CHAPTER XIX

A FOUR-FOOTED HUNTER

Hugh and Joe started off to look at the horses, while Jack stayed in camp and watched the mountains, and noticed how their shadows grew shorter and shorter as the sunlight crept toward the place where he was sitting.

It was quiet here. Now and then a bird’s note sounded in the trees above him, and once he heard the shrill whistle of a mountain woodchuck and always the dull sound of water falling over the cliff. Despite the quiet, there was yet much that was delightful in his surroundings.

As he sat there doing nothing, the forest, which to the casual traveler seems so silent and so destitute of life, began to give out little sounds and to show movements that Jack hardly expected. Down by the stream a friendly little water ouzel came along feeding, and stopping near the place where Jack sat, perched himself on a dry stick, and sat there for a long time, practicing his thrush-like song. He seemed to be a young bird and, though low, his song was very musical. He tried it over and over again, stopping sometimes when he thought he had made a mistake, and beginning anew with great patience and perseverance. He was a humble bit of life as he perched there, clad in quaker gray and hardly to be distinguished from a stub of the dead branch on which he rested, and Jack could not but admire the little fellow and be delighted by his liquid notes.

On one of the trees hung the shoulders of the sheep, which, shining red against the dark green, attracted the notice of a vagrant company of gray jays, which were flitting from point to point among the pines. Jack had seen many of these amusing rascals, sometimes known as meat hawks or camp robbers, and was always ready to admire their astonishing impudence.

A gray jay has little fear of human beings. He is likely to alight within three feet of one’s face, and to wink at one in daring fashion. He will stand on the legs of a deer which is hanging in a tree while you are skinning it, and from his perch will dart down to the ground after every little bit of meat or fat that drops from the knife. One can entice them almost up to his hand by tossing bits of food to them, making each bit fall a little nearer than the last; yet, notwithstanding all their impudence and apparent tameness, they are watchful and well able to take care of themselves. They scan you suspiciously with keen black eyes, and are always on the alert.

A group of these bold fellows darted down from the tree tops, some of them perching on the meat in the tree, but two or three plunging close to the fire, and alighting with an audacious flirt and spreading of the tail, which made Jack feel that the camp belonged rather to the birds than to him, and that he, if he had any modesty at all, ought to go off and leave them to occupy it.

The jays raised themselves to their full height, as if standing on tiptoe, and looked round, and then seeming perfectly satisfied, hopped about and picked up little pieces of bacon, morsels of fat and crumbs of bread. Some of these they ate at once, some they took up and carried off bodily to a neighboring branch, where, holding the food under one foot, they hammered and tore the piece until it was so divided that they could swallow it.

One of the jays got hold of a bone of the sheep to which some flesh was clinging, and as it was too big to carry off, pecked at it until he got a beak full of the food, and then flew off to eat it, but immediately returned for more.

Jack noticed that the jays that were working at the meat hanging in the trees sometimes clung to it, hanging head down, like titmice, which, indeed, they somewhat resembled. They did not seem very good-natured among themselves, and Jack noticed that if two alighted on the same piece of meat, one of them always retired and waited until the other had satisfied himself and gone off. Once or twice there seemed a possibility of an active quarrel between two of them. One of the two would draw himself up very straight indeed, slightly raise the feathers of his head and give a low flute-like whistle, and when the other saw this attitude and heard the warning he at once flew away.

Jack supposed that the jays would eat what they wanted, and then go away, but this was not the case. After satisfying their appetites, they continued their foraging, carrying off their booty and laying it up in secret storehouses on the branches, or in the little festoons of moss that hung from the trees.

Jack noticed that they seemed to store away quite a little bit of food in their throats, and that when they had all they could carry they went off and deposited it, and came back for more. The gray jays were so persistent and such wholesale robbers that Jack contemplated throwing sticks and stones at them to drive they away, but before he had made up his mind to do this another bird appeared, which at once scattered the jays.

While they were hard at work gathering plunder from the camp a dark shape flashed across the opening, and a moment later a beautiful Steller’s jay alighted in a small tree near the tent, raised his long crest, looked about him for an instant, and then hopping from one branch to another, reached the topmost spray of the tree, where he hung for an instant, swinging backward and forward on a slender twig. Then he darted down and alighted on the meat, and after another glance about him, attacked it with much vigor, sinking his sharp bill into the tender flesh at every stroke. He was a fine fellow, this Rocky Mountain blue jay, beautiful in color and shape, with dark blue wings and tail, a smoky brown body and head and a long crest, with light blue dots on his forehead. He was trim, graceful, alert and quick in all his motions, but he remained about the camp only a little while and then dashed away into the forest.

After the blue jay had gone, and the coast was clear, the gray jays came back again, and so persistently did they assail the meat that Jack finally drove them off, and threw a coat over it to protect it.

The daring and impudent gray jays were not, however, the only birds about the camp. Modest little juncos--birds like the black snow bird of the East--now and then crept out of the forest and made cautious advances to the neighborhood of the fire, where they feasted on the bread crumbs that had been dropped on the ground.

When Jack first saw them they seemed to him the most timid, shrinking little creatures imaginable, and he was astonished later to see two of them almost come to blows over a choice bit of bread that one had found. When another bird approached the dainty which its discoverer was picking to pieces, the owner grimly lowered his head and bristled up his feathers, prepared to defend his rights. The other little bird threw itself into a defensive position as if quite prepared for battle, but the two did not quite come to blows. After eyeing each other for a few seconds one made a little hop to one side and then the other moved off, and presently the ruffled feathers were smoothed down.

Back in the woods, Jack could hear now and then dull tappings and drummings, which told him that the carpenters among the birds were at work, and after a while one of these woodpeckers dashed into camp, and, alighting near the top of an old stub, stood there for a while as if waiting to be admired.

He was a handsome fellow, with a glossy black back, relieved by white shoulder knots and wearing a satiny cap of red. He was also an energetic worker, but liked frequent intervals of rest.

He hammered away on the wood as if his life depended on it, making the chips fly this way and that, but when he secured the grub that his keen ear told him was concealed there and had swallowed it, he would sit still for some moments as if considering its excellent flavor.

A sudden movement of the gray jays, which still loitered about in the hope of being able to steal something more, occasionally alarmed this visitor and caused him to dodge around to the other side of the stub with a little shriek of alarm, but he would at once peer out from behind it and, finding that he had been frightened without cause, went to work again.

Two rather distant cousins of this woodpecker also came into the camp. They were banded three-toed woodpeckers, somewhat more modestly clad in black and white, with yellow silk caps.

Jack noticed that they worked most on the trunks of the higher trees and on the larger limbs, corkscrewing about them and pecking away in modest fashion, as if anxious to escape observation.

One of them crept into a hollow in the bark of a great spruce and stayed there for a long time, and Jack thought that he was taking a nap before starting out for his supper.

For some hours Jack sat there watching the birds and having a delightfully lazy time. Once in a while he looked across the creek to the place where the horses were, and could see two figures, which he knew must be Hugh and Joe. They seemed in no hurry to return to the camp, but had gone beyond the horses and almost to the crest of the hill above the old camp where the bears had been killed.

At length when the birds had all gone off and he felt a little tired of doing nothing, Jack took up his rifle and crossing the tiny stream which lay before the camp, clambered half a mile or more up the mountainside. It was steep, but not bad going.

There was little sign of game, but, presently, on one of the ledges, Jack walked into a little brood of Franklin’s grouse; a mother and half a dozen young ones as big as a quail.

At first the old bird seemed rather uneasy, but not sufficiently alarmed to resort to any of the common tricks for leading an intruder away from her young, and Jack sat down on the ground close to them and watched them for a long time. They did not seem very active birds, nor did they display much energy in searching for food. They seemed to him rather lazy, and at last he rose and, leaving them, went on.

From his high perch he could see far into the distance and could now overlook the great cliff lying south of the camp, which he discovered to be the northern boundary of an immense snow field which ran back a long way to a vast mountain and to the ridges which extended from it on either hand.

“My,” said Jack to himself, “that will be no fool of a climb to cross that ice and get on those ridges. We will have to do that before very long.”

Looking down across the valley he could now see Hugh and Joe returning to camp, and turning about retraced his steps and got to the tent soon after the others.

The next morning Hugh proposed that they should explore still further the valley which lay to the east of the camp, up which they had ridden when they had been here before. There was no special reason for hunting, since they still had plenty of the sheep killed a few days before.

It took some little time to go across the stream and bring in the horses--the pack animals along with the others, since there was no place over where they were feeding where they could be tied up. The long level ledges of rock that formed the floor of the bench gave no opportunity for driving a picket pin down into the soil, and indeed the feed was so scattered that a picketed horse would get nothing to eat.

Jack suggested that they should tie up the pack animals near camp, but Hugh said no, that it would be better to let them follow, and perhaps graze in the little valley up which they were about to go. There was no likelihood that they would get out of this narrow trough, and even if they did not follow the saddle horses, they could be picked up on the return to camp and taken back to their feeding ground.

As the three riders passed among the scattered pines that grew in the valley they were again impressed by the vast height to which the mountains rose on either hand, by the stillness of the place, and by the glimpses they had from time to time of new snowfields and rock pinnacles.

When they had passed the little lake that lay high up in the valley Jack rode down to its edge, and saw there the fresh tracks of mountain sheep and one huge footmark of an immense bear. He got down from his horse and measured the length of this track, which was very large, reaching from the heel-plate of his rifle to the hammer.

Remounting, he followed Hugh and Joe, whose horses were clambering up a steep slope which presently ended in a tumbled mass of rock lying at the foot of a low cliff.

When the travelers reached the rocks they tied their horses to some little spruces and started to breast the steep ascent on foot.

It was a long, hard climb, but in no way dangerous, simply the mounting one after another of low ledges or steep rocky slopes, wearying to the legs and making the climbers puff.

At last they reached a very high point from which they could look out over the upper lake and see to the northeast a number of cold snowy basins. Over some mountain points they could see also what they believed to be the prairie shining in the hot sun, but the lower lake was hidden by the mountains.

“Come on now,” said Hugh, “let us see if we can work our way over on to this next ridge to the south. If we can get there, I believe we can see down into the head of Red Eagle Creek.”

Following the ridge as well as they could, and going down hill but little, the three soon stood on another crest of rock, from which they looked down into a long valley, carpeted at its head with grass and low willows, but farther down supporting large spruces and pines. In the timber a long way off shone a bit of silver, which Hugh told them was Red Eagle Lake.

“Who is the lake named after, Hugh?” asked Jack. “It cannot be our Red Eagle that we saw back at the Agency.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s just who it is. A man that thought a great deal of him came up that valley and found the lake and named it after the old man, and the creek and the valley take their name from the lake, I reckon.”

“That’s interesting, Hugh,” remarked Jack, “I’m glad somebody has given Indian names to these mountains. I think that is the way that mountains, lakes and rivers ought to be named. The first thing we know there won’t be any Indians left, and unless we name the main features of the land after them, the Indians will all be forgotten.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t know but you’re right. It seems to me a great deal better to call things and places after Indians than to call them after the names of European cities. Haven’t you got a Rome in New York State? I know we’ve got a Paris in my State, and I don’t think either name is a very good one for an American city.”

“Not a bit good,” replied Jack.

While Hugh and Jack had been discussing names and places, Joe had been studying the mountainsides, to see whether he could discover any game. Presently he picked up a little bit of snow and tossed it toward Hugh and Jack. It hit Hugh’s leg and he turned around and looked at Joe, who made, with his lips, a side motion toward the valley, and after a moment’s search Hugh, and then a little later, Jack, discovered several sheep feeding far below them.

Taking out their glasses, they sat down on the rocks and began to search the valley for sheep, and before long discovered a number.

Jack thought that there must be eighteen or twenty, though it was not easy to count them, for some would occasionally disappear, hidden behind some bush or rise of the ground, while others would be found in unexpected places.

Those feeding at the upper end of the valley seemed to be rams, some of them with very large horns, while those farther away were harder to identify, but appeared to be ewes and lambs.

“Well, son,” said Hugh, “there are your sheep all right, but as near as I can see they’re pretty safe.”

“I guess they are, Hugh,” answered Jack. “I don’t see any way of getting at them without going down into that valley, and the way it looks to me you couldn’t go and come in the same day.”

“No,” said Hugh, “it’s a long way.”

They spent some hours looking at the sheep, all of which after a while stopped feeding, and the ewes and lambs lay down on the grass, while most of the rams left the valley and climbed some distance up the rocks and lay down.

“Well,” said Hugh, “I don’t know but we’ve seen enough of Red Eagle Valley and its bunch of sheep, especially as we’re not going to get any of them. What do you say to turning round and going back to camp?”

The boys were ready, and they started back, following along the rim of rocks on which they were until they came to the high cliffs, down which they had to climb to get to their horses.

They were descending these, sometimes jumping from ledge to ledge, and in bad places lowering themselves by their hands, when Hugh, who was a little below the others, gave a low hiss, which caused the boys to stand motionless. After a moment he said in a low voice, “Come on down to where I am, and be quick about it.”

Cautiously and silently the boys descended to the broad ledge on which Hugh stood.

He pointed across the valley to a mountainside not more than three hundred yards away and said, “Do you see that hill there with the ridge running down toward camp? Well, a minute ago three young rams passed behind that, and behind the rams came a lion stalking them.”

“Well, what became of them, Hugh?” asked Jack. “Are they still behind there?”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I haven’t seen them come out and I don’t know as we will, but if the lion jumps on one of them, the other two ought to show up soon.”

Almost as he spoke they saw the three young rams climbing toward the upper ledges of the mountain, evidently undisturbed as yet, and a moment or two later the panther appeared on the trail that the rams had followed, eagerly looking after them.

The sheep climbed higher and higher and then stopped, and after standing for a little while, two of them lay down.

Meanwhile, their pursuer had not been able to advance, for if he had followed the trail which the rams had taken they would surely have seen him and run off. Two or three times he put up his head to look at them and then drew it back again.

“What can we do, Hugh?” asked Jack. “I’d like to get a shot at that lion, but he’s a long way off, and doesn’t show himself.”

“No, you can’t do anything now,” declared Hugh, “except wait. Maybe if the rams move, he will come out so that you can shoot at him with some chance of hitting. As it is now, it’s a thousand to one that you wouldn’t come anywhere near him and would just scare the game and make a noise for nothing. If you were ‘round on the other side of that hill you could probably get a good shot, but so you could if you had wings and could fly right over the beast.”

“Nothing to do but wait here, I expect?” said Joe.

“Nothing else,” said Hugh.

Eager though Jack was to get a shot at the panther and strong as were his sympathies with the sheep, he could not help being interested as he sat there and watched the three rams which stood unconsciously so near their deadly enemy, and the patience and caution of the great cat. He hardly marked the passage of time, so anxious was he to see the lion as it took an occasional peep at the sheep, and then settled back again out of sight. At last, however, he whispered to Hugh, “Isn’t there anything we can do, Hugh? I’d like that lion.”

“I don’t know of anything unless we want to end the show right here. If you make a move the rams will see us and go off, and likely enough when the lion sees them go away scared he will see us, and then he’ll go.”

For a long time they sat there, but at length the two rams that had been lying down got up, and after moving about a little, started on, passing out of sight, round the side of the mountain, and long before they had disappeared the lion was cautiously creeping after them.

“Now, Hugh,” said Jack, “can’t we go over there and follow that lion and perhaps get him?”

“Well,” said Hugh, “there’s a chance, of course, of getting him and a good many chances that we may not see him again. If you feel like it, we can get up on the ledge along which the animals passed. We’ll make quite a procession, I think, the sheep in the lead, the lion after the sheep, and we three after the lion. I think it will be rather a funny sight to see, and I’m willing to be one of the procession, if you like.”

With due caution, and making as little noise as possible, they crossed over to the hill and started in pursuit of the lion.

As Hugh supposed, the chase was fruitless. When they got round on the other side of the hill they could see the three rams a long way off descending the rocks toward the meadow at the head of Red Eagle Valley, and after a careful inspection with the glasses the lion was also seen, still following them, but some distance behind.

“You see,” said Hugh, “we can’t catch that lion and the lion can’t catch the sheep. I believe we might as well turn round and go back to camp. We can come up here again some day before long and kill a sheep, if we need one, I reckon, and possibly get a shot at the lion, but we can’t to-day.”

On the way down they picked up the pack animals, and as they passed the camp Hugh stopped to cook supper, while the boys took the horses across the river and turned them loose to feed, returning to camp on foot.

The day had been warm, and from the mountains all around them, sometimes loud and sometimes faint and far off, came the rumble and roar of avalanches sliding down the heights.

As they were eating supper, and the sun was sinking over the great mountain to the west, Hugh pointed toward the mountain, and they saw what seemed to be the greater part of a vast snow bank start, at first moving slowly and then more rapidly, slide for some distance down the mountainside, pour in a cloud of what looked like white spray over the great cliff at the mountain’s foot and then pile in a bank at the base of the cliff.

“Lots of snow falling to-day,” said Hugh.

“Lots of it,” assented Jack. “But, say, Hugh, is this going to keep up all night?”

“No,” said Hugh, “just as soon as it gets a little bit cold these slides will stop falling, and then if the sun shines hot to-morrow they’ll begin again toward night.”

“Don’t the animals sometimes get caught in these slides, White Bull?” asked Joe.

“I don’t know,” replied Hugh. “Sometimes I’ve thought they do. One time I found a bunch of sheep bones at the foot of a cliff lying all mixed up together, and I had an idea that maybe they’d been caught in a snowslide and killed there. I heard, too, of a man that found half a dozen goats once in just such a place, and he thought they had been killed by a slide.

“In neither case had the animals been torn to pieces or skinned. Their hair and wool lay all about them. Still, I reckon these mountain animals are pretty well able to take care of themselves, and that they don’t often get into places where snowslides can harm them. Nowadays, most of the sheep live too high up to be caught by slides.”

“You say nowadays, Hugh, as if there had been a time when the sheep did not live high up. I have always thought that they were a mountain animal and always lived among the rocks,” said Jack.

“Hold on, son,” said Hugh. “I don’t know if I’ve ever talked with you about these things before, but even if I haven’t you’ve seen sheep down on the prairie yourself, where there were no mountains, living around among the Bad Land Bluffs just where the black-tailed deer or elk may be found, and where the buffalo often go. What about the first sheep that you ever killed? Was that in the mountains?”

“That’s so, Hugh; you are certainly right. Sheep don’t need the mountains.”

“No,” said Hugh, “they don’t. Of course, they always try to run to broken land when they’re scared, but that broken land need not necessarily be mountain land. I have seen sheep a good many times feeding out on the flat prairie and a long way from any hills; feeding with the antelope, in fact. Haven’t I ever told you old Hugh Monroe’s story about how the Piegans used to hunt sheep in old times?”

“I don’t know, Hugh,” replied Jack. “If you have I’ve forgotten it.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “all through the Piegan country there are great big buttes rising up out of the prairie, and in old times there used to be lots of sheep on all these buttes. They fed on the prairie down below, and then if they got scared for any reason, they’d run up on the rocks and get away. Old man Monroe says that in old times when he was a young man the Indians used to start out on horseback and go to one of these buttes where sheep lived and make a big circle around it. Then two or three of them would climb up on top of the butte and run the sheep off the top. Then they would go down to the prairie and the horsemen would chase them and kill them. They used to do this only occasionally, when they wanted mountain sheep hides for war shirts or women’s dresses.”

“Is it possible that the sheep here were ever so plentiful that they could be killed in that way, Hugh?” said Jack.

“Yes,” said Hugh, “there’s no doubt about either of those things. A sheep can run pretty fast and can climb well, but on the level a good fast dog can overtake it after a fairly short chase. When I first came into the country, the Indians used to say that of all the animals, except the buffalo, the sheep were the gentlest and easiest to kill.”

“Well, they’ve changed since then, haven’t they, Hugh?” said Jack.

“Yes,” replied Hugh, “they’re pretty sharp now. We saw to-day one of the worst enemies that a sheep has, and one that along the mountains here probably kills more than all the men that are hunting them do.”

“What was that, White Bull?” asked Joe, “the lion?”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “that’s just what it is. You see, the lion is at work all the time. He’s got to eat every two or three days, and to eat he’s got to kill something. Now and then he may pick up a bird or a rabbit or a woodchuck, but his main dependence is these animals here in the mountains. High up like this there are not so many lions, and I was surprised to see that one to-day, but lower down there are a good many, and, of course, in summer they work up higher. On the other side of the range, where deer are plenty, they kill lots of deer and a few elk, but they also kill a great many sheep and goats, most of them, perhaps, young ones.

“You know about their killing goats, son, for you’ve seen them do it, and you remember that story that I was telling you the other day about a lion jumping on what he took to be a sheep. Now, there’s a place down south of here on Boulder Creek up near its head, where two men, both of whom I know well, Colonel Pickett and Billy Hofer, found eighteen or twenty skulls of sheep all by one rock. They had been killed at different times. Some of them were mighty old and all falling to pieces, and some of them were pretty fresh. They had all been killed under a high rock, not in a place where they could have been hit by a snowslide, but in a place where a lion could lie by the trail without being seen, but could himself see both ways. The rock was right over the trail, so close that a lion could jump right down on it.

“The two men who found these skulls were both good mountain men and they both believe that this was a place where a lion lay and killed his food as the sheep passed along the trail under the rock.

“There’s another interesting thing about sheep that most people don’t know. A sheep is awful easy tamed, especially if you get him young. I knew of one owned by a man in Salt Lake, caught when a little lamb and as tame as any dog. He was good-natured and liked to be petted. He spent most of his time lying on the roof of the house, but sometimes he’d jump down and feed in the yard and sometimes go quite a way along the street. Sometimes the dogs would chase him and he’d come back as hard as he could pelt, and then jump up on the roof, where he was safe.

“I once knew an Indian that had a lamb that was perfectly tame and was not afraid of the Indian dogs around the house. This Indian lived in a cabin and was always complaining about the sheep because it would jump up on the windowsill, sometimes breaking a light of glass out of the window.

“You take a young sheep, though, and tame him and let him grow up into a big ram and he isn’t afraid of anything and is likely to get real cross; and I expect that a big ram can hit a terrible blow with those horns of his.

“I reckon there are sheep found all the way up and down the mountains, maybe from the Arctic to Mexico. I’ve heard of a white sheep up North and of a black one, and I’ve been told that sheep were plenty down in the hot desert country in California and Arizona, but I never have been down there and don’t know anything about them. They say that down there they kill ’em by watching the water holes.”

“I suppose,” said Jack, “that there are not many sheep found on the prairie now, are there?”

“No,” replied Hugh, “I guess there are very few, if any at all. You see the prairie is getting covered with cattle now, and where there are cattle there are cowboys, and the cowboys don’t like anything better than the fun of chasing and roping any wild animal that they come across.

“A sheep don’t bear chasing very well. If they get much harried in any place, they get up and move away to where they think they’ll be safer.”

By this time the sun had set and it was quite dark. The roar of the snowslides, heard less and less frequently as the air grew cooler, had now ceased, and before very long Hugh smoked a final pipe, and advised all hands to turn in.