The Last of the Plainsmen
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Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
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Crash! I felt the brushing and scratching of branches, and saw a
green blur. I went down straddling limbs and hit the ground with
a thump. Fortunately, I landed mostly on my feet, in sand, and
suffered no serious bruise. But I was stunned, and my right arm
was numb for a moment. When I gathered myself together, instead
of being grateful the ledge had not been on the face of Point
Sublime--from which I would most assuredly have leaped--I was the
angriest man ever let loose in the Grand Canyon.
Of course the cougars were far on their way by that time, and
were telling neighbors about the brave hunter's leap for life; so
I devoted myself to further efforts to find an outlet. The niche
I had jumped into opened below, as did most of the breaks, and I
worked out of it to the base of the rim wall, and tramped a long,
long mile before I reached my own trail leading down. Resting
every five steps, I climbed and climbed. My rifle grew to weigh a
ton; my feet were lead; the camera strapped to my shoulder was
the world. Soon climbing meant trapeze work--long reach of arm,
and pull of weight, high step of foot, and spring of body. Where
I had slid down with ease, I had to strain and raise myself by
sheer muscle. I wore my left glove to tatters and threw it away
to put the right one on my left hand. I thought many times I
could not make another move; I thought my lungs would burst, but
I kept on. When at last I surmounted the rim, I saw Jones, and
flopped down beside him, and lay panting, dripping, boiling, with
scorched feet, aching limbs and numb chest.
"I've been here two hours," he said, "and I knew things were
happening below; but to climb up that slide would kill me. I am
not young any more, and a steep climb like this takes a young
heart. As it was I had enough work. Look!" He called my attention
to his trousers. They had been cut to shreds, and the right
trouser leg was missing from the knee down. His shin was bloody.
"Moze took a lion along the rim, and I went after him with all my
horse could do. I yelled for the boys, but they didn't come.
Right here it is easy to go down, but below, where Moze started
this lion, it was impossible to get over the rim. The lion lit
straight out of the pinyons. I lost ground because of the thick
brush and numerous trees. Then Moze doesn't bark often enough. He
treed the lion twice. I could tell by the way he opened up and
bayed. The rascal coon-dog climbed the trees and chased the lion
out. That's what Moze did! I got to an open space and saw him,
and was coming up fine when he went down over a hollow which ran
into the canyon. My horse tripped and fell, turning clear over
with me before he threw me into the brush. I tore my clothes, and
got this bruise, but wasn't much hurt. My horse is pretty lame."
I began a recital of my experience, modestly omitting the
incident where I bravely faced an old lioness. Upon consulting my
watch, I found I had been almost four hours climbing out. At that
moment, Frank poked a red face over the rim. He was in shirt
sleeves, sweating freely, and wore a frown I had never seen
before. He puffed like a porpoise, and at first could hardly
speak.
"Where were--you--all?" he panted. "Say! but mebbe this hasn't
been a chase! Jim and Wallace an' me went tumblin' down after the
dogs, each one lookin' out for his perticilar dog, an' darn me if
I don't believe his lion, too. Don took one oozin' down the
canyon, with me hot-footin' it after him. An' somewhere he treed
thet lion, right below me, in a box canyon, sort of an offshoot
of the second rim, an' I couldn't locate him. I blamed near
killed myself more'n once. Look at my knuckles! Barked em slidin'
about a mile down a smooth wall. I thought once the lion had
jumped Don, but soon I heard him barkin' again. All thet time I
heard Sounder, an' once I heard the pup. Jim yelled, an' somebody
was shootin'. But I couldn't find nobody, or make nobody hear me.
Thet canyon is a mighty deceivin' place. You'd never think so
till you go down. I wouldn't climb up it again for all the lions
in Buckskin. Hello, there comes Jim oozin' up."
Jim appeared just over the rim, and when he got up to us, dusty,
torn and fagged out, with Don, Tige and Ranger showing signs of
collapse, we all blurted out questions. But Jim took his time.
"Shore thet canyon is one hell of a place," he began finally.
"Where was everybody? Tige and the pup went down with me an'
treed a cougar. Yes, they did, an' I set under a pinyon holdin'
the pup, while Tige kept the cougar treed. I yelled an' yelled.
After about an hour or two, Wallace came poundin' down like a
giant. It was a sure thing we'd get the cougar; an' Wallace was
takin' his picture when the blamed cat jumped. It was
embarrassin', because he wasn't polite about how he jumped. We
scattered some, an' when Wallace got his gun, the cougar was
humpin' down the slope, an' he was goin' so fast an' the pinyons
was so thick thet Wallace couldn't get a fair shot, an' missed.
Tige an' the pup was so scared by the shots they wouldn't take
the trail again. I heard some one shoot about a million times,
an' shore thought the cougar was done for. Wallace went plungin'
down the slope an' I followed. I couldn't keep up with him--he
shore takes long steps--an' I lost him. I'm reckonin' he went
over the second wall. Then I made tracks for the top. Boys, the
way you can see an' hear things down in thet canyon, an' the way
you can't hear an' see things is pretty funny."
"If Wallace went over the second rim wall, will he get back
to-day?" we all asked.
"Shore, there's no tellin'."
We waited, lounged, and slept for three hours, and were beginning
to worry about our comrade when he hove in sight eastward, along
the rim. He walked like a man whose next step would be his last.
When he reached us, he fell flat, and lay breathing heavily for a
while.
"Somebody once mentioned Israel Putnam's ascent of a hill," he
said slowly. "With all respect to history and a patriot, I wish
to say Putnam never saw a hill!"
"Ooze for camp," called out Frank.
Five o'clock found us round a bright fire, all casting ravenous
eyes at a smoking supper. The smell of the Persian meat would
have made a wolf of a vegetarian. I devoured four chops, and
could not have been counted in the running. Jim opened a can of
maple syrup which he had been saving for a grand occasion, and
Frank went him one better with two cans of peaches. How glorious
to be hungry--to feel the craving for food, and to be grateful
for it, to realize that the best of life lies in the daily needs
of existence, and to battle for them!
Nothing could be stronger than the simple enumeration and
statement of the facts of Wallace's experience after he left Jim.
He chased the cougar, and kept it in sight, until it went over
the second rim wall. Here he dropped over a precipice twenty feet
high, to alight on a fan-shaped slide which spread toward the
bottom. It began to slip and move by jerks, and then started off
steadily, with an increasing roar. He rode an avalanche for one
thousand feet. The jar loosened bowlders from the walls. When the
slide stopped, Wallace extricated his feet and began to dodge the
bowlders. He had only time to jump over the large ones or dart to
one side out of their way. He dared not run. He had to watch them
coming. One huge stone hurtled over his head and smashed a pinyon
tree below.
When these had ceased rolling, and he had passed down to the red
shale, he heard Sounder baying near, and knew a cougar had been
treed or cornered. Hurdling the stones and dead pinyons, Wallace
ran a mile down the slope, only to find he had been deceived in
the direction. He sheered off to the left. Sounder's illusive bay
came up from a deep cleft. Wallace plunged into a pinyon, climbed
to the ground, skidded down a solid slide, to come upon an
impassable the obstacle in the form of a solid wall of red
granite. Sounder appeared and came to him, evidently having given
up the chase.
Wallace consumed four hours in making the ascent. In the notch of
the curve of the second rim wall, he climbed the slippery steps
of a waterfall. At one point, if he had not been six feet five
inches tall he would have been compelled to attempt retracing his
trail--an impossible task. But his height enabled him to reach a
root, by which he pulled himself up. Sounder he lassoed a la
Jones, and hauled up. At another spot, which Sounder climbed, he
lassoed a pinyon above, and walked up with his feet slipping from
under him at every step. The knees of his corduroy trousers were
holes, as were the elbows of his coat. The sole of his left boot,
which he used most in climbing--was gone, and so was his hat.
CHAPTER 15. JONES ON COUGARS
The mountain lion, or cougar, of our Rocky Mountain region, is
nothing more nor less than the panther. He is a little different
in shape, color and size, which vary according to his
environment. The panther of the Rockies is usually light, taking
the grayish hue of the rocks. He is stockier and heavier of
build, and stronger of limb than the Eastern species, which
difference comes from climbing mountains and springing down the
cliffs after his prey.
In regions accessible to man, or where man is encountered even
rarely, the cougar is exceedingly shy, seldom or never venturing
from cover during the day. He spends the hours of daylight high
on the most rugged cliffs, sleeping and basking in the sunshine,
and watching with wonderfully keen sight the valleys below. His
hearing equals his sight, and if danger threatens, he always
hears it in time to skulk away unseen. At night he steals down
the mountain side toward deer or elk he has located during the
day. Keeping to the lowest ravines and thickets, he creeps upon
his prey. His cunning and ferocity are keener and more savage in
proportion to the length of time he has been without food. As he
grows hungrier and thinner, his skill and fierce strategy
correspondingly increase. A well-fed cougar will creep upon and
secure only about one in seven of the deer, elk, antelope or
mountain sheep that he stalks. But a starving cougar is another
animal. He creeps like a snake, is as sure on the scent as a
vulture, makes no more noise than a shadow, and he hides behind a
stone or bush that would scarcely conceal a rabbit. Then he
springs with terrific force, and intensity of purpose, and seldom
fails to reach his victim, and once the claws of a starved lion
touch flesh, they never let go.
A cougar seldom pursues his quarry after he has leaped and
missed, either from disgust or failure, or knowledge that a
second attempt would be futile. The animal making the easiest
prey for the cougar is the elk. About every other elk attacked
falls a victim. Deer are more fortunate, the ratio being one dead
to five leaped at. The antelope, living on the lowlands or upland
meadows, escapes nine times out of ten; and the mountain sheep,
or bighorn, seldom falls to the onslaught of his enemy.
Once the lion gets a hold with the great forepaw, every movement
of the struggling prey sinks the sharp, hooked claws deeper. Then
as quickly as is possible, the lion fastens his teeth in the
throat of his prey and grips till it is dead. In this way elk
have carried lions for many rods. The lion seldom tears the skin
of the neck, and never, as is generally supposed, sucks the blood
of its victim; but he cuts into the side, just behind the
foreshoulder, and eats the liver first. He rolls the skin back as
neatly and tightly as a person could do it. When he has gorged
himself, he drags the carcass into a ravine or dense thicket, and
rakes leaves, sticks or dirt over it to hide it from other
animals. Usually he returns to his cache on the second night, and
after that the frequency of his visits depends on the supply of
fresh prey. In remote regions, unfrequented by man, the lion will
guard his cache from coyote and buzzards.
In sex there are about five female lions to one male. This is
caused by the jealous and vicious disposition of the male. It is
a fact that the old Toms kill every young lion they can catch.
Both male and female of the litter suffer alike until after
weaning time, and then only the males. In this matter wise animal
logic is displayed by the Toms. The domestic cat, to some extent,
possesses the same trait. If the litter is destroyed, the mating
time is sure to come about regardless of the season. Thus this
savage trait of the lions prevents overproduction, and breeds a
hardy and intrepid race. If by chance or that cardinal feature of
animal life--the survival of the fittest--a young male lion
escapes to the weaning time, even after that he is persecuted.
Young male lions have been killed and found to have had their
flesh beaten until it was a mass of bruises and undoubtedly it
had been the work of an old Tom. Moreover, old males and females
have been killed, and found to be in the same bruised condition.
A feature, and a conclusive one, is the fact that invariably the
female is suckling her young at this period, and sustains the
bruises in desperately defending her litter.
It is astonishing how cunning, wise and faithful an old lioness
is. She seldom leaves her kittens. From the time they are six
weeks old she takes them out to train them for the battles of
life, and the struggle continues from birth to death. A lion
hardly ever dies naturally. As soon as night descends, the
lioness stealthily stalks forth, and because of her little ones,
takes very short steps. The cubs follow, stepping in their
mother's tracks. When she crouches for game, each little lion
crouches also, and each one remains perfectly still until she
springs, or signals them to come. If she secures the prey, they
all gorge themselves. After the feast the mother takes her back
trail, stepping in the tracks she made coming down the mountain.
And the cubs are very careful to follow suit, and not to leave
marks of their trail in the soft snow. No doubt this habit is
practiced to keep their deadly enemies in ignorance of their
existence. The old Toms and white hunters are their only foes.
Indians never kill a lion. This trick of the lions has fooled
many a hunter, concerning not only the direction, but
particularly the number.
The only successful way to hunt lions is with trained dogs. A
good hound can trail them for several hours after the tracks have
been made, and on a cloudy or wet day can hold the scent much
longer. In snow the hound can trail for three or four days after
the track has been made.
When Jones was game warden of the Yellowstone National Park, he
had unexampled opportunities to hunt cougars and learn their
habits. All the cougars in that region of the Rockies made a
rendezvous of the game preserve. Jones soon procured a pack of
hounds, but as they had been trained to run deer, foxes and
coyotes he had great trouble. They would break on the trail of
these animals, and also on elk and antelope just when this was
farthest from his wish. He soon realized that to train the hounds
was a sore task. When they refused to come back at his call, he
stung them with fine shot, and in this manner taught obedience.
But obedience was not enough; the hounds must know how to follow
and tree a lion. With this in mind, Jones decided to catch a lion
alive and give his dogs practical lessons.
A few days after reaching this decision, he discovered the tracks
of two lions in the neighborhood of Mt. Everett. The hounds were
put on the trail and followed it into an abandoned coal shaft.
Jones recognized this as his opportunity, and taking his lasso
and an extra rope, he crawled into the hole. Not fifteen feet
from the opening sat one of the cougars, snarling and spitting.
Jones promptly lassoed it, passed his end of the lasso round a
side prop of the shaft, and out to the soldiers who had followed
him. Instructing them not to pull till he called, he cautiously
began to crawl by the cougar, with the intention of getting
farther back and roping its hind leg, so as to prevent disaster
when the soldiers pulled it out. He accomplished this, not
without some uneasiness in regard to the second lion, and giving
the word to his companions, soon had his captive hauled from the
shaft and tied so tightly it could not move.
Jones took the cougar and his hounds to an open place in the
park, where there were trees, and prepared for a chase. Loosing
the lion, he held his hounds back a moment, then let them go.
Within one hundred yards the cougar climbed a tree, and the dogs
saw the performance. Taking a forked stick, Jones mounted up to
the cougar, caught it under the jaw with the stick, and pushed it
out. There was a fight, a scramble, and the cougar dashed off to
run up another tree. In this manner, he soon trained his hounds
to the pink of perfection.
Jones discovered, while in the park, that the cougar is king of
all the beasts of North America. Even a grizzly dashed away in
great haste when a cougar made his appearance. At the road camp,
near Mt. Washburn, during the fall of 1904, the bears, grizzlies
and others, were always hanging round the cook tent. There were
cougars also, and almost every evening, about dusk, a big fellow
would come parading past the tent. The bears would grunt
furiously and scamper in every direction. It was easy to tell
when a cougar was in the neighborhood, by the peculiar grunts and
snorts of the bears, and the sharp, distinct, alarmed yelps of
coyotes. A lion would just as lief kill a coyote as any other
animal and he would devour it, too. As to the fighting of cougars
and grizzlies, that was a mooted question, with the credit on the
side of the former.
The story of the doings of cougars, as told in the snow, was
intensely fascinating and tragic! How they stalked deer and elk,
crept to within springing distance, then crouched flat to leap,
was as easy to read as if it had been told in print. The leaps
and bounds were beyond belief. The longest leap on a level
measured eighteen and one-half feet. Jones trailed a half-grown
cougar, which in turn was trailing a big elk. He found where the
cougar had struck his game, had clung for many rods, to be dashed
off by the low limb of a spruce tree. The imprint of the body of
the cougar was a foot deep in the snow; blood and tufts of hair
covered the place. But there was no sign of the cougar renewing
the chase.
In rare cases cougars would refuse to run, or take to trees. One
day Jones followed the hounds, eight in number, to come on a huge
Tom holding the whole pack at bay. He walked to and fro, lashing
his tail from side to side, and when Jones dashed up, he coolly
climbed a tree. Jones shot the cougar, which, in falling, struck
one of the hounds, crippling him. This hound would never approach
a tree after this incident, believing probably that the cougar
had sprung upon him.
Usually the hounds chased their quarry into a tree long before
Jones rode up. It was always desirable to kill the animal with
the first shot. If the cougar was wounded, and fell or jumped
among the dogs, there was sure to be a terrible fight, and the
best dogs always received serious injuries, if they were not
killed outright. The lion would seize a hound, pull him close,
and bite him in the brain.
Jones asserted that a cougar would usually run from a hunter, but
that this feature was not to be relied upon. And a wounded cougar
was as dangerous as a tiger. In his hunts Jones carried a
shotgun, and shells loaded with ball for the cougar, and others
loaded with fine shot for the hounds. One day, about ten miles
from the camp, the hounds took a trail and ran rapidly, as there
were only a few inches of snow. Jones found a large lion had
taken refuge in a tree that had fallen against another, and
aiming at the shoulder of the beast, he fired both barrels. The
cougar made no sign he had been hit. Jones reloaded and fired at
the head. The old fellow growled fiercely, turned in the tree and
walked down head first, something he would not have been able to
do had the tree been upright. The hounds were ready for him, but
wisely attacked in the rear. Realizing he had been shooting fine
shot at the animal, Jones began a hurried search for a shell
loaded with ball. The lion made for him, compelling him to dodge
behind trees. Even though the hounds kept nipping the cougar, the
persistent fellow still pursued the hunter. At last Jones found
the right shell, just as the cougar reached for him. Major, the
leader of the hounds, darted bravely in, and grasped the leg of
the beast just in the nick of time. This enabled Jones to take
aim and fire at close range, which ended the fight. Upon
examination, it was discovered the cougar had been half-blinded
by the fine shot, which accounted for the ineffectual attempts he
had made to catch Jones.
The mountain lion rarely attacks a human being for the purpose of
eating. When hungry he will often follow the tracks of people,
and under favorable circumstances may ambush them. In the park
where game is plentiful, no one has ever known a cougar to follow
the trail of a person; but outside the park lions have been known
to follow hunters, and particularly stalk little children. The
Davis family, living a few miles north of the park, have had
children pursued to the very doors of their cabin. And other
families relate similar experiences. Jones heard of only one
fatality, but he believes that if the children were left alone in
the woods, the cougars would creep closer and closer, and when
assured there was no danger, would spring to kill.
Jones never heard the cry of a cougar in the National Park, which
strange circumstance, considering the great number of the animals
there, he believed to be on account of the abundance of game. But
he had heard it when a boy in Illinois, and when a man all over
the West, and the cry was always the same, weird and wild, like
the scream of a terrified woman. He did not understand the
significance of the cry, unless it meant hunger, or the wailing
mourn of a lioness for her murdered cubs.
The destructiveness of this savage species was murderous. Jones
came upon one old Tom's den, where there was a pile of nineteen
elk, mostly yearlings. Only five or six had been eaten. Jones
hunted this old fellow for months, and found that the lion killed
on the average three animals a week. The hounds got him up at
length, and chased him to the Yellowstone River, which he swam at
a point impassable for man or horse. One of the dogs, a giant
bloodhound named Jack, swam the swift channel, kept on after the
lion, but never returned. All cougars have their peculiar traits
and habits, the same as other creatures, and all old Toms have
strongly marked characteristics, but this one was the most
destructive cougar Jones ever knew.
During Jones's short sojourn as warden in the park, he captured
numerous cougars alive, and killed seventy-two.
CHAPTER 16. KITTY
It seemed my eyelids had scarcely touched when Jones's
exasperating, yet stimulating, yell aroused me. Day was breaking.
The moon and stars shone with wan luster. A white, snowy frost
silvered the forest. Old Moze had curled close beside me, and now
he gazed at me reproachfully and shivered. Lawson came hustling
in with the horses. Jim busied himself around the campfire. My
fingers nearly froze while I saddled my horse.
At five o'clock we were trotting up the slope of Buckskin, bound
for the section of ruined rim wall where we had encountered the
convention of cougars. Hoping to save time, we took a short cut,
and were soon crossing deep ravines.
The sunrise coloring the purple curtain of cloud over the canyon
was too much for me, and I lagged on a high ridge to watch it,
thus falling behind my more practical companions. A far-off
"Waa-hoo!" brought me to a realization of the day's stern duty
and I hurried Satan forward on the trail.
I came suddenly upon our leader, leading his horse through the
scrub pinyon on the edge of the canyon, and I knew at once
something had happened, for he was closely scrutinizing the
ground.
"I declare this beats me all hollow!" began Jones. "We might be
hunting rabbits instead of the wildest animals on the continent.
We jumped a bunch of lions in this clump of pinyon. There must
have been at least four. I thought first we'd run upon an old
lioness with cubs, but all the trails were made by full-grown
lions. Moze took one north along the rim, same as the other day,
but the lion got away quick. Frank saw one lion. Wallace is
following Sounder down into the first hollow. Jim has gone over
the rim wall after Don. There you are! Four lions playing tag in
broad daylight on top of this wall! I'm inclined to believe
Clarke didn't exaggerate. But confound the luck! the hounds have
split again. They're doing their best, of course, and it's up to
us to stay with them. I'm afraid we'll lose some of them. Hello!
I hear a signal. That's from Wallace. Waa-hoo! Waa-hoo! There he
is, coming out of the hollow."
The tall Californian reached us presently with Sounder beside
him. He reported that the hound had chased a lion into an
impassable break. We then joined Frank on a jutting crag of the
canyon wall.
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