The Mountains
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Stewart Edward White >> The Mountains
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"Howdy, boys," said he, and dropped to the
fireside, where he promptly annexed a coal for his pipe.
We all greeted him, but gradually the talk fell
to him and Wes. It was commonplace talk enough
from one point of view: taken in essence it was
merely like the inquiry and answer of the civilized
man as to another's itinerary--"Did you visit Florence?
Berlin? St. Petersburg?"--and then the
comparing of impressions. Only here again that old
familiar magic of unfamiliar names threw its glamour
over the terse sentences.
"Over beyond the Piute Monument," the old
prospector explained, "down through the Inyo
Range, a leetle north of Death Valley--"
"Back in seventy-eight when I was up in Bay
Horse Canon over by Lost River--"
"Was you ever over in th' Panamit Mountains?
--North of th' Telescope Range?"--
That was all there was to it, with long pauses for
drawing at the pipes. Yet somehow in the aggregate
that catalogue of names gradually established in the
minds of us two who listened an impression of long
years, of wide wilderness, of wandering far over the
face of the earth. The old man had wintered here,
summered a thousand miles away, made his strike
at one end of the world, lost it somehow, and cheerfully
tried for a repetition of his luck at the other.
I do not believe the possibility of wealth, though
always of course in the background, was ever near
enough his hope to be considered a motive for
action. Rather was it a dream, remote, something to
be gained to-morrow, but never to-day, like the mediaeval
Christian's idea of heaven. His interest was
in the search. For that one could see in him a real
enthusiasm. He had his smattering of theory, his
very real empirical knowledge, and his superstitions,
like all prospectors. So long as he could keep in
grub, own a little train of burros, and lead the life
he loved, he was happy.
Perhaps one of the chief elements of this remarkable
interest in the game rather than the prizes of it
was his desire to vindicate his guesses or his conclusions.
He liked to predict to himself the outcome of
his solitary operations, and then to prove that
prediction through laborious days. His life was a
gigantic game of solitaire. In fact, he mentioned a
dozen of his claims many years apart which he had
developed to a certain point,--"so I could see what
they was,"--and then abandoned in favor of fresher
discoveries. He cherished the illusion that these were
properties to whose completion some day he would
return. But we knew better; he had carried them to
the point where the result was no longer in doubt
and then, like one who has no interest in playing on
in an evidently prescribed order, had laid his cards
on the table to begin a new game.
This man was skilled in his profession; he had
pursued it for thirty odd years; he was frugal and
industrious; undoubtedly of his long series of
discoveries a fair percentage were valuable and are
producing-properties to-day. Yet he confessed his bank
balance to be less than five hundred dollars. Why
was this? Simply and solely because he did not care.
At heart it was entirely immaterial to him whether
he ever owned a dollar above his expenses. When
he sold his claims, he let them go easily, loath to
bother himself with business details, eager to get
away from the fuss and nuisance. The few hundred
dollars he received he probably sunk in unproductive
mining work, or was fleeced out of in the towns.
Then joyfully he turned back to his beloved mountains
and the life of his slow deep delight and his
pecking away before the open doors of fortune. By
and by he would build himself a little cabin down
in the lower pine mountains, where he would grow
a white beard, putter with occult wilderness crafts,
and smoke long contemplative hours in the sun before
his door. For tourists he would braid rawhide
reins and quirts, or make buckskin. The jays and
woodpeckers and Douglas squirrels would become
fond of him. So he would be gathered to his fathers,
a gentle old man whose life had been spent harmlessly
in the open. He had had his ideal to which
blindly he reached; he had in his indirect way
contributed the fruits of his labor to mankind; his
recompenses he had chosen according to his desires.
When you consider these things, you perforce have
to revise your first notion of him as a useless sort of
old ruffian. As you come to know him better, you
must love him for the kindliness, the simple honesty,
the modesty, and charity that he seems to draw from
his mountain environment. There are hundreds of
him buried in the great canons of the West.
Our prospector was a little uncertain as to his
plans. Along toward autumn he intended to land at
some reputed placers near Dinkey Creek. There
might be something in that district. He thought he
would take a look. In the mean time he was just
poking up through the country--he and his jackasses.
Good way to spend the summer. Perhaps he might run
across something 'most anywhere; up near the top of
that mountain opposite looked mineralized. Didn't
know but what he'd take a look at her to-morrow.
He camped near us during three days. I never
saw a more modest, self-effacing man. He seemed
genuinely, childishly, almost helplessly interested in
our fly-fishing, shooting, our bear-skins, and our
travels. You would have thought from his demeanor
--which was sincere and not in the least ironical--
that he had never seen or heard anything quite like
that before, and was struck with wonder at it. Yet
he had cast flies before we were born, and shot even
earlier than he had cast a fly, and was a very
Ishmael for travel. Rarely could you get an account of
his own experiences, and then only in illustration
of something else.
"If you-all likes bear-hunting," said he, "you
ought to get up in eastern Oregon. I summered
there once. The only trouble is, the brush is thick
as hair. You 'most always have to bait them, or
wait for them to come and drink. The brush is so
small you ain't got much chance. I run onto a she-
bear and cubs that way once. Didn't have nothin'
but my six-shooter, and I met her within six foot."
He stopped with an air of finality.
"Well, what did you do?" we asked.
"Me?" he inquired, surprised. "Oh, I just leaked
out of th' landscape."
He prospected the mountain opposite, loafed with
us a little, and then decided that he must be going.
About eight o'clock in the morning he passed us,
hazing his burros, his tall, lean figure elastic in
defiance of years.
"So long, boys," he called; "good luck!"
"So long," we responded heartily. "Be good to
yourself."
He plunged into the river without hesitation, emerged
dripping on the other side, and disappeared in the
brush. From time to time during the rest of the morning
we heard the intermittent tinkling of his bell-animal
rising higher and higher above us on the trail.
In the person of this man we gained our first
connection, so to speak, with the Golden Trout. He had
caught some of them, and could tell us of their habits.
Few fishermen west of the Rockies have not heard
of the Golden Trout, though, equally, few have
much definite information concerning it. Such information
usually runs about as follows:
It is a medium size fish of the true trout family,
resembling a rainbow except that it is of a rich
golden color. The peculiarity that makes its capture
a dream to be dreamed of is that it swims in but one
little stream of all the round globe. If you would
catch a Golden Trout, you must climb up under the
very base of the end of the High Sierras. There is
born a stream that flows down from an elevation of
about ten thousand feet to about eight thousand
before it takes a long plunge into a branch of the Kern
River. Over the twenty miles of its course you can
cast your fly for Golden Trout; but what is the nature
of that stream, that fish, or the method of its
capture, few can tell you with any pretense of accuracy.
To be sure, there are legends. One, particularly
striking, claims that the Golden Trout occurs in one
other stream--situated in Central Asia!--and that
the fish is therefore a remnant of some pre-glacial
period, like Sequoia trees, a sort of grand-daddy of
all trout, as it were. This is but a sample of what
you will hear discussed.
Of course from the very start we had had our eye
on the Golden Trout, and intended sooner or later
to work our way to his habitat. Our prospector had
just come from there.
"It's about four weeks south, the way you and
me travels," said he. "You don't want to try
Harrison's Pass; it's chock full of tribulation. Go
around by way of the Giant Forest. She's pretty
good there, too, some sizable timber. Then over by
Redwood Meadows, and Timber Gap, by Mineral
King, and over through Farewell Gap. You turn
east there, on a new trail. She's steeper than straight-
up-an'-down, but shorter than the other. When you
get down in the canon of Kern River,--say, she's a
fine canon, too,--you want to go downstream about
two mile to where there's a sort of natural over-
flowed lake full of stubs stickin' up. You'll get
some awful big rainbows in there. Then your best
way is to go right up Whitney Creek Trail to a big
high meadows mighty nigh to timber-line. That's
where I camped. They's lots of them little yaller
fish there. Oh, they bite well enough. You'll catch
'em. They's a little shy."
So in that guise--as the desire for new and distant
things--did our angel with the flaming sword
finally come to us.
We caught reluctant horses reluctantly. All the
first day was to be a climb. We knew it; and I
suspect that they knew it too. Then we packed
and addressed ourselves to the task offered us by
the Basin Trail.
ON CAMP COOKERY
XIV
ON CAMP COOKERY
One morning I awoke a little before the others,
and lay on my back staring up through the
trees. It was not my day to cook. We were camped
at the time only about sixty-five hundred feet high,
and the weather was warm. Every sort of green thing
grew very lush all about us, but our own little space
was held dry and clear for us by the needles of two
enormous red cedars some four feet in diameter. A
variety of thoughts sifted through my mind as it
followed lazily the shimmering filaments of loose spider-
web streaming through space. The last thought stuck.
It was that that day was a holiday. Therefore I un-
limbered my six-shooter, and turned her loose, each
shot being accompanied by a meritorious yell.
The outfit boiled out of its blankets. I explained
the situation, and after they had had some breakfast
they agreed with me that a celebration was in order.
Unanimously we decided to make it gastronomic.
"We will ride till we get to good feed," we
concluded, "and then we'll cook all the afternoon.
And nobody must eat anything until the whole business
is prepared and served."
It was agreed. We rode until we were very
hungry, which was eleven o'clock. Then we rode
some more. By and by we came to a log cabin in a
wide fair lawn below a high mountain with a ducal
coronet on its top, and around that cabin was a fence,
and inside the fence a man chopping wood. Him we
hailed. He came to the fence and grinned at us from
the elevation of high-heeled boots. By this token we
knew him for a cow-puncher.
"How are you?" said we.
"Howdy, boys," he roared. Roared is the accurate
expression. He was not a large man, and his hair
was sandy, and his eye mild blue. But undoubtedly
his kinsmen were dumb and he had as birthright the
voice for the entire family. It had been subsequently
developed in the shouting after the wild cattle of the
hills. Now his ordinary conversational tone was that
of the announcer at a circus. But his heart was good.
"Can we camp here?" we inquired.
"Sure thing," he bellowed. "Turn your horses
into the meadow. Camp right here."
But with the vision of a rounded wooded knoll a
few hundred yards distant we said we'd just get out
of his way a little. We crossed a creek, mounted an
easy slope to the top of the knoll, and were delighted
to observe just below its summit the peculiar fresh
green hump which indicates a spring. The Tenderfoot,
however, knew nothing of springs, for shortly
he trudged a weary way back to the creek, and so
returned bearing kettles of water. This performance
hugely astonished the cowboy, who subsequently
wanted to know if a "critter had died in the spring."
Wes departed to borrow a big Dutch oven of the
man and to invite him to come across when we raised
the long yell. Then we began operations.
Now camp cooks are of two sorts. Anybody can
with a little practice fry bacon, steak, or flapjacks, and
boil coffee. The reduction of the raw material to its
most obvious cooked result is within the reach of all
but the most hopeless tenderfoot who never knows
the salt-sack from the sugar-sack. But your true artist
at the business is he who can from six ingredients, by
permutation, combination, and the genius that is in
him turn out a full score of dishes. For simple
example: GIVEN, rice, oatmeal, and raisins. Your expert
accomplishes the following:
ITEM--Boiled rice.
ITEM--Boiled oatmeal.
ITEM--Rice boiled until soft, then stiffened by the
addition of quarter as much oatmeal.
ITEM--Oatmeal in which is boiled almost to the
dissolving point a third as much rice.
These latter two dishes taste entirely unlike each
other or their separate ingredients. They are moreover
great in nutrition.
ITEM--Boiled rice and raisins.
ITEM--Dish number three with raisins.
ITEM--Rice boiled with raisins, sugar sprinkled on
top, and then baked.
ITEM--Ditto with dish number three.
All these are good--and different.
Some people like to cook and have a natural knack for
it. Others hate it. If you are one of the former,
select a propitious moment to suggest that you will
cook, if the rest will wash the dishes and supply the
wood and water. Thus you will get first crack at the
fire in the chill of morning; and at night you can squat
on your heels doing light labor while the others rustle.
In a mountain trip small stout bags for the
provisions are necessary. They should be big enough to
contain, say, five pounds of corn-meal, and should tie
firmly at the top. It will be absolutely labor lost for
you to mark them on the outside, as the outside soon
will become uniform in color with your marking.
Tags might do, if occasionally renewed. But if you
have the instinct, you will soon come to recognize
the appearance of the different bags as you recognize
the features of your family. They should contain
small quantities for immediate use of the provisions
the main stock of which is carried on another pack-
animal. One tin plate apiece and "one to grow on";
the same of tin cups; half a dozen spoons; four
knives and forks; a big spoon; two frying-pans; a
broiler; a coffee-pot; a Dutch oven; and three light
sheet-iron pails to nest in one another was what we
carried on this trip. You see, we had horses. Of course
in the woods that outfit would be materially reduced.
For the same reason, since we had our carrying
done for us, we took along two flat iron bars about
twenty-four inches in length. These, laid across two
stones between which the fire had been built, we
used to support our cooking-utensils stove-wise. I
should never carry a stove. This arrangement is
quite as effective, and possesses the added advantage
that wood does not have to be cut for it of any
definite length. Again, in the woods these iron bars
would be a senseless burden. But early you will
learn that while it is foolish to carry a single ounce
more than will pay in comfort or convenience for its
own transportation, it is equally foolish to refuse the
comforts or conveniences that modified circumstance
will permit you. To carry only a forest equipment
with pack-animals would be as silly as to carry only
a pack-animal outfit on a Pullman car. Only look
out that you do not reverse it.
Even if you do not intend to wash dishes, bring
along some "Gold Dust." It is much simpler in
getting at odd corners of obstinate kettles than any
soap. All you have to do is to boil some of it in
that kettle, and the utensil is tamed at once.
That's about all you, as expert cook, are going to
need in the way of equipment. Now as to your fire.
There are a number of ways of building a cooking
fire, but they share one first requisite: it should
be small. A blaze will burn everything, including
your hands and your temper. Two logs laid side by
side and slanted towards each other so that small
things can go on the narrow end and big things on
the wide end; flat rocks arranged in the same manner;
a narrow trench in which the fire is built; and
the flat irons just described--these are the best-
known methods. Use dry wood. Arrange to do your
boiling first--in the flame; and your frying and
broiling last--after the flames have died to coals.
So much in general. You must remember that
open-air cooking is in many things quite different
from indoor cooking. You have different utensils,
are exposed to varying temperatures, are limited in
resources, and pursued by a necessity of haste. Pre-
conceived notions must go by the board. You are
after results; and if you get them, do not mind the
feminines of your household lifting the hands of
horror over the unorthodox means. Mighty few women
I have ever seen were good camp-fire cooks; not
because camp-fire cookery is especially difficult, but
because they are temperamentally incapable of ridding
themselves of the notion that certain things
should be done in a certain way, and because if an
ingredient lacks, they cannot bring themselves to
substitute an approximation. They would rather
abandon the dish than do violence to the sacred art.
Most camp-cookery advice is quite useless for the
same reason. I have seen many a recipe begin with
the words: "Take the yolks of four eggs, half a
cup of butter, and a cup of fresh milk--" As if
any one really camping in the wilderness ever had
eggs, butter, and milk!
Now here is something I cooked for this particular
celebration. Every woman to whom I have ever described
it has informed me vehemently that it is not cake,
and must be "horrid." Perhaps it is not cake, but
it looks yellow and light, and tastes like cake.
First I took two cups of flour, and a half cup of
corn-meal to make it look yellow. In this I mixed
a lot of baking-powder,--about twice what one
should use for bread,--and topped off with a cup of
sugar. The whole I mixed with water into a light
dough. Into the dough went raisins that had previously
been boiled to swell them up. Thus was the
cake mixed. Now I poured half the dough into the
Dutch oven, sprinkled it with a good layer of sugar,
cinnamon, and unboiled raisins; poured in the rest
of the dough; repeated the layer of sugar, cinnamon,
and raisins; and baked in the Dutch oven. It
was gorgeous, and we ate it at one fell swoop.
While we are about it, we may as well work backwards
on this particular orgy by describing the rest of our
dessert. In addition to the cake and some stewed
apricots, I, as cook of the day, constructed also a pudding.
The basis was flour--two cups of it. Into this I
dumped a handful of raisins, a tablespoonful of baking-
powder, two of sugar, and about a pound of fat
salt pork cut into little cubes. This I mixed up into
a mess by means of a cup or so of water and a
quantity of larrupy-dope.[3] Then I dipped a flour-
sack in hot water, wrung it out, sprinkled it with
dry flour, and half filled it with my pudding
mixture. The whole outfit I boiled for two hours in a
kettle. It, too, was good to the palate, and was even
better sliced and fried the following morning.
[3] Camp-lingo for any kind of syrup.
This brings us to the suspension of kettles. There
are two ways. If you are in a hurry, cut a springy
pole, sharpen one end, and stick it perpendicular in
the ground. Bend it down towards your fire. Hang
your kettle on the end of it. If you have jabbed it
far enough into the ground in the first place, it will
balance nicely by its own spring and the elasticity
of the turf. The other method is to plant two forked
sticks on either side your fire over which a strong
cross-piece is laid. The kettles are hung on hooks
cut from forked branches. The forked branches are
attached to the cross-piece by means of thongs or withes.
On this occasion we had deer, grouse, and ducks
in the larder. The best way to treat them is as
follows. You may be sure we adopted the best way.
When your deer is fresh, you will enjoy greatly a
dish of liver and bacon. Only the liver you will
discover to be a great deal tenderer and more delicate
than any calf's liver you ever ate. There is this
difference: a deer's liver should be parboiled in order
to get rid of a green bitter scum that will rise to the
surface and which you must skim off.
Next in order is the "back strap" and tenderloin,
which is always tender, even when fresh. The hams
should be kept at least five days. Deer-steak, to my
notion, is best broiled, though occasionally it is
pleasant by way of variety to fry it. In that case a brown
gravy is made by thoroughly heating flour in the
grease, and then stirring in water. Deer-steak threaded
on switches and "barbecued" over the coals is delicious.
The outside will be a little blackened, but all
the juices will be retained. To enjoy this to the
utmost you should take it in your fingers and GNAW.
The only permissible implement is your hunting-
knife. Do not forget to peel and char slightly the
switches on which you thread the meat, otherwise
they will impart their fresh-wood taste.
By this time the ribs are in condition. Cut little
slits between them, and through the slits thread in and
out long strips of bacon. Cut other little gashes, and
fill these gashes with onions chopped very fine.
Suspend the ribs across two stones between which
you have allowed a fire to die down to coals.
There remain now the hams, shoulders, and heart.
The two former furnish steaks. The latter you will
make into a "bouillon." Here inserts itself quite
naturally the philosophy of boiling meat. It may be
stated in a paragraph.
If you want boiled meat, put it in hot water. That
sets the juices. If you want soup, put it in cold water
and bring to a boil. That sets free the juices.
Remember this.
Now you start your bouillon cold. Into a kettle
of water put your deer hearts, or your fish, a chunk
of pork, and some salt. Bring to a boil. Next drop
in quartered potatoes, several small whole onions, a
half cupful of rice, a can of tomatoes--if you have
any. Boil slowly for an hour or so--until things
pierce easily under the fork. Add several chunks of
bread and a little flour for thickening. Boil down to
about a chowder consistency, and serve hot. It is all
you will need for that meal; and you will eat of it
until there is no more.
I am supposing throughout that you know enough
to use salt and pepper when needed.
So much for your deer. The grouse you can split
and fry, in which case the brown gravy described
for the fried deer-steak is just the thing. Or you can
boil him. If you do that, put him into hot water,
boil slowly, skim frequently, and add dumplings
mixed of flour, baking-powder, and a little lard. Or
you can roast him in your Dutch oven with your ducks.
Perhaps it might be well here to explain the Dutch
oven. It is a heavy iron kettle with little legs and
an iron cover. The theory of it is that coals go among
the little legs and on top of the iron cover. This heats
the inside, and so cooking results. That, you will
observe, is the theory.
In practice you will have to remember a good
many things. In the first place, while other affairs are
preparing, lay the cover on the fire to heat it through;
but not on too hot a place nor too long, lest it warp
and so fit loosely. Also the oven itself is to be heated
through, and well greased. Your first baking will
undoubtedly be burned on the bottom. It is almost
impossible without many trials to understand just how
little heat suffices underneath. Sometimes it seems
that the warmed earth where the fire has been is
enough. And on top you do not want a bonfire. A
nice even heat, and patience, are the proper ingredients.
Nor drop into the error of letting your bread
chill, and so fall to unpalatable heaviness. Probably
for some time you will alternate between the extremes
of heavy crusts with doughy insides, and white
weighty boiler-plate with no distinguishable crusts at
all. Above all, do not lift the lid too often for the
sake of taking a look. Have faith.
There are other ways of baking bread. In the North
Country forests, where you carry everything on your
back, you will do it in the frying-pan. The mixture
should be a rather thick batter or a rather thin dough.
It is turned into the frying-pan and baked first on one
side, then on the other, the pan being propped on
edge facing the fire. The whole secret of success is
first to set your pan horizontal and about three feet
from the fire in order that the mixture may be
thoroughly warmed--not heated--before the pan is
propped on edge. Still another way of baking is in
a reflector oven of tin. This is highly satisfactory,
provided the oven is built on the scientific angles to
throw the heat evenly on all parts of the bread-pan
and equally on top and bottom. It is not so easy as
you might imagine to get a good one made. These
reflectors are all right for a permanent camp, but too
fragile for transportation on pack-animals.
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