Tales of lonely trails by Zane Grey (free novel 24 .TXT) 📕

said bear, lion, lynx, and coyote, sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep. Deer, however, hated a sheep-run range.

Riding was exceedingly pleasant. The forest was shady, cool, full of sunlight and beauty. Nothing but fire or the lumbermen could ever rob it of its beauty, silence, fragrance, and of its temple-like majesty. So provided we did not meet any cattle or sheep I did not care whether or not we sighted any game. In fact I would have forgotten we were hunting had not Romer been along. With him continually seeing things it was difficult to keep from imagining that we were hunting Indians. The Apaches had once lived in this country Haught informed us; and it was a habit of theirs to burn the grass and fallen leaves over every fall, thus keeping down the underbrush. In this the Indians showed how near-sighted they were; the future growth of a forest did not concern them. Usually Indians were better conservationists than white men.

We rode across a grove of widely separated, stately pines, at the far end of which stood a thicket of young pines and other brush. As we neared this Haught suddenly reined in, and in quick and noiseless action he dismounted. Then he jerked his rifle from his saddle-sheath, took a couple of forward steps, and leveled it. I was so struck with the rugged and significant picture he made that I did not dismount, and did not see any game until after he fired. Then as I tumbled off and got out my rifle I heard Romer gasping and crying out. A gray streak with a bobbing white end flashed away out of sight to the left. Next I saw a deer bounding through the thicket. Haught fired again. The deer ran so fast that I could not get my sights anywhere near him. Haught thudded through an opening, and an instant later, when both he and the deer had disappeared, he shot the third time. Presently he returned.

"Never could shoot with them open sights nohow," he said. "Shore I missed thet yearlin' buck when he was standin'. Why didn't you smoke him up?"

"Dad, why didn't you peg him?" asked Romer, with intense regret. "Why, I could have knocked him."

Then it was incumbent upon me to confess that the action had appeared to be a little swift. "Wal," said Haught, "when you see one you want to pile off quick."

As we rode on Romer naively asked me if ever in my life I had seen anything run so fast as that deer. We entered another big grove with thin patches of thicket here and there. Haught said these were good places for deer to lie down, relying on their noses to scent danger from windward, and on their eyes in the other direction. We circled to go round thickets, descending somewhat into a swale. Here Haught got off a little to the right. Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward a thin line of little pines, through which I could see into the pines beyond. Suddenly up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off my horse, bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in a thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender trees. I aimed—followed him—got a bead on him—and was just about to pull trigger when he vanished. Plunging forward I yelled to Haught. Then Romer cried in his shrill treble: "Dad, here's a big buck—hurry!" Turning I ran back. In wild excitement Romer was pointing. I was just in time to see a gray rump disappear in the green. Just then Haught shot, and after that he halloed. Romer and I went through the thicket, working to our left, and presently came out into the open forest. Haught was leading his horse. To Romer's eager query he replied: "Shore, I piled him up. Two-year-old black-tail buck."

Sure enough he had shot straight this time. The buck lay motionless under a pine, with one point of his antlers imbedded deep in the ground. A sleek, gray, graceful deer he was just beginning to get his winter coat. His color was indeed a bluish gray. Haught hung him up to a branch, spread his hind legs, and cut him down the middle. The hunter's dexterity with a knife made me wonder how many deer he had dressed in his life in the open. We lifted the deer upon the saddle of Haught's horse and securely tied it there with a lasso; then with the hunter on foot, leading the way, we rode through the forest up the main ridge between Beaver and Turkey Canyons. Toward the rim I found the pines and spruces larger, and the thickets of aspen denser. We passed the heads of many ravines running down to the canyons on either side, and these were blazing gold and red in color, and so thick I could not see a rod into them. About the middle of the afternoon we reached camp. With venison hanging up to cool we felt somewhat like real hunters. R.C. had gone off to look for turkeys, which enterprise had been unsuccessful.

Upon the following day, which was October tenth, we started our bear hunting. Haught's method appeared to me to lack something. He sent the hounds down below the rim with George; and taking R.C. and me, and Lee and Nielsen, he led us over to what he called Horton Thicket. Never would I forget my first sight of that immense forest-choked canyon. It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet they were many. An empire of splintered cliff!

High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens, with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes. Points of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and bronze. Below the huge gorge was full of aspens, maples, spruces—a green, crimson, yellow density of timber, apparently impenetrable. We were accorded different stations on the ledges all around the cove, and instructed to stay there until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My point was so far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee and Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a comfortable seat, if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to accept my wait for developments. One thing was sure—even though it were a futile way to hunt it seemed rich in other recompense for me. My stand towered above a vast colorful slope down which the wind roared as in a gale. How could I ever hear the hounds? I watched the storm-clouds scudding across the sky. Once I saw a rare bird, a black eagle in magnificent flight; and so whatever happened I had my reward in that sight.

Nothing happened. For hours and hours I sat there, with frequent intermissions away from my hard, rocky seat. Toward the close of afternoon, when the wind began to get cold, I saw that R.C. had left his stand. He had undoubtedly gone back to camp, which was some miles nearer his stand than mine. At last I gave up any hope of hearing either the hounds or the horn, as the roar of wind had increased. Once I thought I heard a distant rifle shot. So I got on my horse and set out to find camp. I was on a promontory, the sides of which were indented by long ravines that were impassable except near their heads. In fact I had been told there was only one narrow space where it was possible to get off this promontory. Lucky indeed that I remembered Haught telling of this! Anyway I soon found myself lost in a maze of forested heads of ravines. Finally I went back to the rim on the west side, and then working along I found our horse-tracks. These I followed, with difficulty, and after an hour's travel I crossed the narrow neck of the promontory, and back-tracked myself to camp, arriving there at sunset.

The Haughts had put up two bear. One bear had worked around under one of the great promontories. The hounds had gotten on his back-trail, staying on it until it grew cold, then had left it. Their baying had roused the bear out of his bed, and he had showed himself once or twice on the open rock-slides. Haught saw the other bear from the rim. This was a big, red, cinnamon bear asleep under a pine tree on an open slope. Haught said when the hounds gave tongue on the other trail this red bear awakened, sat up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never been chased by hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance was too great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the result that he at least scared the cinnamon off.

These bear were both thin. As they were not the sheep-killing and cow-killing kind their food consisted mainly of mast (acorns) and berries. But this season there were no berries at all, and very few acorns. So the bears were not fat. When a bear was thin he could always outrun the hounds; if he was fat he would get hot and tired enough to climb a tree or mad enough to stop and fight the dogs.

Haught told me there were a good many mountain lions and lynx under the rim. They lived on elk, deer, and turkey. The lynx were the tuft-eared, short-tailed species. They would attack and kill a cow-elk. In winter on the rim the snow sometimes fell fifteen feet deep, so that the game wintered underneath. Snow did not lay long on the sunny, open ridges of the basin.

That night a storm-wind roared mightily in the pines. How wonderful to lie snug in bed, down in the protected canyon, and hear the marching and retreating gale above in the forest! Next day we expected rain or snow. But there was only wind, and that quieted by afternoon. So I took Romer off into the woods. He carried his rifle and he wore his chaps. I could not persuade him to part with these. They rustled on the brush and impeded his movements, and particularly tired him, and made him look like a diminutive cowboy. How eager, keen, boyishly vain, imaginative! He was crazy to see game, to shoot anything, particularly bears. But it contented him to hunt turkeys. Many a stump and bit of color he mistook for game of some kind. Nevertheless, I had to take credence in what he thought he saw, for his eyesight was unusually quick