Grizzly Killer: The Making of a Mountain Man

by Lane R Warenski

  8 The Fever

  I figured the safest place for us to go and for Runnin’ Wolf’s leg to mend was the dugout, so we headed in that direction. We passed the creek comin’ in from the east that I had done the trappin’ on, and just a couple of miles below that, we climbed up out of the Bear River canyon, headin’ east. I reckoned it would take us three or four days to get back to the dugout. I was tryin’ to stay to hard rocky ground and high up in the timber as much as possible so’s not to leave an easy trail to follow. I figured Runnin’ Wolf’s leg wouldn’t let him stay in the saddle for a long, hard day either. But I figured he would never say a thing ’bout it hurtin’ him like I knew it must. By midafternoon, I was lookin’ for a safe place to camp, and we still needed meat. I headed down the hill and came out on the edge of a big meadow that had a small spring at the head of it and a beaver pond right out in the middle.

  We stopped at the head of this meadow just inside the trees, and I got Runnin’ Wolf down, hobbled the horses on the meadow grass, and brought in a little wood for a fire and nodded at Runnin’ Wolf, and he nodded back. We had only been together for a couple of days but were learnin’ fast what each other needed. I got back on Ol’ Red and started along the edge of the trees, lookin’ for some meat.

  ’Bout an hour later and a couple of miles below camp, I came across a well-used game trail. I turned around and headed back into the trees. Around a quarter mile away, I tied Red to a quakie then moved real easy like back down and waited sixty or seventy yards off the trail back in the trees. The sun was gettin’ right low in the sky, and no game had come down to the meadow to graze. When it started to get dusk, I went back up to Red and started back to camp. I spooked a couple of deer but had no shot. All I could see was their white rumps bouncin’ away through the trees. Then ’bout a half mile from camp, I saw a porcupine just climbin’ down from a tree and got off Red, and with a stick, I smacked him a good, hard hit across its head. Skinnin’ that critter wasn’t fun, but I got it done. When I got to camp, Runnin’ Wolf had a small fire goin’. I put the porcupine on a green quakie branch and set it up over the fire to roast. I still had coffee and flour, so I made up some pan biscuits and got some water to boilin’ in the coffee pot. Jimbo came back with a snowshoe rabbit. I thought I should have taken him with me, and maybe he could have driven those deer I saw to me. I would have to try that next time I went out.

  Next mornin’ we headed out just after dawn and traveled much like we had the day before, tryin’ to stay to rocky ground where we could and in the cover of trees. ’Bout midday we jumped a yearlin’ doe that ran out just a few yards and stopped to see what we were, and I shot her. We now had some fresh meat. I figured on making today a short day of travel to let Runnin’ Wolf rest his leg. Since we had seen no sign of the Snakes, it would give me and Jimbo a chance to check our back trail.

  ’Round noon we came out of the timber and had to cross a big, high bald ridge. There were several game trails up over this ridge, but we were gonna to be in the open on all of them. Runnin’ Wolf didn’t like it at all, and pointin’ way up high to the timber, he said, “We should stay in the trees.” It looked to be ’bout a hard half day’s ride to where we could cross the ridge and stay in the trees, but he knew this country better than I did, so we started south in the trees.

  It was a hard climb up through the timber, and we came to a couple of spots we had to backtrack to get around rock outcroppin’s that we couldn’t climb. By midafternoon the horses were gettin’ mighty tired, and I saw Runnin’ Wolf rubbin’ his leg with a real grim look on his face. I knew we weren’t goin’ the make it across the ridge ’fore dark, so we started to look for a place to camp. We came up on a little shelf no more than ten feet across and maybe fifty feet long. There was no food or water for the stock, but it was level enough for us to sleep and the stock to stand comfortably, so we stopped.

  After Runnin’ Wolf was set, I unloaded the packs and unsaddled Red and the chestnut. Jimbo had taken off like he always did, scoutin’ around and lookin’ for somethin’ to eat. I broke off a bunch of small branches and found part of an old squirrel’s nest for tinder and left Runnin’ Wolf to get a fire goin’. I cut us off some chunks of deer and put them on stakes to roast over the fire. My water pouch didn’t have enough water left in it to do any more than wet the stock’s mouths and give us just a swallow. I figured we would just move out at dawn, and when we found a stream on the other side of that ridge, we would have a good rest and drink there.

  We had moved up in this timber quite a ways, and it was a right chilly night. Runnin’ Wolf seemed fine under that bear robe, but I spent most of the night findin’ and feedin’ small branches into the fire. When it was barely light enough to see the trees, I was ready to head out. With Ol’ Red and the horses havin’ nothin’ to eat or drink, they weren’t very happy ’bout bein’ loaded up for another day. Runnin’ Wolf was tryin’ to get movin’, but it was real plain he was hurtin’. I got my arms around him to help him up and could tell he was gettin’ feverish. We would have to rest for a few days before we got back to the dugout.

  I let Red lead the way, and he picked as easy a trail as could be found. We came out of the trees just at the base of a straight-up rock face. It was ’bout a quarter mile across the ridge in the open, and we had to cross over an old rock side for part of that. By now we were up high enough and far enough away that bein’ in the open for just the little while wasn’t much of a worry. Runnin’ Wolf was mighty weak, and I was worried ’bout the rock slide and knew it would be tough on him and the horses.

  Red was followin’ a game trail that led out under this cliff, and when we got to the slide, I was right pleased to see the trail went right on across it. It was narrow and windin’ along, but these were all mountain horses. Ol’ Red seemed right at home as he made his way across. One of the pack horses slipped and started to go down just as we were gettin’ to the far side, but he managed to stay up. The chestnut Runnin’ Wolf was ridin’ was doin’ fine and seemed to know his rider was hurt.

  Just into the trees on the other side, the ridge dropped off into a sage flat, and I pulled up and stopped. Runnin’ Wolf had beads of sweat runnin’ down his face and was real pale. He needed water, and so did the stock, so with a nod, we rode on. The sun was gettin’ close to center sky when we rode into a draw that had just a trickle of water runnin’ down through the bottom. We followed it down ’bout a half mile and came to the edge of a meadow with a spring bubblin’ up, and it turned that trickle of water into a right pretty little creek. There were quakies along the creek and a place to set up a camp, stayin’ in the pines for shelter if the weather didn’t hold.

  I helped Runnin’ Wolf off the chestnut, rolled out the bear skin on a bed of pine needles, and got him covered up. Ol’ Red and the horses had stayed right there at the spring, drinkin’ their fill. Jimbo had taken off as usual, scoutin’ around. I filled the water pouch and got Runnin’ Wolf to drink then went to work unloadin’ the stock, hobbled them out on the meadow grass, built a fire up under a big ol’ pine so the smoke would be broken up by the branches, and started cookin’. Jimbo came back with some pine hen feathers stuck to the side of his mouth, so I figured he’d had lunch. Roasted deer, pan biscuits, and coffee were lunch, but Runnin’ Wolf hardly ate.

  I’d seen the Cherokees back home make a tea usin’ white bark, so I peeled some quakie bark and boiled it awhile. Runnin’ Wolf didn’t seem to care for the taste, but he drank it. After a while, he was sleepin’ better, and the fever seemed to be down. Pa had told me once that aspen bark had medicines in it. It looked to be helpin’ Runnin’ Wolf rest, so I was glad I remembered that.

  I put us together a lean-to and covered the top with pine boughs real thick and hung the deer way up in a tree a couple of hundred feet from camp. Then I went to gatherin’ firewood, findin’ the driest there was around. Much of it I broke off the dead lower branches of pines as they are almost always dry.

  When the sun was ’bout midway ’
tween center sky and the western horizon, I checked on Runnin’ Wolf and told him I would be gone awhile, saddled Ol’ Red, and called Jimbo, and we headed along our back trail, watchin’ real close for any sign we were bein’ followed. When we came out onto the bare ridge top by the rock slide, I stopped and just looked out over hundreds of miles of country. Lookin’ for any movement or smoke or any sign of life. I saw what appeared to be an elk herd two or three miles northwest and below us, but they seemed content just grazin’ in the open. I sat there in the saddle, just admirin’ the view, when I noticed a haze between two hills way off to the northeast toward the Seeds-Kee-Dee. I figured this haze was out there maybe fifteen or twenty miles. I looked mighty hard for quite a while, but I just couldn’t tell for sure if it was smoke or just a haze. There wasn’t any haze in any of the other hollows or valleys that I could tell, so I figured it must be smoke.

  I hightailed it back to camp to tell Runnin’ Wolf, but when I got there, his fever was up again, and so I just kept it to myself. I boiled some more quakie bark and got him to drink the tea it made and built the fire up just a bit to help keep him warm. Then I just sat by the fire to ponder on our predicament. After rollin’ it around in my mind for a while, I figured stayin’ right where we were was the safest thing to do and the only thing with Runnin’ Wolf in the condition he was in. We were up higher on the mountain than most huntin’ parties were likely to come, and we had good water, shelter, and enough meat for a few days.

  Runnin’ Wolf had a bad time of it over the next three days. His fever would come, and I would try to get as much quakie bark tea in him as I could. When his fever seemed to break some, I tried to get him to drink some broth I made by boilin’ some deer meat with plenty of fat in it, but he drank mighty little of that, and he didn’t eat a thing.

  On the mornin’ of the fourth day, I woke up just before dawn to the howlin’ of a wolf that wasn’t far away. I just lay there real still, listening like I always did. That wolf was slowly movin’ away from us with his mournful-soundin’ howl. As dawn broke, the red-orange tint of the clouds was really something to see. I got the fire goin’ and some coffee boilin’ and watched the color fade from the sky as the sun came up. There were marmots below us in the rocks along the creek and a pair of camp robbers squawkin’ in a tree not far away. I figured it was time to wake Runnin’ Wolf and see how he was doin’, when he sat up, smiled, and said. “Hungry.” His color was back to normal, and I went right to work gettin’ some deer strips roastin’ over the fire.

  As we sat there by the fire, eatin’ roasted deer and biscuits and sippin’ coffee, he told me his spirit helper, the wolf, had come to him in the night and had takin’ his fever away. I figured he had been dreamin’ and had seen Jimbo, as that dog had hardly left Runnin’ Wolf’s side for the last three days. But as I moved the stock from their picket line out to the meadow, I noticed another set of dog tracks just smaller than Jimbo’s. I couldn’t figure why Ol’ Red and the horses or Jimbo hadn’t made a fuss if there had been a wolf right in camp, and I said so to Runnin’ Wolf. He just smiled and said, “They know he here to help.”

  I had been around the Cherokee enough to know they believed in a lot of things that didn’t fit to our way of thinkin’. Most white people just figured it was all made up in their minds. But I could see the wolf tracks right in camp, and Runnin’ Wolf’s fever was gone and none of our animals had made a sound ’bout that wolf bein’ here. None of this made any sense to me. I could tell I would be ponderin’ on this thing for a long time to come.

  Runnin’ Wolf seemed to be gettin’ better fast now the fever was gone. The next mornin’, I stripped off the splint on his leg, and the swellin’ had gone down a lot. The bruise was startin’ to return to a more normal color. I wrapped his leg with some of the raw hide from that last deer, hair side against his skin, and replaced the splint and wrapped it as tight as I dared. I found a good strong stick with the fork on one end and made a makeshift crutch. He still couldn’t put any weight on his leg. But now he could hobble around a bit.

  I figured it was gettin’ to be around the last of April by now, so I had ’bout a month before I would leave for Rendezvous. I told Runnin’ Wolf ’bout the haze I had seen a couple of days ago and that we needed to get back to the dugout. I told him ’bout Rendezvous and asked if he would like to go with me. He figured the haze was what I figured, an Injun village. He reckoned it was Snakes, but he said the Arapahos and Cheyennes sometimes went to the mountains to hunt in the spring, that they were out of meat from the winter, and the buffalo hadn’t returned from the south yet. So they went to the mountains to hunt deer and elk to get them by until the buffalo returned. He said we would have to be mighty careful movin’ with huntin’ parties ’bout. He said all these Injuns were his enemies, and if they found us, it would mean a fight. He said, “When you are ready to go to Rendezvous, I will know to go or not.”

  Next mornin’ we broke camp and packed up the horses. Ol’ Red seemed right ready to be goin’ again. Runnin’ Wolf was movin’ much easier, but he still needed a lot of help. Once he was up on the chestnut, he seemed right at home. Jimbo took the lead, and we moved out, headed north by east. We were still high up, and we just followed the lay of the land, stayin’ under the cover of trees as much as possible. I figured we were still two or three days from the dugout.

  As the sun was gettin’ low in the west, we were followin’ a little creek that had become a rushin’ torrent of water with the snow meltin’ now mighty fast up in the high country. We moved away from the creek quite a ways so we could hear someone comin’ without the rushin’ water coverin’ all other sounds, and we made us a simple little camp for the night. We set a small fire up under some trees to break up the smoke, and I made sure the firewood was dry. The grass was really greenin’ up fast now, and there were a lot of wildflowers startin’ to come up. I picketed the stock on a patch of grass close by, and we let the fire completely die out ’fore dark.

  Next mornin’ the sky was slate gray and lowerin’. The mountaintops were all covered, and it looked like we would be gettin’ wet ’fore long. We loaded up, crossed the creek, and headed in a more easterly direction. We had traveled ’bout two hours, when we come upon a right pretty little valley with a creek runnin’ down through it, and we started to follow it down. We had only been followin’ it a little while, when it started to feel real familiar. I then realized this was the valley were Pa was buried. I told Runnin’ Wolf the story of what had happened, and as we followed the valley down, it was only ’bout three miles when we came upon me and Pa’s old camp. The lean-to frame was still up, but the boughs were all crumbled away. From there I went right to Pa’s grave. Grass was startin’ to grow right up over it, and I wanted to clean it up like me and Pa had done to Ma’s ’fore we left Kentucky. But with Injun huntin’ parties ’bout, I knew not to leave any sign we had been there.

  Not wantin’ to camp another night on the trail with a storm ready to break anytime, we pushed hard. Most all the way to the dugout, we could stay in the trees. The clouds kept gettin’ lower as the afternoon dragged on, and by dusk, it was startin’ to rain. That last hour gettin’ to the dugout was cold, wet, and miserable. The only time I could see the trail was when the lightning would flash, and the thunder got so loud you could feel it shakin’ the ground and the air. When we got there, I stripped the packs and saddles and turned the horses into the corral. I opened up the dugout, and it was so dark inside I couldn’t see a thing, but it smelled mighty stale, bein’ closed up for a few weeks. I had to feel my way to the fireplace and fumbled around for quite a while, gettin’ a fire goin’. Once I had flames and we could see, I helped Runnin’ Wolf in and got him settled by the fire. He was mighty weak. It had been a long, hard day of ridin’, and I could tell his leg was really botherin’ him. But he never said a word ’bout it.

  Once I had the packs and saddles inside out of the rain, I put what deer meat we had left on the fire and made coffee. By the time the coffee was re
ady, the dugout was good and warm. Jimbo was curled up by the fire, and we ate roasted deer and drank hot bitter coffee. Then turned in and slept through the night.

  9 Making Meat

  For the next couple of days, Runnin’ Wolf didn’t move around much. I fixed him a spot by the outside fire, next to the logs of the dugout, so he didn’t have to be in that dark dugout durin’ the day. I figured it was ’bout the first of May, and the days were downright pleasant. My supplies were runnin’ real low, the cornmeal and sugar were gone, and I figured we would be out of flour in another week or two. I had started usin’ less of the bakin’ powder ’cause it was ’bout gone. I still had some salt but not enough to cure much meat. There was still a little of the moose left in the smokehouse, but it had gone bad, so I threw it out for Jimbo. He wasn’t very particular ’bout the condition of the meat he ate. We were back to havin’ only jerky to eat, and we didn’t have a lot of that left, so I knew I would have to go out and make meat.

  Next mornin’ I saddled Ol’ Red and got Runnin’ Wolf set. I left him the squirrel gun and had dug out Pa’s old possibles bag that had his powder horn, patch knife, fire-makin’ kit, two extra flints, and patch cloth, and I put eight .36-caliber balls in it. He had me get him the bow from the Snake warrior he had killed and the rest of the rawhide from the last deer. Once he had that, I got on Ol’ Red, and we started out, with Jimbo takin’ the lead as always. I thought ’bout leavin’ Jimbo with Runnin’ Wolf, but I really liked havin’ him with me. So just like through the winter, the three of us headed out.