Our Southern Highlanders Part 6

None but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But the stamina of these "withey" little men was even more remarkable than their endurance of cold. After a small slice of fried pork, a chunk of half-baked johnny-cake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh as ever.

What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together!--some man like Daniel Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!

I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought from home. After his first deep draught, Little John exclaimed:

"Hah! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it!"

I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.

We took new stands; but the afternoon pa.s.sed without incident to those of us on the mountain tops. I returned to camp about five o'clock, and was surprised to see three of our men lugging across the "gant-lot"[3]

toward the cabin a small female bear.

"Hyur's yer old n.i.g.g.e.r woman," shouted John.

The hunters showed no elation--in fact, they looked sheepish--and I suspected a n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile.

"How's this? I didn't hear any drive."

"There wa'n't none."

"Then where did you get your bear?"

"In one of Wit Hensley's traps, dum him! Boys, I wish t' we _hed_ roasted the temper outen them trap-springs, like we talked o' doin'."

"Was the bear alive?"

"Live as a hot coal. See the pup's head!"

I examined Coaly, who looked sick. The flesh was torn from his lower jaw and hung down a couple of inches. Two holes in the top of his head showed where the bear's tusks had tried to crack his skull.

"When the other dogs found her, he rushed right in. She hadn't been trapped more'n a few hours, and she larned Coaly somethin' about the bear business."

"Won't this spoil him for hunting hereafter?"

"Not if he has his daddy's and mammy's grit. We'll know by to-morrow whether he's a sh.o.r.e-enough bear dog; for I've larned now whar they're crossin'--seed sign a-plenty and it's spang fraish. Coaly, old boy!

you-uns won't be so feisty and brigaty after this, will ye!"

"John, what do those two words mean?"

"_Good_ la! whar was you fotch up? Them's common. They mean nigh about the same thing, only there's a differ. When I say that Doc Jones thar is brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he's stuck on hisself and wants to show off----"

"And John Cable's sulkin' around with his nose out o' jint," interjected "Doc."

"Feisty," proceeded the interpreter, "feisty means when a feller's allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the preacher comes. You know a feist is one o' them little bitty dogs that ginerally runs on three legs and pretends a whole lot."

All of us were indignant at the setter of the trap. It had been hidden in a trail, with no sign to warn a man from stepping into it. In Tennessee, I was told, it is a penitentiary offense to set out a bear trap. We agreed that a similar law ought to be pa.s.sed as soon as possible in North Carolina.

"It's only two years ago," said Granville to me, "that Jasper Millington, an old man living on the Tennessee side, started acrost the mountain to get work at the Everett mine, where you live. Not fur from where we are now, he stepped into a bear trap that was hid in the leaves, like this one. It broke his leg, and he starved to death in it."

Despite our indignation meeting, it was decided to carry the trapped bear's hide to Hensley, and for us to use only the meat as recompense for trouble, to say nothing of risk to life and limb. Such is the mountaineers' regard for property rights!

The animal we had ingloriously won was undersized, weighing scant 175 pounds. The average weight of Smoky Mountain bears is not great, but occasionally a very large beast is killed. Matt Hyde told us that he killed one on the Welch Divide in 1901, the meat of which, dressed, without the hide, weighed 434 pounds, and the hide "squared eight feet"

when stretched for drying. "Doc" Jones killed a bear that was "kivered with fat, five inches thick."

Afterwards I took pains to ask the most famous bear hunters of our region what were the largest bears they had personally killed. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, of the Balsam Mountains, estimated his largest at 500 pounds gross, and the hide of another that he had killed weighed forty pounds after three days' drying. Quill Rose, of Eagle Creek, said that, after stripping the hide from one of his bears, he took the fresh skin by the ears and raised it as high as he could reach above his head, and that four inches of the b.u.t.t end of the hide (not legs) trailed on the ground. "And," he added severely, "thar's no lie about it." Quill is six feet one and one-half inches tall. Black Bill Walker, of the middle p.r.o.ng of Little River (Tennessee side), told me "The biggest one I ever saw killed had a hide that measured ten feet from nose to rump, stretched for drying. The biggest I ever killed myself measured nine and a half feet, same way, and weighed a good four hundred net, which, allowin' for hide, blood, and entrails, would run full five hunderd live weight."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Skinning a frozen bear]

Within the past two years two bears of about 500 pounds each have been killed in Swain and Graham counties, the Cables getting one of them.

The veteran hunters that I have named have killed their hundreds of bears and are men superior to silly exaggeration. In the Smoky Mountains the black bear, like most of the trees, attains its fullest development, and that it occasionally reaches a weight of 500 pounds when "hog fat"

is beyond reasonable doubt, though the average would not be more than half that weight.

We spent the evening in debate as to where the next drive should be made. Some favored moving six miles eastward, to the old mining shack at Siler's Meadow, and trying the headwaters of Forney's Creek, around Rip Shin Thicket and the Gunstick Laurel, driving towards Clingman Dome and over into the bleak gulf, southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, that I had named G.o.dforsaken--a t.i.tle that stuck. We knew there were bears in that region, though it was a desperately rough country to hunt in.

But John and the hunchback had found "sign" in the opposite direction.

Bears were crossing from Little River in the neighborhood of Thunderhead and Briar k.n.o.b, coming up just west of the Devil's Court House and "using" around Block House, Woolly Ridge, Bear Pen, and thereabouts.

The motion carried, and we adjourned to bed.

We breakfasted on bear meat, the remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, and wheat bread shortened with bear's grease until it was light as a feather; and I made tea. It was the first time that Little John ever saw "store tea." He swallowed some of it as if it had been boneset, under the impression that it was some sort of "yerb" that would be good for his insides. Without praising its flavor, he asked what it had cost, and, when I told him "a dollar a pound," reckoned that it was "rich man's medicine"; said he preferred dittany or sa.s.safras or goldenrod.

"Doc" Jones opined that it "looked yaller," and he even affirmed that it "tasted yaller."

"Waal, people," exclaimed Matt, "I 'low I've done growed a bit, atter that mess o' meat. Le's be movin'."

It was a hard pull for me, climbing up the rocky approach to Briar k.n.o.b.

This was my first trip to the main divide, and my heart was not yet used to mountain climbing.

The boys were anxious for me to get a shot. I was paying them nothing; it was share-and-share alike; but their neighborly kindness moved them to do their best for the outlander.

So they put me on what was probably the best stand for the day. It was above the Fire-scald, a brule or burnt-over s.p.a.ce on the steep southern side of the ridge between Briar k.n.o.b and Laurel Top, overlooking the grisly slope of Killpeter. Here I could both see and hear an uncommonly long distance, and if the bear went either east or west I would have timely warning.

This Fire-scald, by the way, is a famous place for wildcats. Once in a blue moon a lynx is killed in the highest zone of the Smokies, up among the balsams and spruces, where both the flora and fauna, as well as the climate, resemble those of the Canadian woods. Our native hunters never heard the word lynx, but call the animal a "catamount." Wolves and panthers used to be common here, but it is a long time since either has been killed in this region, albeit impressionable people see wolf tracks or hear a "pant'er" scream every now and then.

I had shivered on the mountain top for a couple of hours, hearing only an occasional yelp from the dogs, which had been working in the thickets a mile or so below me, when suddenly there burst forth the devil of a racket.

On came the chase, right in my direction. Presently I could distinguish the different notes: the deep bellow of old Dred, the hound-like baying of Rock and Coaly, and little Towse's feisty yelp.

I thought that the bear might chance the comparatively open s.p.a.ce of the Fire-scald, because there were still some ashes on the ground that would dust the dogs' nostrils and throw them off the scent. And such, I believe, was his intention. But the dogs caught up with him. They nipped him fore and aft. Time after time he shook them off; but they were true bear dogs, and, like Matt Hyde after the turkey, they knew no such word as quit.

I took a last squint at my rifle sights, made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber, and then felt my ears grow as I listened. Suddenly the chase swerved at a right angle and took straight up the side of Saddle-back. Either the bear would tree, or he would try to smash on through to the low rhododendron of the Devil's Court House, where dogs who followed might break their legs. I girded myself and ran, "wiggling and wingling" along the main divide, and then came the steep pull up Briar k.n.o.b. As I was grading around the summit with all the lope that was left in me, I heard a rifle crack, half a mile down Saddle-back. Old "Doc" was somewhere in that vicinity. I halted to listen. Creation, what a rumpus! Then another shot. Then the warwhoop of the South, that we read about.

By and by, up they came, John and Cope and "Doc," two at a time, carrying the bear on a trimmed sapling. Presently Hyde joined us, then came Granville, and we filed back to camp, where "Doc" told his story: