The Mountains

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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 CANON
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 canon, 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 canon 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,
canons, 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
Canon 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 canons 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 Canon, 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 canons 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
canons 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 canons, 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 canons 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.

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