CHAPTER XIV

A LYNX VISITS CAMP

“Well, son,” said Hugh, as the two pulled on their shoes in the gray light of the next morning, “I slept mighty well last night and I reckon your conscience didn’t trouble you much, did it?”

“No,” said Jack, “I didn’t know what was going on two minutes after I rolled my blanket about me.”

“It’s mighty dark this morning,” said Hugh. “Either we got up early, or else there’s a big fog;” and when they put their heads out of the tent, sure enough, the mountains were covered with mist and a few flakes of snow were falling.

“Well,” said Hugh, “it’s no time to climb the mountains to-day, unless the weather clears, and it seems to me that it’s mighty cold. Maybe we’re going to get snowed in here.”

“That wouldn’t be very nice,” said Jack. “I hope we won’t have a big snowstorm.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “you boys go out and look after the horses. We’ve got to keep our eyes on them; it would be pretty bad to be left afoot and, if it does snow, the horses will be wanting to get down to the prairie again.”

The boys went and did as they were told, and changed the two horses that were picketed to fresh grass, saw that the others were all near at hand, and then returned to the fire.

Meanwhile, the snow began to fall more and more thickly and, after breakfast, Hugh said, “Now, boys, I believe we’re going to have a real snowstorm. Let’s get these ropes, blankets and saddles covered up as well as we can, and then we’ll go down to the point where we came out of the timber and build some sort of a fence there, so as to keep the horses from going back to the prairie. We’ll have to picket them all to-day and they’re not likely to pull up their pins, but we’ll make it as hard for them to get away as we can.”

The riding saddles and pack riggings were soon piled under a tree, where they would be protected from the snow and covered with blankets and mantas, and then Hugh began to cut and sharpen a number of pins, while the boys collected lash ropes and lariats enough to tie all the horses. After the animals had been securely picketed, the three men went down to the end of the valley and, after Hugh had cut some tall, but slender, dead pine and spruce trees, the boys dragged them out of the timber and made a fence, which sufficiently barricaded the trail and one or two open places, where the horses might have gone into the forest.

By this time the light snow was two or three inches deep and, when they returned to camp, they found that all the horses were busily at work pawing away the snow, in order to get at the grass beneath it.

“There,” said Hugh, “I guess they’re all right, and this thing is just a flurry. As soon as the sun comes out again, this snow will all melt.”

Joe went into the tent, and covering himself with his blankets, went to sleep, but Jack wanted to be doing something, yet there was not much that he could do, unless he went out to hunt, and, as all the foliage was covered with snow, he could not hunt without also getting wet.

Now and then he would walk out and look at the horses, which could not be seen from the camp. They were all standing with their tails to the storm, each with a crest of wet snow on his mane, a patch on the upper hairs of his tail and, most of them, with a line of white running down the backbone. They looked quite as miserable as Jack felt.

On one of Jack’s returns to the fire, Hugh looked up and said smilingly, “You’re getting pretty tired of doing nothing, son?”

“Yes,” said Jack, “it’s pretty slow business, I confess. I’ve been trying to think if there was anything that I could do and I can’t think of anything, unless I go over and take down some of that meat and cut it up for drying.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “that’s certainly not a bad idea. What do you say if we go over there and get a quarter and work on it under a tree where the snow doesn’t fall thick?”

“I’d like to, Hugh,” said Jack. “Of course, nothing would dry to-day and maybe not to-morrow, but if we could have two or three days of bright weather we could get it so it would keep.”

“We sure could,” said Hugh; “and even if we don’t have bright weather, we can rig up some kind of a scaffold and half dry and half smoke it with the fire. Come on, I’ll go with you and we’ll get down a piece of meat and go to work on it.”

It was but a short distance to where the meat hung, and, before long, one of the hind quarters of the elk was on the ground. Hugh stopped in front of it and said, “Now, son, take hold of it and, when I get up, raise it, and we’ll pack it into camp.”

The load was too heavy for an ordinary man to carry a great distance, but this did not seem to trouble Hugh. He threw down the ham under a spreading pine tree, that stood not far from the tent, and then Jack and he removed the skin, and began the work of cutting the flesh into thin flakes, which they piled up on the flesh side of the hide that had been taken off the elk. They worked at this for some hours and before supper time had cut out all the meat of the elk.

“Now, son,” said Hugh, “go and get me a sling-rope and we’ll hoist this meat off the ground. If we leave it here, likely some animal will come around to-night and want to carry it off.”

“Well, Hugh, I don’t believe I can climb the tree,” said Jack; for the trunk was very large and without branches for twenty-five or thirty feet above his head.

“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t believe you can and, what’s more, we haven’t got any sling-rope that will reach from the ground to that lowest branch and back again. We’ll tie it up to that little tree that stands close to the tent. Of course, it won’t be safe there, but I reckon anything can’t get at it without our hearing it.”

He made a bundle of the meat, lashing it with a sling-rope.

“There,” he said, “that’s all right for the present, and we’ll put it up here in this spruce tree. Nothing can knock it down without its hitting the tent and waking us, but if we should want to dry it to-morrow, someone will have to stop here and look after it, if the others go off on the mountains. Now let’s have supper.”

Hugh and Jack washed their hands in the snow, built up the fire, and presently commenced to cook supper. After things were going well, Jack called out, “Get up, Joe, you’ve been asleep all day, while other people have been working. Supper is nearly ready.”

Joe grunted sleepily in response and, presently, his black shock of hair was seen poking out of the tent door.

“I must have been asleep,” he said.

“Asleep?” said Jack “I should say so. It’s five or six hours since you turned in and here Hugh and I have been working all that time to support you.”

Joe was not wide enough awake to appreciate Jack’s joke, but after he had walked a little way from the fire and given his face and hands a good scrubbing with snow, he brightened up a good deal and seemed to watch the progress of the meal with interest.

“I tell you what,” said Hugh, as they were eating, “let’s turn back the flaps of the tent and build a small fire right close in front of it. Of course, we’ll have to watch it pretty carefully and put it out when we want to go to bed, but it will seem a heap more comfortable than to be standing about the fire out here.”

“Good,” said Jack, “let’s do it. If you’ll wash the dishes I’ll cut some small wood and we’ll get something as near like a lodge as we can.”

When the fire was built and when the three were sitting on their soft blankets under the shelter of the tent, it seemed very comfortable.

“There,” said Hugh, “this is lots better than standing out there, boys, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” said Joe, “it is.”

“Bully,” said Jack. “We couldn’t be more comfortable than this, unless we had a lodge, and this is plenty good enough.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I would like to have brought a small lodge, but then I knew we were coming into a stormy country and very likely often would have to camp high up where we couldn’t get lodge poles, and so I thought it was better to bring this little tent with the folding poles. Of course, sleeping out on the prairie in this weather one doesn’t need a tent, but in the mountains here, where you’re likely to have ten rain or snow storms in a day, it’s good to keep your blankets dry.”

While he was speaking, Hugh was cutting tobacco, and when he had a pipeful, after grinding it up between his palms, he filled the bowl of the pipe and reaching out took a brand from the fire and lighting his pipe sat there in great comfort, drawing in deep breaths of the fragrant smoke.

“Well,” he remarked, when his pipe was going well, “I never would advise a young man to begin to smoke, but I don’t know of anything in this world that has given me more comfort than tobacco, and that is one thing that the world has got to thank the Indians for.”

“Well, pretty nearly everybody smokes,” said Jack, “and I’ve often thought that maybe I’d like to, especially when I see you sitting there as you do now, Hugh. You seem to take such solid comfort in your pipe.”

“Yes,” assented Hugh, “I do; but then, suppose I’d never learned to smoke; don’t you suppose I’d be just as comfortable as I am now? A man don’t miss the things that he’s never enjoyed.”

“No, of course not,” replied Jack.

For a long time the three sat there, gazing at the little fire that flickered before them, Joe occasionally reaching over and carefully laying on it a stick of wood so that it constantly burned bright and warm.

At length Jack spoke up again and said, “Hugh, where were you in 1876, when the Custer massacre took place?”

“I was up camping with the Piegans, not far from the Sweet Grass Hills. I had been trading the year before with the Piegans, and instead of going into Benton and lying around there during the summer, I just stayed out in camp with the people. But look here, son,” he went on, “don’t make the mistake that pilgrims do and call that the Custer massacre; call it if you like the Custer fight or the Custer battle. It wasn’t what I understand a massacre to be; it was just a fair up-and-down fight, and the white men got licked and all of them got killed off. The white men went into that fight with their eyes wide open and knew what they were doing. They just tackled a job that was too big for them, that’s all. Now, you might call the Baker fight that I was telling you about a few days ago a massacre, because it was a surprise and because the troops attacked the camp, and killed off mostly women and children and old men. That’s my idea of a massacre, but the Custer fight was just a fight, and nothing else.”

“That’s so, Hugh,” said Jack, “I oughtn’t to have called it a massacre, but that’s what a good many people do call it, you know.”

“I know they do,” said Hugh, “but it’s a wrong name to give it, at least according to my idea.”

“Did you ever know General Custer?” asked Jack.

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I knew him some. I worked for him part of one summer out from Lincoln; I was one of the scouts on the Yellowstone expedition in ’73 and again in ’74, when he made his trip to the Black Hills.”

“What sort of a man was he?” asked Jack.

“Well,” said Hugh, “he was a nice man. Of course, I never knew him, except in what you may call a business way, to take orders from him and to report. He was always right pleasant, and his wife was an awful nice lady. He was a good soldier, General Custer was, and a great hunter. He was just crazy to be hunting all the time. He treated his men well, too; worked them awful hard, breaking camp early in the morning and sometimes marching away into the night, but they thought a heap of him. I remember one time, going into the Black Hills, two of the men were caught stealing canned goods out of one of the wagons. We camped early the afternoon they were caught, and he had them each ride a cannon from the time we went into camp until after dark. Then he had ’em cut loose and brought to his tent, and he gave them a good talking to, and a day or two afterward he appointed one of them, an old soldier and a pretty good man, too, his orderly. The other man he gave permission to go hunting the next day. He was pretty savage with his men when they did wrong, but after he’d punished a man, he always did something to him to make him feel that he did not hold the offense up against him. That made the men have confidence in him, and it made a good many of them careful about how they did anything wrong.

“I haven’t told you, have I,” he went on, “that Jackson, Billy Jackson, you know, was along with that outfit in 1874.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I think you told me that.”

“I didn’t know him then,” said Hugh. “He was just a schoolboy. We had quite a bunch of schoolboys along. They were called scouts, and maybe they thought they were scouts, but, of course, they were just boys out of the Indian schools without experience, and not knowing anything. They were mostly Santee Sioux.”

“Well,” said Jack, “but Billy is a Piegan, isn’t he?”

“Yes, a Piegan,” replied Hugh, “a grandson of old Hugh Monroe’s and on his mother’s side a grandson of a great chief that died before my time with the tribe, a man called Lone Walker. They said he was a great man. An awful big man, brave and rich. He had nineteen wives, and old man Monroe has told me that when he first came with the tribe--that must be nearly seventy-five years ago--Lone Walker had two grizzly bears that he used to keep tied up, one on either side of the door of his lodge. The old man said that the first time he ever went into the lodge, both bears got up and growled and started to attack him. He said he was scared pretty near to death, but Lone Walker spoke to them and they became quiet and went and lay down again. Old man Monroe lived in Lone Walker’s lodge for two or three years after that and, of course, the bears got used to him right away and never bothered him; in fact, I believe it wasn’t very long after that before the bears ran away and were never seen again.”

“But, Hugh, were they tame bears?” asked Jack.

“I don’t rightly know,” responded Hugh. “They were tame to the man that owned them, I expect, and they say that during the day when the camp was moving, the bears used to travel with it, walking along with the dogs. They didn’t bother anybody or anything and nothing bothered them; but, finally, I believe, they ran off, and although Lone Walker looked for them he could not find them.”

“Well,” said Jack, “those seem to me like queer pets for a man to have, but after all I don’t know that they are any queerer than poor old Swift Foot that I used to have.”

“No,” said Hugh, “any tame wild animal may seem strange to a person who never has seen a tame one before, but any wild animal can be tamed, and if he’s taken young enough he won’t have any fear of man. The trouble is, though, to make him stay tame. He’s naturally shy, and while he may be all right when his owner’s around, if he gets among strange people, the natural fear that he’s inherited from his ancestors will come back to him, and he’ll run.”

“That’s what happened to poor old Swift Foot, I am afraid,” said Jack.

“What Swift Foot?” said Joe. “I never heard about that.”

“Why, haven’t I ever told you about him, Joe?” said Jack. “Four or five years ago, the first year I was in the West, we dug out a den of wolves and kept the puppies, and some of them became very tame. I took one back East with me and had him two or three years. He was just like a dog with me and felt at home with all the other people in the house, but I never dared let him loose on the streets, for fear he would get lost. In the country, when I went there, I’d turn him loose and he would run--Great Scott! you never saw anything so wild to run as he was. Then, when I’d bring him back to the city again I’d have to keep him chained and give him what little exercise I could on a chain. Of course, he grew awfully fat, and I think if I’d had him much longer he’d have gotten cross, too; but finally, one unlucky day, I took him out walking, and over near Third Avenue, a crowded street where there is a great deal of noise and the elevated railroad trains are running all the time, something frightened him and he dodged behind me and gave a pull on the chain, and it pulled loose from his collar, and before I could grab him he got frightened and ran. He ran like a deer, dodging among the trucks and horses and cars, and though I called and whistled he never stopped, and I never saw him again. Father advertised, and we tried our best to hear something of him, but it was no use.”

“I don’t wonder he got scared,” said Joe. “I guess I’d be scared a whole lot with so many people round me, and no place to get away.”

“You’re right,” said Hugh, “so would I. It must be something terrible in those big cities.”

“Well,” said Jack, “it is terrible the way the people crowd about. Of course, those who live there are used to it and don’t pay any attention, but people that haven’t been used to hearing the noises and seeing the crowds, could easily enough get scared.”

A little later Hugh rose to his feet and stepped out of the tent, saying as he did so, “Boys, I believe we’re going to have a nice day to-morrow. It’s stopped snowing, all the stars are out and the moon is just rising. It feels mighty warm, too. Likely enough to-morrow the sun will come out hot and take off the heft of this snow. Then we can get round a bit and can dry this meat.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I’d like to be able to dry our meat. Of course, there’s no trouble killing meat here, but one doesn’t want to kill a big animal for a single meal.”

“No,” said Hugh, “you’re right about that. Meat is plenty here, but that’s no reason why we should waste it. Now, let’s put this fire out and cover it up with snow, so that there’ll be no danger of the tent’s catching fire, and then we’ll go to bed. What do you say?”

At once the boys were on their feet, pulling the fire to pieces and extinguishing the burning brands, by throwing them into the snow, and then bringing a few double handfuls of snow they threw them on to the ashes of the fire, and with much smoke and steam the last sparks were extinguished. A little later the regular breathing of the three men in the tent showed that all were asleep.

It must have been in the middle of the night or perhaps toward morning, when Jack was half awakened by hearing a noise, something like scratching, which he did not recognize, but a moment later he was thoroughly aroused by hearing a loud thump on the ground just outside the tent and then the sound of something galloping. His first thought was that one of the horses had come up close to the tent and knocked something down, but almost at once he recognized that this could not have been the cause of the sound, because the footfalls were not heavy enough to have been made by a horse. Rising on his elbow, he looked about. It was quite light in the tent, for a brilliant moon was shining, and he could plainly see Hugh get up, walk to the door and look out.

“What is it, Hugh?” asked Jack.

For a moment Hugh did not answer, and then said, “Why, something has carried off that bundle of meat. No, he hasn’t either. Here’s the meat lying in the snow and there is the thing that knocked it down over there under the pine tree, where we were cutting up the elk. I can see it plain in the snow, but I can’t make out what it is. It’s some animal, because it’s moving.”

By this time Jack was on his feet and had his head out of the tent door. He could plainly see some not very large animal crouched in the snow and could hear faintly the scratching, tearing sound of an animal gnawing a bone, and at once said, “Why, Hugh, whatever it is, he’s gnawing on the bones of that elk we left over there.”

“So he is,” said Hugh. “Let’s see what it is,” and, reaching down, he took his rifle and, stepping outside of the tent door, fired at the creature. It paid no attention whatever, but went on eating. Then Hugh fired another shot and then another, and after the fourth shot, the animal sprang into the air and, turning about, bounded off into the shadow and was not seen again. Hugh picked up the bundle of elk meat and put it in among the branches of the tree, and then he and Jack went back into the tent.

“What was it, Hugh?” asked Jack.

“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t know. It was either a mountain lion or a lynx or a bob-cat, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a bit afraid.”

“No,” said Jack, “I could see that. We ought to be glad that it didn’t come into the tent with us.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “we’ll know what it is in the morning, when it gets light.”

For the remainder of the night their rest was undisturbed. They rose early, and while breakfast was being cooked Hugh walked over to where the animal had been, and after looking about, came back and told the boys that the disturber of their rest had not been a mountain lion.

“I wish after we get breakfast you would show me how you know that, Hugh,” said Jack.

“I will,” said Hugh, “but I can tell you now. The place where it was lying is too small for a mountain lion. There is no mark anywhere on the snow of a long tail, such as a lion would have, and then out there I picked up this,” and he took from his pocket a little tuft of hair, gray, mixed with reddish. “Do you recognize that fur?” he said, as Jack took it in his hand and looked at it.

“No,” said Jack, “I don’t. But then you know I don’t know many of the mountain animals.”

“No,” said Hugh, “you don’t, and I don’t think Joe does, either. But unless I’m mightily mistaken that came from a lynx, one of those big animals like a bob-cat, only a good deal bigger, and gray instead of red. They’ve got black tips to their ears and a kind of whiskers around their necks, and they look awful fierce and savage, but it’s all looks. Though they seem to be so big, a man can kill one with a stick and not a very big stick, either.”

“Well,” said Jack, “let’s go over there as soon as we’ve eaten.”

After breakfast Hugh and Jack took their rifles and went over to the place where the animal had been sitting, and Hugh pointed out the animal’s tracks, which looked very large.

“Now, in this soft snow,” observed Hugh, “I can’t tell, and I don’t believe anybody else can, whether this is a lynx’s track or a mountain lion’s, but if it was a mountain lion’s, every little while as you followed it you’d see some place where the lion’s tail had made a mark in the snow. We don’t find anything of that sort here. Now, what do you say to following up these tracks, and seeing where the critter’s gone?”

“Let’s do it,” said Jack, eagerly.

Quietly and slowly they followed the trail, which was very plain, and found that only about twenty or thirty steps from the place where the animal had been shot at, it had stopped and lain in the snow for some time, and that in this bed was a drop or two of blood. Apparently one of the shots that Hugh fired had grazed the skin somewhere.

“Well, Hugh,” said Jack, “that beast isn’t much frightened and it may be anywhere about here. Let’s go ahead, as carefully and quietly as we can.”

From here the trail led into thick willows, where it wound about, and where, owing to the closeness of the willow stems, it was not easy to go quietly. Every few moments Hugh stopped and looked carefully about, and then went on a little farther. When he had followed the trail for a little more than a hundred yards, the tracks turned sharply to the right, and just as they turned to follow them, Hugh made a motion with his hand and stopped. Jack looked under Hugh’s arm, and there, not twenty yards away, saw the animal. A large spruce tree grew among the willows and at its foot was a little open place. The lynx, for such it was, was lying in the sun at the foot of this tree, and only its hips were visible.

Hugh motioned to Jack to shoot, but before the lad could do so, he was obliged to creep several yards to the left under the low-spreading branches of a willow. At last he got far enough to one side to see the animal’s body almost to the shoulders, and then fired, trying to send his ball as close to the tree as possible. At the report the animal gave a spring, and, falling back, stretched itself out in the snow. When Hugh and Jack went up to it they could see that it was a Canada lynx of the largest size, and as it lay there, its thick legs, and huge paws, armed with long, strong claws, gave it a more ferocious appearance than it was really entitled to.

Those paws were a marvel to Jack on account of their size, and the way in which they were armed, but when he took hold of the animal to lift it, he appreciated what Hugh had told him about its really small size, and realized that a great deal of its bulk was due to its long, loose fur.

Hugh took the lynx by the back of the neck and a few minutes brought them to the camp.

Joe was delighted with their capture, and confessed that he had never before seen an animal like this.

“Now, Hugh,” said Jack, “I want to skin this beast, that is, if you will give me the skin.”

“Sure,” replied Hugh, “I’ll give you my share in the skin. You killed it, and it seems to me it’s yours.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I killed it, of course, since you gave me the shot, but by hunter’s law the skin belongs to you. Isn’t it true that the first shot that draws blood is entitled to half the meat and the hide?”

“That’s so,” said Hugh, “that’s the old-time law that I used to hear down in Kentucky, before I got big enough to pack a gun. That’s what they always said down there and I reckon that’s been the custom ever since this country was a country. But you can have the hide and all the meat. I’ll give ’em both to you. Keep them always.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I’m mightily obliged to you for the hide, but I don’t feel as if I could rob you of the meat.”

“Well,” replied Hugh, “maybe you don’t know what you’re refusing. I never did happen to eat bob-cat myself, but I’ve eaten mountain lion, and that’s pretty good meat. A little dry maybe, and tastes a little too much like dry roast pork to suit me, but it’s good all the same.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I’ll skin this bob-cat now, I think. How shall I do it, Hugh, split it, or shall I case it?”

“Why,” said Hugh, “if I were you I’d case it. That’s the regular way to skin a bob-cat, and while you’re skinning it, suppose Joe and I go down and see how the horses are and look after our fence. I reckon we don’t want to stay here much longer, but while we do stay we must watch the horses.”

“Well,” said Jack, “that’s for you to say. I’m ready to stay or I’m ready to go. I’d like to have a chance to climb up where you went the other day to look down into Belly River. Maybe I can do that to-day or, at least, this afternoon, if I start as soon as I get through my job of skinning.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I reckon you could. Go ahead at it now, and Joe and me will go and look at the horses.”