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The Last of the Plainsmen

by Zane Grey · English · Gutenberg #2057 · 407,385 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Last of the Plainsmen

Author: Zane Grey


        
Release date: February 1, 2000 [eBook #2057]
                Most recently updated: April 10, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2057

Credits: Produced by Mary Starr.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN ***




THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN


by

ZANE GREY





PREFATORY NOTE

Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to these
of my readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may not be
amiss.

He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he has
devoted practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild animals. It
has been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy and indomitable
purpose to a singular passion, almost an obsession, to capture alive,
not to kill. He has caught and broken the will of every well-known wild
beast native to western North America. Killing was repulsive to him. He
even disliked the sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessity
compelled him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffalo
to the caravans crossing the plains. At last, seeing that the
extinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his rifle
over a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species. For ten years he
labored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for which the West
gave him fame, and the name Preserver of the American Bison.

As civilization encroached upon the plains Buffalo Jones ranged slowly
westward; and to-day an isolated desert-bound plateau on the north rim
of the Grand Cañon of Arizona is his home. There his buffalo browse
with the mustang and deer, and are as free as ever they were on the
rolling plains.

In the spring of 1907 I was the fortunate companion of the old
plainsman on a trip across the desert, and a hunt in that wonderful
country of yellow crags, deep cañons and giant pines. I want to tell
about it. I want to show the color and beauty of those painted cliffs
and the long, brown-matted bluebell-dotted aisles in the grand forests;
I want to give a suggestion of the tang of the dry, cool air; and
particularly I want to throw a little light upon the life and nature of
that strange character and remarkable man, Buffalo Jones.

Happily in remembrance a writer can live over his experiences, and see
once more the moonblanched silver mountain peaks against the dark blue
sky; hear the lonely sough of the night wind through the pines; feel
the dance of wild expectation in the quivering pulse; the stir, the
thrill, the joy of hard action in perilous moments; the mystery of
man's yearning for the unattainable.

As a boy I read of Boone with a throbbing heart, and the silent
moccasined, vengeful Wetzel I loved.

I pored over the deeds of later men—Custer and Carson, those heroes of
the plains. And as a man I came to see the wonder, the tragedy of their
lives, and to write about them. It has been my destiny—what a happy
fulfillment of my dreams of border spirit!—to live for a while in the
fast-fading wild environment which produced these great men with the
last of the great plainsmen.

ZANE GREY.



CONTENTS

   1. THE ARIZONA DESERT
   2. THE RANGE
   3. THE LAST HERD
   4. THE TRAIL
   5. OAK SPRING
   6. THE WHITE MUSTANG
   7. SNAKE GULCH
   8. NAZA! NAZA! NAZA!
   9. THE LAND OF THE MUSK-OX
  10. SUCCESS AND FAILURE
  11. ON TO THE SIWASH
  12. OLD TOM
  13. SINGING CLIFFS
  14. ALL HEROES BUT ONE
  15. JONES ON COUGARS
  16. KITTY
  17. CONCLUSION




CHAPTER 1.

THE ARIZONA DESERT

One afternoon, far out on the sun-baked waste of sage, we made camp
near a clump of withered pinyon trees. The cold desert wind came down
upon us with the sudden darkness. Even the Mormons, who were finding
the trail for us across the drifting sands, forgot to sing and pray at
sundown. We huddled round the campfire, a tired and silent little
group. When out of the lonely, melancholy night some wandering Navajos
stole like shadows to our fire, we hailed their advent with delight.
They were good-natured Indians, willing to barter a blanket or
bracelet; and one of them, a tall, gaunt fellow, with the bearing of a
chief, could speak a little English.

"How," said he, in a deep chest voice.

"Hello, Noddlecoddy," greeted Jim Emmett, the Mormon guide.

"Ugh!" answered the Indian.

"Big paleface—Buffalo Jones—-big chief—buffalo man," introduced
Emmett, indicating Jones.

"How." The Navajo spoke with dignity, and extended a friendly hand.

"Jones big white chief—rope buffalo—tie up tight," continued Emmett,
making motions with his arm, as if he were whirling a lasso.

"No big—heap small buffalo," said the Indian, holding his hand level
with his knee, and smiling broadly.

Jones, erect, rugged, brawny, stood in the full light of the campfire.
He had a dark, bronzed, inscrutable face; a stern mouth and square jaw,
keen eyes, half-closed from years of searching the wide plains; and
deep furrows wrinkling his cheeks. A strange stillness enfolded his
feature the tranquility earned from a long life of adventure.

He held up both muscular hands to the Navajo, and spread out his
fingers.

"Rope buffalo—heap big buffalo—heap many—one sun."

The Indian straightened up, but kept his friendly smile.

"Me big chief," went on Jones, "me go far north—Land of Little
Sticks—Naza! Naza! rope musk-ox; rope White Manitou of Great Slave
Naza! Naza!"

"Naza!" replied the Navajo, pointing to the North Star; "no—no."

"Yes me big paleface—me come long way toward setting sun—go cross Big
Water—go Buckskin—Siwash—chase cougar."

The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos hold him
in as much fear and reverence as do the Great Slave Indians the musk-ox.

"No kill cougar," continued Jones, as the Indian's bold features
hardened. "Run cougar horseback—run long way—dogs chase cougar long
time—chase cougar up tree! Me big chief—me climb tree—climb high
up—lasso cougar—rope cougar—tie cougar all tight."

The Navajo's solemn face relaxed

"White man heap fun. No."

"Yes," cried Jones, extending his great arms. "Me strong; me rope
cougar—me tie cougar; ride off wigwam, keep cougar alive."

"No," replied the savage vehemently.

"Yes," protested Jones, nodding earnestly.

"No," answered the Navajo, louder, raising his dark head.

"Yes!" shouted Jones.

"BIG LIE!" the Indian thundered.

Jones joined good-naturedly in the laugh at his expense. The Indian had
crudely voiced a skepticism I had heard more delicately hinted in New
York, and singularly enough, which had strengthened on our way West, as
we met ranchers, prospectors and cowboys. But those few men I had
fortunately met, who really knew Jones, more than overbalanced the
doubt and ridicule cast upon him. I recalled a scarred old veteran of
the plains, who had talked to me in true Western bluntness:

"Say, young feller, I heerd yer couldn't git acrost the Cañon fer the
deep snow on the north rim. Wal, ye're lucky. Now, yer hit the trail
fer New York, an' keep goin'! Don't ever tackle the desert, 'specially
with them Mormons. They've got water on the brain, wusser 'n religion.
It's two hundred an' fifty miles from Flagstaff to Jones range, an'
only two drinks on the trail. I know this hyar Buffalo Jones. I knowed
him way back in the seventies, when he was doin' them ropin' stunts
thet made him famous as the preserver of the American bison. I know
about that crazy trip of his'n to the Barren Lands, after musk-ox. An'
I reckon I kin guess what he'll do over there in the Siwash. He'll rope
cougars—sure he will—an' watch 'em jump. Jones would rope the devil,
an' tie him down if the lasso didn't burn. Oh! he's hell on ropin'
things. An' he's wusser 'n hell on men, an' hosses, an' dogs."

All that my well-meaning friend suggested made me, of course, only the
more eager to go with Jones. Where I had once been interested in the
old buffalo hunter, I was now fascinated. And now I was with him in the
desert and seeing him as he was, a simple, quiet man, who fitted the
mountains and the silences, and the long reaches of distance.

"It does seem hard to believe—all this about Jones," remarked Judd,
one of Emmett's men. "How could a man have the strength and the nerve?
And isn't it cruel to keep wild animals in captivity? Isn't it against
God's word?"

Quick as speech could flow, Jones quoted: "And God said, 'Let us make
man in our image, and give him dominion over the fish of the sea, the
fowls of the air, over all the cattle, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth'!"

"Dominion—over all the beasts of the field!" repeated Jones, his big
voice rolling out. He clenched his huge fists, and spread wide his long
arms. "Dominion! That was God's word!" The power and intensity of him
could be felt. Then he relaxed, dropped his arms, and once more grew
calm. But he had shown a glimpse of the great, strange and absorbing
passion of his life. Once he had told me how, when a mere child, he had
hazarded limb and neck to capture a fox squirrel, how he had held on to
the vicious little animal, though it bit his hand through; how he had
never learned to play the games of boyhood; that when the youths of the
little Illinois village were at play, he roamed the prairies, or the
rolling, wooded hills, or watched a gopher hole. That boy was father of
the man: for sixty years an enduring passion for dominion over wild
animals had possessed him, and made his life an endless pursuit.

Our guests, the Navajos, departed early, and vanished silently in the
gloom of the desert. We settled down again into a quiet that was broken
only by the low chant-like song of a praying Mormon. Suddenly the
hounds bristled, and old Moze, a surly and aggressive dog, rose and
barked at some real or imaginary desert prowler. A sharp command from
Jones made Moze crouch down, and the other hounds cowered close
together.

"Better tie up the dogs," suggested Jones. "Like as not coyotes run
down here from the hills."

The hounds were my especial delight. But Jones regarded them with
considerable contempt. When all was said, this was no small wonder, for
that quintet of long-eared canines would have tried the patience of a
saint. Old Moze was a Missouri hound that Jones had procured in that
State of uncertain qualities; and the dog had grown old over
coon-trails. He was black and white, grizzled and battlescarred; and if
ever a dog had an evil eye, Moze was that dog. He had a way of wagging
his tail—an indeterminate, equivocal sort of wag, as if he realized
his ugliness and knew he stood little chance of making friends, but was
still hopeful and willing. As for me, the first time he manifested this
evidence of a good heart under a rough coat, he won me forever.

To tell of Moze's derelictions up to that time would take more space
than would a history of the whole trip; but the enumeration of
several incidents will at once stamp him as a dog of character, and
will establish the fact that even if his progenitors had never taken
any blue ribbons, they had at least bequeathed him fighting blood.
At Flagstaff we chained him in the yard of a livery stable. Next
morning we found him hanging by his chain on the other side of an
eight-foot fence. We took him down, expecting to have the sorrowful
duty of burying him; but Moze shook himself, wagged his tail and then
pitched into the livery stable dog. As a matter of fact, fighting
was his forte. He whipped all of the dogs in Flagstaff; and when our
blood hounds came on from California, he put three of them _hors de
combat_ at once, and subdued the pup with a savage growl. His crowning
feat, however, made even the stoical Jones open his mouth in amaze.
We had taken Moze to the El Tovar at the Grand Cañon, and finding
it impossible to get over to the north rim, we left him with one of
Jones's men, called Rust, who was working on the Cañon trail. Rust's
instructions were to bring Moze to Flagstaff in two weeks. He brought
the dog a little ahead of time, and roared his appreciation of the
relief it was to get the responsibility off his hands. And he related
many strange things, most striking of which was how Moze had broken his
chain and plunged into the raging Colorado River, and tried to swim it
just above the terrible Sockdolager Rapids. Rust and his fellow-workmen
watched the dog disappear in the yellow, wrestling, turbulent whirl
of waters, and had heard his knell in the booming roar of the falls.
Nothing but a fish could live in that current; nothing but a bird could
scale those perpendicular marble walls. That night, however, when the
men crossed on the tramway, Moze met them with a wag of his tail. He
had crossed the river, and he had come back!

To the four reddish-brown, high-framed bloodhounds I had given the
names of Don, Tige, Jude and Ranger; and by dint of persuasion, had
succeeded in establishing some kind of family relation between them and
Moze. This night I tied up the bloodhounds, after bathing and salving
their sore feet; and I left Moze free, for he grew fretful and surly
under restraint.

The Mormons, prone, dark, blanketed figures, lay on the sand. Jones was
crawling into his bed. I walked a little way from the dying fire, and
faced the north, where the desert stretched, mysterious and
illimitable. How solemn and still it was! I drew in a great breath of
the cold air, and thrilled with a nameless sensation. Something was
there, away to the northward; it called to me from out of the dark and
gloom; I was going to meet it.

I lay down to sleep with the great blue expanse open to my eyes. The
stars were very large, and wonderfully bright, yet they seemed so much
farther off than I had ever seen them. The wind softly sifted the sand.
I hearkened to the tinkle of the cowbells on the hobbled horses. The
last thing I remembered was old Moze creeping close to my side, seeking
the warmth of my body.

When I awakened, a long, pale line showed out of the dun-colored clouds
in the east. It slowly lengthened, and tinged to red. Then the morning
broke, and the slopes of snow on the San Francisco peaks behind us
glowed a delicate pink. The Mormons were up and doing with the dawn.
They were stalwart men, rather silent, and all workers. It was
interesting to see them pack for the day's journey. They traveled with
wagons and mules, in the most primitive way, which Jones assured me was
exactly as their fathers had crossed the plains fifty years before, on
the trail to Utah.

All morning we made good time, and as we descended into the desert, the
air became warmer, the scrubby cedar growth began to fail, and the
bunches of sage were few and far between. I turned often to gaze back
at the San Francisco peaks. The snowcapped tips glistened and grew
higher, and stood out in startling relief. Some one said they could be
seen two hundred miles across the desert, and were a landmark and a
fascination to all travelers thitherward.

I never raised my eyes to the north that I did not draw my breath
quickly and grow chill with awe and bewilderment with the marvel of the
desert. The scaly red ground descended gradually; bare red knolls, like
waves, rolled away northward; black buttes reared their flat heads;
long ranges of sand flowed between them like streams, and all sloped
away to merge into gray, shadowy obscurity, into wild and desolate,
dreamy and misty nothingness.

"Do you see those white sand dunes there, more to the left?" asked
Emmett. "The Little Colorado runs in there. How far does it look to
you?"

"Thirty miles, perhaps," I replied, adding ten miles to my estimate.

"It's seventy-five. We'll get there day after to-morrow. If the snow in
the mountains has begun to melt, we'll have a time getting across."

That afternoon, a hot wind blew in my face, carrying fine sand that cut
and blinded. It filled my throat, sending me to the water cask till I
was ashamed. When I fell into my bed at night, I never turned. The next
day was hotter; the wind blew harder; the sand stung sharper.

About noon the following day, the horses whinnied, and the mules roused
out of their tardy gait. "They smell water," said Emmett. And despite
the heat, and the sand in my nostrils, I smelled it, too. The dogs,
poor foot-sore fellows, trotted on ahead down the trail. A few more
miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone brought us around a low mesa
to the Little Colorado.

It was a wide stream of swiftly running, reddish-muddy water. In the
channel, cut by floods, little streams trickled and meandered in all
directions. The main part of the river ran in close to the bank we were
on. The dogs lolled in the water; the horses and mules tried to run in,
but were restrained; the men drank, and bathed their faces. According
to my Flagstaff adviser, this was one of the two drinks I would get on
the desert, so I availed myself heartily of the opportunity. The water
was full of sand, but cold and gratefully thirst-quenching.

The Little Colorado seemed no more to me than a shallow creek; I heard
nothing sullen or menacing in its musical flow.

"Doesn't look bad, eh?" queried Emmett, who read my thought. "You'd be
surprised to learn how many men and Indians, horses, sheep and wagons
are buried under that quicksand."

The secret was out, and I wondered no more. At once the stream and wet
bars of sand took on a different color. I removed my boots, and waded
out to a little bar. The sand seemed quite firm, but water oozed out
around my feet; and when I stepped, the whole bar shook like jelly. I
pushed my foot through the crust, and the cold, wet sand took hold, and
tried to suck me down.

"How can you ford this stream with horses?" I asked Emmett.

"We must take our chances," replied he. "We'll hitch two teams to one
wagon, and run the horses. I've forded here at worse stages than this.
Once a team got stuck, and I had to leave it; another time the water
was high, and washed me downstream."

Emmett sent his son into the stream on a mule. The rider lashed his
mount, and plunging, splashing, crossed at a pace near a gallop. He
returned in the same manner, and reported one bad place near the other
side.

Jones and I got on the first wagon and tried to coax up the dogs, but
they would not come. Emmett had to lash the four horses to start them;
and other Mormons riding alongside, yelled at them, and used their
whips. The wagon bowled into the water with a tremendous splash. We
were wet through before we had gone twenty feet. The plunging horses
were lost in yellow spray; the stream rushed through the wheels; the
Mormons yelled. I wanted to see, but was lost in a veil of yellow mist.
Jones yelled in my ear, but I could not hear what he said. Once the
wagon wheels struck a stone or log, almost lurching us overboard. A
muddy splash blinded me. I cried out in my excitement, and punched
Jones in the back. Next moment, the keen exhilaration of the ride gave
way to horror. We seemed to drag, and almost stop. Some one roared:
"Horse down!" One instant of painful suspense, in which imagination
pictured another tragedy added to the record of this deceitful river—a
moment filled with intense feeling, and sensation of splash, and yell,
and fury of action; then the three able horses dragged their comrade
out of the quicksand. He regained his feet, and plunged on. Spurred by
fear, the horses increased their efforts, and amid clouds of spray,
galloped the remaining distance to the other side.

Jones looked disgusted. Like all plainsmen, he hated water. Emmett and
his men calmly unhitched. No trace of alarm, or even of excitement
showed in their bronzed faces.

"We made that fine and easy," remarked Emmett.

So I sat down and wondered what Jones and Emmett, and these men would
consider really hazardous. I began to have a feeling that I would find
out; that experience for me was but in its infancy; that far across the
desert the something which had called me would show hard, keen,
perilous life. And I began to think of reserve powers of fortitude and
endurance.

The other wagons were brought across without mishap; but the dogs did
not come with them. Jones called and called. The dogs howled and
howled. Finally I waded out over the wet bars and little streams to a
point several hundred yards nearer the dogs. Moze was lying down, but
the others were whining and howling in a state of great perturbation. I
called and called. They answered, and even ran into the water, but did
not start across.

"Hyah, Moze! hyah, you Indian!" I yelled, losing my patience. "You've
already swum the Big Colorado, and this is only a brook. Come on!"

This appeal evidently touched Moze, for he barked, and plunged in. He
made the water fly, and when carried off his feet, breasted the current
with energy and power. He made shore almost even with me, and wagged
his tail. Not to be outdone, Jude, Tige and Don followed suit, and
first one and then another was swept off his feet and carried
downstream. They landed below me. This left Ranger, the pup, alone on
the other shore. Of all the pitiful yelps ever uttered by a frightened
and lonely puppy, his were the most forlorn I had ever heard. Time
after time he plunged in, and with many bitter howls of distress, went
back. I kept calling, and at last, hoping to make him come by a show of
indifference, I started away. This broke his heart. Putting up his
head, he let out a long, melancholy wail, which for aught I knew might
have been a prayer, and then consigned himself to the yellow current.
Ranger swam like a boy learning. He seemed to be afraid to get wet. His
forefeet were continually pawing the air in front of his nose. When he
struck the swift place, he went downstream like a flash, but still kept
swimming valiantly. I tried to follow along the sand-bar, but found it
impossible. I encouraged him by yelling. He drifted far below, stranded
on an island, crossed it, and plunged in again, to make shore almost
out of my sight. And when at last I got to dry sand, there was Ranger,
wet and disheveled, but consciously proud and happy.

After lunch we entered upon the seventy-mile stretch from the Little to
the Big Colorado.

Imagination had pictured the desert for me as a vast, sandy plain, flat
and monotonous. Reality showed me desolate mountains gleaming bare in
the sun, long lines of red bluffs, white sand dunes, and hills of blue
clay, areas of level ground—in all, a many-hued, boundless world in
itself, wonderful and beautiful, fading all around into the purple haze
of deceiving distance.

Thin, clear, sweet, dry, the desert air carried a languor, a
dreaminess, tidings of far-off things, and an enthralling promise. The
fragrance of flowers, the beauty and grace of women, the sweetness of
music, the mystery of life—all seemed to float on that promise. It was
the air breathed by the lotus-eaters, when they dreamed, and wandered
no more.

Beyond the Little Colorado, we began to climb again. The sand was
thick; the horses labored; the drivers shielded their faces. The dogs
began to limp and lag. Ranger had to be taken into a wagon; and then,
one by one, all of the other dogs except Moze. He refused to ride, and
trotted along with his head down.

Far to the front the pink cliffs, the ragged mesas, the dark, volcanic
spurs of the Big Colorado stood up and beckoned us onward. But they
were a far hundred miles across the shifting sands, and baked day, and
ragged rocks. Always in the rear rose the San Francisco peaks, cold and
pure, startlingly clear and close in the rare atmosphere.

We camped near another water hole, located in a deep, yellow-colored
gorge, crumbling to pieces, a ruin of rock, and silent as the grave. In
the bottom of the cañon was a pool of water, covered with green scum.
My thirst was effectually quenched by the mere sight of it. I slept
poorly, and lay for hours watching the great stars. The silence was
painfully oppressive. If Jones had not begun to give a respectable
imitation of the exhaust pipe on a steamboat, I should have been
compelled to shout aloud, or get up; but this snoring would have
dispelled anything. The morning came gray and cheerless. I got up stiff
and sore, with a tongue like a rope.

All day long we ran the gauntlet of the hot, flying sand. Night came
again, a cold, windy night. I slept well until a mule stepped on my
bed, which was conducive to restlessness. At dawn, cold, gray clouds
tried to blot out the rosy east. I could hardly get up. My lips were
cracked; my tongue swollen to twice its natural size; my eyes smarted
and burned. The barrels and kegs of water were exhausted. Holes that
had been dug in the dry sand of a dry streambed the night before in the
morning yielded a scant supply of muddy alkali water, which went to the
horses.

Only twice that day did I rouse to anything resembling enthusiasm. We
came to a stretch of country showing the wonderful diversity of the
desert land. A long range of beautifully rounded clay stones bordered
the trail. So symmetrical were they that I imagined them works of
sculptors. Light blue, dark blue, clay blue, marine blue, cobalt
blue—every shade of blue was there, but no other color. The other time
that I awoke to sensations from without was when we came to the top of
a ridge. We had been passing through red-lands. Jones called the place
a strong, specific word which really was illustrative of the heat amid
those scaling red ridges. We came out where the red changed abruptly to
gray. I seemed always to see things first, and I cried out: "Look! here
are a red lake and trees!"

"No, lad, not a lake," said old Jim, smiling at me; "that's what haunts
the desert traveler. It's only mirage!"

So I awoke to the realization of that illusive thing, the mirage, a
beautiful lie, false as stairs of sand. Far northward a clear rippling
lake sparkled in the sunshine. Tall, stately trees, with waving green
foliage, bordered the water. For a long moment it lay there, smiling in
the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of
actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I
was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters.
Disappointment was keen. This is what maddens the prospector or
sheep-herder lost in the desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be
dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then
realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, a lure,
a delusion? I ceased to wonder at the Mormons, and their search for
water, their talk of water. But I had not realized its true
significance. I had not known what water was. I had never appreciated
it. So it was my destiny to learn that water is the greatest thing on
earth. I hung over a three-foot hole in a dry stream-bed, and watched
it ooze and seep through the sand, and fill up—oh, so slowly; and I
felt it loosen my parched tongue, and steal through all my dry body
with strength and life. Water is said to constitute three fourths of
the universe. However that may be, on the desert it is the whole world,
and all of life.

Two days passed by, all hot sand and wind and glare. The Mormons sang
no more at evening; Jones was silent; the dogs were limp as rags.

At Moncaupie Wash we ran into a sandstorm. The horses turned their
backs to it, and bowed their heads patiently. The Mormons covered
themselves. I wrapped a blanket round my head and hid behind a sage
bush. The wind, carrying the sand, made a strange hollow roar. All was
enveloped in a weird yellow opacity. The sand seeped through the sage
bush and swept by with a soft, rustling sound, not unlike the wind in
the rye. From time to time I raised a corner of my blanket and peeped
out. Where my feet had stretched was an enormous mound of sand. I felt
the blanket, weighted down, slowly settle over me.

Suddenly as it had come, the sandstorm passed. It left a changed world
for us. The trail was covered; the wheels hub-deep in sand; the horses,
walking sand dunes. I could not close my teeth without grating harshly
on sand.

We journeyed onward, and passed long lines of petrified trees, some a
hundred feet in length, lying as they had fallen, thousands of years
before. White ants crawled among the ruins. Slowly climbing the sandy
trail, we circled a great red bluff with jagged peaks, that had seemed
an interminable obstacle. A scant growth of cedar and sage again made
its appearance. Here we halted to pass another night. Under a cedar I
heard the plaintive, piteous bleat of an animal. I searched, and
presently found a little black and white lamb, scarcely able to stand.
It came readily to me, and I carried it to the wagon.

"That's a Navajo lamb," said Emmett. "It's lost. There are Navajo
Indians close by."

"Away in the desert we heard its cry," quoted one of the Mormons.

Jones and I climbed the red mesa near camp to see the sunset. All the
western world was ablaze in golden glory. Shafts of light shot toward
the zenith, and bands of paler gold, tinging to rose, circled away from
the fiery, sinking globe. Suddenly the sun sank, the gold changed to
gray, then to purple, and shadows formed in the deep gorge at our feet.
So sudden was the transformation that soon it was night, the solemn,
impressive night of the desert. A stillness that seemed too sacred to
break clasped the place; it was infinite; it held the bygone ages, and
eternity.

More days, and miles, miles, miles! The last day's ride to the Big
Colorado was unforgettable. We rode toward the head of a gigantic red
cliff pocket, a veritable inferno, immeasurably hot, glaring, awful. It
towered higher and higher above us. When we reached a point of this red
barrier, we heard the dull rumbling roar of water, and we came out, at
length, on a winding trail cut in the face of a bluff overhanging the
Colorado River. The first sight of most famous and much-heralded
wonders of nature is often disappointing; but never can this be said of
the blood-hued Rio Colorado. If it had beauty, it was beauty that
appalled. So riveted was my gaze that I could hardly turn it across the
river, where Emmett proudly pointed out his lonely home—an oasis set
down amidst beetling red cliffs. How grateful to the eye was the green
of alfalfa and cottonwood! Going round the bluff trail, the wheels had
only a foot of room to spare; and the sheer descent into the red,
turbid, congested river was terrifying.

I saw the constricted rapids, where the Colorado took its plunge into
the box-like head of the Grand Cañon of Arizona; and the deep,
reverberating boom of the river, at flood height, was a fearful thing
to hear. I could not repress a shudder at the thought of crossing above
that rapid.

The bronze walls widened as we proceeded, and we got down presently to
a level, where a long wire cable stretched across the river. Under the
cable ran a rope. On the other side was an old scow moored to the bank.

"Are we going across in that?" I asked Emmett, pointing to the boat.

"We'll all be on the other side before dark," he replied cheerily.

I felt that I would rather start back alone over the desert than trust
myself in such a craft, on such a river. And it was all because I had
had experience with bad rivers, and thought I was a judge of dangerous
currents. The Colorado slid with a menacing roar out of a giant split
in the red wall, and whirled, eddied, bulged on toward its confinement
in the iron-ribbed cañon below.

In answer to shots fired, Emmett's man appeared on the other side, and
rode down to the ferry landing. Here he got into a skiff, and rowed
laboriously upstream for a long distance before he started across, and
then swung into the current. He swept down rapidly, and twice the skiff
whirled, and completely turned round; but he reached our bank safely.
Taking two men aboard he rowed upstream again, close to the shore, and
returned to the opposite side in much the same manner in which he had
come over.

The three men pushed out the scow, and grasping the rope overhead,
began to pull. The big craft ran easily. When the current struck it,
the wire cable sagged, the water boiled and surged under it, raising
one end, and then the other. Nevertheless, five minutes were all that
were required to pull the boat over.

It was a rude, oblong affair, made of heavy planks loosely put
together, and it leaked. When Jones suggested that we get the agony
over as quickly as possible, I was with him, and we embarked together.
Jones said he did not like the looks of the tackle; and when I thought
of his by no means small mechanical skill, I had not added a cheerful
idea to my consciousness. The horses of the first team had to be
dragged upon the scow, and once on, they reared and plunged.

When we started, four men pulled the rope, and Emmett sat in the stern,
with the tackle guys in hand. As the current hit us, he let out the
guys, which maneuver caused the boat to swing stern downstream. When it
pointed obliquely, he made fast the guys again. I saw that this served
two purposes: the current struck, slid alongside, and over the stern,
which mitigated the danger, and at the same time helped the boat across.

To look at the river was to court terror, but I had to look. It was an
infernal thing. It roared in hollow, sullen voice, as a monster
growling. It had voice, this river, and one strangely changeful. It
moaned as if in pain—it whined, it cried. Then at times it would seem
strangely silent. The current as complex and mutable as human life. It
boiled, beat and bulged. The bulge itself was an incompressible thing,
like a roaring lift of the waters from submarine explosion. Then it
would smooth out, and run like oil. It shifted from one channel to
another, rushed to the center of the river, then swung close to one
shore or the other. Again it swelled near the boat, in great, boiling,
hissing eddies.

"Look! See where it breaks through the mountain!" yelled Jones in my
ear.

I looked upstream to see the stupendous granite walls separated in a
gigantic split that must have been made by a terrible seismic
disturbance; and from this gap poured the dark, turgid, mystic flood.

I was in a cold sweat when we touched shore, and I jumped long before
the boat was properly moored.

Emmett was wet to the waist where the water had surged over him. As he
sat rearranging some tackle I remarked to him that of course he must be
a splendid swimmer, or he would not take such risks.

"No, I can't swim a stroke," he replied; "and it wouldn't be any use if
I could. Once in there a man's a goner."

"You've had bad accidents here?" I questioned.

"No, not bad. We only drowned two men last year. You see, we had to tow
the boat up the river, and row across, as then we hadn't the wire. Just
above, on this side, the boat hit a stone, and the current washed over
her, taking off the team and two men."

"Didn't you attempt to rescue them?" I asked, after waiting a moment.

"No use. They never came up."

"Isn't the river high now?" I continued, shuddering as I glanced out at
the whirling logs and drifts.

"High, and coming up. If I don't get the other teams over to-day I'll
wait until she goes down. At this season she rises and lowers every day
or so, until June then comes the big flood, and we don't cross for
months."

I sat for three hours watching Emmett bring over the rest of his party,
which he did without accident, but at the expense of great effort. And
all the time in my ears dinned the roar, the boom, the rumble of this
singularly rapacious and purposeful river—a river of silt, a red river
of dark, sinister meaning, a river with terrible work to perform, a
river which never gave up its dead.



CHAPTER 2.

THE RANGE

After a much-needed rest at Emmett's, we bade good-by to him and his
hospitable family, and under the guidance of his man once more took to
the wind-swept trail. We pursued a southwesterly course now, following
the lead of the craggy red wall that stretched on and on for hundreds
of miles into Utah. The desert, smoky and hot, fell away to the left,
and in the foreground a dark, irregular line marked the Grand Cañon
cutting through the plateau.

The wind whipped in from the vast, open expanse, and meeting an
obstacle in the red wall, turned north and raced past us. Jones's hat
blew off, stood on its rim, and rolled. It kept on rolling, thirty
miles an hour, more or less; so fast, at least, that we were a long
time catching up to it with a team of horses. Possibly we never would
have caught it had not a stone checked its flight. Further
manifestation of the power of the desert wind surrounded us on all
sides. It had hollowed out huge stones from the cliffs, and tumbled
them to the plain below; and then, sweeping sand and gravel low across
the desert floor, had cut them deeply, until they rested on slender
pedestals, thus sculptoring grotesque and striking monuments to the
marvelous persistence of this element of nature.

Late that afternoon, as we reached the height of the plateau, Jones
woke up and shouted: "Ha! there's Buckskin!"

Far southward lay a long, black mountain, covered with patches of
shining snow. I could follow the zigzag line of the Grand Cañon
splitting the desert plateau, and saw it disappear in the haze round
the end of the mountain. From this I got my first clear impression of
the topography of the country surrounding our objective point. Buckskin
mountain ran its blunt end eastward to the Cañon—in fact, formed a
hundred miles of the north rim. As it was nine thousand feet high it
still held the snow, which had occasioned our lengthy desert ride to
get back of the mountain. I could see the long slopes rising out of the
desert to meet the timber.

As we bowled merrily down grade I noticed that we were no longer on
stony ground, and that a little scant silvery grass had made its
appearance. Then little branches of green, with a blue flower, smiled
out of the clayish sand.

All of a sudden Jones stood up, and let out a wild Comanche yell. I was
more startled by the yell than by the great hand he smashed down on my
shoulder, and for the moment I was dazed.

"There! look! look! the buffalo! Hi! Hi! Hi!"

Below us, a few miles on a rising knoll, a big herd of buffalo shone
black in the gold of the evening sun. I had not Jones's incentive, but
I felt enthusiasm born of the wild and beautiful picture, and added my
yell to his. The huge, burly leader of the herd lifted his head, and
after regarding us for a few moments calmly went on browsing.

The desert had fringed away into a grand rolling pastureland, walled in
by the red cliffs, the slopes of Buckskin, and further isolated by the
Cañon. Here was a range of twenty-four hundred square miles without a
foot of barb-wire, a pasture fenced in by natural forces, with the
splendid feature that the buffalo could browse on the plain in winter,
and go up into the cool foothills of Buckskin in summer.

From another ridge we saw a cabin dotting the rolling plain, and in
half an hour we reached it. As we climbed down from the wagon a brown
and black dog came dashing out of the cabin, and promptly jumped at
Moze. His selection showed poor discrimination, for Moze whipped him
before I could separate them. Hearing Jones heartily greeting some one,
I turned in his direction, only to be distracted by another dog fight.
Don had tackled Moze for the seventh time. Memory rankled in Don, and
he needed a lot of whipping, some of which he was getting when I
rescued him.

Next moment I was shaking hands with Frank and Jim, Jones's ranchmen.
At a glance I liked them both. Frank was short and wiry, and had a big,
ferocious mustache, the effect of which was softened by his kindly
brown eyes. Jim was tall, a little heavier; he had a careless, tidy
look; his eyes were searching, and though he appeared a young man, his
hair was white.

"I shore am glad to see you all," said Jim, in slow, soft, Southern
accent.

"Get down, get down," was Frank's welcome—a typically Western one, for
we had already gotten down; "an' come in. You must be worked out. Sure
you've come a long way." He was quick of speech, full of nervous
energy, and beamed with hospitality.

The cabin was the rudest kind of log affair, with a huge stone
fireplace in one end, deer antlers and coyote skins on the wall,
saddles and cowboys' traps in a corner, a nice, large, promising
cupboard, and a table and chairs. Jim threw wood on a smoldering fire,
that soon blazed and crackled cheerily.

I sank down into a chair with a feeling of blessed relief. Ten days of
desert ride behind me! Promise of wonderful days before me, with the
last of the old plainsmen. No wonder a sweet sense of ease stole over
me, or that the fire seemed a live and joyously welcoming thing, or
that Jim's deft maneuvers in preparation of supper roused in me a rapt
admiration.

"Twenty calves this spring!" cried Jones, punching me in my sore side.
"Ten thousand dollars worth of calves!"

He was now altogether a changed man; he looked almost young; his eyes
danced, and he rubbed his big hands together while he plied Frank with
questions. In strange surroundings—that is, away from his Native
Wilds, Jones had been a silent man; it had been almost impossible to
get anything out of him. But now I saw that I should come to know the
real man. In a very few moments he had talked more than on all the
desert trip, and what he said, added to the little I had already
learned, put me in possession of some interesting information as to his
buffalo.

Some years before he had conceived the idea of hybridizing buffalo with
black Galloway cattle; and with the characteristic determination and
energy of the man, he at once set about finding a suitable range. This
was difficult, and took years of searching. At last the wild north rim
of the Grand Cañon, a section unknown except to a few Indians and
mustang hunters, was settled upon. Then the gigantic task of
transporting the herd of buffalo by rail from Montana to Salt Lake was
begun. The two hundred and ninety miles of desert lying between the
home of the Mormons and Buckskin Mountain was an obstacle almost
insurmountable. The journey was undertaken and found even more trying
than had been expected. Buffalo after buffalo died on the way. Then
Frank, Jones's right-hand man, put into execution a plan he had been
thinking of—namely, to travel by night. It succeeded. The buffalo
rested in the day and traveled by easy stages by night, with the result
that the big herd was transported to the ideal range.

Here, in an environment strange to their race, but peculiarly
adaptable, they thrived and multiplied. The hybrid of the Galloway cow
and buffalo proved a great success. Jones called the new species
"Cattalo." The cattalo took the hardiness of the buffalo, and never
required artificial food or shelter. He would face the desert storm or
blizzard and stand stock still in his tracks until the weather cleared.
He became quite domestic, could be easily handled, and grew exceedingly
fat on very little provender. The folds of his stomach were so numerous
that they digested even the hardest and flintiest of corn. He had
fourteen ribs on each side, while domestic cattle had only thirteen;
thus he could endure rougher work and longer journeys to water. His fur
was so dense and glossy that it equaled that of the unplucked beaver or
otter, and was fully as valuable as the buffalo robe. And not to be
overlooked by any means was the fact that his meat was delicious.

Jones had to hear every detail of all that had happened since his
absence in the East, and he was particularly inquisitive to learn all
about the twenty cattalo calves. He called different buffalo by name;
and designated the calves by descriptive terms, such as "Whiteface" and
"Crosspatch." He almost forgot to eat, and kept Frank too busy to get
anything into his own mouth. After supper he calmed down.

"How about your other man—Mr. Wallace, I think you said?" asked Frank.

"We expected to meet him at Grand Cañon Station, and then at
Flagstaff. But he didn't show up. Either he backed out or missed us.
I'm sorry; for when we get up on Buckskin, among the wild horses and
cougars, we'll be likely to need him."

"I reckon you'll need me, as well as Jim," said Frank dryly, with a
twinkle in his eye. "The buffs are in good shape an' can get along
without me for a while."

"That'll be fine. How about cougar sign on the mountain?"

"Plenty. I've got two spotted near Clark Spring. Comin' over two weeks
ago I tracked them in the snow along the trail for miles. We'll ooze
over that way, as it's goin' toward the Siwash. The Siwash breaks of
the Cañon—there's the place for lions. I met a wild-horse wrangler
not long back, an' he was tellin' me about Old Tom an' the colts he'd
killed this winter."

Naturally, I here expressed a desire to know more of Old Tom.

"He's the biggest cougar ever known of in these parts. His tracks are
bigger than a horse's, an' have been seen on Buckskin for twelve years.
This wrangler—his name is Clark—said he'd turned his saddle horse out
to graze near camp, an' Old Tom sneaked in an' downed him. The lions
over there are sure a bold bunch. Well, why shouldn't they be? No one
ever hunted them. You see, the mountain is hard to get at. But now
you're here, if it's big cats you want we sure can find them. Only be
easy, be easy. You've all the time there is. An' any job on Buckskin
will take time. We'll look the calves over, an' you must ride the range
to harden up. Then we'll ooze over toward Oak. I expect it'll be boggy,
an' I hope the snow melts soon."

"The snow hadn't melted on Greenland point," replied Jones. "We saw
that with a glass from the El Tovar. We wanted to cross that way, but
Rust said Bright Angel Creek was breast high to a horse, and that creek
is the trail."

"There's four feet of snow on Greenland," said Frank. "It was too early
to come that way. There's only about three months in the year the
Cañon can be crossed at Greenland."

"I want to get in the snow," returned Jones. "This bunch of long-eared
canines I brought never smelled a lion track. Hounds can't be trained
quick without snow. You've got to see what they're trailing, or you
can't break them."

Frank looked dubious. "'Pears to me we'll have trouble gettin' a lion
without lion dogs. It takes a long time to break a hound off of deer,
once he's chased them. Buckskin is full of deer, wolves, coyotes, and
there's the wild horses. We couldn't go a hundred feet without crossin'
trails."

"How's the hound you and Jim fetched in las' year? Has he got a good
nose? Here he is—I like his head. Come here, Bowser—what's his name?"

"Jim named him Sounder, because he sure has a voice. It's great to hear
him on a trail. Sounder has a nose that can't be fooled, an' he'll
trail anythin'; but I don't know if he ever got up a lion."

Sounder wagged his bushy tail and looked up affectionately at Frank. He
had a fine head, great brown eyes, very long ears and curly
brownish-black hair. He was not demonstrative, looked rather askance at
Jones, and avoided the other dogs.

"That dog will make a great lion-chaser," said Jones, decisively, after
his study of Sounder. "He and Moze will keep us busy, once they learn
we want lions."

"I don't believe any dog-trainer could teach them short of six months,"
replied Frank. "Sounder is no spring chicken; an' that black and dirty
white cross between a cayuse an' a barb-wire fence is an old dog. You
can't teach old dogs new tricks."

Jones smiled mysteriously, a smile of conscious superiority, but said
nothing.

"We'll shore hev a storm to-morrow," said Jim, relinquishing his pipe
long enough to speak. He had been silent, and now his meditative gaze
was on the west, through the cabin window, where a dull afterglow faded
under the heavy laden clouds of night and left the horizon dark.

I was very tired when I lay down, but so full of excitement that sleep
did not soon visit my eyelids. The talk about buffalo, wild-horse
hunters, lions and dogs, the prospect of hard riding and unusual
adventure; the vision of Old Tom that had already begun to haunt me,
filled my mind with pictures and fancies. The other fellows dropped off
to sleep, and quiet reigned. Suddenly a succession of queer, sharp
barks came from the plain, close to the cabin. Coyotes were paying us a
call, and judging from the chorus of yelps and howls from our dogs, it
was not a welcome visit. Above the medley rose one big, deep, full
voice that I knew at once belonged to Sounder. Then all was quiet
again. Sleep gradually benumbed my senses. Vague phrases dreamily
drifted to and fro in my mind: "Jones's wild range—Old
Tom—Sounder—great name—great voice—Sounder! Sounder! Sounder—"

Next morning I could hardly crawl out of my sleeping-bag. My bones
ached, my muscles protested excruciatingly, my lips burned and bled,
and the cold I had contracted on the desert clung to me. A good brisk
walk round the corrals, and then breakfast, made me feel better.

"Of course you can ride?" queried Frank.

My answer was not given from an overwhelming desire to be truthful.
Frank frowned a little, as it wondering how a man could have the nerve
to start out on a jaunt with Buffalo Jones without being a good
horseman. To be unable to stick on the back of a wild mustang, or a
cayuse, was an unpardonable sin in Arizona. My frank admission was made
relatively, with my mind on what cowboys held as a standard of
horsemanship.

The mount Frank trotted out of the corral for me was a pure white,
beautiful mustang, nervous, sensitive, quivering. I watched Frank put
on the saddle, and when he called me I did not fail to catch a covert
twinkle in his merry brown eyes. Looking away toward Buckskin Mountain,
which was coincidentally in the direction of home, I said to myself:
"This may be where you get on, but most certainly it is where you get
off!"

Jones was already riding far beyond the corral, as I could see by a
cloud of dust; and I set off after him, with the painful consciousness
that I must have looked to Frank and Jim much as Central Park
equestrians had often looked to me. Frank shouted after me that he
would catch up with us out on the range. I was not in any great hurry
to overtake Jones, but evidently my horse's inclinations differed from
mine; at any rate, he made the dust fly, and jumped the little sage
bushes.

Jones, who had tarried to inspect one of the pools—formed of running
water from the corrals—greeted me as I came up with this cheerful
observation.

"What in thunder did Frank give you that white nag for? The buffalo
hate white horses—anything white. They're liable to stampede off the
range, or chase you into the cañon."

I replied grimly that, as it was certain something was going to happen,
the particular circumstance might as well come off quickly.

We rode over the rolling plain with a cool, bracing breeze in our
faces. The sky was dull and mottled with a beautiful cloud effect that
presaged wind. As we trotted along Jones pointed out to me and
descanted upon the nutritive value of three different kinds of grass,
one of which he called the Buffalo Pea, noteworthy for a beautiful blue
blossom. Soon we passed out of sight of the cabin, and could see only
the billowy plain, the red tips of the stony wall, and the
black-fringed crest of Buckskin. After riding a while we made out some
cattle, a few of which were on the range, browsing in the lee of a
ridge. No sooner had I marked them than Jones let out another Comanche
yell.

"Wolf!" he yelled; and spurring his big bay, he was off like the wind.

A single glance showed me several cows running as if bewildered, and
near them a big white wolf pulling down a calf. Another white wolf
stood not far off. My horse jumped as if he had been shot; and the
realization darted upon me that here was where the certain something
began. Spot—the mustang had one black spot in his pure white—snorted
like I imagined a blooded horse might, under dire insult. Jones's bay
had gotten about a hundred paces the start. I lived to learn that Spot
hated to be left behind; moreover, he would not be left behind; he was
the swiftest horse on the range, and proud of the distinction. I cast
one unmentionable word on the breeze toward the cabin and Frank, then
put mind and muscle to the sore task of remaining with Spot. Jones was
born on a saddle, and had been taking his meals in a saddle for about
sixty-three years, and the bay horse could run. Run is not a felicitous
word—he flew. And I was rendered mentally deranged for the moment to
see that hundred paces between the bay and Spot materially lessen at
every jump. Spot lengthened out, seemed to go down near the ground, and
cut the air like a high-geared auto. If I had not heard the fast
rhythmic beat of his hoofs, and had not bounced high into the air at
every jump, I would have been sure I was riding a bird. I tried to stop
him. As well might I have tried to pull in the Lusitania with a thread.
Spot was out to overhaul that bay, and in spite of me, he was doing it.
The wind rushed into my face and sang in my ears. Jones seemed the
nucleus of a sort of haze, and it grew larger and larger. Presently he
became clearly defined in my sight; the violent commotion under me
subsided; I once more felt the saddle, and then I realized that Spot
had been content to stop alongside of Jones, tossing his head and
champing his bit.

"Well, by George! I didn't know you were in the stretch," cried my
companion. "That was a fine little brush. We must have come several
miles. I'd have killed those wolves if I'd brought a gun. The big one
that had the calf was a bold brute. He never let go until I was within
fifty feet of him. Then I almost rode him down. I don't think the calf
was much hurt. But those blood-thirsty devils will return, and like as
not get the calf. That's the worst of cattle raising. Now, take the
buffalo. Do you suppose those wolves could have gotten a buffalo calf
out from under the mother? Never. Neither could a whole band of wolves.
Buffalo stick close together, and the little ones do not stray. When
danger threatens, the herd closes in and faces it and fights. That is
what is grand about the buffalo and what made them once roam the
prairies in countless, endless droves."

From the highest elevation in that part of the range we viewed the
surrounding ridges, flats and hollows, searching for the buffalo. At
length we spied a cloud of dust rising from behind an undulating mound,
then big black dots hove in sight.

"Frank has rounded up the herd, and is driving it this way. We'll
wait," said Jones.

Though the buffalo appeared to be moving fast, a long time elapsed
before they reached the foot of our outlook. They lumbered along in a
compact mass, so dense that I could not count them, but I estimated the
number at seventy-five. Frank was riding zigzag behind them, swinging
his lariat and yelling. When he espied us he reined in his horse and
waited. Then the herd slowed down, halted and began browsing.

"Look at the cattalo calves," cried Jones, in ecstatic tones. "See how
shy they are, how close they stick to their mothers."

The little dark-brown fellows were plainly frightened. I made several
unsuccessful attempts to photograph them, and gave it up when Jones
told me not to ride too close and that it would be better to wait till
we had them in the corral.

He took my camera and instructed me to go on ahead, in the rear of the
herd. I heard the click of the instrument as he snapped a picture, and
then suddenly heard him shout in alarm: "Look out! look out! pull your
horse!"

Thundering hoof-beats pounding the earth accompanied his words. I saw a
big bull, with head down, tail raised, charging my horse. He answered
Frank's yell of command with a furious grunt. I was paralyzed at the
wonderfully swift action of the shaggy brute, and I sat helpless. Spot
wheeled as if he were on a pivot and plunged out of the way with a
celerity that was astounding. The buffalo stopped, pawed the ground,
and angrily tossed his huge head. Frank rode up to him, yelled, and
struck him with the lariat, whereupon he gave another toss of his
horns, and then returned to the herd.

"It was that darned white nag," said Jones. "Frank, it was wrong to put
an inexperienced man on Spot. For that matter, the horse should never
be allowed to go near the buffalo."

"Spot knows the buffs; they'd never get to him," replied Frank. But the
usual spirit was absent from his voice, and he glanced at me soberly. I
knew I had turned white, for I felt the peculiar cold sensation on my
face.

"Now, look at that, will you?" cried Jones. "I don't like the looks of
that."

He pointed to the herd. They stopped browsing, and were uneasily
shifting to and fro. The bull lifted his head; the others slowly
grouped together.

"Storm! Sandstorm!" exclaimed Jones, pointing desert-ward. Dark yellow
clouds like smoke were rolling, sweeping, bearing down upon us. They
expanded, blossoming out like gigantic roses, and whirled and merged
into one another, all the time rolling on and blotting out the light.

"We've got to run. That storm may last two days," yelled Frank to me.
"We've had some bad ones lately. Give your horse free rein, and cover
your face."

A roar, resembling an approaching storm at sea, came on puffs of wind,
as the horses got into their stride. Long streaks of dust whipped up in
different places; the silver-white grass bent to the ground; round
bunches of sage went rolling before us. The puffs grew longer,
steadier, harder. Then a shrieking blast howled on our trail, seeming
to swoop down on us with a yellow, blinding pall. I shut my eyes and
covered my face with a handkerchief. The sand blew so thick that it
filled my gloves, pebbles struck me hard enough to sting through my
coat.

Fortunately, Spot kept to an easy swinging lope, which was the most
comfortable motion for me. But I began to get numb, and could hardly
stick on the saddle. Almost before I had dared to hope, Spot stopped.
Uncovering my face, I saw Jim in the doorway of the lee side of the
cabin. The yellow, streaky, whistling clouds of sand split on the cabin
and passed on, leaving a small, dusty space of light.

"Shore Spot do hate to be beat," yelled Jim, as he helped me off. I
stumbled into the cabin and fell upon a buffalo robe and lay there
absolutely spent. Jones and Frank came in a few minutes apart, each
anathematizing the gritty, powdery sand.

All day the desert storm raged and roared. The dust sifted through the
numerous cracks in the cabin, burdened our clothes, spoiled our food and
blinded our eyes. Wind, snow, sleet and rainstorms are discomforting
enough under trying circumstances; but all combined, they are nothing
to the choking stinging, blinding sandstorm.

"Shore it'll let up by sundown," averred Jim. And sure enough the roar
died away about five o'clock, the wind abated and the sand settled.

Just before supper, a knock sounded heavily on the cabin door. Jim
opened it to admit one of Emmett's sons and a very tall man whom none
of us knew. He was a sand-man. All that was not sand seemed a space or
two of corduroy, a big bone-handled knife, a prominent square jaw and
bronze cheek and flashing eyes.

"Get down—get down, an' come in, stranger, said Frank cordially.

"How do you do, sir," said Jones.

"Colonel Jones, I've been on your trail for twelve days," announced the
stranger, with a grim smile. The sand streamed off his coat in little
white streak. Jones appeared to be casting about in his mind.

"I'm Grant Wallace," continued the newcomer. "I missed you at the El
Tovar, at Williams and at Flagstaff, where I was one day behind. Was
half a day late at the Little Colorado, saw your train cross Moncaupie
Wash, and missed you because of the sandstorm there. Saw you from the
other side of the Big Colorado as you rode out from Emmett's along the
red wall. And here I am. We've never met till now, which obviously
isn't my fault."

The Colonel and I fell upon Wallace's neck. Frank manifested his usual
alert excitation, and said: "Well, I guess he won't hang fire on a long
cougar chase." And Jim—slow, careful Jim, dropped a plate with the
exclamation: "Shore it do beat hell!" The hounds sniffed round Wallace,
and welcomed him with vigorous tails.

Supper that night, even if we did grind sand with our teeth, was a
joyous occasion. The biscuits were flaky and light; the bacon fragrant
and crisp. I produced a jar of blackberry jam, which by subtle cunning
I had been able to secrete from the Mormons on that dry desert ride,
and it was greeted with acclamations of pleasure. Wallace, divested of
his sand guise, beamed with the gratification of a hungry man once more
in the presence of friends and food. He made large cavities in Jim's
great pot of potato stew, and caused biscuits to vanish in a way that
would not have shamed a Hindoo magician. The Grand Cañon he dug in my
jar of jam, however, could not have been accomplished by legerdemain.

Talk became animated on dogs, cougars, horses and buffalo. Jones told
of our experience out on the range, and concluded with some salient
remarks.

"A tame wild animal is the most dangerous of beasts. My old friend,
Dick Rock, a great hunter and guide out of Idaho, laughed at my advice,
and got killed by one of his three-year-old bulls. I told him they knew
him just well enough to kill him, and they did. My friend, A. H. Cole,
of Oxford, Nebraska, tried to rope a Weetah that was too tame to be
safe, and the bull killed him. Same with General Bull, a member of the
Kansas Legislature, and two cowboys who went into a corral to tie up a
tame elk at the wrong time. I pleaded with them not to undertake it.
They had not studied animals as I had. That tame elk killed all of
them. He had to be shot in order to get General Bull off his great
antlers. You see, a wild animal must learn to respect a man. The way I
used to teach the Yellowstone Park bears to be respectful and safe
neighbors was to rope them around the front paw, swing them up on a
tree clear of the ground, and whip them with a long pole. It was a
dangerous business, and looks cruel, but it is the only way I could
find to make the bears good. You see, they eat scraps around the hotels
and get so tame they will steal everything but red-hot stoves, and will
cuff the life out of those who try to shoo them off. But after a bear
mother has had a licking, she not only becomes a good bear for the rest
of her life, but she tells all her cubs about it with a good smack of
her paw, for emphasis, and teaches them to respect peaceable citizens
generation after generation.

"One of the hardest jobs I ever tackled was that of supplying the
buffalo for Bronx Park. I rounded up a magnificent 'king' buffalo bull,
belligerent enough to fight a battleship. When I rode after him the
cowmen said I was as good as killed. I made a lance by driving a nail
into the end of a short pole and sharpening it. After he had chased me,
I wheeled my broncho, and hurled the lance into his back, ripping a
wound as long as my hand. That put the fear of Providence into him and
took the fight all out of him. I drove him uphill and down, and across
cañons at a dead run for eight miles single handed, and loaded him on
a freight car; but he came near getting me once or twice, and only
quick broncho work and lance play saved me.

"In the Yellowstone Park all our buffaloes have become docile,
excepting the huge bull which led them. The Indians call the buffalo
leader the 'Weetah,' the master of the herd. It was sure death to go
near this one. So I shipped in another Weetah, hoping that he might
whip some of the fight out of old Manitou, the Mighty. They came
together head on, like a railway collision, and ripped up over a square
mile of landscape, fighting till night came on, and then on into the
night.

"I jumped into the field with them, chasing them with my biograph,
getting a series of moving pictures of that bullfight which was sure
the real thing. It was a ticklish thing to do, though knowing that
neither bull dared take his eyes off his adversary for a second, I felt
reasonably safe. The old Weetah beat the new champion out that night,
but the next morning they were at it again, and the new buffalo finally
whipped the old one into submission. Since then his spirit has remained
broken, and even a child can approach him safely—but the new Weetah is
in turn a holy terror.

"To handle buffalo, elk and bear, you must get into sympathy with their
methods of reasoning. No tenderfoot stands any show, even with the tame
animals of the Yellowstone."

The old buffalo hunter's lips were no longer locked. One after another
he told reminiscences of his eventful life, in a simple manner; yet so
vivid and gripping were the unvarnished details that I was spellbound.

"Considering what appears the impossibility of capturing a full-grown
buffalo, how did you earn the name of preserver of the American bison?"
inquired Wallace.

"It took years to learn how, and ten more to capture the fifty-eight
that I was able to keep. I tried every plan under the sun. I roped
hundreds, of all sizes and ages. They would not live in captivity. If
they could not find an embankment over which to break their necks, they
would crush their skulls on stones. Failing any means like that, they
would lie down, will themselves to die, and die. Think of a savage wild
nature that could will its heart to cease beating! But it's true.
Finally I found I could keep only calves under three months of age. But
to capture them so young entailed time and patience. For the buffalo
fight for their young, and when I say fight, I mean till they drop. I
almost always had to go alone, because I could neither coax nor hire
any one to undertake it with me. Sometimes I would be weeks getting one
calf. One day I captured eight—eight little buffalo calves! Never will
I forget that day as long as I live!"

"Tell us about it," I suggested, in a matter of fact,
round-the-campfire voice. Had the silent plainsman ever told a complete
and full story of his adventures? I doubted it. He was not the man to
eulogize himself.

A short silence ensued. The cabin was snug and warm; the ruddy embers
glowed; one of Jim's pots steamed musically and fragrantly. The hounds
lay curled in the cozy chimney corner.

Jones began to talk again, simply and unaffectedly, of his famous
exploit; and as he went on so modestly, passing lightly over features
we recognized as wonderful, I allowed the fire of my imagination to
fuse for myself all the toil, patience, endurance, skill, herculean
strength and marvelous courage and unfathomable passion which he
slighted in his narrative.



CHAPTER 3.

THE LAST HERD

Over gray No-Man's-Land stole down the shadows of night. The undulating
prairie shaded dark to the western horizon, rimmed with a fading streak
of light. Tall figures, silhouetted sharply against the last golden
glow of sunset, marked the rounded crest of a grassy knoll.

"Wild hunter!" cried a voice in sullen rage, "buffalo or no, we halt
here. Did Adams and I hire to cross the Staked Plains? Two weeks in
No-Man's-Land, and now we're facing the sand! We've one keg of water,
yet you want to keep on. Why, man, you're crazy! You didn't tell us you
wanted buffalo alive. And here you've got us looking death in the eye!"

In the grim silence that ensued the two men unhitched the team from the
long, light wagon, while the buffalo hunter staked out his wiry,
lithe-limbed racehorses. Soon a fluttering blaze threw a circle of
light, which shone on the agitated face of Rude and Adams, and the
cold, iron-set visage of their brawny leader.

"It's this way," began Jones, in slow, cool voice; "I engaged you
fellows, and you promised to stick by me. We've had no luck. But I've
finally found sign—old sign, I'll admit the buffalo I'm looking
for—the last herd on the plains. For two years I've been hunting this
herd. So have other hunters. Millions of buffalo have been killed and
left to rot. Soon this herd will be gone, and then the only buffalo in
the world will be those I have given ten years of the hardest work in
capturing. This is the last herd, I say, and my last chance to capture
a calf or two. Do you imagine I'd quit? You fellows go back if you
want, but I keep on."

"We can't go back. We're lost. We'll have to go with you. But, man,
thirst is not the only risk we run. This is Comanche country. And if
that herd is in here the Indians have it spotted."

"That worries me some," replied the plainsman, "but we'll keep on it."

They slept. The night wind swished the grasses; dark storm clouds
blotted out the northern stars; the prairie wolves mourned dismally.

Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky. The hunters
traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream
flowed in wet season. Cottonwood trees were bursting into green;
thickets of prickly thorn, dense and matted, showed bright spring buds.

"What is it?" suddenly whispered Rude.

The plainsman lay in strained posture, his ear against the ground.

"Hide the wagon and horses in the clump of cottonwoods," he ordered,
tersely. Springing to his feet, he ran to the top of the knoll above
the hollow, where he again placed his ear to the ground.

Jones's practiced ear had detected the quavering rumble of far-away,
thundering hoofs. He searched the wide waste of plain with his powerful
glass. To the southwest, miles distant, a cloud of dust mushroomed
skyward. "Not buffalo," he muttered, "maybe wild horses." He watched
and waited. The yellow cloud rolled forward, enlarging, spreading out,
and drove before it a darkly indistinct, moving mass. As soon as he had
one good look at this he ran back to his comrades.

"Stampede! Wild horses! Indians! Look to your rifles and hide!"

Wordless and pale, the men examined their Sharps, and made ready to
follow Jones. He slipped into the thorny brake and, flat on his
stomach, wormed his way like a snake far into the thickly interlaced
web of branches. Rude and Adams crawled after him. Words were
superfluous. Quiet, breathless, with beating hearts, the hunters
pressed close to the dry grass. A long, low, steady rumble filled the
air, and increased in volume till it became a roar. Moments, endless
moments, passed. The roar filled out like a flood slowly released from
its confines to sweep down with the sound of doom. The ground began to
tremble and quake: the light faded; the smell of dust pervaded the
thicket, then a continuous streaming roar, deafening as persistent roll
of thunder, pervaded the hiding place. The stampeding horses had split
round the hollow. The roar lessened. Swiftly as a departing snow-squall
rushing on through the pines, the thunderous thud and tramp of hoofs
died away.

The trained horses hidden in the cottonwoods never stirred. "Lie low!
lie low!" breathed the plainsman to his companions.

Throb of hoofs again became audible, not loud and madly pounding as
those that had passed, but low, muffled, rhythmic. Jones's sharp eye,
through a peephole in the thicket, saw a cream-colored mustang bob over
the knoll, carrying an Indian. Another and another, then a swiftly
following, close-packed throng appeared. Bright red feathers and white
gleamed; weapons glinted; gaunt, bronzed savage leaned forward on racy,
slender mustangs.

The plainsman shrank closer to the ground. "Apache!" he exclaimed to
himself, and gripped his rifle. The band galloped down to the hollow,
and slowing up, piled single file over the bank. The leader, a short,
squat chief, plunged into the brake not twenty yards from the hidden
men. Jones recognized the cream mustang; he knew the somber, sinister,
broad face. It belonged to the Red Chief of the Apaches.

"Geronimo!" murmured the plainsman through his teeth.

Well for the Apache that no falcon savage eye discovered aught strange
in the little hollow! One look at the sand of the stream bed would have
cost him his life. But the Indians crossed the thicket too far up; they
cantered up the slope and disappeared. The hoof-beats softened and
ceased.

"Gone?" whispered Rude.

"Gone. But wait," whispered Jones. He knew the savage nature, and he
knew how to wait. After a long time, he cautiously crawled out of the
thicket and searched the surroundings with a plainsman's eye. He
climbed the slope and saw the clouds of dust, the near one small, the
far one large, which told him all he needed to know.

"Comanches?" queried Adams, with a quaver in his voice. He was new to
the plains.

"Likely," said Jones, who thought it best not to tell all he knew. Then
he added to himself: "We've no time to lose. There's water back here
somewhere. The Indians have spotted the buffalo, and were running the
horses away from the water."

The three got under way again, proceeding carefully, so as not to raise
the dust, and headed due southwest. Scantier and scantier grew the
grass; the hollows were washes of sand; steely gray dunes, like long,
flat, ocean swells, ribbed the prairie. The gray day declined. Late
into the purple night they traveled, then camped without fire.

In the gray morning Jones climbed a high ride and scanned the
southwest. Low dun-colored sandhills waved from him down and down, in
slow, deceptive descent. A solitary and remote waste reached out into
gray infinitude. A pale lake, gray as the rest of that gray expanse,
glimmered in the distance.

"Mirage!" he muttered, focusing his glass, which only magnified all
under the dead gray, steely sky. "Water must be somewhere; but can that
be it? It's too pale and elusive to be real. No life—a blasted, staked
plain! Hello!"

A thin, black, wavering line of wild fowl, moving in beautiful, rapid
flight, crossed the line of his vision. "Geese flying north, and low.
There's water here," he said. He followed the flock with his glass, saw
them circle over the lake, and vanish in the gray sheen.

"It's water." He hurried back to camp. His haggard and worn companions
scorned his discovery. Adams siding with Rude, who knew the plains,
said: "Mirage! the lure of the desert!" Yet dominated by a force too
powerful for them to resist, they followed the buffalo-hunter. All day
the gleaming lake beckoned them onward, and seemed to recede. All day
the drab clouds scudded before the cold north wind. In the gray
twilight, the lake suddenly lay before them, as if it had opened at
their feet. The men rejoiced, the horses lifted their noses and sniffed
the damp air.

The whinnies of the horses, the clank of harness, and splash of water,
the whirl of ducks did not blur out of Jones's keen ear a sound that
made him jump. It was the thump of hoofs, in a familiar beat, beat,
beat. He saw a shadow moving up a ridge. Soon, outlined black against
the yet light sky, a lone buffalo cow stood like a statue. A moment she
held toward the lake, studying the danger, then went out of sight over
the ridge.

Jones spurred his horse up the ascent, which was rather long and steep,
but he mounted the summit in time to see the cow join eight huge,
shaggy buffalo. The hunter reined in his horse, and standing high in
his stirrups, held his hat at arms' length over his head. So he
thrilled to a moment he had sought for two years. The last herd of
American bison was near at hand. The cow would not venture far from the
main herd; the eight stragglers were the old broken-down bulls that had
been expelled, at this season, from the herd by younger and more
vigorous bulls. The old monarchs saw the hunter at the same time his
eyes were gladdened by sight of them, and lumbered away after the cow,
to disappear in the gathering darkness. Frightened buffalo always make
straight for their fellows; and this knowledge contented Jones to
return to the lake, well satisfied that the herd would not be far away
in the morning, within easy striking distance by daylight.

At dark the storm which had threatened for days, broke in a fury of
rain, sleet and hail. The hunters stretched a piece of canvas over the
wheels of the north side of the wagon, and wet and shivering, crawled
under it to their blankets. During the night the storm raged with
unabated strength.

Dawn, forbidding and raw, lightened to the whistle of the sleety gusts.
Fire was out of the question. Chary of weight, the hunters had carried
no wood, and the buffalo chips they used for fuel were lumps of ice.
Grumbling, Adams and Rude ate a cold breakfast, while Jones, munching a
biscuit, faced the biting blast from the crest of the ridge. The middle
of the plain below held a ragged, circular mass, as still as stone. It
was the buffalo herd, with every shaggy head to the storm. So they
would stand, never budging from their tracks, till the blizzard of
sleet was over.

Jones, though eager and impatient, restrained himself, for it was
unwise to begin operations in the storm. There was nothing to do but
wait. Ill fared the hunters that day. Food had to be eaten uncooked.
The long hours dragged by with the little group huddled under icy
blankets. When darkness fell, the sleet changed to drizzling rain. This
blew over at midnight, and a colder wind, penetrating to the very
marrow of the sleepless men, made their condition worse. In the after
part of the night, the wolves howled mournfully.

With a gray, misty light appearing in the east, Jones threw off his
stiff, ice-incased blanket, and crawled out. A gaunt gray wolf, the
color of the day and the sand and the lake, sneaked away, looking back.
While moving and threshing about to warm his frozen blood, Jones
munched another biscuit. Five men crawled from under the wagon, and
made an unfruitful search for the whisky. Fearing it, Jones had thrown
the bottle away. The men cursed. The patient horses drooped sadly, and
shivered in the lee of the improvised tent. Jones kicked the inch-thick
casing of ice from his saddle. Kentuck, his racer, had been spared on
the whole trip for this day's work. The thoroughbred was cold, but as
Jones threw the saddle over him, he showed that he knew the chase
ahead, and was eager to be off. At last, after repeated efforts with
his benumbed fingers, Jones got the girths tight. He tied a bunch of
soft cords to the saddle and mounted.

"Follow as fast as you can," he called to his surly men. "The buffs
will run north against the wind. This is the right direction for us;
we'll soon leave the sand. Stick to my trail and come a-humming."

From the ridge he met the red sun, rising bright, and a keen
northeasterly wind that lashed like a whip. As he had anticipated, his
quarry had moved northward. Kentuck let out into a swinging stride,
which in an hour had the loping herd in sight. Every jump now took him
upon higher ground, where the sand failed, and the grass grew thicker
and began to bend under the wind.

In the teeth of the nipping gale Jones slipped close upon the herd
without alarming even a cow. More than a hundred little reddish-black
calves leisurely loped in the rear. Kentuck, keen to his work, crept on
like a wolf, and the hunter's great fist clenched the coiled lasso.
Before him expanded a boundless plain. A situation long cherished and
dreamed of had become a reality. Kentuck, fresh and strong, was good
for all day. Jones gloated over the little red bulls and heifers, as a
miser gloats over gold and jewels. Never before had he caught more than
two in one day, and often it had taken days to capture one. This was
the last herd, this the last opportunity toward perpetuating a grand
race of beasts. And with born instinct he saw ahead the day of his life.

At a touch, Kentuck closed in, and the buffalo, seeing him, stampeded
into the heaving roll so well known to the hunter. Racing on the right
flank of the herd, Jones selected a tawny heifer and shot the lariat
after her. It fell true, but being stiff and kinky from the sleet,
failed to tighten, and the quick calf leaped through the loop to
freedom.

Undismayed the pursuer quickly recovered his rope. Again he whirled and
sent the loop. Again it circled true, and failed to close; again the
agile heifer bounded through it. Jones whipped the air with the
stubborn rope. To lose a chance like that was worse than boy's work.

The third whirl, running a smaller loop, tightened the coil round the
frightened calf just back of its ears. A pull on the bridle brought
Kentuck to a halt in his tracks, and the baby buffalo rolled over and
over in the grass. Jones bounced from his seat and jerked loose a
couple of the soft cords. In a twinkling; his big knee crushed down on
the calf, and his big hands bound it helpless.

Kentuck neighed. Jones saw his black ears go up. Danger threatened. For
a moment the hunter's blood turned chill, not from fear, for he never
felt fear, but because he thought the Indians were returning to ruin
his work. His eye swept the plain. Only the gray forms of wolves
flitted through the grass, here, there, all about him. Wolves! They
were as fatal to his enterprise as savages. A trooping pack of prairie
wolves had fallen in with the herd and hung close on the trail, trying
to cut a calf away from its mother. The gray brutes boldly trotted to
within a few yards of him, and slyly looked at him, with pale, fiery
eyes. They had already scented his captive. Precious time flew by; the
situation, critical and baffling, had never before been met by him.
There lay his little calf tied fast, and to the north ran many others,
some of which he must—he would have. To think quickly had meant the
solving of many a plainsman's problem. Should he stay with his prize to
save it, or leave it to be devoured?

"Ha! you old gray devils!" he yelled, shaking his fist at the wolves.
"I know a trick or two." Slipping his hat between the legs of the calf,
he fastened it securely. This done, he vaulted on Kentuck, and was off
with never a backward glance. Certain it was that the wolves would not
touch anything, alive or dead, that bore the scent of a human being.

The bison scoured away a long half-mile in the lead, sailing northward
like a cloud-shadow over the plain. Kentuck, mettlesome, over-eager,
would have run himself out in short order, but the wary hunter, strong
to restrain as well as impel, with the long day in his mind, kept the
steed in his easy stride, which, springy and stretching, overhauled the
herd in the course of several miles.

A dash, a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect
accord, and a fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately
for freedom under the remorseless knee. The big hands toyed with him;
and then, secure in the double knots, the calf lay still, sticking out
his tongue and rolling his eyes, with the coat of the hunter tucked
under his bonds to keep away the wolves.

The race had but begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the
hunter had but tasted of sweet triumph. Another hopeful of a buffalo
mother, negligent in danger, truant from his brothers, stumbled and
fell in the enmeshing loop. The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's
neck, served as danger signal to the wolves. Before the lumbering
buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked helplessly
on the grass and sent up vain, weak calls, and at last lay still, with
the hunter's boot tied to his cords.

Four! Jones counted them aloud, and in his mind, and kept on. Fast,
hard work, covering upward of fifteen miles, had begun to tell on herd,
horse and man, and all slowed down to the call for strength. The fifth
time Jones closed in on his game, he encountered different
circumstances such as called forth his cunning.

The herd had opened up; the mothers had fallen back to the rear; the
calves hung almost out of sight under the shaggy sides of protectors.
To try them out Jones darted close and threw his lasso. It struck a
cow. With activity incredible in such a huge beast, she lunged at him.
Kentuck, expecting just such a move, wheeled to safety. This duel,
ineffectual on both sides, kept up for a while, and all the time, man
and herd were jogging rapidly to the north.

Jones could not let well enough alone; he acknowledged this even as he
swore he must have five. Emboldened by his marvelous luck, and yielding
headlong to the passion within, he threw caution to the winds. A lame
old cow with a red calf caught his eye; in he spurred his willing horse
and slung his rope. It stung the haunch of the mother. The mad grunt
she vented was no quicker than the velocity with which she plunged and
reared. Jones had but time to swing his leg over the saddle when the
hoofs beat down. Kentuck rolled on the plain, flinging his rider from
him. The infuriated buffalo lowered her head for the fatal charge on
the horse, when the plainsman, jerking out his heavy Colts, shot her
dead in her tracks.

Kentuck got to his feet unhurt, and stood his ground, quivering but
ready, showing his steadfast courage. He showed more, for his ears lay
back, and his eyes had the gleam of the animal that strikes back.

The calf ran round its mother. Jones lassoed it, and tied it down,
being compelled to cut a piece from his lasso, as the cords on the
saddle had given out. He left his other boot with baby number five. The
still heaving, smoking body of the victim called forth the stern,
intrepid hunter's pity for a moment. Spill of blood he had not wanted.
But he had not been able to avoid it; and mounting again with
close-shut jaw and smoldering eye, he galloped to the north.

Kentuck snorted; the pursuing wolves shied off in the grass; the pale
sun began to slant westward. The cold iron stirrups froze and cut the
hunter's bootless feet.

When once more he came hounding the buffalo, they were considerably
winded. Short-tufted tails, raised stiffly, gave warning. Snorts, like
puffs of escaping steam, and deep grunts from cavernous chests evinced
anger and impatience that might, at any moment, bring the herd to a
defiant stand.

He whizzed the shortened noose over the head of a calf that was
laboring painfully to keep up, and had slipped down, when a mighty
grunt told him of peril. Never looking to see whence it came, he sprang
into the saddle. Fiery Kentuck jumped into action, then hauled up with
a shock that almost threw himself and rider. The lasso, fast to the
horse, and its loop end round the calf, had caused the sudden check.

A maddened cow bore down on Kentuck. The gallant horse straightened in
a jump, but dragging the calf pulled him in a circle, and in another
moment he was running round and round the howling, kicking pivot. Then
ensued a terrible race, with horse and bison describing a twenty-foot
circle. Bang! Bang! The hunter fired two shots, and heard the spats of
the bullets. But they only augmented the frenzy of the beast. Faster
Kentuck flew, snorting in terror; closer drew the dusty, bouncing
pursuer; the calf spun like a top; the lasso strung tighter than wire.
Jones strained to loosen the fastening, but in vain. He swore at his
carelessness in dropping his knife by the last calf he had tied. He
thought of shooting the rope, yet dared not risk the shot. A hollow
sound turned him again, with the Colts leveled. Bang! Dust flew from
the ground beyond the bison.

The two charges left in the gun were all that stood between him and
eternity. With a desperate display of strength Jones threw his weight
in a backward pull, and hauled Kentuck up. Then he leaned far back in
the saddle, and shoved the Colts out beyond the horse's flank. Down
went the broad head, with its black, glistening horns. Bang! She slid
forward with a crash, plowing the ground with hoofs and nose—spouted
blood, uttered a hoarse cry, kicked and died.

Kentuck, for once completely terrorized, reared and plunged from the
cow, dragging the calf. Stern command and iron arm forced him to a
standstill. The calf, nearly strangled, recovered when the noose was
slipped, and moaned a feeble protest against life and captivity. The
remainder of Jones's lasso went to bind number six, and one of his
socks went to serve as reminder to the persistent wolves.

"Six! On! On! Kentuck! On!" Weakening, but unconscious of it, with
bloody hands and feet, without lasso, and with only one charge in his
revolver, hatless, coatless, vestless, bootless, the wild hunter urged
on the noble horse. The herd had gained miles in the interval of the
fight. Game to the backbone, Kentuck lengthened out to overhaul it, and
slowly the rolling gap lessened and lessened. A long hour thumped away,
with the rumble growing nearer.

Once again the lagging calves dotted the grassy plain before the
hunter. He dashed beside a burly calf, grasped its tail, stopped his
horse, and jumped. The calf went down with him, and did not come up.
The knotted, blood-stained hands, like claws of steel, bound the hind
legs close and fast with a leathern belt, and left between them a torn
and bloody sock.

"Seven! On! Old Faithfull! We MUST have another! the last! This is your
day."

The blood that flecked the hunter was not all his own.

The sun slanted westwardly toward the purpling horizon; the grassy
plain gleamed like a ruffled sea of glass; the gray wolves loped on.

When next the hunter came within sight of the herd, over a wavy ridge,
changes in its shape and movement met his gaze. The calves were almost
done; they could run no more; their mothers faced the south, and
trotted slowly to and fro; the bulls were grunting, herding, piling
close. It looked as if the herd meant to stand and fight.

This mattered little to the hunter who had captured seven calves since
dawn. The first limping calf he reached tried to elude the grasping
hand and failed. Kentuck had been trained to wheel to the right or
left, in whichever way his rider leaned; and as Jones bent over and
caught an upraised tail, the horse turned to strike the calf with both
front hoofs. The calf rolled; the horse plunged down; the rider sped
beyond to the dust. Though the calf was tired, he still could bellow,
and he filled the air with robust bawls.

Jones all at once saw twenty or more buffalo dash in at him with fast,
twinkling, short legs. With the thought of it, he was in the air to the
saddle. As the black, round mounds charged from every direction,
Kentuck let out with all there was left in him. He leaped and whirled,
pitched and swerved, in a roaring, clashing, dusty melee. Beating hoofs
threw the turf, flying tails whipped the air, and everywhere were
dusky, sharp-pointed heads, tossing low. Kentuck squeezed out
unscathed. The mob of bison, bristling, turned to lumber after the main
herd. Jones seized his opportunity and rode after them, yelling with
all his might. He drove them so hard that soon the little fellows
lagged paces behind. Only one or two old cows straggled with the calves.

Then wheeling Kentuck, he cut between the herd and a calf, and rode it
down. Bewildered, the tously little bull bellowed in great affright.
The hunter seized the stiff tail, and calling to his horse, leaped off.
But his strength was far spent and the buffalo, larger than his
fellows, threshed about and jerked in terror. Jones threw it again and
again. But it struggled up, never once ceasing its loud demands for
help. Finally the hunter tripped it up and fell upon it with his knees.

Above the rumble of retreating hoofs, Jones heard the familiar short,
quick, jarring pound on the turf. Kentuck neighed his alarm and raced
to the right. Bearing down on the hunter, hurtling through the air, was
a giant furry mass, instinct with fierce life and power—a buffalo cow
robbed of her young.

With his senses almost numb, barely able to pull and raise the Colt,
the plainsman willed to live, and to keep his captive. His leveled arm
wavered like a leaf in a storm.

Bang! Fire, smoke, a shock, a jarring crash, and silence!

The calf stirred beneath him. He put out a hand to touch a warm, furry
coat. The mother had fallen beside him. Lifting a heavy hoof, he laid
it over the neck of the calf to serve as additional weight. He lay
still and listened. The rumble of the herd died away in the distance.

The evening waned. Still the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the
calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides;
they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses
through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star
shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the
first dark shadow of night.

Suddenly the hunter laid his ear to the ground, and listened. Faint
beats, like throbs of a pulsing heart, shuddered from the soft turf.
Stronger they grew, till the hunter raised his head. Dark forms
approached; voices broke the silence; the creaking of a wagon scared
away the wolves.

"This way!" shouted the hunter weakly.

"Ha! here he is. Hurt?" cried Rude, vaulting the wheel.

"Tie up this calf. How many—did you find?" The voice grew fainter.

"Seven—alive, and in good shape, and all your clothes."

But the last words fell on unconscious ears.



CHAPTER 4.

THE TRAIL

"Frank, what'll we do about horses?" asked Jones. "Jim'll want the bay,
and of course you'll want to ride Spot. The rest of our nags will only
do to pack the outfit."

"I've been thinkin'," replied the foreman. "You sure will need good
mounts. Now it happens that a friend of mine is just at this time at
House Rock Valley, an outlyin' post of one of the big Utah ranches. He
is gettin' in the horses off the range, an' he has some crackin' good
ones. Let's ooze over there—it's only thirty miles—an' get some
horses from him."

We were all eager to act upon Frank's suggestion. So plans were made
for three of us to ride over and select our mounts. Frank and Jim would
follow with the pack train, and if all went well, on the following
evening we would camp under the shadow of Buckskin.

Early next morning we were on our way. I tried to find a soft place on
Old Baldy, one of Frank's pack horses. He was a horse that would not
have raised up at the trumpet of doom. Nothing under the sun, Frank
said, bothered Old Baldy but the operation of shoeing. We made the
distance to the outpost by noon, and found Frank's friend a genial and
obliging cowboy, who said we could have all the horses we wanted.

While Jones and Wallace strutted round the big corral, which was full
of vicious, dusty, shaggy horses and mustangs, I sat high on the fence.
I heard them talking about points and girth and stride, and a lot of
terms that I could not understand. Wallace selected a heavy sorrel, and
Jones a big bay; very like Jim's. I had observed, way over in the
corner of the corral, a bunch of cayuses, and among them a clean-limbed
black horse. Edging round on the fence I got a closer view, and then
cried out that I had found my horse. I jumped down and caught him, much
to my surprise, for the other horses were wild, and had kicked
viciously. The black was beautifully built, wide-chested and powerful,
but not heavy. His coat glistened like sheeny black satin, and he had a
white face and white feet and a long mane.

"I don't know about giving you Satan—that's his name," said the
cowboy. "The foreman rides him often. He's the fastest, the best
climber, and the best dispositioned horse on the range.

"But I guess I can let you have him," he continued, when he saw my
disappointed face.

"By George!" exclaimed Jones. "You've got it on us this time."

"Would you like to trade?" asked Wallace, as his sorrel tried to bite
him. "That black looks sort of fierce."

I led my prize out of the corral, up to the little cabin nearby, where
I tied him, and proceeded to get acquainted after a fashion of my own.
Though not versed in horse-lore, I knew that half the battle was to win
his confidence. I smoothed his silky coat, and patted him, and then
surreptitiously slipped a lump of sugar from my pocket. This sugar,
which I had purloined in Flagstaff, and carried all the way across the
desert, was somewhat disreputably soiled, and Satan sniffed at it
disdainfully. Evidently he had never smelled or tasted sugar. I pressed
it into his mouth. He munched it, and then looked me over with some
interest. I handed him another lump. He took it and rubbed his nose
against me. Satan was mine!

Frank and Jim came along early in the afternoon. What with packing,
changing saddles and shoeing the horses, we were all busy. Old Baldy
would not be shod, so we let him off till a more opportune time. By
four o'clock we were riding toward the slopes of Buckskin, now only a
few miles away, standing up higher and darker.

"What's that for?" inquired Wallace, pointing to a long, rusty,
wire-wrapped, double-barreled blunderbuss of a shotgun, stuck in the
holster of Jones's saddle.

The Colonel, who had been having a fine time with the impatient and
curious hounds, did not vouchsafe any information on that score. But
very shortly we were destined to learn the use of this incongruous
firearm. I was riding in advance of Wallace, and a little behind Jones.
The dogs—excepting Jude, who had been kicked and lamed—were ranging
along before their master. Suddenly, right before me, I saw an immense
jack-rabbit; and just then Moze and Don caught sight of it. In fact,
Moze bumped his blunt nose into the rabbit. When it leaped into scared
action, Moze yelped, and Don followed suit. Then they were after it in
wild, clamoring pursuit. Jones let out the stentorian blast, now
becoming familiar, and spurred after them. He reached over, pulled the
shotgun out of the holster and fired both barrels at the jumping dogs.

I expressed my amazement in strong language, and Wallace whistled.

Don came sneaking back with his tail between his legs, and Moze, who
had cowered as if stung, circled round ahead of us. Jones finally
succeeded in getting him back.

"Come in hyah! You measly rabbit dogs! What do you mean chasing off
that way? We're after lions. Lions! understand?"

Don looked thoroughly convinced of his error, but Moze, being more
thick-headed, appeared mystified rather than hurt or frightened.

"What size shot do you use?" I asked.

"Number ten. They don't hurt much at seventy five yards," replied our
leader. "I use them as sort of a long arm. You see, the dogs must be
made to know what we're after. Ordinary means would never do in a case
like this. My idea is to break them of coyotes, wolves and deer, and
when we cross a lion trail, let them go. I'll teach them sooner than
you'd think. Only we must get where we can see what they're trailing.
Then I can tell whether to call then back or not."

The sun was gilding the rim of the desert rampart when we began the
ascent of the foothills of Buckskin. A steep trail wound zigzag up the
mountain We led our horses, as it was a long, hard climb. From time to
time, as I stopped to catch my breath I gazed away across the growing
void to the gorgeous Pink Cliffs, far above and beyond the red wall
which had seemed so high, and then out toward the desert. The irregular
ragged crack in the plain, apparently only a thread of broken ground,
was the Grand Cañon. How unutterably remote, wild, grand was that
world of red and brown, of purple pall, of vague outline!

Two thousand feet, probably, we mounted to what Frank called Little
Buckskin. In the west a copper glow, ridged with lead-colored clouds,
marked where the sun had set. The air was very thin and icy cold. At
the first clump of pinyon pines, we made dry camp. When I sat down it
was as if I had been anchored. Frank solicitously remarked that I
looked "sort of beat." Jim built a roaring fire and began getting
supper. A snow squall came on the rushing wind. The air grew colder,
and though I hugged the fire, I could not get warm. When I had
satisfied my hunger, I rolled out my sleeping-bag and crept into it. I
stretched my aching limbs and did not move again. Once I awoke,
drowsily feeling the warmth of the fire, and I heard Frank say: "He's
asleep, dead to the world!"

"He's all in," said Jones. "Riding's what did it. You know how a horse
tears a man to pieces."

"Will he be able to stand it?" asked Frank, with as much solicitude as
if he were my brother. "When you get out after anythin'—well, you're
hell. An' think of the country we're goin' into. I know you've never
seen the breaks of the Siwash, but I have, an' it's the worst an'
roughest country I ever saw. Breaks after breaks, like the ridges on a
washboard, headin' on the south slope of Buckskin, an' runnin' down,
side by side, miles an' miles, deeper an' deeper, till they run into
that awful hole. It will be a killin' trip on men, horses an' dogs.
Now, Mr. Wallace, he's been campin' an' roughin' with the Navajos for
months; he's in some kind of shape, but—"

Frank concluded his remark with a doubtful pause.

"I'm some worried, too," replied Jones. "But he would come. He stood
the desert well enough; even the Mormons said that."

In the ensuing silence the fire sputtered, the glare fitfully merged
into dark shadows under the weird pinyons, and the wind moaned through
the short branches.

"Wal," drawled a slow, soft voice, "shore I reckon you're hollerin' too
soon. Frank's measly trick puttin' him on Spot showed me. He rode out
on Spot, an' he rode in on Spot. Shore he'll stay."

It was not all the warmth of the blankets that glowed over me then. The
voices died away dreamily, and my eyelids dropped sleepily tight. Late
in the night I sat up suddenly, roused by some unusual disturbance. The
fire was dead; the wind swept with a rush through the pinyons. From the
black darkness came the staccato chorus of coyotes. Don barked his
displeasure; Sounder made the welkin ring, and old Moze growled low and
deep, grumbling like muttered thunder. Then all was quiet, and I slept.

Dawn, rosy red, confronted me when I opened my eyes. Breakfast was
ready; Frank was packing Old Baldy; Jones talked to his horse as he
saddled him; Wallace came stooping his giant figure under the pinyons;
the dogs, eager and soft-eyed, sat around Jim and begged. The sun
peeped over the Pink Cliffs; the desert still lay asleep, tranced in a
purple and golden-streaked mist.

"Come, come!" said Jones, in his big voice. "We're slow; here's the
sun."

"Easy, easy," replied Frank, "we've all the time there is."

When Frank threw the saddle over Satan I interrupted him and said I
would care for my horse henceforward. Soon we were under way, the
horses fresh, the dogs scenting the keen, cold air.

The trail rolled over the ridges of pinyon and scrubby pine.
Occasionally we could see the black, ragged crest of Buckskin above us.
From one of these ridges I took my last long look back at the desert,
and engraved on my mind a picture of the red wall, and the many-hued
ocean of sand. The trail, narrow and indistinct, mounted the last
slow-rising slope; the pinyons failed, and the scrubby pines became
abundant. At length we reached the top, and entered the great arched
aisles of Buckskin Forest. The ground was flat as a table. Magnificent
pine trees, far apart, with branches high and spreading, gave the eye
glad welcome. Some of these monarchs were eight feet thick at the base
and two hundred feet high. Here and there one lay, gaunt and prostrate,
a victim of the wind. The smell of pitch pine was sweetly overpowering.

"When I went through here two weeks ago, the snow was a foot deep, an'
I bogged in places," said Frank. "The sun has been oozin' round here
some. I'm afraid Jones won't find any snow on this end of Buckskin."

Thirty miles of winding trail, brown and springy from its thick mat of
pine needles, shaded always by the massive, seamy-barked trees, took us
over the extremity of Buckskin. Then we faced down into the head of a
ravine that ever grew deeper, stonier and rougher. I shifted from side
to side, from leg to leg in my saddle, dismounted and hobbled before
Satan, mounted again, and rode on. Jones called the dogs and complained
to them of the lack of snow. Wallace sat his horse comfortably, taking
long pulls at his pipe and long gazes at the shaggy sides of the
ravine. Frank, energetic and tireless, kept the pack-horses in the
trail. Jim jogged on silently. And so we rode down to Oak Spring.

The spring was pleasantly situated in a grove of oaks and Pinyons,
under the shadow of three cliffs. Three ravines opened here into an
oval valley. A rude cabin of rough-hewn logs stood near the spring.

"Get down, get down," sang out Frank. "We'll hang up here. Beyond Oak
is No-Man's-Land. We take our chances on water after we leave here."

When we had unsaddled, unpacked, and got a fire roaring on the wide
stone hearth of the cabin, it was once again night.

"Boys," said Jones after supper, "we're now on the edge of the lion
country. Frank saw lion sign in here only two weeks ago; and though the
snow is gone, we stand a show of finding tracks in the sand and dust.
To-morrow morning, before the sun gets a chance at the bottom of these
ravines, we'll be up and doing. We'll each take a dog and search in
different directions. Keep the dog in leash, and when he opens up,
examine the ground carefully for tracks. If a dog opens on any track
that you are sure isn't lion's, punish him. And when a lion-track is
found, hold the dog in, wait and signal. We'll use a signal I have
tried and found far-reaching and easy to yell. Waa-hoo! That's it. Once
yelled it means come. Twice means comes quickly. Three times means
come—danger!"

In one corner of the cabin was a platform of poles, covered with straw.
I threw the sleeping-bag on this, and was soon stretched out.
Misgivings as to my strength worried me before I closed my eyes. Once
on my back, I felt I could not rise; my chest was sore; my cough deep
and rasping. It seemed I had scarcely closed my eyes when Jones's
impatient voice recalled me from sweet oblivion.

"Frank, Frank, it's daylight. Jim—boys!" he called.

I tumbled out in a gray, wan twilight. It was cold enough to make the
fire acceptable, but nothing like the morning before on Buckskin.

"Come to the festal board," drawled Jim, almost before I had my boots
laced.

"Jones," said Frank, "Jim an' I'll ooze round here to-day. There's lots
to do, an' we want to have things hitched right before we strike for
the Siwash. We've got to shoe Old Baldy, an' if we can't get him
locoed, it'll take all of us to do it."

The light was still gray when Jones led off with Don, Wallace with
Sounder and I with Moze. Jones directed us to separate, follow the dry
stream beds in the ravines, and remember his instructions given the
night before.

The ravine to the right, which I entered, was choked with huge stones
fallen from the cliff above, and pinyons growing thick; and I wondered
apprehensively how a man could evade a wild animal in such a place,
much less chase it. Old Moze pulled on his chain and sniffed at coyote
and deer tracks. And every time he evinced interest in such, I cut him
with a switch, which, to tell the truth, he did not notice. I thought I
heard a shout, and holding Moze tight, I waited and listened.

"Waa-hoo—waa-hoo!" floated on the air, rather deadened as if it had
come from round the triangular cliff that faced into the valley. Urging
and dragging Moze, I ran down the ravine as fast as I could, and soon
encountered Wallace coming from the middle ravine. "Jones," he said
excitedly,  "this way—there's the signal again." We dashed in haste
for the mouth of the third ravine, and came suddenly upon Jones,
kneeling under a pinyon tree. "Boys, look!" he exclaimed, as he pointed
to the ground. There, clearly defined in the dust, was a cat track as
big as my spread hand, and the mere sight of it sent a chill up my
spine. "There's a lion track for you; made by a female, a two-year-old;
but can't say if she passed here last night. Don won't take the trail.
Try Moze."

I led Moze to the big, round imprint, and put his nose down into it.
The old hound sniffed and sniffed, then lost interest.

"Cold!" ejaculated Jones. "No go. Try Sounder. Come, old boy, you've
the nose for it."

He urged the reluctant hound forward. Sounder needed not to be shown
the trail; he stuck his nose in it, and stood very quiet for a long
moment; then he quivered slightly, raised his nose and sought the next
track. Step by step he went slowly, doubtfully. All at once his tail
wagged stiffly.

"Look at that!" cried Jones in delight. "He's caught a scent when the
others couldn't. Hyah, Moze, get back. Keep Moze and Don back; give him
room."

Slowly Sounder paced up the ravine, as carefully as if he were
traveling on thin ice. He passed the dusty, open trail to a scaly
ground with little bits of grass, and he kept on.

We were electrified to hear him give vent to a deep bugle-blast note of
eagerness.

"By George, he's got it, boys!" exclaimed Jones, as he lifted the
stubborn, struggling hound off the trail. "I know that bay. It means a
lion passed here this morning. And we'll get him up as sure as you're
alive. Come, Sounder. Now for the horses."

As we ran pell-mell into the little glade, where Jim sat mending some
saddle trapping, Frank rode up the trail with the horses.

"Well, I heard Sounder," he said with his genial smile. "Somethin's
comin' off, eh? You'll have to ooze round some to keep up with that
hound."

I saddled Satan with fingers that trembled in excitement, and pushed my
little Remington automatic into the rifle holster.

"Boys, listen," said our leader. "We're off now in the beginning of a
hunt new to you. Remember no shooting, no blood-letting, except in
self-defense. Keep as close to me as you can. Listen for the dogs, and
when you fall behind or separate, yell out the signal cry. Don't forget
this. We're bound to lose each other. Look out for the spikes and
branches on the trees. If the dogs split, whoever follows the one that
trees the lion must wait there till the rest come up. Off now! Come,
Sounder; Moze, you rascal, hyah! Come, Don, come, Puppy, and take your
medicine."

Except Moze, the hounds were all trembling and running eagerly to and
fro. When Sounder was loosed, he led them in a bee-line to the trail,
with us cantering after. Sounder worked exactly as before, only he
followed the lion tracks a little farther up the ravine before he
bayed. He kept going faster and faster, occasionally letting out one
deep, short yelp. The other hounds did not give tongue, but eager,
excited, baffled, kept at his heels. The ravine was long, and the wash
at the bottom, up which the lion had proceeded, turned and twisted
round boulders large as houses, and led through dense growths of some
short, rough shrub. Now and then the lion tracks showed plainly in the
sand. For five miles or more Sounder led us up the ravine, which began
to contract and grow steep. The dry stream bed got to be full of
thickets of branchless saplings, about the poplar—tall, straight, size
of a man's arm, and growing so close we had to press them aside to let
our horses through.

Presently Sounder slowed up and appeared at fault. We found him
puzzling over an open, grassy patch, and after nosing it for a little
while, he began skirting the edge.

"Cute dog!" declared Jones. "That Sounder will make a lion chaser. Our
game has gone up here somewhere."

Sure enough, Sounder directly gave tongue from the side of the ravine.
It was climb for us now. Broken shale, rocks of all dimensions, pinyons
down and pinyons up made ascending no easy problem. We had to dismount
and lead the horses, thus losing ground. Jones forged ahead and reached
the top of the ravine first. When Wallace and I got up, breathing
heavily, Jones and the hounds were out of sight. But Sounder kept
voicing his clear call, giving us our direction. Off we flew, over
ground that was still rough, but enjoyable going compared to the ravine
slopes. The ridge was sparsely covered with cedar and pinyon, through
which, far ahead, we pretty soon spied Jones. Wallace signaled, and our
leader answered twice. We caught up with him on the brink of another
ravine deeper and craggier than the first, full of dead, gnarled pinyon
and splintered rocks.

"This gulch is the largest of the three that head in at Oak Spring,"
said Jones. "Boys, don't forget your direction. Always keep a feeling
where camp is, always sense it every time you turn. The dogs have gone
down. That lion is in here somewhere. Maybe he lives down in the high
cliffs near the spring and came up here last night for a kill he's
buried somewhere. Lions never travel far. Hark! Hark! There's Sounder
and the rest of them! They've got the scent; they've all got it! Down,
boys, down, and ride!"

With that he crashed into the cedar in a way that showed me how
impervious he was to slashing branches, sharp as thorns, and steep
descent and peril.

Wallace's big sorrel plunged after him and the rolling stones cracked.
Suffering as I was by this time, with cramp in my legs, and torturing
pain, I had to choose between holding my horse in or falling off; so I
chose the former and accordingly got behind.

Dead cedar and pinyon trees lay everywhere, with their contorted limbs
reaching out like the arms of a devil-fish. Stones blocked every
opening. Making the bottom of the ravine after what seemed an
interminable time, I found the tracks of Jones and Wallace. A long
"Waa-hoo!" drew me on; then the mellow bay of a hound floated up the
ravine. Satan made up time in the sandy stream bed, but kept me busily
dodging overhanging branches. I became aware, after a succession of
efforts to keep from being strung on pinyons, that the sand before me
was clean and trackless. Hauling Satan up sharply, I waited
irresolutely and listened. Then from high up the ravine side wafted
down a medley of yelps and barks.

"Waa-hoo, waa-hoo!" ringing down the slope, pealed against the cliff
behind me, and sent the wild echoes flying. Satan, of his own accord,
headed up the incline. Surprised at this, I gave him free rein. How he
did climb! Not long did it take me to discover that he picked out
easier going than I had. Once I saw Jones crossing a ledge far above
me, and I yelled our signal cry. The answer returned clear and sharp;
then its echo cracked under the hollow cliff, and crossing and
recrossing the ravine, it died at last far away, like the muffled peal
of a bell-buoy. Again I heard the blended yelping of the hounds, and
closer at hand. I saw a long, low cliff above, and decided that the
hounds were running at the base of it. Another chorus of yelps,
quicker, wilder than the others, drew a yell from me. Instinctively I
knew the dogs had jumped game of some kind. Satan knew it as well as I,
for he quickened his pace and sent the stones clattering behind him.

I gained the base of the yellow cliff, but found no tracks in the dust
of ages that had crumbled in its shadow, nor did I hear the dogs.
Considering how close they had seemed, this was strange. I halted and
listened. Silence reigned supreme. The ragged cracks in the cliff walls
could have harbored many a watching lion, and I cast an apprehensive
glance into their dark confines. Then I turned my horse to get round
the cliff and over the ridge. When I again stopped, all I could hear
was the thumping of my heart and the labored panting of Satan. I came
to a break in the cliff, a steep place of weathered rock, and I put
Satan to it. He went up with a will. From the narrow saddle of the
ridge-crest I tried to take my bearings. Below me slanted the green of
pinyon, with the bleached treetops standing like spears, and uprising
yellow stones. Fancying I heard a gunshot, I leaned a straining ear
against the soft breeze. The proof came presently in the unmistakable
report of Jones's blunderbuss. It was repeated almost instantly, giving
reality to the direction, which was down the slope of what I concluded
must be the third ravine. Wondering what was the meaning of the shots,
and chagrined because I was out of the race, but calmer in mind, I let
Satan stand.

Hardly a moment elapsed before a sharp bark tingled in my ears. It
belonged to old Moze. Soon I distinguished a rattling of stones and the
sharp, metallic clicks of hoofs striking rocks. Then into a space below
me loped a beautiful deer, so large that at first I took it for an elk.
Another sharp bark, nearer this time, told the tale of Moze's
dereliction. In a few moments he came in sight, running with his tongue
out and his head high.

"Hyah, you old gladiator! hyah! hyah!" I yelled and yelled again. Moze
passed over the saddle on the trail of the deer, and his short bark
floated back to remind me how far he was from a lion dog.

Then I divined the meaning of the shotgun reports. The hounds had
crossed a fresher trail than that of the lion, and our leader had
discovered it. Despite a keen appreciation of Jones's task, I gave way
to amusement, and repeated Wallace's paradoxical formula: "Pet the
lions and shoot the hounds."

So I headed down the ravine, looking for a blunt, bold crag, which I
had descried from camp. I found it before long, and profiting by past
failures to judge of distance, gave my first impression a great
stretch, and then decided that I was more than two miles from Oak.

Long after two miles had been covered, and I had begun to associate
Jim's biscuits with a certain soft seat near a ruddy fire, I was
apparently still the same distance from my landmark crag. Suddenly a
slight noise brought me to a halt. I listened intently. Only an
indistinct rattling of small rocks disturbed the impressive stillness.
It might have been the weathering that goes on constantly, and it might
have been an animal. I inclined to the former idea till I saw Satan's
ears go up. Jones had told me to watch the ears of my horse, and short
as had been my acquaintance with Satan, I had learned that he always
discovered things more quickly than I. So I waited patiently.

From time to time a rattling roll of pebbles, almost musical, caught my
ear. It came from the base of the wall of yellow cliff that barred the
summit of all those ridges. Satan threw up his head and nosed the
breeze. The delicate, almost stealthy sounds, the action of my horse,
the waiting drove my heart to extra work. The breeze quickened and
fanned my cheek, and borne upon it came the faint and far-away bay of a
hound. It came again and again, each time nearer. Then on a stronger
puff of wind rang the clear, deep, mellow call that had given Sounder
his beautiful name. Never it seemed had I heard music so
blood-stirring. Sounder was on the trail of something, and he had it
headed my way. Satan heard, shot up his long ears, and tried to go
ahead; but I restrained and soothed him into quiet.

Long moments I sat there, with the poignant consciousness of the
wildness of the scene, of the significant rattling of the stones and of
the bell-tongued hound baying incessantly, sending warm joy through my
veins, the absorption in sensations new, yielding only to the hunting
instinct when Satan snorted and quivered. Again the deep-toned bay rang
into the silence with its stirring thrill of life. And a sharp rattling
of stones just above brought another snort from Satan.

Across an open space in the pinyons a gray form flashed. I leaped off
Satan and knelt to get a better view under the trees. I soon made out
another deer passing along the base of the cliff. Mounting again, I
rode up to the cliff to wait for Sounder.

A long time I had to wait for the hound. It proved that the atmosphere
was as deceiving in regard to sound as to sight. Finally Sounder came
running along the wall. I got off to intercept him. The crazy
fellow—he had never responded to my overtures of friendship—uttered
short, sharp yelps of delight, and actually leaped into my arms. But I
could not hold him. He darted upon the trail again and paid no heed to
my angry shouts. With a resolve to overhaul him, I jumped on Satan and
whirled after the hound.

The black stretched out with such a stride that I was at pains to keep
my seat. I dodged the jutting rocks and projecting snags; felt stinging
branches in my face and the rush of sweet, dry wind. Under the
crumbling walls, over slopes of weathered stone and droppings of
shelving rock, round protruding noses of cliff, over and under pinyons
Satan thundered. He came out on the top of the ridge, at the narrow
back I had called a saddle. Here I caught a glimpse of Sounder far
below, going down into the ravine from which I had ascended some time
before. I called to him, but I might as well have called to the wind.

Weary to the point of exhaustion, I once more turned Satan toward camp.
I lay forward on his neck and let him have his will. Far down the
ravine I awoke to strange sounds, and soon recognized the cracking of
iron-shod hoofs against stone; then voices. Turning an abrupt bend in
the sandy wash, I ran into Jones and Wallace.

"Fall in! Line up in the sad procession!" said Jones. "Tige and the pup
are faithful. The rest of the dogs are somewhere between the Grand
Cañon and the Utah desert."

I related my adventures, and tried to spare Moze and Sounder as much as
conscience would permit.

"Hard luck!" commented Jones. "Just as the hounds jumped the
cougar—Oh! they bounced him out of the rocks all right—don't you
remember, just under that cliff wall where you and Wallace came up to
me? Well, just as they jumped him, they ran right into fresh deer
tracks. I saw one of the deer. Now that's too much for any hounds,
except those trained for lions. I shot at Moze twice, but couldn't turn
him. He has to be hurt, they've all got to be hurt to make them
understand."

Wallace told of a wild ride somewhere in Jones's wake, and of sundry
knocks and bruises he had sustained, of pieces of corduroy he had left
decorating the cedars and of a most humiliating event, where a gaunt
and bare pinyon snag had penetrated under his belt and lifted him, mad
and kicking, off his horse.

"These Western nags will hang you on a line every chance they get,"
declared Jones, "and don't you overlook that. Well, there's the cabin.
We'd better stay here a few days or a week and break in the dogs and
horses, for this day's work was apple pie to what we'll get in the
Siwash."

I groaned inwardly, and was remorselessly glad to see Wallace fall off
his horse and walk on one leg to the cabin. When I got my saddle off
Satan, had given him a drink and hobbled him, I crept into the cabin
and dropped like a log. I felt as if every bone in my body was broken
and my flesh was raw. I got gleeful gratification from Wallace's
complaints, and Jones's remark that he had a stitch in his back. So
ended the first chase after cougars.



CHAPTER 5.

OAK SPRING

Moze and Don and Sounder straggled into camp next morning, hungry,
footsore and scarred; and as they limped in, Jones met them with
characteristic speech: "Well, you decided to come in when you got
hungry and tired? Never thought of how you fooled me, did you? Now, the
first thing you get is a good licking."

He tied them in a little log pen near the cabin and whipped them
soundly. And the next few days, while Wallace and I rested, he took
them out separately and deliberately ran them over coyote and deer
trails. Sometimes we heard his stentorian yell as a forerunner to the
blast from his old shotgun. Then again we heard the shots unheralded by
the yell. Wallace and I waxed warm under the collar over this peculiar
method of training dogs, and each of us made dire threats. But in
justice to their implacable trainer, the dogs never appeared to be
hurt; never a spot of blood flecked their glossy coats, nor did they
ever come home limping. Sounder grew wise, and Don gave up, but Moze
appeared not to change.

"All hands ready to rustle," sang out Frank one morning. "Old Baldy's
got to be shod."

This brought us all, except Jones, out of the cabin, to see the object
of Frank's anxiety tied to a nearby oak. At first I failed to recognize
Old Baldy. Vanished was the slow, sleepy, apathetic manner that had
characterized him; his ears lay back on his head; fire flashed from his
eyes. When Frank threw down a kit-bag, which emitted a metallic
clanking, Old Baldy sat back on his haunches, planted his forefeet deep
in the ground and plainly as a horse could speak, said "No!"

"Sometimes he's bad, and sometimes worse," growled Frank.

"Shore he's plumb bad this mornin'," replied Jim.

Frank got the three of us to hold Baldy's head and pull him up, then he
ventured to lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened out
his leg and sent Frank sprawling into the dirt. Twice again Frank
patiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then he
lifted a forefoot. Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit through
Wallace's glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I let
go his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree.
There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantly
held on to Baldy's head, and a thrashing of scrub pinyon, where Baldy
reached out vigorously with his hind feet. But for Jim, he would have
escaped.

"What's all the row?" called Jones from the cabin. Then from the door,
taking in the situation, he yelled: "Hold on, Jim! Pull down on the
ornery old cayuse!"

He leaped into action with a lasso in each hand, one whirling round his
head. The slender rope straightened with a whiz and whipped round
Baldy's legs as he kicked viciously. Jones pulled it tight, then
fastened it with nimble fingers to the tree.

"Let go! let go! Jim!" he yelled, whirling the other lasso. The loop
flashed and fell over Baldy's head and tightened round his neck. Jones
threw all the weight of his burly form on the lariat, and Baldy crashed
to the ground, rolled, tussled, screamed, and then lay on his back,
kicking the air with three free legs. "Hold this," ordered Jones,
giving the tight rope to Frank. Whereupon he grabbed my lasso from the
saddle, roped Baldy's two forefeet, and pulled him down on his side.
This lasso he fastened to a scrub cedar.

"He's chokin'!" said Frank.

"Likely he is," replied Jones shortly. "It'll do him good." But with
his big hands he drew the coil loose and slipped it down over Baldy's
nose, where he tightened it again.

"Now, go ahead," he said, taking the rope from Frank.

It had all been done in a twinkling. Baldy lay there groaning and
helpless, and when Frank once again took hold of the wicked leg, he was
almost passive. When the shoeing operation had been neatly and quickly
attended to and Baldy released from his uncomfortable position he
struggled to his feet with heavy breaths, shook himself, and looked at
his master.

"How'd you like being hog-tied?" queried his conqueror, rubbing Baldy's
nose. "Now, after this you'll have some manners."

Old Baldy seemed to understand, for he looked sheepish, and lapsed once
more into his listless, lazy unconcern.

"Where's Jim's old cayuse, the pack-horse?" asked our leader.

"Lost. Couldn't find him this morning, an' had a deuce of a time
findin' the rest of the bunch. Old Baldy was cute. He hid in a bunch of
pinyons an' stood quiet so his bell wouldn't ring. I had to trail him."

"Do the horses stray far when they are hobbled?" inquired Wallace.

"If they keep jumpin' all night they can cover some territory. We're
now on the edge of the wild horse country, and our nags know this as
well as we. They smell the mustangs, an' would break their necks to get
away. Satan and the sorrel were ten miles from camp when I found them
this mornin'. An' Jim's cayuse went farther, an' we never will get him.
He'll wear his hobbles out, then away with the wild horses. Once with
them, he'll never be caught again."

On the sixth day of our stay at Oak we had visitors, whom Frank
introduced as the Stewart brothers and Lawson, wild-horse wranglers.
They were still, dark men, whose facial expression seldom varied; tall
and lithe and wiry as the mustangs they rode. The Stewarts were on
their way to Kanab, Utah, to arrange for the sale of a drove of horses
they had captured and corraled in a narrow cañon back in the Siwash.
Lawson said he was at our service, and was promptly hired to look after
our horses.

"Any cougar signs back in the breaks?" asked Jones.

"Wal, there's a cougar on every deer trail," replied the elder Stewart,
"An' two for every pinto in the breaks. Old Tom himself downed fifteen
colts fer us this spring."

"Fifteen colts! That's wholesale murder. Why don't you kill the
butcher?"

"We've tried more'n onct. It's a turrible busted up country, them
brakes. No man knows it, an' the cougars do. Old Tom ranges all the
ridges and brakes, even up on the slopes of Buckskin; but he lives down
there in them holes, an' Lord knows, no dog I ever seen could follow
him. We tracked him in the snow, an' had dogs after him, but none could
stay with him, except two as never cum back. But we've nothin' agin Old
Tom like Jeff Clarke, a hoss rustler, who has a string of pintos
corraled north of us. Clarke swears he ain't raised a colt in two
years."

"We'll put that old cougar up a tree," exclaimed Jones.

"If you kill him we'll make you all a present of a mustang, an' Clarke,
he'll give you two each," replied Stewart. "We'd be gettin' rid of him
cheap."

"How many wild horses on the mountain now?"

"Hard to tell. Two or three thousand, mebbe. There's almost no ketchin'
them, an' they regrowin' all the time We ain't had no luck this spring.
The bunch in corral we got last year."

"Seen anythin' of the White Mustang?" inquired Frank. "Ever get a rope
near him?"

"No nearer'n we hev fer six years back. He can't be ketched. We seen
him an' his band of blacks a few days ago, headin' fer a water-hole
down where Nail Cañon runs into Kanab Cañon. He's so cunnin' he'll
never water at any of our trap corrals. An' we believe he can go
without water fer two weeks, unless mebbe he hes a secret hole we've
never trailed him to."

"Would we have any chance to see this White Mustang and his band?"
questioned Jones.

"See him? Why, thet'd be easy. Go down Snake Gulch, camp at Singin'
Cliffs, go over into Nail Cañon, an' wait. Then send some one slippin'
down to the water-hole at Kanab Cañon, an' when the band cums in to
drink—which I reckon will be in a few days now—hev them drive the
mustangs up. Only be sure to hev them get ahead of the White Mustang,
so he'll hev only one way to cum, fer he sure is knowin'. He never
makes a mistake. Mebbe you'll get to see him cum by like a white
streak. Why, I've heerd thet mustang's hoofs ring like bells on the
rocks a mile away. His hoofs are harder'n any iron shoe as was ever
made. But even if you don't get to see him, Snake Gulch is worth
seein'."

I learned later from Stewart that the White Mustang was a beautiful
stallion of the wildest strain of mustang blue blood. He had roamed the
long reaches between the Grand Cañon and Buckskin toward its southern
slope for years; he had been the most sought-for horse by all the
wranglers, and had become so shy and experienced that nothing but a
glimpse was ever obtained of him. A singular fact was that he never
attached any of his own species to his band, unless they were coal
black. He had been known to fight and kill other stallions, but he kept
out of the well-wooded and watered country frequented by other bands,
and ranged the brakes of the Siwash as far as he could range. The usual
method, indeed the only successful way to capture wild horses, was to
build corrals round the waterholes. The wranglers lay out night after
night watching. When the mustangs came to drink—which was always after
dark—the gates would be closed on them. But the trick had never even
been tried on the White Mustang, for the simple reason that he never
approached one of these traps.

"Boys," said Jones, "seeing we need breaking in, we'll give the White
Mustang a little run."

This was most pleasurable news, for the wild horses fascinated me.
Besides, I saw from the expression on our leader's face that an
uncapturable mustang was an object of interest for him.

Wallace and I had employed the last few warm sunny afternoons in riding
up and down the valley, below Oak, where there was a fine, level
stretch. Here I wore out my soreness of muscle, and gradually overcame
my awkwardness in the saddle. Frank's remedy of maple sugar and red
pepper had rid me of my cold, and with the return of strength, and the
coming of confidence, full, joyous appreciation of wild environment and
life made me unspeakably happy. And I noticed that my companions were
in like condition of mind, though self-contained where I was exuberant.
Wallace galloped his sorrel and watched the crags; Jones talked more
kindly to the dogs; Jim baked biscuits indefatigably, and smoked in
contented silence; Frank said always: "We'll ooze along easy like, for
we've all the time there is." Which sentiment, whether from reiterated
suggestion, or increasing confidence in the practical cowboy, or charm
of its free import, gradually won us all.

"Boys," said Jones, as we sat round the campfire, "I see you're getting
in shape. Well, I've worn off the wire edge myself. And I have the
hounds coming fine. They mind me now, but they're mystified. For the
life of them they can't understand what I mean. I don't blame them.
Wait till, by good luck, we get a cougar in a tree. When Sounder and
Don see that, we've lion dogs, boys! we've lion dogs! But Moze is a
stubborn brute. In all my years of animal experience, I've never
discovered any other way to make animals obey than by instilling fear
and respect into their hearts. I've been fond of buffalo, horses and
dogs, but sentiment never ruled me. When animals must obey, they
must—that's all, and no mawkishness! But I never trusted a buffalo in
my life. If I had I wouldn't be here to-night. You all know how many
keepers of tame wild animals get killed. I could tell you dozens of
tragedies. And I've often thought, since I got back from New York, of
that woman I saw with her troop of African lions. I dream about those
lions, and see them leaping over her head. What a grand sight that was!
But the public is fooled. I read somewhere that she trained those lions
by love. I don't believe it. I saw her use a whip and a steel spear.
Moreover, I saw many things that escaped most observers—how she
entered the cage, how she maneuvered among them, how she kept a
compelling gaze on them! It was an admirable, a great piece of work.
Maybe she loves those huge yellow brutes, but her life was in danger
every moment while she was in that cage, and she knew it. Some day, one
of her pets likely the King of Beasts she pets the most will rise up
and kill her. That is as certain as death."



CHAPTER 6.

THE WHITE MUSTANG

For thirty miles down Nail Cañon we marked, in every dusty trail and
sandy wash, the small, oval, sharply defined tracks of the White
Mustang and his band.

The cañon had been well named. It was long, straight and square sided;
its bare walls glared steel-gray in the sun, smooth, glistening
surfaces that had been polished by wind and water. No weathered heaps
of shale, no crumbled piles of stone obstructed its level floor. And,
softly toning its drab austerity, here grew the white sage, waving in
the breeze, the Indian Paint Brush, with vivid vermilion flower, and
patches of fresh, green grass.

"The White King, as we Arizona wild-hoss wranglers calls this mustang,
is mighty pertickler about his feed, an' he ranged along here last
night, easy like, browsin' on this white sage," said Stewart. Inflected
by our intense interest in the famous mustang, and ruffled slightly by
Jones's manifest surprise and contempt that no one had captured him,
Stewart had volunteered to guide us. "Never knowed him to run in this
way fer water; fact is, never knowed Nail Cañon had a fork. It splits
down here, but you'd think it was only a crack in the wall. An' thet
cunnin' mustang hes been foolin' us fer years about this water-hole."

The fork of Nail Cañon, which Stewart had decided we were in, had been
accidentally discovered by Frank, who, in search of our horses one
morning had crossed a ridge, to come suddenly upon the blind, box-like
head of the cañon. Stewart knew the lay of the ridges and run of the
cañons as well as any man could know a country where, seemingly, every
rod was ridged and bisected, and he was of the opinion that we had
stumbled upon one of the White Mustang's secret passages, by which he
had so often eluded his pursuers.

Hard riding had been the order of the day, but still we covered ten
more miles by sundown. The cañon apparently closed in on us, so camp
was made for the night. The horses were staked out, and supper made
ready while the shadows were dropping; and when darkness settled thick
over us, we lay under our blankets.

Morning disclosed the White Mustang's secret passage. It was a narrow
cleft, splitting the cañon wall, rough, uneven, tortuous and choked
with fallen rocks—no more than a wonderful crack in solid stone,
opening into another cañon. Above us the sky seemed a winding, flowing
stream of blue. The walls were so close in places that a horse with
pack would have been blocked, and a rider had to pull his legs up over
the saddle. On the far side, the passage fell very suddenly for several
hundred feet to the floor of the other cañon. No hunter could have
seen it, or suspected it from that side.

"This is Grand Cañon country, an' nobody knows what he's goin' to
find," was Frank's comment.

"Now we're in Nail Cañon proper," said Stewart; "An' I know my
bearin's. I can climb out a mile below an' cut across to Kanab Cañon,
an' slip up into Nail Cañon agin, ahead of the mustangs, an' drive 'em
up. I can't miss 'em, fer Kanab Cañon is impassable down a little
ways. The mustangs will hev to run this way. So all you need do is go
below the break, where I climb out, an' wait. You're sure goin' to get
a look at the White Mustang. But wait. Don't expect him before noon,
an' after thet, any time till he comes. Mebbe it'll be a couple of
days, so keep a good watch."

Then taking our man Lawson, with blankets and a knapsack of food,
Stewart rode off down the cañon.

We were early on the march. As we proceeded the cañon lost its
regularity and smoothness; it became crooked as a rail fence, narrower,
higher, rugged and broken. Pinnacled cliffs, cracked and leaning,
menaced us from above. Mountains of ruined wall had tumbled into
fragments.

It seemed that Jones, after much survey of different corners, angles
and points in the cañon floor, chose his position with much greater
care than appeared necessary for the ultimate success of our
venture—which was simply to see the White Mustang, and if good fortune
attended us, to snap some photographs of this wild king of horses. It
flashed over me that, with his ruling passion strong within him, our
leader was laying some kind of trap for that mustang, was indeed bent
on his capture.

Wallace, Frank and Jim were stationed at a point below the break where
Stewart had evidently gone up and out. How a horse could have climbed
that streaky white slide was a mystery. Jones's instructions to the men
were to wait until the mustangs were close upon them, and then yell and
shout and show themselves.

He took me to a jutting corner of cliff, which hid us from the others,
and here he exercised still more care in scrutinizing the lay of the
ground. A wash from ten to fifteen feet wide, and as deep, ran through
the cañon in a somewhat meandering course. At the corner which
consumed so much of his attention, the dry ditch ran along the cliff
wall about fifty feet out; between it and the wall was good level
ground, on the other side huge rocks and shale made it hummocky,
practically impassable for a horse. It was plain the mustangs, on their
way up, would choose the inside of the wash; and here in the middle of
the passage, just round the jutting corner, Jones tied our horses to
good, strong bushes. His next act was significant. He threw out his
lasso and, dragging every crook out of it, carefully recoiled it, and
hung it loose over the pommel of his saddle.

"The White Mustang may be yours before dark," he said with the smile
that came so seldom. "Now I placed our horses there for two reasons.
The mustangs won't see them till they're right on them. Then you'll see
a sight and have a chance for a great picture. They will halt; the
stallion will prance, whistle and snort for a fight, and then they'll
see the saddles and be off. We'll hide across the wash, down a little
way, and at the right time we'll shout and yell to drive them up."

By piling sagebrush round a stone, we made a hiding-place. Jones was
extremely cautious to arrange the bunches in natural positions. "A
Rocky Mountain Big Horn is the only four-footed beast," he said, "that
has a better eye than a wild horse. A cougar has an eye, too; he's used
to lying high up on the cliffs and looking down for his quarry so as to
stalk it at night; but even a cougar has to take second to a mustang
when it comes to sight."

The hours passed slowly. The sun baked us; the stones were too hot to
touch; flies buzzed behind our ears; tarantulas peeped at us from
holes. The afternoon slowly waned.

At dark we returned to where we had left Wallace and the cowboys. Frank
had solved the problem of water supply, for he had found a little
spring trickling from a cliff, which, by skillful management, produced
enough drink for the horses. We had packed our water for camp use.

"You take the first watch to-night," said Jones to me after supper.
"The mustangs might try to slip by our fire in the night and we must
keep a watch or them. Call Wallace when your time's up. Now, fellows,
roll in."

When the pink of dawn was shading white, we were at our posts. A long,
hot day—interminably long, deadening to the keenest interest—passed,
and still no mustangs came. We slept and watched again, in the grateful
cool of night, till the third day broke.

The hours passed; the cool breeze changed to hot; the sun blazed over
the cañon wall; the stones scorched; the flies buzzed. I fell asleep
in the scant shade of the sage bushes and awoke, stifled and moist. The
old plainsman, never weary, leaned with his back against a stone and
watched, with narrow gaze, the cañon below. The steely walls hurt my
eyes; the sky was like hot copper. Though nearly wild with heat and
aching bones and muscles and the long hours of wait—wait—wait, I was
ashamed to complain, for there sat the old man, still and silent. I
routed out a hairy tarantula from under a stone and teased him into a
frenzy with my stick, and tried to get up a fight between him and a
scallop-backed horned-toad that blinked wonderingly at me. Then I
espied a green lizard on a stone. The beautiful reptile was about a
foot in length, bright green, dotted with red, and he had diamonds for
eyes. Nearby a purple flower blossomed, delicate and pale, with a bee
sucking at its golden heart. I observed then that the lizard had his
jewel eyes upon the bee; he slipped to the edge of the stone, flicked
out a long, red tongue, and tore the insect from its honeyed perch.
Here were beauty, life and death; and I had been weary for something to
look at, to think about, to distract me from the wearisome wait!

"Listen!" broke in Jones's sharp voice. His neck was stretched, his
eyes were closed, his ear was turned to the wind.

With thrilling, reawakened eagerness, I strained my hearing. I caught a
faint sound, then lost it.

"Put your ear to the ground," said Jones. I followed his advice, and
detected the rhythmic beat of galloping horses.

"The mustangs are coming, sure as you're born!" exclaimed Jones.

"There I see the cloud of dust!" cried he a minute later.

In the first bend of the cañon below, a splintered ruin of rock now
lay under a rolling cloud of dust. A white flash appeared, a line of
bobbing black objects, and more dust; then with a sharp pounding of
hoofs, into clear vision shot a dense black band of mustangs, and well
in front swung the White King.

"Look! Look! I never saw the beat of that—never in my born days!"
cried Jones. "How they move! yet that white fellow isn't half-stretched
out. Get your picture before they pass. You'll never see the beat of
that."

With long manes and tails flying, the mustangs came on apace and passed
us in a trampling roar, the white stallion in the front. Suddenly a
shrill, whistling blast, unlike any sound I had ever heard, made the
cañon fairly ring. The white stallion plunged back, and his band
closed in behind him. He had seen our saddle horses. Then trembling,
whinnying, and with arched neck and high-poised head, bespeaking his
mettle, he advanced a few paces, and again whistled his shrill note of
defiance. Pure creamy white he was, and built like a racer. He pranced,
struck his hoofs hard and cavorted; then, taking sudden fright, he
wheeled.

It was then, when the mustangs were pivoting, with the white in the
lead, that Jones jumped upon the stone, fired his pistol and roared
with all his strength. Taking his cue, I did likewise. The band huddled
back again, uncertain and frightened, then broke up the cañon.

Jones jumped the ditch with surprising agility, and I followed close at
his heels. When we reached our plunging horses, he shouted: "Mount, and
hold this passage. Keep close in by that big stone at the turn so they
can't run you down, or stampede you. If they head your way, scare them
back."

Satan quivered, and when I mounted, reared and plunged. I had to hold
him in hard, for he was eager to run. At the cliff wall I was at some
pains to check him. He kept champing his bit and stamping his feet.

From my post I could see the mustangs flying before a cloud of dust.
Jones was turning in his horse behind a large rock in the middle of the
cañon, where he evidently intended to hide. Presently successive yells
and shots from our comrades blended in a roar which the narrow
box-cañon augmented and echoed from wall to wall. High the White
Mustang reared, and above the roar whistled his snort of furious
terror. His band wheeled with him and charged back, their hoofs ringing
like hammers on iron.

The crafty old buffalo-hunter had hemmed the mustangs in a circle and
had left himself free in the center. It was a wily trick, born of his
quick mind and experienced eye.

The stallion, closely crowded by his followers, moved swiftly. I saw
that he must pass near the stone. Thundering, crashing, the horses came
on. Away beyond them I saw Frank and Wallace. Then Jones yelled to me:
"Open up! open up!"

I turned Satan into the middle of the narrow passage, screaming at the
top of my voice and discharging my revolver rapidly.

But the wild horses thundered on. Jones saw that they would not now be
balked, and he spurred his bay directly in their path. The big horse,
courageous as his intrepid master, dove forward.

Then followed confusion for me. The pound of hoofs, the snorts, a
screaming neigh that was frightful, the mad stampede of the mustangs
with a whirling cloud of dust, bewildered and frightened me so that I
lost sight of Jones. Danger threatened and passed me almost before I
was aware of it. Out of the dust a mass of tossing manes, foam-flecked
black horses, wild eyes and lifting hoofs rushed at me. Satan, with a
presence of mind that shamed mine, leaped back and hugged the wall. My
eyes were blinded by dust; the smell of dust choked me. I felt a strong
rush of wind and a mustang grazed my stirrup. Then they had passed, on
the wings of the dust-laden breeze.

But not all, for I saw that Jones had, in some inexplicable manner, cut
the White Mustang and two of his blacks out of the band. He had turned
them back again and was pursuing them. The bay he rode had never before
appeared to much advantage, and now, with his long, lean, powerful body
in splendid action, imbued with the relentless will of his rider, what
a picture he presented! How he did run! With all that, the White
Mustang made him look dingy and slow. Nevertheless, it was a critical
time in the wild career of that king of horses. He had been penned in a
space two hundred by five hundred yards, half of which was separated
from him by a wide ditch, a yawning chasm that he had refused, and
behind him, always keeping on the inside, wheeled the yelling hunter,
who savagely spurred his bay and whirled a deadly lasso. He had been
cut off and surrounded; the very nature of the rocks and trails of the
cañon threatened to end his freedom or his life. Certain it was he
preferred to end the latter, for he risked death from the rocks as he
went over them in long leaps.

Jones could have roped either of the two blacks, but he hardly noticed
them. Covered with dust and splotches of foam, they took their
advantage, turned on the circle toward the passage way and galloped by
me out of sight. Again Wallace, Frank and Jim let out strings of yells
and volleys. The chase was narrowing down. Trapped, the White Mustang
King had no chance. What a grand spirit he showed! Frenzied as I was
with excitement, the thought occurred to me that this was an unfair
battle, that I ought to stand aside and let him pass. But the blood and
lust of primitive instinct held me fast. Jones, keeping back, met his
every turn. Yet always with lithe and beautiful stride the stallion
kept out of reach of the whirling lariat.

"Close in!" yelled Jones, and his voice, powerful with a note of
triumph, bespoke the knell of the king's freedom.

The trap closed in. Back and forth at the upper end the White Mustang
worked; then rendered desperate by the closing in, he circled round
nearer to me. Fire shone in his wild eyes. The wily Jones was not to be
outwitted; he kept in the middle, always on the move, and he yelled to
me to open up.

I lost my voice again, and fired my last shot. Then the White Mustang
burst into a dash of daring, despairing speed. It was his last
magnificent effort. Straight for the wash at the upper end he pointed
his racy, spirited head, and his white legs stretched far apart,
twinkled and stretched again. Jones galloped to cut him off, and the
yells he emitted were demoniacal. It was a long, straight race for the
mustang, a short curve for the bay.

That the white stallion gained was as sure as his resolve to elude
capture, and he never swerved a foot from his course. Jones might have
headed him, but manifestly he wanted to ride with him, as well as to
meet him, so in case the lasso went true, a terrible shock might be
averted.

Up went Jones's arm as the space shortened, and the lasso ringed his
head. Out it shot, lengthened like a yellow, striking snake, and fell
just short of the flying white tail.

The White Mustang, fulfilling his purpose in a last heroic display of
power, sailed into the air, up and up, and over the wide wash like a
white streak. Free! the dust rolled in a cloud from under his hoofs,
and he vanished.

Jones's superb horse, crashing down on his haunches, just escaped
sliding into the hole.

I awoke to the realization that Satan had carried me, in pursuit of the
thrilling chase, all the way across the circle without my knowing it.

Jones calmly wiped the sweat from his face, calmly coiled his lasso,
and calmly remarked:

"In trying to capture wild animals a man must never be too sure. Now
what I thought my strong point was my weak point—the wash. I made sure
no horse could ever jump that hole."



CHAPTER 7.

SNAKE GULCH

Not far from the scene of our adventure with the White Streak as we
facetiously and appreciatively named the mustang, a deep, flat cave
indented the cañon wall. By reason of its sandy floor and close
proximity to Frank's trickling spring, we decided to camp in it. About
dawn Lawson and Stewart straggled in on spent horse and found awaiting
them a bright fire, a hot supper and cheery comrades.

"Did yu fellars git to see him?" was the ranger's first question.

"Did we get to see him?" echoed five lusty voice as one. "We did!"

It was after Frank, in his plain, blunt speech had told of our
experience, that the long Arizonian gazed fixedly at Jones.

"Did yu acktully tech the hair of thet mustang with a rope?"

In all his days Jones never had a greater compliment. By way of reply,
he moved his big hand to a button of his coat, and, fumbling over it,
unwound a string of long, white hairs, then said: "I pulled these out
of his tail with my lasso; it missed his left hind hoof about six
inches."

There were six of the hairs, pure, glistening white, and over three
feet long. Stewart examined then in expressive silence, then passed
them along; and when they reached me, they stayed.

The cave, lighted up by a blazing fire, appeared to me a forbidding,
uncanny place. Small, peculiar round holes, and dark cracks, suggestive
of hidden vermin, gave me a creepy feeling; and although not
over-sensitive on the subject of crawling, creeping things, I voiced my
disgust.

"Say, I don't like the idea of sleeping in this hole. I'll bet it's
full of spiders, snakes and centipedes and other poisonous things."

Whatever there was in my inoffensive declaration to rouse the usually
slumbering humor of the Arizonians, and the thinly veiled ridicule of
Colonel Jones, and a mixture of both in my once loyal California
friend, I am not prepared to state. Maybe it was the dry, sweet, cool
air of Nail Cañon; maybe my suggestion awoke ticklish associations
that worked themselves off thus; maybe it was the first instance of my
committing myself to a breach of camp etiquette. Be that as it may, my
innocently expressed sentiment gave rise to bewildering dissertations
on entomology, and most remarkable and startling tales from first-hand
experience.

"Like as not," began Frank in matter-of-fact tone. "Them's tarantuler
holes all right. An' scorpions, centipedes an' rattlers always rustle
with tarantulers. But we never mind them—not us fellers! We're used to
sleepin' with them. Why, I often wake up in the night to see a big
tarantuler on my chest, an' see him wink. Ain't thet so, Jim?"

"Shore as hell," drawled faithful, slow Jim.

"Reminds me how fatal the bite of a centipede is," took up Colonel
Jones, complacently. "Once I was sitting in camp with a hunter, who
suddenly hissed out: 'Jones, for God's sake don't budge! There's a
centipede on your arm!' He pulled his Colt, and shot the blamed
centipede off as clean as a whistle. But the bullet hit a steer in the
leg; and would you believe it, the bullet carried so much poison that
in less than two hours the steer died of blood poisoning. Centipedes
are so poisonous they leave a blue trail on flesh just by crawling over
it. Look there!"

He bared his arm, and there on the brown-corded flesh was a blue trail
of something, that was certain. It might have been made by a centipede.

"This is a likely place for them," put in Wallace, emitting a volume of
smoke and gazing round the cave walls with the eye of a connoisseur.
"My archaeological pursuits have given me great experience with
centipedes, as you may imagine, considering how many old tombs, caves
and cliff-dwellings I have explored. This Algonkian rock is about the
right stratum for centipedes to dig in. They dig somewhat after the
manner of the fluviatile long-tailed decapod crustaceans, of the genera
Thoracostraca, the common crawfish, you know. From that, of course, you
can imagine, if a centipede can bite rock, what a biter he is."

I began to grow weak, and did not wonder to see Jim's long pipe fall
from his lips. Frank looked queer around the gills, so to speak, but
the gaunt Stewart never batted an eye.

"I camped here two years ago," he said, "An' the cave was alive with
rock-rats, mice, snakes, horned-toads, lizards an' a big Gila monster,
besides bugs, scorpions' rattlers, an' as fer tarantulers an'
centipedes—say! I couldn't sleep fer the noise they made fightin'."

"I seen the same," concluded Lawson, as nonchalant as a wild-horse
wrangler well could be. "An' as fer me, now I allus lays perfickly
still when the centipedes an' tarantulers begin to drop from their
holes in the roof, same as them holes up there. An' when they light on
me, I never move, nor even breathe fer about five minutes. Then they
take a notion I'm dead an' crawl off. But sure, if I'd breathed I'd
been a goner!"

All of this was playfully intended for the extinction of an unoffending
and impressionable tenderfoot.

With an admiring glance at my tormentors, I rolled out my sleeping-bag
and crawled into it, vowing I would remain there even if devil-fish,
armed with pikes, invaded our cave.

Late in the night I awoke. The bottom of the cañon and the outer floor
of our cave lay bathed in white, clear moonlight. A dense, gloomy black
shadow veiled the opposite cañon wall. High up the pinnacles and
turrets pointed toward a resplendent moon. It was a weird, wonderful
scene of beauty entrancing, of breathless, dreaming silence that seemed
not of life. Then a hoot-owl lamented dismally, his call fitting the
scene and the dead stillness; the echoes resounded from cliff to cliff,
strangely mocking and hollow, at last reverberating low and mournful in
the distance.

How long I lay there enraptured with the beauty of light and mystery of
shade, thrilling at the lonesome lament of the owl, I have no means to
tell; but I was awakened from my trance by the touch of something
crawling over me. Promptly I raised my head. The cave was as light as
day. There, sitting sociably on my sleeping-bag was a great black
tarantula, as large as my hand.

For one still moment, notwithstanding my contempt for Lawson's advice,
I certainly acted upon it to the letter. If ever I was quiet, and if
ever I was cold, the time was then. My companions snored in blissful
ignorance of my plight. Slight rustling sounds attracted my wary gaze
from the old black sentinel on my knee. I saw other black spiders
running to and fro on the silver, sandy floor. A giant, as large as a
soft-shell crab, seemed to be meditating an assault upon Jones's ear.
Another, grizzled and shiny with age or moonbeams I could not tell
which—pushed long, tentative feelers into Wallace's cap. I saw black
spots darting over the roof. It was not a dream; the cave was alive
with tarantulas!

Not improbably my strong impression that the spider on my knee
deliberately winked at me was the result of memory, enlivening
imagination. But it sufficed to bring to mind, in one rapid, consoling
flash, the irrevocable law of destiny—that the deeds of the wicked
return unto them again.

I slipped back into my sleeping-bag, with a keen consciousness of its
nature, and carefully pulled the flap in place, which almost
hermetically sealed me up.

"Hey! Jones! Wallace! Frank! Jim!" I yelled, from the depths of my safe
refuge.

Wondering cries gave me glad assurance that they had awakened from
their dreams.

"The cave's alive with tarantulas!" I cried, trying to hide my unholy
glee.

"I'll be durned if it ain't!" ejaculated Frank.

"Shore it beats hell!" added Jim, with a shake of his blanket.

"Look out, Jones, there's one on your pillow!" shouted Wallace.

Whack! A sharp blow proclaimed the opening of hostilities.

Memory stamped indelibly every word of that incident; but innate
delicacy prevents the repetition of all save the old warrior's
concluding remarks: "! ! ! place I was ever in! Tarantulas by the
million—centipedes, scorpions, bats! Rattlesnakes, too, I'll swear.
Look out, Wallace! there, under your blanket!"

From the shuffling sounds which wafted sweetly into my bed, I gathered
that my long friend from California must have gone through motions
creditable to a contortionist. An ensuing explosion from Jones
proclaimed to the listening world that Wallace had thrown a tarantula
upon him. Further fearful language suggested the thought that Colonel
Jones had passed on the inquisitive spider to Frank. The reception
accorded the unfortunate tarantula, no doubt scared out of its wits,
began with a wild yell from Frank and ended in pandemonium.

While the confusion kept up, with whacks and blows and threshing about,
with language such as never before had disgraced a group of old
campers, I choked with rapture, and reveled in the sweetness of revenge.

When quiet reigned once more in the black and white cañon, only one
sleeper lay on the moon-silvered sand of the cave.

At dawn, when I opened sleepy eyes, Frank, Slim, Stewart and Lawson had
departed, as pre-arranged, with the outfit, leaving the horses
belonging to us and rations for the day. Wallace and I wanted to climb
the divide at the break, and go home by way of Snake Gulch, and the
Colonel acquiesced with the remark that his sixty-three years had
taught him there was much to see in the world. Coming to undertake it,
we found the climb—except for a slide of weathered rock—no great
task, and we accomplished it in half an hour, with breath to spare and
no mishap to horses.

But descending into Snake Gulch, which was only a mile across the
sparsely cedared ridge, proved to be tedious labor. By virtue of
Satan's patience and skill, I forged ahead; which advantage, however,
meant more risk for me because of the stones set in motion above. They
rolled and bumped and cut into me, and I sustained many a bruise trying
to protect the sinewy slender legs of my horse. The descent ended
without serious mishap.

Snake Gulch had a character and sublimity which cast Nail Cañon into
the obscurity of forgetfulness. The great contrast lay in the diversity
of structure. The rock was bright red, with parapet of yellow, that
leaned, heaved, bulged outward. These emblazoned cliff walls, two
thousand feet high, were cracked from turret to base; they bowled out
at such an angle that we were afraid to ride under them. Mountains of
yellow rock hung balanced, ready to tumble down at the first angry
breath of the gods. We rode among carved stones, pillars, obelisks and
sculptured ruined walls of a fallen Babylon. Slides reaching all the
way across and far up the cañon wall obstructed our passage. On every
stone silent green lizards sunned themselves, gliding swiftly as we
came near to their marble homes.

We came into a region of wind-worn caves, of all sizes and shapes, high
and low on the cliffs; but strange to say, only on the north side of
the cañon they appeared with dark mouths open and uninviting. One,
vast and deep, though far off, menaced us as might the cave of a
tawny-maned king of beasts; yet it impelled, fascinated and drew us on.

"It's a long, hard climb," said Wallace to the Colonel, as we
dismounted.

"Boys, I'm with you," came the reply. And he was with us all the way,
as we clambered over the immense blocks and threaded a passage between
them and pulled weary legs up, one after the other. So steep lay the
jumble of cliff fragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we
got near it. Suddenly we rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing
looming before us.

The dark portal of death or hell might have yawned there. A gloomy
hole, large enough to admit a church, had been hollowed in the cliff by
ages of nature's chiseling.

"Vast sepulcher of Time's past, give up thy dead!" cried Wallace,
solemnly.

"Oh! dark Stygian cave forlorn!" quoted I, as feelingly as my friend.

Jones hauled us down from the clouds.

"Now, I wonder what kind of a prehistoric animal holed in here?" said
he.

Forever the one absorbing interest! If he realized the sublimity of
this place, he did not show it.

The floor of the cave ascended from the very threshold. Stony ridges
circled from wall to wall. We climbed till we were two hundred feet
from the opening, yet we were not half-way to the dome.

Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked like ants. So steep
did the ascent become that we desisted; for if one of us had slipped on
the smooth incline, the result would have been terrible. Our voices
rang clear and hollow from the walls. We were so high that the sky was
blotted out by the overhanging square, cornice-like top of the door;
and the light was weird, dim, shadowy, opaque. It was a gray tomb.

"Waa-hoo!" yelled Jones with all the power of his wide, leather lungs.

Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seemingly on puffs of wind.
Mocking, deep echoes bellowed from the ebon shades at the back of the
cave, and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again in fiendish
concatenation.

We did not again break the silence of that tomb, where the spirits of
ages lay in dusty shrouds; and we crawled down as if we had invaded a
sanctuary and invoked the wrath of the gods.

We all proposed names: Montezuma's Amphitheater being the only rival of
Jones's selection, Echo cave, which we finally chose.

Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles of Snake Gulch by noon,
when we rested for lunch. All the way up we had played the boy's game
of spying for sights, with the honors about even. It was a question if
Snake Gulch ever before had such a raking over. Despite its name,
however, we discovered no snakes.

From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a tomb,
and heralded his discovery with a victorious whoop. Digging in old
ruins roused in him much the same spirit that digging in old books
roused in me. Before we reached him, he had a big bowie-knife buried
deep in the red, sandy floor of the tomb.

This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of small
stones, held together by a cement, the nature of which, Wallace
explained, had never become clear to civilization. It was red in color
and hard as flint, harder than the rocks it glued together. The tomb
was half-round in shape, and its floor was a projecting shelf of cliff
rock. Wallace unearthed bits of pottery, bone and finely braided rope,
all of which, to our great disappointment, crumbled to dust in our
fingers. In the case of the rope, Wallace assured us, this was a sign
of remarkable antiquity.

In the next mile we traversed, we found dozens of these old cells, all
demolished except a few feet of the walls, all despoiled of their
one-time possessions. Wallace thought these depredations were due to
Indians of our own time. Suddenly we came upon Jones, standing under a
cliff, with his neck craned to a desperate angle.

"Now, what's that?" demanded he, pointing upward.

High on the cliff wall appeared a small, round protuberance. It was of
the unmistakably red color of the other tombs; and Wallace, more
excited than he had been in the cougar chase, said it was a sepulcher,
and he believed it had never been opened.

From an elevated point of rock, as high up as I could well climb, I
decided both questions with my glass. The tomb resembled nothing so
much as a mud-wasp's nest, high on a barn wall. The fact that it had
never been broken open quite carried Wallace away with enthusiasm.

"This is no mean discovery, let me tell you that," he declared. "I am
familiar with the Aztec, Toltec and Pueblo ruins, and here I find no
similarity. Besides, we are out of their latitude. An ancient race of
people—very ancient indeed lived in this cañon. How long ago, it is
impossible to tell."

"They must have been birds," said the practical Jones. "Now, how'd that
tomb ever get there? Look at it, will you?"

As near as we could ascertain, it was three hundred feet from the
ground below, five hundred from the rim wall above, and could not
possibly have been approached from the top. Moreover, the cliff wall
was as smooth as a wall of human make.

"There's another one," called out Jones.

"Yes, and I see another; no doubt there are many of them," replied
Wallace. "In my mind, only one thing possible accounts for their
position. You observe they appear to be about level with each other.
Well, once the Cañon floor ran along that line, and in the ages gone
by it has lowered, washed away by the rains."

This conception staggered us, but it was the only one conceivable. No
doubt we all thought at the same time of the little rainfall in that
arid section of Arizona.

"How many years?" queried Jones.

"Years! What are years?" said Wallace. "Thousands of years, ages have
passed since the race who built these tombs lived."

Some persuasion was necessary to drag our scientific friend from the
spot, where obviously helpless to do anything else, he stood and gazed
longingly at the isolated tombs. The cañon widened as we proceeded;
and hundreds of points that invited inspection, such as overhanging
shelves of rock, dark fissures, caverns and ruins had to be passed by,
for lack of time.

Still, a more interesting and important discovery was to come, and the
pleasure and honor of it fell to me. My eyes were sharp and peculiarly
farsighted—the Indian sight, Jones assured me; and I kept them
searching the walls in such places as my companions overlooked.
Presently, under a large, bulging bluff, I saw a dark spot, which took
the shape of a figure. This figure, I recollected, had been presented
to my sight more than once, and now it stopped me. The hard climb up
the slippery stones was fatiguing, but I did not hesitate, for I was
determined to know. Once upon the ledge, I let out a yell that quickly
set my companions in my direction. The figure I had seen was a dark,
red devil, a painted image, rude, unspeakably wild, crudely executed,
but painted by the hand of man. The whole surface of the cliff wall
bore figures of all shapes—men, mammals, birds and strange devices,
some in red paint, mostly in yellow. Some showed the wear of time;
others were clear and sharp.

Wallace puffed up to me, but he had wind enough left for another whoop.
Jones puffed up also, and seeing the first thing a rude sketch of what
might have been a deer or a buffalo, he commented thus: "Darn me if I
ever saw an animal like that? Boys, this is a find, sure as you're
born. Because not even the Piutes ever spoke of these figures. I doubt
if they know they're here. And the cowboys and wranglers, what few ever
get by here in a hundred years, never saw these things. Beats anything
I ever saw on the Mackenzie, or anywhere else."

The meaning of some devices was as mystical as that of others was
clear. Two blood-red figures of men, the larger dragging the smaller
by the hair, while he waved aloft a blood-red hatchet or club, left
little to conjecture. Here was the old battle of men, as old as life.
Another group, two figures of which resembled the foregoing in form
and action, battling over a prostrate form rudely feminine in outline,
attested to an age when men were as susceptible as they are in modern
times, but more forceful and original. An odd yellow Indian waved aloft
a red hand, which striking picture suggested the idea that he was an
ancient Macbeth, listening to the knocking at the gate. There was a
character representing a great chief, before whom many figures lay
prostrate, evidently slain or subjugated. Large red paintings, in the
shape of bats, occupied prominent positions, and must have represented
gods or devils. Armies of marching men told of that blight of nations
old or young—war. These, and birds unnamable, and beasts unclassable,
with dots and marks and hieroglyphics, recorded the history of a
bygone people. Symbols they were of an era that had gone into the dim
past, leaving only these marks—forever unintelligible; yet while they
stood, century after century, ineffaceable, reminders of the glory, the
mystery, the sadness of life.

"How could paint of any kind last so long? asked Jones, shaking his
head doubtfully.

"That is the unsolvable mystery," returned Wallace. "But the records
are there. I am absolutely sure the paintings are at least a thousand
years old. I have never seen any tombs or paintings similar to them.
Snake Gulch is a find, and I shall some day study its wonders."

Sundown caught us within sight of Oak Spring, and we soon trotted into
camp to the welcoming chorus of the hounds. Frank and the others had
reached the cabin some hours before. Supper was steaming on the hot
coals with a delicious fragrance.

Then came the pleasantest time of the day, after a long chase or
jaunt—the silent moments, watching the glowing embers of the fire; the
speaking moments when a red-blooded story rang clear and true; the
twilight moments, when the wood-smoke smelled sweet.

Jones seemed unusually thoughtful. I had learned that this
preoccupation in him meant the stirring of old associations, and I
waited silently. By and by Lawson snored mildly in a corner; Jim and
Frank crawled into their blankets, and all was still. Wallace smoked
his Indian pipe and hunted in firelit dreams.

"Boys," said our leader finally, "somehow the echoes dying away in that
cave reminded me of the mourn of the big white wolves in the Barren
Lands."

Wallace puffed huge clouds of white smoke, and I waited, knowing that I
was to hear at last the story of the Colonel's great adventure in the
Northland.



CHAPTER 8.

NAZA! NAZA! NAZA!

It was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The lonesome, far-northern
Hudson's Bay Trading Post seldom saw such life. Tepees dotted the banks
of the Slave River and lines of blanketed Indians paraded its shores.
Near the boat landing a group of chiefs, grotesque in semi-barbaric,
semicivilized splendor, but black-browed, austere-eyed, stood in savage
dignity with folded arms and high-held heads. Lounging on the grassy
bank were white men, traders, trappers and officials of the post.

All eyes were on the distant curve of the river where, as it lost
itself in a fine-fringed bend of dark green, white-glinting waves
danced and fluttered. A June sky lay blue in the majestic stream;
ragged, spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the water;
beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in remote purple relief.

A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting eyes discerned a black
speck on the green, and watched it grow. A flatboat, with a man
standing to the oars, bore down swiftly.

Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help the voyager in the
difficult landing. The oblong, clumsy, heavily laden boat surged with
the current and passed the dock despite the boatman's efforts. He swung
his craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast to a tree. The Indians
crowded above him on the bank. The boatman raised his powerful form
erect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in craggy hardness, and
cast from narrow eyes a keen, cool glance on those above. The silvery
gleam in his fair hair told of years.

Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only to the rattle of
camping paraphernalia, which the voyager threw to a level, grassy bench
on the bank. Evidently this unwelcome visitor had journeyed from afar,
and his boat, sunk deep into the water with its load of barrels, boxes
and bags, indicated that the journey had only begun. Significant, too,
were a couple of long Winchester rifles shining on a tarpaulin.

The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit the passage of a
tall, thin, gray personage of official bearing, in a faded military
coat.

"Are you the musk-ox hunter?" he asked, in tones that contained no
welcome.

The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor with a cool laugh—a
strange laugh, in which the muscles of his face appeared not to play.

"Yes, I am the man," he said.

"The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave tribes have been
apprised of your coming. They have held council and are here to speak
with you."

At a motion from the commandant, the line of chieftains piled down to
the level bench and formed a half-circle before the voyager. To a man
who had stood before grim Sitting Bull and noble Black Thunder of the
Sioux, and faced the falcon-eyed Geronimo, and glanced over the sights
of a rifle at gorgeous-feathered, wild, free Comanches, this
semi-circle of savages—lords of the north—was a sorry comparison.
Bedaubed and betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these low-statured
chiefs belied in appearance their scorn-bright eyes and lofty mien.
They made a sad group.

One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled out a haughty,
sonorous voice over the listening multitude. When he had finished, a
half-breed interpreter, in the dress of a white man, spoke at a signal
from the commandant.

"He says listen to the great orator of the Chippewayan. He has summoned
all the chiefs of the tribes south of Great Slave Lake. He has held
council. The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to take the musk-oxen,
is well known. Let the pale-face hunter return to his own
hunting-grounds; let him turn his face from the north. Never will the
chiefs permit the white man to take musk-oxen alive from their country.
The Ageter, the Musk-ox, is their god. He gives them food and fur. He
will never come back if he is taken away, and the reindeer will follow
him. The chiefs and their people would starve. They command the
pale-face hunter to go back. They cry Naza! Naza! Naza!"

"Say, for a thousand miles I've heard that word Naza!" returned the
hunter, with mingled curiosity and disgust. "At Edmonton Indian runners
started ahead of me, and every village I struck the redskins would
crowd round me and an old chief would harangue at me, and motion me
back, and point north with Naza! Naza! Naza! What does it mean?"

"No white man knows; no Indian will tell," answered the interpreter.
"The traders think it means the Great Slave, the North Star, the North
Spirit, the North Wind, the North Lights and the musk-ox god."

"Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been four moons on the
way after some of his little Ageters, and I'm going to keep on after
them."

"Hunter, you are most unwise," broke in the commandant, in his
officious voice. "The Indians will never permit you to take a musk-ox
alive from the north. They worship him, pray to him. It is a wonder you
have not been stopped."

"Who'll stop me?"

"The Indians. They will kill you if you do not turn back."

"Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!" The hunter paused a steady
moment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue fire. "There is
no law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition and Naza! And
the greed of the Hudson's Bay people. I am an old fox, not to be fooled
by pretty baits. For years the officers of this fur-trading company
have tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, an
Englishman, could not buy food of them. The policy of the company is to
side with the Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So they
can keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food by
trading a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum for
millions of dollars worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man after man,
Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a helper? Have I, a
plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be scared by you, or a lot of
craven Indians? Have I been dreaming of musk-oxen for forty years, to
slink south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I."

Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat in
the hunter's face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated the
outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice,
addressed the interpreter.

"Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in council.
Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are not even
squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back on
them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, fierce, bold, like
eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them he is the one who
could teach them to raise the musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keep
out the cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the hunter
goes north."

Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering thunder.

True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed by,
his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunter's
stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolen
a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for an
unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was unexpected.

A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief's passage, and
laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the Indian,
and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash.
Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this unexpected
incident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore. Whereupon the
champion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a bag, which gave
forth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp articles
on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.

"My name is Rea," he said, in deep, cavernous tones.

"Mine is Jones," replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip the
proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stunted
shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, a
hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bull
neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff
under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar,
marked him a man of terrible brute force.

"Free-trader!" called the commandant "Better think twice before you
join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter."

"To hell with you an' your rantin', dog-eared redskins!" cried Rea.
"I've run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own country, an' I'm
goin' with him."

With this he thrust aside some encroaching, gaping Indians so
unconcernedly and ungently that they sprawled upon the grass.

Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.

Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he had
fallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province. These
free-traders, from the very nature of their calling, which was to defy
the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own account—were a
hardy and intrepid class of men. Rea's worth to Jones exceeded that of
a dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of the north, the language of
the tribes, the habits of animals, the handling of dogs, the uses of
food and fuel. Moreover, it soon appeared that he was a carpenter and
blacksmith.

"There's my kit," he said, dumping the contents of his bag. It
consisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a box of
miscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few articles of
flannel. "Thievin' redskins," he added, in explanation of his poverty.
"Not much of an outfit. But I'm the man for you. Besides, I had a pal
onct who knew you on the plains, called you 'Buff' Jones. Old Jim Bent
he was."

"I recollect Jim," said Jones. "He went down in Custer's last charge.
So you were Jim's pal. That'd be a recommendation if you needed one.
But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me."

Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much action. With
the planks Jones had on board he heightened the stern and bow of the
boat to keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he fashioned a
steering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and shifted the cargo so
as to make more room in the craft.

"Buff, we're in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin an' make a fire. We'll
pretend to camp to-night. These Indians won't dream we'd try to run the
river after dark, and we'll slip by under cover."

The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind swept
the tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in gusts. By the
time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were housed from
the storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and the big log cabins of the
trading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black night, when a
freezing, pouring blast sent him back to the protection of the
tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had taken it down and
awaited him. "Off!" said the free-trader; and with no more noise than a
drifting feather the boat swung into the current and glided down till
the twinkling fires no longer accentuated the darkness.

By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen
voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its meaning.
The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced the
pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The craft slid
noiselessly onward into the gloom.

And into Jones's ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a steady,
muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It had come to
be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long life
of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight shudder over his
warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble had presaged the
dangerous and dreaded rapids.

"Hell Bend Rapids!" shouted Rea. "Bad water, but no rocks."

The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the air
with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world appeared
to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to the roar of
the river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met shock on shock,
breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend of
watery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into a black
chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of light. Then the
convulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance, changed its course
abruptly to slow down and drown the sound of rapids in muffling
distance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of the
wind and the rush of the rain.

By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining,
blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of the
spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded peak behind
the dark branches.

Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the moon-blanched
water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls of granite, where
it swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again the far-off
rumble, faint on the night. High cliff banks appeared, walled out the
mellow, light, and the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes,
whirlpools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and raced with the
boat.

On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping
frosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slave
plunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing no
patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark shiny rocks in spume and
spray.



CHAPTER 9.

THE LAND OF THE MUSK-OX

A far cry it was from bright June at Port Chippewayan to dim October on
Great Slave Lake.

Two long, laborious months Rea and Jones threaded the crooked shores of
the great inland sea, to halt at the extreme northern end, where a
plunging rivulet formed the source of a river. Here they found a stone
chimney and fireplace standing among the darkened, decayed ruins of a
cabin.

"We mustn't lose no time," said Rea. "I feel the winter in the wind.
An' see how dark the days are gettin' on us."

"I'm for hunting musk-oxen," replied Jones.

"Man, we're facin' the northern night; we're in the land of the
midnight sun. Soon we'll be shut in for seven months. A cabin we want,
an' wood, an' meat."

A forest of stunted spruce trees edged on the lake, and soon its dreary
solitudes rang to the strokes of axes. The trees were small and uniform
in size. Black stumps protruded, here and there, from the ground,
showing work of the steel in time gone by. Jones observed that the
living trees were no larger in diameter than the stumps, and questioned
Rea in regard to the difference in age.

"Cut twenty-five, mebbe fifty years ago," said the trapper.

"But the living trees are no bigger."

"Trees an' things don't grow fast in the north land."

They erected a fifteen-foot cabin round the stone chimney, roofed it
with poles and branches of spruce and a layer of sand. In digging near
the fireplace Jones unearthed a rusty file and the head of a whisky
keg, upon which was a sunken word in unintelligible letters.

"We've found the place," said Rea. "Frank built a cabin here in 1819.
An' in 1833 Captain Back wintered here when he was in search of Captain
Ross of the vessel Fury. It was those explorin' parties thet cut the
trees. I seen Indian sign out there, made last winter, I reckon; but
Indians never cut down no trees."

The hunters completed the cabin, piled cords of firewood outside,
stowed away the kegs of dried fish and fruits, the sacks of flour,
boxes of crackers, canned meats and vegetables, sugar, salt, coffee,
tobacco—all of the cargo; then took the boat apart and carried it up
the bank, which labor took them less than a week.

Jones found sleeping in the cabin, despite the fire, uncomfortably
cold, because of the wide chinks between the logs. It was hardly better
than sleeping under the swaying spruces. When he essayed to stop up the
crack, a task by no means easy, considering the lack of material—Rea
laughed his short "Ho! Ho!" and stopped him with the word, "Wait."
Every morning the green ice extended farther out into the lake; the sun
paled dim and dimmer; the nights grew colder. On October 8th the
thermometer registered several degrees below zero; it fell a little
more next night and continued to fall.

"Ho! Ho!" cried Rea. "She's struck the toboggan, an' presently she'll
commence to slide. Come on, Buff, we've work to do."

He caught up a bucket, made for their hole in the ice, rebroke a
six-inch layer, the freeze of a few hours, and filling his bucket,
returned to the cabin. Jones had no inkling of the trapper's intention,
and wonderingly he soused his bucket full of water and followed.

By the time he had reached the cabin, a matter of some thirty or forty
good paces, the water no longer splashed from his pail, for a thin film
of ice prevented. Rea stood fifteen feet from the cabin, his back to
the wind, and threw the water. Some of it froze in the air, most of it
froze on the logs. The simple plan of the trapper to incase the cabin
with ice was easily divined. All day the men worked, easing only when
the cabin resembled a glistening mound. It had not a sharp corner nor a
crevice. Inside it was warm and snug, and as light as when the chinks
were open.

A slight moderation of the weather brought the snow. Such snow! A
blinding white flutter of grey flakes, as large as feathers! All day
they rustle softly; all night they swirled, sweeping, seeping brushing
against the cabin. "Ho! Ho!" roared Rea. "'Tis good; let her snow, an'
the reindeer will migrate. We'll have fresh meat." The sun shone again,
but not brightly. A nipping wind came down out of the frigid north and
crusted the snows. The third night following the storm, when the
hunters lay snug under their blankets, a commotion outside aroused them.

"Indians," said Rea, "come north for reindeer."

Half the night, shouting and yelling, barking dogs, hauling of sleds
and cracking of dried-skin tepees murdered sleep for those in the
cabin. In the morning the level plain and edge of the forest held an
Indian village. Caribou hides, strung on forked poles, constituted
tent-like habitations with no distinguishable doors. Fires smoked in
the holes in the snow. Not till late in the day did any life manifest
itself round the tepees, and then a group of children, poorly clad in
ragged pieces of blankets and skins, gaped at Jones. He saw their
pinched, brown faces, staring, hungry eyes, naked legs and throats, and
noted particularly their dwarfish size. When he spoke they fled
precipitously a little way, then turned. He called again, and all ran
except one small lad. Jones went into the cabin and came out with a
handful of sugar in square lumps.

"Yellow Knife Indians," said Rea. "A starved tribe! We're in for it."

Jones made motions to the lad, but he remained still, as if transfixed,
and his black eyes stared wonderingly.

"Molar nasu (white man good)," said Rea.

The lad came out of his trance and looked back at his companions, who
edged nearer. Jones ate a lump of sugar, then handed one to the little
Indian. He took it gingerly, put it into his mouth and immediately
jumped up and down.

"Hoppiesharnpoolie! Hoppiesharnpoolie!" he shouted to his brothers and
sisters. They came on the run.

"Think he means sweet salt," interpreted Rea. "Of course these beggars
never tasted sugar."

The band of youngsters trooped round Jones, and after tasting the white
lumps, shrieked in such delight that the braves and squaws shuffled out
of the tepees.

In all his days Jones had never seen such miserable Indians. Dirty
blankets hid all their person, except straggling black hair, hungry,
wolfish eyes and moccasined feet. They crowded into the path before the
cabin door and mumbled and stared and waited. No dignity, no
brightness, no suggestion of friendliness marked this peculiar attitude.

"Starved!" exclaimed Rea. "They've come to the lake to invoke the Great
Spirit to send the reindeer. Buff, whatever you do, don't feed them. If
you do, we'll have them on our hands all winter. It's cruel, but, man,
we're in the north!"

Notwithstanding the practical trapper's admonition Jones could not
resist the pleading of the children. He could not stand by and see them
starve. After ascertaining there was absolutely nothing to eat in the
tepees, he invited the little ones into the cabin, and made a great pot
of soup, into which he dropped compressed biscuits. The savage children
were like wildcats. Jones had to call in Rea to assist him in keeping
the famished little aborigines from tearing each other to pieces. When
finally they were all fed, they had to be driven out of the cabin.

"That's new to me," said Jones. "Poor little beggars!"

Rea doubtfully shook his shaggy head.

Next day Jones traded with the Yellow Knives. He had a goodly supply of
baubles, besides blankets, gloves and boxes of canned goods, which he
had brought for such trading. He secured a dozen of the large-boned,
white and black Indian dogs, huskies, Rea called them—two long sleds
with harness and several pairs of snowshoes. This trade made Jones rub
his hands in satisfaction, for during all the long journey north he had
failed to barter for such cardinal necessities to the success of his
venture.

"Better have doled out the grub to them in rations," grumbled Rea.

Twenty-four hours sufficed to show Jones the wisdom of the trapper's
words, for in just that time the crazed, ignorant savages had glutted
the generous store of food, which should have lasted them for weeks.
The next day they were begging at the cabin door. Rea cursed and
threatened them with his fists, but they returned again and again.

Days passed. All the time, in light and dark, the Indians filled the
air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and
the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of their wild
prayer for food.

But the white monotony of the rolling land and level lake remained
unbroken. The reindeer did not come. The days became shorter, dimmer,
darker. The mercury kept on the slide.

Forty degrees below zero did not trouble the Indians. They stamped till
they dropped, and sang till their voices vanished, and beat the tomtoms
everlastingly. Jones fed the children once each day, against the
trapper's advice.

One day, while Rea was absent, a dozen braves succeeded in forcing an
entrance, and clamored so fiercely, and threatened so desperately, that
Jones was on the point of giving them food when the door opened to
admit Rea.

With a glance he saw the situation. He dropped the bucket he carried,
threw the door wide open and commenced action. Because of his great
bulk he seemed slow, but every blow of his sledge-hammer fist knocked a
brave against the wall, or through the door into the snow. When he
could reach two savages at once, by way of diversion, he swung their
heads together with a crack. They dropped like dead things. Then he
handled them as if they were sacks of corn, pitching them out into the
snow. In two minutes the cabin was clear. He banged the door and
slipped the bar in place.

"Buff, I'm goin' to get mad at these thievin' redskins some day," he
said gruffly. The expanse of his chest heaved slightly, like the slow
swell of a calm ocean, but there was no other indication of unusual
exertion.

Jones laughed, and again gave thanks for the comradeship of this
strange man.

Shortly afterward, he went out for wood, and as usual scanned the
expanse of the lake. The sun shone mistier and warmer, and frost
feathers floated in the air. Sky and sun and plain and lake—all were
gray. Jones fancied he saw a distant moving mass of darker shade than
the gray background. He called the trapper.

"Caribou," said Rea instantly. "The vanguard of the migration. Hear the
Indians! Hear their cry: "Aton! Aton!" they mean reindeer. The idiots
have scared the herd with their infernal racket, an' no meat will they
get. The caribou will keep to the ice, an' man or Indian can't stalk
them there."

For a few moments his companion surveyed the lake and shore with a
plainsman's eye, then dashed within, to reappear with a Winchester in
each hand. Through the crowd of bewailing, bemoaning Indians; he sped,
to the low, dying bank. The hard crust of snow upheld him. The gray
cloud was a thousand yards out upon the lake and moving southeast. If
the caribou did not swerve from this course they would pass close to a
projecting point of land, a half-mile up the lake. So, keeping a wary
eye upon them, the hunter ran swiftly. He had not hunted antelope and
buffalo on the plains all his life without learning how to approach
moving game. As long as the caribou were in action, they could not tell
whether he moved or was motionless. In order to tell if an object was
inanimate or not, they must stop to see, of which fact the keen hunter
took advantage. Suddenly he saw the gray mass slow down and bunch up.
He stopped running, to stand like a stump. When the reindeer moved
again, he moved, and when they slackened again, he stopped and became
motionless. As they kept to their course, he worked gradually closer
and closer. Soon he distinguished gray, bobbing heads. When the leader
showed signs of halting in his slow trot the hunter again became a
statue. He saw they were easy to deceive; and, daringly confident of
success, he encroached on the ice and closed up the gap till not more
than two hundred yards separated him from the gray, bobbing, antlered
mass.

Jones dropped on one knee. A moment only his eyes lingered admiringly
on the wild and beautiful spectacle; then he swept one of the rifles to
a level. Old habit made the little beaded sight cover first the stately
leader. Bang! The gray monarch leaped straight forward, forehoofs up,
antlered head back, to fall dead with a crash. Then for a few moments
the Winchester spat a deadly stream of fire, and when emptied was
thrown down for the other gun, which in the steady, sure hands of the
hunter belched death to the caribou.

The herd rushed on, leaving the white surface of the lake gray with a
struggling, kicking, bellowing heap. When Jones reached the caribou he
saw several trying to rise on crippled legs. With his knife he killed
these, not without some hazard to himself. Most of the fallen ones were
already dead, and the others soon lay still. Beautiful gray creatures
they were, almost white, with wide-reaching, symmetrical horns.

A medley of yells arose from the shore, and Rea appeared running with
two sleds, with the whole tribe of Yellow Knives pouring out of the
forest behind him.

"Buff, you're jest what old Jim said you was," thundered Rea, as he
surveyed the gray pile. "Here's winter meat, an' I'd not have given a
biscuit for all the meat I thought you'd get."

"Thirty shots in less than thirty seconds," said Jones, "An' I'll bet
every ball I sent touched hair. How many rei

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