At the camp in the cañon they had a cow. It is true she sometimes broke away and went off with the herds on the range and had to be chased on horseback and caught with a lasso. They had chickens,—all that were left them from night raids by the coyotes;[1] and a garden, the products of which they shared with the jack-rabbits and the gophers. But the supply wagon brought fresh fruit from the town, ten miles away, and new butter from the valley ranches. There were no mosquitoes, no peddlers, no tramps, no book agents, no undesirable neighbor’s children, whom one cannot scare away as one may the neighbor’s dogs and chickens when they creep through the fence, but must be civil to for the sake of peace and good-will,—which are good things in a neighborhood.
Jack Gilmour worked at his crude inventions in the shop, and was allowed to use grown-up tools under certain not too hard conditions; and Polly rode up and down the steep path to the river beach on the shoulders of the young assistant engineers—and assistant everything-elses. The mother was waited on and spoiled, as women are in camp; she was even invited to go fishing with her husband and Mr. Dane, one of the young assistants-in-general. It was a dull time for work in the camp, and there were good care-takers with whom Mrs. Gilmour could trust the children. The boy was the elder. He was learning those two most important elements of a boy’s education, up to nine years, according to Sir Walter Scott,—to ride and to speak the truth. But he was only eight, and perhaps was not quite perfect in either.
He watched the three happy ones ride away, and as they turned on the hilltop and waved good-by to the little figure on the trail below, he was longing, with all the strength of desire an eight-year-old heart can know, for the time to come when he too should climb the hills and wave his hand against the sky before turning the crest, where he had so often stood and felt so small, gazing up into those higher hills that locked the last bright bend of the river from sight.
They were to go up Charcoal Creek; they were to cross the “Divide;” they were to go down Grouse Creek on the other side and camp on some unknown bit of the river’s shore.
The boy went stumbling back down the dusty path to his unfinished work in the shop,—the engine for a toy elevated road he was making. But the painfully fashioned fragments of his plan had no meaning for eyes that still saw only the hills against the morning sky, and the three happy ones riding away.
This first trip led to a second and longer one, to the fishing-grounds up the river, by the trail on the opposite shore. Jack heard his father and Mr. Dane talking one morning at the breakfast-table about riding down to Turner’s and getting a pack-animal and some more riding animals,—and mamma was going again! What good times the grown-ups did have! And John Brown, Jack’s particular crony from the men’s camp, was going, to cook and take care of the animals. This word “animal” is used in the West to describe anything that is ridden or “packed,”—horse, mule, Indian pony, or “burro.” It is never applied to cattle or unbroken horses on the range; these are “stock.”
The party were to take a tent and stay perhaps a week, if no word came from the home camp to call them back.
Jack slipped away from the table and went out and hung upon the railing of a footbridge that crossed the brook. Beside learning how to ride and to speak the truth, Jack was learning to whistle. He was practicing this last more persistently, perhaps, than either of the more important branches of knowledge,—let us hope because there was more need of practice; for he was as yet very far from being a perfect whistler. It was but a melancholy, tuneless little note in which he gave vent to his feelings, as he watched the trickling water.
“I’d like to take the boy,” his father was that moment saying at the breakfast-table in the cook-tent, “if we had anything he could ride.” And then he added, smiling, “There’s Mrs. O’Dowd.” The smile went around the table.
Mrs. O’Dowd, or “Peggy,” as she was variously called, was a gray donkey of uncertain age and mild but inflexible disposition who sometimes consented to carry the children over the hills at a moderate pace, her usual equipment being a side-saddle, which did not fit her oval figure (the curves of which turned the wrong way for beauty); so the side-saddle was always slipping off, obliging the children to slide down and “cinch up.”
The engineer’s house was built against a hill; from the end of the upper piazza a short bridge, or gang-plank, joined the hill and met a steep trail which led upward to the tents, the garden, the road to the lower camp, the road up the bluffs, and all the rest of the children’s world beyond the gulch. One of their favorite exercises with Mrs. O’Dowd was to ride her down the trail, and try to force her over this gang-plank. She would put her small feet cautiously one before the other, hanging her great white head and sniffing her way. The instant her toes touched the resonant boards of the bridge, she stopped, and then the exercises began. Mrs. O’Dowd’s gravity and resignation, in the midst of the children’s laughing and shouting and pulling and whacking, was most edifying to see; but she never budged. She saw the darlings of the household dance back and forth before her in safety; the engineers in their big boots would push past her and tramp over the bridge. Mrs. O’Dowd was a creature of fixed habits. Useless, flighty children, and people with unaccountable ways of their own might do as they liked; it had never been her habit to trust Mrs. O’D. on such a place as that, and she never did.
“Yes, the boy might ride Peggy,” said Jack’s father. “He could keep her up with John and the pack-mule, if not with us.”
“Oh, I should not want him behind with the men,” said Jack’s mother,—“and those high trails! If he’s to go over such places, he must ride where you can look after his saddle-girths.” She could hear Jack’s disconsolate whistle as she spoke. “I hope he does not hear us,” she said. “It would break his heart to think he is going, and be left behind after all.”
“If the boy’s heart is going to break as easily as that, it is time it was toughened,” said his father, but not ungently. “I should tell him there is a chance of his going; but if it can’t be managed, he must not whine about it.”
Jack went to bed by himself, except on Sunday nights; then his mother went with him, and saw that he laid his clothes in a neat pile on the trunk by his bed,—for in a camp bedroom trunks sometimes take the place of chairs,—and heard him say his prayers, and sometimes they talked together a little while before she kissed him good-night. That night was Sunday night, and Jack’s mother asked him, while she watched his undressing, if it ever made him dizzy to stand on high places and look down. Jack did not seem to know what that feeling was like; and then she asked him how far he had ever ridden on Mrs. O’Dowd at one time. Jack thought he had never ridden farther than Mr. Hensley’s ranch—that was three miles away, six miles in all, going and coming; but he had rested at the ranch, and had walked for a part of the journey when his sister Polly had resolved to ride by herself, instead of behind him, holding on to his jacket.
It made his mother very happy to tell the boy that the next day, if nothing happened to prevent, he was to set out with the fishing party for a week’s camping up the river. She knew how, in his reticent child’s heart, he had envied them. He was seated on the side of his bed, emptying the beach sand out of his stockings, when she told him. He said nothing at first, and one who did not know his plain little face as his mother knew it might have thought he was indifferent. She took a last look at him, before leaving the room. It seemed but a very little while ago that the close-cropped whity-brown head on the pillow had been covered with locks like thistle-down, which had never been touched with the scissors; that the dark little work-hardened hands (for Jack’s play was always work) lying outside the sheet had been kissed a dozen times a day for joy of their rosy palms and dimples. And to-morrow the boy would put on spurs,—no, not spurs, but a spur, left over from the men’s accoutrements,—and he would ride—to be sure it was only Mrs. O’Dowd, but no less would the journey be one of the landmarks in his life. And many older adventurers than Jack have set out in this way on their first emprise,—not very heroically equipped, except for brave and joyous dreams and good faith in their ability to keep the pace set by better-mounted comrades.
Jack woke next morning with a delightful feeling that this day was not going to be like any other day he had known. Preparations for the journey had already begun. In the cook-tent two boxes were being filled with things to eat and things to cook them with. These were to be covered with canvas, roped, and fastened, one on each side of the pack-mule’s pack-saddle. On the piazza, saddle-bags were being packed; guns, ammunition, fishing-rods, rubber coats, and cushions were being collected in a heap for John to carry down to the beach to be ferried across the river, where the man from Turner’s horse-ranch was already waiting with the animals. The saddle-horses and Mrs. O’Dowd were to cross by the ford above the rapids. The boat went back and forth two or three times, and in the last load went Jack and his mother and Polly in the care of one of the young engineers. The stir of departure had fired Polly’s imagination. It was not mamma saying good-by to Polly,—it was Polly saying good-by to mamma, before riding off with “bubba” on an expedition of their own. She was telling about it, in a soft, joyous recitative, to any one who had time to listen. The man from Turner’s had brought, for Mrs. Gilmour to ride, a mule he called a lady’s animal, but remarked that for his own use he preferred one that would go. Mrs. Gilmour thought that she did, too; so the side-saddle was changed from the “lady’s animal” to the mule that “would go.”
The pack-mule was “packed,” the men’s horses were across the ford, mamma had kissed Polly, two pairs and a half of spurs were jingling impatiently on the rocks,—but where was Mrs. O’Dowd?
She was dallying at the ford,—she was coy about taking to the water. Sticks and straps and emphatic words of encouragement had no effect upon her. She had unfortunately had time to make up her mind, and she had made it up not to cross the river. She was persuaded finally, by means of a “lass’ rope” around her neck. Everybody was laughing at her subdued way of making herself conspicuous, delaying the whole party and meekly implying that it was everybody’s fault but her own.
The camp of the engineers was on a little river of Idaho that rises in the Bitter-root range of the Rocky Mountains, and flows into the swift, silent current of the great Snake River, which flows into the Columbia, which flows into the Pacific; so that the waters of this little inland river see a great deal of grand and peculiar scenery on their way to the ocean. But the river as it flows past the camp is still very young and inexperienced. Its waters have carried no craft larger than a lumberman’s pirogue, or the coffin-shaped box the Chinese wood-drivers use for a boat. Its cañons have never echoed to a locomotive’s scream; it knows not towns nor villages; not even a telegraph pole has ever been reared on its banks. It is just out of the mountains, hurrying down through the gate of its last cañon to the desert plains. But young and provincial as it is, it has an ancestral history very ancient and respectable, if mystery and tragedy and years of reticence can give dignity to a family history. The river’s story has been patiently recorded on the tablets of the black basalt bluffs that face each other across its channel. Their language it is not given to everybody to read. The geologists tell a wonderful tale which they learned from those inscriptions on the rocks. They do not say how many years ago, but long enough to have given a very ancient name to our river,—had there been any one living at that time to call it by a name,—it met with a fearful obstruction, a very dragon in its path, which threatened to devour it altogether, or to scatter it in little streams over the face of the earth. A flood of melted, boiling-hot lava burst up suddenly in the river’s bed, making it to boil like a pot, and crowded into the granite gorges through which the river had found its way, half filling them. It was a battle between the heavens and the earth,—the stream of molten rock, blinding hot from the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits the mould into which it is poured. The waters kept flowing down, never resting till they had worn a new channel in the path of the old one, only narrower and deeper, down through the intruding lava. When the river was first known to men, wherever its course lay through a granite gorge the granite was seen to be lined in places, often continuously for miles, with black lava rock, or basalt, standing in lofty palisades with deeply scarred and graven fronts and with long slides of crumbled rock at their feet, descending to the level of the river.
Another part of the river’s story has been toilsomely written in the trails that wind along its shores, worn by the feet of men and animals. Whose feet were the first to tread them, and on what errands? This is the part of the river’s story some of us would like best to know. But this the geologist cannot tell us.
It was one of these hunters’, miners’, cowboys’, packers’, ranchmen’s trails the fishing-party followed on its way up the river. Through the cañon they wound along the base of the lava bluffs; then entered a crooked fold of the hills called Sheep Gulch, passing through willow thickets, rattling over the pebbles of a summer-dried stream, losing the breeze and getting more than they wanted of the sun. Sheep Gulch is one of the haunts of grouse, wood-doves, and “cotton-tails” (as the little gray rabbits are called to distinguish them from the tall leaping “jack-rabbits” of the sage-brush plains, which are like the English hare).
Above Turner’s horse-ranch, Sheep Gulch divides into two branches; up one of these goes the old Idaho City road. Where the gulch divides there is a disused cabin, (which Jack remembered afterward because there they saw some grouse which they didn’t get,) and there they left the trail for the old stage-road. As they climbed the little divide which separates the waters (when there are any) of Sheep Gulch from those of Moore’s Creek, they were met by a fresh breeze which cooled their hot faces and seemed to welcome them to the hills. The hills were all around them now,—the beautiful mountain pastures, golden with their wind-sown harvest of wild, strong-stemmed grasses. As the grass becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always, like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade.
In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early, and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.”
At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to ask a drink all around from the spring which every traveler who has tasted it remembers.
The women of the household—a slender, dark-haired daughter and a stout, fair, flushed mother with a year-old baby—were busy, baby and all, in an outdoor kitchen, a delightful-looking place, part light and part shadow, and full of all manner of tools and rude conveniences that told of cheerful, busy living and making the best of things. They were preparing for the coming, next week, of the threshers,—a yearly event of consequence at a ranch,—fifteen men with horses for their machines and saddle-horses besides, all to be fed and lodged at the ranch. In the corral behind the big new barn, there were stacks of yellow and stacks of green, and between them a hay press, painted pink, which one could see as far as one could see Giles’s. Altogether it was lovely at Giles’s; but they were building a new house,—which, of course, they had a perfect right to do. But whoever stops there next year will find them all snugly roofed and gabled and painted white; and it is to be feared the outdoor kitchen, with its dim corners full of “truck” and its lights and shadows, will be seen no more.
The old stage-road went gayly along a bit of high plain, and then, without the slightest hesitation or circumlocution, dropped off into the cañon of Moore’s Creek. These reckless old pioneer roads give one a vivid idea of the race for possession of a new mining-camp, and of the pluck it took to win. At the “freeze-out” stage-passengers probably got out and walked, and the driver “rough-locked” the wheels; but the horsemen of that new country doubtless took a fresh hitch on their cinches and went jouncing down the breakneck grade, with countenances as calm as those of the illustrious riders of bronze and marble horses we see in the public squares, unless they were tired of the saddle and walked down to rest themselves,—never their horses.
Jack’s short legs were getting numb with pressing the saddle, and he was glad to walk, and to linger on his way down the wild descent into the cañon. It was the middle of September; Moore’s Creek had not more than enough water left to float the “Chinaman’s drive” of cord-wood, cut higher up on its banks. Its waters, moreover, were turbid with muddy tailings emptied into them from the sluice-boxes of the placer-miners who had been working all summer on the bars. Above Moore’s Creek the water of the river is clear as that of a trout-stream and iridescent with reflections from sky and shore; but after its union with that ill-fated stream it is obliged to carry the poor creek’s burden, and its own bright waters thenceforth wear the stain of labor. A breath of coolness, as of sunless rocks and damp, spicy shade, came up to them from the cañon; and a noise of waters, mingled with queer, discordant cries. It was dinner-time at the Chinamen’s camp and word was being passed up stream, from man to man, calling the wood-drivers to leave their work. They were not the sleek-braided, white-bloused, silk-sashed Chinese of the house-servant variety. They had wild black hair, rugged, not fat, sleepy faces, and little clothing except the boots,—store boots, in which a Chinaman is queerer than in anything except a store hat. They struggled with the jam of cord-wood as if it were some sort of water-prey they had hunted down, and were now meeting at bay, spearing, thrusting, hooking with their long boat-hooks, skipping from rock to rock in midstream, hoarse with shouting.
The party had now left the stage-road and turned down the pack-trail along the creek toward its junction with the river. The pack-trail here crosses the creek by a bridge high above the stream; the bridge was good enough, but it was a question whether Mrs. O’Dowd, with her known prejudices, could be induced to go over it. It was quickly decided to get a “good ready,” as Jack said, and hustle the old lady down the trail between two of the horses and crowd her on the bridge before she had time to make up that remarkable mind of hers. This simple plan was carried out with enthusiasm on the part of all but Mrs. O’D. herself.
Soon after leaving Giles’s, they had met a wagon-load of people townward bound from Gillespie’s, the beautiful river ranch above Moore’s Creek. Mr. Gilmour had stopped them to inquire if a pack-animal and two riding animals, mules or horses, could be sent from the ranch up to the fishing-camp, on a day set for the journey home; for the mules from Turner’s were to go back that same day, to start the next day but one, as part of a pack-train bound for Atlanta.
The people in the wagon “couldn’t say.” Most of the horses were out on the range; those at the ranch were being used for hauling peaches to town, fording Moore’s Creek and the river, and scaling the “freeze-out.” But Mr. Gillespie himself was at home; the travelers had better stop on the way up and find out.
So, after crossing the bridge and gaining the good trail along the river-bank, Mr. Dane spurred on ahead and forded the river, to make the necessary inquiries at the ranch. Gillespie’s is on the opposite side of the river from the packer’s trail. It is most beautiful with the sun in the western sky, its hills and water-front of white beech and pine trees all in shadow, and a broad reflection floating out into the river at its feet.
The sun was still high and the shadows were short; but the river ranch was a fair picture of a frontier home as they looked back at it passing by on the other side,—the last home they should see on the wild way they were taking.
The trail went winding up and up, and still higher, until they were far above the river and could see, beyond the still reflections that darkened it by Gillespie’s, the white-whipped waters of the rapids above. And the higher they went, the more hills beyond hills rose along the horizon widening their view.
Mr. Dane had rejoined the party, with a satisfactory report from the ranch. He rode ahead on his blue-roan Indian pony twirling his romál, a long leathern strap attached to the bridle, the end divided like a double whip-lash by means of which and a pair of heavy blunt spurs “Blue Pete” and his rider had come to a perfect understanding. Blue Pete was a sulky little brute, with a broad white streak down his nose and a rather vicious eye, but he was tough and unsensitive and minded his business.
Next came Jack’s mamma on the “mule that would go”—with a will, as far as Turner’s,—but after that needed the usual encouragement; a gentle-paced creature though, and sure-footed on a bad trail. Then came Jack on Mrs. O’Dowd. The poor old girl had been vigorously cinched and it wasn’t becoming to her figure; but those were bad places for a saddle to turn, even with an active, eight-year-old boy on it.
The boy was deeply content, gazing about him at the river, the hills, the winding trail ahead, and serenely poking up Mrs. O’Dowd with his one spur in response to the packer’s often-repeated command to “Keep her up!” When Mrs. O’Dowd refused to be kept up Jack’s father made a rush at her—a kind of business his good horse Billy must have despised, for Billy had points that indicated better blood than that which is usually found in the veins of those tough little “rustlers” of the desert and the range. He loved to lead on a hard trail, with his long, striding walk, his cheerful, well-opened eyes to the front. He was gentle, but he was also scornful; he was not a “lady’s animal;” he had a contempt for paltry little objectless canters over the hills with limp-handed women and children flopping about on his back. He liked to feel there was work ahead; a long climb and a bad trail did not frighten him; he looked his best when he was breasting a keen ascent with the wind of the summit parting his thin forelock, his ears pointed forward, his breath coming quick and deep, his broad haunches working under the saddle. Poor work indeed he must have thought it, hustling a lazy, sulky old donkey along a trail that was as nothing to his own sinewy legs.
After Billy came the pack-mule, driven by the man from Turner’s, a square-jawed, bronzed young fellow, mounted also on a mule and conversing amicably with John Brown. The lunch-bag had been passed down the line, but there was no halt, except for water at the crossing of a little gulch. The trail wound in and out among the spurs of the hills and up and down the rock-faced heights. They passed a roofless cabin, once the dwelling of some placer-miners, and farther on the half-obliterated ditch they had built leading to the deserted bars, where a few gray, warped sluice-boxes were falling to pieces in the sun.
Between two and three o’clock they came in sight of some large pine-trees, sheltering a half circle of white sand beach that sloped smoothly to the river. Above the pines a granite cliff rose, two hundred and fifty feet of solid rock against a hill five hundred or more feet higher, that shut off the morning sun. Between the cliff and the lava bluffs opposite, the eastern and western shadows nearly met across the river. There were deep, still pools among the rocks near shore, where the large trout congregate. Below the shadowed bend, the river spread out again suddenly in the sunlight that flashed white as silver on the ripples of a gravelly bar. This was the spot chosen at sight for the fishing-camp.
A bald eagle perched on a turret of the lava bluffs across the river watched the party descending the trail. At the report of a rifle echoing among the rocks, he rose and wheeled away over the pine-trees without hurrying himself or dropping a single feather in acknowledgment of the shot. It was a dignified, rather scornful retreat.
Where the trail hugs the cliff closest on its way around the bend, it passes under a big overhanging rock. No one, I am sure, ever rode under it for the first time without looking up at the black crack between it and the cliff, and wondering how far up the crack goes, and when the huge mass will fall. There is a story that the Bannock braves, following this trail on the war-path, always fired a passing arrow up into the crack,—perhaps out of the exuberance of youth and war-paint, perhaps to propitiate the demon of the rocks, lest he should drop one of his superfluous boulders on their feathered heads. The white men who followed the trail after the Indians had left it, amused themselves by shooting at the arrows and dislodging them from the crack. The story must be true, because there are no arrows left in the crack! Jack stared up at it many times, and never could see one.
So now they were at home for a week in the wilderness. Jack followed Brown about as he was “making camp,” cutting tent-pegs and poles and putting up the old A-tent, which had seen service in the army and in many frontier camps since it was “condemned” and sold at quartermaster’s sale.
The man from Turner’s had taken another bite of lunch and returned with his animals. He bade Jack to watch for him as he passed the camp, day after to-morrow, with his mule-train for Atlanta.
The kitchen was unpacked down on the beach and the fireplace chosen,—a big, wedge-shaped rock,—in the lee of which John built a fire, not for warmth, but for the sake of a good bed of coals for cooking. Mrs. Gilmour was resting in the tent, under the pine-trees. Mr. Gilmour had gone up the river to catch some trout for supper.
After four o’clock the sun left the river bank, but all the colors were distinct and strong,—the white beach, the dark pine boughs against the sky, the purple colors in the rocks, and the spots of pale green and yellow lichen on them, the changing tints in the dark water swinging smoothly around the bend and then flashing out into a broad sheet of silvery sparkles over the bar. It was as if it went gravely around the shadowy bend, and then broke out laughing in the bright light.
As it grew darker, the kitchen fire began to glow red against the big gray rock. In front of it John was stooping to heap coals on the lid of the bake-kettle, where the bread was spread in a thin, round cake for cooking.
There were three big trout for supper and four or five little ones. The big ones were a noble weight to tell of, but the little ones tasted the best when they were taken out of the bake-kettle on hot tin plates and served with thin slices of bacon and camp bread.
The horses had been turned loose up the trail but now came wandering back, Billy leading, followed by Pete, who was hobbled but managed to keep up with him, and Mrs. O’Dowd meandering meekly in the rear. They were on their way home, having decided that was the best place to pass the night, but John turned them back. After supper he watered them at the river and took them up the trail to a rudely fenced inclosure on the bluffs, where there was better pasture.
Sleepy-time for Jack came very soon after supper, but as the tent was some distance from the camp-fire,—a lonesome bedroom for a little boy to lie in by himself,—he was rolled up in a blanket and allowed to sleep by the camp-fire. The last thing he could remember was the sound of the river and the wind in the great pine boughs overhead and voices around him talking about the stars that could be seen in the night sky between the fire-illumined tree branches. The great boughs moved strangely in the hot breath of the fire that lit them from below. The sky between looked black as ink and the stars blazed far and keen. John was washing up the dishes on his knees by the light of a candle fastened in a box set upon end to shield it from draughts. Jack watched the light shining up into his face and on his hands as he moved them about. It seemed as if he had slept but a moment, when they were shaking him and trying to stand him on his feet and he was stumbling along to the tent with his father’s arm around him.
How they crawled about in the low tent, by the light of a candle fastened by its own drippings to a stone, and took off a few clothes and put on more (for the September nights were cold); how cosy it was, lying down in his blankets inside the white walls of the tent with the curtain securely tied against the wind, with his father close beside him and his father’s gun on the outside within reach of an outstretched hand; how the light went out and the river sounded on and some twigs scraped against the tent in the wind,—this is about all Jack can remember of his first night under canvas.
The morning was gray and cold. The sun had been up several hours before it was seen in the camp. Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Dane were out with the earliest light for trout. Jack was the next to leave the tent and go shivering down to the river to wash, and then run to warm his red hands and button his jacket at the kitchen fire, where John was again cooking bread. John and Mr. Dane had slept on the beach with only the pine boughs for a roof and saddle-bags for a pillow.
When Mrs. Gilmour appeared, last of all, Jack was just finishing his second chunk of last night’s bread, leaning against the angle of the rock fireplace out of the smoke that made a pale blue wavering flight upward and aslant the dark pine boughs.
The fishermen had returned with trout, but not a surfeit of trout, for breakfast. The bread was taken out of the bake-kettle and the trout put in to plump up in their own steam over the coals. The coffee smelled deliciously in the sweet, cold air. The broiled ham was welcome, even after a first course of trout, and Jack was good for a third of bread and honey. He could use his fingers and wipe up the honey with the broken bread until his tin plate shone, not to speak of his countenance, and nobody observed him except to smile.
But something had happened that morning besides breakfast. Mr. Dane had lost a tremendous trout, after playing him a long time and tiring him out. He had been fishing from a rock, with deep water all around him. The big fish seemed quite still and tame as he was drawn in, but as his tail touched the rock, with a frantic rebound he made one last plunge for the water and got off. If there had been but a beach to land him on!
Then, a man had been shot the evening before at Atlanta, the big mining-camp of the Saw-tooth range; and another man riding a tired horse had passed the camp at daybreak, on his way to Boise for a surgeon. The horse he had started with from Atlanta had given out about twenty miles from that place; he had walked ten or fifteen miles along the mountain trail in the darkness before he could get another horse. He wished to change this for one of the horses from the fishing-camp, but they were back on the bluffs and he concluded to go on and change at Gillespie’s. He had traveled about fifty miles that night, on horseback and on foot, over a trail that some of us would not enjoy riding over by daylight.
His wife and their young child were at his horse-ranch away back on the hills, alone, except for some of the cowboys. He had gone up to Atlanta to attend the ball. The man who had been shot was a stranger to him,—had a brother in Boise, he believed. He had breathed his horse a moment while he talked to John and took a bite of something to eat, and then went on his way.
It was strange to think that all this was part of those dark hours of the night that had passed so peacefully to the sleepers on the river beach,—the miners’ ball, the shooting, the night ride in haste, the wife waiting at the lonely ranch in the hills for her husband’s return.
The day passed with fishing and sketching and eating, and beauty of sunlight and shadow on rocks and trees and river.
Brown had built a table and placed boxes around it for seats. The gray rock fireplace had got well blackened, and the camp had taken on a homelike look. Jack had gone for a glorious walk up the trail with Brown, to see if the fence on the bluffs was all right, and if there was a way down to the river from the bluffs by which the horses could go down to drink. There was one, a rather obscure way; but Billy was clever, and Pete was a “rustler,” and Mrs. O’Dowd could be relied upon to follow the lead of her betters. But they did not seem to be eating, and Jack fancied they looked homesick in their high pasture, as if the scenery did not console them for being sent off so far from camp.
That second day Mr. Gilmour went fishing alone down the river. John was gathering firewood; the boy and his mother were in the tent; Mr. Dane sat in the doorway, tending a little fire he had made outside, and reading aloud, while Mrs. Gilmour made a languid sketch of him, in his red-hooded blanket robe. Mr. Dane was the first to hear a shout from down the river. He threw off the red robe, seized a rifle, and ran down the shore in the direction Mr. Gilmour had taken. The shout meant, to him, game of a kind that could not be tackled with a fly-rod.
In a moment or two he came running back for more cartridges. Mr. Gilmour had met a black bear, and they were going after him. John followed with the axe. Some time passed, but no shots were heard. At last the men came back, warm and merry, though disappointed of their game. The bear had got away. It was tantalizing to think how fat and sleek he must have been, after his summer in the mountains. There would be no bear-steaks for supper that night, and no glossy dark skin to carry back in triumph to the home camp and spread before next winter’s hearth wherever the house-fires might be lighted.
Mr. Gilmour had been walking down the trail when he saw the bear ahead of him, crossing the high flat toward the trail and making straight for the river. If both had continued to advance, there would have been a meeting, and as Mr. Gilmour was armed only with a fly-rod and a pistol, he preferred the meeting should be postponed. Then he stopped and shouted for Dane. The bear came on, and Mr. Gilmour fell back, leisurely, he said, toward camp. He did not care to bring his game in alive, he said, without giving the camp due warning, so he shouted again. It was the second shout Dane had heard. The way of his retreat led him down into a little gulch, where he lost sight of the bear.
It did not take very long to tell the story of the hunt, and then Mr. Gilmour went back to his fishing. The sun came out. The fire in front of the tent was a heap of smoking ashes; the magazine story palled; the sketch was pronounced not worth finishing; and then the pack-train for Atlanta came tinkling and shuffling down the trail. Fourteen sleek, handsome mules, with crisp, clipped manes, like the little Greek horses on ancient friezes, passed in single file between a man riding ahead on the “bell-mare,” and another bringing up the rear of the train, swinging his leathern “blind” as he rode. This one was the man from Turner’s. He had met Mr. Gilmour farther down the river, and heard the story about the bear, and offered to leave his dog, which he said was a good bear-dog. But the dog wouldn’t be left, and so the picturesque freight-train went its way, under the Indian’s rock, and up the steep climb beyond. High above the river they could be seen, footing with neat steps the winding trail, their packs swinging and shuffling with a sidelong motion, in time to the regular pace, while the bell sounded fainter and fainter.
Bear stories were told by the camp-fire that night; and Mr. Dane slept with his rifle handy, and John with an axe. John said he was a better shot with an axe than with a rifle. Jack thought he should dream of bears, but he didn’t. The next morning he went with John Brown up to the high pasture to bring down one of the horses. Brown was to ride down to Gillespie’s and make sure of transportation for the party home, the next day but one.
Jack had the happiness of riding Billy barebacked down the trail, following John on Pete, Mrs. O’Dowd, as usual, in the rear. Mr. Gilmour was surprised to see all the animals coming down, and he noticed at once how hollow and drooping the horses looked. John explained that they had evidently not been able to find the trail leading down to the river, and had been without water all the time they had been kept upon the bluffs. He could see by their tracks where they had wandered back and forth along the edge of the bluffs, seeking a way down. How glad they must have been of that deep draught from the river, that had mocked them so long with the sound of its waters! No one liked to find fault with Brown, who was faithful and tender-hearted; and it was stupid of horses, used to the range, not to have gone back from the bluffs and followed the fence until they found the outlet to the river. They quickly revived with water and food, which they could once more enjoy now that their long thirst was quenched. Brown rode Pete down to Gillespie’s, and returned in the afternoon with word that Mr. Gillespie himself would come for the party on Saturday, with the outfit required.
The evening was cool and cloudy; twilight came on early, and Brown cooked supper with the whole family gathered around his fire, hungrily watching him. There was light enough from the fire, mingled with the wan twilight on the beach, by which to eat supper. John was filling the tin cups with coffee, when horses’ feet were heard coming down the trail from the direction of Boise. A man on a gray horse stopped under the Indian’s rock and looking down on the group on the beach below asked what was “the show for a bite of something to eat.” He was invited to share what there was, and throwing the bridle loose on his horse’s neck he dropped out of the saddle and joined the party at the table.
He was the man from Atlanta, returning from his errand to Boise. No doctor had been willing to go up from Boise, so he said, and the friends of the wounded man had telegraphed to C—, and a doctor had gone across from there. The messenger had stayed over a day in Boise to rest, and was now on his way home to his ranch in the hills. He gave the details of the shooting,—the usual details, received with the usual comments and speculations as to the wounded man’s recovery,—then the talk turned upon sport, and bear stories and fish stories were in order. The man from Atlanta knew what good hunting was, from his own account. He told how he had struck a bear track about as big as a man’s hand in the woods and followed it some distance, thinking it was “about his size,” and all of a sudden he had come upon a fresh track about as big—he picked up the cover of the bake-kettle—“as big as that.” Then he turned around and came home. It was suggested (after the man from Atlanta had gone) that the big track he saw was where the bear had sat down.
It was now deep dusk in the woods; only the latest and palest sky gleams touched the water. The stranger included the entire party in his cordial invitation to stop at his place if they ever got so far up the river, mounted his horse and quickly disappeared up the trail. He expected to reach his home some time that night.
The next day was the last in camp. It was still gray, cold weather, and the tent among the pine-trees looked inviting, with a suggestion of a fire outside; but there were sketches to be finished and last walks to be taken and a big mess of trout to be caught to take home. Jack had a little enterprise of his own to complete,—the filling of a tin can Brown had given him with melted pine gum, which hardened into clear, solid resin. The can was nearly full, and Jack had various experiments in his mind which he intended to try with it on his return. Brown had told him it would make an excellent boot-grease mixed with tallow—and if he should want to make a pair of Norwegian snowshoes next winter, it would be just the thing to rub on the bottom of the wood to make it slip easily over the snow.
Brown was going back on the hills to try to get some grouse and the boy was allowed to go with him. They tramped off together, and the walk was one of the memorable ones in Jack’s experience; but Jack’s mother would not have been so contented in his absence, had she known they were coming home by way of Deer Gulch, one of the most likely places in the neighborhood of the camp for a meeting with a bear.
Mr. Gilmour was the enthusiast about fishing, and so it happened that Mr. Dane was generally the one to stay about camp if John were off duty. The fishing should have been good, but it was not, partly because the Chinese placer-miners on the river had a practice of emptying the deep pools of trout by means of giant-powder, destroying a hundred times as many fish as they ate. The glorious fishing was higher up the river and in its tributaries, the mountain streams. However, not a day had passed without one meal of trout at least, and many of the fish were of great size, and an enthusiast like Mr. Gilmour cares for the sport, not for the fish!
The last camp-fire, Jack thought, was the best one of all; it was built farther down the beach, since a change of wind had made the corner by the rock fireplace uncomfortable. A big log, rolled up near the fire on its wind-ward side, made an excellent settle-back, the seat of which was the sand with blankets spread over it. The company sat in a row facing the fire, and Mrs. Gilmour was provided with a tin plate for a hand-screen. Perhaps they all were rather glad they were going home to-morrow. Mrs. Gilmour wanted to see Polly, the sand floor of the tent was getting lumpy, and they all were beginning to long for the wider outlook and the fuller life of the home camp at headquarters. Beautiful as the great pine-trees, the sheltered beach, and the shadows on the water had looked to them after their long, hot ride over the mountain trail, there were always the granite cliff on one side and the lava bluffs on the other, and no far-off lines for the eye to rest upon. People who have lived in places where there is a great deal of sky and a wide horizon are never long contented in nooks and corners of the earth, however lovely their detail may be.
At all events, the talk was gayer that last night by the camp-fire than any night except the first one of their stay. At last one of the company—the smallest one—slid quietly out of sight among the blankets, and no more was heard of him until the time came to dig him out, and restore him to consciousness.
After Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour and Jack—poor little sleepy Jack—had gone down the shore to their tent, Mr. Dane and Brown rolled the log settle upon the fire. It burned all night, and there were brands left with which to light the kitchen fire.
Breakfast was a sort of “clean-up,” as the miners say. The last of the ham, the last of the honey, one trout, left over from last night’s supper which the company quarreled about, each in turn refusing it,—even Jack, who seldom refused anything in the eating line,—and leaving it finally for John, who perhaps suspecting there was something wrong with it threw it out upon the beach.
After breakfast everybody fell to packing, except Jack, who roamed around, with his leggings and his one spur on, watching for Mr. Gillespie and the animals.
Mrs. Gilmour had finished her small share of the packing, and with Jack climbed up among the rocks in the shadow of the cliff. Mr. Gillespie had arrived and on the beach below he and Brown were loading the pack-horse with the camp stuff.
The two boxes in which the kitchen was packed went up first, one on each side of the pack-saddle, set astride the horse’s back, and in shape something like a saw-horse. The boxes were balanced and made fast with ropes. The roll of blankets filled the space between them; an axe was poked in, or a fishing-pole protruded from the heap; more blankets went up, then the tent was spread over all and the load securely roped into place,—Mr. Gillespie and Brown, one on either side, pulling against each other, and the patient old horse being squeezed between.
Mr. Gillespie had brought the usual “lady’s animal” for Mrs. Gilmour to ride which, in the West always means an article of horseflesh which no man would care to bestride, but on which it will do to “pack” women and children about.
The chief event of the journey home was the fording of the river, once above Gillespie’s and once below, thus avoiding the highest and hottest part of the trail which they would pass at midday. Neither Jack nor his mother had ever forded a stream on horseback before. The sun was high, the breeze was strong, the river bright and noisy. Giddily rippling and sparkling, it rushed past the low willows along its shore.
Mrs. O’Dowd was whacked into her place in the line between Billy and the lady’s animal, and kept her feet, if not her temper. And so, in due time, they arrived at the home ford and the ferry.
Brown and Mr. Gillespie took the animals across the ford, but the others were glad to exchange the saddle for the boat. Polly, in a fresh, white frock, with her hair blown over her cheeks, was watching from the hilltop, and came flying down the trail to meet them. Every one said how Polly had grown, and how fair she looked—and the house, which they called a camp for its rudeness, looked quite splendid with its lamps and books and curtains, to the sunburnt, dusty, real campers; and as Jack said, it did seem good to sit in a chair again. It was noticeable, however, that Jack sat lightly in chairs for several days after the ride home; but he had not flinched nor whined, and everybody acknowledged that he had won his single spur fairly well for an eight-year-old.
[1] Poisoned meat was laid near the chicken-house one night after the coyotes had carried off some fine young Plymouth Rocks (with a baleful instinct they always picked out the best of the fowls), and was eaten by them. Two of the robbers were found next day, dead, by the irrigation ditch, where they had crept to quench their thirst, and one was afterward seen, from time to time, in the sage-brush, a hairless spectre. The coyote mothers no doubt told their babies of this gruesome outcast as a warning, not against chicken-stealing, which must be one of the coyote virtues, but against poison and other desperate arts of man.