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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
Zane Grey
KYPROS PRESS
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This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Zane Grey
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Tales of Lonely Trails
I. — NONNEZOSHE
II. — COLORADO TRAILS
III. — ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
IV. — TONTO BASIN
V. — DEATH VALLEY
TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
I. — NONNEZOSHE
JOHN WETHERILL, ONE OF THE famous Wetherill brothers and trader at Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting the secret of the great bridge.
After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after Doyle and I came out we admitted that we would not care to try to return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find again alone.
My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for Wetherill’s Navajos.
We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill’s pack mules. But they surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and sultry air.
At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
Two days’ ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented by spruce-sided notches.
There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These silent little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.
Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed over me a strange feeling that “Riders of the Purple Sage” was true. My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time. I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party. Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self. I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the story it had given me.
That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.
Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.
“It’s down in there,” said Wetherill, with a laugh.
Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It is as if he says, “There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I know, and it is far.” The fact was that I looked at the Piute’s dark, inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.
My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene; and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed one moment and magnified the next.
Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he said.
“You can see two hundred miles into Utah,” he went on. “That bright rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the red, that’s where the San Juan comes in. And there’s Escalante Canyon.”
I had to adopt the Indian’s method of studying unlimited spaces in the desert—to look with slow contracted eyes from near to far.
The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope, bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar. Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated. They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes, crags, great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts, each of which was a canyon.
Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and because of its limitless deceiving surfaces incomprehensible to the gaze of man. Away to the eastward began a winding ragged blue line, looping back upon itself, and then winding away again, growing wider and bluer. This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line all its length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined a dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer, revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther westward it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas. Here the canyon was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed, it gaped, it lost itself and showed again in that chaos of a million cliffs. And then it faded, a mere purple line, into deceiving distance.
I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this. The tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This happened to be a place where so much of the desert could be seen and the effect was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here. Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across the shining spaces.
Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was green only at a distance.
Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself. Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw piñon patches under the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners of cliff.
I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and piñon. We found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between. Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short, careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bulge and depression.
Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us to see the bottom.
At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with all his might.
It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place to have trouble with horses.
I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe’s hold on the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick as thought Joe ran sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and yelled for help. I got to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas ta Bega; and together we pulled Chub up out of danger. At first we thought he had been choked to death. But he came to, and got up, a bloody, skinned horse, but alive and safe. I have never seen a more magnificent effort than Joe Lee’s. Those fellows are built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the trip which is not splendid.
We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was the head of a canyon.
“Nonnezoshe Boco,” said the Indian.
This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got down into it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a selection of the best levels, the best places to cross the brook, the best places to climb, and it was a process of continual repetition. There was no trail ahead of us, but we certainly left one behind. And as Wetherill picked out the course and the mustangs followed him I had all freedom to see and feel the beauty, color, wildness and changing character of Nonnezoshe Boco.
My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip down this strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not alike. This one did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue river. Huge caverns had been hollowed out by water or wind. And when the brook ran close under one of these overhanging places the running water made a singular indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a frog—the only living creature I noted in the canyon—was a weird and melancholy thing.
“We’re sure gettin’ deep down,” said Joe Lee.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones are found above.”
I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger than the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite beauty and fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I had never seen.
“They bloom only where it’s always summer,” explained Joe.
That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the green. It was impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under foot. And as the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy air.
But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and bulging walls—these features were gradually lost, and Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare red and white stone steps. The walls sheered away from one another, breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the nature that had created this old rent in the earth.
There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by one, the mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified and its character changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon, leaning, broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking passage, with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting canyons. It jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous stone-shape left by avalanche or cataclysm.
Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of boulders and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that canyon had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor, in places, was bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording treacherous foothold. And the time came when Wetherill abandoned the stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined amphitheater, and then apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed the walls.
I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and lag. I wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the Indians tired. It was with great pleasure that I observed the giant Joe Lee plodding slowly along. And when I glanced behind at my straggling party it was with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped—was waiting for me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the canyon.
I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a magnificent natural bridge.
“Nonnezoshe,” said Wetherill, simply.
This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived.
But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued arch against the blue sky.
Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle the huge amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed dark.
We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we reached it Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions. He was saying his prayer to this great stone god. Then he began to climb straight up the steep slope. Wetherill told me the Indian would not pass under the arch.
When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame mustangs twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to fare for what scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to find than grass. When our simple meal had been eaten there was gloom gathering in the canyon and stars had begun to blink in the pale strip of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and we were mostly silent.
Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by the bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was invisible, but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock upon which I composed myself, to watch, to feel.
A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been continually looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never seemed the same any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for immediate comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had formed it—to reflect upon its meaning as to age and force of nature. Yet it seemed that all I could do was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved line. The rim of the arch appeared to shine. The moon was up there somewhere. The far side of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line. The bridge turned to silver.
It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta Bega. Dark, silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted, with all that was spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge of his place there, he represented to me that which a solitary figure of human life represents in a great painting. Nonnezoshe needed life, wild life, life of its millions of years—and here stood the dark and silent Indian.
Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the bridge. The moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above, and the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with all the strangeness of that strange country in its moan, rushed through the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as I imagined might have dwelt deep in the center of the earth. And again an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. It had a mocking echo. An echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!
The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to see in them the meaning of life and the past—the illimitable train of faces that had shone under the stars. There was something nameless in that canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the great Nonnezoshe, or the life of the present, or the death of the ages, or the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent, dreaming, waiting walls—the truth was that there was a spirit.
I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the tip of the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to shine. The sun had just risen high enough over some low break in the wall to reach the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous transformation, the gold and blue and rose and pink and purple blended their hues, softly, mistily, cloudily, until once more the arch was a rainbow.
I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth this bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black and mystic at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at sunset a flaming curve limned against the heavens. When the race of man had passed it would, perhaps, stand there still. It was not for many eyes to see. The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great things of life had to be earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone, grand, silent, beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a mute, reverent farewell.
II. — COLORADO TRAILS
RIDING AND TRAMPING TRAILS WOULD lose half their charm if the motive were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the reader who longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle of fishing records that this is not that kind of story. But it will be one for those who love horses and dogs, the long winding dim trails, the wild flowers and the dark still woods, the fragrance of spruce and the smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well for those who love to angle in brown lakes or rushing brooks or chase after the baying hounds or stalk the stag on his lonely heights.
We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road and had a long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies have a sweep, a limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many miles we crossed no streams, and climbed and wound up barren slopes. Once across the divide, however, we descended into a country of black forests and green valleys. Yampa, a little hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of the Bear River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very wide and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It seemed a deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the guide, lived there. He assured me it was not quite as lively a place as in the early days when it was a stage center for an old and rich mining section. We stayed there at the one hotel for a whole day, most of which I spent sitting on the board walk. Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it seemed always the same—deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old and forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a while.
On August twenty-third we started in two buckboards for the foothills, some fifteen miles westward, where Teague’s men were to meet us with saddle and pack horses. The ride was not interesting until the Flattop Mountains began to loom, and we saw the dark green slopes of spruce, rising to bare gray cliffs and domes, spotted with white banks of snow. I felt the first cool breath of mountain air, exhilarating and sweet. From that moment I began to live.
We had left at six-thirty. Teague, my guide, had been so rushed with his manifold tasks that I had scarcely seen him, let alone gotten acquainted with him. And on this ride he was far behind with our load of baggage. We arrived at the edge of the foothills about noon. It appeared to be the gateway of a valley, with aspen groves and ragged jack-pines on the slopes, and a stream running down. Our driver called it the Stillwater. That struck me as strange, for the stream was in a great hurry. R.C. spied trout in it, and schools of darkish, mullet-like fish which we were informed were grayling. We wished for our tackle then and for time to fish.
Teague’s man, a young fellow called Virgil, met us here. He did not resemble the ancient Virgil in the least, but he did look as if he had walked right out of one of my romances of wild riders. So I took a liking to him at once.
But the bunch of horses he had corralled there did not excite any delight in me. Horses, of course, were the most important part of our outfit. And that moment of first seeing the horses that were to carry us on such long rides was an anxious and thrilling one. I have felt it many times, and it never grows any weaker from experience. Many a scrubby lot of horses had turned out well upon acquaintance, and some I had found hard to part with at the end of trips. Up to that time, however, I had not seen a bear hunter’s horses; and I was much concerned by the fact that these were a sorry looking outfit, dusty, ragged, maneless, cut and bruised and crippled. Still, I reflected, they were bunched up so closely that I could not tell much about them, and I decided to wait for Teague before I chose a horse for any one.
In an hour Teague trotted up to our resting place. Beside his own mount he had two white saddle horses, and nine pack-animals, heavily laden. Teague was a sturdy rugged man with bronzed face and keen gray-blue eyes, very genial and humorous. Straightway I got the impression that he liked work.
“Let’s organize,” he said, briskly. “Have you picked the horses you’re goin’ to ride?”
Teague led from the midst of that dusty kicking bunch a rangy powerful horse, with four white feet, a white face and a noble head. He had escaped my eye. I felt thrillingly that here at least was one horse.
The rest of the horses were permanently crippled or temporarily lame, and I had no choice, except to take the one it would be kindest to ride.
“He ain’t much like your Silvermane or Black Star,” said Teague, laughing.
“What do you know about them?” I asked, very much pleased at this from him.
“Well, I know all about them,” he replied. “I’ll have you the best horse in this country in a few days. Fact is I’ve bought him, an’ he’ll come with my cowboy, Vern...Now, we’re organized. Let’s move.”
We rode through a meadow along a spruce slope above which towered the great mountain. It was a zigzag trail, rough, boggy, and steep in places. The Stillwater meandered here, and little breaks on the water gave evidence of feeding trout. We had several miles of meadow, and then sheered off to the left up into the timber. It was a spruce forest, very still and fragrant. We climbed out up on a bench, and across a flat, up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of snow. Here snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw a fox, a badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One more climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven thousand feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was splendid, and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim along the horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not very wide at this pass, and we were soon going down again into a green gulf of spruce, with ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here again I got the suggestion of limitless space. It took us an hour to ride down to Little Trappers Lake, a small clear green sheet of water. The larger lake was farther down. It was big, irregular, and bordered by spruce forests, and shadowed by the lofty gray peaks.
The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm, and mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It was after sunset and I was too tired to have many impressions.
Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep quavering voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was silent most of the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when they spoke, for he was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to discover that he was a good cook.
Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights. The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly. There was a soft murmur of falling water. A lonesome coyote barked, and that thrilled me. Teague’s dogs answered this prowler, and some of them had voices to make a hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had a roar like a lion’s. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and I was thinking about them when I fell asleep.
Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the tip of the mountain and slowly grew downward.
The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his discomfiture.
After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods, and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent black slopes.
The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes during dog days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We tried the outlet first, but trout were not rising there. Then we began wading and casting along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had instructed us to cast, then drag the flies slowly across the surface of the water, in imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and several times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I had strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout. Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook the fish.
R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most unaccountable fiendish pleasure.
“These are educated trout,” he said. “It takes a skillful fisherman to make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which is your forte. But here you are N.G...Watch me cast!”
I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water boiled, and he hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite speechless with envy and admiration I watched him play them and eventually beach them. They were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided and marked with the red slash along their gills that gave them their name. I did not catch any while wading, but from the bank I spied one, and dropping a fly in front of his nose, I got him. R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in weight, and then he had a strike that broke his leader. He did not have another leader, so we walked back to camp.
Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the forest. Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful and very pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful flower that is the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its blue, Indian paint brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in color from red to pink and from white to yellow.
My favorite of all wild flowers—the purple asters—were there too, on tall nodding stems, with pale faces held up to the light. The reflection of mountain and forest in Trappers Lake was clear and beautiful.
The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great show about beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last very long. The sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge under a pine. One of the blessings of outdoor life was that a man could be like an Indian and do nothing. So from rest I passed to dreams and from dreams to sleep.
In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout. The lake appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck and we could not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again. Here the current was swift. I found a place between two willow banks where trout were breaking on the surface. It took a long cast for me, but about every tenth attempt I would get a fly over the right place and raise a fish. They were small, but that did not detract from my gratification. The light on the water was just right for me to see the trout rise, and that was a beautiful sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had caught four when a shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I found him standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent double and a long line out.
“Got a whale!” he yelled. “See him—down there—in that white water. See him flash red!...Go down there and land him for me. Hurry! He’s got all the line!”
I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream was shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a flashing gleam of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I could not reach it without wading in. When I did this the trout lunged out. He looked crimson and silver. I could have put my fist in his mouth.
“Grab the leader! Yank him out!” yelled R.C. in desperation. “There! He’s got all the line.”
“But it’d be better to wade down,” I yelled back.
He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his fish. This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I grasped the leader that the big trout would break it or pull free. The same situation, with different kinds of fish, had presented itself many times on my numberless fishing jaunts with R.C. and they all crowded to my mind. Nevertheless I had no choice. Plunging in to my knees I frantically reached for the leader. The red trout made a surge. I missed him. R.C. yelled that something would break. That was no news to me. Another plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I essayed to lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was tired and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my legs.
When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was sitting on the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was holding his broken leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went into a rage! Blamed me for the loss of that big trout! Under such circumstances it was always best to maintain silence and I did so as long as I could. After his paroxysm had spent itself and he had become somewhat near a rational being once more he asked me:
“Was he big?”
“Oh—a whale of a trout!” I replied.
“Humph! Well, how big?”
Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of that trout. I made him out very much bigger than he actually looked to me and I minutely described his beauty and wonderful gaping mouth. R.C. groaned and that was my revenge.
We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape acquaintance with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted pack—four Airedales, one bloodhound and seven other hounds of mixed breeds. There were also three pup hounds, white and yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all pups, noisy and mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied also to one of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by some estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with that name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and exceedingly funny. When he was approached he had a trick of standing up, holding up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way, with his head twisted in the most absurd manner. This was when he was chained—otherwise he would have been climbing up on anyone who gave him the chance. He was the most jealous dog I ever saw. He could not be kept chained very long because he always freed himself. At meal time he would slip noiselessly behind some one and steal the first morsel he could snatch. Bill was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of firewood.
Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then saddled up to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and down ridges of heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer sign. Elk tracks appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we left the trail to climb into heavy timber we began to look for game. The forest was dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No squirrels or birds or sign of life! We had a hard ride up and down steep slopes. A feature was the open swaths made by avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a path through the timber, and the young shoots of spruce were springing up. I imagined the roar made by that tremendous slide.
We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the grass had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign where the elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers to get rid of the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes made by an axe. The Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note again.
We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with wild asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The patches of red and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere we rode we were knee deep in flowers. At length we came out of the heavy timber down upon Big Fish Lake. This lake was about half a mile across, deep blue-green in color, with rocky shores. Upon the opposite side were beaver mounds. We could see big trout swimming round, but they would not rise to a fly. R.C. went out in an old boat and paddled to the head of the lake and fished at the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went around and up the little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly through a meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering banks. At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds. It was musical and clear as crystal, and to the touch of hand, as cold as ice water. I waded in and began to cast. I saw several big trout, and at last coaxed one to take my fly. But I missed him. Then in a swift current a flash of red caught my eye and I saw a big trout lazily rise to my fly. Saw him take it! And I hooked him. He was not active, but heavy and plunging, and he bored in and out, and made short runs. I had not seen such beautiful red colors in any fish. He made a fine fight, but at last I landed him on the grass, a cutthroat of about one and three-quarter pounds, deep red and silver and green, and spotted all over. That was the extent of my luck.
We went back to the point, and thought we would wait a little while to see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not. A storm began to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great gray clouds obscured the peaks, and at length the rain came. It was cold and cutting. We sought the shelter of spruces for a while, and waited. After an hour it cleared somewhat, and R.C. caught a fine one-pound cutthroat, all green and silver, with only two slashes of red along under the gills. Then another storm threatened. Before we got ready to leave for camp the rain began again to fall, and we looked for a wetting. It was raining hard when we rode into the woods and very cold. The spruces were dripping. But we soon got warm from hard riding up steep slopes. After an hour the rain ceased, the sun came out, and from the open places high up we could see a great green void of spruce, and beyond, boundless black ranges, running off to dim horizon. We flushed a big blue grouse with a brood of little ones, and at length another big one.
In one of the open parks the Airedale Fox showed signs of scenting game. There was a patch of ground where the grass was pressed down. Teague whispered and pointed. I saw the gray rump of an elk protruding from behind some spruces. I beckoned for R.C. and we both dismounted. Just then the elk rose and stalked out. It was a magnificent bull with crowning lofty antlers. The shoulders and neck appeared black. He raised his head, and turning, trotted away with ease and grace for such a huge beast. That was a wild and beautiful sight I had not seen before. We were entranced, and when he disappeared, we burst out with exclamations.
We rode on toward camp, and out upon a bench that bordered the lofty red wall of rock. From there we went down into heavy forest again, dim and gray, with its dank, penetrating odor, and oppressive stillness. The forest primeval! When we rode out of that into open slopes the afternoon was far advanced, and long shadows lay across the distant ranges. When we reached camp, supper and a fire to warm cold wet feet were exceedingly welcome. I was tired.
Later, R.C. and I rode up a mile or so above camp, and hitched our horses near Teague’s old corral. Our intention was to hunt up along the side of the slope. Teague came along presently. We waited, hoping the big black clouds would break. But they did not. They rolled down with gray, swirling edges, like smoke, and a storm enveloped us. We sought shelter in a thick spruce. It rained and hailed. By and bye the air grew bitterly cold, and Teague suggested we give up, and ride back. So we did. The mountains were dim and obscure through the gray gloom, and the black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against the background. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and crashed in magnificent bombardment across the heavens.
Next morning at six-thirty the sun was shining clear, and only a few clouds sailed in the blue. Wind was in the west and the weather promised fair. But clouds began to creep up behind the mountains, first hazy, then white, then dark. Nevertheless we decided to ride out, and cross the Flattop rim, and go around what they call the Chinese Wall. It rained as we climbed through the spruces above Little Trappers Lake. And as we got near the top it began to hail. Again the air grew cold. Once out on top I found a wide expanse, green and white, level in places, but with huge upheavals of ridge. There were flowers here at eleven thousand feet. The view to the rear was impressive—a wide up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of rocks, and patches of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall, and the view to the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling thick and white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell into the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet, lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White River Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope, up to a bare jagged peak. Beyond this stretched range on range, dark under the lowering pall of clouds. On top we found fresh Rocky Mountain sheep tracks. A little later, going into a draw, we crossed a snow-bank, solid as ice. We worked down into this draw into the timber. It hailed, and rained some more, then cleared. The warm sun felt good. Once down in the parks we began to ride through a flower-garden. Every slope was beautiful in gold, and red, and blue and white. These parks were luxuriant with grass, and everywhere we found elk beds, where the great stags had been lying, to flee at our approach. But we did not see one. The bigness of this slope impressed me. We rode miles and miles, and every park was surrounded by heavy timber. At length we got into a burned district where the tall dead spruces stood sear and ghastly, and the ground was so thickly strewn with fallen trees that we had difficulty in threading a way through them. Patches of aspen grew on the hillside, still fresh and green despite this frosty morning. Here we found a sego lily, one of the most beautiful of flowers. Here also I saw pink Indian paint brush. At the foot of this long burned slope we came to the White River trail, and followed it up and around to camp.
Late in the evening, about sunset, I took my rifle and slipped off into the woods back of camp. I walked a short distance, then paused to listen to the silence of the forest. There was not a sound. It was a place of peace. By and bye I heard snapping of twigs, and presently heard R.C. and Teague approaching me. We penetrated half a mile into the spruce, pausing now and then to listen. At length R.C. heard something. We stopped. After a little I heard the ring of a horn on wood. It was thrilling. Then came the crack of a hoof on stone, then the clatter of a loosened rock. We crept on. But that elk or deer evaded us. We hunted around till dark without farther sign of any game.
R.C. and Teague and I rode out at seven-thirty and went down White River for three miles. In one patch of bare ground we saw tracks of five deer where they had come in for salt. Then we climbed high up a burned ridge, winding through patches of aspen. We climbed ridge after ridge, and at last got out of the burned district into reaches of heavy spruce. Coming to a park full of deer and elk tracks, we dismounted and left our horses. I went to the left, and into some beautiful woods, where I saw beds of deer or elk, and many tracks. Returning to the horses, I led them into a larger park, and climbed high into the open and watched. There I saw some little squirrels about three inches long, and some gray birds, very tame. I waited a long time before there was any sign of R.C. or Teague, and then it was the dog I saw first. I whistled, and they climbed up to me. We mounted and rode on for an hour, then climbed through a magnificent forest of huge trees, windfalls, and a ferny, mossy, soft ground. At length we came out at the head of a steep, bare slope, running down to a verdant park crossed by stretches of timber. On the way back to camp we ran across many elk beds and deer trails, and for a while a small band of elk evidently trotted ahead of us, but out of sight.
Next day we started for a few days’ trip to Big Fish Lake. R.C. and I went along up around the mountain. I found our old trail, and was at a loss only a few times. We saw fresh elk sign, but no live game at all.
In the afternoon we fished. I went up the river half a mile, while R.C. fished the lake. Neither of us had any luck. Later we caught four trout, one of which was fair sized.
Toward sunset the trout began to rise all over the lake, but we could not get them to take a fly.
The following day we went up to Twin Lakes and found them to be beautiful little green gems surrounded by spruce. I saw some big trout in the large lake, but they were wary. We tried every way to get a strike. No use! In the little lake matters were worse. It was full of trout up to two pounds. They would run at the fly, only to refuse it. Exasperating work! We gave up and returned to Big Fish. After supper we went out to try again. The lake was smooth and quiet. All at once, as if by concert, the trout began to rise everywhere. In a little bay we began to get strikes. I could see the fish rise to the fly. The small ones were too swift and the large ones too slow, it seemed. We caught one, and then had bad luck. We snarled our lines, drifted wrong, broke leaders, snapped off flies, hooked too quick and too slow, and did everything that was clumsy. I lost two big fish because they followed the fly as I drew it toward me across the water to imitate a swimming fly. Of course this made a large slack line which I could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and altogether we got seven. All in that little bay, where the water was shallow! In other places we could not catch a fish. I had one vicious strike. The fish appeared to be feeding on a tiny black gnat, which we could not imitate. This was the most trying experience of all. We ought to have caught a basketful.
The next day, September first, we rode down along the outlet of Big Fish to White River and down that for miles to fish for grayling. The stream was large and swift and cold. It appeared full of ice water and rocks, but no fish. We met fishermen, an automobile, and a camp outfit. That was enough for me. Where an automobile can run, I do not belong. The fishing was poor. But the beautiful open valley, flowered in gold and purple, was recompense for a good deal of bad luck.
A grayling, or what they called a grayling, was not as beautiful a fish as my fancy had pictured. He resembled a sucker or mullet, had a small mouth, dark color, and was rather a sluggish-looking fish.
We rode back through a thunderstorm, and our yellow slickers afforded much comfort.
Next morning was bright, clear, cold. I saw the moon go down over a mountain rim rose-flushed with the sunrise.
