Grizzly Killer: The Making of a Mountain Man

by Lane R Warenski

  I picketed Red right by the door of the dugout that night, and early the next day, I saddled up, takin’ all three rifles and Pa’s horse pistol. We headed out followin’ those Injuns. The trail led right back to their camp on Ham’s Fork. I thought they were gone, and bein’ mighty careful, I rode down into their camp. I could see by the tracks where they had tried to load Red. The ground, with a couple of inches of snow on it, was churned up something awful, and there was blood all around. The way it looked, Red had bloodied one of them up pretty good with his hooves then broke loose and ran straight back to the dugout.

  I heard something behind me and jumped around with rifle up, only to see a half-starved half-grown pup lookin’ at me. I took a step toward him, and he just cowered down like he was gonna get beat and whimpered. I pulled a piece of jerky out of my pocket, broke off a piece, and threw it to him. He wolfed it right down and took a step toward me, and I saw the limp. Talkin’ real soft and with a piece of jerky in hand, I slowly approached the pup and let him sniff the back of my hand and gave him another piece of the jerky. I reached down and rubbed his ears, talkin’ all the time, and when he figured I wasn’t gonna hurt him, I moved my hand down his sore leg. It didn’t feel broke, more like he had been kicked and had a severe bruise. I gave him another piece of jerky and figured the Injuns had left him ’cause he couldn’t keep up, and they had left in a hurry. Lookin’ at the tracks, it looked like there were three on their feet, one they had on a travois, and two or three others were slung over the backs of horses. I had to smile, thinkin’ of them tryin’ to throw a dead Injun on the back of Ol’ Red. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought I had killed two of them, and Red had taken out another one. They got two horses and a mule out of it, but it had cost them mighty dearly.

  Now they knew where my dugout sat, but at the high cost they had paid, I didn’t think they would be back. Injuns put a mighty high value on good or bad medicine, and mine was mighty good in their eyes right now. I had the sign of the grizzly by the door of the dugout, and I wore a necklace of grizzly claws. Six or seven Snake Warriors had attacked one man and stole the stock, but only three had ridden away. I surely had powerful medicine in the eyes of the Snake people.

  By this time, that pup was followin’ me around, and I reached down and picked him up. It was real clear he was just a pup, but when I picked him up, he must have weighed fifty pounds. I got him settled across my knees and started Red back to the dugout. Red was pretty nervous at first, but as I talked, he seemed to accept the pup up on his back. As we headed back to the dugout, I followed an indirect route as I didn’t want to make a plain trail, although with the wind pickin’ up out of the north and it lookin’ like it would snow before long, any sign of the trail would soon be gone. I talked to the pup and Red all along the way, and by the time we got back, I figured we were all friends.

  When I rode up to the dugout, I set the pup down and got a good chunk of elk I had roasted a couple of days earlier and gave it to him then pulled the saddle off Red and rubbed him down with some dry grass. I picked up the Hawken and led him out to the meadow so he could graze awhile, but I was standin’ guard while he was grazin’. It would be a long time before I felt things were back to normal, and I was gonna watch over him any time he wasn’t right by the dugout. The snow wasn’t deep yet, and the grass was still sticking through it, so he wasn’t havin’ a tough time gettin’ plenty to eat. But I knew it wouldn’t be too long before he would really have to work to paw down through the snow to the grass.

  While Red was grazin’, that pup limped out to where I was standin’, and we just stood there together, watchin’ the clouds lower up against the high peaks until they couldn’t be seen, and although it was already cold, the temperature just kept droppin’. The dark pine timber up on the ridges was slowly fadin’ out of sight, and the wind was gettin’ downright fearsome. There was a norther blowin’ in, and I figured this was gonna to be the real start of winter. I let Red graze until I was froze to the bone, and Red didn’t seem to mind at all when I led him back to the dugout. And that pup stayed right with me the whole time. I tied Red on the side on the dugout, out of the wind, as I didn’t trust the corral any longer, and went in to start a fire and get my own supper. It was real plain that pup hadn’t ever been allowed inside a lodge before, and it took some coaxin’ to get him to come in. I got a fire started and coffee on then went to fixin’ some grub. I had a couple of hard biscuits left, and I cut some slices off a smoked deer haunch and started fryin’ them in some bear grease. When they were done enough, I threw a small handful of flour in the pan, stirred it up, and added water and had a nice, thick gravy. I set one of the strip steaks on a tin plate and poured gravy over it and set it down for the pup. The way he went after that, I think I had made a friend for life. After the minute or so it took him to lick the plate clean, he just curled up in front of the fireplace and slept.

  The wind howled throughout the night, and I kept a little wood fed into the fire to keep the worst of the chill out. When we got up the next mornin’, there were two feet of fresh snow with drifts four and five feet deep, and it was bitter cold, a cold that made your breath freeze as soon as it hit the air, a cold that burned your skin. I bundled up and went out and checked on Red. He had stomped a good-sized spot clear of the snow and seemed to be all right. I knew then it was gonna be a mighty rough winter. I had what I thought was enough grub, dependin’ on how much I had to feed that pup, and plenty of furs for warm clothing. Me and Pa had had a great fall trappin’ season. I still had my wool capote and Pa’s and my bedrolls. I felt I was prepared for winter, but I knew it would still be mighty hard. With the pup here now, I wasn’t all alone, and that made me feel better.

  With all that had happened over the last two days, I had fairly forgot ’bout my Thanksgiving dinner I had planned, but that prairie chicken was hung outside the dugout and was frozen solid. I brought it in to thaw then bundled up as best I could, and me and the pup took Red out to graze. I had the rifle in one hand and the spade in the other and led Red a couple of hundred yards from the dugout to where the snow had blown off some to drift up against the willows along the stream. Red went to scapin’ at the ground with his hooves, and I went at it with the spade, and before long, we had a pretty good patch of grass uncovered. By the time Red had eaten enough, my toes were so cold they hurt, and I knew then I had to make much warmer moccasins.

  After we got back inside and my feet were thawed again, I made up some cornbread and put a little extra sugar and some of the dried berries in it. I put that prairie chicken on a spit over the fire and would turn it every few minutes, and ’bout the time it was gettin’ done, I put coffee to boilin’. Well, this sure wasn’t like our dinners had been back home, but it tasted mighty good to me. But it brought back a lot of memories, and I started to get to that low-down alone feelin’ again. So to shake that feelin’, I started to play with the pup. His sore leg was gettin’ much better, and the limp was ’bout gone, and I decided he had to have a name. Well, I talked it over with him for quite a while, askin’ him what name he liked best, tryin’ all sorts of names on him to see what seemed to fit. He seemed to raise his ears some when I said Jimbo, so that was what we settled on.

  4 The Wolves

  As the next few weeks went by, winter settled in, and the dugout, bein’ dark and glum inside, became like a jail to me and Jimbo. We looked forward to our daily tromps out through the meadow, takin’ Ol’ Red to graze. The stream had frozen over, and I had to chop through the ice to get water for us all to drink. I cleared an area in front of the dugout of snow and built a fire pit. I banked rocks up a foot and a half high on the outside edge so it would reflect heat back to the logs of the dugout, and Jimbo and me would set out there while it was light, and I worked on makin’ buckskins and keepin’ what I had repaired. I made several pairs of moccasins and rubbed them down with bear grease to help keep the water and snow from soakin’ in so fast. I found I needed several pairs, so when one got wet, I had a dr
y pair to change into. I had made some of them with the fur side in and three layers thick on the bottom, and just by tryin’ different things, I came up with a pattern that kept my feet warm. I had learned to make moccasins back home from the Cherokees, but they didn’t need to make them as warm as they needed to be out here in these high western mountains.

  The days grew mighty short, and I figured it must be near Christmas, so I went out and cut down a small pine and bought it down and set it up just outside the door. I had no poppin’ corn to put on a string like we did back home, or any candles but, I had the tree, and that made me feel better. I made a collar for Jimbo and a new halter for Red out of elk hide.

  I sure wished I still had some of the buffalo hide from those ol’ shaggy beasts we shot comin’ across the plains from St. Louis. If I had only known then just how useful they would be, I sure would have kept some. But they were so full of ticks and gray backs we cut out the best meat and the tongues and just let the rest lie.

  Jimbo was growin’ so much, and he was gettin’ so big I doubled the elk hide for his collar and stitched along the edges with rawhide. I took three of the grizzly claws off my necklace and put them on the collar. I figured it wouldn’t be much of a surprise for either of them ’cause they had watched me make them, but they wasn’t gonna get them till Christmas mornin’ anyhow.

  By now I was gettin’ a might tired of eatin’ just smoked and dried meat and biscuits. I wanted some fresh meat, slow roasted over the fire for Christmas. So I saddled Ol’ Red and tied the two older rifles to the saddle, along with the horse pistol, and with the Hawken across my knees, we started down along the stream just to see what we could see. Goin’ through some of those drifts was pretty tough, but Ol’ Red must have been as tired of bein’ cooped up as me and Jimbo, ’cause he just plowed on through them and even acted like he was enjoyin’ it.

  It was a bright, sunny day, and the temperature had mellowed out a bit. The air was so clear you could see mountain peaks that must be a hundred miles away. You could see snow driftin’ off the high peaks of the Bear River Mountains behind us and dark bands of pines standin’ out against the stark white of the snow. We jumped a pair of bald eagles from the cottonwoods along the stream just below the dugout, and Jimbo scared out several snowshoe hares from the thickets over on the edge of the hill. The last one he caught and brought it back just as proud as he could be. I hurried and stripped the hide off it and gave it back to him to show him he could get his own food, and he wolfed it right down. He was learnin’ mighty fast.

  After a while, that bright sun got my eyes burnin’, and I pulled that wolverine cap down halfway over my eyes, and that seemed to help. We were maybe four or five miles downstream from the dugout, when I saw a spot of black in the snow, just out from a patch of willows. I stopped and just let Red stand next to a cottonwood and told Jimbo to stay. We had been workin’ on that ever since I’d found him. I crossed over to the other side of the stream, keepin’ the trees and willows between me and that spot. I started toward it, movin’ real slow and quiet. The snow was soft, so bein’ quiet was easy. When I was down far enough that I figured I was ’bout across from it, I started sneakin’ down through the willows and found a trail that was packed down with moose tracks. Movin’ ever so slowly, I eventually got to the edge, and maybe seventy yards up the hill was lyin’ a big ol’ bull moose. His horns must have been four feet across. Movin’ just as slow and careful as I could, I brought the Hawken up to my shoulder and eased back the hammer. I took a good aim and, just then, remembered I hadn’t checked the powder in the pan. I always kept the pans primed with frizzen cover in place, but I had been taught my whole life to check the pan before I make that shot. That moose was lookin’ right at me, and I didn’t dare move. Then he stood and I squeezed the trigger, and that Hawken jumped back against my shoulder, and that moose took three or four bounds through the snow and went down to his knees. It took me under a minute to reload, and I fired again, and he just laid his big ol’ head down and didn’t move again. I reloaded again just as fast as I could and just waited there a few minutes to make sure he was down for good.

  I approached him real careful and used the end of the Hawken to poke his hind end a couple of times just to make sure he was dead, stayin’ as far away from his head gear as possible. When he didn’t move, I whistled real loud and went to work dressin’ him out. Besides the meat, I needed that good, thick hide, so I just started to skin him at the same time. In just a minute, Jimbo was with me, and Red came up just a few minutes later. I used Red to help pull the hide off, then with it laid on the snow, I went to cuttin’ the meat off the bones. When I had as much of it on the hide as I thought Red could pull, I tied it up, and we headed back to the dugout. I had left over half of the meat back there on the carcass, so I planned on a return trip just as soon as I could. I got the meat hangin’ back in camp and headed back for the rest of it. Draggin’ that hide was just like pullin’ a sled on the snow.

  Before we got in sight of the moose carcass, Jimbo started to growl, and Red was gettin’ real nervous. I slowed down and kept the Hawken ready as we moved ahead. When we rounded the last bend, all the hair on Jimbo’s back was sticking up, and he had a real soft, low growl just rollin’ out from way down in his throat, and Ol’ Red was tense, with eyes and ears straight ahead. Then I could see four wolves feeding on the carcass. Jimbo was gettin’ mighty big, but he was no way a match for four wolves. But I figured my rifles were, so I told Jimbo to stay, and I just charged right at ’em, screamin’ like a banshee. When they saw me and that ol’ mule chargin’ right at them, they scattered out of the way, but they didn’t go far, and two of them circled around to get behind Ol’ Red. I jumped off and fired, takin’ out the closest one, and as I reached for another rifle from the saddle, the two had come in from behind Red. He kicked with both hind hooves, and as he did, it knocked me off my feet and I was down in the snow. Both hooves caught one of those wolves just as he was goin’ for Red’s hamstring, and I caught just a glimpse of that critter flyin’ through the air, but then another one was comin’ at me. I had that horse pistol and my knife, and as he lunged, I fired that pistol, and it just clicked, a misfire. I put my forearm up in front of me, and as the wolf bit down on my arm, I brought up my other hand with the knife and drove that blade deep between his ribs. He yelped and jumped and then staggered off to the side and fell, took a couple of gasps, and then lay still. Then I heard a terrible dogfight goin’ on behind us, and I realized Jimbo had come up and attacked that last wolf. That wolf must have been just a young one too, ’cause they were pretty evenly matched. But Ol’ Red just charged right in there with his hooves flyin’ and brayin’ to the heavens. He must have scared that wolf something fierce, ’cause he just broke off and ran for the timber.

  I had a mighty sore arm, but he hadn’t broken through the leather and wool. Jimbo had a nasty gash just below his one ear and another on his shoulder, but I could sew them up, and I couldn’t see a thing hurt on Ol’ Red. That was one tough mule.

  The wolf that Ol’ Red had kicked was lyin’ right where he landed. When I got over there to gather him up, I could see the side of his head was caved in from one of Red’s hooves. I went right to work, skinnin’ those three wolves, then had to walk back a ways to get the moose skin that had broke off durin’ our mad charge at those wolves. When I got to the moose, there wasn’t a whole lot left. I was amazed how much meat four hungry wolves could devour in just a couple of hours. But I loaded the head and what little meat was left, along with the wolf skins, and we headed back to the dugout.

  After carin’ for Red, I got a fresh piece of sinew I’d pulled off the moose and my sewin’ needle and sat down by the fire with Jimbo. I tried my best not to hurt him too much, and he just sat there by the fire and let me sew up those two gashes the wolf had left him with. I stretched the wolf hides on the sides of the dugout where I could work them up off the ground and then staked out the moose hide on the ground. By the time I had those hides scr
aped, it was well after dark, and I was dead tired and hungry. I sliced off a few pieces of moose meat and threw them in the pan. I didn’t even make coffee, just ate a couple and threw Jimbo a couple and called it a day.

  Next mornin’ my arm was swollen and pretty sore, and I figured this was the day for Christmas. Since I didn’t have a calendar, this was as close as I could guess. So I built up the fire and brought Red and Jimbo around and gave them their presents. Now Jimbo seemed right proud of his collar, but Ol’ Red seemed much more interested in goin’ out to the meadow and graze. So I grabbed the Hawken and put the lead rope on Red’s new halter, and off to the meadow we went. It was another right pretty midwinter day, and I could see those two eagles soaring in the heights, and then one just folded its wings in and, like a bullet, streaked down from the sky onto an unsuspecting snowshoe rabbit. It seems like you can see forever in this clear mountain air.

  We got back, and I put a big ol’ hunk of moose on the spit over the fire and made another pan of sweetened cornbread with berries in it, then me and Jimbo had our Christmas dinner. I even took a piece of the cornbread out and gave it to Red. He wolfed it right down and was rubbin’ my hand for more.

  5 The Snakes Return

  The new year came, and a few weeks into the New Year, I could tell the days were startin’ to get a little longer. We had settled into a daily routine. Storms would come, and we would be cooped up inside, which both me and Jimbo hated. But after the storms, the sun would come out again, and we would spend our days outside. Many hours every day, I worked with Jimbo, teachin’ him hand signals and voice commands. He was learnin’ real fast, and I figured I had never seen a dog with more smarts. Ol’ Red’s coat had grown long and shaggy, and I could tell he had lost weight not gettin’ all the grass he wanted, and I made up my mind to let him graze longer each day and I would have to shovel more. When the storms would come in and we couldn’t go out to the meadow, I had taken to peelin’ the bark from cottonwoods along the stream to feed him. Whatever weight Red had lost, Jimbo had gained. He was growin’ mighty fast and was gettin’ huge.