The Last of the Plainsmen
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Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
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"Waa-hoo!" yelled Jones. There was no answer except the echo, and
it rolled up out of the chasm with strange, hollow mockery.
"Don took a cougar down this slide," said Frank. "I saw the
brute, an' Don was makin' him hump. A--ha! There! Listen to
thet!"
From the green and yellow depths soared the faint yelp of a
hound.
"That's Don! that's Don!" cried Jones. "He's hot on something.
Where's Sounder? Hyar, Sounder! By George! there he goes down the
slide. Hear him! He's opened up! Hi! Hi! Hi!"
The deep, full mellow bay of the hound came ringing on the clear
air.
"Wallace, you go down. Frank and I will climb out on that pointed
crag. Grey, you stay here. Then we'll have the slide between us.
Listen and watch!"
From my promontory I watched Wallace go down with his gigantic
strides, sending the rocks rolling and cracking; and then I saw
Jones and Frank crawl out to the end of a crumbling ruin of
yellow wall which threatened to go splintering and thundering
down into the abyss.
I thought, as I listened to the penetrating voice of the hound,
that nowhere on earth could there be a grander scene for wild
action, wild life. My position afforded a commanding view over a
hundred miles of the noblest and most sublime work of nature. The
rim wall where I stood sheered down a thousand feet, to meet a
long wooded slope which cut abruptly off into another giant
precipice; a second long slope descended, and jumped off into
what seemed the grave of the world. Most striking in that vast
void were the long, irregular points of rim wall, protruding into
the Grand Canyon. From Point Sublime to the Pink Cliffs of Utah
there were twelve of these colossal capes, miles apart, some
sharp, some round, some blunt, all rugged and bold. The great
chasm in the middle was full of purple smoke. It seemed a mighty
sepulcher from which misty fumes rolled upward. The turrets,
mesas, domes, parapets and escarpments of yellow and red rock
gave the appearance of an architectural work of giant hands. The
wonderful river of silt, the blood-red, mystic and sullen Rio
Colorado, lay hidden except in one place far away, where it
glimmered wanly. Thousands of colors were blended before my rapt
gaze. Yellow predominated, as the walls and crags lorded it over
the lower cliffs and tables; red glared in the sunlight; green
softened these two, and then purple and violet, gray, blue and
the darker hues shaded away into dim and distinct obscurity.
Excited yells from my companions on the other crag recalled me to
the living aspect of the scene. Jones was leaning far down in a
niche, at seeming great hazard of life, yelling with all the
power of his strong lungs. Frank stood still farther out on a
cracked point that made me tremble, and his yell reenforced
Jones's. From far below rolled up a chorus of thrilling bays and
yelps, and Jim's call, faint, but distinct on that wonderfully
thin air, with its unmistakable note of warning.
Then on the slide I saw a lion headed for the rim wall and
climbing fast. I added my exultant cry to the medley, and I
stretched my arms wide to that illimitable void and gloried in a
moment full to the brim of the tingling joy of existence. I did
not consider how painful it must have been to the toiling lion.
It was only the spell of wild environment, of perilous yellow
crags, of thin, dry air, of voice of man and dog, of the stinging
expectation of sharp action, of life.
I watched the lion growing bigger and bigger. I saw Don and
Sounder run from the pinyon into the open slide, and heard their
impetuous burst of wild yelps as they saw their game. Then
Jones's clarion yell made me bound for my horse. I reached him,
was about to mount, when Moze came trotting toward me. I caught
the old gladiator. When he heard the chorus from below, he
plunged like a mad bull. With both arms round him I held on. I
vowed never to let him get down that slide. He howled and tore,
but I held on. My big black horse with ears laid back stood like
a rock.
I heard the pattering of little sliding rocks below; stealthy
padded footsteps and hard panting breaths, almost like coughs;
then the lion passed out of the slide not twenty feet away. He
saw us, and sprang into the pinyon scrub with the leap of a
scared deer.
Samson himself could no longer have held Moze. Away he darted
with his sharp, angry bark. I flung myself upon Satan and rode
out to see Jones ahead and Frank flashing through the green on
the white horse.
At the end of the pinyon thicket Satan overhauled Jones's bay,
and we entered the open forest together. We saw Frank glinting
across the dark pines.
"Hi! Hi!" yelled the Colonel.
No need was there to whip or spur those magnificent horses. They
were fresh; the course was open, and smooth as a racetrack, and
the impelling chorus of the hounds was in full blast. I gave
Satan a loose rein, and he stayed neck and neck with the bay.
There was not a log, nor a stone, nor a gully. The hollows grew
wider and shallower as we raced along, and presently disappeared
altogether. The lion was running straight from the canyon, and
the certainty that he must sooner or later take to a tree,
brought from me a yell of irresistible wild joy.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" answered Jones.
The whipping wind with its pine-scented fragrance, warm as the
breath of summer, was intoxicating as wine. The huge pines, too
kingly for close communion with their kind, made wide arches
under which the horses stretched out long and low, with supple,
springy, powerful strides. Frank's yell rang clear as a bell. We
saw him curve to the right, and took his yell as a signal for us
to cut across. Then we began to close in on him, and to hear more
distinctly the baying of the hounds.
"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" bawled Jones, and his great trumpet voice
rolled down the forest glades.
"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" I screeched, in wild recognition of the spirit
of the moment.
Fast as they were flying, the bay and the black responded to our
cries, and quickened, strained and lengthened under us till the
trees sped by in blurs.
There, plainly in sight ahead ran the hounds, Don leading,
Sounder next, and Moze not fifty yards, behind a desperately
running lion.
There are all-satisfying moments of life. That chase through the
open forest, under the stately pines, with the wild, tawny quarry
in plain sight, and the glad staccato yelps of the hounds filling
my ears and swelling my heart, with the splendid action of my
horse carrying me on the wings of the wind, was glorious answer
and fullness to the call and hunger of a hunter's blood.
But as such moments must be, they were brief. The lion leaped
gracefully into the air, splintering the bark from a pine fifteen
feet up, and crouched on a limb. The hounds tore madly round the
tree.
"Full-grown female," said Jones calmly, as we dismounted, "and
she's ours. We'll call her Kitty."
Kitty was a beautiful creature, long, slender, glossy, with white
belly and black-tipped ears and tail. She did not resemble the
heavy, grim-faced brute that always hung in the air of my dreams.
A low, brooding menacing murmur, that was not a snarl nor a
growl, came from her. She watched the dogs with bright, steady
eyes, and never so much as looked at us.
The dogs were worth attention, even from us, who certainly did
not need to regard them from her personally hostile point of
view. Don stood straight up, with his forepaws beating the air;
he walked on his hind legs like the trained dog in the circus; he
yelped continuously, as if it agonized him to see the lion safe
out of his reach. Sounder had lost his identity. Joy had unhinged
his mind and had made him a dog of double personality. He had
always been unsocial with me, never responding to my attempts to
caress him, but now he leaped into my arms and licked my face. He
had always hated Jones till that moment, when he raised his paws
to his master's breast. And perhaps more remarkable, time and
time again he sprang up at Satan's nose, whether to bite him or
kiss him, I could not tell. Then old Moze, he of Grand Canyon
fame, made the delirious antics of his canine fellows look cheap.
There was a small, dead pine that had fallen against a drooping
branch of the tree Kitty had taken refuge in, and up this narrow
ladder Moze began to climb. He was fifteen feet up, and Kitty had
begun to shift uneasily, when Jones saw him.
"Hyar! you wild coon hyar! Git out of that! Come down! Come
down!"
But Jones might have been in the bottom of the canyon for all
Moze heard or cared. Jones removed his coat, carefully coiled his
lasso, and began to go hand and knee up the leaning pine.
"Hyar! dad-blast you, git down!" yelled Jones, and he kicked Moze
off. The persistent hound returned, and followed Jones to a
height of twenty feet, where again he was thrust off.
"Hold him, one of you!" called Jones.
"Not me," said Frank, "I'm lookin' out for myself."
"Same here," I cried, with a camera in one hand and a rifle in
the other. "Let Moze climb if he likes."
Climb he did, to be kicked off again. But he went back. It was a
way he had. Jones at last recognized either his own waste of time
or Moze's greatness, for he desisted, allowing the hound to keep
close after him.
The cougar, becoming uneasy, stood up, reached for another limb,
climbed out upon it, and peering down, spat hissingly at Jones.
But he kept steadily on with Moze close on his heels. I snapped
my camera on them when Kitty was not more than fifteen feet above
them. As Jones reached the snag which upheld the leaning tree,
she ran out on her branch, and leaped into an adjoining pine. It
was a good long jump, and the weight of the animal bent the limb
alarmingly.
Jones backed down, and laboriously began to climb the other tree.
As there were no branches low down, he had to hug the trunk with
arms and legs as a boy climbs. His lasso hampered his progress.
When the slow ascent was accomplished up to the first branch,
Kitty leaped back into her first perch. Strange to say Jones did
not grumble; none of his characteristic impatience manifested
itself. I supposed with him all the exasperating waits, vexatious
obstacles, were little things preliminary to the real work, to
which he had now come. He was calm and deliberate, and slid down
the pine, walked back to the leaning tree, and while resting a
moment, shook his lasso at Kitty. This action fitted him,
somehow; it was so compatible with his grim assurance.
To me, and to Frank, also, for that matter, it was all new and
startling, and we were as excited as the dogs. We kept
continually moving about, Frank mounted, and I afoot, to get good
views of the cougar. When she crouched as if to leap, it was
almost impossible to remain under the tree, and we kept moving.
Once more Jones crept up on hands and knees. Moze walked the
slanting pine like a rope performer. Kitty began to grow
restless. This time she showed both anger and impatience, but did
not yet appear frightened. She growled low and deep, opened her
mouth and hissed, and swung her tufted tail faster and faster.
"Look out, Jones! look out!" yelled Frank warningly.
Jones, who had reached the trunk of the tree, halted and slipped
round it, placing it between him and Kitty. She had advanced on
her limb, a few feet above Jones, and threateningly hung over.
Jones backed down a little till she crossed to another branch,
then he resumed his former position.
"Watch below," called he.
Hardly any doubt was there as to how we watched. Frank and I were
all eyes, except very high and throbbing hearts. When Jones
thrashed the lasso at Kitty we both yelled. She ran out on the
branch and jumped. This time she fell short of her point,
clutched a dead snag, which broke, letting her through a bushy
branch from where she hung head downward. For a second she swung
free, then reaching toward the tree caught it with front paws,
ran down like a squirrel, and leaped off when thirty feet from
the ground. The action was as rapid as it was astonishing.
Like a yellow rubber ball she bounded up, and fled with the
yelping hounds at her heels. The chase was short. At the end of a
hundred yards Moze caught up with her and nipped her. She whirled
with savage suddenness, and lunged at Moze, but he cunningly
eluded the vicious paws. Then she sought safety in another pine.
Frank, who was as quick as the hounds, almost rode them down in
his eagerness. While Jones descended from his perch, I led the
two horses down the forest.
This time the cougar was well out on a low spreading branch.
Jones conceived the idea of raising the loop of his lasso on a
long pole, but as no pole of sufficient length could be found, he
tried from the back of his horse. The bay walked forward well
enough; when, however, he got under the beast and heard her
growl, he reared and almost threw Jones. Frank's horse could not
be persuaded to go near the tree. Satan evinced no fear of the
cougar, and without flinching carried Jones directly beneath the
limb and stood with ears back and forelegs stiff.
"Look at that! look at that!" cried Jones, as the wary cougar
pawed the loop aside. Three successive times did Jones have the
lasso just ready to drop over her neck, when she flashed a yellow
paw and knocked the noose awry. Then she leaped far out over the
waiting dogs, struck the ground with a light, sharp thud, and
began to run with the speed of a deer. Frank's cowboy training
now stood us in good stead. He was off like a shot and turned the
cougar from the direction of the canyon. Jones lost not a moment
in pursuit, and I, left with Jones's badly frightened bay, got
going in time to see the race, but not to assist. For several
hundred yards Kitty made the hounds appear slow. Don, being
swiftest, gained on her steadily toward the close of the dash,
and presently was running under her upraised tail. On the next
jump he nipped her. She turned and sent him reeling. Sounder came
flying up to bite her flank, and at the same moment fierce old
Moze closed in on her. The next instant a struggling mass whirled
on the ground. Jones and Frank, yelling like demons, almost rode
over it. The cougar broke from her assailants, and dashing away
leaped on the first tree. It was a half-dead pine with short
snags low down and a big branch extending out over a ravine.
"I think we can hold her now," said Jones. The tree proved to be
a most difficult one to climb. Jones made several ineffectual
attempts before he reached the first limb, which broke, giving
him a hard fall. This calmed me enough to make me take notice of
Jones's condition. He was wet with sweat and covered with the
black pitch from the pines; his shirt was slit down the arm, and
there was blood on his temple and his hand. The next attempt
began by placing a good-sized log against the tree, and proved to
be the necessary help. Jones got hold of the second limb and
pulled himself up.
As he kept on, Kitty crouched low as if to spring upon him. Again
Frank and I sent warning calls to him, but he paid no attention
to us or to the cougar, and continued to climb. This worried
Kitty as much as it did us. She began to move on the snags,
stepping from one to the other, every moment snarling at Jones,
and then she crawled up. The big branch evidently took her eye.
She tried several times to climb up to it, but small snags close
together made her distrustful. She walked uneasily out upon two
limbs, and as they bent with her weight she hurried back. Twice
she did this, each time looking up, showing her desire to leap to
the big branch. Her distress became plainly evident; a child
could have seen that she feared she would fall. At length, in
desperation, she spat at Jones, then ran out and leaped. She all
but missed the branch, but succeeded in holding to it and
swinging to safety. Then she turned to her tormentor, and gave
utterance to most savage sounds. As she did not intimidate her
pursuer, she retreated out on the branch, which sloped down at a
deep angle, and crouched on a network of small limbs.
When Jones had worked up a little farther, he commanded a
splendid position for his operations. Kitty was somewhat below
him in a desirable place, yet the branch she was on joined the
tree considerably above his head. Jones cast his lasso. It caught
on a snag. Throw after throw he made with like result. He
recoiled and recast nineteen times, to my count, when Frank made
a suggestion.
"Rope those dead snags an' break them off."
This practical idea Jones soon carried out, which left him a
clear path. The next fling of the lariat caused the cougar
angrily to shake her head. Again Jones sent the noose flying. She
pulled it off her back and bit it savagely.
Though very much excited, I tried hard to keep sharp, keen
faculties alert so as not to miss a single detail of the
thrilling scene. But I must have failed, for all of a sudden I
saw how Jones was standing in the tree, something I had not
before appreciated. He had one hand hold, which he could not use
while recoiling the lasso, and his feet rested upon a
precariously frail-appearing, dead snag. He made eleven casts of
the lasso, all of which bothered Kitty, but did not catch her.
The twelfth caught her front paw. Jones jerked so quickly and
hard that he almost lost his balance, and he pulled the noose
off. Patiently he recoiled the lasso.
"That's what I want. If I can get her front paw she's ours. My
idea is to pull her off the limb, let her hang there, and then
lasso her hind legs."
Another cast, the unlucky thirteenth, settled the loop perfectly
round her neck. She chewed on the rope with her front teeth and
appeared to have difficulty in holding it.
"Easy! Easy! Ooze thet rope! Easy!" yelled the cowboy.
Cautiously Jones took up the slack and slowly tightened the nose,
then with a quick jerk, fastened it close round her neck.
We heralded this achievement with yells of triumph that made the
forest ring.
Our triumph was short-lived. Jones had hardly moved when the
cougar shot straight out into the air. The lasso caught on a
branch, hauling her up short, and there she hung in mid-air,
writhing, struggling and giving utterance to sounds terribly
human. For several seconds she swung, slowly descending, in which
frenzied time I, with ruling passion uppermost, endeavored to
snap a picture of her.
The unintelligible commands Jones was yelling to Frank and me
ceased suddenly with a sharp crack of breaking wood. Then crash!
Jones fell out of the tree. The lasso streaked up, ran over the
limb, while the cougar dropped pell-mell into the bunch of
waiting, howling dogs.
The next few moments it was impossible for me to distinguish what
actually transpired. A great flutter of leaves whirled round a
swiftly changing ball of brown and black and yellow, from which
came a fiendish clamor.
Then I saw Jones plunge down the ravine and bounce here and there
in mad efforts to catch the whipping lasso. He was roaring in a
way that made all his former yells merely whispers. Starting to
run, I tripped on a root, fell prone on my face into the ravine,
and rolled over and over until I brought up with a bump against a
rock.
What a tableau rivited my gaze! It staggered me so I did not
think of my camera. I stood transfixed not fifteen feet from the
cougar. She sat on her haunches with body well drawn back by the
taut lasso to which Jones held tightly. Don was standing up with
her, upheld by the hooked claws in his head. The cougar had her
paws outstretched; her mouth open wide, showing long, cruel,
white fangs; she was trying to pull the head of the dog to her.
Don held back with all his power, and so did Jones. Moze and
Sounder were tussling round her body. Suddenly both ears of the
dog pulled out, slit into ribbons. Don had never uttered a sound,
and once free, he made at her again with open jaws. One blow sent
him reeling and stunned. Then began again that wrestling whirl.
"Beat off the dogs! Beat off the dogs!" roared Jones. "She'll
kill them! She'll kill them!"
Frank and I seized clubs and ran in upon the confused furry mass,
forgetful of peril to ourselves. In the wild contagion of such a
savage moment the minds of men revert wholly to primitive
instincts. We swung our clubs and yelled; we fought all over the
bottom of the ravine, crashing through the bushes, over logs and
stones. I actually felt the soft fur of the cougar at one
fleeting instant. The dogs had the strength born of insane
fighting spirit. At last we pulled them to where Don lay,
half-stunned, and with an arm tight round each, I held them while
Frank turned to help Jones.
The disheveled Jones, bloody, grim as death, his heavy jaw
locked, stood holding to the lasso. The cougar, her sides shaking
with short, quick pants, crouched low on the ground with eyes of
purple fire.
"For God's sake, get a half-hitch on the saplin'!" called the
cowboy.
His quick grasp of the situation averted a tragedy. Jones was
nearly exhausted, even as he was beyond thinking for himself or
giving up. The cougar sprang, a yellow, frightful flash. Even as
she was in the air, Jones took a quick step to one side and
dodged as he threw his lasso round the sapling. She missed him,
but one alarmingly outstretched paw grazed his shoulder. A twist
of Jones's big hand fastened the lasso--and Kitty was a prisoner.
While she fought, rolled, twisted, bounded, whirled, writhed with
hissing, snarling fury, Jones sat mopping the sweat and blood
from his face.
Kitty's efforts were futile; she began to weaken from the
choking. Jones took another rope, and tightening a noose around
her back paws, which he lassoed as she rolled over, he stretched
her out. She began to contract her supple body, gave a savage,
convulsive spring, which pulled Jones flat on the ground, then
the terrible wrestling started again. The lasso slipped over her
back paws. She leaped the whole length of the other lasso. Jones
caught it and fastened it more securely; but this precaution
proved unnecessary, for she suddenly sank down either exhausted
or choked, and gasped with her tongue hanging out. Frank slipped
the second noose over her back paws, and Jones did likewise with
a third lasso over her right front paw. These lassoes Jones tied
to different saplings.
"Now you are a good Kitty," said Jones, kneeling by her. He took
a pair of clippers from his hip pocket, and grasping a paw in his
powerful fist he calmly clipped the points of the dangerous
claws. This done, he called to me to get the collar and chain
that were tied to his saddle. I procured them and hurried back.
Then the old buffalo hunter loosened the lasso which was round
her neck, and as soon as she could move her head, he teased her
to bite a club. She broke two good sticks with her sharp teeth,
but the third, being solid, did not break. While she was chewing
it Jones forced her head back and placed his heavy knee on the
club. In a twinkling he had strapped the collar round her neck.
The chain he made fast to the sapling. After removing the club
from her mouth he placed his knee on her neck, and while her head
was in this helpless position he dexterously slipped a loop of
thick copper wire over her nose, pushed it back and twisted it
tight Following this, all done with speed and precision, he took
from his pocket a piece of steel rod, perhaps one-quarter of an
inch thick, and five inches long. He pushed this between Kitty's
jaws, just back of her great white fangs, and in front of the
copper wire. She had been shorn of her sharp weapons; she was
muzzled, bound, helpless, an object to pity.
Lastly Jones removed the three lassoes. Kitty slowly gathered her
lissom body in a ball and lay panting, with the same brave
wildfire in her eyes. Jones stroked her black-tipped ears and ran
his hand down her glossy fur. All the time he had kept up a low
monotone, talking to her in the strange language he used toward
animals. Then he rose to his feet.
"We'll go back to camp now, and get a pack, saddle and horse," he
said. "She'll be safe here. We'll rope her again, tie her up,
throw her over a pack-saddle, and take her to camp."
To my utter bewilderment the hounds suddenly commenced fighting
among themselves. Of all the vicious bloody dog-fights I ever saw
that was the worst. I began to belabor them with a club, and
Frank sprang to my assistance. Beating had no apparent effect. We
broke a dozen sticks, and then Frank grappled with Moze and I
with Sounder. Don kept on fighting either one till Jones secured
him. Then we all took a rest, panting and weary.
"What's it mean?" I ejaculated, appealing to Jones.
"Jealous, that's all. Jealous over the lion."
We all remained seated, men and hounds, a sweaty, dirty, bloody,
ragged group. I discovered I was sorry for Kitty. I forgot all
the carcasses of deer and horses, the brutality of this species
of cat; and even forgot the grim, snarling yellow devil that had
leaped at me. Kitty was beautiful and helpless. How brave she
was, too! No sign of fear shone in her wonderful eyes, only hate,
defiance, watchfulness.
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