CHAPTER XXI

JACK'S FIRST CAMP-FIRE

Hugh and Jack walked a quarter of a mile down the ravine, at whose head they had left the horses, without seeing any sign of game. Then, clambering up the steep bank to the north, they crossed a hill and entered another ravine. Jack saw that there was good grass in the narrow bottoms of these water-courses, as Hugh had said, and in almost each one of several that they crossed a little stream flowed. The sun was getting low and the air cooler, when, as they topped one of these hills to descend into another ravine Hugh stopped, made a motion of warning with his hand, and then, slowly lowered his head and backed away from the ridge.

"There's two deer just below us, feeding in the creek bottom, and I believe they're near enough to the ridge to shoot. We'll go round about opposite them and take a look and see what the chances are. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we could get a good shot at them."

"How far below us are they, Hugh?" said Jack. "Not more than a hundred yards," was the reply. "I think we can see them from the ridge, and get one, or maybe both of them. But, now there's one thing I want to say to you: look out you don't over-shoot. When a man's shooting downhill, the way we may have to do from here, he's terrible likely to draw his sight too coarse, and to shoot too high. If you get a chance to shoot, draw your sight down just as fine as you can, and hold low down on the animal. It is better to shoot under than it is to shoot over, anyhow; don't forget this."

They walked briskly along, and in a very few moments Hugh said, "Hold on now; I'll go up and take a look." He did so, cautiously peering over the ridge, with bared head, and then, bending down, he motioned Jack to his side.

"They're right there," he whispered, "and it's an easy shot. You take the big buck and I'll try the little fellow when he runs. Remember now, hold low and steady. If the deer is standing with his tail toward you, aim about for his loin, and try to break his back."

They crept forward on hands and knees, and not until they had reached the very crown of the hill did they raise their heads. Then they saw the wished-for game, two fine mule deer bucks, busily feeding on the green grass that grew near the stream. They were graceful creatures, one of them much larger than the other and with a fine head of horns; the other had small horns and was evidently young. Their ears were very large, and their tails, which were white, all except a black tip, were constantly in motion. Both deer stood broadside on; the larger one somewhat in advance of the other.

"You shoot first," said Hugh. "Take the big one, and remember, hold low."

Jack put his rifle to his shoulder, feeling as cool and steady as ever he did in his life, and aiming just behind the big buck's elbow, fired, and the deer dropped in his tracks. The little fellow made one or two jumps, and then stood looking, when Hugh's ball pierced his breast, and he too fell to the ground.

"Well," said Hugh, "that's a good job, son. If I'd thought we were going to get meat so quick, I'd a fetched a pack horse along, but I didn't much think we would. So I'll go down and butcher them deer, and you go back to camp and put a pack saddle on one of the pack horses and fetch it over here. Mind you take the saddle and the blanket and the lash rope that goes together; don't mix up the riggings. You'd better bring the pack horse you led; it hasn't had nothing to do all day except to pack its saddle, and it might as well work for its grub now. You can't see the camp from here, but I don't expect there's any danger of your losing your way. You know we crossed four of these gulches coming, and when you get to the fifth you want to turn to your right and follow up the creek, and soon you'll come in sight of the camp. Keep the sun on your right hand all the time. Do you think you can do it?"

"Oh, I guess so, Hugh," said Jack; "now that you've told me how many ravines we crossed; I didn't notice, myself, I only knew we'd crossed a number of them."

"Well," said Hugh, "you've got to learn to take notice of just them things, if you're going to be a prairie man. Now mind, if you should not be able to find your way to camp, and think you're lost, don't keep on travelling; just climb up to the top of the nearest hill and set there, and before night you'll see or hear me. But I don't expect but what you'll find your way back to camp all right."

Hugh went on downhill toward the deer, and Jack set out on his return to camp. He kept count of the ravines as he crossed them, and when he came to the fifth, looked around to see if there was anything there that he could recognise. It all looked strange to him, but he turned to his right and followed the stream up, and, before he had gone very far, he noticed a clump of willows that he remembered they had passed soon after leaving camp. A few steps beyond this a grove of trees appeared, and a moment later he saw the horses. "Now, the question is," he said to himself, as he hurried toward camp, "can I find my way back to Hugh? I'll try hard, anyhow."

He loosened the pack horse from its picket pin, led it to the saddles, and choosing the right rigging, saddled the animal and tied the lash rope to the saddle. It was the first time he had ever put a pack saddle on a horse, and he did not feel sure that he had done it right, but he spent little time over it, thinking that the important thing now was to get the horse to Hugh, so that they could bring their meat to camp before the sun set. He found his way back without difficulty to the place they had shot from, and from there saw Hugh, who had finished butchering, smoking his pipe by the two carcasses. When Jack reached him, Hugh said, "Well, you didn't have no trouble, did you?"

"Not a bit," said Jack. "I'd a notion at one time that maybe I was lost, for the ravine that we came down looked strange to me on my way back, but I followed it up and got to camp all right."

"Well," said Hugh, "it's a mighty good plan, when you're going along in a strange country, to stop every now and then and take a look behind you, and see how the country looks after you pass through it. Of course as you go along you see how things look ahead of you, but sometimes they look mighty different from the other side. I'd ought to have spoken to you about that before. Say," he continued, as he rose to his feet and looked at the pack horse, "who saddled that horse?"

"Why, I did, of course," answered Jack; "what's the matter with it? I kind o' felt as if there was something wrong when I started, but I was in a rush to get back here, and so hurried along without stopping to think about it."

"Well," said Hugh, "there is something wrong, but we ain't got time now to let you find out what it is. Don't you see you've got the saddle on hind side before? You must have cinched the horse up from the off side instead of from the near."

"Of course," said Jack, "I see it now. That must be what made it seem so queer when I was saddling; but you see, both ends of the pack saddle look alike. I don't think I would have made that mistake with a riding saddle."

"No, I expect not," said Hugh, "if you had, you'd probably have found it out when you tried to mount. Now, I'll put this saddle on right and then we'll take these deer to camp as quick as we can. The sun will be down before long, and we want daylight to cook supper and spread our beds by."

They packed the two deer on the horse. Hugh did most of the work of packing, but Jack helped now and then by holding up the load on one side, and pulling a rope or two. As they drew near the camp Hugh said, "We've got lots of daylight yet and can make a nice camp here, and to-morrow morning we'll hunt a little way on horseback. We don't want to have too good luck right at the start, if we do we'll have to go back home again too soon."

Hugh hung up the two deer to the branches of a tree, and then told Jack to go down to the stream and dip up a bucket of water, while he would gather wood and start the supper. By the time the water had been brought, the fire was blazing, and Hugh had their small mess box open on the ground and had taken from it a little piece of bacon, the coffee and sugar in the two cans, and a sack which contained several loaves of bread.

"Now, you see," he said, "we're in luck this trip, for Mrs. Carter gave us a sack full of bread, so we won't have to bake none while we're out. All we've got to do now is to fry a little meat and cook a cup of coffee, and our supper's ready. You fill that coffee kettle with water and set it on to boil while I cut some of that fat deer meat." By the time the water was boiling, fat ribs of one of the deer were sizzling in the frying-pan, giving out an odour that made Jack feel very hungry. Hugh put the coffee into the hot water, let it boil for two or three minutes, then stood it off the fire but close to it, where it would keep warm, and told Jack to cut some slices of bread. When he had done this, Hugh told him to set the table, which made Jack look rather blank, for he did not know precisely what Hugh meant, but he laid out two of the tin plates, two cups, and for each a knife, fork and spoon, and Hugh nodded, as much as to say that this was right. The deer meat, the bread and the hot coffee, with plenty of sugar in it, seemed to Jack to make about the best meal that he had ever tasted.

When they had finished eating, Hugh said, "Now, let's unroll our beds and get ready to sleep, and then we won't have anything more to do except to sit by the fire here until we get sleepy." He pointed out to Jack a good place for his bed, where the grass was smooth and there were no stones or roots or bits of stick lying on the ground, and the bed was soon unrolled and ready for occupancy. Hugh made his own bed and then returned to the fire and again lit his pipe.

The sun had set, and the air was so cool as to make the warmth of the fire very pleasant. Jack lay down by it and stretched out his legs in the comfortable heat. "Better put your coat on, son," said Hugh; "it gets cool mighty fast after the sun goes down. It's good for you to keep right warm until you turn into your blankets. If you go to bed feeling chilly, it's liable to take you a long time to go to sleep."

Jack followed this advice, and after putting on his coat lay down again by the fire, for he was tired and a little bit sleepy. "Tell me something about these deer that we killed, Hugh," he said; "they don't look like any of the deer that I ever saw in Central Park; their ears are big, and their tails are different. Are these the regular deer that we have in the east?"

"I expect not," said Hugh; "these are what we call blacktails out here. You took notice, I expect, that the tips of their tails were black; I guess that's what gives them the name. They've got another name, though. I have heard your uncle call them mule deer, and he says that that name comes from their having such big ears. They've got sure enough big ears, all right, and I guess that's a pretty good name for 'em. I have heard him say that 'way over west, toward the coast, there's another kind of deer that's the real blacktail; it's got a big tail that's black all over. These deer here are good meat, but they're a kind of a fool animal, after all. Sometimes if you shoot one, the others with it will just kind of jump round, looking to see where the noise comes from; they don't seem to have sense enough to run away; but I expect that don't mean much except that they haven't been hunted. I've seen elk and mountain sheep do the same thing, and of course buffalo will stand and let you shoot at them as long as you want to. 'Pears to me always as if deer and elk didn't depend much on their eyes. If a man keeps right still they don't seem to see him; or, anyway, they ain't afraid of him; but if they once get a smell of him, they don't wait to ask no questions, but just light out of the country.

"You killed that deer mighty well, son," he went on, "you're getting to be steady as anybody need be. I wondered, when you drew up to shoot, whether you'd have any trouble catching your sight. I thought maybe you would, because this was the first deer you'd shot at; but you didn't seem to be a mite flustered."

"No," said Jack, "I didn't feel excited. Of course I wanted to kill the deer, but I was thinking hard about what you had told me of the danger of over-shooting. I don't believe I thought of anything else."

They were sitting by the fire, not talking, when suddenly from the hills to the north, sounded a series of frightful yells and howls, which made Jack sit up very straight. "What in the world's that, Hugh?" he said, seeing that Hugh had not changed his position nor apparently heard this dreadful noise.

"That yelling?" said Hugh. "Why I forgot that you'd never been in camp before. Now, what do you expect that is?"

"Why, I don't know," said Jack; "it sounded like a lot of demons fighting."

"Well, I'll tell you what it is," said Hugh, "it's just some miserable coyote that's found the place where we butchered them deer, and is telling all the other coyotes about it."

"But, Hugh," said Jack, "there must be at least a hundred there, from the noise they make."

"Not so," said Hugh; "I don't believe there's more than one. I told you the other day that one of them woodchucks could make more noise for its size than any beast I knew; but when I said that, I expect I must have forgot the coyote. Sometimes if two or three get together and howl, you'd think there was a thousand. They'd be a terrible beast to hear at night if one was anyway scary."

"I should think so," said Jack; "I didn't know what was going to happen when I heard that fellow begin just now."

"Well," said Hugh, "he and his partners will have a good feast to-night; but I expect you're getting sleepy, and we want to be up with the sun to-morrow, so maybe we might as well turn in now."

"All right, Hugh, I am getting sleepy and I guess I'd like to go to bed."

"Say we do," said Hugh. "One thing I'll tell ye, seeing that you've never slept out of doors before; when you go to bed, take off your coat, your pants and your shoes; the less a man has on him when he is in bed the better he rests."

Hugh filled his pipe again and put some more wood on the fire, which blazed up brightly; and Jack, sitting on the edge of his bed, began to undress.

"Put your shoes and the clothes that you take off under the head of your bed," said Hugh, "then, if it should come on to rain or snow during the night, they won't get wet. You've got a lot of little odds and ends of things to learn about being in camp, and I want to tell you all of them that I can think of, because if you know them you'll be a heap more comfortable than you will if you don't."

Before long, Jack was snugly wrapped in his blankets, watching the flickering fire and the bright stars that shone out of the black sky above him. Presently Hugh turned into his blankets, and the fire went down.

Jack had been sleepy when he went to bed, but now he felt wakeful. He could hear queer little things moving about in the grass close to his head; the leaves of the trees rustled in the gentle breeze; the horses cropped the grass and walked about not far off, and each one of these sounds seemed loud to him. Every now and then there would be a burst of howling from the hills, and altogether, Jack felt strange. But soon he slept.