The Spell of the Rockies Part 8

One day, after two weeks with me, he climbed to the top of a pole fence to which he was chained. Up there he had a great time; he perched, gazed here and there, pranced back and forth, and finally fell off. His chain tangled and caught. For a few seconds he dangled in the air by the neck, then slipped through his collar and galloped off up the mountainside and quickly disappeared in the woods. I supposed he was gone for good. Although I followed for several hours, I did not even catch sight of him.

This little boy had three days of runaway life, and then concluded to return. Hunger drove him back. I saw him coming and went to meet him; but kept out of sight until he was within twenty feet, then stepped into view. Apparently a confused or entangled mental condition followed my appearance. His first impulse was to let me know that he was hungry by standing erect and outstretching his arms; this he started hastily to do.

In the midst of this performance, it occurred to him that if he wanted anything to eat he must hurry to me; so he interrupted his first action, and started to carry his second into instant effect. These incomplete proceedings interrupted and tripped one another three or four times in rapid succession. Though he tumbled about in comic confusion while trying to do two things at once, it was apparent through all that his central idea was to get something to eat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHNNY AND JENNY]

And this, as with all boys, was his central idea much of the time. I did not find anything that he would not eat. He simply gobbled sc.r.a.ps from the table,--mountain sage, rhubarb, dandelion, and apples.

Of course, being a boy, he liked apples best of all.

If I approached him with meat and honey upon a plate and with an apple in my pocket, he would smell the apple and begin to dance before me, ignoring the eatables in sight. Instantly, on permission, he would clasp me with both fore paws and thrust his nose into the apple pocket. Often, standing between him and Jenny, I alternately fed each a bit. A few times I broke the regular order and gave Jenny two bits in succession. At this Johnny raged, and usually ended by striking desperately at me; I never flinched, and the wise little rogue made it a point each time to miss me by an inch or two. A few other people tried this irritating experiment with him, but he hit them every time.

However, I early tried to prevent anything being done that teased or irritated him. Visitors did occasionally tease him, and frequently they fed the two on bad-temper-producing knickknacks.

Occasionally the two quarreled, but not more frequently than two ordinary children; and these quarrels were largely traceable to fight-producing food mixtures. Anyway, bears will maintain a better disposition with a diet of putrid meat, snakes, mice, and weeds than upon desserts of human concoction.

Naturally bears are fun-loving and cheerful; they like to romp and play. Johnny played by the hour. Most of the time he was chained to a low, small shed that was built for his accommodation. Scores of times each day he covered all the territory that could be traversed while he was fastened with a twelve-foot chain. Often he skipped back and forth in a straight line for an hour or more. These were not the restless, aimless movements of the caged tiger, but those of playful, happy activity. It was a pleasure to watch this eager play; in it he would gallop to the outer limit of his chain, then, reversing his legs without turning his body, go backward with a queer, lively hippety-hop to the other end, then gallop forward again. He knew the length of his chain to an inch. No matter how wildly he rushed after some bone-stealing dog, he was never jerked off his feet by forgetting his limitations.

He and Scotch, my collie, were good friends and jolly playmates. In their favorite play Scotch tried to take a bone which Johnny guarded; this brought out from both a lively lot of feinting, dodging, grabbing, and striking. Occasionally they clinched, and when this ended, Johnny usually tried for a good bite or two on Scotch's s.h.a.ggy tail. Scotch appeared always to have in mind that the end of Johnny's nose was sensitive, and he landed many a good slap on this spot.

Apparently, Johnny early appreciated the fact that I would not tease him, and also that I was a master who must be obeyed. One day, however, he met with a little mishap, misjudged things, and endeavored to make it lively for me. I had just got him to the point where he enjoyed a rocking-chair. In this chair he sat up like a little man.

Sometimes his fore paws lay awkwardly in his lap, but more often each rested on an arm of the big chair. He found rocking such a delight that it was not long until he learned to rock himself. This brought on the mishap. He had grown over-confident, and one day was rocking with great enthusiasm. Suddenly, the big rocker, little man and all, went over backward. Though standing by, I was unable to save him, and did not move. Seeing his angry look when he struck the floor, and guessing his next move, I leaped upon the table. Up he sprang, and delivered a vicious blow that barely missed, but which knocked a piece out of my trousers.

Apparently no other large animal has such intense curiosity as the grizzly. An object in the distance, a scent, a sound, or a trail, may arouse this, and for a time overcome his intense and wary vigilance.

In satisfying this curiosity he will do unexpected and apparently bold things. But the instant the mystery is solved he is himself again, and may run for dear life from some situation into which his curiosity has unwittingly drawn him. An unusual noise behind Johnny's shed would bring him out with a rush, to determine what it was. If not at once satisfied as to the cause, he would put his fore paws on the top of the shed and peer over in the most eager and inquiring manner imaginable. Like a scout, he spied mysterious and dim objects afar. If a man, a dog, or a horse, appeared in the distance, he quickly discovered the object, and at once stood erect, with fore paws drawn up, until he had a good look at it. The instant he made out what it was, he lost interest in it. At all times he was vigilant to know what was going on about him.

He was like a boy in his fondness for water. Usually, when unchained and given the freedom of the place, he would spend much of the time in the brook, rolling, playing, and wading. He and I had a few foot-races, and usually, in order to give me a better chance, we ran down hill. In a two-hundred-yard dash he usually paused three or four times and waited for me to catch up, and I was not a slow biped, either.

The grizzly, though apparently awkward and lumbering, is really one of the most agile of beasts. I constantly marveled at Johnny's lightness of touch, or the deftness of movement of his fore paws. With but one claw touching it, he could slide a coin back and forth on the floor more rapidly and lightly than I could. He would slide an eggsh.e.l.l swiftly along without breaking it. Yet by using but one paw, he could, without apparent effort, overturn rocks that were heavier than himself.

One day, while he slept in the yard, outstretched in the sun, I opened a large umbrella and put it over him, and waited near for him to wake up. By and by the sleepy eyes half opened, but without a move he closed them and slept again. Presently he was wide awake, making a quiet study of the strange thing over him, but except to roll his eyes, not a move did he make. Then a puff of wind gave sudden movement to the umbrella, rolling it over a point or two. At this he leaped to his feet, terribly frightened, and made a dash to escape this mysterious monster. But, as he jumped, the wind whirled the umbrella, and plump into it he landed. An instant of desperate clawing, and he shook off the wrecked umbrella and fled in terror. A minute or two later I found him standing behind the house, still frightened and trembling. When I came up and spoke to him, he made three or four lively attempts to bite my ankles. Plainly, he felt that I had played a mean and uncalled-for trick upon him. I talked to him for some time and endeavored to explain the matter to him.

A sudden movement of a new or mysterious object will usually frighten any animal. On more than one occasion people have taken advantage of this characteristic of wild beasts, and prevented an attack upon themselves. In one instance I unconsciously used it to my advantage.

In the woods, one day, as I have related elsewhere, two wolves and myself unexpectedly met. With bared teeth they stood ready to leap upon me. Needing something to keep up my courage and divert my thoughts, it occurred to me to snap a picture of them. This effectively broke the spell, for when the kodak door flew open they wheeled and fled.

Autumn came, and I was to leave for a forestry tour. The only man that I could persuade to stay at my place for the winter was one who neither understood nor sympathized with my wide-awake and aggressive young grizzly. Realizing that the man and the bear would surely clash, and perhaps to the man's disadvantage, I settled things once and for all by sending Johnny to the Denver Zoo.

He was seven months old when we parted, and apparently as much attached to me as any dog to master. I frequently had news of him, but let two years go by before I allowed myself the pleasure of visiting him. He was lying on the ground asleep when I called, while around him a number of other bears were walking about. He was no longer a boy bear, but a big fellow. In my eagerness to see him I forgot to be cautious and, climbing to the top of the picket fence, leaped into the pen, calling, "h.e.l.lo, Johnny!" as I leaped, and repeating this greeting as I landed on the ground beside him. He jumped up, fully awake, and at once recognized me. Instantly, he stood erect, with both arms extended, and gave a few happy grunts of joy and by way of greeting.

I talked to him for a little while and patted him as I talked. Then I caught a fore paw in my hand and we hopped and pranced about as in old times. A yell from the outside brought me to my senses.

Instinctively I glanced about for a way of escape, though I really did not feel that I was in danger. We were, however, the observed of all observers, and I do not know which throng was staring with greater interest and astonishment,--the bears in the pen or the spectators on the outside.

Alone with a Landslide

Alone with a Landslide

Realizing the importance of traveling as lightly as possible during my hasty trip through the Uncompahgre Mountains, I allowed myself to believe that the golden days would continue. Accordingly I set off with no bedding, with but little food, and without even snowshoes. A few miles up the trail, above Lake City, I met a prospector coming down and out of these mountains for the winter. "Yes," he said, "the first snow usually is a heavy one, and I am going out now for fear of being snowed-in for the winter." My imagination at once pictured the grand mountains deeply, splendidly covered with snow, myself by a camp-fire in a solemn primeval forest without food or bedding, a camp-bird on a near-by limb sympathizing with me in low, confiding tones, the snow waist-deep and mountains-wide. Then I dismissed the imaginary picture of winter and joyfully climbed the grand old mountains amid the low and leafless aspens and the tall and richly robed firs.

I was impelled to try to make this mountain realm a National Forest and felt that sometime it would become a National Park. The wonderful reports of prospectors about the scenery of this region, together with what I knew of it from incomplete exploration, eloquently urged this course upon me. My plan was to make a series of photographs, from commanding heights and slopes, that would ill.u.s.trate the forest wealth and the scenic grandeur of this wonderland. In the centre Uncompahgre Peak rose high, and by girdling it a little above the timber I obtained a number of the desired photographs, and then hurried from height to height, taking other pictures of towering summits or their slopes below that were black and purpling with impressive, pathless forests.

The second evening I went into camp among some picturesque trees upon a skyline at an alt.i.tude of eleven thousand feet above the tides.

While gathering wood for a fire, I paused to watch the moon, a great globe of luminous gold, rise strangely, silently into the mellow haze of autumn night. For a moment on the horizon it paused to peep from behind a crag into a scattered group of weird storm-beaten trees on a ridge before me, then swiftly floated up into lonely, misty s.p.a.ce.

Just before I lay down for the night, I saw a cloud-form in the dim, low distance that was creeping up into my moonlit world of mountains.

Other shadowy forms followed it. A little past midnight I was awakened by the rain falling gently, coldly upon my face. As I stood shivering with my back to the fire, there fell an occasional feathery flake of snow.

Had my snowshoes been with me, a different lot of experiences would have followed. With them I should have stayed in camp and watched the filmy flakes form their beautiful white feathery bog upon the earth, watched robes, rugs, and drapery decorate rocks and cliffs, or the fir trees come out in pointed, spearhead caps, or the festoons form upon the limbs of dead and lifeless trees,--crumbling tree-ruins in the midst of growing forest life. To be without food or snowshoes in faraway mountain snows is about as serious as to be adrift in a lifeboat without food or oars in the ocean's wide waste. In a few minutes the large, almost pelt-like flakes were falling thick and fast. Hastily I put the two kodaks and the treasured films into water-tight cases, pocketed my only food, a handful of raisins, adjusted hatchet and barometer, then started across the strange, snowy mountains through the night.

The nearest and apparently the speediest way out lay across the mountains to Ridgway; the first half of this fifteen miles was through a rough section that was new to me. After the lapse of several years this night expedition appears a serious one, though at the time it gave me no concern that I recall. How I ever managed to go through that black, storm-filled night without breaking my neck amid the innumerable opportunities for accident, is a thing that I cannot explain.

I descended a steep, rugged slope for a thousand feet or more with my eyes useless in the eager falling of mingled rain and snow. Nothing could be seen, but despite slow, careful going a dead limb occasionally prodded me. With the deliberation of a blind man I descended the long, steep, broken, slippery slope, into the bottom of a canon. Now and then I came out upon a jumping-off place; here I felt before and below with a slender staff for a place to descend; occasionally no bottom could be found, and upon this report I would climb back a short distance and search out a way.

Activity kept me warm, although the cold rain drenched me and the slipperiness of slopes and ledges never allowed me to forget the law of falling bodies. At last a roaring torrent told me that I was at the bottom of a slope. Apparently I had come down by the very place where the stream contracted and dashed into a deep, narrow box canon. Not being able to go down stream or make a crossing at this point, I turned and went up the stream for half a mile or so, where I crossed the swift, roaring water in inky darkness on a fallen Douglas spruce,--for such was the arrangement of its limbs and the feel of the wood in its barkless trunk, that these told me it was a spruce, though I could see nothing. During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place,--the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

The next hour after crossing the stream I spent in climbing and descending a low wooded ridge with smooth surface and gentle slopes.

Then there was one more river, the Little Cimarron, to cross. An Engelmann spruce, with scaly, flaky bark, that had stood perfectly perpendicular for a century or two but had recently been hurled to the horizontal, provided a long, vibrating bridge for me to cross on. Once across, I started to climb the most unstable mountain that I had ever trodden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEAR THE TOP OF MT. c.o.xCOMB]

Mt. c.o.xcomb, up which I climbed, is not one of the "eternal hills" but a crumbling, dissolving, tumbling, transient mountain. Every hard rain dissolves, erodes, and uncovers the sides of this mountain as if it were composed of sugar, paste, and stones. It is made up of a confused mingling of parts and ma.s.ses of soluble and flinty materials. Here change and erosion run riot after every rain. There is a great falling to pieces; gravity, the insatiable, is temporarily satisfied, and the gulches feast on earthy materials, while the river-channel is glutted with crushed cliffs, acres of earth, and the debris of ruined forests.

Here and there these are flung together in fierce confusion.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes,--changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff is born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine and the blue. The Storm King comes, the thunders echo among crags and canons, the broken clouds clear away, and the beautiful bow bends above a ruined cliff.

Here and there strange, immature monsters are struggling to rise,--to free themselves from the earth. Occasionally a crag is brought forth full grown during one operation of gravity, erosion, and storm, and left upon a foundation that would raise corn but never sustain cliff or crag. Scattered monoliths at times indulge in a contest of leaning the farthest from the perpendicular without falling. The potato-patch foundations of these in time give way, then gravity drags them head foremost, or in broken installments, down the slope.

Among the forested slopes that I traversed there were rock-slides, earthy glaciers, and leafless gulches with crumbling walls. Some of these gulches extended from bottom to top of the mountain, while others were digging their way. An occasional one had a temporary ending against the bottom of a kingly cliff, whose short reign was about to end as its igneous throne was disorganized and decomposed.

The storm and darkness continued as I climbed the mountain of short-lived scenes,--a mountain so eagerly moving from its place in the sky to a bed in the sea. The saturation had softened and lubricated the surface; these sedimentary slopes had been made restless by the rain.

I endeavored to follow up one of the ridges, but it was narrow and all the pulpy places very slippery. Fearing to tumble off into the dark unknown, I climbed down into a gully and up this made my way toward the top. All my mountain experience told me to stay on the ridge and not travel in darkness the way in which gravity flings all his spoils.

The clouds were low, and I climbed well up into them. The temperature was cooler, and snow was whitening the earth. When I was well up to the silver lining of the clouds, a gust of wind momentarily rent them, and I stood amid snow-covered statuary,--leaning monoliths and shattered minarets all weird and enchanting in the moonlight. A few seconds later I was in darkness and snowstorm again.

The gulch steepened and apparently grew shallower. Occasionally a ma.s.s of mud or a few small stones rolled from the sides of the gulch to my feet and told that saturation was at work dissolving and loosening anchorages and foundations. It was time to get out of the gulch. While I was making haste to do so, there came a sudden tremor instantly followed by an awful crash and roar. Then _r-r-rip! z-zi-ip!

s-w-w-r-r-ip!_ A bombardment of flying, bounding, plunging rocks from an overturned cliff above was raking my gulch. Nothing could be seen, but several slaps in the face from dashes of snow which these rock missiles disturbed and displaced was expressively comprehensive.

As this brief bombardment ceased, the ominous sounds from above echoing among the cliffs shouted warning of an advancing landslide.

This gave a little zest to my efforts to get out of the gulch; too much perhaps, for my scramble ended in a slip and a tumble back to the bottom. In the second attempt a long, uncovered tree-root reached down to me in the darkness, and with the aid of this I climbed out of the way of the avalanche. None too soon, however. With quarreling and subdued grinding sounds the rushing flood of landslide material went past, followed by an offensive smell.

While I paused listening to the monster groan and grind his way downward, the cliffs fired a few more rock missiles in my direction.

One struck a crag beside me. The explosive contact gave forth a blast of sputtering sparks and an offensive, rotten-egg smell. A flying fragment of this shattered missile struck my left instep, breaking one of the small bones.

Fortunately my foot was resting in the mud when struck. When consciousness came back to me I was lying in the mud and snow, drenched, mud-bespattered, and cold. The rain and snow had almost ceased to fall, and while I was bandaging my foot the pale light of day began to show feebly through heavy clouds. If that luminous place is in the eastern horizon, then I have lost my sense of direction. An appeal to the compa.s.s brought no consolation, for it said laconically, "Yes, you are turned around now, even though you never were before."

The accuracy of the compa.s.s was at once doubted,--but its decree was followed.