After having proceeded in this manner for perhaps two hours, we entered timber, and were obliged to advance with greater caution to avoid the slightest sound which might betray our presence and give the alarm. With two men the risk of doing this is increased in geometrical ratio. One person alone, traveling through the woods, may, and almost certainly will, break an occasional twig under foot. If game is within hearing, the sound will inevitably be detected; the deer, if it be a deer, will lift his head and listen; but if the hunter stops and waits for a time, the chances are that the animal will, after due interval of silence, resume his feeding if so engaged, or his rumination, be it physical or moral, and the alarm may not prove fatal. Not so when companions are hunting together. It would seem as if the second man, with dreadful promptness, never failed to snap his twig also, which sounds as loud as a pistol coming upon the strained attention of the listening beast, who is off like a streak, leaving the disappointed hunter, as he hears him crashing away, to moralize that company in the chase halves the pleasure and doubles the sorrow. The only safety where union is necessary is to proceed with exaggerated and fantastic caution.
Leonard was a treasure in this. He had dreamt of grizzlies all his life, yet had never been in at the death. His heart was in the hunt—he fairly sighed for gore. We crept into the woods as silent as panthers and as "purry" in the ardor of the chase. After a mile or so our bear had come to an immense fallen spruce, lying across the trail, with the big butt, five or six feet in diameter, to our right, the top pointing up the hill. Over the middle of this, at right angles, lay another large tree, with the point toward us. I felt that behind the first of these, if I had been the original and unmolested settler in these parts, as the bear was, with all the world before me where to choose, I should have made the bed for my morning nap. It was long after daylight when he had reached this covert. He had doubtless been stirring soon after sunset the evening before; he had, it is not unlikely, been traveling all night; had feasted heartily upon a sheep during that interval, and by the time he reached this place, which may have been in his mind from the start, was feeling comfortably lazy and inclined to the refreshment of sleep. Behind that tree, so admirably suited for the purpose, I trusted that he might still remain. The big end would protect a cool space from the heat of the morning sun, and we might yet be so lucky as to find him in his lair beneath its shelter. A signal to Leonard was enough, and we proceeded to circle the fallen timber, which fortunately the wind permitted, with all the caution of which we were capable. Had the gentleman we were after been our dearest friend at the crisis of a fever, we could not have tiptoed about his bed with more solicitude lest we disturb sweet slumber. The big tree lay in front of us; by this we crept at a respectful distance, and then approached the further end of the tree lying across it. With great care I sneaked up until I could look over its trunk at the desired point. Alas! no bear had made his nest there.
Sorrowfully, but without a sound, I crawled upon the intervening log and slowly stood erect. There, directly beneath me, where I could have jumped into it most comfortably, was the deserted form of the bear, which he had dug in the morning within an hour after Leonard had seen him, and in which the greater part of the day had been spent, until he had stirred abroad for water, with which to wash down the recollection of his muttons. Although ardently hoping that he was behind the tree, I had not in the least expected to find his bed in this particular place. Had he stayed quietly there until our arrival, he would have given one of us a delicious surprise, and the mutual agitation of the moment might have induced a shot with unpremeditated haste, and possibly have caused me to get off that fallen spruce tree in somewhat quicker time than I had climbed it. One naturally would not feel any keen desire to display his acrobatic skill in walking a log for the entertainment of an infuriated grizzly. A few hairs proclaimed him a cinnamon, who is either a variety of the grizzly or his first cousin—authorities differ; at all events, he closely resembles him except in color, which, although of a uniform light, fady brown, might be an extreme type of the "sorrel top" of the Rockies. In size the cinnamon fully holds his own with the grizzly; I should say that his head was rather longer. The generous excavation which this one had made showed that he was no mean representative of his species.
Not twenty yards away, and near the end of the big tree where I had expected to find him, was a little spring. To this, still without a word, we proceeded, saw where he had stood to drink more than once, doubtless long and deep. To our left, in the soft earth, lay his retreating footsteps—a continuation of the general direction of his previous course. A moment's pause for closer scrutiny, a smile and a whispered word exchanged—just to show that we were not bored; then, respectful of the silence of the darkening woods, we were again upon the trail. It was now easy to see why he had left his lair; it faced the west, and the heat of the afternoon sun had annoyed him, warmly clad and irritable with high living.
We had proceeded only about a stone's throw further when I caught a glimpse of our bear. Within twenty paces, under the shadow of a tree at the edge of a cool, umbrageous thicket, between him and the setting sun, lay the beast we were after; or, as I for a moment thought, judging from the great inchoate mass of brown fur, a pair, perhaps male and female, or one, it might be, a yearling cub. With finger lifted I signaled Leonard to stop. A great head was slowly raised and turned my way. A bullet between the eyes and down it went again, and I threw another cartridge into the chamber, expecting to see the second bear spring to his feet, ready to do whatever, in his judgment, the occasion required, either to fight or to run. Whichever he might elect to do, it was well to be prepared. "Give him another shot," said the prudent Leonard, and I fired a second time, sending this ball quartering and, like the first, through the brain; then I realized that there was but one, and he of creditable size. We soon had him out in the open, for nothing is easier to roll about than a bear just killed. He is like a great jelly-fish, and I have seen a little terrier no larger than a rabbit worry and shake a great carcass four times as large as the most commodious kennel he could desire, provided he were a sensible pup and had the comfortable instinct of wild things for snugness rather than ostentatious display. Enough of daylight remained for us to get his pelt off, with head and claws unskinned and attached, and to hurry over the mountain by moonlight with our trophy, a junk of rank meat for such as might desire it not forgotten.
We were cordially welcomed back to camp, and, after the usual pow-wow, the cook, with due formality, with Mexican chile and Spanish politeness, proceeded to concoct the boasted chile con oso—a much overrated dish when made of a tough old cinnamon he bear. After I had turned in I heard much laughter, and subsequently learned that it was at an incident of the day. As we were starting out in the afternoon, and before we had struck the bear's trail, in order to avoid any possibility of a premature shot I had casually inquired of Leonard if he wished to earn five dollars.
"Certainly, Señor, I am always glad to get the chance."
"Well, don't shoot then until I give the word, and you shall have it."
This circumstance Leonard had innocently narrated to the group around the camp-fire in the fuller elaboration of the hunt, and the story had an immediate success, the idea seeming to prevail that nothing in the world could have tempted him to fire before he was compelled to—which, as a matter of fact, I think was only prudent on his part, considering the arms he bore.
The next morning, to the infinite chagrin of some of us, the younger patron discovered that his presence was required at home, where, if he was mildly chid by my friend, his elder brother, who in generosity to his junior had yielded his own place and the leadership of this expedition, I should not greatly grieve.
Upon the third day thereafter we regained the ranch.
Alden Sampson.
In the most northern corner of the Piegans' country, in northwestern Montana, almost grazing the Canadian border with its abrupt side, stands a turret-shaped mountain. Behind it the great range of the Rockies, which for hundreds of miles has been trending steadily northwood, bends sharply away toward the west, leaving the corner on which the mountain stands a huge protruding pedestal for its weird shape. Ninety years ago Lewis and Clarke saw it from far to southward as they passed along the dwindling Missouri and called it Tower Mountain; but to the Indians it has always been The Chief Mountain. Even those prosaic German geographers to whom we owe so much for information about our own and other lands have either seen it and fallen under the spell of its strange power, or have taken their nomenclature directly from the Piegans, for they have crowned it Kaiser Peak.
For more than a year we had been numbered with the Chief's subjects. During the previous summer we had been seeking the acquaintance of the mountain goat; not the shorn degenerate which throngs the slopes of the Cascades and straggles among the southern peaks of Montana, but the true snowy buffalo of the northern Rockies; and from the ledges of the St. Mary Mountains, where we had sought him, could be seen still further to the northward the Piegans' Chief. Of the range, yet not in it, like a captain well to the front of his battle-line, he pressed out into the broad prairie, as if leading a charge of Titans toward the far distant lakes. And through the long months of an Eastern winter, and the still longer months of an Eastern summer, above all the memories of that wondrous land where every butte and mountain peak teems with legend, and where every bison skull on the prairie tells its story, had towered the clear-cut image of that Northern mountain, a worthy sovereign of any man's allegiance. Now, as inevitably as an antelope returns to its lure, we had returned for a closer look at our mountain. Down deep in our hearts, battling with the awe which we felt for him, was the almost unspoken hope that perhaps in some way we might struggle up his sheer sides and make him, in a way he was to no one else, our king.
We were a party of three, the Doctor and I, and our faithful packer, Fox. A cold storm was blowing spitefully across the open foothills and out on to the prairie as we broke camp under the high banks of Kennedy Creek on the morning of the last stage of our journey. The clouds, driving over the range from the northwest, swung so low that they hid the peaks, and the great pedestal of the Chief met them all uncrowned, indistinguishable from the others about him. It was one of those doubtful mornings with which the mountains love to warn off strangers, or to greet their friends—one which might presage a week of storm or usher in a fortnight of surpassing beauty.
We had camped for the night at the last of those ranches which stretch along the bottom lands of the St. Mary River, and just as we started, its owner, Indian Billy, decided to go with us.
Even he had never been to the foot of his tribe's famous peak, and the dark-skinned idlers of the ranch who gathered about us as we flung the lash ropes over our horses could tell us little more than legends of it. Several Bloods from across the Canadian border declared that the boundary line ran, not where the white men had marked it on the prairie with their insignificant piles of stones, but through the deep cleft in the Chief's wall, where the Great Spirit himself had placed it; thus giving to the Bloods, who knew it best, their proper share of the mountain. And, getting warmer in their enthusiasm, they reminded Billy of their standing challenge to his tribe, the Piegans—fifty horses to anyone who should run around that wall, small as it seemed, in half a day.
For our part it was hard to realize even on that cold September morning that the long dreaming was over and the reality before us. It took all the straining of the pack ponies on the wet lead-ropes to remind us that we were at last climbing the foothills of the great peak. Our presence there, far from breaking the long enchantment, surrendered us bodily to it, and Billy, riding over the successive slopes before us, swaying in the saddle with the hawk-like motion of the prairie Indian, seemed a fit ambassador to lead us to his king. As the day passed, the clouds gradually lightened; and finally, just as we surmounted one of the higher foothills, at the summit of the long, sloping, forest-clad pedestal before us broke through the crown of the Chief. Toward us, on the east, it showed a black rectangular wall 2,000 feet in length, 1,500 in height, and from its sharp corners the broken mists streamed away southward like tattered garments.
A few hasty pictures, taken while Fox mended a broken pack cinch, and we pressed on toward the foot of the mountain. Some benign influence was with us even thus early, and we were guided into the easiest way. Streaks of burned forest, bristling with windfalls, were slowly but successfully threaded, long rock slides luckily avoided, while we mounted steadily slope after slope; until finally, late in the afternoon, we pulled our panting horses out, just above timber line, upon the comparatively level summit of the pedestal. The foot of the great crown wall was still a mile away and 1,000 feet above us, but we were near enough and high enough for our purpose; and in a deep basin, sheltered from the wind and carpeted with softest mountain grass, and with the only water in the neighborhood sparkling up from a spring in the bottom, we found a perfect camp. As soon as the tents were pitched, Fox set about preparing dinner, while the seven horses, freed from their loads, buried their noses in the grass in perfect contentment.
As he sat in the door of the tent, the Doctor's eyes seemed glued to his field glass, while the object lenses ever pointed in the one direction, westward; under the brim of the Indian's broad hat, as he lay apparently dozing before the fire, I could see his black eyes fixed on the same point; and even Fox, constantly shifting his position about the fire, rarely took one which placed his back toward that black wall behind which the sun was now gradually sinking. For myself, all the longing of the past year had concentrated itself into a desire to rush over this last remaining distance; to get to that magic crown, to feel it with hand and foot, and to see whether, as the Piegans aver, it denied even a single foothold for a mortal man.
After dinner the Doctor and I did go to it. We clambered out of our little basin on to the higher portion of the domelike pedestal, and from this platform, on which rests the great crown, looked past its two edges at the vast mountain range behind it, stretching north and south. Then we picked our way toward it, through the loose boulders and broken rock; saw the summit hang further and further over us as we advanced into the gloom at its foot, and after finally reaching it and pressing ourselves against it where it rose sheer from its pedestal, we hurried back to camp through the twilight, thoroughly awed by the solemnity of the place.
The storm of the morning had cleared into a most perfect night; and, as we lay about the fire, Billy told us all that the old men had told him of the Chief. A full-blooded Piegan, in his new life as a ranchman he had not lost touch with the traditions of his tribe. Only one Piegan, he said, had ever attempted to climb the mountain. Years ago a hunting party of their young men had been encamped on the opposite side, where the cliffs do not overhang so much, and ledges run temptingly up for a distance; and one of them, the youngest and most ambitious of the band, declared that he would go to the summit. He started, and his companions watched him from below until he passed along one of the very highest ledges, out of sight. Then the spirit of the mountain must have met him; for, though they waited many days, and searched for him all around the base, he never came back. And the Piegans, being a prairie tribe and not over fond of the mountains at best, thereafter avoided any close acquaintance with their king.
A story had come to them, however, from the Flatheads across the range—a tribe whose prowess they always respected in war, as they believed in their truthfulness in peace—and as the story related to their mountain, they had treasured it among their own legends. Still earlier, many years before even the oldest Piegan was a boy, there had lived a great Flathead warrior, a man watched over by a spirit so mighty that no peril of battle or of the hunt could overcome him. When at last in his old age he came to die, he told the young men his long-kept secret. Many years before, as the time approached for him to go off into the forest and sleep his warrior sleep, in which he hoped to see the vision which should be his guide and protection through life, he had decided to seek a spot and a spirit which had never before been tried. So, carrying the usual sacred bison skull for his pillow, he had crossed the mountains eastward into the far-off Piegan country. Then, with none to aid him save the steady power of his own courage, he had ventured upon the ledges of the Chief of the Mountains, and, choking down each gasp of panic when at overhanging corners the black walls seemed striving to thrust him off and down, he had finally forced his way to the very summit. For four days and nights he had fasted there, sleeping in the great cleft which one can see from far out on the prairie. On each of the first three nights, with ever increasing violence, the spirit of the mountain had come to him and threatened to hurl him off the face of the cliff if he did not go down on the following day. Each time he had refused to go, and had spent the day pacing the summit, chanting his warrior song and waving his peace pipe in the air as an offering, until finally, on the fourth night, the spirit had yielded, had smoked the pipe, and had given him the token of his life. None of the young Flatheads, however, said Billy, had dared to follow their great warrior's example; so that to this day he was the only man who had braved the spirit of the Chief and made it his friend.
After we were rolled in our blankets, and the late moon, rising from the prairie ocean behind us, had turned the dark, threatening wall to cheering silver, we thought again of the old warrior's steadfastness and longed to make his example ours.
The Doctor's thermometer marked 20 degrees Fahrenheit when Fox called us, and the morning bucket which he dashed over us was flavored with more of the spirit of duty than usual. But otherwise the weather had been made for us. Yesterday's storm had beaten down the smoke from Washington forest fires, which had clouded everything for the past month, and the Sweet Grass Hills twinkled across one hundred miles of prairie as if at our feet; and yet there was hardly a breath of wind. Under the lee of the wall itself absolute stillness brooded over ledges which even a moderate breeze could have made dangerous. We did not make an early start. The thing could be done quickly if it could be done at all, for there was only 1,500 feet of cliff.
Our men did not give the attempt to reach the summit from this, the eastern side, even the scant compliment of a doubt; in their minds its failure was certain, but they were willing to see how far we could get up. The Doctor, too, had at first suggested, and with perfect correctness, that to try a difficult side of a mountain before reconnoitering the other was bad mountaineering, to say the least. But, on the other hand, this east side was the famous side of the Chief—the side which every passer-by on the prairie saw and wondered at. With our glasses we had mapped a course which seemed not impossible; was it not better to meet our king face to face than to steal on him from behind? Besides, this wonderful weather might not last long enough for us to reach the other side. And so our final conclusion was to try the east face.
Half way up the sheer face of the cliff was divided horizontally by a broad, steep shelf which ran nearly the length of the mountain. That shelf could clearly be crossed at any place; the difficulty would lie with the walls below and above it. The lower one was bad enough at best, but it was easy to recognize as least bad a place where a slope of shale abutted against it, shortening it some 300 feet. The upper wall in general seemed even worse, but it was furrowed by two deep chimneys, side by side, one of which led into the mountain's well-known cleft. The other chimney seemed to lead directly to the summit, but its lower mouth was inaccessible—cut off by overhanging cliff. Our plan, therefore, if we could ever reach the halfway shelf, was to use the first chimney in the beginning, then try to find a way around the dividing shoulder into the second, then follow that to the top. And at 9 o'clock we began on the lower wall.
Of course, the work which followed was not so difficult as it had promised from below—rock work rarely is—but it thoroughly taxed our slender experience, and, for a single man without a rope, must have been far worse. The Doctor and I took turns in leading, carrying up or having thrown to us from below a rope, on which the others then ascended. Most of the difficulty was thus confined to one man, and he could often be assisted from beneath. We were not skilled enough in the use of the rope to risk tying ourselves together.
Two hundred feet up came our first trouble, perhaps the worst of the day. We were sidling along a narrow shelf, with arms outstretched against the wall above, when we reached a spot where the shelf was broken by a round protruding shoulder. Beyond it the ledge commenced again and seemed to offer our only way upward. I was leading at the time, and, after examining it, turned back to a wider portion of the shelf for consultation. It was not a place one would care to try if there was an alternative.
We braced the Indian against the wall, and his skillful hand sent the lariat whirling up at a sharp rock above our heads. Time after time the noose settled fairly around it, but found no neck to hold it, and came sliding down. Then, almost before we knew it, the Doctor had run out along the ledge to the shoulder and had started around. For a moment he hung, griping the rounded surface with arms and knees; then a dangerous wriggle and he was on the other side.
Under his coaching the Indian and I followed; but Fox, when half way, lost his head, and barely succeeded in getting back to the starting point. He would not try again. The poor fellow's moccasins had lost some of their nails and he had slipped once or twice that morning, thus destroying the nerve of one who had at other times shown himself a good climber. But of the Indian's companionship for the rest of the day we were now sure.
Again, when near the top of that first wall, and when the halfway ledge seemed almost within our grasp, the shallow cleft—up which we were scrambling—ended in a deep pocket in the cliff's face, with no outlet above. The Doctor tried it at one corner, but the treacherous crumbling rock warned him back. I tried it at another, but was stopped by an overhang in the cliff. No help for it but to go back and try to find a way around.
Fifty feet below we landed on a small shelf running horizontally along the mountain's face, and, after following it northward a few moments, we found another channel leading up. The Doctor started to investigate it, while Billy and I continued on slowly looking for a better. Almost immediately, however, we heard the Doctor shout "All right," and, following him, came out at last upon the great halfway shelf of the mountain.
This was a steep slope of shale, which seemed in places quite ready to slide in an avalanche of loose rock over the edge of the cliff below; but the relief of being out upon it, and able once more to stand upright without the sensation of a wall against your face, apparently trying to shove you outward from your slender foothold, was simply indescribable.
After crossing the shelf and eating our lunch in the mouth of the first or left-hand chimney, we attacked the upper wall. Following up the chimney a short distance, we found at last a narrow ledge leading to the right, and, creeping around on it, I looked into the right-hand chimney above its forbidding mouth. It led as a broad, almost easy, staircase clear to the top of the wall above, and for the first time we felt as if our king were really ours.
Six or seven hundred feet more of steady work, and we could feel the summit breeze beginning to blow down the narrow mouth of the chimney. Billy was then sent to the front, and at half past one the first Piegan stepped out on the summit of the Chief Mountain.
It is a long ridge of disintegrated rock, flanked at either end by lower rounded turrets, and at its highest part is no wider than a New England stone wall. On the opposite western side the cliffs fell away as on our own, but they seemed shorter, were composed of looser rock, and far down below we could see steep slopes of shale meeting them part way. After we had picked out our various landmarks in the wonderful outlook about us, and I had made my record from compass and barometer, we pushed our way carefully along to the highest point of the narrow ridge, in order to mark it with a cairn of rocks. Just as we reached it, the Indian, who was still in the lead, suddenly stopped and pointed to the ground. There, on the very summit of Chief Mountain, safely anchored by rocks from the effect of wind or tempest, lay a small, weather-beaten bison skull. It was certainly one of the very oldest I have ever seen. Even in the pure air of that mountain top it had rotted away until there was little else than the frontal bone and the stubs on which had been the horns. Billy picked it up and handed it to us quietly, saying with perfect conviction, "The old Flathead's pillow!"
We left the skull where it had been found. Much as we should have treasured it as a token of that day, the devotion of the old warrior who had brought it was an influence quite sufficient to protect this memorial of his visit. We shared his reverence far too much to allow us to remove its offering. And then, too, as Billy suggested, we were still on top of the Chief, and the Chief had certainly been very forbearing to us. Those long walls, now darkened by the afternoon shade, those narrow ledges whence the downward climber could no longer avoid seeing the stone he dislodged bound, after two or three lengthening jumps, clear to the pedestal below, loomed very suggestively before his mind. But the Chief still remained gracious, and Billy worked even more steadily and sure-footedly going down than in the morning. We had all gained confidence, and besides we were certain of our course. By 5 o'clock we had reached the last bad place—where Fox had left us—and, after avoiding that by swinging down hand over hand on the rope from a ledge above, it was only a few moments to the bottom.
That night, after we were all safe in camp, and the great cliff beamed down on us more kindly than ever in the moonlight, the Doctor and I decided that we had been more favored than the old Flathead warrior, for the spirit of our mountain had been with us even before we reached its top.
And for our success an explanation beyond our physical powers seemed necessary to others also; for, when a few days later we returned to the ranch in the St. Mary's Valley, Billy, who had preceded us, met us with the mien of the prophet who is denied by his own, and told us that his cousins, the Bloods from across the border, had suggested that, when next he returned from a trip to the range, he should bring them a likelier story than that he had climbed the east face of the Chief Mountain.
Henry L. Stimson.
It was upwards of twelve years ago that I had been down to one of the Rio Grande River towns herding up Mexicans, whom I expected to aid me in discovering gold where none existed. On my way down I had run across a mountain lion making off with a lamb, and shot and secured him after a little strategic maneuvering. On the return journey, after I had hired as many of the greasers as I desired, I camped at night about twenty miles from home, in a log cabin that had lost the door, the roof and all the chinking from between the logs.
There was no reason to fear wild beasts—and the cabin would have been no protection for me even if there had been; nor was the structure any protection from the numerous cut-throat, horse-stealing Mexicans who flourished in that section of the country as thickly as cactus. However, I lariated my horse and threw down my blankets in this tumble-down shack, and turned in. I have quite a habit of sleeping on my back, and I was awakened some time in the night by a feeling of oppression on my chest. Having been accustomed to life in a country where the Indians were rampant, and where the wise man on awakening looked about him before stirring, I opened my eyes without moving, and there, standing directly on my breast, looking me squarely in the face, was a skunk, with its nose not, I swear, six inches from my own.
It was a bright moonlight night, and I could see that the little devil was of the kind whose bite is said to convey hydrophobia. But that did not worry me; it was not the bite I feared. I realized perfectly that if I moved I might get myself into trouble. I knew that the only thing for me to do was to let the skunk gambol over me until he wearied of the pastime and went out of the cabin.
I have a lurking suspicion that that skunk knew I was awake and in mental agony; for, after looking me in the face, he ran down my body on one leg and then up again, actually smelling of one of my ears; and then he trotted off me on to the floor of the cabin, where he nosed about awhile, then up again on my body; and, after sprinting a few seconds over my person, he went down and out of the cabin.
So soon as he had disappeared out of the door I jumped to my feet and, drawing my gun, rushed out after him. He was plainly visible just to the right of the cabin, and I blazed away. Immediately after I had shot him I regretted it, for I had to move camp.
The next day, on my way back to camp, I journeyed over a divide that was more or less noted as a den for mountain lions; though to designate any particular locality as a "den" for cougars is incorrect, for it is not an animal that remains in any one place for any great length of time. He is a wandering pirate, who makes no one district his home for any long period.
However, this especial divide was said to harbor more of them than any other; or, at least, there were more signs of them, and more were reported to be started from there by hunters than elsewhere in the territory. Be that as it may, on the particular day of which I write I accidentally ran across the only cougar I ever have killed which gave me a fight and stampeded my horse, so that I was obliged to foot it into camp.
I do not think the bronco is as fearful of the cougar as of the bear, at least my experience has not been such. I have had a mustang jump pretty nearly from under me on winding a bear, and I have wasted minutes upon minutes in getting him near the carcass of a dead one, that I might pack home a bit of bruin's highly-scented flesh, and I never had any similar experience where the cougar was concerned. I have had my pony evince reluctance to approach the slain lion, but not show the absolute terror which seizes them in the neighborhood of bear.
My experience at this particular time, as I say, was novel in two respects—first, the fright with which my bronco was stricken; and second, the fight shown by the cougar. I had reached the top of the divide, and was picking my way across the fallen timber, which so often blocks the trail over the tops of divides in New Mexico. I remember distinctly having gained a clear spot that was pretty well filled with wild violets, which grew in great profusion thereabouts, and was guiding my pony that I should not trample upon them; for in that God-forsaken district, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, it seemed too bad to crush the life out of the dainty little flowers that hold up their heads to the New Mexico sunshine.
Without warning, my bronco, which was traveling along at a fox-trot, stopped suddenly, and looking up I saw, not more than fifty yards away, about as large a mountain lion as I had ever encountered, standing motionless and looking at us with utmost complacency. To throw myself out of the saddle and draw my Sharps-forty from the saddle holster was the work of a very few seconds. Throwing the bridle rein over my arm, I slipped in a cartridge, and was just pulling down on him when the cougar started off at a swinging trot to one side at right angles to where he had stood, and through some small quaking aspens. Without thinking of the bridle being over my arm, I knelt quickly in order to get a better sight of the animal, and almost simultaneously pressed the trigger.
As I did so my bronco threw up his head, which spoiled my aim, and, instead of sending the ball through the cougar's heart, as I had hoped to do, it went through the top of his shoulders, making a superficial wound—not sufficiently severe to interfere with his locomotion, as I immediately discovered; for, with a combined screech and growl, that lion wheeled in my direction, and made for me with big jumps that were not exactly of lightning rapidity, but were ground-covering enough to create discomfort in the object of his wrath.
My bronco, meanwhile, was jumping all over the ground, and I realized I could not hold him and make sure of my aim. To swing myself into the saddle and make away would have been simple, but I knew enough of the cougar to know that if I retreated, he, in his fury, would be sure to follow; and on that mountain side, with its fallen timber and rough going, I should have little chance in a race with him. I had no revolver to meet him in the saddle at short range, and a knife was not to my liking for any purpose, so far as an infuriated cougar was concerned, except for skinning him, once I had put sufficient lead into his carcass to quiet his nerves. There was nothing for me to do but fight it out on foot; therefore I dropped the bridle rein and turned the bronco loose (thinking he would run his fright off in a short distance), and gave myself up to the business of the moment, which, with the beast getting nearer every instant, was becoming rather serious. I do not know how others have felt under like conditions; but there is something about the look of a cougar on business bent, with its greenish, staring eyes, that produces a most uncomfortable sensation. I have been sent up a tree post-haste by a bear, and I have had an old bull moose give me an unpleasant quarter of an hour, but I am sure I never experienced a more disagreeable sensation than when I looked through my rifle sights at that loping lion. He did not seem to be in any feverish anxiety to reach me, but there was an earnest air about his progression that was ominous.
Under any circumstances, it is not altogether pleasing to have a mountain lion, on his busy day, making for you, and with only about fifteen to twenty yards between him and his quarry. I presume the delicacy of the situation must have impressed itself upon me; for my next shot, although I aimed for one of those hideous eyes, missed far enough to clip off a piece of skin from the top of his skull and to whet his appetite for my gore. My bullet seemed to give him an added impetus; for, with almost a single bound and a blood-chilling screech, by the time I had put another cartridge into my single-shot rifle, he was practically on top of me. Fortunately, his spring had landed him short, and in another instant I had very nearly blown his entire head off. He was a monster. I skinned him and hung his pelt on a tree; and, on foot, made my way into camp, after a fruitless search for my bronco.
I have killed five cougars, and this is the only one that ever gave me a fight. I record it with much pleasure, for there is an uncertainty about the cougar's temperament and an alacrity of movement that are altogether unsettling. You never know in what mood you find the mountain lion, and he does not seem by any chance to be in the same one more than once, for those I have shot have evinced different dispositions; generally, however, bordering on the cowardly. At times their actions are sufficient to characterize them as the veriest cowards in the world, and yet again, on very slight provocation, they are most aggressive and cruelly ferocious. There are many well-authenticated stories, to be had for the asking of any old mountaineer, of the unwonted craftiness and ferocity of the cougar, and I suppose I could fill a couple of chapters of this volume by recounting yarns that have been told me during my Western life.
Between ourselves, I do not think hunting the cougar is very much sport. It is an instructive experience, and one, I think, every hunter of big game should have; but, at the same time, in my opinion it does not afford the sport of still-hunting deer, antelope, elk, moose or bears. In the first place, there is really no time you can still-hunt the cougar except in winter, when there is a light snow on the ground, and at all times it is most difficult, because you are dealing with an animal that embodies the very quintessence of wariness, and is ever on the lookout for prey and enemies. You have to deal with an animal that knows every crevice and hole of the mountain side, that moves by night in preference to day, and rarely travels in the open; whose great velvety paws enable it to sneak about absolutely unheard, and that will crouch in its lair while you pass, perhaps within a dozen feet.
Yet there are only two ways of really hunting the mountain lion—by still-hunting and by baiting. I have tried baiting a number of times, but have never found it successful. Others, I understand, have found it so; but in a score of cases, where I have provided tempting morsels, and lain out all night in hopes of getting a shot at the marauder, in none have I been rewarded, and in only one or two have I got a glimpse of a pair of shining eyes, that disappeared in the gloom almost on the instant of my discovering them.
Probably the most successful method of getting a shot at this wary beast is by hunting it with dogs (though I never had the experience), for the mountain lion has small lungs and makes a short, fast race. With dogs on his trail he is likely to take to a tree after a not very long run, which rarely occurs when he is still-hunted on foot. Yet, if the hunter values the lives of his dogs, he must be sure of his first shot, for the cougar is a tough customer to tackle when in his death throes; and I have been told, by those who have hunted in this way, that many a young and promising dog has had the life crushed out of him by the dying lion. Their forelegs are short and very powerful; but, curiously enough, unlike the bear, they do not use them in cutting and slashing so much as in drawing the victim to them to crush out its life with their strong jaws.
I have said, one never knows how to take the cougar. Almost every mining camp in the West will produce somebody who has met and scared him to flight by a mere wave of the hand or a shout, and that identical camp will as like as not produce men that have had the most trying experiences with the same animal. It is this knowledge that makes you, to say the least, a little uncomfortable when you meet one of these creatures. I have had many trying experiences of one kind and another, and hunted many different kinds of game, but none ever harassed my soul as the cougar has. On one occasion I had been about five miles from camp, prospecting for gold, which I had discovered in such alluring quantities as to keep me panning until darkness put an end to my work and started me homeward. It was a pretty dark night, and my trail lay along the side of a mountain that was rather thickly wooded and a pretty fair sort of hunting country. I had left my cabin early in the morning, intent on finding one of the numerous fortunes that was confidently believed to be hidden away in those New Mexico gulches, and was armed only with pick, shovel and pan. I was sauntering along, beset by dreams of prospective prosperity, based on the excellent finds I had made, when suddenly in front of me—I am sure not more than twenty-five feet—two great balls of fire rudely awakened me and brought my progress to an abrupt halt. I dare say it took a second or two to bring me down to earth, but when the earthward flight was accomplished I immediately concluded that those balls of fire must belong to a mountain lion.
At that time my experience with the cougar had been sufficient to put me in an uncertain frame of mind as to just what to expect of the creature. I had not an idea whether he was going to spring at me or whether I could scare him away. However, on chance, I broke the stillness of the night by one of those cowboy yells, in the calliope variations of which I was pretty well versed in those days, and, to my immense relief, the two glaring balls of fire disappeared.
Trudging on my way, I had once more lost myself in the roseate future incidental to placers averaging three dollars in gold to the cubic yard, when, as suddenly as before, and as directly in front of me, those two glaring balls shone out like a hideous nightmare. This time, I confess, I was a little bit annoyed. I knew that, as a rule, mountain lions do not follow you unless they are ravenous with hunger or smell blood. I had not been hunting, and, consequently, my clothes and hands were free from gore, and I was therefore forced to the sickening conclusion that this particular beast had selected me as a toothsome morsel for its evening repast. I cannot honestly say I was flattered by the implied compliment, and, summoning all my nerve, I reached for a rock and hurled it at those eyes, to hear it crash into the dry brush, and, greatly to my peace of mind, to see the diabolical lights go out, for it was too dark to distinguish the animal itself.
Congratulating myself on the disappearance of the hideous will-o'-the-wisp, I set out at a five-mile-an-hour gait for camp. My castles in the air had by this time quite dissolved, and I was attending strictly to the business of the trail, wishing camp was at hand instead of a mile off, when once more those greenish lanterns of despair loomed up ahead of me—not more than a dozen feet away, it seemed. I presume the beast had been trailing me all the time, though, after its second visitation, I kept a sharp lookout without discovering it, but evidently it had kept track of my movements.
I had no proof of its being the same animal, of course, but I was pretty well persuaded of its identity, and I became thoroughly convinced that this particular cougar had grown weary of waiting for its supper, and was about to begin its meal without even the courtesy of "by your leave." The uncanny feature of the experience was that not a sound revealed its approach on any occasion, and I had no intimation of its call until it dropped directly in my path. I leaned against a friendly tree and thought pretty hard, watching the animal most intently to see that it did not advance. It stood there as still as death, so far as I could distinguish, not moving even its head, and the steady glare of its eyes turned full upon me.
I made up my mind that, if the animal was going to feast on me that evening, I would disarrange its digestion, if possible. My short-handled prospecting pick was the nearest approach I had to a weapon, and, summoning all my ancient baseball skill, and feeling very carefully all around me to see that there were no intervening branches to arrest its flight, I hurled that pick at those two shining eyes, with a fervid wish that it might land between them. My aim was true and it landed—just where I cannot say, but I do know that it struck home; for, with a screech calculated to freeze one's blood, and a subsequent growl, the lion made off. For the rest of the mile to camp I had eyes on all sides of the path at once, but I was not molested.
I have since often wondered whether hunger or pure malice possessed that brute. Owen Wister, to whom I told the story not very long ago, suggested curiosity, and I am half inclined to believe his interpretation; for, if hunger had been the incentive, it seems as if a tap on the nose with a prospecting pick would not have appeased it, though the cougar's propensity for following people, out of unadulterated wantonness to frighten them, is well known. At any rate, he showed his cowardly side that trip.
The cougar is a curious beast, capricious as a woman. One day he follows his prey stealthily until the proper opportunity for springing upon it comes; again he will race after a deer in the open; at one time he will flee at a shout, at another he will fight desperately. They are powerful animals, particularly in the fore quarters. I have seen one lope down a mountain side, through about six inches of snow, carrying a fawn by the nape of the neck in its jaws, and swinging the body clear.
In the West generally, I think, the lion is considered cowardly—a belief I share, though agreeing with Theodore Roosevelt, who in "The Wilderness Hunter" says cougars, and, in fact, all animals vary in moods just as much as mankind. Because of their feline strategy and craftiness, they are most difficult animals to hunt; I know none more so. Neither do I know of any beast so likely to still the tenderfoot's heart. Their cry is as terror-striking as it is varied. I have heard them wail so you would swear an infant had been left out in the cold by its mamma; I have heard them screech like a woman in distress; and, again, growl after the conventional manner attributed to the monarch of the forest. The average camp dog runs to cover when a cougar is awakening the echoes of the mountain. I should call it lucky, for those who hunt with dogs, that the lion does not pierce the atmosphere by his screeches when being hunted; for, if he did, I fear it would be a difficult matter to keep dogs on his trail. There seems to be something about his screeching that particularly terrorizes dogs.
Casper W. Whitney.