by Zane Grey
I never tired of listening to Haught. He had killed over a hundred bears, many of them vicious grizzlies, and he had often escaped by a breadth of a hair, but the killing stories were not the most interesting to me. Haught had lived a singularly elemental life. He never knew what to tell me, because I did not know what to ask for, so I just waited for stories, experiences, woodcraft, natural history and the like, to come when they would. Once he had owned an old bay horse named Moze. Under any conditions of weather or country Moze could find his way back to camp. Haught would let go the bridle, and Moze would stick up his ears, look about him, and circle home. No matter if camp had been just where Haught had last thrown a packsaddle!
When Haught first came to Arizona and began his hunting up over the rim he used to get down in the cedar country, close to the desert. Here he heard of a pure black antelope that was the leader of a herd of ordinary color, which was a grayish white. The day came when Haught saw this black antelope. It was a very large, beautiful stag, the most noble and wild and sagacious animal Haught had ever seen. For years he tried to stalk it and kill it, and so did other hunters. But no hunter ever got even a shot at it. Finally this black antelope disappeared and was never heard of again.
By this time Copple had been permitted a long breathing spell, and now began a tale calculated to outdo the Arabian Nights. I envied his most remarkable imagination. His story had to do with hunting meat for a mining camp in Mexico. He got so expert with a rifle that he never aimed at deer. Just threw his gun, as was a habit of gun-fighters! Once the camp was out of meat, and also he was out of ammunition. Only one shell left! He came upon a herd of deer licking salt at a deer lick. They were small deer and he wanted several or all of them. So he manoeuvred around and waited until five of the deer had lined up close together. Then, to make sure, he aimed so as to send his one bullet through their necks. Killed the whole five in one shot!
We were all reduced to a state of mute helplessness and completely at Copple’s mercy. Next he gave us one of his animal tales. He was hunting along the gulf shore on the coast of Sonora, where big turtles come out to bask in the sun and big jaguars come down to prowl for meat. One morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck. Promptly the turtle drew in head and flippers, and was safe under its shell. The jaguar scratched and clawed at a great rate, but to no avail. Then the big cat turned round and seized the tail of the turtle and began to chew it. Whereupon the turtle stuck out its head, opened its huge mouth and grasped the tail of the jaguar. First to give in was the cat. He let go and let out a squall. But the turtle started to crawl off, got going strong, and dragged the jaguar into the sea and drowned him. With naive earnestness Copple assured his mute listeners that he could show them the exact spot in Sonora where this happened.
Retribution inevitably overtakes transgressors. Copple in his immense loquaciousness was not transgressing much, for he really was no greater dreamer than I, but the way he put things made us want to see the mighty hunter have a fall.
We rested the hounds next day, and I was glad to rest myself. About sunset Copple rode up to the rim to look for his mules. We all heard him shoot eight times with his rifle and two with his revolver. Everybody said: “Turkeys! Ten turkeys—maybe a dozen, if Copple got two in line!” And we were all glad to think so. We watched eagerly for him, but he did not return till dark. He seemed vastly sore at himself. What a remarkable hard luck story he told! He had come upon a flock of turkeys, and they were rather difficult to see. All of them were close, and running fast. He shot eight times at eight turkeys and missed them all. Too dark—brush—trees—running like deer. Copple had a dozen excuses. Then he saw a turkey on a log ten feet away. He shot twice. The turkey was a knot, and he had missed even that.
Thereupon I seized my opportunity and reminded all present how Copple had called out: “Turkey number one! Turkey number two!” the day I had missed so many. Then I said:
“Ben, you must have yelled out tonight like this.” And I raised my voice high.
“Turkey number one—Nix!… Turkey number two—missed, by Gosh!… Turkey number three—never touched him!… Turkey number four—No!… Turkey number five—Aw, I’m shootin’ blank shells!… Turkey number six on the log—by thunder, I can’t see straight!”
We all had our fun at Copple’s expense. The old bear hunter, Haught, rolled on the ground, over and over, and roared in his mirth.
VII
Early next morning before the sun had tipped the pines with gold I went down Barber Shop Canyon with Copple to look for our horses. During the night our stock had been chased by a lion. We had all been awakened by their snorting and stampeding. We found our horses scattered, the burros gone, and Copple’s mules still squared on guard, ready to fight. Copple assured me that this formation of his mules on guard was an infallible sign of lions prowling around. One of these mules he had owned for ten years and it was indeed the most intelligent beast I ever saw in the woods.
We found three beaver dams across the brook, one about fifty feet long, and another fully two hundred. Fresh turkey tracks showed in places, and on the top of the longer dam, fresh made in the mud, were lion tracks as large as the crown of my hat. How sight of them made me tingle all over! Here was absolute proof of the prowling of one of the great cats.
Beaver tracks were everywhere. They were rather singular looking tracks, the front feet being five-toed, and the back three-toed, and webbed. Near the slides on the bank the water was muddy, showing that the beaver had been at work early. These animals worked mostly at night, but sometimes at sunset and sunrise. They were indeed very cautious and wary. These dams had just been completed and no aspens had yet been cut for food. Beaver usually have two holes to their home, one under the water, and the other out on the bank. We found one of these outside burrows and it was nearly a foot wide.
Upon our return to camp with the horses Haught said he could put up that lion for us, and from the size of its track he judged it to be a big one. I did not want to hunt lions and R.C. preferred to keep after bears. “Wal,” said Haught, “I’ll take an off day an’ chase thet lion. Had a burro killed here a couple of years ago.”
So we rode out with the hounds on another bear hunt. Pyle’s Canyon lay to the east of Dude Creek, and we decided to run it that day. Edd and Nielsen started down with the hounds. Copple and I followed shortly afterward with the intention of descending mid-way, and then working along the ridge crests and promontories. The other boys remained on the rim to take up various stands as occasion called for.
I had never been on as steep slopes as these under the rim. They were grassy, brushy, rocky, but it was their steepness that made them so hard to travel. Right off, half way down, we started a herd of bucks. The noise they made sounded like cattle. We found tracks of half a dozen. “Lots of deer under the rim,” declared Copple, his eyes gleaming. “They’re feedin’ on acorns. Here’s where you’ll get your big buck.” After that I kept a sharp lookout, arguing with myself that a buck close at hand was worth a lot of bears down in the brush.
Presently we changed a direct descent to work gradually along the slopes toward a great level bench covered with pines. We had to cross gravel patches and pits where avalanches had slid, and at last, gaining the bench we went through the pine grove, out to a manzanita thicket, to a rocky point where the ledges were toppling and dangerous. The stand here afforded a magnificent view. We were now down in the thick of this sloped and canyoned and timbered wildness; no longer above it, and aloof from it. The dry smell of pine filled the air. When we finally halted to listen we at once heard the baying of the hounds in the black notch below us. We watched and listened. And presently across open patches we saw the flash of deer, and then Rock and Buck following them. Thus were my suspicions of Rock fully confirmed. Copple yelled down to Edd that some of the hounds were running deer, but apparently Edd was too far away to hear.
Still, after a while we heard the mellow tones of Edd’s horn, calling
in the hounds. And then he blew the signal to acquaint all of us above that he was going down around the point to drive the next canyon. Copple and I had to choose between climbing back to the rim or trying to cross the slopes and head the gorges, and ascend the huge ridge that separated Pyle’s Canyon from the next canyon. I left the question to Copple, with the result that we stayed below.
We were still high up, though when we gazed aloft at the rim we felt so far down, and the slopes were steep, stony, soft in places and slippery in others, with deep cuts and patches of manzanita. No stranger was I to this beautiful treacherous Spanish brush! I shared with Copple a dislike of it almost equal to that inspired by cactus. We soon were hot, dusty, dry, and had begun to sweat. The immense distances of the place were what continually struck me. Distances that were deceptive—that looked short and were interminable! That was Arizona. We covered miles in our detours and we had to travel fast because we knew Edd could round the base of the lower points in quick time.
Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an enormous bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear trail. This track measured twelve inches. “He’s an old Jasper, as Haught says,” declared Copple. “Grizzly. An’ you can bet he heard the dogs an’ got movin’ away from here. But he ain’t scared. He was walkin’.”
I forgot the arduous toil. How tight and cool and prickling the feel of my skin! The fresh track of a big grizzly would rouse the hunter in any man. We made sure how fresh this track was by observing twigs and sprigs of manzanita just broken. The wood was green, and wet with sap. Old Bruin had not escaped our eyes any too soon. We followed this bear trail, evidently one used for years. It made climbing easy for us. Trust a big, heavy, old grizzly to pick out the best traveling over rough country! This fellow, I concluded, had the eye of a surveyor. His trail led gradually toward a wonderful crag-crowned ridge that rolled and heaved down from the rim. It had a dip or saddle in the middle, and rose from that to the lofty mesa, and then on the lower side, rose to a bare, round point of gray rock, a landmark, a dome-shaped tower where the gods of that wild region might have kept their vigil.
Long indeed did it take us to climb up the bear trail to where it crossed the saddle and went down on the other side into a canyon so deep and wild that it was purple. This saddle was really a remarkable place—a natural trail and outlet and escape for bears traveling from one canyon to another. Our bear tracks showed fresh, and we saw where they led down a steep, long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a dense black thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on each side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for a hunter to wait and watch.
We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds. Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet. After a while we heard Edd’s yell, far away, but clear: “Hi! Hi!” We could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and weathered slides.
Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. “Let’s go farther up,” he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us; to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious, wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes back and forth.
Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the Haughts. Presently someone high on the rim answered with like yells. The chase was growing hotter.
“They’ve got a bear up somewhere,” cried Copple, excitedly. And I agreed with him.
Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.
“The ball’s open! Get your pardners, boys,” exclaimed Copple, with animation.
“Ben, wasn’t that a.30 Gov’t?” I asked.
“Sure was,” he replied. “Must have been R.C. openin’ up. Now look sharp!”
I gazed everywhere, growing more excited and thrilled. Another shot from above, farther off and from a different rifle, augmented our stirring expectation.
Copple left our stand and ran up over the ridge, and then down under and along the base of a rock wall. I had all I could do to keep up with him. We got perhaps a hundred yards when we heard the spang of Haught’s.30 Gov’t. Following this his big, hoarse voice bawled out: “He’s goin’ to the left—to the left!” That sent us right about face, to climbing, scrambling, running and plunging back to our first stand at the saddle, where we arrived breathless and eager.
Edd was climbing higher up, evidently to reach the level top of the bluff above, and Haught was working farther up the canyon, climbing a little. Copple yelled with all his might: “Where’s the bear?”
“Bar everywhar!” pealed back Haught’s stentorian voice. How the echoes clapped!
Just then Copple electrified me with a wild shout. “Wehow! I see him.… What a whopper!” He threw up his rifle: spang—spang—spang—spang— spang.
His aim was across the canyon. I heard his bullets strike. I strained my eyes in flashing gaze everywhere. “Where? Where?” I cried, wildly.
“There!” shouted Copple, keenly, and he pointed across the canyon. “He’s goin’ over the bench—above Edd.… Now he’s out of sight. Watch just over Edd. He’ll cross that bench, go round the head of the little canyon, an’ come out on the other side, under the bare bluff.… Watch sharp-right by that big spruce with the dead top.… He’s a grizzly an’ as big as a horse”.
I looked until my eyes hurt. All I said was: “Ben, you saw game first today”. Suddenly a large, dark brown object, furry and grizzled, huge and round, moved out of the shadow under the spruce and turned to go along the edge in the open sunlight.
“Oh! look at him!” I yelled. A strong, hot gust of blood ran all over me and I thrilled till I shook. When I aimed at the bear I could see him through the circle of my peep sight, but when I moved the bead of the front sight upon him it almost covered him up. The distance was far—more than a thousand yards—over half a mile—we calculated afterward. But I tried to draw a bead on the big, wagging brown shape and fired till my rifle was empty.
Meanwhile Copple had reloaded. “You watch while I shoot,” he said. “Tell me where I’m hittin’.”
Wonderful was it to see how swiftly he could aim and shoot. I saw a puff of dust. “Low, Ben!” Spang rang his rifle. “High!” Again he shot, wide this time. He emptied his magazine. “Smoke him now!” he shouted, gleefully. “I’ll watch while you shoot.”
“It’s too far, Ben,” I replied, as I jammed the last shell in the receiver.
“No—no. It’s only we don’t hold right. Aim a little coarse,” said Copple. “Gee, ain’t he some bear! ‘No scared tall’ as the Jap says.… He’s one of the old sheep-killers. He’ll weigh half a ton. Smoke him now!”
My excitement was intense. It seemed, however, I was most consumed with admiration for that grizzly. Not in the least was he afraid. He walked along the rough places, trotted along the ledges, and here and there he halted to gaze below him. I waited for one of these halts, aimed a trifle high, and fired. The grizzly made a quick, angry moveme
nt and then jumped up on a ledge. He jumped like a rabbit.
“You hit close that time,” yelled Ben. “Hold the same way—a little coarser.”
My next bullet struck a puff from rock above the bear, and my third, hitting just in front of him, as he was on a yellow ledge, covered him with dust. He reared, and wheeling, sheered back and down the step he had mounted, and disappeared in a clump of brush. I shot into that. We heard my bullet crack the twigs. But it routed him out, and then my last shot hit far under him.
Copple circled his mouth with his hands and bellowed to the Haughts: “Climb! Climb! Hurry! Hurry! He’s just above you—under that bluff.”
The Haughts heard, and evidently tried to do all in their power, but they moved like snails. Then Copple fired five more shots, quick, yet deliberate, and he got through before I had reloaded; and as I began my third magazine Copple was so swift in reloading that his first shot mingled with my second. How we made the welkin ring! Wild yells pealed down from the rim. Somewhere from the purple depths below Nielsen’s giant’s voice rolled up. The Haughts opposite answered with their deep, hoarse yells. Old Dan and Old Tom bayed like distant thunder. The young hounds let out a string of sharp, keen yelps. Copple added his Indian cry, high-pitched and wild, to the pandemonium. But I could not shoot and screech at one and the same time.