by Zane Grey
Well, the members of the commission are having a thorough look-see, too thorough, I’m afraid, for some of them, who have been more accustomed to office chairs than saddles. One thing that impressed them was something you observed this summer—that there are no running streams in any part of this territory. The only source of water for the herd is from twenty widely scattered springs and a few tanks or pools which hold stagnant and often polluted rain water (when there is rain).
As I read over what I have written, it all sounds terribly dry and uninspired. I have a horrible feeling that it must have sounded the same way this summer when you listened so sweetly and so patiently to my long harangues on the subject of deer and their habitat. Beware of a man with a single-track mind. I hope that you may be able to read between the lines of this letter the things that I really want to say—the things which perhaps I have no right to say.
I have thought often, often of that day we sat on the rim under the old pine when I rushed in with what was in my heart for you, when I first should have sent a scouting party of angels in to see whether the ground was all right for treading.
As soon as the hearing is over and the commission files its report, I shall avail myself of the invitation which I have been cherishing in my heart all these long days to visit you at El Tovar. While you spoke no words to give me too much hope in regard to your feelings for me, there was a look in your dear eyes when you said you would be glad to see me again that has sustained me during all these weary miles.
Sincerely,
Thad Eburne
As Patricia finished reading Thad’s long letter there was a mist in her eyes which made the last paragraph almost illegible. It brought back in a sweet flood of memories those weeks in the forest. How strange that her recollections of that fearful day when she had been Dyott’s captive had almost faded from her mind! In their place were those long walks and talks with the deer stalker, his loyal championship of the cause of the preservation of the herd of deer, his fierce scorn of the bungling bureaucrats and the selfish cattle interests and the cold-blooded slaughterers with hunting licenses, his genuine sorrow that one by one the last lonely fastnesses of the Buckskin Preserve were being thrown open to the careless tourist.
For a long time she sat in a chair in her room with the pages of Eburne’s letter held idly in her hand. The sun sank lower and dusk began to fall. Still she sat there thinking. At last there had come into her life a real man, one she could love and honor and respect. Here was a man who never questioned or doubted. Why could she not be equally straightforward and sure and candid with herself?
On a sudden impulse the eastern girl left her room and walked slowly downstairs. Through the hotel lobby she went as in a daze, out the door and down the steps. Now she was standing on the canyon rim, her eyes seeking to penetrate the darkness that she knew to be the forest beyond the Northern Rim.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THERE was a chill in the air that indicated the approach of fall. A fire roared and crackled on the hearth of the ranger cabin at V. T. Park. Before it lounged Thad Eburne and his friend of many years in the service, Blakener. They had been discussing the hearing held late in August at the Rust Hotel by the committee on wild life conservation, following the committee’s tour of the Buckskin Preserve. The memories of that hearing still rankled, and Thad was in a discouraged mood. Blakener, who had had to miss the tour of the commission through the deer range, did his best to cheer up his downcast fellow ranger.
“It don’t do no good worryin’,” he said. “You done all you could for the herd. You told them the truth. A man can’t do no more.”
“What hurts,” replied Eburne, “is that our own service testified against us. Judson and Cassell gave all the answers they thought the commission wanted, and they are the answers that will get into the report and to the ears of the Secretary of Agriculture.” He stared moodily into the fire.
“Did they give you a chance to have your say?” asked Blakener.
“Yes, in spite of Cassell, who tried his best to discredit me,” replied Thad. “I told them that there had been a great herd of mule deer here even back in the days before the Indians used Buckskin Mountain as their hunting ground. And even back in those early days when predatory animals roamed the mountain, there was unequal distribution of the deer. You see, some of the committee couldn’t understand why in some parts of the range where the forage was ample they saw only a few deer. You know—the Greenland Plateau.”
Blakener nodded.
“Then they couldn’t understand why there should be so many deer in the scrub oak belt and in the neighborhood of the open grassy parks, where the forage is all used up. I told them that they would find the same cockeyed distribution of the deer on their winter range. Even humans can starve in a land of plenty. Why, over in Europe right now foodstuffs are rotting in some places that could prevent people only a few miles away from starvation. Deer don’t seek the best forage the way water seeks its level.”
“Didn’t you tell them how the snowfall limits the winter range of a big part of the herd to the sheltered slopes of the plateau?” asked Blakener.
“I certainly did,” replied Eburne. “I told them something about cover, too, how deer normally lie up during the day, and so naturally the amount of cover available in any particular section tends to affect their distribution. Neither can you overlook the fact that natural barriers, such as steep rock walls and box canyons, limit the animals’ freedom of movement and affect their distribution on a given range.”
Blakener grunted. “That shore is the answer to the question why they’s so blame few animals up on Greenland Plateau,” he said. “Why, that plateau must be twelve miles long if it’s an inch, an’ it’s connected to the main land only by a narrow neck, a mile wide, an’ some steep rock walls.”
“And don’t forget,” added Thad, “that Greenland Plateau projects far to the south of the general east and west direction of the drift of the deer. I showed them on my map how the drift would leave the plateau to the south and that would explain the relatively few deer there in spite of the good forage.”
“What did they have to say to that?” Blakener wanted to know.
“They seemed a little skeptical about this drift I had mentioned. But I had a chance to tell ’em about that later,” said Eburne with considerable satisfaction. “I wanted to finish up with the point I was trying to make about why the deer are so badly distributed over the preserve. Deer are controlled by habit pretty much as other animals are—even humans. Take their breeding habits. You know and I know, Blakener, that deer are gregarious and tend to remain together and stay in a given locality unless compelled by natural or artificial causes to move elsewhere. Let’s say that the does returning to their summer range don’t get beyond the central forest before they drop their young. The inability of the young fawns to travel results in holding the herd to that region. When the fawns grow up, habit tends to keep the mature animals in the locality of their birth, or, if there is a seasonal migration, it is habit which leads them back to the same haunts and causes them to remain there throughout the season.”
“Wal, you don’t need to argue with me, Thad,” exploded Blakener. “O’ course I know habit holds deer to certain localities even when the feedin’ gets slim. What happened next, Thad?”
“We had dinner,” Eburne replied. “And when we got back from the dining room, the chairman of the inquest seemed to take a different tack. He got up and said something like this: ‘The number of the deer in the Buckskin Mountain National Game Preserve and the methods and means of preserving a permanent herd in a thrifty condition has been made the principal consideration of this investigation; but the committee believes that the danger now threatening the range conditions is at least equal to, and just as alarming as, the danger threatening the existence or welfare of the deer herd.’ ”
“Man,” interrupted Blakener in open-mouthed admiration, “them perfessor fellars can’t seem to talk English, can they? But I
bet that was the chance the cattlemen wanted!”
“As a matter of fact, they didn’t rise to the bait just then,” continued Eburne. “We got onto the subject of drift. They had me on the grill all afternoon. I told them that out here we used drift, as applied to the herd, in two ways. There is the seasonal drift of the deer from the winter to the summer range or the other way round.”
“Everybody knows that the heavy snow—”
“Exactly,” replied Thad. “I told them that deer naturally prefer the higher altitudes and would most probably remain on the Kaibob Plateau proper all through the year if it weren’t for the heavy winter snows. The map you and I made shows that the summer range of our herd is roughly an oval-shaped area with its long axis north and south. Then I showed them how the summer range area is surrounded by a belt of lower ground which is the winter range.”
Blakener again interrupted. “Did you point out to them dudes that the winter belt is a great deal wider on the sides, the western, specially, than on the north an’ south?”
Eburne got up from his chair and placed another log on the fire and stretched his arms above his head before he sat down again.
“Of course I did,” he said. “And I showed them that when the deer are forced off the high plateau when the snows come, only a few can move to the narrow strips of winter range on the north and south. So the direction of their seasonal drift has to be from east to west.” The ranger paused.
“But I could see,” he continued, “that the commission was more interested in the longer meaning of drift. What they were looking for was the evidence of a permanent movement or migration off our range to some other range. They wanted to know whether there was any possibility of creating or accelerating an overflow of the surplus deer from Buckskin Forest to the surrounding country which might need restocking with deer. I had to spoil their little pipe dream there by telling them that no permanent drift exists because of the natural barriers, such as the desert on the north and the canyon on the south.”
Blakener yawned. Eburne got up from his chair. “I guess you’ve heard enough for one night, old-timer,” he said. “Let’s hit the hay.”
“Sit down, Eburne,” ordered Blakener, “you can’t stop now. Besides, we can sleep in the mornin’. No orders have come through whether we’re to go on trappin’ them poor critters or not.”
“Well, all right, partner, if you fall asleep it’s your own funeral,” said Thad with a laugh. “One of the Utah people took exception to my claim that there was no exit from Buckskin. ’Aren’t you forgetting?’ he asked, That low ridge connecting the slopes below the northeast corner of the plateau with the higher country across the valley? Why couldn’t some follow this timbered ridge to the Red Bluff Mountains in Utah?’
“ ’And get shot!’ I answered him. ’That’s where your Mormon friends graze their sheep. And a deer has about as much chance of crossing into Utah alive as he has of reaching the North Pole!’
“Well, that ended that,” continued Thad. “But right here, I thought, was a good spot to put in a plug for McKay’s plan to drive a big herd south across the canyon onto the Coconino Plateau.”
“What did they say to that?” asked Blakener eagerly.
“The plan seemed pretty well known,” said Eburne. “The Utah people tried to make out that McKay was a crazy man and that such a wild scheme could never succeed. The Arizona delegates, however, were all for the drive. Quite a bit of heat was generated from the debate, and the chairman had to rule that a deposition would be taken from McKay and included in the report.
“Then one of the commission who had been one of my party read a paper on ’The Condition and Number of the Deer in Buckskin Mountain Preserve.’ He said he had counted 1,028 deer in a drive of one hour and ten minutes along the highway between the rim and the lower end of V. T. Park. But he said the animals were in poor condition. At a time of year when they should have been in the pink of condition, he found them, even including most of the large bucks, extremely thin. In many cases hollows along the flanks and above the hip joints were very noticeable. He had found some dead deer. He spoke of the severe drought but refused to believe that the drought could account for the scarcity of forage on the preserve. To prove his point, he called attention to the Dixie National Forest and the Fishlake National Forest, which he had visited, and where, he said, the dry spell had been equally severe, but that food there was abundant for deer. It was his opinion that the number of deer on a range should be limited to the number the range could maintain in a thrifty condition on the amount of forage and browse the range afforded—”
“Wal, now what do you think of that?” roared Blakener, slapping his knees. “That fellar is a deep one! How many deer did he figger are in the preserve right now?”
Thad laughed shortly. “He had it all worked out on a slide rule —the annual fawn crop less the number which fail to survive plus the number of twins plus the number that survive as a result of the extermination of predatory animals minus the number killed illegally by hunters equals twenty-six thousand.”
Blakener roared. “Thad, you know and I know that there are more’n fifty-thousand deer up here on Buckskin!”
“That’s the number that went into the report,” replied the deer stalker with grim satisfaction.
Both men sat in silence for a long time, staring into the fire. Finally Eburne spoke. “Blake, do you recall telling me about seeing Judson and Dyott together in a confab, and then later the time in the summer when Dyott went almost completely loco, when he tied up Miss Clay because he thought she had overheard him conferring with that dude in the high-pitched voice?”
The older man nodded.
“Well, Settlemire finally showed his hand at the hearing. He and his Los Angeles dude were both there. They made a great show of being patriotic citizens by insisting that their herds had been removed from the Buckskin Preserve, even though they could prove conclusively that cattle were grazers and mule deer were browsers and that cattle and deer could subsist on the same range without affecting the supply of food available to the deer. Their smooth talk might have gone over with the commission if it hadn’t been for some photographs we took on the tour.
“When feed is scarce, cattle will browse too, and it is easy to distinguish their browsing from the work of the deer. They chew off and break off much larger twigs and branches than deer. When I showed Settlemire our photographs and asked him whether they showing the effect of the browsing of deer or of cattle, he said he wasn’t a detective. When I flashed a photograph in which a steer had been caught in the act of pulling down a big branch of an aspen, he said, ’that doesn’t prove a thing.’ Then, when he saw one of his own brands on the steer’s flank, he shut up mighty quick.”
“What’s the commission recommendin’?” asked Blakener.
“Removal of all livestock for such a period as the complete recuperation of the range may require AND the reduction of the deer herd to 50 per cent of its present numbers.”
“Well, I guess that fixes Settlemire’s wagon,” said Blakener.
“Except that they left the usual loophole. The Grand Canyon Cattle Company, that’s Settlemire, has to move out, BUT the stock belonging to local settlers may stay. All that this is going to mean is that Settlemire’s stock will now be registered in southern Utah as owned by the Mormon settlers, and they’ll stay on the range. The cattle will stay, but twenty-five thousand deer will have to vamoose!”
“They goin’ to have the forest service carry ’em out piggy-back?” asked Blakener in disgust.
Eburne groaned. “In spite of all my reports on how impossible it was to capture deer, even little fawns, in traps, to be shipped alive to other localities, Cassell stood up there and said it could be done. He admitted that the first experiments weren’t too conclusive, but with the right men in charge—and he gave me a dirty look—it would be a comparatively easy matter to trap deer in considerable numbers, crate them, and ship them to other forests, preserves, parks, or pri
vate estates for restocking purposes, and that it was his recommendation that the forest service do it free of charge except for the cost of the crates and the freight.”
The older man spat disgustedly into the fire. “Judas H. Priest,” he groaned. “We spent a week catchin’ an’ tamin’ two fawns an’ killed a dozen does and yearlin’s in doin’ so! An’ these young sprouts think they can trap twenty-five thousand wild deer an’ mail ’em out to their friends like Christmas postcards! Why do they need deer stalkers when they have men in charge who know so much?”
“Well, the funny thing,” said Thad, “is that you would have liked some of those chaps who went on the tour with me. They listened to what I had to say and they seemed anxious to find out what the problem was all about. But it’s the men like Cassell who always manage to be Johnny-on-the-spot when recommendations are to be made to Washington.”
“Did they get around to givin’ the Utah boys a chance for their shootin’, this fall?” asked Blakener.
“Don’t worry, Blake,” replied the deer stalker. “If the trapping and removal of the live deer did not result in the necessary reduction, why, then the hunters were to be allowed on the preserve. Oh, yes, the killing is to be conducted in a thoroughly sane and proper manner, along the lines of modern and approved principles of game management.” Eburne’s voice was bitter with sarcasm.
“An’ what them Utah boys don’t know about the principles of game management,’” growled Blakener, “would fill a book! They borrow a huntin’ license, drive up to a water hole, kill the first dozen tame deer they see, load ’em into their cars, an’ then head back for Utah—an’ read up on the principles of game management’ later.”
“Blake, as I sat there and listened to those men telling how the Secretary of Agriculture in Washington would issue regulations, eliminate licensing system abuses, open and close sections of the park regardless of state lines, prescribe where the hunters would camp, it made me feel so helpless and hopeless that I became almost physically ill. Why, to open Buckskin to hunting under the principles of game management’ would take more men than already are on the Secretary of Agriculture’s payroll. It would take an army!”