CHAPTER XII

WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE ELK?

"Here we are, boys; this is the divide--the top of the range," said Hugh. "Now if we can only get down this hill and find decent travelling in the valley, we'll soon be out of this snow. I expect this is one of the heads of Wind River, and I hope we can make it down below the snow to-morrow."

The way down the new stream was steep, and for a while progress was slow. There appeared to be no trail, and several times Hugh dismounted and went ahead slowly on foot, to pick out a way for the animals down steep rock slides. At last, however, they came to a point where the stream had a little bottom, thickly overgrown with timber, but all of it green; and working their way along through this they came, shortly before sundown, to a little open park surrounded by willows, where they camped.

There was a little daylight left after camp had been made and supper eaten, and Jack, with Hugh, walked out to the edge of the stream. There was a good deal of water flowing in it, for ever since they came into the valley they had been crossing rivulets and brooklets, tumbling down from the high hills and pouring their current into the valley. The little river flowed among the close-set pines, and its bed was composed of great blocks of stone. Just opposite the camp it opened out into a pool twenty feet long, and half as wide; and, as they stood here, they saw two little dippers at work in the stream.

Although Jack had often seen these birds in the northern mountains, they constantly interested him. He knew that, although living always in and about the water, their nearest relations were not water-birds, such as ducks or snipe, but instead were thrushes, of which the common robin is one. Yet as many times as he had seen them diving into the water, swimming about on it, and again disappearing beneath its waves, he could never quite get over his astonishment at seeing a bird walk down the shelving rock or smooth beach into the water, and keep on walking, without attempting to swim or to dive, until it had disappeared.

He spoke about this now to Hugh, and said, "Those are the queerest little birds I ever saw, and I don't know of any like them anywhere."

"Yes," said Hugh, "they are queer; but they're mighty cheerful--mighty good company if you're alone in the mountains. They stay here, you know, all summer and all winter, wherever the water is open, and they've got a real nice little song, and they sing, too, at all seasons of the year. There, listen to that one," he said, as a dipper appeared from under the water in the pool before them, and then flying to an old dead stick that projected from the bank, alighted on it and began to warble a simple but pleasing song. After it had finished, it flew part way across the pool, and then dived from the wing, and came to the surface again some distance below where it had entered the water. Then flying to a rock it seemed to batter to pieces some small object which it had brought up from the bottom, which it then devoured.

"Don't it seem queer, Hugh," said Jack, "that they never get wet; their plumage seems light and fluffy, like that of a land bird, and not close and compact like that of the duck or grebe. They must have a big oil-sack, and must oil up their feathers pretty often."

"I reckon they do," said Hugh, "but I'm sure they never get wet. I've often wondered what it is they feed on; I suppose it's insects that live at the bottom of the water. Anyhow, I've often seen them bring up one of those little worms that build sort of houses for themselves out of sticks and little bits of sand, and take it to a rock and pound it to pieces, and then eat the worm that's inside of it. You've seen those things, haven't you? I don't know what they do, or what they're good for, without it is to feed the birds and the fish."

"Oh yes, Hugh," said Jack, "I've often seen those. Mighty queer little houses they are, but I don't know any more than you do what the insect in them lives for. I expect he may turn into a dragonfly, or maybe some kind of beetle or other. I know I've heard that there are lots of insects that lay their eggs, and live part of their lives in water, and then finally, coming up to the surface, change their shape and become perfect insects."

"Well," said Hugh, "I expect likely that's the way it may be."

Jack noticed that the dippers seemed to dive into the upper part of the pool, and to be carried down by the swift current close to a little point of rocks, and slowly walking out there, and standing perfectly still, he soon saw one of the birds drop down from a large stone near him, and disappear under the water. He could see a sort of a flying shadow under the surface, and in a moment the bird came up a little below him, and flew off to the other side of the stream. As it grew darker, the dippers disappeared, having probably gone to their roost; and as the two returned to camp, Hugh said to Jack, "Son, did you ever see one of the nests made by these birds?"

"No, Hugh, I never did," said Jack.

"Well, we must be on the lookout for that. They're mighty queer little nests. On the outside they seem to be made of green moss, so that the nests look just like a bunch of moss growing on a rock. Often they build them close under some little water-fall, and I expect maybe it's the mist from the fall that keeps the moss wet and growing; but if the outside is damp and wet, the inside is just as dry as can be, and the young birds have a good warm place, and a good roof over their heads. It's kind of fun to watch one of these nests and see how hard the old birds have to work to keep the young birds quiet. They come with an insect, and give it to some one of the young ones, and then dart off, and are not gone more than a few minutes, and then come back again, so both the old birds keep travelling back and forth; and all the time the young ones are making all the noise they can, only you can't hear'em for the sound of the water--they're a hungry lot, I tell you. Of course, the breeding season is past a long time now, and maybe if we keep our eyes open we'll be able to see a nest and get it for you to take home with you, though often they're in a place where it's mighty hard to get at them."

The little circular meadow in which they had camped was not large enough to give good feeding for their horses, even if the ground had not been covered with snow; but Hugh felt certain that the horses would not try to follow the back trail up the hill again, nor did he think that they would venture away down the stream into country unknown to them. However, he picketed two horses and hobbled most of the others, and when morning came they were most of them in sight, though one or two had strayed away into the timber. The snow on the ground made it an easy matter to follow them, and soon after sunrise the train had started on again.

The travelling was better than had been expected. Although sometimes the walls of the valley drew so close together that there was hardly room for the stream to flow, they managed to get along without very much climbing, and were all the time going down hill. The next night when they camped, the snow had almost entirely disappeared from the valley, only patches lying in some of the most shady spots. There was abundant sign of game here, but they saw none, nor did they look for it. The next afternoon however, Hugh stopped as they were crossing a meadow, and, calling Jack to him, pointed out some tracks in the soft ground, which Jack at first supposed were elk tracks, but on more careful examination found to be quite different; and after thinking for a moment, he asked Hugh if they could be moose tracks.

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's just what they are. This was a good bull, and he crossed here early this morning. Follow his tracks a little way and see if you can make out anything special about them, and then come on after us and tell me what you saw."

Jack followed slowly along on the tracks until they entered the timber. Then he returned to take his position in the pack train. By this time the way was so open that it was not necessary to travel in single file, and Jack, riding up to Hugh said, "Well, Hugh, those tracks are about twice as long as an elk's track, and only a little bit wider; that makes them look long and narrow. Then, besides that, I noticed that whenever the animal went over a soft spot, and his foot sank in a little, there seemed to be two marks behind the main track, and I suppose those are the dew claws sinking in. Is that so?"

"That's it," said Hugh, "I'm glad you took notice so carefully. Maybe we'll get a chance to kill a moose before we get down out of these mountains. We don't really want one now; but you've never seen a moose, and I expect if one should show up, why maybe you'd want to shoot at it."

"Well, Hugh, I guess I would," said Jack; "but I suppose as long as we're travelling here with the pack train, and making so much noise, there isn't much chance of our seeing one."

"No, not much," said Hugh.

As the valley became wider, and the stream larger, there seemed to be more life in the bottom. Several broods of ruffed grouse had been noticed during the day, and all were so tame that they scarcely moved out of the horses' way as they passed along. In the river there were a few ducks, of the kind that breed high up in the mountains; and the next morning, when Jack was down at the water's edge, just after he had risen, he saw a hawk make a dash at a family of ducks. The ducks were flying down the river when the hawk came out of the timber and darted toward them. They all fell into the water, with loud splashings, and the hawk swooped at one of them which was a little apart from the main flock; but the duck made a rush to one side and easily avoided it. Then the hawk gave up the chase, and flew into a tall tree, where he watched the ducks as they swam swiftly down the stream. Jack was amused at a little spotted sandpiper that had been flying up the stream when the hawk darted for the ducks. The bird was very much frightened, thinking that the hawk was after it. It dropped into the water as if it had been shot, and sat there with its head cocked to one side, watching the enemy, and prepared to dive at a second's warning, if the hawk should dash at it.

The weather was bright and pleasant, and they kept on down the stream, which constantly grew wider. Now there was some sage-brush on the benches above the bottom, and often the trail kept away from the stream, and close under these benches, in order to avoid the frequent wet and miry places which would have troubled the horses. As Jack was riding along he suddenly heard a shot behind him, and looking about, saw three deer running near the top of a ridge, and just below the timber. Joe had shot at one of them, and just after Jack looked round, two of them disappeared over the ridge. The last one stopped almost at its crest, and looked back, and Joe fired again. The doe fell, and Joe rode up to where she lay. The train was halted, and when the deer had been brought down to the trail she was put on one of the packs and they started on again. As the bottom became wider it was evident that beaver had been much at work here, and although they had long deserted it, the marshes and sloughs and mud-holes caused by their damming of the stream still remained as pitfalls for the traveller.

Ever since they had left Snake River they had heard from time to time the shrill bugling call of the elk, though near the top of the range where the snow was deepest they had not heard them whistle. Now, however, they frequently heard elk, and on this day an old bull came out of a point of timber near which they were travelling, and stood and looked at them. He was but a short distance off, and might easily have been killed; but they had meat enough, and there was no reason for shooting him. He was but forty or fifty yards distant, and seemed disposed to come even nearer, making some threatening demonstrations with his head, and advancing a few steps; but no attention was paid to him, and presently he turned about and disappeared in the timber. Hugh said that very likely the elk took some of the pack animals for cows, and wished to gather them in.

That night they camped on an enlargement of the river, which almost seemed like a little lake. Behind them and on either side were timbered hills, before them the water, and beyond the mountains rising steeply. The lodge stood in a little grove of pine trees, which furnished shelter and fuel, and the hungry animals fed on the rich grass behind it. The bright fire in front of the lodge lit up the trees and the lodge and the pack saddles, and as it flamed and flickered, curious shadows peeped out from the dark caverns that stretched back beneath the pine branches to the gloom beyond, and sometimes creeping stealthily forth, danced for a moment within the circle of the firelight, and then chased one another back into the darkness, and were swallowed up in it. The soft murmur of the river over its stones came to the campers in a monotonous undertone, while now and then from the nearby trees came the plaintive call of some bird, and the mountain sides echoed at intervals to the fierce shrill challenge of the angry elk.

"This is a great elk country, isn't it, Hugh?" said Jack. "It seems to me that elk are 'most everywhere, and I suppose they'll always be here, won't they?"

"Well, I don't know, son," said Hugh; "it's pretty hard to say about that. They'll likely be here until the white folks come; but as soon as they come, why the elk are bound to go. I've heard they're talking about passing a law not to let them be killed in the Park we came through--that place where the hot springs and spouting fountains are. But just as soon as mineral is discovered in these hills, the game will go. I reckon, too, that this law they're talking about passing for that Park back there won't amount to much, for I talked with two hunters there who said that they expected to get the contract this winter to kill meat for all them fellows that's working on those buildings that we saw. Of course what two men'll kill in a winter won't amount to much; but just as soon as many people begin to come into this country, the game will all get killed off. I've seen places down in the south, in Colorado, where twenty or twenty-five years ago game was so plenty that you could kill all you wanted right close to camp, any time; and now that country is full of settlers, miners and ranchmen, and they've killed off the game for the mining camps and tie camps and every settler has to go and get three or four wagon loads for his winter's meat, and the first thing they know there won't be a hoof left in the country."

"Well, but Hugh," said Jack, "what's going to become of all the game? Isn't there going to be any left after a few years?"

"You can't prove it by me, son. I don't know; but I expect there won't be any game left, unless they pass some laws, and enforce them, to stop the killing of it. Of course laws don't mean anything without they're enforced, and as far as I can see, these laws protecting the game never are enforced."

"But, Hugh," said Jack, "that seems to me all wrong. Do you mean to say that if I come out here twenty years from now there won't be anything for me to hunt?"

"Looks that way to me, son," said Hugh.

"And if I should have a son, and ever want to bring him out here and show him the things that I saw when I was a boy, he could not see them?"

"I don't believe he could. I tell you, son, this country has changed an awful lot since I first saw it, and it seems to me it's changing more and more all the time, and quicker now than it used to. I used to think that the time would never come when I couldn't go out and kill meat if I wanted it; but my ideas have changed a whole lot in the last year or two, and I believe now that the time will come when there won't be any game left for a man to shoot with a rifle. I used to think that the buffalo could never be killed off, but I've seen 'em killed off over part of the country, and I may live long enough to see 'em killed off everywhere."

"Well," said Jack, "it seems as if there ought to be some way to stop that."

"Yes, there ought to be," said Hugh, "but you see, every fellow that comes out into the mountains, he's just like you and me; we think the other fellow oughtn't to kill game, but we ought to kill it. We claim that we don't kill anything more than what we want to eat, and these other fellows claim, maybe--if they're buffalo skinners or elk skinners--that they don't kill any more than they want to skin. Each man thinks that what he'll kill won't do any harm; but when they're all at work killing as hard as they can, the upshot of it is that there's no game left."

"I see," said Jack; "each one of us is thinking about himself and about nobody else, and yet each one of us is likely to talk about what the other people do. You must have seen lots of game in your life, Hugh," he added.

"Yes, son," said Hugh, "I've seen a heap of game. Why, at one time men used to travel day after day, and never be out of sight of game; and most times the game was not afraid at all. Buffalo or elk or antelope would just move out the way, and a man never thought of shooting at anything until he needed meat to eat. Of course in those times we never took anything but the best parts, and so it often happened that we killed an animal every two or three days. But we never thought, up to within a very few years ago, when railroads began to come into the country, that things would be much different from what they were then; but when the railroads came, they brought a heap of people, a good many of them hunters, and a good many of them men who came to live on the land where the game had always roamed without being bothered by anybody, except maybe once a year when Indians happened to pass that way and perhaps camped in the neighborhood for a few weeks. Of course the time has been when a man could easily enough kill a car-load of game in a day, but in the old times no one had any reason for doing that. We could only eat about so much meat, and wear about so much buckskin; and ammunition cost money, and nobody wanted to waste it."