Tales of lonely trails - Zane Grey

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where sheep had been run. I refused to camp here, and Teague, in high dudgeon, rode on. As it turned out I was both wise and lucky, for we rode into a park with many branches, where there was good water and fair grass and a pretty grove of white pines in which to pitch our tents. I enjoyed this camp, and had a fine rest at night.

      The morning broke dark and lowering. We hustled to get started before a storm broke. It began to rain as we mounted our horses, and soon we were in the midst of a cold rain. It blew hard. We put on our slickers. After a short ride down through the forest we entered Buffalo Park. This was a large park, and we lost time trying to find a forester's trail leading out of it. At last we found one, but it soon petered out, and we were lost in thick timber, in a driving rain, with the cold and wind increasing. But we kept on.

      This forest was deep and dark, with tremendous windfalls, and great canyons around which we had to travel. It took us hours to ride out of it. When we began to descend once more we struck an old lumber road. More luck—the storm ceased, and presently we were out on an aspen slope with a great valley beneath, and high, black peaks beyond. Below the aspens were long swelling slopes of sage and grass, gray and golden and green. A ranch lay in the valley, and we crossed it to climb up a winding ravine, once more to the aspens where we camped in the rancher's pasture. It was a cold, wet camp, but we managed to be fairly comfortable.

      The sunset was gorgeous. The mass of clouds broke and rolled. There was exquisite golden light on the peaks, and many rose- and violet-hued banks of cloud.

      Morning found us shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About nine the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed pastures and aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the grass grew luxuriant, and the red wall of rock overhung the long slopes. The view west was magnificent—a long, bulging range of mountains, vast stretches of green aspen slopes, winding parks of all shapes, gray and gold and green, and jutting peaks, and here and there patches of autumn blaze in grass and thicket.

      We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with water, grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of mountains and valleys below.

      We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak. After the middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to the touch of frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly beautiful. Against a background of gray sage the gold and red and purple aspen groves showed too much like exquisite paintings to seem real. In the mornings the frost glistened thick and white on the grass; and after the gorgeous sunsets of gold over the violet-hazed ranges the air grew stingingly cold.

      Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely criticised by many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business, and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I would not do so, except in a case of hunger. All the same, leaving the tree out of consideration, bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously exciting and hazardous game. But my ideas about sport are changing. Hunting, in the sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate business.

White Aspen Tree, Showing Marks of Bear Claws

      The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong about the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my hands. All is exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent up to the moment the shot is fired. After that it is another matter. It is useless for sportsmen to tell me that they, in particular, hunt right, conserve the game, do not go beyond the limit, and all that sort of thing. I do not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not prepared now to say whether or not that would be well. The Germans believe they are the race fittest to survive over all others—and that has made me a little sick of this Darwin business.

A Black Bear Treed

      To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a wild chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating experience, I will relate a couple of instances, and I will leave it to my readers to judge whether or not it is a cowardly sport.

      One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that he had surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead cow.

      "Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in delight. "We'll get him even if the trail is a day old. But he'll come back to-night."

      Early next morning the young rancher and three other boys rode into camp, saying they would like to go with us to see the fun. We were glad to have them, and we rode off through the frosted sage that crackled like brittle glass under the hoofs of the horses. Our guide led toward a branch of a park, and when we got within perhaps a quarter of a mile Teague suggested that R.C. and I go ahead on the chance of surprising the bear. It was owing to this suggestion that my brother and I were well ahead of the others. But we did not see any bear near the carcass of the cow. Old Jim and Sampson were close behind us, and when Jim came within forty yards of that carcass he put his nose up with a deep and ringing bay, and he shot by us like a streak. He never went near the dead cow! Sampson bayed like thunder and raced after Jim.

      "They're off!" I yelled to R.C. "It's a hot scent! Come on!"

      We spurred our horses and they broke across the open park to the edge of the woods. Jim and Sampson were running straight with noses high. I heard a string of yelps and bellows from our rear.

      "Look back!" shouted R.C.

      Teague and the cowboys were unleashing the rest of the pack. It surely was great to see them stretch out, yelping wildly. Like the wind they passed us. Jim and Sampson headed into the woods with deep bays. I was riding Teague's best horse for this sort of work and he understood the game and plainly enjoyed it. R.C.'s horse ran as fast in the woods as he did in the open. This frightened me, and I yelled to R.C. to be careful. I yelled to deaf ears. That is the first great risk—a rider is not going to be careful! We were right on top of Jim and Sampson with the pack clamoring mad music just behind. The forest rang. Both horses hurdled logs, sometimes two at once. My old lion chases with Buffalo Jones had made me skillful in dodging branches and snags, and sliding knees back to avoid knocking them against trees. For a mile the forest was comparatively open, and here we had a grand and ringing run. I received two hard knocks, was unseated once, but held on, and I got a stinging crack in the face from a branch. R.C. added several more black-and-blue spots to his already spotted anatomy, and he missed, just by an inch, a solid snag that would have broken him in two. The pack stretched out in wild staccato chorus, the little Airedales literally screeching. Jim got out of our sight and then Sampson. Still it was ever more thrilling to follow by sound rather than sight. They led up a thick, steep slope. Here we got into trouble in the windfalls of timber and the pack drew away from us, up over the mountain. We were half way up when we heard them jump the bear. The forest seemed full of strife and bays and yelps. We heard the dogs go down again to our right, and as we turned we saw Teague and the others strung out along the edge of the park. They got far ahead of us. When we reached the bottom of the slope they were out of sight, but we could hear them yell. The hounds were working around on another slope, from which craggy rocks loomed above the timber. R.C.'s horse lunged across the park and appeared to be running off from mine. I was a little to the right, and when my horse got under way, full speed, we had the bad luck to plunge suddenly into soft ground. He went to his knees, and I sailed out of the saddle fully twenty feet, to alight all spread out and to slide like a plow. I did not seem to be hurt. When I got up my horse was coming and he appeared to be patient with me, but he was in a hurry. Before we got across the wet

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