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+Project Gutenberg's A Woman Tenderfoot, by Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman Tenderfoot
+
+Author: Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9412]
+This file was first posted on September 30, 2003
+Last Updated: May 14, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN TENDERFOOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and Project
+Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders from images generously
+made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN TENDERFOOT
+
+By Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+
+1900
+
+
+
+In this Book the full-page Drawings were made by Ernest Seton-Thompson,
+G. Wright and E.M. Ashe, and the Marginals by S.N. Abbott. The cover,
+title-page and general make-up were designed by the Author. Thanks are
+due to Miller Christy for proof revision, and to A.A. Anderson for
+valuable suggestions on camp outfitting. (No illustrations are included
+in this file.)
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS A TRIBUTE TO THE WEST.
+
+
+I have used many Western phrases as necessary to the Western setting.
+
+I can only add that the events related really happened in the Rocky
+Mountains of the United States and Canada; and this is why, being a
+woman, I wanted to tell about them, in the hope that some
+going-to-Europe-in-the-summer-woman may be tempted to go West instead.
+
+G.G.S.-T.
+
+New York City, September 1st, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I The Why of It
+
+    II Outfit and Advice for the Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband
+
+   III The First Plunge of the Woman Tenderfoot
+
+    IV Which Treats of the Imps and My Elk
+
+     V Lost in the Mountains
+
+    VI The Cook
+
+   VII Among the Clouds
+
+  VIII At Yeddars
+
+    IX My Antelope
+
+     X A Mountain Drama
+
+    XI What I Know about Wahb of the Bighorn Basin
+
+   XII The Dead Hunt
+
+  XIII Just Rattlesnakes
+
+   XIV As Cowgirl
+
+    XV The Sweet Pea Lady Someone Else's Mountain Sheep
+
+   XVI In which the Tenderfoot Learns a New Trick
+
+  XVII _Our_ Mine
+
+ XVIII The Last Word
+
+
+
+
+A LIST OF FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS.
+
+Costume for cross saddle riding
+
+Tears starting from your smoke-inflamed eyes
+
+Saddle cover for wet weather Policeman's equestrian rain coat
+
+She was postmistress twice a week
+
+The trail was lost in a gully
+
+Whetted one to a razor edge and threw it into a tree where it stuck
+quivering
+
+Not three hundred yards away ... were two bull elk in deadly combat
+
+Down the path came two of the prettiest Blacktails
+
+A misstep would have sent us flying over the cliff
+
+Thus I fought through the afternoon
+
+We whizzed across the railroad track in front of the Day Express
+
+Five feet full in front of us, they pulled their horses to a dead stop
+
+The coyotes made savage music
+
+The horrid thing was ready for me I started on a gallop, swinging one
+arm
+
+The warm beating heart of a mountain sheep
+
+I could not keep away from his hoofs
+
+We started forward, just as the rear wheels were hovering over the edge
+
+"You better not sit down on that kaig ... It's nitroglycerine"
+
+The tunnel caused its roof to cave in close behind me
+
+A mountain lion sneaked past my saddle-pillowed head
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE WHY OF IT.
+
+
+Theoretically, I have always agreed with the Quaker wife who reformed her
+husband--"Whither thou goest, I go also, Dicky dear." What thou doest, I
+do also, Dicky dear. So when, the year after our marriage, Nimrod
+announced that the mountain madness was again working in his blood, and
+that he must go West and take up the trail for his holiday, I tucked my
+summer-watering-place-and-Europe-flying-trip mind away (not without
+regret, I confess) and cautiously tried to acquire a new vocabulary and
+some new ideas.
+
+Of course, plenty of women have handled guns and have gone to the Rocky
+Mountains on hunting trips--but they were not among my friends. However,
+my imagination was good, and the outfit I got together for my first trip
+appalled that good man, my husband, while the number of things I had to
+learn appalled me.
+
+In fact, the first four months spent 'Out West' were taken up in
+learning how to ride, how to dress for it, how to shoot, and how
+to philosophise, each of which lessons is a story in itself. But briefly,
+in order to come to this story, I must have a side talk with the
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. Those not interested please omit
+the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+OUTFIT AND ADVICE FOR THE WOMAN-WHO-GOES-HUNTING-WITH-HER-HUSBAND.
+
+
+Is it really so that most women say no to camp life because they are
+afraid of being uncomfortable and looking unbeautiful? There is no reason
+why a woman should make a freak of herself even if she is going to rough
+it; as a matter of fact I do not rough it, I go for enjoyment and leave
+out all possible discomforts. There is no reason why a woman should be
+more uncomfortable out in the mountains, with the wild west wind for
+companion and the big blue sky for a roof, than sitting in a 10 by 12
+whitewashed bedroom of the summer hotel variety, with the tin roof to
+keep out what air might be passing. A possible mosquito or gnat in the
+mountains is no more irritating than the objectionable personality that
+is sure to be forced upon you every hour at the summer hotel. The usual
+walk, the usual drive, the usual hop, the usual novel, the usual
+scandal,--in a word, the continual consciousness of self as related to
+dress, to manners, to position, which the gregarious living of a hotel
+enforces--are all right enough once in a while; but do you not get enough
+of such life in the winter to last for all the year?
+
+Is one never to forget that it is not proper to wear gold beads with
+crape? Understand, I am not to be set down as having any charity for the
+ignoramus who would wear that combination, but I wish to record the fact
+that there are times, under the spell of the West, when I simply do not
+_care_ whether there are such things as gold beads and crape; when the
+whole business of city life, the music, arts, drama, the pleasant
+friends, equally with the platitudes of things and people you care not
+about--civilization, in a word--when all these fade away from my thoughts
+as far as geographically they are, and in their place comes the joy of
+being at least a healthy, if not an intelligent, animal. It is a pleasure
+to eat when the time comes around, a good old-fashioned pleasure, and you
+need no dainty serving to tempt you. It is another pleasure to use your
+muscles, to buffet with the elements, to endure long hours of riding, to
+run where walking would do, to jump an obstacle instead of going around
+it, to return, physically at least, to your pinafore days when you
+played with your brother Willie. Red blood means a rose-colored world.
+Did you feel like that last summer at Newport or Narragansett?
+
+So enough; come with me and learn how to be vulgarly robust.
+
+Of course one must have clothes and personal comforts, so, while we are
+still in the city humor, let us order a habit suitable for riding
+astride. Whipcord, or a closely woven homespun, in some shade of grayish
+brown that harmonizes with the landscape, is best. Corduroy is pretty, if
+you like it, but rather clumsy. Denham will do, but it wrinkles and
+becomes untidy. Indeed it has been my experience that it is economy to
+buy the best quality of cloth you can afford, for then the garment always
+keeps its shape, even after hard wear, and can be cleaned and made ready
+for another year, and another, and another. You will need it, never
+fear. Once you have opened your ears, "the Red Gods" will not cease to
+"call for you."
+
+In Western life you are on and off your horse at the change of a thought.
+Your horse is not an animate exercise-maker that John brings around for a
+couple of hours each morning; he is your companion, and shares the
+vicissitudes of your life. You even consult him on occasion, especially
+on matters relating to the road. Therefore your costume must look equally
+well on and off the horse. In meeting this requirement, my woes were
+many. I struggled valiantly with everything in the market, and finally,
+from five varieties of divided skirts and bloomers, the following
+practical and becoming habit was evolved.
+
+I speak thus modestly, as there is now a trail of patterns of this habit
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Wherever it goes, it makes
+converts, especially among the wives of army officers at the various
+Western posts where we have been--for the majority of women in the West,
+and I nearly said all the sensible ones, now ride astride.
+
+When off the horse, there is nothing about this habit to distinguish it
+from any trim golf suit, with the stitching up the left front which is
+now so popular. When on the horse, it looks, as some one phrased it, as
+though one were riding side saddle on both sides. This is accomplished by
+having the fronts of the skirt double, free nearly to the waist, and,
+when off the horse, fastened by patent hooks. The back seam is also open,
+faced for several inches, stitched and closed by patent fasteners. Snug
+bloomers of the same material are worn underneath. The simplicity of
+this habit is its chief charm; there is no superfluous material to sit
+upon--oh, the torture of wrinkled cloth in the divided skirt!--and it
+does not fly up even in a strong wind, if one knows how to ride. The
+skirt is four inches from the ground--it should not bell much on the
+sides--and about three and a half yards at the bottom, which is finished
+with a five-inch stitched hem.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME FOR CROSS SADDLE RIDING. Designed by the Author.]
+
+Any style of jacket is of course suitable. One that looks well on the
+horse is tight fitting, with postilion back, short on hips, sharp pointed
+in front, with single-breasted vest of reddish leather (the habit
+material of brown whipcord), fastened by brass buttons, leather collar
+and revers, and a narrow leather band on the close-fitting sleeves. A
+touch of leather on the skirt in the form of a patch pocket is
+harmonious, but any extensive leather trimming on the skirt makes it
+unnecessarily heavy.
+
+A suit of this kind should be as irreproachable in fit and finish as a
+tailor can make it. This is true economy, for when you return in the
+autumn it is ready for use as a rainy-day costume.
+
+Once you have your habit, the next purchase should be stout, heavy soled
+boots, 13 or 14 inches high, which will protect the leg in walking and
+from the stirrup leather while riding. One needs two felt hats (never
+straw), one of good quality for sun or rain, with large firm brim. This
+is important, for if the brim be not firm the elements will soon reduce
+it to raglike limpness and it will flap up and down in your face as you
+ride. This can be borne with composure for five or ten minutes, but not
+for days and weeks at a time. The other felt hat may be as small and as
+cheap as you like. Only see that it combines the graces of comfort and
+becomingness. It is for evenings, and sunless rainless days. A small
+brown felt, with a narrow leather band, gilt buckle, and a twist of
+orange veiling around the crown, is pretty for the whipcord costume.
+
+One can do a wonderful amount of smartening up with tulle, hat pins,
+belts, and fancy neck ribbons, all of which comparatively take up no room
+and add no weight, always the first consideration. Be sure you supply
+yourself with a reserve of hat pins. Two devices by which they may be
+made to stay in the hat are here shown. The spiral can be given to any
+hat pin. The chain and small brooch should be used if the hat pin is of
+much value.
+
+At this point, if any man, a reviewer perhaps, has delved thus far into
+the mysteries of feminine outfit, he will probably remark, "Why take a
+hat pin of much value?" to which I reply; "Why not? Can you suggest any
+more harmless or useful vent for woman's desire to ornament herself? And
+unless you want her to be that horror of horrors, a strong-minded woman,
+do you think you can strip her for three months of all her gewgaws and
+still have her filled with the proper desire to be pleasing in your eyes?
+No; better let her have the hat pins--and you know they really are
+useful--and then she will dress up to those hat pins, if it is only with
+a fresh neck ribbon and a daisy at her belt."
+
+I had a man's saddle, with a narrow tree and high pommel and cantle, such
+as is used out West, and as I had not ridden a horse since the hazy days
+of my infancy, I got on the huge creature's back with everything to
+learn. Fear enveloped me as in a cloud during my first ride, and the
+possibilities of the little cow pony they put me on seemed more
+awe-inspiring than those of a locomotive. But I have been reading
+Professor William James and acquired from him the idea (I hope I do not
+malign him) that the accomplishment of a thing depends largely upon one's
+mental attitude, and this was mine all nicely taken--in New York:--
+
+"This thing has been done before, and done well. Good; then I can do it,
+and _enjoy_ it too."
+
+I particularly insisted upon the latter clause--in the East. This
+formula is applicable in any situation. I never should have gotten
+through my Western experiences without it, and I advise you, my dear
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband, to take a large stock of it made
+up and ready for use. There is one other rule for your conduct, if you
+want to be a success: think what you like, but unless it is pleasant,
+_don't say it_.
+
+Is it better to ride astride? I will not carry the battle ground into the
+East, although even here I have my opinion; but in the West, in the
+mountains, there can be no question that it is the _only way_. Here is an
+example to illustrate: Two New York women, mother and daughter, took a
+trip of some three hundred miles over the pathless Wind River Mountains.
+The mother rode astride, but the daughter preferred to exhibit her
+Durland Academy accomplishment, and rode sidesaddle, according to the
+fashion set by an artful queen to hide her deformity. The advantages of
+health, youth and strength were all with the daughter; yet in every case
+on that long march it was the daughter who gave out first and compelled
+the pack train to halt while she and her horse rested. And the daughter
+was obliged to change from one horse to another, while the same horse was
+able to carry the mother, a slightly heavier woman, through the trip. And
+the back of the horse which the daughter had ridden chiefly was in such a
+condition from saddle galls that the animal, two months before a
+magnificent creature, had to be shot.
+
+I hear you say, "But that was an extreme case." Perhaps it was, but it
+supports the verdict of the old mountaineers who refuse to let any horse
+they prize be saddled with "those gol-darned woman fripperies."
+
+There is also another side. A woman at best is physically handicapped
+when roughing it with husband or brother. Then why increase that handicap
+by wearing trailing skirts that catch on every log and bramble, and which
+demand the services of at least one hand to hold up (fortunately this
+battle is already won), and by choosing to ride side-saddle, thus making
+it twice as difficult to mount and dismount by yourself, which in fact
+compels you to seek the assistance of a log, or stone, or a friendly hand
+for a lift? Western riding is not Central Park riding, nor is it Rotten
+Row riding. The cowboy's, or military, seat is much simpler and easier
+for both man and beast than the Park seat--though, of course, less
+stylish. That is the glory of it; you can go galloping over the prairie
+and uplands with never a thought that the trot is more proper, and your
+course, untrammelled by fenced-in roads, is straight to the setting sun
+or to yonder butte. And if you want a spice of danger, it is there,
+sometimes more than you want, in the presence of badger and gopher holes,
+to step into which while at high speed may mean a broken leg for your
+horse, perhaps a broken neck for yourself. But to return to the
+independence of riding astride:
+
+One day I was following a game trail along a very steep bank which ended
+a hundred feet below in a granite precipice. It had been raining and
+snowing in a fitful fashion, and the clay ground was slippery, making a
+most treacherous footing. One of the pack animals just ahead of my horse
+slipped, fell to his knees, the heavy pack overbalanced him, and away he
+rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice
+only by the happy accident of a scrub tree in the way. Frightened by this
+sight, my animal plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. Had I been
+riding side-saddle, nothing could have saved me, for the downhill was on
+the near side; but instead I swung out of the saddle on the off side and
+landed in a heap on the uphill, still clutching the bridle. That act
+saved my horse's life, probably, as well as my own. For the sudden weight
+I put on the upper side as I swung off enabled him to recover his balance
+just in time. I do not pretend to say that I can dismount from the off
+side as easily as from the near, because I am not accustomed to it. But I
+have frequently done it in emergencies, while a side-saddle leaves one
+helpless in this case as in many others.
+
+Besides being unable to mount and dismount without assistance it is very
+difficult to get side-saddle broken horses, and it usually means a horse
+so broken in health and spirits that he does not care what is being
+strapped on his back and dangling on one side of him only. And to be on
+such an animal means that you are on the worst mount of the outfit, and I
+am sure that it requires little imagination on any one's part to know
+therein lies misery. Oh! the weariness of being the weakest of the party
+and the worst mounted--to be always at the tail end of the line, never to
+be able to keep up with the saddle horses when they start off for a
+canter, to expend your stock of vitality, which you should husband for
+larger matters, in urging your beast by voice and quirt to further
+exertion! Never place yourself in such a position. The former you cannot
+help, but you can lessen it by making use of such aids to greater
+independence as wearing short skirts and riding astride, and having at
+least as good a horse as there is in the outfit. Then you will get the
+pleasure from your outing that you have the right to expect--that is, if
+you adhere to one other bit of advice, or rather two.
+
+The first is: See that for your camping trip is provided a man cook.
+
+I wish that I could put a charm over the next few words so that only the
+woman reader could understand, but as I cannot I must repeat boldly: Dear
+woman who goes hunting with her husband, be sure that you have it
+understood that you do no cooking, or dishwashing. I think that the
+reason women so often dislike camping out is because the only really
+disagreeable part of it is left to them as a matter of course. Cooking
+out of doors at best is trying, and certainly you cannot be care free,
+camp-life's greatest charm, when you have on your mind the boiling of
+prunes and beans, or when tears are starting from your smoke-inflamed
+eyes as you broil the elk steak for dinner. No, indeed! See that your
+guide or your horse wrangler knows how to cook, and expects to do it.
+He is used to it, and, anyway, is paid for it. He is earning his living,
+you are taking a vacation.
+
+Now for the second advice, which is a codicil to the above: In return for
+not having to potter with the food and tinware, _never complain about
+it_. Eat everything that is set before you, shut your eyes to possible
+dirt, or, if you cannot, leave the particular horror in question
+untouched, but without comment. Perhaps in desperation you may assume the
+role of cook yourself. Oh, foolish woman, if you do, you only exchange
+your woes for worse ones.
+
+If you provide yourself with the following articles and insist upon
+having them reserved for you, and then let the cook furnish everything
+else, you will be all right:--
+
+_An aluminum plate made double for hot water_. This is a very little
+trouble to fill, and insures a comfortable meal; otherwise, your meat and
+vegetables will be cold before you can eat them, and the gravy will have
+a thin coating of ice on it. It is always cold night and morning in the
+mountains. And if you do not need the plate heated you do not have to
+fill it; that's all. I am sure my hot-water plate often saved me from
+indigestion and made my meals things to enjoy instead of to endure.
+
+_Two cups and saucers of white enamel ware_. They always look clean and
+do not break.
+
+_One silver-plated knife and fork and two teaspoons_.
+
+_One folding camp chair_.
+
+N.B.--Provide your husband or brother or sister precisely the same; no
+more, no less.
+
+_Japanese napkins_, enough to provide two a day for the party.
+
+_Two white enamel vegetable dishes_.
+
+_One folding camp table_.
+
+_One candle lamp, with enough candles_. Then leave all the rest of the
+cooking outfit to your cook and trust in Providence. (If you do not
+approve of Providence, a full aluminum cooking outfit can be bought so
+that one pot or pan nests in the other, the whole very complete, compact
+and light.)
+
+Come what may, you have your own particular clean hot plate, cup and
+saucer, knife, fork, spoon and napkin, with a table to eat from and a
+chair to sit on and a lamp to see by, if you are eating after dark--which
+often happens--and nothing else matters, but food.
+
+If you want to be canny you will have somewhere in your own pack a modest
+supply of condensed soups and vegetables, a box or two of meat crackers,
+and three or four bottles of bouillon, to be brought out on occasions of
+famine. Anyway it is a comfort to know that you have provided against the
+wolf. So much for your part of the eating; now for the sleeping. If you
+do not sleep warm and comfortable at night, the joys of camping are as
+dust in the mouth. The most glorious morning that Nature ever produced is
+a weariness to the flesh of the owl-eyed. So whatever else you leave
+behind, be sure your sleeping arrangements are comfortable. The following
+is the result of three years' experience:--
+
+_A piece of waterproof brown canvas_, 7 by 10 feet, bound with tape
+and supplied with two heavy leather straps nine feet long, with strong
+buckles at one end and fastened to the canvas by means of canvas
+loops, and one leather strap six feet long that crosses the other two
+at right angles.
+
+_One rubber air bed_, 36 by 76 inches (don't take a narrower size or you
+will be uncomfortable), fitted with large size double valve at each end.
+This bed is six inches thick when blown full of air. Be sure that sides
+are inserted, thus making two seams to join together the top and bottom
+six inches apart. If the top and bottom are fastened directly together,
+your bed slopes down at the sides, which is always disagreeable.
+
+_A sleeping bag_, with the canvas cover made the full 36 inches wide.
+This cover should hold two blanket bags of different weight, and if you
+are wise you will have made an eider-down bag to fit inside all of these
+for very cold weather. The eider bag costs about $16.00 or $18.00, but
+is worth it if you are going to camp out in the mountains after August.
+Do without one or two summer hats, but get it, for it is the keynote of
+camp comfort.
+
+Then you want a lamb's wool night wrapper, a neutral grey or brown in
+color, a set of heavy night flannels, some heavy woollen stockings and a
+woollen tam o' shanter large enough to pull down over the ears. A
+hot-water bag, also, takes up no room and is heavenly on a freezing
+night when the wind is howling through the trees and snow threatens.
+N.B.--See that your husband or brother has a similar outfit, or he will
+borrow yours.
+
+The sleeping bags should be separated and dried either by sun or fire
+every other day.
+
+_Always keep all your sleeping things together in your bed roll_, and
+your husband's things together in his bed bundle. It will save you many a
+sigh and weary hunt in the dark and cold. The tent and such things, you
+can afford to leave to your guide or to luck. If one wishes to provide a
+tent, brown canvas is far preferable to white. It does not make a glare
+of light, nor does it stand out aggressively in the landscape. You have
+your little nightly kingdom waiting for you and can sleep cosily if
+nothing else is provided. Whenever possible, get your bed blown up and
+your sleeping bags in order on top and your sleeping things together
+where you can put your hands on them during the daylight, or if that is
+impossible, make it the first thing you do when you make camp, while the
+cook is getting supper. Then, as you eat supper and sit near the camp
+fire to keep warm, you have the sweet consciousness that over there, in
+the blackness is a snug little nest all ready to receive your tired self.
+And if some morning you want to see what you have escaped, just unscrew
+the air valve to your bed before you rise, and when you come down on the
+hard, bumpy ground, in less time than it takes to tell, you will agree
+with me that there is nothing so rare as resting on air. Nimrod used to
+play this trick on me occasionally when it was time to get up--it is more
+efficacious than any alarm clock--but somehow he never seemed to enjoy it
+when I did it to him.
+
+For riding, it is better to carry your own saddle and bridle and to buy a
+saddle horse upon leaving the railroad. You can look to the guides for
+all the rest, such as pack saddles, pack animals, etc.
+
+My saddle is a strong but light-weight California model; that is, with
+pommel and cantle on a Whitman tree. It is fitted with gun-carrying case
+of the same leather and saddle-bag on the skirt of each side, and has a
+leather roll at the back strapped on to carry an extra jacket and a
+slicker. (A rain-coat is most important. I use a small size of the New
+York mounted policemen's mackintosh, made by Goodyear. It opens front and
+back and has a protecting cape for the hands.) The saddle has also small
+pommel bags in which are matches, compass, leather thongs, knife and a
+whistle (this last in case I get lost), and there are rings and strings
+in which other bundles such as lunch can be attached while on the march.
+A horsehair army saddle blanket saves the animal's back. Nimrod's saddle
+is exactly like mine, only with longer and larger stirrups.
+
+
+[Illustration: I. SADDLE COVER FOR WET WEATHER. Designed by A.A.
+Anderson.]
+
+[Illustration: II. POLICEMAN'S EQUESTRIAN RAIN COAT.]
+
+You have now your personal things for eating, sleeping and riding. It
+remains but to clothe yourself and you are ready to start. Provide
+yourself with two or three champagne baskets covered with brown
+waterproof canvas, with stout handles at each end and two leather straps
+going round the basket to buckle the lid down, and a stronger strap going
+lengthwise over all. Or if you do not mind a little more expense,
+telescopes made of leatheroid, about 22 inches long, 11 inches wide and 9
+inches deep, with the lower corners rounded so they will not stick into
+the horse, and fitted with straps and handles, make the ideal travelling
+case; for they can be shipped from place to place on the railroad and can
+be packed, one on each side of a horse. They are much to be preferred to
+the usual Klondike bag for convenience in packing and unpacking one's
+things and in protecting them.
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that clothes have to be kept down to the
+limit of comfort. Into the telescopes or baskets should go warm flannels,
+extra pair of heavy boots, several flannel shirt waists, extra riding
+habit and bloomers, fancy neck ribbons and a belt or two--for why look
+worse than your best at any time?--a long warm cloak and a chamois jacket
+for cold weather, snow overshoes, warm gloves and mittens too, and some
+woollen stockings. Be sure you take flannels. This is the advice of one
+who never wears them at any other time. A veil or two is very useful, as
+the wind is often high and biting, and I was much annoyed with wisps of
+hair around my eyes, and also with my hair coming down while on
+horseback, until I hit upon the device of tying a brown liberty silk veil
+over the hair and partially over the ears before putting on a sombrero.
+This veil was not at all unbecoming, being the same color as my hair, and
+it served the double purpose of keeping unruly locks in order and
+keeping my ears warm. A hair net is also useful.
+
+Then you must not forget a rubber bath tub, a rubber wash basin, sponge,
+towels, soap, and toilet articles generally, including camphor ice for
+chapped lips and pennyroyal vaseline salve for insect bites. A brown
+linen case is invaluable to hold all these toilet necessaries, so that
+you can find them quickly. A sewing kit should be supplied, a flask of
+whiskey, and a small "first-aid" outfit; a bottle of Perry Davis pain
+killer or Pond's extract; but no more bottles than must be, as they are
+almost sure to be broken. In your husband's box, ammunition takes the
+place of toilet articles. I shall pass over the guns with the bare
+mention that I use a 30.30 Winchester, smokeless. For railroad purposes
+all this outfit for two goes into two trunks and a box--one trunk for all
+the bedding and night things: the other for all the clothing, guns,
+ammunition, eating things, and incidentals. The box holds the saddles,
+bridles, and horse things.
+
+In a pack train, the bed-rolls, weighing about fifty pounds each, go on
+either side of one horse, and the telescopes on each side of another
+horse--in both cases not a full load, and leaving room on the top of the
+pack for a tent and other camp things. The saddles, of course, go on the
+saddle horses. The cost of such an outfit, in New York, is about two
+hundred dollars each; but it lasts for years and brings you in large
+returns in health and consequent happiness.
+
+I am willing to wager my horsehair rope (specially designed for keeping
+off snakes) that a summer in the Rockies would enable you to cheat time
+of at least two years, and you would come home and join me in the ranks
+of converts from the usual summer sort of thing. Will you try it? If you
+do, how you will pity your unfortunate friends who have never known what
+it is to sleep on the south side of a sage brush, and honestly say in the
+morning, "It is wonderful how well I am feeling."
+
+But to begin:--
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.
+
+
+It was about midnight in the end of August when Nimrod and I tumbled off
+the train at Market Lake, Idaho. Next morning, after a comfortable
+night's rest at the "hotel," our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles,
+guns, clothing, and ourselves were packed into a covered wagon, drawn by
+four horses, and we started for Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver who
+knew the road perfectly. At least, that was what he said, so of course he
+must have known it. But his memory failed him sadly the first day out,
+which reduced him to the necessity of inquiring of the neighbours. As
+these were unsociably placed from thirty to fifty miles apart, there were
+many times when the little blind god of chance ruled our course.
+
+We put up for the night at Rexburgh, after forty long miles of alkali
+dust. The Mormon religion has sent a thin arm up into that country, and
+the keeper of the log building he called a hotel was of that faith. The
+history of our brief stay there belongs properly to the old torture days
+of the Inquisition, for the Mormon's possessions of living creatures
+were many, and his wives and children were the least of them.
+
+Another day of dust and long hard miles over gradually rising hills, with
+the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day we
+climbed the Teton Pass.
+
+There is nothing extraordinary about climbing the Teton Pass--to tell
+about. We just went up, and then we went down. It took six horses half a
+day to draw us up the last mile--some twenty thousand seconds of
+conviction on my part (unexpressed, of course; see side talk) that the
+next second would find us dashed to everlasting splinters. And it took
+ten minutes to get us down!
+
+Of the two, I preferred going up. If you have ever climbed a greased pole
+during Fourth of July festivities in your grandmother's village, you
+will understand.
+
+When we got to the bottom there was something different. Our driver
+informed us that in two hours we should be eating dinner at the ranch
+house in Jackson's Hole, where we expected to stop for a while to
+recuperate from the past year's hard grind and the past two weeks of
+travel. This was good news, as it was then five o'clock and our midday
+meal had been light--despite the abundance of coffee, soggy potatoes,
+salt pork, wafer slices of meat swimming in grease, and evaporated
+apricots wherein some nice red ants were banqueting.
+
+"We'll just cross the Snake River, and then it'll be plain sailing," he
+said. Perhaps it was so. I was inexperienced in the West. This was what
+followed:--Closing the door on the memory of my recent perilous
+passage, I prepared to be calm inwardly, as I like to think I was
+outwardly. The Snake River is so named because for every mile it goes
+ahead it retreats half way alongside to see how well it has been done. I
+mention this as a pleasing instance of a name that really describes the
+thing named. But this is after knowledge.
+
+About half past five, we came to a rolling tumbling yellow stream where
+the road stopped abruptly with a horrid drop into water that covered the
+hubs of the wheels. The current was strong, and the horses had to
+struggle hard to gain the opposite bank. I began to thank my patron saint
+that the Snake River was crossed.
+
+Crossed? Oh, no! A narrow strip of pebbly road, and the high willows
+suddenly parted to disclose another stream like the last, but a
+little deeper, a little wider, a little worse. We crossed it. I made
+no comments.
+
+At the third stream the horses rebelled. There are many things four
+horses can do on the edge of a wicked looking river to make it
+uncomfortable, but at last they had to go in, plunging madly, and
+dragging the wagon into the stream nearly broadside, which made at least
+one in the party consider the frailty of human contrivances when matched
+against a raging flood.
+
+Soon there was another stream. I shall not describe it. When we
+eventually got through it, the driver stopped his horses to rest, wiped
+his brow, went around the wagon and pulled a few ropes tighter, cut a
+willow stick and mended his broken whip, gave a hitch to his trousers,
+and remarked as he started the horses:
+
+"Now, when we get through the Snake River on here a piece, we'll be
+all right."
+
+"I thought we had been crossing it for the past hour," I was feminine
+enough to gasp.
+
+"Oh, yes, them's forks of it; but the main stream's on ahead, and it's
+mighty treacherous, too," was the calm reply.
+
+When we reached the Snake River, there was no doubt that the others were
+mere forks. Fortunately, Joe Miller and his two sons live on the opposite
+bank, and make a living by helping people escape destruction from the
+mighty waters. Two men waved us back from the place where our driver was
+lashing his horses into the rushing current, and guided us down stream
+some distance. One of them said:
+
+"This yere ford changes every week, but I reckon you might try here."
+
+We did.
+
+Had my hair been of the dramatic kind that realises situations, it would
+have turned white in the next ten minutes. The water was over the horses'
+backs immediately, the wagon box was afloat, and we were being borne
+rapidly down stream in the boiling seething flood, when the wheels struck
+a shingly bar which gave the horses a chance to half swim, half plunge.
+The two men, who were on horseback, each seized one of the leaders, and
+kept his head pointed for a cut in the bank, the only place where we
+could get out.
+
+Everything in the wagon was afloat. A leather case with a forty dollar
+fishing rod stowed snugly inside slipped quietly off down stream. I
+rescued my camera from the same fate just in time. Overshoes, wraps,
+field glasses, guns, were suddenly endowed with motion. Another moment
+and we should surely have sunk, when the horses, by a supreme effort,
+managed to scramble on to the bank, but were too exhausted to draw more
+than half of the wagon after them, so that it was practically on end in
+the water, our outfit submerged, of course, and ourselves reclining as
+gracefully as possible on the backs of the seats.
+
+Had anything given away then, there might have been a tragedy. The two
+men immediately fastened a rope to the tongue of the wagon, and each
+winding an end around the pommel of his saddle, set his cow pony
+pulling. Our horses made another effort, and up we came out of the
+water, wet, storm tossed, but calm. Oh, yes--calm! After that, earth
+had no terrors for me; the worst road that we could bump over was but an
+incident. I was not surprised that it grew dark very soon, and that we
+blundered on and on for hours in the night until the near wheeler just
+lay down in the dirt, a dark spot in the dark road, and our driver,
+after coming back from a tour of inspection on foot, looked worried. I
+mildly asked if we would soon cross Snake River, but his reply was an
+admission that he was lost. There was nothing visible but the twinkling
+stars and a dim outline of the grim Tetons. The prospect was excellent
+for passing the rest of the night where we were, famished, freezing, and
+so tired I could hardly speak.
+
+But Nimrod now took command. His first duty, of course, being a man, was
+to express his opinion of the driver in terms plain and comprehensive;
+then he loaded his rifle and fired a shot. If there were any mountaineers
+around, they would understand the signal and answer.
+
+We waited. All was silent as before. Two more horses dropped to the
+ground. Then he sent another loud report into the darkness. In a few
+moments we thought we heard a distant shout, then the report of a gun
+not far away.
+
+Nimrod mounted the only standing horse and went in the direction of the
+sound. Then followed an interminable silence. I hallooed, but got no
+answer. The wildest fears for Nimrod's safety tormented me. He had fallen
+into a gully, the horse had thrown him, _he_ was lost.
+
+Then I heard a noise and listened eagerly. The driver said it was a
+coyote howling up on the mountain. At last voices did come to me from out
+of the blackness, and Nimrod returned with a man and a fresh horse. The
+man was no other than the owner of the house for which we were searching,
+and in ten minutes I was drying myself by his fireplace, while his
+hastily aroused wife was preparing a midnight supper for us.
+
+To this day, I am sure that driver's worst nightmare is when he lives
+over again the time when he took a tenderfoot and his wife into Jackson's
+Hole, and, but for the tenderfoot, would have made them stay out
+overnight, wet, famished, frozen, within a stone's throw of the very
+house for which they were looking.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+WHICH TREATS OF THE IMPS AND MY ELK.
+
+
+"If you want to see elk, you just follow up the road till you strike a
+trail on the left, up over that hog's back, and that will bring you in a
+mile or so on to a grassy flat, and in two or three miles more you come
+to a lake back in the mountains."
+
+Mrs. Cummings, the speaker, was no ordinary woman of Western make. She
+had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She
+had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her
+away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed,
+and fed the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this
+in spite of the fact that for those parts she was very comfortable.
+
+Her log house was the largest in the country, barring Captain Jones's,
+her nearest neighbour, ten miles up at Jackson's Lake, and his was a
+hotel. Hers could boast of six rooms and two clothes' closets. The
+ceilings were white muslin to shut off the rafters, the sitting room had
+wall-paper and a rag carpet, and in one corner was the post-office.
+
+The United States Government Post-office of Deer, Wyoming, took up
+two compartments of Mrs. Cummings' writing desk, and she was called
+upon to be postmistress fifteen minutes twice a week, when the small boy,
+mounted on a tough little pony, happened around with the leather bag
+which carried the mail to and from Jackson, thirty miles below.
+
+[Illustration: SHE WAS POSTMISTRESS TWICE A WEEK.]
+
+"I'd like some elk meat mighty well for dinner," Mrs. Cummings continued,
+as she leaned against the kitchen door and watched us mount our newly
+acquired horses, "but you won't find game around here without a
+guide--Easterners never do."
+
+Nimrod and I started off in joyous mood. The secret of it, the
+fascination of the wild life, was revealed to me. At last I understood
+why the birds sing. The glorious exhilaration of the mountains, the
+feeling that life is a rosy dream, and that all the worry and the fever
+and the fret of man's making is a mere illusion that has faded away into
+the past, and is not worth while; that the real life is to be free, to
+fly over the grassy mountain meadow with never a limitation of fence or
+house, with the eternal peaks towering around you, terrible in their
+grandeur and vastness, yet inviting.
+
+We struck the trail all right, we thought, but it soon disappeared and we
+had to govern our course by imagination, an uncertain guide at best. We
+got into dreadful tangles of timber; the country was all strange, and the
+trees spread over the mountain for miles, so that it was like trying to
+find the way under a blanket; but we kept on riding our horses over
+fallen logs and squeezing them between trees, all the time keeping a
+sharp watch over them, for they were fresh and scary.
+
+Finally, after three hours' hard climbing, we emerged from the forest on
+to a great bare shoulder of the mountain, from which the whole country
+around, vast and beautiful, could be seen. We took bearings and tried to
+locate that lake, and we finally decided that a wooded basin three miles
+away looked likely to contain it.
+
+In order to get to it, we had to cross a wooded ravine, very steep and
+torn out by a recent cloudburst. We rode the horses down places that I
+shudder in remembering, and I had great trouble in keeping away from the
+front feet of my horse as I led him, especially when there were little
+gullies that had to be jumped.
+
+It was exciting enough, and hard work, too, every nerve on a tingle and
+one's heart thumping with the unwonted exercise at that altitude; but oh,
+the glorious air, the joy of life and motion that was quite unknown to my
+reception and theatre-going self in the dim far away East!
+
+We searched for that lake all day, and at nightfall went home confident
+that we could find it on the morrow.
+
+Mrs. Cummings' smile clearly expressed 'I told you so,' and she remarked
+as she served supper: "When my husband comes home next week, he will take
+you where you can find game."
+
+The next morning we again took some lunch in the saddle bag and started
+for that elusive spot we had christened Cummings' Lake. About three
+o'clock we found it--a beautiful patch of water in the heart of the
+forest, nestling like a jewel, back in the mountains.
+
+We picketed the horses at a safe distance, so that they could not be seen
+or heard from the lake. At one end the shore sloped gradually into the
+water, and here Nimrod discovered many tracks of elk, a few deer, and one
+set of black bear. He said the lake was evidently a favourite drinking
+place, that a band of elk had been coming daily to water, and that,
+according to their habits, they ought to come again before dusk.
+
+So we concealed ourselves on a little bluff to the right and waited. The
+sun had begun to cast long lines on the earth, and the little circle of
+water was already in shadow when Nimrod held up his finger as a warning
+for silence. We listened. We were so still that the whole world seemed to
+be holding its breath.
+
+I heard a faint noise as of a snapping branch, then some light thuds
+along the ground, and to the left of us out of the dark forest, a dainty
+creature flitted along the trail and playfully splashed into the water.
+Six others of her sisters followed her, with two little ones, and they
+were all splashing about in the water like so many sportive mermaids when
+their lordly master appeared--a fine bull elk who seemed to me, as he
+sedately approached the edge of the lake, to be nothing but horns.
+
+I shall never forget the picture of this family at home--the quiet lake
+encircled by forest and towered over by mountains; the gentle graceful
+creatures full of life playing about in the water, now drinking, now
+splashing it in cooling showers upon one another; the solicitude of a
+mother that her young one should come to no harm; and then the head of
+them all proceeding with dignity to bathe with his harem.
+
+Had I to do again what followed, I hope I should act differently. Nimrod
+was watching them with a rapt expression, quite forgetful of the rifle in
+his hands, when I, who had never seen anything killed, touched his arm
+and whispered: "Shoot, shoot now, if you are going to."
+
+The report of the rifle rang out like a cannon. The does fled away as if
+by magic. The stag tried also to get to shore, but the ball had
+inflicted a wound which partially paralysed his hindquarters. At the
+sight of the blood and the big fellow's struggles to get away, the
+horror of the thing swept over me. "Oh, kill him, kill him!" I wailed.
+"Don't let him suffer!"
+
+But here the hunter in Nimrod answered: "If I kill him now, I shall never
+be able to get him. Wait until he gets out of the water."
+
+The next few seconds, with that struggling thing in the water, seemed an
+eternity of agony to me. Then another loud bang caused the proud head
+with its weight of antlers to sink to the wet bank never to rise again.
+
+Later, as I dried my tears, I asked Nimrod:
+
+"Where is the place to aim if you want to kill an animal instantly, so
+that he will not suffer, and never know what hit him?"
+
+"The best place is the shoulder." He showed me the spot on his elk.
+
+"But wouldn't he suffer at all?"
+
+"Well, of course, if you hit him in the brain, he will never know; but
+that is a very fine shot. Your target is only an inch or two, here
+between the eye and the ear, and the head moves more than the body.
+But," he said, "you would not kill an elk after the way you have wept
+over this one?"
+
+"If--if I were sure he would not suffer, I might kill just one," I
+said, conscious of my inconsistencies. My woman's soul revolted, and yet
+I was out West for all the experiences that the life could give me, and
+I knew, if the chance came just right, that one elk would be sacrificed
+to that end.
+
+The next day, much to Mrs. Cummings' surprise, we had elk steak, the most
+delicious of meat when properly cooked. The next few days slipped by. We
+were always in the open air, riding about in those glorious mountains,
+and it was the end of the week when a turn of the wheel brought my day.
+
+First, it becomes necessary to confide in you. Fear is a very wicked
+companion who, since nursery days, had troubled me very little; but when
+I arrived out West, he was waiting for me, and, so that I need never be
+without him, he divided himself into a band of little imps.
+
+Each imp had a special duty, and never left me until he had been crushed
+in silent but terrible combat. There was the imp who did not like to be
+alone in the mountains, and the imp who was sure he was going to be lost
+in those wildernesses, and the imp who quaked at the sight of a gun, and
+the imp who danced a mad fierce dance when on a horse. All these had been
+conquered, or at least partially reduced to subjection, but the imp who
+sat on the saddle pommel when there was a ditch or stream to be jumped
+had hitherto obliged me to dismount and get over the space on foot.
+
+This morning, when we came to a nasty boggy place, with several small
+water cuts running through it, I obeyed the imp with reluctance. Well, we
+got over it--Blondey, the imp, and I--with nothing worse than wet feet
+and shattered nerves.
+
+I attempted to mount, and had one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the
+pommel, when Blondey started. Like the girl in the song, I could not get
+up, I could not get down, and although I had hold of the reins, I had no
+free hand to pull them in tighter, and you may be sure the imp did not
+help me. Blondey, realising there was something wrong, broke into a wild
+gallop across country, but I clung on, expecting every moment the saddle
+would turn, until I got my foot clear from the stirrup. Then I let go
+just as Blondey was gathering himself together for another ditch.
+
+I was stunned, but escaped any serious hurt. Nimrod was a great deal more
+undone than I. He had not dared to go fast for fear of making Blondey go
+faster, and he now came rushing up, with the fear of death upon his face
+and the most terrible swears on his lips.
+
+Although a good deal shaken, I began to laugh, the combination was so
+incongruous. Nimrod rarely swears, and was now quite unconscious what his
+tongue was doing. Upon being assured that all was well, he started after
+Blondey and soon brought him back to me; but while he was gone the imp
+and I had a mortal combat.
+
+I did up my hair, rearranged my habit, and, rejecting Nimrod's offer of
+his quieter horse, remounted Blondey. We all jumped the next ditch, but
+the shock was too much for the imp in his weakened condition; he tumbled
+off the pommel, and I have never seen him since.
+
+Our course lay along the hills on the east bank of Snake River that day.
+We discovered another beautiful sapphire lake in a setting of green
+hills. Several ducks were gliding over its surface. We watched them, in
+concealment of course, and we saw a fish hawk capture his dinner. Then we
+quietly continued along the ridge of a high bluff until we came to an
+outstretched point, where beneath us lay the Snake Valley with its
+fickle-minded river winding through.
+
+The sun was just dropping behind the great Tetons, massed in front of us
+across the valley. We sat on our horses motionless, looking at the
+peaceful and majestic scene, when out from the shadows on the sandy
+flats far below us came a dark shadow, and then leisurely another and
+another. They were elk, two bulls and a doe, grazing placidly in a little
+meadow surrounded by trees.
+
+We kept as still as statues.
+
+Nimrod said. "There is your chance."
+
+"Yes," I echoed, "here is my chance."
+
+We waited until they passed into the trees again. Then we dismounted.
+Nimrod handed me the rifle, saying:
+
+"There are seven shots in it. I will stay behind with the horses."
+
+I took the gun without a word and crept down the mountain side, keeping
+under cover as much as possible. The sunset quiet surrounded me; the
+deadly quiet of but one idea--to creep upon that elk and kill
+him--possessed me. That gradual painful drawing nearer to my prey seemed
+a lifetime. I was conscious of nothing to the right, or to the left of
+me; only of what I was going to do. There were pine woods and scrub brush
+and more woods. Then, suddenly, I saw him standing by the river about to
+drink. I crawled nearer until I was within one hundred and fifty yards of
+him, when at the snapping of a twig he raised his head with its crown of
+branching horn. He saw nothing, so turned again to drink.
+
+Now was the time. I crawled a few feet nearer and raised the deadly
+weapon. The stag turned partly away from me. In another moment he would
+be gone. I sighted along the metal barrel and a terrible bang went
+booming through the dim secluded spot. The elk raised his proud, antlered
+head and looked in my direction. Another shot tore through the air.
+Without another move the animal dropped where he stood. He lay as still
+as the stones beside him, and all was quiet again in the twilight.
+
+I sat on the ground where I was and made no attempt to go near him.
+So that was all. One instant a magnificent breathing thing, the
+next--nothing.
+
+Death had been so sudden. I had no regret, I had no triumph--just a sort
+of wonder at what I had done--a surprise that the breath of life could be
+taken away so easily.
+
+Meanwhile, Nimrod had become alarmed at the long silence, and, tying the
+horses, had followed me down the mountain. He was nearly down when he
+heard the shots, and now came rushing up.
+
+"I have done it," I said in a dull tone, pointing at the dark, quiet
+object on the bank.
+
+"You surely have."
+
+Nimrod paced the distance--it was one hundred and thirty-five yards--as
+we went up to the elk. How beautiful his coat was, glossy and shaded in
+browns, and those great horns--eleven points--that did not seem so big
+now to my eyes.
+
+Nimrod examined the carcass.
+
+"You are an apt pupil," he said. "You put a bullet through his heart and
+another through his brain."
+
+"Yes," I said; "he never knew what killed him." But I felt no glory in
+the achievement.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+Have you ever been lost in the mountains?--not the peaceful, cultivated
+child hills of the Catskills, but in real mountains, where the first
+outpost of civilisation, a lonely ranch house, is two weeks' travel away,
+and where that stream on your left is bound for the Pacific Ocean, and
+that stream on your right over there will, after four thousand miles,
+find its way into the Atlantic Ocean, and where the air you breathe is
+twelve thousand feet above those seas? I have.
+
+The situation is naturally one you would not fish out of the grab bag of
+fate if you could avoid it. When you suddenly find it on your hands,
+however, there is only one thing to do--keep your nerve, grasp it firmly,
+and look at it closely. If you have a horse and a gun and a cartridge,
+it is not so bad. I had these and I had better than all these, I had
+Nimrod--but only half of Nimrod. The working half was chained up by my
+fears, for such is the power of a woman. I will explain. In crossing
+over the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains, we were guests in the
+pack train of a man who was equally at home in a New York drawing-room or
+on a Wyoming bear hunt, and he had made mountain travelling a fine art.
+Besides ourselves, there were the horse wrangler, the cook (of whom you
+shall hear later), and sixteen horses, and we started from Jackson's Lake
+for the Big Horn Basin, several hundred miles over the pathless
+uninhabited mountains.
+
+No one who has not tried it knows how difficult it is for two or three
+men to keep so many pack animals in line, with no pathway to guide; and
+once they are started going nicely, it is nothing short of a calamity to
+stop them, especially when it is necessary to cover a certain number of
+miles before nightfall in order that they may have feed.
+
+We were on the Pacific side of the Wind River Divide, and must get to the
+top that night. The horses were travelling nicely up the difficult
+ascent, so when Nimrod got his feet wet crossing a stream about noon, he
+and I thought we would just stop and have a little lunch, dry the shoes,
+and catch up with the pack train in half an hour.
+
+From the minute the last horse vanished out of sight behind a rock,
+desolation settled upon me. That slender line of living beings somewhere
+on ahead was the only link between us and civilisation--civilisation
+which I understood, which was human and touchable--and the awful vastness
+of those endless peaks, wherein lurked a hundred dangers, and which
+seemed made but to annihilate me.
+
+Of course, the fire would not burn, and the shoes would not dry. Blondey
+wandered off and had to be brought back, and it seemed an age before we
+were again in the saddle, following the trail the animals had made.
+
+But Nimrod was blithe and unconcerned, so I made no sign of the craven
+soul within me. For an hour or two we followed the trail, urging our
+horses as much as possible, but the ascent was difficult, and we could
+not gain on the speed of the pack train. Then the trail was lost in a
+gully where the animals had gone in every direction to get through. My
+nerves were now on the rack of suspense.
+
+Where were they? Surely, we must have passed them! We were on the wrong
+trail, perhaps going away from them at every step!
+
+The screws of fear grew tighter every moment during the following hours.
+Nimrod soon found what he considered to be the trail, and we proceeded.
+
+At last we got to the top. No sign of them. I could have screamed aloud;
+a great wave of soul destroying fear encompassed me--wild black fear. I
+could not reason it out. We were lost!
+
+Nimrod scoffed at me. The track was still plain, he said; but I could not
+read the hieroglyphics at my feet, and there was no room in my mind for
+confidence or hope. Fear filled it all.
+
+There we were with the mighty forces of the insensate world around, so
+pitiless, so silently cruel, it seemed to my city-bred soul. It was the
+spot where Nature spread her wonders before us, one tiny spring dividing
+its waters east and west for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for this
+was the highest point.
+
+We attempted to cross that hateful divide, that at another time might
+have looked so beautiful, when suddenly Nimrod's horse plunged withers
+deep in a bog, and in his struggles to get out threw Nimrod head first
+from the saddle into the mud, where he lay quite still.
+
+I faced the horror of death at that moment. Of course, this was what I
+had been expecting, but had not been able to put into words. Nimrod
+killed! My other fears dwindled away before this one, or, rather, it
+seemed to wrap them in itself, as in a cloak. For an instant I could not
+move--there alone with a dead or wounded man on that awful mountain top.
+
+But here was an emergency where I could do something besides blindly
+follow another's lead. I caught the frightened animal as it dashed out of
+the treacherous place (to be horseless is almost a worse fate than to be
+wounded), and Nimrod, who was little hurt, quickly recovered and managed
+to scramble to dry ground, and again into the saddle.
+
+Forcing our tired horses onward, we again found a trail, supposedly the
+right one, but there was that haunting fear that it was not. For the only
+signs were the bending of the grass and the occasional rubbing of the
+trees where the animals had passed. And these might have been done by a
+band of elk.
+
+It was growing dusk and still no pack train in sight. No criminal on
+trial for his life could have felt more wretchedly apprehensive than I.
+At last we came to a stream. Nimrod, who had dismounted to examine more
+closely, said:
+
+"The trail turns off here, but it is very dim in the grass."
+
+"Where?" I asked, anxiously.
+
+He pointed to the ground. I could make out nothing. "Oh, let us hurry!
+They must have gone on."
+
+"I think it would be safer to follow these tracks for a time at least, to
+see where they come out. There are some tracks across the stream there,
+but they are older and dimmer and might have been made by elk."
+
+"Oh, do go on! Surely the tracks across the stream must be the ones." To
+go on, on, and hurry, was my one thought, my one cry.
+
+Nimrod yielded. Thus I and my wild fear betrayed the hunter's instinct.
+We went on for many weary minutes. We lost all tracks. Then Nimrod fired
+a shot into the air. He would not do it before, because he said we were
+not lost, and that there was no need for worry--worry, when for hours
+blind fear had held me in torture!
+
+There was no answer to the shot.
+
+In five minutes he fired again. Then we heard a report, very faint. I
+would not believe that I had heard it at all. I raised my gun and fired.
+This time a shot rattled through the branches overhead, unpleasantly
+near. It was clearly from behind us. We turned, and after another
+interchange of shots, the cook appeared.
+
+I was too exhausted to be glad, but a feeling of relief glided over me.
+He led us to the stream where Nimrod had wanted to turn off, and from
+there we were quickly in camp, very much to our host's relief. I dropped
+at the foot of a tree, and said nothing for an hour--my companions were
+men, so I did not have to talk if I could not--then I arose as usual and
+was ready for supper.
+
+Of course, Nimrod was blamed for not being a better mountaineer. 'He
+ought to have seen that broken turf by the trail,' or those 'blades of
+fresh pulled grass in the pine fork.' How could they know that a woman
+and her fears had hampered him at every step, especially as you see there
+was no need?
+
+Always regulate your fears according to the situation, and then you will
+not go into the valley of the shadow of death, when you are only lost in
+the mountains.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE COOK.
+
+
+I had but a bare speaking acquaintance with the grim silent mountaineer
+who was cook to our party. Two days after he had appeared like an angel
+of heaven on our gloomy path I had an opportunity of knowing him better.
+I quote from my journal:
+
+Camp Jim, Shoshone Range, September 23: They left me alone in camp today.
+No, the cook was there. They left me the cook for protection against the
+vast solitude, the mighty grandeur of the mountains, and the possible,
+but improbable, bear. Nice man, that cook--he confessed with pride to
+many robberies and three murders! Only a month before engaging as cook on
+this trip, he had been serving a life term for murder; but had been
+released through some political 'pull.'
+
+Our host, in company with another game warden, had discovered him in the
+mountains, where he had gone immediately from the penitentiary and
+resumed his unlawful life of killing game. But he had hidden his prizes
+so effectively that there was no evidence but his own, which, of course,
+is not accepted in law. Thus he welcomed these two men of justice to his
+camp, told graphically of his killing--then offered them a smoke, smiling
+the while at their discomfiture.
+
+Both his face and hands were scarred from many bar room encounters, and
+he unblushingly dated most of his remarks by the period when he 'was
+rusticatin' in the Pen.' He had brought his own bed and saddle and pack
+horses on the trip so that he could 'cut loose' from the party in case
+'things got too hot' for him.
+
+Such was the cook.
+
+Immediately after breakfast Nimrod and our host equipped themselves for
+the day's hunt, and went off in opposite directions, like _Huck Finn_ and
+_Tom Sawyer_ on the occasion of their memorable first smoke.
+
+Our camp was beside a rushing brook in a little glade that was tucked at
+the foot of towering mountains where no man track had been for years, if
+ever. Around us sighed the mighty pines of the limitless forest.
+Hundreds of miles away, beyond the barrier of nature, were human hives
+weary of the noise and strife of their own making. Here, alone in the
+solitudes, were two human atoms wandering on the trail of the hunted,
+and--the cook and I.
+
+I sat on my rubber bed in the tent and thought--there was nothing else to
+do--and was cold, cold from the outside in, and from the inside out.
+There wasn't a thing alive, not even myself--no one but the cook.
+
+Outside, I could hear him washing the breakfast tinware, and whistling
+some kind of a jiggling tune that ran up and down me like a shiver. This
+went on for an eternity.
+
+Suddenly it stopped, and I heard the faintest crunch on the thin layer of
+snow and the rattling of more snow as it slid off my tent from a blow
+that had been struck on the outside.
+
+I jumped to the door of the tent. It was the cook.
+
+"Purty cold in there, ain't it? You'd a good sight better come to the
+fire. Ain't you got a slicker?"
+
+I put on a mackintosh and overshoes and went to the fire. The weather
+was now indulging in a big flake snow that slid stealthily to the ground
+and disappeared into water on whatever obstacle it found there. It found
+me. The cook was cleaning knives--the cooking knives, the eating knives,
+and a full set of hunting knives, long and short, slim and broad, all
+sharp and efficacious.
+
+He handled them lovingly, rubbed off some blood rust here and there, and
+occasionally whetted one to a still more razor edge and threw it into a
+near by tree, where it stuck, quivering.
+
+There was no conversation, but I did not feel forgotten.
+
+I turned my back on the cook and gazed into the fire, a miserable
+smouldering affair, and speculated on why I had never before noticed how
+much spare time there was in a minute. It may have been five of these
+spacious minutes, it may have been fifteen, that had passed away when the
+cook approached me. I could _feel_ him coming. He came very close to
+me--and to the fire.
+
+He put on some beans.
+
+Then he went away, and there were many more minutes, many more.
+
+Then something touched my arm. At last it had come (what we expect, if it
+be disagreeable, usually does come). I never moved a muscle. This time
+the pressure on my arm was unmistakable. I turned quickly and saw--the
+cook--with a gun!
+
+The cook, gun, knives, fire, snow, and stars danced a mad jig before me
+for an instant. Then the cook suddenly resumed his proper position, and I
+saw that his disengaged hand was held in an attitude of warning for
+silence. He pointed off into the woods and appeared to be listening. Soon
+I thought I heard a snapping of a branch away off up the mountain.
+
+"Bear," the cook whispered. "Follow me."
+
+I followed. It was hard work to get over logs and stones without noise,
+in a long mackintosh, and, besides, I wished that I had brought a gun. I
+should have felt more comfortable about both man and beast. I struggled
+on for a while, when the thought suddenly struck home that if I went
+farther I should not be able to find my way back to camp. Everything is
+relative, and those empty tents and smouldering fire seemed a haven of
+security compared to the situation of being unarmed, and lost in the
+wilderness--with the cook.
+
+I watched my chance and sneaked back to camp to get a gun. I was willing
+to believe the cook's bear story, but I wanted a gun. When I got to camp
+there were many good reasons for not going back.
+
+After a time I heard two shots close at hand, and soon the cook appeared.
+He said he could not find the bear's track, and lost me, so thought he
+had better look me up and be on hand in case I had returned to camp, and
+the bear should come.
+
+I thanked the cook for his solicitude.
+
+To while away the time, I put up a target and commenced practising with a
+30-30 rifle at fifty yards range.
+
+I shot very badly.
+
+The cook obligingly interested himself in my performance and kept tally
+on my aim, pointing out to me when it was high, when it was low, to the
+right or to the left.
+
+Then he took his six shooter and put a half dozen bullets in the
+bull's-eye offhand.
+
+I lost my interest in shooting.
+
+The cook gave me some lunch, and while I was eating he stood before the
+fire looking at it through the fingers of his. Outstretched hand, with a
+queer squint in his cold gray eyes, as though sighting along a rifle
+barrel, while a cigarette hung limply from his mouth.
+
+Then in response to a winning smile (after all, a woman's best weapon) he
+opened the floodgates of his thoughts and poured into my ears a
+succession of bloodcurdling adventures over which the big, big 'I' had
+dominated. "Yes," he said musingly of his _second_ murder, as he
+removed his squint from the fire to me, and a ghost of a smile played
+around his lips; "yes, it took six shots to keep him quiet, and you could
+have covered all the holes with a cap box--and his pard nearly got me."
+
+"That was the year I lost my pard, Dick Elsen. We was at camp near Fort
+Fetterman. We called a man 'Red'--his name was Jim Capse. Drink was at
+the bottom of it. Red he sees my pard passing a saloon, and he says,
+'Hello, where did you come from? Come and have a drink!' Pard says, 'No,
+I don't want nothing!' 'Oh, come along and have a drink!' Dick says, 'No,
+thanks, pard, I'm not drinking to-night.' 'Well, I guess you'll have a
+drink with me'; and Red pulls out his six shooter. Dick wasn't quick
+enough about throwing up his hands, and he gets killed. Then Irish Mike
+says to Red, 'You better hit the breeze,' but we ketched him--a telegraph
+pole was handy--I says, 'Have you got anything to say?' 'You write to my
+mother and tell her that, a horse fell on me. Don't tell her that I got
+hung,' Red says; and we swung him."
+
+By the time he had thus proudly stretched out his three dead men before
+my imagination, in a setting of innumerable shooting scraps and horse
+stealings, the hunters returned--my day with the multi-murderous cook was
+over--and nothing had happened.
+
+It is only fair to quote Nimrod's reply to one who criticised him for
+leaving me thus:
+
+"Humph! Do you think I don't know those wild mountaineers? They are
+perfectly chivalrous, and I could feel a great deal safer in leaving my
+wife in care of that desperado than with one of your Eastern dudes."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+AMONG THE CLOUDS.
+
+
+Many a time as a child I used to lie on my back in the grass and stare
+far into the wide blue sky above. It seemed so soft, so caressing, so far
+away, and yet so near. Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would drift
+across its face, meet another of its kind, then another and another,
+until the massed up curtain hid the playful blue, and amid grayness and
+chill, where all had been so bright, I would hurry under shelter to avoid
+the storm. That, outside of fairy books, an earthbound being could
+actually be in a cloud, was beyond my imagination. Indeed, it seems
+strange now, and were it not for the absence of a cherished quirt, I
+should be ready to think that my cloud experience had been a dream.
+
+The day before, we had been in a great hurry to cross the Wind River
+Divide before a heavy snowfall made travel difficult, if not impossible.
+We had no wish to be snowbound for the winter in those wilds, with only
+two weeks' supply of food, and it was for this same reason we had not
+stopped to hunt that grizzly who had left a fourteen inch track over on
+Wiggins' Creek--the same being Wahb of the Big Horn Basin, about whom I
+shall have something to say later.
+
+We were now camped in a little valley whose creek bubbled pleasantly
+under the ice. Having cleared away three feet of snow for our tents, we
+decided to rest a day or two and hunt, as we were within two days' easy
+travel of the first ranch house.
+
+It was cold and snowy when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look
+for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a
+trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it
+would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but
+I had been taught my lesson, and kept silent.
+
+I even tried to make mental notes of various rocks and trees we passed,
+but it was hopeless. They all looked alike to me. In a city, no matter
+how big or how strange, I can find home unerringly, and Nimrod is
+helpless as a babe. In the mountains it is different. When I finally
+raised my eyes from the horse's tail in front, it was because the tail
+and the horse belonging to it had stopped suddenly.
+
+We were in the middle of a brook. It is highly unpleasant to be stopped
+in the middle of an icy brook when your horse's feet break through the
+ice at each step, and you cannot be sure how deep the water is, nor how
+firm the bottom he is going to strike, especially as ice-covered
+brooks are Blondey's pet abhorrence, and the uncertainty of my
+progress, was emphasised by Blondey's attempts to cross on one or two
+feet instead of four.
+
+However, I looked dutifully in the direction Nimrod indicated and saw a
+long line of elk heads peering over the ridge in front and showing darkly
+against the snow. They were not startled.
+
+Those inquisitive heads, with ears alert, looked at us for some time, and
+then leisurely moved out of sight. We scrambled out of the stream and
+commenced ascending the mountain after them. The damp snow packed on
+Blondey's hoofs, so that he was walking on snowballs. When these got
+about five inches high, they would drop off and begin again. It is
+needless to say that these varying snowballs did not help Blondey's
+sure-footedness, especially as the snow was just thick enough to conceal
+the treacherous slaty rocks beneath. For the first time I understood the
+phrase, to be 'all balled up.'
+
+Between being ready to clear myself from the saddle and jump off on the
+up side, in case Blondey should fall, and keeping in sight of the tail of
+the other horse, I had given no attention to the landscape.
+
+Suddenly I lost Nimrod, and everything was swallowed up in a dark misty
+vapour that cut me off from every object. Even Blondey's nose and the
+ground at my feet were blurred. Regardless of possibly near-by elk, I
+raised a frightened, yell. My voice swirled around me and dropped. I
+tried again, but the sound would not carry.
+
+The icy vapour swept through me--a very lonely forlorn little being
+indeed. I just clung to the saddle, trusting to Blondey's instinct to
+follow the other animal, and tried to enjoy the fact that I was getting a
+new sensation. Even when one could see, every step was treacherous, but
+in that black fog I might as well have been blind and deaf. Then Blondey
+dislodged some loose rock, and went sliding down the mountain with it.
+There was not a thing I could do, so I shut my eyes for an instant. We
+brought up against a boulder, fortunately, with no special damage--except
+to my nerves. Not being a man, I don't pretend to having enjoyed that
+experience--and there, not six feet away, was a ghostly figure that I
+knew must be Nimrod.
+
+He did not greet me as a long lost, for such I surely felt, but merely
+remarked in a whisper:
+
+"We are in a cloud cap. It is settling down. The elk are over there.
+Keep close to me." And he started along the ridge. I felt it was so
+thoughtful of him to give me this admonition. I would much rather have
+been returned safely to camp without further injury and before I froze to
+the saddle; but I grimly kept Blondey's nose overlapping his mate's back
+and said nothing--not even when I discovered that my cherished riding
+whip had left me. It probably was not fifty feet away, on that toboggan
+slide, but it seemed quite hopeless to find anything in the freezing
+misty grayness that surrounded us.
+
+We continued our perilous passage. Then I was rewarded by a sight seldom
+accorded to humans. It was worth all the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for
+that appallingly illogical cloud cap took a new vagary. It split and
+lifted a little, and there, not three hundred yards away, in the
+twilight of that cold wet cloud, on that mountain in the sky, were two
+bull elk in deadly combat. Their far branching horns were locked
+together, and they swayed now this way, now that, as they wrestled for
+the supremacy of the herd of does, which doubtless was not far away. We
+could not see clearly: all was as in a dream. There was not a sound, only
+the blurred outlines through the blank mist of two mighty creatures
+struggling for victory. One brief glimpse of this mountain drama; then
+they sank out of sight, and the numbing grayness and darkness once more
+closed around us.
+
+On the way back to camp, Blondey shied at a heap of decaying bones that
+were still attached to a magnificent pair of antlers. They were at the
+foot of a cliff, over which the animal had probably fallen. The gruesome
+sight was suggestive of the end of one of those shadowy creatures,
+fighting back there high up on the mountain in the mist and the darkness.
+
+We saw no mountain sheep, but oh, the joy of our camp fire that night!
+For we got back in due time all right--Nimrod and the gods know how. To
+feel the cheery dancing warmth from the pine needles driving away cold
+and misery was pure bliss. One thing is certain about roughing it for a
+woman:--there is no compromise. She either sits in the lap of happiness
+or of misery. The two are side by side, and toss her about a dozen times
+a day--but happiness never lets her go for long.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+AT YEDDAR'S.
+
+
+Life at Yeddar's ranch on Green River, where Nimrod and I left the pack
+train, is different from life in New York; likewise the people are
+different. And as every Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure
+to go through a Yeddar experience, I offer a few observations by way of
+enlightenment before telling how I killed my antelope. (If you wish to
+be proper, always use the possessive for animals you have killed. It is a
+Western abbreviation in great favour.)
+
+A two-story log house, a one-room log office, a log barn, and, across the
+creek, the log shack we occupied, fifty miles from the railroad, and no
+end of miles from anything else, but wilderness--that was Yeddar's.
+
+Old Yeddar--Uncle John, the guides and trappers and teamsters called
+him--had solved the problem of ideal existence. He ran this rough road
+house without any personal expenditure of labour or money. He sold whisky
+in his office to the passing teamsters and guides, and relied upon the
+same to do the chores around the place, for which he gave them grub, the
+money for which came from the occasional summer tourist, such as we.
+
+Mrs. Spiker 'did' for him in the summer for her board and that of her
+little girl, and in the winter he and a pard or two rustled for
+themselves, on bacon, coffee, and that delectable compound of bread and
+water known as camp sinkers. He got some money for letting the horses
+from two Eastern outfits run over the surrounding country and eat up the
+Wyoming government hay. Thus he loafs on through the years, outside or
+inside his office, without a care beyond the getting of his whisky and
+his tobacco. Of course he has a history. He claims to be from a 'high up'
+Southern family, but has been a plainsman since 1851. He has lived among
+the Indians, has several red-skinned children somewhere on this planet,
+and seems to have known all the wild tribe of stage drivers, miners, and
+frontiersmen with rapid-firing histories.
+
+Once a week, if the weather were fine, Uncle John would tie a towel and a
+clean shirt to his saddle, throw one leg across the back of Jim, his cow
+pony, blind in one eye and weighted with years unknown, and the two would
+jog a mile or so back in the mountains, to a hot sulphur spring, where
+Yeddar would perform his weekly toilet. He was not known to take off his
+clothes at any other time, and if the weather were disagreeable the
+pilgrimage was omitted.
+
+The cheapest thing at Yeddar's, except time, was advice. You could not
+tie up a dog without the entire establishment of loafers bossing the job.
+A little active co-operation was not so easy to get, however. One day I
+watched a freighter get stuck in the mud down the road 'a piece.' One by
+one, the whole number of freighters, mountaineers and guides then at
+Yeddar's lounged to the place, until there were nine able-bodied men
+ranged in a row watching the freighter dig out his wagon. No one offered
+to help him, but all contented themselves with criticising his methods
+freely and inquiring after his politics.
+
+During the third week of our stay, Uncle John raised the price of our
+board--and such board!--giving as an excuse that when we came he did not
+know that we were going to like it so well, or stay so long! Please place
+this joke where it belongs.
+
+The charm that held us to this rough place was the abundance of game. The
+very night we got there, I was standing quietly by the cabin door at
+dusk, when down the path came two of the prettiest does that the whole
+of the Blacktail tribe could muster. Shoulder to shoulder, with their big
+ears alert, they picked their way along, and under cover of the deepening
+twilight advanced to examine the dwelling of the white man.
+
+I watched them with silent breath. They were not ten yards away. Then
+they saw me and, wheeling around, stopped, the boldest a little in
+advance of her companion, with the right forefoot raised for action. I
+made no move. The graceful things eyed me suspiciously for several
+seconds and then advanced a little in a one-sided fashion.
+
+A laugh from Yeddar's office, across the creek, where Uncle John and Dave
+were having a quiet game of pinochle, caused a short retreat up the
+road. About fifty yards away, they stopped, and there, in the twilight,
+in that wild glen, they put themselves through a series of poses so
+graceful, so unstudied, so tender, so deer-like, that my heart was
+thrilled with joy at the mere artistic beauty of the scene. Then the
+loudmouthed alarm of a dog sent them silently into the forest gloom.
+
+Nimrod wanted some photographs of animals from life, and the energy which
+we put forth to obtain these was a constant surprise and disturbance to
+Uncle John and his co-loafers. They could understand why one might trap
+an animal, but to let it go again unhurt, after spending hours over it
+with a camera, was a problem that required many drinks and much quiet
+cogitation in the shade of the office.
+
+For days we tried to get a wood-chuck. At last we succeeded, and I find
+this note written in my journal for that date:--
+
+"Oct. 15th: Nimrod caught a woodchuck to-day, a baby one, and we called
+him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us all day in his cage, while Nimrod made
+a sketch of him and I took his picture. Then, in the late afternoon, we
+took him back to his home in the stone-clad hill, and put him among his
+brothers and sisters, who peeped cautiously at us from various rocky
+niches, higher up the hill."
+
+Little Johnny must have had a great deal to say of the strange ways and
+food of the big white animal. It must have been hard, too, for him to
+have found suitable woodchuck language to express his sensations when he
+was carried, oh! such a long way, in a big sack that grew on the side of
+his captor; and of the taste of peppermint candy, which he ate in his
+prettiest style, sitting on his haunches and clutching the morsel in both
+forepaws like any well-bred baby woodchuck. And then those delicious
+sugar cookies that Mrs. Spiker had just baked! How could he make his
+ignorant brother chuckies appreciate those cookies! Poor little Johnny is
+a marked woodchuck. He has seen the world.
+
+When Nimrod went hunting skunks, the group at the office gave us up.
+"Locoed, plumb locoed," was the verdict.
+
+Have you ever been on a skunk hunt? But perhaps you have no prejudices. I
+had. My code of action for a skunk was, if you see a black and white
+animal, don't stop to admire its beautiful bushy tail, but give a good
+imitation of a young woman running for her life. This did not suit
+Nimrod. He assured me that there was no danger if we treated his
+skunkship respectfully, and, as I was the photographer, I put on my old
+clothes and meekly fell in line. Nimrod set several box traps in places
+where skunks had been. These traps were merely soap boxes raised at one
+end by a figure four arrangement of sticks, so that when the animal goes
+inside and touches the bait the sticks fall apart, down comes the box,
+and the animal is caged unhurt. The next morning we went the rounds. The
+first trap was unsprung. The second one was down. Of course we could not
+see inside. Was it empty? Was the occupant a rat or a skunk, and if so,
+_what_ was he going to do?
+
+Nimrod approached the trap. Just then a big tree chanced to get between
+me and it. I stopped, thinking that as good a place as any to await
+developments.
+
+"It's a skunk all right," Nimrod announced gleefully.
+
+The box was rather heavy, so Nimrod went to Yeddar's, which was not far
+away, to see if he could get one of the loungers to help carry the
+captive to a large wire cage that we had rigged up near our shack.
+
+There were six men near the office, bronzed mountaineers, men of guns and
+grit, men who had spent their lives facing danger; but, when it came to
+facing a skunk, each looked at Nimrod as one would at a crazy man and had
+important business elsewhere. For once I thoroughly appreciated their
+point of view, but as there was no one else I took one end of the box,
+and we started. It was a precarious pilgrimage, but we moved gently and
+managed not to outrage the little animal's feelings.
+
+When the men saw us coming across the creek, with one accord they all
+went in and took a drink.
+
+We gingerly urged Mr. Skunk into the big cage, and with the greatest
+caution, never making a sudden move, I took his picture. All was as merry
+as a marriage bell, and might have continued so but for that puppy Sim.
+That is the trouble with skunks; they will lose their manners if
+startled, and _dogs startle skunks_.
+
+Of course the puppy barked; of course the skunk did not like it. He
+ruffled up his cold black nose, and elevated his bushy tail--his
+beautiful, plumy tail. I opened the door of his cage and, snatching
+the puppy, fled. The skunk was a wise and good animal, really a
+gentleman, if treated politely. He appreciated my efforts on his
+behalf. He forbearingly lowered his tail, composed his fur, and walked
+out of the cage and into the near-by woods as tamely as a house tabby
+out for a stroll.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+MY ANTELOPE.
+
+
+It was a week later when I did something which those old guides could
+understand and appreciate--I made a dead shot. I committed a murder, and
+from that time, the brotherhood of pards was open to us, had we cared to
+join. It was all because I killed an antelope.
+
+Nimrod and I started out that morning with the understanding that, if we
+saw antelope, I was to have a chance.
+
+In about six miles, Nimrod spied two white specks moving along the rocky
+ridge to the east of us, which rose abruptly from the plain where we
+were. I was soon able to make out that they were antelope. But the
+antelope had also seen us, and there was as much chance of getting near
+to them, by direct pursuit, as of a snail catching a hare. So we rode on
+calmly northward for half a mile, making believe we had not seen them,
+until we passed out of sight behind a long hill. Then we began an
+elaborate detour up the mountain, keeping well out of sight, until we
+judged that the animals, providing they had not moved, were below us,
+under the rocky ledge nearly a mile back.
+
+We tied up the horses on that dizzy height, and stole, Nimrod with a
+carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended,
+twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the
+cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would
+slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over
+the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on
+a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play
+compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent us flying over the
+cliff, but I did not think of that--my only care was not to startle the
+shy fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. I hardly dared to breathe;
+every muscle and nerve was tense with the long suspense.
+
+[Illustration: A MISSTEP WOULD HAVE SENT US FLYING OVER THE CLIFF.]
+
+Suddenly I clutched Nimrod's arm and pointed at an oblong tan coloured
+bulk fifty yards above us on the mountain.
+
+"Antelope! Lying down!" I whispered in his ear. He nodded and motioned me
+to go ahead. I crawled nearer, inch by inch, my gaze riveted on that
+object. It did not move. I grew more elated the nearer it allowed me to
+approach. It was not so very hard to get at an antelope, after all. I
+felt astonishingly pleased with my performance. Then--rattle, crash--and
+a stone went bounding down. What a pity, after all my painful contortions
+not to do it! I instantly raised the rifle to get a shot before the swift
+animal went flying away.
+
+But it was strangely quiet. I stole a little nearer--and then turned and
+went gently back to Nimrod. He was convulsed with silent and unnecessary
+laughter. My elaborate stalk had been made on--a nice buff stone.
+
+We continued our precarious journey for another quarter of a mile, when
+I motioned that I was going to try to get a sight of the antelope, which,
+according to my notion, were under the rock some hundred feet below, and
+signed to Nimrod to stay behind.
+
+Surely my guardian angel attended that descent. I slid down a crack in
+the rock three feet wide, which gave me a purchase on the sides with my
+elbows and left hand. The right hand grasped the rifle, to my notion an
+abominably heavy awkward thing. One of these drops was eight feet,
+another twelve. A slip would probably have cost me my life. Then I
+crawled along a narrow ledge for about the width of a town-house front,
+and, making another perilous slide, landed on a ledge so close to the
+creatures I was hunting that I was as much startled as they.
+
+Away those two beautiful animals bounded, their necks proudly arched and
+their tiny feet hitting the only safe places with unerring aim. They were
+far out of range before I thought to get my rifle in position, and my
+random shot only sent them farther out on the plain, like drifting leaves
+on autumn wind.
+
+It was impossible to return the way I had come; so I rolled and jumped
+and generally tumbled to the grassy hill below, and waited for Nimrod to
+go back along the shaly stretch, and bring down the horses the way they
+had gone up.
+
+Then we took some lunch from the saddle bags and sat down in the waving,
+yellow grass of the foot hill with a sweep of miles before us, miles of
+grassy tableland shimmering in the clear air like cloth of gold in the
+sun, where cattle grow fat and the wild things still are at home.
+
+During lunch Nimrod tried to convince me that he knew all the time that
+the antelope I stalked on the mountainside was a stone. Of course wives
+should believe their husbands. The economy of State and Church would
+collapse otherwise. However, the appearance of a large band of antelope,
+a sight now very rare even in the Rockies, caused the profitless
+discussion to be engulfed in the pursuit of the real thing.
+
+The antelope were two miles away, mere specks of white. We could not
+tell them from the twinkling plain until they moved. We mounted
+immediately and went after those antelope--by pretending to go away
+from them. For three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly browsing
+animals. We hid behind low hills, and crawled down a water-course, and
+finally dismounted behind the very mound of prairie on the other side of
+which they were resting, a happy, peaceful family. There were twenty
+does, and proudly in their midst moved the king of the harem, a powerful
+buck with royal horns.
+
+The crowning point of my long day's hunt was before me. That I should
+have my chance to get one of the finest bucks ever hunted was clear. What
+should I do, should I hit or miss? Fail! What a thought--never!
+
+Just then a drumming of hoofs which rapidly faded away showed that
+the wind had betrayed us, and the whole band was off like a flight
+of arrows.
+
+"Shoot! Shoot!" cried Nimrod, but my gun was already up and levelled on
+the flying buck--now nearly a hundred yards away.
+
+Bang! The deadly thing went forth to do its work. Sliding another
+cartridge into the chamber, I held ready for another shot.
+
+There was no need. The fleet-footed monarch's reign was over, and already
+he had gone to his happy hunting ground. The bullet had gone straight to
+his heart, and he had not suffered. But the does, the twenty beating
+hearts of his harem! There they were, not one hundred yards away, huddled
+together with ears erect, tiny feet alert for the next bound--yet waiting
+for their lord and master, the proud tyrant, so strangely still on the
+ground. Why did he not come? And those two creatures whose smell they
+feared--why did he stay so near?
+
+They took a few steps nearer and again waited, eyes and ears and
+uplifted hoofs asking the question, "Why doesn't he come? Why does he
+let those dreadful creatures go so close?" Then, as we bent over their
+fallen hero, they knew he was forever lost to them, and fear sent them
+speeding out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+A MOUNTAIN DRAMA.
+
+
+But hunting does not make one wholly a brute, crying, 'Kill, kill!' at
+every chance. In fact I have no more to confess in that line. Another
+side to it is shown by an incident that happened about a week later.
+
+We were riding leisurely along, a mile or so from the spot where my
+antelope had yielded his life to my vanity, when we saw, several
+miles away in the low hills, two moving flecks of white which might
+mean antelope.
+
+We watched. The two spots came rapidly nearer, and were clearly antelope.
+We were soon able to make out that one was being chased by the other;
+then that they were both bucks, the one in the rear much the heavier and
+evidently the aggressor. Then from behind a hill came the cause of it
+all--a bunch of lady antelope, who kept modestly together and to one
+side, and watched the contest that should decide their master. Surely
+this unclaimed harem was my doing!
+
+All at once, the two on-coming figures saw us. The first one paused,
+doubtful which of the two dangers to choose. His foe caught up with him.
+He wheeled and charged in self-defence, their horns met with a crash,
+and the smaller was thrown to the ground. He was clearly no match for
+his opponent.
+
+He sprang to his feet. His only safety was in flight, but where? His
+strength was nearly gone. He ran a short distance away from us, circling
+our cavalcade. His foe was nearly up to him again. He stopped an instant
+with uplifted foot, then turned and made directly for _us_. Three loaded
+guns hung at our saddles, but no hand went towards them. Not thirty feet
+away from our motionless horses the buck dropped, exhausted. We could
+easily have lassoed him. His adversary kept beyond gunshot, not daring to
+follow him into the power of an enemy all wild things fear; and an eagle
+who had perched on a rock near by, in hopes of a coming feast, flapped
+his wings and slowly flew away to search elsewhere for his dinner. The
+conquering buck walked back to his spoils of war, and soon marshalled
+them out of sight behind a hill.
+
+The young buck almost at our feet quickly recovered. He was not seriously
+hurt, only frightened and winded. He rose to his feet and stood for an
+instant looking directly at us, his head with its growing horns held high
+in the air, as if to thank us for the protection from a lesser foe he had
+so boldly asked and so freely received of an all powerful enemy. Then,
+turning, he lightly sped over the plain in an opposite direction, and the
+eagle, who had kept us in sight until now, perhaps with a lingering hope,
+rose swiftly upwards and was lost to sight.
+
+One elk with an eleven-point crown, and one antelope, of the finest ever
+brought down, is the tax I levied on the wild things. Of the many, many
+times I have watched them and left them unmolested, and of the lessons
+they have taught me, under Nimrod's guidance, I have not space to tell,
+for the real fascination of hunting is not in the killing but in seeing
+the creature at home amid his glorious surroundings, and feeling the
+freely rushing blood, the health-giving air, the gleeful sense of joy and
+life in nature, both within and without.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAHB OF THE BIGHORN BASIN.
+
+
+A fourteen-inch track is big, even for a grizzly. That was the size of
+Wahb's. The first time I saw it, the hole looked big enough for a
+baby's bath tub.
+
+We were travelling in Mr. A.'s pack train across the Shoshones from Idaho
+to Wyoming. It was the first of October, and by then, in that region,
+winter is shaking hands with you--pleasant hands to be sure, but a bit
+cool. The night before we had made a picturesque camp on the lee side of
+a rock cliff which was honeycombed with caves. A blazing camp fire was
+built at the mouth of one of these and we lounged on the rock ledges
+inside, thoroughly protected from the wind and cold. A storm was brewing.
+We could hear the pine trees whistle and shriek as they were lashed about
+in the forest across the brook. The lurid light of the fire showed us
+ourselves in distorted shadows. The whole place seemed wild and wicked,
+like a robber camp, and under its spell one thought things and felt
+things that would have been impossible in the sun shine, where everything
+is revealed. It began to snow, but we laughed at that. What did it matter
+in the shelter of the cave? For the first time in days I was thoroughly
+toasted on all sides at once. We had changed abruptly from the
+steam-heated Pullman to camping in snow, and it takes a few days to get
+used to such a shock. We told tales as weird as the scene, until far into
+the night. The next morning the sun was bright, but the cook had to cut a
+hole in the ice blanket over the brook to get water. We dared not linger
+at our robber camp, for at any time a big snowstorm might come that would
+cover the Wind River Divide, which we had to cross, with snow too deep
+for the horses to travel.
+
+Two days later, the weather still promising well, we decided to camp for
+a few days on the Upper Wiggin's Fork to hunt. It was a lovely spot; one
+of those little grassy parks which but for the uprising masses of
+mountains and towering trees might have surrounded your country home.
+
+That first night as we sat around the camp fire there came out of the
+blackness behind us a faint greeting--_Wheres Who_--_Wheres Who_--from a
+denizen of this mountain park, the great horned owl. The next morning we
+packed biscuits into our saddle-bags and separated for the day into two
+parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and myself, leaving the
+Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk, mountain lion, or
+bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a combination which the
+Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance.
+
+The Host led me down the Wiggin's Fork for two miles, when we came out
+upon a sandy, pebbly stretch which in spring the torrents entirely
+covered, but now had been dried up for months. I was following
+mechanically, guiding Blondey's feet among the cobblestones, for nature
+had paved the place very badly, without much thought for anything beyond
+the pleasure of being alive, when the Host suddenly stopped and pointed
+to the ground. There I made out the track of a huge bear going the way we
+were, and beyond was another, and another. Then they disappeared like a
+row of post-holes into the distance. The Host said there was only one
+bear in that region that could make a track like that; in spite of the
+fact that this was beyond his range, it must be Meeteetsee Wahb. He got
+off his horse and measured the track. Yes, the hind foot tracked fourteen
+inches. What a hole in the ground it looked!
+
+The Host said the maker of it was probably far away, as he judged the
+track to be several weeks old. I had heard so many tales of this monster
+that when I gazed upon his track I felt as though I were looking at the
+autograph of a hero.
+
+We saw other smaller grizzly and black bear tracks that day, so it was
+decided to set a bear bait. Our Host was a cattle king, and could wage
+war on bears with a good conscience. The usual three-cornered affair of
+logs was fixed, the trap in the centre and elk meat as a decoy. Horse
+meat is more alluring, but we deemed we would not need that, since we had
+with us "a never-failing bear charm." Its object was to suggest a lady
+bear, and thus attract some gallant to her side. The secret of the
+preparation of this charm had been confided to Nimrod by an old hunter
+the year before. It was a liquid composed of rancid fish oil, and--but I
+suppose I must not tell. A more ungodly odour I have never known. Nimrod
+put a few drops of it on his horse's feet, and all the other horses
+straightway ostracised him for several days till the worst of it wore
+away. Even the cook allowed "it was all-fired nasty." So some of this
+bear charm went on the bait.
+
+The next morning, as we started out for the day to roam the mountains, we
+first inspected the bear pen. Nothing had been near it. Indeed that charm
+would keep everything else away, if not the bear himself.
+
+The next day it was the same story, but this really was no argument for
+or against the charm, because, as I was told, bears in feeding usually
+make about a two weeks' circuit, and although we had seen many tracks
+they were all stale, demonstrating in a rough way that if we could linger
+for a week or two we would be sure to catch some one of the trackers on
+the return trip.
+
+This we could not do, as the expected snow-storm was now threatening,
+and we were still two days from the Divide. To be snowed up there would
+be serious. Before we could get packed up the snow began, falling
+steadily and quietly as though reserving its forces for later violence.
+We had been travelling about an hour from where we broke camp, when
+Nimrod beckoned me to join him where he had halted with the Horsewrangler
+a little off the line the pack train was following. I rode up quietly,
+thinking it might be game. But no; Horsewrangler pointed to a little bank
+where there was a circular opening in the trees. I looked, but did not
+understand.
+
+"Do you see that dip in the ground there where the snow melts as fast as
+it drops?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wal, that there's a bear bath."
+
+"A bear's bath!" I exclaimed, suspecting a hoax.
+
+"Yes, a sulphur spring. I reckon this here one belongs to the Big
+Grizzly."
+
+We examined the place with much interest, but found no fresh tracks, and
+the snow had covered most of the stale ones, as "of course he ain't got
+no call for it in winter. Like as not, he's denned up somewheres near,
+though it's a mite early."
+
+This was thrilling. Perhaps we might pass within a few feet of Wahb and
+never know it. It was like being told that the ghost of the dear departed
+is watching you. Nimrod pointed out to me a tree with the bark scratched
+and torn off for several feet--one of Wahb's rubbing trees. He located
+the sunning ledge for me, and then we reluctantly hurried on, for the
+journey ahead promised to be long and hard. Indeed I found it so.
+
+There were many indications that the storm was a serious one, and not the
+least of these was the behaviour of the little chief hare, or pika. As we
+ascended the rocky mountain-side we saw many of these little creatures
+scurrying hither and thither with bundles of hay in their mouths, which
+they deposited in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places under rocks. So hard
+were they working that they could not even stop to be afraid of us. As
+all the party, but myself, knew, this meant bad weather and winter; for
+these cute, overgrown rats are reliable barometers, and they gave every
+indication that they were belated in getting their food supply, which had
+been garnered in the autumn after the manner of their kind, properly
+housed for winter use.
+
+All that day we worked our way through the forest with the silent snow
+deepening around us, ever up and up, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten
+thousand feet. It was an endless day of freezing in the saddle, and of
+snow showers in one's face from the overladen branches. I was frightfully
+cold and miserable. Every minute seemed the last I could endure without
+screeching. But still our Host pushed on. It was necessary to get near
+enough to the top of the Continental Divide so that we could cross it the
+next day. It began to grow dark about three o'clock; the storm increased.
+I kept saying over and over to myself what I was determined I should not
+say out loud:
+
+"Oh, please stop and make camp! I cannot stay in this saddle another
+minute. My left foot is frozen. I know it is, and the saddle cramp is
+unbearable. I am so hungry, so cold, so exhausted; oh, please stop!"
+Then, having wailed this out under my breath, I would answer it harshly:
+"You little fool, stop your whimpering. The others are made of flesh and
+blood too. We should be snowbound if we stopped here. Don't be a
+cry-baby. There is lots of good stuff in you yet. This only seems
+terrible because you are not used to it, so brace up."
+
+[Illustration: THUS I FOUGHT THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.]
+
+Then I would even smile at Nimrod who kept keen watch on me, or wave my
+hand at the Host, who was in front. This appearance of unconcern helped
+me for a few seconds, and then I would begin the weary round: "Oh, my
+foot, my back, my head; I cannot endure it another moment; I can't, I
+can't." Yet all the while knowing that I could and would. Thus I fought
+through the afternoon, and at last became just a numb thing on the horse
+with but one thought, "I can and will do it." So at last when the order
+came to camp in four feet of snow ten thousand feet above the sea, with
+the wind and snow blowing a high gale, I just drew rein and sat there on
+my tired beast.
+
+We disturbed a band of mountain sheep that got over the deep snow with
+incredible swiftness. It was my first view of these animals, but it
+aroused no enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder that they seemed to be
+enjoying themselves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled me off, I was too
+stiff and numb to get down myself. Then I found that the snow was so deep
+I could not go four feet. Not to be able to move about seemed to me the
+end of all things. I simply dropped in the snow--it was impossible to
+ever be warm and happy again--and prepared at last to weep.
+
+But I looked around first--Nimrod was coaxing a pack animal through the
+snow to a comparatively level place where our tent and bed things could
+be placed. The Host was shovelling a pathway between me and the spot
+where the Cook was coaxing a fire. The Horsewrangler was unpacking the
+horses alone (so that I might have a fire the sooner). They were all
+grim--doubtless as weary as I--but they were all working for my ultimate
+comfort, while I was about to repay them by sitting in the snow and
+weeping. I pictured them in four separate heaps in the snow, all weeping.
+This was too much; I did not weep. Instead by great effort I managed to
+get my horse near the fire, and after thawing out a moment unsaddled the
+tired animal, who galloped off gladly to join his comrades, and thus I
+became once more a unit in the economic force. But bad luck had
+crossed its fingers at me that day without doubt, and I had to be taught
+another lesson. I tell of it briefly as a warning to other women; of
+course--men always know better, instinctively, as they know how to fight.
+I presume you will agree that ignorance is punished more cruelly than any
+other thing, and that in most cases good intentions do not lighten the
+offence. My ignorance that time was of the effect of eating snow on an
+empty stomach. My intentions were of the best, for, being thirsty, I ate
+several handfuls of snow in order to save the cook from getting water out
+of a brook that was frozen. But my punishment was the same--a severe
+chill which made me very ill.
+
+I had been cold all day, but that is a very different thing from having a
+chill. I felt stuffed with snow; snow water ran in my veins, snow
+covered the earth, the peaks around me. I was mad with snow. They gave me
+snow whisky and put me beside a snow fire. I had not told any one what I
+had done, not realising what was the mischief maker, and it really looked
+as though I had heart disease, or something dreadful.
+
+They put rugs and coats around me till I could not move with their
+weight; but they were putting them around a snow woman. The only thing I
+felt was the icy wind, and that went through my shivering, shaking self.
+The snow was falling quietly and steadily, as it had fallen all day. We
+_must_ cross yonder divide to-morrow. It was no time to be ill. Every one
+felt that, and big, black gloom was settling over the camp, when I by way
+of being cheerful remarked to the Host: "Do you-ou kno-ow, I feel as
+though there was n-nothing of me b-but the sno-ow I ate an hour ago."
+
+"Snow!" he exclaimed. "Did you eat much? Well, no wonder you are ill."
+
+The effect was instantaneous. Everybody looked relieved; I was not even
+a heroine.
+
+"I will soon cure you," said the Host, as he poured out more whisky, and
+the Cook reheated some soup and chocolate. The hot drinks soon succeeded
+in thawing me from a snow woman back to shivering flesh and blood which
+was supportable.
+
+Nimrod looked pleasant again and began studying the mountain sheep
+tracks. The cook fell to whistling softly from one side of his mouth,
+while a cigarette dangled from the other, as was his wont when he
+puttered about the fire. The Horsewrangler was making everything tight
+for the night against wind and snow. The Host lighted a cigarette, a calm
+expression glided over his face, and he became chatty, and, although the
+storm was just as fierce and the thermometer just as low, peace was
+restored to Camp Snow.
+
+The next day we crossed the divide, and not a day too soon. The snow was
+so deep that the trail breaker in front was in danger of going over a
+precipice or into a rock crevice at any time. After him came the pack,
+animals, so that they could make a path for us. The path was just the
+width of the horse, and in some places the walls of it rose above my
+head. In such places I had to keep my feet high up in the saddle to
+prevent them from being crushed. For a half day we struggled upwards
+with danger stalking by our sides, then on the very ridge of the divide
+itself, 11,500 feet in the air, with the icy wind blowing a hurricane of
+blinding snow, we skirted along a precipice the edge of which the snow
+covered so that we could not be sure when a misstep might send us over
+into whatever is waiting for us in the next world.
+
+But fortunately we did not even lose a horse. Then came the plunging
+down, down, with no chance to pick steps because of the all-concealing
+snow. Those, indeed, were "stirring times," but we made camp that night
+in clear weather and good spirits. We were on the right side of the
+barrier and only two days from the Palette Ranch--and safety, not to
+say luxury.
+
+If you had Aladdin's lamp and asked for a shooting box, you could hardly
+expect to find anything more ideal than the Palette Ranch. There is no
+spot in the world more beautiful or more health giving. It is tucked away
+by itself in the heart of the Rockies, 150 miles from the railroad, 40
+miles from the stage route, and surrounded on the three sides by a
+wilderness of mountains. And when after travelling over these for three
+weeks with compass as guide, one dark, stormy night we stumbled and
+slipped down a mountain side and across an icy brook to its front lawn,
+the message of good cheer that streamed in rosy light from its windows
+seemed like an opiate dream.
+
+We entered a large living room, hung with tapestries and hunting trophies
+where a perfectly appointed table was set opposite a huge stone
+fireplace, blazing with logs. Then came a delicious course dinner with
+rare wines, and served by a French chef. The surprise and delight of it
+in that wilderness--but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we
+entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing
+lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal
+mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a
+hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled
+bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that
+region a veritable fairy's chamber. Truly it is a canny Host who can thus
+blend harmoniously the human luxuries of the East and the natural glories
+of the West.
+
+In our rides around the Palette I saw Wahb's tracks once again. The Host
+had taken us to a far away part of his possessions. Three beautiful wolf
+hounds frisked along beside us, when all at once they became much excited
+about something they smelt in a little scrub-pine clump on the right. We
+looked about for some track or sign that would explain their behaviour. I
+spied a huge bear track.
+
+"Hah!" I thought, "Wahb at last," and my heart went pit-a-pat as I
+pointed it out to Nimrod. He recognised it but remained far too calm
+for my fancy. I pointed into the bushes with signs of "Hurrah, it's
+Wahb." I received in reply a shake of the head and a pitying smile. How
+was I to know that the dogs were saying as plainly as dogs need to "A
+bobcat treed"?
+
+So I followed meekly and soon saw the bobcat's eyes glaring at us from
+the topmost branches. The Host took a shot at it with the camera which
+the lynx did not seem to mind, and calling off the disappointed dogs we
+went on our way. The Host allows no shooting within a radius of twelve
+miles of the Palette. Any living thing can find protection there and the
+result is that any time you choose to ride forth you can see perfectly
+wild game in their homeland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not till the next year that I really saw Wahb. It was at his
+summer haunt, the Fountain Hotel in the Yellowstone National Park. If
+you were to ask Nimrod to describe the Fountain geyser or Hell Hole,
+or any of the other tourist sights thereabouts, I am sure he would
+shake his head and tell you there was nothing but bears around the
+hotel. For this was the occasion when Nimrod spent the entire day in
+the garbage heap watching the bears, while I did the conventional
+thing and saw the sights.
+
+About sunset I got back to the hotel. Much to my surprise I could not
+find Nimrod; and neither had he been seen since morning, when he had
+started in the direction of the garbage heap in the woods some quarter of
+a mile back from the hotel. Anxiously I hurried there, but could see no
+Nimrod. Instead I saw the outline of a Grizzly feeding quietly on the
+hillside. It was very lonely and gruesome. Under other circumstances I
+certainly would have departed quickly the way I came, but now I must find
+Nimrod. It was growing dark, and the bear looked a shocking size, as big
+as a whale. Dear me, perhaps Nimrod was inside--Jonah style. Just then I
+heard a sepulchral whisper from the earth.
+
+"Keep quiet, don't move, it's the Big Grizzly."
+
+I looked about for the owner of the whisper and discovered Nimrod not
+far away in a nest he had made for himself in a pile of rubbish. I
+edged nearer.
+
+"See, over there in the woods are two black bears. You scared them away.
+Isn't he a monster?" indicating Wahb.
+
+I responded with appropriate enthusiasm. Then after a respectful silence
+I ventured to say:
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"All day--and such a day--thirteen bears at one time. It is worth all
+your geysers rolled into one.
+
+"H'm--Have you had anything to eat?"
+
+"No." Another silence, then I began again.
+
+"Aren't you hungry? Don't you want to come to dinner?"
+
+He nodded yes. Then I sneaked away and came back as soon as possible with
+a change of clothes. The scene was as I had left it, but duskier. I stood
+waiting for the next move. The Grizzly made it. He evidently had finished
+his meal for the night, and now moved majestically off up the hill
+towards the pine woods. At the edge of these he stood for a moment,
+Wahb's last appearance, so far as I am concerned, for, as he posed, the
+fading, light dropped its curtain of darkness between us, and I was able
+to get Nimrod away.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE DEAD HUNT.
+
+
+To hunt the wily puma, the wary elk, or the fleet-footed antelope is to
+have experiences strange and varied, but for the largest assortment of
+thrills in an equal time the 'dead hunt' is the most productive. My
+acquaintance with a 'dead hunt'--which is by no means a 'still
+hunt'--began and ended at Raven Agency. It included horses, bicycles, and
+Indians, and followed none of the customary rules laid down for a hunt,
+either in progress or result.
+
+And, not to antagonise the reader, I will say now that it was very
+naughty to do what I did, an impolite and ungenerous thing to do, on a
+par with the making up of slumming parties to pry into the secrets of the
+poor. It was the act of a vandal, and at times--in the gray dawn and on
+the first day of January--I am sorry about it; but then I should not have
+had that carved bead armlet, and as that is the tail of my story, I will
+put it in the mouth and properly begin.
+
+Nimrod and I went to the United States agency for the Asrapako or Raven
+Indians in--well, never mind, not such a far cry from the Rockies, unless
+you are one of those uncomfortable persons who carry a map of the United
+States in your mind's eye--because Burfield was there painting Many
+Whacks, the famous chief; because Nimrod wanted to know what kind of
+beasties lived in that region; and because I wanted a face to face
+encounter with the Indian at home. I got it.
+
+The first duty of a stranger at Raven Agency is to visit the famous
+battlefield, three miles away; and the Agent, an army officer, very
+charmingly made up a horseback party to escort us there. He put me on a
+rawboned bay who, he said, was a "great goer." It was no merry jest. I
+was nearly the last to mount and quite the first to go flying down the
+road. The Great Goer galloped all the way there. His mouth was as hard as
+nails, and I could not check him; still, the ride was no worse than being
+tossed in a blanket for half an hour. On the very spot, I heard the
+story of the tragic Indian fight by one who claimed to have been an
+eye-witness. Every place where each member of that heroic band fell,
+doing his duty, is marked by a small marble monument, and as I looked
+over the battle ground and saw these symbols of beating hearts, long
+still in death, clustered in twos and threes and a dozen where each had
+made the last stand, every pillar seemed to become a shadowy soldier; the
+whole awful shame of the massacre swept over me, and I was glad to head
+my horse abruptly for home. And then there were other things to think
+about, things more intimate and real. No sooner did the Great Goer's nose
+point in the direction of his stable than he gave a great bound, as
+though a bee had stung him; then he lowered his head, laid back his ears,
+and--gallopped home.
+
+[Illustration: WE WHIZZED ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACK IN FRONT OF THE
+DAY EXPRESS.]
+
+I yanked and tugged at the bit. It was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I
+might as well have been a monkey or a straw woman bobbing up and down on
+his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, gaily sped on the Great Goer.
+There were dim shouts far behind me for a while, then no more. The
+roadside whipped by, two long streaks of green. We whizzed across the
+railroad track in front of the day express, accompanied by the engine's
+frantic shriek of "down brakes." If a shoe had caught in the track--ah!
+I lost my hat, my gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown locks flew out
+two feet behind.
+
+Away went my watch, then the all in two pockets, knife, purse,
+match-box--surely this trail was an improvement on Tom Thumb's' bread
+crumbs. One foot was out of the stirrup. I wrapped the reins around the
+pommel and clung on. There is a gopher hole--that means a broken leg for
+him, a clavicle and a few ribs for me. No; on we go. Ah, that stony brook
+ahead we soon must cross! Ye gods, so young and so fair! To perish thus,
+the toy of a raw-boned Great Goer!
+
+Pound, pound, pound, the hard road rang with the thunder of hoofs. Could
+I endure it longer? Oh, there is the stream--surely he will stop. No! He
+is going to jump! It's an awful distance! With a frantic effort I got my
+feet in the stirrups. He gathered himself together. I shut my eyes. Oh!
+We missed the bank and landed in the water--an awful mess. But the Great
+Goer scrambled out, with me still on top somehow, and started on. I
+pulled on the reins again with every muscle, trying to break his pace, or
+his neck anything that was his. Then there was a flapping noise below. We
+both heard it, we both knew what it was--the cinch worked loose, that
+meant the saddle loose.
+
+In desperation I clutched the Great Goer's mane with both hands and,
+leaning forward, yelled wildly in his ears:
+
+"Whoa, whoa! The saddle's turning! Whoa! Do you wa-ant to _ki-ill_ me?"
+
+Do not tell me that the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a
+vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the
+Great Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in
+the line of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to
+nibbling grass as placidly as though he had not been doing racing time
+for three miles, and I should have gone on forever believing in his
+wondrous wit had I not turned and realised that he was standing in his
+own pasture lot.
+
+Seeking to console my dishevelled self as I got off, I murmured, "Well,
+it was a sensation any way--an absolutely new one," just as Nimrod
+gallopped up, and seeing I was all right, called out:
+
+"Hello, John Gilpin!" That is the way with men.
+
+My scattered belongings were gathered up by the rest of the party, and
+each as he arrived with the relic he had gathered, made haste to explain
+that his horse had no chance with my mount.
+
+I thanked the Agent for the Great Goer without much comment. (See advice
+to Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband.) But that is why, the next
+day, when Burfield confided to me that he knew where there were some
+'Dead-trees' (not dead trees) that could be examined without fear of
+detection, I preferred to borrow the doctor's wife's bicycle.
+
+Dead-trees? Very likely you know what I did not until I saw for myself,
+that the Asrapako, in common with several Indian tribes, place their dead
+in trees instead of in the ground. As the trees are very scarce in that
+arid country, and only to be found in gullies and along the banks of the
+Little Big Buck River, nearly every tree has its burden of one or more
+swathed-up bodies bound to its branches, half hidden by the leaves, like
+great cocoons--most ghastly reminders of the end of all human things.
+
+It was to a cluster of these "deadtrees," five miles away, that Burfield
+guided me, and it was on this ride that the wily wheel, stripped of all
+its glamour of shady roads, tête-à-têtes, down grades, and asphalts,
+appeared as its true, heavy, small seated, stubborn self.
+
+I can undertake to cure any bicycle enthusiast. The receipt is simple and
+here given away. First, take two months of Rocky Mountains with a living
+sentient creature to pull you up and down their rock-ribbed sides, to
+help out with his sagacity when your own fails, and to carry you at a
+long easy lope over the grassy uplands some eight or ten thousand feet
+above the sea in that glorious bracing air. Secondly, descend rapidly to
+the Montana plains--hot, oppressive, enervating--or to the Raven Agency,
+if you will, and attempt to ride a wheel up the only hill in all that
+arid stretch of semi desert, a rise of perhaps three hundred feet.
+
+It is enough. You will find that your head is a sea of dizziness, that
+your lungs have refused to work, that your heart is pounding aloud in
+agony, and you will then and there pronounce the wheel an instrument of
+torture, devised for the undoing of woman.
+
+I tried it. It cured me, and, once cured, the charms of the wheel are as
+vapid as the defence of a vigilant committee to the man it means to hang.
+Stubborn--it would not go a step without being pushed. It would not even
+stand up by itself, and I literally had to push it--it, as well as myself
+on it--in toil and dust and heat the whole way. Nimrod said his bicycle
+betrayed itself, too, only not so badly. Of course, that was because he
+was stronger. The weaker one is, the more stubbornly bicycles behave.
+Every one knows that. And they are so narrow minded. They needs must
+stick to the travelled road, and they behave viciously when they get in a
+rut. Imagine hunting antelope across sage-brush country on a bicycle! I
+know a surveyor who tried it once. They brought him home with sixteen
+broken bones and really quite a few pieces of the wheel, improved to
+Rococo. Bah! Away with it and its limitations, and those of its big
+brother, the automobile! Sing me no death knell of the horse companion.
+
+At last, with the assistance of trail and muscle, the five miles were
+covered, and we came to a dip in the earth which some bygone torrent had
+hollowed out, and so given a chance for a little moisture to be retained
+to feed the half-dozen cottonwoods and rank grass, that dared to struggle
+for existence in that baked up sage-brush waste which the government has
+set aside for the Raven paradise.
+
+We jumped--no, that is horse talk--we sprawled off our wheels and left
+the stupid things, lying supinely on their sides, like the dead lumpish
+things they are, and descended a steep bank some ten feet into the gully.
+
+It was a gruesome sight, in the hour before sunset, with not a soul but
+ourselves for miles around. The lowering sun lighted up the under side of
+the leaves and branches and their strange burdens, giving an effect
+uncanny and weird, as though caused by unseen footlights. Not a sound
+disturbed the oppressive quiet, not the quiver of a twig. Five of the six
+trees bore oblong bundles, wrapped in comforters and blankets, and bound
+with buckskin to the branches near the trunk, fifteen or twenty feet from
+the ground, too high for coyotes, too tight for vultures. But what caught
+our attention as we dropped into the gully was one of the bundles that
+had slipped from its fastenings and was hanging by a thong.
+
+It needed but a tug to pull it to the ground. Burfield supplied that tug,
+and we all got a shock when the wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted
+at one end and disclosed the face of a mummy. I had retreated to the
+other end of the little dip, not caring to witness some awful spectacle
+of disintegration; but a mummy--no museum-cased specimen, labelled 'hands
+off', but a real mummy of one's own finding--was worth a few shudders
+to examine.
+
+I looked into the shrivelled, but otherwise normal, face of the Indian
+woman. What had been her life, her heart history, now as completely gone
+as though it had never been--thirty years of life struggle in snow and
+sun, with, perhaps, a little joy, and then what?
+
+Seven brass rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled
+the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were
+more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a
+peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and
+surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that
+determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while
+longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very
+much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the
+wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I
+stooped to help him, and he whispered:
+
+"Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there'll be trouble,
+I'm afraid."
+
+We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried
+to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had
+fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to
+the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged
+unconcernedly.
+
+There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched
+here and there by the sun's last gleams. We were much relieved.
+Said Burfield:
+
+"The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they
+had caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us."
+
+"Why, what would they do?" I asked, suddenly realising what many white
+men never do--that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The
+brass rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency,
+but I don't know; a mad Injun's a bad Injun."
+
+Nevertheless, this opinion did not deter him from climbing a tree where
+three bodies lay side by side in a curious fashion; but I had no more
+interest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. Nimrod had wandered off some
+distance and was watching a gopher hole-up for the night. The place in
+the fading light was spooky, but it was of live Indians, not dead ones,
+that I was thinking.
+
+There is a time for all things, and clearly this was the time to go
+back to Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. I started for the
+bicycles when two black specks appeared on the horizon and grew
+rapidly larger. They could be nothing but two men on horseback
+approaching at a furious gallop. It was but yaller-covered-novel
+justice that they should be Indians.
+
+"Quick, Burfield, get out of that tree on the other side!" It did not
+take a second for man and tree to be quit of each other, at the imminent
+risk of broken bones. I started again for the wheels.
+
+"Stay where, you are," said Burfield; "we could never get away on those
+things. If they are after us, we must bluff it out."
+
+There was no doubt about their being after us. The two galloping figures
+were pointed straight at us and were soon close enough to show that they
+were Indians. We stood like posts and awaited them. Thud, thud--ta-thud,
+thud--on they charged at a furious pace directly at us. They were five
+hundred feet away--one hundred feet--fifty.
+
+Now, I always take proper pride in my self possession, and to show how
+calm I was, I got out my camera, and as the two warriors came chasing up
+to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I had taken a landscape a minute
+before, and I do not think that the fact that that landscape and those
+Indians appeared on the same plate is any proof that I was in the least
+upset by the red men's onset. Forty feet, thirty--on they came--ten--were
+they going to run us down?
+
+Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead
+stop--unpleasantly, close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an
+electric silence, such as comes between the lightning's flash and the
+thunder's crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each
+measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate
+spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced
+from the shock of the sudden stop.
+
+For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then
+one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching
+suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the
+bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale brass rings and armlet were in my
+gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He
+turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke
+grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
+
+[Illustration: FIVE FEET FULL IN FRONT OF US, THEY PULLED THEIR HORSES TO
+A DEAD STOP.]
+
+"No touch 'em; savey?" giving a significant jerk of the head towards
+the trees.
+
+We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those brass rings! Why
+did I want to steal brass rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman
+mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
+
+There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions,
+so much as a leaf's thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as
+the first, spoke sullenly:
+
+"No touch 'em; savey?" He laid his hand suggestively on something in his
+belt.
+
+Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a
+thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned
+their horses.
+
+We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the
+other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground
+and--who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look
+backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements of
+a tragedy.
+
+I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor's
+wife's bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night,
+after I had delivered unto the doctor's wife her own, and disinfected the
+gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again
+list--bicycling in Montana and 'dead hunts.'
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+JUST RATTLESNAKES.
+
+
+It is a blessing that a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No
+one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it
+has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from
+our simian ancestors.
+
+To me, I acknowledge, a rattler is just a horrid snake; so, when we were
+told at Markham that rattlers were more common than the cattle which
+grazed on every hill, I discovered that there were yet new imps to
+conquer in my world of fear. Shakspere has said some nice things about
+fear--"Of all the wonders, ... it seems to me most strange that men
+should fear"--but he never knew anything about squirming rattlesnakes.
+
+The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles from Markham. That thriving
+metropolis has ten houses and eleven saloons, in spite of Dakota being
+'prohibition.' Markham is in the heart of the Bad Lands, the wonderful
+freakish Bad Lands, where great herds of cattle range over all the
+possible, and some of the impossible, places, while the rest of
+it--black, green, and red peaks, hills of powdered coal, wicked land cuts
+that no plumb can fathom, treacherous clay crust over boiling lava, arid
+horrid miles of impish whimsical Nature--is Bad indeed.
+
+Nimrod and I had been lured to the Cuttle Fish ranch to go on a wolf
+hunt. The house was a large two storey affair of logs, with a long tail
+of one storey log outbuildings like a train of box cars. We sat down to
+dinner the first night with twenty others, a queer lot truly to find in
+that wild uncivilised place. There was an ex-mayor and his wife from a
+large Eastern city; a United States Senator--the toughest of the
+party--who appeared at table in his undershirt; four cowboys, who were
+better mannered than the two New York millionaires' sons who had been
+sent there to spend their college vacation and get toughened (the process
+was obviously succeeding); they made Nimrod apologise for keeping his
+coat on during dinner; the three brothers who owned the ranch, and the
+wife of one of them; several children; a prim and proper spinster from
+Washington--how she got there, who can tell?--and Miss Belle Hadley, the
+servant girl.
+
+In studying the case of Belle I at last appreciated the age-old teaching
+that the greatest dignity belongs to the one who serves. Else why did
+the ex-mayor's wife bake doughnuts, and the rotund Senator toil at the
+ice cream freezer with the thermometer at 112 degrees, and the
+millionaires' sons call Belle "Miss Hadley," and I make bows for her
+organdie dress, while she curled her hair for a dance to be held that
+evening ten miles away, and to which she went complacently with her pick
+of the cowboys and her employers' two best horses, while they stayed at
+home and did her work! Else why did this one fetch wood for her, that
+one peel the potatoes, another wash the dishes? And when she and the
+rest of us were seated at meals, and something was needed from the
+kitchen, why did the unlucky one nearest the door jump up and forage?
+Belle was never nearest the door. She sat at the middle of the long
+table, so that she could be handy to everything that was 'circulating.'
+But I refer this case to the author of those delightful papers on the
+"Unquiet Sex," and hark back to my story.
+
+That night the moon was full, and the coyotes made savage music around
+the lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a
+snappy _wow-wow, yac-yac_, and then a long drawn out _ooo-oo_; then
+another voice, a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the
+star voice of them all--loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I
+saw him silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head
+thrown back and muzzle raised, as he gave to the peaceful night his
+long, howling bark, his "talk at moon" as the Indians put it. The
+ranchman remarked that there were "two or three out there," but I knew
+better. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them; I am not deaf.
+
+The next morning we were up with the dawn and started by eight to run
+down Mountain Billy, the grey wolf who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad
+Lands. Our outfit was as symmetrical as a pine cone;--dogs, horses, mess
+wagon, food, guns and men. All we needed was the grey wolf. I was the
+only woman in the party, and, like "Weary Waddles," tagged behind.
+
+[Illustration: THE COYOTES MADE SAVAGE MUSIC.]
+
+It was the middle of September, and the weather should have known
+better. But it was the Bad Lands, and there was a hot spell on. By three
+o'clock the thermometer showed 116-1/2 in the shade, and I believed it.
+The heat and glare simmered around us like fire. The dogs' tongues nearly
+trailed in the baked dust, the horses' heads hung low, an iron band
+seemed ever tightening around my head, as the sun beat down upon all
+alike with pitiless force.
+
+When we came to the Little Missoula, even its brackish muddy water was
+welcome, and I shut my eyes to the dirt in the uninviting brown fluid,
+and my mind to the knowledge of the horrid things it would do to me, and
+drank; Tepid, gritty, foul--was it water I had swallowed? The horse
+assigned to me, a small, white, benevolent animal named 'Whiskers,'
+waded in knee deep and did the same. Whiskers was a 'lady's horse,'
+which, being interpreted, meant aged eighteen or twenty, with all spirit
+knocked out by hard work; a broken down cow pony, in fact, or, in local
+parlance, a 'skate,' a 'goat.' He had lagged considerably behind the
+rest of the party.
+
+However, Whiskers did not matter; nothing mattered but the waves on
+waves of heat that quivered before my eyes. I shut them and began
+repeating cooling rhymes, such as 'twin peaks snow clad,' 'From
+Greenland's Icy Mountains,' and the 'Frozen North,' by way of living up
+to Professor James' teachings. Whiskers was ambling on, half-stupefied
+with the heat, as I was, when from the road just in front came a
+peculiar sound. I did not know what it was, but Whiskers did, and he
+immediately executed a demi volte (see Webster) with an energy I had
+not thought him capable of.
+
+Again came the noise, yes, surely, just as it had been described--like
+dried peas in a pod--and gliding across the road was a big rattlesnake. I
+confess had Whiskers been so inclined, I should have been content to have
+passed on with haughty disdain. But Whiskers performed a left flank
+movement so nearly unseating me that I deemed it expedient to drop to the
+ground, and Whiskers, without waiting for orders, retreated down the road
+at what he meant for a gallop. The rattler stopped his pretty gliding
+motion away from me, and seemed in doubt. Then he began to take on a few
+quirks. "He is going to coil and then to strike," said I, recalling a
+paragraph from my school reader. It was an unhappy moment! I knew that
+tradition had fixed the proper weapons to be used against rattlesnakes:
+a stone (more if necessary), a stick (forked one preferred), and in rare
+cases a revolver (when it is that kind of a story). I had no revolver.
+There was not a stick in sight, and not a stone bigger than a hazelnut;
+but there was the rattler. I cast another despairing glance around and
+saw, almost at my feet and half hidden by sage brush, several inches of
+rusty iron--blessed be the passing teamster who had thrown it there. I
+darted towards it and, despite tradition, turned on the rattler armed
+with the goodly remains of--a frying pan.
+
+[Illustration: THE HORRID THING WAS READY FOR ME.]
+
+The horrid thing was ready for me with darting tongue and flattened
+head--another instant it would have sprung. _Smash_ on its head went my
+valiant frying pan and struck a deadly blow, although the thing managed
+to get from under it. I recaptured my weapon and again it descended upon
+the reptile's head, settling it this time. Feeling safe, I now took hold
+of the handle to finish it more quickly. Oh, that tail--that awful,
+writhing, lashing tail! I can stand Indians, bears, wolves, anything but
+that tail, and a rattler is all tail, except its head. If that tail
+touches me I shall let go. It did touch me, I did not let go. Pride held
+me there, for I heard the sound of galloping hoofs. Whiskers' empty
+saddle had alarmed the rest of the party.
+
+My snake was dead now, so I put one foot on him to take his scalp--his
+rattles, I mean--when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny
+thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to
+think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance
+that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my
+heart and captured his 'pod of dry peas.'
+
+Oh, about the wolf hunt! That was all, just heat and rattlesnakes.
+
+The hounds could not run; one died from sunstroke while chasing a jack
+rabbit. No one lifted a finger if it could be avoided. All the world was
+an oven, and after three days we gave up the chase, and leaving Mountain
+Billy panting triumphantly somewhere in his lair, trailed back to the
+ranch house with drooping heads and fifteen rattle-snakes' tails. Oh, no,
+the hunt was not a failure--for Mountain Billy.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+AS COWGIRL.
+
+
+Till the time of the "WB" round-up all cows looked alike to me. We were
+still at the Cuttle Fish ranch, which was in a state of great activity
+because of the fall roundup. Belle, the servant girl, had received less
+attention of late and had been worked harder, a combination of
+disagreeables which caused her to threaten imminent departure. The
+cowboys, who had been away for several days gathering in the stragglers
+that had wandered into the wild recesses of those uncanny Bad Land hills,
+assembled in full force for the evening meal, and announced, between
+mouthfuls, that the morrow was to be branding day for the several
+outfits, about two thousand head of cattle in all, the 'WB' included,
+which were rounded up on the Big Flat two miles distant from the ranch.
+
+This was the chance for me to be relieved of my crass ignorance
+concerning round-ups, really to have a definite conception of the term
+instead of the sea of vagueness and conjecture into which I was plunged
+by the usual description--"Oh, just a whole lot of cattle driven to one
+place, and those that need it are cut out and frescoed." How many was a
+whole lot, how were they driven, where were they driven from, what were
+they cut out with, how were they branded, and when did they need it? My
+ignorance was hopeless and pathetic, and those to whom I applied were all
+too familiar with the process to be able to describe it. I might as well
+have asked for a full description of how a man ate his dinner.
+
+"Will you take me to the round-up to-morrow?" I asked of the 'WB' boss.
+
+"Well, I could have a team hitched up, and Bob could drive you to the
+Black Nob Hill, where you can get a good view," was the tolerant reply.
+
+Bob had wrenched his foot the day before, when roping a steer, and was
+therefore incapacitated for anything but 'woman's work'--'a soft job.'
+
+"Oh, but I do not want to be so far away and look on; I want to
+be _in_ it."
+
+He looked at me out of the angle of his eye to make sure that I was in
+earnest. "Tain't safe," he said.
+
+"Then you mean to say that every cowboy risks his life in a round-up?"
+
+"Oh, well, they're men and take their chances. Besides, it's their
+business."
+
+I never yet have been able to have a direct question answered by a true
+mountaineer or plainsman by a simple yes or no. Is there something in the
+bigness of their surroundings that causes the mind to spread over an
+idea and lose directness like a meadow brook?
+
+However, by various wiles known to my kind, the next morning at daybreak
+I was mounted upon the surest-footed animal in the 'bunch.'
+
+"She's a trained cow pony and won't lose her head," the boss remarked.
+
+Thus equipped, I was allowed to accompany the cowboys to their work, with
+the understanding that I was to keep at a safe distance from the herd.
+Van Anden, a famous 'cutter out,' whatever that meant, was deputed to
+have an especially watchful eye upon me. Van Anden was a surprisingly
+graceful fellow, who got his six foot of stature in more places during
+the day than any of the smaller men. He was evidently a cowboy because he
+wanted to be one. There were many traces of a college education and a
+thorough drilling in good manners in an Eastern home, which report said
+could still be his if he so wished; and report also stated that he
+remained a bachelor in spite of being the most popular man in the
+country, because of a certain faithless siren who with gay unconcern
+casts languishing glances and spends papa's dollars at Newport.
+
+But this was no Beau Brummel day. There was work to do, and hard work,
+as I soon discovered. We had ridden perhaps a mile; my teeth were
+still chattering in the early morning cold (breaking ice on one's bath
+water and blowing on one's fingers to enable one to lace heavy boots
+may suit a cowboy: I do not pretend to like it), when we began to
+notice a loud bellowing in the distance. Instantly my companions
+spurred their horses and we went speeding over the Little Missoula
+bottom lands, around scrub willows and under low hanging branches of
+oak, one of which captured my hat, after breaking both of the hat pins,
+and nearly swept me from the saddle.
+
+On I rushed with the rest, hatless, and as in a cloud of fury. Van Anden
+took a turn around that tree and was at my side again with the hat before
+I realised what, he was doing. I jerked out a "thank you" between lopes,
+and of course forbore to remark that a hat without pins was hollow
+mockery. I dodged the next low branch so successfully that the pommel in
+some miraculous way jumped up and smashed the crystal in my watch, the
+same being carried in that mysterious place, the shirt waist front, where
+most women carry their watches, pocket books, and love letters.
+
+When we got into the open the terrible bellowing--a combination of
+shriek, groan, and roar in varying pitch--grew louder, and I could just
+discern a waving ghostly mass in the gray morning mist. I wondered if
+this were the herd, but found it was only the cloud of dust in which it
+was enveloped.
+
+Four of the cowboys had already disappeared in different directions. I
+heard the 'WB' boss say, "Billy, to the left flank. Van, them blamed
+heifers," as he flew past them.
+
+Van dashed forward, I gave my black mare a cut with the quirt and
+followed. Van's face, as he turned around to remonstrate, was a study of
+surprise, distress, and disgust, for I was undoubtedly breaking rules.
+
+"Don't bother about me," I called as airily as possible, as I shot past
+him. He had checked his horse's speed, but now there was nothing to do
+but to follow me as fast as he could. I shall have to record that he
+swore, as he turned sharply to the right into a group of cattle. Poor
+man, it was dreadful to saddle him with a woman at such a juncture, but
+I was not a woman just then. I was a green cowboy and frightened to
+death, as the cattle closed around me, a heavy mass of ponderous forms,
+here wedged in tightly and bellowing, some with the pain of being
+crushed, some for their calves. I expected every instant to be trampled
+under foot.
+
+"Stick to your horse, whatever you do, and work to the left," I heard Van
+shouting to me over the backs of a dozen cows. The dust, the noise, and
+the smell of those struggling creatures appalled and sickened me. How was
+I ever going to work to the left in that jam? I could see nothing but
+backs and heads and horns. I allowed myself one terrified groan which was
+fortunately lost in the general uproar. But the pony had been in such a
+situation before, if I had not, and she taught me what to do. She gave a
+sudden spring forward when a space just big enough for her appeared, then
+wove her way a few paces forward between two animals who had room enough
+on the other side of them to give way a little, while the space I had
+just left had closed up, a tight mass of groaning creatures.
+
+Thus we worked our way to the left whenever there was a chance, and at
+last through the dust I could see the heavenly open space beyond.
+Forgetting my tactics, I made straight for it, and was caught in one of
+those terrible waves of tightly pressed creatures which is caused by
+those on the outside pressing towards the centre, and the centre giving
+until there is no more space, when comes the crush. Fortunately I was on
+the outskirts of this crush, and by holding my feet up high we managed to
+squeeze through that dreadful, dust covered, stamping, snorting bedlam
+into the glorious free air and sunshine. Already I had a much better
+conception of what a 'whole lot' of cattle meant.
+
+From the vantage ground of a little hill I could see the whole herd, and
+realised that I had been in only a small bunch of it, composed of cows
+and calves. Had I gone to the right I should soon have gotten into a
+raging mass of some thousand head of bulls. They were pawing and tearing
+up the ground that but a little before had been covered with grass and
+late flowers, and occasionally goring one another. The cowboys were
+riding on the outskirts of this life-destroying horde, forcing the
+stragglers back into line, and by many a sudden dash forward, then to the
+right, sharp wheel about, and more spurts this way and that, were slowly
+driving it toward another mass of cattle, a half mile further on, which
+could be distinguished only by the clouds of dust which enveloped it.
+
+Van Anden, meanwhile, in the small bunch with which I had had such an
+intimate acquaintance, was acting as though he had lost his wits, or so
+it seemed to me until I began to understand what he was doing. He would
+dart into the bunch, scattering cattle right and left, and would weave
+in and out, out and in, waving his arms, shouting, throwing his rope,
+occasionally hitting an animal across the nose or the flank, sometimes
+twisting their tails, dodging blows and kicks, and finally emerge driving
+before him a cow followed by her calf. These another cowboy would take
+charge of and drive to a small bunch of cows and calves which I now
+noticed for the first time, separating them from their relations, who
+remonstrated in loud bellowings, stampings and freakish, brief, ill
+judged attacks. And then I understood what it meant to 'cut out' cattle
+from 'a whole lot.'
+
+When the calves and cows were finally separated, it was necessary to
+drive them also to the Big Flat for the afternoon's work of branding
+those that 'needed it.' Van guarded the rear of the bunch and of course
+I rode with him, that is as near as I could, for he was as restless as a
+blue bottle fly in a glass jar, dashing hither and thither, keeping those
+crazy creatures together, and ever pushing them forward. The dust and
+heat and noise and smell and continual action made my head ache. So this
+was cowboy life, Van's choice! I thought of a certain far away, well
+ordered home, with perhaps a sweet voiced mother and well groomed sister,
+and wondered, even while I knew the answer. On the one hand, peace,
+comfort, affection, and the eternal sameness; on the other, effort,
+hardship, fighting sometimes, but ever with the new day a whole world of
+unlived possibilities, change, action, and bondage to no one.
+
+A particularly fractious heifer at this point suddenly changed my
+contemplation of Van Anden's character into a lively share of Van
+Anden's job. The creature was making good time straight towards me, and
+as I had dropped considerably behind the herd in order to breathe some
+fresh air and to be free from the dust, I knew that it meant a long hard
+chase for Van and his tired horse if I did not head off that heifer; I
+felt I owed him that much. I had seen the cowboys do that very thing a
+hundred times that morning, but you cannot stand on your toe by watching
+a ballet dancer do it. However, I started on a gallop, slanting
+diagonally towards the creature, swinging one arm frantically (I really
+could not let go with both) and yelling "Hi, hi!" I wondered what would
+happen next, for to be honest, I was exquisitely scared. Why scared? It
+is not for me to explain a woman's dread of the unknown and untried.
+
+[Illustration: I STARTED ON A GALLOP, SWINGING ONE ARM.]
+
+I heard Van shouting, but could not understand. To know you are right and
+then go ahead is a pretty plan, but how to know? The animal did not stop
+or swerve from its course. We would surely collide. What was I to do? Oh,
+for a precedent! Evidently the mare was aware of one, for she wheeled to
+the right just in time to miss the oncoming heifer, and we raced
+alongside for a few seconds. I had so nearly parted company with my mount
+in the last manoeuvre (centaurs would have an enormous advantage as
+cowboys) that I had lost all desire to help Van and only wanted to get
+away from that heifer, to make an honourable dismount, and go somewhere
+by myself where a little brook babbled nothings, and the forget-me-nots
+placidly slept. Rough riding and adventures of the Calamity Jane order
+tempted me no more.
+
+Whether now the heifer did the proper thing or not, I cannot say, but
+she circled around with me on the outer side (I suspect my cow pony knew
+how it was done) and was half way back to the herd when Van took it in
+charge. His face bore a broad grin for the first time that day, from
+what emotions caused I have never been able to determine. I, of course,
+said nothing.
+
+Then, oh, the joy of that round up dinner! The 'WB' outfit had a meal
+tent, a mess wagon, and a cook for the men, and a rope corral, food and
+water for the horses. Everybody was happy for the noon hour, save the
+unlucky ones whose turn it was to guard the herd. Bob had driven the
+ex-mayor's wife, the sad eyed spinster, and Nimrod over to join us at
+dinner. The boss greeted Nimrod with the assurance that I was 'all right'
+and could apply any time for a job. I may as well say that Nimrod had
+allowed me to go without him in the morning, because the cattle business
+was no novelty to him; because daybreak rising did not appeal to him as a
+pastime; and because, at the time I broached the subject, being engaged
+in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the
+consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is
+insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out
+for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished
+and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same
+question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon
+I rode in the wagon.
+
+The cowboy meal, which I believe was not elaborated for us, was a healthy
+solid affair of meat, vegetables, hot biscuit, coffee, and prunes,
+appetisingly cooked and unstintingly served, for the Bad Land appetite is
+like unto that of the Rocky Mountains, lusty and big. The saddling of
+fresh horses made a lively scene for a few moments in the corral; then
+the men rode off for the afternoon's business of branding.
+
+The ranch party packed itself into a three-seated buckboard and we
+followed behind. We went at a wide safe distance from the half-crazed
+herds, which had been driven this way and that until they knew not what
+they wanted, nor what was wanted of them, to where a huge fire was
+blazing and rapidly turning cold black iron to red hot. These irons were
+fashioned in curious shapes, from six to ten inches long and fastened to
+a four foot iron handle. The smell of burning flesh was in the air, and
+horrid shrieks. Beyond was the ceaseless bellowing and stamping and
+weaving of the herds.
+
+From the time I got into the wagon and became a mere onlooker, my point
+of view changed. The exhilaration of action had disappeared. I was a
+cowboy no longer. The cattle in the morning had been stupid foolish
+creatures, dangerous in their blind strength, which must be made to do
+what one willed. Now they were poor, dumb, persecuted beasts which must
+be tormented, even tortured (for who shall say that red hot iron on
+tender flesh is not torture?) and eventually butchered for the swelling
+of man's purse. I saw the riders dash towards an animal who 'needed
+branding'--which I discovered to mean one that had hitherto escaped the
+iron, or that had changed owners--throw a rope over its head or horns,
+fasten the other end to the pommel, and drag it to the fire, where it was
+thrown and tied. Then it was seized by several men who sat on its head
+and legs to hold it comparatively still while another took the hot brand
+from the fire and pressed it against the quivering side of the animal. It
+was then released and, bawling with pain and fright, allowed to return to
+its mother, who had been kept off by another rider. A sound at my side
+informed me that the little old maid was weeping copiously.
+
+It is a pity I could not have had the cowboy's point of view, for mine
+was most unpleasant, but my little glimpse of the other side was gone,
+and gladly I drove away from the mighty smells and sounds of that
+unfortunate mass of seething life, subjected to the will of a dozen men,
+Van Anden the worst of the lot. And as we went silently through the sweet
+cool air, crisp as an October leaf, where a bluebird was twittering a
+wing-free song on the poplar yonder, where silver-turned willows were
+gently swaying, and a jolly chipmunk was rippling from log to stone, I
+wondered whether the Newport girl had really done so wrong after all.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE SWEET PEA LADY SOMEONE ELSE'S MOUNTAIN SHEEP.
+
+
+It was at Winnipeg (you do not want to know how we got there) that I
+first walked into the aura of the Sweet Pea Lady, and by so doing
+prepared the way for the shatterment of another illusion--namely, that
+'little deeds of kindness' always result in mutual pleasure.
+
+Flowers and fruit in Manitoba are treasured as sunshine in London, for
+you must remember that Manitoba is a very new country, that it is only a
+paltry few thousands of years since its thousands of miles were scraped
+flat as a floor. Everything even yet looks so immodest on those vast
+stretches. The clumps of trees stand out in such a bold brazen fashion.
+The houses appear as though stuck on to the landscape. Even an honest
+brown cow can not manage to melt herself into the endless stretch of
+prairies. In fact, the little scenic accidents of trees and hollows,
+which mean fruit and flowers, are mainly due to man.
+
+So, when our friends who saw us off on the west-bound Canadian Pacific
+left in our sleeper two huge bouquets of sweet peas and ten pounds of
+blackberries, we knew that the finest garden in Winnipeg had been rifled
+to do us pleasure. Now, I dearly love flowers and fruit, as I did the
+giver, but ten pounds of great, fat blackberries and an armful of sweet
+peas in a cramped stuffy Pullman caused my heart to resound in the minor
+chords. We rallied again and again to demolish the fruit as we voyaged,
+and sat with one foot on top of the other to avoid crushing the lovely
+pea blossoms as we fidgeted about, but the results of our efforts, messy
+fruit in hopeless abundance and withering leaves in dreary profusion,
+were discouraging.
+
+When the noon hour came, Nimrod carried the fruit basket into the
+Diner and set it down on the table. The waiter eyed us askance.
+"It's a dollar each for dinner, sah." It was clear we were emigrants.
+We paid the waiter's demand and then from soup to coffee ate
+blackberries--blackberries until we were black in the mouth and pale in
+the face. Then we picked up our basket, upon the contents of which our
+labours had apparently made no impression, and, hastily pushing a plate
+over the rich red stain it had left on the table cloth, departed with our
+fruit and a grieved feeling in the region of our hearts. It may not be
+amiss to remark that I have never eaten a blackberry since. To get to our
+car it was necessary to pass through another sleeper, where I noticed a
+made up berth in which was reclining a young woman, and hovering over her
+solicitously a man, evidently the husband.
+
+Hope and joy awoke within me--perhaps she would like some blackberries!
+No, she would not venture to eat fruit, and with many thanks, oh, many,
+many thanks, she declined it. But the blessedness of giving I felt must
+be mine, so I bribed the porter to take as many sweet peas as he could
+carry and present them to the sick lady in the next car, and on no
+account to tell where he got them. I did not want the thanks, neither did
+I want the sweet peas, but I was illogical enough to hope that the
+Recording Angel would be busy and accept the act at its face value as a
+"deed of kindness."
+
+It must have been a slack day with the angel, for this is a brief but
+accurate account of what followed, and I am willing to leave it to any
+human, whether my punishment was not out of all proportion to the offense
+committed:
+
+_One hour later_. Train stops for ten minutes. I got out for fresh air
+and promenade on platform. Behold, the first object that meets my gaze is
+the sick lady, miraculously recovered. She swooped down upon me with the
+deadly light of determination in her eyes. I was discovered. There was no
+escape. I was going to be thanked--and I was thanked. Up and down,
+backwards and forwards, inside and out, and all hands around. And when
+she paused breathless her husband took up the theme. It seems she was a
+semi invalid, and the sweet peas were quite the most heavenly thing that
+could have happened to her. Nimrod joined me at this moment and he was
+thanked separately and dually, for being the husband of his wife, I
+suppose. At last we were able to retire with profuse bows, tired but
+exceedingly thankful that the incident, though trying, was ended.
+
+_Three minutes later_. Have been driven indoors by the sweet pea woman,
+as each turn of the walk brought us face to face, when it immediately
+became necessary to nod and smile, and for our husbands to lift hats and
+smile, until we looked like loose-necked manikins. At least, the sleeper
+is tranquil, if stuffy.
+
+_Supper time_. Have been thanked again by the Sweet Pea Lady, who sat at
+our table. She had sweet peas in her hair, and at her belt. The husband
+had a boutonnière of them.
+
+_Next morning, Carberry_. Bade an elaborate farewell to the Sweet Pea
+Lady. She is going straight to the coast where they catch steamer for
+Japan. Praise be to Allah! I shall see her no more. The heavy polite
+is wearing.
+
+_Next day, Banff Hot Springs_. First person on the hotel steps I see
+is the S.P. Lady. She rushed up and assured me that the S.P.'s were
+still fresh, and that she and her husband had unexpectedly stopped
+over for a day.
+
+_Next day_. Spent the day avoiding S.P.L. Left for Glacier House in the
+evening. At least, I shall not see S.P.L. there, as they have to go right
+through to catch steamer.
+
+_Two days later, Glacier House_. Had horrid shock. Found apparition of
+S.P. Lady sitting beside me at breakfast table. She began to speak, then
+I knew it was the real thing. She assured me that many of the S.P.'s were
+still fresh, as she had clipped their stems night and morning. I again
+said good by to her, and to those ghastly flowers. She just has time to
+catch her steamer.
+
+_Three days later: Vancouver_. Ran across the S.P. Lady in hotel
+corridor. She saw me first. There was another weary interchange of the
+heavy polite. Her steamer had been delayed from sailing for two days--in
+order that we might meet again, I have no doubt.
+
+_Next morning. She's gone_. Ring the bells, boom the cannon! I saw the
+Japan steamer bear the Sweet Pea Lady rapidly into deep water. At last
+easeful peace may again dream on my shoulder. When I returned to the
+hotel the clerk handed me an envelope enclosing a lady's visiting card
+(kind fate, she lives in Japan) on which was written "In grateful
+appreciation of your kindness," and with the card were two sprays of
+Pressed Sweet Peas.
+
+After this when it comes to "scattering deeds of kindness on the weary
+way," I shall be the woman who didn't, and who shall say me nay?
+However, all this flower and fruit piece was but an episode; the event of
+that journey was the intimate acquaintance we made of the Great Glacier
+of the Selkirks, and the nice opportunity I had to lose my life. And the
+only reason this tale is not more tragic is because, given the choice, I
+preferred to lose the opportunity rather than the life.
+
+I wonder if I can give any idea to one who has not seen it what a snow
+slide really is; how it sweeps away every vestige of trees, grass, and
+roots, and leaves a surface of shirting, unstable earth almost as
+treacherous as quicksand.
+
+Nimrod and I had paid a superficial visit to the Glacier the day before:
+that is, we had gone as far as its forefoot, a hard but thoroughly safe
+climb, and had explored with awe the green glass ice caves with which the
+Great Glacier has seen fit to decorate its lower line, wonderful rooms of
+ice, emerald in the shadows, with glacial streams for floors.
+
+[Illustration: THE WARM BEATING HEART OF A MOUNTAIN SHEEP.]
+
+So the next morning we started out, intending a little bit to further
+explore the vast, cold, heartless ice sheet (vaster than all the Swiss
+glaciers together), but more to hunt for the warm beating heart of a
+mountain sheep, whose home is here. We had been travelling for miles in
+the wildest kind of earth upheavals, for the Selkirks are still hard and
+fast in the grip of the ice king; huge boulders, uprooted trees, mighty
+mountains, released but recently from the glacial wet blanket, when
+Nimrod discovered the stale track of a mountain sheep. We followed it
+eagerly till it brought us across the path of a snow slide. At that point
+it was about five hundred feet across, at an angle of forty-five
+degrees; below us a thousand feet was a vicious looking glacial torrent;
+above, an equal distance, was the lower edge of the glacier, the mother
+of all this devastation.
+
+The fearless-footed mountain sheep had crossed this sliding crumbling
+earth and gravel incline with apparent ease. For us it was go on or go
+back. There was no middle course. The row of tiny hoof marks running
+straight across from one safe bank to the other deceived us. It could not
+be so very difficult. We dismounted; Nimrod threw the bridle over his
+horse's head and started across, leading his beast. The animal snorted as
+he felt the foot-hold giving way beneath him, but Nimrod pulled him
+along. It was impossible to stand still. It would have been as easy for
+quicksilver to remain at the top of an incline. Amid rattling stones and
+sliding earth they landed on the firm bank beyond, fully three hundred
+feet below me.
+
+It was a shivery sight, but I started expecting the horse would follow.
+He, however, jerked back snorting and trembling, which unexpected move
+upset my equilibrium, uncertain at best, and I fell. Nothing but the
+happy chance of a tight grip on the reins kept me from sliding down that
+dreadful bank, over the rock into the water, and so into eternity (Please
+pardon the Salvation Army metaphor).
+
+I had barely time to right myself and get out of the way of my horse,
+which now plunged forward upon the sliding rock with me. The terrified
+animal lost his head completely. I could not keep away from his hoofs. He
+would not let me keep in front, I dare not get above for fear I should
+slip under his feet, or below him for fear he should slide upon me. I
+lost my balance again while dodging away from him as he plunged and
+balked, but managed to grab his mane and we both slid a horrible
+distance. I could hear Nimrod shouting on the bank, but did not seem to
+understand him. I had the stage, centre front, and it was all I could
+attend to.
+
+We were now opposite to Nimrod, but only half way across. Such an ominous
+rolling and tumbling of stones and tons of earth sliding down over the
+low precipice into the water! I expected to be with it each instant.
+Nimrod had started out after me.
+
+[Illustration: I COULD NOT KEEP AWAY FROM HIS HOOFS.]
+
+Then I understood what he was shouting: "Let go that horse." Why, of
+course! Why had I not thought of that? I did let go and, thus freed,
+managed to get across, falling, slipping, but still making progress
+until I reached the safe ground one hundred feet lower in a decidedly
+dilapidated condition. My animal followed me instinctively for a short
+distance, and Nimrod got him the rest of the way--I do not know how. It
+did not interest me then.
+
+And the saddest of all, the mountain sheep had vanished into the unknown,
+taking his little tracks with him, so we had to go back in a roundabout
+way, without sheep, without joy--and without a tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+IN WHICH THE TENDERFOOT LEARNS A NEW TRICK.
+
+
+For those who have driven four-in-hand, this will have no message. But as
+four-in-hand literature seems to be somewhat limited and my first lesson
+was somewhat drastic, I shall venture to tell you how it felt.
+
+Of coaching there are two kinds: Eastern coaching, with well-groomed
+full-fed horses, who are never worked harder than is good for them; with
+silver-plated harness, and coach with the latest springs and running
+gear, umbrella rack, horn, lunch larder, and what not; with footmen or
+postilions, according to the degree of style, to run to the horses' heads
+at the first hitch; with the gentleman driver in cream box coat and
+beribboned whip; with everything down to the pole pin correct and
+immaculate.
+
+Then there is Western coaching, which is more properly termed staging,
+for which is used any vehicle that will hold together and whose wheels
+will turn round. This is pulled by half-broken shaggy horses which would
+kick any man who ventured near them with brush or currycomb, and which
+are sometimes made to travel until they drop in the road. The harness on
+such coaching trips is an assortment of single, double, leaders and
+wheelers sets, mended with buckskin or wire and thrown on irrespective of
+fit. Lucky the cayuse who happens to be the right size for his harness.
+
+And the driver! No cream box coat for him--provident the one who owns a
+slicker and a coat of weather green (the same being the result of sun and
+rain on any given color). And the people in the stage hoist no white and
+red silk parasols. They are there because they are "going somewhere." My
+multi-murderous cook taught me the distinction between "just travellin'"
+and "going somewhere."
+
+As for the roads--oh, those Rocky Mountain roads! They make coaching
+quite a different thing from that on the smooth boulevards around New
+York. I have twice made seventy-five miles in twelve hours, by having
+four relays, but the average rate of travel is about twenty miles in
+eight hours. And the day when I first took the ribbons in my hands to
+guide--four horses we were from nine in the morning till five at night
+going twelve miles. This was the way of it: Nimrod and I were on a
+hunting trip in the Canadian Rockies, and as the government map said
+there was a road, though not a good one, we decided to carry our
+belongings in a four-horse wagon, in which we could also ride if we
+liked, and to have saddle horses besides.
+
+Green, a man of the region, was the driver and cook, and we had as guest
+a famous bear hunter from the Sierra Nevadas. On the first two days out
+from the little mountain town where we started, we saw many tracks of
+black bear, which encouraged the hunters to think that they might find a
+grizzly (which, by the way, they did not).
+
+The dust was thick and red, enveloping us all day long like some horrible
+insistent monster that had resolved itself into atoms to choke, blind and
+strangle us. Nimrod looked like a clay man--hair, eyebrows, mustache,
+skin, and clothes were all one solid coating of red dust. We were all
+alike. Even the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bottom of a box, covered by
+other boxes, bags and a canvas, became adulterated almost past use.
+
+On the fourth day this changed, and we camped at the foot of a granite
+mountain. It made one think of the Glass Mountain of fable, with its
+smooth stretches of polished rock shining in the sun. That a human being
+should dare to take a wagon over such a place seemed incredible. Yet
+there the road was, zigzagging up the rocky slope, while here and there
+the jagged outlines of blasted rock showed where the all-powerful
+dynamite had been used to make a resting place for straining horses.
+
+That morning excitement surrounded our out-of-door breakfast table. We
+had had strange visitors during the night, while we slept. A mountain
+lion, the beautiful tan-coated vibrant-tailed puma, had nosed within ten
+feet of me and then, not liking the camp-fire glow and unalarmed by my
+inert form, had silently retreated.
+
+It made me feel creepy to see how easily that lithe-limbed powerful
+creature might have had me for a midnight meal. But I was not trying to
+do him harm, and so he granted me the same tolerance. Then, too, not
+far away was a bear track, and the canned peaches were fewer than the
+night before.
+
+All of this caused Nimrod and the bear-hunter to saddle their horses
+early; and agreeing to meet us at night on the other side of the
+mountain, where the map showed a stream, they set out for a day's hunt.
+Nimrod's horse having gone slightly lame, I offered mine, a swift-footed
+intelligent dear, and agreed to ride in the wagon.
+
+It was the same old story. Virtue is somebody else's reward. I never had
+a worse day in the mountains. Green and I started blithely enough by
+nine, which had meant a 5:30 rising in the cold gray dawn. The horses had
+been worked every day since the start, and were jaded.
+
+We went slowly along the only level road in our journey that day; but the
+load did not seem to be riding well, and at the beginning of the ascent
+Green got out to investigate. He said the spring was out of order. The
+wagon was what is known as a thorough-brace, which means that there are
+two large loopy steel bands on which the wagon box rests; the loops are
+filled in with countless strips of leather, forming a pad for the springs
+to play on. (The Century Dictionary will please not copy this
+definition.) The Deadwood stage coach was a thorough-brace, I believe.
+Another interesting out-of-date detail in the construction of this wagon
+was that the brake had no mechanical device for holding it in position
+when it was put on hard, and the driver had to rely upon his strength of
+limb to keep it in place. It seems that Green, in pounding these bits of
+leather in the spring, had badly crushed his left hand. He said nothing
+to me, and I did not notice that, contrary to custom, he was driving with
+his right hand, which he usually reserved for the whip and the brake.
+
+We crossed the shallow brook and started up the very steep and very
+rocky road, when everything happened at once. Two of the horses refused
+to pull and danced up and down in the one spot, a sickening thing for a
+horse to do. This meant the instant application of the brake. We had
+already begun to slip backward (the most uncomfortable sensation I know,
+barring actual pain). Nimrod's horse, tied on behind, gave a frightened
+snort and broke his rope. Green attempted to take the reins with his
+left hand. They dropped from his grasp, and I saw that his fingers were
+purple and black.
+
+"Grab the lines, can you?" he said, as he seized the whip and put both
+feet on the brake. The leaders were curveting back on the wheelers in a
+way which meant imminent mix up, their legs over traces and behind
+whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid
+rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp
+turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I
+had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson
+left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of
+difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, broad, and
+level stretches with plenty of room to pull a rein and see what would
+happen. I had to spring into the situation with knowledge, as Minerva did
+into life, full grown. It was no kindergarten way of learning to drive
+four-in-hand.
+
+I grabbed the reins in both hands. There were yards of them, rods of
+them, miles of them--they belonged to a six or sixteen horse set. I do
+not know which. I sat on them. They writhed in my lap, wrapped around my
+feet, and around the gun against my knee, in a hopeless and dangerous
+muddle. Of course the reins were twisted. I did not know one from the
+other. I gave a desperate jerk which sent the leaders plunging to the
+right, where fortunately they brought up against the rock wall. Had they
+gone the other way nothing but our destiny could have saved us from going
+over the edge. _Crack_ went the whip in the right place.
+
+"Slack the lines!" Green cried, as he eased the brake. A lash of the whip
+for each wheeler, and we started forward, the horses disentangling
+themselves from the harness as by a miracle, just as the rear wheels were
+hovering over the bluff. Green dropped the whip (his left hand was quite
+useless) and straightened out the reins for me.
+
+"Can you do it?" he asked, grasping the whip, as the horses showed signs
+of stopping again. To attend to the brake was physically impossible.
+Green could not do it and drive with one hand.
+
+"Yes," I said, "but watch me"--an injunction scarcely necessary.
+
+[Illustration: WE STARTED FORWARD, JUST AS THE REAR WHEELS WERE HOVERING
+OVER THE EDGE.]
+
+If ever a woman put her whole mind to a thing, I did on that
+four-in-hand. There was no place for mistakes. There was no place for
+anything but the right thing, and do it I must or run the risk of
+breaking my very dusty, very brown, but none the less precious neck.
+
+A sharp turn in a steep road with rocks a foot high disputing the right
+of way with the wheels, a heavy load, horses that do not want to pull,
+and a green driver--that was the situation. If it does not appeal to you
+as one of the horribles in life, try it once.
+
+"Run your leaders farther up the bank--left, left! _Get up, Milo!
+Frank, get out of that_! Now sharp to the right. _Whoa! Steady_!
+Left--left, I say! _Milo, whoa_! Now to the right, quick! Let 'em on
+the bank more. _Nellie, easy_--_Whoa! Steady, George_!" Crack went the
+whip on the leaders.
+
+"Hold your lines tighter. Pull that nigh leader. _Get out of that, Frank!
+Now steady, boys_! Don't pull--there!"
+
+Down went the brake; we were safely round the turn, and all hands rested
+for a moment.
+
+Thus we worked all that morning, Green with the brake, the whip, and his
+tongue; I with the lines, what strength I had and mother wit in lieu of
+experience.
+
+There were stretches of two hundred feet of granite, smooth and polished
+as a floor, where the horses repeatedly slipped and fell, and where the
+wheels brought forth hollow mocking rumbles.
+
+There were sections where the rocky ledges succeeded one another in
+steps, and the animals had to pull the heavy wagon up rises from a foot
+to eighteen inches high by sheer strength--as easy to drive up a flight
+of brownstone steps on Fifth Avenue. There were places between huge
+boulders where a swerve of a foot to the right or to the left would have
+sent us crashing into the unyielding granite.
+
+When we got to the top there was no place to rest--only rock, rock
+everywhere. No water, no food for the exhausted horses, nothing to do but
+to push on to the bottom--and such going! Have you ever felt the
+shuddering of a wagon with brake hard on, as it poised in air the
+instant before it dropped a foot or two to the next level, from hard rock
+to hard rock? Have you ever tried to keep four horses away from under a
+wagon, and yet sufficiently near it not to precipitate the crash? Have
+you ever at the same time tried to keep them from falling on the rocks
+ahead and from plunging over the bank as you turn a sharp curve on a
+steep down grade? If you have, then you know the nature of my first
+lesson in four-in-hand driving.
+
+We got to the bottom at dusk. I was too tired to speak. Every muscle set
+up a separate complaint and I had had nothing to eat since morning, as we
+had expected to make camp by noon. The world seemed indeed a very drab
+place. We found the hunters careering around searching for us. They
+thought they had missed us--as they had done the bear.
+
+I have driven, and been driven, hundreds of miles since, but there never
+was a ride like those twelve, cruel, mocking, pitiless miles over
+Granite Mountain, when necessity taught me a very pretty trick, which,
+however, I have not yet been tempted to display at the Madison Square
+Garden in November.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+_OUR_ MINE.
+
+
+It now behooves me to state that, between the events of the last chapter
+and this, Nimrod and I heard the hum, the wail, and the shriek that make
+the song of the Westinghouse brake before we found ourselves deposited at
+the flourishing mining camp of Red Ridge in the Arizona Rockies, nine
+thousand feet in the air.
+
+Did ever a tenderfoot escape from the mountains without at least having a
+try at making his or her fortune in a mine--gold one preferred? We, of
+course, had the chance of our lives, and who knows what might have
+happened if only the fat woman and the lean woman had not gotten jealous
+of each other, and thereby wrecked the company?
+
+The gold is, or is not, in the fastnesses of the earth as before, but
+where, oh, where, is the lean woman of lineage and the fat woman of
+money? The lean woman had quality. She was the daughter of somebody
+who had done something, but, unlike _Becky Sharp_, she had not been
+successful in living richly in San Francisco on nothing a year. Nobody
+knows whose daughter the fat woman was, but in her very comfortable
+home in Kansas that had not mattered, and, besides, she had saved a
+few hundreds.
+
+These two women had husbands, who had entered into a mining scheme
+together. The man from Frisco was a good-looking, well-educated, jovial
+fellow, with the purses of several rich friends to back him up, and with
+a great desire to replenish his purse with the yellow metal direct,
+rather than to acquire it by the sweat of his brow. He was many other
+things, but, to be brief, he was a promoter. The man from Kansas had the
+pride of the uneducated, and a little money, and was also not averse to
+getting rich fast.
+
+Nimrod, the third partner, likewise encumbered with a wife on the spot,
+desired to make _his_ everlasting fortune, retire from the painting of
+pictures and the making of books, and grub in the field of science and
+live happily ever after.
+
+For two weeks we were all together at the only hotel at Cartersville, a
+hamlet of perhaps thirty souls. It took only two weeks to wreck the
+company. The mine was a mile and a half away, over a very up-and-down
+mountain road which on the first day the fat woman and I walked with
+our husbands, and which Mrs. Frisco and her husband had travelled in
+Mrs. Kansas' phaeton--the result of a little way Mrs. Frisco had of
+getting the best.
+
+Three days of this calm appropriation of her carriage while she walked
+ruffled Mrs. Kansas' temper. When she heard a rumour that Mrs. Frisco had
+stated disdainfully to the landlady that there could be no thought of
+recognising Mrs. Kansas socially, but that she must be tolerated because
+of her money in the enterprise, her politeness grew frigid and the
+trouble began to brew.
+
+While perfectly willing to watch the logomachy when it should arrive, I
+had no wish to take part. I was willing to make money, but not to make
+enemies, so Nimrod and I removed ourselves as much as possible from the
+Cartersville Hotel, took long walks and rides over the glorious Chihuahua
+Mountains, poked around the abandoned mines, spied out the deer and
+mountain lion and the ubiquitous coyote and all the indigenous beasts and
+birds of the air thereof. We usually managed to arrive at the mine when
+the partners and their wives were elsewhere.
+
+The mine, _our_ mine, was a long horizontal hole in the mountain, with a
+tiny leaf-choked stream trickling past the entrance, heavy timbers
+propping up the inert mass of dirt and stone just above our heads, piles
+of uninteresting rock dumped to one side, the "pay dirt." I had seen such
+things before, and they had said nothing to me. But this was _our_ mine,
+_our_ stream, _our_ dump.
+
+McCaffrey, the foreman, put rubber boots on me in the little smithy which
+formed a part of the entrance of the tunnel, and thus equipped I entered
+the tunnel. The day shift, represented by two dancing lights far off in
+the blackness, was preparing to blast.
+
+I advanced uncertainly, my own candle blinding me. Water trickled from
+the roof and walls of this rock-bound passage seven feet high and four
+feet wide. A stream of it flowed by the tiny tram track. The hollow sound
+of the mallet on the crowbar forcing its way into the stubborn wall grew
+louder as we approached, until we stood with the miners in a foot or so
+of water which showed yellow and shining in the flickering light of four
+candles. Then we went back to the smithy to wait the result of the blast.
+
+There was a horrid jarring booming sound. The miners listened intently.
+McCaffrey said, "One." Another explosion in the tunnel followed--"Two."
+Another--"Three." Then a silence. "That's bad," said McCaffrey, shaking
+his head. "An unexploded cap."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"There were four charges and should have been four explosions. It's
+liable to go off when we go in there."
+
+"Oh!" I said.
+
+The miners waited a while for the fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated
+and kept me away from the tunnel mouth, saying:
+
+"If you ever get a dynamite headache you will never want to come near the
+mine again. And, besides, that unexploded cap may do damage yet."
+
+I went back to the smithy to wait, for it was the last of October, and
+snow in the mountains at ten thousand feet is cold. I attempted to sit
+down on a keg behind the little sheet-iron stove, which was nearly red
+hot.
+
+"You better not sit down on that kaig," said one of the men calmly,
+without pausing in his work.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it's dirty, and, besides, it's nitro-glycerine."
+
+"Nitro-glycerine! Why is it in _here_, and so close to the stove? Won't
+it explode?" and I checked a desire to retreat in disorder.
+
+"No, 't'ain't no danger, if it don't get too hot and ain't jarred. You
+see, it won't go off if it's too cold, so we keep a little in here and
+kind o' watch it."
+
+The keg was within two feet of the stove. Suppose that a dog or something
+were to knock it over! But miners do not suppose.
+
+Just then a tremendous explosion in the tunnel seemed to make the whole
+earth vibrate. It was followed by a rattling and crashing of rocks, which
+told us that the last cap had gone off and had done good work.
+
+Half an hour later, when it was safe from dynamite fumes, I went back to
+our hole in the ground. Nimrod had left me, lured away by some fox tracks
+trailing up the mountain. The weird scene was too interesting for me to
+leave until the arrival of the fat and lean women (Mrs. Frisco had
+persuaded Mrs. Kansas to drive her over) caused me to remember that the
+parlour fire at the Cartersville Hotel must be very comfortable, and that
+it was a mile and a half of tiresome snow away.
+
+Evidently the wives of my husband's partners had disagreed on the way,
+for the air was electric as they greeted me, and to avoid another
+tête-à-tête they at once turned to accompany me out of the tunnel. I
+was the last.
+
+The scene was now properly set for a mining accident, so there was
+nothing for a self respecting tunnel to do but to accordingly, which it
+did. Just as the fat woman and the lean woman passed into the open air,
+and I was nearly at the mouth of the tunnel, it caused its roof to cave
+in so close behind me that, had I not instinctively rushed out, some of
+the flying stones, timbers, and dirt must have knocked me to the ground.
+
+[Illustration: THE TUNNEL CAUSED ITS ROOF TO CAVE IN CLOSE BEHIND ME.]
+
+As it was, I landed sprawling in the snow outside, sweeping the lean
+woman down with me. It was very like a dime novel. Three lone women who,
+for purposes of intensification, may be called enemies, staring with
+white faces at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise that a minute before
+it had been a black hole. And at the other end of that hole now were two
+men horribly imprisoned in a rock-walled tomb without air or food,
+perhaps dead. We could not tell how much of a cave-in it was.
+
+The lean woman rushed for Mrs. Kansas' horse and wagon and went to alarm
+the hamlet. I dashed up the hill a quarter of a mile to awaken the night
+shift, who were in their cabin sleeping. And the fat woman at a safe
+distance wrung her hands and uttered exclamations of horror and ill
+judged advice to our departing forms.
+
+Between the fright, the altitude, and the hill I had no breath left to
+speak with as I pounded on the door of the miner's hut. Mountaineers
+sleep lightly and do not make toilets, so it was barely ten minutes from
+the time of the cave-in when three men were working at the tunnel's mouth
+with pickaxes and shovels.
+
+The tunnel had not meant to be malicious, but merely to do the proper
+thing (it had not even disturbed the nitro-glycerine in the smithy). Not
+much earth had fallen, and in less than an hour we heard the shouts of
+the imprisoned men; in two hours they crawled into the air unhurt, and
+soon were helping the others to shore up the treacherous entrance, so
+that such a stirring thing could not happen again.
+
+There is not much more to tell. I believe that the tunnel is still there,
+boring its way into the heart of the mountain, where, perhaps, the lovely
+yellow gold is; but we no longer refer to it as _ours_, and Nimrod still
+has to work for our daily jam. For the insolence of Mrs. Frisco in
+leaving Mrs. Kansas stranded in the snow and obliging her to walk home on
+the cave-in day developed the brewing storm into such proportions that
+the next day their husbands did not speak as we gathered round the
+morning coffee. And the Kansases moved away into one of the other five
+houses in Cartersville. Mr. Kansas was not "going to see his wife
+insulted by an upstart--not he: he'd soon show them," and he did so
+effectively that the Red Ridge Mining Company was soon no more. We
+docketed our golden dreams 'unusable,' stowed them away, and returned
+with tranquil minds, if lighter purse, to milder and slower ways of
+getting rich.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE LAST WORD.
+
+
+Now this is the end. It is three years since I first became a
+woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. I have lived on jerked deer
+and alkali water, and bathed in dark-eyed pools, nestling among vast
+pines where none but the four footed had been before. I have been sung
+asleep a hundred times by the coyotes' evening lullaby, have felt the
+spell of their wild nightly cry, long and mournful, coming just as the
+darkness has fully come, lasting but a few seconds, and then heard no
+more till the night gives place to the fresh sheet of dawn. I have
+pored in the morning over the big round footprints of a mountain lion
+where he had sneaked in hours of darkness, past my saddle pillowed
+head. I have hunted much, and killed a little, the wary, the beautiful,
+the fleet-footed big game. I have driven a four-in-hand over corduroy
+roads and ridden horseback over the pathless vasty wilds of the
+continent's backbone.
+
+I have been nearly frozen eleven thousand feet in air in blinding snow,
+I have baked on the Dakota plains with the thermometer at 116 degrees,
+and I have met characters as diverse as the climate. I know what it
+means to be a miner and a cowboy, and have risked my life when need be,
+_but_, best of all, I have felt the charm of the glorious freedom, the
+quick rushing blood, the bounding motion, of the wild life, the joy of
+the living and of the doing, of the mountain and the plain; I have
+learned to know and feel some, at least, of the secrets of the Wild Ones.
+In short, though I am still a woman and may be tender, I am a Woman
+Tenderfoot no longer.
+
+[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN LION SNEAKED PAST MY SADDLE-PILLOWED HEAD.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman Tenderfoot, by
+Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
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diff --git a/9412-8.zip b/9412-8.zip
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@@ -0,0 +1,5097 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+<head>
+<title>
+A Woman Tenderfoot, by Grace Gallatin Seton-thompson
+</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+body { margin:5%; background:#ffffcc; text-align:justify}
+P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+.foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+.mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+.toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+.toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+.figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+.figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+.pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+text-align: right;}
+.side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+-->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's A Woman Tenderfoot, by Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman Tenderfoot
+
+Author: Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9412]
+This file was first posted on September 30, 2003
+Last Updated: March 6, 2014
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN TENDERFOOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and Project
+Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders from images generously
+made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions
+
+Illustrated HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div style="height: 8em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h1>
+A WOMAN TENDERFOOT
+</h1>
+<h2>
+By Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+</h2>
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+<h3>
+1900
+</h3>
+
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0001m.jpg" alt="0001m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0001.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0005m.jpg" alt="0005m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0005.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /> <br /> <br />
+</p>
+<div class="middle">
+<p>
+In this Book the full-page Drawings were made by Ernest Seton-Thompson,
+G. Wright and E.M. Ashe, and the Marginals by S.N. Abbott. The cover,
+title-page and general make-up were designed by the Author. Thanks are
+due to Miller Christy for proof revision, and to A.A. Anderson for
+valuable suggestions on camp outfitting. (No illustrations are included
+in this file.)
+</p>
+<br /> <br /> <br />
+<p>
+THIS BOOK IS A TRIBUTE TO THE WEST.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8011.jpg" alt="8011 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8011.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+I have used many Western phrases as necessary to the Western setting.
+</p>
+<p>
+I can only add that the events related really happened in the Rocky
+Mountains of the United States and Canada; and this is why, being a
+woman, I wanted to tell about them, in the hope that some
+going-to-Europe-in-the-summer-woman may be tempted to go West instead.
+</p>
+<p>
+G.G.S.-T.
+</p>
+<p>
+New York City, September 1st, 1900.
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+<br /> <br /> <br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /> <br />
+</p>
+<p>
+A LIST OF FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS (in the original printed book)
+</p>
+<p>
+Costume for cross saddle riding
+</p>
+<p>
+Tears starting from your smoke-inflamed eyes
+</p>
+<p>
+Saddle cover for wet weather Policeman's equestrian rain coat
+</p>
+<p>
+She was postmistress twice a week
+</p>
+<p>
+The trail was lost in a gully
+</p>
+<p>
+Whetted one to a razor edge and threw it into a tree where it stuck
+quivering
+</p>
+<p>
+Not three hundred yards away ... were two bull elk in deadly combat
+</p>
+<p>
+Down the path came two of the prettiest Blacktails
+</p>
+<p>
+A misstep would have sent us flying over the cliff
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus I fought through the afternoon
+</p>
+<p>
+We whizzed across the railroad track in front of the Day Express
+</p>
+<p>
+Five feet full in front of us, they pulled their horses to a dead stop
+</p>
+<p>
+The coyotes made savage music
+</p>
+<p>
+The horrid thing was ready for me I started on a gallop, swinging one arm
+</p>
+<p>
+The warm beating heart of a mountain sheep
+</p>
+<p>
+I could not keep away from his hoofs
+</p>
+<p>
+We started forward, just as the rear wheels were hovering over the edge
+</p>
+<p>
+"You better not sit down on that kaig ... It's nitroglycerine"
+</p>
+<p>
+The tunnel caused its roof to cave in close behind me
+</p>
+<p>
+A mountain lion sneaked past my saddle-pillowed head
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+<b>CONTENTS</b>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0001"> I. THE WHY OF IT. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0002"> II. OUTFIT AND ADVICE FOR THE
+WOMAN-WHO-GOES-HUNTING-WITH-HER-HUSBAND. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0003"> III. THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.
+</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0004"> IV. WHICH TREATS OF THE IMPS AND MY ELK. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0005"> V. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0006"> VI. THE COOK. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0007"> VII. AMONG THE CLOUDS. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0008"> VIII. AT YEDDAR'S. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0009"> IX. MY ANTELOPE. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0010"> X. A MOUNTAIN DRAMA. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0011"> XI. WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAHB OF THE BIGHORN BASIN.
+</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0012"> XII. THE DEAD HUNT. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0013"> XIII. JUST RATTLESNAKES. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0014"> XIV. AS COWGIRL. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0015"> XV. THE SWEET PEA LADY SOMEONE ELSE'S MOUNTAIN
+SHEEP. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0016"> XVI. IN WHICH THE TENDERFOOT LEARNS A NEW TRICK.
+</a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0017"> XVII. <i>OUR</i> MINE. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#linklink2H_4_0018"> XVIII. THE LAST WORD. </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+I. THE WHY OF IT.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9019.jpg" alt="9019 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9019.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Theoretically, I have always agreed with the Quaker wife who reformed her
+husband&mdash;"Whither thou goest, I go also, Dicky dear." What thou
+doest, I do also, Dicky dear. So when, the year after our marriage, Nimrod
+announced that the mountain madness was again working in his blood, and
+that he must go West and take up the trail for his holiday, I tucked my
+summer-watering-place-and-Europe-flying-trip mind away (not without
+regret, I confess) and cautiously tried to acquire a new vocabulary and
+some new ideas.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8019.jpg" alt="8019 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8019.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Of course, plenty of women have handled guns and have gone to the Rocky
+Mountains on hunting trips&mdash;but they were not among my friends.
+However, my imagination was good, and the outfit I got together for my
+first trip appalled that good man, my husband, while the number of things
+I had to learn appalled me.
+</p>
+<p>
+In fact, the first four months spent 'Out West' were taken up in learning
+how to ride, how to dress for it, how to shoot, and how to philosophise,
+each of which lessons is a story in itself. But briefly, in order to come
+to this story, I must have a side talk with the
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. Those not interested please omit
+the next chapter.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+II. OUTFIT AND ADVICE FOR THE WOMAN-WHO-GOES-HUNTING-WITH-HER-HUSBAND.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9023.jpg" alt="9023 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9023.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Is it really so that most women say no to camp life because they are
+afraid of being uncomfortable and looking unbeautiful? There is no reason
+why a woman should make a freak of herself even if she is going to rough
+it; as a matter of fact I do not rough it, I go for enjoyment and leave
+out all possible discomforts. There is no reason why a woman should be
+more uncomfortable out in the mountains, with the wild west wind for
+companion and the big blue sky for a roof, than sitting in a 10 by 12
+whitewashed bedroom of the summer hotel variety, with the tin roof to keep
+out what air might be passing. A possible mosquito or gnat in the
+mountains is no more irritating than the objectionable personality that is
+sure to be forced upon you every hour at the summer hotel. The usual walk,
+the usual drive, the usual hop, the usual novel, the usual scandal,&mdash;in
+a word, the continual consciousness of self as related to dress, to
+manners, to position, which the gregarious living of a hotel enforces&mdash;are
+all right enough once in a while; but do you not get enough of such life
+in the winter to last for all the year?
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0023m.jpg" alt="0023m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0023.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Is one never to forget that it is not proper to wear gold beads with
+crape? Understand, I am not to be set down as having any charity for the
+ignoramus who would wear that combination, but I wish to record the fact
+that there are times, under the spell of the West, when I simply do not <i>care</i>
+whether there are such things as gold beads and crape; when the whole
+business of city life, the music, arts, drama, the pleasant friends,
+equally with the platitudes of things and people you care not about&mdash;civilization,
+in a word&mdash;when all these fade away from my thoughts as far as
+geographically they are, and in their place comes the joy of being at
+least a healthy, if not an intelligent, animal. It is a pleasure to eat
+when the time comes around, a good old-fashioned pleasure, and you need no
+dainty serving to tempt you. It is another pleasure to use your muscles,
+to buffet with the elements, to endure long hours of riding, to run where
+walking would do, to jump an obstacle instead of going around it, to
+return, physically at least, to your pinafore days when you played with
+your brother Willie. Red blood means a rose-colored world. Did you feel
+like that last summer at Newport or Narragansett?
+</p>
+<p>
+So enough; come with me and learn how to be vulgarly robust.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of course one must have clothes and personal comforts, so, while we are
+still in the city humor, let us order a habit suitable for riding astride.
+Whipcord, or a closely woven homespun, in some shade of grayish brown that
+harmonizes with the landscape, is best. Corduroy is pretty, if you like
+it, but rather clumsy. Denham will do, but it wrinkles and becomes untidy.
+Indeed it has been my experience that it is economy to buy the best
+quality of cloth you can afford, for then the garment always keeps its
+shape, even after hard wear, and can be cleaned and made ready for another
+year, and another, and another. You will need it, never fear. Once you
+have opened your ears, "the Red Gods" will not cease to "call for you."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0027m.jpg" alt="0027m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0027.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+In Western life you are on and off your horse at the change of a thought.
+Your horse is not an animate exercise-maker that John brings around for a
+couple of hours each morning; he is your companion, and shares the
+vicissitudes of your life. You even consult him on occasion, especially on
+matters relating to the road. Therefore your costume must look equally
+well on and off the horse. In meeting this requirement, my woes were many.
+I struggled valiantly with everything in the market, and finally, from
+five varieties of divided skirts and bloomers, the following practical and
+becoming habit was evolved.
+</p>
+<p>
+I speak thus modestly, as there is now a trail of patterns of this habit
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Wherever it goes, it makes
+converts, especially among the wives of army officers at the various
+Western posts where we have been&mdash;for the majority of women in the
+West, and I nearly said all the sensible ones, now ride astride.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0028m.jpg" alt="0028m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0028.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+When off the horse, there is nothing about this habit to distinguish it
+from any trim golf suit, with the stitching up the left front which is now
+so popular. When on the horse, it looks, as some one phrased it, as though
+one were riding side saddle on both sides. This is accomplished by having
+the fronts of the skirt double, free nearly to the waist, and, when off
+the horse, fastened by patent hooks. The back seam is also open, faced for
+several inches, stitched and closed by patent fasteners. Snug bloomers of
+the same material are worn underneath. The simplicity of this habit is its
+chief charm; there is no superfluous material to sit upon&mdash;oh, the
+torture of wrinkled cloth in the divided skirt!&mdash;and it does not fly
+up even in a strong wind, if one knows how to ride. The skirt is four
+inches from the ground&mdash;it should not bell much on the sides&mdash;and
+about three and a half yards at the bottom, which is finished with a
+five-inch stitched hem.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0029m.jpg" alt="0029m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0029.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+Any style of jacket is of course suitable. One that looks well on the
+horse is tight fitting, with postilion back, short on hips, sharp pointed
+in front, with single-breasted vest of reddish leather (the habit material
+of brown whipcord), fastened by brass buttons, leather collar and revers,
+and a narrow leather band on the close-fitting sleeves. A touch of leather
+on the skirt in the form of a patch pocket is harmonious, but any
+extensive leather trimming on the skirt makes it unnecessarily heavy.
+</p>
+<p>
+A suit of this kind should be as irreproachable in fit and finish as a
+tailor can make it. This is true economy, for when you return in the
+autumn it is ready for use as a rainy-day costume.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once you have your habit, the next purchase should be stout, heavy soled
+boots, 13 or 14 inches high, which will protect the leg in walking and
+from the stirrup leather while riding. One needs two felt hats (never
+straw), one of good quality for sun or rain, with large firm brim. This is
+important, for if the brim be not firm the elements will soon reduce it to
+raglike limpness and it will flap up and down in your face as you ride.
+This can be borne with composure for five or ten minutes, but not for days
+and weeks at a time. The other felt hat may be as small and as cheap as
+you like. Only see that it combines the graces of comfort and
+becomingness. It is for evenings, and sunless rainless days. A small brown
+felt, with a narrow leather band, gilt buckle, and a twist of orange
+veiling around the crown, is pretty for the whipcord costume.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9034.jpg" alt="9034 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9034.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+One can do a wonderful amount of smartening up with tulle, hat pins,
+belts, and fancy neck ribbons, all of which comparatively take up no room
+and add no weight, always the first consideration. Be sure you supply
+yourself with a reserve of hat pins. Two devices by which they may be made
+to stay in the hat are here shown. The spiral can be given to any hat pin.
+The chain and small brooch should be used if the hat pin is of much value.
+</p>
+<p>
+At this point, if any man, a reviewer perhaps, has delved thus far into
+the mysteries of feminine outfit, he will probably remark, "Why take a hat
+pin of much value?" to which I reply; "Why not? Can you suggest any more
+harmless or useful vent for woman's desire to ornament herself? And unless
+you want her to be that horror of horrors, a strong-minded woman, do you
+think you can strip her for three months of all her gewgaws and still have
+her filled with the proper desire to be pleasing in your eyes? No; better
+let her have the hat pins&mdash;and you know they really are useful&mdash;and
+then she will dress up to those hat pins, if it is only with a fresh neck
+ribbon and a daisy at her belt."
+</p>
+<p>
+I had a man's saddle, with a narrow tree and high pommel and cantle, such
+as is used out West, and as I had not ridden a horse since the hazy days
+of my infancy, I got on the huge creature's back with everything to learn.
+Fear enveloped me as in a cloud during my first ride, and the
+possibilities of the little cow pony they put me on seemed more
+awe-inspiring than those of a locomotive. But I have been reading
+Professor William James and acquired from him the idea (I hope I do not
+malign him) that the accomplishment of a thing depends largely upon one's
+mental attitude, and this was mine all nicely taken&mdash;in New York:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"This thing has been done before, and done well. Good; then I can do it,
+and <i>enjoy</i> it too."
+</p>
+<p>
+I particularly insisted upon the latter clause&mdash;in the East. This
+formula is applicable in any situation. I never should have gotten through
+my Western experiences without it, and I advise you, my dear
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband, to take a large stock of it made
+up and ready for use. There is one other rule for your conduct, if you
+want to be a success: think what you like, but unless it is pleasant, <i>don't
+say it</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Is it better to ride astride? I will not carry the battle ground into the
+East, although even here I have my opinion; but in the West, in the
+mountains, there can be no question that it is the <i>only way</i>. Here
+is an example to illustrate: Two New York women, mother and daughter, took
+a trip of some three hundred miles over the pathless Wind River Mountains.
+The mother rode astride, but the daughter preferred to exhibit her Durland
+Academy accomplishment, and rode sidesaddle, according to the fashion set
+by an artful queen to hide her deformity. The advantages of health, youth
+and strength were all with the daughter; yet in every case on that long
+march it was the daughter who gave out first and compelled the pack train
+to halt while she and her horse rested. And the daughter was obliged to
+change from one horse to another, while the same horse was able to carry
+the mother, a slightly heavier woman, through the trip. And the back of
+the horse which the daughter had ridden chiefly was in such a condition
+from saddle galls that the animal, two months before a magnificent
+creature, had to be shot.
+</p>
+<p>
+I hear you say, "But that was an extreme case." Perhaps it was, but it
+supports the verdict of the old mountaineers who refuse to let any horse
+they prize be saddled with "those gol-darned woman fripperies."
+</p>
+<p>
+There is also another side. A woman at best is physically handicapped when
+roughing it with husband or brother. Then why increase that handicap by
+wearing trailing skirts that catch on every log and bramble, and which
+demand the services of at least one hand to hold up (fortunately this
+battle is already won), and by choosing to ride side-saddle, thus making
+it twice as difficult to mount and dismount by yourself, which in fact
+compels you to seek the assistance of a log, or stone, or a friendly hand
+for a lift? Western riding is not Central Park riding, nor is it Rotten
+Row riding. The cowboy's, or military, seat is much simpler and easier for
+both man and beast than the Park seat&mdash;though, of course, less
+stylish. That is the glory of it; you can go galloping over the prairie
+and uplands with never a thought that the trot is more proper, and your
+course, untrammelled by fenced-in roads, is straight to the setting sun or
+to yonder butte. And if you want a spice of danger, it is there, sometimes
+more than you want, in the presence of badger and gopher holes, to step
+into which while at high speed may mean a broken leg for your horse,
+perhaps a broken neck for yourself. But to return to the independence of
+riding astride:
+</p>
+<p>
+One day I was following a game trail along a very steep bank which ended a
+hundred feet below in a granite precipice. It had been raining and snowing
+in a fitful fashion, and the clay ground was slippery, making a most
+treacherous footing. One of the pack animals just ahead of my horse
+slipped, fell to his knees, the heavy pack overbalanced him, and away he
+rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice only
+by the happy accident of a scrub tree in the way. Frightened by this
+sight, my animal plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. Had I been riding
+side-saddle, nothing could have saved me, for the downhill was on the near
+side; but instead I swung out of the saddle on the off side and landed in
+a heap on the uphill, still clutching the bridle. That act saved my
+horse's life, probably, as well as my own. For the sudden weight I put on
+the upper side as I swung off enabled him to recover his balance just in
+time. I do not pretend to say that I can dismount from the off side as
+easily as from the near, because I am not accustomed to it. But I have
+frequently done it in emergencies, while a side-saddle leaves one helpless
+in this case as in many others.
+</p>
+<p>
+Besides being unable to mount and dismount without assistance it is very
+difficult to get side-saddle broken horses, and it usually means a horse
+so broken in health and spirits that he does not care what is being
+strapped on his back and dangling on one side of him only. And to be on
+such an animal means that you are on the worst mount of the outfit, and I
+am sure that it requires little imagination on any one's part to know
+therein lies misery. Oh! the weariness of being the weakest of the party
+and the worst mounted&mdash;to be always at the tail end of the line,
+never to be able to keep up with the saddle horses when they start off for
+a canter, to expend your stock of vitality, which you should husband for
+larger matters, in urging your beast by voice and quirt to further
+exertion! Never place yourself in such a position. The former you cannot
+help, but you can lessen it by making use of such aids to greater
+independence as wearing short skirts and riding astride, and having at
+least as good a horse as there is in the outfit. Then you will get the
+pleasure from your outing that you have the right to expect&mdash;that is,
+if you adhere to one other bit of advice, or rather two.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first is: See that for your camping trip is provided a man cook.
+</p>
+<p>
+I wish that I could put a charm over the next few words so that only the
+woman reader could understand, but as I cannot I must repeat boldly: Dear
+woman who goes hunting with her husband, be sure that you have it
+understood that you do no cooking, or dishwashing. I think that the reason
+women so often dislike camping out is because the only really disagreeable
+part of it is left to them as a matter of course. Cooking out of doors at
+best is trying, and certainly you cannot be care free, camp-life's
+greatest charm, when you have on your mind the boiling of prunes and
+beans, or when tears are starting from your smoke-inflamed eyes as you
+broil the elk steak for dinner. No, indeed! See that your guide or your
+horse wrangler knows how to cook, and expects to do it. He is used to it,
+and, anyway, is paid for it. He is earning his living, you are taking a
+vacation.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0045m.jpg" alt="0045m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0045.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Now for the second advice, which is a codicil to the above: In return for
+not having to potter with the food and tinware, <i>never complain about it</i>.
+Eat everything that is set before you, shut your eyes to possible dirt,
+or, if you cannot, leave the particular horror in question untouched, but
+without comment. Perhaps in desperation you may assume the role of cook
+yourself. Oh, foolish woman, if you do, you only exchange your woes for
+worse ones.
+</p>
+<p>
+If you provide yourself with the following articles and insist upon having
+them reserved for you, and then let the cook furnish everything else, you
+will be all right:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>An aluminum plate made double for hot water</i>. This is a very little
+trouble to fill, and insures a comfortable meal; otherwise, your meat and
+vegetables will be cold before you can eat them, and the gravy will have a
+thin coating of ice on it. It is always cold night and morning in the
+mountains. And if you do not need the plate heated you do not have to fill
+it; that's all. I am sure my hot-water plate often saved me from
+indigestion and made my meals things to enjoy instead of to endure.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Two cups and saucers of white enamel ware</i>. They always look clean
+and do not break.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One silver-plated knife and fork and two teaspoons</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One folding camp chair</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+N.B.&mdash;Provide your husband or brother or sister precisely the same;
+no more, no less.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Japanese napkins</i>, enough to provide two a day for the party.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Two white enamel vegetable dishes</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One folding camp table</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One candle lamp, with enough candles</i>. Then leave all the rest of
+the cooking outfit to your cook and trust in Providence. (If you do not
+approve of Providence, a full aluminum cooking outfit can be bought so
+that one pot or pan nests in the other, the whole very complete, compact
+and light.)
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9048.jpg" alt="9048 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9048.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Come what may, you have your own particular clean hot plate, cup and
+saucer, knife, fork, spoon and napkin, with a table to eat from and a
+chair to sit on and a lamp to see by, if you are eating after dark&mdash;which
+often happens&mdash;and nothing else matters, but food.
+</p>
+<p>
+If you want to be canny you will have somewhere in your own pack a modest
+supply of condensed soups and vegetables, a box or two of meat crackers,
+and three or four bottles of bouillon, to be brought out on occasions of
+famine. Anyway it is a comfort to know that you have provided against the
+wolf. So much for your part of the eating; now for the sleeping. If you do
+not sleep warm and comfortable at night, the joys of camping are as dust
+in the mouth. The most glorious morning that Nature ever produced is a
+weariness to the flesh of the owl-eyed. So whatever else you leave behind,
+be sure your sleeping arrangements are comfortable. The following is the
+result of three years' experience:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>A piece of waterproof brown canvas</i>, 7 by 10 feet, bound with tape
+and supplied with two heavy leather straps nine feet long, with strong
+buckles at one end and fastened to the canvas by means of canvas loops,
+and one leather strap six feet long that crosses the other two at right
+angles.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One rubber air bed</i>, 36 by 76 inches (don't take a narrower size or
+you will be uncomfortable), fitted with large size double valve at each
+end. This bed is six inches thick when blown full of air. Be sure that
+sides are inserted, thus making two seams to join together the top and
+bottom six inches apart. If the top and bottom are fastened directly
+together, your bed slopes down at the sides, which is always disagreeable.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0050m.jpg" alt="0050m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0050.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<i>A sleeping bag</i>, with the canvas cover made the full 36 inches wide.
+This cover should hold two blanket bags of different weight, and if you
+are wise you will have made an eider-down bag to fit inside all of these
+for very cold weather. The eider bag costs about $16.00 or $18.00, but is
+worth it if you are going to camp out in the mountains after August. Do
+without one or two summer hats, but get it, for it is the keynote of camp
+comfort.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then you want a lamb's wool night wrapper, a neutral grey or brown in
+color, a set of heavy night flannels, some heavy woollen stockings and a
+woollen tam o' shanter large enough to pull down over the ears. A
+hot-water bag, also, takes up no room and is heavenly on a freezing night
+when the wind is howling through the trees and snow threatens. N.B.&mdash;See
+that your husband or brother has a similar outfit, or he will borrow
+yours.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sleeping bags should be separated and dried either by sun or fire
+every other day.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Always keep all your sleeping things together in your bed roll</i>, and
+your husband's things together in his bed bundle. It will save you many a
+sigh and weary hunt in the dark and cold. The tent and such things, you
+can afford to leave to your guide or to luck. If one wishes to provide a
+tent, brown canvas is far preferable to white. It does not make a glare of
+light, nor does it stand out aggressively in the landscape. You have your
+little nightly kingdom waiting for you and can sleep cosily if nothing
+else is provided. Whenever possible, get your bed blown up and your
+sleeping bags in order on top and your sleeping things together where you
+can put your hands on them during the daylight, or if that is impossible,
+make it the first thing you do when you make camp, while the cook is
+getting supper. Then, as you eat supper and sit near the camp fire to keep
+warm, you have the sweet consciousness that over there, in the blackness
+is a snug little nest all ready to receive your tired self. And if some
+morning you want to see what you have escaped, just unscrew the air valve
+to your bed before you rise, and when you come down on the hard, bumpy
+ground, in less time than it takes to tell, you will agree with me that
+there is nothing so rare as resting on air. Nimrod used to play this trick
+on me occasionally when it was time to get up&mdash;it is more efficacious
+than any alarm clock&mdash;but somehow he never seemed to enjoy it when I
+did it to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+For riding, it is better to carry your own saddle and bridle and to buy a
+saddle horse upon leaving the railroad. You can look to the guides for all
+the rest, such as pack saddles, pack animals, etc.
+</p>
+<p>
+My saddle is a strong but light-weight California model; that is, with
+pommel and cantle on a Whitman tree. It is fitted with gun-carrying case
+of the same leather and saddle-bag on the skirt of each side, and has a
+leather roll at the back strapped on to carry an extra jacket and a
+slicker. (A rain-coat is most important. I use a small size of the New
+York mounted policemen's mackintosh, made by Goodyear. It opens front and
+back and has a protecting cape for the hands.) The saddle has also small
+pommel bags in which are matches, compass, leather thongs, knife and a
+whistle (this last in case I get lost), and there are rings and strings in
+which other bundles such as lunch can be attached while on the march. A
+horsehair army saddle blanket saves the animal's back. Nimrod's saddle is
+exactly like mine, only with longer and larger stirrups.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0055m.jpg" alt="0055m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0055.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+You have now your personal things for eating, sleeping and riding. It
+remains but to clothe yourself and you are ready to start. Provide
+yourself with two or three champagne baskets covered with brown waterproof
+canvas, with stout handles at each end and two leather straps going round
+the basket to buckle the lid down, and a stronger strap going lengthwise
+over all. Or if you do not mind a little more expense, telescopes made of
+leatheroid, about 22 inches long, 11 inches wide and 9 inches deep, with
+the lower corners rounded so they will not stick into the horse, and
+fitted with straps and handles, make the ideal travelling case; for they
+can be shipped from place to place on the railroad and can be packed, one
+on each side of a horse. They are much to be preferred to the usual
+Klondike bag for convenience in packing and unpacking one's things and in
+protecting them.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0057m.jpg" alt="0057m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0057.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It is hardly necessary to say that clothes have to be kept down to the
+limit of comfort. Into the telescopes or baskets should go warm flannels,
+extra pair of heavy boots, several flannel shirt waists, extra riding
+habit and bloomers, fancy neck ribbons and a belt or two&mdash;for why
+look worse than your best at any time?&mdash;a long warm cloak and a
+chamois jacket for cold weather, snow overshoes, warm gloves and mittens
+too, and some woollen stockings. Be sure you take flannels. This is the
+advice of one who never wears them at any other time. A veil or two is
+very useful, as the wind is often high and biting, and I was much annoyed
+with wisps of hair around my eyes, and also with my hair coming down while
+on horseback, until I hit upon the device of tying a brown liberty silk
+veil over the hair and partially over the ears before putting on a
+sombrero. This veil was not at all unbecoming, being the same color as my
+hair, and it served the double purpose of keeping unruly locks in order
+and keeping my ears warm. A hair net is also useful.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9058.jpg" alt="9058 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9058.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Then you must not forget a rubber bath tub, a rubber wash basin, sponge,
+towels, soap, and toilet articles generally, including camphor ice for
+chapped lips and pennyroyal vaseline salve for insect bites. A brown linen
+case is invaluable to hold all these toilet necessaries, so that you can
+find them quickly. A sewing kit should be supplied, a flask of whiskey,
+and a small "first-aid" outfit; a bottle of Perry Davis pain killer or
+Pond's extract; but no more bottles than must be, as they are almost sure
+to be broken.
+</p>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0059m.jpg" alt="0059m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0059.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>In your husband's box, ammunition takes the place of toilet
+articles. I shall pass over the guns with the bare mention that I use a
+30.30 Winchester, smokeless. For railroad purposes all this outfit for two
+goes into two trunks and a box&mdash;one trunk for all the bedding and
+night things: the other for all the clothing, guns, ammunition, eating
+things, and incidentals. The box holds the saddles, bridles, and horse
+things.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0060m.jpg" alt="0060m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0060.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+In a pack train, the bed-rolls, weighing about fifty pounds each, go on
+either side of one horse, and the telescopes on each side of another horse&mdash;in
+both cases not a full load, and leaving room on the top of the pack for a
+tent and other camp things. The saddles, of course, go on the saddle
+horses. The cost of such an outfit, in New York, is about two hundred
+dollars each; but it lasts for years and brings you in large returns in
+health and consequent happiness.
+</p>
+<p>
+I am willing to wager my horsehair rope (specially designed for keeping
+off snakes) that a summer in the Rockies would enable you to cheat time of
+at least two years, and you would come home and join me in the ranks of
+converts from the usual summer sort of thing. Will you try it? If you do,
+how you will pity your unfortunate friends who have never known what it is
+to sleep on the south side of a sage brush, and honestly say in the
+morning, "It is wonderful how well I am feeling."
+</p>
+<p>
+But to begin:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0062m.jpg" alt="0062m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0062.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+III. THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9065.jpg" alt="9065 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9065.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was about midnight in the end of August when Nimrod and I tumbled off
+the train at Market Lake, Idaho. Next morning, after a comfortable night's
+rest at the "hotel," our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles, guns,
+clothing, and ourselves were packed into a covered wagon, drawn by four
+horses, and we started for Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver who knew
+the road perfectly. At least, that was what he said, so of course he must
+have known it. But his memory failed him sadly the first day out, which
+reduced him to the necessity of inquiring of the neighbours. As these were
+unsociably placed from thirty to fifty miles apart, there were many times
+when the little blind god of chance ruled our course.
+</p>
+<p>
+We put up for the night at Rexburgh, after forty long miles of alkali
+dust. The Mormon religion has sent a thin arm up into that country, and
+the keeper of the log building he called a hotel was of that faith. The
+history of our brief stay there belongs properly to the old torture days
+of the Inquisition, for the Mormon's possessions of living creatures were
+many, and his wives and children were the least of them.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8067.jpg" alt="8067 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8067.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Another day of dust and long hard miles over gradually rising hills, with
+the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day we
+climbed the Teton Pass.
+</p>
+<p>
+There is nothing extraordinary about climbing the Teton Pass&mdash;to tell
+about. We just went up, and then we went down. It took six horses half a
+day to draw us up the last mile&mdash;some twenty thousand seconds of
+conviction on my part (unexpressed, of course; see side talk) that the
+next second would find us dashed to everlasting splinters. And it took ten
+minutes to get us down!
+</p>
+<p>
+Of the two, I preferred going up. If you have ever climbed a greased pole
+during Fourth of July festivities in your grandmother's village, you will
+understand.
+</p>
+<p>
+When we got to the bottom there was something different. Our driver
+informed us that in two hours we should be eating dinner at the ranch
+house in Jackson's Hole, where we expected to stop for a while to
+recuperate from the past year's hard grind and the past two weeks of
+travel. This was good news, as it was then five o'clock and our midday
+meal had been light&mdash;despite the abundance of coffee, soggy potatoes,
+salt pork, wafer slices of meat swimming in grease, and evaporated
+apricots wherein some nice red ants were banqueting.
+</p>
+<p>
+"We'll just cross the Snake River, and then it'll be plain sailing," he
+said. Perhaps it was so. I was inexperienced in the West. This was what
+followed:&mdash;Closing the door on the memory of my recent perilous
+passage, I prepared to be calm inwardly, as I like to think I was
+outwardly. The Snake River is so named because for every mile it goes
+ahead it retreats half way alongside to see how well it has been done. I
+mention this as a pleasing instance of a name that really describes the
+thing named. But this is after knowledge.
+</p>
+<p>
+About half past five, we came to a rolling tumbling yellow stream where
+the road stopped abruptly with a horrid drop into water that covered the
+hubs of the wheels. The current was strong, and the horses had to struggle
+hard to gain the opposite bank. I began to thank my patron saint that the
+Snake River was crossed.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0069m.jpg" alt="0069m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0069.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Crossed? Oh, no! A narrow strip of pebbly road, and the high willows
+suddenly parted to disclose another stream like the last, but a little
+deeper, a little wider, a little worse. We crossed it. I made no comments.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the third stream the horses rebelled. There are many things four horses
+can do on the edge of a wicked looking river to make it uncomfortable, but
+at last they had to go in, plunging madly, and dragging the wagon into the
+stream nearly broadside, which made at least one in the party consider the
+frailty of human contrivances when matched against a raging flood.
+</p>
+<p>
+Soon there was another stream. I shall not describe it. When we eventually
+got through it, the driver stopped his horses to rest, wiped his brow,
+went around the wagon and pulled a few ropes tighter, cut a willow stick
+and mended his broken whip, gave a hitch to his trousers, and remarked as
+he started the horses:
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8071.jpg" alt="8071 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8071.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"Now, when we get through the Snake River on here a piece, we'll be all
+right."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought we had been crossing it for the past hour," I was feminine
+enough to gasp.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, them's forks of it; but the main stream's on ahead, and it's
+mighty treacherous, too," was the calm reply.
+</p>
+<p>
+When we reached the Snake River, there was no doubt that the others were
+mere forks. Fortunately, Joe Miller and his two sons live on the opposite
+bank, and make a living by helping people escape destruction from the
+mighty waters. Two men waved us back from the place where our driver was
+lashing his horses into the rushing current, and guided us down stream
+some distance. One of them said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"This yere ford changes every week, but I reckon you might try here."
+</p>
+<p>
+We did.
+</p>
+<p>
+Had my hair been of the dramatic kind that realises situations, it would
+have turned white in the next ten minutes. The water was over the horses'
+backs immediately, the wagon box was afloat, and we were being borne
+rapidly down stream in the boiling seething flood, when the wheels struck
+a shingly bar which gave the horses a chance to half swim, half plunge.
+The two men, who were on horseback, each seized one of the leaders, and
+kept his head pointed for a cut in the bank, the only place where we could
+get out.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0072m.jpg" alt="0072m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0072.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Everything in the wagon was afloat. A leather case with a forty dollar
+fishing rod stowed snugly inside slipped quietly off down stream. I
+rescued my camera from the same fate just in time. Overshoes, wraps, field
+glasses, guns, were suddenly endowed with motion. Another moment and we
+should surely have sunk, when the horses, by a supreme effort, managed to
+scramble on to the bank, but were too exhausted to draw more than half of
+the wagon after them, so that it was practically on end in the water, our
+outfit submerged, of course, and ourselves reclining as gracefully as
+possible on the backs of the seats.
+</p>
+<p>
+Had anything given away then, there might have been a tragedy. The two men
+immediately fastened a rope to the tongue of the wagon, and each winding
+an end around the pommel of his saddle, set his cow pony pulling. Our
+horses made another effort, and up we came out of the water, wet, storm
+tossed, but calm. Oh, yes&mdash;calm! After that, earth had no terrors for
+me; the worst road that we could bump over was but an incident. I was not
+surprised that it grew dark very soon, and that we blundered on and on for
+hours in the night until the near wheeler just lay down in the dirt, a
+dark spot in the dark road, and our driver, after coming back from a tour
+of inspection on foot, looked worried. I mildly asked if we would soon
+cross Snake River, but his reply was an admission that he was lost. There
+was nothing visible but the twinkling stars and a dim outline of the grim
+Tetons. The prospect was excellent for passing the rest of the night where
+we were, famished, freezing, and so tired I could hardly speak.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Nimrod now took command. His first duty, of course, being a man, was
+to express his opinion of the driver in terms plain and comprehensive;
+then he loaded his rifle and fired a shot. If there were any mountaineers
+around, they would understand the signal and answer.
+</p>
+<p>
+We waited. All was silent as before. Two more horses dropped to the
+ground. Then he sent another loud report into the darkness. In a few
+moments we thought we heard a distant shout, then the report of a gun not
+far away.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod mounted the only standing horse and went in the direction of the
+sound. Then followed an interminable silence. I hallooed, but got no
+answer. The wildest fears for Nimrod's safety tormented me. He had fallen
+into a gully, the horse had thrown him, <i>he</i> was lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then I heard a noise and listened eagerly. The driver said it was a coyote
+howling up on the mountain. At last voices did come to me from out of the
+blackness, and Nimrod returned with a man and a fresh horse. The man was
+no other than the owner of the house for which we were searching, and in
+ten minutes I was drying myself by his fireplace, while his hastily
+aroused wife was preparing a midnight supper for us.
+</p>
+<p>
+To this day, I am sure that driver's worst nightmare is when he lives over
+again the time when he took a tenderfoot and his wife into Jackson's Hole,
+and, but for the tenderfoot, would have made them stay out overnight, wet,
+famished, frozen, within a stone's throw of the very house for which they
+were looking.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0076m.jpg" alt="0076m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0076.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+IV. WHICH TREATS OF THE IMPS AND MY ELK.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9079.jpg" alt="9079 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9079.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"If you want to see elk, you just follow up the road till you strike a
+trail on the left, up over that hog's back, and that will bring you in a
+mile or so on to a grassy flat, and in two or three miles more you come to
+a lake back in the mountains."
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8079.jpg" alt="8079 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8079.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Mrs. Cummings, the speaker, was no ordinary woman of Western make. She had
+been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She had
+been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her away,
+and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed, and fed
+the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this in spite
+of the fact that for those parts she was very comfortable.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her log house was the largest in the country, barring Captain Jones's, her
+nearest neighbour, ten miles up at Jackson's Lake, and his was a hotel.
+Hers could boast of six rooms and two clothes' closets. The ceilings were
+white muslin to shut off the rafters, the sitting room had wall-paper and
+a rag carpet, and in one corner was the post-office.
+</p>
+<p>
+The United States Government Post-office of Deer, Wyoming, took up two
+compartments of Mrs. Cummings' writing desk, and she was called upon to be
+postmistress fifteen minutes twice a week, when the small boy, mounted on
+a tough little pony, happened around with the leather bag which carried
+the mail to and from Jackson, thirty miles below.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0081m.jpg" alt="0081m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0081.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+"I'd like some elk meat mighty well for dinner," Mrs. Cummings continued,
+as she leaned against the kitchen door and watched us mount our newly
+acquired horses, "but you won't find game around here without a guide&mdash;Easterners
+never do."
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod and I started off in joyous mood. The secret of it, the fascination
+of the wild life, was revealed to me. At last I understood why the birds
+sing. The glorious exhilaration of the mountains, the feeling that life is
+a rosy dream, and that all the worry and the fever and the fret of man's
+making is a mere illusion that has faded away into the past, and is not
+worth while; that the real life is to be free, to fly over the grassy
+mountain meadow with never a limitation of fence or house, with the
+eternal peaks towering around you, terrible in their grandeur and
+vastness, yet inviting.
+</p>
+<p>
+We struck the trail all right, we thought, but it soon disappeared and we
+had to govern our course by imagination, an uncertain guide at best. We
+got into dreadful tangles of timber; the country was all strange, and the
+trees spread over the mountain for miles, so that it was like trying to
+find the way under a blanket; but we kept on riding our horses over fallen
+logs and squeezing them between trees, all the time keeping a sharp watch
+over them, for they were fresh and scary.
+</p>
+<p>
+Finally, after three hours' hard climbing, we emerged from the forest on
+to a great bare shoulder of the mountain, from which the whole country
+around, vast and beautiful, could be seen. We took bearings and tried to
+locate that lake, and we finally decided that a wooded basin three miles
+away looked likely to contain it.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8085.jpg" alt="8085 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8085.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+In order to get to it, we had to cross a wooded ravine, very steep and
+torn out by a recent cloudburst. We rode the horses down places that I
+shudder in remembering, and I had great trouble in keeping away from the
+front feet of my horse as I led him, especially when there were little
+gullies that had to be jumped.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was exciting enough, and hard work, too, every nerve on a tingle and
+one's heart thumping with the unwonted exercise at that altitude; but oh,
+the glorious air, the joy of life and motion that was quite unknown to my
+reception and theatre-going self in the dim far away East!
+</p>
+<p>
+We searched for that lake all day, and at nightfall went home confident
+that we could find it on the morrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Cummings' smile clearly expressed 'I told you so,' and she remarked
+as she served supper: "When my husband comes home next week, he will take
+you where you can find game."
+</p>
+<p>
+The next morning we again took some lunch in the saddle bag and started
+for that elusive spot we had christened Cummings' Lake. About three
+o'clock we found it&mdash;a beautiful patch of water in the heart of the
+forest, nestling like a jewel, back in the mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+We picketed the horses at a safe distance, so that they could not be seen
+or heard from the lake. At one end the shore sloped gradually into the
+water, and here Nimrod discovered many tracks of elk, a few deer, and one
+set of black bear. He said the lake was evidently a favourite drinking
+place, that a band of elk had been coming daily to water, and that,
+according to their habits, they ought to come again before dusk.
+</p>
+<p>
+So we concealed ourselves on a little bluff to the right and waited. The
+sun had begun to cast long lines on the earth, and the little circle of
+water was already in shadow when Nimrod held up his finger as a warning
+for silence. We listened. We were so still that the whole world seemed to
+be holding its breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+I heard a faint noise as of a snapping branch, then some light thuds along
+the ground, and to the left of us out of the dark forest, a dainty
+creature flitted along the trail and playfully splashed into the water.
+Six others of her sisters followed her, with two little ones, and they
+were all splashing about in the water like so many sportive mermaids when
+their lordly master appeared&mdash;a fine bull elk who seemed to me, as he
+sedately approached the edge of the lake, to be nothing but horns.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0088m.jpg" alt="0088m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0088.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+I shall never forget the picture of this family at home&mdash;the quiet
+lake encircled by forest and towered over by mountains; the gentle
+graceful creatures full of life playing about in the water, now drinking,
+now splashing it in cooling showers upon one another; the solicitude of a
+mother that her young one should come to no harm; and then the head of
+them all proceeding with dignity to bathe with his harem.
+</p>
+<p>
+Had I to do again what followed, I hope I should act differently. Nimrod
+was watching them with a rapt expression, quite forgetful of the rifle in
+his hands, when I, who had never seen anything killed, touched his arm and
+whispered: "Shoot, shoot now, if you are going to."
+</p>
+<p>
+The report of the rifle rang out like a cannon. The does fled away as if
+by magic. The stag tried also to get to shore, but the ball had inflicted
+a wound which partially paralysed his hindquarters. At the sight of the
+blood and the big fellow's struggles to get away, the horror of the thing
+swept over me. "Oh, kill him, kill him!" I wailed. "Don't let him suffer!"
+</p>
+<p>
+But here the hunter in Nimrod answered: "If I kill him now, I shall never
+be able to get him. Wait until he gets out of the water."
+</p>
+<p>
+The next few seconds, with that struggling thing in the water, seemed an
+eternity of agony to me. Then another loud bang caused the proud head with
+its weight of antlers to sink to the wet bank never to rise again.
+</p>
+<p>
+Later, as I dried my tears, I asked Nimrod:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Where is the place to aim if you want to kill an animal instantly, so
+that he will not suffer, and never know what hit him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The best place is the shoulder." He showed me the spot on his elk.
+</p>
+<p>
+"But wouldn't he suffer at all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, of course, if you hit him in the brain, he will never know; but
+that is a very fine shot. Your target is only an inch or two, here between
+the eye and the ear, and the head moves more than the body. But," he said,
+"you would not kill an elk after the way you have wept over this one?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"If&mdash;if I were sure he would not suffer, I might kill just one," I
+said, conscious of my inconsistencies. My woman's soul revolted, and yet I
+was out West for all the experiences that the life could give me, and I
+knew, if the chance came just right, that one elk would be sacrificed to
+that end.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0091m.jpg" alt="0091m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0091.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+The next day, much to Mrs. Cummings' surprise, we had elk steak, the most
+delicious of meat when properly cooked. The next few days slipped by. We
+were always in the open air, riding about in those glorious mountains, and
+it was the end of the week when a turn of the wheel brought my day.
+</p>
+<p>
+First, it becomes necessary to confide in you. Fear is a very wicked
+companion who, since nursery days, had troubled me very little; but when I
+arrived out West, he was waiting for me, and, so that I need never be
+without him, he divided himself into a band of little imps.
+</p>
+<p>
+Each imp had a special duty, and never left me until he had been crushed
+in silent but terrible combat. There was the imp who did not like to be
+alone in the mountains, and the imp who was sure he was going to be lost
+in those wildernesses, and the imp who quaked at the sight of a gun, and
+the imp who danced a mad fierce dance when on a horse. All these had been
+conquered, or at least partially reduced to subjection, but the imp who
+sat on the saddle pommel when there was a ditch or stream to be jumped had
+hitherto obliged me to dismount and get over the space on foot.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0092m.jpg" alt="0092m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0092.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+This morning, when we came to a nasty boggy place, with several small
+water cuts running through it, I obeyed the imp with reluctance. Well, we
+got over it&mdash;Blondey, the imp, and I&mdash;with nothing worse than
+wet feet and shattered nerves.
+</p>
+<p>
+I attempted to mount, and had one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the
+pommel, when Blondey started. Like the girl in the song, I could not get
+up, I could not get down, and although I had hold of the reins, I had no
+free hand to pull them in tighter, and you may be sure the imp did not
+help me. Blondey, realising there was something wrong, broke into a wild
+gallop across country, but I clung on, expecting every moment the saddle
+would turn, until I got my foot clear from the stirrup. Then I let go just
+as Blondey was gathering himself together for another ditch.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0093m.jpg" alt="0093m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0093.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+I was stunned, but escaped any serious hurt. Nimrod was a great deal more
+undone than I. He had not dared to go fast for fear of making Blondey go
+faster, and he now came rushing up, with the fear of death upon his face
+and the most terrible swears on his lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+Although a good deal shaken, I began to laugh, the combination was so
+incongruous. Nimrod rarely swears, and was now quite unconscious what his
+tongue was doing. Upon being assured that all was well, he started after
+Blondey and soon brought him back to me; but while he was gone the imp and
+I had a mortal combat.
+</p>
+<p>
+I did up my hair, rearranged my habit, and, rejecting Nimrod's offer of
+his quieter horse, remounted Blondey. We all jumped the next ditch, but
+the shock was too much for the imp in his weakened condition; he tumbled
+off the pommel, and I have never seen him since.
+</p>
+<p>
+Our course lay along the hills on the east bank of Snake River that day.
+We discovered another beautiful sapphire lake in a setting of green hills.
+Several ducks were gliding over its surface. We watched them, in
+concealment of course, and we saw a fish hawk capture his dinner. Then we
+quietly continued along the ridge of a high bluff until we came to an
+outstretched point, where beneath us lay the Snake Valley with its
+fickle-minded river winding through.
+</p>
+<p>
+The sun was just dropping behind the great Tetons, massed in front of us
+across the valley. We sat on our horses motionless, looking at the
+peaceful and majestic scene, when out from the shadows on the sandy flats
+far below us came a dark shadow, and then leisurely another and another.
+They were elk, two bulls and a doe, grazing placidly in a little meadow
+surrounded by trees.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0095m.jpg" alt="0095m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0095.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+We kept as still as statues.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod said. "There is your chance."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," I echoed, "here is my chance."
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9096.jpg" alt="9096 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9096.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We waited until they passed into the trees again. Then we dismounted.
+Nimrod handed me the rifle, saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+"There are seven shots in it. I will stay behind with the horses."
+</p>
+<p>
+I took the gun without a word and crept down the mountain side, keeping
+under cover as much as possible. The sunset quiet surrounded me; the
+deadly quiet of but one idea&mdash;to creep upon that elk and kill him&mdash;possessed
+me. That gradual painful drawing nearer to my prey seemed a lifetime. I
+was conscious of nothing to the right, or to the left of me; only of what
+I was going to do. There were pine woods and scrub brush and more woods.
+Then, suddenly, I saw him standing by the river about to drink. I crawled
+nearer until I was within one hundred and fifty yards of him, when at the
+snapping of a twig he raised his head with its crown of branching horn. He
+saw nothing, so turned again to drink.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8097.jpg" alt="8097 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8097.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Now was the time. I crawled a few feet nearer and raised the deadly
+weapon. The stag turned partly away from me. In another moment he would be
+gone. I sighted along the metal barrel and a terrible bang went booming
+through the dim secluded spot. The elk raised his proud, antlered head and
+looked in my direction. Another shot tore through the air. Without another
+move the animal dropped where he stood. He lay as still as the stones
+beside him, and all was quiet again in the twilight.
+</p>
+<p>
+I sat on the ground where I was and made no attempt to go near him. So
+that was all. One instant a magnificent breathing thing, the next&mdash;nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+Death had been so sudden. I had no regret, I had no triumph&mdash;just a
+sort of wonder at what I had done&mdash;a surprise that the breath of life
+could be taken away so easily.
+</p>
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Nimrod had become alarmed at the long silence, and, tying the
+horses, had followed me down the mountain. He was nearly down when he
+heard the shots, and now came rushing up.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have done it," I said in a dull tone, pointing at the dark, quiet
+object on the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You surely have."
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod paced the distance&mdash;it was one hundred and thirty-five yards&mdash;as
+we went up to the elk. How beautiful his coat was, glossy and shaded in
+browns, and those great horns&mdash;eleven points&mdash;that did not seem
+so big now to my eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod examined the carcass.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You are an apt pupil," he said. "You put a bullet through his heart and
+another through his brain."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," I said; "he never knew what killed him." But I felt no glory in the
+achievement.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0099m.jpg" alt="0099m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0099.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+V. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9103.jpg" alt="9103 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9103.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Have you ever been lost in the mountains?&mdash;not the peaceful,
+cultivated child hills of the Catskills, but in real mountains, where the
+first outpost of civilisation, a lonely ranch house, is two weeks' travel
+away, and where that stream on your left is bound for the Pacific Ocean,
+and that stream on your right over there will, after four thousand miles,
+find its way into the Atlantic Ocean, and where the air you breathe is
+twelve thousand feet above those seas? I have.
+</p>
+<p>
+The situation is naturally one you would not fish out of the grab bag of
+fate if you could avoid it. When you suddenly find it on your hands,
+however, there is only one thing to do&mdash;keep your nerve, grasp it
+firmly, and look at it closely. If you have a horse and a gun and a
+cartridge, it is not so bad. I had these and I had better than all these,
+I had Nimrod&mdash;but only half of Nimrod. The working half was chained
+up by my fears, for such is the power of a woman. I will explain. In
+crossing over the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains, we were
+guests in the pack train of a man who was equally at home in a New York
+drawing-room or on a Wyoming bear hunt, and he had made mountain
+travelling a fine art. Besides ourselves, there were the horse wrangler,
+the cook (of whom you shall hear later), and sixteen horses, and we
+started from Jackson's Lake for the Big Horn Basin, several hundred miles
+over the pathless uninhabited mountains.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0105m.jpg" alt="0105m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0105.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+No one who has not tried it knows how difficult it is for two or three men
+to keep so many pack animals in line, with no pathway to guide; and once
+they are started going nicely, it is nothing short of a calamity to stop
+them, especially when it is necessary to cover a certain number of miles
+before nightfall in order that they may have feed.
+</p>
+<p>
+We were on the Pacific side of the Wind River Divide, and must get to the
+top that night. The horses were travelling nicely up the difficult ascent,
+so when Nimrod got his feet wet crossing a stream about noon, he and I
+thought we would just stop and have a little lunch, dry the shoes, and
+catch up with the pack train in half an hour.
+</p>
+<p>
+From the minute the last horse vanished out of sight behind a rock,
+desolation settled upon me. That slender line of living beings somewhere
+on ahead was the only link between us and civilisation&mdash;civilisation
+which I understood, which was human and touchable&mdash;and the awful
+vastness of those endless peaks, wherein lurked a hundred dangers, and
+which seemed made but to annihilate me.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0106m.jpg" alt="0106m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0106.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Of course, the fire would not burn, and the shoes would not dry. Blondey
+wandered off and had to be brought back, and it seemed an age before we
+were again in the saddle, following the trail the animals had made.
+</p>
+<p>
+But Nimrod was blithe and unconcerned, so I made no sign of the craven
+soul within me. For an hour or two we followed the trail, urging our
+horses as much as possible, but the ascent was difficult, and we could not
+gain on the speed of the pack train. Then the trail was lost in a gully
+where the animals had gone in every direction to get through. My nerves
+were now on the rack of suspense.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0108m.jpg" alt="0108m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0108.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Where were they? Surely, we must have passed them! We were on the wrong
+trail, perhaps going away from them at every step!
+</p>
+<p>
+The screws of fear grew tighter every moment during the following hours.
+Nimrod soon found what he considered to be the trail, and we proceeded.
+</p>
+<p>
+At last we got to the top. No sign of them. I could have screamed aloud; a
+great wave of soul destroying fear encompassed me&mdash;wild black fear. I
+could not reason it out. We were lost!
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0110m.jpg" alt="0110m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0110.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Nimrod scoffed at me. The track was still plain, he said; but I could not
+read the hieroglyphics at my feet, and there was no room in my mind for
+confidence or hope. Fear filled it all.
+</p>
+<p>
+There we were with the mighty forces of the insensate world around, so
+pitiless, so silently cruel, it seemed to my city-bred soul. It was the
+spot where Nature spread her wonders before us, one tiny spring dividing
+its waters east and west for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for this was
+the highest point.
+</p>
+<p>
+We attempted to cross that hateful divide, that at another time might have
+looked so beautiful, when suddenly Nimrod's horse plunged withers deep in
+a bog, and in his struggles to get out threw Nimrod head first from the
+saddle into the mud, where he lay quite still.
+</p>
+<p>
+I faced the horror of death at that moment. Of course, this was what I had
+been expecting, but had not been able to put into words. Nimrod killed! My
+other fears dwindled away before this one, or, rather, it seemed to wrap
+them in itself, as in a cloak. For an instant I could not move&mdash;there
+alone with a dead or wounded man on that awful mountain top.
+</p>
+<p>
+But here was an emergency where I could do something besides blindly
+follow another's lead. I caught the frightened animal as it dashed out of
+the treacherous place (to be horseless is almost a worse fate than to be
+wounded), and Nimrod, who was little hurt, quickly recovered and managed
+to scramble to dry ground, and again into the saddle.
+</p>
+<p>
+Forcing our tired horses onward, we again found a trail, supposedly the
+right one, but there was that haunting fear that it was not. For the only
+signs were the bending of the grass and the occasional rubbing of the
+trees where the animals had passed. And these might have been done by a
+band of elk.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was growing dusk and still no pack train in sight. No criminal on trial
+for his life could have felt more wretchedly apprehensive than I. At last
+we came to a stream. Nimrod, who had dismounted to examine more closely,
+said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"The trail turns off here, but it is very dim in the grass."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Where?" I asked, anxiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+He pointed to the ground. I could make out nothing. "Oh, let us hurry!
+They must have gone on."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think it would be safer to follow these tracks for a time at least, to
+see where they come out. There are some tracks across the stream there,
+but they are older and dimmer and might have been made by elk."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, do go on! Surely the tracks across the stream must be the ones." To
+go on, on, and hurry, was my one thought, my one cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod yielded. Thus I and my wild fear betrayed the hunter's instinct. We
+went on for many weary minutes. We lost all tracks. Then Nimrod fired a
+shot into the air. He would not do it before, because he said we were not
+lost, and that there was no need for worry&mdash;worry, when for hours
+blind fear had held me in torture!
+</p>
+<p>
+There was no answer to the shot.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9114.jpg" alt="9114 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9114.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+In five minutes he fired again. Then we heard a report, very faint. I
+would not believe that I had heard it at all. I raised my gun and fired.
+This time a shot rattled through the branches overhead, unpleasantly near.
+It was clearly from behind us. We turned, and after another interchange of
+shots, the cook appeared.
+</p>
+<p>
+I was too exhausted to be glad, but a feeling of relief glided over me. He
+led us to the stream where Nimrod had wanted to turn off, and from there
+we were quickly in camp, very much to our host's relief. I dropped at the
+foot of a tree, and said nothing for an hour&mdash;my companions were men,
+so I did not have to talk if I could not&mdash;then I arose as usual and
+was ready for supper.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9115.jpg" alt="9115 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9115.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Of course, Nimrod was blamed for not being a better mountaineer. 'He ought
+to have seen that broken turf by the trail,' or those 'blades of fresh
+pulled grass in the pine fork.' How could they know that a woman and her
+fears had hampered him at every step, especially as you see there was no
+need?
+</p>
+<p>
+Always regulate your fears according to the situation, and then you will
+not go into the valley of the shadow of death, when you are only lost in
+the mountains.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VI. THE COOK.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9119.jpg" alt="9119 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9119.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+I had but a bare speaking acquaintance with the grim silent mountaineer
+who was cook to our party. Two days after he had appeared like an angel of
+heaven on our gloomy path I had an opportunity of knowing him better. I
+quote from my journal:
+</p>
+<p>
+Camp Jim, Shoshone Range, September 23: They left me alone in camp today.
+No, the cook was there. They left me the cook for protection against the
+vast solitude, the mighty grandeur of the mountains, and the possible, but
+improbable, bear. Nice man, that cook&mdash;he confessed with pride to
+many robberies and three murders! Only a month before engaging as cook on
+this trip, he had been serving a life term for murder; but had been
+released through some political 'pull.'
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0120m.jpg" alt="0120m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0120.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Our host, in company with another game warden, had discovered him in the
+mountains, where he had gone immediately from the penitentiary and resumed
+his unlawful life of killing game. But he had hidden his prizes so
+effectively that there was no evidence but his own, which, of course, is
+not accepted in law. Thus he welcomed these two men of justice to his
+camp, told graphically of his killing&mdash;then offered them a smoke,
+smiling the while at their discomfiture.
+</p>
+<p>
+Both his face and hands were scarred from many bar room encounters, and he
+unblushingly dated most of his remarks by the period when he 'was
+rusticatin' in the Pen.' He had brought his own bed and saddle and pack
+horses on the trip so that he could 'cut loose' from the party in case
+'things got too hot' for him.
+</p>
+<p>
+Such was the cook.
+</p>
+<p>
+Immediately after breakfast Nimrod and our host equipped themselves for
+the day's hunt, and went off in opposite directions, like <i>Huck Finn</i>
+and <i>Tom Sawyer</i> on the occasion of their memorable first smoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+Our camp was beside a rushing brook in a little glade that was tucked at
+the foot of towering mountains where no man track had been for years, if
+ever. Around us sighed the mighty pines of the limitless forest. Hundreds
+of miles away, beyond the barrier of nature, were human hives weary of the
+noise and strife of their own making. Here, alone in the solitudes, were
+two human atoms wandering on the trail of the hunted, and&mdash;the cook
+and I. I sat on my rubber bed in the tent and thought&mdash;there was
+nothing else to do&mdash;and was cold, cold from the outside in, and from
+the inside out. There wasn't a thing alive, not even myself&mdash;no one
+but the cook.
+</p>
+<p>
+Outside, I could hear him washing the breakfast tinware, and whistling
+some kind of a jiggling tune that ran up and down me like a shiver. This
+went on for an eternity.
+</p>
+<p>
+Suddenly it stopped, and I heard the faintest crunch on the thin layer of
+snow and the rattling of more snow as it slid off my tent from a blow that
+had been struck on the outside.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8123.jpg" alt="8123 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8123.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+I jumped to the door of the tent. It was the cook.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Purty cold in there, ain't it? You'd a good sight better come to the
+fire. Ain't you got a slicker?"
+</p>
+<p>
+I put on a mackintosh and overshoes and went to the fire. The weather was
+now indulging in a big flake snow that slid stealthily to the ground and
+disappeared into water on whatever obstacle it found there. It found me.
+The cook was cleaning knives&mdash;the cooking knives, the eating knives,
+and a full set of hunting knives, long and short, slim and broad, all
+sharp and efficacious.
+</p>
+<p>
+He handled them lovingly, rubbed off some blood rust here and there, and
+occasionally whetted one to a still more razor edge and threw it into a
+near by tree, where it stuck, quivering.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0125m.jpg" alt="0125m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0125.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+There was no conversation, but I did not feel forgotten.
+</p>
+<p>
+I turned my back on the cook and gazed into the fire, a miserable
+smouldering affair, and speculated on why I had never before noticed how
+much spare time there was in a minute. It may have been five of these
+spacious minutes, it may have been fifteen, that had passed away when the
+cook approached me. I could <i>feel</i> him coming. He came very close to
+me&mdash;and to the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+He put on some beans.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then he went away, and there were many more minutes, many more.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then something touched my arm. At last it had come (what we expect, if it
+be disagreeable, usually does come). I never moved a muscle. This time the
+pressure on my arm was unmistakable. I turned quickly and saw&mdash;the
+cook&mdash;with a gun!
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8127.jpg" alt="8127 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8127.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+The cook, gun, knives, fire, snow, and stars danced a mad jig before me
+for an instant. Then the cook suddenly resumed his proper position, and I
+saw that his disengaged hand was held in an attitude of warning for
+silence. He pointed off into the woods and appeared to be listening. Soon
+I thought I heard a snapping of a branch away off up the mountain.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Bear," the cook whispered. "Follow me."
+</p>
+<p>
+I followed. It was hard work to get over logs and stones without noise, in
+a long mackintosh, and, besides, I wished that I had brought a gun. I
+should have felt more comfortable about both man and beast. I struggled on
+for a while, when the thought suddenly struck home that if I went farther
+I should not be able to find my way back to camp. Everything is relative,
+and those empty tents and smouldering fire seemed a haven of security
+compared to the situation of being unarmed, and lost in the wilderness&mdash;with
+the cook.
+</p>
+<p>
+I watched my chance and sneaked back to camp to get a gun. I was willing
+to believe the cook's bear story, but I wanted a gun. When I got to camp
+there were many good reasons for not going back.
+</p>
+<p>
+After a time I heard two shots close at hand, and soon the cook appeared.
+He said he could not find the bear's track, and lost me, so thought he had
+better look me up and be on hand in case I had returned to camp, and the
+bear should come.
+</p>
+<p>
+I thanked the cook for his solicitude.
+</p>
+<p>
+To while away the time, I put up a target and commenced practising with a
+30-30 rifle at fifty yards range.
+</p>
+<p>
+I shot very badly.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cook obligingly interested himself in my performance and kept tally on
+my aim, pointing out to me when it was high, when it was low, to the right
+or to the left.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then he took his six shooter and put a half dozen bullets in the
+bull's-eye offhand.
+</p>
+<p>
+I lost my interest in shooting.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cook gave me some lunch, and while I was eating he stood before the
+fire looking at it through the fingers of his. Outstretched hand, with a
+queer squint in his cold gray eyes, as though sighting along a rifle
+barrel, while a cigarette hung limply from his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then in response to a winning smile (after all, a woman's best weapon) he
+opened the floodgates of his thoughts and poured into my ears a succession
+of bloodcurdling adventures over which the big, big 'I' had dominated.
+"Yes," he said musingly of his <i>second</i> murder, as he removed his
+squint from the fire to me, and a ghost of a smile played around his lips;
+"yes, it took six shots to keep him quiet, and you could have covered all
+the holes with a cap box&mdash;and his pard nearly got me."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0130m.jpg" alt="0130m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0130.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+"That was the year I lost my pard, Dick Elsen. We was at camp near Fort
+Fetterman. We called a man 'Red'&mdash;his name was Jim Capse. Drink was
+at the bottom of it. Red he sees my pard passing a saloon, and he says,
+'Hello, where did you come from? Come and have a drink!' Pard says, 'No, I
+don't want nothing!' 'Oh, come along and have a drink!' Dick says, 'No,
+thanks, pard, I'm not drinking to-night.' 'Well, I guess you'll have a
+drink with me'; and Red pulls out his six shooter. Dick wasn't quick
+enough about throwing up his hands, and he gets killed. Then Irish Mike
+says to Red, 'You better hit the breeze,' but we ketched him&mdash;a
+telegraph pole was handy&mdash;I says, 'Have you got anything to say?'
+'You write to my mother and tell her that, a horse fell on me. Don't tell
+her that I got hung,' Red says; and we swung him."
+</p>
+<p>
+By the time he had thus proudly stretched out his three dead men before my
+imagination, in a setting of innumerable shooting scraps and horse
+stealings, the hunters returned&mdash;my day with the multi-murderous cook
+was over&mdash;and nothing had happened.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is only fair to quote Nimrod's reply to one who criticised him for
+leaving me thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Humph! Do you think I don't know those wild mountaineers? They are
+perfectly chivalrous, and I could feel a great deal safer in leaving my
+wife in care of that desperado than with one of your Eastern dudes."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0132m.jpg" alt="0132m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0132.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VII. AMONG THE CLOUDS.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9135.jpg" alt="9135 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9135.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Many a time as a child I used to lie on my back in the grass and stare far
+into the wide blue sky above. It seemed so soft, so caressing, so far
+away, and yet so near. Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would drift
+across its face, meet another of its kind, then another and another, until
+the massed up curtain hid the playful blue, and amid grayness and chill,
+where all had been so bright, I would hurry under shelter to avoid the
+storm. That, outside of fairy books, an earthbound being could actually be
+in a cloud, was beyond my imagination. Indeed, it seems strange now, and
+were it not for the absence of a cherished quirt, I should be ready to
+think that my cloud experience had been a dream.
+</p>
+<p>
+The day before, we had been in a great hurry to cross the Wind River
+Divide before a heavy snowfall made travel difficult, if not impossible.
+We had no wish to be snowbound for the winter in those wilds, with only
+two weeks' supply of food, and it was for this same reason we had not
+stopped to hunt that grizzly who had left a fourteen inch track over on
+Wiggins' Creek&mdash;the same being Wahb of the Big Horn Basin, about whom
+I shall have something to say later.
+</p>
+<p>
+We were now camped in a little valley whose creek bubbled pleasantly under
+the ice. Having cleared away three feet of snow for our tents, we decided
+to rest a day or two and hunt, as we were within two days' easy travel of
+the first ranch house.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0136m.jpg" alt="0136m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0136.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It was cold and snowy when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look
+for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a
+trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it
+would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but I
+had been taught my lesson, and kept silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+I even tried to make mental notes of various rocks and trees we passed,
+but it was hopeless. They all looked alike to me. In a city, no matter how
+big or how strange, I can find home unerringly, and Nimrod is helpless as
+a babe. In the mountains it is different. When I finally raised my eyes
+from the horse's tail in front, it was because the tail and the horse
+belonging to it had stopped suddenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+We were in the middle of a brook. It is highly unpleasant to be stopped in
+the middle of an icy brook when your horse's feet break through the ice at
+each step, and you cannot be sure how deep the water is, nor how firm the
+bottom he is going to strike, especially as ice-covered brooks are
+Blondey's pet abhorrence, and the uncertainty of my progress, was
+emphasised by Blondey's attempts to cross on one or two feet instead of
+four.
+</p>
+<p>
+However, I looked dutifully in the direction Nimrod indicated and saw a
+long line of elk heads peering over the ridge in front and showing darkly
+against the snow. They were not startled.
+</p>
+<p>
+Those inquisitive heads, with ears alert, looked at us for some time, and
+then leisurely moved out of sight. We scrambled out of the stream and
+commenced ascending the mountain after them. The damp snow packed on
+Blondey's hoofs, so that he was walking on snowballs. When these got about
+five inches high, they would drop off and begin again. It is needless to
+say that these varying snowballs did not help Blondey's sure-footedness,
+especially as the snow was just thick enough to conceal the treacherous
+slaty rocks beneath. For the first time I understood the phrase, to be
+'all balled up.'
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0139m.jpg" alt="0139m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0139.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Between being ready to clear myself from the saddle and jump off on the up
+side, in case Blondey should fall, and keeping in sight of the tail of the
+other horse, I had given no attention to the landscape.
+</p>
+<p>
+Suddenly I lost Nimrod, and everything was swallowed up in a dark misty
+vapour that cut me off from every object. Even Blondey's nose and the
+ground at my feet were blurred. Regardless of possibly near-by elk, I
+raised a frightened, yell. My voice swirled around me and dropped. I tried
+again, but the sound would not carry.
+</p>
+<p>
+The icy vapour swept through me&mdash;a very lonely forlorn little being
+indeed. I just clung to the saddle, trusting to Blondey's instinct to
+follow the other animal, and tried to enjoy the fact that I was getting a
+new sensation. Even when one could see, every step was treacherous, but in
+that black fog I might as well have been blind and deaf. Then Blondey
+dislodged some loose rock, and went sliding down the mountain with it.
+There was not a thing I could do, so I shut my eyes for an instant. We
+brought up against a boulder, fortunately, with no special damage&mdash;except
+to my nerves. Not being a man, I don't pretend to having enjoyed that
+experience&mdash;and there, not six feet away, was a ghostly figure that I
+knew must be Nimrod.
+</p>
+<p>
+He did not greet me as a long lost, for such I surely felt, but merely
+remarked in a whisper:
+</p>
+<p>
+"We are in a cloud cap. It is settling down. The elk are over there. Keep
+close to me." And he started along the ridge. I felt it was so thoughtful
+of him to give me this admonition. I would much rather have been returned
+safely to camp without further injury and before I froze to the saddle;
+but I grimly kept Blondey's nose overlapping his mate's back and said
+nothing&mdash;not even when I discovered that my cherished riding whip had
+left me. It probably was not fifty feet away, on that toboggan slide, but
+it seemed quite hopeless to find anything in the freezing misty grayness
+that surrounded us.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9142.jpg" alt="9142 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9142.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We continued our perilous passage. Then I was rewarded by a sight seldom
+accorded to humans. It was worth all the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for
+that appallingly illogical cloud cap took a new vagary. It split and
+lifted a little, and there, not three hundred yards away, in the twilight
+of that cold wet cloud, on that mountain in the sky, were two bull elk in
+deadly combat. Their far branching horns were locked together, and they
+swayed now this way, now that, as they wrestled for the supremacy of the
+herd of does, which doubtless was not far away. We could not see clearly:
+all was as in a dream. There was not a sound, only the blurred outlines
+through the blank mist of two mighty creatures struggling for victory. One
+brief glimpse of this mountain drama; then they sank out of sight, and the
+numbing grayness and darkness once more closed around us.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the way back to camp, Blondey shied at a heap of decaying bones that
+were still attached to a magnificent pair of antlers. They were at the
+foot of a cliff, over which the animal had probably fallen. The gruesome
+sight was suggestive of the end of one of those shadowy creatures,
+fighting back there high up on the mountain in the mist and the darkness.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0143m.jpg" alt="0143m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0143.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+We saw no mountain sheep, but oh, the joy of our camp fire that night! For
+we got back in due time all right&mdash;Nimrod and the gods know how. To
+feel the cheery dancing warmth from the pine needles driving away cold and
+misery was pure bliss. One thing is certain about roughing it for a woman:&mdash;there
+is no compromise. She either sits in the lap of happiness or of misery.
+The two are side by side, and toss her about a dozen times a day&mdash;but
+happiness never lets her go for long.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0146m.jpg" alt="0146m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0146.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VIII. AT YEDDAR'S.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9149.jpg" alt="9149 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9149.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Life at Yeddar's ranch on Green River, where Nimrod and I left the pack
+train, is different from life in New York; likewise the people are
+different. And as every Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure to
+go through a Yeddar experience, I offer a few observations by way of
+enlightenment before telling how I killed my antelope. (If you wish to be
+proper, always use the possessive for animals you have killed. It is a
+Western abbreviation in great favour.)
+</p>
+<p>
+A two-story log house, a one-room log office, a log barn, and, across the
+creek, the log shack we occupied, fifty miles from the railroad, and no
+end of miles from anything else, but wilderness&mdash;that was Yeddar's.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0150m.jpg" alt="0150m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0150.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Old Yeddar&mdash;Uncle John, the guides and trappers and teamsters called
+him&mdash;had solved the problem of ideal existence. He ran this rough
+road house without any personal expenditure of labour or money. He sold
+whisky in his office to the passing teamsters and guides, and relied upon
+the same to do the chores around the place, for which he gave them grub,
+the money for which came from the occasional summer tourist, such as we.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Spiker 'did' for him in the summer for her board and that of her
+little girl, and in the winter he and a pard or two rustled for
+themselves, on bacon, coffee, and that delectable compound of bread and
+water known as camp sinkers. He got some money for letting the horses from
+two Eastern outfits run over the surrounding country and eat up the
+Wyoming government hay. Thus he loafs on through the years, outside or
+inside his office, without a care beyond the getting of his whisky and his
+tobacco. Of course he has a history. He claims to be from a 'high up'
+Southern family, but has been a plainsman since 1851. He has lived among
+the Indians, has several red-skinned children somewhere on this planet,
+and seems to have known all the wild tribe of stage drivers, miners, and
+frontiersmen with rapid-firing histories.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once a week, if the weather were fine, Uncle John would tie a towel and a
+clean shirt to his saddle, throw one leg across the back of Jim, his cow
+pony, blind in one eye and weighted with years unknown, and the two would
+jog a mile or so back in the mountains, to a hot sulphur spring, where
+Yeddar would perform his weekly toilet. He was not known to take off his
+clothes at any other time, and if the weather were disagreeable the
+pilgrimage was omitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cheapest thing at Yeddar's, except time, was advice. You could not tie
+up a dog without the entire establishment of loafers bossing the job. A
+little active co-operation was not so easy to get, however. One day I
+watched a freighter get stuck in the mud down the road 'a piece.' One by
+one, the whole number of freighters, mountaineers and guides then at
+Yeddar's lounged to the place, until there were nine able-bodied men
+ranged in a row watching the freighter dig out his wagon. No one offered
+to help him, but all contented themselves with criticising his methods
+freely and inquiring after his politics.
+</p>
+<p>
+During the third week of our stay, Uncle John raised the price of our
+board&mdash;and such board!&mdash;giving as an excuse that when we came he
+did not know that we were going to like it so well, or stay so long!
+Please place this joke where it belongs.
+</p>
+<p>
+The charm that held us to this rough place was the abundance of game. The
+very night we got there, I was standing quietly by the cabin door at dusk,
+when down the path came two of the prettiest does that the whole of the
+Blacktail tribe could muster. Shoulder to shoulder, with their big ears
+alert, they picked their way along, and under cover of the deepening
+twilight advanced to examine the dwelling of the white man.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0155m.jpg" alt="0155m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0155.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+I watched them with silent breath. They were not ten yards away. Then they
+saw me and, wheeling around, stopped, the boldest a little in advance of
+her companion, with the right forefoot raised for action. I made no move.
+The graceful things eyed me suspiciously for several seconds and then
+advanced a little in a one-sided fashion.
+</p>
+<p>
+A laugh from Yeddar's office, across the creek, where Uncle John and Dave
+were having a quiet game of pinochle, caused a short retreat up the road.
+About fifty yards away, they stopped, and there, in the twilight, in that
+wild glen, they put themselves through a series of poses so graceful, so
+unstudied, so tender, so deer-like, that my heart was thrilled with joy at
+the mere artistic beauty of the scene. Then the loudmouthed alarm of a dog
+sent them silently into the forest gloom.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod wanted some photographs of animals from life, and the energy which
+we put forth to obtain these was a constant surprise and disturbance to
+Uncle John and his co-loafers. They could understand why one might trap an
+animal, but to let it go again unhurt, after spending hours over it with a
+camera, was a problem that required many drinks and much quiet cogitation
+in the shade of the office.
+</p>
+<p>
+For days we tried to get a wood-chuck. At last we succeeded, and I find
+this note written in my journal for that date:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oct. 15th: Nimrod caught a woodchuck to-day, a baby one, and we called
+him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us all day in his cage, while Nimrod made a
+sketch of him and I took his picture. Then, in the late afternoon, we took
+him back to his home in the stone-clad hill, and put him among his
+brothers and sisters, who peeped cautiously at us from various rocky
+niches, higher up the hill."
+</p>
+<p>
+Little Johnny must have had a great deal to say of the strange ways and
+food of the big white animal. It must have been hard, too, for him to have
+found suitable woodchuck language to express his sensations when he was
+carried, oh! such a long way, in a big sack that grew on the side of his
+captor; and of the taste of peppermint candy, which he ate in his
+prettiest style, sitting on his haunches and clutching the morsel in both
+forepaws like any well-bred baby woodchuck. And then those delicious sugar
+cookies that Mrs. Spiker had just baked! How could he make his ignorant
+brother chuckies appreciate those cookies! Poor little Johnny is a marked
+woodchuck. He has seen the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Nimrod went hunting skunks, the group at the office gave us up.
+"Locoed, plumb locoed," was the verdict.
+</p>
+<p>
+Have you ever been on a skunk hunt? But perhaps you have no prejudices. I
+had. My code of action for a skunk was, if you see a black and white
+animal, don't stop to admire its beautiful bushy tail, but give a good
+imitation of a young woman running for her life. This did not suit Nimrod.
+He assured me that there was no danger if we treated his skunkship
+respectfully, and, as I was the photographer, I put on my old clothes and
+meekly fell in line. Nimrod set several box traps in places where skunks
+had been. These traps were merely soap boxes raised at one end by a figure
+four arrangement of sticks, so that when the animal goes inside and
+touches the bait the sticks fall apart, down comes the box, and the animal
+is caged unhurt. The next morning we went the rounds. The first trap was
+unsprung. The second one was down. Of course we could not see inside. Was
+it empty? Was the occupant a rat or a skunk, and if so, <i>what</i> was he
+going to do?
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0160m.jpg" alt="0160m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0160.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Nimrod approached the trap. Just then a big tree chanced to get between me
+and it. I stopped, thinking that as good a place as any to await
+developments.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It's a skunk all right," Nimrod announced gleefully.
+</p>
+<p>
+The box was rather heavy, so Nimrod went to Yeddar's, which was not far
+away, to see if he could get one of the loungers to help carry the captive
+to a large wire cage that we had rigged up near our shack.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were six men near the office, bronzed mountaineers, men of guns and
+grit, men who had spent their lives facing danger; but, when it came to
+facing a skunk, each looked at Nimrod as one would at a crazy man and had
+important business elsewhere. For once I thoroughly appreciated their
+point of view, but as there was no one else I took one end of the box, and
+we started. It was a precarious pilgrimage, but we moved gently and
+managed not to outrage the little animal's feelings.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the men saw us coming across the creek, with one accord they all went
+in and took a drink.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9162.jpg" alt="9162 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9162.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We gingerly urged Mr. Skunk into the big cage, and with the greatest
+caution, never making a sudden move, I took his picture. All was as merry
+as a marriage bell, and might have continued so but for that puppy Sim.
+That is the trouble with skunks; they will lose their manners if startled,
+and <i>dogs startle skunks</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of course the puppy barked; of course the skunk did not like it. He
+ruffled up his cold black nose, and elevated his bushy tail&mdash;his
+beautiful, plumy tail. I opened the door of his cage and, snatching the
+puppy, fled. The skunk was a wise and good animal, really a gentleman, if
+treated politely. He appreciated my efforts on his behalf. He forbearingly
+lowered his tail, composed his fur, and walked out of the cage and into
+the near-by woods as tamely as a house tabby out for a stroll.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0167m.jpg" alt="0167m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0167.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<h2>
+IX. MY ANTELOPE.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9167.jpg" alt="9167 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9167.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was a week later when I did something which those old guides could
+understand and appreciate&mdash;I made a dead shot. I committed a murder,
+and from that time, the brotherhood of pards was open to us, had we cared
+to join. It was all because I killed an antelope.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod and I started out that morning with the understanding that, if we
+saw antelope, I was to have a chance.
+</p>
+<p>
+In about six miles, Nimrod spied two white specks moving along the rocky
+ridge to the east of us, which rose abruptly from the plain where we were.
+I was soon able to make out that they were antelope. But the antelope had
+also seen us, and there was as much chance of getting near to them, by
+direct pursuit, as of a snail catching a hare. So we rode on calmly
+northward for half a mile, making believe we had not seen them, until we
+passed out of sight behind a long hill. Then we began an elaborate detour
+up the mountain, keeping well out of sight, until we judged that the
+animals, providing they had not moved, were below us, under the rocky
+ledge nearly a mile back.
+</p>
+<p>
+We tied up the horses on that dizzy height, and stole, Nimrod with a
+carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended,
+twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the
+cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would
+slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over the
+cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on a
+squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play
+compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent us flying over the
+cliff, but I did not think of that&mdash;my only care was not to startle
+the shy fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. I hardly dared to
+breathe; every muscle and nerve was tense with the long suspense.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0170m.jpg" alt="0170m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0170.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly I clutched Nimrod's arm and pointed at an oblong tan coloured
+bulk fifty yards above us on the mountain.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Antelope! Lying down!" I whispered in his ear. He nodded and motioned me
+to go ahead. I crawled nearer, inch by inch, my gaze riveted on that
+object. It did not move. I grew more elated the nearer it allowed me to
+approach. It was not so very hard to get at an antelope, after all. I felt
+astonishingly pleased with my performance. Then&mdash;rattle, crash&mdash;and
+a stone went bounding down. What a pity, after all my painful contortions
+not to do it! I instantly raised the rifle to get a shot before the swift
+animal went flying away.
+</p>
+<p>
+But it was strangely quiet. I stole a little nearer&mdash;and then turned
+and went gently back to Nimrod. He was convulsed with silent and
+unnecessary laughter. My elaborate stalk had been made on&mdash;a nice
+buff stone.
+</p>
+<p>
+We continued our precarious journey for another quarter of a mile, when I
+motioned that I was going to try to get a sight of the antelope, which,
+according to my notion, were under the rock some hundred feet below, and
+signed to Nimrod to stay behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+Surely my guardian angel attended that descent. I slid down a crack in the
+rock three feet wide, which gave me a purchase on the sides with my elbows
+and left hand. The right hand grasped the rifle, to my notion an
+abominably heavy awkward thing. One of these drops was eight feet, another
+twelve. A slip would probably have cost me my life. Then I crawled along a
+narrow ledge for about the width of a town-house front, and, making
+another perilous slide, landed on a ledge so close to the creatures I was
+hunting that I was as much startled as they.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0173m.jpg" alt="0173m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0173.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Away those two beautiful animals bounded, their necks proudly arched and
+their tiny feet hitting the only safe places with unerring aim. They were
+far out of range before I thought to get my rifle in position, and my
+random shot only sent them farther out on the plain, like drifting leaves
+on autumn wind.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9174.jpg" alt="9174 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9174.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was impossible to return the way I had come; so I rolled and jumped and
+generally tumbled to the grassy hill below, and waited for Nimrod to go
+back along the shaly stretch, and bring down the horses the way they had
+gone up.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then we took some lunch from the saddle bags and sat down in the waving,
+yellow grass of the foot hill with a sweep of miles before us, miles of
+grassy tableland shimmering in the clear air like cloth of gold in the
+sun, where cattle grow fat and the wild things still are at home.
+</p>
+<p>
+During lunch Nimrod tried to convince me that he knew all the time that
+the antelope I stalked on the mountainside was a stone. Of course wives
+should believe their husbands. The economy of State and Church would
+collapse otherwise. However, the appearance of a large band of antelope, a
+sight now very rare even in the Rockies, caused the profitless discussion
+to be engulfed in the pursuit of the real thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+The antelope were two miles away, mere specks of white. We could not tell
+them from the twinkling plain until they moved. We mounted immediately and
+went after those antelope&mdash;by pretending to go away from them. For
+three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly browsing animals. We hid behind
+low hills, and crawled down a water-course, and finally dismounted behind
+the very mound of prairie on the other side of which they were resting, a
+happy, peaceful family. There were twenty does, and proudly in their midst
+moved the king of the harem, a powerful buck with royal horns.
+</p>
+<p>
+The crowning point of my long day's hunt was before me. That I should have
+my chance to get one of the finest bucks ever hunted was clear. What
+should I do, should I hit or miss? Fail! What a thought&mdash;never!
+</p>
+<p>
+Just then a drumming of hoofs which rapidly faded away showed that the
+wind had betrayed us, and the whole band was off like a flight of arrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shoot! Shoot!" cried Nimrod, but my gun was already up and levelled on
+the flying buck&mdash;now nearly a hundred yards away.
+</p>
+<p>
+Bang! The deadly thing went forth to do its work. Sliding another
+cartridge into the chamber, I held ready for another shot.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0177m.jpg" alt="0177m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0177.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+There was no need. The fleet-footed monarch's reign was over, and already
+he had gone to his happy hunting ground. The bullet had gone straight to
+his heart, and he had not suffered. But the does, the twenty beating
+hearts of his harem! There they were, not one hundred yards away, huddled
+together with ears erect, tiny feet alert for the next bound&mdash;yet
+waiting for their lord and master, the proud tyrant, so strangely still on
+the ground. Why did he not come? And those two creatures whose smell they
+feared&mdash;why did he stay so near?
+</p>
+<p>
+They took a few steps nearer and again waited, eyes and ears and uplifted
+hoofs asking the question, "Why doesn't he come? Why does he let those
+dreadful creatures go so close?" Then, as we bent over their fallen hero,
+they knew he was forever lost to them, and fear sent them speeding out of
+sight.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0178m.jpg" alt="0178m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0178.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+X. A MOUNTAIN DRAMA.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9181.jpg" alt="9181 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9181.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+But hunting does not make one wholly a brute, crying, 'Kill, kill!' at
+every chance. In fact I have no more to confess in that line. Another side
+to it is shown by an incident that happened about a week later.
+</p>
+<p>
+We were riding leisurely along, a mile or so from the spot where my
+antelope had yielded his life to my vanity, when we saw, several miles
+away in the low hills, two moving flecks of white which might mean
+antelope.
+</p>
+<p>
+We watched. The two spots came rapidly nearer, and were clearly antelope.
+We were soon able to make out that one was being chased by the other; then
+that they were both bucks, the one in the rear much the heavier and
+evidently the aggressor. Then from behind a hill came the cause of it all&mdash;a
+bunch of lady antelope, who kept modestly together and to one side, and
+watched the contest that should decide their master. Surely this unclaimed
+harem was my doing!
+</p>
+<p>
+All at once, the two on-coming figures saw us. The first one paused,
+doubtful which of the two dangers to choose. His foe caught up with him.
+He wheeled and charged in self-defence, their horns met with a crash, and
+the smaller was thrown to the ground. He was clearly no match for his
+opponent.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8183.jpg" alt="8183 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8183.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+He sprang to his feet. His only safety was in flight, but where? His
+strength was nearly gone. He ran a short distance away from us, circling
+our cavalcade. His foe was nearly up to him again. He stopped an instant
+with uplifted foot, then turned and made directly for <i>us</i>. Three
+loaded guns hung at our saddles, but no hand went towards them. Not thirty
+feet away from our motionless horses the buck dropped, exhausted. We could
+easily have lassoed him. His adversary kept beyond gunshot, not daring to
+follow him into the power of an enemy all wild things fear; and an eagle
+who had perched on a rock near by, in hopes of a coming feast, flapped his
+wings and slowly flew away to search elsewhere for his dinner. The
+conquering buck walked back to his spoils of war, and soon marshalled them
+out of sight behind a hill.
+</p>
+<p>
+The young buck almost at our feet quickly recovered. He was not seriously
+hurt, only frightened and winded. He rose to his feet and stood for an
+instant looking directly at us, his head with its growing horns held high
+in the air, as if to thank us for the protection from a lesser foe he had
+so boldly asked and so freely received of an all powerful enemy. Then,
+turning, he lightly sped over the plain in an opposite direction, and the
+eagle, who had kept us in sight until now, perhaps with a lingering hope,
+rose swiftly upwards and was lost to sight.
+</p>
+<p>
+One elk with an eleven-point crown, and one antelope, of the finest ever
+brought down, is the tax I levied on the wild things. Of the many, many
+times I have watched them and left them unmolested, and of the lessons
+they have taught me, under Nimrod's guidance, I have not space to tell,
+for the real fascination of hunting is not in the killing but in seeing
+the creature at home amid his glorious surroundings, and feeling the
+freely rushing blood, the health-giving air, the gleeful sense of joy and
+life in nature, both within and without.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0185m.jpg" alt="0185m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0185.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XI. WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAHB OF THE BIGHORN BASIN.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9189.jpg" alt="9189 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9189.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+A fourteen-inch track is big, even for a grizzly. That was the size of
+Wahb's. The first time I saw it, the hole looked big enough for a baby's
+bath tub.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8189.jpg" alt="8189 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8189.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We were travelling in Mr. A.'s pack train across the Shoshones from Idaho
+to Wyoming. It was the first of October, and by then, in that region,
+winter is shaking hands with you&mdash;pleasant hands to be sure, but a
+bit cool. The night before we had made a picturesque camp on the lee side
+of a rock cliff which was honeycombed with caves. A blazing camp fire was
+built at the mouth of one of these and we lounged on the rock ledges
+inside, thoroughly protected from the wind and cold. A storm was brewing.
+We could hear the pine trees whistle and shriek as they were lashed about
+in the forest across the brook. The lurid light of the fire showed us
+ourselves in distorted shadows. The whole place seemed wild and wicked,
+like a robber camp, and under its spell one thought things and felt things
+that would have been impossible in the sun shine, where everything is
+revealed. It began to snow, but we laughed at that. What did it matter in
+the shelter of the cave? For the first time in days I was thoroughly
+toasted on all sides at once. We had changed abruptly from the
+steam-heated Pullman to camping in snow, and it takes a few days to get
+used to such a shock. We told tales as weird as the scene, until far into
+the night. The next morning the sun was bright, but the cook had to cut a
+hole in the ice blanket over the brook to get water. We dared not linger
+at our robber camp, for at any time a big snowstorm might come that would
+cover the Wind River Divide, which we had to cross, with snow too deep for
+the horses to travel.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8191.jpg" alt="8191 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8191.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Two days later, the weather still promising well, we decided to camp for a
+few days on the Upper Wiggin's Fork to hunt. It was a lovely spot; one of
+those little grassy parks which but for the uprising masses of mountains
+and towering trees might have surrounded your country home.
+</p>
+<p>
+That first night as we sat around the camp fire there came out of the
+blackness behind us a faint greeting&mdash;<i>Wheres Who</i>&mdash;<i>Wheres
+Who</i>&mdash;from a denizen of this mountain park, the great horned owl.
+The next morning we packed biscuits into our saddle-bags and separated for
+the day into two parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and
+myself, leaving the Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk,
+mountain lion, or bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a
+combination which the Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Host led me down the Wiggin's Fork for two miles, when we came out
+upon a sandy, pebbly stretch which in spring the torrents entirely
+covered, but now had been dried up for months. I was following
+mechanically, guiding Blondey's feet among the cobblestones, for nature
+had paved the place very badly, without much thought for anything beyond
+the pleasure of being alive, when the Host suddenly stopped and pointed to
+the ground. There I made out the track of a huge bear going the way we
+were, and beyond was another, and another. Then they disappeared like a
+row of post-holes into the distance. The Host said there was only one bear
+in that region that could make a track like that; in spite of the fact
+that this was beyond his range, it must be Meeteetsee Wahb. He got off his
+horse and measured the track. Yes, the hind foot tracked fourteen inches.
+What a hole in the ground it looked!
+</p>
+<p>
+The Host said the maker of it was probably far away, as he judged the
+track to be several weeks old. I had heard so many tales of this monster
+that when I gazed upon his track I felt as though I were looking at the
+autograph of a hero.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9194.jpg" alt="9194 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9194.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We saw other smaller grizzly and black bear tracks that day, so it was
+decided to set a bear bait. Our Host was a cattle king, and could wage war
+on bears with a good conscience. The usual three-cornered affair of logs
+was fixed, the trap in the centre and elk meat as a decoy. Horse meat is
+more alluring, but we deemed we would not need that, since we had with us
+"a never-failing bear charm." Its object was to suggest a lady bear, and
+thus attract some gallant to her side. The secret of the preparation of
+this charm had been confided to Nimrod by an old hunter the year before.
+It was a liquid composed of rancid fish oil, and&mdash;but I suppose I
+must not tell. A more ungodly odour I have never known. Nimrod put a few
+drops of it on his horse's feet, and all the other horses straightway
+ostracised him for several days till the worst of it wore away. Even the
+cook allowed "it was all-fired nasty." So some of this bear charm went on
+the bait.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next morning, as we started out for the day to roam the mountains, we
+first inspected the bear pen. Nothing had been near it. Indeed that charm
+would keep everything else away, if not the bear himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next day it was the same story, but this really was no argument for or
+against the charm, because, as I was told, bears in feeding usually make
+about a two weeks' circuit, and although we had seen many tracks they were
+all stale, demonstrating in a rough way that if we could linger for a week
+or two we would be sure to catch some one of the trackers on the return
+trip.
+</p>
+<p>
+This we could not do, as the expected snow-storm was now threatening, and
+we were still two days from the Divide. To be snowed up there would be
+serious. Before we could get packed up the snow began, falling steadily
+and quietly as though reserving its forces for later violence. We had been
+travelling about an hour from where we broke camp, when Nimrod beckoned me
+to join him where he had halted with the Horsewrangler a little off the
+line the pack train was following. I rode up quietly, thinking it might be
+game. But no; Horsewrangler pointed to a little bank where there was a
+circular opening in the trees. I looked, but did not understand.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you see that dip in the ground there where the snow melts as fast as
+it drops?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Wal, that there's a bear bath."
+</p>
+<p>
+"A bear's bath!" I exclaimed, suspecting a hoax.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, a sulphur spring. I reckon this here one belongs to the Big
+Grizzly."
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9198.jpg" alt="9198 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9198.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+We examined the place with much interest, but found no fresh tracks, and
+the snow had covered most of the stale ones, as "of course he ain't got no
+call for it in winter. Like as not, he's denned up somewheres near, though
+it's a mite early."
+</p>
+<p>
+This was thrilling. Perhaps we might pass within a few feet of Wahb and
+never know it. It was like being told that the ghost of the dear departed
+is watching you. Nimrod pointed out to me a tree with the bark scratched
+and torn off for several feet&mdash;one of Wahb's rubbing trees. He
+located the sunning ledge for me, and then we reluctantly hurried on, for
+the journey ahead promised to be long and hard. Indeed I found it so.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were many indications that the storm was a serious one, and not the
+least of these was the behaviour of the little chief hare, or pika. As we
+ascended the rocky mountain-side we saw many of these little creatures
+scurrying hither and thither with bundles of hay in their mouths, which
+they deposited in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places under rocks. So hard
+were they working that they could not even stop to be afraid of us. As all
+the party, but myself, knew, this meant bad weather and winter; for these
+cute, overgrown rats are reliable barometers, and they gave every
+indication that they were belated in getting their food supply, which had
+been garnered in the autumn after the manner of their kind, properly
+housed for winter use.
+</p>
+<p>
+All that day we worked our way through the forest with the silent snow
+deepening around us, ever up and up, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten
+thousand feet. It was an endless day of freezing in the saddle, and of
+snow showers in one's face from the overladen branches. I was frightfully
+cold and miserable. Every minute seemed the last I could endure without
+screeching. But still our Host pushed on. It was necessary to get near
+enough to the top of the Continental Divide so that we could cross it the
+next day. It began to grow dark about three o'clock; the storm increased.
+I kept saying over and over to myself what I was determined I should not
+say out loud:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, please stop and make camp! I cannot stay in this saddle another
+minute. My left foot is frozen. I know it is, and the saddle cramp is
+unbearable. I am so hungry, so cold, so exhausted; oh, please stop!" Then,
+having wailed this out under my breath, I would answer it harshly: "You
+little fool, stop your whimpering. The others are made of flesh and blood
+too. We should be snowbound if we stopped here. Don't be a cry-baby. There
+is lots of good stuff in you yet. This only seems terrible because you are
+not used to it, so brace up."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0201m.jpg" alt="0201m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0201.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+Then I would even smile at Nimrod who kept keen watch on me, or wave my
+hand at the Host, who was in front. This appearance of unconcern helped me
+for a few seconds, and then I would begin the weary round: "Oh, my foot,
+my back, my head; I cannot endure it another moment; I can't, I can't."
+Yet all the while knowing that I could and would. Thus I fought through
+the afternoon, and at last became just a numb thing on the horse with but
+one thought, "I can and will do it." So at last when the order came to
+camp in four feet of snow ten thousand feet above the sea, with the wind
+and snow blowing a high gale, I just drew rein and sat there on my tired
+beast.
+</p>
+<p>
+We disturbed a band of mountain sheep that got over the deep snow with
+incredible swiftness. It was my first view of these animals, but it
+aroused no enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder that they seemed to be
+enjoying themselves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled me off, I was too
+stiff and numb to get down myself. Then I found that the snow was so deep
+I could not go four feet. Not to be able to move about seemed to me the
+end of all things. I simply dropped in the snow&mdash;it was impossible to
+ever be warm and happy again&mdash;and prepared at last to weep.
+</p>
+<p>
+But I looked around first&mdash;Nimrod was coaxing a pack animal through
+the snow to a comparatively level place where our tent and bed things
+could be placed. The Host was shovelling a pathway between me and the spot
+where the Cook was coaxing a fire. The Horsewrangler was unpacking the
+horses alone (so that I might have a fire the sooner). They were all grim&mdash;doubtless
+as weary as I&mdash;but they were all working for my ultimate comfort,
+while I was about to repay them by sitting in the snow and weeping. I
+pictured them in four separate heaps in the snow, all weeping. This was
+too much; I did not weep. Instead by great effort I managed to get my
+horse near the fire, and after thawing out a moment unsaddled the tired
+animal, who galloped off gladly to join his comrades, and thus I became
+once more a unit in the economic force. But bad luck had crossed its
+fingers at me that day without doubt, and I had to be taught another
+lesson. I tell of it briefly as a warning to other women; of course&mdash;men
+always know better, instinctively, as they know how to fight. I presume
+you will agree that ignorance is punished more cruelly than any other
+thing, and that in most cases good intentions do not lighten the offence.
+My ignorance that time was of the effect of eating snow on an empty
+stomach. My intentions were of the best, for, being thirsty, I ate several
+handfuls of snow in order to save the cook from getting water out of a
+brook that was frozen. But my punishment was the same&mdash;a severe chill
+which made me very ill.
+</p>
+<p>
+I had been cold all day, but that is a very different thing from having a
+chill. I felt stuffed with snow; snow water ran in my veins, snow covered
+the earth, the peaks around me. I was mad with snow. They gave me snow
+whisky and put me beside a snow fire. I had not told any one what I had
+done, not realising what was the mischief maker, and it really looked as
+though I had heart disease, or something dreadful.
+</p>
+<p>
+They put rugs and coats around me till I could not move with their weight;
+but they were putting them around a snow woman. The only thing I felt was
+the icy wind, and that went through my shivering, shaking self. The snow
+was falling quietly and steadily, as it had fallen all day. We <i>must</i>
+cross yonder divide to-morrow. It was no time to be ill. Every one felt
+that, and big, black gloom was settling over the camp, when I by way of
+being cheerful remarked to the Host: "Do you-ou kno-ow, I feel as though
+there was n-nothing of me b-but the sno-ow I ate an hour ago."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0206m.jpg" alt="0206m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0206.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+"Snow!" he exclaimed. "Did you eat much? Well, no wonder you are ill."
+</p>
+<p>
+The effect was instantaneous. Everybody looked relieved; I was not even a
+heroine.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I will soon cure you," said the Host, as he poured out more whisky, and
+the Cook reheated some soup and chocolate. The hot drinks soon succeeded
+in thawing me from a snow woman back to shivering flesh and blood which
+was supportable.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod looked pleasant again and began studying the mountain sheep tracks.
+The cook fell to whistling softly from one side of his mouth, while a
+cigarette dangled from the other, as was his wont when he puttered about
+the fire. The Horsewrangler was making everything tight for the night
+against wind and snow. The Host lighted a cigarette, a calm expression
+glided over his face, and he became chatty, and, although the storm was
+just as fierce and the thermometer just as low, peace was restored to Camp
+Snow.
+</p>
+<p>
+The next day we crossed the divide, and not a day too soon. The snow was
+so deep that the trail breaker in front was in danger of going over a
+precipice or into a rock crevice at any time. After him came the pack,
+animals, so that they could make a path for us. The path was just the
+width of the horse, and in some places the walls of it rose above my head.
+In such places I had to keep my feet high up in the saddle to prevent them
+from being crushed. For a half day we struggled upwards with danger
+stalking by our sides, then on the very ridge of the divide itself, 11,500
+feet in the air, with the icy wind blowing a hurricane of blinding snow,
+we skirted along a precipice the edge of which the snow covered so that we
+could not be sure when a misstep might send us over into whatever is
+waiting for us in the next world.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9210.jpg" alt="9210 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9210.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+But fortunately we did not even lose a horse. Then came the plunging down,
+down, with no chance to pick steps because of the all-concealing snow.
+Those, indeed, were "stirring times," but we made camp that night in clear
+weather and good spirits. We were on the right side of the barrier and
+only two days from the Palette Ranch&mdash;and safety, not to say luxury.
+</p>
+<p>
+If you had Aladdin's lamp and asked for a shooting box, you could hardly
+expect to find anything more ideal than the Palette Ranch. There is no
+spot in the world more beautiful or more health giving. It is tucked away
+by itself in the heart of the Rockies, 150 miles from the railroad, 40
+miles from the stage route, and surrounded on the three sides by a
+wilderness of mountains. And when after travelling over these for three
+weeks with compass as guide, one dark, stormy night we stumbled and
+slipped down a mountain side and across an icy brook to its front lawn,
+the message of good cheer that streamed in rosy light from its windows
+seemed like an opiate dream.
+</p>
+<p>
+We entered a large living room, hung with tapestries and hunting trophies
+where a perfectly appointed table was set opposite a huge stone fireplace,
+blazing with logs. Then came a delicious course dinner with rare wines,
+and served by a French chef. The surprise and delight of it in that
+wilderness&mdash;but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we
+entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing
+lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal
+mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a
+hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled
+bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that
+region a veritable fairy's chamber. Truly it is a canny Host who can thus
+blend harmoniously the human luxuries of the East and the natural glories
+of the West.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0211m.jpg" alt="0211m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0211.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+In our rides around the Palette I saw Wahb's tracks once again. The Host
+had taken us to a far away part of his possessions. Three beautiful wolf
+hounds frisked along beside us, when all at once they became much excited
+about something they smelt in a little scrub-pine clump on the right. We
+looked about for some track or sign that would explain their behaviour. I
+spied a huge bear track.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hah!" I thought, "Wahb at last," and my heart went pit-a-pat as I pointed
+it out to Nimrod. He recognised it but remained far too calm for my fancy.
+I pointed into the bushes with signs of "Hurrah, it's Wahb." I received in
+reply a shake of the head and a pitying smile. How was I to know that the
+dogs were saying as plainly as dogs need to "A bobcat treed"?
+</p>
+<p>
+So I followed meekly and soon saw the bobcat's eyes glaring at us from the
+topmost branches. The Host took a shot at it with the camera which the
+lynx did not seem to mind, and calling off the disappointed dogs we went
+on our way. The Host allows no shooting within a radius of twelve miles of
+the Palette. Any living thing can find protection there and the result is
+that any time you choose to ride forth you can see perfectly wild game in
+their homeland.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9214.jpg" alt="9214 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9214.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was not till the next year that I really saw Wahb. It was at his summer
+haunt, the Fountain Hotel in the Yellowstone National Park. If you were to
+ask Nimrod to describe the Fountain geyser or Hell Hole, or any of the
+other tourist sights thereabouts, I am sure he would shake his head and
+tell you there was nothing but bears around the hotel. For this was the
+occasion when Nimrod spent the entire day in the garbage heap watching the
+bears, while I did the conventional thing and saw the sights.
+</p>
+<p>
+About sunset I got back to the hotel. Much to my surprise I could not find
+Nimrod; and neither had he been seen since morning, when he had started in
+the direction of the garbage heap in the woods some quarter of a mile back
+from the hotel. Anxiously I hurried there, but could see no Nimrod.
+Instead I saw the outline of a Grizzly feeding quietly on the hillside. It
+was very lonely and gruesome. Under other circumstances I certainly would
+have departed quickly the way I came, but now I must find Nimrod. It was
+growing dark, and the bear looked a shocking size, as big as a whale. Dear
+me, perhaps Nimrod was inside&mdash;Jonah style. Just then I heard a
+sepulchral whisper from the earth.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8217.jpg" alt="8217 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8217.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"Keep quiet, don't move, it's the Big Grizzly."
+</p>
+<p>
+I looked about for the owner of the whisper and discovered Nimrod not far
+away in a nest he had made for himself in a pile of rubbish. I edged
+nearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+"See, over there in the woods are two black bears. You scared them away.
+Isn't he a monster?" indicating Wahb.
+</p>
+<p>
+I responded with appropriate enthusiasm. Then after a respectful silence I
+ventured to say:
+</p>
+<p>
+"How long have you been here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"All day&mdash;and such a day&mdash;thirteen bears at one time. It is
+worth all your geysers rolled into one.
+</p>
+<p>
+"H'm&mdash;Have you had anything to eat?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No." Another silence, then I began again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Aren't you hungry? Don't you want to come to dinner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+He nodded yes. Then I sneaked away and came back as soon as possible with
+a change of clothes. The scene was as I had left it, but duskier. I stood
+waiting for the next move. The Grizzly made it. He evidently had finished
+his meal for the night, and now moved majestically off up the hill towards
+the pine woods. At the edge of these he stood for a moment, Wahb's last
+appearance, so far as I am concerned, for, as he posed, the fading, light
+dropped its curtain of darkness between us, and I was able to get Nimrod
+away.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XII. THE DEAD HUNT.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9221.jpg" alt="9221 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9221.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+To hunt the wily puma, the wary elk, or the fleet-footed antelope is to
+have experiences strange and varied, but for the largest assortment of
+thrills in an equal time the 'dead hunt' is the most productive. My
+acquaintance with a 'dead hunt'&mdash;which is by no means a 'still hunt'&mdash;began
+and ended at Raven Agency. It included horses, bicycles, and Indians, and
+followed none of the customary rules laid down for a hunt, either in
+progress or result.
+</p>
+<p>
+And, not to antagonise the reader, I will say now that it was very naughty
+to do what I did, an impolite and ungenerous thing to do, on a par with
+the making up of slumming parties to pry into the secrets of the poor. It
+was the act of a vandal, and at times&mdash;in the gray dawn and on the
+first day of January&mdash;I am sorry about it; but then I should not have
+had that carved bead armlet, and as that is the tail of my story, I will
+put it in the mouth and properly begin.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0222m.jpg" alt="0222m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0222.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Nimrod and I went to the United States agency for the Asrapako or Raven
+Indians in&mdash;well, never mind, not such a far cry from the Rockies,
+unless you are one of those uncomfortable persons who carry a map of the
+United States in your mind's eye&mdash;because Burfield was there painting
+Many Whacks, the famous chief; because Nimrod wanted to know what kind of
+beasties lived in that region; and because I wanted a face to face
+encounter with the Indian at home. I got it.
+</p>
+<p>
+The first duty of a stranger at Raven Agency is to visit the famous
+battlefield, three miles away; and the Agent, an army officer, very
+charmingly made up a horseback party to escort us there. He put me on a
+rawboned bay who, he said, was a "great goer." It was no merry jest. I was
+nearly the last to mount and quite the first to go flying down the road.
+The Great Goer galloped all the way there. His mouth was as hard as nails,
+and I could not check him; still, the ride was no worse than being tossed
+in a blanket for half an hour. On the very spot, I heard the story of the
+tragic Indian fight by one who claimed to have been an eye-witness. Every
+place where each member of that heroic band fell, doing his duty, is
+marked by a small marble monument, and as I looked over the battle ground
+and saw these symbols of beating hearts, long still in death, clustered in
+twos and threes and a dozen where each had made the last stand, every
+pillar seemed to become a shadowy soldier; the whole awful shame of the
+massacre swept over me, and I was glad to head my horse abruptly for home.
+And then there were other things to think about, things more intimate and
+real. No sooner did the Great Goer's nose point in the direction of his
+stable than he gave a great bound, as though a bee had stung him; then he
+lowered his head, laid back his ears, and&mdash;gallopped home.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0226m.jpg" alt="0226m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0226.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+I yanked and tugged at the bit. It was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I
+might as well have been a monkey or a straw woman bobbing up and down on
+his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, gaily sped on the Great Goer. There
+were dim shouts far behind me for a while, then no more. The roadside
+whipped by, two long streaks of green. We whizzed across the railroad
+track in front of the day express, accompanied by the engine's frantic
+shriek of "down brakes." If a shoe had caught in the track&mdash;ah! I
+lost my hat, my gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown locks flew out two
+feet behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+Away went my watch, then the all in two pockets, knife, purse, match-box&mdash;surely
+this trail was an improvement on Tom Thumb's' bread crumbs. One foot was
+out of the stirrup. I wrapped the reins around the pommel and clung on.
+There is a gopher hole&mdash;that means a broken leg for him, a clavicle
+and a few ribs for me. No; on we go. Ah, that stony brook ahead we soon
+must cross! Ye gods, so young and so fair! To perish thus, the toy of a
+raw-boned Great Goer!
+</p>
+<p>
+Pound, pound, pound, the hard road rang with the thunder of hoofs. Could I
+endure it longer? Oh, there is the stream&mdash;surely he will stop. No!
+He is going to jump! It's an awful distance! With a frantic effort I got
+my feet in the stirrups. He gathered himself together. I shut my eyes. Oh!
+We missed the bank and landed in the water&mdash;an awful mess. But the
+Great Goer scrambled out, with me still on top somehow, and started on. I
+pulled on the reins again with every muscle, trying to break his pace, or
+his neck anything that was his. Then there was a flapping noise below. We
+both heard it, we both knew what it was&mdash;the cinch worked loose, that
+meant the saddle loose.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0228m.jpg" alt="0228m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0228.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+In desperation I clutched the Great Goer's mane with both hands and,
+leaning forward, yelled wildly in his ears:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Whoa, whoa! The saddle's turning! Whoa! Do you wa-ant to <i>ki-ill</i>
+me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Do not tell me that the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a
+vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the Great
+Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in the line
+of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to nibbling grass as
+placidly as though he had not been doing racing time for three miles, and
+I should have gone on forever believing in his wondrous wit had I not
+turned and realised that he was standing in his own pasture lot.
+</p>
+<p>
+Seeking to console my dishevelled self as I got off, I murmured, "Well, it
+was a sensation any way&mdash;an absolutely new one," just as Nimrod
+gallopped up, and seeing I was all right, called out:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hello, John Gilpin!" That is the way with men.
+</p>
+<p>
+My scattered belongings were gathered up by the rest of the party, and
+each as he arrived with the relic he had gathered, made haste to explain
+that his horse had no chance with my mount.
+</p>
+<p>
+I thanked the Agent for the Great Goer without much comment. (See advice
+to Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband.) But that is why, the next
+day, when Burfield confided to me that he knew where there were some
+'Dead-trees' (not dead trees) that could be examined without fear of
+detection, I preferred to borrow the doctor's wife's bicycle.
+</p>
+<p>
+Dead-trees? Very likely you know what I did not until I saw for myself,
+that the Asrapako, in common with several Indian tribes, place their dead
+in trees instead of in the ground. As the trees are very scarce in that
+arid country, and only to be found in gullies and along the banks of the
+Little Big Buck River, nearly every tree has its burden of one or more
+swathed-up bodies bound to its branches, half hidden by the leaves, like
+great cocoons&mdash;most ghastly reminders of the end of all human things.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0231m.jpg" alt="0231m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0231.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It was to a cluster of these "deadtrees," five miles away, that Burfield
+guided me, and it was on this ride that the wily wheel, stripped of all
+its glamour of shady roads, tête-à-têtes, down grades, and asphalts,
+appeared as its true, heavy, small seated, stubborn self.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9234.jpg" alt="9234 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9234.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+I can undertake to cure any bicycle enthusiast. The receipt is simple and
+here given away. First, take two months of Rocky Mountains with a living
+sentient creature to pull you up and down their rock-ribbed sides, to help
+out with his sagacity when your own fails, and to carry you at a long easy
+lope over the grassy uplands some eight or ten thousand feet above the sea
+in that glorious bracing air. Secondly, descend rapidly to the Montana
+plains&mdash;hot, oppressive, enervating&mdash;or to the Raven Agency, if
+you will, and attempt to ride a wheel up the only hill in all that arid
+stretch of semi desert, a rise of perhaps three hundred feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is enough. You will find that your head is a sea of dizziness, that
+your lungs have refused to work, that your heart is pounding aloud in
+agony, and you will then and there pronounce the wheel an instrument of
+torture, devised for the undoing of woman.
+</p>
+<p>
+I tried it. It cured me, and, once cured, the charms of the wheel are as
+vapid as the defence of a vigilant committee to the man it means to hang.
+Stubborn&mdash;it would not go a step without being pushed. It would not
+even stand up by itself, and I literally had to push it&mdash;it, as well
+as myself on it&mdash;in toil and dust and heat the whole way. Nimrod said
+his bicycle betrayed itself, too, only not so badly. Of course, that was
+because he was stronger. The weaker one is, the more stubbornly bicycles
+behave. Every one knows that. And they are so narrow minded. They needs
+must stick to the travelled road, and they behave viciously when they get
+in a rut. Imagine hunting antelope across sage-brush country on a bicycle!
+I know a surveyor who tried it once. They brought him home with sixteen
+broken bones and really quite a few pieces of the wheel, improved to
+Rococo. Bah! Away with it and its limitations, and those of its big
+brother, the automobile! Sing me no death knell of the horse companion.
+</p>
+<p>
+At last, with the assistance of trail and muscle, the five miles were
+covered, and we came to a dip in the earth which some bygone torrent had
+hollowed out, and so given a chance for a little moisture to be retained
+to feed the half-dozen cottonwoods and rank grass, that dared to struggle
+for existence in that baked up sage-brush waste which the government has
+set aside for the Raven paradise.
+</p>
+<p>
+We jumped&mdash;no, that is horse talk&mdash;we sprawled off our wheels
+and left the stupid things, lying supinely on their sides, like the dead
+lumpish things they are, and descended a steep bank some ten feet into the
+gully.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0235m.jpg" alt="0235m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0235.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It was a gruesome sight, in the hour before sunset, with not a soul but
+ourselves for miles around. The lowering sun lighted up the under side of
+the leaves and branches and their strange burdens, giving an effect
+uncanny and weird, as though caused by unseen footlights. Not a sound
+disturbed the oppressive quiet, not the quiver of a twig. Five of the six
+trees bore oblong bundles, wrapped in comforters and blankets, and bound
+with buckskin to the branches near the trunk, fifteen or twenty feet from
+the ground, too high for coyotes, too tight for vultures. But what caught
+our attention as we dropped into the gully was one of the bundles that had
+slipped from its fastenings and was hanging by a thong.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0236m.jpg" alt="0236m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0236.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It needed but a tug to pull it to the ground. Burfield supplied that tug,
+and we all got a shock when the wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted
+at one end and disclosed the face of a mummy. I had retreated to the other
+end of the little dip, not caring to witness some awful spectacle of
+disintegration; but a mummy&mdash;no museum-cased specimen, labelled
+'hands off', but a real mummy of one's own finding&mdash;was worth a few
+shudders to examine.
+</p>
+<p>
+I looked into the shrivelled, but otherwise normal, face of the Indian
+woman. What had been her life, her heart history, now as completely gone
+as though it had never been&mdash;thirty years of life struggle in snow
+and sun, with, perhaps, a little joy, and then what?
+</p>
+<p>
+Seven brass rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled
+the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were
+more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a
+peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and
+surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that
+determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while
+longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very
+much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the
+wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I
+stooped to help him, and he whispered:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there'll be trouble,
+I'm afraid."
+</p>
+<p>
+We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried
+to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had
+fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to
+the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged
+unconcernedly.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched here
+and there by the sun's last gleams. We were much relieved. Said Burfield:
+</p>
+<p>
+"The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they had
+caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, what would they do?" I asked, suddenly realising what many white men
+never do&mdash;that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The
+brass rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, I don't suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency,
+but I don't know; a mad Injun's a bad Injun."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0239m.jpg" alt="0239m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0239.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Nevertheless, this opinion did not deter him from climbing a tree where
+three bodies lay side by side in a curious fashion; but I had no more
+interest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. Nimrod had wandered off some
+distance and was watching a gopher hole-up for the night. The place in the
+fading light was spooky, but it was of live Indians, not dead ones, that I
+was thinking.
+</p>
+<p>
+There is a time for all things, and clearly this was the time to go back
+to Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. I started for the bicycles when
+two black specks appeared on the horizon and grew rapidly larger. They
+could be nothing but two men on horseback approaching at a furious gallop.
+It was but yaller-covered-novel justice that they should be Indians.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Quick, Burfield, get out of that tree on the other side!" It did not take
+a second for man and tree to be quit of each other, at the imminent risk
+of broken bones. I started again for the wheels.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Stay where, you are," said Burfield; "we could never get away on those
+things. If they are after us, we must bluff it out."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0240m.jpg" alt="0240m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0240.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+There was no doubt about their being after us. The two galloping figures
+were pointed straight at us and were soon close enough to show that they
+were Indians. We stood like posts and awaited them. Thud, thud&mdash;ta-thud,
+thud&mdash;on they charged at a furious pace directly at us. They were
+five hundred feet away&mdash;one hundred feet&mdash;fifty.
+</p>
+<p>
+Now, I always take proper pride in my self possession, and to show how
+calm I was, I got out my camera, and as the two warriors came chasing up
+to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I had taken a landscape a minute
+before, and I do not think that the fact that that landscape and those
+Indians appeared on the same plate is any proof that I was in the least
+upset by the red men's onset. Forty feet, thirty&mdash;on they came&mdash;ten&mdash;were
+they going to run us down?
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0243m.jpg" alt="0243m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0243.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead stop&mdash;unpleasantly,
+close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an electric silence, such as
+comes between the lightning's flash and the thunder's crack. The Indians
+glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each measuring the other. Not a
+sound broke the stillness of that desolate spot, save the noisy panting of
+the horses as they stood, still braced from the shock of the sudden stop.
+</p>
+<p>
+For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then
+one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching
+suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the
+bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale brass rings and armlet were in my
+gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He
+turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke
+grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8245.jpg" alt="8245 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8245.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"No touch 'em; savey?" giving a significant jerk of the head towards the
+trees.
+</p>
+<p>
+We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those brass rings! Why
+did I want to steal brass rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman
+mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
+</p>
+<p>
+There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions, so
+much as a leaf's thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as the
+first, spoke sullenly:
+</p>
+<p>
+"No touch 'em; savey?" He laid his hand suggestively on something in his
+belt.
+</p>
+<p>
+Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a
+thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned their
+horses.
+</p>
+<p>
+We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the
+other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground
+and&mdash;who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a
+look backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements
+of a tragedy.
+</p>
+<p>
+I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor's
+wife's bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night,
+after I had delivered unto the doctor's wife her own, and disinfected the
+gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again list&mdash;bicycling
+in Montana and 'dead hunts.'
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0247m.jpg" alt="0247m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0247.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XIII. JUST RATTLESNAKES.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9251.jpg" alt="9251 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9251.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It is a blessing that a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No
+one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it
+has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from our
+simian ancestors.
+</p>
+<p>
+To me, I acknowledge, a rattler is just a horrid snake; so, when we were
+told at Markham that rattlers were more common than the cattle which
+grazed on every hill, I discovered that there were yet new imps to conquer
+in my world of fear. Shakspere has said some nice things about fear&mdash;"Of
+all the wonders, ... it seems to me most strange that men should fear"&mdash;but
+he never knew anything about squirming rattlesnakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles from Markham. That thriving metropolis
+has ten houses and eleven saloons, in spite of Dakota being 'prohibition.'
+Markham is in the heart of the Bad Lands, the wonderful freakish Bad
+Lands, where great herds of cattle range over all the possible, and some
+of the impossible, places, while the rest of it&mdash;black, green, and
+red peaks, hills of powdered coal, wicked land cuts that no plumb can
+fathom, treacherous clay crust over boiling lava, arid horrid miles of
+impish whimsical Nature&mdash;is Bad indeed.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod and I had been lured to the Cuttle Fish ranch to go on a wolf hunt.
+The house was a large two storey affair of logs, with a long tail of one
+storey log outbuildings like a train of box cars. We sat down to dinner
+the first night with twenty others, a queer lot truly to find in that wild
+uncivilised place. There was an ex-mayor and his wife from a large Eastern
+city; a United States Senator&mdash;the toughest of the party&mdash;who
+appeared at table in his undershirt; four cowboys, who were better
+mannered than the two New York millionaires' sons who had been sent there
+to spend their college vacation and get toughened (the process was
+obviously succeeding); they made Nimrod apologise for keeping his coat on
+during dinner; the three brothers who owned the ranch, and the wife of one
+of them; several children; a prim and proper spinster from Washington&mdash;how
+she got there, who can tell?&mdash;and Miss Belle Hadley, the servant
+girl.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0253m.jpg" alt="0253m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0253.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+In studying the case of Belle I at last appreciated the age-old teaching
+that the greatest dignity belongs to the one who serves. Else why did the
+ex-mayor's wife bake doughnuts, and the rotund Senator toil at the ice
+cream freezer with the thermometer at 112 degrees, and the millionaires'
+sons call Belle "Miss Hadley," and I make bows for her organdie dress,
+while she curled her hair for a dance to be held that evening ten miles
+away, and to which she went complacently with her pick of the cowboys and
+her employers' two best horses, while they stayed at home and did her
+work! Else why did this one fetch wood for her, that one peel the
+potatoes, another wash the dishes? And when she and the rest of us were
+seated at meals, and something was needed from the kitchen, why did the
+unlucky one nearest the door jump up and forage? Belle was never nearest
+the door. She sat at the middle of the long table, so that she could be
+handy to everything that was 'circulating.' But I refer this case to the
+author of those delightful papers on the "Unquiet Sex," and hark back to
+my story.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9254.jpg" alt="9254 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9254.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+That night the moon was full, and the coyotes made savage music around the
+lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a snappy <i>wow-wow,
+yac-yac</i>, and then a long drawn out <i>ooo-oo</i>; then another voice,
+a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the star voice of
+them all&mdash;loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I saw him
+silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head thrown back
+and muzzle raised, as he gave to the peaceful night his long, howling
+bark, his "talk at moon" as the Indians put it. The ranchman remarked that
+there were "two or three out there," but I knew better. There were dozens,
+perhaps hundreds, of them; I am not deaf.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0257m.jpg" alt="0257m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0257.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+The next morning we were up with the dawn and started by eight to run down
+Mountain Billy, the grey wolf who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad Lands.
+Our outfit was as symmetrical as a pine cone;&mdash;dogs, horses, mess
+wagon, food, guns and men. All we needed was the grey wolf. I was the only
+woman in the party, and, like "Weary Waddles," tagged behind.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8259.jpg" alt="8259 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8259.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was the middle of September, and the weather should have known better.
+But it was the Bad Lands, and there was a hot spell on. By three o'clock
+the thermometer showed 116-1/2 in the shade, and I believed it. The heat
+and glare simmered around us like fire. The dogs' tongues nearly trailed
+in the baked dust, the horses' heads hung low, an iron band seemed ever
+tightening around my head, as the sun beat down upon all alike with
+pitiless force.
+</p>
+<p>
+When we came to the Little Missoula, even its brackish muddy water was
+welcome, and I shut my eyes to the dirt in the uninviting brown fluid, and
+my mind to the knowledge of the horrid things it would do to me, and
+drank; Tepid, gritty, foul&mdash;was it water I had swallowed? The horse
+assigned to me, a small, white, benevolent animal named 'Whiskers,' waded
+in knee deep and did the same. Whiskers was a 'lady's horse,' which, being
+interpreted, meant aged eighteen or twenty, with all spirit knocked out by
+hard work; a broken down cow pony, in fact, or, in local parlance, a
+'skate,' a 'goat.' He had lagged considerably behind the rest of the
+party.
+</p>
+<p>
+However, Whiskers did not matter; nothing mattered but the waves on waves
+of heat that quivered before my eyes. I shut them and began repeating
+cooling rhymes, such as 'twin peaks snow clad,' 'From Greenland's Icy
+Mountains,' and the 'Frozen North,' by way of living up to Professor
+James' teachings. Whiskers was ambling on, half-stupefied with the heat,
+as I was, when from the road just in front came a peculiar sound. I did
+not know what it was, but Whiskers did, and he immediately executed a demi
+volte (see Webster) with an energy I had not thought him capable of.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0261m.jpg" alt="0261m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0261.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Again came the noise, yes, surely, just as it had been described&mdash;like
+dried peas in a pod&mdash;and gliding across the road was a big
+rattlesnake. I confess had Whiskers been so inclined, I should have been
+content to have passed on with haughty disdain. But Whiskers performed a
+left flank movement so nearly unseating me that I deemed it expedient to
+drop to the ground, and Whiskers, without waiting for orders, retreated
+down the road at what he meant for a gallop.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9262.jpg" alt="9262 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9262.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+The rattler stopped his
+pretty gliding motion away from me, and seemed in doubt. Then he began to
+take on a few quirks. "He is going to coil and then to strike," said I,
+recalling a paragraph from my school reader. It was an unhappy moment! I
+knew that tradition had fixed the proper weapons to be used against
+rattlesnakes: a stone (more if necessary), a stick (forked one preferred),
+and in rare cases a revolver (when it is that kind of a story). I had no
+revolver. There was not a stick in sight, and not a stone bigger than a
+hazelnut; but there was the rattler. I cast another despairing glance
+around and saw, almost at my feet and half hidden by sage brush, several
+inches of rusty iron&mdash;blessed be the passing teamster who had thrown
+it there. I darted towards it and, despite tradition, turned on the
+rattler armed with the goodly remains of&mdash;a frying pan.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0264m.jpg" alt="0264m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0264.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+The horrid thing was ready for me with darting tongue and flattened head&mdash;another
+instant it would have sprung. <i>Smash</i> on its head went my valiant
+frying pan and struck a deadly blow, although the thing managed to get
+from under it. I recaptured my weapon and again it descended upon the
+reptile's head, settling it this time. Feeling safe, I now took hold of
+the handle to finish it more quickly. Oh, that tail&mdash;that awful,
+writhing, lashing tail! I can stand Indians, bears, wolves, anything but
+that tail, and a rattler is all tail, except its head. If that tail
+touches me I shall let go. It did touch me, I did not let go. Pride held
+me there, for I heard the sound of galloping hoofs. Whiskers' empty saddle
+had alarmed the rest of the party.
+</p>
+<p>
+My snake was dead now, so I put one foot on him to take his scalp&mdash;his
+rattles, I mean&mdash;when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny
+thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to
+think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance
+that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my heart
+and captured his 'pod of dry peas.'
+</p>
+<p>
+Oh, about the wolf hunt! That was all, just heat and rattlesnakes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The hounds could not run; one died from sunstroke while chasing a jack
+rabbit. No one lifted a finger if it could be avoided. All the world was
+an oven, and after three days we gave up the chase, and leaving Mountain
+Billy panting triumphantly somewhere in his lair, trailed back to the
+ranch house with drooping heads and fifteen rattle-snakes' tails. Oh, no,
+the hunt was not a failure&mdash;for Mountain Billy.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0267m.jpg" alt="0267m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0267.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XIV. AS COWGIRL.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9271.jpg" alt="9271 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9271.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Till the time of the "WB" round-up all cows looked alike to me. We were
+still at the Cuttle Fish ranch, which was in a state of great activity
+because of the fall roundup. Belle, the servant girl, had received less
+attention of late and had been worked harder, a combination of
+disagreeables which caused her to threaten imminent departure. The
+cowboys, who had been away for several days gathering in the stragglers
+that had wandered into the wild recesses of those uncanny Bad Land hills,
+assembled in full force for the evening meal, and announced, between
+mouthfuls, that the morrow was to be branding day for the several outfits,
+about two thousand head of cattle in all, the 'WB' included, which were
+rounded up on the Big Flat two miles distant from the ranch.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9272.jpg" alt="9272 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9272.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+This was the chance for me to be relieved of my crass ignorance concerning
+round-ups, really to have a definite conception of the term instead of the
+sea of vagueness and conjecture into which I was plunged by the usual
+description&mdash;"Oh, just a whole lot of cattle driven to one place, and
+those that need it are cut out and frescoed." How many was a whole lot,
+how were they driven, where were they driven from, what were they cut out
+with, how were they branded, and when did they need it? My ignorance was
+hopeless and pathetic, and those to whom I applied were all too familiar
+with the process to be able to describe it. I might as well have asked for
+a full description of how a man ate his dinner.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Will you take me to the round-up to-morrow?" I asked of the 'WB' boss.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, I could have a team hitched up, and Bob could drive you to the
+Black Nob Hill, where you can get a good view," was the tolerant reply.
+</p>
+<p>
+Bob had wrenched his foot the day before, when roping a steer, and was
+therefore incapacitated for anything but 'woman's work'&mdash;'a soft
+job.'
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, but I do not want to be so far away and look on; I want to be <i>in</i>
+it."
+</p>
+<p>
+He looked at me out of the angle of his eye to make sure that I was in
+earnest. "Tain't safe," he said.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9274.jpg" alt="9274 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9274.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"Then you mean to say that every cowboy risks his life in a round-up?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, well, they're men and take their chances. Besides, it's their
+business."
+</p>
+<p>
+I never yet have been able to have a direct question answered by a true
+mountaineer or plainsman by a simple yes or no. Is there something in the
+bigness of their surroundings that causes the mind to spread over an idea
+and lose directness like a meadow brook?
+</p>
+<p>
+However, by various wiles known to my kind, the next morning at daybreak I
+was mounted upon the surest-footed animal in the 'bunch.'
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's a trained cow pony and won't lose her head," the boss remarked.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/8275.jpg" alt="8275 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8275.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Thus equipped, I was allowed to accompany the cowboys to their work, with
+the understanding that I was to keep at a safe distance from the herd. Van
+Anden, a famous 'cutter out,' whatever that meant, was deputed to have an
+especially watchful eye upon me. Van Anden was a surprisingly graceful
+fellow, who got his six foot of stature in more places during the day than
+any of the smaller men. He was evidently a cowboy because he wanted to be
+one. There were many traces of a college education and a thorough drilling
+in good manners in an Eastern home, which report said could still be his
+if he so wished; and report also stated that he remained a bachelor in
+spite of being the most popular man in the country, because of a certain
+faithless siren who with gay unconcern casts languishing glances and
+spends papa's dollars at Newport.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9276.jpg" alt="9276 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9276.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+But this was no Beau Brummel day. There was work to do, and hard work, as
+I soon discovered. We had ridden perhaps a mile; my teeth were still
+chattering in the early morning cold (breaking ice on one's bath water and
+blowing on one's fingers to enable one to lace heavy boots may suit a
+cowboy: I do not pretend to like it), when we began to notice a loud
+bellowing in the distance. Instantly my companions spurred their horses
+and we went speeding over the Little Missoula bottom lands, around scrub
+willows and under low hanging branches of oak, one of which captured my
+hat, after breaking both of the hat pins, and nearly swept me from the
+saddle.
+</p>
+<p>
+On I rushed with the rest, hatless, and as in a cloud of fury. Van Anden
+took a turn around that tree and was at my side again with the hat before
+I realised what, he was doing. I jerked out a "thank you" between lopes,
+and of course forbore to remark that a hat without pins was hollow
+mockery. I dodged the next low branch so successfully that the pommel in
+some miraculous way jumped up and smashed the crystal in my watch, the
+same being carried in that mysterious place, the shirt waist front, where
+most women carry their watches, pocket books, and love letters.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8277.jpg" alt="8277 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8277.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+When we got into the open the terrible bellowing&mdash;a combination of
+shriek, groan, and roar in varying pitch&mdash;grew louder, and I could
+just discern a waving ghostly mass in the gray morning mist. I wondered if
+this were the herd, but found it was only the cloud of dust in which it
+was enveloped.
+</p>
+<p>
+Four of the cowboys had already disappeared in different directions. I
+heard the 'WB' boss say, "Billy, to the left flank. Van, them blamed
+heifers," as he flew past them.
+</p>
+<p>
+Van dashed forward, I gave my black mare a cut with the quirt and
+followed. Van's face, as he turned around to remonstrate, was a study of
+surprise, distress, and disgust, for I was undoubtedly breaking rules.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't bother about me," I called as airily as possible, as I shot past
+him. He had checked his horse's speed, but now there was nothing to do but
+to follow me as fast as he could. I shall have to record that he swore, as
+he turned sharply to the right into a group of cattle. Poor man, it was
+dreadful to saddle him with a woman at such a juncture, but I was not a
+woman just then. I was a green cowboy and frightened to death, as the
+cattle closed around me, a heavy mass of ponderous forms, here wedged in
+tightly and bellowing, some with the pain of being crushed, some for their
+calves. I expected every instant to be trampled under foot.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Stick to your horse, whatever you do, and work to the left," I heard Van
+shouting to me over the backs of a dozen cows. The dust, the noise, and
+the smell of those struggling creatures appalled and sickened me. How was
+I ever going to work to the left in that jam? I could see nothing but
+backs and heads and horns. I allowed myself one terrified groan which was
+fortunately lost in the general uproar. But the pony had been in such a
+situation before, if I had not, and she taught me what to do. She gave a
+sudden spring forward when a space just big enough for her appeared, then
+wove her way a few paces forward between two animals who had room enough
+on the other side of them to give way a little, while the space I had just
+left had closed up, a tight mass of groaning creatures.
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus we worked our way to the left whenever there was a chance, and at
+last through the dust I could see the heavenly open space beyond.
+Forgetting my tactics, I made straight for it, and was caught in one of
+those terrible waves of tightly pressed creatures which is caused by those
+on the outside pressing towards the centre, and the centre giving until
+there is no more space, when comes the crush. Fortunately I was on the
+outskirts of this crush, and by holding my feet up high we managed to
+squeeze through that dreadful, dust covered, stamping, snorting bedlam
+into the glorious free air and sunshine. Already I had a much better
+conception of what a 'whole lot' of cattle meant.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0280m.jpg" alt="0280m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0280.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+From the vantage ground of a little hill I could see the whole herd, and
+realised that I had been in only a small bunch of it, composed of cows and
+calves. Had I gone to the right I should soon have gotten into a raging
+mass of some thousand head of bulls. They were pawing and tearing up the
+ground that but a little before had been covered with grass and late
+flowers, and occasionally goring one another. The cowboys were riding on
+the outskirts of this life-destroying horde, forcing the stragglers back
+into line, and by many a sudden dash forward, then to the right, sharp
+wheel about, and more spurts this way and that, were slowly driving it
+toward another mass of cattle, a half mile further on, which could be
+distinguished only by the clouds of dust which enveloped it.
+</p>
+<p>
+Van Anden, meanwhile, in the small bunch with which I had had such an
+intimate acquaintance, was acting as though he had lost his wits, or so it
+seemed to me until I began to understand what he was doing. He would dart
+into the bunch, scattering cattle right and left, and would weave in and
+out, out and in, waving his arms, shouting, throwing his rope,
+occasionally hitting an animal across the nose or tting them from their relations, who
+remonstrated in loud bellowings, stampings and freakish, brief, ill judged
+attacks. And then I understood what it meant to 'cut out' cattle from 'a
+whole lot.'he flank, sometimes
+twisting their tails, dodging blows and kicks, and finally emerge driving
+before him a cow followed by her calf. These another cowboy would take
+charge of and drive to a small bunch of cows and calves which I now
+noticed for the first time, separa
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9284.jpg" alt="9284 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9284.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+When the calves and cows were finally separated, it was necessary to drive
+them also to the Big Flat for the afternoon's work of branding those that
+'needed it.' Van guarded the rear of the bunch and of course I rode with
+him, that is as near as I could, for he was as restless as a blue bottle
+fly in a glass jar, dashing hither and thither, keeping those crazy
+creatures together, and ever pushing them forward. The dust and heat and
+noise and smell and continual action made my head ache. So this was cowboy
+life, Van's choice! I thought of a certain far away, well ordered home,
+with perhaps a sweet voiced mother and well groomed sister, and wondered,
+even while I knew the answer. On the one hand, peace, comfort, affection,
+and the eternal sameness; on the other, effort, hardship, fighting
+sometimes, but ever with the new day a whole world of unlived
+possibilities, change, action, and bondage to no one.
+</p>
+<p>
+A particularly fractious heifer at this point suddenly changed my
+contemplation of Van Anden's character into a lively share of Van Anden's
+job. The creature was making good time straight towards me, and as I had
+dropped considerably behind the herd in order to breathe some fresh air
+and to be free from the dust, I knew that it meant a long hard chase for
+Van and his tired horse if I did not head off that heifer; I felt I owed
+him that much. I had seen the cowboys do that very thing a hundred times
+that morning, but you cannot stand on your toe by watching a ballet dancer
+do it. However, I started on a gallop, slanting diagonally towards the
+creature, swinging one arm frantically (I really could not let go with
+both) and yelling "Hi, hi!" I wondered what would happen next, for to be
+honest, I was exquisitely scared. Why scared? It is not for me to explain
+a woman's dread of the unknown and untried.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0285m.jpg" alt="0285m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0285.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+I heard Van shouting, but could not understand. To know you are right and
+then go ahead is a pretty plan, but how to know? The animal did not stop
+or swerve from its course. We would surely collide. What was I to do? Oh,
+for a precedent! Evidently the mare was aware of one, for she wheeled to
+the right just in time to miss the oncoming heifer, and we raced alongside
+for a few seconds. I had so nearly parted company with my mount in the
+last manoeuvre (centaurs would have an enormous advantage as cowboys) that
+I had lost all desire to help Van and only wanted to get away from that
+heifer, to make an honourable dismount, and go somewhere by myself where a
+little brook babbled nothings, and the forget-me-nots placidly slept.
+Rough riding and adventures of the Calamity Jane order tempted me no more.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8289.jpg" alt="8289 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8289.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Whether now the heifer did the proper thing or not, I cannot say, but she
+circled around with me on the outer side (I suspect my cow pony knew how
+it was done) and was half way back to the herd when Van took it in charge.
+His face bore a broad grin for the first time that day, from what emotions
+caused I have never been able to determine. I, of course, said nothing.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9290.jpg" alt="9290 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9290.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Then, oh, the joy of that round up dinner! The 'WB' outfit had a meal
+tent, a mess wagon, and a cook for the men, and a rope corral, food and
+water for the horses. Everybody was happy for the noon hour, save the
+unlucky ones whose turn it was to guard the herd. Bob had driven the
+ex-mayor's wife, the sad eyed spinster, and Nimrod over to join us at
+dinner. The boss greeted Nimrod with the assurance that I was 'all right'
+and could apply any time for a job. I may as well say that Nimrod had
+allowed me to go without him in the morning, because the cattle business
+was no novelty to him; because daybreak rising did not appeal to him as a
+pastime; and because, at the time I broached the subject, being engaged in
+writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the
+consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is
+insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out
+for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished
+and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same
+question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon I
+rode in the wagon.
+</p>
+<p>
+The cowboy meal, which I believe was not elaborated for us, was a healthy
+solid affair of meat, vegetables, hot biscuit, coffee, and prunes,
+appetisingly cooked and unstintingly served, for the Bad Land appetite is
+like unto that of the Rocky Mountains, lusty and big. The saddling of
+fresh horses made a lively scene for a few moments in the corral; then the
+men rode off for the afternoon's business of branding.
+</p>
+<p>
+The ranch party packed itself into a three-seated buckboard and we
+followed behind. We went at a wide safe distance from the half-crazed
+herds, which had been driven this way and that until they knew not what
+they wanted, nor what was wanted of them, to where a huge fire was blazing
+and rapidly turning cold black iron to red hot. These irons were fashioned
+in curious shapes, from six to ten inches long and fastened to a four foot
+iron handle. The smell of burning flesh was in the air, and horrid
+shrieks. Beyond was the ceaseless bellowing and stamping and weaving of
+the herds.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9292.jpg" alt="9292 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9292.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+From the time I got into the wagon and became a mere onlooker, my point of
+view changed. The exhilaration of action had disappeared. I was a cowboy
+no longer. The cattle in the morning had been stupid foolish creatures,
+dangerous in their blind strength, which must be made to do what one
+willed. Now they were poor, dumb, persecuted beasts which must be
+tormented, even tortured (for who shall say that red hot iron on tender
+flesh is not torture?) and eventually butchered for the swelling of man's
+purse. I saw the riders dash towards an animal who 'needed branding'&mdash;which
+I discovered to mean one that had hitherto escaped the iron, or that had
+changed owners&mdash;throw a rope over its head or horns, fasten the other
+end to the pommel, and drag it to the fire, where it was thrown and tied.
+Then it was seized by several men who sat on its head and legs to hold it
+comparatively still while another took the hot brand from the fire and
+pressed it against the quivering side of the animal. It was then released
+and, bawling with pain and fright, allowed to return to its mother, who
+had been kept off by another rider. A sound at my side informed me that
+the little old maid was weeping copiously.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0293m.jpg" alt="0293m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0293.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It is a pity I could not have had the cowboy's point of view, for mine was
+most unpleasant, but my little glimpse of the other side was gone, and
+gladly I drove away from the mighty smells and sounds of that unfortunate
+mass of seething life, subjected to the will of a dozen men, Van Anden the
+worst of the lot. And as we went silently through the sweet cool air,
+crisp as an October leaf, where a bluebird was twittering a wing-free song
+on the poplar yonder, where silver-turned willows were gently swaying, and
+a jolly chipmunk was rippling from log to stone, I wondered whether the
+Newport girl had really done so wrong after all.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0294m.jpg" alt="0294m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0294.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XV. THE SWEET PEA LADY SOMEONE ELSE'S MOUNTAIN SHEEP.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9297.jpg" alt="9297 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9297.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It was at Winnipeg (you do not want to know how we got there) that I first
+walked into the aura of the Sweet Pea Lady, and by so doing prepared the
+way for the shatterment of another illusion&mdash;namely, that 'little
+deeds of kindness' always result in mutual pleasure.
+</p>
+<p>
+Flowers and fruit in Manitoba are treasured as sunshine in London, for you
+must remember that Manitoba is a very new country, that it is only a
+paltry few thousands of years since its thousands of miles were scraped
+flat as a floor. Everything even yet looks so immodest on those vast
+stretches. The clumps of trees stand out in such a bold brazen fashion.
+The houses appear as though stuck on to the landscape. Even an honest
+brown cow can not manage to melt herself into the endless stretch of
+prairies. In fact, the little scenic accidents of trees and hollows, which
+mean fruit and flowers, are mainly due to man.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9298.jpg" alt="9298 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9298.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+So, when our friends who saw us off on the west-bound Canadian Pacific
+left in our sleeper two huge bouquets of sweet peas and ten pounds of
+blackberries, we knew that the finest garden in Winnipeg had been rifled
+to do us pleasure. Now, I dearly love flowers and fruit, as I did the
+giver, but ten pounds of great, fat blackberries and an armful of sweet
+peas in a cramped stuffy Pullman caused my heart to resound in the minor
+chords. We rallied again and again to demolish the fruit as we voyaged,
+and sat with one foot on top of the other to avoid crushing the lovely pea
+blossoms as we fidgeted about, but the results of our efforts, messy fruit
+in hopeless abundance and withering leaves in dreary profusion, were
+discouraging.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the noon hour came, Nimrod carried the fruit basket into the Diner
+and set it down on the table. The waiter eyed us askance. "It's a dollar
+each for dinner, sah." It was clear we were emigrants. We paid the
+waiter's demand and then from soup to coffee ate blackberries&mdash;blackberries
+until we were black in the mouth and pale in the face. Then we picked up
+our basket, upon the contents of which our labours had apparently made no
+impression, and, hastily pushing a plate over the rich red stain it had
+left on the table cloth, departed with our fruit and a grieved feeling in
+the region of our hearts. It may not be amiss to remark that I have never
+eaten a blackberry since. To get to our car it was necessary to pass
+through another sleeper, where I noticed a made up berth in which was
+reclining a young woman, and hovering over her solicitously a man,
+evidently the husband.
+</p>
+<p>
+Hope and joy awoke within me&mdash;perhaps she would like some
+blackberries! No, she would not venture to eat fruit, and with many
+thanks, oh, many, many thanks, she declined it. But the blessedness of
+giving I felt must be mine, so I bribed the porter to take as many sweet
+peas as he could carry and present them to the sick lady in the next car,
+and on no account to tell where he got them. I did not want the thanks,
+neither did I want the sweet peas, but I was illogical enough to hope that
+the Recording Angel would be busy and accept the act at its face value as
+a "deed of kindness."
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8301.jpg" alt="8301 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8301.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It must have been a slack day with the angel, for this is a brief but
+accurate account of what followed, and I am willing to leave it to any
+human, whether my punishment was not out of all proportion to the offense
+committed:
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>One hour later</i>. Train stops for ten minutes. I got out for fresh
+air and promenade on platform. Behold, the first object that meets my gaze
+is the sick lady, miraculously recovered. She swooped down upon me with
+the deadly light of determination in her eyes. I was discovered. There was
+no escape. I was going to be thanked&mdash;and I was thanked. Up and down,
+backwards and forwards, inside and out, and all hands around. And when she
+paused breathless her husband took up the theme. It seems she was a semi
+invalid, and the sweet peas were quite the most heavenly thing that could
+have happened to her. Nimrod joined me at this moment and he was thanked
+separately and dually, for being the husband of his wife, I suppose. At
+last we were able to retire with profuse bows, tired but exceedingly
+thankful that the incident, though trying, was ended.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9302.jpg" alt="9302 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9302.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+<i>Three minutes later</i>. Have been driven indoors by the sweet pea
+woman, as each turn of the walk brought us face to face, when it
+immediately became necessary to nod and smile, and for our husbands to
+lift hats and smile, until we looked like loose-necked manikins. At least,
+the sleeper is tranquil, if stuffy.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Supper time</i>. Have been thanked again by the Sweet Pea Lady, who sat
+at our table. She had sweet peas in her hair, and at her belt. The husband
+had a boutonnière of them.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8303.jpg" alt="8303 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8303.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+<i>Next morning, Carberry</i>. Bade an elaborate farewell to the Sweet Pea
+Lady. She is going straight to the coast where they catch steamer for
+Japan. Praise be to Allah! I shall see her no more. The heavy polite is
+wearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Next day, Banff Hot Springs</i>. First person on the hotel steps I see
+is the S.P. Lady. She rushed up and assured me that the S.P.'s were still
+fresh, and that she and her husband had unexpectedly stopped over for a
+day.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Next day</i>. Spent the day avoiding S.P.L. Left for Glacier House in
+the evening. At least, I shall not see S.P.L. there, as they have to go
+right through to catch steamer.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Two days later, Glacier House</i>. Had horrid shock. Found apparition
+of S.P. Lady sitting beside me at breakfast table. She began to speak,
+then I knew it was the real thing. She assured me that many of the S.P.'s
+were still fresh, as she had clipped their stems night and morning. I
+again said good by to her, and to those ghastly flowers. She just has time
+to catch her steamer.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Three days later: Vancouver</i>. Ran across the S.P. Lady in hotel
+corridor. She saw me first. There was another weary interchange of the
+heavy polite. Her steamer had been delayed from sailing for two days&mdash;in
+order that we might meet again, I have no doubt.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8305.jpg" alt="8305 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8305.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+<i>Next morning. She's gone</i>. Ring the bells, boom the cannon! I saw
+the Japan steamer bear the Sweet Pea Lady rapidly into deep water. At last
+easeful peace may again dream on my shoulder. When I returned to the hotel
+the clerk handed me an envelope enclosing a lady's visiting card (kind
+fate, she lives in Japan) on which was written "In grateful appreciation
+of your kindness," and with the card were two sprays of Pressed Sweet
+Peas.
+</p>
+<p>
+After this when it comes to "scattering deeds of kindness on the weary
+way," I shall be the woman who didn't, and who shall say me nay? However,
+all this flower and fruit piece was but an episode; the event of that
+journey was the intimate acquaintance we made of the Great Glacier of the
+Selkirks, and the nice opportunity I had to lose my life. And the only
+reason this tale is not more tragic is because, given the choice, I
+preferred to lose the opportunity rather than the life.
+</p>
+<p>
+I wonder if I can give any idea to one who has not seen it what a snow
+slide really is; how it sweeps away every vestige of trees, grass, and
+roots, and leaves a surface of shirting, unstable earth almost as
+treacherous as quicksand.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod and I had paid a superficial visit to the Glacier the day before:
+that is, we had gone as far as its forefoot, a hard but thoroughly safe
+climb, and had explored with awe the green glass ice caves with which the
+Great Glacier has seen fit to decorate its lower line, wonderful rooms of
+ice, emerald in the shadows, with glacial streams for floors.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0308m.jpg" alt="0308m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0308.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+So the next morning we started out, intending a little bit to further
+explore the vast, cold, heartless ice sheet (vaster than all the Swiss
+glaciers together), but more to hunt for the warm beating heart of a
+mountain sheep, whose home is here. We had been travelling for miles in
+the wildest kind of earth upheavals, for the Selkirks are still hard and
+fast in the grip of the ice king; huge boulders, uprooted trees, mighty
+mountains, released but recently from the glacial wet blanket, when Nimrod
+discovered the stale track of a mountain sheep. We followed it eagerly
+till it brought us across the path of a snow slide. At that point it was
+about five hundred feet across, at an angle of forty-five degrees; below
+us a thousand feet was a vicious looking glacial torrent; above, an equal
+distance, was the lower edge of the glacier, the mother of all this
+devastation.
+</p>
+<p>
+The fearless-footed mountain sheep had crossed this sliding crumbling
+earth and gravel incline with apparent ease. For us it was go on or go
+back. There was no middle course. The row of tiny hoof marks running
+straight across from one safe bank to the other deceived us. It could not
+be so very difficult. We dismounted; Nimrod threw the bridle over his
+horse's head and started across, leading his beast. The animal snorted as
+he felt the foot-hold giving way beneath him, but Nimrod pulled him along.
+It was impossible to stand still. It would have been as easy for
+quicksilver to remain at the top of an incline. Amid rattling stones and
+sliding earth they landed on the firm bank beyond, fully three hundred
+feet below me.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0310m.jpg" alt="0310m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0310.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It was a shivery sight, but I started expecting the horse would follow.
+He, however, jerked back snorting and trembling, which unexpected move
+upset my equilibrium, uncertain at best, and I fell. Nothing but the happy
+chance of a tight grip on the reins kept me from sliding down that
+dreadful bank, over the rock into the water, and so into eternity (Please
+pardon the Salvation Army metaphor).
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8311.jpg" alt="8311 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8311.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+I had barely time to right myself and get out of the way of my horse,
+which now plunged forward upon the sliding rock with me. The terrified
+animal lost his head completely. I could not keep away from his hoofs. He
+would not let me keep in front, I dare not get above for fear I should
+slip under his feet, or below him for fear he should slide upon me. I lost
+my balance again while dodging away from him as he plunged and balked, but
+managed to grab his mane and we both slid a horrible distance. I could
+hear Nimrod shouting on the bank, but did not seem to understand him. I
+had the stage, centre front, and it was all I could attend to.
+</p>
+<p>
+We were now opposite to Nimrod, but only half way across. Such an ominous
+rolling and tumbling of stones and tons of earth sliding down over the low
+precipice into the water! I expected to be with it each instant. Nimrod
+had started out after me.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0313m.jpg" alt="0313m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0313.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+Then I understood what he was shouting: "Let go that horse." Why, of
+course! Why had I not thought of that? I did let go and, thus freed,
+managed to get across, falling, slipping, but still making progress until
+I reached the safe ground one hundred feet lower in a decidedly
+dilapidated condition. My animal followed me instinctively for a short
+distance, and Nimrod got him the rest of the way&mdash;I do not know how.
+It did not interest me then.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the saddest of all, the mountain sheep had vanished into the unknown,
+taking his little tracks with him, so we had to go back in a roundabout
+way, without sheep, without joy&mdash;and without a tragedy.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0315m.jpg" alt="0315m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0315.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XVI. IN WHICH THE TENDERFOOT LEARNS A NEW TRICK.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9319.jpg" alt="9319 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9319.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+For those who have driven four-in-hand, this will have no message. But as
+four-in-hand literature seems to be somewhat limited and my first lesson
+was somewhat drastic, I shall venture to tell you how it felt.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of coaching there are two kinds: Eastern coaching, with well-groomed
+full-fed horses, who are never worked harder than is good for them; with
+silver-plated harness, and coach with the latest springs and running gear,
+umbrella rack, horn, lunch larder, and what not; with footmen or
+postilions, according to the degree of style, to run to the horses' heads
+at the first hitch; with the gentleman driver in cream box coat and
+beribboned whip; with everything down to the pole pin correct and
+immaculate.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0320m.jpg" alt="0320m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0320.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+Then there is Western coaching, which is more properly termed staging, for
+which is used any vehicle that will hold together and whose wheels will
+turn round. This is pulled by half-broken shaggy horses which would kick
+any man who ventured near them with brush or currycomb, and which are
+sometimes made to travel until they drop in the road. The harness on such
+coaching trips is an assortment of single, double, leaders and wheelers
+sets, mended with buckskin or wire and thrown on irrespective of fit.
+Lucky the cayuse who happens to be the right size for his harness.
+</p>
+<p>
+And the driver! No cream box coat for him&mdash;provident the one who owns
+a slicker and a coat of weather green (the same being the result of sun
+and rain on any given color). And the people in the stage hoist no white
+and red silk parasols. They are there because they are "going somewhere."
+My multi-murderous cook taught me the distinction between "just
+travellin'" and "going somewhere."
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0321m.jpg" alt="0321m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0321.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+As for the roads&mdash;oh, those Rocky Mountain roads! They make coaching
+quite a different thing from that on the smooth boulevards around New
+York. I have twice made seventy-five miles in twelve hours, by having four
+relays, but the average rate of travel is about twenty miles in eight
+hours. And the day when I first took the ribbons in my hands to guide&mdash;four
+horses we were from nine in the morning till five at night going twelve
+miles. This was the way of it: Nimrod and I were on a hunting trip in the
+Canadian Rockies, and as the government map said there was a road, though
+not a good one, we decided to carry our belongings in a four-horse wagon,
+in which we could also ride if we liked, and to have saddle horses
+besides.
+</p>
+<p>
+Green, a man of the region, was the driver and cook, and we had as guest a
+famous bear hunter from the Sierra Nevadas. On the first two days out from
+the little mountain town where we started, we saw many tracks of black
+bear, which encouraged the hunters to think that they might find a grizzly
+(which, by the way, they did not).
+</p>
+<p>
+The dust was thick and red, enveloping us all day long like some horrible
+insistent monster that had resolved itself into atoms to choke, blind and
+strangle us. Nimrod looked like a clay man&mdash;hair, eyebrows, mustache,
+skin, and clothes were all one solid coating of red dust. We were all
+alike. Even the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bottom of a box, covered by
+other boxes, bags and a canvas, became adulterated almost past use.
+</p>
+<p>
+On the fourth day this changed, and we camped at the foot of a granite
+mountain. It made one think of the Glass Mountain of fable, with its
+smooth stretches of polished rock shining in the sun. That a human being
+should dare to take a wagon over such a place seemed incredible. Yet there
+the road was, zigzagging up the rocky slope, while here and there the
+jagged outlines of blasted rock showed where the all-powerful dynamite had
+been used to make a resting place for straining horses.
+</p>
+<p>
+That morning excitement surrounded our out-of-door breakfast table. We had
+had strange visitors during the night, while we slept. A mountain lion,
+the beautiful tan-coated vibrant-tailed puma, had nosed within ten feet of
+me and then, not liking the camp-fire glow and unalarmed by my inert form,
+had silently retreated.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0324m.jpg" alt="0324m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0324.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+It made me feel creepy to see how easily that lithe-limbed powerful
+creature might have had me for a midnight meal. But I was not trying to do
+him harm, and so he granted me the same tolerance. Then, too, not far away
+was a bear track, and the canned peaches were fewer than the night before.
+</p>
+<p>
+All of this caused Nimrod and the bear-hunter to saddle their horses
+early; and agreeing to meet us at night on the other side of the mountain,
+where the map showed a stream, they set out for a day's hunt. Nimrod's
+horse having gone slightly lame, I offered mine, a swift-footed
+intelligent dear, and agreed to ride in the wagon.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was the same old story. Virtue is somebody else's reward. I never had a
+worse day in the mountains. Green and I started blithely enough by nine,
+which had meant a 5:30 rising in the cold gray dawn. The horses had been
+worked every day since the start, and were jaded.
+</p>
+<p>
+We went slowly along the only level road in our journey that day; but the
+load did not seem to be riding well, and at the beginning of the ascent
+Green got out to investigate. He said the spring was out of order. The
+wagon was what is known as a thorough-brace, which means that there are
+two large loopy steel bands on which the wagon box rests; the loops are
+filled in with countless strips of leather, forming a pad for the springs
+to play on. (The Century Dictionary will please not copy this definition.)
+The Deadwood stage coach was a thorough-brace, I believe. Another
+interesting out-of-date detail in the construction of this wagon was that
+the brake had no mechanical device for holding it in position when it was
+put on hard, and the driver had to rely upon his strength of limb to keep
+it in place. It seems that Green, in pounding these bits of leather in the
+spring, had badly crushed his left hand. He said nothing to me, and I did
+not notice that, contrary to custom, he was driving with his right hand,
+which he usually reserved for the whip and the brake.
+</p>
+<p>
+We crossed the shallow brook and started up the very steep and very rocky
+road, when everything happened at once. Two of the horses refused to pull
+and danced up and down in the one spot, a sickening thing for a horse to
+do. This meant the instant application of the brake. We had already begun
+to slip backward (the most uncomfortable sensation I know, barring actual
+pain). Nimrod's horse, tied on behind, gave a frightened snort and broke
+his rope. Green attempted to take the reins with his left hand. They
+dropped from his grasp, and I saw that his fingers were purple and black.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Grab the lines, can you?" he said, as he seized the whip and put both
+feet on the brake. The leaders were curveting back on the wheelers in a
+way which meant imminent mix up, their legs over traces and behind
+whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid
+rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp
+turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I had
+always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson left
+me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of
+difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, broad, and
+level stretches with plenty of room to pull a rein and see what would
+happen. I had to spring into the situation with knowledge, as Minerva did
+into life, full grown. It was no kindergarten way of learning to drive
+four-in-hand.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0328m.jpg" alt="0328m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0328.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+I grabbed the reins in both hands. There were yards of them, rods of them,
+miles of them&mdash;they belonged to a six or sixteen horse set. I do not
+know which. I sat on them. They writhed in my lap, wrapped around my feet,
+and around the gun against my knee, in a hopeless and dangerous muddle. Of
+course the reins were twisted. I did not know one from the other. I gave a
+desperate jerk which sent the leaders plunging to the right, where
+fortunately they brought up against the rock wall. Had they gone the other
+way nothing but our destiny could have saved us from going over the edge.
+<i>Crack</i> went the whip in the right place.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8329.jpg" alt="8329 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8329.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"Slack the lines!" Green cried, as he eased the brake. A lash of the whip
+for each wheeler, and we started forward, the horses disentangling
+themselves from the harness as by a miracle, just as the rear wheels were
+hovering over the bluff. Green dropped the whip (his left hand was quite
+useless) and straightened out the reins for me.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Can you do it?" he asked, grasping the whip, as the horses showed signs
+of stopping again. To attend to the brake was physically impossible. Green
+could not do it and drive with one hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," I said, "but watch me"&mdash;an injunction scarcely necessary.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0331m.jpg" alt="0331m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0331.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+If ever a woman put her whole mind to a thing, I did on that four-in-hand.
+There was no place for mistakes. There was no place for anything but the
+right thing, and do it I must or run the risk of breaking my very dusty,
+very brown, but none the less precious neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+A sharp turn in a steep road with rocks a foot high disputing the right of
+way with the wheels, a heavy load, horses that do not want to pull, and a
+green driver&mdash;that was the situation. If it does not appeal to you as
+one of the horribles in life, try it once.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Run your leaders farther up the bank&mdash;left, left! <i>Get up, Milo!
+Frank, get out of that</i>! Now sharp to the right. <i>Whoa! Steady</i>!
+Left&mdash;left, I say! <i>Milo, whoa</i>! Now to the right, quick! Let
+'em on the bank more. <i>Nellie, easy</i>&mdash;<i>Whoa! Steady, George</i>!"
+Crack went the whip on the leaders.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9334.jpg" alt="9334 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9334.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"Hold your lines tighter. Pull that nigh leader. <i>Get out of that,
+Frank! Now steady, boys</i>! Don't pull&mdash;there!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Down went the brake; we were safely round the turn, and all hands rested
+for a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+Thus we worked all that morning, Green with the brake, the whip, and his
+tongue; I with the lines, what strength I had and mother wit in lieu of
+experience.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were stretches of two hundred feet of granite, smooth and polished
+as a floor, where the horses repeatedly slipped and fell, and where the
+wheels brought forth hollow mocking rumbles.
+</p>
+<p>
+There were sections where the rocky ledges succeeded one another in steps,
+and the animals had to pull the heavy wagon up rises from a foot to
+eighteen inches high by sheer strength&mdash;as easy to drive up a flight
+of brownstone steps on Fifth Avenue. There were places between huge
+boulders where a swerve of a foot to the right or to the left would have
+sent us crashing into the unyielding granite.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8337.jpg" alt="8337 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8337.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+When we got to the top there was no place to rest&mdash;only rock, rock
+everywhere. No water, no food for the exhausted horses, nothing to do but
+to push on to the bottom&mdash;and such going! Have you ever felt the
+shuddering of a wagon with brake hard on, as it poised in air the instant
+before it dropped a foot or two to the next level, from hard rock to hard
+rock? Have you ever tried to keep four horses away from under a wagon, and
+yet sufficiently near it not to precipitate the crash? Have you ever at
+the same time tried to keep them from falling on the rocks ahead and from
+plunging over the bank as you turn a sharp curve on a steep down grade? If
+you have, then you know the nature of my first lesson in four-in-hand
+driving.
+</p>
+<p>
+We got to the bottom at dusk. I was too tired to speak. Every muscle set
+up a separate complaint and I had had nothing to eat since morning, as we
+had expected to make camp by noon. The world seemed indeed a very drab
+place. We found the hunters careering around searching for us. They
+thought they had missed us&mdash;as they had done the bear.
+</p>
+<p>
+I have driven, and been driven, hundreds of miles since, but there never
+was a ride like those twelve, cruel, mocking, pitiless miles over Granite
+Mountain, when necessity taught me a very pretty trick, which, however, I
+have not yet been tempted to display at the Madison Square Garden in
+November.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XVII. <i>OUR</i> MINE.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9341.jpg" alt="9341 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9341.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+It now behooves me to state that, between the events of the last chapter
+and this, Nimrod and I heard the hum, the wail, and the shriek that make
+the song of the Westinghouse brake before we found ourselves deposited at
+the flourishing mining camp of Red Ridge in the Arizona Rockies, nine
+thousand feet in the air.
+</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;"><img src="images/8341.jpg" alt="8341 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/8341.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Did ever a tenderfoot escape from the mountains without at least having a
+try at making his or her fortune in a mine&mdash;gold one preferred? We,
+of course, had the chance of our lives, and who knows what might have
+happened if only the fat woman and the lean woman had not gotten jealous
+of each other, and thereby wrecked the company?
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9342.jpg" alt="9342 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9342.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+The gold is, or is not, in the fastnesses of the earth as before, but
+where, oh, where, is the lean woman of lineage and the fat woman of money?
+The lean woman had quality. She was the daughter of somebody who had done
+something, but, unlike <i>Becky Sharp</i>, she had not been successful in
+living richly in San Francisco on nothing a year. Nobody knows whose
+daughter the fat woman was, but in her very comfortable home in Kansas
+that had not mattered, and, besides, she had saved a few hundreds.
+</p>
+<p>
+These two women had husbands, who had entered into a mining scheme
+together. The man from Frisco was a good-looking, well-educated, jovial
+fellow, with the purses of several rich friends to back him up, and with a
+great desire to replenish his purse with the yellow metal direct, rather
+than to acquire it by the sweat of his brow. He was many other things,
+but, to be brief, he was a promoter. The man from Kansas had the pride of
+the uneducated, and a little money, and was also not averse to getting
+rich fast.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nimrod, the third partner, likewise encumbered with a wife on the spot,
+desired to make <i>his</i> everlasting fortune, retire from the painting
+of pictures and the making of books, and grub in the field of science and
+live happily ever after.
+</p>
+<p>
+For two weeks we were all together at the only hotel at Cartersville, a
+hamlet of perhaps thirty souls. It took only two weeks to wreck the
+company. The mine was a mile and a half away, over a very up-and-down
+mountain road which on the first day the fat woman and I walked with our
+husbands, and which Mrs. Frisco and her husband had travelled in Mrs.
+Kansas' phaeton&mdash;the result of a little way Mrs. Frisco had of
+getting the best.
+</p>
+<p>
+Three days of this calm appropriation of her carriage while she walked
+ruffled Mrs. Kansas' temper. When she heard a rumour that Mrs. Frisco had
+stated disdainfully to the landlady that there could be no thought of
+recognising Mrs. Kansas socially, but that she must be tolerated because
+of her money in the enterprise, her politeness grew frigid and the trouble
+began to brew.
+</p>
+<p>
+While perfectly willing to watch the logomachy when it should arrive, I
+had no wish to take part. I was willing to make money, but not to make
+enemies, so Nimrod and I removed ourselves as much as possible from the
+Cartersville Hotel, took long walks and rides over the glorious Chihuahua
+Mountains, poked around the abandoned mines, spied out the deer and
+mountain lion and the ubiquitous coyote and all the indigenous beasts and
+birds of the air thereof. We usually managed to arrive at the mine when
+the partners and their wives were elsewhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+The mine, <i>our</i> mine, was a long horizontal hole in the mountain,
+with a tiny leaf-choked stream trickling past the entrance, heavy timbers
+propping up the inert mass of dirt and stone just above our heads, piles
+of uninteresting rock dumped to one side, the "pay dirt." I had seen such
+things before, and they had said nothing to me. But this was <i>our</i>
+mine, <i>our</i> stream, <i>our</i> dump.
+</p>
+<p>
+McCaffrey, the foreman, put rubber boots on me in the little smithy which
+formed a part of the entrance of the tunnel, and thus equipped I entered
+the tunnel. The day shift, represented by two dancing lights far off in
+the blackness, was preparing to blast.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0346m.jpg" alt="0346m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0346.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+I advanced uncertainly, my own candle blinding me. Water trickled from the
+roof and walls of this rock-bound passage seven feet high and four feet
+wide. A stream of it flowed by the tiny tram track. The hollow sound of
+the mallet on the crowbar forcing its way into the stubborn wall grew
+louder as we approached, until we stood with the miners in a foot or so of
+water which showed yellow and shining in the flickering light of four
+candles. Then we went back to the smithy to wait the result of the blast.
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a horrid jarring booming sound. The miners listened intently.
+McCaffrey said, "One." Another explosion in the tunnel followed&mdash;"Two."
+Another&mdash;"Three." Then a silence. "That's bad," said McCaffrey,
+shaking his head. "An unexploded cap."
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There were four charges and should have been four explosions. It's liable
+to go off when we go in there."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh!" I said.
+</p>
+<p>
+The miners waited a while for the fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated
+and kept me away from the tunnel mouth, saying:
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9348.jpg" alt="9348 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9348.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+"If you ever get a dynamite headache you will never want to come near the
+mine again. And, besides, that unexploded cap may do damage yet."
+</p>
+<p>
+I went back to the smithy to wait, for it was the last of October, and
+snow in the mountains at ten thousand feet is cold. I attempted to sit
+down on a keg behind the little sheet-iron stove, which was nearly red
+hot.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0349m.jpg" alt="0349m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0349.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+"You better not sit down on that kaig," said one of the men calmly,
+without pausing in his work.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, it's dirty, and, besides, it's nitro-glycerine."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Nitro-glycerine! Why is it in <i>here</i>, and so close to the stove?
+Won't it explode?" and I checked a desire to retreat in disorder.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, 't'ain't no danger, if it don't get too hot and ain't jarred. You
+see, it won't go off if it's too cold, so we keep a little in here and
+kind o' watch it."
+</p>
+<p>
+The keg was within two feet of the stove. Suppose that a dog or something
+were to knock it over! But miners do not suppose.
+</p>
+<p>
+Just then a tremendous explosion in the tunnel seemed to make the whole
+earth vibrate. It was followed by a rattling and crashing of rocks, which
+told us that the last cap had gone off and had done good work.
+</p>
+<p>
+Half an hour later, when it was safe from dynamite fumes, I went back to
+our hole in the ground. Nimrod had left me, lured away by some fox tracks
+trailing up the mountain. The weird scene was too interesting for me to
+leave until the arrival of the fat and lean women (Mrs. Frisco had
+persuaded Mrs. Kansas to drive her over) caused me to remember that the
+parlour fire at the Cartersville Hotel must be very comfortable, and that
+it was a mile and a half of tiresome snow away.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9352.jpg" alt="9352 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9352.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Evidently the wives of my husband's partners had disagreed on the way, for
+the air was electric as they greeted me, and to avoid another tête-à-tête
+they at once turned to accompany me out of the tunnel. I was the last.
+</p>
+<p>
+The scene was now properly set for a mining accident, so there was nothing
+for a self respecting tunnel to do but to accordingly, which it did. Just
+as the fat woman and the lean woman passed into the open air, and I was
+nearly at the mouth of the tunnel, it caused its roof to cave in so close
+behind me that, had I not instinctively rushed out, some of the flying
+stones, timbers, and dirt must have knocked me to the ground.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0353m.jpg" alt="0353m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0353.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<p>
+As it was, I landed sprawling in the snow outside, sweeping the lean woman
+down with me. It was very like a dime novel. Three lone women who, for
+purposes of intensification, may be called enemies, staring with white
+faces at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise that a minute before it had
+been a black hole. And at the other end of that hole now were two men
+horribly imprisoned in a rock-walled tomb without air or food, perhaps
+dead. We could not tell how much of a cave-in it was.
+</p>
+<p>
+The lean woman rushed for Mrs. Kansas' horse and wagon and went to alarm
+the hamlet. I dashed up the hill a quarter of a mile to awaken the night
+shift, who were in their cabin sleeping. And the fat woman at a safe
+distance wrung her hands and uttered exclamations of horror and ill judged
+advice to our departing forms.
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9356.jpg" alt="9356 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9356.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Between the fright, the altitude, and the hill I had no breath left to
+speak with as I pounded on the door of the miner's hut. Mountaineers sleep
+lightly and do not make toilets, so it was barely ten minutes from the
+time of the cave-in when three men were working at the tunnel's mouth with
+pickaxes and shovels.
+</p>
+<p>
+The tunnel had not meant to be malicious, but merely to do the proper
+thing (it had not even disturbed the nitro-glycerine in the smithy). Not
+much earth had fallen, and in less than an hour we heard the shouts of the
+imprisoned men; in two hours they crawled into the air unhurt, and soon
+were helping the others to shore up the treacherous entrance, so that such
+a stirring thing could not happen again.
+</p>
+<p>
+There is not much more to tell. I believe that the tunnel is still there,
+boring its way into the heart of the mountain, where, perhaps, the lovely
+yellow gold is; but we no longer refer to it as <i>ours</i>, and Nimrod
+still has to work for our daily jam. For the insolence of Mrs. Frisco in
+leaving Mrs. Kansas stranded in the snow and obliging her to walk home on
+the cave-in day developed the brewing storm into such proportions that the
+next day their husbands did not speak as we gathered round the morning
+coffee. And the Kansases moved away into one of the other five houses in
+Cartersville. Mr. Kansas was not "going to see his wife insulted by an
+upstart&mdash;not he: he'd soon show them," and he did so effectively that
+the Red Ridge Mining Company was soon no more. We docketed our golden
+dreams 'unusable,' stowed them away, and returned with tranquil minds, if
+lighter purse, to milder and slower ways of getting rich.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0358m.jpg" alt="0358m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0358.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<a name="linklink2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XVIII. THE LAST WORD.
+</h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;"><img src="images/9361.jpg" alt="9361 " width="100%" /><br /><a href="images/9361.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></div>
+<p>
+Now this is the end. It is three years since I first became a
+woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. I have lived on jerked deer and
+alkali water, and bathed in dark-eyed pools, nestling among vast pines
+where none but the four footed had been before. I have been sung asleep a
+hundred times by the coyotes' evening lullaby, have felt the spell of
+their wild nightly cry, long and mournful, coming just as the darkness has
+fully come, lasting but a few seconds, and then heard no more till the
+night gives place to the fresh sheet of dawn. I have pored in the morning
+over the big round footprints of a mountain lion where he had sneaked in
+hours of darkness, past my saddle pillowed head. I have hunted much, and
+killed a little, the wary, the beautiful, the fleet-footed big game. I
+have driven a four-in-hand over corduroy roads and ridden horseback over
+the pathless vasty wilds of the continent's backbone.
+</p>
+<p>
+I have been nearly frozen eleven thousand feet in air in blinding snow, I
+have baked on the Dakota plains with the thermometer at 116 degrees, and I
+have met characters as diverse as the climate. I know what it means to be
+a miner and a cowboy, and have risked my life when need be, <i>but</i>,
+best of all, I have felt the charm of the glorious freedom, the quick
+rushing blood, the bounding motion, of the wild life, the joy of the
+living and of the doing, of the mountain and the plain; I have learned to
+know and feel some, at least, of the secrets of the Wild Ones. In short,
+though I am still a woman and may be tender, I am a Woman Tenderfoot no
+longer.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0363m.jpg" alt="0363m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0363.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:65%;">
+
+<img src="images/0365m.jpg" alt="0365m
+" width="100%" /><br /></div><h4><a href="images/0365.jpg"><i>Original Size</i></a></h4>
+
+<div style="height: 6em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman Tenderfoot, by
+Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's A Woman Tenderfoot, by Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman Tenderfoot
+
+Author: Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9412]
+This file was first posted on September 30, 2003
+Last Updated: May 14, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN TENDERFOOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and Project
+Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders from images generously
+made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical
+Microreproductions
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN TENDERFOOT
+
+By Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
+
+
+1900
+
+
+
+In this Book the full-page Drawings were made by Ernest Seton-Thompson,
+G. Wright and E.M. Ashe, and the Marginals by S.N. Abbott. The cover,
+title-page and general make-up were designed by the Author. Thanks are
+due to Miller Christy for proof revision, and to A.A. Anderson for
+valuable suggestions on camp outfitting. (No illustrations are included
+in this file.)
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS A TRIBUTE TO THE WEST.
+
+
+I have used many Western phrases as necessary to the Western setting.
+
+I can only add that the events related really happened in the Rocky
+Mountains of the United States and Canada; and this is why, being a
+woman, I wanted to tell about them, in the hope that some
+going-to-Europe-in-the-summer-woman may be tempted to go West instead.
+
+G.G.S.-T.
+
+New York City, September 1st, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I The Why of It
+
+    II Outfit and Advice for the Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband
+
+   III The First Plunge of the Woman Tenderfoot
+
+    IV Which Treats of the Imps and My Elk
+
+     V Lost in the Mountains
+
+    VI The Cook
+
+   VII Among the Clouds
+
+  VIII At Yeddars
+
+    IX My Antelope
+
+     X A Mountain Drama
+
+    XI What I Know about Wahb of the Bighorn Basin
+
+   XII The Dead Hunt
+
+  XIII Just Rattlesnakes
+
+   XIV As Cowgirl
+
+    XV The Sweet Pea Lady Someone Else's Mountain Sheep
+
+   XVI In which the Tenderfoot Learns a New Trick
+
+  XVII _Our_ Mine
+
+ XVIII The Last Word
+
+
+
+
+A LIST OF FULL-PAGE DRAWINGS.
+
+Costume for cross saddle riding
+
+Tears starting from your smoke-inflamed eyes
+
+Saddle cover for wet weather Policeman's equestrian rain coat
+
+She was postmistress twice a week
+
+The trail was lost in a gully
+
+Whetted one to a razor edge and threw it into a tree where it stuck
+quivering
+
+Not three hundred yards away ... were two bull elk in deadly combat
+
+Down the path came two of the prettiest Blacktails
+
+A misstep would have sent us flying over the cliff
+
+Thus I fought through the afternoon
+
+We whizzed across the railroad track in front of the Day Express
+
+Five feet full in front of us, they pulled their horses to a dead stop
+
+The coyotes made savage music
+
+The horrid thing was ready for me I started on a gallop, swinging one
+arm
+
+The warm beating heart of a mountain sheep
+
+I could not keep away from his hoofs
+
+We started forward, just as the rear wheels were hovering over the edge
+
+"You better not sit down on that kaig ... It's nitroglycerine"
+
+The tunnel caused its roof to cave in close behind me
+
+A mountain lion sneaked past my saddle-pillowed head
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE WHY OF IT.
+
+
+Theoretically, I have always agreed with the Quaker wife who reformed her
+husband--"Whither thou goest, I go also, Dicky dear." What thou doest, I
+do also, Dicky dear. So when, the year after our marriage, Nimrod
+announced that the mountain madness was again working in his blood, and
+that he must go West and take up the trail for his holiday, I tucked my
+summer-watering-place-and-Europe-flying-trip mind away (not without
+regret, I confess) and cautiously tried to acquire a new vocabulary and
+some new ideas.
+
+Of course, plenty of women have handled guns and have gone to the Rocky
+Mountains on hunting trips--but they were not among my friends. However,
+my imagination was good, and the outfit I got together for my first trip
+appalled that good man, my husband, while the number of things I had to
+learn appalled me.
+
+In fact, the first four months spent 'Out West' were taken up in
+learning how to ride, how to dress for it, how to shoot, and how
+to philosophise, each of which lessons is a story in itself. But briefly,
+in order to come to this story, I must have a side talk with the
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. Those not interested please omit
+the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+OUTFIT AND ADVICE FOR THE WOMAN-WHO-GOES-HUNTING-WITH-HER-HUSBAND.
+
+
+Is it really so that most women say no to camp life because they are
+afraid of being uncomfortable and looking unbeautiful? There is no reason
+why a woman should make a freak of herself even if she is going to rough
+it; as a matter of fact I do not rough it, I go for enjoyment and leave
+out all possible discomforts. There is no reason why a woman should be
+more uncomfortable out in the mountains, with the wild west wind for
+companion and the big blue sky for a roof, than sitting in a 10 by 12
+whitewashed bedroom of the summer hotel variety, with the tin roof to
+keep out what air might be passing. A possible mosquito or gnat in the
+mountains is no more irritating than the objectionable personality that
+is sure to be forced upon you every hour at the summer hotel. The usual
+walk, the usual drive, the usual hop, the usual novel, the usual
+scandal,--in a word, the continual consciousness of self as related to
+dress, to manners, to position, which the gregarious living of a hotel
+enforces--are all right enough once in a while; but do you not get enough
+of such life in the winter to last for all the year?
+
+Is one never to forget that it is not proper to wear gold beads with
+crape? Understand, I am not to be set down as having any charity for the
+ignoramus who would wear that combination, but I wish to record the fact
+that there are times, under the spell of the West, when I simply do not
+_care_ whether there are such things as gold beads and crape; when the
+whole business of city life, the music, arts, drama, the pleasant
+friends, equally with the platitudes of things and people you care not
+about--civilization, in a word--when all these fade away from my thoughts
+as far as geographically they are, and in their place comes the joy of
+being at least a healthy, if not an intelligent, animal. It is a pleasure
+to eat when the time comes around, a good old-fashioned pleasure, and you
+need no dainty serving to tempt you. It is another pleasure to use your
+muscles, to buffet with the elements, to endure long hours of riding, to
+run where walking would do, to jump an obstacle instead of going around
+it, to return, physically at least, to your pinafore days when you
+played with your brother Willie. Red blood means a rose-colored world.
+Did you feel like that last summer at Newport or Narragansett?
+
+So enough; come with me and learn how to be vulgarly robust.
+
+Of course one must have clothes and personal comforts, so, while we are
+still in the city humor, let us order a habit suitable for riding
+astride. Whipcord, or a closely woven homespun, in some shade of grayish
+brown that harmonizes with the landscape, is best. Corduroy is pretty, if
+you like it, but rather clumsy. Denham will do, but it wrinkles and
+becomes untidy. Indeed it has been my experience that it is economy to
+buy the best quality of cloth you can afford, for then the garment always
+keeps its shape, even after hard wear, and can be cleaned and made ready
+for another year, and another, and another. You will need it, never
+fear. Once you have opened your ears, "the Red Gods" will not cease to
+"call for you."
+
+In Western life you are on and off your horse at the change of a thought.
+Your horse is not an animate exercise-maker that John brings around for a
+couple of hours each morning; he is your companion, and shares the
+vicissitudes of your life. You even consult him on occasion, especially
+on matters relating to the road. Therefore your costume must look equally
+well on and off the horse. In meeting this requirement, my woes were
+many. I struggled valiantly with everything in the market, and finally,
+from five varieties of divided skirts and bloomers, the following
+practical and becoming habit was evolved.
+
+I speak thus modestly, as there is now a trail of patterns of this habit
+from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Wherever it goes, it makes
+converts, especially among the wives of army officers at the various
+Western posts where we have been--for the majority of women in the West,
+and I nearly said all the sensible ones, now ride astride.
+
+When off the horse, there is nothing about this habit to distinguish it
+from any trim golf suit, with the stitching up the left front which is
+now so popular. When on the horse, it looks, as some one phrased it, as
+though one were riding side saddle on both sides. This is accomplished by
+having the fronts of the skirt double, free nearly to the waist, and,
+when off the horse, fastened by patent hooks. The back seam is also open,
+faced for several inches, stitched and closed by patent fasteners. Snug
+bloomers of the same material are worn underneath. The simplicity of
+this habit is its chief charm; there is no superfluous material to sit
+upon--oh, the torture of wrinkled cloth in the divided skirt!--and it
+does not fly up even in a strong wind, if one knows how to ride. The
+skirt is four inches from the ground--it should not bell much on the
+sides--and about three and a half yards at the bottom, which is finished
+with a five-inch stitched hem.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME FOR CROSS SADDLE RIDING. Designed by the Author.]
+
+Any style of jacket is of course suitable. One that looks well on the
+horse is tight fitting, with postilion back, short on hips, sharp pointed
+in front, with single-breasted vest of reddish leather (the habit
+material of brown whipcord), fastened by brass buttons, leather collar
+and revers, and a narrow leather band on the close-fitting sleeves. A
+touch of leather on the skirt in the form of a patch pocket is
+harmonious, but any extensive leather trimming on the skirt makes it
+unnecessarily heavy.
+
+A suit of this kind should be as irreproachable in fit and finish as a
+tailor can make it. This is true economy, for when you return in the
+autumn it is ready for use as a rainy-day costume.
+
+Once you have your habit, the next purchase should be stout, heavy soled
+boots, 13 or 14 inches high, which will protect the leg in walking and
+from the stirrup leather while riding. One needs two felt hats (never
+straw), one of good quality for sun or rain, with large firm brim. This
+is important, for if the brim be not firm the elements will soon reduce
+it to raglike limpness and it will flap up and down in your face as you
+ride. This can be borne with composure for five or ten minutes, but not
+for days and weeks at a time. The other felt hat may be as small and as
+cheap as you like. Only see that it combines the graces of comfort and
+becomingness. It is for evenings, and sunless rainless days. A small
+brown felt, with a narrow leather band, gilt buckle, and a twist of
+orange veiling around the crown, is pretty for the whipcord costume.
+
+One can do a wonderful amount of smartening up with tulle, hat pins,
+belts, and fancy neck ribbons, all of which comparatively take up no room
+and add no weight, always the first consideration. Be sure you supply
+yourself with a reserve of hat pins. Two devices by which they may be
+made to stay in the hat are here shown. The spiral can be given to any
+hat pin. The chain and small brooch should be used if the hat pin is of
+much value.
+
+At this point, if any man, a reviewer perhaps, has delved thus far into
+the mysteries of feminine outfit, he will probably remark, "Why take a
+hat pin of much value?" to which I reply; "Why not? Can you suggest any
+more harmless or useful vent for woman's desire to ornament herself? And
+unless you want her to be that horror of horrors, a strong-minded woman,
+do you think you can strip her for three months of all her gewgaws and
+still have her filled with the proper desire to be pleasing in your eyes?
+No; better let her have the hat pins--and you know they really are
+useful--and then she will dress up to those hat pins, if it is only with
+a fresh neck ribbon and a daisy at her belt."
+
+I had a man's saddle, with a narrow tree and high pommel and cantle, such
+as is used out West, and as I had not ridden a horse since the hazy days
+of my infancy, I got on the huge creature's back with everything to
+learn. Fear enveloped me as in a cloud during my first ride, and the
+possibilities of the little cow pony they put me on seemed more
+awe-inspiring than those of a locomotive. But I have been reading
+Professor William James and acquired from him the idea (I hope I do not
+malign him) that the accomplishment of a thing depends largely upon one's
+mental attitude, and this was mine all nicely taken--in New York:--
+
+"This thing has been done before, and done well. Good; then I can do it,
+and _enjoy_ it too."
+
+I particularly insisted upon the latter clause--in the East. This
+formula is applicable in any situation. I never should have gotten
+through my Western experiences without it, and I advise you, my dear
+Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband, to take a large stock of it made
+up and ready for use. There is one other rule for your conduct, if you
+want to be a success: think what you like, but unless it is pleasant,
+_don't say it_.
+
+Is it better to ride astride? I will not carry the battle ground into the
+East, although even here I have my opinion; but in the West, in the
+mountains, there can be no question that it is the _only way_. Here is an
+example to illustrate: Two New York women, mother and daughter, took a
+trip of some three hundred miles over the pathless Wind River Mountains.
+The mother rode astride, but the daughter preferred to exhibit her
+Durland Academy accomplishment, and rode sidesaddle, according to the
+fashion set by an artful queen to hide her deformity. The advantages of
+health, youth and strength were all with the daughter; yet in every case
+on that long march it was the daughter who gave out first and compelled
+the pack train to halt while she and her horse rested. And the daughter
+was obliged to change from one horse to another, while the same horse was
+able to carry the mother, a slightly heavier woman, through the trip. And
+the back of the horse which the daughter had ridden chiefly was in such a
+condition from saddle galls that the animal, two months before a
+magnificent creature, had to be shot.
+
+I hear you say, "But that was an extreme case." Perhaps it was, but it
+supports the verdict of the old mountaineers who refuse to let any horse
+they prize be saddled with "those gol-darned woman fripperies."
+
+There is also another side. A woman at best is physically handicapped
+when roughing it with husband or brother. Then why increase that handicap
+by wearing trailing skirts that catch on every log and bramble, and which
+demand the services of at least one hand to hold up (fortunately this
+battle is already won), and by choosing to ride side-saddle, thus making
+it twice as difficult to mount and dismount by yourself, which in fact
+compels you to seek the assistance of a log, or stone, or a friendly hand
+for a lift? Western riding is not Central Park riding, nor is it Rotten
+Row riding. The cowboy's, or military, seat is much simpler and easier
+for both man and beast than the Park seat--though, of course, less
+stylish. That is the glory of it; you can go galloping over the prairie
+and uplands with never a thought that the trot is more proper, and your
+course, untrammelled by fenced-in roads, is straight to the setting sun
+or to yonder butte. And if you want a spice of danger, it is there,
+sometimes more than you want, in the presence of badger and gopher holes,
+to step into which while at high speed may mean a broken leg for your
+horse, perhaps a broken neck for yourself. But to return to the
+independence of riding astride:
+
+One day I was following a game trail along a very steep bank which ended
+a hundred feet below in a granite precipice. It had been raining and
+snowing in a fitful fashion, and the clay ground was slippery, making a
+most treacherous footing. One of the pack animals just ahead of my horse
+slipped, fell to his knees, the heavy pack overbalanced him, and away he
+rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice
+only by the happy accident of a scrub tree in the way. Frightened by this
+sight, my animal plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. Had I been
+riding side-saddle, nothing could have saved me, for the downhill was on
+the near side; but instead I swung out of the saddle on the off side and
+landed in a heap on the uphill, still clutching the bridle. That act
+saved my horse's life, probably, as well as my own. For the sudden weight
+I put on the upper side as I swung off enabled him to recover his balance
+just in time. I do not pretend to say that I can dismount from the off
+side as easily as from the near, because I am not accustomed to it. But I
+have frequently done it in emergencies, while a side-saddle leaves one
+helpless in this case as in many others.
+
+Besides being unable to mount and dismount without assistance it is very
+difficult to get side-saddle broken horses, and it usually means a horse
+so broken in health and spirits that he does not care what is being
+strapped on his back and dangling on one side of him only. And to be on
+such an animal means that you are on the worst mount of the outfit, and I
+am sure that it requires little imagination on any one's part to know
+therein lies misery. Oh! the weariness of being the weakest of the party
+and the worst mounted--to be always at the tail end of the line, never to
+be able to keep up with the saddle horses when they start off for a
+canter, to expend your stock of vitality, which you should husband for
+larger matters, in urging your beast by voice and quirt to further
+exertion! Never place yourself in such a position. The former you cannot
+help, but you can lessen it by making use of such aids to greater
+independence as wearing short skirts and riding astride, and having at
+least as good a horse as there is in the outfit. Then you will get the
+pleasure from your outing that you have the right to expect--that is, if
+you adhere to one other bit of advice, or rather two.
+
+The first is: See that for your camping trip is provided a man cook.
+
+I wish that I could put a charm over the next few words so that only the
+woman reader could understand, but as I cannot I must repeat boldly: Dear
+woman who goes hunting with her husband, be sure that you have it
+understood that you do no cooking, or dishwashing. I think that the
+reason women so often dislike camping out is because the only really
+disagreeable part of it is left to them as a matter of course. Cooking
+out of doors at best is trying, and certainly you cannot be care free,
+camp-life's greatest charm, when you have on your mind the boiling of
+prunes and beans, or when tears are starting from your smoke-inflamed
+eyes as you broil the elk steak for dinner. No, indeed! See that your
+guide or your horse wrangler knows how to cook, and expects to do it.
+He is used to it, and, anyway, is paid for it. He is earning his living,
+you are taking a vacation.
+
+Now for the second advice, which is a codicil to the above: In return for
+not having to potter with the food and tinware, _never complain about
+it_. Eat everything that is set before you, shut your eyes to possible
+dirt, or, if you cannot, leave the particular horror in question
+untouched, but without comment. Perhaps in desperation you may assume the
+role of cook yourself. Oh, foolish woman, if you do, you only exchange
+your woes for worse ones.
+
+If you provide yourself with the following articles and insist upon
+having them reserved for you, and then let the cook furnish everything
+else, you will be all right:--
+
+_An aluminum plate made double for hot water_. This is a very little
+trouble to fill, and insures a comfortable meal; otherwise, your meat and
+vegetables will be cold before you can eat them, and the gravy will have
+a thin coating of ice on it. It is always cold night and morning in the
+mountains. And if you do not need the plate heated you do not have to
+fill it; that's all. I am sure my hot-water plate often saved me from
+indigestion and made my meals things to enjoy instead of to endure.
+
+_Two cups and saucers of white enamel ware_. They always look clean and
+do not break.
+
+_One silver-plated knife and fork and two teaspoons_.
+
+_One folding camp chair_.
+
+N.B.--Provide your husband or brother or sister precisely the same; no
+more, no less.
+
+_Japanese napkins_, enough to provide two a day for the party.
+
+_Two white enamel vegetable dishes_.
+
+_One folding camp table_.
+
+_One candle lamp, with enough candles_. Then leave all the rest of the
+cooking outfit to your cook and trust in Providence. (If you do not
+approve of Providence, a full aluminum cooking outfit can be bought so
+that one pot or pan nests in the other, the whole very complete, compact
+and light.)
+
+Come what may, you have your own particular clean hot plate, cup and
+saucer, knife, fork, spoon and napkin, with a table to eat from and a
+chair to sit on and a lamp to see by, if you are eating after dark--which
+often happens--and nothing else matters, but food.
+
+If you want to be canny you will have somewhere in your own pack a modest
+supply of condensed soups and vegetables, a box or two of meat crackers,
+and three or four bottles of bouillon, to be brought out on occasions of
+famine. Anyway it is a comfort to know that you have provided against the
+wolf. So much for your part of the eating; now for the sleeping. If you
+do not sleep warm and comfortable at night, the joys of camping are as
+dust in the mouth. The most glorious morning that Nature ever produced is
+a weariness to the flesh of the owl-eyed. So whatever else you leave
+behind, be sure your sleeping arrangements are comfortable. The following
+is the result of three years' experience:--
+
+_A piece of waterproof brown canvas_, 7 by 10 feet, bound with tape
+and supplied with two heavy leather straps nine feet long, with strong
+buckles at one end and fastened to the canvas by means of canvas
+loops, and one leather strap six feet long that crosses the other two
+at right angles.
+
+_One rubber air bed_, 36 by 76 inches (don't take a narrower size or you
+will be uncomfortable), fitted with large size double valve at each end.
+This bed is six inches thick when blown full of air. Be sure that sides
+are inserted, thus making two seams to join together the top and bottom
+six inches apart. If the top and bottom are fastened directly together,
+your bed slopes down at the sides, which is always disagreeable.
+
+_A sleeping bag_, with the canvas cover made the full 36 inches wide.
+This cover should hold two blanket bags of different weight, and if you
+are wise you will have made an eider-down bag to fit inside all of these
+for very cold weather. The eider bag costs about $16.00 or $18.00, but
+is worth it if you are going to camp out in the mountains after August.
+Do without one or two summer hats, but get it, for it is the keynote of
+camp comfort.
+
+Then you want a lamb's wool night wrapper, a neutral grey or brown in
+color, a set of heavy night flannels, some heavy woollen stockings and a
+woollen tam o' shanter large enough to pull down over the ears. A
+hot-water bag, also, takes up no room and is heavenly on a freezing
+night when the wind is howling through the trees and snow threatens.
+N.B.--See that your husband or brother has a similar outfit, or he will
+borrow yours.
+
+The sleeping bags should be separated and dried either by sun or fire
+every other day.
+
+_Always keep all your sleeping things together in your bed roll_, and
+your husband's things together in his bed bundle. It will save you many a
+sigh and weary hunt in the dark and cold. The tent and such things, you
+can afford to leave to your guide or to luck. If one wishes to provide a
+tent, brown canvas is far preferable to white. It does not make a glare
+of light, nor does it stand out aggressively in the landscape. You have
+your little nightly kingdom waiting for you and can sleep cosily if
+nothing else is provided. Whenever possible, get your bed blown up and
+your sleeping bags in order on top and your sleeping things together
+where you can put your hands on them during the daylight, or if that is
+impossible, make it the first thing you do when you make camp, while the
+cook is getting supper. Then, as you eat supper and sit near the camp
+fire to keep warm, you have the sweet consciousness that over there, in
+the blackness is a snug little nest all ready to receive your tired self.
+And if some morning you want to see what you have escaped, just unscrew
+the air valve to your bed before you rise, and when you come down on the
+hard, bumpy ground, in less time than it takes to tell, you will agree
+with me that there is nothing so rare as resting on air. Nimrod used to
+play this trick on me occasionally when it was time to get up--it is more
+efficacious than any alarm clock--but somehow he never seemed to enjoy it
+when I did it to him.
+
+For riding, it is better to carry your own saddle and bridle and to buy a
+saddle horse upon leaving the railroad. You can look to the guides for
+all the rest, such as pack saddles, pack animals, etc.
+
+My saddle is a strong but light-weight California model; that is, with
+pommel and cantle on a Whitman tree. It is fitted with gun-carrying case
+of the same leather and saddle-bag on the skirt of each side, and has a
+leather roll at the back strapped on to carry an extra jacket and a
+slicker. (A rain-coat is most important. I use a small size of the New
+York mounted policemen's mackintosh, made by Goodyear. It opens front and
+back and has a protecting cape for the hands.) The saddle has also small
+pommel bags in which are matches, compass, leather thongs, knife and a
+whistle (this last in case I get lost), and there are rings and strings
+in which other bundles such as lunch can be attached while on the march.
+A horsehair army saddle blanket saves the animal's back. Nimrod's saddle
+is exactly like mine, only with longer and larger stirrups.
+
+
+[Illustration: I. SADDLE COVER FOR WET WEATHER. Designed by A.A.
+Anderson.]
+
+[Illustration: II. POLICEMAN'S EQUESTRIAN RAIN COAT.]
+
+You have now your personal things for eating, sleeping and riding. It
+remains but to clothe yourself and you are ready to start. Provide
+yourself with two or three champagne baskets covered with brown
+waterproof canvas, with stout handles at each end and two leather straps
+going round the basket to buckle the lid down, and a stronger strap going
+lengthwise over all. Or if you do not mind a little more expense,
+telescopes made of leatheroid, about 22 inches long, 11 inches wide and 9
+inches deep, with the lower corners rounded so they will not stick into
+the horse, and fitted with straps and handles, make the ideal travelling
+case; for they can be shipped from place to place on the railroad and can
+be packed, one on each side of a horse. They are much to be preferred to
+the usual Klondike bag for convenience in packing and unpacking one's
+things and in protecting them.
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that clothes have to be kept down to the
+limit of comfort. Into the telescopes or baskets should go warm flannels,
+extra pair of heavy boots, several flannel shirt waists, extra riding
+habit and bloomers, fancy neck ribbons and a belt or two--for why look
+worse than your best at any time?--a long warm cloak and a chamois jacket
+for cold weather, snow overshoes, warm gloves and mittens too, and some
+woollen stockings. Be sure you take flannels. This is the advice of one
+who never wears them at any other time. A veil or two is very useful, as
+the wind is often high and biting, and I was much annoyed with wisps of
+hair around my eyes, and also with my hair coming down while on
+horseback, until I hit upon the device of tying a brown liberty silk veil
+over the hair and partially over the ears before putting on a sombrero.
+This veil was not at all unbecoming, being the same color as my hair, and
+it served the double purpose of keeping unruly locks in order and
+keeping my ears warm. A hair net is also useful.
+
+Then you must not forget a rubber bath tub, a rubber wash basin, sponge,
+towels, soap, and toilet articles generally, including camphor ice for
+chapped lips and pennyroyal vaseline salve for insect bites. A brown
+linen case is invaluable to hold all these toilet necessaries, so that
+you can find them quickly. A sewing kit should be supplied, a flask of
+whiskey, and a small "first-aid" outfit; a bottle of Perry Davis pain
+killer or Pond's extract; but no more bottles than must be, as they are
+almost sure to be broken. In your husband's box, ammunition takes the
+place of toilet articles. I shall pass over the guns with the bare
+mention that I use a 30.30 Winchester, smokeless. For railroad purposes
+all this outfit for two goes into two trunks and a box--one trunk for all
+the bedding and night things: the other for all the clothing, guns,
+ammunition, eating things, and incidentals. The box holds the saddles,
+bridles, and horse things.
+
+In a pack train, the bed-rolls, weighing about fifty pounds each, go on
+either side of one horse, and the telescopes on each side of another
+horse--in both cases not a full load, and leaving room on the top of the
+pack for a tent and other camp things. The saddles, of course, go on the
+saddle horses. The cost of such an outfit, in New York, is about two
+hundred dollars each; but it lasts for years and brings you in large
+returns in health and consequent happiness.
+
+I am willing to wager my horsehair rope (specially designed for keeping
+off snakes) that a summer in the Rockies would enable you to cheat time
+of at least two years, and you would come home and join me in the ranks
+of converts from the usual summer sort of thing. Will you try it? If you
+do, how you will pity your unfortunate friends who have never known what
+it is to sleep on the south side of a sage brush, and honestly say in the
+morning, "It is wonderful how well I am feeling."
+
+But to begin:--
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.
+
+
+It was about midnight in the end of August when Nimrod and I tumbled off
+the train at Market Lake, Idaho. Next morning, after a comfortable
+night's rest at the "hotel," our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles,
+guns, clothing, and ourselves were packed into a covered wagon, drawn by
+four horses, and we started for Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver who
+knew the road perfectly. At least, that was what he said, so of course he
+must have known it. But his memory failed him sadly the first day out,
+which reduced him to the necessity of inquiring of the neighbours. As
+these were unsociably placed from thirty to fifty miles apart, there were
+many times when the little blind god of chance ruled our course.
+
+We put up for the night at Rexburgh, after forty long miles of alkali
+dust. The Mormon religion has sent a thin arm up into that country, and
+the keeper of the log building he called a hotel was of that faith. The
+history of our brief stay there belongs properly to the old torture days
+of the Inquisition, for the Mormon's possessions of living creatures
+were many, and his wives and children were the least of them.
+
+Another day of dust and long hard miles over gradually rising hills, with
+the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day we
+climbed the Teton Pass.
+
+There is nothing extraordinary about climbing the Teton Pass--to tell
+about. We just went up, and then we went down. It took six horses half a
+day to draw us up the last mile--some twenty thousand seconds of
+conviction on my part (unexpressed, of course; see side talk) that the
+next second would find us dashed to everlasting splinters. And it took
+ten minutes to get us down!
+
+Of the two, I preferred going up. If you have ever climbed a greased pole
+during Fourth of July festivities in your grandmother's village, you
+will understand.
+
+When we got to the bottom there was something different. Our driver
+informed us that in two hours we should be eating dinner at the ranch
+house in Jackson's Hole, where we expected to stop for a while to
+recuperate from the past year's hard grind and the past two weeks of
+travel. This was good news, as it was then five o'clock and our midday
+meal had been light--despite the abundance of coffee, soggy potatoes,
+salt pork, wafer slices of meat swimming in grease, and evaporated
+apricots wherein some nice red ants were banqueting.
+
+"We'll just cross the Snake River, and then it'll be plain sailing," he
+said. Perhaps it was so. I was inexperienced in the West. This was what
+followed:--Closing the door on the memory of my recent perilous
+passage, I prepared to be calm inwardly, as I like to think I was
+outwardly. The Snake River is so named because for every mile it goes
+ahead it retreats half way alongside to see how well it has been done. I
+mention this as a pleasing instance of a name that really describes the
+thing named. But this is after knowledge.
+
+About half past five, we came to a rolling tumbling yellow stream where
+the road stopped abruptly with a horrid drop into water that covered the
+hubs of the wheels. The current was strong, and the horses had to
+struggle hard to gain the opposite bank. I began to thank my patron saint
+that the Snake River was crossed.
+
+Crossed? Oh, no! A narrow strip of pebbly road, and the high willows
+suddenly parted to disclose another stream like the last, but a
+little deeper, a little wider, a little worse. We crossed it. I made
+no comments.
+
+At the third stream the horses rebelled. There are many things four
+horses can do on the edge of a wicked looking river to make it
+uncomfortable, but at last they had to go in, plunging madly, and
+dragging the wagon into the stream nearly broadside, which made at least
+one in the party consider the frailty of human contrivances when matched
+against a raging flood.
+
+Soon there was another stream. I shall not describe it. When we
+eventually got through it, the driver stopped his horses to rest, wiped
+his brow, went around the wagon and pulled a few ropes tighter, cut a
+willow stick and mended his broken whip, gave a hitch to his trousers,
+and remarked as he started the horses:
+
+"Now, when we get through the Snake River on here a piece, we'll be
+all right."
+
+"I thought we had been crossing it for the past hour," I was feminine
+enough to gasp.
+
+"Oh, yes, them's forks of it; but the main stream's on ahead, and it's
+mighty treacherous, too," was the calm reply.
+
+When we reached the Snake River, there was no doubt that the others were
+mere forks. Fortunately, Joe Miller and his two sons live on the opposite
+bank, and make a living by helping people escape destruction from the
+mighty waters. Two men waved us back from the place where our driver was
+lashing his horses into the rushing current, and guided us down stream
+some distance. One of them said:
+
+"This yere ford changes every week, but I reckon you might try here."
+
+We did.
+
+Had my hair been of the dramatic kind that realises situations, it would
+have turned white in the next ten minutes. The water was over the horses'
+backs immediately, the wagon box was afloat, and we were being borne
+rapidly down stream in the boiling seething flood, when the wheels struck
+a shingly bar which gave the horses a chance to half swim, half plunge.
+The two men, who were on horseback, each seized one of the leaders, and
+kept his head pointed for a cut in the bank, the only place where we
+could get out.
+
+Everything in the wagon was afloat. A leather case with a forty dollar
+fishing rod stowed snugly inside slipped quietly off down stream. I
+rescued my camera from the same fate just in time. Overshoes, wraps,
+field glasses, guns, were suddenly endowed with motion. Another moment
+and we should surely have sunk, when the horses, by a supreme effort,
+managed to scramble on to the bank, but were too exhausted to draw more
+than half of the wagon after them, so that it was practically on end in
+the water, our outfit submerged, of course, and ourselves reclining as
+gracefully as possible on the backs of the seats.
+
+Had anything given away then, there might have been a tragedy. The two
+men immediately fastened a rope to the tongue of the wagon, and each
+winding an end around the pommel of his saddle, set his cow pony
+pulling. Our horses made another effort, and up we came out of the
+water, wet, storm tossed, but calm. Oh, yes--calm! After that, earth
+had no terrors for me; the worst road that we could bump over was but an
+incident. I was not surprised that it grew dark very soon, and that we
+blundered on and on for hours in the night until the near wheeler just
+lay down in the dirt, a dark spot in the dark road, and our driver,
+after coming back from a tour of inspection on foot, looked worried. I
+mildly asked if we would soon cross Snake River, but his reply was an
+admission that he was lost. There was nothing visible but the twinkling
+stars and a dim outline of the grim Tetons. The prospect was excellent
+for passing the rest of the night where we were, famished, freezing, and
+so tired I could hardly speak.
+
+But Nimrod now took command. His first duty, of course, being a man, was
+to express his opinion of the driver in terms plain and comprehensive;
+then he loaded his rifle and fired a shot. If there were any mountaineers
+around, they would understand the signal and answer.
+
+We waited. All was silent as before. Two more horses dropped to the
+ground. Then he sent another loud report into the darkness. In a few
+moments we thought we heard a distant shout, then the report of a gun
+not far away.
+
+Nimrod mounted the only standing horse and went in the direction of the
+sound. Then followed an interminable silence. I hallooed, but got no
+answer. The wildest fears for Nimrod's safety tormented me. He had fallen
+into a gully, the horse had thrown him, _he_ was lost.
+
+Then I heard a noise and listened eagerly. The driver said it was a
+coyote howling up on the mountain. At last voices did come to me from out
+of the blackness, and Nimrod returned with a man and a fresh horse. The
+man was no other than the owner of the house for which we were searching,
+and in ten minutes I was drying myself by his fireplace, while his
+hastily aroused wife was preparing a midnight supper for us.
+
+To this day, I am sure that driver's worst nightmare is when he lives
+over again the time when he took a tenderfoot and his wife into Jackson's
+Hole, and, but for the tenderfoot, would have made them stay out
+overnight, wet, famished, frozen, within a stone's throw of the very
+house for which they were looking.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+WHICH TREATS OF THE IMPS AND MY ELK.
+
+
+"If you want to see elk, you just follow up the road till you strike a
+trail on the left, up over that hog's back, and that will bring you in a
+mile or so on to a grassy flat, and in two or three miles more you come
+to a lake back in the mountains."
+
+Mrs. Cummings, the speaker, was no ordinary woman of Western make. She
+had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She
+had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her
+away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed,
+and fed the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this
+in spite of the fact that for those parts she was very comfortable.
+
+Her log house was the largest in the country, barring Captain Jones's,
+her nearest neighbour, ten miles up at Jackson's Lake, and his was a
+hotel. Hers could boast of six rooms and two clothes' closets. The
+ceilings were white muslin to shut off the rafters, the sitting room had
+wall-paper and a rag carpet, and in one corner was the post-office.
+
+The United States Government Post-office of Deer, Wyoming, took up
+two compartments of Mrs. Cummings' writing desk, and she was called
+upon to be postmistress fifteen minutes twice a week, when the small boy,
+mounted on a tough little pony, happened around with the leather bag
+which carried the mail to and from Jackson, thirty miles below.
+
+[Illustration: SHE WAS POSTMISTRESS TWICE A WEEK.]
+
+"I'd like some elk meat mighty well for dinner," Mrs. Cummings continued,
+as she leaned against the kitchen door and watched us mount our newly
+acquired horses, "but you won't find game around here without a
+guide--Easterners never do."
+
+Nimrod and I started off in joyous mood. The secret of it, the
+fascination of the wild life, was revealed to me. At last I understood
+why the birds sing. The glorious exhilaration of the mountains, the
+feeling that life is a rosy dream, and that all the worry and the fever
+and the fret of man's making is a mere illusion that has faded away into
+the past, and is not worth while; that the real life is to be free, to
+fly over the grassy mountain meadow with never a limitation of fence or
+house, with the eternal peaks towering around you, terrible in their
+grandeur and vastness, yet inviting.
+
+We struck the trail all right, we thought, but it soon disappeared and we
+had to govern our course by imagination, an uncertain guide at best. We
+got into dreadful tangles of timber; the country was all strange, and the
+trees spread over the mountain for miles, so that it was like trying to
+find the way under a blanket; but we kept on riding our horses over
+fallen logs and squeezing them between trees, all the time keeping a
+sharp watch over them, for they were fresh and scary.
+
+Finally, after three hours' hard climbing, we emerged from the forest on
+to a great bare shoulder of the mountain, from which the whole country
+around, vast and beautiful, could be seen. We took bearings and tried to
+locate that lake, and we finally decided that a wooded basin three miles
+away looked likely to contain it.
+
+In order to get to it, we had to cross a wooded ravine, very steep and
+torn out by a recent cloudburst. We rode the horses down places that I
+shudder in remembering, and I had great trouble in keeping away from the
+front feet of my horse as I led him, especially when there were little
+gullies that had to be jumped.
+
+It was exciting enough, and hard work, too, every nerve on a tingle and
+one's heart thumping with the unwonted exercise at that altitude; but oh,
+the glorious air, the joy of life and motion that was quite unknown to my
+reception and theatre-going self in the dim far away East!
+
+We searched for that lake all day, and at nightfall went home confident
+that we could find it on the morrow.
+
+Mrs. Cummings' smile clearly expressed 'I told you so,' and she remarked
+as she served supper: "When my husband comes home next week, he will take
+you where you can find game."
+
+The next morning we again took some lunch in the saddle bag and started
+for that elusive spot we had christened Cummings' Lake. About three
+o'clock we found it--a beautiful patch of water in the heart of the
+forest, nestling like a jewel, back in the mountains.
+
+We picketed the horses at a safe distance, so that they could not be seen
+or heard from the lake. At one end the shore sloped gradually into the
+water, and here Nimrod discovered many tracks of elk, a few deer, and one
+set of black bear. He said the lake was evidently a favourite drinking
+place, that a band of elk had been coming daily to water, and that,
+according to their habits, they ought to come again before dusk.
+
+So we concealed ourselves on a little bluff to the right and waited. The
+sun had begun to cast long lines on the earth, and the little circle of
+water was already in shadow when Nimrod held up his finger as a warning
+for silence. We listened. We were so still that the whole world seemed to
+be holding its breath.
+
+I heard a faint noise as of a snapping branch, then some light thuds
+along the ground, and to the left of us out of the dark forest, a dainty
+creature flitted along the trail and playfully splashed into the water.
+Six others of her sisters followed her, with two little ones, and they
+were all splashing about in the water like so many sportive mermaids when
+their lordly master appeared--a fine bull elk who seemed to me, as he
+sedately approached the edge of the lake, to be nothing but horns.
+
+I shall never forget the picture of this family at home--the quiet lake
+encircled by forest and towered over by mountains; the gentle graceful
+creatures full of life playing about in the water, now drinking, now
+splashing it in cooling showers upon one another; the solicitude of a
+mother that her young one should come to no harm; and then the head of
+them all proceeding with dignity to bathe with his harem.
+
+Had I to do again what followed, I hope I should act differently. Nimrod
+was watching them with a rapt expression, quite forgetful of the rifle in
+his hands, when I, who had never seen anything killed, touched his arm
+and whispered: "Shoot, shoot now, if you are going to."
+
+The report of the rifle rang out like a cannon. The does fled away as if
+by magic. The stag tried also to get to shore, but the ball had
+inflicted a wound which partially paralysed his hindquarters. At the
+sight of the blood and the big fellow's struggles to get away, the
+horror of the thing swept over me. "Oh, kill him, kill him!" I wailed.
+"Don't let him suffer!"
+
+But here the hunter in Nimrod answered: "If I kill him now, I shall never
+be able to get him. Wait until he gets out of the water."
+
+The next few seconds, with that struggling thing in the water, seemed an
+eternity of agony to me. Then another loud bang caused the proud head
+with its weight of antlers to sink to the wet bank never to rise again.
+
+Later, as I dried my tears, I asked Nimrod:
+
+"Where is the place to aim if you want to kill an animal instantly, so
+that he will not suffer, and never know what hit him?"
+
+"The best place is the shoulder." He showed me the spot on his elk.
+
+"But wouldn't he suffer at all?"
+
+"Well, of course, if you hit him in the brain, he will never know; but
+that is a very fine shot. Your target is only an inch or two, here
+between the eye and the ear, and the head moves more than the body.
+But," he said, "you would not kill an elk after the way you have wept
+over this one?"
+
+"If--if I were sure he would not suffer, I might kill just one," I
+said, conscious of my inconsistencies. My woman's soul revolted, and yet
+I was out West for all the experiences that the life could give me, and
+I knew, if the chance came just right, that one elk would be sacrificed
+to that end.
+
+The next day, much to Mrs. Cummings' surprise, we had elk steak, the most
+delicious of meat when properly cooked. The next few days slipped by. We
+were always in the open air, riding about in those glorious mountains,
+and it was the end of the week when a turn of the wheel brought my day.
+
+First, it becomes necessary to confide in you. Fear is a very wicked
+companion who, since nursery days, had troubled me very little; but when
+I arrived out West, he was waiting for me, and, so that I need never be
+without him, he divided himself into a band of little imps.
+
+Each imp had a special duty, and never left me until he had been crushed
+in silent but terrible combat. There was the imp who did not like to be
+alone in the mountains, and the imp who was sure he was going to be lost
+in those wildernesses, and the imp who quaked at the sight of a gun, and
+the imp who danced a mad fierce dance when on a horse. All these had been
+conquered, or at least partially reduced to subjection, but the imp who
+sat on the saddle pommel when there was a ditch or stream to be jumped
+had hitherto obliged me to dismount and get over the space on foot.
+
+This morning, when we came to a nasty boggy place, with several small
+water cuts running through it, I obeyed the imp with reluctance. Well, we
+got over it--Blondey, the imp, and I--with nothing worse than wet feet
+and shattered nerves.
+
+I attempted to mount, and had one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the
+pommel, when Blondey started. Like the girl in the song, I could not get
+up, I could not get down, and although I had hold of the reins, I had no
+free hand to pull them in tighter, and you may be sure the imp did not
+help me. Blondey, realising there was something wrong, broke into a wild
+gallop across country, but I clung on, expecting every moment the saddle
+would turn, until I got my foot clear from the stirrup. Then I let go
+just as Blondey was gathering himself together for another ditch.
+
+I was stunned, but escaped any serious hurt. Nimrod was a great deal more
+undone than I. He had not dared to go fast for fear of making Blondey go
+faster, and he now came rushing up, with the fear of death upon his face
+and the most terrible swears on his lips.
+
+Although a good deal shaken, I began to laugh, the combination was so
+incongruous. Nimrod rarely swears, and was now quite unconscious what his
+tongue was doing. Upon being assured that all was well, he started after
+Blondey and soon brought him back to me; but while he was gone the imp
+and I had a mortal combat.
+
+I did up my hair, rearranged my habit, and, rejecting Nimrod's offer of
+his quieter horse, remounted Blondey. We all jumped the next ditch, but
+the shock was too much for the imp in his weakened condition; he tumbled
+off the pommel, and I have never seen him since.
+
+Our course lay along the hills on the east bank of Snake River that day.
+We discovered another beautiful sapphire lake in a setting of green
+hills. Several ducks were gliding over its surface. We watched them, in
+concealment of course, and we saw a fish hawk capture his dinner. Then we
+quietly continued along the ridge of a high bluff until we came to an
+outstretched point, where beneath us lay the Snake Valley with its
+fickle-minded river winding through.
+
+The sun was just dropping behind the great Tetons, massed in front of us
+across the valley. We sat on our horses motionless, looking at the
+peaceful and majestic scene, when out from the shadows on the sandy
+flats far below us came a dark shadow, and then leisurely another and
+another. They were elk, two bulls and a doe, grazing placidly in a little
+meadow surrounded by trees.
+
+We kept as still as statues.
+
+Nimrod said. "There is your chance."
+
+"Yes," I echoed, "here is my chance."
+
+We waited until they passed into the trees again. Then we dismounted.
+Nimrod handed me the rifle, saying:
+
+"There are seven shots in it. I will stay behind with the horses."
+
+I took the gun without a word and crept down the mountain side, keeping
+under cover as much as possible. The sunset quiet surrounded me; the
+deadly quiet of but one idea--to creep upon that elk and kill
+him--possessed me. That gradual painful drawing nearer to my prey seemed
+a lifetime. I was conscious of nothing to the right, or to the left of
+me; only of what I was going to do. There were pine woods and scrub brush
+and more woods. Then, suddenly, I saw him standing by the river about to
+drink. I crawled nearer until I was within one hundred and fifty yards of
+him, when at the snapping of a twig he raised his head with its crown of
+branching horn. He saw nothing, so turned again to drink.
+
+Now was the time. I crawled a few feet nearer and raised the deadly
+weapon. The stag turned partly away from me. In another moment he would
+be gone. I sighted along the metal barrel and a terrible bang went
+booming through the dim secluded spot. The elk raised his proud, antlered
+head and looked in my direction. Another shot tore through the air.
+Without another move the animal dropped where he stood. He lay as still
+as the stones beside him, and all was quiet again in the twilight.
+
+I sat on the ground where I was and made no attempt to go near him.
+So that was all. One instant a magnificent breathing thing, the
+next--nothing.
+
+Death had been so sudden. I had no regret, I had no triumph--just a sort
+of wonder at what I had done--a surprise that the breath of life could be
+taken away so easily.
+
+Meanwhile, Nimrod had become alarmed at the long silence, and, tying the
+horses, had followed me down the mountain. He was nearly down when he
+heard the shots, and now came rushing up.
+
+"I have done it," I said in a dull tone, pointing at the dark, quiet
+object on the bank.
+
+"You surely have."
+
+Nimrod paced the distance--it was one hundred and thirty-five yards--as
+we went up to the elk. How beautiful his coat was, glossy and shaded in
+browns, and those great horns--eleven points--that did not seem so big
+now to my eyes.
+
+Nimrod examined the carcass.
+
+"You are an apt pupil," he said. "You put a bullet through his heart and
+another through his brain."
+
+"Yes," I said; "he never knew what killed him." But I felt no glory in
+the achievement.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+Have you ever been lost in the mountains?--not the peaceful, cultivated
+child hills of the Catskills, but in real mountains, where the first
+outpost of civilisation, a lonely ranch house, is two weeks' travel away,
+and where that stream on your left is bound for the Pacific Ocean, and
+that stream on your right over there will, after four thousand miles,
+find its way into the Atlantic Ocean, and where the air you breathe is
+twelve thousand feet above those seas? I have.
+
+The situation is naturally one you would not fish out of the grab bag of
+fate if you could avoid it. When you suddenly find it on your hands,
+however, there is only one thing to do--keep your nerve, grasp it firmly,
+and look at it closely. If you have a horse and a gun and a cartridge,
+it is not so bad. I had these and I had better than all these, I had
+Nimrod--but only half of Nimrod. The working half was chained up by my
+fears, for such is the power of a woman. I will explain. In crossing
+over the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains, we were guests in the
+pack train of a man who was equally at home in a New York drawing-room or
+on a Wyoming bear hunt, and he had made mountain travelling a fine art.
+Besides ourselves, there were the horse wrangler, the cook (of whom you
+shall hear later), and sixteen horses, and we started from Jackson's Lake
+for the Big Horn Basin, several hundred miles over the pathless
+uninhabited mountains.
+
+No one who has not tried it knows how difficult it is for two or three
+men to keep so many pack animals in line, with no pathway to guide; and
+once they are started going nicely, it is nothing short of a calamity to
+stop them, especially when it is necessary to cover a certain number of
+miles before nightfall in order that they may have feed.
+
+We were on the Pacific side of the Wind River Divide, and must get to the
+top that night. The horses were travelling nicely up the difficult
+ascent, so when Nimrod got his feet wet crossing a stream about noon, he
+and I thought we would just stop and have a little lunch, dry the shoes,
+and catch up with the pack train in half an hour.
+
+From the minute the last horse vanished out of sight behind a rock,
+desolation settled upon me. That slender line of living beings somewhere
+on ahead was the only link between us and civilisation--civilisation
+which I understood, which was human and touchable--and the awful vastness
+of those endless peaks, wherein lurked a hundred dangers, and which
+seemed made but to annihilate me.
+
+Of course, the fire would not burn, and the shoes would not dry. Blondey
+wandered off and had to be brought back, and it seemed an age before we
+were again in the saddle, following the trail the animals had made.
+
+But Nimrod was blithe and unconcerned, so I made no sign of the craven
+soul within me. For an hour or two we followed the trail, urging our
+horses as much as possible, but the ascent was difficult, and we could
+not gain on the speed of the pack train. Then the trail was lost in a
+gully where the animals had gone in every direction to get through. My
+nerves were now on the rack of suspense.
+
+Where were they? Surely, we must have passed them! We were on the wrong
+trail, perhaps going away from them at every step!
+
+The screws of fear grew tighter every moment during the following hours.
+Nimrod soon found what he considered to be the trail, and we proceeded.
+
+At last we got to the top. No sign of them. I could have screamed aloud;
+a great wave of soul destroying fear encompassed me--wild black fear. I
+could not reason it out. We were lost!
+
+Nimrod scoffed at me. The track was still plain, he said; but I could not
+read the hieroglyphics at my feet, and there was no room in my mind for
+confidence or hope. Fear filled it all.
+
+There we were with the mighty forces of the insensate world around, so
+pitiless, so silently cruel, it seemed to my city-bred soul. It was the
+spot where Nature spread her wonders before us, one tiny spring dividing
+its waters east and west for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for this
+was the highest point.
+
+We attempted to cross that hateful divide, that at another time might
+have looked so beautiful, when suddenly Nimrod's horse plunged withers
+deep in a bog, and in his struggles to get out threw Nimrod head first
+from the saddle into the mud, where he lay quite still.
+
+I faced the horror of death at that moment. Of course, this was what I
+had been expecting, but had not been able to put into words. Nimrod
+killed! My other fears dwindled away before this one, or, rather, it
+seemed to wrap them in itself, as in a cloak. For an instant I could not
+move--there alone with a dead or wounded man on that awful mountain top.
+
+But here was an emergency where I could do something besides blindly
+follow another's lead. I caught the frightened animal as it dashed out of
+the treacherous place (to be horseless is almost a worse fate than to be
+wounded), and Nimrod, who was little hurt, quickly recovered and managed
+to scramble to dry ground, and again into the saddle.
+
+Forcing our tired horses onward, we again found a trail, supposedly the
+right one, but there was that haunting fear that it was not. For the only
+signs were the bending of the grass and the occasional rubbing of the
+trees where the animals had passed. And these might have been done by a
+band of elk.
+
+It was growing dusk and still no pack train in sight. No criminal on
+trial for his life could have felt more wretchedly apprehensive than I.
+At last we came to a stream. Nimrod, who had dismounted to examine more
+closely, said:
+
+"The trail turns off here, but it is very dim in the grass."
+
+"Where?" I asked, anxiously.
+
+He pointed to the ground. I could make out nothing. "Oh, let us hurry!
+They must have gone on."
+
+"I think it would be safer to follow these tracks for a time at least, to
+see where they come out. There are some tracks across the stream there,
+but they are older and dimmer and might have been made by elk."
+
+"Oh, do go on! Surely the tracks across the stream must be the ones." To
+go on, on, and hurry, was my one thought, my one cry.
+
+Nimrod yielded. Thus I and my wild fear betrayed the hunter's instinct.
+We went on for many weary minutes. We lost all tracks. Then Nimrod fired
+a shot into the air. He would not do it before, because he said we were
+not lost, and that there was no need for worry--worry, when for hours
+blind fear had held me in torture!
+
+There was no answer to the shot.
+
+In five minutes he fired again. Then we heard a report, very faint. I
+would not believe that I had heard it at all. I raised my gun and fired.
+This time a shot rattled through the branches overhead, unpleasantly
+near. It was clearly from behind us. We turned, and after another
+interchange of shots, the cook appeared.
+
+I was too exhausted to be glad, but a feeling of relief glided over me.
+He led us to the stream where Nimrod had wanted to turn off, and from
+there we were quickly in camp, very much to our host's relief. I dropped
+at the foot of a tree, and said nothing for an hour--my companions were
+men, so I did not have to talk if I could not--then I arose as usual and
+was ready for supper.
+
+Of course, Nimrod was blamed for not being a better mountaineer. 'He
+ought to have seen that broken turf by the trail,' or those 'blades of
+fresh pulled grass in the pine fork.' How could they know that a woman
+and her fears had hampered him at every step, especially as you see there
+was no need?
+
+Always regulate your fears according to the situation, and then you will
+not go into the valley of the shadow of death, when you are only lost in
+the mountains.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE COOK.
+
+
+I had but a bare speaking acquaintance with the grim silent mountaineer
+who was cook to our party. Two days after he had appeared like an angel
+of heaven on our gloomy path I had an opportunity of knowing him better.
+I quote from my journal:
+
+Camp Jim, Shoshone Range, September 23: They left me alone in camp today.
+No, the cook was there. They left me the cook for protection against the
+vast solitude, the mighty grandeur of the mountains, and the possible,
+but improbable, bear. Nice man, that cook--he confessed with pride to
+many robberies and three murders! Only a month before engaging as cook on
+this trip, he had been serving a life term for murder; but had been
+released through some political 'pull.'
+
+Our host, in company with another game warden, had discovered him in the
+mountains, where he had gone immediately from the penitentiary and
+resumed his unlawful life of killing game. But he had hidden his prizes
+so effectively that there was no evidence but his own, which, of course,
+is not accepted in law. Thus he welcomed these two men of justice to his
+camp, told graphically of his killing--then offered them a smoke, smiling
+the while at their discomfiture.
+
+Both his face and hands were scarred from many bar room encounters, and
+he unblushingly dated most of his remarks by the period when he 'was
+rusticatin' in the Pen.' He had brought his own bed and saddle and pack
+horses on the trip so that he could 'cut loose' from the party in case
+'things got too hot' for him.
+
+Such was the cook.
+
+Immediately after breakfast Nimrod and our host equipped themselves for
+the day's hunt, and went off in opposite directions, like _Huck Finn_ and
+_Tom Sawyer_ on the occasion of their memorable first smoke.
+
+Our camp was beside a rushing brook in a little glade that was tucked at
+the foot of towering mountains where no man track had been for years, if
+ever. Around us sighed the mighty pines of the limitless forest.
+Hundreds of miles away, beyond the barrier of nature, were human hives
+weary of the noise and strife of their own making. Here, alone in the
+solitudes, were two human atoms wandering on the trail of the hunted,
+and--the cook and I.
+
+I sat on my rubber bed in the tent and thought--there was nothing else to
+do--and was cold, cold from the outside in, and from the inside out.
+There wasn't a thing alive, not even myself--no one but the cook.
+
+Outside, I could hear him washing the breakfast tinware, and whistling
+some kind of a jiggling tune that ran up and down me like a shiver. This
+went on for an eternity.
+
+Suddenly it stopped, and I heard the faintest crunch on the thin layer of
+snow and the rattling of more snow as it slid off my tent from a blow
+that had been struck on the outside.
+
+I jumped to the door of the tent. It was the cook.
+
+"Purty cold in there, ain't it? You'd a good sight better come to the
+fire. Ain't you got a slicker?"
+
+I put on a mackintosh and overshoes and went to the fire. The weather
+was now indulging in a big flake snow that slid stealthily to the ground
+and disappeared into water on whatever obstacle it found there. It found
+me. The cook was cleaning knives--the cooking knives, the eating knives,
+and a full set of hunting knives, long and short, slim and broad, all
+sharp and efficacious.
+
+He handled them lovingly, rubbed off some blood rust here and there, and
+occasionally whetted one to a still more razor edge and threw it into a
+near by tree, where it stuck, quivering.
+
+There was no conversation, but I did not feel forgotten.
+
+I turned my back on the cook and gazed into the fire, a miserable
+smouldering affair, and speculated on why I had never before noticed how
+much spare time there was in a minute. It may have been five of these
+spacious minutes, it may have been fifteen, that had passed away when the
+cook approached me. I could _feel_ him coming. He came very close to
+me--and to the fire.
+
+He put on some beans.
+
+Then he went away, and there were many more minutes, many more.
+
+Then something touched my arm. At last it had come (what we expect, if it
+be disagreeable, usually does come). I never moved a muscle. This time
+the pressure on my arm was unmistakable. I turned quickly and saw--the
+cook--with a gun!
+
+The cook, gun, knives, fire, snow, and stars danced a mad jig before me
+for an instant. Then the cook suddenly resumed his proper position, and I
+saw that his disengaged hand was held in an attitude of warning for
+silence. He pointed off into the woods and appeared to be listening. Soon
+I thought I heard a snapping of a branch away off up the mountain.
+
+"Bear," the cook whispered. "Follow me."
+
+I followed. It was hard work to get over logs and stones without noise,
+in a long mackintosh, and, besides, I wished that I had brought a gun. I
+should have felt more comfortable about both man and beast. I struggled
+on for a while, when the thought suddenly struck home that if I went
+farther I should not be able to find my way back to camp. Everything is
+relative, and those empty tents and smouldering fire seemed a haven of
+security compared to the situation of being unarmed, and lost in the
+wilderness--with the cook.
+
+I watched my chance and sneaked back to camp to get a gun. I was willing
+to believe the cook's bear story, but I wanted a gun. When I got to camp
+there were many good reasons for not going back.
+
+After a time I heard two shots close at hand, and soon the cook appeared.
+He said he could not find the bear's track, and lost me, so thought he
+had better look me up and be on hand in case I had returned to camp, and
+the bear should come.
+
+I thanked the cook for his solicitude.
+
+To while away the time, I put up a target and commenced practising with a
+30-30 rifle at fifty yards range.
+
+I shot very badly.
+
+The cook obligingly interested himself in my performance and kept tally
+on my aim, pointing out to me when it was high, when it was low, to the
+right or to the left.
+
+Then he took his six shooter and put a half dozen bullets in the
+bull's-eye offhand.
+
+I lost my interest in shooting.
+
+The cook gave me some lunch, and while I was eating he stood before the
+fire looking at it through the fingers of his. Outstretched hand, with a
+queer squint in his cold gray eyes, as though sighting along a rifle
+barrel, while a cigarette hung limply from his mouth.
+
+Then in response to a winning smile (after all, a woman's best weapon) he
+opened the floodgates of his thoughts and poured into my ears a
+succession of bloodcurdling adventures over which the big, big 'I' had
+dominated. "Yes," he said musingly of his _second_ murder, as he
+removed his squint from the fire to me, and a ghost of a smile played
+around his lips; "yes, it took six shots to keep him quiet, and you could
+have covered all the holes with a cap box--and his pard nearly got me."
+
+"That was the year I lost my pard, Dick Elsen. We was at camp near Fort
+Fetterman. We called a man 'Red'--his name was Jim Capse. Drink was at
+the bottom of it. Red he sees my pard passing a saloon, and he says,
+'Hello, where did you come from? Come and have a drink!' Pard says, 'No,
+I don't want nothing!' 'Oh, come along and have a drink!' Dick says, 'No,
+thanks, pard, I'm not drinking to-night.' 'Well, I guess you'll have a
+drink with me'; and Red pulls out his six shooter. Dick wasn't quick
+enough about throwing up his hands, and he gets killed. Then Irish Mike
+says to Red, 'You better hit the breeze,' but we ketched him--a telegraph
+pole was handy--I says, 'Have you got anything to say?' 'You write to my
+mother and tell her that, a horse fell on me. Don't tell her that I got
+hung,' Red says; and we swung him."
+
+By the time he had thus proudly stretched out his three dead men before
+my imagination, in a setting of innumerable shooting scraps and horse
+stealings, the hunters returned--my day with the multi-murderous cook was
+over--and nothing had happened.
+
+It is only fair to quote Nimrod's reply to one who criticised him for
+leaving me thus:
+
+"Humph! Do you think I don't know those wild mountaineers? They are
+perfectly chivalrous, and I could feel a great deal safer in leaving my
+wife in care of that desperado than with one of your Eastern dudes."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+AMONG THE CLOUDS.
+
+
+Many a time as a child I used to lie on my back in the grass and stare
+far into the wide blue sky above. It seemed so soft, so caressing, so far
+away, and yet so near. Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would drift
+across its face, meet another of its kind, then another and another,
+until the massed up curtain hid the playful blue, and amid grayness and
+chill, where all had been so bright, I would hurry under shelter to avoid
+the storm. That, outside of fairy books, an earthbound being could
+actually be in a cloud, was beyond my imagination. Indeed, it seems
+strange now, and were it not for the absence of a cherished quirt, I
+should be ready to think that my cloud experience had been a dream.
+
+The day before, we had been in a great hurry to cross the Wind River
+Divide before a heavy snowfall made travel difficult, if not impossible.
+We had no wish to be snowbound for the winter in those wilds, with only
+two weeks' supply of food, and it was for this same reason we had not
+stopped to hunt that grizzly who had left a fourteen inch track over on
+Wiggins' Creek--the same being Wahb of the Big Horn Basin, about whom I
+shall have something to say later.
+
+We were now camped in a little valley whose creek bubbled pleasantly
+under the ice. Having cleared away three feet of snow for our tents, we
+decided to rest a day or two and hunt, as we were within two days' easy
+travel of the first ranch house.
+
+It was cold and snowy when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look
+for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a
+trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it
+would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but
+I had been taught my lesson, and kept silent.
+
+I even tried to make mental notes of various rocks and trees we passed,
+but it was hopeless. They all looked alike to me. In a city, no matter
+how big or how strange, I can find home unerringly, and Nimrod is
+helpless as a babe. In the mountains it is different. When I finally
+raised my eyes from the horse's tail in front, it was because the tail
+and the horse belonging to it had stopped suddenly.
+
+We were in the middle of a brook. It is highly unpleasant to be stopped
+in the middle of an icy brook when your horse's feet break through the
+ice at each step, and you cannot be sure how deep the water is, nor how
+firm the bottom he is going to strike, especially as ice-covered
+brooks are Blondey's pet abhorrence, and the uncertainty of my
+progress, was emphasised by Blondey's attempts to cross on one or two
+feet instead of four.
+
+However, I looked dutifully in the direction Nimrod indicated and saw a
+long line of elk heads peering over the ridge in front and showing darkly
+against the snow. They were not startled.
+
+Those inquisitive heads, with ears alert, looked at us for some time, and
+then leisurely moved out of sight. We scrambled out of the stream and
+commenced ascending the mountain after them. The damp snow packed on
+Blondey's hoofs, so that he was walking on snowballs. When these got
+about five inches high, they would drop off and begin again. It is
+needless to say that these varying snowballs did not help Blondey's
+sure-footedness, especially as the snow was just thick enough to conceal
+the treacherous slaty rocks beneath. For the first time I understood the
+phrase, to be 'all balled up.'
+
+Between being ready to clear myself from the saddle and jump off on the
+up side, in case Blondey should fall, and keeping in sight of the tail of
+the other horse, I had given no attention to the landscape.
+
+Suddenly I lost Nimrod, and everything was swallowed up in a dark misty
+vapour that cut me off from every object. Even Blondey's nose and the
+ground at my feet were blurred. Regardless of possibly near-by elk, I
+raised a frightened, yell. My voice swirled around me and dropped. I
+tried again, but the sound would not carry.
+
+The icy vapour swept through me--a very lonely forlorn little being
+indeed. I just clung to the saddle, trusting to Blondey's instinct to
+follow the other animal, and tried to enjoy the fact that I was getting a
+new sensation. Even when one could see, every step was treacherous, but
+in that black fog I might as well have been blind and deaf. Then Blondey
+dislodged some loose rock, and went sliding down the mountain with it.
+There was not a thing I could do, so I shut my eyes for an instant. We
+brought up against a boulder, fortunately, with no special damage--except
+to my nerves. Not being a man, I don't pretend to having enjoyed that
+experience--and there, not six feet away, was a ghostly figure that I
+knew must be Nimrod.
+
+He did not greet me as a long lost, for such I surely felt, but merely
+remarked in a whisper:
+
+"We are in a cloud cap. It is settling down. The elk are over there.
+Keep close to me." And he started along the ridge. I felt it was so
+thoughtful of him to give me this admonition. I would much rather have
+been returned safely to camp without further injury and before I froze to
+the saddle; but I grimly kept Blondey's nose overlapping his mate's back
+and said nothing--not even when I discovered that my cherished riding
+whip had left me. It probably was not fifty feet away, on that toboggan
+slide, but it seemed quite hopeless to find anything in the freezing
+misty grayness that surrounded us.
+
+We continued our perilous passage. Then I was rewarded by a sight seldom
+accorded to humans. It was worth all the fatigue, cold, and bruises, for
+that appallingly illogical cloud cap took a new vagary. It split and
+lifted a little, and there, not three hundred yards away, in the
+twilight of that cold wet cloud, on that mountain in the sky, were two
+bull elk in deadly combat. Their far branching horns were locked
+together, and they swayed now this way, now that, as they wrestled for
+the supremacy of the herd of does, which doubtless was not far away. We
+could not see clearly: all was as in a dream. There was not a sound, only
+the blurred outlines through the blank mist of two mighty creatures
+struggling for victory. One brief glimpse of this mountain drama; then
+they sank out of sight, and the numbing grayness and darkness once more
+closed around us.
+
+On the way back to camp, Blondey shied at a heap of decaying bones that
+were still attached to a magnificent pair of antlers. They were at the
+foot of a cliff, over which the animal had probably fallen. The gruesome
+sight was suggestive of the end of one of those shadowy creatures,
+fighting back there high up on the mountain in the mist and the darkness.
+
+We saw no mountain sheep, but oh, the joy of our camp fire that night!
+For we got back in due time all right--Nimrod and the gods know how. To
+feel the cheery dancing warmth from the pine needles driving away cold
+and misery was pure bliss. One thing is certain about roughing it for a
+woman:--there is no compromise. She either sits in the lap of happiness
+or of misery. The two are side by side, and toss her about a dozen times
+a day--but happiness never lets her go for long.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+AT YEDDAR'S.
+
+
+Life at Yeddar's ranch on Green River, where Nimrod and I left the pack
+train, is different from life in New York; likewise the people are
+different. And as every Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband is sure
+to go through a Yeddar experience, I offer a few observations by way of
+enlightenment before telling how I killed my antelope. (If you wish to
+be proper, always use the possessive for animals you have killed. It is a
+Western abbreviation in great favour.)
+
+A two-story log house, a one-room log office, a log barn, and, across the
+creek, the log shack we occupied, fifty miles from the railroad, and no
+end of miles from anything else, but wilderness--that was Yeddar's.
+
+Old Yeddar--Uncle John, the guides and trappers and teamsters called
+him--had solved the problem of ideal existence. He ran this rough road
+house without any personal expenditure of labour or money. He sold whisky
+in his office to the passing teamsters and guides, and relied upon the
+same to do the chores around the place, for which he gave them grub, the
+money for which came from the occasional summer tourist, such as we.
+
+Mrs. Spiker 'did' for him in the summer for her board and that of her
+little girl, and in the winter he and a pard or two rustled for
+themselves, on bacon, coffee, and that delectable compound of bread and
+water known as camp sinkers. He got some money for letting the horses
+from two Eastern outfits run over the surrounding country and eat up the
+Wyoming government hay. Thus he loafs on through the years, outside or
+inside his office, without a care beyond the getting of his whisky and
+his tobacco. Of course he has a history. He claims to be from a 'high up'
+Southern family, but has been a plainsman since 1851. He has lived among
+the Indians, has several red-skinned children somewhere on this planet,
+and seems to have known all the wild tribe of stage drivers, miners, and
+frontiersmen with rapid-firing histories.
+
+Once a week, if the weather were fine, Uncle John would tie a towel and a
+clean shirt to his saddle, throw one leg across the back of Jim, his cow
+pony, blind in one eye and weighted with years unknown, and the two would
+jog a mile or so back in the mountains, to a hot sulphur spring, where
+Yeddar would perform his weekly toilet. He was not known to take off his
+clothes at any other time, and if the weather were disagreeable the
+pilgrimage was omitted.
+
+The cheapest thing at Yeddar's, except time, was advice. You could not
+tie up a dog without the entire establishment of loafers bossing the job.
+A little active co-operation was not so easy to get, however. One day I
+watched a freighter get stuck in the mud down the road 'a piece.' One by
+one, the whole number of freighters, mountaineers and guides then at
+Yeddar's lounged to the place, until there were nine able-bodied men
+ranged in a row watching the freighter dig out his wagon. No one offered
+to help him, but all contented themselves with criticising his methods
+freely and inquiring after his politics.
+
+During the third week of our stay, Uncle John raised the price of our
+board--and such board!--giving as an excuse that when we came he did not
+know that we were going to like it so well, or stay so long! Please place
+this joke where it belongs.
+
+The charm that held us to this rough place was the abundance of game. The
+very night we got there, I was standing quietly by the cabin door at
+dusk, when down the path came two of the prettiest does that the whole
+of the Blacktail tribe could muster. Shoulder to shoulder, with their big
+ears alert, they picked their way along, and under cover of the deepening
+twilight advanced to examine the dwelling of the white man.
+
+I watched them with silent breath. They were not ten yards away. Then
+they saw me and, wheeling around, stopped, the boldest a little in
+advance of her companion, with the right forefoot raised for action. I
+made no move. The graceful things eyed me suspiciously for several
+seconds and then advanced a little in a one-sided fashion.
+
+A laugh from Yeddar's office, across the creek, where Uncle John and Dave
+were having a quiet game of pinochle, caused a short retreat up the
+road. About fifty yards away, they stopped, and there, in the twilight,
+in that wild glen, they put themselves through a series of poses so
+graceful, so unstudied, so tender, so deer-like, that my heart was
+thrilled with joy at the mere artistic beauty of the scene. Then the
+loudmouthed alarm of a dog sent them silently into the forest gloom.
+
+Nimrod wanted some photographs of animals from life, and the energy which
+we put forth to obtain these was a constant surprise and disturbance to
+Uncle John and his co-loafers. They could understand why one might trap
+an animal, but to let it go again unhurt, after spending hours over it
+with a camera, was a problem that required many drinks and much quiet
+cogitation in the shade of the office.
+
+For days we tried to get a wood-chuck. At last we succeeded, and I find
+this note written in my journal for that date:--
+
+"Oct. 15th: Nimrod caught a woodchuck to-day, a baby one, and we called
+him Johnny. Johnny stayed with us all day in his cage, while Nimrod made
+a sketch of him and I took his picture. Then, in the late afternoon, we
+took him back to his home in the stone-clad hill, and put him among his
+brothers and sisters, who peeped cautiously at us from various rocky
+niches, higher up the hill."
+
+Little Johnny must have had a great deal to say of the strange ways and
+food of the big white animal. It must have been hard, too, for him to
+have found suitable woodchuck language to express his sensations when he
+was carried, oh! such a long way, in a big sack that grew on the side of
+his captor; and of the taste of peppermint candy, which he ate in his
+prettiest style, sitting on his haunches and clutching the morsel in both
+forepaws like any well-bred baby woodchuck. And then those delicious
+sugar cookies that Mrs. Spiker had just baked! How could he make his
+ignorant brother chuckies appreciate those cookies! Poor little Johnny is
+a marked woodchuck. He has seen the world.
+
+When Nimrod went hunting skunks, the group at the office gave us up.
+"Locoed, plumb locoed," was the verdict.
+
+Have you ever been on a skunk hunt? But perhaps you have no prejudices. I
+had. My code of action for a skunk was, if you see a black and white
+animal, don't stop to admire its beautiful bushy tail, but give a good
+imitation of a young woman running for her life. This did not suit
+Nimrod. He assured me that there was no danger if we treated his
+skunkship respectfully, and, as I was the photographer, I put on my old
+clothes and meekly fell in line. Nimrod set several box traps in places
+where skunks had been. These traps were merely soap boxes raised at one
+end by a figure four arrangement of sticks, so that when the animal goes
+inside and touches the bait the sticks fall apart, down comes the box,
+and the animal is caged unhurt. The next morning we went the rounds. The
+first trap was unsprung. The second one was down. Of course we could not
+see inside. Was it empty? Was the occupant a rat or a skunk, and if so,
+_what_ was he going to do?
+
+Nimrod approached the trap. Just then a big tree chanced to get between
+me and it. I stopped, thinking that as good a place as any to await
+developments.
+
+"It's a skunk all right," Nimrod announced gleefully.
+
+The box was rather heavy, so Nimrod went to Yeddar's, which was not far
+away, to see if he could get one of the loungers to help carry the
+captive to a large wire cage that we had rigged up near our shack.
+
+There were six men near the office, bronzed mountaineers, men of guns and
+grit, men who had spent their lives facing danger; but, when it came to
+facing a skunk, each looked at Nimrod as one would at a crazy man and had
+important business elsewhere. For once I thoroughly appreciated their
+point of view, but as there was no one else I took one end of the box,
+and we started. It was a precarious pilgrimage, but we moved gently and
+managed not to outrage the little animal's feelings.
+
+When the men saw us coming across the creek, with one accord they all
+went in and took a drink.
+
+We gingerly urged Mr. Skunk into the big cage, and with the greatest
+caution, never making a sudden move, I took his picture. All was as merry
+as a marriage bell, and might have continued so but for that puppy Sim.
+That is the trouble with skunks; they will lose their manners if
+startled, and _dogs startle skunks_.
+
+Of course the puppy barked; of course the skunk did not like it. He
+ruffled up his cold black nose, and elevated his bushy tail--his
+beautiful, plumy tail. I opened the door of his cage and, snatching
+the puppy, fled. The skunk was a wise and good animal, really a
+gentleman, if treated politely. He appreciated my efforts on his
+behalf. He forbearingly lowered his tail, composed his fur, and walked
+out of the cage and into the near-by woods as tamely as a house tabby
+out for a stroll.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+MY ANTELOPE.
+
+
+It was a week later when I did something which those old guides could
+understand and appreciate--I made a dead shot. I committed a murder, and
+from that time, the brotherhood of pards was open to us, had we cared to
+join. It was all because I killed an antelope.
+
+Nimrod and I started out that morning with the understanding that, if we
+saw antelope, I was to have a chance.
+
+In about six miles, Nimrod spied two white specks moving along the rocky
+ridge to the east of us, which rose abruptly from the plain where we
+were. I was soon able to make out that they were antelope. But the
+antelope had also seen us, and there was as much chance of getting near
+to them, by direct pursuit, as of a snail catching a hare. So we rode on
+calmly northward for half a mile, making believe we had not seen them,
+until we passed out of sight behind a long hill. Then we began an
+elaborate detour up the mountain, keeping well out of sight, until we
+judged that the animals, providing they had not moved, were below us,
+under the rocky ledge nearly a mile back.
+
+We tied up the horses on that dizzy height, and stole, Nimrod with a
+carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended,
+twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the
+cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would
+slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over
+the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on
+a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play
+compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent us flying over the
+cliff, but I did not think of that--my only care was not to startle the
+shy fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. I hardly dared to breathe;
+every muscle and nerve was tense with the long suspense.
+
+[Illustration: A MISSTEP WOULD HAVE SENT US FLYING OVER THE CLIFF.]
+
+Suddenly I clutched Nimrod's arm and pointed at an oblong tan coloured
+bulk fifty yards above us on the mountain.
+
+"Antelope! Lying down!" I whispered in his ear. He nodded and motioned me
+to go ahead. I crawled nearer, inch by inch, my gaze riveted on that
+object. It did not move. I grew more elated the nearer it allowed me to
+approach. It was not so very hard to get at an antelope, after all. I
+felt astonishingly pleased with my performance. Then--rattle, crash--and
+a stone went bounding down. What a pity, after all my painful contortions
+not to do it! I instantly raised the rifle to get a shot before the swift
+animal went flying away.
+
+But it was strangely quiet. I stole a little nearer--and then turned and
+went gently back to Nimrod. He was convulsed with silent and unnecessary
+laughter. My elaborate stalk had been made on--a nice buff stone.
+
+We continued our precarious journey for another quarter of a mile, when
+I motioned that I was going to try to get a sight of the antelope, which,
+according to my notion, were under the rock some hundred feet below, and
+signed to Nimrod to stay behind.
+
+Surely my guardian angel attended that descent. I slid down a crack in
+the rock three feet wide, which gave me a purchase on the sides with my
+elbows and left hand. The right hand grasped the rifle, to my notion an
+abominably heavy awkward thing. One of these drops was eight feet,
+another twelve. A slip would probably have cost me my life. Then I
+crawled along a narrow ledge for about the width of a town-house front,
+and, making another perilous slide, landed on a ledge so close to the
+creatures I was hunting that I was as much startled as they.
+
+Away those two beautiful animals bounded, their necks proudly arched and
+their tiny feet hitting the only safe places with unerring aim. They were
+far out of range before I thought to get my rifle in position, and my
+random shot only sent them farther out on the plain, like drifting leaves
+on autumn wind.
+
+It was impossible to return the way I had come; so I rolled and jumped
+and generally tumbled to the grassy hill below, and waited for Nimrod to
+go back along the shaly stretch, and bring down the horses the way they
+had gone up.
+
+Then we took some lunch from the saddle bags and sat down in the waving,
+yellow grass of the foot hill with a sweep of miles before us, miles of
+grassy tableland shimmering in the clear air like cloth of gold in the
+sun, where cattle grow fat and the wild things still are at home.
+
+During lunch Nimrod tried to convince me that he knew all the time that
+the antelope I stalked on the mountainside was a stone. Of course wives
+should believe their husbands. The economy of State and Church would
+collapse otherwise. However, the appearance of a large band of antelope,
+a sight now very rare even in the Rockies, caused the profitless
+discussion to be engulfed in the pursuit of the real thing.
+
+The antelope were two miles away, mere specks of white. We could not
+tell them from the twinkling plain until they moved. We mounted
+immediately and went after those antelope--by pretending to go away
+from them. For three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly browsing
+animals. We hid behind low hills, and crawled down a water-course, and
+finally dismounted behind the very mound of prairie on the other side of
+which they were resting, a happy, peaceful family. There were twenty
+does, and proudly in their midst moved the king of the harem, a powerful
+buck with royal horns.
+
+The crowning point of my long day's hunt was before me. That I should
+have my chance to get one of the finest bucks ever hunted was clear. What
+should I do, should I hit or miss? Fail! What a thought--never!
+
+Just then a drumming of hoofs which rapidly faded away showed that
+the wind had betrayed us, and the whole band was off like a flight
+of arrows.
+
+"Shoot! Shoot!" cried Nimrod, but my gun was already up and levelled on
+the flying buck--now nearly a hundred yards away.
+
+Bang! The deadly thing went forth to do its work. Sliding another
+cartridge into the chamber, I held ready for another shot.
+
+There was no need. The fleet-footed monarch's reign was over, and already
+he had gone to his happy hunting ground. The bullet had gone straight to
+his heart, and he had not suffered. But the does, the twenty beating
+hearts of his harem! There they were, not one hundred yards away, huddled
+together with ears erect, tiny feet alert for the next bound--yet waiting
+for their lord and master, the proud tyrant, so strangely still on the
+ground. Why did he not come? And those two creatures whose smell they
+feared--why did he stay so near?
+
+They took a few steps nearer and again waited, eyes and ears and
+uplifted hoofs asking the question, "Why doesn't he come? Why does he
+let those dreadful creatures go so close?" Then, as we bent over their
+fallen hero, they knew he was forever lost to them, and fear sent them
+speeding out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+A MOUNTAIN DRAMA.
+
+
+But hunting does not make one wholly a brute, crying, 'Kill, kill!' at
+every chance. In fact I have no more to confess in that line. Another
+side to it is shown by an incident that happened about a week later.
+
+We were riding leisurely along, a mile or so from the spot where my
+antelope had yielded his life to my vanity, when we saw, several
+miles away in the low hills, two moving flecks of white which might
+mean antelope.
+
+We watched. The two spots came rapidly nearer, and were clearly antelope.
+We were soon able to make out that one was being chased by the other;
+then that they were both bucks, the one in the rear much the heavier and
+evidently the aggressor. Then from behind a hill came the cause of it
+all--a bunch of lady antelope, who kept modestly together and to one
+side, and watched the contest that should decide their master. Surely
+this unclaimed harem was my doing!
+
+All at once, the two on-coming figures saw us. The first one paused,
+doubtful which of the two dangers to choose. His foe caught up with him.
+He wheeled and charged in self-defence, their horns met with a crash,
+and the smaller was thrown to the ground. He was clearly no match for
+his opponent.
+
+He sprang to his feet. His only safety was in flight, but where? His
+strength was nearly gone. He ran a short distance away from us, circling
+our cavalcade. His foe was nearly up to him again. He stopped an instant
+with uplifted foot, then turned and made directly for _us_. Three loaded
+guns hung at our saddles, but no hand went towards them. Not thirty feet
+away from our motionless horses the buck dropped, exhausted. We could
+easily have lassoed him. His adversary kept beyond gunshot, not daring to
+follow him into the power of an enemy all wild things fear; and an eagle
+who had perched on a rock near by, in hopes of a coming feast, flapped
+his wings and slowly flew away to search elsewhere for his dinner. The
+conquering buck walked back to his spoils of war, and soon marshalled
+them out of sight behind a hill.
+
+The young buck almost at our feet quickly recovered. He was not seriously
+hurt, only frightened and winded. He rose to his feet and stood for an
+instant looking directly at us, his head with its growing horns held high
+in the air, as if to thank us for the protection from a lesser foe he had
+so boldly asked and so freely received of an all powerful enemy. Then,
+turning, he lightly sped over the plain in an opposite direction, and the
+eagle, who had kept us in sight until now, perhaps with a lingering hope,
+rose swiftly upwards and was lost to sight.
+
+One elk with an eleven-point crown, and one antelope, of the finest ever
+brought down, is the tax I levied on the wild things. Of the many, many
+times I have watched them and left them unmolested, and of the lessons
+they have taught me, under Nimrod's guidance, I have not space to tell,
+for the real fascination of hunting is not in the killing but in seeing
+the creature at home amid his glorious surroundings, and feeling the
+freely rushing blood, the health-giving air, the gleeful sense of joy and
+life in nature, both within and without.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAHB OF THE BIGHORN BASIN.
+
+
+A fourteen-inch track is big, even for a grizzly. That was the size of
+Wahb's. The first time I saw it, the hole looked big enough for a
+baby's bath tub.
+
+We were travelling in Mr. A.'s pack train across the Shoshones from Idaho
+to Wyoming. It was the first of October, and by then, in that region,
+winter is shaking hands with you--pleasant hands to be sure, but a bit
+cool. The night before we had made a picturesque camp on the lee side of
+a rock cliff which was honeycombed with caves. A blazing camp fire was
+built at the mouth of one of these and we lounged on the rock ledges
+inside, thoroughly protected from the wind and cold. A storm was brewing.
+We could hear the pine trees whistle and shriek as they were lashed about
+in the forest across the brook. The lurid light of the fire showed us
+ourselves in distorted shadows. The whole place seemed wild and wicked,
+like a robber camp, and under its spell one thought things and felt
+things that would have been impossible in the sun shine, where everything
+is revealed. It began to snow, but we laughed at that. What did it matter
+in the shelter of the cave? For the first time in days I was thoroughly
+toasted on all sides at once. We had changed abruptly from the
+steam-heated Pullman to camping in snow, and it takes a few days to get
+used to such a shock. We told tales as weird as the scene, until far into
+the night. The next morning the sun was bright, but the cook had to cut a
+hole in the ice blanket over the brook to get water. We dared not linger
+at our robber camp, for at any time a big snowstorm might come that would
+cover the Wind River Divide, which we had to cross, with snow too deep
+for the horses to travel.
+
+Two days later, the weather still promising well, we decided to camp for
+a few days on the Upper Wiggin's Fork to hunt. It was a lovely spot; one
+of those little grassy parks which but for the uprising masses of
+mountains and towering trees might have surrounded your country home.
+
+That first night as we sat around the camp fire there came out of the
+blackness behind us a faint greeting--_Wheres Who_--_Wheres Who_--from a
+denizen of this mountain park, the great horned owl. The next morning we
+packed biscuits into our saddle-bags and separated for the day into two
+parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and myself, leaving the
+Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk, mountain lion, or
+bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a combination which the
+Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance.
+
+The Host led me down the Wiggin's Fork for two miles, when we came out
+upon a sandy, pebbly stretch which in spring the torrents entirely
+covered, but now had been dried up for months. I was following
+mechanically, guiding Blondey's feet among the cobblestones, for nature
+had paved the place very badly, without much thought for anything beyond
+the pleasure of being alive, when the Host suddenly stopped and pointed
+to the ground. There I made out the track of a huge bear going the way we
+were, and beyond was another, and another. Then they disappeared like a
+row of post-holes into the distance. The Host said there was only one
+bear in that region that could make a track like that; in spite of the
+fact that this was beyond his range, it must be Meeteetsee Wahb. He got
+off his horse and measured the track. Yes, the hind foot tracked fourteen
+inches. What a hole in the ground it looked!
+
+The Host said the maker of it was probably far away, as he judged the
+track to be several weeks old. I had heard so many tales of this monster
+that when I gazed upon his track I felt as though I were looking at the
+autograph of a hero.
+
+We saw other smaller grizzly and black bear tracks that day, so it was
+decided to set a bear bait. Our Host was a cattle king, and could wage
+war on bears with a good conscience. The usual three-cornered affair of
+logs was fixed, the trap in the centre and elk meat as a decoy. Horse
+meat is more alluring, but we deemed we would not need that, since we had
+with us "a never-failing bear charm." Its object was to suggest a lady
+bear, and thus attract some gallant to her side. The secret of the
+preparation of this charm had been confided to Nimrod by an old hunter
+the year before. It was a liquid composed of rancid fish oil, and--but I
+suppose I must not tell. A more ungodly odour I have never known. Nimrod
+put a few drops of it on his horse's feet, and all the other horses
+straightway ostracised him for several days till the worst of it wore
+away. Even the cook allowed "it was all-fired nasty." So some of this
+bear charm went on the bait.
+
+The next morning, as we started out for the day to roam the mountains, we
+first inspected the bear pen. Nothing had been near it. Indeed that charm
+would keep everything else away, if not the bear himself.
+
+The next day it was the same story, but this really was no argument for
+or against the charm, because, as I was told, bears in feeding usually
+make about a two weeks' circuit, and although we had seen many tracks
+they were all stale, demonstrating in a rough way that if we could linger
+for a week or two we would be sure to catch some one of the trackers on
+the return trip.
+
+This we could not do, as the expected snow-storm was now threatening,
+and we were still two days from the Divide. To be snowed up there would
+be serious. Before we could get packed up the snow began, falling
+steadily and quietly as though reserving its forces for later violence.
+We had been travelling about an hour from where we broke camp, when
+Nimrod beckoned me to join him where he had halted with the Horsewrangler
+a little off the line the pack train was following. I rode up quietly,
+thinking it might be game. But no; Horsewrangler pointed to a little bank
+where there was a circular opening in the trees. I looked, but did not
+understand.
+
+"Do you see that dip in the ground there where the snow melts as fast as
+it drops?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wal, that there's a bear bath."
+
+"A bear's bath!" I exclaimed, suspecting a hoax.
+
+"Yes, a sulphur spring. I reckon this here one belongs to the Big
+Grizzly."
+
+We examined the place with much interest, but found no fresh tracks, and
+the snow had covered most of the stale ones, as "of course he ain't got
+no call for it in winter. Like as not, he's denned up somewheres near,
+though it's a mite early."
+
+This was thrilling. Perhaps we might pass within a few feet of Wahb and
+never know it. It was like being told that the ghost of the dear departed
+is watching you. Nimrod pointed out to me a tree with the bark scratched
+and torn off for several feet--one of Wahb's rubbing trees. He located
+the sunning ledge for me, and then we reluctantly hurried on, for the
+journey ahead promised to be long and hard. Indeed I found it so.
+
+There were many indications that the storm was a serious one, and not the
+least of these was the behaviour of the little chief hare, or pika. As we
+ascended the rocky mountain-side we saw many of these little creatures
+scurrying hither and thither with bundles of hay in their mouths, which
+they deposited in tiny hay-cocks in sheltered places under rocks. So hard
+were they working that they could not even stop to be afraid of us. As
+all the party, but myself, knew, this meant bad weather and winter; for
+these cute, overgrown rats are reliable barometers, and they gave every
+indication that they were belated in getting their food supply, which had
+been garnered in the autumn after the manner of their kind, properly
+housed for winter use.
+
+All that day we worked our way through the forest with the silent snow
+deepening around us, ever up and up, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten
+thousand feet. It was an endless day of freezing in the saddle, and of
+snow showers in one's face from the overladen branches. I was frightfully
+cold and miserable. Every minute seemed the last I could endure without
+screeching. But still our Host pushed on. It was necessary to get near
+enough to the top of the Continental Divide so that we could cross it the
+next day. It began to grow dark about three o'clock; the storm increased.
+I kept saying over and over to myself what I was determined I should not
+say out loud:
+
+"Oh, please stop and make camp! I cannot stay in this saddle another
+minute. My left foot is frozen. I know it is, and the saddle cramp is
+unbearable. I am so hungry, so cold, so exhausted; oh, please stop!"
+Then, having wailed this out under my breath, I would answer it harshly:
+"You little fool, stop your whimpering. The others are made of flesh and
+blood too. We should be snowbound if we stopped here. Don't be a
+cry-baby. There is lots of good stuff in you yet. This only seems
+terrible because you are not used to it, so brace up."
+
+[Illustration: THUS I FOUGHT THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.]
+
+Then I would even smile at Nimrod who kept keen watch on me, or wave my
+hand at the Host, who was in front. This appearance of unconcern helped
+me for a few seconds, and then I would begin the weary round: "Oh, my
+foot, my back, my head; I cannot endure it another moment; I can't, I
+can't." Yet all the while knowing that I could and would. Thus I fought
+through the afternoon, and at last became just a numb thing on the horse
+with but one thought, "I can and will do it." So at last when the order
+came to camp in four feet of snow ten thousand feet above the sea, with
+the wind and snow blowing a high gale, I just drew rein and sat there on
+my tired beast.
+
+We disturbed a band of mountain sheep that got over the deep snow with
+incredible swiftness. It was my first view of these animals, but it
+aroused no enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder that they seemed to be
+enjoying themselves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled me off, I was too
+stiff and numb to get down myself. Then I found that the snow was so deep
+I could not go four feet. Not to be able to move about seemed to me the
+end of all things. I simply dropped in the snow--it was impossible to
+ever be warm and happy again--and prepared at last to weep.
+
+But I looked around first--Nimrod was coaxing a pack animal through the
+snow to a comparatively level place where our tent and bed things could
+be placed. The Host was shovelling a pathway between me and the spot
+where the Cook was coaxing a fire. The Horsewrangler was unpacking the
+horses alone (so that I might have a fire the sooner). They were all
+grim--doubtless as weary as I--but they were all working for my ultimate
+comfort, while I was about to repay them by sitting in the snow and
+weeping. I pictured them in four separate heaps in the snow, all weeping.
+This was too much; I did not weep. Instead by great effort I managed to
+get my horse near the fire, and after thawing out a moment unsaddled the
+tired animal, who galloped off gladly to join his comrades, and thus I
+became once more a unit in the economic force. But bad luck had
+crossed its fingers at me that day without doubt, and I had to be taught
+another lesson. I tell of it briefly as a warning to other women; of
+course--men always know better, instinctively, as they know how to fight.
+I presume you will agree that ignorance is punished more cruelly than any
+other thing, and that in most cases good intentions do not lighten the
+offence. My ignorance that time was of the effect of eating snow on an
+empty stomach. My intentions were of the best, for, being thirsty, I ate
+several handfuls of snow in order to save the cook from getting water out
+of a brook that was frozen. But my punishment was the same--a severe
+chill which made me very ill.
+
+I had been cold all day, but that is a very different thing from having a
+chill. I felt stuffed with snow; snow water ran in my veins, snow
+covered the earth, the peaks around me. I was mad with snow. They gave me
+snow whisky and put me beside a snow fire. I had not told any one what I
+had done, not realising what was the mischief maker, and it really looked
+as though I had heart disease, or something dreadful.
+
+They put rugs and coats around me till I could not move with their
+weight; but they were putting them around a snow woman. The only thing I
+felt was the icy wind, and that went through my shivering, shaking self.
+The snow was falling quietly and steadily, as it had fallen all day. We
+_must_ cross yonder divide to-morrow. It was no time to be ill. Every one
+felt that, and big, black gloom was settling over the camp, when I by way
+of being cheerful remarked to the Host: "Do you-ou kno-ow, I feel as
+though there was n-nothing of me b-but the sno-ow I ate an hour ago."
+
+"Snow!" he exclaimed. "Did you eat much? Well, no wonder you are ill."
+
+The effect was instantaneous. Everybody looked relieved; I was not even
+a heroine.
+
+"I will soon cure you," said the Host, as he poured out more whisky, and
+the Cook reheated some soup and chocolate. The hot drinks soon succeeded
+in thawing me from a snow woman back to shivering flesh and blood which
+was supportable.
+
+Nimrod looked pleasant again and began studying the mountain sheep
+tracks. The cook fell to whistling softly from one side of his mouth,
+while a cigarette dangled from the other, as was his wont when he
+puttered about the fire. The Horsewrangler was making everything tight
+for the night against wind and snow. The Host lighted a cigarette, a calm
+expression glided over his face, and he became chatty, and, although the
+storm was just as fierce and the thermometer just as low, peace was
+restored to Camp Snow.
+
+The next day we crossed the divide, and not a day too soon. The snow was
+so deep that the trail breaker in front was in danger of going over a
+precipice or into a rock crevice at any time. After him came the pack,
+animals, so that they could make a path for us. The path was just the
+width of the horse, and in some places the walls of it rose above my
+head. In such places I had to keep my feet high up in the saddle to
+prevent them from being crushed. For a half day we struggled upwards
+with danger stalking by our sides, then on the very ridge of the divide
+itself, 11,500 feet in the air, with the icy wind blowing a hurricane of
+blinding snow, we skirted along a precipice the edge of which the snow
+covered so that we could not be sure when a misstep might send us over
+into whatever is waiting for us in the next world.
+
+But fortunately we did not even lose a horse. Then came the plunging
+down, down, with no chance to pick steps because of the all-concealing
+snow. Those, indeed, were "stirring times," but we made camp that night
+in clear weather and good spirits. We were on the right side of the
+barrier and only two days from the Palette Ranch--and safety, not to
+say luxury.
+
+If you had Aladdin's lamp and asked for a shooting box, you could hardly
+expect to find anything more ideal than the Palette Ranch. There is no
+spot in the world more beautiful or more health giving. It is tucked away
+by itself in the heart of the Rockies, 150 miles from the railroad, 40
+miles from the stage route, and surrounded on the three sides by a
+wilderness of mountains. And when after travelling over these for three
+weeks with compass as guide, one dark, stormy night we stumbled and
+slipped down a mountain side and across an icy brook to its front lawn,
+the message of good cheer that streamed in rosy light from its windows
+seemed like an opiate dream.
+
+We entered a large living room, hung with tapestries and hunting trophies
+where a perfectly appointed table was set opposite a huge stone
+fireplace, blazing with logs. Then came a delicious course dinner with
+rare wines, and served by a French chef. The surprise and delight of it
+in that wilderness--but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we
+entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing
+lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal
+mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a
+hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled
+bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that
+region a veritable fairy's chamber. Truly it is a canny Host who can thus
+blend harmoniously the human luxuries of the East and the natural glories
+of the West.
+
+In our rides around the Palette I saw Wahb's tracks once again. The Host
+had taken us to a far away part of his possessions. Three beautiful wolf
+hounds frisked along beside us, when all at once they became much excited
+about something they smelt in a little scrub-pine clump on the right. We
+looked about for some track or sign that would explain their behaviour. I
+spied a huge bear track.
+
+"Hah!" I thought, "Wahb at last," and my heart went pit-a-pat as I
+pointed it out to Nimrod. He recognised it but remained far too calm
+for my fancy. I pointed into the bushes with signs of "Hurrah, it's
+Wahb." I received in reply a shake of the head and a pitying smile. How
+was I to know that the dogs were saying as plainly as dogs need to "A
+bobcat treed"?
+
+So I followed meekly and soon saw the bobcat's eyes glaring at us from
+the topmost branches. The Host took a shot at it with the camera which
+the lynx did not seem to mind, and calling off the disappointed dogs we
+went on our way. The Host allows no shooting within a radius of twelve
+miles of the Palette. Any living thing can find protection there and the
+result is that any time you choose to ride forth you can see perfectly
+wild game in their homeland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not till the next year that I really saw Wahb. It was at his
+summer haunt, the Fountain Hotel in the Yellowstone National Park. If
+you were to ask Nimrod to describe the Fountain geyser or Hell Hole,
+or any of the other tourist sights thereabouts, I am sure he would
+shake his head and tell you there was nothing but bears around the
+hotel. For this was the occasion when Nimrod spent the entire day in
+the garbage heap watching the bears, while I did the conventional
+thing and saw the sights.
+
+About sunset I got back to the hotel. Much to my surprise I could not
+find Nimrod; and neither had he been seen since morning, when he had
+started in the direction of the garbage heap in the woods some quarter of
+a mile back from the hotel. Anxiously I hurried there, but could see no
+Nimrod. Instead I saw the outline of a Grizzly feeding quietly on the
+hillside. It was very lonely and gruesome. Under other circumstances I
+certainly would have departed quickly the way I came, but now I must find
+Nimrod. It was growing dark, and the bear looked a shocking size, as big
+as a whale. Dear me, perhaps Nimrod was inside--Jonah style. Just then I
+heard a sepulchral whisper from the earth.
+
+"Keep quiet, don't move, it's the Big Grizzly."
+
+I looked about for the owner of the whisper and discovered Nimrod not
+far away in a nest he had made for himself in a pile of rubbish. I
+edged nearer.
+
+"See, over there in the woods are two black bears. You scared them away.
+Isn't he a monster?" indicating Wahb.
+
+I responded with appropriate enthusiasm. Then after a respectful silence
+I ventured to say:
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"All day--and such a day--thirteen bears at one time. It is worth all
+your geysers rolled into one.
+
+"H'm--Have you had anything to eat?"
+
+"No." Another silence, then I began again.
+
+"Aren't you hungry? Don't you want to come to dinner?"
+
+He nodded yes. Then I sneaked away and came back as soon as possible with
+a change of clothes. The scene was as I had left it, but duskier. I stood
+waiting for the next move. The Grizzly made it. He evidently had finished
+his meal for the night, and now moved majestically off up the hill
+towards the pine woods. At the edge of these he stood for a moment,
+Wahb's last appearance, so far as I am concerned, for, as he posed, the
+fading, light dropped its curtain of darkness between us, and I was able
+to get Nimrod away.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE DEAD HUNT.
+
+
+To hunt the wily puma, the wary elk, or the fleet-footed antelope is to
+have experiences strange and varied, but for the largest assortment of
+thrills in an equal time the 'dead hunt' is the most productive. My
+acquaintance with a 'dead hunt'--which is by no means a 'still
+hunt'--began and ended at Raven Agency. It included horses, bicycles, and
+Indians, and followed none of the customary rules laid down for a hunt,
+either in progress or result.
+
+And, not to antagonise the reader, I will say now that it was very
+naughty to do what I did, an impolite and ungenerous thing to do, on a
+par with the making up of slumming parties to pry into the secrets of the
+poor. It was the act of a vandal, and at times--in the gray dawn and on
+the first day of January--I am sorry about it; but then I should not have
+had that carved bead armlet, and as that is the tail of my story, I will
+put it in the mouth and properly begin.
+
+Nimrod and I went to the United States agency for the Asrapako or Raven
+Indians in--well, never mind, not such a far cry from the Rockies, unless
+you are one of those uncomfortable persons who carry a map of the United
+States in your mind's eye--because Burfield was there painting Many
+Whacks, the famous chief; because Nimrod wanted to know what kind of
+beasties lived in that region; and because I wanted a face to face
+encounter with the Indian at home. I got it.
+
+The first duty of a stranger at Raven Agency is to visit the famous
+battlefield, three miles away; and the Agent, an army officer, very
+charmingly made up a horseback party to escort us there. He put me on a
+rawboned bay who, he said, was a "great goer." It was no merry jest. I
+was nearly the last to mount and quite the first to go flying down the
+road. The Great Goer galloped all the way there. His mouth was as hard as
+nails, and I could not check him; still, the ride was no worse than being
+tossed in a blanket for half an hour. On the very spot, I heard the
+story of the tragic Indian fight by one who claimed to have been an
+eye-witness. Every place where each member of that heroic band fell,
+doing his duty, is marked by a small marble monument, and as I looked
+over the battle ground and saw these symbols of beating hearts, long
+still in death, clustered in twos and threes and a dozen where each had
+made the last stand, every pillar seemed to become a shadowy soldier; the
+whole awful shame of the massacre swept over me, and I was glad to head
+my horse abruptly for home. And then there were other things to think
+about, things more intimate and real. No sooner did the Great Goer's nose
+point in the direction of his stable than he gave a great bound, as
+though a bee had stung him; then he lowered his head, laid back his ears,
+and--gallopped home.
+
+[Illustration: WE WHIZZED ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACK IN FRONT OF THE
+DAY EXPRESS.]
+
+I yanked and tugged at the bit. It was as a wisp of hay in his mouth. I
+might as well have been a monkey or a straw woman bobbing up and down on
+his back. Pound, pound, thump, thump, gaily sped on the Great Goer.
+There were dim shouts far behind me for a while, then no more. The
+roadside whipped by, two long streaks of green. We whizzed across the
+railroad track in front of the day express, accompanied by the engine's
+frantic shriek of "down brakes." If a shoe had caught in the track--ah!
+I lost my hat, my gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown locks flew out
+two feet behind.
+
+Away went my watch, then the all in two pockets, knife, purse,
+match-box--surely this trail was an improvement on Tom Thumb's' bread
+crumbs. One foot was out of the stirrup. I wrapped the reins around the
+pommel and clung on. There is a gopher hole--that means a broken leg for
+him, a clavicle and a few ribs for me. No; on we go. Ah, that stony brook
+ahead we soon must cross! Ye gods, so young and so fair! To perish thus,
+the toy of a raw-boned Great Goer!
+
+Pound, pound, pound, the hard road rang with the thunder of hoofs. Could
+I endure it longer? Oh, there is the stream--surely he will stop. No! He
+is going to jump! It's an awful distance! With a frantic effort I got my
+feet in the stirrups. He gathered himself together. I shut my eyes. Oh!
+We missed the bank and landed in the water--an awful mess. But the Great
+Goer scrambled out, with me still on top somehow, and started on. I
+pulled on the reins again with every muscle, trying to break his pace, or
+his neck anything that was his. Then there was a flapping noise below. We
+both heard it, we both knew what it was--the cinch worked loose, that
+meant the saddle loose.
+
+In desperation I clutched the Great Goer's mane with both hands and,
+leaning forward, yelled wildly in his ears:
+
+"Whoa, whoa! The saddle's turning! Whoa! Do you wa-ant to _ki-ill_ me?"
+
+Do not tell me that the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a
+vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the
+Great Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in
+the line of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to
+nibbling grass as placidly as though he had not been doing racing time
+for three miles, and I should have gone on forever believing in his
+wondrous wit had I not turned and realised that he was standing in his
+own pasture lot.
+
+Seeking to console my dishevelled self as I got off, I murmured, "Well,
+it was a sensation any way--an absolutely new one," just as Nimrod
+gallopped up, and seeing I was all right, called out:
+
+"Hello, John Gilpin!" That is the way with men.
+
+My scattered belongings were gathered up by the rest of the party, and
+each as he arrived with the relic he had gathered, made haste to explain
+that his horse had no chance with my mount.
+
+I thanked the Agent for the Great Goer without much comment. (See advice
+to Woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband.) But that is why, the next
+day, when Burfield confided to me that he knew where there were some
+'Dead-trees' (not dead trees) that could be examined without fear of
+detection, I preferred to borrow the doctor's wife's bicycle.
+
+Dead-trees? Very likely you know what I did not until I saw for myself,
+that the Asrapako, in common with several Indian tribes, place their dead
+in trees instead of in the ground. As the trees are very scarce in that
+arid country, and only to be found in gullies and along the banks of the
+Little Big Buck River, nearly every tree has its burden of one or more
+swathed-up bodies bound to its branches, half hidden by the leaves, like
+great cocoons--most ghastly reminders of the end of all human things.
+
+It was to a cluster of these "deadtrees," five miles away, that Burfield
+guided me, and it was on this ride that the wily wheel, stripped of all
+its glamour of shady roads, tete-a-tetes, down grades, and asphalts,
+appeared as its true, heavy, small seated, stubborn self.
+
+I can undertake to cure any bicycle enthusiast. The receipt is simple and
+here given away. First, take two months of Rocky Mountains with a living
+sentient creature to pull you up and down their rock-ribbed sides, to
+help out with his sagacity when your own fails, and to carry you at a
+long easy lope over the grassy uplands some eight or ten thousand feet
+above the sea in that glorious bracing air. Secondly, descend rapidly to
+the Montana plains--hot, oppressive, enervating--or to the Raven Agency,
+if you will, and attempt to ride a wheel up the only hill in all that
+arid stretch of semi desert, a rise of perhaps three hundred feet.
+
+It is enough. You will find that your head is a sea of dizziness, that
+your lungs have refused to work, that your heart is pounding aloud in
+agony, and you will then and there pronounce the wheel an instrument of
+torture, devised for the undoing of woman.
+
+I tried it. It cured me, and, once cured, the charms of the wheel are as
+vapid as the defence of a vigilant committee to the man it means to hang.
+Stubborn--it would not go a step without being pushed. It would not even
+stand up by itself, and I literally had to push it--it, as well as myself
+on it--in toil and dust and heat the whole way. Nimrod said his bicycle
+betrayed itself, too, only not so badly. Of course, that was because he
+was stronger. The weaker one is, the more stubbornly bicycles behave.
+Every one knows that. And they are so narrow minded. They needs must
+stick to the travelled road, and they behave viciously when they get in a
+rut. Imagine hunting antelope across sage-brush country on a bicycle! I
+know a surveyor who tried it once. They brought him home with sixteen
+broken bones and really quite a few pieces of the wheel, improved to
+Rococo. Bah! Away with it and its limitations, and those of its big
+brother, the automobile! Sing me no death knell of the horse companion.
+
+At last, with the assistance of trail and muscle, the five miles were
+covered, and we came to a dip in the earth which some bygone torrent had
+hollowed out, and so given a chance for a little moisture to be retained
+to feed the half-dozen cottonwoods and rank grass, that dared to struggle
+for existence in that baked up sage-brush waste which the government has
+set aside for the Raven paradise.
+
+We jumped--no, that is horse talk--we sprawled off our wheels and left
+the stupid things, lying supinely on their sides, like the dead lumpish
+things they are, and descended a steep bank some ten feet into the gully.
+
+It was a gruesome sight, in the hour before sunset, with not a soul but
+ourselves for miles around. The lowering sun lighted up the under side of
+the leaves and branches and their strange burdens, giving an effect
+uncanny and weird, as though caused by unseen footlights. Not a sound
+disturbed the oppressive quiet, not the quiver of a twig. Five of the six
+trees bore oblong bundles, wrapped in comforters and blankets, and bound
+with buckskin to the branches near the trunk, fifteen or twenty feet from
+the ground, too high for coyotes, too tight for vultures. But what caught
+our attention as we dropped into the gully was one of the bundles that
+had slipped from its fastenings and was hanging by a thong.
+
+It needed but a tug to pull it to the ground. Burfield supplied that tug,
+and we all got a shock when the wrappings, dislodged by the fall, parted
+at one end and disclosed the face of a mummy. I had retreated to the
+other end of the little dip, not caring to witness some awful spectacle
+of disintegration; but a mummy--no museum-cased specimen, labelled 'hands
+off', but a real mummy of one's own finding--was worth a few shudders
+to examine.
+
+I looked into the shrivelled, but otherwise normal, face of the Indian
+woman. What had been her life, her heart history, now as completely gone
+as though it had never been--thirty years of life struggle in snow and
+sun, with, perhaps, a little joy, and then what?
+
+Seven brass rings were on her thumb and a carved wooden armlet encircled
+the wrist. These I was vandal enough to accept from Burfield. There were
+more rings and armlets, but enough is enough. As the gew-gaws had a
+peculiar, gaseous, left-over smell, I wrapped them in my gloves, and
+surely if trifles determine destiny, that act was one of the trifles that
+determined the fact that I was to be spared to this life for yet a while
+longer. For, as I was carelessly wrapping up my spoil, with a nose very
+much turned up, Burfield suddenly started and then began bundling the
+wrappings around the mummy at great speed. Something was serious. I
+stooped to help him, and he whispered:
+
+"Thought I heard a noise. If the Indians catch us, there'll be trouble,
+I'm afraid."
+
+We hastily stood the mummy on end, head down, against the tree, and tried
+to make it look as though the coyotes had torn it down, after it had
+fallen within reach, as indeed they had, originally. Then we crawled to
+the other end of the gully, scrambled up the bank, and emerged
+unconcernedly.
+
+There was nothing in sight but long stretches of sage brush, touched
+here and there by the sun's last gleams. We were much relieved.
+Said Burfield:
+
+"The Indians are mighty ugly over that Spotted Tail fight, and if they
+had caught us touching their dead, it might have been unhealthy for us."
+
+"Why, what would they do?" I asked, suddenly realising what many white
+men never do--that Indians are emotional creatures like ourselves. The
+brass rings became uncomfortably conspicuous in my mind.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose they would dare to kill us so close to the agency,
+but I don't know; a mad Injun's a bad Injun."
+
+Nevertheless, this opinion did not deter him from climbing a tree where
+three bodies lay side by side in a curious fashion; but I had no more
+interest in 'dead-trees,' and fidgeted. Nimrod had wandered off some
+distance and was watching a gopher hole-up for the night. The place in
+the fading light was spooky, but it was of live Indians, not dead ones,
+that I was thinking.
+
+There is a time for all things, and clearly this was the time to go
+back to Severin's dollar-a-day Palace Hotel. I started for the
+bicycles when two black specks appeared on the horizon and grew
+rapidly larger. They could be nothing but two men on horseback
+approaching at a furious gallop. It was but yaller-covered-novel
+justice that they should be Indians.
+
+"Quick, Burfield, get out of that tree on the other side!" It did not
+take a second for man and tree to be quit of each other, at the imminent
+risk of broken bones. I started again for the wheels.
+
+"Stay where, you are," said Burfield; "we could never get away on those
+things. If they are after us, we must bluff it out."
+
+There was no doubt about their being after us. The two galloping figures
+were pointed straight at us and were soon close enough to show that they
+were Indians. We stood like posts and awaited them. Thud, thud--ta-thud,
+thud--on they charged at a furious pace directly at us. They were five
+hundred feet away--one hundred feet--fifty.
+
+Now, I always take proper pride in my self possession, and to show how
+calm I was, I got out my camera, and as the two warriors came chasing up
+to the fifty-foot limit, I snapped it. I had taken a landscape a minute
+before, and I do not think that the fact that that landscape and those
+Indians appeared on the same plate is any proof that I was in the least
+upset by the red men's onset. Forty feet, thirty--on they came--ten--were
+they going to run us down?
+
+Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead
+stop--unpleasantly, close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an
+electric silence, such as comes between the lightning's flash and the
+thunder's crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each
+measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate
+spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced
+from the shock of the sudden stop.
+
+For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then
+one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching
+suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the
+bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale brass rings and armlet were in my
+gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He
+turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke
+grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
+
+[Illustration: FIVE FEET FULL IN FRONT OF US, THEY PULLED THEIR HORSES TO
+A DEAD STOP.]
+
+"No touch 'em; savey?" giving a significant jerk of the head towards
+the trees.
+
+We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those brass rings! Why
+did I want to steal brass rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman
+mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
+
+There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions,
+so much as a leaf's thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as
+the first, spoke sullenly:
+
+"No touch 'em; savey?" He laid his hand suggestively on something in his
+belt.
+
+Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a
+thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned
+their horses.
+
+We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the
+other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground
+and--who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look
+backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements of
+a tragedy.
+
+I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor's
+wife's bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night,
+after I had delivered unto the doctor's wife her own, and disinfected the
+gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again
+list--bicycling in Montana and 'dead hunts.'
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+JUST RATTLESNAKES.
+
+
+It is a blessing that a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No
+one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it
+has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from
+our simian ancestors.
+
+To me, I acknowledge, a rattler is just a horrid snake; so, when we were
+told at Markham that rattlers were more common than the cattle which
+grazed on every hill, I discovered that there were yet new imps to
+conquer in my world of fear. Shakspere has said some nice things about
+fear--"Of all the wonders, ... it seems to me most strange that men
+should fear"--but he never knew anything about squirming rattlesnakes.
+
+The Cuttle Fish ranch is five miles from Markham. That thriving
+metropolis has ten houses and eleven saloons, in spite of Dakota being
+'prohibition.' Markham is in the heart of the Bad Lands, the wonderful
+freakish Bad Lands, where great herds of cattle range over all the
+possible, and some of the impossible, places, while the rest of
+it--black, green, and red peaks, hills of powdered coal, wicked land cuts
+that no plumb can fathom, treacherous clay crust over boiling lava, arid
+horrid miles of impish whimsical Nature--is Bad indeed.
+
+Nimrod and I had been lured to the Cuttle Fish ranch to go on a wolf
+hunt. The house was a large two storey affair of logs, with a long tail
+of one storey log outbuildings like a train of box cars. We sat down to
+dinner the first night with twenty others, a queer lot truly to find in
+that wild uncivilised place. There was an ex-mayor and his wife from a
+large Eastern city; a United States Senator--the toughest of the
+party--who appeared at table in his undershirt; four cowboys, who were
+better mannered than the two New York millionaires' sons who had been
+sent there to spend their college vacation and get toughened (the process
+was obviously succeeding); they made Nimrod apologise for keeping his
+coat on during dinner; the three brothers who owned the ranch, and the
+wife of one of them; several children; a prim and proper spinster from
+Washington--how she got there, who can tell?--and Miss Belle Hadley, the
+servant girl.
+
+In studying the case of Belle I at last appreciated the age-old teaching
+that the greatest dignity belongs to the one who serves. Else why did
+the ex-mayor's wife bake doughnuts, and the rotund Senator toil at the
+ice cream freezer with the thermometer at 112 degrees, and the
+millionaires' sons call Belle "Miss Hadley," and I make bows for her
+organdie dress, while she curled her hair for a dance to be held that
+evening ten miles away, and to which she went complacently with her pick
+of the cowboys and her employers' two best horses, while they stayed at
+home and did her work! Else why did this one fetch wood for her, that
+one peel the potatoes, another wash the dishes? And when she and the
+rest of us were seated at meals, and something was needed from the
+kitchen, why did the unlucky one nearest the door jump up and forage?
+Belle was never nearest the door. She sat at the middle of the long
+table, so that she could be handy to everything that was 'circulating.'
+But I refer this case to the author of those delightful papers on the
+"Unquiet Sex," and hark back to my story.
+
+That night the moon was full, and the coyotes made savage music around
+the lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a
+snappy _wow-wow, yac-yac_, and then a long drawn out _ooo-oo_; then
+another voice, a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the
+star voice of them all--loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I
+saw him silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head
+thrown back and muzzle raised, as he gave to the peaceful night his
+long, howling bark, his "talk at moon" as the Indians put it. The
+ranchman remarked that there were "two or three out there," but I knew
+better. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them; I am not deaf.
+
+The next morning we were up with the dawn and started by eight to run
+down Mountain Billy, the grey wolf who lived on the ranchmen of the Bad
+Lands. Our outfit was as symmetrical as a pine cone;--dogs, horses, mess
+wagon, food, guns and men. All we needed was the grey wolf. I was the
+only woman in the party, and, like "Weary Waddles," tagged behind.
+
+[Illustration: THE COYOTES MADE SAVAGE MUSIC.]
+
+It was the middle of September, and the weather should have known
+better. But it was the Bad Lands, and there was a hot spell on. By three
+o'clock the thermometer showed 116-1/2 in the shade, and I believed it.
+The heat and glare simmered around us like fire. The dogs' tongues nearly
+trailed in the baked dust, the horses' heads hung low, an iron band
+seemed ever tightening around my head, as the sun beat down upon all
+alike with pitiless force.
+
+When we came to the Little Missoula, even its brackish muddy water was
+welcome, and I shut my eyes to the dirt in the uninviting brown fluid,
+and my mind to the knowledge of the horrid things it would do to me, and
+drank; Tepid, gritty, foul--was it water I had swallowed? The horse
+assigned to me, a small, white, benevolent animal named 'Whiskers,'
+waded in knee deep and did the same. Whiskers was a 'lady's horse,'
+which, being interpreted, meant aged eighteen or twenty, with all spirit
+knocked out by hard work; a broken down cow pony, in fact, or, in local
+parlance, a 'skate,' a 'goat.' He had lagged considerably behind the
+rest of the party.
+
+However, Whiskers did not matter; nothing mattered but the waves on
+waves of heat that quivered before my eyes. I shut them and began
+repeating cooling rhymes, such as 'twin peaks snow clad,' 'From
+Greenland's Icy Mountains,' and the 'Frozen North,' by way of living up
+to Professor James' teachings. Whiskers was ambling on, half-stupefied
+with the heat, as I was, when from the road just in front came a
+peculiar sound. I did not know what it was, but Whiskers did, and he
+immediately executed a demi volte (see Webster) with an energy I had
+not thought him capable of.
+
+Again came the noise, yes, surely, just as it had been described--like
+dried peas in a pod--and gliding across the road was a big rattlesnake. I
+confess had Whiskers been so inclined, I should have been content to have
+passed on with haughty disdain. But Whiskers performed a left flank
+movement so nearly unseating me that I deemed it expedient to drop to the
+ground, and Whiskers, without waiting for orders, retreated down the road
+at what he meant for a gallop. The rattler stopped his pretty gliding
+motion away from me, and seemed in doubt. Then he began to take on a few
+quirks. "He is going to coil and then to strike," said I, recalling a
+paragraph from my school reader. It was an unhappy moment! I knew that
+tradition had fixed the proper weapons to be used against rattlesnakes:
+a stone (more if necessary), a stick (forked one preferred), and in rare
+cases a revolver (when it is that kind of a story). I had no revolver.
+There was not a stick in sight, and not a stone bigger than a hazelnut;
+but there was the rattler. I cast another despairing glance around and
+saw, almost at my feet and half hidden by sage brush, several inches of
+rusty iron--blessed be the passing teamster who had thrown it there. I
+darted towards it and, despite tradition, turned on the rattler armed
+with the goodly remains of--a frying pan.
+
+[Illustration: THE HORRID THING WAS READY FOR ME.]
+
+The horrid thing was ready for me with darting tongue and flattened
+head--another instant it would have sprung. _Smash_ on its head went my
+valiant frying pan and struck a deadly blow, although the thing managed
+to get from under it. I recaptured my weapon and again it descended upon
+the reptile's head, settling it this time. Feeling safe, I now took hold
+of the handle to finish it more quickly. Oh, that tail--that awful,
+writhing, lashing tail! I can stand Indians, bears, wolves, anything but
+that tail, and a rattler is all tail, except its head. If that tail
+touches me I shall let go. It did touch me, I did not let go. Pride held
+me there, for I heard the sound of galloping hoofs. Whiskers' empty
+saddle had alarmed the rest of the party.
+
+My snake was dead now, so I put one foot on him to take his scalp--his
+rattles, I mean--when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny
+thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to
+think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance
+that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my
+heart and captured his 'pod of dry peas.'
+
+Oh, about the wolf hunt! That was all, just heat and rattlesnakes.
+
+The hounds could not run; one died from sunstroke while chasing a jack
+rabbit. No one lifted a finger if it could be avoided. All the world was
+an oven, and after three days we gave up the chase, and leaving Mountain
+Billy panting triumphantly somewhere in his lair, trailed back to the
+ranch house with drooping heads and fifteen rattle-snakes' tails. Oh, no,
+the hunt was not a failure--for Mountain Billy.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+AS COWGIRL.
+
+
+Till the time of the "WB" round-up all cows looked alike to me. We were
+still at the Cuttle Fish ranch, which was in a state of great activity
+because of the fall roundup. Belle, the servant girl, had received less
+attention of late and had been worked harder, a combination of
+disagreeables which caused her to threaten imminent departure. The
+cowboys, who had been away for several days gathering in the stragglers
+that had wandered into the wild recesses of those uncanny Bad Land hills,
+assembled in full force for the evening meal, and announced, between
+mouthfuls, that the morrow was to be branding day for the several
+outfits, about two thousand head of cattle in all, the 'WB' included,
+which were rounded up on the Big Flat two miles distant from the ranch.
+
+This was the chance for me to be relieved of my crass ignorance
+concerning round-ups, really to have a definite conception of the term
+instead of the sea of vagueness and conjecture into which I was plunged
+by the usual description--"Oh, just a whole lot of cattle driven to one
+place, and those that need it are cut out and frescoed." How many was a
+whole lot, how were they driven, where were they driven from, what were
+they cut out with, how were they branded, and when did they need it? My
+ignorance was hopeless and pathetic, and those to whom I applied were all
+too familiar with the process to be able to describe it. I might as well
+have asked for a full description of how a man ate his dinner.
+
+"Will you take me to the round-up to-morrow?" I asked of the 'WB' boss.
+
+"Well, I could have a team hitched up, and Bob could drive you to the
+Black Nob Hill, where you can get a good view," was the tolerant reply.
+
+Bob had wrenched his foot the day before, when roping a steer, and was
+therefore incapacitated for anything but 'woman's work'--'a soft job.'
+
+"Oh, but I do not want to be so far away and look on; I want to
+be _in_ it."
+
+He looked at me out of the angle of his eye to make sure that I was in
+earnest. "Tain't safe," he said.
+
+"Then you mean to say that every cowboy risks his life in a round-up?"
+
+"Oh, well, they're men and take their chances. Besides, it's their
+business."
+
+I never yet have been able to have a direct question answered by a true
+mountaineer or plainsman by a simple yes or no. Is there something in the
+bigness of their surroundings that causes the mind to spread over an
+idea and lose directness like a meadow brook?
+
+However, by various wiles known to my kind, the next morning at daybreak
+I was mounted upon the surest-footed animal in the 'bunch.'
+
+"She's a trained cow pony and won't lose her head," the boss remarked.
+
+Thus equipped, I was allowed to accompany the cowboys to their work, with
+the understanding that I was to keep at a safe distance from the herd.
+Van Anden, a famous 'cutter out,' whatever that meant, was deputed to
+have an especially watchful eye upon me. Van Anden was a surprisingly
+graceful fellow, who got his six foot of stature in more places during
+the day than any of the smaller men. He was evidently a cowboy because he
+wanted to be one. There were many traces of a college education and a
+thorough drilling in good manners in an Eastern home, which report said
+could still be his if he so wished; and report also stated that he
+remained a bachelor in spite of being the most popular man in the
+country, because of a certain faithless siren who with gay unconcern
+casts languishing glances and spends papa's dollars at Newport.
+
+But this was no Beau Brummel day. There was work to do, and hard work,
+as I soon discovered. We had ridden perhaps a mile; my teeth were
+still chattering in the early morning cold (breaking ice on one's bath
+water and blowing on one's fingers to enable one to lace heavy boots
+may suit a cowboy: I do not pretend to like it), when we began to
+notice a loud bellowing in the distance. Instantly my companions
+spurred their horses and we went speeding over the Little Missoula
+bottom lands, around scrub willows and under low hanging branches of
+oak, one of which captured my hat, after breaking both of the hat pins,
+and nearly swept me from the saddle.
+
+On I rushed with the rest, hatless, and as in a cloud of fury. Van Anden
+took a turn around that tree and was at my side again with the hat before
+I realised what, he was doing. I jerked out a "thank you" between lopes,
+and of course forbore to remark that a hat without pins was hollow
+mockery. I dodged the next low branch so successfully that the pommel in
+some miraculous way jumped up and smashed the crystal in my watch, the
+same being carried in that mysterious place, the shirt waist front, where
+most women carry their watches, pocket books, and love letters.
+
+When we got into the open the terrible bellowing--a combination of
+shriek, groan, and roar in varying pitch--grew louder, and I could just
+discern a waving ghostly mass in the gray morning mist. I wondered if
+this were the herd, but found it was only the cloud of dust in which it
+was enveloped.
+
+Four of the cowboys had already disappeared in different directions. I
+heard the 'WB' boss say, "Billy, to the left flank. Van, them blamed
+heifers," as he flew past them.
+
+Van dashed forward, I gave my black mare a cut with the quirt and
+followed. Van's face, as he turned around to remonstrate, was a study of
+surprise, distress, and disgust, for I was undoubtedly breaking rules.
+
+"Don't bother about me," I called as airily as possible, as I shot past
+him. He had checked his horse's speed, but now there was nothing to do
+but to follow me as fast as he could. I shall have to record that he
+swore, as he turned sharply to the right into a group of cattle. Poor
+man, it was dreadful to saddle him with a woman at such a juncture, but
+I was not a woman just then. I was a green cowboy and frightened to
+death, as the cattle closed around me, a heavy mass of ponderous forms,
+here wedged in tightly and bellowing, some with the pain of being
+crushed, some for their calves. I expected every instant to be trampled
+under foot.
+
+"Stick to your horse, whatever you do, and work to the left," I heard Van
+shouting to me over the backs of a dozen cows. The dust, the noise, and
+the smell of those struggling creatures appalled and sickened me. How was
+I ever going to work to the left in that jam? I could see nothing but
+backs and heads and horns. I allowed myself one terrified groan which was
+fortunately lost in the general uproar. But the pony had been in such a
+situation before, if I had not, and she taught me what to do. She gave a
+sudden spring forward when a space just big enough for her appeared, then
+wove her way a few paces forward between two animals who had room enough
+on the other side of them to give way a little, while the space I had
+just left had closed up, a tight mass of groaning creatures.
+
+Thus we worked our way to the left whenever there was a chance, and at
+last through the dust I could see the heavenly open space beyond.
+Forgetting my tactics, I made straight for it, and was caught in one of
+those terrible waves of tightly pressed creatures which is caused by
+those on the outside pressing towards the centre, and the centre giving
+until there is no more space, when comes the crush. Fortunately I was on
+the outskirts of this crush, and by holding my feet up high we managed to
+squeeze through that dreadful, dust covered, stamping, snorting bedlam
+into the glorious free air and sunshine. Already I had a much better
+conception of what a 'whole lot' of cattle meant.
+
+From the vantage ground of a little hill I could see the whole herd, and
+realised that I had been in only a small bunch of it, composed of cows
+and calves. Had I gone to the right I should soon have gotten into a
+raging mass of some thousand head of bulls. They were pawing and tearing
+up the ground that but a little before had been covered with grass and
+late flowers, and occasionally goring one another. The cowboys were
+riding on the outskirts of this life-destroying horde, forcing the
+stragglers back into line, and by many a sudden dash forward, then to the
+right, sharp wheel about, and more spurts this way and that, were slowly
+driving it toward another mass of cattle, a half mile further on, which
+could be distinguished only by the clouds of dust which enveloped it.
+
+Van Anden, meanwhile, in the small bunch with which I had had such an
+intimate acquaintance, was acting as though he had lost his wits, or so
+it seemed to me until I began to understand what he was doing. He would
+dart into the bunch, scattering cattle right and left, and would weave
+in and out, out and in, waving his arms, shouting, throwing his rope,
+occasionally hitting an animal across the nose or the flank, sometimes
+twisting their tails, dodging blows and kicks, and finally emerge driving
+before him a cow followed by her calf. These another cowboy would take
+charge of and drive to a small bunch of cows and calves which I now
+noticed for the first time, separating them from their relations, who
+remonstrated in loud bellowings, stampings and freakish, brief, ill
+judged attacks. And then I understood what it meant to 'cut out' cattle
+from 'a whole lot.'
+
+When the calves and cows were finally separated, it was necessary to
+drive them also to the Big Flat for the afternoon's work of branding
+those that 'needed it.' Van guarded the rear of the bunch and of course
+I rode with him, that is as near as I could, for he was as restless as a
+blue bottle fly in a glass jar, dashing hither and thither, keeping those
+crazy creatures together, and ever pushing them forward. The dust and
+heat and noise and smell and continual action made my head ache. So this
+was cowboy life, Van's choice! I thought of a certain far away, well
+ordered home, with perhaps a sweet voiced mother and well groomed sister,
+and wondered, even while I knew the answer. On the one hand, peace,
+comfort, affection, and the eternal sameness; on the other, effort,
+hardship, fighting sometimes, but ever with the new day a whole world of
+unlived possibilities, change, action, and bondage to no one.
+
+A particularly fractious heifer at this point suddenly changed my
+contemplation of Van Anden's character into a lively share of Van
+Anden's job. The creature was making good time straight towards me, and
+as I had dropped considerably behind the herd in order to breathe some
+fresh air and to be free from the dust, I knew that it meant a long hard
+chase for Van and his tired horse if I did not head off that heifer; I
+felt I owed him that much. I had seen the cowboys do that very thing a
+hundred times that morning, but you cannot stand on your toe by watching
+a ballet dancer do it. However, I started on a gallop, slanting
+diagonally towards the creature, swinging one arm frantically (I really
+could not let go with both) and yelling "Hi, hi!" I wondered what would
+happen next, for to be honest, I was exquisitely scared. Why scared? It
+is not for me to explain a woman's dread of the unknown and untried.
+
+[Illustration: I STARTED ON A GALLOP, SWINGING ONE ARM.]
+
+I heard Van shouting, but could not understand. To know you are right and
+then go ahead is a pretty plan, but how to know? The animal did not stop
+or swerve from its course. We would surely collide. What was I to do? Oh,
+for a precedent! Evidently the mare was aware of one, for she wheeled to
+the right just in time to miss the oncoming heifer, and we raced
+alongside for a few seconds. I had so nearly parted company with my mount
+in the last manoeuvre (centaurs would have an enormous advantage as
+cowboys) that I had lost all desire to help Van and only wanted to get
+away from that heifer, to make an honourable dismount, and go somewhere
+by myself where a little brook babbled nothings, and the forget-me-nots
+placidly slept. Rough riding and adventures of the Calamity Jane order
+tempted me no more.
+
+Whether now the heifer did the proper thing or not, I cannot say, but
+she circled around with me on the outer side (I suspect my cow pony knew
+how it was done) and was half way back to the herd when Van took it in
+charge. His face bore a broad grin for the first time that day, from
+what emotions caused I have never been able to determine. I, of course,
+said nothing.
+
+Then, oh, the joy of that round up dinner! The 'WB' outfit had a meal
+tent, a mess wagon, and a cook for the men, and a rope corral, food and
+water for the horses. Everybody was happy for the noon hour, save the
+unlucky ones whose turn it was to guard the herd. Bob had driven the
+ex-mayor's wife, the sad eyed spinster, and Nimrod over to join us at
+dinner. The boss greeted Nimrod with the assurance that I was 'all right'
+and could apply any time for a job. I may as well say that Nimrod had
+allowed me to go without him in the morning, because the cattle business
+was no novelty to him; because daybreak rising did not appeal to him as a
+pastime; and because, at the time I broached the subject, being engaged
+in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the
+consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is
+insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out
+for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished
+and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same
+question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon
+I rode in the wagon.
+
+The cowboy meal, which I believe was not elaborated for us, was a healthy
+solid affair of meat, vegetables, hot biscuit, coffee, and prunes,
+appetisingly cooked and unstintingly served, for the Bad Land appetite is
+like unto that of the Rocky Mountains, lusty and big. The saddling of
+fresh horses made a lively scene for a few moments in the corral; then
+the men rode off for the afternoon's business of branding.
+
+The ranch party packed itself into a three-seated buckboard and we
+followed behind. We went at a wide safe distance from the half-crazed
+herds, which had been driven this way and that until they knew not what
+they wanted, nor what was wanted of them, to where a huge fire was
+blazing and rapidly turning cold black iron to red hot. These irons were
+fashioned in curious shapes, from six to ten inches long and fastened to
+a four foot iron handle. The smell of burning flesh was in the air, and
+horrid shrieks. Beyond was the ceaseless bellowing and stamping and
+weaving of the herds.
+
+From the time I got into the wagon and became a mere onlooker, my point
+of view changed. The exhilaration of action had disappeared. I was a
+cowboy no longer. The cattle in the morning had been stupid foolish
+creatures, dangerous in their blind strength, which must be made to do
+what one willed. Now they were poor, dumb, persecuted beasts which must
+be tormented, even tortured (for who shall say that red hot iron on
+tender flesh is not torture?) and eventually butchered for the swelling
+of man's purse. I saw the riders dash towards an animal who 'needed
+branding'--which I discovered to mean one that had hitherto escaped the
+iron, or that had changed owners--throw a rope over its head or horns,
+fasten the other end to the pommel, and drag it to the fire, where it was
+thrown and tied. Then it was seized by several men who sat on its head
+and legs to hold it comparatively still while another took the hot brand
+from the fire and pressed it against the quivering side of the animal. It
+was then released and, bawling with pain and fright, allowed to return to
+its mother, who had been kept off by another rider. A sound at my side
+informed me that the little old maid was weeping copiously.
+
+It is a pity I could not have had the cowboy's point of view, for mine
+was most unpleasant, but my little glimpse of the other side was gone,
+and gladly I drove away from the mighty smells and sounds of that
+unfortunate mass of seething life, subjected to the will of a dozen men,
+Van Anden the worst of the lot. And as we went silently through the sweet
+cool air, crisp as an October leaf, where a bluebird was twittering a
+wing-free song on the poplar yonder, where silver-turned willows were
+gently swaying, and a jolly chipmunk was rippling from log to stone, I
+wondered whether the Newport girl had really done so wrong after all.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE SWEET PEA LADY SOMEONE ELSE'S MOUNTAIN SHEEP.
+
+
+It was at Winnipeg (you do not want to know how we got there) that I
+first walked into the aura of the Sweet Pea Lady, and by so doing
+prepared the way for the shatterment of another illusion--namely, that
+'little deeds of kindness' always result in mutual pleasure.
+
+Flowers and fruit in Manitoba are treasured as sunshine in London, for
+you must remember that Manitoba is a very new country, that it is only a
+paltry few thousands of years since its thousands of miles were scraped
+flat as a floor. Everything even yet looks so immodest on those vast
+stretches. The clumps of trees stand out in such a bold brazen fashion.
+The houses appear as though stuck on to the landscape. Even an honest
+brown cow can not manage to melt herself into the endless stretch of
+prairies. In fact, the little scenic accidents of trees and hollows,
+which mean fruit and flowers, are mainly due to man.
+
+So, when our friends who saw us off on the west-bound Canadian Pacific
+left in our sleeper two huge bouquets of sweet peas and ten pounds of
+blackberries, we knew that the finest garden in Winnipeg had been rifled
+to do us pleasure. Now, I dearly love flowers and fruit, as I did the
+giver, but ten pounds of great, fat blackberries and an armful of sweet
+peas in a cramped stuffy Pullman caused my heart to resound in the minor
+chords. We rallied again and again to demolish the fruit as we voyaged,
+and sat with one foot on top of the other to avoid crushing the lovely
+pea blossoms as we fidgeted about, but the results of our efforts, messy
+fruit in hopeless abundance and withering leaves in dreary profusion,
+were discouraging.
+
+When the noon hour came, Nimrod carried the fruit basket into the
+Diner and set it down on the table. The waiter eyed us askance.
+"It's a dollar each for dinner, sah." It was clear we were emigrants.
+We paid the waiter's demand and then from soup to coffee ate
+blackberries--blackberries until we were black in the mouth and pale in
+the face. Then we picked up our basket, upon the contents of which our
+labours had apparently made no impression, and, hastily pushing a plate
+over the rich red stain it had left on the table cloth, departed with our
+fruit and a grieved feeling in the region of our hearts. It may not be
+amiss to remark that I have never eaten a blackberry since. To get to our
+car it was necessary to pass through another sleeper, where I noticed a
+made up berth in which was reclining a young woman, and hovering over her
+solicitously a man, evidently the husband.
+
+Hope and joy awoke within me--perhaps she would like some blackberries!
+No, she would not venture to eat fruit, and with many thanks, oh, many,
+many thanks, she declined it. But the blessedness of giving I felt must
+be mine, so I bribed the porter to take as many sweet peas as he could
+carry and present them to the sick lady in the next car, and on no
+account to tell where he got them. I did not want the thanks, neither did
+I want the sweet peas, but I was illogical enough to hope that the
+Recording Angel would be busy and accept the act at its face value as a
+"deed of kindness."
+
+It must have been a slack day with the angel, for this is a brief but
+accurate account of what followed, and I am willing to leave it to any
+human, whether my punishment was not out of all proportion to the offense
+committed:
+
+_One hour later_. Train stops for ten minutes. I got out for fresh air
+and promenade on platform. Behold, the first object that meets my gaze is
+the sick lady, miraculously recovered. She swooped down upon me with the
+deadly light of determination in her eyes. I was discovered. There was no
+escape. I was going to be thanked--and I was thanked. Up and down,
+backwards and forwards, inside and out, and all hands around. And when
+she paused breathless her husband took up the theme. It seems she was a
+semi invalid, and the sweet peas were quite the most heavenly thing that
+could have happened to her. Nimrod joined me at this moment and he was
+thanked separately and dually, for being the husband of his wife, I
+suppose. At last we were able to retire with profuse bows, tired but
+exceedingly thankful that the incident, though trying, was ended.
+
+_Three minutes later_. Have been driven indoors by the sweet pea woman,
+as each turn of the walk brought us face to face, when it immediately
+became necessary to nod and smile, and for our husbands to lift hats and
+smile, until we looked like loose-necked manikins. At least, the sleeper
+is tranquil, if stuffy.
+
+_Supper time_. Have been thanked again by the Sweet Pea Lady, who sat at
+our table. She had sweet peas in her hair, and at her belt. The husband
+had a boutonniere of them.
+
+_Next morning, Carberry_. Bade an elaborate farewell to the Sweet Pea
+Lady. She is going straight to the coast where they catch steamer for
+Japan. Praise be to Allah! I shall see her no more. The heavy polite
+is wearing.
+
+_Next day, Banff Hot Springs_. First person on the hotel steps I see
+is the S.P. Lady. She rushed up and assured me that the S.P.'s were
+still fresh, and that she and her husband had unexpectedly stopped
+over for a day.
+
+_Next day_. Spent the day avoiding S.P.L. Left for Glacier House in the
+evening. At least, I shall not see S.P.L. there, as they have to go right
+through to catch steamer.
+
+_Two days later, Glacier House_. Had horrid shock. Found apparition of
+S.P. Lady sitting beside me at breakfast table. She began to speak, then
+I knew it was the real thing. She assured me that many of the S.P.'s were
+still fresh, as she had clipped their stems night and morning. I again
+said good by to her, and to those ghastly flowers. She just has time to
+catch her steamer.
+
+_Three days later: Vancouver_. Ran across the S.P. Lady in hotel
+corridor. She saw me first. There was another weary interchange of the
+heavy polite. Her steamer had been delayed from sailing for two days--in
+order that we might meet again, I have no doubt.
+
+_Next morning. She's gone_. Ring the bells, boom the cannon! I saw the
+Japan steamer bear the Sweet Pea Lady rapidly into deep water. At last
+easeful peace may again dream on my shoulder. When I returned to the
+hotel the clerk handed me an envelope enclosing a lady's visiting card
+(kind fate, she lives in Japan) on which was written "In grateful
+appreciation of your kindness," and with the card were two sprays of
+Pressed Sweet Peas.
+
+After this when it comes to "scattering deeds of kindness on the weary
+way," I shall be the woman who didn't, and who shall say me nay?
+However, all this flower and fruit piece was but an episode; the event of
+that journey was the intimate acquaintance we made of the Great Glacier
+of the Selkirks, and the nice opportunity I had to lose my life. And the
+only reason this tale is not more tragic is because, given the choice, I
+preferred to lose the opportunity rather than the life.
+
+I wonder if I can give any idea to one who has not seen it what a snow
+slide really is; how it sweeps away every vestige of trees, grass, and
+roots, and leaves a surface of shirting, unstable earth almost as
+treacherous as quicksand.
+
+Nimrod and I had paid a superficial visit to the Glacier the day before:
+that is, we had gone as far as its forefoot, a hard but thoroughly safe
+climb, and had explored with awe the green glass ice caves with which the
+Great Glacier has seen fit to decorate its lower line, wonderful rooms of
+ice, emerald in the shadows, with glacial streams for floors.
+
+[Illustration: THE WARM BEATING HEART OF A MOUNTAIN SHEEP.]
+
+So the next morning we started out, intending a little bit to further
+explore the vast, cold, heartless ice sheet (vaster than all the Swiss
+glaciers together), but more to hunt for the warm beating heart of a
+mountain sheep, whose home is here. We had been travelling for miles in
+the wildest kind of earth upheavals, for the Selkirks are still hard and
+fast in the grip of the ice king; huge boulders, uprooted trees, mighty
+mountains, released but recently from the glacial wet blanket, when
+Nimrod discovered the stale track of a mountain sheep. We followed it
+eagerly till it brought us across the path of a snow slide. At that point
+it was about five hundred feet across, at an angle of forty-five
+degrees; below us a thousand feet was a vicious looking glacial torrent;
+above, an equal distance, was the lower edge of the glacier, the mother
+of all this devastation.
+
+The fearless-footed mountain sheep had crossed this sliding crumbling
+earth and gravel incline with apparent ease. For us it was go on or go
+back. There was no middle course. The row of tiny hoof marks running
+straight across from one safe bank to the other deceived us. It could not
+be so very difficult. We dismounted; Nimrod threw the bridle over his
+horse's head and started across, leading his beast. The animal snorted as
+he felt the foot-hold giving way beneath him, but Nimrod pulled him
+along. It was impossible to stand still. It would have been as easy for
+quicksilver to remain at the top of an incline. Amid rattling stones and
+sliding earth they landed on the firm bank beyond, fully three hundred
+feet below me.
+
+It was a shivery sight, but I started expecting the horse would follow.
+He, however, jerked back snorting and trembling, which unexpected move
+upset my equilibrium, uncertain at best, and I fell. Nothing but the
+happy chance of a tight grip on the reins kept me from sliding down that
+dreadful bank, over the rock into the water, and so into eternity (Please
+pardon the Salvation Army metaphor).
+
+I had barely time to right myself and get out of the way of my horse,
+which now plunged forward upon the sliding rock with me. The terrified
+animal lost his head completely. I could not keep away from his hoofs. He
+would not let me keep in front, I dare not get above for fear I should
+slip under his feet, or below him for fear he should slide upon me. I
+lost my balance again while dodging away from him as he plunged and
+balked, but managed to grab his mane and we both slid a horrible
+distance. I could hear Nimrod shouting on the bank, but did not seem to
+understand him. I had the stage, centre front, and it was all I could
+attend to.
+
+We were now opposite to Nimrod, but only half way across. Such an ominous
+rolling and tumbling of stones and tons of earth sliding down over the
+low precipice into the water! I expected to be with it each instant.
+Nimrod had started out after me.
+
+[Illustration: I COULD NOT KEEP AWAY FROM HIS HOOFS.]
+
+Then I understood what he was shouting: "Let go that horse." Why, of
+course! Why had I not thought of that? I did let go and, thus freed,
+managed to get across, falling, slipping, but still making progress
+until I reached the safe ground one hundred feet lower in a decidedly
+dilapidated condition. My animal followed me instinctively for a short
+distance, and Nimrod got him the rest of the way--I do not know how. It
+did not interest me then.
+
+And the saddest of all, the mountain sheep had vanished into the unknown,
+taking his little tracks with him, so we had to go back in a roundabout
+way, without sheep, without joy--and without a tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+IN WHICH THE TENDERFOOT LEARNS A NEW TRICK.
+
+
+For those who have driven four-in-hand, this will have no message. But as
+four-in-hand literature seems to be somewhat limited and my first lesson
+was somewhat drastic, I shall venture to tell you how it felt.
+
+Of coaching there are two kinds: Eastern coaching, with well-groomed
+full-fed horses, who are never worked harder than is good for them; with
+silver-plated harness, and coach with the latest springs and running
+gear, umbrella rack, horn, lunch larder, and what not; with footmen or
+postilions, according to the degree of style, to run to the horses' heads
+at the first hitch; with the gentleman driver in cream box coat and
+beribboned whip; with everything down to the pole pin correct and
+immaculate.
+
+Then there is Western coaching, which is more properly termed staging,
+for which is used any vehicle that will hold together and whose wheels
+will turn round. This is pulled by half-broken shaggy horses which would
+kick any man who ventured near them with brush or currycomb, and which
+are sometimes made to travel until they drop in the road. The harness on
+such coaching trips is an assortment of single, double, leaders and
+wheelers sets, mended with buckskin or wire and thrown on irrespective of
+fit. Lucky the cayuse who happens to be the right size for his harness.
+
+And the driver! No cream box coat for him--provident the one who owns a
+slicker and a coat of weather green (the same being the result of sun and
+rain on any given color). And the people in the stage hoist no white and
+red silk parasols. They are there because they are "going somewhere." My
+multi-murderous cook taught me the distinction between "just travellin'"
+and "going somewhere."
+
+As for the roads--oh, those Rocky Mountain roads! They make coaching
+quite a different thing from that on the smooth boulevards around New
+York. I have twice made seventy-five miles in twelve hours, by having
+four relays, but the average rate of travel is about twenty miles in
+eight hours. And the day when I first took the ribbons in my hands to
+guide--four horses we were from nine in the morning till five at night
+going twelve miles. This was the way of it: Nimrod and I were on a
+hunting trip in the Canadian Rockies, and as the government map said
+there was a road, though not a good one, we decided to carry our
+belongings in a four-horse wagon, in which we could also ride if we
+liked, and to have saddle horses besides.
+
+Green, a man of the region, was the driver and cook, and we had as guest
+a famous bear hunter from the Sierra Nevadas. On the first two days out
+from the little mountain town where we started, we saw many tracks of
+black bear, which encouraged the hunters to think that they might find a
+grizzly (which, by the way, they did not).
+
+The dust was thick and red, enveloping us all day long like some horrible
+insistent monster that had resolved itself into atoms to choke, blind and
+strangle us. Nimrod looked like a clay man--hair, eyebrows, mustache,
+skin, and clothes were all one solid coating of red dust. We were all
+alike. Even the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bottom of a box, covered by
+other boxes, bags and a canvas, became adulterated almost past use.
+
+On the fourth day this changed, and we camped at the foot of a granite
+mountain. It made one think of the Glass Mountain of fable, with its
+smooth stretches of polished rock shining in the sun. That a human being
+should dare to take a wagon over such a place seemed incredible. Yet
+there the road was, zigzagging up the rocky slope, while here and there
+the jagged outlines of blasted rock showed where the all-powerful
+dynamite had been used to make a resting place for straining horses.
+
+That morning excitement surrounded our out-of-door breakfast table. We
+had had strange visitors during the night, while we slept. A mountain
+lion, the beautiful tan-coated vibrant-tailed puma, had nosed within ten
+feet of me and then, not liking the camp-fire glow and unalarmed by my
+inert form, had silently retreated.
+
+It made me feel creepy to see how easily that lithe-limbed powerful
+creature might have had me for a midnight meal. But I was not trying to
+do him harm, and so he granted me the same tolerance. Then, too, not
+far away was a bear track, and the canned peaches were fewer than the
+night before.
+
+All of this caused Nimrod and the bear-hunter to saddle their horses
+early; and agreeing to meet us at night on the other side of the
+mountain, where the map showed a stream, they set out for a day's hunt.
+Nimrod's horse having gone slightly lame, I offered mine, a swift-footed
+intelligent dear, and agreed to ride in the wagon.
+
+It was the same old story. Virtue is somebody else's reward. I never had
+a worse day in the mountains. Green and I started blithely enough by
+nine, which had meant a 5:30 rising in the cold gray dawn. The horses had
+been worked every day since the start, and were jaded.
+
+We went slowly along the only level road in our journey that day; but the
+load did not seem to be riding well, and at the beginning of the ascent
+Green got out to investigate. He said the spring was out of order. The
+wagon was what is known as a thorough-brace, which means that there are
+two large loopy steel bands on which the wagon box rests; the loops are
+filled in with countless strips of leather, forming a pad for the springs
+to play on. (The Century Dictionary will please not copy this
+definition.) The Deadwood stage coach was a thorough-brace, I believe.
+Another interesting out-of-date detail in the construction of this wagon
+was that the brake had no mechanical device for holding it in position
+when it was put on hard, and the driver had to rely upon his strength of
+limb to keep it in place. It seems that Green, in pounding these bits of
+leather in the spring, had badly crushed his left hand. He said nothing
+to me, and I did not notice that, contrary to custom, he was driving with
+his right hand, which he usually reserved for the whip and the brake.
+
+We crossed the shallow brook and started up the very steep and very
+rocky road, when everything happened at once. Two of the horses refused
+to pull and danced up and down in the one spot, a sickening thing for a
+horse to do. This meant the instant application of the brake. We had
+already begun to slip backward (the most uncomfortable sensation I know,
+barring actual pain). Nimrod's horse, tied on behind, gave a frightened
+snort and broke his rope. Green attempted to take the reins with his
+left hand. They dropped from his grasp, and I saw that his fingers were
+purple and black.
+
+"Grab the lines, can you?" he said, as he seized the whip and put both
+feet on the brake. The leaders were curveting back on the wheelers in a
+way which meant imminent mix up, their legs over traces and behind
+whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid
+rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp
+turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I
+had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson
+left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of
+difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, broad, and
+level stretches with plenty of room to pull a rein and see what would
+happen. I had to spring into the situation with knowledge, as Minerva did
+into life, full grown. It was no kindergarten way of learning to drive
+four-in-hand.
+
+I grabbed the reins in both hands. There were yards of them, rods of
+them, miles of them--they belonged to a six or sixteen horse set. I do
+not know which. I sat on them. They writhed in my lap, wrapped around my
+feet, and around the gun against my knee, in a hopeless and dangerous
+muddle. Of course the reins were twisted. I did not know one from the
+other. I gave a desperate jerk which sent the leaders plunging to the
+right, where fortunately they brought up against the rock wall. Had they
+gone the other way nothing but our destiny could have saved us from going
+over the edge. _Crack_ went the whip in the right place.
+
+"Slack the lines!" Green cried, as he eased the brake. A lash of the whip
+for each wheeler, and we started forward, the horses disentangling
+themselves from the harness as by a miracle, just as the rear wheels were
+hovering over the bluff. Green dropped the whip (his left hand was quite
+useless) and straightened out the reins for me.
+
+"Can you do it?" he asked, grasping the whip, as the horses showed signs
+of stopping again. To attend to the brake was physically impossible.
+Green could not do it and drive with one hand.
+
+"Yes," I said, "but watch me"--an injunction scarcely necessary.
+
+[Illustration: WE STARTED FORWARD, JUST AS THE REAR WHEELS WERE HOVERING
+OVER THE EDGE.]
+
+If ever a woman put her whole mind to a thing, I did on that
+four-in-hand. There was no place for mistakes. There was no place for
+anything but the right thing, and do it I must or run the risk of
+breaking my very dusty, very brown, but none the less precious neck.
+
+A sharp turn in a steep road with rocks a foot high disputing the right
+of way with the wheels, a heavy load, horses that do not want to pull,
+and a green driver--that was the situation. If it does not appeal to you
+as one of the horribles in life, try it once.
+
+"Run your leaders farther up the bank--left, left! _Get up, Milo!
+Frank, get out of that_! Now sharp to the right. _Whoa! Steady_!
+Left--left, I say! _Milo, whoa_! Now to the right, quick! Let 'em on
+the bank more. _Nellie, easy_--_Whoa! Steady, George_!" Crack went the
+whip on the leaders.
+
+"Hold your lines tighter. Pull that nigh leader. _Get out of that, Frank!
+Now steady, boys_! Don't pull--there!"
+
+Down went the brake; we were safely round the turn, and all hands rested
+for a moment.
+
+Thus we worked all that morning, Green with the brake, the whip, and his
+tongue; I with the lines, what strength I had and mother wit in lieu of
+experience.
+
+There were stretches of two hundred feet of granite, smooth and polished
+as a floor, where the horses repeatedly slipped and fell, and where the
+wheels brought forth hollow mocking rumbles.
+
+There were sections where the rocky ledges succeeded one another in
+steps, and the animals had to pull the heavy wagon up rises from a foot
+to eighteen inches high by sheer strength--as easy to drive up a flight
+of brownstone steps on Fifth Avenue. There were places between huge
+boulders where a swerve of a foot to the right or to the left would have
+sent us crashing into the unyielding granite.
+
+When we got to the top there was no place to rest--only rock, rock
+everywhere. No water, no food for the exhausted horses, nothing to do but
+to push on to the bottom--and such going! Have you ever felt the
+shuddering of a wagon with brake hard on, as it poised in air the
+instant before it dropped a foot or two to the next level, from hard rock
+to hard rock? Have you ever tried to keep four horses away from under a
+wagon, and yet sufficiently near it not to precipitate the crash? Have
+you ever at the same time tried to keep them from falling on the rocks
+ahead and from plunging over the bank as you turn a sharp curve on a
+steep down grade? If you have, then you know the nature of my first
+lesson in four-in-hand driving.
+
+We got to the bottom at dusk. I was too tired to speak. Every muscle set
+up a separate complaint and I had had nothing to eat since morning, as we
+had expected to make camp by noon. The world seemed indeed a very drab
+place. We found the hunters careering around searching for us. They
+thought they had missed us--as they had done the bear.
+
+I have driven, and been driven, hundreds of miles since, but there never
+was a ride like those twelve, cruel, mocking, pitiless miles over
+Granite Mountain, when necessity taught me a very pretty trick, which,
+however, I have not yet been tempted to display at the Madison Square
+Garden in November.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+_OUR_ MINE.
+
+
+It now behooves me to state that, between the events of the last chapter
+and this, Nimrod and I heard the hum, the wail, and the shriek that make
+the song of the Westinghouse brake before we found ourselves deposited at
+the flourishing mining camp of Red Ridge in the Arizona Rockies, nine
+thousand feet in the air.
+
+Did ever a tenderfoot escape from the mountains without at least having a
+try at making his or her fortune in a mine--gold one preferred? We, of
+course, had the chance of our lives, and who knows what might have
+happened if only the fat woman and the lean woman had not gotten jealous
+of each other, and thereby wrecked the company?
+
+The gold is, or is not, in the fastnesses of the earth as before, but
+where, oh, where, is the lean woman of lineage and the fat woman of
+money? The lean woman had quality. She was the daughter of somebody
+who had done something, but, unlike _Becky Sharp_, she had not been
+successful in living richly in San Francisco on nothing a year. Nobody
+knows whose daughter the fat woman was, but in her very comfortable
+home in Kansas that had not mattered, and, besides, she had saved a
+few hundreds.
+
+These two women had husbands, who had entered into a mining scheme
+together. The man from Frisco was a good-looking, well-educated, jovial
+fellow, with the purses of several rich friends to back him up, and with
+a great desire to replenish his purse with the yellow metal direct,
+rather than to acquire it by the sweat of his brow. He was many other
+things, but, to be brief, he was a promoter. The man from Kansas had the
+pride of the uneducated, and a little money, and was also not averse to
+getting rich fast.
+
+Nimrod, the third partner, likewise encumbered with a wife on the spot,
+desired to make _his_ everlasting fortune, retire from the painting of
+pictures and the making of books, and grub in the field of science and
+live happily ever after.
+
+For two weeks we were all together at the only hotel at Cartersville, a
+hamlet of perhaps thirty souls. It took only two weeks to wreck the
+company. The mine was a mile and a half away, over a very up-and-down
+mountain road which on the first day the fat woman and I walked with
+our husbands, and which Mrs. Frisco and her husband had travelled in
+Mrs. Kansas' phaeton--the result of a little way Mrs. Frisco had of
+getting the best.
+
+Three days of this calm appropriation of her carriage while she walked
+ruffled Mrs. Kansas' temper. When she heard a rumour that Mrs. Frisco had
+stated disdainfully to the landlady that there could be no thought of
+recognising Mrs. Kansas socially, but that she must be tolerated because
+of her money in the enterprise, her politeness grew frigid and the
+trouble began to brew.
+
+While perfectly willing to watch the logomachy when it should arrive, I
+had no wish to take part. I was willing to make money, but not to make
+enemies, so Nimrod and I removed ourselves as much as possible from the
+Cartersville Hotel, took long walks and rides over the glorious Chihuahua
+Mountains, poked around the abandoned mines, spied out the deer and
+mountain lion and the ubiquitous coyote and all the indigenous beasts and
+birds of the air thereof. We usually managed to arrive at the mine when
+the partners and their wives were elsewhere.
+
+The mine, _our_ mine, was a long horizontal hole in the mountain, with a
+tiny leaf-choked stream trickling past the entrance, heavy timbers
+propping up the inert mass of dirt and stone just above our heads, piles
+of uninteresting rock dumped to one side, the "pay dirt." I had seen such
+things before, and they had said nothing to me. But this was _our_ mine,
+_our_ stream, _our_ dump.
+
+McCaffrey, the foreman, put rubber boots on me in the little smithy which
+formed a part of the entrance of the tunnel, and thus equipped I entered
+the tunnel. The day shift, represented by two dancing lights far off in
+the blackness, was preparing to blast.
+
+I advanced uncertainly, my own candle blinding me. Water trickled from
+the roof and walls of this rock-bound passage seven feet high and four
+feet wide. A stream of it flowed by the tiny tram track. The hollow sound
+of the mallet on the crowbar forcing its way into the stubborn wall grew
+louder as we approached, until we stood with the miners in a foot or so
+of water which showed yellow and shining in the flickering light of four
+candles. Then we went back to the smithy to wait the result of the blast.
+
+There was a horrid jarring booming sound. The miners listened intently.
+McCaffrey said, "One." Another explosion in the tunnel followed--"Two."
+Another--"Three." Then a silence. "That's bad," said McCaffrey, shaking
+his head. "An unexploded cap."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"There were four charges and should have been four explosions. It's
+liable to go off when we go in there."
+
+"Oh!" I said.
+
+The miners waited a while for the fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated
+and kept me away from the tunnel mouth, saying:
+
+"If you ever get a dynamite headache you will never want to come near the
+mine again. And, besides, that unexploded cap may do damage yet."
+
+I went back to the smithy to wait, for it was the last of October, and
+snow in the mountains at ten thousand feet is cold. I attempted to sit
+down on a keg behind the little sheet-iron stove, which was nearly red
+hot.
+
+"You better not sit down on that kaig," said one of the men calmly,
+without pausing in his work.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it's dirty, and, besides, it's nitro-glycerine."
+
+"Nitro-glycerine! Why is it in _here_, and so close to the stove? Won't
+it explode?" and I checked a desire to retreat in disorder.
+
+"No, 't'ain't no danger, if it don't get too hot and ain't jarred. You
+see, it won't go off if it's too cold, so we keep a little in here and
+kind o' watch it."
+
+The keg was within two feet of the stove. Suppose that a dog or something
+were to knock it over! But miners do not suppose.
+
+Just then a tremendous explosion in the tunnel seemed to make the whole
+earth vibrate. It was followed by a rattling and crashing of rocks, which
+told us that the last cap had gone off and had done good work.
+
+Half an hour later, when it was safe from dynamite fumes, I went back to
+our hole in the ground. Nimrod had left me, lured away by some fox tracks
+trailing up the mountain. The weird scene was too interesting for me to
+leave until the arrival of the fat and lean women (Mrs. Frisco had
+persuaded Mrs. Kansas to drive her over) caused me to remember that the
+parlour fire at the Cartersville Hotel must be very comfortable, and that
+it was a mile and a half of tiresome snow away.
+
+Evidently the wives of my husband's partners had disagreed on the way,
+for the air was electric as they greeted me, and to avoid another
+tete-a-tete they at once turned to accompany me out of the tunnel. I
+was the last.
+
+The scene was now properly set for a mining accident, so there was
+nothing for a self respecting tunnel to do but to accordingly, which it
+did. Just as the fat woman and the lean woman passed into the open air,
+and I was nearly at the mouth of the tunnel, it caused its roof to cave
+in so close behind me that, had I not instinctively rushed out, some of
+the flying stones, timbers, and dirt must have knocked me to the ground.
+
+[Illustration: THE TUNNEL CAUSED ITS ROOF TO CAVE IN CLOSE BEHIND ME.]
+
+As it was, I landed sprawling in the snow outside, sweeping the lean
+woman down with me. It was very like a dime novel. Three lone women who,
+for purposes of intensification, may be called enemies, staring with
+white faces at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise that a minute before
+it had been a black hole. And at the other end of that hole now were two
+men horribly imprisoned in a rock-walled tomb without air or food,
+perhaps dead. We could not tell how much of a cave-in it was.
+
+The lean woman rushed for Mrs. Kansas' horse and wagon and went to alarm
+the hamlet. I dashed up the hill a quarter of a mile to awaken the night
+shift, who were in their cabin sleeping. And the fat woman at a safe
+distance wrung her hands and uttered exclamations of horror and ill
+judged advice to our departing forms.
+
+Between the fright, the altitude, and the hill I had no breath left to
+speak with as I pounded on the door of the miner's hut. Mountaineers
+sleep lightly and do not make toilets, so it was barely ten minutes from
+the time of the cave-in when three men were working at the tunnel's mouth
+with pickaxes and shovels.
+
+The tunnel had not meant to be malicious, but merely to do the proper
+thing (it had not even disturbed the nitro-glycerine in the smithy). Not
+much earth had fallen, and in less than an hour we heard the shouts of
+the imprisoned men; in two hours they crawled into the air unhurt, and
+soon were helping the others to shore up the treacherous entrance, so
+that such a stirring thing could not happen again.
+
+There is not much more to tell. I believe that the tunnel is still there,
+boring its way into the heart of the mountain, where, perhaps, the lovely
+yellow gold is; but we no longer refer to it as _ours_, and Nimrod still
+has to work for our daily jam. For the insolence of Mrs. Frisco in
+leaving Mrs. Kansas stranded in the snow and obliging her to walk home on
+the cave-in day developed the brewing storm into such proportions that
+the next day their husbands did not speak as we gathered round the
+morning coffee. And the Kansases moved away into one of the other five
+houses in Cartersville. Mr. Kansas was not "going to see his wife
+insulted by an upstart--not he: he'd soon show them," and he did so
+effectively that the Red Ridge Mining Company was soon no more. We
+docketed our golden dreams 'unusable,' stowed them away, and returned
+with tranquil minds, if lighter purse, to milder and slower ways of
+getting rich.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE LAST WORD.
+
+
+Now this is the end. It is three years since I first became a
+woman-who-goes-hunting-with-her-husband. I have lived on jerked deer
+and alkali water, and bathed in dark-eyed pools, nestling among vast
+pines where none but the four footed had been before. I have been sung
+asleep a hundred times by the coyotes' evening lullaby, have felt the
+spell of their wild nightly cry, long and mournful, coming just as the
+darkness has fully come, lasting but a few seconds, and then heard no
+more till the night gives place to the fresh sheet of dawn. I have
+pored in the morning over the big round footprints of a mountain lion
+where he had sneaked in hours of darkness, past my saddle pillowed
+head. I have hunted much, and killed a little, the wary, the beautiful,
+the fleet-footed big game. I have driven a four-in-hand over corduroy
+roads and ridden horseback over the pathless vasty wilds of the
+continent's backbone.
+
+I have been nearly frozen eleven thousand feet in air in blinding snow,
+I have baked on the Dakota plains with the thermometer at 116 degrees,
+and I have met characters as diverse as the climate. I know what it
+means to be a miner and a cowboy, and have risked my life when need be,
+_but_, best of all, I have felt the charm of the glorious freedom, the
+quick rushing blood, the bounding motion, of the wild life, the joy of
+the living and of the doing, of the mountain and the plain; I have
+learned to know and feel some, at least, of the secrets of the Wild Ones.
+In short, though I am still a woman and may be tender, I am a Woman
+Tenderfoot no longer.
+
+[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN LION SNEAKED PAST MY SADDLE-PILLOWED HEAD.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman Tenderfoot, by
+Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
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