CHAPTER VI
To have one's nose all but broken, both eyes blackened and a twistedankle is a sad misfortune wherever it occurs, but when such a thinghappens to a fellow many weary miles from the nearest human habitationand in a howling wilderness it might be considered anything butpleasant. Yet, strange as it may appear, among the most pleasant andprecious memories I have stored away in my mind, only to be tapped uponspecial occasions, is the memory of the glorious days spent nursing mybruises and lolling around that far-away camp. Sometimes I listened tothe quaint yarns of my unique and interesting guide or idly watched thechanging colors and effects which the sun and the atmosphere produced onthe snow-capped mountains of Darlinkel's Park. I made friends with ourlittle neighbors the rock-chuck, whose home was in the base of the cliffback of the spring, and became intimate with the golden chipmunk and itspretty little black and white cousin, the four-striped chipmunk, both ofwhich were common and remarkably tame about camp.
Back of the camp in the dark shade of the evergreens there was a barkmound composed entirely of the fragments of the conifera cones, whichPete said was the squirrel's dining room. This mound contained at leastfour good cart-loads of fragments and all of it was the work of theimpudent little blunt-nosed red squirrels, which were plentiful in thewoods.
How long it took these small rodents to heap such a mass of materialtogether I was unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as someof the shell heaps made by the ancient oyster-eating men and left bythem along our coast from Florida to Maine.
The numerous magpies seemed to be conscious of my admiration of theirbeautiful piebald plumage and to take every opportunity to show off itsiridescent hues to the best advantage in the sunlight.
Pete evidently thought I was a chap of very low taste, with a great lackof discrimination in the choice of my friends among the forest folk, andhe could see no reason for my intimacy with "all th' outlaws and mostrascally varmints of the park."
Truth compels me to admit that the pranks of some of my little friendswere often mischievous and annoying, but they were also humorous andentertaining and I laughed when the "tallow-head" jay swooped down andsnatched a tid-bit from Pete's plate just as he was about to eat it, andwhen the irate trapper threw his plate at the camp robber it was acharming sight to see a number of birds flutter down to feast upon thescattered food.
The loud-mouthed, self-asserting fly-catcher in the cottonwood treelearned to know my whistle, and whenever I attempted to mimic him hewould send back a ringing answer. The charming little lazulii buntingswere tamer than the irritating dirty English sparrows at home.
It was interesting to notice how quickly all our little wild neighborslearned to know that the sound produced by banging on a tin plate meantdough-god and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustlingamong the grasses or fluttering from bush and trees they showed morefear of each other than they did of Pete and me.
When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky orthe great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what wasdoing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the bigpack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secretcaves and invade the camp.
In the gray dawn, while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hearsomething scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadowof a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives,compasses and all other small objects were never safe unless securelypacked away out of reach of these nocturnal marauders.
Our conversations around the camp fire evenings were highly interestingtoo, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of theGreat West at his tongue's end. Indeed, the story of his family andtheir migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been atrapper in the old days; he had done his share of roaming the mountains,prospecting and making his strikes, small and large, fighting Indiansand living the strenuous life of the border pioneer. He had found thewoman he afterward married unconscious under an overturned wagon of anemigrant train that had been raided by the Indians, and after nursingher back to health in his mining shack, had married her. With money hehad worked from the "diggin's" he had acquired, by grants from thegovernment, the beautiful and expansive mountain park where he hadplanned to develop a ranch. He never went very far with his project,however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in themountains and his wife found his body pinned to the ground with arrows.The shock of his tragedy killed Big Pete's mother soon after, and theyoung Peter Darlinkel, then three years old, went to a nearby settlementto be brought up by an uncle and a squaw aunt. Pete became prospector,scout, trapper and hunter, using this beautiful park that became his asa result of the passing of his father, as a private game preserve, so tospeak. That is, it was private except for the intrusion of the WildHunter and his black wolf pack.
In a fragmentary way Big Pete told me this story and other interestingtales of this wild western country, but mostly our conversation turnedto this old man of the mountains who was such a mystery to everyone,even to Big Pete, but who, despite the lugubrious reputation, hadproved a kindly gentleman and a good friend to me.
There were no visible signs of a change in the weather which had beenclear for weeks, and the sky was otherwise clear blue save where thewhite mares' tails swept across the heavens. But when we sat down tosupper that evening I could hear the rumbling of distant thunder. I knewit was thunder for, although the fall of avalanches makes the samenoise, avalanches choose the noon time to fall when the sun is hottestand the snows softest. Soon I could see the heads of some dark cloudspeering at us over the mountains and before dark the clouds crept overthe mountain tops and overcast our sky.
It rained all that night in a fitful manner and came to a stop aboutfour A. M. The wind went down and the air seemed to have lost itsvivacity and life; it was a dead atmosphere; we arose from our blanketsfeeling tired and listless.
While we were eating our breakfast dark clouds again suddenly obscuredthe heavens and before we had finished the meal big drops of rain setthe camp fire spluttering and drove us to the shelter of our tent; thenit rained! Lord help us! the water came down in such torrents that onaccount of the spray we could not see thirty feet; then came hailstonesas large as hen's eggs. There was some lightning and thunder, but eitherthe splashing of the water drowned the rumbling or the electric fluidwas so far distant that the reports were not loud when they reached us.Suddenly there was a ripping noise, followed by a sort of subdued roarwhich stampeded our horses from their shelter under a projecting rockand made the earth shudder.
"Earthquake!" I exclaimed.
"Wuss," said Pete, "hit's a landslide."
Instantly a thought went through my brain like a hot bullet and made meshudder.
"Pete," I shouted.
"I'm right hyer, tenderfut, you needn't holler so loud," he answered,and calmly filled his pipe.
I flung myself impulsively on my companion, grasped his big brawnyshoulders, and with my face close to his I whispered, "Pete, I believethe slide occurred at the gate."
"Well, hit did sound that-a-way," admitted Pete composedly.
"Pete," I continued, "that butte has caved in on our trail!"
"Wull, tenderfut, we ain't hurt, be we? Tha's plenty of game here furthe tak'n of it and plenty of water, as fine as ever spouted from oldMoses' rock, right at hand. If the Mesa's cut our trail we can live wellhere for a hundred years and not have to chew wolf mutton neither. Idon't reckon I can go to York with you just yet," drawled my comrade ina most provokingly imperturbable manner, as he slowly freed himself frommy grasp and made for the camp fire, which being to a great extentsheltered by an overhanging rock, was still smouldering in spite of thedrenching rain. Raking the ashes until he found a red glowing coal, Petedeftly picked it up and by juggling it from one hand to the other, heconducted the live ember to his pipe-bowl, then he puffed away as calmlyas if there was nothing in this world to trouble him.
"If the gate be sh
ut," he resumed, "it will keep out prospectors, trampsand Injuns." With that he went to smoking his red-willow[1] bark again.
[Footnote 1: The trappers and Indians made Kil-i-ki-nic, or Kinnikinick, by mixing tobacco with the inside bark of red willow, which is the common name for the red osier of the dogwood family. EDITOR.]
But I could not view the situation so complacently, and when the rainhad ceased as suddenly as it began, with some difficulty I caught myhorse and made my way to the gate, to discover that my worst fears wererealized; a large section of the cliff had split off the Mesa and sliddown into the narrow gateway completely filling the space and leaving awall of over one hundred feet of sheer precipice for us to climb beforewe could escape from our Eden-like prison.
Again a wave of superstitious dread swept over me as I viewed thetightly closed exit, a dread that perhaps after all there was more toBig Pete's superstitions about the Wild Hunter than I dared to admit,else why should that cliff which had stood for thousands of years takethis opportunity to split off and choke up the ancient trail?
The longer I questioned myself, the less was my ability to answer. I saton a stone and for some time was lost in thought. When at length Ilooked up it was to see Big Pete with folded arms silently gazing at thebarricaded exit and the muddy pool of water extending for some distanceback of the gateway into the park.
"Well, tenderfut, you was dead right in your judication. The gate airshut sure 'nuff. Our horses ain't likely to take the back trail andleave us, that's sartin."
"Oh, Pete," I exclaimed, "how will we ever get out? Must we spend theremainder of our lives here?"
"It do look as if we'd stop hyer a right smart bit," he admitted, "maybetill this hyer holler between the mountains all fills with water aginlike it was onct before, I reckon. Don't you think that we'd better getbusy and build a Noah's Ark?"
"Pete, you'd joke if the world came to an end. But seriously I think wemight move our camp back to the far end of your park."
The Black Wolf Pack Page 6