The Mountains
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Stewart Edward White >> The Mountains
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"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
canons, 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 CANON
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 canon. Somehow
the level at the bottom resembled less forests and
meadows than a heavy and sluggish fluid like
molasses flowing between the canon 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.
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