Tales Of Lonely Trails (1996)

by Grey, Zane

  I signalled his information with a loud whoop of victory.

  "You next, Jones! They're coming to you!"

  I heard him grumble over my happy anticipation. Jim laughed and so did the Navajo, which made me suspect that he could understand more English than he wanted us to suppose.

  Next morning a merry yell disturbed my slumbers. "Snowed in--snowed in!"

  "Mucha snow--discass--no cougie--dam no bueno!" exclaimed Navvy.

  When I peeped out to see the forest in the throes of a blinding blizzard, the great pines only pale, grotesque shadows, everything white mantled in a foot of snow, I emphasized the Indian words in straight English.

  "Much snow--cold--no cougar--bad!"

  "Stay in bed," yelled Jones.

  "All right," I replied. "Say Jones, have you got 'em yet?"

  He vouchsafed me no answer. I went to sleep then and dozed off and on till noon, when the storm abated. We had dinner, or rather breakfast, round a blazing bonfire.

  "It's going to clear up," said Jim.

  The forest around us was a somber and gloomy place. The cloud that had enveloped the plateau lifted and began to move. It hit the tree tops, sometimes rolling almost to the ground, then rising above the trees.

  At first it moved slowly, rolling, forming, expanding, blooming like a column of whirling gray smoke; then it gathered headway and rolled onward through the forest. A gray, gloomy curtain, moving and rippling, split by the trees, seemed to be passing over us. It rose higher and higher, to split up in great globes, to roll apart, showing glimpses of blue sky.

  Shafts of golden sunshine shot down from these rifts, dispelling the shadows and gloom, moving in paths of gold through the forest glade, gleaming with brilliantly colored fire from the snow-wreathed pines.

  The cloud rolled away and the sun shone hot. The trees began to drip.

  A mist of diamonds filled the air, rainbows curved through every glade and feathered patches of snow floated down.

  It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond.

  I awoke about five o'clock. The sun was low, making crimson paths in the white aisles of the forest. A cold wind promised a frosty morning.

  "To-morrow will be the day for lions," exclaimed Jones.

  While we hugged the fire, Navvy brought up the horses and gave them their oats. The hounds sought their shelter and the lions lay hidden in their beds of pine. The round red sun dropped out of sight beyond the trees, a pink glow suffused all the ridges; blue shadows gathered in the hollow, shaded purple and stole upward. A brief twilight succeeded to a dark, coldly starlit night.

  Once again, when I had crawled into the warm hole of my sleeping bag, was I hailed from the other tent.

  Emett called me twice, and as I answered, I heard Jones remonstrating in a low voice.

  "Shore, Jones has got 'em!" yelled Jim. "He can't keep it a secret no longer."

  "Hey, Jones," I cried, "do you remember laughing at me?"

  "No, I don't," growled Jones.

  "Listen to this: Haw-haw! haw! haw! ho-ho! ho-ho! bueno! bueno!" and I wound up with a string of "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!"

  The hounds rose up in a body and began to yelp.

  "Lie down, pups," I called to them. "Nothing doing for you. It's only Jones has got 'em."

  XII

  When we trooped out of the pines next morning, the sun, rising gloriously bright, had already taken off the keen edge of the frosty air, presaging a warm day. The white ridges glistened; the bunches of sage scintillated, and the cedars, tipped in snow, resembled trees with brilliant blossoms.

  We lost no time riding for the mouth of Left Canyon, into which Jim had trailed the three lions. On the way the snow, as we had expected, began to thin out, and it failed altogether under the cedars, though there was enough on the branches to give us a drenching.

  Jim reined in on the verge of a narrow gorge, and informed us the cave was below. Jones looked the ground over and said Jim had better take the hounds down while the rest of us remained above to await developments.

  Jim went down on foot, calling the hounds and holding them close. We listened eagerly for him to yell or the pack to open up, but we were disappointed. In less than half an hour Jim came climbing out, with the information that the lions had left the cave, probably the evening after he had chased them there.

  "Well, then," said Jones, "let's split the pack, and hunt round the rims of these canyons. We can signal to each other if necessary."

  So we arranged for Jim to take Ranger and the pups across Left Canyon;

  Emett to try Middle Canyon, with Don and Moze, and we were to perform a like office in Right Canyon with Sounder and Jude. Emett rode back with us, leaving us where we crossed Middle Canyon.

  Jones and I rimmed a mile of our canyon and worked out almost to the west end of the Bay, without finding so much as a single track, so we started to retrace our way. The sun was now hot; the snow all gone; the ground dry as if it had never been damp; and Jones grumbled that no success would attend our efforts this morning.

  We reached the ragged mouth of Right Canyon, where it opened into the deep, wide Bay, and because we hoped to hear our companions across the canyon, we rode close to the rim. Sounder and Jude both began to bark on a cliff; however, as we could find no tracks in the dust we called them off. Sounder obeyed reluctantly, but Jude wanted to get down over the wall.

  "They scent a lion," averred Jones. "Let's put them over the wall."

  Once permitted to go, the hounds needed no assistance. They ran up and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they gone out of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the rim and looked over. The first step was short, a crumbled section of wall, and from it led down a long slope, dotted here and there with cedars. Both hounds were baying furiously.

  I spied Jude with her paws up on a cedar, and above her hung a lion, so close that she could nearly reach him. Sounder was not yet in sight.

  "There! There!" I cried, directing Jones' glance. "Are we not lucky?"

  "I see. By George! Come, we'll go down. Leave everything that you don't absolutely need."

  Spurs, chaps, gun, coat, hat, I left on the rim, taking only my camera and lasso. I had forgotten to bring my canteen. We descended a ladder of shaly cliff, the steps of which broke under our feet. The slope below us was easy, and soon we stood on a level with the lion. The cedar was small, and afforded no good place for him. Evidently he jumped from the slope to the tree, and had hung where he first alighted.

  "Where's Sounder? Look for him. I hear him below. This lion won't stay treed long."

  I, too, heard Sounder. The cedar tree obstructed my view, and I moved aside. A hundred feet farther down the hound bayed under a tall pi+-on.

  High in the branches I saw a great mass of yellow, and at first glance thought Sounder had treed old Sultan. How I yelled! Then a second glance showed two lions close together.

  "Two more! two more! look! look!" I yelled to Jones.

  "Hi! Hi! Hi!" he joined his robust yell to mine, and for a moment we made the canyon bellow. When we stopped for breath the echoes bayed at us from the opposite walls.

  "Waa-hoo!" Emett's signal, faint, far away, soaring but unmistakable, floated down to us. Across the jutting capes separating the mouths of these canyons, high above them on the rim wall of the opposite side of the Bay, stood a giant white horse silhouetted against the white sky. They made a brave picture, one most welcome to us. We yelled in chorus: "Three lions treed! Three lions treed! come down--hurry!"

  A crash of rolling stones made us wheel. Jude's lion had jumped. He ran straight down, drawing Sounder from his guard. Jude went tearing after them.

  "I'll follow; you stay here. Keep them up there, if you can!" yelled Jones. Then in long strides he passed down out of sight among the tree
s and crags.

  It had all happened so quickly that I could scarcely realize it. The yelping of the hounds, the clattering of stones, grew fainter, telling me Jude and Sounder, with Jones, were going to the bottom of the Bay.

  Both lions snarling at me brought me to a keen appreciation of the facts in the case. Two full-grown lions to be kept treed without hounds, without a companion, without a gun.

  "This is fine! This is funny!" I cried, and for a moment I wanted to run. But the same grim, deadly feeling that had taken me with Don around the narrow shelf now rose in me stronger and fiercer. I pronounced one savage malediction upon myself for leaving my gun. I could not go for it; I would have to make the best of my error, and in the wildness born of the moment I swore if the lions would stay treed for the hounds they would stay treed for me.

  First I photographed them from different positions; then I took up my stand about on a level with them in an open place on the slope where they had me in plain sight. I might have been fifty feet from them.

  They showed no inclination to come down.

  About this moment I heard hounds below, coming down from the left. I called and called, but they passed on down the canyon bottom in the direction Jones had taken.

  Presently a chorus of bays, emphasized by Jones' yell, told me his lion had treed again.

  "Waa-hoo!" rolled down from above.

  I saw Emett farther to the left from the point where he had just appeared.

  "Where--can--I--get--down?"

  I surveyed the walls of the Bay. Cliff on cliff, slide on slide, jumble, crag, and ruin, baffled my gaze. But I finally picked out a path.

  "Farther to the left," I yelled, and waited. He passed on, Don at his heels.

  "There," I yelled again, "stop there; let Don go down with your lasso, and come yourself."

  I watched him swing the hound down a wall, and pull the slip noose free. Don slid to the edge of a slope, trotted to the right and left of crags, threaded the narrow places, and turned in the direction of the baying hounds. He passed on the verge of precipices that made me tremble for him; but sure-footed as a goat, he went on safely down, to disappear far to my right.

  Then I saw Emett sliding, leg wrapped around his lasso, down the first step of the rim. His lasso, doubled so as to reach round a cedar above, was too short to extend to the landing below. He dropped, raising a cloud of dust, and starting the stones. Pulling one end of his lasso up around the cedar he gathered it in a coil on his arm and faced forward, following Don's trail.

  What strides he took! In the clear light, with that wild red and yellow background, with the stones and gravel roaring down, streaming over the walls like waterfalls, he seemed a giant pursuing a foe. From time to time he sent up a yell of encouragement that wound down the canyon, to be answered by Jones and the baying hounds and then the strange echoes. At last he passed out of sight behind the crests of the trees; I heard him going down, down till the sounds came up faint and hollow.

  I was left absolutely alone with my two lions and never did a hunter so delight in a situation. I sat there in the sun watching them. For a long time they were quiet, listening. But as the bays and yells below diminished in volume and occurrence and then ceased altogether, they became restless. It was then that I, remembering the lion I had held on top of the crag, began to bark like a hound. The lions became quiet once more.

  I bayed them for an hour. My voice grew from hoarse to hoarser, and finally failed in my throat. The lions immediately grew restless again. The lower one hissed, spat and growled at me, and made many attempts to start down, each one of which I frustrated by throwing stones under the tree. At length he made one more determined effort, turned head downward, and stepped from branch to branch.

  I dashed down the incline with a stone in one hand and a long club in the other. Instinctively I knew I must hurt him--make him fear me.

  If he got far enough down to jump, he would either escape or have me helpless. I aimed deliberately at him, and hit him square in the ribs.

  He exploded in a spit-roar that raised my hair. Directly under him I wielded my club, pounded on the tree, thrashed at the branches and, like the crazy fool that I was, yelled at him:

  "Go back! Go back! Don't you dare come down! I'd break your old head for you!"

  Foolish or not, this means effectually stopped the descent. He climbed to his first perch. It was then, realizing what I had done, that I would certainly have made tracks from under the pi+-on, if I had not heard the faint yelp of a hound.

  I listened. It came again, faint but clearer. I looked up at my lions.

  They too heard, for they were very still. I saw how strained they held their heads. I backed a little way up the slope. Then the faint yelp floated up again in the silence. Such dead, strange silence, that seemed never to have been broken! I saw the lions quiver, and if I ever heard anything in my life I heard their hearts thump. The yelp wafted up again, closer this time. I recognized it; it belonged to Don. The great hound on the back trail of the other lion was coming to my rescue.

  "It's Don! It's Don! It's Don!" I cried, shaking my club at the lions.

  "It's all up with you now!" What feelings stirred me then! Pity for those lions dominated me. Big, tawny, cruel fellows as they were, they shivered with fright. Their sides trembled. But pity did not hold me long; Don's yelp, now getting clear and sharp, brought back the rush of savage, grim sensations.

  A full-toned bay attracted my attention from the lions to the downward slope. I saw a yellow form moving under the trees and climbing fast.

  It was Don.

  "Hi! Hi! old boy!" I yelled.

  Then it seemed he moved up like a shot and stood all his long length, forepaws against the pi+-on, his deep bay ringing defiance to the lions.

  It was a great relief, not to say a probable necessity, for me to sit down just then.

  "Now come down," I said to my lions; "you can't catch that hound, and you can't get away from him."

  Moments passed. I was just on the point of deciding to go down to hurry up my comrades, when I heard the other hounds coming. Yelp on yelp, bay on bay, made welcome music to my ears. Then a black and yellow, swiftly flying string of hounds bore into sight down the slope, streaked up and circled the pi+-on.

  Jones, who at last showed his tall stooping form on the steep ascent, seemed as long in coming as the hounds had been swift.

  His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence! I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation, but on this point he was impenetrable. "Are you mad, my friend?" said he. "Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own." Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked to see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places, but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. "Since you have preserved my narration," said he, "I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity."

  "Lion tied--all fast," replied the panting Jones. "Left Emett--to guard--him."

  "What are we to do now?"

  "Wait--till I get my breath. Think out--a plan. We can't get both lions--out of one tree."

  "All right," I replied, after a moment's thought. "I'll tie Sounder and Moze. You go up the tree. That first lion will jump, sure; he's almost ready now. Don and the other hounds will tree him again pretty soon. If he runs up the canyon, well and good. Then, if you can get the lasso on the other, I'll yell for Emett to come up to help you, and I'll follow Don."

 
Jones began the ascent of the pi+-on. The branches were not too close, affording him easy climbing. Before we looked for even a move on the part of the lions, the lower one began stepping down. I yelled a warning, but Jones did not have time to take advantage of it. He had half turned, meaning to swing out and drop, when the lion planted both forepaws upon his back. Jones went sprawling down with the lion almost on him.

  Don had his teeth in the lion before he touched the ground, and when he did strike the rest of the hounds were on him. A cloud of dust rolled down the slope. The lion broke loose and with great, springy bounds ran up the canyon, Don and his followers hot-footing it after him.

  Moze and Sounder broke the dead sapling to which I had tied them, and dragging it behind them, endeavored in frenzied action to join the chase. I drew them back, loosening the rope, so in case the other lion jumped I could free them quickly.

  Jones calmly gathered himself up, rearranged his lasso, took his long stick, and proceeded to mount the pi+-on again. I waited till I saw him slip the noose over the lion's head, then I ran down the slope to yell for Emett. He answered at once. I told him to hurry to Jones' assistance. With that I headed up the canyon.

  I hung close to the broad trail left by the lion and his pursuers. I passed perilously near the brink of precipices, but fear of them was not in me that day. I passed out of the Bay into the mouth of Left Canyon, and began to climb. The baying of the hounds directed me. In the box of yellow walls the chorus seemed to come from a hundred dogs.

  When I found them, close to a low cliff, baying the lion in a thick, dark pi+-on, Ranger leaped into my arms and next Don stood up against me with his paws on my shoulders. These were strange actions, and though I marked it at the moment, I had ceased to wonder at our hounds. I took one picture as the lion sat in the dark shade, and then climbed to the low cliff and sat down. I called Don to me and held him. In case our quarry leaped upon the cliff I wanted a hound to put quickly on his trail.

  Another hour passed. It must have been a dark hour for the lion--he looked as if it were--and one of impatience for the baying hounds, but for me it was a full hour. Alone with the hounds and a lion, far from the walks of men, walled in by the wild-colored cliffs, with the dry, sweet smell of cedar and pi+-on, I asked no more.