Part 7
No talking now, but with every nerve and muscle tense, and your eye on the boil of the water, you rush along. You back water and paddle, the stern swings, she hangs for an instant, she falls in the current, and with a mad rush you take it like a hunting-man a six-bar gate. Now paddle, paddle, paddle. It looks bad--we cannot make it--yes--all right, and we are on the far shore, with the shallows on the other side. This little episode was successful, but, as you well know, it cannot last. The next rift, and with a bump she is hung upon a sunken rock, and--jump! jump!--we both flounder overboard in any way possible, so it is well and quickly done. One man loses his hold, the other swings the boat off, and, kicking and splashing for a foothold, the demoralized outfit shoots along. At last one is found, and then at a favorable rock we embark again.
You are now wet, but the tea and sugar are safe, so it’s a small matter. A jam of logs and tops is “hung up” on a particularly nasty place, and you have a time getting the boat around it. You walk on rotten tops while the knots stick up beneath you like sabres. “Has” floats calmly out to sea, as it were, on a detached log which he is cutting, and with a hopeless look of despair he totters, while I yell, “Save the axe, ---- you--save the axe!” and over he goes, only to get wet and very disgusted, both of which will wear off in time. For a mile the water is so shallow that the boat will not run loaded, and we lead her along as we wade, now falling in over our heads, sliding on slippery stones, hurting our feet, wondering why we had come at all. The boat gets loose, and my heart stands still as the whole boat-load of blankets and grub with our pipes and tobacco started off for the settlements--or “drifting to thunder,” as Bret Harte said of Chiquita. There was rather a lively and enthusiastic pursuit instituted then, the details of which are forgotten, as my mind was focussed on the grub-pack, but we got her. About this time the soles let go on my tennis shoes, and my only pair of trousers gave way. These things, however, become such mere details as to be scarcely noticed when you have travelled since sunrise up to your waist in water, and are tired, footsore, and hungry. It is time to go ashore and camp.
You scrape away a rod square of dirt, chunks, witch-hoppel, and dead leaves, and make a fire. You dry your clothes while you wear the blanket and the guide the shelter-tent, and to a casual observer it would look as though the savage had come again; but he would detect a difference, because a white man in a blanket is about as inspiring a sight as an Indian with a plug-hat.
Finally the coffee boils, the tent is up, and the bough bed laid down. You lean against the dead log and swap lies with the guide; and the greatest hunters I have ever known have all been magnificent liars. The two go together. I should suspect a man who was deficient. Since no one ever believes hunters’ yarns, it has come to be a pleasurable pastime, in which a man who has not hunted considerably can’t lie properly without offending the intelligence of that part of his audience who have.
The morning comes too soon, and after you are packed up and the boat loaded, if you are in a bad part of the river you do this: you put away your pipe, and with a grimace and a shudder you step out into the river up to your neck and get wet. The morning is cold, and I, for one, would not allow a man who was perfectly dry to get into my boat, for fear he might have some trepidation about getting out promptly if the boat was “hung up” on a rock; and in the woods all nature is subservient to the “grub.”
Hour after hour we waded along. A few rods of still water and “Has” would cut off large chews of tobacco, and become wonderfully cynical as to the caprices of the river. The still water ends around the next point. You charge the thing nobly, but end up in the water up to your neck with the “grub” safe, and a mile or so more of wading in prospect.
Then the river narrows, and goes tumbling off down a dark cañon cut through the rocks. We go ashore and “scout the place,” and then begin to let the boat down on a line. We hug the black sides like ants, while the water goes to soapsuds at our feet. The boat bobs and rocks, and is nearly upset in a place where we cannot follow it through. We must take it up a ledge about thirty feet high, and after puffing and blowing and feats of maniacal strength, we at last have it again in the water. After some days of this thing we found from a statistician we had dropped 1100 feet in about fifty-one miles, and with the well-known propensity of water to flow downhill, it can be seen that difficulties were encountered. You cannot carry a boat in the forest, and you will discover enough reasons why in a five-minute trail to make their enumeration tiresome. The zest of the whole thing lies in not knowing the difficulties beforehand, and then, if properly equipped, a man who sits at a desk the year through can find no happier days than he will in his canoe when the still waters run through the dark forests and the rapid boils below.
COACHING IN CHIHUAHUA
That coaching is a grand sport I cannot deny, for I know almost nothing of it beyond an impression that there is a tremendous amount of mystery connected with its rites. As a sport I have never participated in it, but while travelling the waste places of the earth I have used it as a means on occasion. I never will again. There is no place to which I desire to go badly enough to go in a coach, and such points of interest as are inaccessible except by coach are off my trail. I am not in the least superstitious, and am prone to scout such tendencies; but I’m a Jonah in a stage-coach, and that is not a superstition, but a fact amply proven by many trials. I remember as a boy in Montana having been so hopelessly mixed up with a sage-bush on a dark night when the stage overturned that it left an impression on me. Later in life I was travelling in Arizona, and we were bowling along about ten miles an hour down a great “hog-back” to the plains below. A “swing mule” tripped up a “lead mule,” and the stage--with myself on the box--ran over the whole six, and when the driver and I separated ourselves from the mules, shreds of harness, splinters, hair, hide, cargo, and cactus plants I began to formulate the intelligence that stage-coaching was dangerous.
While riding in an army ambulance with Major Viele, of the First Cavalry, and the late Lieutenant Clark, of the Tenth, the brake-beam broke on the descent of a hill, and we only hit the ground in the high places for about a mile. I will not insist that every man can hold his breath for five consecutive minutes, but I did it. Thereupon I formulated vows and pledges. But like the weak creature I am, I ignored all this and got into one at Chihuahua last winter, and first and last did five hundred miles of jolting, with all the incident and the regulation accident which goes to make up that sort of thing. Now I like to think that I have been through it all, and am alive and unmaimed; and I take a great deal of comfort in knowing that, however I may meet my end, a stage-coach will be in no way connected with it.
On the trip out we had mules. They were black and diminutive. To me a Mexican mule seems to be the Chinaman of the dumb animals. They are enduring beyond comprehension, and they have minds which are patient, yet alert and full of guile. The Mexican _coacheros_ have their mules trained, as bankers do their depositors in our land. They back up against a wall and stand in line while one by one they are harnessed. In the early morning I liked to see the lantern-light glorify the little black creatures against the adobe wall, and hear the big _coachero_ talk to his beasts in that easy, familiar way and with that mutual comprehension which is lost to those of the human race who have progressed beyond the natural state. This coachman was an enormous man--big, bony, and with Sullivanesque shoulders, gorilla hands, and a blue-black buccaneer beard; and but for a merry brown eye and a mouth set in perpetual readiness to grin he would have belonged to the “mild-mannered” class, to which, as a matter of fact, he did not. It is written in the lease of his land that he shall drive the Bavicora ranche coach--it’s fief-service, it’s feudal, and it carries one back. If the little mules and ponies did not stand in the exact six feet of ground where he wanted them, he grabbed hold of them and moved them over to the place without a word, and after being located they never moved until he yanked or lifted them to their place at the pole. The guards were Mexican Indians--hair cut _à la Cosaques_, big straw hats, _serapes_, and munitions of war. William, whose ancestors had emigrated from the Congo region before the war, was to cook. He was also guide, philosopher, and friend to Mr. H. and myself in this strange land, and he made all things possible by his tact and zeal in our behalf. William knows every one in the State of Chihuahua, and he is constantly telling us of the standing and glittering position of the inhabitants of the mud huts which we pass, until it sounds like that ghastly array of intelligence with which a society reporter quickens the social dead in a Sunday newspaper.
At night we stay at the different ranches, and, rolling ourselves up in our blankets, we lie down on the mud floors to sleep. It’s not so bad after one becomes used to it, albeit the skin wears off one’s femur joint. The Mexican hen is as conscientious here as elsewhere, and we eat eggs. The Mexican coffee is always excellent in quality, but the people make it up into a nerve-jerking dose, which will stand hot-water in quantities. Nearly all travellers are favorably impressed with the _frejoles_ and _tortillas_ of the country. The beans are good, but as old General Taylor once said, “They killed more men than did bullets in the Mexican War.” Of the _tortillas_ I will say, as my philosophical friend, Mr. Poultney Bigelow, says of the black bread of the Russian soldier, “It’s a good strong food to march and fight on,” which can in no way be a recommendation of its palatability.
The coach starts by gray dawn, and we are aroused at an early hour. The white men take sponge-baths in a wash-basin, and the native who stands about deep in the folds of his _serape_ fails utterly to comprehend. He evidently thinks a lot, but he doesn’t say anything. I suppose it seems like “clay-eating” or penitent mutilations to him--not exactly insanity, but a curious custom, at any rate. On the return trip we have a half-broken team of buckskin broncos, which have to be “hooked up” with great stealth. And when the coachman had climbed quietly on to the box and we were inside, the guards let go of the team, and the coachman cracked his whip, while we looked out of the window and held our breath. Then there were Horse Pyrotechniques! Ground and Lofty Tumbling! Greatest Show on Earth! for about a minute, when we made a start down the big road--or didn’t, as the case might be. After the first round we often had to get out, and, two ponies having got themselves into the same collar, we would then rearrange them for better luck next time.
In Mexico they drive four mules abreast in the lead and two on the pole, which seems to be an excellent way. Mexican coachmen generally keep “belting” their stock and yelling “_Underlay-nula!_” which is both picturesque and unintelligible. Our man was, however, better educated. Forty or fifty miles is a day’s journey, but the exact distance is so dependent on the roads, the load, and the desire to “get thar” that it varies greatly.
We pass the Guerrero stage as it bowls along, and hundreds of heavy, creeking ox-carts, as they draw slowly over the yellow landscape, with their freight to and from the mines. Bunches of sorrowful _burros_, with corn, wood, pottery, and hay, part as we sweep along through and by them.
We have the inspiring vista of Chihuahua before us all the time. It is massive in its proportions and opalescent in color. There are torquois hills, dazzling yellow foregrounds--the palette of the “rainbow school” is everywhere. There are little mud houses, ranches, and dirty little adobe towns to pass, which you must admire, though you may not like them. Gaunt cattle wander in their search for grass and water, and women squat by the riverbed engaged in washing or filling their _ollas_.
The people are enchanting. It is like reading the Bible to look at them, because it is so unreal; yet there they are before one, strange and mysterious, and, like other things which appeal to one’s imagination, it would be a sad thing if one were to understand them. One is tempted to think that the people of our Northern races know too much for their own good. It seems remorseless, but it is so. When I heard the poor Mexican asked why he thought it had not rained in eighteen months, he said, “Because God wills it, I suppose;” we were edified by the way they shifted the responsibility which Farmer Dunn in our part of the world so cheerfully assumes.
One afternoon we were on a down-grade, going along at a fair pace, when a wheel struck a stone, placed there by some freighter to block his load. It heaved the coach, pulled out the king-pin, and let the big Concord down and over on its side. The mules went on with the front wheels, pulling Jack off the box, while we who were on top described a graceful parabolic curve and landed with three dull thuds. I was caught under the coach by one leg and held there. A guard inside made all haste to crawl out through a window, and after a bit I was released. We were all pretty badly bruised up, and Mr. H. had his foot broken. The mules were recovered, however, the coach righted, and we were again off. We made the town of Tamochica that night, and the town-folks were kind and attentive. They made crutches, heated water, and sent a man to the creek to catch leeches to put on our wounds. Two men were shot in a house near by during the night, and for a few minutes there was a lively fusillade of pistol shots. It was evident that life in Tamochica would spoil a man’s taste for anything quiet, and so as soon as we could move we did it.
We passed an old church, and were shown two Jesuits who had been dead over a hundred years. They were wonderfully preserved, and were dressed in full regalia. I wondered by what embalmer’s art it had been accomplished.
A guard of punchers met us to conduct us over a mountain-pass. They were dressed in terra-cotta buckskin trimmed with white leather, and were armed for the largest game in the country. The Bavicora coach has never been robbed, and it is never going to be--or, at least that is the intention of the I-F folks. One man can rob a stage-coach as easily as he could a box of sardines, but with outriders before and behind it takes a large party, and even then they will leave a “hot trail” behind them.
One morning as I was lolling out of the window I noticed the wheel of the coach pass over a long, blue Roman candle. I thought it was curious that a long, blue Roman candle should be lying out there on the plains, when with a sudden sickening it flashed upon me--“giant powder!” The coach was stopped, and we got out. The road was full of the sticks of this high explosive. A man was coming down the road leading a _burro_ and picking up the things, and he explained that they had dropped out of a package from his bull-wagon as he passed the night before. We didn’t run over any more pieces. If the stick had gone off there would have been a little cloud of dust on the Guerrero road, and, I hope, some regrets in various parts of the world. The incident cannot be made startling, but it put the occupants of the Bavicora coach in a quiet train of reflection that makes a man religious.
Now, as I ponder over the last stage-coach ride which I shall ever take on this earth, I am conscious that it was pleasant, instructive, and full of incident. All that might have happened did not, but enough did to satiate my taste.
STUBBLE AND SLOUGH IN DAKOTA
Now I am conscious that all my life I have seen men who owned shot-guns and setter-dogs, and that these persons were wont at intervals to disappear from their usual haunts with this paraphernalia. Without thinking, I felt that they went to slay little birds, and for them I entertained a good-natured contempt. It came about in this wise that I acquired familiarity with “mark,” and “hie-on,” and “No. 6 vis No. 4’s”: by telegram I was invited to make one of a party in Chicago, bound West on a hunting expedition. It being one of my periods of unrest, I promptly packed up my Winchester, boots, saddle, and blankets, wired “All right--next train,” and crawled into the “Limited” at Forty-second Street.
“West” is to me a generic term for that country in the United States which lies beyond the high plains, and this will account for my surprise when I walked into the private car at the St. Paul depot in Chicago and met my friends contesting the rights of occupancy with numerous setter-dogs, while all about were shot-gun cases and boxes labelled “Ammunition.” After greetings I stepped to the station platform and mingled with the crowd--disgusted, and disposed to desert.
A genial young soldier who appreciated the curves in my character followed me out, and explained, in the full flush of his joyous anticipation, that we were going to North Dakota to shoot ducks and prairie chicken, and that it would be the jolliest sort of a time; besides, it was a party of good friends. I hesitated, yielded, and enlisted for the enterprise. Feeling now that I was this far it would be good to go on and learn what there was in the form of sport which charmed so many men whose taste I respected in other matters, and once embarked I summoned my enthusiasm, and tried to “step high, wide, and handsome,” as the horsemen say.
The happiness of a hunting-party is like that of a wedding, so important is it that true love shall rule. The _pièce de résistance_ of our car was two old generals, who called each other by an abbreviation of their first names, and interrupted conversations by recalling to each other’s memory where some acres of men were slain. “A little more of the roast beef, please--yes, that was where I was shot in this side;” and at night, when quiet reigned and we sought sleep, there would be a waving of the curtains, and a voice, “Oh, say, Blank, do you remember that time my horse was hit with the twelve-pounder?” and it banished dreams. There was a phlebotomist from Pittsburg who had shot all over the earth. He was a thorough sportsman, with a code of rules as complicated as the common-law, and he “made up tough” in his canvas shooting-clothes. There was a young and distinguished officer of the regular army who had hunted men, which excused him in the paltry undertaking before him; and, finally, three young men who were adding the accumulated knowledge of Harvard to their natural endowments. For myself, I did not see how jack-boots, spurs, and a Winchester would lend themselves to the stubble and slough of Dakota, but a collection was taken, and by the time we arrived in Valley City, Dakota, I was armed, if not accoutred, in the style affected by double-barrel men. All I now needed was an education, and between the Doctor, who explained, expostulated, and swore, and a great many “clean misses,” I wore on to the high-school stage. Like the obliging person who was asked if he played on the violin, I said to myself, “I don’t know, but I’ll try.”
In the early morning three teams drove up where our car was side-tracked, and we embarked in them. The shot-gun man affects buck-colored canvas clothes, with many pockets, and carries his cartridges in his shirt fronts, like a Circassian Cossack. He also takes the shells out of his gun before he climbs into a wagon, or he immediately becomes an object of derision and dread, or, what’s worse, suddenly friendless and alone. He also refrains from pointing his gun at any fellow-sportsman, and if he inadvertently does it, he receives a fusillade such as an Irish drill-sergeant throws into a recruit when he does amiss. This day was cool and with a wind blowing, and the poor dogs leaped in delirious joy when let out from their boxes, in which they had travelled all the way from Chicago. After running the wire edge off their nerves they were gotten to range inside a township site, and we jogged along. The first thing which interested me was to hear the Doctor indicate to the driver that he did not care to participate in the driver’s knowledge of hunting, and that in order to save mental wear he only had to drive the team, and stand fast when we got out, in order that from the one motionless spot on the prairie sea we could “mark down” the birds.
The immensity of the wheat-fields in Dakota is astonishing to a stranger. They begin on the edge of town, and we drive all day and are never out of them, and on either side they stretch away as far as one’s eye can travel. The wheat had been cut and “shocked,” which left a stubble some eight inches high. The farm-houses are far apart, and, indeed, not often in sight, but as the threshing was in progress, we saw many groups of men and horses, and the great steam-threshers blowing clouds of black smoke, and the flying straw as it was belched from the bowels of the monsters.
During the heat of the day the chickens lie in the cover of the grass at the sides of the fields, or in the rank growth of some slough-hole, but at early morning and evening they feed in the wheat stubble. As we ride along, the dogs range out in front, now leaping gracefully along, now stopping and carrying their noses in the air to detect some scent, and finally--“There’s a point! Stop, driver!” and we pile out, breaking our guns and shoving in the cartridges.
“No hurry--no hurry,” says the Doctor; “the dog will stay there a month.” But, fired with the anticipations, we move briskly up. “You take the right and I’ll take the left. Don’t fire over the dog,” adds the portly sportsman, with an admonishing frown. We go more slowly, and suddenly, with a “whir,” up get two chickens and go sailing off. Bang! bang! The Doctor bags his and I miss mine. We load and advance, when up comes the remainder of the covey, and the bewildering plenty of the flying objects rattles me. The Doctor shoots well, and indeed prairie-chickens are not difficult, but I am discouraged. As the great sportsman Mr. Soapy Sponge used to say, “I’m a good shooter, but a bad hitter.” It was in this distressful time that I remembered the words of the old hunter who had charge of my early education in .45 calibres, which ran, “Take yer time, sonny, and always see your hind sight,” and by dint of doing this I soon improved to a satisfactory extent. The walking over the stubble is good exercise, and it becomes fascinating to watch the well-trained Llewellyn setters “make game,” or stand pointing with their tails wagging violently in the nervous thrill of their excitement, then the shooting, and the marking down of the birds who escape the fire, that we may go to them for another “flush.” With care and patience one can bag at last the whole covey.