Chapter IX

AN ELK HUNT UNDER THE TETONS

He was riding along slowly, letting Pawnee make his own way among the loose rocks and tree-trunks, when he caught sight of an animal standing with its tail toward him, in a little opening among the trees. For an instant he thought it was a buckskin horse, and the idea flashed through his mind that there must be a camp down there. Almost before the thought had taken form, the animal moved a little, and he saw that it was an elk. He slipped off his horse on the side furthest from the animal, and led Pawnee out of sight behind a clump of pines, and left him there. Then he crept back to the ridge. In the timber below he soon made out half-a-dozen elk, and as he watched, he could see quite a large bunch of cows and calves. He lay there, watching and waiting. The drop down the hill into the valley was very steep, and he was hoping that the elk might move into some position where he would not have to go down to them. They seemed uneasy and suspicious, and presently something startled them, and they ran a little way, and then stopped, looking back up the valley. Two big heifers stood almost side by side facing opposite ways, with their shoulders close together, and their heads in such position that their necks seemed to cross. Jack raised his gun and took a careful sight at the necks, just below the heads, and pulled the trigger. One of the cows dropped instantly, while the other, standing a moment to look, turned and ran off. He heard the elk crashing through the timber of the valley, and then saw them climbing the bald hills on the other side, stopping every little while to look back, and at last walking slowly off over the hills.

A convenient side ridge gave Pawnee a good road down to where the cow had fallen, but she had rolled far down the hill, and finally had stopped on a little level place. She was quite dead. The animal was rather large for Jack to handle, but with some trouble he managed to cut off her hams and sirloins, and tying the two hams together by the gambrel joints, he balanced them on his saddle, and then tying the sirloins on behind, set out on foot for camp. There was much scrambling up steep hillsides, and down others quite as steep, and some working through the thick underbrush, before he came out into the open lake valley. Here progress was more rapid. Jack walked swiftly, and Pawnee followed close behind. After a time he came on the trail made by the pack train, some hours before, and hurrying along this, presently saw in the distance what looked like a house. Before he reached it, however, the trail that he was following turned sharply to the right, and led down toward the river, two or three miles below the lake.

As he approached the tall cottonwood timber, which he supposed grew on the shores of the river, he saw the horses feeding close to it, and before long the cone of the lodge showed through the leaves, and a little later he stopped by the fire.

"Good boy," said Hugh. "I'm mighty glad to get that meat. That'll keep us going for quite a while, and now that we've got fresh meat, and dried meat and fish, we're bound to live well."

"Animal's in good order, too," he continued, as he began to lift the meat from the saddle. "I expect you picked out a heifer, didn't you?"

"Well," said Jack, "I tried to, but I wasn't sure that it wasn't an old cow until I put a knife into her. The only thing I was sure of was that she had no calf." "Well," said Hugh, "it's a nice piece of meat, and I'm mighty glad you got it."

"What's that house that I see up there, Hugh? Nobody lives here now, does there?"

"No," said Hugh, "I reckon that's some kind of a shelter or stable, built by hunters or prospectors, for their horses in fly-time. Flies are pretty bad here now, and I reckon close about this lake the greenheads must be enough to drive the horses crazy. I noticed to-day when we were crossing some points of that meadow up above that they were bad. If it hadn't been for that, I reckon we'd have camped up there by the lake. It's an awful sightly spot, but there were too many flies."

Supper was almost ready, and they feasted royally that night on trout and the fat sirloins of the elk; and after the meal was over, it was pleasant to sit round the big camp-fire that Jack and Joe built out in front of the lodge, and watch the blaze, and listen to the murmur of the river as it hurried over the stones, just beyond the camp. Every stick tossed on the burning pile sent a great cloud of sparks soaring upward to disappear among the dark green foliage of the spruces, which here grew among the taller cottonwoods. The warmth of the fire was grateful; the willows and cottonwoods and spruces all about their camp sheltered them from the strong wind which still blew down the valley; and Jack, as he lay stretched out on the ground between Joe and Hugh, thought that he never could have a happier time than that very moment.

"Now, boys," said Hugh, "I don't know how you feel about it, but it strikes me this is a terrible nice place to stop for a day or two. This is a good camp, and these mountains right opposite to us are things I like to look at. What do you say to our stopping here, say for one day, anyhow; and maybe to-morrow we'll take a little ride across the river, and get closer to these mountains, and see something of what they look like. I'd like mighty well to look at them long enough to kind o' carry a remembrance of them back with me to the ranch."

"Well," said Jack, "let's do that. There's no reason for our hurrying; we've got plenty of grub, and I think we'd all like to stay here for one day, anyhow."

"Now, there's two things we can do," said Hugh. "We ain't made up our minds how we'll go home; but we can cross the range in a whole lot of different places. We can either follow down Snake River for a way, and then work up one of the creeks, and go over and strike the head of Wind River, and follow that down, or we can go back to the park, and then cut across, and get down onto Stinking Water, and then go back on the prairie. My idea is that we'll do better to keep on south, and try to go straight on our course. We can either go up Buffalo Fork, and then strike across to the head of the Wind River, and follow that down; or go down and follow up the Gros Ventre, and get across some way there. We don't have to make up our minds to-day; we can settle that to-morrow night. Let's agree that we'll stop here to-morrow, and then to-morrow night decide what we'll do."

"All right," said both boys.

When the three friends got up next morning, and went to the stream to wash, they could see nothing of the great range beneath which they were camped, for the tall spruce trees which grew on the opposite bank cut off the view of everything beyond. After breakfast they saddled up and having picketed two of the pack horses, set out to cross the river, and to get nearer to the mountains. The river was wide, and so deep that the water came almost up to the saddle blankets, but they crossed comfortably enough, and riding through the open dry timber of the bottom, before long were approaching the high bluffs which formed the first terrace above the river. In the bottom were many tracks of deer and elk, some of the deer tracks quite fresh; and they almost rode over a huge old porcupine, which waddled awkwardly to one side, and then stopped among some low rose bushes, with its head between its forefeet, its quills erect, and its tail thrashing about in a threatening way. Jack stopped his horse and said to Hugh:

"Hugh, is there anything in that story that porcupines throw their quills? I've heard lots of people say it is so, and then other people say it isn't."

Hugh drew his horse up, and turning in his saddle said, "Why no, son, there's nothing in that; though I've heard plenty of men who ought to know a heap better say that there was. Take a stick and go right up close to that fellow, and poke him with it, and then bring it to me."

Jack picked up a dead branch, and going to the porcupine, poked him in the sides and back, and when he did this the porcupine thrashed his tail about more vigorously than ever, and two or three times struck the stick. Leaving him, Jack went to Hugh, carrying the stick in his hand, and Hugh said, "Look at the end of that stick now, and see those quills." The end of the stick was pierced by a dozen or twenty sharp, strong quills, and Jack, taking hold of one and trying to pull it out, found that the point was firmly fastened in the wood, so that it required quite a little effort to pull it out.

"Now, son," said Hugh, "a porcupine, as you have seen, is slow, and can't run away. His back and sides and tail are covered with these quills, which are mighty sharp, and which have little stickers pointing back toward the root, so that if a quill gets fast in the flesh, it is a very hard matter to pull it out again. If a quill gets stuck in an animal's head or foot, it keeps working forward all the time; it never works backward and comes out; it has to go through to the other side. Most animals know that it isn't good to fool with a porcupine. The only way to kill him is to turn him over on his back, and get at his throat and belly, which are not covered with quills. When a porcupine sees an animal coming he holds his body close to the ground, makes his quills stand up all over him, and thrashes around with his tail, which is pretty well covered with quills too. His tail is strong, and he can hit a hard blow with it; and so you see he's pretty well defended. The quills are not set deep in the skin; they are loose, and they pull out mighty easy; you see that just by poking the porcupine you got that stick full of quills. Sometimes when he thrashes hard with his tail he may hit a piece of wood, or may knock loose some of the quills on his tail so that they may fly a little distance; but as for throwing them any distance from his body, or with any force, why he can't do it.

"I have had dogs that would tackle porcupines, and when they did, it was a terrible job to pull the quills out of them."

"Well," said Jack, "I'm glad to hear all that I've been told of dogs tackling porcupines, up in the Adirondacks, but I never saw one that had been pierced by quills."

"Most dogs," said Hugh, "soon learn never to bother porcupines, but some seem never to learn, and will go for one every time they see it. Bears sometimes tackle them, and so do lynx and panthers, but they say the greatest animal of all to kill a porcupine is a fisher. I've seen two or three panthers with their jaws full of quills. I've heard people say that the fisher kills them by turning them over on their backs and then jumping onto the belly, but I never saw this done. What I have seen is fishers with lots of quills in their bodies: some in the legs, some in the belly, and some in the sides. And the Indians say that these quills don't bother them at all; that is to say, that a fisher full of quills don't swell up the way a dog or a panther does. The porcupine is a pretty stupid beast, but its effect on its neighbors is quite interesting."

Jack listened with much attention to this lesson in natural history, and they mounted and rode on again.

Soon they came to a great slough, evidently an old beaver meadow, and as Hugh drew up his horse and looked at it, he shook his head:--"Too soft for us to cross, I reckon, we'll have to go round some other way. There's plenty of sloughs and mud-holes in there where our horses would go out of sight."

They turned northward, and for the next two hours were occupied in trying to make their way out to the high prairie. At frequent intervals they came to what looked like a tongue of hard dry land extending out to the bluffs, but after following it for a little distance they found at its end a mud-hole, which obliged them to turn back and take another road. At length they reached a strip of hard ground which led them to the bluffs; and just before they rode up the steep ascent, Hugh's horse started from the ground a brood of grouse, which scattered in all directions, many of them alighting on the willows and spruce branches close to them. They were singularly tame, almost as much so as the fool hens they had seen farther north, and Jack rode up to within three or four feet of one, and then reached out his gun to touch it, but before the muzzle was within a foot of the bird, it flew away.

When they reached the higher prairie they rode off toward the range, which was now plainly to be seen. There were three principal peaks, the names of which Hugh gave them. One, he said, was Mount Moran, a great square-topped mass of granite, with two or three vast snow or ice banks on its north face. To the south of that were the three pinnacles of the Tetons, whose slender summits ran far up into the blue sky. The prairie over which they were now riding was uneven:--here cut by dry, grassy, ancient water-ways, there with mounds of great extent rising above the general level. There was much gravel--some of it very large--which looked as if it might have been carried down by the water. Long ridges composed wholly of this gravel ran for long distances out from the foot of the range, and were now for the most part bare of timber, having been burned over. On some of them the fire had spared many of the pines, and young aspen timber grew on their slopes. The terraces of the river's flood-plain rose one above another, and on the highest of all, on the west side, were groups of evergreen trees, and now and then a single pine standing alone in the wide sage-plain. Scattered about over the prairie were many antelope.

They rode on toward the mountains, trying to get up high enough so as to look down on Jackson's Lake, which runs in close to the foot of Mount Moran; but the ridges became higher and higher, more and more timber grew on them, and cut off the view, so that at length they gave up the effort and turned off to one side to ride through the timber. Here were many fresh elk tracks and trails, some made the night before, and some since daylight; and here, quite unexpectedly, as they rode over a ridge a little higher than any that they had yet passed, a fine view was had of the southern end of Jackson's Lake. It seemed to wind and twist about among its points and islands, and sent out long and narrow finger-like bays into the hills in a most curious way. A little further on they saw from a hilltop another lake, not nearly so large as Jackson's, but still perhaps two miles long. It was surrounded by dense forest, and reflected the great peaks which overhung it. Here they dismounted for a while to look at the range, which was now plainly seen.

"Big mountains, ain't they, son?" said Hugh, as they sat there looking up at them.

"Yes, Hugh," said Jack, "they're awful big, and how bare and gray they are. There seems to be a little timber in small patches, but except for that, there doesn't seem to be anything growing on them at all; they are just rocks with snow on top and in the ravines."

"Well," said Hugh, "I expect for the most part that rock is so steep that the snow can't lie there. Even if the wind don't blow, just as soon as any weight of snow falls on the rocks it slips off.

"Have you got your glasses with you, son?" he continued, and when Jack had handed them to him, he looked through them and said: "I thought so. Do you know, son, that snow up there in those highest ravines isn't snow at all, it's ice; just like them glaciers that we have up there in the mountains to the north. Look through the glasses, and you can see the cracks on the lower border, and you can see too that it is blue, and not white like snow."

Jack and Joe both looked through the glasses and saw what Hugh meant, and both were reminded of the masses of ice that they had seen in the mountains of the north, the year before.

It was pleasant sitting in the warm sun and looking up at this wonderful scenery, but at last they caught up their horses, and mounted and rode back to the camp. As they were going along side by side, down the wide point of a ridge, a great brown deer bounced out from an aspen thicket on Joe's side and ran down the ravine. Joe sprang from his horse and raised his gun to shoot, but just as he did so she sprang into a little gully, so that Joe could see only her ears as she raced along. She followed the ravine down and was not seen again.

Hugh and Jack both laughed at Joe, and told him that he should have stayed on his horse, for from their point of view on horseback, the doe's body had been in sight for quite time enough to shoot.

When they reached the level bottom, they rode out close to the river, and keeping along the bank found firm ground all the way to the camp. There remained still some hours of daylight, and both boys got out their lines and began to fish, catching a number of fine and heavy trout. Just as they were about to go to camp with their catch, a flock of seven wild geese flew up the river, calling loudly, and after they had passed a little beyond the boys, Joe began to honk in response, and presently the great birds turned about and came back, flying directly over the boys, looking down at them, as if to see who it was that was talking to them. The air was cool and damp after dark and they sat about the fire in the lodge. A great horned owl a little way down the river was hooting regularly, and Joe said, "We're going to have a storm."

"Yes," said Hugh, "I hear him now, and I heard him last night. I reckon we're going to have change of weather."

"What do you mean, Hugh?" said Jack, "has the owl anything to do with the weather?"

"Well no, son, I don't know that he has; but some of the Indians say that if you hear an owl calling it means a storm's coming."

It was raining the next morning when Jack thrust his head from under his blankets, and as the fire had not been started, and nobody seemed to be moving, he knew that this day also would be spent in camp. When he went out of the lodge the ground was covered with an inch of very wet snow, and the weather seemed to be trying to make up its mind whether it would rain or no. Big wet flakes were falling in a mixture of rain and snow, and moisture was everywhere.

After breakfast, Hugh cut some crotches and poles, and with the ropes and two of the mantas made a very good shelter, under which they built an outdoor fire. By this they sat for a long time, discussing various matters, and then, since the rain had stopped, Jack went down to the stream and began to fish. He caught a few fish weighing from three quarters of a pound to a pound, and there were enough of them to make it interesting. The small ones seemed to trouble his hook very little, and one or two little ones that he caught he shook off before getting them to shore. Suddenly, after a long cast that he had made out toward the middle of the stream, a huge fish rose to his fly, but in its eagerness, missed and sprang over the fly showing its full length out of the water. This was such a fish as Jack had not seen before, and he was very anxious to get it. He cast again over the same spot, and this time drew in his line a little more slowly. The great fish rose again, and just at the right moment Jack struck, and had him fast.

For a moment the fish did nothing, but then came a fight the like of which Jack had never witnessed. The fish made a strong rush toward the deepest water of the rapid, and twice on his way there he sprang into the air, shaking his head savagely to rid himself of the steel that was biting his jaw. Then he turned about and rushed back toward the bank, again throwing himself out of the water. Jack was excited, but was trying to keep cool. Whenever the fish gave him an opportunity he took in line, and when the fish ran he gave him as little as possible.

Suddenly the trout started down the river at great speed, so fast that Jack was afraid to check him, and started racing after him, running over the slippery stones of the beach, and through the pools of water left by the river. Presently the fish stopped, and refused to move, and Jack recovered all the line that he could, and then began to try to move the fish. Now it began to give a series of tugging jerks on the line, as if it were bending itself from side to side in the water; then it began to throw itself over and over, as if trying to twist the line; and then it would rush off, as if striving to break it. As the splendid fish grew tired, Jack worked it nearer and nearer to the beach; but he had no net and of course could not lift it from the water. After looking about a little he found a place where the beach was shelving, and laying down his rod, he drew the fish out by the leader and soon had it safely in his hand. It was a handsome fish, deep and thick, and yet graceful in all its lines, and it seemed to Jack as big as a North River shad. As soon as it was killed, Jack took his rod and started back to the camp for he wished to show them there the biggest trout that he had ever seen.

White clouds hung low over the valley and hid the mountains on either side; but as Jack walked along the beach the western sky grew lighter, and for a few moments the sun struggled to shine through the clouds. Then suddenly, far down the valley the white wall that shut out the view broke away, and Jack could see the great mountain mass of the Teton Range. He stopped and gazed, waiting for the rent to close up again. Through it he could see, like a picture in its frame, the mountains, not dark and gray as they had been yesterday, but white now, in all the purity of new-fallen snow. As he looked, the break in the clouds moved rapidly northward, exposing one mountain after another, each seeming more beautiful than the one seen just before. A wreath of mist hung around and concealed the needle peak of the Grand Teton, adding to, rather than taking away from its height. The rift in the clouds passed northward, and after it had shown him Mount Moran, it closed again and the white vapor cut off the view. Jack had seen the glories of the Tetons, snow-clad. He returned to camp.