and old Tom were
+baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could be heard yelping
+somewhere else. Bear trails seemingly were abundant near our
+whereabouts. Presently the Haughts disappeared at the back of the bench
+where the old grizzly had gone down, and evidently they put the two
+hounds on his trail.
+
+"That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this ridge,"
+declared Copple. "We want to be there."
+
+So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side of the
+ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down along the slope.
+Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than riding after Edd and
+George. When soon we reached a manzanita thicket I could no longer keep
+Copple in sight. He was so powerful that he just crashed through, but I
+had to worm my way, and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a
+tight-rope performer. Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was
+the worst.
+
+In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the dome-topped end
+of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently working back up the
+canyon. There was nothing for us to do but return to our stand at the
+saddle. Copple hurried faster than ever. But I had begun to tire and I
+could not keep up with him. But as I had no wild cravings to meet that
+old grizzly face to face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did
+manage by desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight. When I reached
+our stand I was wet and exhausted. After the hot, stifling, dusty glare
+of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush, the cool
+shade was a welcome change.
+
+Somewhere all the hounds were baying. Not for some time could we locate
+the Haughts. Finally with the aid of my glass we discovered them perched
+high upon the bluff above where our grizzly had gone round. It appeared
+that Edd was pointing across the canyon and his father was manifesting a
+keen interest. We did not need the glass then to tell that they saw a
+bear. Both leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.
+Then they stood like statues.
+
+"I'll go down into the thicket," said Copple. "Maybe I can get a shot.
+An' anyway I want to see our grizzly's tracks." With that he started
+down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather than walked, and
+soon was out of my sight. After that I heard him crashing through
+thicket and brush. Soon this sound ceased. The hounds, too, had quit
+baying and the wind had lulled. Not a rustle of a leaf! All the hunters
+were likewise silent. I enjoyed a lonely hour there watching and
+listening, not however without apprehensions of a bear coming along.
+Certain I was that this canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been
+full of bears.
+
+At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite slope. The
+way he toiled along proved how rough was the going. I watched him
+through my glasses, and was again impressed with the strange difference
+between the semblance of distance and the reality. Every few steps
+Copple would halt to rest. He had to hold on to the brush and in the
+bare places where he could not reach a bush he had to dig his heels into
+the earth to keep from sliding down. In time he ascended to the place
+where our grizzly had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the
+Haughts, high above him. They answered, and soon disappeared on the far
+side of the bluff. Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of
+yellow rock. Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and then a
+wild clamor of the hounds. Some of the pack had been put on the trail of
+our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther away.
+
+This was too much for me. I decided to go down into the canyon.
+Forthwith I started. It was easy to go down! As a matter of fact it was
+hard not to slide down like a streak. That long, dark, narrow aisle
+between the spruces had no charm for me anyway. Suppose I should meet a
+bear coming up as I was sliding down! I sheered off and left the trail,
+and also Copple's tracks. This was a blunder. I came out into more open
+slope, but steeper, and harder to cling on. Ledges cropped out, cliffs
+and ravines obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to
+help me much. Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran
+down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful ones. It
+was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces. The lower down I
+got the smaller and more numerous the trees. I could see where they left
+off to the dense thicket that choked the lower part of the v-shaped
+canyon. And I was amazed at the size and density of that jungle of scrub
+oaks, maples and aspens. From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and
+gold and green, with bronze tinge.
+
+Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could see the
+dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little particles, the
+springing erect of bent grasses. In some places big sections of earth, a
+yard wide had slipped under the feet of this particular bear. He
+appeared to be working down. Right then I wanted to go up! But I could
+not climb out there. I had to go down. Soon I was under low-spreading,
+dense spruces, and I had to hold on desperately to keep from sliding.
+All the time naturally I kept a keen lookout for a bear. Every stone and
+tree trunk resembled a bear. I decided if I met a grizzly that I would
+not annoy him on that slope. I would say: "Nice bear, I won't hurt you!"
+Still the situation had some kind of charm. But to claim I was not
+frightened would not be strictly truthful. I slid over the trail of that
+bear into the trail of another one, and under the last big spruce on
+that part of the slope I found a hollow nest of pine needles and leaves,
+and if that bed was not still warm then my imagination lent considerable
+to the moment.
+
+Beyond this began the edge of the thicket. It was small pine at first,
+so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as dark as
+twilight. The ground was a slant of brown pine needles, so slippery,
+that if I could not have held on to trees and branches I never would
+have kept my feet. In this dark strip I had more than apprehensions.
+What a comfortable place to encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly
+bear! The manzanita thicket was preferable. But as Providence would have
+it I did not encounter one.
+
+Soon I worked or wormed out of the pines into the thicket of scrub oaks,
+maples and aspens. The change was welcome. Not only did the slope
+lengthen out, but the light changed from gloom to gold. There was half a
+foot of scarlet, gold, bronze, red and purple leaves on the ground, and
+every step I made I kicked acorns about to rustle and roll. Bear sign
+was everywhere, tracks and trails and beds and scratches. I kept going
+down, and the farther down I got the lighter it grew, and more
+approaching a level. One glade was strangely luminous and beautiful with
+a blending of gold and purple light made by the sun shining through the
+leaves overhead down upon the carpet of leaves on the ground. Then I
+came into a glade that reminded me of Kipling's moonlight dance of the
+wild elephants. Here the leaves and fern were rolled and matted flat,
+smooth as if done by a huge roller. Bears and bears had lolled and slept
+and played there. A little below this glade was a place, shady and cool,
+where a seep of water came from under a bank. It looked like a herd of
+cattle had stamped the earth, only the tracks were bear tracks. Little
+ones no longer than a child's hand, and larger, up to huge tracks a foot
+long and almost as wide. Many were old, but some were fresh. This little
+spot smelled of bear so strongly that it reminded me of the bear pen in
+the Bronx Park Zoological Garden. I had been keen for sight of bear
+trails and scent of bear fur, but this was a little too much. I thought
+it was too much because the place was lonely and dark and absolutely
+silent. I went on down to the gully that ran down the middle of the
+canyon. It was more open here. The sun got through, and there were some
+big pines.
+
+I could see the bluff that the Haughts had climbed so laboriously, and
+now I understood why they had been so slow. It was straight up, brush
+and jumbled rock, and two hundred feet over my head. Somewhere above
+that bluff was the bluff where our bear had run along.
+
+I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to deceive me, but
+I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed unwise for me to go on
+down the canyon, for if I did not meet the men I would find myself lost.
+As it was I would have my troubles climbing out.
+
+I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had come down,
+hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and not so vastly
+inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse! It was thicker,
+darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if possible, actually more bear
+sign. I had to pull myself up by holding to the trees and branches. I
+had to rest every few steps. I had to watch and listen all the time.
+Half-way up the trunks of the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent
+down-hill. They curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood
+upright. And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely
+almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course caused
+by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more interesting if
+I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter and wetter than I had
+been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with the labor and worry and
+exhaustion, my apprehensions had increased. They increased until I had
+to confess that I was scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the
+leaves somewhere below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a
+bear. I would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear
+coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score, so had
+Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had Haught. "Don't
+never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if you do he'll just
+roll up an' pile down on you!"
+
+I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to burst.
+Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding down I got
+desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would happen along to make an
+end to my misery.
+
+It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which constituted
+the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past three when finally
+I reached the saddle where we had shot at the grizzly. I rested as long
+as I dared. I had still a long way to go up that ridge to the rim, and
+how did I know whether or not I could surmount it.
+
+However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit. Then I
+started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the open, high above
+the canyons, and the vast basin still farther below, yet far indeed
+under the pine-fringed rim above. This climb was all over stone. The
+ridge was narrow-crested, yellow, splintered rock, with a few dwarf
+pines and spruces and an occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a
+sound that I did not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and
+the other hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an
+hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course
+that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high
+backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me.
+Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out. It would be a task
+equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to
+realize that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the
+task.
+
+Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the hour. This
+was one of my especial joys of the open--to be alone high on some
+promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery. The sun was still an hour
+from setting, and it had begun to soften, to grow intense, and more
+golden. There were clouds and lights that promised a magnificent sunset.
+
+So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone loose and
+watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down, to make the
+dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually start an avalanche
+that would roar down into the canyon.
+
+The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black ridges and
+canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great mountain ranges
+enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed promontories of the
+rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood out over the void. The colors
+of autumn gleamed under the cliffs, everywhere patches of gold and long
+slants of green and spots of scarlet and clefts of purple.
+
+The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had to step
+up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body. My rifle grew
+to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of lead around my waist.
+If I had been hot and wet below in the thicket I wondered what I grew on
+the last steps of this ridge. Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen
+pleasure. I did not analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be
+there.
+
+The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable, all grown
+over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by hauling myself
+up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges of rock there, and
+holding to the brush, at last, panting and spent, I reached the top.
+
+I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
+unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep and
+ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side of the
+ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around. There was
+George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own horse Stockings.
+
+Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and scarlet
+thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will seem, that the
+first object I clearly distinguished was a big black bear standing in
+an open aisle at the upper reach of the thicket close to the cliff. He
+shone black as shiny coal. He was looking down into the thicket, as if
+listening to the baying hound.
+
+I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement,
+and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his
+shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped,
+and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner
+of gray ledge.
+
+"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day--to get a
+chance like that--and miss!"
+
+All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I
+could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden
+ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of
+color--Coleridge's yellow lightning--and it extended to a bank of cloud
+that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of
+purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
+exquisitely flecked with gold.
+
+Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
+transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back
+to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located
+the spot. I just about had strength enough left to straddle him. And
+presently through the twilight shadows I caught a bright glimmer of our
+camp-fire. Supper was ready; Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the
+men were waiting for me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As
+I sat to a bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions
+seemed absolutely satisfying.
+
+George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard and seen
+a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he had overshot
+and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking a slide some four
+hundred yards down the canyon slope, and forgetting that he had a heavy
+close-range shell in his rifle instead of one of high trajectory, he had
+aimed accordingly, to undershoot half a foot and thus lose his
+opportunity. Nielsen had been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere
+he heard yells and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud
+rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd told of
+the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they had shot at the
+grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear had rolled around in his
+bed across the canyon. But the hounds got too tired to hold the trails
+late in the day. And lastly Edd said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the
+grizzly I could hear the bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure
+scared stiff for fear you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't
+scared. He said, 'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"
+
+When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's adventures
+my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was wanting on the moment
+except that my boy Romer was not there to hear.
+
+"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint
+satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from brush,
+surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we seen five bars.
+Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some of them big fellars,
+too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of this canyon. When Old Dan
+opened up first off I wanted Edd to climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin'
+an' we lost our chance. Fer pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush.
+My, but thet bar was rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild
+steer, an' he ran past us close--not a hundred yards. I never heard a
+heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an' thet
+bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the grizzly thet
+you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but Edd an' I lammed a
+couple after him jest for luck. One of the pups was nippin' his heels.
+Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet was all of thet. We plumb busted
+ourselves gettin' on top of the bench to head off your bar. Only we
+hadn't time. Then we worried along around to the top of thet higher
+bluff an' there I was so played-out I thought my day had come. We kept
+our eyes peeled, an' pretty soon I spied a big brown bar actin' queer in
+an open spot across the canyon. Edd seen him too, an' we argued about
+what thet bar was doin'. He lay in a small open place at the foot of a
+spruce. He wagged his head slow an' he made as if to roll over, an' he
+stretched his paws, an' acted shore queer. Edd said: 'Thet bar's
+crippled. He's been shot by one of the boys, an' he's tryin' to get up.'
+But I shore didn't exactly agree with Edd. So I was for watchin' him
+some more. He looked like a sick bar--raisin' his head so slow an'
+droppin' it so slow an' sort of twistin' his body. He looked like his
+back had been broke an' he was tryin' to get up, but somehow I couldn't
+believe thet. Then he lay still an' Edd swore he was dead. Shore I got
+almost to believin' thet myself, when he waked up. An' then the old
+scoundrel slid around lazy like a torn cat by the fire, and sort of
+rolled on his back an' stretched. Next he slapped at himself with his
+paws. If he wasn't sick he was shore actin' queer with thet canyon full
+of crackin' guns an' bayin' hounds an' yellin' men. I begun to get
+suspicious. Shore he must be a dyin' bear. So I said to Edd: 'Let's bast
+him a couple just fer luck.' Wal, when we shot up jumped thet sick bar
+quicker'n you could wink. An' he piled into the thicket while I was
+goin' down after another shell.... It shore was funny. Thet old Jasper
+never heard the racket, an' if he heard it he didn't care. He had a bed
+in thet sunny spot an' he was foolin' around, playin' with himself like
+a kitten. Playin'! An' Edd reckoned he was dyin' an' I come shore near
+bein' fooled. The old Jasper! We'll assassinate him fer thet!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+Five more long arduous days we put in chasing bears under the rim from
+Pyle's Canyon to Verde Canyon. In all we started over a dozen bears. But
+I was inclined to think that we chased the same bears over and over from
+one canyon to another. The boys got a good many long-range shots, which,
+however, apparently did no damage. But as for me, the harder and farther
+I tramped and the longer I watched and waited the less opportunity had I
+to shoot a bear.
+
+This circumstance weighed heavily upon the spirits of my comrades. They
+wore their boots out, as well as the feet of the hounds, trying to chase
+a bear somewhere near me. And wherever I stayed or went there was the
+place the bears avoided. Edd and Neilsen lost flesh in this daily toil.
+Haught had gloomy moments. But as for me the daily ten-or fifteen-mile
+grind up and down the steep craggy slopes had at last trained me back to
+my former vigorous condition, and I was happy. No one knew it, not even
+R.C., but the fact was I really did not care in the least whether I shot
+a bear or not. Bears were incidental to my hunting trip. I had not a
+little secret glee over the praise accorded me by Copple and Haught and
+Nielsen, who all thought that the way I persevered was remarkable. They
+would have broken their necks to get me a bear. At times R.C. when he
+was tired fell victim to discouragement and he would make some caustic
+remark: "I don't know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle
+because it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise
+up and swipe you one!"
+
+Takahashi passed from concern to grief over what he considered my bad
+luck: "My goodnish! No see bear to-day?... Maybe more better luck
+to-morrow." If I could have had some of Takahashi's luck I would
+scarcely have needed to leave camp. He borrowed Nielsen's 30-40 rifle
+and went hunting without ever having shot it. He rode the little
+buckskin mustang, that, remarkable to state, had not yet thrown him or
+kicked him. And on that occasion he led the mustang back to camp with a
+fine two-point buck on the saddle. "Camp need fresh meat," said the Jap,
+with his broad smile. "I go hunt. Ride along old road. Soon nice fat
+deer walk out from bush. Twenty steps away--maybe. I get off. I no want
+kill deer so close, so I walk on him. Deer he no scared. He jump off few
+steps--stick up his ears--look at horse all same like he thought him
+deer too. I no aim gun from shoulder. I just shoot. No good. Deer he
+run. I aim then--way front of him--shoot--deer he drop right down
+dead.... Aw, easy to get deer!"
+
+I would have given a great deal to have been able to describe Haught's
+face when the Jap finished his story of killing that deer. But such feat
+was beyond human ingenuity. "Wal," ejaculated the hunter, "in all my
+days raslin' round with fools packin' guns I never seen the likes of
+thet. No wonder the Japs licked the Russians!" This achievement of
+Takahashi's led me to suggest his hunting bear with us. "Aw sure--I kill
+bear too," he said. Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never
+made detours. He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple
+and Edd were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a
+wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man made,
+carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed as a goat,
+perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I took occasion to
+ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain climbing in Japan. "Aw
+sure. I have father own whole mountain more bigger here. I climb
+high--saw wood. Leetle boy so big." And he held his hand about a foot
+from the ground. Thus for me every day brought out some further
+interesting or humorous or remarkable feature pertaining to Takahashi.
+
+The next day added to the discouragement of my party. We drove Verde
+Canyon and ran the dogs into a nest of steel-traps. Big Foot was caught
+in one, and only the remarkable size and strength of his leg saved it
+from being broken. Nielsen found a poor, miserable, little fox in a
+trap, where it had been for days, and was nearly dead. Edd found a dead
+skunk in another. He had to call the hounds in. We returned to camp.
+That night was really the only cheerless one the men spent around the
+fire. They did not know what to do. Manifestly with trappers in a
+locality there could be no more bear chasing. Disappointment perched
+upon the countenances of the Haughts and Copple and Nielsen. I let them
+all have their say. Finally Haught spoke up: "Wal, fellars, I'm
+figgerin' hard an' I reckon here's my stand. We jest naturally have to
+get Doc an' his brother a bear apiece. Shore I expected we'd get 'em a
+couple. Now, them traps we seen are all small. We didn't run across no
+bear traps. An' I reckon we can risk the dogs. We'll shore go back an'
+drive Verde Canyon. We can't do no worse than break a leg for a dog. I'd
+hate to see thet happen to Old Dan or Tom. But we'll take a chance."
+
+After that there fell a moment's silence. I could see from Edd's face
+what a serious predicament this was. Nothing was plainer than his
+fondness for the hounds. Finally he said: "Sure. We'll take a chance."
+Their devotion to my interest, their simple earnestness, warmed me to
+them. But not for all the bears under the rim would I have been
+wittingly to blame for Old Dan or Old Tom breaking a leg.
+
+"Men, I've got a better plan," I said. "We'll let the bears here rest
+for a spell. Supplies are about gone. Let's go back to Beaver Dam camp
+for a week or so. Rest up the hounds. Maybe we'll have a storm and a
+cold snap that will improve conditions. Then we'll come back here. I'll
+send Haught down to buy off the trappers. I'll pay them to spring their
+traps and let us have our hunt without risk of the hounds."
+
+Instantly the men brightened. The insurmountable obstacles seemed to
+melt away. Only Haught demurred a little at additional and unreasonable
+expense for me. But I cheered him over this hindrance, and the last part
+of that evening round the camp-fire was very pleasant.
+
+The following morning we broke camp, and all rode off, except Haught and
+his son George, who remained to hunt a strayed burro. "Reckon thet lion
+eat him. My best burro. He was the one your boy was always playin' with.
+I'm goin' to assassinate thet lion."
+
+On the way back to Beaver Dam camp I happened to be near Takahashi when
+he dismounted to shoot at a squirrel. Returning to get back in the
+saddle the Jap forgot to approach the mustang from the proper side.
+There was a scuffle between Takahashi and the mustang as to which of
+them should possess the bridle. The Jap lost this argument. Edd had to
+repair the broken bridle. I watched Takahashi and could see that he did
+not like the mustang any better than the mustang liked him. Soon the
+struggle for supremacy would take place between this ill assorted rider
+and horse. I rather felt inclined to favor the latter; nevertheless it
+was only fair to Takahashi to admit that his buckskin-colored mustang
+had some mean traits.
+
+In due time I arrived at our permanent camp, to be the last to get in.
+Lee and his father welcomed us as familiar faces in a strange land. As I
+dismounted I heard heavy thuds and cracks accompanied by fierce
+utterances in a foreign tongue. These sounds issued from the corral.
+
+"I'll bet the Jap got what was coming to him," declared Lee.
+
+We all ran toward the corral. A bunch of horses obstructed our view, and
+we could not see Takahashi until we ran round to the other side. The Jap
+had the buckskin mustang up in a corner and was vigorously whacking him
+with a huge pole. Not by any means was the mustang docile. Like a mule,
+he kicked. "Hey George," yelled Lee, "don't kill him! What's the
+matter?"
+
+Takahashi slammed the mustang one parting blow, which broke the club,
+and then he turned to us. We could see from dust and dirt on his person
+that he had lately been in close relation to the earth. Takahashi's face
+was pale except for a great red lump on his jaw. The Jap was terribly
+angry. He seemed hurt, too. With a shaking hand he pointed to the bruise
+on his jaw.
+
+"Look what he do!" exclaimed Takahashi. "He throw me off!... He kick me
+awful hard! I kill him sure next time."
+
+Lee and I managed to conceal our mirth until our irate cook had gotten
+out of hearing. "Look--what--he--do!" choked Lee, imitating Takahashi.
+Then Lee broke out and roared. I had to join him. I laughed till I
+cried. My family and friends severely criticise this primitive trait of
+mine, but I can not help it. Later I went to Takahashi and asked to
+examine his jaw, fearing it might have been broken. This fear of mine,
+however, was unfounded. Moreover the Jap had recovered from his pain and
+anger. "More better now," he said, with a grin. "Maybe my fault anyhow."
+
+Next day we rested, and the following morning was so fine and clear and
+frosty that we decided to go hunting. We rode east on the way to See
+Lake through beautiful deep forest.
+
+I saw a deer trotting away into the woods. I jumped off, jerked out my
+gun, and ran hard, hoping to see him in an opening. Lo! I jumped a herd
+of six more deer, some of them bucks. They plunged everywhere. I tried
+frantically to get my sights on one. All I could aim at was bobbing
+ears. I shot twice, and of course missed. R.C. shot four times, once at
+a running buck, and three at a small deer that he said was flying!
+
+Here Copple and Haught caught up with us. We went on, and turned off the
+road on the blazed trail to See Lake. It was pretty open forest, oaks
+and scattered pines, and a few spruce. The first park we came to was a
+flat grassy open, with places where deer licked the bare earth. Copple
+left several pounds of salt in these spots. R.C. and I went up to the
+upper end where he had seen deer before. No deer this day! But saw three
+turkeys, one an old gobbler. We lost sight of them.
+
+Then Copple and R.C. went one way and Haught and I another. We went
+clear to the rim, and then circled around, and eventually met R.C. and
+Copple. Together we started to return. Going down a little draw we found
+water, and R.C. saw where a rock had been splashed with water and was
+still wet. Then I saw a turkey track upon this rock. We slipped up the
+slope, with me in the lead. As I came out on top, I saw five big
+gobblers feeding. Strange how these game birds thrilled me! One saw me
+and started to run. Like a streak! Another edged away into pines. Then I
+espied one with his head and neck behind a tree and he was scratching
+away in the pine needles. I could not see much of him, but that little
+was not running, so I drew down upon him, tried to aim fine, and fired.
+He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and needles flying.
+Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted into a thicket.
+
+Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an ostrich in
+the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him. In vain!
+
+R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught and I went
+the other way. We could find no trace of ours. And we returned to our
+horses.
+
+Presently we heard shots. One--two--three--pause--then several more. And
+finally more, to a total number of fifteen. I could not stand that and I
+had to hurry back into the woods. I saw one old gobbler running wildly
+around as if lost, but I did not shoot at him because he seemed to be in
+line with the direction which R.C. and Copple had taken. I should have
+run after him until he went some other way.
+
+I could not find the hunters, and returned to our resting place, which
+they had reached ahead of me. They had a turkey each, gobblers about two
+years old Copple said.
+
+R.C. told an interesting story of how he had run in the direction the
+two turkeys had taken, and suddenly flushed thirty or forty more, some
+big old gobblers, but mostly young. They scattered and ran. He followed
+as fast as he could, shooting a few times. Copple could not keep up with
+him, but evidently had a few shots himself. R.C. chased most of the
+flock across several small canyons, till he came to a deep canyon. Here
+he hoped to make a killing when the turkeys ran up the far slope. But
+they flew across! And he heard them clucking over there. He crossed, and
+went on cautiously. Once he saw three turkey heads sticking above a log.
+Wise old gobblers! They protected their bodies while they watched for
+him. He tried to get sidewise to them but they ran off. Then he followed
+until once more he heard clucking.
+
+Here he sat down, just beyond the edge of a canyon, and began to call
+with his turkey wing. It thrilled him to hear his calls answered on all
+sides. Here was a wonderful opportunity. He realized that the turkeys
+were mostly young and scattered, and frightened, and wanted to come
+together. He kept calling, and as they neared him on all sides he felt
+something more than the zest of hunting. Suddenly Copple began to shoot.
+Spang! Spang! Spang! R.C. saw the dust fly under one turkey. He heard
+the bullet glance. The next shot killed a turkey. Then R.C. yelled that
+he was no turkey! Then of that scattering flock he managed to knock over
+one for himself.
+
+Copple had been deceived by the call of an amateur. That flattered R.C.,
+but he was keenly disappointed that Copple had spoiled the situation.
+
+During the day the blue sky was covered by thin flying clouds that
+gradually thickened and darkened. The wind grew keener and colder, and
+veered to the southwest. We all said storm. There was no sunset Darker
+clouds rolled up, obliterating the few stars.
+
+We went to bed. Long after that I heard the swell and roar and crash and
+lull of the wind in the pines, a sound I had learned to love in Buckskin
+Forest with Buffalo Jones. At last I fell asleep.
+
+Sometime in the night I awoke. A fine rain was pattering on the tent.
+It grew stronger. After a while I went to sleep again. Upon awakening I
+found that the storm had struck with a vengeance. It was dull gray
+daylight, foggy, cold, windy, with rain and snow.
+
+I got up, built a fire, puttered around the tents to loosen the ground
+ropes, and found that it was nipping cold. My fingers ached. The storm
+increased, and then we fully appreciated the tent with stove. The rain
+roared on the tent roof, and all morning the wind increased, and the air
+grew colder. I hoped it would turn to snow.
+
+Soon indeed we were storm bound. On the third day the wind reached a
+very high velocity. The roar in the pines was stupendous. Many times I
+heard the dull crash of a falling tree. With the ground saturated by the
+copious rain, and the fury of the storm blast, a great many trees were
+felled. That night it rained all night, not so hard, but steadily, now
+low, now vigorously. After morning snow began to fall. But it did not
+lay long. After a while it changed to sleet. At times the dark,
+lowering, scurrying clouds broke to emit a flare of sunshine and to show
+a patch of blue. These last however were soon obscured by the scudding
+gray pall. Every now and then a little shower of rain or sleet pattered
+on the tents. We looked for a clearing up.
+
+That night about eight o'clock the clouds vanished and stars shone. In
+the night the wind rose and roared. In the morning all was dark, cloudy,
+raw, cold. But the wind had died out, and there were spots of blue
+showing. These spots enlarged as the morning advanced, and about nine
+the sun, golden and dazzling, beautified the forest. "Bright sunny days
+will soon come again!"
+
+It was good to have hope and belief in that.
+
+All the horses but Don Carlos weathered the storm in good shape. Don
+lost considerable weight. He had never before been left with hobbled
+feet to shift for himself in a prolonged storm of rain, sleet and snow.
+He had cut himself upon brush, and altogether had fared poorly. He
+showed plainly that he had been neglected. Don was the only horse I had
+ever known of that did not welcome the wilderness and companionship with
+his kind.
+
+We rested the following day, and on the next we packed and started back
+to Dude Creek. It was a cold, raw, bitter day, with a gale from the
+north, such a day as I could never have endured had I not become
+hardened. As it was I almost enjoyed wind and cold. What a
+transformation in the woods! The little lakes were all frozen over;
+pines, moss, grass were white with frost. The sear days had come. Not a
+leaf showed in the aspen and maple thickets. The scrub oaks were shaggy
+and ragged, gray as the rocks. From the rim the slopes looked steely and
+dark, thinned out, showing the rocks and slides.
+
+When we reached our old camp in Barber Shop Canyon we were all glad to
+see Haught's lost burro waiting for us there. Not a scratch showed on
+the shaggy lop-eared little beast. Haught for once unhobbled a burro and
+set it free without a parting kick. Nielsen too had observed this
+omission on Haught's part. Nielsen was a desert man and he knew burros.
+He said prospectors were inclined to show affection for burros by sundry
+cuffs and kicks. And Nielsen told me a story about Haught. It seemed the
+bear hunter was noted for that habit of kicking burros. Sometimes he was
+in fun and sometimes, when burros were obstinate, he was in earnest.
+Upon one occasion a big burro stayed away from camp quite a long
+time--long enough to incur Haught's displeasure. He needed the burro and
+could not find it, and all he could do was to hunt for it. Upon
+returning to camp there stood the big gray burro, lazy and fat, just as
+if he had been perfectly well behaved. Haught put a halter on the burro,
+using strong language the while, and then he proceeded to exercise his
+habit of kicking burros. He kicked this one until its fat belly gave
+forth sounds exceedingly like a bass drum. When Haught had ended his
+exercise he tied up the burro. Presently a man came running into
+Haught's camp. He appeared alarmed. He was wet and panting. Haught
+recognized him as a miner from a mine nearby. "Hey Haught," panted the
+miner, "hev you seen--your gray burro--thet big one--with white face?"
+
+"Shore, there he is," replied Haught. "Son of a gun jest rustled home."
+
+The miner appeared immensely relieved. He looked and looked at the gray
+burro as if to make sure it was there, in the solid flesh, a really
+tangible object. Then he said: "We was all afeared you'd kick the
+stuffin's out of him!... Not an hour ago he was over at the mine, an' he
+ate five sticks of dynamite! Five sticks! For Lord's sake handle him
+gently!"
+
+Haught turned pale and suddenly sat down. "Ahuh!" was all he said. But
+he had a strange hunted look. And not for a long time did he ever again
+kick a burro!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hunting conditions at Dude Creek had changed greatly to our benefit. The
+trappers had pulled up stakes and gone to some other section of the
+country. There was not a hunting party within fifteen miles of our camp.
+Leaves and acorns were all down; trails were soft and easy to travel; no
+dust rose on the southern slopes; the days were cold and bright; in
+every pocket and ravine there was water for the dogs; from any stand we
+could see into the shaggy thickets where before all we could see was a
+blaze of color.
+
+In three days we drove Pyle's Canyon, Dude Creek, and the small
+adjoining canyons, chasing in all nine bears, none of which ran anywhere
+near R.C. or me. Old Dan gave out and had to rest every other day. So
+the gloom again began to settle thick over the hopes of my faithful
+friends. Long since, as in 1918, I had given up expectations of bagging
+a bear or a buck. For R.C., however, my hopes still held good. At least
+I did not give up for him. But he shared somewhat the feelings of the
+men. Still he worked harder than ever, abandoning the idea of waiting on
+one of the high stands, and took to the slopes under the rim where he
+toiled down and up all day long. It pleased me to learn, presently, that
+this activity, strenuous as it was, became a source of delight to him.
+How different such toil was from waiting and watching on the rim!
+
+On November first, a bitter cold morning, with ice in the bright air, we
+went back to Pyle's Canyon, and four of us went down with Edd and the
+hounds. We had several chases, and about the middle of the forenoon I
+found myself alone, making tracks for the saddle over-looking Bear
+Canyon. Along the south side of the slope, in the still air the sun was
+warm, but when I got up onto the saddle, in an exposed place, the wind
+soon chilled me through. I would keep my stand until I nearly froze,
+then I had to go around to the sunny sheltered side and warm up. The
+hounds finally got within hearing again, and eventually appeared to be
+in Bear Canyon, toward the mouth. I decided I ought to go round the
+ridge on the east side and see if I could hear better. Accordingly I set
+off, and the hard going over the sunny slope was just what I needed.
+When I reached the end of the ridge, under the great dome, I heard the
+hounds below me, somewhat to my left. Running and plowing down through
+the brush I gained the edge of the bluff, just in time to see some of
+the hounds passing on. They had run a bear through that thicket, and if
+I had been there sooner I would have been fortunate. But too late! I
+worked around the head of this canyon and across a wide promontory.
+Again I heard the hounds right under me. They came nearer, and soon I
+heard rolling rocks and cracking brush, which sounds I believed were
+made by a bear. After a while I espied Old Tom and Rock working up the
+canyon on a trail. Then I was sure I would get a shot. Presently,
+however, Old Tom left the trail and started back. Rock came on, climbed
+the ridge, and hearing me call he came to me. I went over to the place
+where he had climbed out and found an enormous bear track pointing in
+the direction the hounds had come. They had back-trailed him. Rock went
+back to join Old Tom. Some of the pack were baying at a great rate in
+the mouth of the next canyon. But an impassable cliff prevented me from
+working around to that point. So I had to address myself to the long
+steep climb upward. I had not gone far when I crossed the huge bear
+track that Rock and Old Tom had given up. This track was six inches wide
+and ten inches long. The bear that had made it had come down this very
+morning from over the ridge east of Bear Canyon. I trailed him up this
+ridge, over the steepest and roughest and wildest part of it, marveling
+at the enormous steps and jumps he made, and at the sagacity which
+caused him to choose this route instead of the saddle trail where I had
+waited so long. His track led up nearly to the rim and proved how he had
+climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was one of
+the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned that Sue and
+several more of the hounds had held a bear for some time in the box of
+the canyon just beyond where I had to give up. Edd and Nielsen were
+across this canyon, unable to go farther, and then yelled themselves
+hoarse, trying to call some of us. I asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure
+did," replied Edd. "One of them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to
+laugh, and told how near I had come to meeting a bear that was short,
+fat, and heavy: "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"
+
+That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more bitterly
+cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the smoke and my
+face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted myself so thoroughly
+that my clothes actually burned me as I lay down. But they heated the
+blankets and that made my bed snug and soon I was in the land of dreams.
+During the night I awoke. The wind had lulled. The canopy above was
+clear, cold, starry, beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed
+ten above zero. Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder,
+but in any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
+fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze stirring.
+
+That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
+atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised to be as
+exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would bag a bear!
+
+When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the purple basin,
+flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the slumberous shadows. What
+a glorious wilderness to greet the eye at sunrise! I suffered a pang to
+realize what men missed--what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.
+
+We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second canyon
+east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi followed to hug the
+lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George held to the rim to ride east
+in case the hounds chased a bear that way. And R.C. and I were to try to
+climb out and down a thin rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught
+knew, no one had ever been on.
+
+Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and rugged
+backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out and down--a
+very narrow knife-edge extended promontory, green with cedar and pine,
+yellow and gray with its crags and rocks. A craggy point comparable to
+some of those in the Grand Canyon! We had to study a way to get across
+the first deep fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest
+and climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little
+time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end in an
+hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle slopes we had to
+run across, for light quick steps were the only means of safe travel.
+And that was not safe! When we surmounted to the crest we found a jumble
+of weathered rocks ready to slide down on either side. Slabs, pyramids,
+columns, shale, rocks of all shapes except round, lay toppling along the
+heaved ridge. It seemed the whole ridge was ready to thunder down into
+the abyss. Half a mile down and out from the rim we felt lost, marooned.
+But there was something splendidly thrilling in our conquest of that
+narrow upflung edge of mountain. Twice R.C. thought we would have to
+abandon further progress, but I found ways to go on. How lonely and wild
+out there! No foot save an Indian's had ever trod those gray rocks or
+brown mats of pine needles.
+
+Before we reached the dip or saddle where R.C. was to make his stand the
+hounds opened up far below. The morning was perfectly still, an unusual
+occurrence there along the rim. What wild music! Then Edd's horn pealed
+out, ringing melody, a long blast keen and clear, telling us above that
+he had started a bear. That made us hurry. We arrived at the head of an
+incline leading down to R.C.'s stand. As luck would have it the place
+was ideal for a bear, but risky for a hunter. A bear could come four
+ways without being seen until he was close enough to kill a man. We
+hurried on. At the saddle there was a broad bear trail with several
+other trails leading into it. Suddenly R.C. halted me with a warning
+finger. "Listen!"
+
+I heard a faint clear rifle shot. Then another, and a fainter yell. We
+stood there and counted eleven more shots. Then the bay of the hounds
+seemed to grow closer. We had little time to pick and choose stands. I
+had yet to reach the end of the ridge--a task requiring seven-league
+boots. But I took time to choose the best possible stand for R.C. and
+that was one where a bear approaching from only the east along under the
+ridge could surprise him. In bad places like this we always tried to
+have our minds made up what to do and where to get in case of being
+charged by a wounded grizzly. In this instance there was not a rock or a
+tree near at hand. "R.C. you'll have to stand your ground and kill him,
+that's all," I declared, grimly. "But it's quiet. You can hear a bear
+coming. If you do hear one--wait--and make sure your first shot lets him
+down."
+
+"Don't worry. I could hear a squirrel coming over this ground," replied
+R.C.
+
+Then I went on, not exactly at ease in mind, but stirred and thrilled to
+the keen charged atmosphere. I had to go around under the base of a
+rocky ledge, over rough ground. Presently I dropped into a bear trail,
+well trodden. I followed it to a corner of cliff where it went down.
+Then I kept on over loose rock and bare earth washed deep in ruts. I had
+to leap these. Perhaps in ten minutes I had traveled a quarter of a mile
+or less. Then _spang_! R.C.'s rifle-shot halted me. So clear and sharp,
+so close, so startling! I was thrilled, delighted--he had gotten a
+shot. I wanted to yell my pleasure. My blood warmed and my nerves
+tingled. Swiftly my thoughts ran--bad luck was nothing--a man had only
+to stick at a thing--what a fine, sharp, wonderful day for adventure!
+How the hounds bayed! Had R.C. sighted a bear somewhere below? Suddenly
+the still air split--_spang_! R.C.'s second shot gave me a shock. My
+breast contracted. I started back. "Suppose it was a grizzly--on that
+bad side!" I muttered. _Spang_!... I began to run. A great sweeping wave
+of emotion charged over me, swelling all my veins to the bursting point.
+_Spang_! My heart came to my throat. Leaping the ruts, bounding like a
+sheep from rock to rock, I covered my back tracks. All inside me seemed
+to flutter, yet I felt cold and hard--a sickening sense of reproach that
+I had left my brother in a bad position. _Spang_! His fifth and last
+shot followed swiftly after the fourth--too swift to be accurate. So
+hurriedly a man would act in close quarters. R.C. now had an empty
+rifle!... Like a flash I crossed that slope leading to the rocks, and
+tore around the cliff at such speed that it was a wonder I did not pitch
+down and break my neck. How long--how terribly long I seemed in reaching
+the corner of cliff! Then I plunged to a halt with eyes darting
+everywhere.
+
+R.C. was not in sight. The steep curved neck of slope seemed all rocks,
+all trees, all brush. Then I heard a wild hoarse bawl and a loud
+crashing of brush. My gaze swerved to an open spot. A patch of manzanita
+seemed to blur round a big bear, standing up, fighting the branches,
+threshing and growling. But where was R.C.? Fearfully my gaze peered
+near and all around this wounded bear. "Hey there!" I yelled with all my
+might.
+
+R.C.'s answer was another _spang_. I heard the bullet hit the bear. It
+must have gone clear through him for I saw bits of fur and manzanita
+fly. The bear plunged out of the bushes--out of my sight. How he crashed
+the brush--rolled the rocks! I listened. Down and down he crashed. Then
+the sound changed somewhat. He was rolling. At last that thumping sound
+ceased, and after it the roll of rocks.
+
+"Are you--all right?" I shouted.
+
+Then, after a moment that made me breathless, I heard R.C. laugh, a
+little shakily. "Sure am.... Did you see him?"
+
+"Yes. I think he's your bear."
+
+"I'm afraid he's got away. The hounds took another bear down the canyon.
+What'll we do?"
+
+"Come on down," I said.
+
+Fifty yards or more down the slope we met. I showed him a great splotch
+of blood on a flat stone. "We'll find him not far down," I said. So we
+slid and crawled, and held to brush and rocks, following that bloody
+trail until we came to a ledge. From there I espied the bear lodged
+against a manzanita bush. He lay on his back, all four paws extended,
+and he was motionless. R.C. and I sat down right there on the ledge.
+
+"Looks pretty big--black and brown--mostly brown," I said. "I'm glad,
+old man, you stuck it out."
+
+"Big!..." exclaimed R.C. with that same peculiar little laugh. "He
+doesn't look big now. But up there he looked like a hill.... What do you
+think? He came up that very way you told me to look out for. And if I
+hadn't had ears he'd got right on me. As it was, when I heard little
+rolling stones, and then saw him, he was almost on a level with me. My
+nerve was all right. I knew I had him. And I made sure of my first shot.
+I knocked him flat. But he got up--let out an awful snarl--and plunged
+my way. I can't say I know he charged me. Only it was just the same as
+if he had!... I knocked him down again and this time he began to kick
+and jump down the slope. That was my best shot. Think I missed him the
+next three. You see I had time to get shaky. If he had kept coming at
+me--good night!... I had trouble loading. But when I got ready again I
+ran down and saw him in that bush. Wasn't far from him then. When he let
+out that bawl he saw me. I don't know much about bears, but I know he
+wanted to get at me. And I'm sure of what he'd have done.... I didn't
+miss my last shot."
+
+We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful indeed had
+been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been others not
+conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure in wild moments
+and regret the risks and spilled blood afterward?
+
+
+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
+books _Treasure Island_ and _Kidnapped_ are full of fight and the
+killing of men. _Robinson Crusoe_ is 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
+a _bola_, 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
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+[Illustration: (2) MEAT IN CAMP]
+
+Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the void. How sweeping
+and grand the long sloping lines of ridges from the rim down! Away in
+the east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like uncertain mountains
+on the desert. South ranged the upheaved and wild Mazatzals. Everywhere
+beneath me, for leagues and leagues extended the timbered hills of
+green, the gray outcroppings of rocks, the red bluffs, the golden
+patches of grassy valleys, lost in the canyons. All these swept away in
+a vast billowy ocean of wilderness to become dim in the purple of
+distance. And the sun was setting in a blaze of gold. From the rim I
+took a last lingering look and did not marvel that I loved this
+wonderland of Arizona.
+
+[Illustration: BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL]
+
+[Illustration: THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF
+THE CACTUS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+DEATH VALLEY
+
+Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square miles of desert-land
+in the southwest Death Valley is the lowest below sea level, the most
+arid and desolate. It derives its felicitous name from the earliest days
+of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of Mormons, numbering
+about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and
+make a short cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors
+perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that
+time became known as Death Valley.
+
+The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news to the world that
+the sombre valley of death was a treasure mine of minerals; and since
+then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives there.
+To seek gold and to live in the lonely waste places of the earth have
+been and ever will be driving passions of men.
+
+My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen. On most of my
+trips to lonely and wild places I have been fortunate as to comrades or
+guides. The circumstances of my meeting Nielsen were so singular that I
+think they will serve as an interesting introduction. Some years ago I
+received a letter, brief, clear and well-written, in which the writer
+stated that he had been a wanderer over the world, a sailor before the
+mast, and was now a prospector for gold. He had taken four trips alone
+down into the desert of Sonora, and in many other places of the
+southwest, and knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my
+story _Desert Gold_ in which I told about a lost gold mine. And the
+point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as to where
+the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and give me half. His
+name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold
+mine existed only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon to
+see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting. To my surprise he
+came. He was a man of about thirty-five, of magnificent physique,
+weighing about one hundred and ninety, and he was so enormously broad
+across the shoulders that he did not look his five feet ten. He had a
+wonderful head, huge, round, solid, like a cannon-ball. And his bronzed
+face, his regular features, square firm jaw, and clear gray eyes,
+fearless and direct, were singularly attractive to me. Well educated,
+with a strange calm poise, and a cool courtesy, not common in Americans,
+he evidently was a man of good family, by his own choice a rolling stone
+and adventurer.
+
+Nielsen accompanied me on two trips into the wilderness of Arizona, on
+one of which he saved my life, and on the other he rescued all our party
+from a most uncomfortable and possibly hazardous situation--but these
+are tales I may tell elsewhere. In January 1919 Nielsen and I traveled
+around the desert of southern California from Palm Springs to Picacho,
+and in March we went to Death Valley.
+
+Nowadays a little railroad, the Tonapah and Tidewater Railroad, runs
+northward from the Santa Fe over the barren Mojave, and it passes within
+fifty miles of Death Valley.
+
+It was sunset when we arrived at Death Valley Junction--a weird, strange
+sunset in drooping curtains of transparent cloud, lighting up dark
+mountain ranges, some peaks of which were clear-cut and black against
+the sky, and others veiled in trailing storms, and still others white
+with snow. That night in the dingy little store I heard prospectors talk
+about float, which meant gold on the surface, and about high grade
+ores, zinc, copper, silver, lead, manganese, and about how borax was
+mined thirty years ago, and hauled out of Death Valley by teams of
+twenty mules. Next morning, while Nielsen packed the outfit, I visited
+the borax mill. It was the property of an English firm, and the work of
+hauling, grinding, roasting borax ore went on day and night. Inside it
+was as dusty and full of a powdery atmosphere as an old-fashioned flour
+mill. The ore was hauled by train from some twenty miles over toward the
+valley, and was dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the
+grinders. For an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid
+down into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced
+operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum out of
+the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five hundred sacks a
+day. The most significant thing he said was that men did not last long
+at such labor, and in the mines six months appeared to be the limit of
+human endurance. How soon I had enough of that choking air in the room
+where the borax was ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in
+huge round revolving furnaces--I found that intolerable. When I got out
+into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And that
+relief made me thoughtful of the lives of men who labored, who were
+chained by necessity, by duty or habit, or by love, to the hard tasks of
+the world. It did not seem fair. These laborers of the borax mines and
+mills, like the stokers of ships, and coal-diggers, and blast-furnace
+hands--like thousands and millions of men, killed themselves outright or
+impaired their strength, and when they were gone or rendered useless
+others were found to take their places. Whenever I come in contact with
+some phase of this problem of life I take the meaning or the lesson of
+it to myself. And as the years go by my respect and reverence and
+wonder increase for these men of elemental lives, these horny-handed
+toilers with physical things, these uncomplaining users of brawn and
+bone, these giants who breast the elements, who till the earth and
+handle iron, who fight the natural forces with their bodies.
+
+That day about noon I looked back down the long gravel and greasewood
+slope which we had ascended and I saw the borax-mill now only a smoky
+blot on the desert floor. When we reached the pass between the Black
+Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we left the road, and were soon lost
+to the works of man. How strange a gladness, a relief! Something dropped
+away from me. I felt the same subtle change in Nielsen. For one thing he
+stopped talking, except an occasional word to the mules.
+
+The blunt end of the Funeral Range was as remarkable as its name. It
+sheered up very high, a saw-toothed range with colored strata tilted at
+an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red and
+yellow, rather dull, ran through the great drab-gray mass. This end of
+the range, an iron mountain, frowned down upon us with hard and
+formidable aspect. The peak was draped in streaky veils of rain from
+low-dropping clouds that appeared to have lodged there. All below lay
+clear and cold in the sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS]
+
+[Illustration: DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Our direction lay to the westward, and at that altitude, about three
+thousand feet, how pleasant to face the sun! For the wind was cold. The
+narrow shallow wash leading down from the pass deepened, widened, almost
+imperceptibly at first, and then gradually until its proportions were
+striking. It was a gully where the gravel washed down during rains, and
+where a scant vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage
+struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature in
+sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I looked back,
+because as we could not see far ahead all the superb scene spread and
+towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to be a wide canyon, winding
+away from under the massive, impondering wall of the Funeral Range. The
+high side of this magnificent and impressive line of mountains faced
+west--a succession of unscalable slopes of bare ragged rock, jagged and
+jutted, dark drab, rusty iron, with gray and oblique strata running
+through them far as eye could see. Clouds soared around the peaks.
+Shadows sailed along the slopes.
+
+[Illustration: DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED
+RIDGES TO THE STARK VALLEY OF DEATH]
+
+Walking in loose gravel was as hard as trudging along in sand. After
+about fifteen miles I began to have leaden feet. I did not mind hard
+work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied
+my feelings are liable to be colored somewhat by depression or
+melancholy. Then it always bothered me to get tired while Nielsen kept
+on with his wonderful stride.
+
+"Say, Nielsen, do you take me for a Yaqui?" I complained. "Slow up a
+little."
+
+Then he obliged me, and to cheer me up he told me about a little
+tramping experience he had in Baja California. Somewhere on the east
+slope of the Sierra Madre his burros strayed or were killed by
+mountain-lions, and he found it imperative to strike at once for the
+nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one hundred and fifty
+miles. He could carry only so much of his outfit, and as some of it was
+valuable to him he discarded all his food except a few biscuits, and a
+canteen of water. Resting only a few hours, without sleep at all, he
+walked the hundred and fifty miles in three days and nights. I believed
+that Nielsen, by telling me such incidents of his own wild experience,
+inspired me to more endurance than I knew I possessed.
+
+As we traveled on down the canyon its dimensions continued to grow. It
+finally turned to the left, and opened out wide into a valley running
+west. A low range of hills faced us, rising in a long sweeping slant of
+earth, like the incline of a glacier, to rounded spurs. Half way up this
+slope, where the brown earth lightened there showed an outcropping of
+clay-amber and cream and cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and
+clear. This bright spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other
+clay slopes of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and
+colors indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
+hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were soon
+greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped, fantastic in
+shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak dominating all. The
+colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all stained by a descending band
+of crimson, as if a higher slope had been stabbed to let its life blood
+flow down. The softness, the richness and beauty of this texture of
+earth amazed and delighted my eyes.
+
+Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and rounded a
+sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held mute in our
+tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the left and the
+dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf,
+a hazy void, a vast stark valley that seemed streaked and ridged and
+canyoned, an abyss into which veils of rain were dropping and over which
+broken clouds hung, pierced by red and gold rays.
+
+Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at first
+sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen stood like a
+statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he strode on. I followed,
+and every second saw more and different aspects, that could not,
+however, change the first stunning impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I
+went on down the widening canyon, looking into that changing void. How
+full of color! It smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white
+washes brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
+white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze, sinister
+and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this valley, and over the
+western drooped gray veils of rain, like thinnest lacy clouds, through
+which gleams of the sun shone.
+
+Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and at last
+checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with commanding and
+magnificent view. As I did not attempt the impossible--to write down
+thoughts and sensations--afterward I could remember only a few. How
+desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of the
+earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little day seemed so
+easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to set and the
+storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene darkened, changed every
+moment, brightened, grew full of luminous red light and then streaked by
+golden gleams. The tips of the Panamint Mountains came out silver above
+the purple clouds. At sunset the moment was glorious--dark, forbidding,
+dim, weird, dismal, yet still tinged with gold. Not like any other
+scene! Dante's Inferno! Valley of Shadows! Canyon of Purple Veils!
+
+When the sun had set and all that upheaved and furrowed world of rock
+had received a mantle of gray, and a slumberous sulphurous ruddy haze
+slowly darkened to purple and black, then I realized more fully that I
+was looking down into Death Valley.
+
+Twilight was stealing down when I caught up with Nielsen. He had
+selected for our camp a protected nook near where the canyon floor bore
+some patches of sage, the stalks and roots of which would serve for
+firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain, pitched our little
+tent and made our bed all in short order. But it was dark long before
+we had supper. During the meal we talked a little, but afterward, when
+the chores were done, and the mules had become quiet, and the strange
+thick silence had settled down upon us, we did not talk at all.
+
+The night was black, with sky mostly obscured by clouds. A pale haze
+marked the west where the after glow had faded; in the south one radiant
+star crowned a mountain peak. I strolled away in the darkness and sat
+down upon a stone. How intense the silence! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like,
+dreaming, waiting, a silence of ages, burdened with the history of the
+past, awful! I strained my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or
+drop of weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This
+silence had something terrifying in it, making me a man alone on the
+earth. The great spaces, the wild places as they had been millions of
+years before! I seemed to divine how through them man might develop from
+savage to a god, and how alas! he might go back again.
+
+When I returned to camp Nielsen had gone to bed and the fire had burned
+low. I threw on some branches of sage. The fire blazed up. But it seemed
+different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no glow, no sparkle! Perhaps
+it was owing to scant and poor wood. Still I thought it was owing as
+much to the place. The sadness, the loneliness, the desolateness of this
+place weighed upon the camp-fire the same as it did upon my heart.
+
+We got up at five-thirty. At dawn the sky was a cold leaden gray, with a
+dull gold and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager and nipping, blew up
+the canyon. At six o'clock the sky brightened somewhat and the day did
+not promise so threatening.
+
+An hour later we broke camp. Traveling in the early morning was
+pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon, arriving at
+Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest. This stream of warm
+water flowed down from a gully that headed up in the Funeral Mountains.
+It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat acrid and soapy. A green thicket
+of brush was indeed welcome to the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse
+kind of grass, and arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named
+bore a pink fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite
+fragrant. Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by
+several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk. They all
+appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace Creek we came upon
+a spring of poison water. It was clear, sparkling, with a greenish cast,
+and it deposited a white crust on the margins. Nielsen, kicking around
+in the sand, unearthed a skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not
+so very old. Some thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that
+deceiving spring. The gruesome and the beautiful, the tragic and the
+sublime, go hand in hand down the naked shingle of this desolate desert.
+
+While tramping around in the neighborhood of Furnace Creek I happened
+upon an old almost obliterated trail. It led toward the ridges of clay,
+and when I had climbed it a little ways I began to get an impression
+that the slopes on the other side must run down into a basin or canyon.
+So I climbed to the top.
+
+The magnificent scenes of desert and mountain, like the splendid things
+of life, must be climbed for. In this instance I was suddenly and
+stunningly confronted by a yellow gulf of cone-shaped and fan-shaped
+ridges, all bare crinkly clay, of gold, of amber, of pink, of bronze, of
+cream, all tapering down to round-knobbed lower ridges, bleak and
+barren, yet wonderfully beautiful in their stark purity of denudation;
+until at last far down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and
+blue and ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams--the
+Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red slope,
+merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint Range, and here
+line on line, and bulge on bulge rose the bold benches, and on up the
+unscalable outcroppings of rock, like colossal ribs of the earth, on and
+up the steep slopes to where their density of blue black color began to
+thin out with streaks of white, and thence upward to the last noble
+height, where the cold pure snow gleamed against the sky.
+
+I descended into this yellow maze, this world of gullies and ridges
+where I found it difficult to keep from getting lost. I did lose my
+bearings, but as my boots made deep imprints in the soft clay I knew it
+would be easy to back-track my trail. After a while this labyrinthine
+series of channels and dunes opened into a wide space enclosed on three
+sides by denuded slopes, mostly yellow. These slopes were smooth,
+graceful, symmetrical, with tiny tracery of erosion, and each appeared
+to retain its own color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were
+always dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic
+region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled on the
+opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue, and of a
+thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the golds and
+russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its slopes were
+changing colors--a dark beautiful mouse color on one side and a strange
+pearly cream on the other. Between these great corners of the curve
+climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope and amber, to meet wonderful veins
+of green--green as the sea in sunlight--and tracery of white--and on the
+bold face of this amphitheater, high up, stood out a zigzag belt of dull
+red, the stain of which had run down to tinge the other hues. Above all
+this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast of the mountain,
+growing darker with earthy browns, up to the gray old rock ramparts.
+
+This place affected me so strangely, so irresistibly that I remained
+there a long time. Something terrible had happened there to men. I felt
+that. Something tragic was going on right then--the wearing down, the
+devastation of the old earth. How plainly that could be seen!
+Geologically it was more remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it
+was the appalling meaning, the absolutely indescribable beauty that
+overcame me. I thought of those who had been inspiration to me in my
+work, and I suffered a pang that they could not be there to see and feel
+with me.
+
+On my way out of this amphitheater a hard wind swooped down over the
+slopes, tearing up the colored dust in sheets and clouds. It seemed to
+me each gully had its mystic pall of color. I lost no time climbing out.
+What a hot choking ordeal! But I never would have missed it even had I
+known I would get lost. Looking down again the scene was vastly changed.
+A smoky weird murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through
+the shifting pall of dust!
+
+In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere growing
+warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at dusk. We followed
+the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under some cottonwood trees,
+on the west slope of the valley.
+
+The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and slept with
+very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away. I was up at
+five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A flare of pale
+gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the sunrise. The tips of
+the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose colored, and below them the
+slopes were red. The bulk of the range showed dark. All these features
+gradually brightened until the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The
+wind began to blow again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling
+leaves, and green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.
+
+Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and some dark
+velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the spreading of Furnace
+Creek over the valley slope. A man lived there, and raised this alfalfa
+for the mules of the borax miners. He lived there alone and his was
+indeed a lonely, wonderful, and terrible life. At this season a few
+Shoshone Indians were camped near, helping him in his labors. This lone
+rancher's name was Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a
+Denton, hunter and guide, whom I had met in Lower California.
+
+[Illustration: DESERT GRAVES]
+
+[Illustration: THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY]
+
+Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with difficulty, but
+the content of his speech made up for its brevity. He told us about the
+wanderers and prospectors he had rescued from death by starvation and
+thirst; he told us about the terrific noonday heat of summer; and about
+the incredible and horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the
+valley. With the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at
+midnight, below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore
+down upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
+many summers there. As for white women--Death Valley was fatal to them.
+The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains. Denton said heat
+affected men differently. Those who were meat eaters or alcohol
+drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and lungs were necessary to
+stand the heat and density of atmosphere below sea level. He told of a
+man who had visited his cabin, and had left early in the day,
+vigorous and strong. A few hours later he was found near the oasis
+unable to walk, crawling on his hands and knees, dragging a full canteen
+of water. He never knew what ailed him. It might have been heat, for the
+thermometer registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have
+been poison gas. Another man, young, of heavy and powerful build, lost
+seventy pounds weight in less than two days, and was nearly dead when
+found. The heat of Death Valley quickly dried up blood, tissue, bone.
+Denton told of a prospector who started out at dawn strong and rational,
+to return at sunset so crazy that he had to be tied to keep him out of
+the water. To have drunk his fill then would have killed him! He had to
+be fed water by spoonful. Another wanderer came staggering into the
+oasis, blind, with horrible face, and black swollen tongue protruding.
+He could not make a sound. He also had to be roped, as if he were a mad
+steer.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH
+VALLEY, THREE HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL]
+
+I met only one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He camped with
+us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular, with brown wrinkled
+face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be smiling to himself most of the
+time. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting.
+Once he nearly died of thirst, having gone from noon one day till next
+morning without water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal,
+but did not lose his senses. Finally the burros saved his life. This old
+fellow had been across Death Valley every month in the year. July was
+the worst. In that month crossing should not be attempted during the
+middle of the day.
+
+I made the acquaintance of the Shoshone Indians, or rather through
+Nielsen I met them. Nielsen had a kindly, friendly way with Indians.
+There were half a dozen families, living in squalid tents. The braves
+worked in the fields for Denton and the squaws kept to the shade with
+their numerous children. They appeared to be poor. Certainly they were a
+ragged unpicturesque group. Nielsen and I visited them, taking an
+armload of canned fruit, and boxes of sweet crackers, which they
+received with evident joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one
+of the tents. The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo
+were here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
+and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a sewing
+machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to live like
+Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another manifestation
+added to my long list of degeneration of the Indians by the whites! The
+tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I never before saw so many. In a
+corner I saw a naked Indian baby asleep on a goat skin, all his brown
+warm-tinted skin spotted black with flies.
+
+Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our camp. I was
+surprised to hear him use good English. He said he had been educated in
+a government school in California. From him I learned considerable about
+Death Valley. As he was about to depart, on the way to his labor in the
+fields, he put his hand in his ragged pocket and drew forth an old
+beaded hat band, and with calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a
+present of it. Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had
+been kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of the
+many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the story of
+the Indian--the truth, the spirit, the soul of his tragedy?
+
+Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a gravel
+ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat down while my
+companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I found a tiny flower, so
+tiny as to almost defy detection. The color resembled sage-gray and it
+had the fragrance of sage. Hard to find and wonderful to see--was its
+tiny blossom! The small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined
+and scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
+flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its unquenchable
+spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous reddening bulk of
+the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly over me.
+
+Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag
+flights--assuredly new and strange creatures to me.
+
+I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of the bleak
+lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains. Before I could
+compose myself to watch the valley I made the discovery that near me
+were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One had two stones at head and
+foot. Another had no mark at all. The one nearest me had for the head a
+flat piece of board, with lettering so effaced by weather that I could
+not decipher the inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about
+between the graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed
+to be one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these
+people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the windy
+desert slope!
+
+By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over Death
+Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints--long tapering notched
+mountains with all their rugged conformation showing. Above floated gold
+and gray and silver-edged clouds--below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy
+bronze haze, gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the
+pale desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be
+shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast scale and
+tremendous dimension! The clouds paled, turned rosy for a moment with
+the afterglow, then deepened into purple gloom. A sombre smoky sunset,
+as if this Death Valley was the gateway of hell, and its sinister shades
+were upflung from fire.
+
+The desert day was done and now the desert twilight descended. Twilight
+of hazy purple fell over the valley of shadows. The black bold lines of
+mountains ran across the sky and down into the valley and up on the
+other side. A buzzard sailed low in the foreground--fitting emblem of
+life in all that wilderness of suggested death. This fleeting hour was
+tranquil and sad. What little had it to do with the destiny of man!
+Death Valley was only a ragged rent of the old earth, from which men in
+their folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The
+air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled soul! I
+felt that I was myself here, far different from my habitual self. Why
+had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I want of the desert that was
+naked, red, sinister, sombre, forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark
+and dismal, the abode of silence and loneliness, the proof of death,
+decay, devastation and destruction, the majestic sublimity of
+desolation? The answer was that I sought the awful, the appalling and
+terrible because they harked me back to a primitive day where my blood
+and bones were bequeathed their heritage of the elements. That was the
+secret of the eternal fascination the desert exerted upon all men. It
+carried them back. It inhibited thought. It brought up the age-old
+sensations, so that I could feel, though I did not know it then, once
+again the all-satisfying state of the savage in nature.
+
+When I returned to camp night had fallen. The evening star stood high in
+the pale sky, all alone and difficult to see, yet the more beautiful for
+that. The night appeared to be warmer or perhaps it was because no wind
+blew. Nielsen got supper, and ate most of it, for I was not hungry. As I
+sat by the camp-fire a flock of little bats, the smallest I had ever
+seen, darted from the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They
+had no fear of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound.
+Later I heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have
+expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious trill
+it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas Jungle of
+Mexico. Every time I awakened that night, and it was often, I heard this
+trill. Once, too, sometime late, my listening ear caught faint mournful
+notes of a killdeer. How strange, and still sweeter than the trill! What
+a touch to the infinite silence and loneliness! A killdeer--bird of the
+swamps and marshes--what could he be doing in arid and barren Death
+Valley? Nature is mysterious and inscrutable.
+
+Next morning the marvel of nature was exemplified even more strikingly.
+Out on the hard gravel-strewn slope I found some more tiny flowers of a
+day. One was a white daisy, very frail and delicate on long thin stem
+with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals,
+a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red
+flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and
+tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very
+flat plants, smiling wanly up from the desolate earth.
+
+Nielsen and I made known to Denton our purpose to walk across the
+valley. He advised against it. Not that the heat was intense at this
+season, he explained, but there were other dangers, particularly the
+brittle salty crust of the sink-hole. Nevertheless we were not deterred
+from our purpose.
+
+So with plenty of water in canteens and a few biscuits in our pockets
+we set out. I saw the heat veils rising from the valley floor, at that
+point one hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea level. The heat
+lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told us that in summer the
+heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted leaves, burned trees to
+death as well as men. Prospectors watched for the leaden haze that
+thickened over the mountains, knowing then no man could dare the
+terrible sun. That day would be a hazed and glaring hell, leaden,
+copper, with sun blazing a sky of molten iron.
+
+A long sandy slope of mesquite extended down to the bare crinkly floor
+of the valley, and here the descent to a lower level was scarcely
+perceptible. The walking was bad. Little mounds in the salty crust made
+it hard to place a foot on the level. This crust appeared fairly strong.
+But when it rang hollow under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously.
+The color was a dirty gray and yellow. Far ahead I could see a dazzling
+white plain that looked like frost or a frozen river. The atmosphere was
+deceptive, making this plain seem far away and then close at hand.
+
+The excessively difficult walking and the thickness of the air tired me,
+so I plumped myself down to rest, and used my note-book as a means to
+conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was fatigued. Always I found
+this a very efficient excuse, and for that matter it was profitable for
+me. I have forgotten more than I have ever written.
+
+Rather overpowering, indeed, was it to sit on the floor of Death Valley,
+miles from the slopes that appeared so far away. It was flat, salty,
+alkali or borax ground, crusted and cracked. The glare hurt my eyes. I
+felt moist, hot, oppressed, in spite of a rather stiff wind. A dry odor
+pervaded the air, slightly like salty dust. Thin dust devils whirled on
+the bare flats. A valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the
+desert floor to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and
+beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass, broken by
+rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown glaciers. Seamed
+and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet surely wearing to ruin!
+From this point I could not see the snow on the peaks. The whole
+mountain range seemed an immense red barrier of beetling rock. The
+Funeral Range was farther away and therefore more impressive. Its effect
+was stupendous. Leagues of brown chocolate slopes, scarred by slashes of
+yellow and cream, and shadowed black by sailing clouds, led up to the
+magnificently peaked and jutted summits.
+
+Splendid as this was and reluctant as I felt to leave I soon joined
+Nielsen, and we proceeded onward. At last we reached the white winding
+plain, that had resembled a frozen river, and which from afar had looked
+so ghastly and stark. We found it to be a perfectly smooth stratum of
+salt glistening as if powdered. It was not solid, not stable. At
+pressure of a boot it shook like jelly. Under the white crust lay a
+yellow substance that was wet. Here appeared an obstacle we had not
+calculated upon. Nielsen ventured out on it and his feet sank in several
+inches. I did not like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice
+under a weight. Presently I ventured to take a few steps, and did not
+sink in so deeply or make such depression in the crust as Nielsen. We
+returned to the solid edge and deliberated. Nielsen said that by
+stepping quickly we could cross without any great risk, though it
+appeared reasonable that by standing still a person would sink into the
+substance.
+
+"Well, Nielsen, you go ahead," I said, with an attempt at lightness.
+"You weigh one hundred and ninety. If you go through I'll turn back!"
+
+Nielsen started with a laugh. The man courted peril. The bright face of
+danger must have been beautiful and alluring to him. I started after
+him--caught up with him--and stayed beside him. I could not have walked
+behind him over that strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have
+done so the whole adventure would have been meaningless to me.
+Nevertheless I was frightened. I felt the prickle of my skin, the
+stiffening of my hair, as well as the cold tingling thrills along my
+veins.
+
+This place was the lowest point of the valley, in that particular
+location, and must have been upwards of two hundred feet below sea
+level. The lowest spot, called the Sink Hole, lay some miles distant,
+and was the terminus of this river of salty white.
+
+We crossed it in safety. On the other side extended a long flat of
+upheaved crusts of salt and mud, full of holes and pitfalls, an
+exceedingly toilsome and painful place to travel, and for all we could
+tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to watch my feet and find
+surfaces to hold my steps. Eventually we crossed this broken field,
+reaching the edge of the gravel slope, where we were very glad indeed to
+rest.
+
+Denton had informed us that the distance was seven miles across the
+valley at the mouth of Furnace Creek. I had thought it seemed much less
+than that. But after I had toiled across it I was convinced that it was
+much more. It had taken us hours. How the time had sped! For this reason
+we did not tarry long on that side.
+
+Facing the sun we found the return trip more formidable. Hot indeed it
+was--hot enough for me to imagine how terrible Death Valley would be in
+July or August. On all sides the mountains stood up dim and obscure and
+distant in haze. The heat veils lifted in ripples, and any object not
+near at hand seemed illusive. Nielsen set a pace for me on this return
+trip. I was quicker and surer of foot than he, but he had more
+endurance. I lost strength while he kept his unimpaired. So often he had
+to wait for me. Once when I broke through the crust he happened to be
+close at hand and quickly hauled me out. I got one foot wet with some
+acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen quoted a
+prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken sharp crust of
+salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever experienced. Slopes of
+weathered rock that slip and slide are bad; cacti, and especially choya
+cacti, are worse: the jagged and corrugated surfaces of lava are still
+more hazardous and painful. But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with
+its salt crusts standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place
+for hard going that either Nielsen or I ever had encountered. I ruined
+my boots, skinned my shins, cut my hands. How those salt cuts stung! We
+crossed the upheaved plain, then the strip of white, and reached the
+crinkly floor of yellow salt. The last hour taxed my endurance almost to
+the limit. When we reached the edge of the sand and the beginning of the
+slope I was hotter and thirstier than I had ever been in my life. It
+pleased me to see Nielsen wringing wet and panting. He drank a quart of
+water apparently in one gulp. And it was significant that I took the
+longest and deepest drink of water that I had ever had.
+
+We reached camp at the end of this still hot summer day. Never had a
+camp seemed so welcome! What a wonderful thing it was to earn and
+appreciate and realize rest! The cottonwood leaves were rustling; bees
+were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in the shade, resting my
+burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled
+over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and
+after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds
+evidently were traveling north and had tarried at the oasis.
+
+Lying there I realized that I had come to love the silence, the
+loneliness, the serenity, even the tragedy of this valley of shadows.
+Death Valley was one place that could never be popular with men. It had
+been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen treasure, and for the
+wanderers of the wastelands--men who go forth to seek and to find and to
+face their souls. Perhaps most of them found death. But there was a
+death in life. Desert travelers learned the secret that men lived too
+much in the world--that in silence and loneliness and desolation there
+was something infinite, something hidden from the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of lonely trails, by Zane Grey
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