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

I rested and listened for the dogs. There was no wind to deceive me, but I imagined I heard dogs everywhere. It seemed unwise for me to go on down the canyon, for if I did not meet the men I would find myself lost. As it was I would have my troubles climbing out.

I chose a part of the thicket some distance above where I had come down, hoping to find it more open, if not less steep, and not so vastly inhabited with bears. Lo and behold it was worse! It was thicker, darker, wilder, steeper and there was, if possible, actually more bear sign. I had to pull myself up by holding to the trees and branches. I had to rest every few steps. I had to watch and listen all the time. Half-way up the trunks of the aspens and oaks and maples were all bent down-hill. They curved out and down before the rest of the tree stood upright. And all the brush was flat, bending down hill, and absolutely almost impassable. This feature of tree and brush was of course caused by the weight of snow in winter. It would have been more interesting if I had not been so anxious to get up. I grew hotter and wetter than I had been in the manzanitas. Moreover, what with the labor and worry and exhaustion, my apprehensions had increased. They increased until I had to confess that I was scared. Once I heard a rustle and pad on the leaves somewhere below. That made matters worse. Surely I would meet a bear. I would meet him coming down-hill! And I must never shoot a bear coming down-hill! Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score, so had Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had Haught. "Don't never shoot no ole bar comin' down hill, 'cause if you do he'll just roll up an' pile down on you!"

I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to burst. Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding down I got desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would happen along to make an end to my misery.

It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which constituted the thicket of oak, maple and aspen. It was half-past three when finally I reached the saddle where we had shot at the grizzly. I rested as long as I dared. I had still a long way to go up that ridge to the rim, and how did I know whether or not I could surmount it.

However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit. Then I started. Once above the saddle I was out clear in the open, high above the canyons, and the vast basin still farther below, yet far indeed under the pine-fringed rim above. This climb was all over stone. The ridge was narrow-crested, yellow, splintered rock, with a few dwarf pines and spruces and an occasional bunch of manzanita. I did not hear a sound that I did not make myself. Whatever had become of the hounds, and the other hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me. Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out. It would be a task equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to realize that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the task.

Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the hour. This was one of my especial joys of the open—to be alone high on some promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery. The sun was still an hour from setting, and it had begun to soften, to grow intense, and more golden. There were clouds and lights that promised a magnificent sunset.

So I climbed on. When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone loose and watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down, to make the dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually start an avalanche that would roar down into the canyon.

The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black ridges and canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great mountain ranges enclosing it to south and west. The black-fringed promontories of the rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood out over the void. The colors of autumn gleamed under the cliffs, everywhere patches of gold and long slants of green and spots of scarlet and clefts of purple.

The last benches of that ridge taxed my waning strength. I had to step up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body. My rifle grew to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of lead around my waist. If I had been hot and wet below in the thicket I wondered what I grew on the last steps of this ridge. Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen pleasure. I did not analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be there.

The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable, all grown over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by hauling myself up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges of rock there, and holding to the brush, at last, panting and spent, I reached the top.

I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there, unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep and ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side of the ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around. There was George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own horse Stockings.

Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and scarlet thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will seem, that the first object I clearly distinguished was a big black bear standing in an open aisle at the upper reach of the thicket close to the cliff. He shone black as shiny coal. He was looking down into the thicket, as if listening to the baying hound.

I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement, and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped, and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner of gray ledge.

"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day—to get a chance like that—and miss!"

All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of color—Coleridge's yellow lightning—and it extended to a bank of cloud that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose, exquisitely flecked with gold.

Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located the spot. I just about had strength enough left to straddle him. And presently through the twilight shadows I caught a bright glimmer of our camp-fire. Supper was ready; Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the men were waiting for me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As I sat to a bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions seemed absolutely satisfying.

George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard and seen a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he had overshot and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking a slide some four hundred yards down the canyon slope, and forgetting that he had a heavy close-range shell in his rifle instead of one of high trajectory, he had aimed accordingly, to undershoot half a foot and thus lose his opportunity. Nielsen had been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere he heard yells and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd told of the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they had shot at the grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear had rolled around in his bed across the canyon. But the hounds got too tired to hold the trails late in the day. And lastly Edd said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the grizzly I could hear the bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure scared stiff for fear you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't scared. He said, 'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"

When the old bear hunter began to tell his part in the day's adventures my pleasure was tinglingly keen and nothing was wanting on the moment except that my boy Romer was not there to hear.

"Wal, shore it was an old bar day," said Haught, with quaint satisfaction. His blue shirt, ragged and torn and black from brush, surely attested to the truth of his words. "All told we seen five bars. Two blacks, two browns an' the old Jasper. Some of them big fellars, too. But we missed seein' the boss bar of this canyon. When Old Dan opened up first off I wanted Edd to climb thet bluff. But Edd kept goin' an' we lost our chance. Fer pretty soon we heard a bustin' of the brush. My, but thet bar was rockin' her off. He knocked the brush like a wild steer, an' he ran past us close—not a hundred yards. I never heard a heavier bar. But we couldn't see him. Then Edd started up, an' thet bluff was a wolf of a place. We was half up when I seen the grizzly thet you an' Ben smoked afterward. He was far off, but Edd an' I lammed a couple after him jest for luck. One of the pups was nippin' his heels. Think it was Big Foot.... Wal, thet was all of thet. We plumb busted ourselves gettin' on top of the bench to head off your bar. Only we hadn't time. Then we worried along around to the top