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The Mountains

by Stewart Edward White · English · Gutenberg #465 · 320,197 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Mountains

Author: Stewart Edward White


        
Release date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #465]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/465

Credits: Produced by Dianne Bean.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAINS ***




Produced by Dianne Bean.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE MOUNTAINS


BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE



AUTHOR OF

"THE BLAZED TRAIL," "SILENT PLACES," "THE FOREST," ETC.





PREFACE

The author has followed a true sequence of events practically in all
particulars save in respect to the character of the Tenderfoot.  He is
in one sense fictitious; in another sense real.  He is real in that he
is the apotheosis of many tenderfeet, and that everything he does in
this narrative he has done at one time or another in the author's
experience.  He is fictitious in the sense that he is in no way to be
identified with the third member of our party in the actual trip.



CONTENTS

     I.  THE RIDGE TRAIL
    II.  ON EQUIPMENT
   III.  ON HORSES
    IV.  HOW TO GO ABOUT IT
     V.  THE COAST RANGES
    VI.  THE INFERNO
   VII.  THE FOOT-HILLS
  VIII.  THE PINES
    IX.  THE TRAIL
     X.  ON SEEING DEER
    XI.  ON TENDERFEET
   XII.  THE CAÑON
  XIII.  TROUT, BUCKSKIN, AND PROSPECTORS
   XIV.  ON CAMP COOKERY
    XV.  ON THE WIND AT NIGHT
   XVI.  THE VALLEY
  XVII.  THE MAIN CREST
 XVIII.  THE GIANT FOREST
   XIX.  ON COWBOYS
    XX.  THE GOLDEN TROUT
   XXI.  ON GOING OUT
  XXII.  THE LURE OF THE TRAIL




THE MOUNTAINS



I

THE RIDGE TRAIL

Six trails lead to the main ridge.  They are all good trails, so that
even the casual tourist in the little Spanish-American town on the
seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent.  In some spots they
contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop
sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more
hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose
boulders and shale.  A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more
than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall.  The major
premise stands: even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear,
however scared he may become.

Our favorite route to the main ridge was by a way called the Cold
Spring Trail.  We used to enjoy taking visitors up it, mainly because
you come on the top suddenly, without warning.  Then we collected
remarks.  Everybody, even the most stolid, said something.

You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually
ascending creek-bed of a cañon, a half hour of laboring steepness in
the overarching mountain lilac and laurel.  There you came to a great
rock gateway which seemed the top of the world.  At the gateway was a
Bad Place where the ponies planted warily their little hoofs, and the
visitor played "eyes front," and besought that his mount should not
stumble.

Beyond the gateway a lush level cañon into which you plunged as into a
bath; then again the laboring trail, up and always up toward the blue
California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood chaparral
into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the fine
angular shale of the upper regions.  Beyond the apparent summit you
found always other summits yet to be climbed.  And all at once, like
thrusting your shoulders out of a hatchway, you looked over the top.

Then came the remarks.  Some swore softly; some uttered appreciative
ejaculation; some shouted aloud; some gasped; one man uttered three
times the word "Oh,"--once breathlessly, Oh! once in awakening
appreciation, OH! once in wild enthusiasm, OH! Then invariably they
fell silent and looked.

For the ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of
foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, cañons, little flats, and
gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below.
And from under your very feet rose, range after range, tier after tier,
rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains
to the main crest of the Coast Ranges, the blue distance, the
mightiness of California's western systems.  The eye followed them up
and up, and farther and farther, with the accumulating emotion of a
wild rush on a toboggan.  There came a point where the fact grew to be
almost too big for the appreciation, just as beyond a certain point
speed seems to become unbearable.  It left you breathless,
wonder-stricken, awed.  You could do nothing but look, and look, and
look again, tongue-tied by the impossibility of doing justice to what
you felt.  And in the far distance, finally, your soul, grown big in a
moment, came to rest on the great precipices and pines of the greatest
mountains of all, close under the sky.

In a little, after the change had come to you, a change definite and
enduring, which left your inner processes forever different from what
they had been, you turned sharp to the west and rode five miles along
the knife-edge Ridge Trail to where Rattlesnake Cañon led you down and
back to your accustomed environment.

To the left as you rode you saw, far on the horizon, rising to the
height of your eye, the mountains of the channel islands.  Then the
deep sapphire of the Pacific, fringed with the soft, unchanging white
of the surf and the yellow of the shore.  Then the town like a little
map, and the lush greens of the wide meadows, the fruit-groves, the
lesser ranges--all vivid, fertile, brilliant, and pulsating with
vitality. You filled your senses with it, steeped them in the beauty of
it.  And at once, by a mere turn of the eyes, from the almost crude
insistence of the bright primary color of life, you faced the tenuous
azures of distance, the delicate mauves and amethysts, the lilacs and
saffrons of the arid country.

This was the wonder we never tired of seeing for ourselves, of showing
to others.  And often, academically, perhaps a little wistfully, as one
talks of something to be dreamed of but never enjoyed, we spoke of how
fine it would be to ride down into that land of mystery and
enchantment, to penetrate one after another the cañons dimly outlined
in the shadows cast by the westering sun, to cross the mountains lying
outspread in easy grasp of the eye, to gain the distant blue Ridge, and
see with our own eyes what lay beyond.

For to its other attractions the prospect added that of impossibility,
of unattainableness.  These rides of ours were day rides.  We had to
get home by nightfall. Our horses had to be fed, ourselves to be
housed. We had not time to continue on down the other side whither the
trail led.  At the very and literal brink of achievement we were forced
to turn back.

Gradually the idea possessed us.  We promised ourselves that some day
we would explore.  In our after-dinner smokes we spoke of it.
Occasionally, from some hunter or forest-ranger, we gained little items
of information, we learned the fascination of musical names--Mono
Cañon, Patrera Don Victor, Lloma Paloma, Patrera Madulce, Cuyamas,
became familiar to us as syllables.  We desired mightily to body them
forth to ourselves as facts.  The extent of our mental vision expanded.
We heard of other mountains far beyond these farthest--mountains whose
almost unexplored vastnesses contained great forests, mighty valleys,
strong water-courses, beautiful hanging-meadows, deep cañons of
granite, eternal snows,--mountains so extended, so wonderful, that
their secrets offered whole summers of solitary exploration.  We came
to feel their marvel, we came to respect the inferno of the Desert that
hemmed them in.  Shortly we graduated from the indefiniteness of
railroad maps to the intricacies of geological survey charts.  The
fever was on us.  We must go.

A dozen of us desired.  Three of us went; and of the manner of our
going, and what you must know who would do likewise, I shall try here
to tell.



II

ON EQUIPMENT

If you would travel far in the great mountains where the trails are few
and bad, you will need a certain unique experience and skill.  Before
you dare venture forth without a guide, you must be able to do a number
of things, and to do them well.

First and foremost of all, you must be possessed of that strange sixth
sense best described as the sense of direction.  By it you always know
about where you are.  It is to some degree a memory for back-tracks and
landmarks, but to a greater extent an instinct for the lay of the
country, for relative bearings, by which you are able to make your way
across-lots back to your starting-place.  It is not an uncommon
faculty, yet some lack it utterly.  If you are one of the latter class,
do not venture, for you will get lost as sure as shooting, and being
lost in the mountains is no joke.

Some men possess it; others do not.  The distinction seems to be almost
arbitrary.  It can be largely developed, but only in those with whom
original endowment of the faculty makes development possible. No matter
how long a direction-blind man frequents the wilderness, he is never
sure of himself. Nor is the lack any reflection on the intelligence.  I
once traveled in the Black Hills with a young fellow who himself
frankly confessed that after much experiment he had come to the
conclusion he could not "find himself."  He asked me to keep near him,
and this I did as well as I could; but even then, three times during
the course of ten days he lost himself completely in the tumultuous
upheavals and cañons of that badly mixed region.  Another, an old
grouse-hunter, walked twice in a circle within the confines of a thick
swamp about two miles square. On the other hand, many exhibit almost
marvelous skill in striking a bee-line for their objective point, and
can always tell you, even after an engrossing and wandering hunt,
exactly where camp lies.  And I know nothing more discouraging than to
look up after a long hard day to find your landmarks changed in
appearance, your choice widened to at least five diverging and similar
cañons, your pockets empty of food, and the chill mountain twilight
descending.

Analogous to this is the ability to follow a dim trail.  A trail in the
mountains often means merely a way through, a route picked out by some
prospector, and followed since at long intervals by chance travelers.

It may, moreover, mean the only way through. Missing it will bring you
to ever-narrowing ledges, until at last you end at a precipice, and
there is no room to turn your horses around for the return.  Some of
the great box cañons thousands of feet deep are practicable by but one
passage,--and that steep and ingenious in its utilization of ledges,
crevices, little ravines, and "hog's-backs"; and when the only
indications to follow consist of the dim vestiges left by your last
predecessor, perhaps years before, the affair becomes one of
considerable skill and experience. You must be able to pick out
scratches made by shod hoofs on the granite, depressions almost filled
in by the subsequent fall of decayed vegetation, excoriations on fallen
trees.  You must have the sense to know AT ONCE when you have overrun
these indications, and the patience to turn back immediately to your
last certainty, there to pick up the next clue, even if it should take
you the rest of the day.  In short, it is absolutely necessary that you
be at least a persistent tracker.

Parenthetically; having found the trail, be charitable. Blaze it, if
there are trees; otherwise "monument" it by piling rocks on top of one
another.  Thus will those who come after bless your unknown shade.

Third, you must know horses.  I do not mean that you should be a
horse-show man, with a knowledge of points and pedigrees.  But you must
learn exactly what they can and cannot do in the matters of carrying
weights, making distance, enduring without deterioration hard climbs in
high altitudes; what they can or cannot get over in the way of bad
places.  This last is not always a matter of appearance merely.  Some
bits of trail, seeming impassable to anything but a goat, a Western
horse will negotiate easily; while others, not particularly terrifying
in appearance, offer complications of abrupt turn or a single bit of
unstable, leg-breaking footing which renders them exceedingly
dangerous.  You must, moreover, be able to manage your animals to the
best advantage in such bad places.  Of course you must in the beginning
have been wise as to the selection of the horses.

Fourth, you must know good horse-feed when you see it.  Your animals
are depending entirely on the country; for of course you are carrying
no dry feed for them.  Their pasturage will present itself under a
variety of aspects, all of which you must recognize with certainty.
Some of the greenest, lushest, most satisfying-looking meadows grow
nothing but water-grasses of large bulk but small nutrition; while
apparently barren tracts often conceal small but strong growths of
great value.  You must differentiate these.

Fifth, you must possess the ability to pare a hoof, fit a shoe cold,
nail it in place.  A bare hoof does not last long on the granite, and
you are far from the nearest blacksmith.  Directly in line with this,
you must have the trick of picking up and holding a hoof without being
kicked, and you must be able to throw and tie without injuring him any
horse that declines to be shod in any other way.

Last, you must of course be able to pack a horse well, and must know
four or five of the most essential pack-"hitches."

With this personal equipment you ought to be able to get through the
country.  It comprises the absolutely essential.

But further, for the sake of the highest efficiency, you should add, as
finish to your mountaineer's education, certain other items.  A
knowledge of the habits of deer and the ability to catch trout with
fair certainty are almost a necessity when far from the base of
supplies.  Occasionally the trail goes to pieces entirely: there you
must know something of the handling of an axe and pick.  Learn how to
swim a horse.  You will have to take lessons in camp-fire cookery.
Otherwise employ a guide.  Of course your lungs, heart, and legs must
be in good condition.

As to outfit, certain especial conditions will differentiate your needs
from those of forest and canoe travel.

You will in the changing altitudes be exposed to greater variations in
temperature.  At morning you may travel in the hot arid foot-hills; at
noon you will be in the cool shades of the big pines; towards evening
you may wallow through snowdrifts; and at dark you may camp where
morning will show you icicles hanging from the brinks of little
waterfalls. Behind your saddle you will want to carry a sweater, or
better still a buckskin waistcoat.  Your arms are never cold anyway,
and the pockets of such a waistcoat, made many and deep, are handy
receptacles for smokables, matches, cartridges, and the like.  For the
night-time, when the cold creeps down from the high peaks, you should
provide yourself with a suit of very heavy underwear and an extra
sweater or a buckskin shirt.  The latter is lighter, softer, and more
impervious to the wind than the sweater.  Here again I wish to place
myself on record as opposed to a coat.  It is a useless ornament,
assumed but rarely, and then only as substitute for a handier garment.

Inasmuch as you will be a great deal called on to handle abrading and
sometimes frozen ropes, you will want a pair of heavy buckskin
gauntlets.  An extra pair of stout high-laced boots with small
Hungarian hob-nails will come handy.  It is marvelous how quickly
leather wears out in the downhill friction of granite and shale.  I
once found the heels of a new pair of shoes almost ground away by a
single giant-strides descent of a steep shale-covered
thirteen-thousand-foot mountain.  Having no others I patched them with
hair-covered rawhide and a bit of horseshoe. It sufficed, but was a
long and disagreeable job which an extra pair would have obviated.

Balsam is practically unknown in the high hills, and the rocks are
especially hard.  Therefore you will take, in addition to your gray
army-blanket, a thick quilt or comforter to save your bones.  This,
with your saddle-blankets and pads as foundation, should give you
ease--if you are tough.  Otherwise take a second quilt.

A tarpaulin of heavy canvas 17 x 6 feet goes under you, and can be, if
necessary, drawn up to cover your head.  We never used a tent.  Since
you do not have to pack your outfit on your own back, you can, if you
choose, include a small pillow.  Your other personal belongings are
those you would carry into the Forest. I have elsewhere described what
they should be.

Now as to the equipment for your horses.

The most important point for yourself is your riding-saddle.  The
cowboy or military style and seat are the only practicable ones.
Perhaps of these two the cowboy saddle is the better, for the simple
reason that often in roping or leading a refractory horse, the horn is
a great help.  For steep-trail work the double cinch is preferable to
the single, as it need not be pulled so tight to hold the saddle in
place.

Your riding-bridle you will make of an ordinary halter by riveting two
snaps to the lower part of the head-piece just above the corners of the
horse's mouth. These are snapped into the rings of the bit.  At night
you unsnap the bit, remove it and the reins, and leave the halter part
on the horse.  Each animal, riding and packing, has furthermore a short
lead-rope attached always to his halter-ring.

Of pack-saddles the ordinary sawbuck tree is by all odds the best,
provided it fits.  It rarely does.  If you can adjust the wood
accurately to the anatomy of the individual horse, so that the side
pieces bear evenly and smoothly without gouging the withers or chafing
the back, you are possessed of the handiest machine made for the
purpose.  Should individual fitting prove impracticable, get an old LOW
California riding-tree and have a blacksmith bolt an upright spike on
the cantle.  You can hang the loops of the kyacks or alforjas--the
sacks slung on either side the horse--from the pommel and this iron
spike.  Whatever the saddle chosen, it should be supplied with
breast-straps, breeching, and two good cinches.

The kyacks or alforjas just mentioned are made either of heavy canvas,
or of rawhide shaped square and dried over boxes.  After drying, the
boxes are removed, leaving the stiff rawhide like small trunks open at
the top.  I prefer the canvas, for the reason that they can be folded
and packed for railroad transportation.  If a stiffer receptacle is
wanted for miscellaneous loose small articles, you can insert a
soap-box inside the canvas.  It cannot be denied that the rawhide will
stand rougher usage.

Probably the point now of greatest importance is that of
saddle-padding.  A sore back is the easiest thing in the world to
induce,--three hours' chafing will turn the trick,--and once it is done
you are in trouble for a month.  No precautions or pains are too great
to take in assuring your pack-animals against this.  On a pinch you
will give up cheerfully part of your bedding to the cause.  However,
two good-quality woolen blankets properly and smoothly folded, a pad
made of two ordinary collar-pads sewed parallel by means of canvas
strips in such a manner as to lie along both sides of the backbone, a
well-fitted saddle, and care in packing will nearly always suffice. I
have gone months without having to doctor a single abrasion.

You will furthermore want a pack-cinch and a pack-rope for each horse.
The former are of canvas or webbing provided with a ring at one end and
a big bolted wooden hook at the other.  The latter should be half-inch
lines of good quality.  Thirty-three feet is enough for packing only;
but we usually bought them forty feet long, so they could be used also
as picket-ropes.  Do not fail to include several extra.  They are
always fraying out, getting broken, being cut to free a fallen horse,
or becoming lost.

Besides the picket-ropes, you will also provide for each horse a pair
of strong hobbles.  Take them to a harness-maker and have him sew
inside each ankle-band a broad strip of soft wash-leather twice the
width of the band.  This will save much chafing.  Some advocate
sheepskin with the wool on, but this I have found tends to soak up
water or to freeze hard.  At least two loud cow-bells with neck-straps
are handy to assist you in locating whither the bunch may have strayed
during the night.  They should be hung on the loose horses most
inclined to wander.

Accidents are common in the hills.  The repair-kit is normally rather
comprehensive.  Buy a number of extra latigos, or cinch-straps.
Include many copper rivets of all sizes--they are the best quick-repair
known for almost everything, from putting together a smashed
pack-saddle to cobbling a worn-out boot. Your horseshoeing outfit
should be complete with paring-knife, rasp, nail-set, clippers, hammer,
nails, and shoes.  The latter will be the malleable soft iron,
low-calked "Goodenough," which can be fitted cold. Purchase a dozen
front shoes and a dozen and a half hind shoes.  The latter wear out
faster on the trail. A box or so of hob-nails for your own boots, a
waxed end and awl, a whetstone, a file, and a piece of buckskin for
strings and patches complete the list.

Thus equipped, with your grub supply, your cooking-utensils, your
personal effects, your rifle and your fishing-tackle, you should be
able to go anywhere that man and horses can go, entirely self-reliant,
independent of the towns.



III

ON HORSES

I really believe that you will find more variation of individual and
interesting character in a given number of Western horses than in an
equal number of the average men one meets on the street.  Their whole
education, from the time they run loose on the range until the time
when, branded, corralled, broken, and saddled, they pick their way
under guidance over a bad piece of trail, tends to develop their
self-reliance.  They learn to think for themselves.

To begin with two misconceptions, merely by way of clearing the ground:
the Western horse is generally designated as a "bronco."  The term is
considered synonymous of horse or pony.  This is not so. A horse is
"bronco" when he is ugly or mean or vicious or unbroken.  So is a cow
"bronco" in the same condition, or a mule, or a burro.  Again, from
certain Western illustrators and from a few samples, our notion of the
cow-pony has become that of a lean, rangy, wiry, thin-necked, scrawny
beast.  Such may be found.  But the average good cow-pony is apt to be
an exceedingly handsome animal, clean-built, graceful.  This is
natural, when you stop to think of it, for he is descended direct from
Moorish and Arabian stock.

Certain characteristics he possesses beyond the capabilities of the
ordinary horse.  The most marvelous to me of these is his
sure-footedness.  Let me give you a few examples.

I once was engaged with a crew of cowboys in rounding up mustangs in
southern Arizona.  We would ride slowly in through the hills until we
caught sight of the herds.  Then it was a case of running them down and
heading them off, of turning the herd, milling it, of rushing it while
confused across country and into the big corrals.  The surface of the
ground was composed of angular volcanic rocks about the size of your
two fists, between which the bunch-grass sprouted.  An Eastern rider
would ride his horse very gingerly and at a walk, and then thank his
lucky stars if he escaped stumbles.  The cowboys turned their mounts
through at a dead run.  It was beautiful to see the ponies go, lifting
their feet well up and over, planting them surely and firmly, and
nevertheless making speed and attending to the game.  Once, when we had
pushed the herd up the slope of a butte, it made a break to get through
a little hog-back.  The only way to head it was down a series of rough
boulder ledges laid over a great sheet of volcanic rock.  The man at
the hog-back put his little gray over the ledges and boulders, down the
sheet of rock,--hop, slip, slide,--and along the side hill in time to
head off the first of the mustangs.  During the ten days of riding I
saw no horse fall.  The animal I rode, Button by name, never even
stumbled.

In the Black Hills years ago I happened to be one of the inmates of a
small mining-camp.  Each night the work-animals, after being fed, were
turned loose in the mountains.  As I possessed the only cow-pony in the
outfit, he was fed in the corral, and kept up for the purpose of
rounding up the others.  Every morning one of us used to ride him out
after the herd.  Often it was necessary to run him at full speed along
the mountain-side, over rocks, boulders, and ledges, across ravines and
gullies.  Never but once in three months did he fall.

On the trail, too, they will perform feats little short of marvelous.
Mere steepness does not bother them at all.  They sit back almost on
their haunches, bunch their feet together, and slide.  I have seen them
go down a hundred feet this way.  In rough country they place their
feet accurately and quickly, gauge exactly the proper balance.  I have
led my saddle-horse, Bullet, over country where, undoubtedly to his
intense disgust, I myself have fallen a dozen times in the course of a
morning.  Bullet had no such troubles.  Any of the mountain horses will
hop cheerfully up or down ledges anywhere.  They will even walk a log
fifteen or twenty feet above a stream.  I have seen the same trick
performed in Barnum's circus as a wonderful feat, accompanied by brass
bands and breathlessness.  We accomplished it on our trip with out any
brass bands; I cannot answer for the breathlessness. As for steadiness
of nerve, they will walk serenely on the edge of precipices a man would
hate to look over, and given a palm's breadth for the soles of their
feet, they will get through.  Over such a place I should a lot rather
trust Bullet than myself.

In an emergency the Western horse is not apt to lose his head.  When a
pack-horse falls down, he lies still without struggle until eased of
his pack and told to get up.  If he slips off an edge, he tries to
double his fore legs under him and slide.  Should he find himself in a
tight place, he waits patiently for you to help him, and then proceeds
gingerly.  A friend of mine rode a horse named Blue.  One day, the
trail being slippery with rain, he slid and fell.  My friend managed a
successful jump, but Blue tumbled about thirty feet to the bed of the
cañon.  Fortunately he was not injured.  After some difficulty my
friend managed to force his way through the chaparral to where Blue
stood.  Then it was fine to see them. My friend would go ahead a few
feet, picking a route. When he had made his decision, he called Blue.
Blue came that far, and no farther.  Several times the little horse
balanced painfully and unsteadily like a goat, all four feet on a
boulder, waiting for his signal to advance.  In this manner they
regained the trail, and proceeded as though nothing had happened.
Instances could be multiplied indefinitely.

A good animal adapts himself quickly.  He is capable of learning by
experience.  In a country entirely new to him he soon discovers the
best method of getting about, where the feed grows, where he can find
water.  He is accustomed to foraging for himself. You do not need to
show him his pasturage. If there is anything to eat anywhere in the
district he will find it.  Little tufts of bunch-grass growing
concealed under the edges of the brush, he will search out. If he
cannot get grass, he knows how to rustle for the browse of small
bushes.  Bullet would devour sage-brush, when he could get nothing
else; and I have even known him philosophically to fill up on dry
pine-needles.  There is no nutrition in dry pine-needles, but Bullet
got a satisfyingly full belly.  On the trail a well-seasoned horse will
be always on the forage, snatching here a mouthful, yonder a single
spear of grass, and all without breaking the regularity of his gait, or
delaying the pack-train behind him.  At the end of the day's travel he
is that much to the good.

By long observation thus you will construct your ideal of the mountain
horse, and in your selection of your animals for an expedition you will
search always for that ideal.  It is only too apt to be modified by
personal idiosyncrasies, and proverbially an ideal is difficult of
attainment; but you will, with care, come closer to its realization
than one accustomed only to the conventionality of an artificially
reared horse would believe possible.

The ideal mountain horse, when you come to pick him out, is of medium
size.  He should be not smaller than fourteen hands nor larger than
fifteen. He is strongly but not clumsily built, short-coupled, with
none of the snipy speedy range of the valley animal.  You will select
preferably one of wide full forehead, indicating intelligence, low in
the withers, so the saddle will not be apt to gall him.  His sureness
of foot should be beyond question, and of course he must be an expert
at foraging.  A horse that knows but one or two kinds of feed, and that
starves unless he can find just those kinds, is an abomination.  He
must not jump when you throw all kinds of rattling and terrifying
tarpaulins across him, and he must not mind if the pack-ropes fall
about his heels.  In the day's march he must follow like a dog without
the necessity of a lead-rope, nor must he stray far when turned loose
at night.

Fortunately, when removed from the reassuring environment of
civilization, horses are gregarious. They hate to be separated from the
bunch to which they are accustomed.  Occasionally one of us would stop
on the trail, for some reason or another, thus dropping behind the
pack-train.  Instantly the saddle-horse so detained would begin to grow
uneasy.  Bullet used by all means in his power to try to induce me to
proceed.  He would nibble me with his lips, paw the ground, dance in a
circle, and finally sidle up to me in the position of being mounted,
than which he could think of no stronger hint.  Then when I had finally
remounted, it was hard to hold him in.  He would whinny frantically,
scramble with enthusiasm up trails steep enough to draw a protest at
ordinary times, and rejoin his companions with every symptom of
gratification and delight.  This gregariousness and alarm at being left
alone in a strange country tends to hold them together at night.  You
are reasonably certain that in the morning, having found one, you will
come upon the rest not far away.

The personnel of our own outfit we found most interesting.  Although
collected from divergent localities they soon became acquainted.  In a
crowded corral they were always compact in their organization, sticking
close together, and resisting as a solid phalanx encroachments on their
feed by other and stranger horses.  Their internal organization was
very amusing. A certain segregation soon took place.  Some became
leaders; others by common consent were relegated to the position of
subordinates.

The order of precedence on the trail was rigidly preserved by the
pack-horses.  An attempt by Buckshot to pass Dinkey, for example, the
latter always met with a bite or a kick by way of hint.  If the gelding
still persisted, and tried to pass by a long detour, the mare would
rush out at him angrily, her ears back, her eyes flashing, her neck
extended.  And since Buckshot was by no means inclined always to give
in meekly, we had opportunities for plenty of amusement.  The two were
always skirmishing. When by a strategic short cut across the angle of a
trail Buckshot succeeded in stealing a march on Dinkey, while she was
nipping a mouthful, his triumph was beautiful to see.  He never held
the place for long, however.  Dinkey's was the leadership by force of
ambition and energetic character, and at the head of the pack-train she
normally marched.

Yet there were hours when utter indifference seemed to fall on the
militant spirits.  They trailed peacefully and amiably in the rear
while Lily or Jenny marched with pride in the coveted advance.  But the
place was theirs only by sufferance.  A bite or a kick sent them back
to their own positions when the true leaders grew tired of their
vacation.

However rigid this order of precedence, the saddle-animals were
acknowledged as privileged;--and knew it.  They could go where they
pleased.  Furthermore theirs was the duty of correcting infractions of
the trail discipline, such as grazing on the march, or attempting
unauthorized short cuts.  They appreciated this duty.  Bullet always
became vastly indignant if one of the pack-horses misbehaved.  He would
run at the offender angrily, hustle him to his place with savage nips
of his teeth, and drop back to his own position with a comical air of
virtue.  Once in a great while it would happen that on my spurring up
from the rear of the column I would be mistaken for one of the
pack-horses attempting illegally to get ahead. Immediately Dinkey or
Buckshot would snake his head out crossly to turn me to the rear.  It
was really ridiculous to see the expression of apology with which they
would take it all back, and the ostentatious, nose-elevated
indifference in Bullet's very gait as he marched haughtily by.  So
rigid did all the animals hold this convention that actually in the San
Joaquin Valley Dinkey once attempted to head off a Southern Pacific
train.  She ran at full speed diagonally toward it, her eyes striking
fire, her ears back, her teeth snapping in rage because the locomotive
would not keep its place behind her ladyship.

Let me make you acquainted with our outfit.

I rode, as you have gathered, an Arizona pony named Bullet.  He was a
handsome fellow with a chestnut brown coat, long mane and tail, and a
beautiful pair of brown eyes.  Wes always called him "Baby."  He was in
fact the youngster of the party, with all the engaging qualities of
youth.  I never saw a horse more willing.  He wanted to do what you
wanted him to; it pleased him, and gave him a warm consciousness of
virtue which the least observant could not fail to remark.  When
leading he walked industriously ahead, setting the pace; when
driving,--that is, closing up the rear,--he attended strictly to
business.  Not for the most luscious bunch of grass that ever grew
would he pause even for an instant.  Yet in his off hours, when I rode
irresponsibly somewhere in the middle, he was a great hand to forage.
Few choice morsels escaped him.  He confided absolutely in his rider in
the matter of bad country, and would tackle anything I would put him
at.  It seemed that he trusted me not to put him at anything that would
hurt him.  This was an invaluable trait when an example had to be set
to the reluctance of the other horses.  He was a great swimmer.
Probably the most winning quality of his nature was his extreme
friendliness.  He was always wandering into camp to be petted, nibbling
me over with his lips, begging to have his forehead rubbed, thrusting
his nose under an elbow, and otherwise telling how much he thought of
us.  Whoever broke him did a good job.  I never rode a better-reined
horse.  A mere indication of the bridle-hand turned him to right or
left, and a mere raising of the hand without the slightest pressure on
the bit stopped him short.  And how well he understood cow-work!  Turn
him loose after the bunch, and he would do the rest.  All I had to do
was to stick to him.  That in itself was no mean task, for he turned
like a flash, and was quick as a cat on his feet.  At night I always
let him go foot free. He would be there in the morning, and I could
always walk directly up to him with the bridle in plain sight in my
hand.  Even at a feedless camp we once made where we had shot a couple
of deer, he did not attempt to wander off in search of pasture, as
would most horses.  He nosed around unsuccessfully until pitch dark,
then came into camp, and with great philosophy stood tail to the fire
until morning.  I could always jump off anywhere for a shot, without
even the necessity of "tying him to the ground," by throwing the reins
over his head.  He would wait for me, although he was never overfond of
firearms.

Nevertheless Bullet had his own sense of dignity. He was literally as
gentle as a kitten, but he drew a line.  I shall never forget how once,
being possessed of a desire to find out whether we could swim our
outfit across a certain stretch of the Merced River, I climbed him
bareback.  He bucked me off so quickly that I never even got settled on
his back.  Then he gazed at me with sorrow, while, laughing
irrepressibly at this unusual assertion of independent ideas, I picked
myself out of a wild-rose bush.  He did not attempt to run away from
me, but stood to be saddled, and plunged boldly into the swift water
where I told him to.  Merely he thought it disrespectful in me to ride
him without his proper harness.  He was the pet of the camp.

As near as I could make out, he had but one fault. He was altogether
too sensitive about his hind quarters, and would jump like a rabbit if
anything touched him there.

Wes rode a horse we called Old Slob.  Wes, be it premised, was an
interesting companion.  He had done everything,--seal-hunting,
abalone-gathering, boar-hunting, all kinds of shooting, cow-punching in
the rough Coast Ranges, and all other queer and outlandish and
picturesque vocations by which a man can make a living.  He weighed two
hundred and twelve pounds and was the best game shot with a rifle I
ever saw.

As you may imagine, Old Slob was a stocky individual.  He was built
from the ground up.  His disposition was quiet, slow, honest.  Above
all, he gave the impression of vast, very vast experience. Never did he
hurry his mental processes, although he was quick enough in his
movements if need arose. He quite declined to worry about anything.
Consequently, in spite of the fact that he carried by far the heaviest
man in the company, he stayed always fat and in good condition.  There
was something almost pathetic in Old Slob's willingness to go on
working, even when more work seemed like an imposition. You could not
fail to fall in love with his mild inquiring gentle eyes, and his utter
trust in the goodness of human nature.  His only fault was an excess of
caution.  Old Slob was very very experienced.  He knew all about
trails, and he declined to be hurried over what he considered a bad
place.  Wes used sometimes to disagree with him as to what constituted
a bad place.  "Some day you're going to take a tumble, you old fool,"
Wes used to address him, "if you go on fiddling down steep rocks with
your little old monkey work.  Why don't you step out?" Only Old Slob
never did take a tumble.  He was willing to do anything for you, even
to the assuming of a pack.  This is considered by a saddle-animal
distinctly as a come-down.

The Tenderfoot, by the irony of fate, drew a tenderfoot horse.  Tunemah
was a big fool gray that was constitutionally rattle-brained.  He meant
well enough, but he didn't know anything.  When he came to a bad place
in the trail, he took one good look--and rushed it.  Constantly we
expected him to come to grief.  It wore on the Tenderfoot's nerves.
Tunemah was always trying to wander off the trail, trying fool routes
of his own invention.  If he were sent ahead to set the pace, he lagged
and loitered and constantly looked back, worried lest he get too far in
advance and so lose the bunch.  If put at the rear, he fretted against
the bit, trying to push on at a senseless speed.  In spite of his
extreme anxiety to stay with the train, he would once in a blue moon
get a strange idea of wandering off solitary through the mountains,
passing good feed, good water, good shelter.  We would find him, after
a greater or less period of difficult tracking, perched in a silly
fashion on some elevation. Heaven knows what his idea was: it certainly
was neither search for feed, escape, return whence he came, nor desire
for exercise.  When we came up with him, he would gaze mildly at us
from a foolish vacant eye and follow us peaceably back to camp. Like
most weak and silly people, he had occasional stubborn fits when you
could beat him to a pulp without persuading him.  He was one of the
type already mentioned that knows but two or three kinds of feed.  As
time went on he became thinner and thinner.  The other horses
prospered, but Tunemah failed.  He actually did not know enough to take
care of himself; and could not learn.  Finally, when about two months
out, we traded him at a cow-camp for a little buckskin called Monache.

So much for the saddle-horses.  The pack-animals were four.

A study of Dinkey's character and an experience of her characteristics
always left me with mingled feelings.  At times I was inclined to think
her perfection: at other times thirty cents would have been esteemed by
me as a liberal offer for her.  To enumerate her good points: she was
an excellent weight-carrier; took good care of her pack that it never
scraped nor bumped; knew all about trails, the possibilities of short
cuts, the best way of easing herself downhill; kept fat and healthy in
districts where grew next to no feed at all; was past-mistress in the
picking of routes through a trailless country.  Her endurance was
marvelous; her intelligence equally so.  In fact too great intelligence
perhaps accounted for most of her defects.  She thought too much for
herself; she made up opinions about people; she speculated on just how
far each member of the party, man or beast, would stand imposition, and
tried conclusions with each to test the accuracy of her speculations;
she obstinately insisted on her own way in going up and down hill,--a
way well enough for Dinkey, perhaps, but hazardous to the other less
skillful animals who naturally would follow her lead.  If she did
condescend to do things according to your ideas, it was with a mental
reservation.  You caught her sardonic eye fixed on you contemptuously.
You felt at once that she knew another method, a much better method,
with which yours compared most unfavorably.  "I'd like to kick you in
the stomach," Wes used to say; "you know too much for a horse!"

If one of the horses bucked under the pack, Dinkey deliberately tried
to stampede the others--and generally succeeded.  She invariably led
them off whenever she could escape her picket-rope.  In case of trouble
of any sort, instead of standing still sensibly, she pretended to be
subject to wild-eyed panics.  It was all pretense, for when you DID
yield to temptation and light into her with the toe of your boot, she
subsided into common sense.  The spirit of malevolent mischief was hers.

Her performances when she was being packed were ridiculously
histrionic.  As soon as the saddle was cinched, she spread her legs
apart, bracing them firmly as though about to receive the weight of an
iron safe.  Then as each article of the pack was thrown across her
back, she flinched and uttered the most heart-rending groans.  We used
sometimes to amuse ourselves by adding merely an empty sack, or other
article quite without weight.  The groans and tremblings of the braced
legs were quite as pitiful as though we had piled on a sack of flour.
Dinkey, I had forgotten to state, was a white horse, and belonged to
Wes.

Jenny also was white and belonged to Wes.  Her chief characteristic was
her devotion to Dinkey.  She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her
enthusiastically. Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a
very good and sure pack-horse.  The deceiving part about Jenny was her
eye.  It was baleful with the spirit of evil,--snaky and black, and
with green sideways gleams in it.  Catching the flash of it, you would
forever after avoid getting in range of her heels or teeth.  But it was
all a delusion.  Jenny's disposition was mild and harmless.

The third member of the pack-outfit we bought at an auction sale in
rather a peculiar manner.  About sixty head of Arizona horses of the C.
A. Bar outfit were being sold.  Toward the close of the afternoon they
brought out a well-built stocky buckskin of first-rate appearance
except that his left flank was ornamented with five different brands.
The auctioneer called attention to him.

"Here is a first-rate all-round horse," said he. "He is sound; will
ride, work, or pack; perfectly broken, mild, and gentle.  He would make
a first-rate family horse, for he has a kind disposition."

The official rider put a saddle on him to give him a demonstrating turn
around the track.  Then that mild, gentle, perfectly broken family
horse of kind disposition gave about as pretty an exhibition of
barbed-wire bucking as you would want to see.  Even the auctioneer had
to join in the wild shriek of delight that went up from the crowd.  He
could not get a bid, and I bought the animal in later very cheaply.

As I had suspected, the trouble turned out to be merely exuberance or
nervousness before a crowd. He bucked once with me under the saddle;
and twice subsequently under a pack,--that was all.  Buckshot was the
best pack-horse we had.  Bar an occasional saunter into the brush when
he got tired of the trail, we had no fault to find with him.  He
carried a heavy pack, was as sure-footed as Bullet, as sagacious on the
trail as Dinkey, and he always attended strictly to his own business.
Moreover he knew that business thoroughly, knew what should be expected
of him, accomplished it well and quietly.  His disposition was
dignified but lovable.  As long as you treated him well, he was as
gentle as you could ask.  But once let Buckshot get it into his head
that he was being imposed on, or once let him see that your temper had
betrayed you into striking him when he thought he did not deserve it,
and he cut loose vigorously and emphatically with his heels.  He
declined to be abused.

There remains but Lily.  I don't know just how to do justice to
Lily--the "Lily maid."  We named her that because she looked it.  Her
color was a pure white, her eye was virginal and silly, her long bang
strayed in wanton carelessness across her face and eyes, her expression
was foolish, and her legs were long and rangy.  She had the general
appearance of an overgrown school-girl too big for short dresses and
too young for long gowns;--a school-girl named Flossie, or Mamie, or
Lily.  So we named her that.

At first hers was the attitude of the timid and shrinking tenderfoot.
She stood in awe of her companions; she appreciated her lack of
experience. Humbly she took the rear; slavishly she copied the other
horses; closely she clung to camp.  Then in a few weeks, like most
tenderfeet, she came to think that her short experience had taught her
everything there was to know.  She put on airs.  She became too cocky
and conceited for words.

Everything she did was exaggerated, overdone. She assumed her pack with
an air that plainly said, "Just see what a good horse am I!"  She
started out three seconds before the others in a manner intended to
shame their procrastinating ways.  Invariably she was the last to rest,
and the first to start on again. She climbed over-vigorously, with the
manner of conscious rectitude.  "Acts like she was trying to get her
wages raised," said Wes.

In this manner she wore herself down.  If permitted she would have
climbed until winded, and then would probably have fallen off somewhere
for lack of strength.  Where the other horses watched the movements of
those ahead, in order that when a halt for rest was called they might
stop at an easy place on the trail, Lily would climb on until jammed
against the animal immediately preceding her.  Thus often she found
herself forced to cling desperately to extremely bad footing until the
others were ready to proceed.  Altogether she was a precious nuisance,
that acted busily but without thinking.

Two virtues she did possess.  She was a glutton for work; and she could
fall far and hard without injuring herself.  This was lucky, for she
was always falling.  Several times we went down to her fully expecting
to find her dead or so crippled that she would have to be shot.  The
loss of a little skin was her only injury.  She got to be quite
philosophic about it.  On losing her balance she would tumble
peaceably, and then would lie back with an air of luxury, her eyes
closed, while we worked to free her.  When we had loosened the pack,
Wes would twist her tail.  Thereupon she would open one eye inquiringly
as though to say, "Hullo!  Done already?"  Then leisurely she would
arise and shake herself.



IV

ON HOW TO GO ABOUT IT

One truth you must learn to accept, believe as a tenet of your faith,
and act upon always.  It is that your entire welfare depends on the
condition of your horses.  They must, as a consequence, receive always
your first consideration.  As long as they have rest and food, you are
sure of getting along; as soon as they fail, you are reduced to
difficulties.  So absolute is this truth that it has passed into an
idiom. When a Westerner wants to tell you that he lacks a thing, he
informs you he is "afoot" for it.  "Give me a fill for my pipe," he
begs; "I'm plumb afoot for tobacco."

Consequently you think last of your own comfort. In casting about for a
place to spend the night, you look out for good feed.  That assured,
all else is of slight importance; you make the best of whatever camping
facilities may happen to be attached.  If necessary you will sleep on
granite or in a marsh, walk a mile for firewood or water, if only your
animals are well provided for.  And on the trail you often will work
twice as hard as they merely to save them a little.  In whatever I may
tell you regarding practical expedients, keep this always in mind.

As to the little details of your daily routine in the mountains, many
are worth setting down, however trivial they may seem.  They mark the
difference between the greenhorn and the old-timer; but, more
important, they mark also the difference between the right and the
wrong, the efficient and the inefficient ways of doing things.

In the morning the cook for the day is the first man afoot, usually
about half past four.  He blows on his fingers, casts malevolent
glances at the sleepers, finally builds his fire and starts his meal.
Then he takes fiendish delight in kicking out the others.  They do not
run with glad shouts to plunge into the nearest pool, as most camping
fiction would have us believe.  Not they.  The glad shout and nearest
pool can wait until noon when the sun is warm.  They, too, blow on
their fingers and curse the cook for getting them up so early.  All eat
breakfast and feel better.

Now the cook smokes in lordly ease.  One of the other men washes the
dishes, while his companion goes forth to drive in the horses.  Washing
dishes is bad enough, but fumbling with frozen fingers at stubborn
hobble-buckles is worse.  At camp the horses are caught, and each is
tied near his own saddle and pack.

The saddle-horses are attended to first.  Thus they are available for
business in case some of the others should make trouble.  You will see
that your saddle-blankets are perfectly smooth, and so laid that the
edges are to the front where they are least likely to roll under or
wrinkle.  After the saddle is in place, lift it slightly and loosen the
blanket along the back bone so it will not draw down tight under the
weight of the rider.  Next hang your rifle-scabbard under your left
leg.  It should be slanted along the horse's side at such an angle that
neither will the muzzle interfere with the animal's hind leg, nor the
butt with your bridle-hand.  This angle must be determined by
experiment.  The loop in front should be attached to the scabbard, so
it can be hung over the horn; that behind to the saddle, so the muzzle
can be thrust through it.  When you come to try this method, you will
appreciate its handiness.  Besides the rifle, you will carry also your
rope, camera, and a sweater or waistcoat for changes in temperature.
In your saddle bags are pipe and tobacco, perhaps a chunk of bread,
your note-book, and the map--if there is any.  Thus your saddle-horse
is outfitted.  Do not forget your collapsible rubber cup.  About your
waist you will wear your cartridge-belt with six-shooter and
sheath-knife. I use a forty-five caliber belt.  By threading a buck
skin thong in and out through some of the cartridge loops, their size
is sufficiently reduced to hold also the 30-40 rifle cartridges.  Thus
I carry ammunition for both revolver and rifle in the one belt.  The
belt should not be buckled tight about your waist, but should hang well
down on the hip.  This is for two reasons.  In the first place, it does
not drag so heavily at your anatomy, and falls naturally into position
when you are mounted.  In the second place, you can jerk your gun out
more easily from a loose-hanging holster. Let your knife-sheath be so
deep as almost to cover the handle, and the knife of the very best
steel procurable.  I like a thin blade.  If you are a student of animal
anatomy, you can skin and quarter a deer with nothing heavier than a
pocket-knife.

When you come to saddle the pack-horses, you must exercise even greater
care in getting the saddle-blankets smooth and the saddle in place.
There is some give and take to a rider; but a pack carries "dead," and
gives the poor animal the full handicap of its weight at all times.  A
rider dismounts in bad or steep places; a pack stays on until the
morning's journey is ended.  See to it, then, that it is on right.

Each horse should have assigned him a definite and, as nearly as
possible, unvarying pack.  Thus you will not have to search everywhere
for the things you need.

For example, in our own case, Lily was known as the cook-horse.  She
carried all the kitchen utensils, the fire-irons, the axe, and matches.
In addition her alforjas contained a number of little bags in which
were small quantities for immediate use of all the different sorts of
provisions we had with us.  When we made camp we unpacked her near the
best place for a fire, and everything was ready for the cook. Jenny was
a sort of supply store, for she transported the main stock of the
provisions of which Lily's little bags contained samples.  Dinkey
helped out Jenny, and in addition--since she took such good care of her
pack--was intrusted with the fishing-rods, the shot-gun, the
medicine-bag, small miscellaneous duffle, and whatever deer or bear
meat we happened to have.  Buckshot's pack consisted of things not
often used, such as all the ammunition, the horse-shoeing outfit,
repair-kit, and the like.  It was rarely disturbed at all.

These various things were all stowed away in the kyacks or alforjas
which hung on either side.  They had to be very accurately balanced.
The least difference in weight caused one side to sag, and that in turn
chafed the saddle-tree against the animal's withers.

So far, so good.  Next comes the affair of the top packs.  Lay your
duffle-bags across the middle of the saddle.  Spread the blankets and
quilts as evenly as possible.  Cover all with the canvas tarpaulin
suitably folded.  Everything is now ready for the pack-rope.

The first thing anybody asks you when it is discovered that you know a
little something of pack-trains is, "Do you throw the Diamond Hitch?"
Now the Diamond is a pretty hitch and a firm one, but it is by no means
the fetish some people make of it.  They would have you believe that it
represents the height of the packer's art; and once having mastered it,
they use it religiously for every weight, shape, and size of pack.  The
truth of the matter is that the style of hitch should be varied
according to the use to which it is to be put.

The Diamond is good because it holds firmly, is a great flattener, and
is especially adapted to the securing of square boxes.  It is
celebrated because it is pretty and rather difficult to learn.  Also it
possesses the advantage for single-handed packing that it can be thrown
slack throughout and then tightened, and that the last pull tightens
the whole hitch.  However, for ordinary purposes, with a quiet horse
and a comparatively soft pack, the common Square Hitch holds well
enough and is quickly made.  For a load of small articles and heavy
alforjas there is nothing like the Lone Packer.  It too is a bit hard
to learn.  Chiefly is it valuable because the last pulls draw the
alforjas away from the horse's sides, thus preventing their chafing
him.  Of the many hitches that remain, you need learn, to complete your
list for all practical purposes, only the Bucking Hitch.  It is
complicated, and takes time and patience to throw, but it is warranted
to hold your deck-load through the most violent storms bronco ingenuity
can stir up.

These four will be enough.  Learn to throw them, and take pains always
to throw them good and tight. A loose pack is the best expedient the
enemy of your soul could possibly devise.  It always turns or comes to
pieces on the edge of things; and then you will spend the rest of the
morning trailing a wildly bucking horse by the burst and scattered
articles of camp duffle.  It is furthermore your exhilarating task,
after you have caught him, to take stock, and spend most of the
afternoon looking for what your first search passed by.  Wes and I once
hunted two hours for as large an object as a Dutch oven.  After which
you can repack.  This time you will snug things down. You should have
done so in the beginning.

Next, the lead-ropes are made fast to the top of the packs.  There is
here to be learned a certain knot. In case of trouble you can reach
from your saddle and jerk the whole thing free by a single pull on a
loose end.

All is now ready.  You take a last look around to see that nothing has
been left.  One of the horsemen starts on ahead.  The pack-horses swing
in behind. We soon accustomed ours to recognize the whistling of "Boots
and Saddles" as a signal for the advance. Another horseman brings up
the rear.  The day's journey has begun.

To one used to pleasure-riding the affair seems almost too deliberate.
The leader plods steadily, stopping from time to time to rest on the
steep slopes. The others string out in a leisurely procession.  It does
no good to hurry.  The horses will of their own accord stay in sight of
one another, and constant nagging to keep the rear closed up only
worries them without accomplishing any valuable result.  In going
uphill especially, let the train take its time.  Each animal is likely
to have his own ideas about when and where to rest.  If he does,
respect them.  See to it merely that there is no prolonged yielding to
the temptation of meadow feed, and no careless or malicious straying
off the trail.  A minute's difference in the time of arrival does not
count.  Remember that the horses are doing hard and continuous work on
a grass diet.

The day's distance will not seem to amount to much in actual miles,
especially if, like most Californians, you are accustomed on a fresh
horse to make an occasional sixty or seventy between suns; but it ought
to suffice.  There is a lot to be seen and enjoyed in a mountain mile.
Through the high country two miles an hour is a fair average rate of
speed, so you can readily calculate that fifteen make a pretty long
day.  You will be afoot a good share of the time. If you were out from
home for only a few hours' jaunt, undoubtedly you would ride your horse
over places where in an extended trip you will prefer to lead him.  It
is always a question of saving your animals.

About ten o'clock you must begin to figure on water.  No horse will
drink in the cool of the morning, and so, when the sun gets well up, he
will be thirsty.  Arrange it.

As to the method of travel, you can either stop at noon or push
straight on through.  We usually arose about half past four; got under
way by seven; and then rode continuously until ready to make the next
camp.  In the high country this meant until two or three in the
afternoon, by which time both we and the horses were pretty hungry.
But when we did make camp, the horses had until the following morning
to get rested and to graze, while we had all the remainder of the
afternoon to fish, hunt, or loaf.  Sometimes, however, it was more
expedient to make a lunch-camp at noon.  Then we allowed an hour for
grazing, and about half an hour to pack and unpack.  It meant steady
work for ourselves.  To unpack, turn out the horses, cook, wash dishes,
saddle up seven animals, and repack, kept us very busy.  There remained
not much leisure to enjoy the scenery.  It freshened the horses,
however, which was the main point.  I should say the first method was
the better for ordinary journeys; and the latter for those times when,
to reach good feed, a forced march becomes necessary.

On reaching the night's stopping-place, the cook for the day unpacks
the cook-horse and at once sets about the preparation of dinner.  The
other two attend to the animals.  And no matter how tired you are, or
how hungry you may be, you must take time to bathe their backs with
cold water; to stake the picket-animal where it will at once get good
feed and not tangle its rope in bushes, roots, or stumps; to hobble the
others; and to bell those inclined to wander.  After this is done, it
is well, for the peace and well-being of the party, to take food.

A smoke establishes you in the final and normal attitude of good humor.
Each man spreads his tarpaulin where he has claimed his bed.  Said
claim is indicated by his hat thrown down where he wishes to sleep.  It
is a mark of pre-emption which every one is bound to respect.  Lay out
your saddle-blankets, cover them with your quilt, place the
sleeping-blanket on top, and fold over the tarpaulin to cover the
whole.  At the head deposit your duffle-bag.  Thus are you assured of a
pleasant night.

About dusk you straggle in with trout or game. The camp-keeper lays
aside his mending or his repairing or his note-book, and stirs up the
cooking-fire.  The smell of broiling and frying and boiling arises in
the air.  By the dancing flame of the campfire you eat your third
dinner for the day--in the mountains all meals are dinners, and
formidable ones at that.  The curtain of blackness draws down close.
Through it shine stars, loom mountains cold and mist-like in the moon.
You tell stories.  You smoke pipes.  After a time the pleasant chill
creeps down from the eternal snows.  Some one throws another handful of
pine-cones on the fire.  Sleepily you prepare for bed.  The pine-cones
flare up, throwing their light in your eyes.  You turn over and wrap
the soft woolen blanket close about your chin.  You wink drowsily and
at once you are asleep.  Along late in the night you awaken to find
your nose as cold as a dog's.  You open one eye.  A few coals mark
where the fire has been.  The mist mountains have drawn nearer, they
seem to bend over you in silent contemplation.  The moon is sailing
high in the heavens.

With a sigh you draw the canvas tarpaulin over your head.  Instantly it
is morning.



V

THE COAST RANGES

At last, on the day appointed, we, with five horses, climbed the Cold
Spring Trail to the ridge; and then, instead of turning to the left, we
plunged down the zigzag lacets of the other side. That night we camped
at Mono Cañon, feeling ourselves strangely an integral part of the
relief map we had looked upon so many times that almost we had come to
consider its features as in miniature, not capacious for the
accommodation of life-sized men. Here we remained a day while we rode
the hills in search of Dinkey and Jenny, there pastured.

We found Jenny peaceful and inclined to be corralled. But Dinkey,
followed by a slavishly adoring brindle mule, declined to be rounded
up.  We chased her up hill and down; along creek-beds and through the
spiky chaparral.  Always she dodged craftily, warily, with forethought.
Always the brindled mule, wrapt in admiration at his companion's
cleverness, crashed along after.  Finally we teased her into a narrow
cañon.  Wes and the Tenderfoot closed the upper end.  I attempted to
slip by to the lower, but was discovered.  Dinkey tore a frantic mile
down the side hill.  Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced
parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful in his avoidance
of bad footing, precious in his selection of good, interested in the
game, indignant at the wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the
besotted mule.  At a bend in the cañon interposed a steep bank.  Up
this we scrambled, dirt and stones flying.  I had just time to bend low
along the saddle when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of
thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket.  In the open space on the
farther side Bullet stopped, panting but triumphant.  Dinkey,
surrounded at last, turned back toward camp with an air of utmost
indifference. The mule dropped his long ears and followed.

At camp we corralled Dinkey, but left her friend to shift for himself.
Then was lifted up his voice in mulish lamentations until, cursing, we
had to ride out bareback and drive him far into the hills and there
stone him into distant fear.  Even as we departed up the trail the
following day the voice of his sorrow, diminishing like the echo of
grief, appealed uselessly to Dinkey's sympathy.  For Dinkey, once
captured, seemed to have shrugged her shoulders and accepted inevitable
toil with a real though cynical philosophy.

The trail rose gradually by imperceptible gradations and occasional
climbs.  We journeyed in the great cañons.  High chaparral flanked the
trail, occasional wide gray stretches of "old man" filled the air with
its pungent odor and with the calls of its quail. The crannies of the
rocks, the stretches of wide loose shale, the crumbling bottom earth
offered to the eye the dessicated beauties of creamy yucca, of yerba
buena, of the gaudy red paint-brushes, the Spanish bayonet; and to the
nostrils the hot dry perfumes of the semi-arid lands.  The air was
tepid; the sun hot. A sing-song of bees and locusts and strange insects
lulled the mind.  The ponies plodded on cheerfully. We expanded and
basked and slung our legs over the pommels of our saddles and were glad
we had come.

At no time did we seem to be climbing mountains. Rather we wound in and
out, round and about, through a labyrinth of valleys and cañons and
ravines, farther and farther into a mysterious shut-in country that
seemed to have no end.  Once in a while, to be sure, we zigzagged up a
trifling ascent; but it was nothing.  And then at a certain point the
Tenderfoot happened to look back.

"Well!" he gasped; "will you look at that!"

We turned.  Through a long straight aisle which chance had placed just
there, we saw far in the distance a sheer slate-colored wall; and
beyond, still farther in the distance, overtopping the slate-colored
wall by a narrow strip, another wall of light azure blue.

"It's our mountains," said Wes, "and that blue ridge is the channel
islands.  We've got up higher than our range."

We looked about us, and tried to realize that we were actually more
than halfway up the formidable ridge we had so often speculated on from
the Cold Spring Trail.  But it was impossible.  In a few moments,
however, our broad easy cañon narrowed. Huge crags and sheer masses of
rock hemmed us in.  The chaparral and yucca and yerba buena gave place
to pine-trees and mountain oaks, with little close clumps of
cottonwoods in the stream bottom. The brook narrowed and leaped, and
the white of alkali faded from its banks.  We began to climb in good
earnest, pausing often for breath.  The view opened.  We looked back on
whence we had come, and saw again, from the reverse, the forty miles of
ranges and valleys we had viewed from the Ridge Trail.

At this point we stopped to shoot a rattlesnake. Dinkey and Jenny took
the opportunity to push ahead.  From time to time we would catch sight
of them traveling earnestly on, following the trail accurately,
stopping at stated intervals to rest, doing their work, conducting
themselves as decorously as though drivers had stood over them with
blacksnake whips.  We tried a little to catch up.

"Never mind," said Wes, "they've been over this trail before.  They'll
stop when they get to where we're going to camp."

We halted a moment on the ridge to look back over the lesser mountains
and the distant ridge, beyond which the islands now showed plainly.
Then we dropped down behind the divide into a cup valley containing a
little meadow with running water on two sides of it and big pines
above.  The meadow was brown, to be sure, as all typical California is
at this time of year.  But the brown of California and the brown of the
East are two different things.  Here is no snow or rain to mat down the
grass, to suck out of it the vital principles.  It grows ripe and sweet
and soft, rich with the life that has not drained away, covering the
hills and valleys with the effect of beaver fur, so that it seems the
great round-backed hills must have in a strange manner the yielding
flesh-elasticity of living creatures.  The brown of California is the
brown of ripeness; not of decay.

Our little meadow was beautifully named Madulce,[1] and was just below
the highest point of this section of the Coast Range.  The air drank
fresh with the cool of elevation.  We went out to shoot supper; and so
found ourselves on a little knoll fronting the brown-hazed east.  As we
stood there, enjoying the breeze after our climb, a great wave of hot
air swept by us, filling our lungs with heat, scorching our faces as
the breath of a furnace.  Thus was brought to our minds what, in the
excitement of a new country, we had forgotten,--that we were at last on
the eastern slope, and that before us waited the Inferno of the desert.

That evening we lay in the sweet ripe grasses of Madulce, and talked of
it.  Wes had been across it once before and did not possess much
optimism with which to comfort us.

"It's hot, just plain hot," said he, "and that's all there is about it.
And there's mighty little water, and what there is is sickish and a
long ways apart. And the sun is strong enough to roast potatoes in."

"Why not travel at night?" we asked.

"No place to sleep under daytimes," explained Wes.  "It's better to
keep traveling and then get a chance for a little sleep in the cool of
the night."

We saw the reasonableness of that.

"Of course we'll start early, and take a long nooning, and travel late.
We won't get such a lot of sleep."

"How long is it going to take us?"

Wes calculated.

"About eight days," he said soberly.

The next morning we descended from Madulce abruptly by a dirt trail,
almost perpendicular until we slid into a cañon of sage-brush and
quail, of mescale cactus and the fierce dry heat of sun-baked shale.

"Is it any hotter than this on the desert?" we inquired.

Wes looked on us with pity.

"This is plumb arctic," said he.

Near noon we came to a little cattle ranch situated in a flat
surrounded by red dikes and buttes after the manner of Arizona.  Here
we unpacked, early as it was, for through the dry countries one has to
apportion his day's journeys by the water to be had.  If we went
farther to-day, then to-morrow night would find us in a dry camp.

The horses scampered down the flat to search out alfilaria.  We roosted
under a slanting shed,--where were stock saddles, silver-mounted bits
and spurs, rawhide riatas, branding-irons, and all the lumber of the
cattle business,--and hung out our tongues and gasped for breath and
earnestly desired the sun to go down or a breeze to come up.  The
breeze shortly did so.  It was a hot breeze, and availed merely to
cover us with dust, to swirl the stable-yard into our faces.  Great
swarms of flies buzzed and lit and stung. Wes, disgusted, went over to
where a solitary cowpuncher was engaged in shoeing a horse.  Shortly we
saw Wes pressed into service to hold the horse's hoof.  He raised a
pathetic face to us, the big round drops chasing each other down it as
fast as rain.  We grinned and felt better.

The fierce perpendicular rays of the sun beat down. The air under the
shed grew stuffier and more oppressive, but it was the only patch of
shade in all that pink and red furnace of a little valley.  The
Tenderfoot discovered a pair of horse-clippers, and, becoming slightly
foolish with the heat, insisted on our barbering his head.  We told him
it was cooler with hair than without; and that the flies and sun would
be offered thus a beautiful opportunity, but without avail.  So we
clipped him,--leaving, however, a beautiful long scalp-lock in the
middle of his crown.  He looked like High-low-kickapoo-waterpot, chief
of the Wam-wams.  After a while he discovered it, and was unhappy.

Shortly the riders began to come in, jingling up to the shed, with a
rattle of spurs and bit-chains.  There they unsaddled their horses,
after which, with great unanimity, they soused their heads in the
horse-trough. The chief, a six-footer, wearing beautifully decorated
gauntlets and a pair of white buckskin chaps, went so far as to say it
was a little warm for the time of year.  In the freshness of evening,
when frazzled nerves had regained their steadiness, he returned to
smoke and yarn with us and tell us of the peculiarities of the cattle
business in the Cuyamas.  At present he and his men were riding the
great mountains, driving the cattle to the lowlands in anticipation of
a rodeo the following week.  A rodeo under that sun!

We slept in the ranch vehicles, so the air could get under us.  While
the stars still shone, we crawled out, tired and unrefreshed.  The
Tenderfoot and I went down the valley after the horses.  While we
looked, the dull pallid gray of dawn filtered into the darkness, and so
we saw our animals, out of proportion, monstrous in the half light of
that earliest morning. Before the range riders were even astir we had
taken up our journey, filching thus a few hours from the inimical sun.

Until ten o'clock we traveled in the valley of the Cuyamas.  The river
was merely a broad sand and stone bed, although undoubtedly there was
water below the surface.  California rivers are said to flow bottom up.
To the northward were mountains typical of the arid countries,--boldly
defined, clear in the edges of their folds, with sharp shadows and
hard, uncompromising surfaces.  They looked brittle and hollow, as
though made of papier mache and set down in the landscape.  A long four
hours' noon we spent beneath a live-oak near a tiny spring.  I tried to
hunt, but had to give it up.  After that I lay on my back and shot
doves as they came to drink at the spring. It was better than walking
about, and quite as effective as regards supper.  A band of cattle
filed stolidly in, drank, and filed as stolidly away.  Some half-wild
horses came to the edge of the hill, stamped, snorted, essayed a
tentative advance.  Them we drove away, lest they decoy our own
animals.  The flies would not let us sleep.  Dozens of valley and
mountain quail called with maddening cheerfulness and energy. By a
mighty exercise of will we got under way again. In an hour we rode out
into what seemed to be a grassy foot-hill country, supplied with a most
refreshing breeze.

The little round hills of a few hundred feet rolled gently away to the
artificial horizon made by their closing in.  The trail meandered white
and distinct through the clear fur-like brown of their grasses. Cattle
grazed.  Here and there grew live-oaks, planted singly as in a park.
Beyond we could imagine the great plain, grading insensibly into these
little hills.

And then all at once we surmounted a slight elevation, and found that
we had been traveling on a plateau, and that these apparent little
hills were in reality the peaks of high mountains.

We stood on the brink of a wide smooth velvet-creased range that dipped
down and down to miniature cañons far below.  Not a single little
boulder broke the rounded uniformity of the wild grasses. Out from
beneath us crept the plain, sluggish and inert with heat.

Threads of trails, dull white patches of alkali, vague brown areas of
brush, showed indeterminate for a little distance.  But only for a
little distance.  Almost at once they grew dim, faded in the thickness
of atmosphere, lost themselves in the mantle of heat that lay palpable
and brown like a shimmering changing veil, hiding the distance in
mystery and in dread.  It was a land apart; a land to be looked on
curiously from the vantage-ground of safety,--as we were looking on it
from the shoulder of the mountain,--and then to be turned away from, to
be left waiting behind its brown veil for what might come.  To abandon
the high country, deliberately to cut loose from the known,
deliberately to seek the presence that lay in wait,--all at once it
seemed the height of grotesque perversity.  We wanted to turn on our
heels. We wanted to get back to our hills and fresh breezes and clear
water, to our beloved cheerful quail, to our trails and the sweet upper
air.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour we sat our horses, gazing down.  Some
unknown disturbance lazily rifted the brown veil by ever so little.  We
saw, lying inert and languid, obscured by its own rank steam, a great
round lake.  We knew the water to be bitter, poisonous.  The veil drew
together again.  Wes shook himself and sighed, "There she is,--damn
her!" said he.


[1] In all Spanish names the final e should be pronounced.



VI

THE INFERNO

For eight days we did penance, checking off the hours, meeting doggedly
one after another the disagreeable things.  We were bathed in heat; we
inhaled it; it soaked into us until we seemed to radiate it like so
many furnaces.  A condition of thirst became the normal condition, to
be only slightly mitigated by a few mouthfuls from zinc canteens of
tepid water.  Food had no attractions: even smoking did not taste good.
Always the flat country stretched out before us.  We could see far
ahead a landmark which we would reach only by a morning's travel.
Nothing intervened between us and it.  After we had looked at it a
while, we became possessed of an almost insane necessity to make a run
for it.  The slow maddening three miles an hour of the pack-train drove
us frantic.  There were times when it seemed that unless we shifted our
gait, unless we stepped outside the slow strain of patience to which
the Inferno held us relentlessly, we should lose our minds and run
round and round in circles--as people often do, in the desert.

And when the last and most formidable hundred yards had slunk sullenly
behind us to insignificance, and we had dared let our minds relax from
the insistent need of self-control--then, beyond the cotton-woods, or
creek-bed, or group of buildings, whichever it might be, we made out
another, remote as paradise, to which we must gain by sunset.  So again
the wagon-trail, with its white choking dust, its staggering sun, its
miles made up of monotonous inches, each clutching for a man's sanity.

We sang everything we knew; we told stories; we rode cross-saddle,
sidewise, erect, slouching; we walked and led our horses; we shook the
powder of years from old worn jokes, conundrums, and puzzles,--and at
the end, in spite of our best efforts, we fell to morose silence and
the red-eyed vindictive contemplation of the objective point that would
not seem to come nearer.

For now we lost accurate sense of time.  At first it had been merely a
question of going in at one side of eight days, pressing through them,
and coming out on the other side.  Then the eight days would be behind
us.  But once we had entered that enchanted period, we found ourselves
more deeply involved. The seemingly limited area spread with startling
swiftness to the very horizon.  Abruptly it was borne in on us that
this was never going to end; just as now for the first time we realized
that it had begun infinite ages ago.  We were caught in the
entanglement of days.  The Coast Ranges were the experiences of a past
incarnation: the Mountains were a myth.

Nothing was real but this; and this would endure forever.  We plodded
on because somehow it was part of the great plan that we should do so.
Not that it did any good:--we had long since given up such ideas.  The
illusion was very real; perhaps it was the anodyne mercifully
administered to those who pass through the Inferno.

Most of the time we got on well enough.  One day, only, the Desert
showed her power.  That day, at five of the afternoon, it was one
hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.  And we, through necessity of
reaching the next water, journeyed over the alkali at noon.  Then the
Desert came close on us and looked us fair in the eyes, concealing
nothing.  She killed poor Deuce, the beautiful setter who had traveled
the wild countries so long; she struck Wes and the Tenderfoot from
their horses when finally they had reached a long-legged water tank;
she even staggered the horses themselves.  And I, lying under a bush
where I had stayed after the others in the hope of succoring Deuce,
began idly shooting at ghostly jack-rabbits that looked real, but
through which the revolver bullets passed without resistance.

After this day the Tenderfoot went water-crazy. Watering the horses
became almost a mania with him.  He could not bear to pass even a
mud-hole without offering the astonished Tunemah a chance to fill up,
even though that animal had drunk freely not twenty rods back.  As for
himself, he embraced every opportunity; and journeyed draped in many
canteens.

After that it was not so bad.  The thermometer stood from a hundred to
a hundred and five or six, to be sure, but we were getting used to it.
Discomfort, ordinary physical discomfort, we came to accept as the
normal environment of man.  It is astonishing how soon uniformly
uncomfortable conditions, by very lack of contrast, do lose their power
to color the habit of mind.  I imagine merely physical unhappiness is a
matter more of contrasts than of actual circumstances.  We swallowed
dust; we humped our shoulders philosophically under the beating of the
sun, we breathed the debris of high winds; we cooked anyhow, ate
anything, spent long idle fly-infested hours waiting for the noon to
pass; we slept in horse-corrals, in the trail, in the dust, behind
stables, in hay, anywhere.  There was little water, less wood for the
cooking.

It is now all confused, an impression of events with out sequence, a
mass of little prominent purposeless things like rock conglomerate.  I
remember leaning my elbows on a low window-ledge and watching a poker
game going on in the room of a dive.  The light came from a sickly
suspended lamp.  It fell on five players,--two miners in their
shirt-sleeves, a Mexican, a tough youth with side-tilted derby hat, and
a fat gorgeously dressed Chinaman.  The men held their cards close to
their bodies, and wagered in silence.  Slowly and regularly the great
drops of sweat gathered on their faces.  As regularly they raised the
backs of their hands to wipe them away.  Only the Chinaman,
broad-faced, calm, impassive as Buddha, save for a little crafty smile
in one corner of his eye, seemed utterly unaffected by the heat, cool
as autumn. His loose sleeve fell back from his forearm when he moved
his hand forward, laying his bets.  A jade bracelet slipped back and
forth as smoothly as on yellow ivory.

Or again, one night when the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and
the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp.  The
flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark.  A tall wagon, a
group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely
within the circle of illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of
shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness,
were the sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious
thousands into the mass of night.  We passed them.  They looked up,
squinting their eyes against the dazzle of their fire.  The night
closed about us again.

Or still another: in the glare of broad noon, after a hot and trying
day, a little inn kept by a French couple.  And there, in the very
middle of the Inferno, was served to us on clean scrubbed tables, a
meal such as one gets in rural France, all complete, with the potage,
the fish fried in oil, the wonderful ragout, the chicken and salad, the
cheese and the black coffee, even the vin ordinaire.  I have forgotten
the name of the place, its location on the map, the name of its
people,--one has little to do with detail in the Inferno,--but that
dinner never will I forget, any more than the Tenderfoot will forget
his first sight of water the day when the Desert "held us up."

Once the brown veil lifted to the eastward.  We, souls struggling, saw
great mountains and the whiteness of eternal snow.  That noon we
crossed a river, hurrying down through the flat plain, and in its
current came the body of a drowned bear-cub, an alien from the high
country.

These things should have been as signs to our jaded spirits that we
were nearly at the end of our penance, but discipline had seared over
our souls, and we rode on unknowing.

Then we came on a real indication.  It did not amount to much.  Merely
a dry river-bed; but the farther bank, instead of being flat, cut into
a low swell of land.  We skirted it.  Another swell of land, like the
sullen after-heave of a storm, lay in our way. Then we crossed a
ravine.  It was not much of a ravine; in fact it was more like a slight
gouge in the flatness of the country.  After that we began to see
oak-trees, scattered at rare intervals.  So interested were we in them
that we did not notice rocks beginning to outcrop through the soil
until they had become numerous enough to be a feature of the landscape.
The hills, gently, quietly, without abrupt transition, almost as though
they feared to awaken our alarm by too abrupt movement of growth,
glided from little swells to bigger swells.  The oaks gathered closer
together.  The ravine's brother could almost be called a cañon.  The
character of the country had entirely changed.

And yet, so gradually had this change come about that we did not awaken
to a full realization of our escape.  To us it was still the plain, a
trifle modified by local peculiarity, but presently to resume its
wonted aspect.  We plodded on dully, anodyned with the desert patience.

But at a little before noon, as we rounded the cheek of a slope, we
encountered an errant current of air. It came up to us curiously,
touched us each in turn, and went on.  The warm furnace heat drew in on
us again.  But it had been a cool little current of air, with something
of the sweetness of pines and water and snow-banks in it.  The
Tenderfoot suddenly reined in his horse and looked about him.

"Boys!" he cried, a new ring of joy in his voice, "we're in the
foot-hills!"

Wes calculated rapidly.  "It's the eighth day to-day:  I guessed right
on the time."

We stretched our arms and looked about us.  They were dry brown hills
enough; but they were hills, and they had trees on them, and cañons in
them, so to our eyes, wearied with flatness, they seemed wonderful.



VII

THE FOOT-HILLS

At once our spirits rose.  We straightened in our saddles, we breathed
deep, we joked.  The country was scorched and sterile; the wagon-trail,
almost paralleling the mountains themselves on a long easy slant toward
the high country, was ankle-deep in dust; the ravines were still dry of
water.  But it was not the Inferno, and that one fact sufficed.  After
a while we crossed high above a river which dashed white water against
black rocks, and so were happy.

The country went on changing.  The change was always imperceptible, as
is growth, or the stealthy advance of autumn through the woods.  From
moment to moment one could detect no alteration. Something intangible
was taken away; something impalpable added. At the end of an hour we
were in the oaks and sycamores; at the end of two we were in the pines
and low mountains of Bret Harte's Forty-Nine.

The wagon-trail felt ever farther and farther into the hills.  It had
not been used as a stage-route for years, but the freighting kept it
deep with dust, that writhed and twisted and crawled lazily knee-high
to our horses, like a living creature.  We felt the swing and sweep of
the route.  The boldness of its stretches, the freedom of its reaches
for the opposite slope, the wide curve of its horseshoes, all filled us
with the breath of an expansion which as yet the broad low country only
suggested.

Everything here was reminiscent of long ago.  The very names hinted
stories of the Argonauts.  Coarse Gold Gulch, Whiskey Creek, Grub
Gulch, Fine Gold Post-Office in turn we passed.  Occasionally, with a
fine round dash into the open, the trail drew one side to a
stage-station.  The huge stables, the wide corrals, the low
living-houses, each shut in its dooryard of blazing riotous flowers,
were all familiar. Only lacked the old-fashioned Concord coach, from
which to descend Jack Hamlin or Judge Starbottle. As for M'liss, she
was there, sunbonnet and all.

Down in the gulch bottoms were the old placer diggings.  Elaborate
little ditches for the deflection of water, long cradles for the
separation of gold, decayed rockers, and shining in the sun the tons
and tons of pay dirt which had been turned over pound by pound in the
concentrating of its treasure.  Some of the old cabins still stood.  It
was all deserted now, save for the few who kept trail for the
freighters, or who tilled the restricted bottom-lands of the flats.
Road-runners racked away down the paths; squirrels scurried over
worn-out placers; jays screamed and chattered in and out of the
abandoned cabins.  Strange and shy little creatures and birds,
reassured by the silence of many years, had ventured to take to
themselves the engines of man's industry.  And the warm California sun
embalmed it all in a peaceful forgetfulness.

Now the trees grew bigger, and the hills more impressive.  We should
call them mountains in the East. Pines covered them to the top,
straight slender pines with voices.  The little flats were planted with
great oaks.  When we rode through them, they shut out the hills, so
that we might have imagined ourselves in the level wooded country.
There insisted the effect of limitless tree-grown plains, which the
warm drowsy sun, the park-like landscape, corroborated.  And yet the
contrast of the clear atmosphere and the sharp air equally insisted on
the mountains.  It was a strange and delicious double effect, a
contradiction of natural impressions, a negation of our right to
generalize from previous experience.

Always the trail wound up and up.  Never was it steep; never did it
command an outlook.  Yet we felt that at last we were rising, were
leaving the level of the Inferno, were nearing the threshold of the
high country.

Mountain peoples came to the edges of their clearings and gazed at us,
responding solemnly to our salutations.  They dwelt in cabins and held
to agriculture and the herding of the wild mountain cattle. From them
we heard of the high country to which we were bound.  They spoke of it
as you or I would speak of interior Africa, as something inconceivably
remote, to be visited only by the adventurous, an uninhabited realm of
vast magnitude and unknown dangers.  In the same way they spoke of the
plains.  Only the narrow pine-clad strip between the two and six
thousand feet of elevation they felt to be their natural environment.
In it they found the proper conditions for their existence.  Out of it
those conditions lacked.  They were as much a localized product as are
certain plants which occur only at certain altitudes.  Also were they
densely ignorant of trails and routes outside of their own little
districts.

All this, you will understand, was in what is known as the low country.
The landscape was still brown; the streams but trickles; sage-brush
clung to the ravines; the valley quail whistled on the side hills.

But one day we came suddenly into the big pines and rocks; and that
very night we made our first camp in a meadow typical of the mountains
we had dreamed about.



VIII

THE PINES

I do not know exactly how to make you feel the charm of that first camp
in the big country.  Certainly I can never quite repeat it in my own
experience.

Remember that for two months we had grown accustomed to the brown of
the California landscape, and that for over a week we had traveled in
the Inferno.  We had forgotten the look of green grass, of abundant
water; almost had we forgotten the taste of cool air.  So invariably
had the trails been dusty, and the camping-places hard and exposed,
that we had come subconsciously to think of such as typical of the
country.  Try to put yourself in the frame of mind those conditions
would make.

Then imagine yourself climbing in an hour or so up into a high ridge
country of broad cup-like sweeps and bold outcropping ledges.  Imagine
a forest of pine-trees bigger than any pines you ever saw
before,--pines eight and ten feet through, so huge that you can hardly
look over one of their prostrate trunks even from the back of your
pony.  Imagine, further, singing little streams of ice-cold water, deep
refreshing shadows, a soft carpet of pine-needles through which the
faint furrow of the trail runs as over velvet.  And then, last of all,
in a wide opening, clear as though chopped and plowed by some
back-woodsman, a park of grass, fresh grass, green as a precious stone.

This was our first sight of the mountain meadows. From time to time we
found others, sometimes a half dozen in a day.  The rough country came
down close about them, edging to the very hair-line of the magic
circle, which seemed to assure their placid sunny peace.  An upheaval
of splintered granite often tossed and tumbled in the abandon of an
unrestrained passion that seemed irresistibly to overwhelm the sanities
of a whole region; but somewhere, in the very forefront of turmoil, was
like to slumber one of these little meadows, as unconscious of anything
but its own flawless green simplicity as a child asleep in mid-ocean.
Or, away up in the snows, warmed by the fortuity of reflected heat, its
emerald eye looked bravely out to the heavens.  Or, as here, it rested
confidingly in the very heart of the austere forest.

Always these parks are green; always are they clear and open.  Their
size varies widely.  Some are as little as a city lawn; others, like
the great Monache,[1] are miles in extent.  In them resides the
possibility of your traveling the high country; for they supply the
feed for your horses.

Being desert-weary, the Tenderfoot and I cried out with the joy of it,
and told in extravagant language how this was the best camp we had ever
made.

"It's a bum camp," growled Wes.  "If we couldn't get better camps than
this, I'd quit the game."

He expatiated on the fact that this particular meadow was somewhat
boggy; that the feed was too watery; that there'd be a cold wind down
through the pines; and other small and minor details.  But we, our
backs propped against appropriately slanted rocks, our pipes well
aglow, gazed down the twilight through the wonderful great columns of
the trees to where the white horses shone like snow against the
unaccustomed relief of green, and laughed him to scorn.  What did
we--or the horses for that matter--care for trifling discomforts of the
body?  In these intangible comforts of the eye was a great refreshment
of the spirit.

The following day we rode through the pine forests growing on the
ridges and hills and in the elevated bowl-like hollows.  These were not
the so-called "big trees,"--with those we had to do later, as you shall
see.  They were merely sugar and yellow pines, but never anywhere have
I seen finer specimens. They were planted with a grand sumptuousness of
space, and their trunks were from five to twelve feet in diameter and
upwards of two hundred feet high to the topmost spear.  Underbrush,
ground growth, even saplings of the same species lacked entirely, so
that we proceeded in the clear open aisles of a tremendous and spacious
magnificence.

This very lack of the smaller and usual growths, the generous plan of
spacing, and the size of the trees themselves necessarily deprived us
of a standard of comparison.  At first the forest seemed immense. But
after a little our eyes became accustomed to its proportions.  We
referred it back to the measures of long experience.  The trees, the
wood-aisles, the extent of vision shrunk to the normal proportions of
an Eastern pinery.  And then we would lower our gaze. The pack-train
would come into view.  It had become lilliputian, the horses small as
white mice, the men like tin soldiers, as though we had undergone an
enchantment.  But in a moment, with the rush of a mighty
transformation, the great trees would tower huge again.

In the pine woods of the mountains grows also a certain close-clipped
parasitic moss.  In color it is a brilliant yellow-green, more yellow
than green.  In shape it is crinkly and curly and tangled up with
itself like very fine shavings.  In consistency it is dry and brittle.
This moss girdles the trunks of trees with innumerable parallel
inch-wide bands a foot or so apart, in the manner of old-fashioned
striped stockings.  It covers entirely sundry twigless branches. Always
in appearance is it fantastic, decorative, almost Japanese, as though
consciously laid in with its vivid yellow-green as an intentional note
of a tone scheme.  The somberest shadows, the most neutral twilights,
the most austere recesses are lighted by it as though so many freakish
sunbeams had severed relations with the parent luminary to rest quietly
in the coolnesses of the ancient forest.

Underfoot the pine-needles were springy beneath the horse's hoof.  The
trail went softly, with the courtesy of great gentleness.  Occasionally
we caught sight of other ridges,--also with pines,--across deep sloping
valleys, pine filled.  The effect of the distant trees seen from above
was that of roughened velvet, here smooth and shining, there dark with
rich shadows.  On these slopes played the wind.  In the level countries
it sang through the forest progressively: here on the slope it struck a
thousand trees at once.  The air was ennobled with the great voice, as
a church is ennobled by the tones of a great organ. Then we would drop
back again to the inner country, for our way did not contemplate the
descents nor climbs, but held to the general level of a plateau.

Clear fresh brooks ran in every ravine.  Their water was snow-white
against the black rocks; or lay dark in bank-shadowed pools.  As our
horses splashed across we could glimpse the rainbow trout flashing to
cover.  Where the watered hollows grew lush were thickets full of
birds, outposts of the aggressively and cheerfully worldly in this
pine-land of spiritual detachment. Gorgeous bush-flowers, great of
petal as magnolias, with perfume that lay on the air like a heavy
drowsiness; long clear stretches of an ankle-high shrub of vivid
emerald, looking in the distance like sloping meadows of a peculiar
color-brilliance; patches of smaller flowers where for the trifling
space of a street's width the sun had unobstructed fall,--these from
time to time diversified the way, brought to our perceptions the
endearing trifles of earthiness, of humanity, befittingly to modify the
austerity of the great forest.  At a brookside we saw, still fresh and
moist, the print of a bear's foot.  From a patch of the little emerald
brush, a barren doe rose to her feet, eyed us a moment, and then
bounded away as though propelled by springs.  We saw her from time to
time surmounting little elevations farther and farther away.

The air was like cold water.  We had not lung capacity to satisfy our
desire for it.  There came with it a dry exhilaration that brought high
spirits, an optimistic viewpoint, and a tremendous keen appetite. It
seemed that we could never tire.  In fact we never did.  Sometimes,
after a particularly hard day, we felt like resting; but it was always
after the day's work was done, never while it was under way.  The
Tenderfoot and I one day went afoot twenty-two miles up and down a
mountain fourteen thousand feet high.  The last three thousand feet
were nearly straight up and down.  We finished at a four-mile clip an
hour before sunset, and discussed what to do next to fill in the time.
When we sat down, we found we had had about enough; but we had not
discovered it before.

All of us, even the morose and cynical Dinkey, felt the benefit of the
change from the lower country. Here we were definitely in the
Mountains.  Our plateau ran from six to eight thousand feet in
altitude.  Beyond it occasionally we could see three more ridges,
rising and falling, each higher than the last. And then, in the blue
distance, the very crest of the broad system called the
Sierras,--another wide region of sheer granite rising in peaks,
pinnacles, and minarets, rugged, wonderful, capped with the eternal
snows.


[1] Do not fail to sound the final e.



IX

THE TRAIL

When you say "trail" to a Westerner, his eye lights up.  This is
because it means something to him.  To another it may mean something
entirely different, for the blessed word is of that rare and beautiful
category which is at once of the widest significance and the most
intimate privacy to him who utters it.  To your mind leaps the picture
of the dim forest-aisles and the murmurings of tree-top breezes; to him
comes a vision of the wide dusty desert; to me, perhaps, a high wild
country of wonder. To all of us it is the slender, unbroken,
never-ending thread connecting experiences.

For in a mysterious way, not to be understood, our trails never do end.
They stop sometimes, and wait patiently while we dive in and out of
houses, but always when we are ready to go on, they are ready too, and
so take up the journey placidly as though nothing had intervened.  They
begin, when?  Sometime, away in the past, you may remember a single
episode, vivid through the mists of extreme youth. Once a very little
boy walked with his father under a green roof of leaves that seemed
farther than the sky and as unbroken.  All of a sudden the man raised
his gun and fired upwards, apparently through the green roof.  A pause
ensued.  Then, hurtling roughly through still that same green roof, a
great bird fell, hitting the earth with a thump.  The very little boy
was I.  My trail must have begun there under the bright green roof of
leaves.

From that earliest moment the Trail unrolls behind you like a thread so
that never do you quite lose connection with your selves.  There is
something a little fearful to the imaginative in the insistence of it.
You may camp, you may linger, but some time or another, sooner or
later, you must go on, and when you do, then once again the Trail takes
up its continuity without reference to the muddied place you have
tramped out in your indecision or indolence or obstinacy or necessity.
It would be exceedingly curious to follow out in patience the chart of
a man's going, tracing the pattern of his steps with all its windings
of nursery, playground, boys afield, country, city, plain, forest,
mountain, wilderness, home, always on and on into the higher country of
responsibility until at the last it leaves us at the summit of the
Great Divide.  Such a pattern would tell his story as surely as do the
tracks of a partridge on the snow.

A certain magic inheres in the very name, or at least so it seems to
me.  I should be interested to know whether others feel the same
glamour that I do in the contemplation of such syllables as the Lo-Lo
Trail, the Tunemah Trail, the Mono Trail, the Bright Angel Trail.  A
certain elasticity of application too leaves room for the more
connotation.  A trail may be almost anything.  There are wagon-trails
which East would rank as macadam roads; horse-trails that would compare
favorably with our best bridle-paths; foot-trails in the fur country
worn by constant use as smooth as so many garden-walks.  Then again
there are other arrangements.  I have heard a mule-driver overwhelmed
with skeptical derision because he claimed to have upset but six times
in traversing a certain bit of trail not over five miles long; in
charts of the mountains are marked many trails which are only "ways
through,"--you will find few traces of predecessors; the same can be
said of trails in the great forests where even an Indian is sometimes
at fault.  "Johnny, you're lost," accused the white man. "Trail lost:
Injun here," denied the red man.  And so after your experience has led
you by the campfires of a thousand delights, and each of those
campfires is on the Trail, which only pauses courteously for your stay
and then leads on untiring into new mysteries forever and ever, you
come to love it as the donor of great joys.  You too become a
Westerner, and when somebody says "trail," your eye too lights up.

The general impression of any particular trail is born rather of the
little incidents than of the big accidents.  The latter are exotic, and
might belong to any time or places; the former are individual.  For the
Trail is a vantage-ground, and from it, as your day's travel unrolls,
you see many things.  Nine tenths of your experience comes thus, for in
the long journeys the side excursions are few enough and unimportant
enough almost to merit classification with the accidents.  In time the
character of the Trail thus defines itself.

Most of all, naturally, the kind of country has to do with this
generalized impression.  Certain surprises, through trees, of vista
looking out over unexpected spaces; little notches in the hills beyond
which you gain to a placid far country sleeping under a sun warmer than
your elevation permits; the delicious excitement of the moment when you
approach the very knife-edge of the summit and wonder what lies
beyond,--these are the things you remember with a warm heart.  Your
saddle is a point of vantage.  By it you are elevated above the
country; from it you can see clearly.  Quail scuttle away to right and
left, heads ducked low; grouse boom solemnly on the rigid limbs of
pines; deer vanish through distant thickets to appear on yet more
distant ridges, thence to gaze curiously, their great ears forward;
across the cañon the bushes sway violently with the passage of a
cinnamon bear among them,--you see them all from your post of
observation.  Your senses are always alert for these things; you are
always bending from your saddle to examine the tracks and signs  that
continually offer themselves for your inspection and interpretation.

Our trail of this summer led at a general high elevation, with
comparatively little climbing and comparatively easy traveling for days
at a time.  Then suddenly we would find ourselves on the brink of a
great box cañon from three to seven thousand feet deep, several miles
wide, and utterly precipitous.  In the bottom of this cañon would be
good feed, fine groves of trees, and a river of some size in which swam
fish.  The trail to the cañon-bed was always bad, and generally
dangerous.  In many instances we found it bordered with the bones of
horses that had failed.  The river had somehow to be forded.  We would
camp a day or so in the good feed and among the fine groves of trees,
fish in the river, and then address ourselves with much reluctance to
the ascent of the other bad and dangerous trail on the other side.
After that, in the natural course of events, subject to variation, we
could expect nice trails, the comfort of easy travel, pines, cedars,
redwoods, and joy of life until another great cleft opened before us or
another great mountain-pass barred our way.

This was the web and woof of our summer.  But through it ran the
patterns of fantastic delight such as the West alone can offer a man's
utter disbelief in them.  Some of these patterns stand out in memory
with peculiar distinctness.

Below Farewell Gap is a wide cañon with high walls of dark rock, and
down those walls run many streams of water.  They are white as snow
with the dash of their descent, but so distant that the eye cannot
distinguish their motion.  In the half light of dawn, with the yellow
of sunrise behind the mountains, they look like gauze streamers thrown
out from the windows of morning to celebrate the solemn pageant of the
passing of many hills.

Again, I know of a cañon whose westerly wall is colored in the dull
rich colors, the fantastic patterns of a Moorish tapestry.  Umber, seal
brown, red, terra-cotta, orange, Nile green, emerald, purple, cobalt
blue, gray, lilac, and many other colors, all rich with the depth of
satin, glow wonderful as the craftiest textures.  Only here the fabric
is five miles long and half a mile wide.

There is no use in telling of these things.  They, and many others of
their like, are marvels, and exist; but you cannot tell about them, for
the simple reason that the average reader concludes at once you must be
exaggerating, must be carried away by the swing of words.  The cold
sober truth is, you cannot exaggerate.  They haven't made the words.
Talk as extravagantly as you wish to one who will in the most childlike
manner believe every syllable you utter.  Then take him into the Big
Country.  He will probably say, "Why, you didn't tell me it was going
to be anything like THIS!"  We in the East have no standards of
comparison either as regards size or as regards color--especially
color.  Some people once directed me to "The Gorge" on the New England
coast.  I couldn't find it.  They led me to it, and rhapsodized over
its magnificent terror.  I could have ridden a horse into the
ridiculous thing.  As for color, no Easterner believes in it when such
men as Lungren or Parrish transposit it faithfully, any more than a
Westerner would believe in the autumn foliage of our own hardwoods, or
an Englishman in the glories of our gaudiest sunsets.  They are all
true.

In the mountains, the high mountains above the seven or eight thousand
foot level, grows an affair called the snow-plant.  It is, when full
grown, about two feet in height, and shaped like a loosely constructed
pine-cone set up on end.  Its entire substance is like wax, and the
whole concern--stalk, broad curling leaves, and all--is a brilliant
scarlet. Sometime you will ride through the twilight of deep pine woods
growing on the slope of the mountain, a twilight intensified, rendered
more sacred to your mood by the external brilliancy of a glimpse of
vivid blue sky above dazzling snow mountains far away. Then, in this
monotone of dark green frond and dull brown trunk and deep olive
shadow, where, like the ordered library of one with quiet tastes,
nothing breaks the harmony of unobtrusive tone, suddenly flames the
vivid red of a snow-plant.  You will never forget it.

Flowers in general seem to possess this concentrated brilliancy both of
color and of perfume.  You will ride into and out of strata of perfume
as sharply defined as are the quartz strata on the ridges.  They lie
sluggish and cloying in the hollows, too heavy to rise on the wings of
the air.

As for color, you will see all sorts of queer things. The ordered
flower-science of your childhood has gone mad.  You recognize some of
your old friends, but strangely distorted and changed,--even the dear
old "butter 'n eggs" has turned pink!  Patches of purple, of red, of
blue, of yellow, of orange are laid in the hollows or on the slopes
like brilliant blankets out to dry in the sun.  The fine grasses are
spangled with them, so that in the cup of the great fierce countries
the meadows seem like beautiful green ornaments enameled with jewels.
The Mariposa Lily, on the other hand, is a poppy-shaped flower varying
from white to purple, and with each petal decorated by an "eye" exactly
like those on the great Cecropia or Polyphemus moths, so that their
effect is that of a flock of gorgeous butterflies come to rest.  They
hover over the meadows poised.  A movement would startle them to
flight; only the proper movement somehow never comes.

The great redwoods, too, add to the colored-edition impression of the
whole country.  A redwood, as perhaps you know, is a tremendous big
tree sometimes as big as twenty feet in diameter.  It is exquisitely
proportioned like a fluted column of noble height.  Its bark is
slightly furrowed longitudinally, and of a peculiar elastic appearance
that lends it an almost perfect illusion of breathing animal life.  The
color is a rich umber red.  Sometimes in the early morning or the late
afternoon, when all the rest of the forest is cast in shadow, these
massive trunks will glow as though incandescent.  The Trail, wonderful
always, here seems to pass through the outer portals of the great
flaming regions where dwell the risings and fallings of days.

As you follow the Trail up, you will enter also the permanent
dwelling-places of the seasons.  With us each visits for the space of a
few months, then steals away to give place to the next.  Whither they
go you have not known until you have traveled the high mountains.
Summer lives in the valley; that you know.  Then a little higher you
are in the spring-time, even in August.  Melting patches of snow linger
under the heavy firs; the earth is soggy with half-absorbed snow-water,
trickling with exotic little rills that do not belong; grasses of the
year before float like drowned hair in pellucid pools with an air of
permanence, except for the one fact; fresh green things are sprouting
bravely; through bare branches trickles a shower of bursting buds,
larger at the top, as though the Sower had in passing scattered them
from above.  Birds of extraordinary cheerfulness sing merrily to new
and doubtful flowers.  The air tastes cold, but the sun is warm.  The
great spring humming and promise is in the air.  And a few thousand
feet higher you wallow over the surface of drifts while a winter wind
searches your bones.  I used to think that Santa Claus dwelt at the
North Pole. Now I am convinced that he has a workshop somewhere among
the great mountains where dwell the Seasons, and that his reindeer paw
for grazing in the alpine meadows below the highest peaks.

Here the birds migrate up and down instead of south and north.  It must
be a great saving of trouble to them, and undoubtedly those who have
discovered it maintain toward the unenlightened the same delighted and
fraternal secrecy with which you and I guard the knowledge of a good
trout-stream.  When you can migrate adequately in a single day, why
spend a month at it?

Also do I remember certain spruce woods with openings where the sun
shone through.  The shadows were very black, the sunlight very white.
As I looked back I could see the pack-horses alternately suffer eclipse
and illumination in a strange flickering manner good to behold.  The
dust of the trail eddied and billowed lazily in the sun, each mote
flashing as though with life; then abruptly as it crossed the sharp
line of shade it disappeared.

From these spruce woods, level as a floor, we came out on the rounded
shoulder of a mountain to find ourselves nearly nine thousand feet
above the sea. Below us was a deep cañon to the middle of the earth.
And spread in a semicircle about the curve of our mountain a most
magnificent panoramic view. First there were the plains, represented by
a brown haze of heat; then, very remote, the foot-hills, the
brush-hills, the pine mountains, the upper timber, the tremendous
granite peaks, and finally the barrier of the main crest with its
glittering snow.  From the plains to that crest was over seventy miles.
I should not dare say how far we could see down the length of the
range; nor even how distant was the other wall of the cañon over which
we rode.  Certainly it was many miles; and to reach the latter point
consumed three days.

It is useless to multiply instances.  The principle is well enough
established by these.  Whatever impression of your trail you carry away
will come from the little common occurrences of every day.  That is
true of all trails; and equally so, it seems to me, of our Trail of
Life sketched at the beginning of this essay.

But the trail of the mountains means more than wonder; it means hard
work.  Unless you stick to the beaten path, where the freighters have
lost so many mules that they have finally decided to fix things up a
bit, you are due for lots of trouble.  Bad places will come to be a
nightmare with you and a topic of conversation with whomever you may
meet. We once enjoyed the company of a prospector three days while he
made up his mind to tackle a certain bit of trail we had just
descended.  Our accounts did not encourage him.  Every morning he used
to squint up at the cliff which rose some four thousand feet above us.
"Boys," he said finally as he started, "I may drop in on you later in
the morning."  I am happy to say he did not.

The most discouraging to the tenderfoot, but in reality the safest of
all bad trails, is the one that skirts a precipice.  Your horse
possesses a laudable desire to spare your inside leg unnecessary
abrasion, so he walks on the extreme outer edge.  If you watch the
performance of the animal ahead, you will observe that every few
moments his outer hind hoof slips off that edge, knocking little stones
down into the abyss. Then you conclude that sundry slight jars you have
been experiencing are from the same cause.  Your peace of mind deserts
you.  You stare straight ahead, sit VERY light indeed, and perhaps turn
the least bit sick.  The horse, however, does not mind, nor will you,
after a little.  There is absolutely nothing to do but to sit steady
and give your animal his head.  In a fairly extended experience I never
got off the edge but once.  Then somebody shot a gun immediately ahead;
my horse tried to turn around, slipped, and slid backwards until he
overhung the chasm. Fortunately his hind feet caught a tiny bush.  He
gave a mighty heave, and regained the trail.  Afterwards I took a look
and found that there were no more bushes for a hundred feet either way.

Next in terror to the unaccustomed is an ascent by lacets up a very
steep side hill.  The effect is cumulative.  Each turn brings you one
stage higher, adds definitely one more unit to the test of your
hardihood. This last has not terrified you; how about the next? or the
next? or the one after that?  There is not the slightest danger.  You
appreciate this point after you have met head-on some old-timer.  After
you have speculated frantically how you are to pass him, he solves the
problem by calmly turning his horse off the edge and sliding to the
next lacet below. Then you see that with a mountain horse it does not
much matter whether you get off such a trail or not.

The real bad places are quite as likely to be on the level as on the
slant.  The tremendous granite slides, where the cliff has avalanched
thousands of tons of loose jagged rock-fragments across the passage,
are the worst.  There your horse has to be a goat in balance.  He must
pick his way from the top of one fragment to the other, and if he slips
into the interstices he probably breaks a leg.  In some parts of the
granite country are also smooth rock aprons where footing is especially
difficult, and where often a slip on them means a toboggan chute off
into space. I know of one spot where such an apron curves off the
shoulder of the mountain.  Your horse slides directly down it until his
hoofs encounter a little crevice.  Checking at this, he turns sharp to
the left and so off to the good trail again.  If he does not check at
the little crevice, he slides on over the curve of the shoulder and
lands too far down to bury.

Loose rocks in numbers on a very steep and narrow trail are always an
abomination, and a numerous abomination at that.  A horse slides,
skates, slithers. It has always seemed to me that luck must count
largely in such a place.  When the animal treads on a loose round
stone--as he does every step of the way--that stone is going to roll
under him, and he is going to catch himself as the nature of that stone
and the little gods of chance may will.  Only furthermore I have
noticed that the really good horse keeps his feet, and the poor one
tumbles.  A judgmatical rider can help a great deal by the delicacy of
his riding and the skill with which he uses his reins.  Or better
still, get off and walk.

Another mean combination, especially on a slant, is six inches of snow
over loose stones or small boulders.  There you hope for divine favor
and flounder ahead.  There is one compensation; the snow is soft to
fall on.  Boggy areas you must be able to gauge the depth of at a
glance.  And there are places, beautiful to behold, where a horse
clambers up the least bit of an ascent, hits his pack against a
projection, and is hurled into outer space.  You must recognize these,
for he will be busy with his feet.

Some of the mountain rivers furnish pleasing afternoons of sport.  They
are deep and swift, and below the ford are rapids.  If there is a
fallen tree of any sort across them,--remember the length of California
trees, and do not despise the rivers,--you would better unpack, carry
your goods across yourself, and swim the pack-horses.  If the current
is very bad, you can splice riatas, hitch one end to the horse and the
other to a tree on the farther side, and start the combination.  The
animal is bound to swing across somehow.  Generally you can drive them
over loose.  In swimming a horse from the saddle, start him well
upstream to allow for the current, and never, never, never attempt to
guide him by the bit.  The Tenderfoot tried that at Mono Creek and
nearly drowned himself and Old Slob.  You would better let him alone,
as he probably knows more than you do.  If you must guide him, do it by
hitting the side of his head with the flat of your hand.

Sometimes it is better that you swim.  You can perform that feat by
clinging to his mane on the downstream side, but it will be easier both
for you and him if you hang to his tail.  Take my word for it, he will
not kick you.

Once in a blue moon you may be able to cross the whole outfit on logs.
Such a log bridge spanned Granite Creek near the North Fork of the San
Joaquin at an elevation of about seven thousand feet. It was suspended
a good twenty feet above the water, which boiled white in a most
disconcerting manner through a gorge of rocks.  If anything fell off
that log it would be of no further value even to the curiosity seeker.
We got over all the horses save Tunemah.  He refused to consider it,
nor did peaceful argument win.  As he was more or less of a fool, we
did not take this as a reflection on our judgment, but culled cedar
clubs.  We beat him until we were ashamed.  Then we put a slip-noose
about his neck. The Tenderfoot and I stood on the log and heaved while
Wes stood on the shore and pushed.  Suddenly it occurred to me that if
Tunemah made up his silly mind to come, he would probably do it all at
once, in which case the Tenderfoot and I would have about as much show
for life as fossil formations.  I didn't say anything about it to the
Tenderfoot, but I hitched my six-shooter around to the front, resolved
to find out how good I was at wing-shooting horses.  But Tunemah
declared he would die for his convictions. "All right," said we, "die
then," with the embellishment of profanity.  So we stripped him naked,
and stoned him into the raging stream, where he had one chance in three
of coming through alive.  He might as well be dead as on the other side
of that stream. He won through, however, and now I believe he'd tackle
a tight rope.

Of such is the Trail, of such its wonders, its pleasures, its little
comforts, its annoyances, its dangers. And when you are forced to draw
your six-shooter to end mercifully the life of an animal that has
served you faithfully, but that has fallen victim to the leg-breaking
hazard of the way, then you know a little of its tragedy also.  May you
never know the greater tragedy when a man's life goes out, and you
unable to help!  May always your trail lead through fine trees, green
grasses, fragrant flowers, and pleasant waters!



X

ON SEEING DEER

Once I happened to be sitting out a dance with a tactful young girl of
tender disposition who thought she should adapt her conversation to the
one with whom she happened to be talking.  Therefore she asked
questions concerning out-of-doors.  She knew nothing whatever about it,
but she gave a very good imitation of one interested.  For some occult
reason people never seem to expect me to own evening clothes, or to
know how to dance, or to be able to talk about anything civilized; in
fact, most of them appear disappointed that I do not pull off a war-jig
in the middle of the drawing-room.

This young girl selected deer as her topic.  She mentioned liquid eyes,
beautiful form, slender ears; she said "cute," and "darlings," and
"perfect dears." Then she shuddered prettily.

"And I don't see how you can ever BEAR to shoot them, Mr. White," she
concluded.

"You quarter the onions and slice them very thin," said I dreamily.
"Then you take a little bacon fat you had left over from the flap-jacks
and put it in the frying-pan.  The frying-pan should be very hot. While
the onions are frying, you must keep turning them over with a fork.
It's rather difficult to get them all browned without burning some.  I
should broil the meat.  A broiler is handy, but two willows, peeled and
charred a little so the willow taste won't penetrate the meat, will do.
Have the steak fairly thick.  Pepper and salt it thoroughly.  Sear it
well at first in order to keep the juices in; then cook rather slowly.
When it is done, put it on a hot plate and pour the browned onions,
bacon fat and all, over it."

"What ARE you talking about?" she interrupted.

"I'm telling you why I can bear to shoot deer," said I.

"But I don't see--" said she.

"Don't you?" said I.  "Well; suppose you've been climbing a mountain
late in the afternoon when the sun is on the other side of it.  It is a
mountain of big boulders, loose little stones, thorny bushes.  The
slightest misstep would send pebbles rattling, brush rustling; but you
have gone all the way without making that misstep.  This is quite a
feat.  It means that you've known all about every footstep you've
taken.  That would be business enough for most people, wouldn't it?
But in addition you've managed to see EVERYTHING on that side of the
mountain--especially patches of brown.  You've seen lots of patches of
brown, and you've examined each one of them.  Besides that, you've
heard lots of little rustlings, and you've identified each one of them.
To do all these things well keys your nerves to a high tension, doesn't
it?  And then near the top you look up from your last noiseless step to
see in the brush a very dim patch of brown.  If you hadn't been looking
so hard, you surely wouldn't have made it out. Perhaps, if you're not
humble-minded, you may reflect that most people wouldn't have seen it
at all. You whistle once sharply.  The patch of brown defines itself.
Your heart gives one big jump.  You know that you have but the briefest
moment, the tiniest fraction of time, to hold the white bead of your
rifle motionless and to press the trigger.  It has to be done VERY
steadily, at that distance,--and you out of breath, with your nerves
keyed high in the tension of such caution."

"NOW what are you talking about?" she broke in helplessly.

"Oh, didn't I mention it?" I asked, surprised. "I was telling you why I
could bear to shoot deer."

"Yes, but--" she began.

"Of course not," I reassured her.  "After all, it's very simple.  The
reason I can bear to kill deer is because, to kill deer, you must
accomplish a skillful elimination of the obvious."

My young lady was evidently afraid of being considered stupid; and also
convinced of her inability to understand what I was driving at.  So she
temporized in the manner of society.

"I see," she said, with an air of complete enlightenment.

Now of course she did not see.  Nobody could see the force of that last
remark without the grace of further explanation, and yet in the
elimination of the obvious rests the whole secret of seeing deer in the
woods.

In traveling the trail you will notice two things: that a tenderfoot
will habitually contemplate the horn of his saddle or the trail a few
yards ahead of his horse's nose, with occasionally a look about at the
landscape; and the old-timer will be constantly searching the prospect
with keen understanding eyes. Now in the occasional glances the
tenderfoot takes, his perceptions have room for just so many
impressions. When the number is filled out he sees nothing more.
Naturally the obvious features of the landscape supply the basis for
these impressions.  He sees the configuration of the mountains, the
nature of their covering, the course of their ravines, first of all.
Then if he looks more closely, there catches his eye an odd-shaped
rock, a burned black stub, a flowering bush, or some such matter.
Anything less striking in its appeal to the attention actually has not
room for its recognition.  In other words, supposing that a man has the
natural ability to receive x visual impressions, the tenderfoot fills
out his full capacity with the striking features of his surroundings.
To be able to see anything more obscure in form or color, he must
naturally put aside from his attention some one or another of these
obvious features.  He can, for example, look for a particular kind of
flower on a side hill only by refusing to see other kinds.

If this is plain, then, go one step further in the logic of that
reasoning.  Put yourself in the mental attitude of a man looking for
deer.  His eye sweeps rapidly over a side hill; so rapidly that you
cannot understand how he can have gathered the main features of that
hill, let alone concentrate and refine his attention to the seeing of
an animal under a bush. As a matter of fact he pays no attention to the
main features.  He has trained his eye, not so much to see things, as
to leave things out.  The odd-shaped rock, the charred stub, the bright
flowering bush do not exist for him.  His eye passes over them as
unseeing as yours over the patch of brown or gray that represents his
quarry.  His attention stops on the unusual, just as does yours; only
in his case the unusual is not the obvious.  He has succeeded by long
training in eliminating that.  Therefore he sees deer where you do not.
As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an
artificially obvious, then you too will see deer.

These animals are strangely invisible to the untrained eye even when
they are standing "in plain sight."  You can look straight at them, and
not see them at all.  Then some old woodsman lets you sight over his
finger exactly to the spot.  At once the figure of the deer fairly
leaps into vision.  I know of no more perfect example of the
instantaneous than this. You are filled with astonishment that you
could for a moment have avoided seeing it.  And yet next time you will
in all probability repeat just this "puzzle picture" experience.

The Tenderfoot tried for six weeks before he caught sight of one.  He
wanted to very much. Time and again one or the other of us would hiss
back, "See the deer! over there by the yellow bush!" but before he
could bring the deliberation of his scrutiny to the point of
identification, the deer would be gone.  Once a fawn jumped fairly
within ten feet of the pack-horses and went bounding away through the
bushes, and that fawn he could not help seeing. We tried
conscientiously enough to get him a shot; but the Tenderfoot was unable
to move through the brush less majestically than a Pullman car, so we
had ended by becoming apathetic on the subject.

Finally, while descending a very abrupt mountain-side I made out a buck
lying down perhaps three hundred feet directly below us.  The buck was
not looking our way, so I had time to call the Tenderfoot. He came.
With difficulty and by using my rifle-barrel as a pointer I managed to
show him the animal.  Immediately he began to pant as though at the
finish of a mile race, and his rifle, when he leveled it, covered a
good half acre of ground.  This would never do.

"Hold on!" I interrupted sharply.

He lowered his weapon to stare at me wild-eyed.

"What is it?" he gasped.

"Stop a minute!" I commanded.  "Now take three deep breaths."

He did so.

"Now shoot," I advised, "and aim at his knees."

The deer was now on his feet and facing us, so the Tenderfoot had the
entire length of the animal to allow for lineal variation.  He fired.
The deer dropped.  The Tenderfoot thrust his hat over one eye, rested
hand on hip in a manner cocky to behold.

"Simply slaughter!" he proffered with lofty scorn.

We descended.  The bullet had broken the deer's back--about six inches
from the tail.  The Tenderfoot had overshot by at least three feet.

You will see many deer thus from the trail,--in fact, we kept up our
meat supply from the saddle, as one might say,--but to enjoy the finer
savor of seeing deer, you should start out definitely with that object
in view.  Thus you have opportunity for the display of a certain finer
woodcraft.  You must know where the objects of your search are likely
to be found, and that depends on the time of year, the time of days
their age, their sex, a hundred little things.  When the bucks carry
antlers in the velvet, they frequent the inaccessibilities of the
highest rocky peaks, so their tender horns may not be torn in the
brush, but nevertheless so that the advantage of a lofty viewpoint may
compensate for the loss of cover.  Later you will find them in the open
slopes of a lower altitude, fully exposed to the sun, that there the
heat may harden the antlers.  Later still, the heads in fine condition
and tough to withstand scratches, they plunge into the dense thickets.
But in the mean time the fertile does have sought a lower country with
patches of small brush interspersed with open passages.  There they can
feed with their fawns, completely concealed, but able, by merely
raising the head, to survey the entire landscape for the threatening of
danger.  The barren does, on the other hand, you will find through the
timber and brush, for they are careless of all responsibilities either
to offspring or headgear.  These are but a few of the considerations
you will take into account, a very few of the many which lend the deer
countries strange thrills of delight over new knowledge gained, over
crafty expedients invented or well utilized, over the satisfactory
matching of your reason, your instinct, your subtlety and skill against
the reason, instinct, subtlety, and skill of one of the wariest of
large wild animals.

Perversely enough the times when you did NOT see deer are more apt to
remain vivid in your memory than the times when you did.  I can still
see distinctly sundry wide jump-marks where the animal I was tracking
had evidently caught sight of me and lit out before I came up to him.
Equally, sundry little thin disappearing clouds of dust; cracklings of
brush, growing ever more distant; the tops of bushes waving to the
steady passage of something remaining persistently concealed,--these
are the chief ingredients often repeated which make up deer-stalking
memory.  When I think of seeing deer, these things automatically rise.

A few of the deer actually seen do, however, stand out clearly from the
many.  When I was a very small boy possessed of a 32-20 rifle and large
ambitions, I followed the advantage my father's footsteps made me in
the deep snow of an unused logging-road. His attention was focused on
some very interesting fresh tracks.  I, being a small boy, cared not at
all for tracks, and so saw a big doe emerge from the bushes not ten
yards away, lope leisurely across the road, and disappear, wagging
earnestly her tail. When I had recovered my breath I vehemently
demanded the sense of fooling with tracks when there were real live
deer to be had.  My father examined me.

"Well, why didn't you shoot her?" he inquired dryly.

I hadn't thought of that.

In the spring of 1900 I was at the head of the Piant River waiting for
the log-drive to start.  One morning, happening to walk over a slashing
of many years before in which had grown a strong thicket of white
popples, I jumped a band of nine deer.  I shall never forget the
bewildering impression made by the glancing, dodging, bouncing white of
those nine snowy tails and rumps.

But most wonderful of all was a great buck, of I should be afraid to
say how many points, that stood silhouetted on the extreme end of a
ridge high above our camp.  The time was just after twilight, and as we
watched, the sky lightened behind him in prophecy of the moon.




ON TENDERFEET



XI

ON TENDERFEET

The tenderfoot is a queer beast.  He makes more trouble than ants at a
picnic, more work than a trespassing goat; he never sees anything,
knows where anything is, remembers accurately your instructions,
follows them if remembered, or is able to handle without awkwardness
his large and pathetic hands and feet; he is always lost, always
falling off or into things, always in difficulties; his articles of
necessity are constantly being burned up or washed away or mislaid; he
looks at you beamingly through great innocent eyes in the most
chuckle-headed of manners; he exasperates you to within an inch of
explosion,--and yet you love him.

I am referring now to the real tenderfoot, the fellow who cannot learn,
who is incapable ever of adjusting himself to the demands of the wild
life.  Sometimes a man is merely green, inexperienced.  But give him a
chance and he soon picks up the game.  That is your greenhorn, not your
tenderfoot.  Down near Monache meadows we came across an individual
leading an old pack-mare up the trail.  The first thing, he asked us to
tell him where he was.  We did so.  Then we noticed that he carried his
gun muzzle-up in his hip-pocket, which seemed to be a nice way to shoot
a hole in your hand, but a poor way to make your weapon accessible.  He
unpacked near us, and promptly turned the mare into a bog-hole because
it looked green.  Then he stood around the rest of the evening and
talked deprecating talk of a garrulous nature.

"Which way did you come?" asked Wes.

The stranger gave us a hazy account of misnamed cañons, by which we
gathered that he had come directly over the rough divide below us.

"But if you wanted to get to Monache, why didn't you go around to the
eastward through that pass, there, and save yourself all the climb?  It
must have been pretty rough through there."

"Yes, perhaps so," he hesitated.  "Still--I got lots of time--I can
take all summer, if I want to--and I'd rather stick to a straight
line--then you know where you ARE--if you get off the straight line,
you're likely to get lost, you know."

We knew well enough what ailed him, of course. He was a tenderfoot, of
the sort that always, to its dying day, unhobbles its horses before
putting their halters on.  Yet that man for thirty-two years had lived
almost constantly in the wild countries.  He had traveled more miles
with a pack-train than we shall ever dream of traveling, and hardly
could we mention a famous camp of the last quarter century that he had
not blundered into.  Moreover he proved by the indirections of his
misinformation that he had really been there and was not making ghost
stories in order to impress us.  Yet if the Lord spares him thirty-two
years more, at the end of that time he will probably still be carrying
his gun upside down, turning his horse into a bog-hole, and blundering
through the country by main strength and awkwardness.  He was a
beautiful type of the tenderfoot.

The redeeming point of the tenderfoot is his humbleness of spirit and
his extreme good nature. He exasperates you with his fool performances
to the point of dancing cursing wild crying rage, and then accepts
your--well, reproofs--so meekly that you come off the boil as though
some one had removed you from the fire, and you feel like a low-browed
thug.

Suppose your particular tenderfoot to be named Algernon.  Suppose him
to have packed his horse loosely--they always do--so that the pack has
slipped, the horse has bucked over three square miles of assorted
mountains, and the rest of the train is scattered over identically that
area.  You have run your saddle-horse to a lather heading the outfit.
You have sworn and dodged and scrambled and yelled, even fired your
six-shooter, to turn them and bunch them.  In the mean time Algernon
has either sat his horse like a park policeman in his leisure hours, or
has ambled directly into your path of pursuit on an average of five
times a minute.  Then the trouble dies from the landscape and the baby
bewilderment from his eyes.  You slip from your winded horse and
address Algernon with elaborate courtesy.

"My dear fellow," you remark, "did you not see that the thing for you
to do was to head them down by the bottom of that little gulch there?
Don't you really think ANYBODY would have seen it?  What in hades do
you think I wanted to run my horse all through those boulders for?  Do
you think I want to get him lame 'way up here in the hills?  I don't
mind telling a man a thing once, but to tell it to him fifty-eight
times and then have it do no good--  Have you the faintest recollection
of my instructing you to turn the bight OVER instead of UNDER when you
throw that pack-hitch?  If you'd remember that, we shouldn't have had
all this trouble."

"You didn't tell me to head them by the little gulch," babbles Algernon.

This is just the utterly fool reply that upsets your artificial and
elaborate courtesy.  You probably foam at the mouth, and dance on your
hat, and shriek wild imploring imprecations to the astonished hills.
This is not because you have an unfortunate disposition, but because
Algernon has been doing precisely the same thing for two months.

"Listen to him!" you howl.  "Didn't tell him! Why you gangle-legged
bug-eyed soft-handed pop-eared tenderfoot, you! there are some things
you never THINK of telling a man.  I never told you to open your mouth
to spit, either.  If you had a hired man at five dollars a year who was
so all-around hopelessly thick-headed and incompetent as you are, you'd
fire him to-morrow morning."

Then Algernon looks truly sorry, and doesn't answer back as he ought to
in order to give occasion for the relief of a really soul-satisfying
scrap, and utters the soft answer humbly.  So your wrath is turned and
there remain only the dregs which taste like some of Algernon's cooking.

It is rather good fun to relieve the bitterness of the heart.  Let me
tell you a few more tales of the tenderfoot, premising always that I
love him, and when at home seek him out to smoke pipes at his fireside,
to yarn over the trail, to wonder how much rancor he cherishes against
the maniacs who declaimed against him, and by way of compensation to
build up in the mind of his sweetheart, his wife, or his mother a
fearful and wonderful reputation for him as the Terror of the Trail.
These tales are selected from many, mere samples of a varied
experience.  They occurred here, there, and everywhere, and at various
times.  Let no one try to lay them at the door of our Tenderfoot merely
because such is his title in this narrative.  We called him that by way
of distinction.

Once upon a time some of us were engaged in climbing a mountain rising
some five thousand feet above our starting-place.  As we toiled along,
one of the pack-horses became impatient and pushed ahead. We did not
mind that, especially, as long as she stayed in sight, but in a little
while the trail was closed in by brush and timber.

"Algernon," said we, "just push on and get ahead of that mare, will
you?"

Algernon disappeared.  We continued to climb.  The trail was steep and
rather bad.  The labor was strenuous, and we checked off each thousand
feet with thankfulness.  As we saw nothing further of Algernon, we
naturally concluded he had headed the mare and was continuing on the
trail.  Then through a little opening we saw him riding cheerfully
along without a care to occupy his mind.  Just for luck we hailed him.

"Hi there, Algernon!  Did you find her?"

"Haven't seen her yet."

"Well, you'd better push on a little faster.  She may leave the trail
at the summit."

Then one of us, endowed by heaven with a keen intuitive instinct for
tenderfeet,--no one could have a knowledge of them, they are too
unexpected,--had an inspiration.

"I suppose there are tracks on the trail ahead of you?" he called.

We stared at each other, then at the trail.  Only one horse had
preceded us,--that of the tenderfoot. But of course Algernon was
nevertheless due for his chuckle-headed reply.

"I haven't looked," said he.

That raised the storm conventional to such an occasion.

"What in the name of seventeen little dicky-birds did you think you
were up to!" we howled.  "Were you going to ride ahead until dark in
the childlike faith that that mare might show up somewhere?  Here's a
nice state of affairs.  The trail is all tracked up now with our
horses, and heaven knows whether she's left tracks where she turned
off.  It may be rocky there."

We tied the animals savagely, and started back on foot.  It would be
criminal to ask our saddle-horses to repeat that climb.  Algernon we
ordered to stay with them.

"And don't stir from them no matter what happens, or you'll get lost,"
we commanded out of the wisdom of long experience.

We climbed down the four thousand odd feet, and then back again,
leading the mare.  She had turned off not forty rods from where
Algernon had taken up her pursuit.

Your Algernon never does get down to little details like tracks--his
scheme of life is much too magnificent.  To be sure he would not know
fresh tracks from old if he should see them; so it is probably quite as
well.  In the morning he goes out after the horses.  The bunch he finds
easily enough, but one is missing.  What would you do about it?  You
would naturally walk in a circle around the bunch until you crossed the
track of the truant leading away from it, wouldn't you?  If you made a
wide enough circle you would inevitably cross that track, wouldn't you?
provided the horse started out with the bunch in the first place.  Then
you would follow the track, catch the horse, and bring him back.  Is
this Algernon's procedure?  Not any.  "Ha!" says he, "old Brownie is
missing.  I will hunt him up." Then he maunders off into the scenery,
trusting to high heaven that he is going to blunder against Brownie as
a prominent feature of the landscape. After a couple of hours you
probably saddle up Brownie and go out to find the tenderfoot.

He has a horrifying facility in losing himself. Nothing is more
cheering than to arise from a hard-earned couch of ease for the purpose
of trailing an Algernon or so through the gathering dusk to the spot
where he has managed to find something--a very real despair of ever
getting back to food and warmth. Nothing is more irritating then than
his gratitude.

I traveled once in the Black Hills with such a tenderfoot.  We were off
from the base of supplies for a ten days' trip with only a saddle-horse
apiece. This was near first principles, as our total provisions
consisted of two pounds of oatmeal, some tea, and sugar.  Among other
things we climbed Mt. Harney. The trail, after we left the horses, was
as plain as a strip of Brussels carpet, but somehow or another that
tenderfoot managed to get off it.  I hunted him up.  We gained the top,
watched the sunset, and started down.  The tenderfoot, I thought, was
fairly at my coat-tails, but when I turned to speak to him he had gone;
he must have turned off at one of the numerous little openings in the
brush.  I sat down to wait.  By and by, away down the west slope of the
mountain, I heard a shot, and a faint, a very faint, despairing yell.
I, also, shot and yelled.  After various signals of the sort, it became
evident that the tenderfoot was approaching.  In a moment he tore by at
full speed, his hat off, his eye wild, his six-shooter popping at every
jump.  He passed within six feet of me, and never saw me.  Subsequently
I left him on the prairie, with accurate and simple instructions.

"There's the mountain range.  You simply keep that to your left and
ride eight hours.  Then you'll see Rapid City.  You simply CAN'T get
lost.  Those hills stick out like a sore thumb."

Two days later he drifted into Rapid City, having wandered off
somewhere to the east.  How he had done it I can never guess.  That is
his secret.

The tenderfoot is always in hard luck.  Apparently, too, by all tests
of analysis it is nothing but luck, pure chance, misfortune.  And yet
the very persistence of it in his case, where another escapes, perhaps
indicates that much of what we call good luck is in reality unconscious
skill in the arrangement of those elements which go to make up events.
A persistently unlucky man is perhaps sometimes to be pitied, but more
often to be booted.  That philosophy will be cryingly unjust about once
in ten.

But lucky or unlucky, the tenderfoot is human. Ordinarily that doesn't
occur to you.  He is a malevolent engine of destruction--quite as
impersonal as heat or cold or lack of water.  He is an unfortunate
article of personal belonging requiring much looking after to keep in
order.  He is a credulous and convenient response to practical jokes,
huge tales, misinformation.  He is a laudable object of attrition for
the development of your character.  But somehow, in the woods, he is
not as other men, and so you do not come to feel yourself in close
human relations to him.

But Algernon is real, nevertheless.  He has feelings, even if you do
not respect them.  He has his little enjoyments, even though he does
rarely contemplate anything but the horn of his saddle.

"Algernon," you cry, "for heaven's sake stick that saddle of yours in a
glass case and glut yourself with the sight of its ravishing beauties
next WINTER. For the present do gaze on the mountains.  That's what you
came for."

No use.

He has, doubtless, a full range of all the appreciative emotions,
though from his actions you'd never suspect it.  Most human of all, he
possesses his little vanities.

Algernon always overdoes the equipment question. If it is
bird-shooting, he accumulates leggings and canvas caps and belts and
dog-whistles and things until he looks like a picture from a
department-store catalogue.  In the cow country he wears Stetson hats,
snake bands, red handkerchiefs, six-shooters, chaps, and huge spurs
that do not match his face.  If it is yachting, he has a chronometer
with a gong in the cabin of a five-ton sailboat, possesses a
nickle-plated machine to register the heel of his craft, sports a
brass-bound yachting-cap and all the regalia.  This is merely amusing.
But I never could understand his insane desire to get sunburned.  A man
will get sunburned fast enough; he could not help it if he would.
Algernon usually starts out from town without a hat.  Then he dares not
take off his sweater for a week lest it carry away his entire face.  I
have seen men with deep sores on their shoulders caused by nothing but
excessive burning in the sun.  This, too, is merely amusing.  It means
quite simply that Algernon realizes his inner deficiencies and wants to
make up for them by the outward seeming.  Be kind to him, for he has
been raised a pet.

The tenderfoot is lovable--mysterious in how he does it--and awfully
unexpected.



XII

THE CAÑON

One day we tied our horses to three bushes, and walked on foot two
hundred yards.  Then we looked down.

It was nearly four thousand feet down.  Do you realize how far that is?
There was a river meandering through olive-colored forests.  It was so
distant that it was light green and as narrow as a piece of tape.  Here
and there were rapids, but so remote that we could not distinguish the
motion of them, only the color.  The white resembled tiny dabs of
cotton wool stuck on the tape.  It turned and twisted, following the
turns and twists of the cañon.  Somehow the level at the bottom
resembled less forests and meadows than a heavy and sluggish fluid like
molasses flowing between the cañon walls.  It emerged from the bend of
a sheer cliff ten miles to eastward: it disappeared placidly around the
bend of another sheer cliff an equal distance to the westward.

The time was afternoon.  As we watched, the shadow of the cañon wall
darkened the valley. Whereupon we looked up.

Now the upper air, of which we were dwellers for the moment, was
peopled by giants and clear atmosphere and glittering sunlight,
flashing like silver and steel and precious stones from the granite
domes, peaks, minarets, and palisades of the High Sierras. Solid as
they were in reality, in the crispness of this mountain air, under the
tangible blue of this mountain sky, they seemed to poise light as so
many balloons. Some of them rose sheer, with hardly a fissure;  some
had flung across their shoulders long trailing pine draperies, fine as
fur; others matched mantles of the whitest white against the bluest
blue of the sky. Towards the lower country were more pines rising in
ridges, like the fur of an animal that has been alarmed.

We dangled our feet over the edge and talked about it. Wes pointed to
the upper end where the sluggish lava-like flow of the cañon-bed first
came into view.

"That's where we'll camp," said he.

"When?" we asked.

"When we get there," he answered.

For this cañon lies in the heart of the mountains. Those who would
visit it have first to get into the country--a matter of over a week.
Then they have their choice of three probabilities of destruction.

The first route comprehends two final days of travel at an altitude of
about ten thousand feet, where the snow lies in midsummer; where there
is no feed, no comfort, and the way is strewn with the bones of horses.
This is known as the "Basin Trail."  After taking it, you prefer the
others--until you try them.

The finish of the second route is directly over the summit of a
mountain.  You climb two thousand feet and then drop down five.  The
ascent is heart-breaking but safe.  The descent is hair-raising and
unsafe: no profanity can do justice to it.  Out of a pack-train of
thirty mules, nine were lost in the course of that five thousand feet.
Legend has it that once many years ago certain prospectors took in a
Chinese cook.  At first the Mongolian bewailed his fate loudly and
fluently, but later settled to a single terrified moan that sounded
like "tu-ne-mah! tu-ne-mah!"  The trail was therefore named the
"Tu-ne-mah Trail."  It is said that "tu-ne-mah" is the very worst
single vituperation of which the Chinese language is capable.

The third route is called "Hell's Half Mile."  It is not misnamed.

Thus like paradise the cañon is guarded; but like paradise it is
wondrous in delight.  For when you descend you find that the tape-wide
trickle of water seen from above has become a river with profound
darkling pools and placid stretches and swift dashing rapids; that the
dark green sluggish flow in the cañon-bed has disintegrated into a
noble forest with great pine-trees, and shaded aisles, and deep dank
thickets, and brush openings where the sun is warm and the birds are
cheerful, and groves of cottonwoods where all day long softly, like
snow, the flakes of cotton float down through the air. Moreover there
are meadows, spacious lawns, opening out, closing in, winding here and
there through the groves in the manner of spilled naphtha, actually
waist high with green feed, sown with flowers like a brocade.  Quaint
tributary little brooks babble and murmur down through these trees,
down through these lawns.  A blessed warm sun hums with the joy of
innumerable bees.  To right hand and to left, in front of you and
behind, rising sheer, forbidding, impregnable, the cliffs, mountains,
and ranges hem you in.  Down the river ten miles you can go: then the
gorge closes, the river grows savage, you can only look down the
tumbling fierce waters and turn back. Up the river five miles you can
go, then interpose the sheer snow-clad cliffs of the Palisades, and
them, rising a matter of fourteen thousand feet, you may not cross.
You are shut in your paradise as completely as though surrounded by
iron bars.

But, too, the world is shut out.  The paradise is yours.  In it are
trout and deer and grouse and bear and lazy happy days.  Your horses
feed to the fatness of butter.  You wander at will in the ample though
definite limits of your domain.  You lie on your back and examine
dispassionately, with an interest entirely detached, the huge
cliff-walls of the valley.  Days slip by.  Really, it needs at least an
angel with a flaming sword to force you to move on.

We turned away from our view and addressed ourselves to the task of
finding out just when we were going to get there.  The first day we
bobbed up and over innumerable little ridges of a few hundred feet
elevation, crossed several streams, and skirted the wide bowl-like
amphitheatre of a basin.  The second day we climbed over things and
finally ended in a small hanging park named Alpine Meadows, at an
elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet.  There we rested-over a
day, camped under a single pine-tree, with the quick-growing mountain
grasses thick about us, a semicircle of mountains on three sides, and
the plunge into the cañon on the other.  As we needed meat, we spent
part of the day in finding a deer.  The rest of the time we watched
idly for bear.

Bears are great travelers.  They will often go twenty miles overnight,
apparently for the sheer delight of being on the move.  Also are they
exceedingly loath to expend unnecessary energy in getting to places,
and they hate to go down steep hills.  You see, their fore legs are
short.  Therefore they are skilled in the choice of easy routes through
the mountains, and once having made the choice they stick to it until
through certain narrow places on the route selected they have worn a
trail as smooth as a garden-path.  The old prospectors used quite
occasionally to pick out the horse-passes by trusting in general to the
bear migrations, and many a well-traveled route of to-day is
superimposed over the way-through picked out by old bruin long ago.

Of such was our own trail.  Therefore we kept our rifles at hand and
our eyes open for a straggler. But none came, though we baited craftily
with portions of our deer.  All we gained was a rattlesnake, and he
seemed a bit out of place so high up in the air.

Mount Tunemah stood over against us, still twenty-two hundred feet
above our elevation.  We gazed on it sadly, for directly by its summit,
and for five hours beyond, lay our trail, and evil of reputation was
that trail beyond all others.  The horses, as we bunched them in
preparation for the packing, took on a new interest, for it was on the
cards that the unpacking at evening would find some missing from the
ranks.

"Lily's a goner, sure," said Wes.  "I don't know how she's got this far
except by drunken man's luck. She'll never make the Tunemah."

"And Tunemah himself," pointed out the Tenderfoot, naming his own fool
horse; "I see where I start in to walk."

"Sort of a 'morituri te salutamur,'" said I.

We climbed the two thousand two hundred feet, leading our saddle-horses
to save their strength. Every twenty feet we rested, breathing heavily
of the rarified air.  Then at the top of the world we paused on the
brink of nothing to tighten cinches, while the cold wind swept by us,
the snow glittered in a sunlight become silvery like that of early
April, and the giant peaks of the High Sierras lifted into a distance
inconceivably remote, as though the horizon had been set back for their
accommodation.

To our left lay a windrow of snow such as you will see drifted into a
sharp crest across a corner of your yard; only this windrow was twenty
feet high and packed solid by the sun, the wind, and the weight of its
age.  We climbed it and looked over directly into the eye of a round
Alpine lake seven or eight hundred feet below.  It was of an intense
cobalt blue, a color to be seen only in these glacial bodies of water,
deep and rich as the mantle of a merchant of Tyre.  White ice floated
in it.  The savage fierce granite needles and knife-edges of the
mountain crest hemmed it about.

But this was temporizing, and we knew it.  The first drop of the trail
was so steep that we could flip a pebble to the first level of it, and
so rough in its water-and-snow-gouged knuckles of rocks that it seemed
that at the first step a horse must necessarily fall end over end.  We
made it successfully, however, and breathed deep.  Even Lily, by a
miracle of lucky scrambling, did not even stumble.

"Now she's easy for a little ways," said Wes, "then we'll get busy."

When we "got busy" we took our guns in our hands to preserve them from
a fall, and started in. Two more miracles saved Dinkey at two more
places. We spent an hour at one spot, and finally built a new trail
around it.  Six times a minute we held our breaths and stood on tiptoe
with anxiety, powerless to help, while the horse did his best.  At the
especially bad places we checked them off one after another,
congratulating ourselves on so much saved as each came across without
accident.  When there were no bad places, the trail was so
extraordinarily steep that we ahead were in constant dread of a horse's
falling on us from behind, and our legs did become wearied to incipient
paralysis by the constant stiff checking of the descent.  Moreover
every second or so one of the big loose stones with which the trail was
cumbered would be dislodged and come bouncing down among us.  We dodged
and swore; the horses kicked; we all feared for the integrity of our
legs.  The day was full of an intense nervous strain, an entire
absorption in the precise present. We promptly forgot a difficulty as
soon as we were by it: we had not time to think of those still ahead.
All outside the insistence of the moment was blurred and unimportant,
like a specialized focus, so I cannot tell you much about the scenery.
The only outside impression we received was that the cañon floor was
slowly rising to meet us.

Then strangely enough, as it seemed, we stepped off to level ground.

Our watches said half-past three.  We had made five miles in a little
under seven hours.

Remained only the crossing of the river.  This was no mean task, but we
accomplished it lightly, searching out a ford.  There were high
grasses, and on the other side of them a grove of very tall
cottonwoods, clean as a park.  First of all we cooked things; then we
spread things; then we lay on our backs and smoked things, our hands
clasped back of our heads.  We cocked ironical eyes at the sheer cliff
of old Mount Tunemah, very much as a man would cock his eye at a tiger
in a cage.

Already the meat-hawks, the fluffy Canada jays, had found us out, and
were prepared to swoop down boldly on whatever offered to their
predatory skill. We had nothing for them yet,--there were no remains of
the lunch,--but the fire-irons were out, and ribs of venison were
roasting slowly over the coals in preparation for the evening meal.
Directly opposite, visible through the lattice of the trees, were two
huge mountain peaks, part of the wall that shut us in, over against us
in a height we had not dared ascribe to the sky itself.  By and by the
shadow of these mountains rose on the westerly wall.  It crept up at
first slowly, extinguishing color; afterwards more rapidly as the sun
approached the horizon. The sunlight disappeared.  A moment's gray
intervened, and then the wonderful golden afterglow laid on the peaks
its enchantment.  Little by little that too faded, until at last, far
away, through a rift in the ranks of the giants, but one remained
gilded by the glory of a dream that continued with it after the others.
Heretofore it had seemed to us an insignificant peak, apparently
overtopped by many, but by this token we knew it to be the highest of
them all.

Then ensued another pause, as though to give the invisible
scene-shifter time to accomplish his work, followed by a shower of
evening coolness, that seemed to sift through the trees like a soft and
gentle rain. We ate again by the flicker of the fire, dabbing a trifle
uncertainly at the food, wondering at the distant mountain on which the
Day had made its final stand, shrinking a little before the stealthy
dark that flowed down the cañon in the manner of a heavy smoke.

In the notch between the two huge mountains blazed a star,--accurately
in the notch, like the front sight of a rifle sighted into the
marvelous depths of space.  Then the moon rose.

First we knew of it when it touched the crest of our two mountains.
The night has strange effects on the hills.  A moment before they had
menaced black and sullen against the sky, but at the touch of the moon
their very substance seemed to dissolve, leaving in the upper
atmosphere the airiest, most nebulous, fragile, ghostly simulacrums of
themselves you could imagine in the realms of fairy-land.  They seemed
actually to float, to poise like cloud-shapes about to dissolve.  And
against them were cast the inky silhouettes of three fir-trees in the
shadow near at hand.

Down over the stones rolled the river, crying out to us with the voices
of old accustomed friends in another wilderness.  The winds rustled.



XIII

TROUT, BUCKSKIN, AND PROSPECTORS

As I have said, a river flows through the cañon. It is a very good
river with some riffles that can be waded down to the edges of black
pools or white chutes of water; with appropriate big trees fallen
slantwise into it to form deep holes; and with hurrying smooth
stretches of some breadth.  In all of these various places are rainbow
trout.

There is no use fishing until late afternoon.  The clear sun of the
high altitudes searches out mercilessly the bottom of the stream,
throwing its miniature boulders, mountains, and valleys as plainly into
relief as the buttes of Arizona at noon.  Then the trout quite refuse.
Here and there, if you walk far enough and climb hard enough over all
sorts of obstructions, you may discover a few spots shaded by big trees
or rocks where you can pick up a half dozen fish; but it is slow work.
When, however, the shadow of the two huge mountains feels its way
across the stream, then, as though a signal had been given, the trout
begin to rise.  For an hour and a half there is noble sport indeed.

The stream fairly swarmed with them, but of course some places were
better than others.  Near the upper reaches the water boiled like
seltzer around the base of a tremendous tree.  There the pool was at
least ten feet deep and shot with bubbles throughout the whole of its
depth, but it was full of fish.  They rose eagerly to your gyrating
fly,--and took it away with them down to subaqueous chambers and
passages among the roots of that tree.  After which you broke your
leader.  Royal Coachman was the best lure, and therefore valuable
exceedingly were Royal Coachmen. Whenever we lost one we lifted up our
voices in lament, and went away from there, calling to mind that there
were other pools, many other pools, free of obstruction and with fish
in them.  Yet such is the perversity of fishermen, we were back losing
more Royal Coachmen the very next day.  In all I managed to disengage
just three rather small trout from that pool, and in return decorated
their ancestral halls with festoons of leaders and the brilliance of
many flies.

Now this was foolishness.  All you had to do was to walk through a
grove of cottonwoods, over a brook, through another grove of pines,
down a sloping meadow to where one of the gigantic pine-trees had
obligingly spanned the current.  You crossed that, traversed another
meadow, broke through a thicket, slid down a steep grassy bank, and
there you were.  A great many years before a pine-tree had fallen
across the current.  Now its whitened skeleton lay there, opposing a
barrier for about twenty-five feet out into the stream.  Most of the
water turned aside, of course, and boiled frantically around the end as
though trying to catch up with the rest of the stream which had gone on
without it, but some of it dived down under and came up on the other
side. There, as though bewildered, it paused in an uneasy pool.  Its
constant action had excavated a very deep hole, the debris of which had
formed a bar immediately below.  You waded out on the bar and cast
along the length of the pine skeleton over the pool.

If you were methodical, you first shortened your line, and began near
the bank, gradually working out until you were casting forty-five feet
to the very edge of the fast current.  I know of nothing pleasanter for
you to do.  You see, the evening shadow was across the river, and a
beautiful grass slope at your back.  Over the way was a grove of trees
whose birds were very busy because it was near their sunset, while
towering over them were mountains, quite peaceful by way of contrast
because THEIR sunset was still far distant.  The river was in a great
hurry, and was talking to itself like a man who has been detained and
is now at last making up time to his important engagement.  And from
the deep black shadow beneath the pine skeleton, occasionally flashed
white bodies that made concentric circles where they broke the surface
of the water, and which fought you to a finish in the glory of battle.
The casting was against the current, so your flies could rest but the
briefest possible moment on the surface of the stream.  That moment was
enough.  Day after day you could catch your required number from an
apparently inexhaustible supply.

I might inform you further of the gorge downstream, where you lie flat
on your stomach ten feet above the river, and with one hand cautiously
extended over the edge cast accurately into the angle of the cliff.
Then when you get your strike, you tow him downstream, clamber
precariously to the water's level--still playing your fish--and there
land him,--if he has accommodatingly stayed hooked.  A three-pound fish
will make you a lot of tribulation at this game.

We lived on fish and venison, and had all we wanted.  The bear-trails
were plenty enough, and the signs were comparatively fresh, but at the
time of our visit the animals themselves had gone over the mountains on
some sort of a picnic.  Grouse, too, were numerous in the popple
thickets, and flushed much like our ruffed grouse of the East. They
afforded first-rate wing-shooting for Sure-Pop, the little shot-gun.

But these things occupied, after all, only a small part of every day.
We had loads of time left.  Of course we explored the valley up and
down.  That occupied two days.  After that we became lazy. One always
does in a permanent camp.  So did the horses.  Active--or rather
restless interest in life seemed to die away.  Neither we nor they had
to rustle hard for food.  They became fastidious in their choice, and
at all times of day could be seen sauntering in Indian file from one
part of the meadow to the other for the sole purpose apparently of
cropping a half dozen indifferent mouthfuls.  The rest of the time they
roosted under trees, one hind leg relaxed, their eyes half closed,
their ears wabbling, the pictures of imbecile content.  We were very
much the same.

Of course we had our outbursts of virtue.  While under their influence
we undertook vast works.  But after their influence had died out, we
found ourselves with said vast works on our hands, and so came to
cursing ourselves and our fool spasms of industry.

For instance, Wes and I decided to make buckskin from the hide of the
latest deer.  We did not need the buckskin--we already had two in the
pack.  Our ordinary procedure would have been to dry the hide for
future treatment by a Mexican, at a dollar a hide, when we should have
returned home. But, as I said, we were afflicted by sporadic activity,
and wanted to do something.

We began with great ingenuity by constructing a graining-tool out of a
table-knife.  We bound it with rawhide, and encased it with wood, and
wrapped it with cloth, and filed its edge square across, as is proper.
After this we hunted out a very smooth, barkless log, laid the hide
across it, straddled it, and began graining.

Graining is a delightful process.  You grasp the tool by either end,
hold the square edge at a certain angle, and push away from you
mightily.  A half-dozen pushes will remove a little patch of hair;
twice as many more will scrape away half as much of the seal-brown
grain, exposing the white of the hide.  Then, if you want to, you can
stop and establish in your mind a definite proportion between the
amount thus exposed, the area remaining unexposed, and the muscular
fatigue of these dozen and a half of mighty pushes.  The proportion
will be wrong.  You have left out of account the fact that you are
going to get almighty sick of the job; that your arms and upper back
are going to ache shrewdly before you are done; and that as you go on
it is going to be increasingly difficult to hold down the edges firmly
enough to offer the required resistance to your knife.  Besides--if you
get careless--you'll scrape too hard: hence little holes in the
completed buckskin. Also--if you get careless--you will probably leave
the finest, tiniest shreds of grain, and each of them means a hard
transparent spot in the product. Furthermore, once having started in on
the job, you are like the little boy who caught the trolley: you cannot
let go.  It must be finished immediately, all at one heat, before the
hide stiffens.

Be it understood, your first enthusiasm has evaporated, and you are
thinking of fifty pleasant things you might just as well be doing.

Next you revel in grease,--lard oil, if you have it; if not, then lard,
or the product of boiled brains. This you must rub into the skin.  You
rub it in until you suspect that your finger-nails have worn away, and
you glisten to the elbows like an Eskimo cutting blubber.

By the merciful arrangement of those who invented buckskin, this
entitles you to a rest.  You take it--for several days--until your
conscience seizes you by the scruff of the neck.

Then you transport gingerly that slippery, clammy, soggy, snaky, cold
bundle of greasy horror to the bank of the creek, and there for endless
hours you wash it.  The grease is more reluctant to enter the stream
than you are in the early morning.  Your hands turn purple.  The others
go by on their way to the trout-pools, but you are chained to the stake.

By and by you straighten your back with creaks, and walk home like a
stiff old man, carrying your hide rid of all superfluous oil.  Then if
you are just learning how, your instructor examines the result.

"That's all right," says he cheerfully.  "Now when it dries, it will be
buckskin."

That encourages you.  It need not.  For during the process of drying it
must be your pastime constantly to pull and stretch at every square
inch of that boundless skin in order to loosen all the fibres.
Otherwise it would dry as stiff as whalebone.  Now there is nothing on
earth that seems to dry slower than buckskin.  You wear your fingers
down to the first joints, and, wishing to preserve the remainder for
future use, you carry the hide to your instructor.

"Just beginning to dry nicely," says he.

You go back and do it some more, putting the entire strength of your
body, soul, and religious convictions into the stretching of that
buckskin.  It looks as white as paper; and feels as soft and warm as
the turf on a southern slope.  Nevertheless your tyrant declares it
will not do.

"It looks dry, and it feels dry," says he, "but it isn't dry.  Go to
it!"

But at this point your outraged soul arches its back and bucks.  You
sneak off and roll up that piece of buckskin, and thrust it into the
alforja.  You KNOW it is dry.  Then with a deep sigh of relief you come
out of prison into the clear, sane, lazy atmosphere of the camp.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is any one chump enough to do that
for a dollar a hide?" you inquire.

"Sure," say they.

"Well, the Fool Killer is certainly behind on his dates," you conclude.

About a week later one of your companions drags out of the alforja
something crumpled that resembles in general appearance and texture a
rusted five-gallon coal-oil can that has been in a wreck.  It is only
imperceptibly less stiff and angular and cast-iron than rawhide.

"What is this?" the discoverer inquires.

Then quietly you go out and sit on a high place before recognition
brings inevitable--and sickening--chaff. For you know it at a glance.
It is your buckskin.

Along about the middle of that century an old prospector with four
burros descended the Basin Trail and went into camp just below us.
Towards evening he sauntered in.

I sincerely wish I could sketch this man for you just as he came down
through the fire-lit trees.  He was about six feet tall, very leanly
built, with a weather-beaten face of mahogany on which was superimposed
a sweeping mustache and beetling eye-brows.  These had originally been
brown, but the sun had bleached them almost white in remarkable
contrast to his complexion.  Eyes keen as sunlight twinkled far down
beneath the shadows of the brows and a floppy old sombrero hat.  The
usual flannel shirt, waistcoat, mountain-boots, and six-shooter
completed the outfit.  He might have been forty, but was probably
nearer sixty years of age.

"Howdy, boys," said he, and dropped to the fireside, where he promptly
annexed a coal for his pipe.

We all greeted him, but gradually the talk fell to him and Wes.  It was
commonplace talk enough from one point of view: taken in essence it was
merely like the inquiry and answer of the civilized man as to another's
itinerary--"Did you visit Florence? Berlin? St. Petersburg?"--and then
the comparing of impressions.  Only here again that old familiar magic
of unfamiliar names threw its glamour over the terse sentences.

"Over beyond the Piute Monument," the old prospector explained, "down
through the Inyo Range, a leetle north of Death Valley--"

"Back in seventy-eight when I was up in Bay Horse Cañon over by Lost
River--"

"Was you ever over in th' Panamit Mountains?--North of th' Telescope
Range?--"

That was all there was to it, with long pauses for drawing at the
pipes.  Yet somehow in the aggregate that catalogue of names gradually
established in the minds of us two who listened an impression of long
years, of wide wilderness, of wandering far over the face of the earth.
The old man had wintered here, summered a thousand miles away, made his
strike at one end of the world, lost it somehow, and cheerfully tried
for a repetition of his luck at the other. I do not believe the
possibility of wealth, though always of course in the background, was
ever near enough his hope to be considered a motive for action.  Rather
was it a dream, remote, something to be gained to-morrow, but never
to-day, like the mediaeval Christian's idea of heaven.  His interest
was in the search.  For that one could see in him a real enthusiasm.
He had his smattering of theory, his very real empirical knowledge, and
his superstitions, like all prospectors.  So long as he could keep in
grub, own a little train of burros, and lead the life he loved, he was
happy.

Perhaps one of the chief elements of this remarkable interest in the
game rather than the prizes of it was his desire to vindicate his
guesses or his conclusions. He liked to predict to himself the outcome
of his solitary operations, and then to prove that prediction through
laborious days.  His life was a gigantic game of solitaire.  In fact,
he mentioned a dozen of his claims many years apart which he had
developed to a certain point,--"so I could see what they was,"--and
then abandoned in favor of fresher discoveries.  He cherished the
illusion that these were properties to whose completion some day he
would return.  But we knew better; he had carried them to the point
where the result was no longer in doubt and then, like one who has no
interest in playing on in an evidently prescribed order, had laid his
cards on the table to begin a new game.

This man was skilled in his profession; he had pursued it for thirty
odd years; he was frugal and industrious; undoubtedly of his long
series of discoveries a fair percentage were valuable and are
producing-properties to-day.  Yet he confessed his bank balance to be
less than five hundred dollars.  Why was this?  Simply and solely
because he did not care. At heart it was entirely immaterial to him
whether he ever owned a dollar above his expenses.  When he sold his
claims, he let them go easily, loath to bother himself with business
details, eager to get away from the fuss and nuisance.  The few hundred
dollars he received he probably sunk in unproductive mining work, or
was fleeced out of in the towns. Then joyfully he turned back to his
beloved mountains and the life of his slow deep delight and his pecking
away before the open doors of fortune.  By and by he would build
himself a little cabin down in the lower pine mountains, where he would
grow a white beard, putter with occult wilderness crafts, and smoke
long contemplative hours in the sun before his door.  For tourists he
would braid rawhide reins and quirts, or make buckskin.  The jays and
woodpeckers and Douglas squirrels would become fond of him.  So he
would be gathered to his fathers, a gentle old man whose life had been
spent harmlessly in the open.  He had had his ideal to which blindly he
reached; he had in his indirect way contributed the fruits of his labor
to mankind; his recompenses he had chosen according to his desires.
When you consider these things, you perforce have to revise your first
notion of him as a useless sort of old ruffian.  As you come to know
him better, you must love him for the kindliness, the simple honesty,
the modesty, and charity that he seems to draw from his mountain
environment.  There are hundreds of him buried in the great cañons of
the West.

Our prospector was a little uncertain as to his plans.  Along toward
autumn he intended to land at some reputed placers near Dinkey Creek.
There might be something in that district.  He thought he would take a
look.  In the mean time he was just poking up through the country--he
and his jackasses. Good way to spend the summer.  Perhaps he might run
across something 'most anywhere; up near the top of that mountain
opposite looked mineralized.  Didn't know but what he'd take a look at
her to-morrow.

He camped near us during three days.  I never saw a more modest,
self-effacing man.  He seemed genuinely, childishly, almost helplessly
interested in our fly-fishing, shooting, our bear-skins, and our
travels.  You would have thought from his demeanor--which was sincere
and not in the least ironical--that he had never seen or heard anything
quite like that before, and was struck with wonder at it.  Yet he had
cast flies before we were born, and shot even earlier than he had cast
a fly, and was a very Ishmael for travel.  Rarely could you get an
account of his own experiences, and then only in illustration of
something else.

"If you-all likes bear-hunting," said he, "you ought to get up in
eastern Oregon.  I summered there once.  The only trouble is, the brush
is thick as hair.  You 'most always have to bait them, or wait for them
to come and drink.  The brush is so small you ain't got much chance.  I
run onto a she-bear and cubs that way once.  Didn't have nothin' but my
six-shooter, and I met her within six foot."

He stopped with an air of finality.

"Well, what did you do?" we asked.

"Me?" he inquired, surprised.  "Oh, I just leaked out of th' landscape."

He prospected the mountain opposite, loafed with us a little, and then
decided that he must be going. About eight o'clock in the morning he
passed us, hazing his burros, his tall, lean figure elastic in defiance
of years.

"So long, boys," he called; "good luck!"

"So long," we responded heartily.  "Be good to yourself."

He plunged into the river without hesitation, emerged dripping on the
other side, and disappeared in the brush.  From time to time during the
rest of the morning we heard the intermittent tinkling of his
bell-animal rising higher and higher above us on the trail.

In the person of this man we gained our first connection, so to speak,
with the Golden Trout.  He had caught some of them, and could tell us
of their habits.

Few fishermen west of the Rockies have not heard of the Golden Trout,
though, equally, few have much definite information concerning it.
Such information usually runs about as follows:

It is a medium size fish of the true trout family, resembling a rainbow
except that it is of a rich golden color.  The peculiarity that makes
its capture a dream to be dreamed of is that it swims in but one little
stream of all the round globe.  If you would catch a Golden Trout, you
must climb up under the very base of the end of the High Sierras.
There is born a stream that flows down from an elevation of about ten
thousand feet to about eight thousand before it takes a long plunge
into a branch of the Kern River.  Over the twenty miles of its course
you can cast your fly for Golden Trout; but what is the nature of that
stream, that fish, or the method of its capture, few can tell you with
any pretense of accuracy.

To be sure, there are legends.  One, particularly striking, claims that
the Golden Trout occurs in one other stream--situated in Central
Asia!--and that the fish is therefore a remnant of some pre-glacial
period, like Sequoia trees, a sort of grand-daddy of all trout, as it
were.  This is but a sample of what you will hear discussed.

Of course from the very start we had had our eye on the Golden Trout,
and intended sooner or later to work our way to his habitat.  Our
prospector had just come from there.

"It's about four weeks south, the way you and me travels," said he.
"You don't want to try Harrison's Pass; it's chock full of tribulation.
Go around by way of the Giant Forest.  She's pretty good there, too,
some sizable timber.  Then over by Redwood Meadows, and Timber Gap, by
Mineral King, and over through Farewell Gap.  You turn east there, on a
new trail.  She's steeper than straight-up-an'-down, but shorter than
the other.  When you get down in the cañon of Kern River,--say, she's a
fine cañon, too,--you want to go downstream about two mile to where
there's a sort of natural overflowed lake full of stubs stickin' up.
You'll get some awful big rainbows in there.  Then your best way is to
go right up Whitney Creek Trail to a big high meadows mighty nigh to
timber-line.  That's where I camped.  They's lots of them little yaller
fish there.  Oh, they bite well enough.  You'll catch 'em.  They's a
little shy."

So in that guise--as the desire for new and distant things--did our
angel with the flaming sword finally come to us.

We caught reluctant horses reluctantly.  All the first day was to be a
climb.  We knew it; and I suspect that they knew it too.  Then we
packed and addressed ourselves to the task offered us by the Basin
Trail.



XIV

ON CAMP COOKERY

One morning I awoke a little before the others, and lay on my back
staring up through the trees.  It was not my day to cook.  We were
camped at the time only about sixty-five hundred feet high, and the
weather was warm.  Every sort of green thing grew very lush all about
us, but our own little space was held dry and clear for us by the
needles of two enormous red cedars some four feet in diameter.  A
variety of thoughts sifted through my mind as it followed lazily the
shimmering filaments of loose spider-web streaming through space.  The
last thought stuck. It was that that day was a holiday.  Therefore I
unlimbered my six-shooter, and turned her loose, each shot being
accompanied by a meritorious yell.

The outfit boiled out of its blankets.  I explained the situation, and
after they had had some breakfast they agreed with me that a
celebration was in order. Unanimously we decided to make it gastronomic.

"We will ride till we get to good feed," we concluded, "and then we'll
cook all the afternoon. And nobody must eat anything until the whole
business is prepared and served."

It was agreed.  We rode until we were very hungry, which was eleven
o'clock.  Then we rode some more.  By and by we came to a log cabin in
a wide fair lawn below a high mountain with a ducal coronet on its top,
and around that cabin was a fence, and inside the fence a man chopping
wood.  Him we hailed.  He came to the fence and grinned at us from the
elevation of high-heeled boots.  By this token we knew him for a
cow-puncher.

"How are you?" said we.

"Howdy, boys," he roared.  Roared is the accurate expression.  He was
not a large man, and his hair was sandy, and his eye mild blue.  But
undoubtedly his kinsmen were dumb and he had as birthright the voice
for the entire family.  It had been subsequently developed in the
shouting after the wild cattle of the hills.  Now his ordinary
conversational tone was that of the announcer at a circus.  But his
heart was good.

"Can we camp here?" we inquired.

"Sure thing," he bellowed.  "Turn your horses into the meadow.  Camp
right here."

But with the vision of a rounded wooded knoll a few hundred yards
distant we said we'd just get out of his way a little.  We crossed a
creek, mounted an easy slope to the top of the knoll, and were
delighted to observe just below its summit the peculiar fresh green
hump which indicates a spring.  The Tenderfoot, however, knew nothing
of springs, for shortly he trudged a weary way back to the creek, and
so returned bearing kettles of water.  This performance hugely
astonished the cowboy, who subsequently wanted to know if a "critter
had died in the spring."

Wes departed to borrow a big Dutch oven of the man and to invite him to
come across when we raised the long yell.  Then we began operations.

Now camp cooks are of two sorts.  Anybody can with a little practice
fry bacon, steak, or flapjacks, and boil coffee.  The reduction of the
raw material to its most obvious cooked result is within the reach of
all but the most hopeless tenderfoot who never knows the salt-sack from
the sugar-sack.  But your true artist at the business is he who can
from six ingredients, by permutation, combination, and the genius that
is in him turn out a full score of dishes.  For simple example:  GIVEN,
rice, oatmeal, and raisins.  Your expert accomplishes the following:

ITEM--Boiled rice.

ITEM--Boiled oatmeal.

ITEM--Rice boiled until soft, then stiffened by the addition of quarter
as much oatmeal.

ITEM--Oatmeal in which is boiled almost to the dissolving point a third
as much rice.

These latter two dishes taste entirely unlike each other or their
separate ingredients.  They are moreover great in nutrition.

ITEM--Boiled rice and raisins.

ITEM--Dish number three with raisins.

ITEM--Rice boiled with raisins, sugar sprinkled on top, and then baked.

ITEM--Ditto with dish number three.

All these are good--and different.

Some people like to cook and have a natural knack for it.  Others hate
it.  If you are one of the former, select a propitious moment to
suggest that you will cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply
the wood and water.  Thus you will get first crack at the fire in the
chill of morning; and at night you can squat on your heels doing light
labor while the others rustle.

In a mountain trip small stout bags for the provisions are necessary.
They should be big enough to contain, say, five pounds of corn-meal,
and should tie firmly at the top.  It will be absolutely labor lost for
you to mark them on the outside, as the outside soon will become
uniform in color with your marking. Tags might do, if occasionally
renewed.  But if you have the instinct, you will soon come to recognize
the appearance of the different bags as you recognize the features of
your family.  They should contain small quantities for immediate use of
the provisions the main stock of which is carried on another
pack-animal. One tin plate apiece and "one to grow on"; the same of tin
cups; half a dozen spoons; four knives and forks; a big spoon; two
frying-pans; a broiler; a coffee-pot; a Dutch oven; and three light
sheet-iron pails to nest in one another was what we carried on this
trip.  You see, we had horses.  Of course in the woods that outfit
would be materially reduced.

For the same reason, since we had our carrying done for us, we took
along two flat iron bars about twenty-four inches in length.  These,
laid across two stones between which the fire had been built, we used
to support our cooking-utensils stove-wise.  I should never carry a
stove.  This arrangement is quite as effective, and possesses the added
advantage that wood does not have to be cut for it of any definite
length.  Again, in the woods these iron bars would be a senseless
burden.  But early you will learn that while it is foolish to carry a
single ounce more than will pay in comfort or convenience for its own
transportation, it is equally foolish to refuse the comforts or
conveniences that modified circumstance will permit you.  To carry only
a forest equipment with pack-animals would be as silly as to carry only
a pack-animal outfit on a Pullman car.  Only look out that you do not
reverse it.

Even if you do not intend to wash dishes, bring along some "Gold Dust."
It is much simpler in getting at odd corners of obstinate kettles than
any soap.  All you have to do is to boil some of it in that kettle, and
the utensil is tamed at once.

That's about all you, as expert cook, are going to need in the way of
equipment.  Now as to your fire.

There are a number of ways of building a cooking fire, but they share
one first requisite: it should be small.  A blaze will burn everything,
including your hands and your temper.  Two logs laid side by side and
slanted towards each other so that small things can go on the narrow
end and big things on the wide end; flat rocks arranged in the same
manner; a narrow trench in which the fire is built; and the flat irons
just described--these are the best-known methods.  Use dry wood.
Arrange to do your boiling first--in the flame; and your frying and
broiling last--after the flames have died to coals.

So much in general.  You must remember that open-air cooking is in many
things quite different from indoor cooking.  You have different
utensils, are exposed to varying temperatures, are limited in
resources, and pursued by a necessity of haste. Preconceived notions
must go by the board.  You are after results; and if you get them, do
not mind the feminines of your household lifting the hands of horror
over the unorthodox means.  Mighty few women I have ever seen were good
camp-fire cooks; not because camp-fire cookery is especially difficult,
but because they are temperamentally incapable of ridding themselves of
the notion that certain things should be done in a certain way, and
because if an ingredient lacks, they cannot bring themselves to
substitute an approximation.  They would rather abandon the dish than
do violence to the sacred art.

Most camp-cookery advice is quite useless for the same reason.  I have
seen many a recipe begin with the words:  "Take the yolks of four eggs,
half a cup of butter, and a cup of fresh milk--"  As if any one really
camping in the wilderness ever had eggs, butter, and milk!

Now here is something I cooked for this particular celebration.  Every
woman to whom I have ever described it has informed me vehemently that
it is not cake, and must be "horrid."  Perhaps it is not cake, but it
looks yellow and light, and tastes like cake.

First I took two cups of flour, and a half cup of corn-meal to make it
look yellow.  In this I mixed a lot of baking-powder,--about twice what
one should use for bread,--and topped off with a cup of sugar.  The
whole I mixed with water into a light dough.  Into the dough went
raisins that had previously been boiled to swell them up.  Thus was the
cake mixed.  Now I poured half the dough into the Dutch oven, sprinkled
it with a good layer of sugar, cinnamon, and unboiled raisins; poured
in the rest of the dough; repeated the layer of sugar, cinnamon, and
raisins; and baked in the Dutch oven.  It was gorgeous, and we ate it
at one fell swoop.

While we are about it, we may as well work backwards on this particular
orgy by describing the rest of our dessert.  In addition to the cake
and some stewed apricots, I, as cook of the day, constructed also a
pudding.

The basis was flour--two cups of it.  Into this I dumped a handful of
raisins, a tablespoonful of baking-powder, two of sugar, and about a
pound of fat salt pork cut into little cubes.  This I mixed up into a
mess by means of a cup or so of water and a quantity of
larrupy-dope.[1]  Then I dipped a flour-sack in hot water, wrung it
out, sprinkled it with dry flour, and half filled it with my pudding
mixture.  The whole outfit I boiled for two hours in a kettle.  It,
too, was good to the palate, and was even better sliced and fried the
following morning.

This brings us to the suspension of kettles.  There are two ways.  If
you are in a hurry, cut a springy pole, sharpen one end, and stick it
perpendicular in the ground.  Bend it down towards your fire.  Hang
your kettle on the end of it.  If you have jabbed it far enough into
the ground in the first place, it will balance nicely by its own spring
and the elasticity of the turf.  The other method is to plant two
forked sticks on either side your fire over which a strong cross-piece
is laid.  The kettles are hung on hooks cut from forked branches.  The
forked branches are attached to the cross-piece by means of thongs or
withes.

On this occasion we had deer, grouse, and ducks in the larder.  The
best way to treat them is as follows.  You may be sure we adopted the
best way.

When your deer is fresh, you will enjoy greatly a dish of liver and
bacon.  Only the liver you will discover to be a great deal tenderer
and more delicate than any calf's liver you ever ate.  There is this
difference: a deer's liver should be parboiled in order to get rid of a
green bitter scum that will rise to the surface and which you must skim
off.

Next in order is the "back strap" and tenderloin, which is always
tender, even when fresh.  The hams should be kept at least five days.
Deer-steak, to my notion, is best broiled, though occasionally it is
pleasant by way of variety to fry it.  In that case a brown gravy is
made by thoroughly heating flour in the grease, and then stirring in
water.  Deer-steak threaded on switches and "barbecued" over the coals
is delicious. The outside will be a little blackened, but all the
juices will be retained.  To enjoy this to the utmost you should take
it in your fingers and GNAW. The only permissible implem

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