Some legends deal with ogres and fabulous monsters rather than with real-life animals, as for instance the windigo or wandingo, a fiendish man-eating creature that preys on wanderers who have lost their way, or the loup-garou, the werewolf of the French-speaking trapper and voyageur, often a bad man, who never went to mass, and turned into this horrible cannibalistic “varmint.” A subspecies of this ogre, the loup-garou de cimetière, specializes in digging up corpses from churchyards in order to devour them. Finally, the high ranges of the Rockies were said to be inhabited by a ten-foot-tall hairy, apelike creature called Big Foot, seemingly a close cousin to the Abominable Snowman.
The Valley of Headless Men
High up in the Canadian northland, just below the Arctic Circle, where the Yukon and Northwest territories meet the jagged end of British Columbia, lies a beautiful valley. Though surrounded by a forbidding country of blizzards and ice storms, this valley is filled with lush forests and luxuriant plants, with meadows covered with wildflowers and miles of berry patches. There fawns gambol in the sun, birds chirp and warble, while bright-colored butterflies flit among blossoms replete with sweet nectar. The valley’s earth is warmed, and the climate rendered mild, by innumerable boiling and steaming hot springs, nature’s own subterranean heating system. Also, by the whim of some strange local god, gold is to be found here, gold by the handful and by the bucketful.
And yet there are no human beings to be encountered in this beautiful valley trying to escape the harsh climate of the region. This earthly paradise is shunned by the nearby Indians, and not only because its beauty is marred by an all-pervading reek of sulphurous vapors. To the natives this is the Valley of Headless Men, the Vale of the Nakoonis, hairy demons resembling giant bears, who suffer no human being to enter their balmy realm and who punish unsuspecting trespassers with death.
In 1904, during the aftermath of the Klondike Gold Rush, three brothers—Charlie, Willie, and Frank McCleod—ventured into the Valley of Headless Men in search of the shiny, precious yellow metal that has kept mankind spellbound since the dawn of history. In Edmonton the brother named Charlie had encountered a grizzled old prospector wearing around his neck a rawhide thong from which dangled a large gold nugget.
“I found it inside that devil’s cauldron they call Headless Valley,” the man explained, “up there, north of Fort Liard. There’s lots more of that stuff where this came from.”
Asked why he had not stayed to help himself to all that gold, the oldtimer said, “There’s critters there you don’t want to monkey with, big as Kodiak bears and so covered with hair that they seem to be wearin’ fur coats. They’re apt to tear you apart with their huge claws, then gobble you up like candy. The gold’s there for the pickin’, but it lies among heaps of human bones. One of them ungodly beasts, the Injuns call ’em Nakoonis, almost had me for breakfast. It got so close I felt its hot stinkin’ breath upon my neck. No, friend, you don’t want to go there, not for all the gold in the world.”
Charlie told his two brothers: “There’s more gold up there than they ever got out of the Klondike. That old coon tried to scare me off with his tales of huge hairy monsters. That’s only to keep out the competition. He wants it all for himself.”
Charlie got a good job with the Hudson’s Bay Company and did not pursue the matter further, but Willie and Frank caught gold fever and, together with an Australian prospector named Wilkerson, set out for the land of the hairy Nakoonis—and were never seen alive again.
When two years went by without his brothers coming back, Charlie got worried. He quit his job with the Hudson’s Bay Company and went on a one-man expedition to find the missing men. After a long, bone-wearying trek, he finally reached the Valley of Headless Men and soon stumbled upon an old dogsled to which had been tied a faded message: “We’ve hit pay dirt.” He began searching the area and, after three days, found Frank’s and Willie’s remains—two skeletons in union suits, one stretching out its bony hands for a rusting rifle. Both skeletons were intact, except that the skulls were missing. Of the Australian there was no trace. It was later rumored that Wilkerson had showed up in Olympia with bags of gold dust, boarding a ship bound for Sydney, but this rumor could not be verified.
Charlie questioned a few Indians living near the valley. They told him: “It was the Nakoonis. They kill all who dare to go into that bad place. They tear their heads off. That’s why we call it Headless Valley.” That was all Charlie could get out of them, but he was scared. He buried his brothers’ remains and then left quickly, haunted by the memory of two headless skeletons in woolen underwear.
All this did not discourage a Swedish gold-seeker named Ole Jorgensson. “The Australian did it, that’s obvious,” said Ole. “And he cut off their heads and hid them somewhere to make it look as if the Indians had murdered those two brothers, or, maybe, to prevent superstitious men from going there. He probably wants to come back for more. It doesn’t scare me. Indians, Australians, or hairy bear people, it’s all the same to me. I have a good rifle and a six-shooter. I’m ready for them.”
At Fort Liard, Ole ran into a storekeeper called Fields who grubstaked him for a half share in whatever the Swede might find. Ole disappeared into the wilderness. Two years later a Ntlakyapamuk Indian appeared at Field’s store with a letter from Jorgensson. Ole had found the mother lode. “Come quick, my friend,” he wrote, “and bring plenty of supplies. We will both be rich!” Enclosed in the letter was a map indicating the spot where the Swede had built himself a cabin by a lake.
It took Fields a few weeks to get the supplies together, load them on a mule, and reach Headless Valley. He found Ole’s cabin burned to the ground. Nearby he discovered Jorgensson’s headless corpse, skeleton hands still grasping a Winchester from which two shots had been squeezed off—at whom or what he could not guess. This time two red-coated Mounties arrived to investigate, but they found neither clue, nor head, nor a trace of gold. There were unnaturally large bearpaw prints all over the place, looking strangely human.
The Indians shrugged, saying: “We told you, white folks, not to go in that valley, told you the Nakoonis would get your heads. But the white man has no ears to listen.”
Three other men with no ears to heed a warning arrived in the Valley of Headless Men. It is not known who they were or what they were called. It is only known that they told all and sundry that the Australian was still in the valley killing intruders venturing into his domain. They were not afraid, because they outnumbered him three to one and were heavily armed. Their headless skeletons were found a year later, by a river, still in their bedrolls. One skeleton was clutching a piece of fur. The Mounties gave it to a naturalist for identification. He told them that the pelt fragment belonged to a creature unknown to zoology.
Twenty years later three prospectors, named Kilroy, Hayes, and Hall, went into the valley, lured by old tales of gold. They were not worried about an Australian assassin, saying, “Whoever murdered all those fellers they tell about must long be dead.”
Hall left camp one morning to look over a promising mountain slope which he thought contained veins of gold. When he did not return, Kilroy and Hayes went in search of him, but they didn’t find a single bone, or shred of clothing, or anything else that belonged to Hall. What they found was a huge, curved, solitary claw covered with dried blood. A paleontologist later insisted that it belonged to a long-extinct cave bear.
Years later a trapper named Powers ventured into the valley, not for gold, but because he was sure that this lush, temperate area must be swarming with fur-bearing animals—silver fox, marten, sable, ermine—a treasure in pelts. When twelve months went by without Powers coming back, the redcoats at Fort Liard said to each other: “Time to look for a lost head again.” They found Powers’ moldering remains, a ghostly index finger curled around the trigger of his Colt, whose cylinder had been emptied. What he had shot at could not be determined, but there were gigantic footprints which one Mountie said must be from the biggest Kodiak bear ever. His
captain was sure they belonged to a ten-foot-tall fellow who never clipped his toenails.
The next victim was a man called Shebbach who went into the valley to trap as well as look for that phantom gold. Of him only heaps of scattered bones were found, of course without a skull. The Mounties could not even be absolutely sure that the bones were Shebbach’s. Among them they discovered a single small nugget, not much larger than a pea.
More men went into the valley to lose their heads—in 1936, 1938, and 1941. A rumor spread that during the war a Japanese Zero had crashed in Headless Valley. The plane and the pilot’s body had been recovered, but the whole incident had been hushed up by army intelligence and the FBI. As to be expected, the pilot’s head was missing. A huge, crescent-shaped bite, the size of half a watermelon, had been taken out of his side, cutting the knight of Bushido almost in half.
And so it went. The last man to lose his head in the valley (up to now) was an adventurous bardog from Nome who was relieved of that so necessary part of his anatomy in the fall of 1976. One anthropologist studying Indian languages in the area was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Carrying a large backpack, he set out on skis, because the season was advanced and snow had arrived unusually early. He was about to make his camp on top of a high mountain pass, just outside Headless Valley, and was in the process of taking off his skis when, in the bright moonlight that made the snow look like glistening silver, he made out the shape of a huge, terrifying, fur-covered creature—half-animal, half-human—running with awkward strides but great speed toward him. Quick as lightning, he snapped his bindings back into place, grabbed his poles, went into a deep crouch, and tore hell-bent down the steep slope in a race for dear life with the horrible creature. He was a champion skier, but the monster, hurtling down the mountainside, kept pace with him. Already it was stretching out its giant paws with long, razor-sharp claws, to grasp him by the neck, but just in the nick of time the Nakooni stumbled, fell, and instantly became enveloped in a great ball of snow. The snowball quickly grew into an avalanche the size of a big house, gathering speed as it came thundering down, rolling, rolling, rolling, splintering trees on its way, crashing at last into the forest, far, far below.
The thoroughly shaken anthropologist did not escape altogether. He lost three toes to frostbite on the way back to Fort Liard, where he arrived more dead than alive. After having recovered he said that the Nakoonis must be Yetis, a subspecies of the Abominable Snowman. Others maintained that the anthropologist was a well-known alcoholic who had seen giant white mice and pink elephants, but no abominable Yeti or Nakoonis. Whatever he saw, the moral of the story is: Don’t lose your head looking for gold in the Valley of Headless Men!
A Loup-Garou, or a Windigo,
or Maybe a Carcajou
There was once a joli garçon, a voyageur, by the name of Baptiste. In 1825 he joined a party of fellow coureurs de bois as a trappair libre, a free trapper and mountain man, to go after beaver. Being a half-breed, part French voyageur and part Chippewa, he was as much at home in the prairies on the far side of the Missouri as was a catfish in the waters of the Big Muddy.
Civilized he was not, this Baptiste, neither in mind or body. A fierce son of nature, he was a wolfish-looking cuss, his face framed by a forest of unkempt black hair, his luxuriant beard covering almost all of his broad chest. He had no need of possessions, save what was needed to trap Frère Castor. He owned a shaggy, razor-backed horse; a dog that was three-quarters wolf; a Hawken rifle whose heavy ball could stop a charging buffalo bull in its tracks; powder, ball, and flint; a strike-a-light and tinderbox with sun-dried punk; a skinning knife; a twist of ’baccer; a fast-dwinding supply of whiskey; and, most important, five heavy steel traps. That was all except the tattered buckskin shirt and leggings that he wore until they disintegrated from wear and tear.
Baptiste was as solitary as a badger and as averse to company as a grizzly. In his vast domain, somewhere between the Platte and the Medicine Bows, he lived like a hermit in caves, dugouts, or lean-tos. He thrived on whatever his Hawken could bring down. And he was not choosy. He devoured everything from gopher to buffalo. A lightly roasted rattlesnake was deemed a delicacy. Whatever ran, hopped, crawled, swam, or flew was très bon à manger, by gar! Painter meat didn’t shine, but he ate it anyway. A feast of boudins—buffalo intestines filled with deliciously fermented grasses, roasted on a bed of hot embers—was bliss. He fought Rees and the terrible Pied Noirs and, once, argued over a fresh kill with a famished grizzly bear, winning the argument. For months at a time he did not see another white man.
His rutting season reoccurred every half year or so, usually coinciding with his rotgut and ’baccer running out. Whenever that happened, Baptiste was seized by restlessness, getting antsy, emerging from his lair like a hibernating beast, wild-eyed and gamy, setting out with his bundles of beaver plews, his “hairy dollars” as he called them.
First, Baptiste made it to the nearest fort to haggle with the despised bourge-way, the trader in charge of the fort’s store, swapping pelts against a new six-month supply of provisions, particularly foofaraw, such as beads, small mirrors, and vermilion paint to charm a willing squaw into sharing his blanket. The bourge-ways always took outrageous advantage of Baptiste on the one-plug–one-plew system—that is, selling him a twist of chawin’ ’baccer, worth two bits, for a six-dollar beaver plew.
“Enfant de garce!” Baptiste complained on these occasions, “Bougre, zees ees brigandage. Vous ětes robbairs. Sapristi! Vous take avantage de pauvre Ba’tiste!”
“Wagh,” was the usual answer, “that’s the way the stick floats. Take it or leave it.”
He took it. The bourge-ways always got the better of the free trappers. With a new supply of whiskey and chewing tobacco, his possible bag and parfleches bulging with foofaraw, “pour l’amour,” Baptiste put the spurs to his old pony, making tracks for the big rendezvous on the Popo Agie. On the way a snake slithered across his path while a huge horned owl hooted at him.
“Sacré bleu,” he muttered, “it ees a mauvais augure, a very bad sign.” He crossed himself, spat three times over his left shoulder, and gave the evil-eye sign to the unimpressed owl, because, like all his fellows, he was very superstitious.
Arrived at the grand rendezvous des trappairs, Baptiste immediately sought out his vieux compagnons—Antoine, a fellow voyageur; Gouge-Eye Luke, a beaver man out of Kaintuck; and Igmoo Tanka, the Panther, a gigantic fellow part-Sioux and part-Irishman.
“Mille tonnères!” exclaimed Antoine. “Here is ze man raisin’ ze diable!”
“Hallo, old hoss,” Gouge-Eye Luke chimed in. “This child is glad to see your ugly mug. Here, have a swig of old towse.”
“Hau, welcome, you consarned corn dodger,” added the Panther. “I thought you wuz rubbed out. Have some mni suta!”
They had not seen each other for more than a year and enjoyed their rare get-togethers. Thus the friends settled down to an orgy of drinking, fighting, gambling, and wenching, making up in three days for a half year of hardship and loneliness.
“Old hoss,” Gouge-Eye Luke remarked as Baptiste emerged wobbly from the tepee he shared with two dusky ’sposas, “there’s a citizen over there braggin’ he can eat more boudins faster’n any other mother’s son. Why don’t you take him up on it?”
“Quoi?” said Baptiste. “Zat miserable bougre ovair zere? Parbleu, scalp my old těte if it ees not the vieux sarpint Pierre Frozen Toes. I shall beat ’eem mangeant les boudins. I shall bet ten dollairs ’pon it.”
“Wagh, Ba’tiste, you cussed devil,” said Pierre when challenged to perform, “voici mes dix dollairs. Hyar goes for meat.”
Eager trappers placed roughly ten feet of coiled buffalo boudins on a mound of hot raked ashes after having tied a strip of red trade cloth plumb center on the sausagelike mess.
“Enfant de garce,” said Baptiste. “Zut alors. Maintenant nous mangeons. Allez oop!”
“Hyar’s brown skin a-comin’,” shouted the Pa
nther on a run to witness the affair. “I’ll be dogged if I miss this!”
“Moi aussi,” added Antoine. “This child is bettin’ on Ba’tiste.”
Each contestant took an end of the boudins between his teeth and, at a signal from Gouge-Eye Luke, started to wolf them down. So began a mighty chawin’ and swallowin’. Pierre had barely managed to get down a measly two feet when Baptiste was already past the center knot and going strong. After gobbling down another foot for good measure he stopped, exclaiming, “Moi, je suis le vainqueur, by gar!” He accepted his prize, immediately converting the dollars into a keg of “Injin whiskey,” raw red-eye spiced with three rattlesnake heads for flavor and a handful of gunpowder to give her a kick.
The friends now went on a stupendous blowout, a frenzied bout lasting all of three days. After that they passed out, not emerging from their tepees or bedrolls for another three days. Coming to and getting the cobwebs out of their heads took another day. Sobered up somewhat, Baptiste exclaimed: “Diable! Mes amis, I feel a leetle queer. J’ai faim. I’m wolfish for meat. My feet, dey feel like dancin’, like runnin’, like goin’ on a chasse. I smell strong meat, by gar! Somezin’ powerful, mes amis, somezin’ peut-ětre wiz a heap big pelt. O là là, I can smell ’eem. Mes pieds, zey are already beatin’ the rataplan. Je suis bewitched, nom de diable. Je m’en vais!” With that Baptiste ran off with great leaps and bounds.
“Comme un fou,” said Antoine.
“His gourd’s out of whack,” said Gouge-Eye Luke.
“Lila witko, out o’ his mind,” said the Panther. “He’ll dry out. He’ll be back in no time at all.”
But Baptiste did not come back. Three days passed and his friends grew uneasy.
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 40