The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  “Well, I’ll be darned!” ejaculated R.C. “He heard the bullets hit and wonders what the dickens.… Say, now he hears the reports! Look at him stand!”

  “Boys, smoke him up,” I said, after the manner of Haught’s vernacular. So while I reloaded R.C. and Nielsen began to shoot. We had more fun out of it than the bear. Evidently he located us. Then he began to run, choosing the open slope by which he had come. I got five more shots at him as he crossed this space, and the last bullet puffed up dust under him, making him take a header down the slope into the thicket. Whereupon we all had a good laugh. Nielsen appeared particularly pleased over his first shots at a real live bear.

  “Say, why didn’t you think to ride round there?” queried R.C. thoughtfully. “He didn’t see us. He wasn’t scared. In a few minutes you could have been on the rim of that slope right over him. Got him sure!”

  “R.C. why didn’t you think to tell me to do that?” I retorted. “Why don’t we ever think the right thing before it is too late?”

  “That’s our last chance this year—I feel it in my bones,” declared R.C. mournfully.

  His premonition turned out to be correct. Upon our arrival at camp we heard some very disquieting news. A neighbor of Haught’s had taken the trouble to ride up to inform us about the epidemic of influenza. The strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages, the cow-camps, the mines—everywhere. At first I thought Haught’s informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty people had succumbed in a few weeks—then I was thoroughly alarmed. Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. Doyle was relieved and glad. He wanted to get home to his family. The Haughts, naturally, were sorry. My decision once arrived at, the next thing was to consider which way to travel. The long ten-day trip down into the basin, round by Payson, and up on the rim again, and so on to Flagstaff was not to be considered at all. The roads by way of Winslow and Holbrook were long and bad. Doyle wanted to attempt the old army road along the rim made by General Crook when he moved the captured Apaches to the reservation assigned to them. No travel over this road for many years! Haught looked dubious, but finally said we could chop our way through thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The matter of decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not easy to make. The responsibility was great, but as the hunt had been for me it seemed incumbent upon me to accept responsibility. What made me hesitate at all was the fact that I had ridden five miles or more along the old Crook road. I remembered. I told Lee and I told Nielsen that we would find it tough going. Lee laughed like a cowboy: “We’ll go a-hummin’,” he said. Nielsen shrugged his brawny shoulders. What were obstacles to this man of the desert? I realized that his look had decided me.

  “All right, men, we’ll try the old Crook road,” I said. “Pack what you can up to the wagon today, and tomorrow early we’ll break camp.”

  I walked with the Haughts from our camp across the brook to theirs, where we sat down in the warm sunshine. I made light of this hunting trip in which it had turned out I had no gun, no horse, no blankets, no rain-proof tent, no adequate amount of food supplies, and no good luck, except the wonderful good luck of being well, of seeing a magnificent country, of meeting some more fine westerners. But the Haughts appeared a little slow to grasp, or at least to credit my philosophy. We were just beginning to get acquainted. Their regret was that they had been unable to see me get a bear, a deer, a lion, and some turkeys. Their conviction, perhaps formed from association with many sportsman hunters, was that owing to my bad luck I could not and would not want to come again.

  “See here, Haught,” I said. “I’ve had a fine time. Now forget about this hunt. It’s past. We’ll plan another. Will you save next fall for me?”

  “I shore will,” he replied.

  “Very well, then, it’s settled. Say by August you and the boys cut a trail or two in and out of Horton Thicket. I’ll send you money in advance to pay for this work, and get new hounds and outfit. I’ll leave Flagstaff on September fifteenth. Meet you here September twenty-first, along about noon.”

  We shook hands upon the deal. It pleased me that the Haughts laughed at me yet appeared both surprised and happy. As I left I heard Edd remark: “Not a kick!… Meet him next year at noon! What do you know about thet?” This remark proved that he had paid me a compliment in eastern slang most likely assimilated from R.C. and Romer.

  The rest of the afternoon our camp resembled a beehive, and next morning it was more like a bedlam. The horses were fresh, spirited, and they had tender backs; the burros stampeded because of some surreptitious trick of Romer’s. But by noon we had all the outfit packed in the wagon. Considering the amount of stuff, and the long, rough climb up to the wagon, this was a most auspicious start. I hoped that it augured well for us, but while I hoped I had a gloomy foreboding. We bade good-bye to Haught and his son George. Edd offered to go with us as far as he knew the country, which distance was not many miles. So we set out upon our doubtful journey, our saddle-horses in front of the lumbering wagon.

  We had five miles of fairly level road through open forest along the rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill grade that the bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied on. When we came to a long slow slant uphill, a road of loose rocks, we made about one mile an hour. This slow travel worked havoc upon my mind. I wanted to hurry. I wanted to get out of the wilds. That awful rumor about influenza occupied my mind and struck cold fear into my heart. What of my family? No making the best of this! Slowly we toiled on. Sunset overtook us at a rocky ledge which had to be surmounted. With lassos on saddle horses in front of the two teams, all pulling hard, we overcame that obstacle. But at the next little hill, which we encountered about twilight, one of the team horses balked. Urging him, whipping him, served no purpose; and it had bad effect upon the other horses. Darkness was upon us with the camp-site Edd knew of still miles to the fore. No grass, no water for the horses! But we had to camp there. All hands set to work. It really was fun—it should have been fine for me—but my gloomy obsession to hurry obscured my mind. I marveled at old Doyle, over seventy, after that long, hard day, quickly and efficiently cooking a good hot supper. Romer had enjoyed the day. He said he was tired, but would like to stay up beside the mighty camp-fire Nielsen built. I had neither energy or spirit to oppose him. The night was dark and cold and windy; the fire felt so good that I almost went asleep beside it. We had no time to put up tents. I made our bed, crawled into it, stretched out with infinite relief; and the last thing I was aware of was Romer snuggling in beside me.

  Morning brought an early bestirring of every one. We had to stir to get warm. The air nipped like cold pincers. All the horses were gone; we could not hear a bell. But Lee did not appear worried. I groaned in spirit. More delay! Gloom assailed me. Lee sallied out with his yellow dog Pups. I had forgotten the good quality of Pups, but not my dislike for him. He barked vociferously, and that annoyed me. R.C. and I helped Edd and Nielsen pack the wagon. We worked quick and hard. Then Doyle called us to breakfast. We had scarcely started to eat when we heard a jangle of bells and the pound of hoofs. I could not believe my ears. Our horses were lost. Nevertheless suddenly they appeared, driven by Lee riding bareback, and Pups barking his head off. We all jumped up with ropes and nose-bags to head off the horses, and soon had them secured. Not one missing! I asked Lee how in the world he had found that wild bunch in less than an hour. Lee laughed. “Pups. He rounded them up in no time.”

  Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick myself, but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat. I reproached myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been deceived in the surface appearance of people and things and dogs! Most of our judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.

  By nine o’clock we were meeting our first obstacle—the little hill at which the sorrel h
orse had balked. Lo! rested and full of grain, he balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled the teams. Lee had more patience than I would have had. He unhitched the lead team and in place of the sorrel put a saddle horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried again and surmounted the hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead over as rocky and rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time we could see over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no urgent need of him.

  We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses, having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day, a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it brightened my spirits. “A bear! A big bear, Dad!… I saw him! He was alive! He stood up—like this—wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!”

  Our next day’s progress was no less than a nightmare. Crawling along, unpacking and carrying, and packing again, we toiled up and down the interminable length of three almost impassable miles. When night overtook us it was in a bad place to camp. No grass, no water! A cold gale blew out of the west. It roared through the forest. It blew everything loose away in the darkness. It almost blew us away in our beds. The stars appeared radiantly coldly white up in the vast blue windy vault of the sky. A full moon soared majestically. Shadows crossed the weird moon-blanched forest glades.

  At daylight we were all up, cramped, stiff, half frozen, mostly silent. The water left in the buckets was solid ice. Suddenly someone discovered that Nielsen was missing. The fact filled me with consternation and alarm. He might have walked in his sleep and fallen over the rim. What had become of him? All his outfit lay scattered round in his bed. In my bewilderment I imagined many things, even to the extreme that he might have left us in the lurch. But when I got to that sad pass of mind I suddenly awakened as if out of an evil dream. My worry, my hurry had obsessed me. High time indeed was it for me to meet this situation as I had met other difficult ones. To this end I went out away from camp, and forgot myself, my imagined possibilities, and thought of my present responsibility, and the issue at hand. That instant I realized my injustice toward Nielsen, and reproached myself.

  Upon my return to camp Nielsen was there, warming one hand over the camp-fire and holding a cup of coffee in the other.

  “Nielsen, you gave us a scare. Please explain,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. Last night I was worried. I couldn’t sleep. I got to thinking we were practically lost. Some one ought to find out what was ahead of us. So I got up and followed the road. Bright moonlight. I walked all the rest of the night. And that’s all, sir.”

  I liked Nielsen’s looks then. He reminded me of Jim Emett, the Mormon giant to whom difficulties and obstacles were but spurs to achievement. Such men could not be defeated.

  “Well, what did you find out?” I inquired.

  “Change of conditions, sir,” he replied, as a mate to his captain. “Only one more steep hill so far as I went. But we’ll have to cut through thickets and logs. From here on the road is all grown over. About ten miles west we turn off the rim down a ridge.”

  That about the turning-off place was indeed good news. I thanked Nielsen. And Doyle appeared immensely relieved. The packing and carrying had begun to tell on us. Pups ingratiated himself into my affections. He found out that he could coax meat and biscuit from me. We had three axes and a hatchet; and these we did not pack in the wagon. When Doyle finally got the teams started Lee and Nielsen and R.C. and I went ahead to clear the road. Soon we were halted by thickets of pines, some of which were six inches in diameter at the base. The road had ceased to be rocky, and that, no doubt, was the reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the road. He sweat till he was wringing wet. Neither that day nor the next would we have ever gotten far along that stretch of thicketed and obstructed road had it not been for Nielsen.

  At sunset we found ourselves at the summit of a long slowly ascending hill, deeply forested. It took all the horses together to pull the wagon to the top. Thus when we started down a steep curve, horses and men both were tired. I was ahead riding beside Romer. Nielsen and R.C. were next, and Lee had fallen in behind the wagon. As I turned the sharp curve I saw not fifty feet below me a huge log obstructing the road.

  “Look out! Stop!” I yelled, looking back.

  But I was too late. The horses could not hold back the heavily laden wagon, and they broke into a gallop. I saw Doyle’s face turn white—heard him yell. Then I spurred my horse to the side. Romer was slow or frightened. I screamed at him to get off the road. My heart sank sick within me! Surely he would be run down. As his pony Rye jumped out of the way the shoulder of the black horse, on the off side, struck him a glancing blow. Then the big team hurdled the log, the tongue struck with a crash, the wagon stopped with a lurch, and Doyle was thrown from his seat.

  Quick as a flash Nielsen was on the spot beside the team. The bay horse was down. The black horse was trying to break away. Nielsen cut and pulled the bay free of the harness, and Lee came tearing down to grasp and hold the black.

  Like a fool I ran around trying to help somehow, but I did not know what to do. I smelled and then saw blood, which fact convinced me of disaster. Only the black horse that had hurdled the log made any effort to tear away. The other lay quiet. When finally it was extricated we found that the horse had a bad cut in the breast made by a snag on the log. We could find no damage done to the wagon. The harness Nielsen had cut could be mended quickly. What a fortunate outcome to what had seemed a very grave accident! I was thankful indeed. But not soon would I forget sight of Romer in front of that plunging wagon.

  With the horses and a rope we hauled the log to one side of the road, and hitching up again we proceeded on our way. Once I dropped back and asked Doyle if he was all right. “Fine as a fiddle,” he shouted. “This’s play to what we teamsters had in the early days.” And verily somehow I could see the truth of that. A mile farther on we made camp; and all of us were hungry, weary, and quiet.

  Doyle proved a remarkable example to us younger men. Next morning he crawled out before any one else, and his call was cheery. I was scarcely able to get out of my bed, but I was ashamed to lie there an instant after I heard Doyle. Possibly my eyesight was dulled by exhaustion when it caused me to see myself as a worn, unshaven, wrinkled wretch. Romer-boy did not hop out with his usual alacrity. R.C. had to roll over in his bed and get up on all fours.

  We had scant rations for three more days. It behooved us to work and waste not an hour. All morning, at the pace of a snail it seemed, we chopped and lifted and hauled our way along that old Crook road. Not since my trip down the Santa Rosa river in Mexico had I labored so strenuously.

  At noon we came to the turning-off junction, an old blazed road Doyl
e had some vague knowledge of. “It must lead to Jones’ ranch,” Doyle kept saying. “Anyway, we’ve got to take it.” North was our direction. And to our surprise, and exceeding gladness, the road down this ridge proved to be a highway compared to what we had passed. In the open forest we had to follow it altogether by the blazes on the trees. But with all our eyes alert that was easy. The grade was down hill, so that we traveled fast, covering four miles an hour. Occasionally a log or thicket halted rapid progress. Toward the end of the afternoon sheep and cattle trails joined the now well-defined road, and we knew we were approaching a ranch. I walked, or rather limped the last mile, for the very good reason that I could not longer bear the trot of my horse. The forest grew more open, with smaller pines, and fewer thickets. At sunset I came out upon the brow of a deep barren-looking canyon, in the middle of which squatted some old ruined log-cabins. Deserted! Alas for my visions of a cup of cold milk. For hours they had haunted me. When Doyle saw the broken-down cabins and corrals he yelled: “Boys, it’s Jones’ Ranch. I’ve been here. We’re only three miles from Long Valley and the main road!”

  Elated we certainly were. And we rushed down the steep hill to look for water. All our drinking water was gone, and the horses had not slaked their thirst for two days. Separating we rode up and down the canyon. R.C. and Romer found running water. Thereupon with immense relief and joy we pitched camp near the cabins, forgetting our aches and pains in the certainty of deliverance.

  What a cold, dismal, bleak, stony, and lonesome place! We unpacked only bedding, and our little store of food. And huddled around the camp-fire we waited upon Doyle’s cooking. The old pioneer talked while he worked.

  “Jones’ ranch!—I knew Jones in the early days. And I’ve heard of him lately. Thirty years ago he rode a prairie schooner down into this canyon. He had his wife, a fine, strong girl, and he had a gun, an axe, some chuck, a few horses and cattle, and not much else. He built him that cabin there and began the real old pioneering of the early days. He raised cattle. He freighted to the settlements twice a year. In twenty-five years he had three strapping boys and a girl just as strapping. And he had a fortune in cattle. Then he sold his stock and left this ranch. He wanted to give his faithful wife and his children some of the comforts and luxuries and advantages of civilization. The war came. His sons did not wait for the draft. They entered the army. I heard a story about Abe Jones, the old man’s first boy. Abe was a quiet sort of chap. When he got to the army training camp a sergeant asked Abe if he could shoot. Abe said: ‘Nope, not much.’ So they gave him a rifle and told him to shoot at the near target. Abe looked at it sort of funny like and he picked out the farthest target at one thousand yards. And he hit the bull’s eye ten times straight running. ‘Hey!’ gasped the sergeant, ‘you long, lanky galoot! You said you couldn’t shoot.’ Abe sort of laughed. ‘Reckon I was thinkin’ about what Dad called shootin’.’… Well, Abe and his brothers got to France to the front. Abe was a sharpshooter. He was killed at Argonne. Both his brothers were wounded. They’re over there yet.… I met a man not long ago who’d seen Jones recently. And the old pioneer said he and his wife would like to be back home. And home to them means right here—Jones’ Ranch!”