Cruisings in the Cascades Part 4

CHAPTER XI.

I had left my bedding at the Hot Springs Hotel, and returning to get it staid there all night. Early next morning (Friday, November 12) we crossed Harrison Lake, in a drenching rain, to the foot of a high mountain, about two miles from the springs, on which Pean, Captain George, and other Indians said there were plenty of goats. We beached our canoe, and made up packs for the climb up the mountain. The outfit consisted of our guns, my sleeping-bag, Pean's gun and blankets, a few sea biscuits, a piece of bacon, and some salt.

My sleeping-bag was wrapped up in a piece of canvas, and when I handed it to Pean, he commenced to unroll it to put his blankets in with it, but I objected. Visions of the insects with which I knew his bedding was inhabited rose up before me. I thought of the rotary drill, key-hole saw, and suction pump with which they are said to be armed, and I did not want any of them in my bag. So I unrolled the canvas only a part of its length, laid his blankets in and rolled it up again, hoping the remaining folds might prevent the vermin from finding their way in, and my reckoning proved correct. One of his blankets had been white in its day, but had long since lost its grip on that color, and was now about as p.r.o.nounced a brunette as its owner. The other blanket was gray, but even through this sombre shade, as well as through the rank odor it emitted, gave evidence that it had not been washed for many years. Pean brought with him a cotton bedspread that had also once been white, but left this with the canoe. In my pack I carried the grub, and an extra coat for use on the mountain, where we expected to encounter colder weather.

We started up the mountain at ten o'clock in the forenoon. For the first two miles we skirted its base to the eastward, through dense timber, crossing several deep, dark jungles and swamps. Then we began the ascent proper, and as soon as we got up a few hundred feet on the mountain side, we found numerous fresh deer-signs. We halted to rest, when Pean took from its case his gun, which up to this time he had kept covered, and which I naturally supposed to be a good, modern weapon. It proved, however, an old smooth bore, muzzle-loading, percussion-lock musket, of .65 calibre, with a barrel about fifty inches long. He drew out the wiping stick, on the end of which was a wormer, pulled a wad of paper from the gun and poured a charge of shot out into his hand. This he put carefully into his shot-bag. Then he took from another pouch a No. 1 buckshot, and dropped it into the muzzle of his musket. It rolled down onto the powder, when he again inserted the bunch of paper, rammed it home with the rod, put on a cap, and was loaded for bear, deer, or whatever else he might encounter. He then replaced the musket in its sealskin cover as carefully as if it had been a $300 breech-loader.

Nearly all these Indians use just such old muskets, bought from the Hudson Bay Company, and yet they keep them in covers made of the skin of the seal, which they kill in the rivers hereabout, or of deer or other animals. They take excellent care of their guns in this respect, but I have never seen one of them clean or oil his weapon, and several of them told me they seldom do so.

My Winchester express, with fancy stock, Lyman sight, etc., was a curiosity to them. None of them had ever seen anything like it, and one of them asked me what kind of a rifle it was. When told it was a Winchester, he said:

"I didn't know Winchester so big like dat. Didn't know he had stock like dat." He had only seen the little .44 Winchester, with a plain stock, and innocently supposed it was the only kind made.

Pean and I had a hard day's work toiling up the mountain through fallen timber, over and around great ledges of jutting rock, across deep, rugged canons and gulches, and through dense jungles of underbrush.

About two o'clock in the afternoon we halted, lay down for a rest, and had been there but a few minutes when I heard the sharp, familiar chatter of the little pine squirrel. I looked around quickly, expecting to see one within a few feet of me, but instead saw Pean lying close to the ground, beckoning to me and pointing excitedly up the game trail in which we had been walking. Looking through the thick, intervening brush, I saw two deer, a buck and a doe, looking toward us. They had not seen nor scented us, but had merely heard the chatter of the little squirrel, as they supposed, and, though apparently as completely deceived by it as I had been, they had stopped to listen, as they do at almost every sound they hear in the woods. But there was no squirrel there. Pean had taken this method of calling my attention, and had imitated the cry of the familiar little cone-eater so perfectly that even the deer had been deceived by it.

I cautiously and slowly drew my rifle to my shoulder, and taking aim at the breast of the buck, fired. Both deer bounded away into thicker brush, and were out of sight in an instant. Pean sprang after them, and in a few minutes I heard the dull, m.u.f.fled report of his musket. He shouted to me, and going to him I found the buck dead and the Indian engaged in butchering it. My bullet had gone a little farther to the left than I intended, breaking its shoulder, and had pa.s.sed out through the ribs on the same side. The deer had fallen after going but a few yards, but was not quite dead when Pean came up and shot it through the head. We took out the entrails, cut a choice roast of the meat for our supper and breakfast, and hurried on our way.

We camped at four o'clock on a small bench of the mountain, and you may rest a.s.sured, gentle reader, that our conversation in front of the camp fire that night was novel. Pean, you will remember, could not speak half a dozen words of English. He spoke entirely in Chinook, and I knew but a few words of that jargon. I had a Chinook dictionary with me, however, and by its aid was able to pick out the few words necessary in what little talking I had to do, and to translate enough of Pean's answers to my questions to get along fairly well. The great trouble with him seemed to be that he was wound up to talk, and whenever I made a remark or asked a question in his adopted language he turned loose, and talked until I shut him off with "Halo k.u.mtucks" (I don't understand). No matter how often I repeated this he seemed soon to forget it, and would open on me again whenever he got a cue. He was a fluent talker, and if I had only been well up in the jargon, I could have got lots of pointers from him.

The deer of this region is the true black-tail (_Cervus columbia.n.u.s_), not the mule-deer (_Cervus macrotis_), that is so often miscalled the black-tail. The black-tail is smaller than the mule-deer, and its ears, though not so large as those of the latter, are larger than those of the Virginia deer (_Cervus virginia.n.u.s_). Its tail is white underneath, dark outside, shading to black at the lower end, and while longer than that of the mule-deer, is not so long as that of the Virginia deer.

CHAPTER XII.

Chinook is a queer jargon. It is said to have been manufactured many years ago by an employe of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, who taught the princ.i.p.al chiefs of various Indian tribes to speak it in order to facilitate traffic with them. From that time it has grown and spread until almost every Indian of the North Pacific Coast, and many inland tribes of Washington, British Columbia, and Oregon speak it. White men of all nations who live in this country speak it, and even the almond-eyed Chinaman learns it soon after locating here. In short, it is the court language of the Northwest, as the sign language is of the plains. It is made up from various Indian tongues, with a few English, or rather pigeon-English, French, and Spanish words intermixed. There are only about 1,500 words in the language and it is very easy to learn.

Of course, it is woefully lacking in strength and beauty. You will often want to say something that can not be said in Chinook, because there are no words in that jargon with which to say it. But it is made to answer the purposes of trade, travel, and barter, in common forms. For instance:

"Kah-tah si-ah ko-pa Frazer chuck?" would be, "How far is it to the Frazer river?"

"Yutes kut klat-a-wa la-pe-a," "Only a short walk." If you wish to say good-morning or good-evening to an Indian you say:

"Kla-how-ya, six."

"Chah-co yah-wa" is "Come here."

"Mi-ka tik-eh mam-ook?" "Do you want to work?"

"Ik-ta mi-ka mam-ook?" "At what?"

"Mam-ook stick." "Cut some wood."

"Na-wit-ka." "Certainly."

"Kon-si dat-la spose mi-ka mam-ook kon-a-way o-koke stick?" "What do you want for cutting that lot of wood?"

"Ikt dol la." "One dollar."

The numerals are ikt (one), mox (two), klone (three), lock-it (four), kwin-num (five), tagh-k.u.m (six), sin-na mox (seven), sto te-kin (eight), twaist (nine), tah-tlum (ten), tah-tlum pee-ikt (eleven), tah-tlum pee-mox (twelve), mox-tah tlum (twenty), klone tah-tlum (thirty), ikt tali-kamo-nux (one hundred), tah-tlum to-ka mo-mik (one thousand), etc.

It is often difficult to get accurate information from these Indians as to distances or time, as they have little idea of English miles or of the measurements of time, and very few of them own or know how to read a watch or clock. Under Pean's tutelage I learned rapidly, and was soon able to carry on quite an interesting conversation by the aid of the little dictionary.

By the light of a rousing camp-fire I cut a large quant.i.ty of cedar boughs and made for myself a bed a foot deep. On this I spread my sleeping-bag, crawled into it and slept the sleep of the weary hunter.

Pean cut only a handful of boughs, spread them near the fire, threw his coat over them, and lay down. Then he folded his two blankets and spread them over him, mostly on the side away from the fire, leaving that part of his body next to the fire exposed so as to catch its heat direct.

During the night, whenever he turned over, he would shift his blankets so as to keep them where most needed. At frequent intervals he would get up and replenish the fire from the large supply of dry wood we had provided. The night was bitter cold, at this high alt.i.tude, and snow fell at frequent intervals. A raw wind blew, and the old man must have suffered from the cold to which he exposed himself.

There are few of these savages that understand and appreciate fully the value of a good bed when camping. In fact, many white hunters and mountaineers go on long camping trips with insufficient bedding, simply because they are too lazy to carry enough to keep them comfortable. I would rather get into a good warm, soft bed at night without my supper, than eat a feast and then sleep on the hard ground, without covering enough to keep me warm. After a hard day's work a good bed is absolutely necessary to prepare one for the labor and fatigue of the following day.

"In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, And born in bed, in bed we die; The near approach, a bed may show, Of human bliss to human woe."

Any ablebodied man may endure a few nights of cold, comfortless sleep, but it will tell on him sooner or later; while if he sleep comfortably and eat heartily, he may endure an incredible amount of labor and hardship of other kinds. You may tramp all day with your feet wet, and all your clothing wet, if need be, but be sure you crawl into a good, warm, dry bed at night.

Old Pean complained of feeling unwell during the evening, and in the morning when we got up said he was sick. I prepared a good breakfast, but he could not, or at least would not, eat. Then he told me that he had once fallen down a mountain; that his breast-bone had been crushed in by striking on a sharp rock, and that it always hurt him since when doing any hard work. He said the climb up the mountain with the pack was too hard for him and he was played out, that he could go no farther.

Here was another bitter disappointment, as we were yet two miles from the top of the mountain, and in going that distance a perpendicular ascent of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet must be made. I deliberated, therefore, as to whether I should go up the mountain alone and let Pean go back, but decided it would be useless. I could not carry more load than my sleeping-bag, gun, etc., and therefore could bring no game down with me if I killed it, not even a head or skin. Beside, if he went back he would take his canoe, and I would be left with no means of crossing the lake. So the only thing to be done was to pack up and retrace our steps. On our way down we stopped and took the head and skin off of the deer killed the day before, and I carried them to the canoe. Arriving at the lake, we pulled again for Chehalis in a cold, disagreeable rain. I stopped at the hot springs on my way down, and took my leave of my host, Mr. Brown, who had been so kind to me, and who regretted my ill luck almost as much as I did.

CHAPTER XIII.

On our return to Chehalis--that town of unsavory odors and salmon-drying, salmon-smoking Siwashes--I at once employed two other Indians, named John and Seymour, and, on the following day we started up Ski-ik-kul Creek, to a lake of the same name, in which it heads ten miles back in the mountains. The Indians claimed that goats, or sheep, as they call them, were plentiful on the cliffs surrounding this lake, and that we could kill plenty of them from a raft while floating up and down along the sh.o.r.es. Seymour claimed to have killed twenty-three in March last, just after the winter snows had gone off, and a party of seven Siwashes from Chehalis had killed ten about two weeks previous to the date of my visit.

Such glowing accounts as these built up my hopes again to such a height as to banish from my mind all recollection of the bitter disappointment in which the former expedition had ended, and, although the rain continued to fall heavily at short intervals, so that the underbrush reeked with dampness and drenching showers fell from every bush we touched, I trudged cheerily along regardless of all discomforts.

The first two miles up the creek, we had a good, open trail, but at the end of this we climbed a steep, rocky bluff, about 500 feet high, and made the greater portion of the remaining distance at an average of about this height above the stream. There was a blind Indian trail all the way to the lake, but it led over the roughest, most tortuous, outlandish country that ever any fool of a goat hunter attempted to traverse. There are marshes and mora.s.ses away up among these mountains, where alders and water beeches, manzanitas, and other shrubs grow so thick that their branches intertwine to nearly their full length. Many of these have fallen down in various directions, and their trunks are as inextricably mixed as their branches, forming altogether a labyrinthine ma.s.s, through which it was with the utmost difficulty we could walk at all.

There were numberless little creeks coming down from the mountain into the main stream, and each had in time cut its deep, narrow gulch, or canon, lined on both sides with rough, shapeless ma.s.ses of rock, and all these we were obliged to cross. In many cases, they were so close together that only a sharp hog-back lay between them, and we merely climbed out of one gulch 300 or 400 feet deep, to go at once down into another still deeper, and so on. Fire had run through a large tract of this country, killing out all the large timber, and many trees have since rotted away and fallen, while the blackened and barkless trunks of others, with here and there a craggy limb, still stand as mute monuments to the glory of the forest before the dread element laid it waste.

We camped that night at the base of one of these great dead firs around which lay a cord or more of old dry bark that had fallen from it, and which, with a few dry logs we gathered, furnished fuel for a rousing, all-night fire. Within a few feet of our camp, a clear, ice-cold little rivulet threaded its serpentine way down among rocks and ferns, and made sweet music to lull us to sleep. After supper, I made for myself the usual bed of mountain feathers (cedar boughs), on which to spread my sleeping-bag.

This old companion of so many rough jaunts, over plains and mountains, has become as necessary a part of my outfit for such voyages as my rifle. Whether it journey by day, on the hurricane deck of a mule, in the hatchway of a canoe, on my shoulder blades or those of a Siwash, it always rounds up at night to house me against the bleak wind, the driving snow, or pouring rain. I have learned to prize it so highly that I can appreciate the sentiments of the fallen monarch, Napoleon, on the lonely island of St. Helena, when he wrote:

"The bed has become a place of luxury to me. I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world."

These Indians, like Pean, and, in fact, all others who have seen the bag, are greatly interested in it. They had never seen anything like it, and watched with undisguised interest the unfolding and preparing of the article, and when I had crawled into it, and stowed myself snugly away, they looked at each other, grunted and uttered a few of their peculiar guttural sounds, which I imagined would be, if translated:

"Well, I'll be doggoned if that ain't about the sleekest trick I ever saw. Eh?"

"You bet it's nice to sleep in, but heavy to carry."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM OF SLEEPING-BAG.]