SPACES 
 
 N 
 
Class 
 
 Book__ 
 CopyiiglitK?. 
 
 COPXRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
BOOKS BY PROF. JOHN C. VAN DYKE 
 
 Art for Art's Sake. University Lectures on the Technical 
 Beauties of Painting. With 24 Illustrations. 12mo. 
 
 The Meaning of Pictures. University Lectures at the 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. With 31 Illus- 
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 Studies in Pictures. An Introduction to Famous Gal- 
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 What is Art ? Studies in the Technique and Criticism of 
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 Text Book of the History of Painting. With 110 Illus- 
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 Old Dutch and Flemish Masters. With Timothy Cole's 
 Wood-Engravings. Superroyal 8vo 
 
 Old English Masters. With Timothy Cole's Wood- 
 Engravings. Superroyal 8vo 
 
 Modern Franch Masters. Written by American Artists 
 and Edited by Prof. Van Dyke. With 66 Full-page Illus- 
 trations. Superroyal 8vo 
 
 New Guides to Old Masters. Critical Notes on the 
 European Galleries, Arranged in Catalogue Order. Frontis- 
 pieces. 14 volumes. Sold separately 
 
 American Painting and Its Tradition. As represented 
 by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, 
 Chase, Alexander, Sargent. With 24 Illustrations. 12mo 
 
 Nature for Its Own Sake. First Studies in Natural 
 Appearances. With Portrait. 12mo 
 
 The Desert. Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 
 With Frontispiece. 12mo 
 Illustrated Edition with Photographs by J. Smeaton Chase. 
 
 The Opal Sea. Continued Studies in Impressions and Ap- 
 pearances. With Frontispiece. 12mo 
 
 The Mountain. Renewed Studies in Impressions and Ap- 
 pearances. With Frontispiece. 12mo 
 
 The Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Recurrent Studies 
 in Impressions and Appearances. With 34 Illustrations. 
 12mo 
 
 The Open Spaces. Incidents of Nights and Days under 
 the Blue Sky. 12mo 
 
 The Money God. Chapters of Heresy and Dissent Con- 
 cerning Business Methods and Mercenary Ideals in Ameri- 
 ican Life. 12mo 
 
 The New New York. A Commentary on the Place and 
 the People. With 125 Illustrations by Joseph Pennell. 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
^JAe^ Iffy/ta^'^ ^^e.j^r^t~ 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 INCIDENTS OF NIGHTS AND DAYS 
 UNDER THE BLUE SKY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN C. VAN DYKE 
 
 AUTHOR OP "the DESERT," "tHE MOUNTAIN," "THE OPAL SEA,' 
 "the grand CANYON," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1922 
 

 Copyright, 1922, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 Published March, 1922 
 
 HaR29'22 
 
 ©CLA659414 
 
PREFACE— DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 
 MURIEL MOORE 
 
 A SCHOOLBOY, with shining morning face, creep- 
 ing unwillingly to school, vainly striving to repeat 
 declensions, fretted by the prospect of the day's 
 confinement, and high overhead the honk of wild 
 geese from the upper sky to fire his eye and set 
 his fancy flying. Against the blue of spring, with 
 broad wings beating back the southern breeze, 
 the clamoring wedge was moving north by west. 
 How strong the wings ! How sure the flight ! 
 How keen the homing sense guiding through that 
 vast expanse of air and sky ! Where away was 
 the gray leader calling them ? Was the long 
 course set for the prairie pools and linked water- 
 ways of Minnesota or the unknown lakes of Brit- 
 ish America ? And what a lure in that far cry, 
 sounding clarion-like from the sky-space, calling 
 down to the boy in the city street: 
 
 "Follow ! Oh, follow ! 
 Follow by stream and hollow ! 
 Follow to No Man's Land !" 
 
 A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts 
 of youth are long, long thoughts. But the boy's 
 
 [v] 
 
PREFACE-DEDICATION 
 
 thought then seemed merely a fancy — a dream 
 of traversing the unknown wilderness, of canoeing 
 with trappers through wild-rice lakes and down 
 strange rivers, of riding with Indians and shoot- 
 ing big game on the prairies. The colored map 
 of his school geography was vague beyond the 
 line of the Mississippi. Back from the river 
 there was a huge tract marked "Unexplored." 
 That was the outermost rim of discovery. How 
 should he ever follow the flock into that land of 
 far horizons ? 
 
 But, strange to say, the day-dreams of the boy 
 became realities. Sooner than he could imagine 
 they came to pass — came true. As a boy he was 
 taken to the great Northwest; he followed in 
 canoes the far waterways of the wild geese, he 
 hunted the forests, rode the plains, and slept by 
 the prairie pool. Again and again, through boy- 
 hood and manhood, he came and went in the 
 mountains, the Bad Lands, the buffalo ranges, 
 the deserts. The wind's will was scarcely more 
 free than the boy's will and the man's will. 
 
 Alas ! for the changes brought in by civiliza- 
 tion 1 The prairie has been ribbed by the plough, 
 the forest has fallen before the axe, the water- 
 ways have become turbid with commerce, even 
 the deserts have been invaded, and the border- 
 land has slowly slipped back to the inaccessible 
 
 [vl] 
 
PREFACE— DEDICATION 
 
 barrens of the north or the bare ranges of the 
 south. Yet the whilom schoolboy still sees that 
 wilderness of his youth— -sees^ it as clearly as he 
 hears the long-ago honk of the gray leader calling 
 from the blue sky of spring. The love and the 
 lure of the wild have remained with him, and 
 now, after many years, he is writing for you 
 some happenings of those early days — living over 
 again in memory the wonder of his lost youth. 
 
 The record is not wholly of early years nor is 
 it chronological or consecutive, for many of the 
 incidents and observations occurred during latter- 
 day revisitings. But linked together these hap- 
 penings form a trail — my own trail in the open. 
 The country through which it leads has become 
 more or less familiar to so many that I need not 
 describe it; but the life that it once knew has 
 largely disappeared, and it is that I would con- 
 jure up for you. Therefore will you retrace with 
 me the now dim pathway ? Will you follow, fol- 
 low, by stream and hollow, follow to No Man's 
 Land? 
 
 John C. Van Dyke. 
 
 Rutgers College, 1922. 
 
 [vii] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Sleeping Out i 
 
 II. Riding the Open 22 
 
 III. Riding the Ranges 41 
 
 IV. The Cowboy 59 
 
 V. Desert Days 78 
 
 VI. Trailing in Moccasins 102 
 
 VII. Mountain-Forest Trails . . . . 125 
 
 VIII. Canoe and Paddle 143 
 
 IX. The River 163 
 
 X. Trolling and Spearing 180 
 
 XI. Trout Fishing 196 
 
 XII. Game-Birds 217 
 
 XIII. The Deer Family 237 
 
 XIV. Wolves and Bears .,.,,. 253 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SLEEPING OUT 
 
 Almost everything creeps to cover at night — 
 the birds to their boughs, the beasts to their lairs, 
 and man to his bolted house. The night-prowlers 
 — those with specially gifted eyes or noses — are 
 only a few out of the many. The rank and file 
 as soon as the sun has gone down begin to look 
 about for shelter. A fear of the dark drives 
 them into hiding. 
 
 Even when man ventures to "sleep out," he 
 does so with a canvas tent over him. His fore- 
 fathers were less luxurious and got on with a 
 lean-to thatched with boughs or a tepee wrapped 
 with birch-bark or deerskins. But generations, 
 time out of mind, have been afraid to sleep under 
 the night sky unprotected. Some scrap of cover, 
 some coign of seclusion, has always been deemed 
 necessary. It might turn cold or wet, or the 
 moon might shine in one's face and warp the 
 features, or perchance the heavens might fall. 
 
 [1] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Besides, there was vision of the pestilence that 
 walketh in darkness and ravening wolves that 
 prey by night. 
 
 In the country to the east of the Mississippi 
 perhaps the tent is necessary. For instance, in 
 the Adirondack or the Maine woods, one is always 
 liable to be deluged by rain, and the ground is 
 never entirely dry even in summer. It is not 
 a good camping country, notwithstanding the 
 thousands of tent-pegs driven there every year. 
 Aside from the dampness, it is usually camping 
 in a forest — something that is nearly as unsatis- 
 factory as sleeping in a cave. Much romance and 
 some poetry have been extracted out of sleeping 
 under the pines with the flickering lights of the 
 camp-fire thrown up on the red trunks and spread- 
 ing boughs. Many a dawn I have watched the 
 sprays of pine overhead grow into form and color 
 with the coming light, while blue jays and Douglas 
 squirrels chattered and barked at me from neigh- 
 boring trees. It is an idyllic experience in the 
 open forests of California, especially if you have 
 company with you; but sleeping in the Eastern 
 woods alone, or even in the northern Pacific 
 woods, is dreary enough. The stars and the sky 
 and the night wind are shut out. You hardlv 
 
 [2] 
 
SLEEPING OUT. 
 
 know when daylight comes or goes, for you can- 
 not see the rising or the setting sun, and you can 
 make no certainty ^of the weather, for you can- 
 not see the clouds. A forest is usually good hunt- 
 ing country for deer and bear, but it is not a 
 comfortable place for the camper. He is too 
 "cabined, cribbed, confined." 
 
 Quite different from the forests are the great 
 prairies and uplands of Dakota, Montana, and 
 Wyoming. There the tent is quite superfluous, 
 because during the long summer rainfall is infre- 
 quent. You rest in the open, and by night or 
 day can see around you in an immense ring. 
 Cries in the night, the whimper of wolves, the 
 grazing of horses, the sound of approaching hoofs, 
 the rush of wind, the roll of thunder, can be 
 rightly located and judged. You rest easily be- 
 cause you know what is going on about you. 
 And if sleep does not come there are the filmy 
 clouds of the cirrus, the constellations slowly mov- 
 ing to the west, the Milky Way powdered with 
 infinite groupings of stars. What a never-ending 
 source of wonder! And not entirely without 
 practical uses to the camper. How many times 
 under the open sky have I wakened and known 
 the time of night by the position of certain bright 
 
 [3] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 stars ! How many times have I ridden the open 
 prairies at night laying my course by the North 
 Star, or getting other bearings by the blazing 
 splendor of Arcturus ! 
 
 Any sort of a tent, in any country, isolates you 
 from the world without. One of the unique 
 scares of my life came to me in the foot-hills of 
 the Big Horn Mountains, where one autumn I 
 was camping under canvas with a companion. 
 We had been hunting and the carcass of a deer 
 was hanging from a small pinyon some fifty yards 
 from the camp-fire. One night, sleeping in our 
 figure-A tent with the door-flap pegged down, 
 we were awakened by the catlike scream or yowl 
 of a mountain-lion. Had we been in the open we 
 might have seen him and perhaps taken a shot 
 at him. As it was, we sat up in our blankets and 
 wondered what to do. While poised there mo- 
 mentarily in the darkness the tent-flap was sud- 
 denly burst open by some large beast that sprang 
 directly upon me. In warding him off I threw 
 out both hands before me and they struck coarse 
 hair. For a moment my heart stopped beating. 
 Then the animal began to growl and I recognized 
 my friend's setter dog. He had been sleeping 
 outside by the burnt-out camp-fire, and, fright- 
 
 [4] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 ened by the cry, had dashed against the tent- 
 flap and landed directly upon me. The moun- 
 tain-lion had been inspecting the carcass of our 
 deer in the pinyon. He could have dragged away 
 or eaten everything in the camp for all that we 
 could have known of him sleeping in our canvas 
 tent. 
 
 When in a strange land it behooves one always 
 to sleep like a jack-rabbit — that is, with one eye 
 open. A white tent in the moonlight, that every 
 Indian or bear or wolf can recognize as easily as 
 a camp-fire, is merely an advertisement of your 
 presence. It puts blinders on your eyes and 
 cotton in your ears, so that anything can sneak 
 upon you. There may be no great danger threat- 
 ening — usually there is none at all — but when you 
 are alone in the wilderness you need all your 
 senses about you, and each one of them acutely 
 attuned. One night in Montana, camping near 
 the edge of the Crow Indian Reservation, I was 
 much concerned by the fact that several Indians, 
 riding across country in the night, had discovered 
 our camp. They halted some distance away and 
 I could hear them talking among themselves. 
 Our tent (taken along to please my companion) 
 had betrayed us. The result was that I spent a 
 
 C5} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 bad night, rifle in hand, holding guard over our 
 horse-bunch a quarter of a mile down the river. 
 Indians do not enjoy being shot up in a fight any 
 more than palefaces, but they delight in horse- 
 stealing. Stampeding a camper's horses at night 
 is their great play, for the enjoyment of which 
 they will run some risk. 
 
 A similar experience, but with the advantage 
 on my side, happened to me many years ago on 
 the Mexican border, below Arivaca. An old trail 
 leading over into Sonora crossed there, and near 
 the boundary-line was a deserted adobe hut. 
 Not far from the hut was a hole in the ground 
 with some green water in it, called, by a stretch 
 of the imagination, a **well.'' I was camped 
 there because of the water, but I had no tent; 
 neither did I sleep in the hut nor near the well. I 
 stretched out my blankets in some thin greasewood 
 and slept with my ear to the ground, knowing 
 quite well that the border passes were runways of 
 the marauder. In the middle of the night I was 
 wakened by the sound of galloping horses and 
 men's voices. Down from the north came five 
 riders, their horses blowing, and they themselves 
 muttering and cursing over some mishap. When 
 they saw the hut they stopped and came together 
 
 [6] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 as though for a council of war. Then they de- 
 ployed, surrounded the hut at a distance, and 
 began helloing at the supposed occupant. Get- 
 ting no answer, they fired two shots into the 
 adobe. 
 
 Still without response they dismounted, ap- 
 proached, and finally found the hut deserted. 
 There was some more violent swearing, and then 
 they began a search for the water-hole, which 
 they evidently knew was somewhere on the 
 premises. My presence they never suspected, 
 and I should have remained unseen had it not 
 been for my horse, picketed a quarter of a mile 
 beyond me. A horse can always be relied upon 
 to get his owner into trouble, and my beast at 
 this juncture let out a long, loud neigh. He had 
 heard or winded the other horses and his social 
 instincts were aroused. The men — they evi- 
 dently were horse- thieves and were riding hard to 
 get over the border and away from some sheriff's 
 posse — pricked up their ears at once. One of 
 them started in the direction of the staked horse, 
 and unfortunately his way led my way. At thirty 
 yards distance I called to him to stop. He 
 jumped as though he had been shot at, and caught 
 at his six-shooter. I quickly informed him that 
 
 [7] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 if he drew his gun I would shoot. He desisted. 
 What did he want? Water for their horses. 
 Where was the well ? I told him. Who was I 
 and what was I doing there ? Merely studying 
 desert geology. Who were they ? — that was more 
 important. No reply. They passed on down 
 into Mexico, I watching them off the premises 
 with my rifle on my knee. 
 
 The moral of that tale is that had I been camped 
 down in a foolish tent they could have located 
 me instantly and shot me through the canvas. 
 As it was, I had the advantage and could have 
 bagged all five of them before they could have 
 gotten into action. Of course such incidents are 
 rare. One sleeps soundly night after night in the 
 open, without even the whir of a night-hawk or 
 the yelp of a coyote to ruffle his repose. I know 
 of no safer place to sleep. Yet while in the 
 Southwest I was frequently asked if I were not 
 afraid to sleep alone in the desert. I always an- 
 swered with another question: "Afraid of what ?" 
 There is much greater danger in the city street. 
 The only danger is from men, not beasts, and men 
 are very scarce in the desert. Well, suppose you 
 became ill ? But you do not get ill under the 
 blue sky. It is in the town and in the hospital 
 
 [8] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 that people sicken and die. But suppose some- 
 thing should bite you — a rattlesnake, for instance ? 
 Yes, but suppose at home you fell down the porch 
 steps and fractured your skull ? You are far 
 more likely to meet with trouble on the porch 
 than to be bitten by a rattlesnake. 
 
 Occasionally in sleeping out one gets wet in 
 summer showers, but that is a slight matter. 
 The piece of tarpaulin, one half of which goes 
 under you and the other half over you, and in 
 which you wrap your blankets when riding, can 
 usually be relied upon to shed the brunt of any 
 short-lived storm. You lie on your back with 
 your knees up, making something tent-shaped of 
 the tarpaulin, and the water drains off. If it is 
 a long storm with much rainfall the water will 
 eventually get under you, and, if you have been 
 foolish enough to make your bed in a hollow in- 
 stead of on a slope, the water will get in at you. 
 There is nothing for it but to get up and seek 
 such shelter as rock or bush or tree will afford. 
 But again such happenings are rare. The great 
 camping country of the plains is arid and the 
 conditions of sleeping out are ideal. 
 
 That does not mean that the camper can dis- 
 miss all care with the coming of the dark. Every 
 
 [9] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 one who sleeps out does so with both ears listen- 
 ing, and in his soundest sleep is partly conscious 
 of keeping watch. Indians and horse-thieves do 
 not bother him, for their coming or going is very 
 infrequent; but he has to look out for his own 
 outfit. Now the most important part of an out- 
 fit is the horse-bunch. You can never aflfbrd to 
 be left afoot in unsettled country by your horses 
 slipping away from you. And all the plains 
 horses know how to cut and run if the oppor- 
 tunity ofiFers. Every one of them has a partner 
 to whom he is devoted and from whom he is not 
 willingly separated. If the partners are in camp 
 together they are generally content, but look out 
 if you take one of them away with you and leave 
 the other behind. The one with you, at the first 
 opportunity, will take his back track to join his 
 partner and you will have great difficulty in 
 catching him. A horse will sometimes go for 
 seventy or a hundred miles hunting for his partner 
 without stopping to eat or drink. 
 
 Aside from these getaways there are occasional 
 scares that must be reckoned with. In urban or 
 suburban territory a horse's sense of sight or 
 smell or hearing is very dull and almost negligible. 
 He sees only a saddle or a wagon and smells 
 [10] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 only a measure of oats. But in the open the mus- 
 tang or plains horse has very acute senses. And, 
 being naturally something of a fool, he is always 
 suspicious. If thirty-six hours before a bear 
 has passed through where he is picketed, he soon 
 catches the scent and is not to be quieted. Around 
 and around on his picket-pin he will go hour 
 after hour, head up and tail up, stopping every 
 few minutes to snort at the air. If he is not 
 double hoppled he will pull the pin and run. 
 Any moving animal is likely to frighten a picketed 
 horse — an elk, a mountain-lion, a gray wolf. 
 And during a lightning-storm or a driving rain he 
 may break away and get to timber, even if in- 
 disposed to make a long run of it. 
 
 And sometimes the camp supplies need watch- 
 ing. Coyotes are always sneaking about a camp, 
 nosing for something to eat, picking up refuse; 
 and occasionally at night, if everything is very 
 quiet, they will slip in and raid the grub-box or 
 chew off a bit of greasy strap from a saddle, or 
 jump for any provender that may be hanging in 
 bags from trees. They are a very clever family, 
 the coyote tribe, and can get what they want 
 without getting into trouble quite as readily as 
 the fox family. 
 
 [ 11 } 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Even bears are fairly good camp-thieves, and 
 in some of the national parks they are now very 
 bold in their entrances and exits. In the Yellow- 
 stone Park some twenty years ago a bear in camp 
 one night broke into the bacon-box and was 
 making a good meal when I interrupted him with 
 an axe. Guns were not allowed in the park, and 
 an axe was my only weapon. It was sufficient. 
 The bear started on a run down a decline and 
 through a meadow where I had seven horses 
 picketed. The horses saw him coming, pulled 
 their picket-pins, and ran for fifteen miles through 
 the timber. It was four o'clock the next 
 afternoon when I found them, bunched together 
 under a slide of rock, high up on a mountain- 
 side. 
 
 After a week or more in camp all the night 
 sounds become familiar to you, and only a few 
 of them are disturbing. The whimper of coyotes 
 just before daylight means nothing. They are 
 usually harmless hoodlums, and oftentimes are 
 good sentinels for you. As long as they keep up 
 their whimpering, there is no dangerous prowler 
 about; but their sudden silence and sneaking away 
 may mean that a bear or a mountain-lion has 
 come on the scene. The gray wolf has a deep 
 [121 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 bass bay, but you seldom hear it near the camp. 
 He is up in the mountains hustling mountain- 
 sheep across a rock slide, or far away over the 
 hills with brother wolves running a mule-deer in 
 relays. He is usually too careful of his skin to 
 be seen of a camper. Bears with their grunting 
 woof are in the same class. The garbage-can 
 bears of the national parks are not typical of those 
 in the wild. Even the big silver-tip in the Rocky 
 Mountain country has to be sought out and run 
 down. He never hunts you. As for the grizzly, 
 he is no more. His habitat was the Coast Range 
 of California, but the gun, the trap, and poison 
 have done for him. 
 
 The more frequent night sounds about a camp 
 are of horses grazing, stamping, snorting, or 
 whinnying, the call of belated quail, the whir of 
 bats, or the hoot of owls. At certain times of the 
 year when birds are migrating, there will be the 
 honk of geese, the far sky-call of crane, perhaps 
 the whistle of curlew, or the pipe of golden plovers 
 moving in flocks. It is not easy to see bird 
 flights by night unless the flocks are flying very 
 low. When there is a full moon you occasionally 
 get strings of ducks or brant in silhouette as they 
 cross the moon's disk, reminding you perhaps of 
 
 [13] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 some Japanese print by Okio or Hiroshige; but 
 usually the night fliers are not seen. 
 
 This is especially true of the smaller birds that 
 seem to move north or south by night, perhaps 
 for protection from the hawks. The swallows, 
 warblers, thrushes, larks, bobolinks, tanagers mi- 
 grate in large straggling flocks, and keep up an 
 incessant chirping and twittering, but they are too 
 high up to be made out. The larger birds usu- 
 ally move by day. Some of them, like the hawks, 
 have no fear [of enemies, and go by overhead 
 with great swiftness. So far as I have observed, 
 they make no sound and attract no attention. 
 
 But, except in periods of migration, birds do 
 not usually fly or move around at night. The 
 majority of the bird family goes to bed early with 
 its head tucked under its wing. Only the killers, 
 such as the owls or bats, remain out. And about 
 the only bird sound one hears in the dark, except 
 the hooting of owls, is the dismal note of the poor- 
 will. He is the same bird as the whippoorwili 
 of the Mississippi Valley, though in the Rocky 
 Mountain region he shortens his call. But not 
 his persistence. He keeps reiterating "poor- 
 will** for hours at a time, until the maddened 
 camper would gladly wring his neck. 
 [14] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 The smaller animals, the mice, rats, and weasels, 
 move about continuously after dark; and every 
 camper knows that the rabbits begin to stir just 
 before sunset, and that in the early dawn they 
 are settling themselves for the day in some thin 
 bush or bunch of grass. Riding by moonlight I 
 have often seen the jack-rabbits feeding on dry 
 grass, dashing off occasionally as in play, caper- 
 ing in circles, or jumping straight up in the air. 
 I have never, at any time, caught one of them 
 sleeping or nodding or with his eyes shut. I 
 doubt very. much if the jack-rabbit ever sleeps, 
 just as I am certain that he never drinks, and that 
 he can live an indefinite time on nothing moister 
 than dry grass. On the desert the water ration 
 of every animal is reduced to a minimum, and the 
 ground-squirrels, kangaroo rats, and gophers are 
 in the category with the jack-rabbit in getting on 
 without it. As for the prairie-dog, he, too, is 
 denied water, but he gets moisture from grass 
 and roots. Any of the desert rodents will eat 
 green herbage when they can f.nd it, but a few 
 of them can flourish without it. 
 
 The reptile contingent need hardly be reckoned 
 with at night, though every new camper has his 
 vague apprehension of snakes crawling over him 
 [15] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 in the dark. In Montana one night I was awak- 
 ened by a feeling similar to some one's finger 
 being drawn slowly along my back-bone. I was 
 sleeping on the ground, rolled in blankets Indian 
 fashion; but I could feel that moving something 
 through the blankets very plainly. I knew in- 
 stinctively that it was a snake, and lay still for 
 a moment wondering whether I should roll over 
 on him and try to crush him or roll away from him. 
 I decided, rather spasmodically, that valor did 
 not require a Laokcoon contest and that I had 
 better roll away from him. How I got started I 
 hardly knew, but once in action I did not stop 
 until I was ten feet away. He rattled, but as it 
 was too dark to see him, I again decided that valor 
 did not call for a fight. I crept carefully back, 
 got hold of a corner of my tarpaulin and jerked it 
 out from under the snake. I then moved some 
 hundred yards away, leaving him to rattle himself 
 quiet. Again, a few evenings after, and camped 
 farther on, while going out in the dark with an 
 axe and a picket-pin to stake a horse, I caught the 
 rattle of a snake at the foot of a sage-bush. I 
 chopped into the bush until the rattle stopped, 
 but could not see the snake. 
 With these two exceptions — and I think they 
 
 [16] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 were exceptional — I have never known snakes to 
 move about at night. They have not a night eye 
 and are particularly averse to chilly evening winds. 
 Basking in the sun by day and creeping into a 
 hole or under a rock by night is their usual habit. 
 Lizards, horned toads, Gila monsters are not dif- 
 ferent. As for trap-door spiders, tarantulas, 
 scorpions, they are not great travellers. They 
 usually have holes in the sand or sod, or under a 
 rock, and the camper has to look sharply if he 
 sees them at all. Occasionally one creeps into 
 the blankets or gets into a shoe or a hat, but 
 that is because the camper has settled down 
 in the wrong place, with blankets or clothing 
 tossed atop of a spider settlement or a scorpion's 
 nest. 
 
 Animals and their movements or cries by night 
 are things that the camper eventually accepts as 
 he does the crackle of his camp-fire or the low 
 growl of his dog. They are passing events. A 
 more lasting impression is that which he sees 
 above him as he lies on his back — the night sky. 
 He never quite gets over the wonder of the great 
 arch and that vast belt made up of infinite stars 
 called the Milky Way. The stars seem studded 
 as in a broad band or architectural rib that reaches 
 [17] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 up and under the huge purple vault. One is at 
 first attracted by the blaze of the more prominent 
 stars, the green-white Sirius, the blue Vega, the 
 orange Betelgeuse, the pearly yellow Capella. If 
 the air is very thick they will seem to twinkle; if 
 you are in high regions where the air is thin they 
 will appear quite still, shining and splendid. 
 Their color in high altitudes becomes more ap- 
 parent, and you perhaps marvel over the white- 
 ness of Sirius which indicates youth, or the orange 
 of Betelgeuse which points to age and decline. 
 Ah ! the wonder of those great sun-stars, their 
 magnitude, their heat and light, their swift flight 
 through space, and the enormous pull of their 
 gravity ! 
 
 But you are clutching at fragments, details of 
 the pattern. The bright stars merely happen to 
 be those near our world. The bowl of the Dipper 
 contains no light within the square perceptible 
 to the unaided eye, but the telescope has discov- 
 ered over a thousand stars in that space, and the 
 larger the telescope the more stars there are to 
 appear. The Milky Way that looks as though 
 strewn with diamond-dust is made up of millions 
 of stars. The newer telescopes make of that por- 
 tion of the heavens a bright shining field, caused 
 [18] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 by countless far-away stars whose lights crowd 
 together on the plate. What is the splendor of 
 Aldebaran or Arcturus to this stupendous glimpse 
 of the infinite — this bringing forward of countless 
 suns from the depths of space! And, wonder 
 upon wonder, they are all moving at terrific paces 
 in enormous orbits ! The entire belt of the Milky 
 Way is supposed to be moving as a mass through 
 space. Whither? Whence the measureless en- 
 ergy that started or keeps such colossal bodies in 
 motion? And where and what are we in this 
 mighty scheme of things ? Are we anything more 
 than petty animalculae clinging to a cold discarded 
 fragment of a sun ? You turn over in your blan- 
 kets and listen to the yap of a distant coyote. 
 Along that Milky Way lies madness. 
 
 Down from the sky comes the coolness of the 
 upper-air stratum. It is almost a nightly occur- 
 rence in the arid regions, even in the heat of sum- 
 mer, for the temperature to fall forty or fifty 
 degrees. You drop off to sleep with a warm breeze 
 blowing over you. By midnight you wake up 
 and begin feeling about for blankets. Perhaps 
 before dawn you are burrowing in the sand to 
 get warm. What has become of the one hundred 
 and twenty degrees Fahrenheit that baked you 
 
 [19} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 at noonday ? The heat has radiated upward and 
 the cold has descended to take its place. 
 
 What a clean cold ! How scentless, saltless, 
 stainless ! It is the purest air in the world — this 
 air which people at one time considered deadly, 
 and which even those of to-day avoid by creep- 
 ing into a house or a tent. Ah ! how you sleep ! 
 And how unconcernedly you breathe in the oxygen 
 of the blue — nature's great restorer ! Even the 
 warm air that blows immediately after dusk has 
 some of this life-giving power. You feel it 
 streaming over your face and through your hair 
 and it has the soothing effect of fairy fingers — or 
 perhaps some loved woman's hands that once had 
 the power to bring you sleep. 
 
 What a strange feeling, sleeping under the wide 
 sky, that you belong only to the universe. You 
 are back to your habitat, to your original environ- 
 ment, to your native heritage. With that feeling 
 you snuggle down in your blankets content to 
 let ambitions slip and the glory of the world pass 
 you by. The honk of the wild goose, calling from 
 the upper space, has for you more understanding 
 and the stars of the sky depth more lure. At 
 last you are free. You are at home in the infinite, 
 and your possessions, your government, your 
 [20] 
 
SLEEPING OUT 
 
 people dwindle away into needle-points of insig- 
 nificance. Danger ? Sleep on serenely ! Danger 
 lies within the pale of civilization, not in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 [21] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 There never was greater joy for the nature- 
 lover than riding into the unknown. Astride of 
 a good plains horse, in unexplored country — not 
 knowing what was coming over the next divide, 
 or what lay in the far valley, or what new world 
 would be disclosed from the top of yonder moun- 
 tain — the lure of the unexpected lent eagerness to 
 the ride. The nipping air of early morning, the 
 long shafts of the rising sun, the great arch of the 
 shifting blue overhead, the far vistas of table- 
 lands and mountains all added to your zest. You 
 were off and away. Nothing could stop you. 
 
 Something of your pleasure depended upon 
 your horse. In Indian days, when unexplored 
 country lay almost everywhere west of the Missis- 
 sippi, the riding was not always enjoyable because 
 the Indian cayuse that one rode was a combina- 
 tion of fool and devil. He was a wild mustang of 
 the plains that had been run down, lassoed, bru- 
 tally broken in a few days, and left to nurse his 
 enmity forever after. And he never failed to 
 [22] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 keep that enmity alive. Every time you lassoed 
 him there was a fight. When bridled with a bit 
 of rawhide or rope, and saddled with nothing more 
 than a flap of buffalo-skin, there was another 
 fight. He glared at you, with ears laid back and 
 lips half bared, as though he would gladly eat 
 you. Mounting him was a feat of vaulting which 
 sometimes landed you on his back and sometimes 
 did not. If you landed 'rightly, it was always a 
 question of whether you would stay. The born 
 impulse of the cayuse was to buck. He curved 
 his back and went into the air. When he came 
 down it was with stiff legs and a sharp back-bone 
 that made you wish you were elsewhere. Two 
 or three jounces of this kind and you were not 
 sorry to get back to earth. Riding a bucking 
 cow-pony, with a deep-seated saddle in which one 
 could get a stirrup hold, was not such a difficult 
 affair; but keeping one's place on a barebacked 
 Indian pony was quite another performance. 
 
 The cayuse was never to be trusted at any 
 time. You might ride him for hours or days or 
 months, but he would always be waiting his time 
 and planning trouble for you. One of his dearest 
 tricks was to rear up on his hind legs, with any 
 sharp little pull on the reins, and fall over back- 
 [23] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ward. The main object of that play was to catch 
 you under him and squeeze the life out of you. 
 Doubtless some of the violent rearing was due to 
 mouth tenderness, and some of the falling back- 
 ward to clumsiness; but bad intention was at the 
 root of things. 
 
 In swimming a river the same rearing and fall- 
 ing over backward were carried out when the 
 cayuse could feel his hind feet on the bottom; 
 but his commoner trick in river-swimming was 
 to get his head and neck down flat on the water 
 and roll over with you. Nothing but a stiff rein 
 and a rawhide quirt, well applied around the ears, 
 could dissuade him from rolling. If he chanced 
 to get you off so that you had to let go of him, 
 he immediately seized the opportunity to pound 
 you with his forefeet, very much as a deer in the 
 water will sometimes turn and hit a following 
 hound. A blow from an unshod hoof under such 
 circumstances might be thought a matter of no 
 great moment, but if you happened to be the one 
 hit, you had reason to think otherwise. 
 
 To give the devil his due, the cayuse had a 
 number of good qualities that in some measure 
 atoned for his viciousness. He was usually sure- 
 footed and travelled almost anywhere that a 
 [24] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 man would venture. In mountain ascents and 
 descents he could pick his way along ledges, cross 
 taluses of broken stone, and slide down declivities 
 like a wild goat. Besides, he had intuitive cun- 
 ning about boggy ground and quicksands, could 
 feel his way across a mountain slide with his fore- 
 feet, and in open country could go his thirty or 
 forty miles a day without being worn or winded. 
 He never had to be pastured, and if with com- 
 panions, he was not hoppled. He picked his own 
 food and got fat on cottonwood bark. If there 
 was water near by he took it, but he could, if 
 emergency required, get on for several days with- 
 out it. Like his Indian master, he accommodated 
 himself to his environment, whatever it was, very 
 well, but he had "a heap bad heart.'* 
 
 The Indians (those at the north particularly — 
 the Sioux, Crows, and Cheyennes) were never very 
 good company on a ride or a hunt. Their dis- 
 position was brutal, sullen, unsocial, not to say 
 quarrelsome. Hour after hour they would ride on 
 without saying a word. If asked a question, the 
 chances were two to one they would not answer. 
 Each one looked after his own skin and cared 
 nothing for the others. As for the women and 
 children (if it were a band on the march), they, 
 [25] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 too, looked after themselves. The papooses, 
 lashed to a board or slung in a pouch, were loaded 
 into a carryall made by skins bound to tepee- 
 poles. Ponies dragged the tepee-poles as they 
 might the wheelless shafts of a wagon. The pa- 
 pooses were jounced and rolled and knocked about 
 all day on the march, but they never cried. At 
 evening when camp was made they were taken 
 out and put down on the ground, whether heads 
 up or feet up, in the sun or out of it, mattered not. 
 Flies and mosquitoes ate them, but they made no 
 murmur. They knew very well that no one 
 would pay attention to them. 
 
 The squaws pitched the tepees, got the meals, 
 and did the camp work. The meal was generally 
 a soup made up of everything edible that had 
 been caught on the day's tramp. It was usually 
 cooked in a huge pot. Any kind of meat, whether 
 fish, flesh, or fowl, turtles, lizards, wild onions, 
 carrots, sago-lilies, acorns — anything that any- 
 body would eat — was flung into the pot. When 
 meat ran short, one of the camp dogs furnished the 
 basis of the soup. Always, with every Indian out- 
 fit I have known, there was an abundant supply 
 of snarling, quarrelling cur dogs, of all ages and 
 degrees. On a march they brought up the rear, 
 [26} 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 with lolling tongues and slow, half-coyote trot. 
 In swimming a river, after all the men, ponies, 
 children, and squaws had crossed, this following 
 of cur dogs could be seen standing and howling 
 on the bank, afraid to take the water. Finally, 
 one by one they would wade out, until beyond 
 their footing, and then swim across — the old dogs 
 first, and the whimpering puppies, snuffling water 
 in and out of their noses, coming after. 
 
 In riding, the chief and older men led the way 
 and the younger bucks followed. Something to 
 eat was uppermost in thought, and the quest of 
 game was omnipresent. Riding with them was 
 hardly a joy to the stranger; and, as for the In- 
 dians themselves, I never saw any one of them 
 give sign of pleasure in company, or over the 
 weather fair or foul or the landscape far or near. 
 They were obsessed with the more material things 
 of daily existence, and beauty was something they 
 probably could not see, and at any rate did not 
 exclaim over. 
 
 A rather unusual experience with the Indians 
 at the south, especially in old Mexico, led me to 
 think them devoid of any fine color sense. They 
 recognized strong reds, blues, oranges, greens; 
 but the rose and amethyst and pale-saffron tints 
 [27] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 they did not see at all. And they were quite 
 blind to pale shadows. Form they recognized 
 largely by silhouette or outline rather than by 
 bulk, and when you talked atmosphere and per- 
 spective at them they were wholly at sea. With a 
 primitive mind they saw things as men of the 
 Stone Age might see them — that is, in outline. 
 The Sioux and Cheyennes at the north were not 
 different from the Indians of Mexico in this re- 
 spect. 
 
 Although the Sioux never was a good companion 
 to ride with, he was always a fine rider and an 
 excellent pathfinder in the wilderness. He be- 
 longed to the buffalo days and was then a pic- 
 turesque figure, if you did not know him too in- 
 timately. Later on he degenerated, through 
 white influences, into a hanger-on about agencies 
 and towns, making occasional trips to old hunting- 
 grounds in the summer seasons. In the early 
 eighties, while riding the eastern Montana coun- 
 try, I often met small bands of Crow or Sioux 
 either camped or on the march. One day on the 
 edge of the Bad Lands, hunting antelope, I saw 
 what I supposed to be the rear end of my game 
 vanishing around the side of an isolated butte. 
 Every hunter knows the cunning trick, sometimes 
 [28] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 resorted to by the antelope, of going around a 
 butte, keeping the butte between you and him, 
 and finally streaking off across the prairie from 
 another point of the compass than you antici- 
 pated. I was aware of this play, and to head it 
 off I put my horse to a run, riding around the 
 opposite side of the butte and hoping to meet 
 my antelope coming toward me. Instead of 
 that, as I turned the far end of the butte, I ran 
 into a band of Indians seated about a camp-fire, 
 drinking libations of soup out of a battered agency 
 wash-boiler. A hawk falling upon a bevy of 
 quail could not have caused a quicker scattering 
 of forces. I was riding so fast that I could not 
 stop, and so dashed right through the camp, out 
 on the other side, and across the prairie beyond. 
 Wild yells followed after me, and I had reason 
 to anticipate bullets, but I never stopped or turned 
 around or gave sign of even having seen them. 
 
 When the great northern ranges were utilized 
 for big herds of cattle and the smoke of the 
 round-up camp was seen under the cottonwoods 
 along the Tongue and the Powder, straggling In- 
 dians would frequently drift into camp and ask 
 for food. Their appetites were something ex- 
 traordinary. I never knew an Indian to refuse 
 [29] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 anything to eat. Potted ham and dried-apple 
 pie preferred, but they never objected to pans full 
 of white baked beans — "soldier beans'* they called 
 them — and saleratus biscuit. Their stomachs 
 seemed so many bottomless pits, and atop of food 
 they poured basins of coffee that disappeared as 
 though down a prairie-dog hole. 
 
 After the meal was over they gathered up in 
 empty cans all the bacon rinds, bones, and scraps of 
 bread to take home to the squaws and papooses. 
 Sometimes the squaws were present and able to 
 look after themselves. One time at a sun-dance 
 in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation I sat in a 
 circle with members of the band while the head 
 men and chiefs gave out rations obtained from 
 the agency store. After the distribution a fat 
 old squaw, who sat next me on the ground, got 
 out a cheap case-knife, cut the top of a quart-can 
 of tomatoes, and drank off the whole quart with- 
 out ever taking the can down from her mouth. I 
 was so much amused that I could not help laugh- 
 ing in her face, but she calmly wiped her mouth 
 with the back of her hand and smiled as though 
 there was nothing unusual in the proceeding. 
 
 With the advent of the big herds of cattle upon 
 the ranges of the Montana-Wyoming country 
 [30] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 there came in a better class of horses. The mus- 
 tang was reduced to "a five-dollar cut" (meaning 
 you could cut out and buy any horse of an Indian 
 bunch for five dollars), and a half-Oregon horse 
 took his place. He was a little larger than the 
 mustang, not quite so hardy or agile, but better 
 broken and trained, especially in handling cattle. 
 These horses usually knew their round-up work, 
 and could cut out and drive cattle very well, but 
 in other respects they were of limited brain power. 
 Every horse is more or less stupid. He is per- 
 haps the only animal that will shy at a news- 
 paper or a dog or a bunch of leaves or a lantern, 
 and yet he has been driven along roads and by 
 such things for centuries. He is also about the 
 only animal that will go into a field through a 
 gate, go down to the bottom of the field, and, not 
 finding a way out, will hang his head over the 
 fence until he starves, waiting for some one to 
 lead him out. A dog that scrambles under a 
 gate and runs along for several hundred yards 
 and then finds there is no exit, will turn about 
 and go back to his original entrance under the 
 gate; but a horse has not sense enough for that. 
 "Horse sense," as the term was originally used, 
 meant very limited sense. 
 [31] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 The old time cow-horse was, of course, much 
 cleverer than the horse of the stables, and usually- 
 had all of his limited faculties about him. He 
 knew rough ground and mountain climbing, and 
 was bred to lassoing, throwing and holding; but 
 at his best I always found him an obstinate, self- 
 willed beast. He never changed his mind or 
 heart about anything, and beating never improved 
 him. In those big range days I rode frequently 
 with the outfits, but often went off on side ven- 
 tures for twenty or thirty miles alone. No horse 
 I ever rode but put up a sturdy objection to this. 
 I was taking him away from the other horses, 
 and that in the equine code was a crime. He 
 registered opposition from the start by refusing 
 to go off a walk. Beaten with a quirt and jabbed 
 with a spur, he would make a spurt forward only 
 to drop into a trot, and then a walk, at the first 
 opportunity. If you stopped for a moment to 
 look at anything, he gradually edged his way 
 around, facing toward the home camp; and when 
 you started you had to twist him about or he 
 would take you on the back track. If you dis- 
 mounted to study a rock or a flower, you could 
 not throw the reins on the ground and leave him 
 to stand. He would sneak off in a moment, 
 [32} 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 carrying his head on one side and trailing the reins 
 so that he would not step on them. If you ran 
 after him, he at once broke into a run, and you 
 were left alone on the prairie to get back to camp 
 as best you could. 
 
 When, after half a day of riding, and with no 
 let-up of home insistence on the part of the horse, 
 you finally turned and tried to make a big circle 
 back to camp, you found your animal at once in 
 a different mood. He pulled on the bit and was 
 eager to run all the way back. If you held him 
 in, he chafed, pranced, danced, cut side-capers, 
 jounced you sore, did everything but walk or jog 
 quietly. He never wanted to complete that cir- 
 cle, but was persistently trying to clip slices off 
 of it with short cuts. When you got back to 
 camp perhaps you were more tired than the horse 
 and, as you unsaddled him and turned him back 
 into the bunch, you were well disposed to kick 
 him; but nothing that you could do would make 
 the slightest impression on his horse-will. The 
 obstinacy remained and would appear the next 
 day as surely as the rising sun. 
 
 The most useful animal I ever rode was a white- 
 eyed pinto pony that had gone blind in one eye 
 and lame in one foot. All the other horses 
 [33] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 seemed to despise him, kicked and bit at him, 
 drove him off. He seemed never very anxious 
 about the horse-bunch, and I took him away with 
 me often on hunting trips. There were a great 
 many pin-tailed or sharp-tailed grouse in Mon- 
 tana in those days, and during the heat of the 
 noon hours these grouse used to seek cover in low 
 bullberry-bushes growing in the shallow swales. 
 I rode the pinto through these bushes, seeing over 
 the tops of them from his back. When the birds 
 got up, the white-eyed one accommodatingly 
 swung his head around to the right and allowed 
 me to shoot from the saddle. He did not like 
 shooting over his head but had no objection to a 
 broadside. I made many bags of these birds, and 
 in camp the cowboys (usually fed on beef three 
 times a day) were enthusiastic over the new ration. 
 In consequence the pinto came in for much praise 
 and decent treatment in the corrals. 
 
 But the pinto could not stand heavy work. 
 Up in the mountains among the pinyons and 
 pines, hunting elk or trying to locate mountain- 
 lions, a stronger, swifter horse was needed. For 
 that work I picked out a buckskin that was a 
 good jumper and a swift runner. He had the 
 usual horse failings, but he was superb in his sure- 
 [34] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 footedness and in his ability to get in or out of 
 the great steep-banked trenches that criss-crossed 
 the Montana ranges. I began by training him 
 to jump white-tailed deer in the willow bottoms 
 of the Little Powder River. He would smash 
 through the brush and make so much noise that 
 any disposition on the part of the deer to skulk 
 and hide in thickets (and that is one of their 
 shrewdest plays) was discouraged at the start. 
 They took to flight, and immediately the buck- 
 skin saw them he went after them as though they 
 were yearlings on the range that required rounding 
 up. The deer, of course, would soon leave us in 
 the rear, though I did manage to knock one of 
 them over one day with a forty-four revolver. 
 That, however, was an accident. In those days 
 I often hunted game on horseback, without a gun, 
 for the mere pleasure of seeing it run. A deer 
 hurdling over fallen tree-trunks and taking a 
 flying plunge into a river was a sight worth any 
 one*s seeing. And what could be more thrilling 
 than a band of elk breaking through pinyons on a 
 full run ! Even a mountain-lion up a tree was 
 better to look at than to shoot. 
 
 There were other sights besides game to wonder 
 over in that Montana country. One day, riding 
 [35] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 through the willow bottoms of the Tongue, I got 
 off my horse to examine something white that 
 was half-bedded in the sand and grass. It was a 
 human skull with a bullet-hole through the side 
 of the head above the right ear. The eyes were 
 stopped with dirt and the skull was bleached and 
 dry. Had I been an evolutionist hunting for a 
 missing link, perhaps I could have put together 
 figures about river deposits, denuded benches, 
 and glacial drifts, to prove the skull as old as 
 the Neanderthal or Piltdown skull of prehistoric 
 antiquity; but the bullet-hole gave me pause. 
 The probabilities were overwhelming that it was 
 an Indian or white man's skull and had been 
 there only a few years. Riding on I found, a 
 hundred yards farther up the river, the miss- 
 ing link of the story. It was the remains of a 
 half-burned wagon with collapsed wheels, rusted 
 tires, and a broken tongue. Near by was a 
 shovel, some barrel-staves, several broken boxes, 
 bottles, and cans. Under a tree I put together 
 about half of a human skeleton. What expla- 
 nation ? Why, the obvious one that a miner's 
 outfit going across the country had been sur- 
 prised in camp. The Indians had killed the 
 party, stolen the horses with everything of any 
 [36] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 value in the camp, and the coyotes had done 
 the rest. 
 
 In Montana in the early eighties bones were 
 scattered everywhere over the ranges, but they 
 were not human bones. They were those of the 
 buffaloes. Their slaughter had taken place a few 
 years before. Outfits by the score had gone out 
 from Miles City and elsewhere with shooters, 
 skinners, drivers, and cooks. The buffaloes were 
 shot by the thousands, their hides pulled off, and 
 their carcasses allowed to lie where they fell. The 
 hides were taken into the border towns, such as 
 Miles City, and sold in the raw state for two dol- 
 lars a hide, the money being immediately con- 
 verted into raw whiskey. It was the most brutal 
 butchery of big game the country had ever known. 
 For years afterward the great buffalo range was 
 strewn with the whitened bones; and then second 
 expeditions, having learned that horns and bones 
 were valuable, went out and gathered up the re- 
 mains. Thus passed the buffalo. 
 
 Riding in the Bad Lands in those days I was 
 dimly aware of still other bones, that had not to 
 do with buffaloes or Indians, but belonged to 
 geological times. Unfortunately my interest was 
 not great, and for that reason perhaps some im- 
 [37] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 portant "finds" slipped through my fingers. My 
 geologic curiosity at that time seemed to centre 
 about the stratification of colored rocks rather 
 than dinosaurs; and a sea-shell on top of a butte 
 gave me more thrill than the joint of a mastodon. 
 I remember gathering one day from the top of a 
 small table-mountain a hatful of petrified clams 
 — something I was told afterward, as regards the 
 petrifaction, was an impossibility. The clam- 
 shell was said to be simply filled with dirt and 
 looked like a clam. But I broke open a dozen of 
 those clams and found the same clam-colored in- 
 terior in all of them. A casual glance would per- 
 suade one that the clam was there and alive, but 
 the touch of the finger found the flesh hard as 
 jade. 
 
 The colored strata and the strange forms of 
 the eroded buttes in the Bad Lands were quite 
 the most obvious features of the landscape. The 
 cowboys could never be persuaded that water 
 wear was responsible for the fantastic forms, and 
 oxides of iron and copper for the bright colorings. 
 They insisted on fire, volcano, or earthquake — 
 some huge cataclysm — as necessary to such an 
 effect. They pointed out as proof small jets of 
 steam and Uttlc spirals of smoke coming out from 
 [38] 
 
RIDING THE OPEN 
 
 under some of the buttes or around the edge of 
 sunken bowls in the ground. These bowls at 
 times would be filled with bright-green grass while 
 all the herbage about them would be withered and 
 yellowed. My own imperfect ideas of geology 
 led me to think them only manifestations of minor 
 faul tings such as marked the Yellowstone Park 
 with hot-water geysers, colored pools, and mud 
 volcanoes. 
 
 Southern and eastern Montana was a wonder- 
 ful riding country just after the buffalo days. 
 There were strange surprises at every turn and 
 an infinite variety of prairie, plain, table-land, and 
 mountain. From the high points one could see 
 enormous distances through the clear air. I often 
 saw the glow of sunlight on the Big Horn Moun- 
 tains more than a hundred miles down in Wy- 
 oming. And the endless vistas to the east over 
 blossoming plains to be seen from the heights of 
 the Cheetah Mountains or the foot-hills of the 
 Rockies ! And what strange indented river- 
 basins ! From the Indian trail looking down was 
 there ever a stranger sight than the valley of the 
 Big Horn River ? Beyond it there rose a loosely 
 cemented table-land, gulched by rains and rivers 
 until thousands of enormous cone-shaped peaks 
 [39] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 seemed pitched upon the plain like the tents of 
 some army of giants. 
 
 A fascinating country was Montana in those 
 days ! It was so aloof, so far away, and so su- 
 perbly sublime in its vast sweep! Many times 
 at dawn and dusk I rode the high ridges to see 
 the sun come and go over that wilderness of the 
 open. Even my horse, whose intelligence I 
 scorned, would look out from some height with 
 bulging eyes and forward-set ears as though he 
 half comprehended the far distances if not the 
 serene grandeur of the scene. Later on I rode 
 for several years the Southwest and old Mexico, 
 but they were not such riding country as Mon- 
 tana. 
 
 [40] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 It was in the early eighties that the big herds 
 of cattle were first driven up on the northern 
 ranges. The buffaloes had not entirely passed 
 but were rapidly passing. And the cattlemen were 
 not sorry. It gave them new grazing country. 
 The northern ranges were enormous, and by the 
 casual observer were supposed to be quite worth- 
 less. Gumbo, alkali, and sage-brush were almost 
 everywhere, and anything like "feed" in the 
 Eastern sense of tall grass was not apparent. But 
 the cattlemen knew that the buffalo-grass, lying 
 low and growing in small bunches, held more nu- 
 trition than the long prairie-grass of the Dakotas. 
 It had kept the buffaloes for many years. Why 
 not the Texas long-horn or the Oregon short-horn ? 
 And it did. 
 
 The ranges in those days were held by claim 
 and possession, very much as a miner staked out 
 his diggings and held them — that is, with a gun. 
 Some of the larger companies bought, or took out 
 under the Homestead Act, a hundred or more 
 
 [41] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 acres near water, and would call those acres 
 the "home ranch*'; but the "home" was only a 
 log hut where flour and other supplies were stored, 
 and the "ranch" was merely an enlarged corral 
 where a few horses for immediate need were pas- 
 tured. Everybody slept on the ground and ate 
 around a camp-fire or at the end of a grub-wagon. 
 Once or twice a week perhaps camp was shifted 
 to some new spot. The men worked over the 
 herds during the summer, and a herd meant often- 
 times fifty or a hundred thousand head of cattle 
 belonging to one company. Such a herd would 
 be scattered over two hundred square miles, 
 though the owner perhaps claimed only fifty 
 square miles. There were no fences, and bound- 
 aries were recognized by creek beds or mountain 
 ranges. A Stock Growers' Association immedi- 
 ately came into existence for mutual protection, 
 and every owner agreed not only to look after his 
 own cattle on his own range but every other 
 owner's cattle found upon his territory. This 
 recognition of property rights with its spirit of 
 mutual helpfulness was necessary; otherwise the 
 cattle would be like so many herring in the sea, 
 running in schools to be sure, but with no limit 
 to their wanderings. 
 
 [42} 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 Helpful as was the association there were, 
 nevertheless, endless quarrels between the stock- 
 men over range lines, wrongly branded calves, 
 and stolen horses. Outfits saddled up more than 
 once and went over to neighboring ranches "to 
 settle about those calves," and sometimes there 
 was shooting; but usually it ended in a great deal 
 of talk. Those were shooting days, and much 
 ammunition was expended with good intent to 
 kill, but it was always rather astonishing to me 
 that so few of the enemy were laid low. The 
 cowboy wore a belt of cartridges, had a forty-four 
 gun in a holster on his hip, and, of course, prided 
 himself on being a dead shot. He would spin un- 
 ending yarns about shooting the lights out in 
 saloons, splitting billiard-balls on the tables, and 
 breaking the glass insulators on the telegraph- 
 poles; but when you asked him to kill a coyote 
 or a prairie-dog, or a sage-hen on the ground before 
 him, he failed to arrive. He was out of practice, 
 or his gun was dirty, or he had some new car- 
 tridges that fitted badly. The truth was that 
 his gun kicked so viciously it would overshoot an 
 elephant at ten paces, and the bullet was so 
 jammed in going from the cylinder into the barrel 
 that it shot wildly. A further truth was that the 
 [43] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 cowboy knew nothing about shooting per se. He 
 could shoot more and hit less than any man I 
 ever met. 
 
 Sometimes the sheriffs and deputy-sheriffs de- 
 veloped considerable skill in gun-play, because 
 they were kept in continual practice. It was the 
 golden age of the cattle business, and it was also 
 a prosperous period for the engaging horse-thief. 
 Horses were continually being run off into the 
 Black Hills region and sold south and east through 
 a Deadwood "fence." It became an established 
 business. In riding the ranges I often picked up 
 the trail of banded horses, and on several occa- 
 sions traced them to the heads of deep-cut trenches 
 where the horses had been rounded up and cor- 
 ralled during the day. Most of the work was 
 done by night, and in the actual stealing some- 
 times a "wrangler,'* watching the ranch horse- 
 bunch, would get a bullet through his head. 
 
 All this was decidedly irritating to the cattle- 
 men. They were too busy to chase horse-thieves, 
 but they cursed loud and deep. At last, one 
 summer the hat was passed around among the 
 stock growers. Large sums were raised, men were 
 hired at exalted prices, and an organized cam- 
 paign was started. I was told (quite in confidence) 
 [44] 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 that the bag that season was fifty-two horse- 
 thieves, shot on sight, and left just where they 
 were shot. The result was that for several years 
 thereafter the export trade in stolen horses through 
 the Black Hills rather languished. 
 
 Besides the horse-thieves in those early days 
 there were Indians to bother the cattlemen. 
 Every few weeks some wild-eyed cowboy from a 
 neighboring ranch would come riding into camp 
 to tell us with quick breath that the Indians were 
 on the war-path. They were raiding the ranches, 
 killing cattle, coming down the river, or doing 
 something else equally perilous for us. But no 
 one paid any attention to the warning. We went 
 on eating beans, with boot-leg coffee for a wash- 
 down, and crept into our blankets without assign- 
 ing sentinels to keep guard. We had been fright- 
 ed by those false fires too often. 
 
 It is true there were depredations carried on by 
 Indian bands moving across the ranges. They 
 shot cattle when they wanted meat. Had not 
 the white man shot their buffalo and why should 
 they not shoot his beef? The carcass of a big 
 steer with his tongue and tenderloin cut out, and 
 the rest of him left to the buzzards, was not an 
 infrequent find. And the knife-work always be- 
 [45] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 trayed the Indian. This was still greater irrita- 
 tion for the ranchmen, and occasionally a volun- 
 teer posse of cowboys would go out from some 
 cow-camp with the avowed purpose of ''getting 
 those Indians," but the Indian had been raised 
 in that country, and knew very well how to effect 
 a disappearance. And the cowboy was always 
 at a disadvantage. A half-Oregon horse carrying 
 a heavy saddle and an armed and outfitted rider 
 could not keep up with an Indian riding bare- 
 back in his bare skin. 
 
 Aside from horse-thieves and Indians, life on 
 the big ranges was always adventurous, strenu- 
 ous, more or less exciting. It was the beginning 
 of the cattle business at the north when every- 
 body rode hard with a whoop — rode the legs off 
 the horses and the beef off the cattle. Every 
 ranch with fifteen or twenty cowboys in the out- 
 fit would have from a hundred to two hundred 
 horses in the horse-bunch, and every cowboy 
 would have from five to fifteen horses on his 
 "string." In round-up work three or four horses 
 a day of each cowboy's string would be ridden 
 to a finish, thrown out to rest for four or five days, 
 and then taken up again in rotation. It was a 
 common occurrence to saddle up a horse and ride 
 [46] 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 him on a run for fifteen or twenty miles as the 
 exigencies of the round-up demanded. That the 
 horse blew or wheezed or got in a lather or stum- 
 bled was no reason for moderating the pace. If 
 the ride used him up permanently it was no great 
 matter. There were plenty of other horses in 
 the bunch. 
 
 The quirt and spur and lasso were always in 
 use. None of the horses understood any other 
 language. They were started with a spur, stopped 
 by a pull on the spade bit, turned to left or right 
 by the flat of the rein on the neck. You could 
 mount on the right side but not on the left, and 
 you could ride with your hands up (one holding 
 the reins and the other your lasso) but not with 
 them down at your side or on the pommel. The 
 horses were accustomed to that procedure and 
 were nervous under any other. 
 
 The saddle was a heavy, deep-seated afl^air, 
 with broad double cinches that would hold any- 
 thing from a calf to a silver- tip bear, and it was 
 cinched up until the horse groaned. It required 
 that tight cinching, for the strains on it at times 
 were severe. When a heavy steer was roped, one 
 sometimes felt as though something had to give 
 way. Frequently the rider gave way, even when 
 [47] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 there was no rope or steer attached. Though 
 deep-seated in the saddle, with feet pushed through 
 the stirrup to the instep, and straps to hold by 
 in addition, one was often flung out of the saddle 
 by the quick turn at full speed of a cutting horse. 
 Every one sooner or later became an expert rider, 
 but even expertism did not always save when a 
 horse stumbled, or got his foot in a prairie-dog 
 hole and cut a somersault, or ran over a calf on 
 the edge of a herd and went down with a smash. 
 It was hard work, made unnecessarily hard by 
 whoop and bravado and a wrong understanding 
 of the cattle business. 
 
 A round-up at that time usually had several 
 objects in view. Each outfit worked over its ter- 
 ritory two or three times during the season to 
 keep its cattle on its own range, to head cattle 
 belonging to other ranches toward their home 
 range, to brand newly-born calves, and to gather 
 beef steers for market. In the cow-camp every- 
 body got started before daylight. A coffee, 
 beans, and beef breakfast was ready at the tail- 
 end of the grub-wagon as soon as the men had 
 their blankets rolled and their faces dry-wiped, or 
 wet-dipped if water was at hand. By daylight 
 the horse-bunch had been driven in, held up in an 
 [48} 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 i 
 
 improvised rope corral, and the men were lassoing 
 the animals that were to be ridden that morning. 
 
 Saddling followed, and with much profanity. 
 The tough, the bad man, the bronco-buster were 
 in evidence in every outfit, and the horses were 
 told, with strange oaths, to stand still or they 
 would be cut in two. Naturally they curved their 
 backs, laid their ears flat down, and looked the 
 more devilish the tighter the cinches were drawn. 
 The men swung into the saddles, but the moment 
 the horses were urged forward by the spur, per- 
 haps a third of them began to buck. Ten minutes 
 of that and then the bronco-busters — often whey- 
 faced and out of breath from their pounding — 
 caught up with the rest of the band. Never 
 caring much for the joy or glory of conquering a 
 bucking horse, I compromised by a looser cinch, 
 and if, in spite of that, the animal looked vicious, 
 I walked him for a few minutes before mounting. 
 The result was I usually maintained a spinal 
 column untelescoped, and rode my miles as easily 
 as the others. 
 
 The controlling instinct of range cattle has 
 
 always been to keep together — to keep in a bunch 
 
 or herd. In riding the ranges one occasionally 
 
 saw two lone bulls that had been fighting for sev- 
 
 [49} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 eral days and had just enough strength left to 
 stand and glare at each other, or a disabled cow 
 with a young calf, or a bawling yearling that had 
 lost the herd; but usually the cattle were seen in 
 bunches of from ten to a hundred scattered at 
 random over small areas. These groups were 
 found grazing in the little valleys and swales 
 lying off from the main creeks. Once a day, 
 sometimes once in two or three days, the units 
 would come lowing to water at the creeks, and 
 then afterward trail up the swales and out on the 
 ranges for ten or fifteen miles. On a round-up 
 these groups were brought together in a large 
 central group by the simple process of riding the 
 swales and driving the cattle toward a given point 
 on the creek or river bottom. They could always 
 be relied upon, whether grazing at ease or wildly 
 stampeding down a swale, to hold together. In 
 fact, at the round-up difficulties never arose until 
 the cutting horses began separating certain cows 
 and calves from the main herd. Any attempt to 
 separate an animal from his kind met with instant 
 opposition from the animal. 
 
 The first round-up of the day began by riding 
 down the spread sticks of a fan toward the handle. 
 The foreman portioned out half of his force of 
 [50] 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 men to a lieutenant and sent him to the left, 
 going himself to the right with the remaining 
 eight or ten men. Each foreman, after riding 
 for a mile or more, would perhaps strike the head 
 of a swale leading down to the main creek. Here 
 he would drop off a man and tell him to ride down 
 that stick and drive all the cattle in the swale to 
 the creek bottom (the handle of the fan), perhaps 
 ten or twelve miles away. Going on another mile 
 or two or three this detailing of a man would be 
 repeated. Another cowboy would be set to drive 
 down a swale. And so on until there were twenty 
 men driving swales from different directions, and 
 all of them hustling cattle toward the fan-handle 
 or the main round-up goal on the creek bed. 
 
 When first surprised in the swales the cattle 
 were always very wild. They curled their tails 
 over their backs and ran like deer. They would 
 sometimes run for several miles before a horse- 
 man could come up within fifty yards of them. 
 As the bunch accumulated numbers on its way 
 down the swale it became a little heavier and 
 slower, got churned up somewhat with running, 
 and lost some of its fear of the horseman. When 
 finally it debouched into the creek bed and met 
 other bunches coming down the far sticks from dif- 
 [51] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ferent directions, it melted into one promiscuous 
 herd that milled around and looked wild-eyed in 
 the most approved picture-fashion. The bring- 
 ing together of the big bulls resulted at once in 
 many fights, all of them easily staged and quickly 
 carried out; the calves occasionally losing their 
 mothers meant frantic bawling and running 
 about; the whole bunch twining and intertwining 
 and pawing the ground threw up clouds of alkali- 
 dust. But the herd held together. By the time 
 all the swale riders had driven in their catch per- 
 haps there were five thousand cattle or more on a 
 level piece of ground, kept in ring-form by cow- 
 boys riding slowly backward and forward. 
 
 Then another phase of the round-up began. 
 The horse-bunch and the grub-wagon, taking a 
 direct line, usually arrived in advance of the cattle. 
 Fresh horses were roped and the specially trained 
 cutting horses were brought up. They edged into 
 the herd, guided by their riders, and began get- 
 ting out the cows running with unbranded calves. 
 After one or two turnings by the flat of the rein 
 an intelligent cutting horse would know precisely 
 the cow wanted. He would get up to her flank 
 and gradually work her toward the edge of the 
 herd — the cow looking behind and always push- 
 [32] 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 ing ahead to get away from the horse. When the 
 outer edge was reached, a slight touch of the spur, 
 a dash forward of the horse, and both cow and 
 calf would suddenly find themselves twenty yards 
 outside the herd. 
 
 That was the beginning of trouble, for instantly 
 the cow found herself isolated from the herd she 
 would try to plunge back into it. Then came into 
 play the swiftness, quickness, and skill of the cut- 
 ting horse. His nose was always at the cow*s 
 shoulder heading her off. There would be a wild 
 dash at antelope speed for a quarter of a mile 
 around the edge of the herd, but the horse would 
 be on the inside. Then, without the slightest in- 
 timation, as quick as a flash, the cow and calf 
 would turn about and run back over the course. 
 Only one thing could go beyond the quickness 
 of the cow and calf and that was the quickness 
 of the horse. If you were on his back, you found 
 out instantly why the cowboys rode in a deep 
 saddle, w^ith a long stirrup, and their foot pushed 
 through the stirrup to the instep. Even with 
 those aids you would often have difficulty in keep- 
 ing your seat when the horse turned to follow the 
 cow. The wrench of it was wicked — so much so 
 that in those days a cowboy over thirty, riding a 
 [33] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 cutting horse, was a rare sight. Only the young 
 men could stand the strain. 
 
 After two or three turns up and down the out- 
 side line the cow would find herself gradually 
 pushed farther away from the herd. Temporarily 
 she would give up her herd proclivities and stand 
 out in the open bawling her loneliness, while an 
 extra cowboy kept her in check. After several 
 cows and calves were thus run out they would 
 form a little herd of their own, and with each 
 other's company for solace they would gradually 
 quiet down. On the opposite side of the big 
 herd a bunch of beef cattle to be shipped to mar- 
 ket would begin forming in precisely the same 
 way. This beef herd would grow in numbers 
 with each round-up, be kept in charge by a special 
 man or two, and moved slowly from place to 
 place. Eventually it would be grazed along at 
 the rate of ten miles a day (so it would not 
 lose weight) toward a railroad siding with cattle 
 chutes and cars for shipment. Perhaps at the 
 end of a month or more this beef herd, seven or 
 eight hundred strong, would reach its goal in the 
 Chicago stock-yards. 
 
 After the beef cattle and the unbranded calves 
 were taken out the balance of the herd was headed 
 [54] 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 back over the ground that had been worked, and 
 perhaps the stranger cattle in the herd started 
 north or south, east or west, in the direction of 
 their home ranches. Then came the branding of 
 the calves. Each one in turn was roped around 
 the neck from a horse and towed by the horse, 
 bawling, kicking, and pulling, up to the branding 
 fire. There it was flung down on its side and 
 duly branded with the 70L or Diamond Bar, or 
 Double Circle of its mother. 
 
 Everything unbranded received similar treat- 
 ment, whether a day or a year old. The moment 
 the hot iron struck the flank a bawl was emitted, 
 and every cowboy knew by the pitch of that bawl 
 just the age of the victim. The young ones 
 struck a baby treble and the larger ones a six- 
 months-old bass. In addition to the branding 
 perhaps there was wattling on the throat or 
 swallow-wing cuts in the ear. Everything was 
 swiftly done, with no antiseptics of any kind. The 
 calf, when finally allowed to scramble to its feet, 
 was given a kick in the belly and sent to find its 
 mother as best it could. Hardly one of them but 
 weathered through this rather violent treatment. 
 In that new country and that pure air it seemed 
 impossible for bacteria to make trouble. Men 
 {55^ 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 and animals died from accident but not from 
 disease. 
 
 Occasionally accident would kill off a cow and 
 leave a calf motherless. But after a few days of 
 bawling the newly made orphan would hunt up 
 a partner in misfortune and the two would sneak 
 around in company stealing milk from the other 
 cows. They quickly learned to eat buffalo-grass, 
 and the premature grass diet usually made them 
 pot-bellied, woolly in their coats, and nigger- 
 looking in their eyes. If winter came in early 
 they had but a poor chance of going through to 
 spring, because not strong enough or hardy 
 enough to paw through the snow to the dry range 
 grass beneath. In severe sleet storms lumps 
 of frozen snow would lodge on their backs and 
 stay there for weeks, depressing their vitality, 
 and eventually, with poor feed and much exposure, 
 resulting in their death. They were forlorn speci- 
 mens, and even when they weathered through and 
 grew up they were always the runts of the herd. 
 Yet this motherless calf was the cause of more 
 than half the quarrels between the different 
 ranches. This was the so-called "maverick" — no 
 one's property because without a holding mother, 
 and hence to be branded and claimed by the 
 [56^ 
 
RIDING THE RANGES 
 
 first comer. The quarrels grew out of second 
 comers, who changed the initial brands to their 
 own, and were thus open to the charge of "steal- 
 ing calves." 
 
 After the noon meal, the grub-wagon, the horse- 
 bunch, and the beef herd would start on a straight 
 line for a camping spot, and the men with fresh 
 horses would start an afternoon round-up pre- 
 cisely as in the morning. In this way the whole 
 range would be gradually worked over by the 
 creek beds, the calves branded, the beef cattle 
 selected, and the increase or decrease of the gen- 
 eral herd estimated. Incidentally the cattle got 
 much shaken up and lost flesh, while the horses 
 were galled or wounded or strained in the legs. 
 The riding was of the hardest. A cowboy riding 
 to a finish four horses a day would frequently go 
 eighty or a hundred miles, and that at a hard 
 gallop, over the roughest ground, up hill and 
 down dale, smashing through willows or buUberry- 
 bushes, galloping over rocks or streams or quick- 
 sands. It was a losing business, because on a 
 scale too large to control and too ruinous in waste 
 to be kept up. 
 
 After a few years the losses through bad man- 
 agement, gray wolves, cattle-thieves, and hard 
 [57] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 winters were so great that the big herds began 
 to contract. Eventually the settler and the wire 
 fence came on the scene, and that was the be- 
 ginning of the end. The brave old days of whoop 
 and shout passed out, and to-day the trail of the 
 cowboy at the north has grown dim. There are 
 ranches still existent and cowboys who run the 
 legs off of horses, but the ranches are small and 
 the outfits are pale imitations of those that flour- 
 ished and fought in the early eighties. 
 
 [58] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE COWBOY 
 
 In the order of their importance, and in the 
 estimate of the cattlemen, the cattle came first, 
 the horses next, and the men last of all. If any- 
 thing was to be rescued it was the imperilled herd, 
 not the men. The cow-punchers could look after 
 themselves, hustle their own horses, rustle their 
 own beds and food, and get out of trouble as they 
 got into it. In Montana, in the eighties, they 
 were all young, active, and capable, needing 
 neither sympathy nor help. And, naturally, 
 astride of a horse, wearing "chaps" and carrying 
 a gun at the hip, they took themselves rather 
 seriously. They even accepted the popular esti- 
 mate of themselves that they were a distinct 
 genus of their own, and a bold bad lot into the 
 bargain. 
 
 I never had many delusions about the cowboy, 
 for I knew his kind before he was born. He never 
 belonged to the Mexican vaquero class in the sense 
 of being raised with cattle and riding with horses 
 all his life. The vaquero was a peon herdsman, 
 [59] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 born and trained on an hacienda^ and remained 
 such to the end of his days; but the northern cow- 
 boy was merely a Wandering Willie, who rode the 
 ranges for a time because it was an easy job. He 
 was usually a ne'er-do-well. Born perhaps in 
 the Mississippi Valley region, and rejected by his 
 family for moral delinquencies, he drifted out on 
 the border and became a ranch hand because help 
 was scarce and anybody could ride a horse, drive 
 a cow, and tote a gun. He rode for only a few 
 years and then, getting stiff in the joints from 
 many strains, he took up with some kind of trade, 
 opened a livery-stable or a saloon, started pros- 
 pecting, gambling, tramping, or some other hon- 
 orable or dishonorable calling. Cowboying was 
 to him only a youthful and a temporary step-gap. 
 The raftsman of the Mississippi had typified his 
 kind a dozen years before him. They were both 
 of the unsettled youthful class and took up with 
 riding a raft or riding a horse because the work 
 had excitement in it and not too much continuous 
 exertion. 
 
 The mentality and morality of both classes 
 
 were rather conspicuously absent. They had 
 
 little or no education, no great intelligence, and 
 
 the very slightest sense of responsibility. The 
 
 [60] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 vices of the border town — drinking, gambling, 
 women — were naturally uppermost with the cow- 
 boy. Occasionally I would meet one who could 
 speak the truth without swearing, and almost all 
 of them recognized property rights and abstained 
 from stealing; but they were quick on the trigger, 
 shot to kill, with no compunctions of conscience 
 if they happened to succeed, and got out of the 
 country on a stolen horse if it were necessary. 
 
 They partly atoned for these reckless propensi- 
 ties by an unbounded good nature and generosity. 
 The morose and disagreeable personality was sel- 
 dom met with. They all talked a great deal, as 
 young people usually do, and their theme was 
 naturally limited, especially on the range. In a 
 cow-camp every one talked cow or held his 
 tongue. The tenderfoot from the East who 
 started in to discourse about the theatres or res- 
 taurants or society life in Chicago or New York 
 soon found himself without an audience. They 
 knew nothing about things east of the Mississippi, 
 and they did not care to know anything about 
 them. They talked their shop and wanted you 
 to do the same. 
 
 Of course they were generous — that (rather 
 than patriotism, as Doctor Johnson had it) being 
 [61} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 the last refuge of a scoundrel. Almost all crooked 
 people are generous, and everybody, straight or 
 crooked, in a new country where people are scarce, 
 helps his neighbor. Those who live in crowded 
 cities, and struggle to keep their ribs free from 
 their neighbor's elbows, have very little under- 
 standing of the right and decent feeling among 
 people who live in the open. Helpfulness with 
 them is not so much regarded as a virtue as self- 
 ishness a crime. The cowboy, as a class, was 
 never selfish. I had one summer for a partner 
 a boy who had killed two men, been a gambler, 
 served a term for stealing, and had a decidedly 
 bad record; but I never knew a more sunny na- 
 ture or a more generous one. When we rolled 
 out our blankets on the ground at night, if there 
 was one side softer or better than the other I got 
 it; when he reached for the coffee-pot he helped 
 me first; when we saddled up he would rope and 
 bring out my horse or swing my saddle. And 
 with all his bad history he was tremendously 
 courageous and had as much endurance as any 
 man I ever knew. 
 
 This same cowboy, while riding with me on a 
 round-up and trying to cut a cow and calf out of 
 a herd, had the misfortune to be badly thrown. 
 [62] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 The calf ran across and in front of his horse while 
 going at full speed, and the result was that both 
 horse and rider turned a complete somersault. 
 The cantle of the saddle caught his right leg, 
 making a square break of the ankle. That was 
 bad business, for we were eighty-four miles from 
 Miles City — the nearest place for medical help — 
 and no way to get there except on horseback. I 
 was the only one in the outfit who had ever seen 
 a broken leg. I got the cowboy — we will call 
 him Dave — down to the creek, stretched him out, 
 pulled off his boot, found the break, and by much 
 pulling and more awkward feeling got the broken 
 sections into place. I had brought from the grub- 
 wagon a cracker-box, which I split up into many 
 thin splints, and also several flannel shirts that I 
 tore into strip bandages. I made a plumber's 
 joint over the ankle, winding it until it was nearly 
 a foot in diameter and reached from the instep 
 to the knee. The whole was lashed fast and 
 tight with much heavy cord and rawhide. During 
 this crude performance Dave never flinched or 
 groaned, though the sweat was rolling down his 
 face; but when it was finished he swore with much 
 violence and thanked me between oaths. 
 The real difficulty now came. It was the height 
 [63] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 of the season and even I was riding down and out 
 three and four horses a day. Dave had to ride 
 alone to Miles City because no one could be 
 spared from the round-up to go with him. I put 
 some cold provender in a small gunny-sack, caught 
 up an extra lead horse, got him into the saddle, 
 and started him across the Big Powder to Miles 
 City. He got there, as I afterward learned, with- 
 out accident, but it must have been a difficult 
 journey. It meant that he had to get in and 
 out of the saddle, picket and water his horses, 
 gather his wood, make his fire, cook his food, 
 stretch his blankets, and all with a broken leg. 
 He was four days and nights on the way, meeting 
 not a soul, and sleeping with one eye open for 
 fear he might lose his horses and be left afoot and 
 crippled. That, I submit, called for courage and 
 endurance. Few people would fancy the trip 
 alone even unhandicapped by accident. Dave 
 pulled through by sheer grit. When he got to 
 town and had his leg examined, he was told that it 
 needed no resetting. That was sheer good luck. 
 He was back on the ranch in less than six months, 
 quite as good as new. 
 
 Accidents on the range were not infrequent. 
 The riding was of the roughest, and the cowboys 
 [64] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 were often thrown, or were twisted in a taut rope, 
 or squeezed under a falling horse. Sometimes 
 the cattle got ** ornery" — as the boys said — and 
 charged everything in sight. Travelling the range 
 on foot was always dangerous. The cattle were 
 somewhat accustomed to a man on a horse, but 
 they would quickly run down and toss a man 
 afoot. Often, after being roped and thrown, 
 some of the wilder cattle would get to their feet 
 half-frenzied and rush at anything moving. 
 One day in crossing a small stream, called Crow 
 Creek, we found two very heavy steers bogged 
 down in alkali mud until only their heads and 
 tails were visible. We threw ropes over the 
 horns of the first one and then, with a turn 
 of the ropes around the pommels of our saddles, 
 five of us abreast started our horses up the 
 bank. 
 
 The ropes stretched like fiddle-strings, and it 
 was a question in my mind which would break 
 first, the ropes or the horns. But rather unex- 
 pectedly the body of the steer slipped forward 
 out of the mud. We dragged him out on the 
 bank and immediately heeled him with another 
 rope. I was then delegated by the foreman to 
 get down and slip the ropes off the horns while 
 [65] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 the heel-rope was held taut. I did so, and then 
 scrambled on my horse as quickly as possible, 
 well knowing a charge would follow. Sure enough, 
 as soon as the steer got to his feet and kicked 
 loose his heel-rope he came at me under full speed. 
 I led him away on a chase for three-quarters of a 
 mile and then rode back to help rescue his com- 
 panion. The same performance was repeated. It 
 seemed a highly ungrateful proceeding on the part 
 of the steers, but they, of course, were merely re- 
 senting the immediate injury to their dignity or 
 their horns. 
 
 Cattle have as little sense as horses, and when 
 anything unusual happens they are easily stam- 
 peded. One night when encamped under some 
 cottonwoods on the Big Powder we were surprised 
 by heavy rain and terrific lightning. My partner 
 and myself, knees up, were endeavoring to shed 
 the rain from our tarpaulin, when I heard, along 
 the ground, a beating, rumbling sound that had 
 nothing to do with the storm. I put my head 
 out of the blankets to locate the sound just as a 
 flash of lightning made a vivid illumination. In 
 that momentary light I saw the tossing heads and 
 horns of cattle on a wide front moving down upon 
 the camp. I knew instantly that it was the beef 
 [66] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 herd that had been stampeded by the lightning 
 and was running wild. 
 
 A yell to the camp brought every one to his 
 feet, and there was a quick rush to get behind 
 cottonwood-trees. Six or seven hundred wild- 
 eyed and frenzied cattle, not knowing where they 
 were going, dashed through the camp. As they 
 passed the tree behind which I stood each one, as 
 he saw me out of the corner of his eye, snorted 
 and kicked at me viciously. That swaying body 
 of mad cattle, their wet hides, large eyes, and 
 tossing heads, illumined by flashes of lightning, 
 was about the weirdest, wildest sight I have ever 
 seen. They ran on and down to the cut bank 
 of the Big Powder River. There the first ones 
 paused on the edge of a ten-foot drop, but the 
 ones behind forced the leaders over the edge, 
 and presently they were all leaping and smashing 
 into the stream and swimming for the other side. 
 I ran down after them and saw the second wild- 
 est scene of my life — mad cattle swimming a 
 swollen river at night, with flashes of lightning 
 and peals of thunder for accompaniment. That 
 herd ran for ten miles before it paused. How 
 much flesh the cattle lost on the run I do not 
 know. I know the camp lost some sleep and 
 [67] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 counted itself lucky that no one had lost his 
 life. 
 
 The lightning in that Montana country I have 
 never seen equalled elsewhere for deadliness of 
 effect. It was not at all unusual to find cattle and 
 horses killed by it; and the cowboys who had 
 special charge of the beef herd insisted that, at 
 night during storms, they could see the lightning 
 playing about the horns of the cattle. One of our 
 boys, while washing some clothes at the river's 
 edge, was struck dead by a bolt that came almost 
 out of the blue, so small was the cloud that sent 
 it forth. At another time Rvq of us were riding 
 abreast along a high ridge, behind two or three 
 hundred cattle that we were driving down to a 
 round-up, when a thunder-storm overtook us. 
 Two clouds seemed to converge and merge as they 
 came over us. There was not one among us who 
 did not know we were in the most dangerous 
 place imaginable. Riding behind heated cattle 
 was thought to be perilous, and the high ridge 
 made us an exceptionally good target. Not one 
 of us, had he been alone, but would have sought 
 lower ground and let the cattle go; but each was 
 ashamed to suggest such a thing, thinking there 
 would be a sneer, a laugh, or a taunt about "some- 
 [68] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 body being scared." We rode on at a hard gallop 
 and swore as the cold rain filled our boots with 
 water. 
 
 Suddenly there came a terrific crash. My riding 
 hands dropped to my sides as though paralyzed, 
 my head seemed to contract Into my coat collar, 
 and a tingling sensation ran through my body. 
 My companion for that day (riding at my side 
 and only an arm's length away) I saw, out of the 
 corner of my eye, throw his hands up in the air 
 like a man shot through the heart, and fall 
 over backward, while his horse wildly reared and 
 plunged forward. For a few seconds there was 
 a mix-up of men and horses on the ground, and 
 then everybody came back to normal, except my 
 companion. He was sitting up in the grass 
 wildly feeling around for his gun and howling 
 that he had lost it and could not shoot. The 
 lightning had so shocked him that he was out of 
 his head for a day or more. His horse had a 
 hind leg drawn up under his belly and stood on 
 three legs for several hours. My cowboy hat had 
 the brim torn out as though with a nail, and my 
 right spur was melted off. The foreman of the 
 outfit, who happened to be looking at us from a 
 hilltop half a mile away, averred that the light- 
 [69} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ning had spattered among our horses' hoofs and 
 that the number of us had absorbed the shock or 
 else some one would have been killed. Perhaps. 
 
 Just before that crash of lightning there had 
 been much laughter and profanity to show we 
 were not afraid. But after the crash not a word 
 was said. A great silence fell upon us. We 
 gathered up my riding mate and got back to camp. 
 He was put in blankets and an old coat thrown 
 over his head (as a dog in a fit is treated), and 
 every one went about his business as usual. 
 That evening at supper one of the hardest of the 
 swearers sat across the camp-fire from me. He 
 was balancing a tin cup of coffee in his hand, and 
 as he caught my eye he winked at me slyly, shook 
 his head a little, and smilingly remarked in a low 
 tone: 
 
 "I tell you the Old Man came near ketchin* 
 us that time." 
 
 His reference to the Deity as the Old Man was 
 quite in keeping with the prevailing custom of 
 the camp. 
 
 The courage of the cowboy was perhaps not 
 
 greater or less than that of other people. Every 
 
 sensible person knows the meaning of fear, though 
 
 some are able to hide their outward expression 
 
 [70] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 better than others. And one gets used to danger 
 without particularly enjoying it. Soldiers on the 
 firing-line finally become seasoned in being shot 
 at, and do not flinch, just as, in a smaller way, 
 the people crossing a street are accustomed to 
 dodging automobiles without heart-failure. So 
 with the cowboy. After familiarity with many 
 strange accidents, there came a time when he no 
 longer ducked at the report of a pistol or a clap 
 of thunder. Moreover, he was so full of robust 
 health that he thought nothing could kill him. 
 His health was an asset he drew upon rather 
 heavily. In town for a few days, he drank enough 
 whiskey to kill an ordinary man with alcoholic 
 poisoning, but he knew he was tough and could 
 pull through. And he usually did. 
 
 A boy from our outfit was sent into Miles City 
 to bring out a bunch of young bulls, just arrived 
 by train from Oregon. He did so, but knowing 
 that the way was long and the job rather lonely^ 
 he also brought with him for company a small 
 keg of whiskey. The keg, the bulls, and the boy 
 arrived in camp; but the keg was empty and the 
 boy had a pain in his abdominal region. He 
 came to me for comfort. On examination I found 
 he had a mushroom protrusion over his appendix, 
 [71} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 and I now know that he had a bad case of appen- 
 dicitis, but the disease and the word were unknown 
 at that time. I put him in his blankets under a 
 big cottonwood-tree and then went to the grub- 
 wagon in search of a possible remedy. I found a 
 bottle of crude castor-oil that some one had used 
 to doctor a horse with a bellyache. If it were 
 good for a horse, why not also for a man — both 
 having similar symptoms ? I gave the cowboy 
 several heroic doses of that crude oil out of a 
 rusty iron spoon. It was a God's mercy I did 
 not kill him outright. 
 
 The oil, with hot compresses (made by soaking 
 a flannel shirt in hot water), proved effective, and 
 in a few days the lowly cow-puncher was calling 
 for something to eat. I could think of nothing 
 as safe as milk, but with twenty thousand fresh 
 cows on the range there was not a drop to drink. 
 Not one of the twenty thousand had ever been 
 milked or handled in any way. I went out with 
 two boys, chased up a young-looking cow and, 
 after a half-mile run, roped and threw her. We 
 dragged her into camp, put her in the corral, put 
 ropes on her hind legs so she could not kick, and 
 tied her head up with another rope so she could 
 not hook. Of course I, being the tenderfoot of 
 [72] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 the camp, was the only one out of eighteen whoop- 
 ing worthies who knew how to milk. I got about 
 a pint of milk and took it to the recuperating 
 cow-puncher. He drank it eagerly and I went 
 away to turn my horse into the corral. In ten 
 minutes I came back to find on the ground near 
 the sick one something that looked like oyster- 
 crackers. I asked him where he got them. 
 
 "Oyster-crackers ! They ain*t oyster-crackers. 
 That's that damned milk!'* 
 
 The milk had gone down his throat, turned 
 into pot-cheese, and come up again in less than 
 ten minutes. But the boy got well. He was too 
 tough even for ignorance and malpractice to kill. 
 
 Toughness, with bravado and some inherent 
 recklessness, usually made of the cowboy a good 
 rider. He was never minded to ride like the hunt 
 riders of the East. From riding all day for weeks 
 at a time he came to seek the line of least resis- 
 tance. He sat low in the saddle, with a straight 
 leg, and with hands, arms, and body swaying 
 easily. Occasionally and exceptionally one would 
 meet with a cowboy who was timid about his 
 horse, perhaps fearful of a bucking contest, or a 
 stumble or a bolt. Such a one never became a 
 good rider and was always the butt of the camp. 
 [73} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 There was no place for timidity in the outfit. It 
 met with a sneer and a jeer. And no one had 
 sufficient simplicity of soul to refuse a "dare." 
 In consequence there was often reckless riding to 
 prove nothing. Even Ben, the foreman of the 
 70L, was not impervious to the ironic voice and 
 the contemptuous look. 
 
 Ben owned a large eight-year-old mare that had 
 never been saddled or bridled. She ran with the 
 horse-bunch, but when the bunch was driven into 
 camp or corral the mare always cut through the 
 line and escaped. No one could get within half 
 a mile of her. She made great five-mile circles 
 about the camp, drawn by the horses but fearful 
 of the men. Ben was continually pestered by 
 the boys as to when he was going to ride that 
 mare. She was getting too old to break; in an- 
 other year or so she would be hopeless; they 
 guessed perhaps he was afraid to ride her. 
 
 One Sunday morning when every one was hav- 
 ing a wash-up and no one working, the question 
 of the mare was again broached. Ben thought 
 it was time to yield. Four swift horses were 
 caught up and the mare, far outside of the horse- 
 bunch and cutting her huge homing circles, was 
 run in relays. After an hour she was roped, 
 [74] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 dragged into the corral, flung on the ground, 
 bridled, and blindfolded by having an old shirt 
 thrown over her head. On her feet again she 
 responded to a saddle put on her by bucking 
 vigorously but unavailingly. The saddle was 
 double-cinched and the stirrups hoppled under her 
 belly. Then, true to form, the gallant foreman 
 swung swiftly into the saddle, pulled the shirt off 
 the mare's head, drove his spurs into her ribs, 
 and the two went through the corral gate as though 
 shot out of a catapult. 
 
 Then followed the cleanest, highest, and swift- 
 est bucking I have ever witnessed. Ben went 
 "above timber-line** with every buck, as the boys 
 expressed it — the reference being to the oak in 
 the high pommel of the saddle. Not being able to 
 jounce him off, the mare started and ran despite 
 the spade-bit cutting into her mouth. I had 
 never before seen such reckless running through 
 sage-brush, over tree-holes, and down cut banks 
 and washouts. Two cowboys at full speed rode 
 beside the mare and tried, with their horses for 
 company, to quiet her; but she was not to be com- 
 forted. After an hour or more the three came 
 back to the corral, the mare in a lather and bloody 
 in both mouth and sides, but with eyes still wild 
 [75] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 and spirit far from tamed. Ben never tried to 
 bridle or saddle her again. Sure enough, she was 
 too old to be tamed and she eventually became 
 a wild horse in the offing, something ghostlike 
 vanishing over a hill or around a butte; but not 
 to be caught again by any cowboy's lasso. 
 
 In a few years the days of the great outfits at 
 the north had passed away. The cattlemen found 
 that rough ranching did not pay and, with cattle 
 as with politics, everything eventually reduced it- 
 self to a matter of finance. The big ranches were 
 contracted, the big herds grew less, the rough 
 riding went out, and cattle-growing was brought 
 down to a business with fewer risks and more 
 certainties. In that form it still exists through 
 all the country lying to the west of the Mississippi. 
 The old-time cow outfit of forty years ago has 
 passed into tradition, though in 1920 I found a 
 survival of the type down in the Mohave Desert 
 near Hinckley. With several thousand cattle in 
 a desert valley growing sacaton and bunch-grass, 
 there was an old-fashioned outfit still sleeping on 
 the ground, eating beef and beans, beating up its 
 horses, and yelling itself sore in the throat at its 
 cattle. Apparently nothing had been changed 
 except the date in the calendar. The cowboy in 
 [76] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 "chaps/* spurs, gun, Stetson hat, and profanity- 
 was rushing things as vigorously as in the hal- 
 cyon days of the big ranges in Montana and 
 Wyoming. 
 
 [77] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 DESERT DAYS 
 
 The desert is quite a different country from the 
 uplands of Montana and Wyoming. As its name 
 implies, it is deserted. The cattle-grower in the 
 spring of the year pastures near-by parts of it, 
 the prospector worries along certain mountain 
 ranges of it looking for outcroppings of metal- 
 bearing rock, the borax man creeps in and out of 
 Death Valley with mule-teams, and sometimes a 
 venturesome tourist picks up and follows the old 
 trails of the Yumas from the Colorado to the 
 Pacific; but in spite of these mild advances the 
 land still remains deserted. When I first knew 
 the Colorado and Mohave Deserts, twenty-five 
 years ago, they were much less travelled than now 
 — so much less that at one time I wandered there 
 for nearly six weeks, with a dog and horse, and 
 in that time saw neither rag nor bone nor hank of 
 hair of humanity. There was only the desert — 
 a great open wilderness lying under a clear sky 
 and a blazing sun. 
 
 To venture into that wilderness without under- 
 [78] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 standing its conditions was to invite disaster. 
 Those who lived along its edges were full of strange 
 tales about it — tales of its perils, of water-holes 
 poisoned by copper and salt, of weird mirages and 
 lost trails. And there were stories innumerable 
 of dazed wanderings and deaths by heat and star- 
 vation. No one cared to go very far from a 
 home base even with the gold lure in mind, and 
 as for riding the desert for the mere joy of ex- 
 ploring it, that was the fancy of a madman. 
 When I first began pushing into the interior from 
 outlying stations there were plenty of old-timers 
 to inform me that I was crazy and would "get 
 caught up with.'* The reasons for their predic- 
 tions were numerous. 
 
 In the first place, I declined to dress in mining 
 costume, with a flannel shirt, thick trousers, large 
 felt hat, and hobnailed boots. I wore a half- 
 Indian, half-Mexican costume, consisting of noth- 
 ing but a thin cotton shirt and trousers, a straw 
 hat, and moccasins on my feet. I discarded im- 
 pedimenta for both myself and my horse and 
 travelled as lightly as possible. All the pots and 
 pans and flasks and opera-glasses that generally 
 make weight in a camping-kit were left behind. 
 I carried a rifle, a small shovel, a hatchet, a pair 
 [79] 
 
' THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 of light blankets, a small pan and some tin cups 
 for cooking, a gallon of water, and several sacks 
 of condensed food. I made my own condensation 
 by grinding to a powder parched corn, beans, 
 coffee, chocolate, and dried venison. This I 
 packed closely in shot-sacks. Such was its sus- 
 taining power that a small sack would last me for 
 weeks. I had merely to pour a few tablespoonfuls 
 of it into a cup, add water, stir with a stick, and 
 drink. I could go for twelve hours on less than 
 half a cupful of it. 
 
 Besides this mixture I carried tablets of choco- 
 late, closely packed dried figs, a few shelled al- 
 monds, a little bacon, some flour, salt, tea, and 
 a small bottle of saccharine. I had with me 
 a long single-barrelled twenty-two caliber Chico- 
 pee pistol, with which I shot rabbits, desert quail, 
 doves, and other small game. My whole outfit 
 weighed perhaps less than fifty pounds.* 
 
 With living and transportation requirements 
 thus reduced to a minimum, I felt measurably 
 
 * I had always fancied my provisioning was very meagre — in fact, 
 approached to Indian simplicity — until John Muir told me of his 
 mountaineering in the Sierras with nothing but tea and bread in a 
 small sack carried over his shoulder. He slept under any bush that 
 offered shelter, without blankets, and usually without fire. But 
 Muir was Scotch and tough as a bit of heather — with all the beauty 
 of character and fine color-tone belonging to that shrub. 
 
 [80] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 secure. My horse I always kept in fresh condi- 
 tion by not overtiring him, so that in case of 
 emergency I could ride out of the desert, or to the 
 edge of it fifty miles or more, at one stretch. But, 
 of course, the horse was a responsibility, a cause 
 for worry at all times. The beast I first secured 
 was desert-bred, accustomed to heat, and could 
 go, under pressure, a day or more without drink- 
 ing; but he required water every day to keep him 
 in condition, and water was the scarcest article of 
 all on the desert. I was never able to move from 
 one water-hole until I had located and tested an- 
 other. Some days I would ride twenty miles in 
 one direction, and, finding no water, would be 
 forced to return to my former water-hole. 
 
 But after a few weeks I became rather cunning 
 about finding water in unexpected places. On the 
 California deserts I always followed the moun- 
 tain ranges, working along the bases, and my eye 
 came to recognize (by a slight variation in the 
 hue of the ground or the shade of color in desert 
 growths) just where water could be found by 
 <^iggi^g« The mountains, some of them lifting 
 six or eight thousand feet, received considerable 
 rainfall on their tops during the rainy season of 
 winter, but very little rain ever fell in the valleys 
 [81] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 at any time. It would be evaporated by the hot 
 air of the valleys before reaching the ground. The 
 rain falling on the mountain tops would wash down 
 in stream courses to the bases, and what got to 
 the desert valleys disappeared at once under the 
 sands. 
 
 But some of the water remained in the upper 
 stream-bed, even during the long, dry summer, and 
 was hidden in pot-holes of the rock under accu- 
 mulated layers of sand and gravel. Wherever a 
 stream was shunted over a ledge of rock and fell 
 from a distance into a basin below, I would gen- 
 erally find, under the sand and gravel deposit of 
 the basin, a catch of water. Digging for just a 
 few feet would disclose it. These catches of water 
 differed in size according to the basin. Sometimes 
 there were only a few gallons and at other times 
 several barrels. If there was no considerable 
 body of sand and gravel the water would soon 
 dry out and I had to look elsewhere; if the bottom 
 of the basin was cracked the water leaked out 
 and I dug in vain. Not one basin in a dozen 
 answered expectations, but enough of them re- 
 sponded to make life endurable for my small 
 outfit. 
 
 It was amusing at first to watch the eagerness 
 [82] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 of both the dog and the horse when I began dig- 
 ging with my small shovel in one of these rock- 
 basins. They quickly grasped the fact that I was 
 after water and would crowd forward with paw 
 and hoof and push gravel into the hole until I 
 had to send them off. I usually made the dog 
 drive the horse away, but the horse came back 
 in a few minutes, head down, ears set, eyes wide 
 open, and nostrils snuffing. He was thirsty and 
 did not care to disguise the fact. The dog always 
 watched the hole I was digging as though he ex- 
 pected to see rabbits jump out of it. That occa- 
 sionally I found gold-dust (seen under a small 
 magnifying-glass) at the bottom of a pot-hole did 
 not interest me very much, and the animals not 
 at all. We were not gold-seekers, though I dare 
 say had it appeared in more substantial quantities 
 my interest would have increased. 
 
 Water I sometimes found oozing out drop by 
 drop from some ledge at the foot of the mountains, 
 and at other times I met with green catches of 
 water in rock cisterns cut in the granite centuries 
 ago by some grinding-stone. The latter was 
 usually exposed to the air and light and un- 
 wholesome, but I made it potable by cutting up 
 cactus lobes and dropping slices into it. That 
 [83] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 settled and cleared the water, and after boiling it 
 in cups I could drink it. But' desert water, at 
 best, proved a hard drink. Sometimes it was 
 brackish from too much salt, and probably some 
 of it was poisonous from too much copper, though 
 I never experienced any effects of poisoning. It 
 was usually blue with alkali, which was bad 
 enough. 
 
 A clear little drip of water from a ledge of rock 
 was something not often found and so very ac- 
 ceptable that it was difficult to leave. I stayed 
 beside such a spring oftentimes for a week, watch- 
 ing at morning and evening to see what animals 
 came to drink. I can remember nothing four- 
 footed ever appearing at such a place except a 
 lynx, and he was after birds, not water. The rab- 
 bits, coyotes, and desert deer never appeared, even 
 in the offing. But the quail came, and the Sonora 
 pigeon with mourning-doves were always hovering 
 about such a dripping spring. I cannot remember, 
 however, that the quail ever drank the water. 
 
 In a week after my first venture in the desert 
 I had trained myself to get on with about one- 
 third of the water I would normally drink. Day 
 after day I went from sunrise to sunset with- 
 out drinking. If my mouth became dried out I 
 [84] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 chewed a few leaves of greasewood (creosote-bush); 
 if the day was terrifically hot — that is, one hun- 
 dred and twenty-five in the shade — and I was 
 tramping or moving, I would slash into a barrel 
 cactus (bisnaga) or a column cactus (suhuaro) 
 with my hatchet and get out some of the juicy 
 pulp. It was usually bitter or sour to the taste, 
 but it held sufficient water in it to quench thirst. 
 The desert Indians always knew about these cacti, 
 but I never met with a white man who saw in 
 them anything but curious bundles of thorns. 
 
 The horse bothered me less in the matter of his 
 feed than his water. A desert valley where one 
 would think a goat unable to pick a living from 
 a thousand acres would, nevertheless, grow in the 
 spring excellent feed grass in bunches in between 
 the greasewood. It mattered not that in summer 
 it was dried out, that it lay crumpled and broken 
 on the ground, or that it was piled up in small sec- 
 tions around ant-hills. Its nutritive power was 
 in no way impaired by its dryness. Horses and 
 cattle knew how to find it, and they throve upon 
 it. If the valleys were too alkaline for it to grow, 
 it would almost always be found on the mountain- 
 sides. The higher up the better the grass. And 
 there was brush growth up there that made good 
 [85] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 browsing. So, all told, the matter of horse feed 
 was not so desperate as water. In climbing the 
 mountainsides for the one, we also secured the 
 other, and almost always the night-camp was 
 made up in the hills rather than down in the hot 
 valleys. 
 
 The ideal camping-ground was under a live 
 oak — when I could find one. The mountain 
 ranges were usually covered with a thin chaparral, 
 dry, tough, stick-like; and not at all a cooling 
 shade or a blest retreat. Trees were scarce and 
 I usually slept on any flat piece of ground in the 
 open, near some small yucca palm or palo verde 
 upon which I could hang my camp supplies and 
 keep them away from rodents. During the sum- 
 mer months there was not the slightest danger of 
 rain and very little cause for apprehension from 
 other sources. At first I picketed and hoppled 
 the horse, but I found after a week or ten days 
 that he had forgotten his back track and was not 
 disposed to leave. On the contrary, he was 
 always edging in or looking toward the camp as 
 though apprehensive lest the dog and I might 
 move off unexpectedly and leave him tied to his 
 stake. He was uneasy and snorted much, and so 
 finally I turned him loose and let him trail his 
 [86] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 rope. He never wandered far, and in the morn- 
 ing the dog soon rounded him up and drove him 
 into camp. 
 
 The dog (a large fox-terrier) was very intelli- 
 gent about all camp work, and soon came to under- 
 stand what was expected of him besides shaking 
 ground-squirrels and retrieving wounded rabbits. 
 It was no part of his breeding to herd horses, but 
 under stress he soon picked it up. His natural 
 instinct served him in good stead. He would 
 fight anything I set him at, except a rattlesnake. 
 Any other snake he would shake until the snake- 
 ends around his ears resembled a spinning-wheel; 
 but he instinctively kept away from a rattler. 
 
 Both the dog and the horse were company for 
 me and, being talked at continually, they came 
 to understand my language much better than the 
 average animals at home. That first summer 
 slipped by without any accident of importance. 
 One moonlight night the horse, trailing a loose 
 rope, came plunging through the camp, but there 
 was good reason for it. Three gray wolves (not 
 coyotes) were close behind him. He had been 
 grazing half a mile away when the wolves (prob- 
 ably starved out by a very dry year) jumped him. 
 Strangely enough, though it may have been acci- 
 C87i 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 dental, he ran straight toward the camp as though 
 for protection, instead of heading down the valley, 
 where he surely would have been overhauled. I 
 heard the hard beat of his hoofs on the ground 
 and knew instantly that something was chasing 
 him. I caught up my rifle as he came into sight. 
 The wolves came on fifty yards behind him as 
 though they had already settled down to a long, 
 slow chase. When within twenty yards, I shot. 
 They were the most surprised wolves imaginable, 
 and at the report jumped straight up in the air, 
 swerved to one side like a deflected wave, and ran 
 off down the valley at an accelerated pace — one 
 of them apparently running on three legs and 
 lagging behind. I shot several times, but the 
 light was too uncertain and nothing dropped. 
 
 In travelling on the desert both the horse and 
 the dog objected to the heat of the day. Early 
 morning or late at evening they were full of life, 
 and night-work they seemed to enjoy; but after 
 the sun had been up an hour or more the sands 
 became too hot for them. The terrier would sit 
 down under a patch of greasewood and howl, re- 
 fusing to go on. I usually went back, caught him 
 by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him up on 
 the saddle behind me. He would brace himself 
 [88] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 against my back, standing crosswise of the horse, 
 and hold on even when we went at a hard gallop. 
 I made him some buckskin shoes, which I tied 
 •fast just above his dew-claws with a buckskin 
 thongj but he worried with them and finally 
 pulled them off with his teeth. 
 
 The horse in the middle of the day developed 
 a great longing for the shade, even though it 
 were merely the very thin shade of a mesquite 
 or a suhuaro. I myself was not averse to the 
 shadow side of a rock at noontime, and often 
 crept into a wind-worn recess for a nap, after 
 having evicted any snake or scorpion tenantry 
 that might be on the premises. Riding in the 
 late morning or early afternoon was hot work. 
 Resting up in the mountains and there watching 
 the movements of scattered mountain-sheep or 
 the flight of vultures seemed more profitable. 
 
 The horse evidently thought the same way, for 
 he was always willing to go up into the mountains. 
 He was an excellent, sure-footed beast, and could 
 negotiate cracks to be jumped and escarpments 
 to be descended quite as well as his master. And 
 I never had to lead him to feed of any kind. His 
 ability in rustling the screw-beans from a mesquite 
 or the bunch-grass from a cholla patch was some- 
 [89] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 thing more than remarkable. Sometimes I won- 
 dered if he had other and finer instincts. At 
 dawn and dusk the sky effects seen from the 
 mountain tops were very beautiful, with many 
 varieties of gas-blue, pink, and orange colored 
 air; I wondered if the horse standing beside me 
 ever saw them. 
 
 Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the days 
 up there were the nights. Lying on the blankets, 
 with the warm air blowing over my face, the 
 great hush of the desert all about, and the far 
 mightier hush of starry space overhead, was 
 always an inspiration rather than a loneliness. I 
 may admit that there were times when a dreary 
 feeling crept over me, but the morning sun always 
 dispelled it. As for fear, there was nothing to be 
 afraid of except my own decisions about water. 
 The fear of man was wholly eliminated, and as 
 for the wolves or other animals, they were more 
 afraid of me than I of them. 
 
 Illness ? I was already ill and went into the 
 open of the desert to get well. Many of my days 
 in there were ill days. But I kept busy making 
 notes and studying vegetation and animals. I 
 had determined to write a book about the desert, 
 and it was necessary that I should know my sub- 
 £90} 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 ject,* That was one of the reasons for my going 
 into the interior. Why did I go alone ? Because I 
 could find no one to go with me. They were all 
 afraid of— nothing. 
 
 That was a summer of strange wanderings. 
 The memory of them comes back to me now 
 mingled with half-obliterated impressions of white 
 light, lilac air, heliotrope mountains, blue sky. I 
 cannot well remember the exact route of the 
 Odyssey, for I kept no record of my movements. 
 I was not travelling by map. I was wandering 
 for health and desert information. My journey- 
 ings took me through the Coast Range, the San 
 Bernardino Ranges, the Salton Basin (it was be- 
 fore the Imperial Valley was known or planned), 
 down into Mexico and the mud volcano region, 
 around the mouth of the Colorado, over into Ari- 
 zona, down along the border into Sonora and far 
 down toward Tiburon Island. On the way there 
 were lost mountains to explore, odd spines of 
 rock standing like monuments in the desert, old 
 Indian forts on barren peaks, great adobe build- 
 
 * The book {The Desert, New York, 1901) was written during that 
 first summer at odd intervals when I lay with my back against a 
 rock or propped up in the sand. What success it had I attribute 
 almost entirely to the fact that I knew the desert at first-hand and 
 wrote about it with intimate knowledge. 
 
 [91] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES, 
 
 ings (somewhat like the Casa Grande but of more 
 modern origin) that I still vaguely remember see- 
 ing in ruins somewhere beyond Arivaca, strange 
 strata of rock, stranger flows of lava, pot-holes 
 and water-holes and mountain-sheep and desert 
 antelope. 
 
 In southern Arizona and Sonora I often met 
 with Papago and Yaki Indians who were friendly 
 and helpful. They talked some Spanish, with 
 much sign-language, and always seemed puzzled 
 over me. They could not understand my being 
 out there alone. The Indian mind is very ma- 
 terial and is closely connected with things to eat, 
 or at least something of palpable gain. To ex- 
 plain one's being in the desert just for the love 
 of the open spaces of earth and sky was to them 
 no explanation at all but merely some paleface 
 lie set forth to throw them off the scent. I was 
 usually thought to be in search of that lost Pegleg 
 mine, or to know something about gold-washings 
 somewhere in the desert. 
 
 That year in Sonora I did explore an old aban- 
 doned and forgotten mine, and a Yaki Indian 
 took me to it by a very roundabout and difficult 
 trail. The mine was evidently his unique secret 
 and he did not want the trail to it known. I re- 
 [92} 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 member his riding a thin burro about as large as 
 a Shetland pony, and that going down a steep 
 rocky canyon the burro kept falling down. Every 
 time the burro fell the Indian, whose feet were 
 trailing on the ground, would pick the little beast 
 up, stand him on his feet, and the journey would 
 be continued. We at last arrived at the hidden 
 entrance of a tunnel under the base of a huge 
 mountain. The heated sulphureous air in the 
 tunnel was stifling, but we made our way into the 
 heart of the mountain, I with a handkerchief to 
 my nose. 
 
 It seemed as though the whole interior of that 
 mountain had been dug out. There were gal- 
 leries everywhere, with mesquite ladders leading 
 up and down, and enormous chambers that had 
 been cut and caverned by the heavy tools of Yaki 
 Indians. There were evidences of old blasting 
 by lime and water and grinding of ore between 
 heavy stones operated by burros — what the Yaki 
 called a **rastre" (arrastre).* But nothing had 
 been worked or touched in a hundred years. The 
 whole place was as silent as the interior of an 
 Egyptian pyramid. No doubt the Mexicans had 
 
 * An old Spanish mill with a vat in which a heavy round stone, 
 propelled by a horizontal beam, crushed ore and prepared it for 
 washing. 
 
 [93] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 taken much gold out by working only the richest 
 leads, and no doubt they left much behind them 
 still in the rock. I never made further inquiry, 
 and was not interested in the mine's commercial 
 possibilities. My going there was merely a chance 
 look into a forgotten treasure-house. I came away 
 without the traditional bagful of gold, and was, in 
 fact, so indifferent to the mine's money value 
 that I made no topographical or mental note 
 of it. 
 
 Another Sonora Indian (I think he was a Ceri 
 and perhaps belonged on Tiburon Island), in 
 recognition of a gift of some tobacco, took me on 
 quite a different excursion. We went to the 
 washed-out bed of a dry river. It was in the heat 
 of summer and there had been no water in the 
 bed for some months. Under the banks there 
 were large caves that had been cut out of the soft 
 soil by the rush and wear of water during storm 
 periods. In these caves, much to my surprise, 
 I found, not an occasional coyote with puppies, 
 but a gathering of litters of puppies. As we 
 walked down the dry bed of the river the mothers 
 and little ones hustled out and away ahead of us. 
 There seemed to be a whole colony of coyotes in 
 that river-bed, hiding from the sun and measur- 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 ably protected in their lairs from enemies. That, 
 I think, was one of the most astounding things 
 in natural history that I ever met with. Wolves 
 of all sorts sometimes run in packs but they do 
 not breed in packs. On the contrary, the rule is 
 that each litter is whelped in some lair very much 
 secluded and away from others of the species. 
 
 In western Sonora, in the Tiburon Island region, 
 I occasionally met Ceri Indians — two or three in 
 a group — who always waved their hands over 
 their heads and wanted to talk tobacco. They 
 had not a very good reputation among the Mexi- 
 cans (though the story that they were cannibals 
 had not then been widely circulated), and where 
 there were more than two in the group I never 
 let them approach mc. They usually understood 
 when I shook my head and waved them away 
 with my rifle. One day a group of four or five 
 persisted in coming on, in spite of my signal, and 
 I fired a cartridge across their bows. Then they 
 scampered away in beautiful style and continued 
 to run until out of sight. 
 
 One or two of them I always felt I could cope 
 
 with and allowed them to come close. Usually 
 
 they would begin by digging into the bundle of 
 
 rags in which they were clothed, and, after much 
 
 [95] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 search, bring to light a small phial stoppered with 
 a stick or a plug of cloth. They would carefully 
 withdraw the stopper and pour into the palms 
 of their skinny hands a mass of small but quite 
 genuine pearls — pearls they had gathered from 
 the oysters of the California Gulf. They were 
 not of any great value but they seemed to answer 
 as token money in bartering. They would swap 
 them for anything I had — tobacco preferred at 
 the head of the list. 
 
 I never met any white people in the Sonora 
 Desert, but, when I rode out of the desert to- 
 ward the Sonora railway, I met with Mexicans, 
 peons, and Yaki Indians on the outlying ranches. 
 The Yakis at that time did most of the work on 
 the ranches and were the most industrious and 
 capable Indians I had ever known. About the 
 time I was there an American syndicate greatly 
 coveted the lands belonging to their tribe on the 
 Yaki River. The Indians had been living there 
 and farming the lands for two hundred years or 
 more, but in spite of that the government at the 
 City of Mexico sold the lands over their heads to 
 the American syndicate and the Indians were 
 ordered to vacate, without compensation. They 
 declined to do so. The "Yaki War" ensued, the 
 a 96} 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 object of which on the part of the government 
 was to exterminate the Yakis and thus clear the 
 title to the land. 
 
 The Mexican troops were reported as giving no 
 quarter and taking no prisoners. In Guaymas I 
 twice saw bands of Yakis, made up of old men, 
 women, and children, marched through the streets 
 for deportation by steamer to Yucatan. There was 
 not a young man or a warrior among them. Ugly 
 tales were told of other bands of prisoners that 
 had been shipped out from Guaymas on the old 
 gunboat "Oaxaca" and never reached Yucatan. 
 The boat came back after a few hours at sea with- 
 out the prisoners. If Yaki warriors fell into the 
 hands of the rurales (Mexican troops) by chance, 
 it was said they were lined up and shot or hung 
 to trees. One day while riding the eastern part 
 of Sonora I noticed a gathering of buzzards. I 
 rode to the centre of attraction expecting to find 
 some dead animal, but I found two Yaki Indians 
 hanging from a large mesquite. They had been 
 hanging there for several weeks. As for the cause, 
 or right or wrong of the war, the general super- 
 intendent of the American syndicate told me, in 
 my room at the Alameda Hotel in Guaymas, that 
 they (the syndicate) had the Indian lands and the 
 [97] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Indians were fighting 'to get them back. That, 
 he said, was the whole trouble put in a nut- 
 shell. 
 
 Many of the Yakis, during the disturbance, 
 stayed on the Mexican ranches where they had 
 been employed, and did not participate in the 
 war. They were known as peaceful Yakis in 
 contradistinction to the hostiles, but of recent 
 years all distinction has been confused and the 
 Yakis as a tribe have been called murderers and 
 bandits and declared to be worse than the old 
 Chiricahua Apaches. The declaration still ap- 
 pears from time to time in the American press, 
 but it is not, and never was, true. Every Mexican 
 in Sonora at the time the war started knew the 
 Yakis to be quiet, hard-working, intelligent In- 
 dians. Everywhere I went on the ranches they 
 were well spoken of. I saw and talked with scores 
 of them on the ranges, in the corrals, in the fields, 
 in their camps. They were always kindly and 
 gentle — more so, I used to think, than their prog- 
 eny. The small boys ran about naked like brown 
 lizards, and used to look at me out of the corners 
 of their eyes like coyote puppies. Their black 
 hair was bleached to a copper color, their thin 
 bodies were sun-scorched, and their expression 
 [98] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 was half-wolfish. But I never knew any harm to 
 come from them. 
 
 Those were the days of open-handed hospital- 
 ity on the Mexican ranches. No introduction was 
 necessary. People came and went on horseback, 
 hung their saddles on pegs and their hats on the 
 floor, and stayed as long as they liked. Every- 
 where I stopped I was welcomed. The owner 
 came in from the fields, knocked off work for the 
 day, produced tequila, coffee, cigarettes, and sat 
 down under the porch for a talk. The coffee- 
 pot and bean-pot were always over the fire and 
 in constant requisition. There was no great 
 variety of food at the table, but the meats and 
 vegetables were tastily cooked, and, if there were 
 young girls in the family, there was singing, to 
 the accompaniment of the guitar, during and 
 after the dinner. When it came to retiring for 
 the night, one simply dragged out a rawhide 
 or canvas cot to whatever part of the premises 
 he pleased, spread his blankets, and went to 
 sleep listening to the dogs chasing coyotes. 
 The hospitality was very simple, whole-hearted, 
 and very gratefully received because of its fine 
 spirit. 
 
 The amusements on the Sonora ranches were 
 [99] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 limited, but there were horses to ride and strange 
 things to be seen by riding. Every Sunday was 
 a fiesta. People would gather for a wolf-hunt, a 
 cock-fight, or a horse-race — the latter two being 
 easily improvised. Interest in the race never 
 waned because there was always much betting, 
 plenty of jockeying, and some fine exhibitions of 
 bareback riding. The Mexican peons (half- 
 breeds) and Indians were superb riders. Our 
 cowboy at the north was merely a nouveau com- 
 pared to them. Riding was their inheritance as 
 well as their lifelong occupation. It seemed to 
 me always better understood in Sonora than any 
 other part of Mexico because, perhaps, it was an 
 open country. Farther south toward the City 
 of Mexico and beyond it in Oaxaca and Tehuan- 
 tepec there were larger ranches, more peons, more 
 horses; but I never felt that the southern riders 
 had the skill in riding of the Sonorans. 
 
 Hospitality at the south was quite as open- 
 handed as at the north, and the great haciendas 
 below the City of Mexico had more to offer in 
 food, lodging, and entertainment, but I somehow 
 always fancied the meagreness and the generous 
 spirit of those in Sonora who had little but were 
 willing to share that little with you. Alas ! that 
 [100] 
 
DESERT DAYS 
 
 most of it has gone by! The hospitality was 
 abused and the door had to be closed. Extending 
 the brotherhood of man by travel and contact 
 sometimes produces unexpected results. 
 
 [101] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 Riding in the desert, or elsewhere, with the 
 horse doing most of the work, seems an easy way 
 of getting over the ground. It is certainly not 
 to be despised, and many are the things that may 
 be seen to advantage from a horse's back. Be- 
 sides, you can go far in a given time — something 
 that may also be said for the automobile. But 
 neither from a horse nor from an automobile can 
 you see well or accurately the small things of 
 creation. You are too high up to count the petals 
 of the flowers, or to watch the trap-door spider 
 emerge from his den, or to trail a side-winder in 
 the sand. Many things must be seen afoot. 
 There are also advantages in being alone. Often- 
 times you wish to stop, turn back, examine anew, 
 perhaps photograph, or sketch, and the impatience 
 of a companion to get somewhere in time for din- 
 ner is something of a nuisance. 
 
 Now being afoot suggests at the start that your 
 feet are to bear the brunt of the work and should 
 be properly shod. And just here comes in a differ- 
 [102] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 ence of opinion or of experience. The average 
 white man thinks himself well shod when he is 
 heavily shod. He likes a double-soled army shoe 
 with calks in it — preferably one that laces up 
 half-way to the knee. If there be no high upper 
 he wears a pigskin puttee, with khaki trousers, a 
 stiff coat, and a cork helmet, or something equally 
 cumbersome. As for the shoes, he tells you that 
 he likes the calks because he wants to be sure of 
 his footing; but on shelving rock a nailed shoe 
 can never be trusted for a moment. More than 
 half the accidents in mountain-climbing, in the 
 Alps or elsewhere, are due to the slip of this same 
 shoe. The weight of it leads, too often, to fatigue 
 and stumbling, while the heat of it is discomfort 
 ever and always. As protection against stones, 
 lava, cactus, chaparral, snakes, it is wholly un- 
 necessary. Any one who walks much in any dry 
 country mechanically watches the placing of his 
 feet and does not go blundering into snakes or 
 cactus patches or lava-beds. After a time his feet 
 pick and choose for themselves where they shall 
 step and what they shall avoid, just as his body 
 pushes through brush without getting tangled in 
 vines, or his hands turn aside dry twigs without 
 being punctured by spines. 
 [103] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 The heavy shoe or boot of any sort is not the 
 foot-gear for a dry country, though it may serve 
 moderately well in wet-snow regions. Instead of 
 following the Englishman, who usually insists 
 upon dragging London into the tropics, I always 
 preferred to follow the Indian, whose knowledge 
 of his own country and its necessities was better 
 than that of any one else. In travelling over sand 
 or grass or mountain country, I always wore the 
 moccasin. It was light on the foot, pliable, al- 
 lowed every foot-muscle to play, and held fast 
 wherever one put weight upon it. Hundreds of 
 times in the desert mountains or in the high 
 Rockies, or along the ledges of the Grand Canyon, 
 I have gone down to the edge of shelving strata 
 and looked over precipices into far depths with a 
 feeling of perfect security. I knew the moccasin 
 would not slip, for I had the feel of the rock in 
 my foot. Such ventures with an army shoe or 
 any heavy-soled foot-gear would have been highly 
 dangerous, if not impossible. In jumping cre- 
 vasses, in vaulting with an alpenstock, in climb- 
 ing rock faces, in travelling through grass or sand, 
 or creeping along lava-flows, the moccasin has al- 
 ways proved a success and a delight to me. With 
 it I was springy on my feet, and could run on for 
 [104] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 long distances with not half the fatigue that would 
 come from wearing an army shoe. 
 
 But it should be said that I am not speaking 
 about the moccasins of the present-day shoe- 
 store or of the curio-shop. Those moccasins are 
 not made to wear but to sell. They are made of 
 thin skins of goat or sheep or young calf (not 
 moose), are not properly dressed, and have no 
 wearing quality. Good buckskin is no longer 
 obtainable, but in my desert-walking days I had 
 the true skin, taken from the back of the mule-deer 
 and Indian tanned. I made my own moccasins. 
 They were pointed-toed after the Sioux model 
 which I had learned in my youth. Instead of 
 sewing them with sinews, as the Sioux, I used 
 thin buckskin thongs, sewed an upper upon them 
 somewhat Hke a spat, and put on an extra sole 
 and heel of heavy hide. The extra sole and heel 
 would last for about one hundred and seventy- 
 five miles. They were then worn through, and 
 I replaced them by new ones. 
 
 I am still cherishing some of that deerskin for 
 a last pair of moccasins, conscious that I shall 
 never see its hke again; but the traveller of to-day 
 will probably never know anything better for 
 desert wear than the rubber sneaker or the rubber- 
 [105] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 soled tennis-shoe. Some of the Indians in the 
 Southwest still wear moccasins with rawhide 
 soles, but they are not satisfactory. The sneaker 
 affords a better foothold. 
 
 Aside from lightness, durability, and ground- 
 gripping quality, I always found moccasins a ne- 
 cessity in hunting because of their noiselessness. 
 One could not still-hunt deer in a dry stick-and- 
 leaf country with a heavy boot. The grind of 
 gravel under your boot would start a mule-deer 
 bounding long before he had either seen you or 
 winded you. If you placed your feet right, the 
 moccasin was soundless. I well remember one 
 day in the Mohave Desert, when I was walking 
 without a gun, seeing a coyote pawing or eating 
 something behind a small but rather thick brush 
 of cactus and greasewood. The wind was blow- 
 ing from him to me and I could almost smell that 
 coyote, but he could not smell me. Neither 
 could he see me. I sneaked up so close to him 
 that I could touch the brush, and yet he did not 
 hear me. A momentary twist of the wind, how- 
 ever, gave him my scent, to which he violently 
 reacted, and with a tremendous bound sprang 
 clear over the brush to my side. So close he 
 came to me that I made a desperate kick at him, 
 [106] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 to which he responded with a steel-trap snap of 
 his teeth. My first momentary impression was 
 that he was attacking me, but the speedy manner 
 in which he put distance between us as soon as 
 his feet struck the ground convinced me that he 
 had sprung at haphazard, on the scent, and did 
 not see me until in mid-air. 
 
 My second summer in the deserts was almost 
 wholly a matter of long walks — usually in circles 
 of twenty or thirty miles about a new water-hole 
 or a railway tank-car. The horse became some- 
 thing of a nuisance and I got rid of him; but the 
 fox-terrier still went with me, and was as tough, 
 as cunning, and as brave as ever. I hunted much 
 that summer, but without a rifle. Occasionally, 
 when hard pushed for something to eat, I shot 
 small game with my pistol, and I had to pot a 
 jack-rabbit frequently for the dog; but I had no 
 inclination to kill large game, or to kill anything 
 merely for the sport of it. Still, I liked to hunt, 
 to trail all sorts of animals and birds, and find out 
 what they were doing, where going, and how they 
 lived. Watching the actions of desert quail, or 
 the play of lizards, or the sneak of a wildcat, or 
 the saunterings of a coyote always proved attrac- 
 tive. 
 
 [107] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 The moccasins on my feet enabled me to move 
 without sound, and my garb was generally neu- 
 tral or sand-colored, so that I was not conspicuous 
 as an object; but it nevertheless took some knowl- 
 edge and skill to come up with the quarry in open 
 country. Trailing on dry desert ground is not 
 the easiest thing in the world. Tracking a cotton- 
 tail rabbit after the first snowfall of the year is 
 a feat upon which every boy prided himself; but 
 tracking a jack-rabbit in the desert is something 
 that every one — white man, peon, or Indian — 
 gives up before he begins. The trail is too faint. 
 
 There were stretches of the desert where the 
 gravel floors and basins were so hard and smooth 
 that a buffalo or an elephant would scarcely leave 
 a trail. There were also lava-flows, granite out- 
 crops, and hard mesas where again no foot left 
 any print. It was useless to bother with such 
 places, and the only thing to do was to pick up 
 the trail where it went in or came out. There 
 were often great reaches of wind-blown sand, or 
 beds of alkali or white gypsum, or dry lake-beds 
 with incrusted surfaces, where the hoofs of a 
 deer or the pad of a wolf would show quite clearly 
 for perhaps a day after being made. If the wind 
 was blowing, and the sand or gypsum drifting, the 
 [1081 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 trail would soon be obliterated. When I found a 
 trail in such places, I had to study out what the 
 game was doing. If the trail ran straight, then the 
 animal was crossing the desert and was bound for 
 some distant retreat in the mountains; if the trail 
 rambled, doubled, crossed, and wandered, then the 
 animal was playing or hunting. I had to make 
 my guess about the animal's state of mind and 
 what would be the general trend of the trail 
 when he emerged from the beds. 
 
 It depended upon a good many circumstances 
 whether desert-trailing was a success or a failure. 
 I always found it a mixture of both. Following 
 up three or four antelope in a band, when there 
 were still a few left down in Sonora, seemed a very 
 easy affair, because where one sharp hoof failed 
 to record, another one would; but I was often 
 puzzled over a single mule-deer and many times 
 had to abandon the quest. The pointed toes 
 would push into soft sand or an alkali crust, or 
 leave disturbed stones on loose gravel, but it 
 made no record on the hard mesas or on rock or 
 lava or talus. The soft foot of a lynx or wolf or 
 cougar could not be seen except in sand or loose 
 ground, and was very difficult to follow unless the 
 animal was running or plunging hard upon his 
 [109] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 feet. And, of course, the reptiles and small 
 animals left no trace at all except in the sands or 
 white lake-beds. If little wind was blowing the 
 beds and dunes recorded all sorts of footprints 
 — the trail of a lizard or rat or road-runner or 
 quail, as easily as the foot of a coyote or a deer. 
 There you could see the curious throw to one 
 side of the side-winder and would know exactly 
 how and why he got his name; and there, too, 
 were the heavy drag of the Gila monster, the 
 wriggle of the horned toad; even, at times, the 
 dotted trail of the centipede. 
 
 Almost all animals have the wise habit of 
 watching their back track. A desert deer, for 
 example, will browse along leisurely through a 
 cholla patch or an open chaparral on the moun- 
 tainside, stopping to kick a fly off his ear with his 
 hind foot or scratch his back against a dry 
 branch, but never neglecting to look behind to 
 see what, if anything, is following him. This 
 they are always doing, and it is almost impossible 
 to approach them from the back trail without 
 being seen. The experienced still-hunter, fol- 
 lowing any kind of deer, works off to the side of 
 the trail, perhaps two hundred yards or more, 
 occasionally swinging in to see that he is foUow- 
 [110] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 ing the general direction. He determines at the 
 start the lay of the land, the habit of the deer at 
 that time of day, whether feeding, lying down, or 
 slowly moving. From this he evolves an idea of 
 the animal's intent and direction, to which the 
 trail is only a general clew. Beating along like 
 a hound on a scent will have only barren results 
 unless you are running the deer down, hound- 
 fashion, as the Indians sometimes do. That 
 means jumping the game again and again until 
 it gets weary and careless and allows of being 
 approached near enough to be shot. 
 
 As illustrating the folly of following a deer 
 trail closely, I recall an incident of cowboy days 
 in Montana that may be pertinent just here. I 
 was camped one evening at sunset with some 
 eighteen or twenty cow-punchers on the banks 
 of the Big Powder River. We had in camp a 
 Western surveyor named Sheets who had come 
 out from Miles City to run some lines for a home 
 ranch. He had the reputation in Montana of 
 being a great deer-hunter, and that evening at 
 supper he was bewailing the fact that there was 
 no venison in camp. Almost as he spoke, and 
 while the rest of us were eating, two white-tailed 
 deer put their heads out of the willow brush on a 
 
 [111] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 long thin island in the river just opposite to our 
 camp. Colonel Sheets reached for his rifle, but 
 before he could get it to his shoulder the deer had 
 drawn back into cover. He advised the cowboys 
 to sit still and keep quiet for a few minutes and 
 there would be venison for breakfast. He then 
 started to wade across the shallow water to the 
 point where the deer had shown themselves, and 
 soon disappeared in the brush, as they had done. 
 I watched the proceeding with blank amaze- 
 ment. I knew the deer could not be rounded up 
 or shot in that way; knew that they would keep 
 a hundred yards or so ahead of him, just out of 
 his sight in the thick brush, and that eventually 
 he would walk them off the far end of the island 
 into the river. As soon as he had disappeared 
 in the willows I took up my rifle, remarking casu- 
 ally that I thought I might get the coloneFs deer. 
 I made a half-circle detour back from the river 
 and brought up on the river-bank just opposite 
 the lower end of the island. There, seated on a 
 Cottonwood log, I awaited developments. Pres- 
 ently I heard the snap of a twig and the two deer 
 came out on the end of the island, trotted down 
 on a sparsely covered sand-bar, and gave me a 
 good shot. I knocked the buck over, and the doe 
 tll2] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 with a tremendous plunge hit the deep current 
 of the stream and started to swim for the far 
 shore. I let her go and sat still. 
 
 Presently the colonel, breaking his way through 
 the willows, came out on the island's end follow- 
 ing the deer trail. He did not see me and so 
 helloed. I answered. He wanted to know who 
 fired that shot. I admitted that I did the shooting. 
 
 "Well, what were you shooting at? You 
 scared my deer." 
 
 "No. I shot at them." 
 
 "Did you hit *em?" 
 
 "Yes; the buck." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "Follow the trail and you will come to him." 
 
 I crossed over to the sand-bar, by wading the 
 shallow water on my side the river, and we came 
 together over the dead deer. He kicked him and 
 got no response, looked at me from head to foot 
 several times, and then remarked: 
 
 "Well, ril be damned!" 
 
 The colonel never quite loved me after that. 
 The cow-punchers nagged him about driving deer 
 for an Eastern tenderfoot. Even they, who knew 
 nothing about deer, saw that the great deer- 
 slayer had dropped a stitch. 
 [113} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 That deer watch their back track is common 
 enough knowledge among hunters; but what is 
 less known is that in watching you they are al- 
 ways looking at your eye, not your hand or foot 
 or gun. In thick brush the white-tailed deer, or 
 in the chaparral the mule-deer, will stand still 
 and hide and let you pass within a few feet of 
 him so long as he is sure you do not see him; but 
 let your eye rest for a moment on any part of 
 his dun hide or dark horn, and there is a great 
 bound, a smash and crash of brush, and a rush 
 to get away. He knows instantly when you see 
 him and is ready for a spring. 
 
 On a gunless walk one day through the open 
 pine regions of northern Arizona my attention 
 was attracted to some very fresh deer tracks. 
 There had been a shower, the ground was moist, 
 and the hoof-prints were sharp-edged, clean-cut. 
 I made a circle of a mile but did not find any trail 
 leading out. I then began a close examination 
 of every little thicket within the circle. In look- 
 ing over a small group of bush oaks my eye was 
 caught by a dull-gray spot no larger than a black- 
 ing-box cover. The moment my eyes fastened 
 on it the spot jumped — jumped clear over the 
 tops of the bush oaks and started to run. It was 
 [114} 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 a doe, and she had not run thirty yards before she 
 stopped, turned around, and looked at me. That 
 was suspicious. I immediately went softly toward 
 the place from which she had jumped, moved 
 slowly, and watched the ground carefully. Pres- 
 ently I detected two little fawns, only a few days 
 old, lying flat on the ground with their heads 
 down and their ears back. The instant I saw 
 them they jumped and started to run after their 
 mother — their thin hind legs wabbling but, never- 
 theless, taking them over the ground very fast. 
 The doe had been hiding and watching my eye, 
 and the fawns had been doing the same thing. 
 
 All animals have the habit of watching the eye 
 of the enemy whatever that enemy may be. It 
 is probably a universal habit that will apply to 
 man as well as to beast and bird. If you have an 
 idea that a dog may bite or a horse kick, you do 
 not watch the animal's mouth or heels, but his 
 eye. And, of course, people watch each other's 
 eyes in conversation, in play, in prize-fighting, 
 in love. The reason is not far to seek, because 
 the eye is the index of the mind. There is indica- 
 tion of the mental attitude, and in perceiving or 
 judging that attitude the animal is almost as 
 shrewd as the human. 
 
 [115] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Almost, but not quite, because I doubt that the 
 average animal, say deer, coyote, or wolf, has so 
 keen an eye as the human. A deer, for example, 
 has a very comprehensive eye for anything that 
 moves, but not for stationary objects. If you 
 stand motionless, he will not discriminate between 
 you and a stump. He may look you over for a 
 long time, and perhaps think you an oddity in 
 the landscape, but if you do not move, he will 
 accept you as a fixture. When he sees you in 
 motion and knows you do not see him, he will 
 often stand still, with great complacency, and 
 survey you for many minutes. The antelope will 
 do the same thing. And nothing seems to please 
 the coyote so much as to sit quietly on a hill and 
 watch you in and out of the landscape and he 
 not moving from his perch. 
 
 Motion — any object or animal in motion — 
 seems always fascinating to the deer or sheep 
 family. There were some mountain-sheep (not 
 bighorns) in the San Bernardino Ranges twenty 
 years ago — a few still remain there — and I was 
 much interested in their comings and goings. In 
 the heat of summer they occasionally had to have 
 water and would come down cautiously to some 
 desert drip or pot-hole, watching on every side 
 
 [116] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 as they descended. A wave of a stick would bring 
 the whole band to attention. There they would 
 hang perfectly motionless on the mountainside, 
 for half an hour at a time, watching for a repeti- 
 tion of that motion. With their sand-colored 
 coats they were quite imperceptible to the casual 
 glance, and once your eye had wandered away 
 and lost them it was difficult to pick them up 
 again. 
 
 In the eastern Alps I have often observed the 
 chamois feeding on the high uplands and keep- 
 ing a lookout for the approach of an enemy at 
 the same time. They would nibble for only a 
 moment and then, with heads up, would sniff 
 the air, look above, below, on all sides of them. 
 They came to a standstill over any moving ob- 
 ject and watched it intently until it passed out 
 of sight. If it came their way, they took to their 
 heels quickly enough. The antelope, as every 
 one knows, has more curiosity than others of his 
 family and will often, step by step, approach a 
 moving object, stamping and snorting, head up 
 and eyes bulging. His curiosity (or what is in 
 effect the same thing, his undiscriminating eye) 
 is often the death of him. A red flag on a stick, 
 or a hat on the muzzle of a rifle, waved slowly at 
 [117] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 intervals, will prove his undoing. He must find 
 out what it is all about, and gets shot for his pains. 
 
 Perhaps the birds, as a class, are not so clear- 
 sighted as the animals, though there are enough 
 exceptions to invalidate any rule that one could 
 lay down about it. What, for instance, could be 
 more keen than the eye of the hawk, the eagle, 
 or the vulture ? The vulture, as he wheels down 
 a valley, cutting great circles in the air, seems 
 to see everything animate or inanimate for miles 
 around. He is not only beating over vast terri- 
 tory for his own profit, but he is watching the 
 hunt of every other vulture in the sky. When 
 one of them drops to earth it is a signal that he 
 has found something, and from all points of the 
 compass his companions drop after him. It is 
 thought by some people that the vulture scents 
 his carrion prey and arrives at it through his nose, 
 but that seems a mere flight of fancy. No one 
 can prove or disprove it. On the contrary, sight, 
 with which the vulture sees a fellow bird a mile 
 away descending to the ground, is susceptible of 
 direct proof. His eye alone is sufficient to find 
 his quarry. 
 
 Often in the desert mountains, resting in the 
 saddle of a range between two valleys, I have 
 [118] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 had the vultures, passing from one valley to the 
 other, come within ten feet of me. I have watched 
 their bright eyes for what they could see as I have 
 watched their flight-feathers for a solution of 
 their flying powers, but nothing of information 
 came to me from either. He sees everything, he 
 glides on any air in any direction; but how he 
 does the one or the other I am not able to explain. 
 
 All the raptores have bright enough eyes, but I 
 am not sure about the game-birds, song-birds, 
 and water-fowl being well equipped in the matter 
 of sight. Those that live by the chase, such as 
 the pelicans, divers, shags, and cormorants, or 
 the insectivorous among song-birds, have some 
 sense of sight or they would not continue to exist; 
 but the mere fact that a flicker digs ants out of 
 a hill or a robin pulls an earthworm out of its 
 hole does not indicate any great acuteness of 
 vision. I have rubbed the head of a robin on the 
 nest with the end of a walking-stick until she closed 
 her eyes and went into a drowse, and I once picked 
 up a perfectly sound woodcock hiding in the grass. 
 A woodcock is supposed to have eyes that see on 
 all sides of him, but I have usually found them 
 rather dull-sighted birds. 
 
 Not so the quail and the pheasant. They see 
 L119] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 quickly and surely, but sometimes will lie close 
 (even after you see them) in the hope of escap- 
 ing detection. Crane and geese are very keen- 
 eyed and wary. In coming into a wild-rice lake 
 for night shelter, geese will survey the premises 
 from high up in the air with great accuracy. If 
 alarmed, or even if not entirely satisfied of safety, 
 they will climb higher up in the air with whiff of 
 wing and honk of throat and move farther on; 
 if the appearances do not disturb them they will 
 descend over the open water in graceful spirals 
 straight from the zenith. Ducks are more care- 
 less, and some of them, especially the black ducks 
 and winter ducks, seem to have very dull eyes, 
 for a boat in the open can often approach them 
 within shooting distance. 
 
 On the desert perhaps the sharpest-eyed of all 
 the birds is the road-runner. His ability in spy- 
 ing out all sorts of reptiles and insects is on a par 
 with his ability to capture them. It is astonish- 
 ing how easily he will pick up a running lizard — 
 astonishing when the running powers and quick- 
 ness of the lizard are considered. And the road- 
 runner is the only bird of the desert that can suc- 
 cessfully dodge a rattlesnake. The snake is 
 usually rather slow in getting ready to strike. 
 [1201 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 I have tortured him many times with a stick, 
 and when at last the head has shot forward, I 
 have tried to pull the stick away, but never with 
 success. The fangs would strike it with a spite- 
 ful little "tick.'* But the road-runner ducks or 
 moves to one side with great ease — an ease that 
 comes from seeing quickly when the head starts 
 to move. He is the brightest-eyed bird on the 
 desert, aside from the hawks and vultures. 
 
 Some of the desert insects seem devoid of sight, 
 and others, even with pronounced eyes, seem to 
 see little. All the scorpions, centipedes, and most 
 of the tarantulas have little vision and less imag- 
 ination. The tarantula will bite if poked with a 
 stick — bite through a switch as large as a lead- 
 pencil — but his eyes are poor affairs. Some of the 
 spiders are bright enough in eyes, and some of 
 the beetles and bugs have enormous telescopic 
 eyes, but they are used only at short range. The 
 vision is not too comprehensive and calls for much 
 adjustment. 
 
 The reptiles, being predatory and living on 
 other life, have developed rather keen sight. A 
 lizard sitting on a stone seems to see little, but, 
 as a matter of fact, he sees everything within 
 fifty yards. Sometimes, when curious or aston- 
 [121] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ished, he will stretch his neck to look; at other 
 times, when excited, he will bob up and down with 
 his body, keeping watch the while; but as soon 
 as he thinks things are getting too near for com- 
 fort, he will retreat with great expedition. The 
 horned toad that lies just under your foot, and 
 looks stupid and sleepy, sees you clearly enough; 
 but he presumes on his protective coloring and 
 oftentimes declines to run. To appreciate his 
 sense of sight, one should see him stalk ants and 
 small flies. He moves very slowly, crawling al- 
 most like a cat, until within firing range. Then 
 a long tongue shoots out, too quickly even to be 
 seen, and the ant or fly simultaneously disap- 
 pears — vanishes from the face of the earth. The 
 young horned toads (of a pinkish-coral color and 
 not quite so large as a quarter of a dollar) tag 
 around after the older ones and learn the fly- 
 stalking business very early in life. They are 
 experts at it long before they are half-dollar size. 
 The bright eye of the snake is proverbial. And 
 it always seems open and glittering. That it 
 dazzles, fascinates, charms, is an old story for 
 which I have never been able to find any con- 
 firmation. Birds, with or without young, get 
 much excited over a snake and will dance, squawk, 
 [122] 
 
TRAILING IN MOCCASINS 
 
 ruffle their plumage, and appear crippled or help- 
 less; but they always manage to keep out of the 
 snake's reach. They are caught sometimes un- 
 awares, especially near water-holes where they 
 come to drink; but they are not charmed in the 
 full presence and, through a fatal fascination, un- 
 able to escape. 
 
 When you come up with a snake you are almost 
 always conscious that he has seen you first. He 
 lies there quite still, with his eyes watching your 
 every movement. I once came upon a rattler that 
 had a live gopher half-way down his throat. The 
 gopher's head and shoulders were sticking out 
 of the snake's mouth but the rest of him was sub- 
 merged. He had given up and was no longer 
 struggling. Both his eyes and those of the snake 
 were fixed full upon me when I first saw them. 
 I stood by for half an hour without impeding the 
 slipping process, until the gopher's head had al- 
 most disappeared. Then I interfered with a blow 
 of my walking-stick. Both the snake and the 
 gopher jumped under the blow and their eyes 
 bulged. I squeezed the gopher out of the snake's 
 mouth, and, after half an hour of tumbling about 
 in the sand like a drunken man, he crawled off, 
 apparently not much the worse for his experience. 
 [123] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 I had always thought the range of a snake's 
 vision was a matter of, say, ten or twelve feet until 
 one day I saw a rattler crawling along under the 
 brow of a hill, and, from his observations at stated 
 periods, evidently somewhat interested in some- 
 thing just over the hill. I backed away and came 
 up at another angle of vision to find a flock of 
 very young quail some twenty or thirty yards 
 in front of the snake, I watched him trying to 
 stalk those quail for half an hour. He had no 
 cover to hide behind and at last he came so close 
 to the quail in the open that the old one called 
 them, and they hurried away. 
 
 That was a great surprise to me, for I had no 
 idea that a snake could either hear or smell, and 
 his eyes I believed to be useful only at short range. 
 But nature and her creations are always offering 
 strange surprises. As soon as we are sure of some- 
 thing that never, never happens, lo, it comes off 
 under our very nose in the most commonplace, 
 matter-of-fact way. 
 
 [124] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 There are high places, ledges, and escarpments 
 in the desert mountains where a horse cannot 
 carry you and your heavy boots may imperil 
 you, but these are playgrounds to the man with 
 moccasined feet. He moves about on ledges 
 with confidence and drops from terrace to terrace 
 down an escarpment with the greatest ease. But 
 he should always look before he drops and find 
 out just what he is to fall upon. 
 
 I learned this with some heart-throbs one day 
 when figuring casually upon swinging down over 
 a ten-foot ledge to a rocky terrace below. I 
 thought I would have a second look, just to see 
 how high the ledge was and just the quality of 
 the rock upon which I was to alight, when, lo 
 and behold, there, curled up on my landing-place, 
 was a charming red-brown rattler. I should have 
 landed upon him very beautifully no doubt, but 
 how should I have gotten away from him ? 
 
 The snake seems always more at home on the 
 rock ledges of the mountains than elsewhere. 
 [125] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 And he seems to prefer the higher ledges of the 
 ranges, especially during the summer months. 
 Some twenty or more years ago, when a flume 
 was being built to take out the waters of the 
 Kaweah to make electricity for Visalia and other 
 towns in California, it was found necessary to 
 carry the flume far along a mountainside some 
 eight hundred feet above the valley. Much pick- 
 ing and blasting of rock was done, and the net 
 result in snakes was about ten rattlers a day. 
 In the valleys and along the Kaweah, where I 
 was fishing, I found not a snake a week. During 
 the winter the rattlers hibernate in the rock crev- 
 ices or small caves of the mountains, sometimes 
 in bunches that are twisted and wound together 
 until they look like the mesh of knotted rope used 
 on tugboats to ward off pressure from docks or 
 other boats. In their winter quarters, in a bunch, 
 they are very sluggish. A pounding with the butt 
 end of a rifle causes a shrugging and shrinking 
 but not an attack. 
 
 One is always more or less astonished at the 
 inaccessible places in the mountains — the shelves 
 and rock points — chosen by a rattlesnake for a 
 summer resting-place or a hunting-ground. At 
 the Grand Canyon I tramped the Tusayan Forest 
 [126] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 all one summer, over a fifty-mile range, without 
 discovering a single rattler; but under the Rim, 
 along shallow rock shelves, on rocky promontories 
 where I had difficulty in climbing, there I found 
 the snake very much at home. One day I crept 
 along a narrow ledge two hundred feet under the 
 Rim and, not without some peril, finally came 
 out just below an Indian cache that I had noticed 
 from above. For days I had been speculating 
 over it and wondering how the Indians got to 
 it. When, at last, I reached it I found it was a 
 stone and mud-mortar affair about four feet 
 square, built on a thin shelf under an overhang- 
 ing rock. The Indians must have reached it with 
 ropes or ladders from above, for from below the 
 shelf presented ten feet of abrupt rock wall. 
 
 By much manoeuvring with my alpenstock I 
 finally got my hands on the edge of the shelf, 
 drew myself up, and swung around to a sitting 
 position. As I did so I was amazed to see a large 
 rattler coiled on the shelf within a few feet of me. 
 He was bright-eyed, alert, and alarmed, for he 
 began to rattle. I could not imagine how he ever 
 got there unless he dropped from above, which 
 seemed an impossibility. That he came from 
 below, wriggling up a steep face-wall, was equally 
 [127] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 impossible. A salmon will run up a waterfall 
 with the aid of the water and a strong tail, but 
 the snake had neither the water nor the fish-tail. 
 He might have been there for a long time but 
 that would not in any way explain how he came 
 there originally. I dare say he had abandoned 
 hope of getting down, but I eased his mind by 
 helping him down rather abruptly. 
 
 In the San Bernardino Range (it separates the 
 Colorado Desert from the Mohave) I had a rest- 
 ing-place on a high saddle between two valleys. 
 It was merely a flat rock upon which I was ac- 
 customed to stretch out on my back and lie stilly 
 watching the vultures swing up and over and 
 into the opposite valley. It was an isolated rock 
 about ten feet long, and I never for a moment 
 questioned its safety as a resting-place. I had 
 gone to sleep there in the sun many times quite 
 unsuspicious of danger; but one day I awoke 
 rather suddenly. My dog had been sniffing about 
 the ground-line of the rock just under my elbow. 
 All at once he sprang back with a snap of his teeth 
 and a growl. His action was followed by the buzz 
 of a rattlesnake. Then I did some springing back. 
 I split a stick and wormed the snake out of his 
 retreat under the rock, and then began poking 
 [128] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 around the opposite side for more snakes. I dug 
 out three fat tarantulas and a scorpion. After 
 that I took my midday siesta elsewhere. 
 
 That experience was rather unusual as regards 
 the smaller game. The tarantula takes kindly to 
 sand-banks, the trap-door spider to flat ground, 
 the scorpion to dead wood or other protecting 
 cover; but none of them cares much about the 
 mountains. The warm desert valleys are their 
 preference. All life decreases as you ascend, and 
 in the mountains, high up on the bare tops or 
 in the chaparral, there is only an occasional sheep, 
 a bear, a deer, a jay, and a quail. Hunting or 
 trailing up there is difficult. The only footways 
 through the chaparral are ones that are perhaps 
 made by various animals pushing the growths 
 aside and forming a half-blind trail. Sometimes 
 along such a trail one will see in the dust the feet 
 of quail, the hoofs of deer, and the pads of wolves, 
 but it is quite useless to follow them. Stalking in 
 that jungle is impossible. The only way to thread 
 it, aside from the animal runway, is on your hands 
 and knees; and the best thing to do with it is 
 to let it alone. 
 
 In the spring of the year this chaparral is often 
 very beautiful with blossoms of buckthorn, wild 
 [129] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 cherry, white lilac, manzanita, and wild mahog- 
 any, while the valleys below are blue and pink 
 with alfilaria or bright with violets that are not 
 violet-hued but golden. The endless variety of 
 flowers on the desert after the winter rains has 
 exhausted the adjectives of many a writer. I 
 never thought to describe the red and blue and 
 gold and white of them. It was sufficient for me 
 to see them, to stop and linger over them, and 
 to love their beauty. It was not the rambling 
 strontium, or the brilliant flowers of the various 
 cacti, or the great cream-colored bells of the yucca 
 that made the strongest appeal, but the small 
 baby blue-eye, or the yellow mimulus, or high up 
 on the face-wall of a mountain, rooted in a crack 
 of the rock, some pale-pink flower on a long thin 
 stem that waved and rolled in the breeze, and 
 fought ofl^ heat and drought for the joy of living 
 and the urge to bring forth after its kind. 
 
 Ah ! how very charming those pale beauties 
 that blush unseen, living and dying unknown 
 and unnoticed that the species may not perish 
 from the face of the earth! They waste little 
 sweetness on the desert air, for wild flowers are 
 generally scentless, nor do they waste any beauty, 
 for beauty is its own excuse for being; but they 
 [130] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 are so isolated, so lonely, so forsaken of their kind 
 that one sighs over them and, perhaps, indulges in 
 pathetic fallacies regarding them. Flowers on 
 the desert ! They are more splendid than shin- 
 ing gold or glittering diamonds. 
 
 For several days on the Silver Valley Ranch in 
 the Mohave Desert, with John Muir, I kept bother- 
 ing him with questions about flower and weed and 
 shrub. What was the name of this or the variety 
 of that ? Learned botanist that he was, his usual 
 answer was: **I don't know.'* The desert growths 
 puzzled him and some of them were wholly in- 
 comprehensible to him. He was not afraid to 
 say, "I don't know," because there were so many 
 things he did know. When Muir gave it up, no 
 one else ventured a further guess. In Sonora, 
 Sinoloa, and Chihuahua I asked the Indians and 
 the peons the same question, over and over again. 
 "How do you name that flower?" or "What is 
 that tree?" The answer was usually ''No se." 
 Sometimes they gave me a local name that meant 
 nothing. I had to christen the flowers and shrubs 
 with names of my own or (as more often hap- 
 pened) let them go unnamed. Doctor MacDougal 
 has done much to straighten out the botany of 
 our deserts, but there is still a terra incognita there. 
 [131] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 On the desert one is always pausing to wonder 
 over some detail of plant or insect or reptile, 
 stooping to examine some vein of rock or flow 
 of lava or spill of small carnelians beaten into a 
 floor. The part attracts one, piques curiosity; 
 and yet it is not nearly so wonderful as the whole 
 — the complete unity of the desert under almost 
 any light. The golden-crimson dawns, the fiery 
 sunsets, seem to attune the desert and put all 
 its elements into complete accord; but it also 
 goes together as a piece from dawn to dusk with 
 a different light and a different tone of color 
 for every hour. The lilac, the rose, the golden 
 envelope of air are in effect so many colored 
 glasses through which we see the world. The 
 mountains, mesas, and basins are all tinged by 
 the prevailing hue or tint, and even the blue of 
 the sky is tempered by it. The result is a color- 
 unity in landscape the most astonishing ever 
 seen. It is possibly this exact unity of tone that 
 baflles the landscape-painter who would put the 
 desert on canvas. Many have tried and very few 
 have succeeded. 
 
 Up at the Grand Canyon the blend is less sub- 
 tle, the variety greater; but here another dif- 
 ficulty faces the painter. He is baffled by the 
 [132] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 scale — the huge proportions, the immensity of 
 things. The picture, instead of being picturesque, 
 is enormously panoramic, scenic, topographic. In 
 the high thin air the light is sharp, the color 
 brilliant, the shadows deep blue. Distance runs 
 out endlessly, perspective flattens, planes collapse, 
 promontories and valleys cut off the foreground 
 and middle distance, clouds and thunder-heads 
 loom in the background. In its way it is quite 
 as impossible to paint as the desert. But its de- 
 tail is just as interesting to study. The geology 
 is marvellous, the local coloring wonderful, the 
 plant life beautiful. 
 
 You will never see elsewhere such beauty in 
 the wild flowers as here. The long-stemmed, 
 pale-hued growths that root in the fissures of 
 broken standstone, and fight for soil and water, 
 are the most graceful, dainty, and romantic of 
 plants. They nod and bend in the wind, waving 
 softly but securely over some precipice, with no 
 thought of anything but fulfilling their mission 
 on earth and perpetuating their kind; but they 
 are apparently contented, happy, serene, at peace. 
 Under the Kaibab wall, on the south side of the 
 Canyon, are small groves of Douglas spruce that 
 flourish only under the protection of the Rim. 
 [133] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Again how serenely and peacefully they seem to 
 live ! They hardly ever stir; but their arrow- 
 headed tops lift up to the sun, their feathery 
 sprays glisten, their splendid green shows joy in 
 life. There they stand together in groves that 
 apparently live on forever, the new taking the 
 place of the old, the beauty of the whole being 
 renewed continuously in the part. 
 
 Not the least of nature's wonders are her trees. 
 At the Canyon the growths are not vigorous be- 
 cause the soil is thin, the rock close to the sur- 
 face, the rain supply uncertain. The Arizona 
 or Western pine that makes up the bulk of the 
 Tusayan Forest, the pinyon, the cedar, the spruce, 
 are none of them prodigal in growth. Not so 
 with the California redwoods that grow on the 
 mountain slopes of the Sierra. As every one 
 knows the giant Sequoia is not only the largest 
 of all trees but it is the oldest. Muir told me that 
 he had counted the rings of some of the fallen, 
 and had made out that there were trees in the 
 California groves at least four thousand years old. 
 He added that, barring accidents, there was no 
 reason why the Sequoia should not live forever.* 
 
 * The species has lived a very long time, for its remains are found 
 among the deposits of the Tertiary Period. 
 
 [ 134 1 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 He meant by that that the tree suffered from 
 no blight or insect or disease. It is a cedar, and 
 perhaps its pungent odor keeps off the borers 
 and sappers. The trees come to violent ends 
 rather than slow decay. Of these, fire is the worst. 
 Lightning destroys the top, and winds twist off 
 the enormous arms so that all the lower half of 
 the trunk is branchless, but the tree always makes 
 a stout resistance and tries to repair the damage 
 by throwing out new branches and new sprays. 
 All the larger trees of the redwood groves show 
 the scars of wind and lightning in their tops, but 
 they hold fast and live into the centuries and 
 shoot up new leaders to the sky. They are the 
 most wonderful trees in the world. 
 
 One never comes to know the redwoods until 
 he sleeps under them, and wakes in the morning 
 to lie for a long time looking up their cinnamon- 
 red trunks into the green foliage of their tops. 
 The bark is deeply indented, sometimes two feet 
 deep, and these indentations appear like the flut- 
 ings of an enormous Corinthian column. The 
 illusion is in measure helped out by the swell-out 
 of the trunk at the base where the great roots go 
 down into the earth and the spread-out of the 
 branches at the top into an efflorescent capital. 
 [135] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 After a week a sense of the bigness of the red- 
 woods begins to dawn upon one. And their ar- 
 rowy majesty and mighty lift are more compre- 
 hensible. How straight and strong and splendid 
 they are ! People, with a genius for seeing the 
 infinitely little, camp under these great trees, and 
 in the morning perhaps are amused by the antics 
 of the Douglas squirrel (a Western red squirrel) 
 chasing himself around the thirty-foot trunk; 
 but they do not see the tree. They gaze beyond 
 the three-hundred-foot top into the sky, watching 
 the wheel of a hawk or a vulture, but they do 
 not see the sky. The story goes of some dullard 
 presented to a great queen at one of her recep- 
 tions, and the only thing he saw about her maj- 
 esty was the wart on her nose. But how can 
 one miss the majesty of these mighty trees ! They 
 belong with the Grand Canyon and Kanchanjanga 
 — among the sublime wonders of the world. 
 
 Under the redwoods the ground is covered with 
 heavy mosses or beds of ferns or spongy deposits 
 of century-old foliage, or perhaps huge rocks. 
 There, too, you will see pale wild roses in clumps 
 — the fairest-petalled beauties ever seen in or out 
 of the forests — and underneath, all around them, 
 sometimes covering acres of ground, are small 
 [136] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 nodding violets, with countless other cups and 
 stars and hoods and slippers, without a name and 
 without a scent, but, nevertheless, charming in 
 color and lovely in form. It is a pleasant place 
 to ramble afoot, and you can ride there, too; but 
 it is inadvisable if you wish to see the trees above 
 or the flowers below. As for a camping-ground, 
 it is the only one in a forest that I ever relished. 
 
 Bears ! Oh^ yes, there were bears there twenty- 
 five years ago but they never harmed any one 
 then, and now there are so few left that even a 
 foolish horse will graze at night in a mountain 
 meadow with no winding up of the picket-rope. 
 Old Ephraim the Grizzly is quite extinct and 
 Bruin the Black hides in the densest portion of 
 the Sierra, where you with your horse will never 
 go. If you see the pancake-like foot of Bruin in 
 the mud near a spring, you need not jump. It 
 is the boot-heel of Brown, your fellow man, near 
 it that should cause you fear. Brown's auto- 
 mobile killed eight hundred people in New York 
 City alone last year, and the Bruin family never 
 killed that many people in all history, except as 
 the Browns shot them and they defended them- 
 selves. 
 
 The forests of California, almost all of them, 
 [137] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 open out at intervals into sunlit spaces where the 
 trees give way to meadows spattered thick with 
 flowers and waving free with grasses. Again you 
 can ride, if you care nothing about the things you 
 are riding over; but if you have a tithe of John 
 Muir's love for the slopes of the Sierras, you will 
 get down and lead your horse. The mountain 
 meadows of California are places where one can 
 drop into sentiment, lose one's self for a moment 
 in the beauty of creation, grow emotional over 
 the purity of petal and leaf, sunlight and shade, 
 curve and color and blended blue. 
 
 Unfortunately, these wonderful places are now 
 being desecrated, if not destroyed, by the auto- 
 mobilist — the same genius that has invaded the 
 Yosemite and made that beautiful spot almost 
 a byword and a cursing. No landscape can stand 
 up against the tramp automobile that dispenses 
 old newspapers, empty cans and bottles, with 
 fire and destruction, in its wake. The crew of 
 that craft burn the timber and grasses, muddy up 
 the streams and kill the trout, tear up the flowers, 
 and paint their names on the face-walls of the 
 mountains. They are worse than the plagues of 
 Egypt because their destruction is mere wanton- 
 ness. 
 
 [138] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 The farther north you go on the Pacific coast 
 the less desirable becomes the camping. The 
 timber gets denser, the ground much wetter, 
 the going, either asaddle or afoot, much harder. 
 When you get into Alaska, or even British Co- 
 lumbia, the undergrowth becomes very thick 
 (you sometimes have to cut your way with an 
 axe), the dews are drenching, the mosquitoes and 
 flies are deadly in their persistent punch. You 
 need a screened tent with an elevated water-tight 
 floor. With these features comes that omnipres- 
 ent consciousness of being shut in and away from 
 the sunlight and the sky. 
 
 Even in the magnificent pine forests of Oregon 
 — the Siskiyou region, for example — there is the 
 feeling of miles upon miles of arrowy stems reach- 
 ing up to the sky. For a hundred feet in height 
 the trunks stand branchless, sprayless, coneless; 
 then they begin to feather out wherever a ray of 
 sunlight invites them. They crowd so closely, they 
 spread so densely, that finally they shut out the 
 light of the sun. For hundreds of years they stand 
 in dark ranks swaying gracefully and rocking per- 
 haps a little in storms. Usually they are motion- 
 less. The snow of winter falls on their tops and 
 sifts through their needles to the ground, or the 
 [139] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 rains of summer trickle and drip and slip to earth 
 from their sprays, but the great trees stand un- 
 moved, cold, silent, forbidding. Around their 
 roots are the mosses of centuries, and springing 
 out of them are flowers great and small. I have 
 never seen elsewhere so many small nameless 
 flowers, lying in such vast beds, and carpeting the 
 earth as with some precious Persian tapestry. 
 Over these low-lying petals are berry-bushes, 
 syringas, purple clematis, great rhododendrons 
 fifteen feet high, with flowers a foot in diameter. 
 There never was a more fertile jungle than the 
 Siskiyou. 
 
 But not a place for riding and not too good a 
 place for walking. The ground is cumbered with 
 decayed timber and mosses. In the great slashes 
 through the forest, called "windfalls** and 
 "burns," where tornadoes and fire have played 
 havoc, you cannot go at all unless you can walk 
 dead tree-trunks that lie criss-crossed on the 
 ground, sometimes a half-dozen layers one upon 
 another, and the topmost, where you walk, per- 
 haps twenty-five feet in the air. You need all 
 the feel and grip of your feet in walking those 
 thin pine trunks that sway under your weight like 
 a tight-rope. Elsewhere in the forest with your 
 [140] 
 
MOUNTAIN-FOREST TRAILS 
 
 feet on the ground you will find the going is not 
 too easy. Berry-bushes, deviPs-clubs, enormous 
 ferns cling to you and trip you up; the steep 
 escarpments and enormous slides throw you down. 
 By the end of the day if you can creep into some 
 half-opening in the forest and strike a camp you 
 are fortunate. More often you build a fire under 
 a rotten stump and spend the evening with the 
 ghostly ranks of pines about you. 
 
 This is decidedly lonesome. Night in the forest, 
 with no sky or stars or wind or sound, is not to 
 the average liking. One loses his sense of direc- 
 tion after he has turned about in camp a few 
 times. And he never has any feeling of security. 
 One does not worry about snakes, for there are 
 few of them, nor over bears, though there may 
 be many of them, nor over panthers or cougars, 
 though they occasionally are in evidence; but 
 he somehow feels that the animals have the ad- 
 vantage of him and can stalk him in his little 
 camp as he in turn perhaps has stalked them in 
 their various covers. The mere idea that the 
 animals of the forest are looking him over as he 
 sits by his camp-fire, or sniffing at him on the 
 tainted wind, rather irritates him. Perhaps when 
 he hears the dull. break of a dead branch in the 
 [141] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 moss and looks that way to see a pair of eyeballs 
 shining like the lamps of a miniature automobile, 
 he raises his gun and fires. There is a rustling 
 and thrashing and kicking in the brush, and the 
 next morning when he goes out to look up that 
 dead panther he finds only a poor doe or a half- 
 grown fawn whose curiosity led it to the light 
 and caused its death. 
 
 Well, at any rate, it was the snarl of a panther 
 that was heard earlier in the evening, and that 
 long-drawn bay in the late afternoon was a tim- 
 ber-wolf. One should take no chances with glit- 
 tering eyeballs. They are dangerous even in the 
 head of a deer — that is, to the deer. 
 
 [142] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 The paddle — the thin whitewood paddle of the 
 Sioux — came to my hands rather early in life. 
 Minnesota was the first Western health resort to 
 which Eastern physicians began sending patients, 
 and thither in 1868 my family went for the bene- 
 fit of the health of an older brother. I was taken 
 along, probably because the family knew no way 
 of leaving me behind. 
 
 Minnesota was at that time something of a 
 wild country. The Milwaukee and St. Paul road 
 had not been built, travel was by flat-bottomed 
 steamers on the Mississippi, and towns were few 
 and sparsely settled. We stopped in the Missis- 
 sippi Valley at a town almost opposite the mouth 
 of the Chippewa River, and from there during 
 the next half-dozen years I made many excur- 
 sions. They seemed not very unusual or remark- 
 able events then, but to-day they sound a little 
 prehistoric owing to the many swift changes that 
 have taken place in that northwestern country. 
 
 The river-basin and the Minnesota country 
 [143} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 held plenty of Sioux at that time (it was only 
 four or ^VQ years after the great Sioux massacre 
 led by Little Crow) and there was no difficulty 
 in a boy making acquaintance with Indian boys 
 and seeing the redskin on his native heath. I 
 was taken into the tepees at once — my first en- 
 trance being at the invitation of an Indian boy 
 who led me into his family tepee and sat me down 
 on a pile of unskinned, half-decayed, and very 
 odoriferous muskrats. When I discovered by the 
 smell what I was seated upon, there was a strange 
 chuckle went up from my companion and two 
 fat old squaws, one of them his mother. That 
 was the Indian idea of something funny. 
 
 Before that introduction I possessed a working 
 knowledge of muskrats. In fact, my first glimpse 
 of Indians was one day when I saw a canoe com- 
 ing across the Mississippi headed for my side of 
 the river. Of course I went down to the water's 
 edge to meet that canoe. Two Indians were 
 seated flat in the bottom of it, and around them, 
 even over their legs and high up on their waists, 
 almost ,to the top of the canoe, were heaped dead 
 muskrats and beavers. What a sight for an 
 Eastern-bred boy! I had never seen anything 
 like it. 
 
 [144] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 That was also my first sight of a dugout canoe. 
 It had never occurred to me at that time that 
 Indians could go about in anything less poetic 
 than a cream-white birch-bark canoe with curv- 
 ing bow and stern. The romance of the redskin 
 was still with me, though I had already been 
 stripped of the delusion that he always wore 
 feathers in his hair and paint upon his face. From 
 engravings in books I had gathered that he even 
 went to sleep in a war-bonnet, but I soon learned 
 that feathers and paint were put on only in times 
 of war or ceremonial dances. The Minnesota 
 Sioux in 1868 were still wearing, to some extent, 
 buckskin shirts, leggings, and moccasins; but the 
 squaws were, even then, taking kindly to pale- 
 face calicoes; and the big chiefs, when they got 
 government money for lands, occasionally bought 
 silk hats and black broadcloth suits, which they 
 wore with no vestige of shirt or collar. The rank 
 and file were far less magnificently garbed. Those 
 who hung about the small towns took up with the 
 cast-ofF wearing- apparel of the poor whites, ex- 
 cept for moccasins; and those who still lived in 
 tepees retained much of the old tribal costume. 
 
 But to return to the canoe. The birch-bark 
 in 1868 was still used on the rivers and lakes of 
 [145] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 the Northwest, but I always fancied the Indians 
 disliked it. When I came to use it I found it, 
 almost at the start, a picturesque swindle. Its 
 only virtue was its lightness, and that was, at the 
 same time, its chief defect. It sat high out of 
 the water like an egg-shell, and the winds would 
 blow it about with maddening persistence. In 
 crossing a lake, for instance, the bow would be 
 caught by every gust of wind and the canoe 
 swung out of direction. And the drift with the 
 wind always had to be made up by hard pad- 
 dling. When the birch-bark was heavily loaded 
 and rode low in the water, it travelled better, 
 but it lost headway the moment the paddling 
 ceased. Its light weight lent it no impetus or 
 carrying power. 
 
 In addition, it was a frail craft. It was made 
 of slight bark material, with knees bent from split 
 saplings, and supposedly made water-tight with 
 pine pitch. But it never was wholly water-tight 
 and the paddler almost always sat or knelt in a 
 puddle at the bottom of the canoe. If it started 
 out in life water-tight, it soon got snagged on a 
 sunken log, and after the first hole was punched 
 in it, there was never a complete recovery to nor- 
 mal. Its lightness made it portable from lake to 
 [146] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 lake, but it could not stand much rough handling 
 without breaking. Even in grounding on sand or 
 mud banks, in getting in and out of it, or carry- 
 ing heavy loads, there was the fear of strain and 
 wrench on its structure. It was never heavy 
 enough for a working craft. 
 
 As for a hunting canoe, the birch-bark was prob- 
 ably the very worst imaginable. The high prow 
 would catch ripples under the forefoot and make 
 a beating noise. If there was a broadside wind, 
 the waves would reverberate with a drum sound 
 from the ribs. Sneaking on ducks, geese, or deer 
 was well-nigh impossible with it. And, again, in 
 working through sloughs lined with flags and 
 reeds, or across lakes filled with tall stalks of wild 
 rice, the edge of the canoe would rub and cry 
 and sing all sorts of notes. The hollow craft would 
 respond Hke a horse-fiddle, and the paddler in 
 turn would indulge in curses, not loud but deep, 
 as flock after flock of wood-ducks or mallards got 
 up, just out of gunshot, and splattered up and 
 away across the lake. The birch-bark never was 
 a success except as a poetic adjunct to fiction. 
 It dropped out of my experience almost as quickly 
 as it dropped in. 
 
 The Sioux substitute for the birch-bark was the 
 [147] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 dugout. Full-blood and half-breed and early- 
 settler all used the dugout. It was cheap, easily 
 made, and serviceable. A pine log, an axe, a 
 fire, some slight ingenuity mixed with labor, were 
 all that was necessary to its making. The model 
 of the dugout was the birch-bark, but, instead of 
 being stitched together and chinked with pitch, it 
 was simply hollowed out of a solid log, smoothed 
 and rounded and brought to a high cutwater 
 edge at bow and stern. When made it was sub- 
 stantial and had all of the qualities which the 
 birch-bark lacked. It rode low in the water, made 
 no reverberating sound from waves, pushed 
 through reeds and rice with no scratching, held 
 its headway, and was water-tight. 
 
 But more than any other canoe was it cranky. 
 It rolled over almost as easily as the log from 
 which it was made — that is, with the nouveau. 
 Those who had grown accustomed to it stood up 
 in it, jumped in or out of it, shot from it. Like 
 riding a bucking horse, it was largely a matter of 
 confidence. As a boy I quickly grew used to it, 
 hunted and fished in it, swam with it, dragged it 
 up on the shore, turned it upside down, and slept 
 under it. I know not how many hundreds of 
 miles I may have gone in it, through rivers, 
 sloughs, and lakes, while still a boy. 
 [148] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 My first dugout I got from an Indian for the 
 reasonable sum of two dollars. It was only twelve 
 feet in length and was guiltless of paint, rope, 
 chain, or name. Naturally, I gave it an imme- 
 diate coat of pale pink with red trimmings, and at 
 the bow, in brilliant orange, I lettered the name 
 ''Logan." Having thus given vent to beauty and 
 romance, I chained the canoe to a wild plum-tree 
 near the water's edge with the idea of allowing it 
 to dry out. Two rivermen chanced along that 
 way in my absence, and, discovering that there 
 were ripe plums on the tree, sat down in the shade, 
 ate the plums, and unsympathetically pelted the 
 wet canoe and *' Logan" with the rejected skins. 
 It was a sorry sight when I came upon it some 
 hours later. I got out my wrath and went after 
 those rivermen, but the trail took to water, and 
 I never caught up with them. Being greatly 
 grieved over the wreck of my color-scheme, I re- 
 painted the whole canoe a lead tone, probably in 
 token of mourning. That chanced to be a very 
 good hunting color, and much good hunting came 
 to me in that revised dugout. 
 
 And some perils also. The first one came in 
 the early spring, with the Mississippi swollen a 
 mile wide and running swift with fields of jos- 
 tling ice coming out of Lake Pepin. A boy friend 
 [149] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 and myself had been up in the Wisconsin bot- 
 toms shooting ducks and were returning home in 
 the little dugout, feeling our way through the ice 
 in crossing the river. About half-way over, a loon 
 came flying by the canoe. My companion caught 
 up my heavy duck gun and, before I could stop 
 him, shot at the loon broadside from the canoe. 
 The inevitable happened. The heavily loaded 
 gun kicked him against the side of the canoe, and 
 in a second it had rolled over and we were in the 
 icy water. 
 
 I remember it was very cold spring weather 
 and I was heavily dressed, wearing a buckskin 
 coat, the pockets of which were loaded with am- 
 munition. In addition, I had on rubber wading- 
 boots that came up and buckled around my waist. 
 When I went into the water it seemed as though 
 I could never stop myself from going down, so 
 heavily was I weighted. When at last I turned 
 under water and began to come up, it seemed 
 many minutes before I reached the surface. Even 
 then it was not the open surface, for I came up 
 under a piece of ice. Horror seized me, for I feared 
 that perhaps it was one of the huge half-acre 
 floes, and that I would swim far under it instead 
 of out from it. I opened my eyes to catch the 
 [150] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 direction of the lightest water and pushed on the 
 jfloe with my hands and head. It gave way, being 
 little larger than a barrel-head. 
 
 I got to the dugout, where I found my com- 
 panion lying across the upturned bottom. After 
 some persuasion, he helped me right it and bail 
 out some of the water, after which I swam to the 
 stern, put my hands on either side and tried to 
 lift myself through my hands into the canoe. I 
 succeeded merely in sinking the canoe into the 
 water. I was too heavy with my wet clothes for 
 so small a craft. We then tried to push it through 
 the water, but the interference of ice gave us no 
 encouragement. In half an hour we had grown 
 very numb and had not gone fifty yards. Either 
 shore was half a mile away, the water was very 
 deep, very rapid, and oh, how cold! It then 
 looked as though two boys were booked for 
 Davy's Locker. 
 
 No use to call. There was no one to hear, no 
 one in sight, nothing human anywhere. We clung 
 to the canoe for another half-hour, and then I 
 noticed far down the river two black stick-like 
 objects and from them proceeded some smoke. 
 I knew it was a small river-steamer working up 
 through the ice to gain a prize for the first boat 
 [151] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 to open spring navigation through Lake Pepin. 
 We waited some more, drifted a mile or more, 
 froze some more. Then we began to yell. The 
 north wind carried our voices. The captain on 
 the hurricane-deck heard us, and immediately 
 after we heard him coming into action with a 
 volley of oaths at the deck-hands. A boat came 
 down from the davits with a smash on the water 
 that threatened its existence. They picked us 
 up — two very cold and nearly collapsed boys — 
 took us to the steamer, stowed us under the big 
 boilers, where we got baked back to life, and finally 
 launched us again in our canoe. I remember when 
 I got home that my dear mother asked me if I 
 had not thanked God for saving my life, to which, 
 boy-like, I answered that I had not, but that I 
 had thanked the steamboat captain. It was 
 years before that remark ceased to be flung at 
 me by the family. 
 
 I learned by that early river adventure to tie 
 my gun to the canoe in crossing deep water. I 
 had lost an exceptionally good duck gun. It 
 went to the bottom in forty feet of water while 
 the things we cared little about, the dead ducks, 
 floated about us in pleasant mockery of our plight. 
 Some other things also were learned, namely: 
 [152} 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 do no shooting broadside out of a small canoe; 
 do not fancy you can perform, heavily clad and 
 in ice-water, the same feats of climbing in and 
 out of a canoe that you did in summer weather 
 in your bare skin; do not be too sure of some one 
 at hand to rescue you. 
 
 But there were always new things to learn and 
 new accidents to happen. Only a few months 
 later that same companion, with obstinate per- 
 severance in setting his gun-hammers down on 
 the caps and then allowing the gun to rattle about 
 in the bottom of the dugout, shot a hole through 
 the bow below the water-line. We crept back 
 into the stern, thus lifting the bow out of the 
 water, and in that way paddled ashore. The 
 canoe was patched up and a few weeks later came 
 near drowning us under a raft. Then a half- 
 breed cast a covetous eye upon it and paddled it 
 away. It came back through some vigorous per- 
 suasion, and was duly chained to the plum-tree. 
 After that it seemed to resign itself to service and 
 ran on for several years without incident or acci- 
 dent. 
 
 Canoeing in those days was hardly the canvas 
 canoeing of the present time. There were no 
 seats in the dugout. The paddler sat flat down 
 [153] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 on the bottom to keep out of sight of game and 
 out of the wind. He paddled with a thin but 
 broad-bladed paddle and a long handle. If sneak- 
 ing on game, he never lifted the paddle out of the 
 water. He brought it forward through the water, 
 edge first, so that it cut without rippling. The 
 back-stroke was made with a flirt out at the side 
 of the broad blade which kept the canoe headed 
 straight. When not sneaking or moving care- 
 fully on game the paddle was often shifted from 
 one side of the canoe to the other, especially if 
 there were heavy winds — the blade being feath- 
 ered as it came up into the wind. 
 
 In going through shallow narrow sloughs the 
 paddle was used to push on the ground, and much 
 fine still-hunting was done in that way. Off from 
 the sloughs (the creeks of the so-called river-bot- 
 toms) were small pockets or little bayous, dense 
 with tall stalks of wild rice, in which ducks would 
 gather by the scores. Sometimes we could push 
 the canoe within ten yards of them before we were 
 either seen or heard. Then they took to wing 
 with a great splash and beat, and we shot at them 
 as they rose. Often, again, we were able to steal 
 on beaver or mink with a noiseless paddle, even 
 in full daylight, by keeping in the shadow of heavy 
 [154] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 mud-banks; and at night, when spearing fish by- 
 torchlight, we could drive the dugout almost 
 within touching distance of a dazzled fawn be- 
 fore it would jump. 
 
 The chief use of the canoe was in hunting ducks 
 and geese. In the early afternoon, almost to the 
 sunset hour, we slipped along the sloughs shoot- 
 ing wood-duck, teal, and mallards as they rose 
 from the pockets. The dog, lying flat in the bot- 
 tom of the canoe, would whimper and shiver with 
 excitement over this, and occasionally would 
 plunge overboard after a broken-winged duck, and 
 take his beating afterward with becoming com- 
 placency. There were mitigating circumstances 
 in his case. The game was close to view, and when 
 it rose there was such a startling whifF of wings 
 and splash of water that we were not less excited 
 than the dog. It was the golden period of water- 
 fowl shooting in America, and we were in the 
 midst of it. 
 
 Before sundown we left the sloughs and took 
 up position on the edge of some huge wild-rice 
 lake where the ducks and geese came in on their 
 evening flight. The procession began arriving 
 sometimes an hour before sunset and lasted until 
 after dark. We shot until we could no longer see 
 [155] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 the flocks outlined against the night sky. And 
 still they came, rank after rank, flock after flock, 
 whirling, beating, gliding, settling into the centre 
 of the lake. 
 
 The early-comers were the wood-duck, flying 
 rather low, and in flocks of a dozen or more. They 
 were bred in the Mississippi bottoms, and the 
 young ones were moving about in flocks before 
 the first of September, feeding in the pockets of 
 the sloughs in the daytime, and dropping into the 
 big lakes for protection at night. They flew quite 
 rapidly and just a little carelessly. They seemed 
 more wary when younger and with unfeathered 
 wings they dove in the water or hid in the long 
 grass; but when they began to fly they thought 
 themselves quite immune from danger. The re- 
 sult was that the hawks often caught them. 
 Ducks have a foolish way of circling a lake again 
 and again, looking for a right spot to alight. The 
 wood-duck has this habit more than any other. 
 The hawks took advantage of that movement, 
 and often dashed into a flock at a tangent of the 
 circle. More than once have I seen a hawk seize 
 a duck in mid-air, at a turning of the flock, and 
 bear his victim away with the greatest ease and 
 deliberation. And the wheeling process also 
 [156] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 brought the ducks within the range of the guns. 
 There would be a puff of smoke, a report, and a 
 leader would perhaps let go his hold on the air 
 and collapse in a crumpled heap on the surface 
 of the lake, where the dog would find him. The 
 wood-duck were the most foolish of the flight. 
 
 Below the wood-duck, often just over the 
 plumes of the wild rice, came the blue-and-green- 
 winged teal. They came close but they came 
 like bullets, and it required quick snap-shooting 
 to stop them. We could often see their very eye- 
 balls, so close they were, and then miss them com- 
 pletely. While reloading (those were the days of 
 the muzzle-loader), a new flock would show us 
 new eyeballs and also their disappearing gray 
 backs before we could get caps on our guns. The 
 teal were always swift fliers, with the ability to 
 change both their mind and their direction in a 
 flash of time, wheeling and swinging up into the 
 air, or round a point of land, or into a pocket 
 with the greatest grace and dexterity. 
 
 For dash the green-winged teal always seemed 
 to me a kind of enlarged humming-bird among 
 the duck family. All sportsmen love their alert- 
 ness and sense of life — so much so, that I have 
 met those who would not shoot them. Once, 
 [137] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 seated on the bank of a slough, a small bunch of 
 five came whizzing by me just a foot or so above 
 the water. They had gotten a little past me and 
 were bunched together when I shot. Much to 
 my surprise, all five of them dropped into the 
 water with the one shot. Of course that, for 
 a boy, was a wonderful feat, but I could not 
 help feeling a pang of remorse over it. I had 
 wiped out a whole little family in a murderous 
 fashion. And they were so beautiful, so happy ! 
 But with every boy there is a reversion to the 
 savage. He gets a sling, a bow and arrow, a gun, 
 and begins to kill things. Not until later life 
 does he give the gun away and resolve himself 
 human. 
 
 Above the wood-duck and teal came the mal- 
 lards. They came at the beginning of the migra- 
 tory season, making long pauses in the wild-rice 
 lakes, and drifting south slowly. The flocks were 
 large, and on the evening flights they flew in and 
 over the lakes about twenty or thirty yards up 
 in the air. You could see the green heads and 
 necks of the drakes plainly enough. Their wing- 
 ing was heavy though swift — the birds them- 
 selves being too large to do any such quick turn- 
 ing as the teal or wood-duck. Usually the leader 
 [158] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 was quacking and leading his fellows right up 
 to destruction. When shot at, they beat the 
 air, rising straight into the sky, exposing their 
 rumps to a second shot, and usually with fatal 
 result. They were hard birds to knock down if 
 you shot at them as they came head on, breast 
 on. The trick was to let them pass, then turn 
 and shoot them in the back, where the casing 
 was not covered with heavy flesh as on the front. 
 Then they collapsed and gave the dogs no trouble 
 in retrieving them. 
 
 Splendid birds, the mallards ! Fed on wild 
 rice, they were (like the teal) so fat that often 
 when shot they would strike the water and 
 burst open on their breasts. And in those early 
 days their numbers were countless. I once saw 
 several thousand in a drove, feeding upon acorns 
 in the oak openings. An Indian companion and 
 myself sneaked upon them over rolling ridges 
 until we were within twenty yards of them. Then 
 an old drake gave a loud danger quack. All the 
 heads came up instantly and at that moment my 
 companion fired. It was a cheap, single-barrelled, 
 pot-metal gun, but that one shot killed eighteen 
 mallards. 
 
 Still higher in the air than the mallards flew 
 [139} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 the spoonbills, widgeons, and pintails. They were 
 faster fliers than the others and not often shot. 
 They seldom made circles around the lakes, 
 though they would follow the linked waterways 
 like the mallards. Even higher than these were 
 the brant — birds that fancied open water and 
 were rarely led into a rice lake unless it happened 
 to be a very large one. The ingenuity they dis- 
 played in keeping themselves out of the game-bag 
 was remarkable. They were very cautious about 
 crossing necks and points of land and would shy 
 at anything resembling a blind. It was seldom 
 that we got a chance at them. The last one I 
 shot was a lone male. He was going fast, but 
 when struck began turning somersaults in the 
 air, and ended his career by falling through a 
 tree, catching his head in the crotch of a branch, 
 and snapping his head off. 
 
 The geese rode the blue even higher than the 
 brant. Toward dusk, when looking for a camp- 
 ing-place, they dropped down lower in the air, 
 and on the evening flight we occasionally got one 
 by a long shot. Usually, however, they kept 
 aloft, came over a lake far up, and then, if dis- 
 posed to take the water, they wound down a spiral 
 staircase of the sky directly over the centre of 
 [160] 
 
CANOE AND PADDLE 
 
 the lake. They were much too shrewd to come 
 in low down over the edge of the lake, making 
 a long slide for water, and giving every gun along 
 the slide a chance at them. On the wing they 
 were almost always clamoring, and they seemed 
 to know that gave notice of their approach. At 
 any rate, they made up for it by great wariness 
 in flight. Usually they were seen in the spring 
 and autumn migrations high up against the blue, 
 flying in a wedge formation. They were not often 
 shot on these migratory flights, but rather when 
 coming and going from their feeding-grounds. 
 In the early days on the Mississippi they raided 
 the corn-fields, and shooting from behind or from 
 within a corn-shock was the usual programme. 
 Before the white man came, the Indians hunted 
 them in the oak openings where they went for 
 acorns, or the prairie pools where they dropped 
 down for wild rice. 
 
 We seldom got more than a distant glimpse 
 of the swans, and, though we could hear the 
 guttural cries of sand-hill cranes somewhere up 
 against the blue, it was still more seldom that we 
 were able to make them out with our eyes. Oc- 
 casionally a lone specimen would drift our way 
 and get into the day*s score, but it was mere ac- 
 
 [161] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 cident. We shot ducks and were content. When 
 the light died out and we could no longer see to 
 shoot, and the water and rice were so dark that 
 the dogs could not retrieve, we came together, 
 got our wet selves and the wetter dogs into the 
 canoe, and started home. Often the nights were 
 very chilly and, seated in the canoe, we heaped 
 dead ducks about us to keep us warm. The going 
 home was tiresome enough without the added 
 discomfort of wet, cold clothes. 
 
 Frequently we were eight or ten miles away 
 and had to trace our course out to the river 
 through the narrow, winding sloughs in the dark- 
 ness. There came in our skill of eye and hand 
 upon which we prided ourselves. The one at the 
 stern who held the controlling paddle was re- 
 sponsible for the run. Could he take the canoe 
 out to the river without hitting a snag or scrap- 
 ing a fallen log or grounding anywhere along the 
 route? Could he see in the dark and be sure of 
 every stick and stone and log that stuck up out 
 of water and menaced him ? It was really aston- 
 ishing what runs we came to perform, what skill 
 we developed. We thought at the time that no 
 Sioux could handle the paddle more cunningly. 
 
 [162] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE RIVER 
 
 It was always more or less romantic and even 
 awesome, that paddling through the sloughs by- 
 night, under the shadow of enormous elms, with 
 occasionally a flash of stars on the dark water 
 where the trees opened for a moment to the sky. 
 And always the mystery of things half-seen ! 
 Forms and shadows and lights were somewhat 
 confused and a course was laid more by instinct 
 than by sight. 
 
 There was also the mystery of things merely 
 heard. A tremendous thrashing of the water 
 just a few feet ahead of the canoe. What was it 
 — an enormous muskallonge, a frightened beaver, 
 or a huge bottom snake? Then a smash and 
 plunge in the water, a series of plunges, a jump 
 up the bank, and a succession of bumps through 
 the bottom timber, growing gradually fainter. 
 Was it a deer or a bear or a wild hog ? We were 
 gifted with lively imaginations in those days, but 
 also some lively things really happened. One 
 day while hunting woodcock I stepped on the 
 [163] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 fallen trunk of a small sapling, and the trunk 
 moved with me so suddenly that I nearly fell 
 to the ground. It was a snake. 
 
 At last we came out to the wide, swiftly-flowing 
 river — a dark river, even under moonlight, and 
 almost black under clouds. But it was a noble 
 river — nobler then than now. And much larger. 
 The great forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin 
 were even then being hit by the axe, but the im- 
 pression at first was slight. The heavy snows 
 of winter fell and sifted through the pine sprays 
 and lodged in the forest depths and were con- 
 served there until far along in the spring. Then 
 they melted away gradually, with the result that 
 a stage of high water was maintained in the Mis- 
 sissippi by the feeding streams until far into the 
 summer. Now the forests have gone and the 
 first few days of spring with a warm sun melt 
 the snows quickly and start a freshet. The tribu- 
 tary streams soon carry into the river and create 
 a great flood that goes down the Mississippi Val- 
 ley with destruction in its wake. Then there 
 follows a long summer subsidence, with the river 
 at its lowest stage. 
 
 It was upon this broad river of the early days 
 that we at last emerged with the canoe and set 
 [164] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 the prow for the opposite shore. How the waters 
 seemed to hurry — more so at night than at any- 
 other time ! And how the current kept carrying 
 the canoe down with it ! It was always a struggle 
 with the swift water, always necessary to give a 
 back spin with the paddle, to keep the bow 
 rightly pointed. How well we knew that current, 
 not only from crossing it in a canoe, but from 
 swimming in it — swimming the river itself! Al- 
 ways the fast-running waters were tugging at 
 our arms and legs, trying to turn us over and 
 roll us under. And in or out of a canoe how 
 quickly the swift waters took advantage of an 
 accident ! How remorselessly they dragged under 
 and drowned the one that had blundered ! And 
 yet how soft, how gentle, the touch as one trailed 
 his hand in the water from the side of the canoe ! 
 It seemed incapable of harm. Diving into it 
 one could slip through its depths like a seal, and 
 opening one's eyes down there revealed the most 
 lovely tone of green. But it was never to be 
 trusted. Even the still depths had their eddies 
 and undertows. 
 
 Its greatest menace was in the warm days of 
 spring when all the tributaries flowed full and 
 fast, and the river-basin, several miles in width, 
 [165} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 was inundated with coffee-colored water. The 
 banks were overflowed, the whilom sloughs and 
 waterways through the bottoms disappeared, and 
 the canoe ran free from bluff to bluff. Logs, tim- 
 ber, uprooted trees, driftwood, grass, leaves — all 
 the flotsam and jetsam of the river-valley, includ- 
 ing an occasional boat or house or haystack of 
 humanity — went hurrying downward with the 
 flood. The canoe picked its way through a wild 
 confusion of drifting objects. And the water 
 surface itself was madly surging. Everywhere 
 the surface was broken by geyser-like boilings up- 
 ward from below, that lifted and fell and spread 
 in great circles. And occasionally there were 
 whirling, suction or pressure eddies that swung 
 the bow of the canoe around in spite of a strong 
 hand at the paddle. 
 
 What might there was in the great river in that 
 flood-time ! The bear or deer, caught on a neck 
 of land by the rising water and compelled to swim 
 for shore, had a desperate time of it; and the 
 human being unfortunate enough to fall or be 
 pushed from a steamer's deck in the night, if he 
 ever dragged himself up the far bank alive, 
 never forgot to his dying day the pull and roll 
 of that racing river. The water ate into and car- 
 
 [166] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 ried away banks and obliterated sand-bars and 
 islands; the river-channel was lost and the three- 
 decker steamers ran where they pleased; the small 
 towns in the valley were water- surrounded and 
 seemed to hold fast by the slenderest of founda- 
 tions; and the tall towers and turrets of the bor- 
 dering bluffs, with the waves breaking at their 
 feet, looked down on the giant elms in the bot- 
 tom-lands trembling with the tug of the water. 
 It was a wild river then. 
 
 But through it all ran the dugout canoe with 
 ease and safety, though with an occasional shiver 
 as a wave hit it or an eddy twisted it. Perhaps 
 it was not the best craft for an open, swift-run- 
 ning river. Paddling against the current was 
 hard work. One could not get pressure enough 
 on the blade for continued headway, the wind 
 was bothersome, and the high waves would fre- 
 quently dash over the sides, especially if we were 
 heavily loaded. So we took up with another 
 kind of craft for use on the open river. That 
 was the skiff. We made it easily enough out of 
 a single bottom-board, bevelled on the edges, 
 three weather-boards lapped one over another 
 on each side, knees to hold the weather-boards 
 firm, clinch-Dosts at bow and stern to which were 
 C167] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 nailed the ends of the weather-boards, cutwaters 
 duly tinned and made water-tight with white 
 lead, and a coat or two of paint over all. This 
 light craft we were able to equip with swivel oars, 
 and they made a vast difference in the speed, 
 headway, and general ease of getting about in 
 open water. We used the skiff a great deal for 
 long-distance trips, but it never was so effective 
 as the dugout for hunting, sneaking, or slough- 
 running. 
 
 There were other small craft used by the lum- 
 bermen and the rivermen, but we rather scorned 
 them because of their size, their wooden row- 
 locks with their noise, and their general unsuit- 
 ableness for hunting; but they were, nevertheless, 
 very serviceable boats. A great deal of activity 
 was displayed just then on the river. The only 
 entrance to the upper country in those days was 
 by water. The full river floated three-decker, 
 flat-bottomed steamers that came from St. Louis 
 and ran up as far as St. Paul. The beating of 
 their paddle-wheels and the sigh of their exhaust 
 through the tall smoke-stacks were sounds that 
 carried far on still days; and the low, deep tones 
 of their whistles, as they blew for some landing, 
 were turned into something half musical by com- 
 [168} 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 ing across the water. The few people who then 
 lived in the river-valley could tell by the sound 
 of the whistle just what steamer was coming in. 
 
 Each white-and-blue messenger, perched high 
 out of water, with covered decks, scrollwork pilot- 
 house, gilded ornaments, and flying flags, came 
 and went unannounced save by its whistle. As 
 it neared the beach-landing a brass band of some 
 strength and little skill struck up a popular air, 
 a gang-plank was pushed ashore, a few people, 
 the mails, some freight and live stock, were 
 hustled off. Then came the tinkle of two bells 
 from the engine-room, a churn of waters from 
 the paddles, a backing out into the stream, and 
 presently the "Northern Belle," the "War Eagle," 
 or the "Dubuque" was again throbbing and beat- 
 ing on its way. The little village, its one excite- 
 ment passed, returned to slumber; and the still- 
 ness of the wide valley came back as the sound 
 of the paddle-wheels died out in the distance. 
 
 Another kind of craft began navigating the 
 river in that early time. The great forests of 
 Wisconsin lying about the headwaters of the 
 Chippewa River had been discovered and slashed 
 into by the axe. Sawmills were put up that 
 whipped the tall pines into lumber, which was 
 [169] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 swiftly locked together In "cribs/' floated down 
 the Chippewa in "strings/* and put together in 
 the Mississippi in enormous lumber-rafts. When 
 twenty or more strings of lumber were coupled 
 up abreast with a long oar-sweep fore and aft of 
 each string, and forty or fifty men were recruited 
 as a crew, then the acres of floating lumber would 
 be swung out into the channel and started for 
 St. Louis or some other Southern destination. 
 
 As boys we were much interested in the rafts. 
 We fished and swam from them, occasionally 
 took the river trip to St. Louis on them, and were 
 more or less attracted by the crews that manned 
 them. For the raft crew, part-Indian, part- white, 
 made a rather picturesque and romantic show- 
 ing. The dress was striking — a red or blue flannel 
 shirt, a black slouch hat, black trousers, driving- 
 boots to the knee with iron calked soles and heels. 
 The wearers were mustached and insolent-looking, 
 sometimes carried bowie-knives but usually no 
 firearms, and generally did their fighting with 
 their fists and boots. It was a more or less devil- 
 may-care, disreputable crew, but had the small 
 virtue of good nature. With its long oar-sweeps 
 the crew kept the raft pointed the right way and 
 in the channel. That was about its only work, 
 and in that it was not always successful. 
 [170] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 In stages of high water the swift current some- 
 times swung an end of the raft against a bank, 
 thereby rubbing off a dozen or more cribs of lum- 
 ber, or perhaps caused the whole raft to saddle- 
 back a sand-bar or small island, in which event 
 cribs and strings often piled up in layers like ice- 
 floes driven against a bridge-pier. At such times, 
 under the inspiration of much cursing from the 
 pilot, the red shirts grew energetic. Ropes were 
 quickly run out, the lost strings were lassoed, and 
 the pull of the main raft in the channel dragged 
 off the stranded members. Under the strain the 
 three-inch hawsers on the "snubbing- works" 
 smoked and flamed with friction, and the air 
 above the crew was festooned with profanity. 
 
 Ordinarily, however, there was little sound or 
 bustle coming from the lumber-raft. It drifted 
 lazily on, moving a trifle faster than the current 
 by virtue of its weight and headway; and the 
 crew slept or played at cards between intervals 
 of handling the oars or gathering for meals in 
 the small board shanty erected in the middle of 
 the raft. So silently the great acres of lumber 
 moved with the current that oftentimes an In- 
 dian, fishing from a canoe anchored in the middle 
 of the stream, would be almost ridden under be- 
 fore aware that a raft was near him. The raft 
 
 C 171 ] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 drifted on from dawn to dusk and then the great 
 hawsers were run out and made fast to some huge 
 tree on the bank and the raft was gradually 
 "snubbed" up until it came to a standstill along- 
 shore. Night-running with large rafts was not 
 the usual custom, except under moonlight. The 
 steamers ran day and night, and tradition had it 
 that the pilots did their best work on the stormiest 
 and darkest nights; but the steamers were easier 
 managed than a lumber-raft. 
 
 It was many days before the raft was "snubbed " 
 for the last time at St. Louis, or some other rail- 
 way city. It was there dismantled and dispersed 
 to lumber-yards, and sent east or south by freight- 
 trains. The crew had nothing to do with this 
 latter work. When the raft was finally tied up, 
 their job was finished. Their next move was to 
 get their money from the company, and then get 
 rid of it forthwith in the river-front saloons. 
 Whiskey, and its usual concomitants, generally 
 used up the crew's wages within twenty- four 
 hours. Then the sobered and surly were ready 
 to go up the river again as deck passengers on one 
 of the three-decker steamers. They slept on the 
 lower deck, under the boilers, around the wood- 
 piles, or among the boxes of freight. 
 [172] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 After recovery from the debauch, they played 
 cards, played practical jokes, and indulged in 
 fighting. The steamboat's mate (always chosen 
 in those days for his ability to stop a row by 
 knocking people down) was the cause of animosi- 
 ties. He swore too much. And at them. He 
 was a bully and any one of them could ''lick" 
 him. Some of them tried and generally came off 
 second best. But occasionally the bully fared 
 badly. On one trip up the river the mate of the 
 "Dubuque'' tried to beat up a raftsman, but the 
 raftsman's partner hit him from behind with a 
 stick of cord-wood and he fell forward on the 
 deck with a crushed skull. The partners went 
 ashore at the next stop of the steamboat, dis- 
 appeared into the back country, and nothing 
 further was heard of the matter. 
 
 There were ugly stories told about the steam- 
 boat life in those days. The river was the natural 
 runway of all the disreputable characters in the 
 country. When a sheriff got after an outlaw, the 
 outlaw could cross from one State to another by 
 the river quite readily. The water left no trail 
 and threw ofHcers off the scent. Besides these 
 desperadoes there were all sorts of gamblers, cut- 
 throats, and thugs to be found on the steamboats 
 
 [173] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 as employees or habitues. A shooting or a rob- 
 bery was not infrequent. People would often 
 disappear, and, perhaps weeks afterward, a body 
 would be brought up from the bottom of the river 
 by the churn of passing paddle-wheels, and a 
 white face would be seen on the waves of the 
 wake. The pilots, from their high position on 
 the hurricane-deck, would see these white faces 
 occasionally and shudder with a superstitious 
 dread. One man — a strong swimmer whom I 
 had heard boast more than once that there was 
 not enough water in the river to drown him — 
 disappeared one night from a steamboat, and his 
 body was found washed ashore on a river-island 
 ten days later. His watch and money were with 
 him and there were no bruises on the body. No 
 one could guess what had happened to him. The 
 swift water, that had rolled him and strangled 
 him, said naught. 
 
 One summer, during school vacation, I took 
 the job of night-clerk on one of the river steamers, 
 and it was thus that I heard not only many strange 
 stories but came in as a witness to some strange 
 happenings. At the start I was brought into 
 contact with the raft crews and began to experi- 
 ence difficulties. One day while standing in the 
 [174] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 pilot-house, with the captain at the wheel (the 
 pilot was below at dinner), word was brought that 
 a drunken raftsman was trying to break in a barrel 
 of whiskey which we were carrying as freight on 
 the forecastle-deck. The captain told me to go 
 down and stop him. It was on my tongue to say 
 to him that that was the mate's business; but, 
 not wishing to disobey orders, I thought I would 
 go down and reason with the man. 
 
 I found my drunken raftsman with a ten-foot 
 fire-poker (which he had got from under the 
 boilers) in his hands, trying to stave-in the barrel- 
 head. I called to him to stop. He paused, hold- 
 ing the poker in mid-air, and looked at me with 
 the utmost contempt, for I was merely a thin, 
 whey-faced boy. Then with a sudden blaze in 
 his eyes he told me that if I did not get out of 
 there he would run the poker through me. I was 
 a new clerk, it was my summer's job to deal with 
 the men of his class, and I realized instantly that 
 I had to fight then or be trampled on forever 
 after. Instantly I whipped out a small pearl- 
 handled revolver and brought it to bear straight 
 between his eyes. It was my turn to order 
 that he drop that poker or I would shoot. The 
 poker very slowly came down until its point 
 [175] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 rested on the deck. The man paused, laughed 
 a counterfeited laugh, and then made some re- 
 mark about his guessing that I would not shoot. 
 He turned aside to talk to a companion and 
 passed it ofF that way, but I took charge of the 
 barrel. 
 
 While I was examining the poker dents in the 
 barrel several other raftsmen came up. They 
 wanted to know if I would have shot had the 
 drunken one not given up. I insisted that I 
 would. But in the midst of my boastings I began 
 to feel very faint and felt sure that I was growing 
 ghastly white in the face. I made an excuse to 
 go back in the engine-room, where I was very 
 glad to sit down on the engineer's chest and catch 
 my breath and strength. I was near a collapse. 
 But I had bluffed it through successfully, and all 
 that summer I had the reputation among the 
 raftsmen of being a young devil, a perfect fire- 
 eater, and not to be trifled with. Reputation is 
 sometimes very easily acquired. 
 
 But there were vastly more of the amusing 
 than the serious incidents happening from day 
 to day. I can repeat only one. The steamer 
 was coming to a beach-landing at Wabasha. The 
 heavy gang-plank or bridge had been pushed out 
 [176] 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 over the deck edge ten or twelve feet preparatory 
 to launching. At this juncture, and while the 
 boat was twenty or thirty feet from shore, a 
 middle-aged character came rushing down the 
 companion-way from the upper deck. He was a 
 curious-looking person in dress (he might have 
 passed for a poor counterfeit of Uncle Sam), and 
 held an old-fashioned carpet-sack in one hand and 
 a cotton umbrella in the other. He rushed out 
 on the end of the gang-plank, evidently thinking 
 the boat was going out instead of coming in, and 
 that he would be carried by his destination. One 
 of the raftsmen quickly grasped the situation and 
 called out behind his back: 
 
 "Jump ! she's going out !" 
 
 The man jumped and struck in the water up 
 to his armpits. He waded ashore, still holding 
 to his belongings, amid the roars and howls of 
 the deck-hands and raftsmen. He then turned 
 around and slowly began to realize that the boat 
 was just landing and that he had been made the 
 butt of a joke. He stood there a picture of sever- 
 ity until the laughter had measurably died out. 
 Then, shaking his wet umbrella violently at the 
 boat's crew, he shouted: 
 
 "I can lick the whelp that said 'jump.' " 
 [177] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 The new howl of laughter that went up was 
 tremendous. 
 
 Fun that had at bottom some one's discomfiture 
 was greatly enjoyed In the early West. The boat 
 and raft crews were always tickled by the ridicu- 
 lous, and the practical joke was ever being sprung 
 on the lower deck. It frequently ended in fights 
 wherein each party tried to throw or knock his 
 opponent overboard, but then, even if successful, 
 a roustabout more or less counted for little. The 
 smoke-stacks sighed, the paddle-wheels beat on, 
 and the steamboat crawled and crept slowly up 
 the twisting channel. 
 
 In stages of low water there were frequent 
 groundings on sand-bars, and then the roustabouts 
 went overboard by the mate's orders, went out 
 in the water ahead with a huge sharp-pointed 
 pole and a rope. From this pole, anchored in the 
 sand, the steamboat pulled herself over the bar 
 by winding in the rope on her windlass. The 
 work of holding down the pole was left to the 
 green hands, and out of it grew many jokes — 
 some of them a little feeble. 
 
 When the mouth of the Chippewa was reached 
 the raft's crew disembarked, and some of them 
 perhaps reshipped on smaller steamboats, like 
 [1781. 
 
THE RIVER 
 
 the "Pete Wilson*' or the "Minnietta," and went 
 up to Eau Claire. The process of raft-making 
 and river-running was repeated all summer long 
 with slight variations. The rafting on the Chip- 
 pewa was perhaps a little more exciting at times 
 than on the Mississippi, because the stream was 
 smaller and swifter and the strings of lumber 
 saddle-backed bars and islands oftener. 
 
 We liked the Chippewa better in the winter- 
 time when the river was frozen and heavy snow 
 lay upon it. Then with our feet in Norwegian 
 snow-shoes (they are called "skis'* to-day) and 
 a rifle at our back we went up the river to hunt 
 deer in the big woods. But that is a story that 
 may be reached farther on. 
 
 [179] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 The rafts, the sand-bars, the rapids, and the 
 deep holes of the Mississippi were all intimately 
 connected with fish and fishing. The river was 
 alive in those early days and any one could catch 
 fish. The lazy way of catching them was to sit 
 on a raft, with two or three lines out, each one 
 anchored to a grub-pin on the raft, and when a 
 fish was hooked to pull in on the line. The only 
 bait used was live minnows. There was no limit 
 to the size of the bait or the hook. Nothing 
 seemed too large. As for the fish, they ran from 
 one to ten or more pounds in weight. 
 
 Rod-and-reel fishing was almost unknown and 
 never practised to any extent in raft-fishing. 
 Playing a fish was a fine art we had not then ac- 
 quired. The only thing worth while was the 
 string of fish. So we hastily pulled them in, strung 
 them through the gills, and watched the string 
 grow. Of course there were days when the catch 
 was slim, when nothing would bite, and whistling 
 did no good; but there were other days when the 
 [180] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 scaly spoil was staggering in weight. Everything 
 under a pound was tossed back into the stream, 
 unless it was a catfish, a sheepshead, or a sturgeon. 
 The catfish was thrown out on the raft to see 
 how long he could live without water, the sheeps- 
 head was brained for the lucky stones in his head, 
 the sturgeon had a shingle tied to his tail and 
 was then turned loose in the stream to be mocked 
 of his kind and eventually to die head downward. 
 
 It was brutal business. Boys always have a 
 more or less brutal strain in them, but I am glad 
 to remember that this particular form of cruelty 
 never appealed strongly to me. The young In- 
 dians delighted in torturing everything. On a 
 hunting trip with them one summer I recall that 
 one day the squaws caught a number of turtles. 
 They were put alive in a pot of water and the 
 pot hung over a camp-fire. When the water grew 
 hot the turtles began to scramble about. That 
 seemed intensely amusing to the whole camp and 
 I was laughed at because I did not like it. 
 
 The smallest of the Mississippi fish that got 
 on the string was the sand-pike. He weighed 
 only a pound or more, was very edible, and de- 
 cidedly gamey. He came out of the water with 
 dorsal fins sharply set and had to be handled with 
 [181} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 care. There were thousands of them slipping 
 along the sandy floors of the river, and they not 
 only bit voraciously at anything, but were bitten 
 at by all the larger fish in the river. Sometimes 
 a sand-pike, swallowing a minnow half as large 
 as himself, and being pulled in on a line, would 
 be attacked by a larger fish. The latter would 
 set teeth into the sand-pike so firmly that both 
 would find themselves on the raft before they 
 knew it. The sand-pike seemed a much-sought- 
 after food-fish, and when we constructed artificial 
 minnows for spearing through the ice our model 
 was the sand-pike. The larger pike — known as 
 the wall-eyed pike — found in abundance in the 
 Mississippi in the early days, was evidently an 
 older brother, or at least a close relation of the 
 sand-pike. Neither of them was, strictly speak- 
 ing, a pike, but rather a pike-perch having two 
 dorsal fins, where the true pike has only one. 
 Names were confused in those days and are still. 
 The true pike of the East is the pickerel of the 
 West. 
 
 The wall-eyed pike grew to a large size in the 
 river, and occasionally one that weighed twenty 
 pounds would be pulled out. They were a beau- 
 tiful golden color on the sides, of substantial build, 
 [182] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 great swiftness, and unparalleled voracity. They 
 bit at everything and swallowed even their own 
 progeny, after the cannibal-fashion of fish. After 
 being hooked they made no great fight, but ac- 
 cepted the situation calmly. They were always, 
 with the sand-pike, considered as the best of the 
 river fishes for food, having something of the fine 
 flavor of the ordinary perch. Quantities of them 
 found their way to our strings. 
 
 A much rarer fish was the black bass — at least 
 he was rarely caught on a set line, but could be 
 tempted by trolling with a *' spoon-hook'' if you 
 went to the swift eddies in which he delighted to 
 swing and sway. Occasionally a white bass, 
 travelling in schools, would be caught in numbers 
 for a day or two, and then disappear for the rest 
 of the season. Of skipjacks, gars, eels, and other 
 ill-favored fish, there were enough and to spare. 
 Strange specimens were always prowling along 
 the river-bottom. And any sort of bait at the 
 end of a set line would attract them. Frequently 
 an enormous mud catfish, weighing thirty or 
 more pounds, would be lifted out. The whites 
 scorned them, but the Indians lodged no com- 
 plaint against them as material for the camp-pot. 
 
 Raft-fishing with a set line was always a little 
 [183] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 dull, and when we craved more excitement we 
 went out along the still sloughs with a long bam- 
 boo pole (not rod) and a trolling spoon, or what 
 was called in Minnesota a "spoon-hook," in quest 
 of pickerel. The pickerel was to be found in 
 still waters, lying under lily-pads or great bunches 
 of slough-grass, and the bright flash of a passing 
 spoon-hook put him into action instantly. He 
 came out from cover with the swiftness and ac- 
 curacy of an arrow, and crunched into the tin spoon 
 like a nail-biter. When disillusioned by the hook 
 in his jaw, he turned with a quick flirt of his pow- 
 erful tail and you were immediately made aware 
 that you had something more agile than a sheeps- 
 head at the end of your line. He shot back into 
 ambush, wound up your line in the grass and 
 lily-pads, or jumped from the surface shaking his 
 jaws to disengage the hook. And he got away 
 quite often by these tactics. When landed, he 
 usually turned out to be long, slim, with an un- 
 dershot jaw and a far back dorsal fin — an Eastern 
 pike but with Western ferocity. His weight was 
 usually about four or five pounds, his color was 
 dark olive-green on the back and yellow-spotted 
 on the sides, his flesh yellow and not very appetiz- 
 ing. But he was a fairly good fighter. 
 [184} 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 Not so good a fighter, however, as the black 
 bass or the muskallonge. When we set out for 
 real fishing it was with the canoe or the skiflF, and 
 we trolled the eddies and sharp points of the 
 Islands for black bass. This was done with a 
 rod and a small spoon-hook, and the favorable 
 spots were whipped from the end of the canoe, 
 just as one would cast for trout in a lake. That 
 was fine sport, because the black bass was then 
 the very gamiest of the river fish. The way he 
 swished the line and cut the water, dodged under 
 sunken trees, or circled the canoe was thrilling, 
 exciting, sometimes quite exasperating, when, 
 owing to our stupidity and lack of skill, he out- 
 generalled us aixd got away. When we got him 
 in the canoe his dark olive-green color did not 
 make us exclaim over his beauty, but his strength 
 and swiftness always commanded respect. 
 
 The muskallonge was quite another affair. We 
 caught him by trolling with a very long line let 
 out behind the canoe or skifi\, and he, like the 
 pickerel, rose to the glittering spoon-hook. We 
 found him in deep water — usually in the dark 
 depths around the foot of Lake Pepin. He was 
 a large and rather heavy fish — not so lively as the 
 pickerel — but what he lacked in agility he made 
 [185] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 up in weight and pulling power. He would pull 
 after the manner of a calf on a rope, and would 
 often tow the canoe or skiff for long distances, if 
 he happened to be large enough. In size they 
 ran up to thirty or forty pounds, and the greater 
 their weight the stronger they pulled, but the 
 less lively they were in dash. When gaffed or 
 netted or dragged over the side and flung into the 
 bottom of the canoe, they were rather gross-look- 
 ing, with a heavy under jaw and a flat, dull eye. 
 In color they were an unattractive green-yellow 
 with pale spots on the sides. The Indians ate 
 them, as they did everything of fish, flesh, or fowl; 
 but the whites were through with them when they 
 got the spoon-hook free. 
 
 None of the line-fishing, with rod or spoon- 
 hook or bait, was for a moment comparable to 
 another kind of fishing that came with the spring 
 of the year and lasted through the summer. I 
 mean spearing from a boat at night by jack-light. 
 It is now forbidden by law, but in the times of 
 which I am writing nothing was forbidden, and 
 every one was a law unto himself. Spearing by 
 jack-light was made possible by the habit common 
 to game-fish of lying at night in shallow water 
 near the shore. Why they go there I am not able 
 [186] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 to say — perhaps to escape for a time from the 
 density of the deep pools. 
 
 A flat-bottomed boat, with an iron jack, plenty 
 of light pine-knots, and a long-handled spear made 
 up the equipment. After dark on still nights the 
 boat could be pushed along the shore, ten feet 
 or more from the water's edge, without making 
 the slightest noise. The pine-knots burning up 
 brightly would illumine the water so that the 
 smallest object on the bottom could be seen. 
 Large fish were made out instantly, for they were 
 usually lying, not under pads or grass, but in the 
 open water — water not more than a foot or two 
 in depth — and when the jack-light came over 
 them the effect was not at first to frighten but 
 rather to daze them. For a few moments they 
 would not stir unless there was some ripple from 
 the paddle or grate of the boat on the bottom. 
 
 But it was only for a very few moments that 
 the larger and more wary fish would stand the 
 glare of the light. Then they would make a rush 
 for deep water. It was the business of the man 
 with the spear to strike before the fish started, 
 or catch him with a swift-flung spear as he rushed 
 out. There were a great many strange hits and 
 many stranger misses. A running fish is not easy 
 [187} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 to hit with a spear. And sometimes when hit he 
 could give plenty of trouble. If the spear drove 
 into the head or neck or shoulders near the back- 
 bone the shock was paralyzing, and the struggle 
 was slight; but if the aim was not true and the 
 running fish was hit near the tail, the spear might 
 hold him but there would be a struggle. 
 
 The larger the fish the fiercer the struggle, and 
 in the sloughs and bayous of the Mississippi there 
 were miniature leviathans in those days. Many 
 a time in my experience the spear was almost 
 wrenched out of my hand, and one night I jumped 
 out of the boat into the water to hold a huge 
 muskallonge that had been hit far back on the 
 body but was still held by the barb of the spear. 
 The preliminary struggle in the boat had upset 
 the jack, and the rest of the scene took place in 
 the dark. The fish got away, and, of course, like 
 all those that escaped, he was a monster. 
 
 The water seemed full of monsters under a 
 bright jack-light. The gar-fish were the most 
 uncanny of all, and perhaps the catfish were the 
 largest, though occasionally a sturgeon challenged 
 for weight. Pickerel were the most plentiful, pike 
 were not frequently seen, and bass were not seen 
 at all. The smaller fry of things living, creeping, 
 [188] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 and swimming was made up of eels, crabs, snakes, 
 turtles, frogs, and their kind. Taken as a whole, 
 the slough's bottom offered a strange tableau, not 
 unlike the sea world as seen through a glass- 
 bottomed boat. Everything was just a little 
 weird. The perspective with the lights and 
 shades got out of focus, and often the water acted 
 as a lens to magnify or distort or create false ap- 
 pearances. The man with the spear, after gazing 
 at the illuminated bottom for a time, had diffi- 
 culty in realizing the shore-line or the night sky. 
 The jack-light dazzled and twisted every eye that 
 looked at it or tried to see by it. 
 
 And the number of eyes that watched that 
 slowly moving light in the boat was extraordinary. 
 It is generally supposed that the deer is the only 
 game that pauses to look at a fire flame, but all 
 animals within the circuit watch it. I have seen 
 pheasants on the bank, ducks on the water, frogs 
 and muskrats in the pools, and coons on the trees, 
 all following in a dazed way the movements of the 
 light. Even the pointer dog at the bottom of the 
 boat (we always took a dog with us on every ex- 
 cursion) grew quite wild under the artificial con- 
 ditions, and had to be speared several times in 
 the course of the evening to keep him quiet. 
 [189] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 The dog particularly objected to fish being 
 flung in the boat beside him, where they thrashed 
 about with irresponsible inconsequence. He cau- 
 tiously got up and smelled over each new arrival, 
 but showed no disposition to take hold of them, 
 even when invited to do so. Dogs do not dislike 
 the taste of fish as they do that of toads and 
 snakes; but they will not set teeth into them un- 
 less forced to do so. A boat-load of wet fish is 
 never very attractive, even to the man with the 
 spear, and we often had a great many fish after 
 an evening's spearing. The ease with which they 
 could be taken with a spear finally led to the 
 abolition of the practice through State statutes. 
 It was akin to shooting deer by jack-light, and 
 was tolerable only in the days when fish were 
 swarming in every stream in the land. 
 
 Spearing by torchlight was a summer sport, 
 but the winter brought in something quite as ex- 
 citing in the spearing through the ice. This was 
 a method of attack handed down from the Indians, 
 or at least I first learned about it from a half- 
 breed. The first thing in the course of prepara- 
 tion was to cut a hole in the ice about three feet 
 in diameter. The ice on the upper river and its 
 side-sloughs was usually about three feet in thick- 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 ness. When that was out of the way and the 
 small ice skimmed off the surface, the sunlight 
 was shining in the hole with a gleam to scare 
 every fish for fifty yards around. All the ice was 
 covered with about two feet of snow, and that 
 made a muffled light to the fish underneath. The 
 hole had to have a muffling to make it correspond 
 to the light of the main ice-field if we did not 
 want the fish to move off the premises. Tepee- 
 poles about eight or ten feet high, set in niches 
 in the ice around the hole, frozen in by pouring 
 water in the niches, the tops brought together and 
 strapped, was the next step. Then about the 
 poles were wound two or three layers of blankets. 
 That kept the sunlight out of the hole and created 
 a condition of the water underneath akin in light 
 to that under the main ice-sheet. 
 
 A wooden minnow — carved with a jack-knife, 
 scarred by a hot iron into semblance of scales, 
 eyed with glass pin-heads, finned with bright 
 pieces of tin — was the lure. A tin tail was pro- 
 vided, which, by bending to right or left, steered 
 the minnow about in circles. Under his belly the 
 minnow was loaded with lead so that he would 
 sink in the water, and on his back, over his shoul- 
 der, was placed a swivel and an attached line with 
 [191] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 which the sinking was regulated. By manoeu- 
 vring the line the minnow could be made to cut 
 all sorts of attractive capers, and by its flashing 
 tin fins and tail the fish were lured under the open 
 hole. A short-handled spear, with a rope at the 
 end of the handle which in turn was fastened to 
 the tepee-poles, was the weapon of attack. The 
 fisherman sat within the tepee on a small piece 
 of board, with his legs around the hole. He held 
 and played the minnow with his left hand and 
 kept the spear in readiness in his right hand. He 
 sat very still and made no motion until he struck. 
 Pickerel and muskallonge were the chief fish 
 speared through the ice, though pike, and even 
 an occasional catfish, would dash at the minnow. 
 Sometimes they attacked the minnow with a 
 great rush, closed on the wood and tin fins, then 
 let go and drew away under the ice for ten or 
 fifteen minutes. After that perhaps they would 
 come slowly back, drifting through the hole, and 
 eying the sportive minnow with narrow curi- 
 osity. That was the time to strike. If the strik- 
 ing was done quickly, and the aim at the back of 
 the head true, the struggle would be over before 
 it was begun. A fish could not stand a spear- 
 thrust in the back of the head or high up on the 
 [192] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 back-bone. But in spearing through the ice the 
 fish could see your every movement and the mo- 
 ment you moved he moved also. He moved very 
 swiftly, and the spear aimed at his head would 
 sometimes catch him far back on the tail. Then 
 trouble began, for if he were a large fish he 
 thrashed and struggled in a violent manner. He 
 would perhaps jerk the spear out of your numbed 
 hand, or tear your tepee down about your ears. 
 Such things happened more than once in my own 
 experience; and every half-breed or white fisher- 
 man had a tale to tell of nearly being dragged into 
 the hole by a muskallonge, as big as a whale, 
 that finally got away. 
 
 The fish that did not get away, that were held 
 by the spear and pushed under the blankets out 
 on the ice and snow, went through a rather 
 unique experience. If hit in the head or high up 
 on the back-bone, they were killed, and that was 
 the end of them; but if hit near the tail and not 
 killed outright, they froze up before they died. 
 The upper Mississippi region in those days was 
 very cold in winter, and, with the thermometer 
 ten or twenty degrees below zero in the daytime, 
 it can be readily understood that a wet fish thrown 
 out on the snow would freeze solidly in a very 
 [ 193 ] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 few minutes. When the day's fishing was done 
 the frozen fish were loaded on a small sled, like 
 so many sticks of cord-wood, and sledded home. 
 There they were all thrown into a large hogshead 
 of fresh water and allowed to thaw out before be- 
 ing dressed. The unique experience was that the 
 merely wounded among the fish, thawed out, came 
 to life, and amused themselves by swimming about 
 in the hogshead. That always caused a large sur- 
 prise on the part of the uninitiated, presumably 
 because of the failure to reckon with the fish as 
 a cold-blooded animal that could stand freezing. 
 It seems that fish can stand being frozen better 
 than being smothered. They must have air. In 
 the very severe winters of the Northwest the still 
 sloughs or inlets of the Mississippi would freeze 
 several feet thick until under the ice would per- 
 haps remain only a foot or two of water. Usually 
 the mouth or entrance of the slough would be 
 somewhat choked with sand or silt, and there the 
 ice would freeze down to the bottom. Escape for 
 the fish would thus be cut off. They would be 
 caught in the pocket of the slough. I have heard 
 the story told many times of holes, as long as a 
 wagon body, being cut in these frozen sloughs, of 
 the ice being taken out and the water allowed to 
 [194] 
 
TROLLING AND SPEARING 
 
 come up to the ice-surface, and of the rush of fish 
 to the surface to get air. The stories ran that 
 sometimes sleigh-loads of fish from these slough- 
 holes were thrown out on the ice with nothing 
 more romantic as a weapon than an ordinary- 
 pitchfork. I doubt not there is a modicum of 
 truth underlying this exaggeration, but I was 
 never a witness at any of the fishing with a pitch- 
 fork. 
 
 [195] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 TROUT FISHING 
 
 The weight of the fish has always been the as- 
 tonishing factor in the big-fish story; but it is not 
 so vital in the sport itself. The fisherman oflF 
 the Newfoundland Banks who pulls up and stows 
 away codfish, as he might so many sides of bacon 
 or hams, is not impressed with the sport of it, 
 whereas the man with light tackle who plays to 
 a finish a speckled trout weighing a pound may be 
 quite beside himself with excitement and joy. 
 
 It is not the getting of the trout that counts so 
 much as the manner of his getting. It has to be 
 done according to well-established rules. You 
 shall not catch him with bait any more than you 
 shall net him or blow him with dynamite. He 
 must be lured with a cast fly, skilfully hooked as 
 he rises, and played with rod and reel to a legiti- 
 mate finish. To be sure the fish eventually gets 
 in the basket, as the bull in the ring falls to the 
 sword; but there are rules for both the pool and 
 the ring that must be observed. 
 
 I need not go into the subtleties of fly-casting 
 [196] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 and little-river fishing. My cousin Henry* has 
 rather pre-empted that field. Perhaps he has 
 caught no more trout than I, but he has fished 
 expertly, knows trout-fishing intimately, and 
 writes about it charmingly. Nor need I discuss 
 the merits of the various flies — wet and dry after 
 their kind — coachmen, doctors, professors, hackles. 
 I have usually found that when trout rise they 
 will do so to almost any kind of a fly, and when 
 they are indisposed — well, they are indisposed. 
 Some of my most fortunate fishing has been done 
 with flies of my own impromptu manufacture, 
 made out of materials wrested from a grouse's 
 wing and a horse's tail. Sometimes when one is 
 a long way from the nearest border town neces- 
 sity becomes the mother of invention. Stanley 
 and his party in exploring Africa sat down on the 
 bank of a stream and starved because no one in 
 the expedition had the small ingenuity to make a 
 hook and line and go after the fish. But Stanley 
 was British and had the British faculty for mud- 
 dling through. 
 
 My fishing along brooks and rivers has been 
 sporadic, intermittent, inconsecutive, and done 
 
 * Doctor Henry van Dyke, of Princeton, author of Fisherman's 
 Luck, Little Rivers, etc. 
 
 [197] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 more for the beauty of the stream than tne catch 
 of fish. At first, Hke every boy, I fished with 
 worms, flung my fish over my head into the 
 meadow grass, stamped on them, and then 
 wrestled with them to make them disgorge the 
 hook. A httle later I developed fisherly curiosity 
 and experimented with grasshoppers, crickets, and 
 June-bugs; but the fish-basket bulked largest on 
 worms. When still later I came to casting a gray 
 or brown hackle on the stream and allowing it to 
 drift with the current over waterfalls and into 
 pools, I knew a distinctly difi^erent sensation. 
 That was real trout fishing. Yet it was not until 
 much later that my dear friend, Frank Thomson,* 
 taught me how to cast a fly, how to strike, how 
 to play a fish. He was the most expert fisherman 
 (and the best companion) I ever knew. I shall 
 never look upon his like again, either as man or 
 fisherman. 
 
 In early Minnesota days few people cared about 
 catching anything so small as a trout and, indeed, 
 there were not many to catch. There were good- 
 looking streams in my end of the State, but no 
 trout in them. Occasionally one would find a 
 
 * Frank Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He 
 died in 1899. 
 
 C198] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 brook, like West Indian Creek, alive with black- 
 backed, speckled trout, but that stream was 
 rather an exception. The Minnesota trout, when 
 finally located, proved a very lively fish, and my 
 memories of him are pleasant; but I doubt if he 
 (or any other trout) ever quite came up to the 
 Catskill or Adirondack trout. We grow senti- 
 mental about the Eastern fish, perhaps because 
 we knew him in our boyhood; and misjudge the 
 quality of the Western fish, perhaps because we 
 met him for the first time in later years. But 
 whatever the cause, I join the chorus in praise 
 of the Eastern fish. To me he has always been 
 the gamiest and loveliest of them all. 
 
 Time was, and only a short time ago at that, 
 when all the streams of New York State held 
 their quotas of trout. So late as 1876 I caught 
 beautiful specimens from a small stream running 
 down from the Palisades and emptying into the 
 Hackensack River above Closter. That was 
 within twenty miles of New York City. And I 
 was not poaching upon a private preserve but 
 catching native fish in their native waters. The 
 next year in Ulster County, at Peekamose, where 
 a fishing club had been established, I found rare 
 fishing in the small brook-fed lake. A few young 
 [199] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 trout had been put into the lake to help out the 
 native numbers, and so favorable were the waters 
 that in a short time the place swarmed with fish. 
 A fly cast from a boat along the edge of open water 
 would meet with instant response, and a commo- 
 tion and pulling under of lily-pads from a tangled 
 line would follow. What beautiful fish, twisting, 
 flashing, jumping out of water ! And what a 
 beautiful lake set in a bowl of the mountains, 
 where sound of foot or wheel never came, and 
 where the tall pines on the mountainside swayed 
 gently in a breeze that was not a wind. The 
 club members were less than half a dozen, and 
 Quincy Ward, the sculptor, was the most enthu- 
 siastic of the number. Perhaps, besides trout, he 
 found there at Peekamose that repose in nature 
 which art tries so hard to acquire and recreate. 
 It was in the mountains, the smooth lake, the 
 soundless pines, the falling sunlight. The fish 
 were merely an excuse for being out in the open. 
 There are still many trout within fifty miles of 
 New York, in streams and lakes that are con- 
 trolled by clubs, and there is still some of the na- 
 tive stock running in the brooks of northern New 
 Jersey and New York. In Pike County, Pennsyl- 
 vania (once a famous place to locate newspaper 
 [200] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 stones of bears and snakes), small trout are found 
 in almost every stream, but the larger specimens 
 have gone their way to the frying-pan, or refuse 
 to rise to the fly. The last brook I fished in that 
 region was a beautiful slip of water, but the fish 
 were not at home. 
 
 Catching no trout, and discovering across the 
 brook on a ledge of rock a large-sized rattlesnake, 
 I amused myself by casting at him. Finally, by 
 sheer accident, I hooked him in the tail and turned 
 him over with a jerk. The hook broke out at 
 that juncture and the much-surprised snake coiled 
 up and rattled at empty space. He did not see 
 me across the brook and had no idea whatever 
 of giving warning. It is sometimes stated that 
 the rattler is a very honorable snake and always 
 tells you beforehand that he is going to strike. 
 But the statement is incorrect. If surprised, he 
 will strike at once without rattling. When he 
 does rattle, it is merely a nervousness made mani- 
 fest at the end of his tail. He rattles because he 
 is rattled. 
 
 The streams of the Alleghanies were once fa- 
 mous for their fish, but they have been whipped 
 to a finish in recent times. Twenty-five years 
 ago I went to them more than once with Frank 
 [201] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Thomson, and he had knowledge of the best 
 streams; but even then we never caught more 
 than we could comfortably eat over the camp- 
 fire. That eating over the camp-fire was not of 
 fish rolled in cracker-dust and fried in a pan. On 
 the contrary, they were dressed, seasoned, but- 
 tered, and rolled singly in oiled tissue-paper, 
 rolled a second time in newspaper, the ends of the 
 newspaper were twisted up, and the whole pack- 
 age soaked for a few moments in brook water. 
 Then the wet package was pushed into the camp- 
 fire and covered with hot ashes for half an hour. 
 The result was a fish of unique flavor and tender- 
 ness. 
 
 Thomson knew cookery as he did everything 
 under the sun; but his culinary skill was as noth- 
 ing compared to his skill with the rod. He was 
 a superb caster, and his wrist-work in striking a 
 fish was the most masterful I have ever seen. 
 There were certain pools, recesses, holes under 
 rocks along the stream, where lone large fish would 
 be found in back eddies. They would rise lei- 
 surely and warily to a fly, take hold gently, and 
 then, after a faint little tug, let go just as gently. 
 Almost any tyro could coax them up once. Some- 
 times I could induce them to rise a second time, 
 [202] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 but I never could strike them. I would remem- 
 ber the places, and after an hour would bring 
 Thomson around to try for them. He could not 
 only get them to rise again, but often struck them 
 so quickly that the fish were hooked and landed. 
 That was like bringing down a wild-flying grouse 
 after every one else had emptied his gun in vain. 
 Indeed, the net result of some of our fishing in 
 Pennsylvania streams would have been rather 
 slim but for his fine handling of the rod. Weir 
 Mitchell once told me that Thomson's skill with 
 salmon on the Restigouche was even greater than 
 with trout, but I never had the fortune to see 
 him make a salmon kill. 
 
 Both Thomson and Mitchell had fished and 
 shot in Scotland, and often talked enthusiastically 
 about the difficulties of shooting driven grouse 
 from butts, but I never heard them say much 
 about the fishing. From which I rather inferred 
 that they thought fishing in America was better 
 sport. I never was able to meet with them over 
 there, though I did some fishing through William 
 Black's country in their time. Later, in the nine- 
 ties, I was at Cluny Castle with the Carnegies, 
 and tried at trout fishing in the streams and lochs 
 of Inverness. It was, perhaps, more amusing 
 [203} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 than thrilling, for the fish were neither very large 
 nor very good fighters. The second day of mv 
 stay there several members of the house-party 
 fished one of the large distant burns, and returned 
 late with sixteen trout, which they thought a re- 
 markable catch. The host quietly informed them 
 that their string was small and that he and I 
 would go to the stream the next day and show 
 them how to catch trout. It was good-natured 
 banter, in which I took no part. 
 
 But, sure enough, the next morning the station- 
 wagon was at the door, James, the gillie, and the 
 fishing-tackle were stowed in behind, and the 
 host and myself were off. Arrived at the stream 
 I was told we had only about three hours to fish, 
 that I was to take James and go up-stream while 
 the host went down-stream, and that we were 
 to be back at the wagon by two o'clock. I ac- 
 quiesced in everything except James, whom I 
 protested I did not want. But James would fix 
 my tackle, and tell me where the trout lay, and 
 show me how to catch them, and — well, I could 
 do nothing without James. But I continued to 
 protest and asked to be relieved of the gillie's 
 society. The good host, with James at his heels, 
 finally disappeared down the glen, leaving me to 
 
 [204] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 my fate. As soon as they were out of sight I sur- 
 veyed the lay of the land, climbed over a three 
 or four hundred-foot hill, and in half an hour 
 stood near the headwaters of the stream. 
 
 I began fishing at once in the pools, eddies, and 
 
 backwaters; but with no luck. It took me half 
 
 an hour to discover that the fish were lying on 
 
 the rifiles instead of in the pools. Then I began 
 
 catching them. I played none of them, but just 
 
 threw them out on the grass and slipped them 
 
 into the basket as fast as possible. I was fishing 
 
 for score rather than for sport. I fished for a 
 
 little less than two hours, then went over the 
 
 high hill again; and when Mr. Carnegie came 
 
 up I was seated in the wagon smoking a cigar 
 
 as though I had been there for hours awaiting 
 
 his arrival. He was delighted with his own luck 
 
 and his face was wreathed in smiles. (I never 
 
 knew him so happy as when fishing. It was his 
 
 great joy.) He had caught sixteen — the same 
 
 number that the house-party of the day before 
 
 had caught. He had equalled all of them put 
 
 together. He talked and smiled about it in a 
 
 half-boyish way as we drove down the glen. 
 
 Suddenly he turned- to me and asked if I had 
 caught anything. 
 
 [205] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 I said: "Yes." 
 
 "How many?'* 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Didn't you count them ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Where are they?" 
 
 "In the basket under the seat." 
 
 "Well, they must be got out." 
 
 A rubber blanket was stretched across our 
 laps and he began taking the fish out of the 
 basket. His eyes kept getting larger as the score 
 mounted. I had sixty-nine. 
 
 As the count closed he looked at me with some 
 severity. 
 
 "I thought you knew nothing about trout 
 fishing?" 
 
 I protested that I had said nothing whatever 
 on the subject; he had inferred that because I 
 knew something about art, therefore I knew 
 nothing about anything else; that, as a matter of 
 fact, if the truth were well told, I had in my life 
 probably caught more trout than any or all of 
 the house-party put together. 
 
 The temptation to boast was too great for me. 
 But I found out that evening that it was some- 
 thing of a mistake. The dear host did not enjoy 
 [206] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 being beaten, and after that I took pains in fish- 
 ing and golfing to make no startling scores. Yet 
 he was generous-minded enough at other times 
 and in other ways, even about fishing. He was 
 pleased when, a few days later, I beat one of his 
 Scotch guests in fishing on Loch Dhu. I was 
 an American and he was proud of everything on 
 this side of the water. 
 
 After that he and his dear friend, John Mor- 
 ley* — the kindliest, most companionable, and 
 best-poised Englishman I ever knew — took me on 
 a fishing excursion to one of the more distant 
 lochs, where we fished from a boat. Morley kept 
 getting a gentle rise from under a rock every time 
 the boat came around that way. There were 
 two fish under the rock, but he seemed unable to 
 strike either of them. He was then on his way 
 to Kingussie, going up to London, and finally 
 had to give up fishing to take his train. After 
 he had gone in the wagon to the station the host 
 and I circled the loch once more. When we 
 reached Morley's rock he asked me to try for the 
 two fish. I was fishing with two leaders and by 
 a great fluke I caught both of the trout on the 
 
 * Now Viscount Morley, but then plain John Morley, writer, and 
 Secretary for Ireland. 
 
 [207] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 first cast. Mr. Carnegie was so pleased that he 
 telegraphed the result to Morley at once. It 
 was another American triumph. He never missed 
 a chance to put forth America. That was gen- 
 erous of him, considering that he was Scotch by- 
 birth and loved Scotland dearly up to his last 
 hour. 
 
 At Skiboj in Sutherland, in later years, I fished 
 somewhat with the Laird,* but he and his friends 
 were more attractive than the fish. A talk with 
 Haldane,t Fairbairn,{ Yates Thompson, and the 
 Laird was preferable to a wet boat and a flowing 
 line. Fishing drooped. Tea on the moors, or 
 sometimes at the Falls of the Shinn, where we 
 could see the salmon jumping, with Mrs. Carnegie 
 and the ladies of the house-party for company, 
 was better than grouse-shooting. Perhaps we had 
 all grown a little older and felt a little kindlier 
 toward the birds and fishes. The wish to catch 
 and kill does not persist forever. And humanity 
 always regrets. Even some of the Biblical char- 
 acters, after running a score with the gay world 
 most of their lives, were said to regret pay-day. 
 
 * After Mr. Carnegie acquired Skibo he was known to every one 
 in the North Country as the Laird of Skibo. 
 t Now Lord Haldane. 
 I Principal A. M. Fairbairn, of Mansfield College, Oxford. 
 
 [208] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 I have in mind an old half-remembered rhyme 
 to the effect that as they grew older they began to 
 
 " experience qualms. 
 So Solomon wrote the Proverbs and David wrote the 
 Psalms." 
 
 The hunter and the fisherman arrive at a similar 
 condition of conscience, and then perhaps write 
 reminiscences of their slaughterings with pious re- 
 grets interlarded — vide supra. 
 
 Before and after Skibo I did some fishing in 
 Norway, in Austria, in Switzerland; but it gave 
 me no proper notion of Continental fish or fish- 
 ing. And the European landscape was never wild 
 enough for my taste. Fishing and hunting within 
 the borders of civilization always seemed to me 
 a bit incongruous. Even such a comparatively 
 wild spot as the Yellowstone National Park had 
 lost its native charm for me so far back as twenty- 
 five years ago, because of the tramp of tourists 
 and the dust of stages. At that time the trout 
 in the lakes were almost too dull to rise to a fly. 
 They came to the surface slowly like catfish, and 
 when struck, the easiest way to land them was 
 to put the rod over one's shoulder and tow them 
 ashore. The smaller fish in the swift-running 
 streams were far more gamey, and I remember 
 [209] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 several mornings of rare sport playing fish in a 
 huge eddy under a cut bank. But the glory of 
 the Yellowstone departed with the coming of 
 the tourist. 
 
 What is now the Glacier National Park has 
 doubtless suffered in the same way, though I 
 have not been there since it was nationalized 
 and opened to the automobile and the owner 
 thereof. In the early days there was excellent 
 fishing in the streams of the eastern slope — Cut 
 Bank, Swift Current, Red Eagle Creek. In fact, 
 almost any stream gave forth trout in those days 
 — trout that fought and feinted and leaped quite 
 as lively as one could wish for. Just what trout 
 family they belonged to I cannot now remember. 
 At that time and in that Western country there 
 were no fine distinctions, and trout were merely — 
 trout. The Glacier Park fish were faintly spotted, 
 with rather black backs, and were sometimes 
 called "mountain-trout** — a general name — but 
 they were not speckled or rainbowed or golden 
 on the sides. The larger lake-trout were found 
 in St. Mary's and in the other lakes of the park, 
 but no one cared to disturb them except the 
 Blackfeet Indians. A lake-trout caught with a 
 spoon-hook from a boat, or a steelhead taken 
 [210] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 with a spinner, is always a poor compromise for 
 the brook-trout that rises to a fly. 
 
 To be sure, the steelhead weighing fifteen 
 pounds and caught with a spinner while wading 
 a river up to your waist is something of a fighter, 
 and does not give up the ship without a struggle. 
 I have caught them in the Fraser, the Columbia, 
 the Rogue, and other rivers, and everywhere 
 they have given good report of themselves; but 
 they had not the fascination, and did not give 
 the thrill, of the smaller fish so often played and 
 landed from the swift waters of the Kicking Horse 
 River or the brooks running into the Fraser. 
 British Columbia twenty-five years ago was a 
 fisherman's paradise. The salmon would not 
 rise to a fly, but it was a sheer delight to see their 
 endless numbers moving in procession, mounting 
 the streams, jumping the falls. And the British 
 Columbia trout rose swiftly at almost any sort 
 of a fly, and when struck, cut the pool with the 
 line, swished the foam under the waterfall, and 
 jumped clear of the water, shaking at the hook 
 with great cunning. 
 
 The rainbow-trout were at that time found in 
 almost all of the streams of southern Washington, 
 Oregon, and California. I cannot recall if they 
 [211} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 were in the streams running down from Mount 
 Rainier, but they were in abundance at the head- 
 waters of the Coquille River in western Oregon 
 not more than fifteen years ago. I caught them 
 then on the Coquille, fished for them there for 
 nearly two weeks, and marvelled much at their 
 beauty. The rainbows seemed at home in that 
 wilderness with the wild rose, the climbing clem- 
 atis, and the tall Port Orford cedars throwing 
 their shadows across the rushing river. Ah ! what 
 splendid canyoned water ! And what wonderful 
 fishing ! I have caught the rainbows all along the 
 Sierra, through California to the Mexican border, 
 but those in the Coquille River were easily the 
 finest of their family. 
 
 At the same time with the rainbow-trout in 
 the Coquille the smaller creeks of Oregon, such 
 as those tributary to the Rogue River, were 
 tenanted by a smaller, black-backed, silver-bel- 
 lied trout that rose to the fly more quickly and 
 fought more tenaciously than the rainbow. He 
 had many names, according to locality, but the 
 usual designation was merely "brook-trout" — a 
 native trout not unlike those in the Minnesota 
 streams of my boyhood. The McCloud River, 
 the Kaweah, King's River are now stocked with 
 [212] 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 rainbow, golden. Eastern, and Loch Leven trout, 
 like almost all of the Sierra streams of California; 
 but the fishing is not what it was twenty years 
 ago. One could then stand in the waters of King's 
 River Canyon and catch a dozen fish without 
 changing his position. I remember coming upon 
 an enclosed basin under a waterfall at one place 
 in the river that I could not get down to. I let 
 out a line from the rocks forty feet above. As 
 soon as the fly struck the water it was seized, and 
 I, rather tamely, reeled up the flapping, struggling 
 fish. Three times I did this and then paused. 
 I doubt not I could have taken fifty fish from 
 that basin, but the manner of their taking was 
 rather stupid and I stopped. 
 
 But that time has passed on forever. Only 
 a memory of it remains. In Southern California 
 the streams running down from Greyback, San 
 Jacinto, and other high mountains of the Sierra 
 were once full of mountain-trout — trout with a 
 bright olive-green back, silver sides dotted with 
 points of jet, and a dark stripe running lengthwise 
 down the centre of each side. That was a very 
 lively, gamey fish, but his voracity and the vo- 
 racity of the tourist long ago proved his undoing. 
 I caught a few of them about ten years ago from 
 [213] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 a little stream running 'down the desert side of 
 Greyback, and occasionally a rancher finds one in 
 his irrigating ditch far down in the valley; but 
 they have become a rarity, almost a curiosity. 
 Some of the Southern California brooks have been 
 stocked with rainbow or golden trout, but even 
 these do not last long. The tourist whips them 
 out about as rapidly as they are put in. The 
 trout and the quail of California seem doomed to 
 extinction. 
 
 Even the sea-fishes of the Pacific coast are 
 beginning to stagger before the assaults of the 
 sportsman and the marketman. The barracuda, 
 the tuna, redfish, kelpfish, rock cod, Spanish 
 mackerel — all sorts offish, gamey and otherwise — 
 are growing less. Farther down on the coast, in 
 old Mexico — where, years ago, foot of tourist 
 never came and the "sportsman" was unknown — 
 there were great swarm.s of sea life, practically 
 undisturbed save for the pelicans, gulls, and 
 divers. The shallow sea-floor for miles around 
 the mouth of the Yaki River was one vast oyster- 
 bed, with oysters studded so thickly that there 
 seemed no room for more. The Indians brought 
 them into Guaymas and sold them for six cents 
 a hundred — the very finest and largest oysters 
 [214} 
 
TROUT FISHING 
 
 in the world. As for fish, great and small, the 
 sea trembled with them. Great schools of cabrilla, 
 tortuaba, mackerel, ran everywhere, and droves 
 of porpoises followed in their wake taking toll of 
 them. 
 
 And sharks ! I often walked along the cliffs 
 beyond Guaymas watching the chase of the por- 
 poises and the roll of the sharks with a strange 
 wonder over the completeness of their equipment. 
 They were so splendidly constructed for slaughter. 
 Often in coming into the Bay of Guaymas in a 
 small fishing-schooner the sharks would follow 
 the schooner almost to the landing, and many 
 were our devices for catching them; but our equip- 
 ment for killing was very crude as compared with 
 theirs. 
 
 Sea-fishing never has had the fisherman's last- 
 ing love and devotion — not even the fishing for 
 tuna or tarpon. It is usually a contest for weight, 
 in which mere force plays too great a part. Far 
 more beguiling and inspiring the skilful casting 
 of a small fly on the rushing waters of the moun- 
 tain brook. And far more beautiful the tiny 
 scrap of speckled or rainbow life than any monster 
 of the shore or the depths ! The brook-trout is 
 the fisherman's delight. 
 
 [215] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 May his tribe increase ! But there is a chilly 
 feeling that it will not, that his numbers are grow- 
 ing yearly less, and that with many another rep- 
 resentative of American wild life he will eventually 
 disappear from the scene. 
 
 [216] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 GAME-BIRDS 
 
 The hunting days of my boyhood are asso- 
 ciated in memory with warm spring weather in 
 Minnesota, blue skies, still air, light-green foliage, 
 the hum of bees in the grass; and, coming down 
 from the prairies stretching beyond the high bluffs 
 of the Mississippi, the faint boom ! booom ! 
 boooom ! of mating prairie-chickens. No roar of 
 trains nor whir of factories to break the stillness; 
 no smoke or dust of cities to blur the blue ! The 
 long valley was a new land then, and the great 
 river that ran through it was a clear and silent 
 river moving down its wide valley in undisturbed 
 volume toward its ocean home. 
 
 The bluffs — those rock-ribbed heights cut and 
 left with^ abrupt face-walls by water- wear thou- 
 sands of years ago — were the great lookouts upon 
 the valley. From their tops, lying upon some 
 Indian signal-rock, one could see many miles up 
 and down the waterway — could see the river 
 widening, narrowing, flashing, and disappearing 
 in a haze of blue distance. The bluff walls with 
 [217] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 their escarpments were broken through here and 
 there by the valleys of tributary streams, and 
 back from these coulees stretched the great prairies 
 waving westward to the Rockies. The prairies 
 led on to No Man*s Land — the land of adventure 
 and surprise, from which came back stories of 
 buffalo and Indians, running fights and wild rides 
 for life. It was all an enchanted land in the imag- 
 ination of a boy. 
 
 But we made no long ride to come up with the 
 prairie-chicken — the pinnated grouse of the West. 
 Every open prairie spot or lone wheat-field con- 
 tained "chickens'* in those days. We drove up 
 the coulees and out on the prairie, turned loose 
 the dogs, and got out to shoot when the dogs came 
 to a point. Sometimes we shot from the wagon, 
 though the horses usually objected to having 
 guns fired over their heads. The shooting began 
 in August, but before that we went out, without 
 guns, to train the young dogs on the little 
 chickens. It was famous sport to see a timid 
 young dog point, and creep up step by step upon 
 a covey, until he reached a place where he could 
 not be urged or driven farther because of the 
 heaviness of the scent. When the covey rose 
 and scattered, and the young chickens were 
 [218] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 marked down, there would be more point, creep, 
 crawl, and tremble from the young dogs — the 
 ones behind "backing" the one in the lead with 
 blind confidence in his nose. The small birds 
 would often lie so close that the dog could come 
 within a few feet of them, and the small boy could 
 catch them in his hat. When caught, the dis- 
 tressed "peep" of the bird would almost drive 
 the dogs out of their minds. 
 
 But nothing was hurt until the chickens were 
 nearly full-grown. Then the season opened up 
 with one or two dogs and three or four guns. 
 After the covey rose, was shot at, scattered, and 
 marked down, the dogs began showing their best 
 work in pointing the single birds. Then, too, be- 
 gan the best shooting. It was not difficult shoot- 
 ing. An older brother one afternoon shot thirty- 
 three birds (which included nine double right and 
 left shots) without missing a bird. He stopped 
 then because the bag was full, but it seemed as 
 though he could have gone on indefinitely without 
 missing. To be sure, he was the best shot with gun 
 or rifle that I ever knew, but then the prairie- 
 chicken was not a difficult bird to knock down. 
 He took to wing and travelled about as fast as 
 the grouse on the Scotch moors — no faster, no 
 [219] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 slower. Late in September, when larger grown 
 and stifFer of wing, he rose at greater distance 
 and required quicker work. But during the first 
 two weeks of the season the shooting was easy— 
 so easy that, as I have said, it was sometimes 
 done from a wagon. 
 
 The prairie-chickens in the early afternoons were 
 usually in the cover of long grass about a grain- 
 field, dusting in the gopher hills, or lying in the 
 shade of some scrub oak. The dogs found them 
 there, and when the covey rose the guns took what 
 they could. After the remaining birds had scat- 
 tered, each bird lay close and rose singly. The 
 shooting was assigned to the guns in turn. We 
 usually had some Eastern visitor with us, who was 
 given the courtesy of first shot. After his "new 
 double-barrelled breech-loader had been emptied, 
 and without results, the field was open to the 
 family in step-ladder order — the youngest, of 
 course, coming in at the end. When every one 
 had fired and missed, and the youngest finally 
 brought down the bird with his single-barrelled 
 muzzle-loading musket, there was some Homeric 
 laughter indulged in. That was called "eye- 
 wiping.** It was highly esteemed as a hunting 
 stunt. I remember the youngest "wiping** the 
 [220} 
 
GAME--BIRDS 
 
 eyes of two shooters on a summer afternoon, not 
 once, but seven different times. It is a wonder 
 the discomfited did not shoot him for his uncon- 
 cealed insolence of triumph. 
 
 In October the coveys came together in great 
 gangs, in flocks numbering hundreds. They then 
 came down from the prairie heights and took up 
 with the valley corn-fields, where the farmer boys 
 would occasionally hunt them by surrounding a 
 gang, moving in on them simultaneously, and 
 shooting them overhead as they flew out of the 
 field. They were at that season of the year not 
 very good to eat, being thin and tough; but the 
 shooting was acceptable and fairly difficult, since 
 the birds flew fast and wild. But there is no 
 more of that. The prairie-chicken is now almost 
 as scarce as the buffalo, and the day is merely 
 to-morrow when he will be as extinct as the grizzly. 
 
 The sharp-tailed grouse that I used to shoot in 
 Montana in the eighties now puts in only an acci- 
 dental appearance, if indeed he is to be found at 
 all. I have not seen one for thirty years. The 
 sage-cock, a fine large member of the grouse fam- 
 ily, also belongs in the scarce category. In the 
 early days no one would shoot him or eat him 
 because of the tradition that he tasted "sagey," 
 [221] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 but the sportsman came in and shot him "just 
 for fun," with the result that there are few left 
 to shoot. The fool-hen (Franklin grouse) was in 
 the Siskiyou forests of Oregon twenty years ago, 
 but I have not heard of him or from him since. 
 He was such a confiding dunce that every pot- 
 hunter must have found him an easy mark. 
 
 The grouse of the Scotch moors corresponds 
 rather closely to our prairie-chicken, having like 
 habits, and not dissimilar ground over which to 
 roam. I never shot at them. In my Scotch 
 days I had quite gotten over the desire to kill 
 things; but I used to go out with the shooters 
 almost every day to see the dogs work and to 
 view the moors. I have also seen the shooting of 
 grouse from butts, though I cannot speak of its 
 difficulties from a shooter's point of view. I have 
 heard men like Lord Alverstone (when he was 
 Sir Richard Webster) and Yates Thompson talk 
 away half the night about driven grouse, but I 
 never got more than a yawn out of the conversa- 
 tion. The wonderful moors, than which there is 
 no finer country in the world, with their flowing 
 lines, their purple heather, and their splendid 
 skies, would never come in for a moment's com- 
 ment. It seemed very odd that grown-ups could 
 [222] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 so miss the glory of the world for a smell of burnt 
 powder and a few pounds of flesh. 
 
 The grouse of Great Britain are merely a fad 
 of the rich, and yet the poorest of the poor are 
 tremendously interested in the bags made on the 
 1 2th of August. And every one in the land will 
 recite for you: 
 
 **Up gets a guinea, 
 Pop goes a penny, 
 Down comes half a crown." 
 
 The meaning, of course, is that a grouse costs a 
 guinea to raise, a pennyworth of ammunition to 
 kill, and that dead he is worth in the market only 
 half a crown. The bunches of grouse that come 
 into the London markets immediately after the 
 opening of the shooting season are always curi- 
 ously eyed by the passing crowd. Perhaps that 
 is as near to the open as many London dwellers 
 ever come. 
 
 The American ruffed grouse, usually called a 
 pheasant, is an Eastern bird, and is not usually 
 found far west of the Mississippi; but in Minne- 
 sota days we shot many of them in the woodlands 
 and bushes around the bases of the river-bluffs. 
 The prairie-chicken was something of a fool com- 
 [223] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 pared to him. He got up unexpectedly out of 
 a thicket, scared the shooter ahnost out of his 
 wits with his bustling roar, and went up and out 
 through the trees like a meteor. You caught him 
 with a snap-shot, if you could. More often than 
 not he went scot-free. He would lie to a dog only 
 when young and in the covey. When older grown, 
 he ran in twos and threes and rose wild. A famous 
 game-bird — one of the most famous on Ameri- 
 can soil ! I used to hear his drumming in the 
 early summer and made many attempts to see 
 him on his native log in order to find out how he 
 made that sound; but he was perverse and never 
 drummed when I was in sight. To this day I 
 am in ignorance as to whether he beats his wings 
 against the log, against his breast, or against the 
 air. Perhaps the drumming is in kind a similar 
 performance to that of a barnyard cock that flaps 
 his wings before crowing. 
 
 The ruffed grouse, during the fierce Minnesota 
 blizzards, often took refuge under the snow. So, 
 too, did his smaller cousins, the quail. It was 
 the same "Bob-White" quail that we knew in the 
 Eastern States, but grown perhaps more hardy 
 by Western exposure. Usually in severe weather 
 the covey would get together under the lee of 
 [2241 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 some snow-bank on the edge of timber, where, pro- 
 tected from the wind, they would sit through a 
 big storm; but they have been found singly inside 
 the snow-bank and frozen to death. The lack of 
 food rather than the weather caused their death. 
 Almost any bird, with a full crop to draw upon 
 for heat and his high bird-temperature, can get 
 through severe cold; but he starves out very 
 easily. 
 
 It is usually said that the migration of birds in 
 the spring and autumn is to avoid cold, but it 
 would be truer to say that they migrate because 
 of food conditions. The song-birds come early 
 in the spring and stand much rough weather, and 
 they go early in the autumn when the temperature 
 is still warm. The robins, for instance, come 
 when the worm supply is plentiful, and the as- 
 sumption is that they prefer worms to any other 
 diet; but as a matter of fact, when the summer 
 comes on and they can get fruit and berries and 
 seeds, they never touch worms. When worms 
 and berries both go out the robin goes South, even 
 though it is warm October. 
 
 The Minnesota quail, as a game-bird, was our 
 delight, and practically our exclusive quarry. 
 No one else would hunt him in the early days be- 
 £225} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 cause he was not big enough — not enough of a 
 table asset. There never was a more princely 
 member of the grouse family, never a finer game- 
 bird. We loved him for the October woods, the 
 fallen leaves, the golden fields, and the mellow 
 sunlight. To this day he is in memory so closely 
 associated with the happy autumn fields and the 
 days that are no more that tears "rise in the heart 
 and gather to the eyes" in thinking of him. It 
 is such a pity that we ever shot him ! It seems 
 now, if it did not then, that we were killing the 
 spirit that animated the whole scene and made it 
 worth while. But the boy has little or no senti- 
 ment; he is merely a boy. We shot, and the quail, 
 being no such swift dodger as the ruffed grouse, 
 went home with us. 
 
 I never had quite the same sentiment about 
 the California valley-quail, because he was only 
 a hoodlum compared with Bob-White. Thirty 
 years ago he travelled the country in gangs of 
 several hundred and inspired about as much love 
 and respect as does the present-day starling of the 
 Atlantic coast. Every one who wanted a meal 
 shot at him — even pot-shotted him on the ground 
 with his fellows. He would not lie to a dog when 
 in large flocks, and the flock had to be scattered 
 [226] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 before any single-bird shooting began. Even then 
 the shooting was tame as compared with Bob- 
 White. You shot and ran for your bird before 
 he crawled down a gopher-hole or crept into a 
 cactus patch. Unless he was killed outright, he 
 was a difficult bird to bag. The spirit of life was 
 strong in him, and his little legs would keep run- 
 ning, even though his wings were broken and his 
 body shot-laden. One had to concede his tough- 
 ness, even when he got on the table. He had 
 that quality of endurance that belongs to all life 
 on or near the desert. 
 
 But the valley-quail has gone the way of all 
 game in the Southwest. There were always a 
 few scattered flocks of them in the desert, living 
 near water-holes or near underground water; and 
 some of these flocks still remain there because the 
 tourist in his car, with his shotgun on the front 
 seat, will not go so far afield. Perhaps for a 
 similar reason some flocks of the mountain-quail — 
 no relative of the valley-quail — are still to be found 
 in the inaccessible parts of the Coast Range. Of 
 recent years they have taken to the thick chap- 
 arral of the high mountains where gunners cannot 
 go, and that, for the moment, has postponed their 
 extinction. They are not so wary or fleet of foot 
 
 [227] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 as the valley bird, and their habit of standing on 
 rocks or logs and curiously eying the stranger is 
 fatal to long life. With so much confidence they 
 are easily shot. I have seen them often and 
 watched them by the hour, but I am pleased to 
 record that I never shot at one. They were too 
 innocent and too beautiful to be killed. 
 
 As for the woodcock, the Pacific slope never 
 knew him. He is an Eastern and a Mississippi 
 Valley bird, or perhaps I should say was, because 
 he is not now to be found in the creek bottoms 
 and brook resorts where once the soft mud was 
 peppered with the "borings" of his long bill. 
 Occasionally an odd one comes back to the old 
 haunts, and at your approach rises wild and flies 
 fast, but his kind has so dwindled away that it 
 may almost be counted as vanished. Where the 
 few living members of the family continue to 
 breed can be guessed at but not readily ascertained. 
 There are some left, and near my New Jersey 
 home I still see an occasional one in the spring or 
 fall, at the times of migration; but the sight is a 
 rare one in these days. Only this last spring I 
 saw a male bird by the edge of a brook, strutting 
 up and down like a little turkey-cock with his 
 tail spread and his wings trailing the ground; but 
 [228] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 alas ! he was strutting alone. There was no hen 
 bird near to admire him and mate with him. 
 
 The woodcock never was very gregarious, never 
 a gangster in flocks of hundreds, never a hoodlum. 
 He was always an aristocrat, living in the solitudes, 
 quite alone except at the breeding-season, always 
 more or less sufficient unto himself. The dozen 
 or fifteen in the young brood trailed with the 
 mother, quickly learned for themselves how to 
 bore for worms, and by the 4th of July were 
 almost, if not quite, full-grown. They were gen- 
 erally found alone after the last days of June, and 
 remained alone until the next year's breeding- 
 season. They were always in hiding — in the 
 grass, or thickets of willows, or in briar patches 
 — lying close and very difficult to see on the 
 ground. Sometimes it was possible to flush them 
 by tramping near them; but a dog was usually 
 necessary in hunting them. 
 
 The most intelligent work of which a dog was 
 capable would come to the fore in hunting wood- 
 cock. The scent was by no means so strong as 
 that of the quail, and single birds lying in thick 
 cover gave out very little intimation of their pres- 
 ence to the twitching nostrils of the average "bird- 
 dog.*' It required either a young and timid setter 
 [229] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 or an old and careful one to handle woodcock quite 
 right. Little could be done by trailing, and so 
 we allowed the dog to work against the wind 
 with upraised head, getting the scent by wind- 
 ing. The necessity was for a slow, trotting mo- 
 tion, with great care that an instant stop should 
 be made at the first faint scent. 
 
 We had beautifully trained dogs, for we hunted 
 woodcock in the Mississippi bottoms very often 
 in the early Minnesota days. After stumbling 
 over and flushing a bird or two, and being cuffed 
 and scolded for it, the setter came down to a slow 
 trot, and, when the scent came on the wind, the 
 gait was reduced to a walk, and finally to a dead 
 stop — a point. I can see that young timid setter 
 snuffing the breeze and trotting back and forth 
 through the little maple thickets of the Missis- 
 sippi bottoms, as plainly to-day as fifty years 
 ago. What cunning he had ! How well he came 
 to know the game ! And what splendid game 
 it was ! 
 
 When at last we walked in ahead of the dog 
 and flushed the bird, how that bird whistled up 
 through the tree-tops or swung out at the side 
 and turned the corner of the thicket, or cork- 
 screwed back over our heads ! It required all our 
 [230} 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 quickness and skill to stop him. He was, all told, 
 the very hardest bird on our list to hit. And 
 alive or dead the very noblest to look at. We 
 shot at him as he disappeared through the leaves 
 of a tree or over a tree-top, and were almost 
 sorry when, a few minutes after, a few light- 
 brown feathers fluttering down to earth would 
 tell us that we had made a hit. 
 
 In September we hunted woodcock during the 
 early afternoon, and at sundown went to the 
 rice lakes for the evening flight of ducks. The 
 woodcock were not so numerous that we got more 
 than a dozen or so at a time, except during one 
 July rise in the river. The rise flooded the bot- 
 tom-lands and drove the birds step by step up 
 to a ridge of high ground perhaps two hundred 
 yards wide and a mile long. We surmised that 
 the woodcock might be bunched on that tem- 
 porary island and went there in the canoes with 
 a dog. But the dog was quite superfluous. There 
 were too many woodcock, he became bewildered 
 by them, and finally came in to heel with lolling 
 tongue. 
 
 Woodcock got up every few feet. I had never 
 seen so many. There were hundreds of them. 
 But another winged spirit excelled them in point 
 [231] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 of numbers. That was the mosquito. There 
 were billions of them. They, too, it seemed, had 
 been driven out of the flooded grass-lands to 
 higher ground. We attacked the woodcock but 
 the mosquitoes attacked us. And we fared worse 
 than our game, for we had to quit almost as soon 
 as we had begun. The next day we came back 
 reinforced with gloves and nettings about face 
 and head, but again we had to quit. The mos- 
 quitoes, with bills as large almost as those of the 
 woodcock, bored through to our backs and shoul- 
 ders, and assaulted our legs through breeches 
 and boots. We got into the canoes and "beat to 
 open sea," with the mosquitoes following after 
 us in a cloud. 
 
 The great numbers of woodcock on that point 
 of land remind me that one year in Minnesota 
 there was a flight of English (Wilson) snipe that 
 came from I knew not where and disappeared as 
 mysteriously as it came. For ten days the slough- 
 banks were lined with snipe. They got up and 
 squawked and gyrated away at every foot. An- 
 other year appeared many flocks of golden plover 
 —the first and the last ones I ever saw. And in 
 1870, or perhaps it was 1872, the sky was dark- 
 ened with flocks of wild passenger-pigeons. Again 
 [232] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 and again, day after day, I saw passing up the 
 Mississippi Valley cloud-flocks of pigeons that 
 extended from the Wisconsin to the Minnesota 
 bluffs, a distance of five miles. The flocks con- 
 tinued daily and all day long for several weeks. 
 Everybody shot into the nearer and smaller flocks, 
 until the pigeon became a nuisance in the kitchen 
 and an unappetizing article of food on the table. 
 In that year the passenger-pigeons had a 
 monster roost in the Mississippi bottoms near 
 the mouth of the Chippewa River, where the 
 birds swarmed like bees, where every little tree 
 was loaded down with nests, and eggs, crowded out 
 of the nests, were lying on the ground so thick 
 that one could hardly step without crushing them. 
 When the young pigeons were half-grown and 
 could not yet fly, some "sportsmen" went there 
 with clubs, shook and beat the trees until the 
 young birds fluttered out and fell to the ground, 
 and then the "sportsmen" tore their breasts off 
 with their forefingers, flung the breasts into a 
 bag, and threw the carcasses on the ground. That 
 is the wretched kind of thing that one does not 
 like to write about or think about, and yet it 
 was perhaps just such butchery that was respon- 
 sible for the absolute extinction of this bird. 
 [233] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 There were such numbers of them then that 
 scarcity seemed a word to laugh at. The roar 
 of that pigeon-roost — a roar like a distant water- 
 fall — could be heard at Wabasha, eight miles away. 
 The roar came from the "knac-a*' call of the 
 birds, mingled with the flutter and beat of count- 
 less wings. 
 
 The coming and going of birds In great flocks 
 or gangs illustrates a gregarious instinct without 
 exactly explaining it. In the spring and fall al- 
 most all the birds get together in family flocks, 
 and then move North or South together, presum- 
 ably for mutual company and protection. The 
 robins, blackbirds, bobolinks, swallows, bluebirds, 
 do this as invariably as the ducks and geese. The 
 practice seems not different, except in continu- 
 ance, from the travel of herring, mackerel, or 
 bluefish in the sea. There Is evidently a feeling 
 of safety in numbers, and though toll is continu- 
 ally taken by hawks and guns and porpoises, each 
 one probably thinks his turn has not yet come. 
 
 But the appearance of Wilson snipe, to which 
 I have referred, as also that of the passenger- 
 pigeons, was sporadic, confined to one year, with 
 no precedent or subsequent appearance. In Mon- 
 tana, in 1883, I witnessed a great flight of sickle- 
 [234] 
 
GAME-BIRDS 
 
 bill curlew, lasting for three days of wind and 
 rain, that was again unprecedented in my experi- 
 ence. They came in flocks of twenty or thirty, 
 following like waves at sea, flying low and mak- 
 ing no sound. It was almost unbelievable that 
 there could be so many curlew on the continent 
 or in the world. There were thousands upon 
 thousands of them. I knew that the curlew bred 
 on the plains and table-lands, and I had been fol- 
 lowed when on horseback for long distances by 
 dipping and hawking birds because I had come 
 too near their nests; but what Montana and 
 Wyoming bred in curlew could never have ac- 
 counted for the enormous numbers that passed 
 overhead in those few days. Penguins, pelicans, 
 cormorants, divers, ducks, and geese in huge 
 gangs were not unusual things along the shores 
 and waterways of the Pacific; but curlew in thou- 
 sands in Montana, in August, was an entirely 
 new story. 
 
 But nature is always presenting us with sur- 
 prises. And perhaps we are surprised only be- 
 cause we are ignorant. Our knowledge is very 
 fragmentary, and we have done very little toward 
 putting together the fragments. The world has 
 been plagued with theories, and practically all of 
 [235] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 them based on insufficient information. If wc 
 but knew our facts, they would point their own 
 conclusions, and neither theory nor argument 
 would be needed. 
 
 [236] 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 When the snow began to fall and the cold be- 
 came intense we put away the shotguns and got 
 out the rifles. The deer season had arrived and 
 there were many deer in the big woods of Minne- 
 sota and Wisconsin in the early days. But they 
 had been shot at by the Indians and hunted by 
 whites until they were very shy. Instinctively 
 they watched their back track and^ after pawing 
 up a bit of moss or dry grass from under the snow, 
 they would look about in every direction with 
 eyes quick to detect the slightest movement and 
 ears set like receivers to catch the slightest sound. 
 The pack of snow under foot, or the whip of a 
 branch, would start them as though shot at by 
 a machine-gun. It was difficult to outwit them, 
 and the days that went by without so much as 
 seeing the white flag of one were numerous, con- 
 secutive, and continuous. 
 
 Still-hunting was the only method employed. 
 Driving or hunting with dogs had gone out be- 
 fore it was really begun, because the dogs were 
 
 [237 3 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 shot instead of the deer as an expression of no 
 confidence on the part of the settlers. One had 
 to outgeneral the deer unaided and on his native 
 heath. It required great patience and skill to 
 do this. x'\nd there was no place more difficult 
 for still-hunting than the interior of the big woods. 
 Tracking in the snow, aside from getting a direc- 
 tion, was almost impossible because of the multi- 
 tude of tracks crossing and recrossing; and a 
 general direction was often blocked by the trail 
 running into a windfall, where travelling over 
 fallen tree-trunks was again almost impossible. 
 Even shooting in a windfall at a deer hurdling 
 over tree-trunks was a great gamble, with the 
 odds two to one against the gambler. Occasion- 
 ally in the woods a fool-deer would get up lei- 
 surely from a bed and, after stretching himself, 
 would stand and look at the hunter, like a calf in 
 a barn-yard, presenting a broadside shot; but 
 more often you took a chance at a pair of horns 
 going down over the far side of a fallen pine, or 
 a bit of white tail disappearing around a tree- 
 trunk. Your bullet would perhaps knock the 
 bark off the tree-trunk, but the bark on the deer 
 generally remained as firmly set as ever. 
 
 I need not detail the methods employed in 
 [238] 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 still-hunting deer, since a member of the family- 
 has devoted a book* to it. Much of his experi- 
 ence was gained in the Wisconsin woods at just 
 this time. I never cared much about hunting 
 deer in the Wisconsin or Minnesota forests. The 
 woods were always too thick and gloomy. The 
 open and the sunlight have always been my pref- 
 erence — a land where you can see game without 
 interruption of sight Years ago there were 
 plenty of deer in British Columbia, Washington, 
 and Oregon, and I used to start them quite 
 often while fishing the brooks in those countries; 
 but I never hunted them. There are deer still 
 in the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, the 
 Catskills; and only a year ago I found an old 
 doe in woods within twenty-five miles of New 
 York that was too wild to have escaped from 
 a park; but again, I never cared to shoot at any 
 of them. 
 
 In Scotland, in 1894 or thereabouts, I was taken 
 out one morning to see a Caledonian forest and 
 some red deer that were to be hunted therein. 
 The forest turned out to be a hundred-acre patch 
 of scrub pine on a side-hill. The deer were driven 
 out of it by beaters and shot at by gunners stand- 
 
 * The Still'Hunter, by T. S. Van Dyke, New York, 1920, 
 
 [239] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ing on the outside. It was very much like shoot- 
 ing cattle along a country road. I tried to ex- 
 plain my lack of sympathy by saying that as a 
 boy I had known the big forests of the Northwest, 
 where the sunlight and the snow both had diffi- 
 culty in falling to the ground, so dense was the 
 foliage and so great the stand of trees; and that 
 I had known the great herds of buffalo and elk, 
 and could not get excited over a few barnyard 
 deer. But it was useless. I was listed in the nil 
 admirari class. 
 
 The deer of the Continent were also too domes- 
 tic in habits to evoke much enthusiasm on my part. 
 I never went from Berlin to Dresden without see- 
 ing deer in the open fields, picking over turnips 
 or cabbages like long-necked goats, and paying 
 less attention to the train of cars than the horses 
 on the highway. Of course these deer were accus- 
 tomed to being fed during the winter and had 
 become very tame. Shooting them seemed only 
 a poor way of slaughtering them. In the forests 
 of small pine in eastern Germany and in the woods 
 of western Russia the deer were much shyer, and, 
 in company with wild pigs and barnyard grouse, no 
 doubt, at one time afforded imperial families great 
 sport; but the tang of the wild was never theirs. 
 C 240 ] 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 European game, with the exception of the 
 chamois (a delightful animal to watch, not to 
 shoot), has always seemed to me too closely asso- 
 ciated with the gamekeeper's feed-pan. In some 
 of the countries the deer would keep in cover, but 
 they were, nevertheless, rather tame, and in other 
 countries game of any sort was apparently scarce. 
 One day while climbing Monte Cavo, near Rome, 
 a red fox came out of the woods, looked at me 
 for a few moments like a strayed cat, and then 
 turned back into the woods. He had evidently 
 been chased by a hunt-party on the campagna 
 and had got away with a whole hide. That was 
 about as much game as I ever saw in Italy. In 
 Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and the Balkans I 
 never saw anything shootable, except some of 
 the hotel people and a few camels that had been 
 recommended for tourist travel. That does not 
 mean that I looked for game in the streets of 
 Bucharest and Brusa, but it does mean that I 
 could find no traces of game in some of the wild 
 ends of the Near East. Doubtless it was there, 
 but I did not know where or how to look for it. 
 
 I knew my Montana country much better, and 
 in the table-lands. Bad Lands, and scrub-pine 
 regions of that State had no trouble in finding 
 [241] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 deer in numbers. In the buffalo days no one 
 bothered with them, and even elk were not 
 greatly sought after; but as soon as the buffalo 
 were exterminated attention was focussed upon 
 the elk and deer, and their ranks began to thin 
 out. Still, all through the eighties and nineties 
 there were white-tailed deer in the river-bottoms, 
 in the pines, and often on the table-lands about the 
 broken trenches and washouts. In Custer County 
 there were many of these huge trenches or sunken 
 beds that ran across country sometimes for sev- 
 eral miles. No one seemed able to explain them 
 geologically or meteorologically — by fire, water, 
 earthquake, or subsidence. They were great 
 troughs, with precipitous sides that grew bushes 
 and tall grasses of various kinds. The deer, in 
 the early morning before sunrise, would be found 
 browsing on these bushes, and I often stampeded 
 them by riding at a sharp pace along the rim. 
 
 When started the deer generally dropped down 
 into the bed of the washout and bounded over 
 the stones and bushes to get away. By jumping 
 quickly from my horse I got running shots that 
 were exciting because very difficult. The diffi- 
 culty was to score. Shooting down Into a trench 
 meant that nine times out of ten you would over- 
 [242] 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 shoot your mark unless the special precaution of 
 holding low down was taken. And there was 
 some very lively running to be reckoned with. 
 When I hit, I counted myself lucky, but I did not 
 hit often enough to grow conceited over my suc- 
 cess. The rifle on running game was never so 
 deadly as some of the shooters would have had 
 us beHeve. There were feats of shooting that the 
 rifle would not do, and a great many more feats 
 that the man behind the rifle could not do, ex- 
 cept occasionally. He would not generally admit 
 this, but it was nevertheless quite true. 
 
 Probably the easiest deer-shooting in the world 
 was at one time to be had in the Coast Range 
 of Southern California. It was practically open 
 country, though there was enough cover in the 
 chaparral, pinyons, and small oaks to hide deer 
 from the most observing of still-hunters. The 
 mule-deer, with something of the mountain-sheep 
 about him, always loved this half-open country 
 with its park-like spaces, and at one time would 
 lie under the shade of the live oak in the heat of 
 the day almost like a cow in an Eastern meadow. 
 But if you looked for him there, with a rifle in 
 hand, you would never find him. He was always 
 somewhere else at your psychological moment. 
 [243} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 I never saw any of the family lying down in 
 these green pastures, and am merely telling the 
 tale of my Still-Hunter brother, whose experience 
 with deer in Southern California has been vastly 
 greater than mine. In fact, he knew Southern 
 California at one time so intimately that I think 
 he had every mule-deer marked down on his par- 
 ticular stamping-ground and knew just where to 
 find him when he wanted him. By way of con- 
 firmation I repeat his story of one year shooting 
 at a mule-deer's head in the chaparral, seeing the 
 deer shake his ears violently, and then bound away. 
 The next year, in the same chaparral, he shot and 
 killed the same deer, and found that his bullet 
 of the year before had gone through the flaps of 
 both the deer's ears and left small, round ear-holes. 
 
 Putting holes in deer, either through their ears 
 or elsewhere, never added much to my joy of 
 living. The very few I killed were more embar- 
 rassing to me dead than alive. I did not know 
 what to do with the carcasses. When in the desert 
 I made many strips of dried "jerky," but they 
 weighed like lead, and I was glad to give them 
 away to Mexicans and Indians. So I finally re- 
 frained from shooting, hunted without a gun, 
 and was just as much pleased when I corralled a 
 [244]; 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 deer in a bowl in the hills as though I had shot 
 him. 
 
 It is always amusing to watch an animal that 
 is unconscious of being watched, though it may 
 be unfair to the animal. And deer are always so 
 graceful. They browse leisurely, reach up high 
 by standing on their hind legs, rub their side or 
 back against a tree-trunk, and then look all 
 around for possible danger. They are always on 
 the alert, with eyes straining for the slightest 
 movement and nostrils twitching for any strange 
 scent upon the breeze. Raise your head above 
 the rock where you are hiding so much as a few 
 inches and your deer springs as though shot at, 
 strikes the ground with all four feet, bounds like 
 a rubber ball, and keeps bounding until out of 
 sight. 
 
 The fawns seem to be rubber-shod at birth, 
 and bound like the old ones without perhaps 
 knowing why or how. It is astonishing that they 
 can keep up with the mother, running by her side 
 but never running into her, and running through 
 chaparral, over loose rock, down canyons, up 
 mountainsides, apparently without effort, but 
 oh ! so fast ! The whole family, big and little, 
 will rush across a talus of broken stone, contain- 
 [245} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 ing rocks as large as a water-bucket, without so 
 much as wrenching a dew-claw or scraping the 
 hair from a fetlock. And when it is necessary 
 to take a high jump, how prettily and easily they 
 all rise to it ! Grace seems a quality of all the 
 deer family. Even the dwarf Sonora deer runs 
 and jumps in miniature like the larger mule- 
 deer. But not so with elk and moose. The ac- 
 tion is much heavier and often plunging and 
 clumsy. 
 
 Shooting elk always seemed something that 
 called for apology. They are now very scarce, 
 probably because they were never very quick- 
 witted and lent themselves to being shot with 
 great readiness. In Montana one day a band of 
 eighteen filed in front of me, as might a bunch 
 of range cattle on the way to water. They came 
 my way for no reason that I could divine, and 
 were so close that with my thirty-thirty rifle 
 I could have shot two or three of them before 
 they could have got out of the way; but I never 
 so much as looked through the sights at them. 
 Years ago in the Yellowstone Park they were so 
 tame that they hung around the tents of the 
 campers and were fed out of hand. Now the 
 remnants of that park band drift south each 
 [246} 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 winter into Jackson's Hole, where the poachers 
 find them. The elk in the open is scheduled for 
 a disappearance. He is not fitted to survive ex- 
 cept in a zoological garden. There he seems to 
 flourish. 
 
 The antelope has practically vanished. What 
 a pity! In the eighties he was the life of the 
 plains and the table-lands — the most graceful 
 evanescent creature imaginable. But he always 
 had an inordinate curiosity and could not resist 
 looking and looking. One day, in turning the 
 corner of a butte, in a rattle-and-bang cross- 
 country wagon, I came up with three antelope 
 that stood and looked at the horses and wagon, 
 and heard my companion and myself talk, with 
 the utmost composure. They were at attention, 
 motionless, head up and eyes bulging, not fifty 
 yards away. They did not move when I jumped 
 out of the wagon, went to the back of it, and got 
 out a rifle. I fired over their heads, and with that 
 they took to flight. When they got started, they 
 went like the wind for half a mile without stop- 
 ping or looking back. Then, having attained a 
 height on a side-hill, they bunched up together, 
 faced about, and stood motionless looking at us 
 for ten minutes. I fired another shot to the left 
 [247] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 of them, but they did not move at the sight of 
 the smoke. The chug of the bullet in the ground 
 twenty feet from them started them into a run 
 and they disappeared over the ridge. 
 
 In an earlier year, in Custer County, Montana, 
 when antelope were more plentiful, I remember 
 shooting several and being greatly impressed 
 with their strength and endurance. Unfortu- 
 nately, I broke the foreleg of a young buck one 
 day, but he went off with the rest of the band 
 almost as rapidly as his companions. They all 
 went along easily with legs that seemed somehow 
 to open and shut like the springy blades of a pen- 
 knife. At another time I shot an antelope from 
 the side of a butte, he being somewhat below me 
 on level ground and running rapidly at broadside 
 to me. When I shot I distinctly heard the bullet 
 strike the animal with a little thud. Instantly 
 the run changed to a trot, which was kept up for 
 a hundred yards with all the beauty and swift- 
 ness of the world's greatest trotting-horse. Then 
 the antelope sprang high in air and fell dead. I 
 was at that time experimenting with expansive 
 bullets that spread like a mushroom when they 
 hit an animal, and much to my surprise I found 
 that my trotting antelope had not only been shot 
 [248] 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 through the heart but that his heart had been 
 torn literally to pieces by the expansive bullet. 
 The shock of such a wound might be relied upon 
 to produce immediate collapse, but the antelope 
 lived several minutes after, and trotted his hun- 
 dred yards before giving in. 
 
 In the summer months there were fawns of 
 different ages and sizes with every small band, but 
 I never could find a fawn so young that it could 
 not keep up with the band in running. They 
 ran close together, like horses on a race-track, 
 and when they stopped they would bunch up, 
 stand still, and look, with the little fawns in the 
 centre and the bucks on the outside. In the In- 
 dian days when buffalo were stampeded the old 
 bulls always ran on the outside and the cows 
 and calves on the inside; but I never noticed 
 this order of flight with antelope. The bucks, 
 however, like the rams of the mountain-sheep, 
 were always on the alert and ready to protect 
 their progeny and their mates. At night they 
 formed a ring against gray wolves and coyotes, 
 very much as did the buffalo, and with their prong 
 horns and sharp hoofs could make a good fight. 
 But in the long run the wolves got many of 
 them. 
 
 [249} 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 In the Montana country I occasionally found 
 antelope down near the creeks or beside water- 
 holes, but I never saw one of them drinking, and 
 I doubt very much if they ever really drank any 
 water. There was enough green grass and pulpy 
 cactus to furnish moisture for them, and probably 
 they subsisted on such foods, spurning the water 
 that the white-tailed deer found so necessary. 
 Down in the desert regions of lower Arizona and 
 Sonora, where there were a few small bands of an- 
 telope twenty-five years ago, the water conditions 
 were still more stringent. I found antelope in 
 places where there were no water-holes what- 
 ever; but the ordinary lobed cactus and the cholla 
 were growing on the slopes and mesas. Mule- 
 deer and desert cattle eat these cacti and swallow 
 even the spines, as the contents of their stomachs 
 have often revealed; and I fancy the desert ante- 
 lope did likewise. It is an odd thing that camp- 
 ing for a week or ten days at a time by a water- 
 hole in the desert — the only one perhaps within 
 many miles — never revealed to me animals com- 
 ing in at evening to drink, as pictured in African 
 big-game stories. The desert animals in our Amer- 
 ican deserts rather ignore the water-holes, giving 
 them over to quail and flocks of mourning-doves. 
 [250] 
 
THE DEER FAMILY 
 
 The few desert antelope that I saw in western 
 Sonora were fat enough but rather dusty and 
 arid-looking, save for their white rumps. They 
 seemed to like the flat valleys, and when near 
 dry lake-beds they were often much mixed up in 
 the mirage, took on long stilted legs, and had a 
 spectral appearance. I never saw the antelope 
 at the north do any marked flashing with the 
 white erectile hairs of their rumps, but down in 
 the deserts the antelope would turn and flash 
 in the sunlght very often, especially in the early 
 morning when the sun was just over the horizon. 
 What this "flashing" signified I was not able to 
 guess, but it certainly was not a confirmation 
 of any protective-coloring theory. On the con- 
 trary, I frequently got my first intimation of the 
 antelope's presence by seeing these flashes of 
 light. 
 
 The small bands and meagre numbers of the 
 desert antelope (they probably do not exist at 
 the present time) tell the rather pitiful tale of 
 the hunted being driven from the grass-lands, the 
 lable-lands, the uplands, down into the far ends 
 of the desert, seeking escape from the soft-nosed 
 bullet. There is a similar story to be told regard- 
 ing the mountain-sheep and the white goat. They 
 [251] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 have receded into the snow-line— melted away 
 from the meadows like the snow itself. Now 
 you find them only in the inaccessible spots. 
 
 In the eighties, in riding the northern buffalo 
 range, occasionally, in a deep-set swale or a pot- 
 hole in the hills, I stumbled upon some lone 
 buffalo-bull, hiding by day from hunters and by 
 night fighting off gray wolves, the last of his 
 herd, surviving by prodigious strength, and de- 
 termined to live on, though alone. They were 
 always pitiful creatures, with wild staring eyes like 
 those of the cattle being driven into the slaughter- 
 pens at Chicago. They could fight off all natural 
 enemies and increase their numbers,* but they 
 could not stand up against the skin-hunter and 
 his rifle. 
 
 The rifle, the axe, the plough, and fire — the 
 four riders of the modern apocalypse ! Some 
 good has come from them, but has there not also 
 been some hell following in their wake ? 
 
 * I have written about the great buffalo herds in The Mountain, 
 and need not repeat the tale here. 
 
 [252] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 The deer, the antelope, and the sheep have 
 had their numbers reduced, not alone by soft- 
 nosed bullets, but by coyotes, wolves, and cou- 
 gars. In the ancient days the gray wolves hung 
 on the flank of a buffalo herd as remorselessly 
 as the bluefish on the edge of a school of herring. 
 They were always pulling down the young, the 
 sick, and the crippled as opportunity offered. 
 When the buffalo passed out, wolf energy was 
 concentrated on the elk, antelope, and deer. To- 
 day, with all wild game scarce and the wolf-pack 
 greatly reduced in numbers, the lone outlier prowls 
 about the diminished cattle-ranges and picks up 
 what he can get. 
 
 Originally he was not a sneaker but a chaser. 
 He ran his game and caught it on the run. More- 
 over, he ran with the pack, and when one gave 
 out in a chase, another took his place in a relay 
 that could overtake the fleetest and the strongest 
 deer or antelope. This may seem an odd thought, 
 because the wolf never was a swift runner, being 
 [253] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 too short of leg and long of body; but he made 
 up by endurance and possessed a terrible tenacity. 
 He hung on and drove through and wore out by 
 the long run. 
 
 Being now quite alone in the world, the wolf 
 varies his tactics and occasionally resorts to the 
 strategy of stalking. In this way he comes near 
 his quarry and then makes a sudden dash upon 
 it. Possibly he has been taught something of 
 this by his admirers, the coyotes, with whom he 
 frequently consorts, or rather by whom he is fol- 
 lowed. The pelican is usually accompanied in 
 his flights and plunges by a gull that swoops at 
 every fish the pelican catches. This is the estate 
 of the wolf. The coyote hunts with him or be- 
 hind him, and comes in for any of the carcass 
 left over. He has a better nose and ear than the 
 wolf, travels faster, and is much keener in hunt- 
 ing up food supplies. He also helps the wolf by 
 locating danger. The wolf is very strong, reason- 
 ably brave, has a formidable jaw and teeth, and 
 makes a savage attack, but he does not like dan- 
 ger and will run rather than fight. Therein the 
 coyote is in hearty accord with him, only the co- 
 yote will run sooner and faster than the wolf. 
 
 In the early cattle days in Montana and Wyo- 
 [254] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 ming, I saw much of the old gray wolf. The herds 
 of cattle made better picking than the herds of 
 buffalo, because less well-guarded. Always with 
 the buffalo the bulls were on the lookout, and 
 at night the small herds were formed in a ring, 
 around the outside of which the bulls patrolled. 
 The wolves never broke through those circles. 
 The heads and horns of the bulls were not to be 
 trifled with by any wolf, no matter what his age 
 and strength. The buffalo-rings in the prairie 
 soil, made by the milling bulls, were to be seen 
 everywhere up to the coming of the plough. They 
 looked a little like depressed circus-rings. With 
 cattle there were never any such organized de- 
 fenses — the cows and calves straggling in small 
 bands, and the bulls fighting only when danger 
 was thrust under their noses. The result was 
 that the gray wolf and the coyote waxed fat on 
 the weak and the young. 
 
 Just how they manoeuvred I one day had an 
 opportunity of witnessing. It was very early in 
 the morning and I was sneaking up to the top of 
 a divide, rifle in hand, with the idea of perhaps 
 catching a deer off guard in the swale below. As 
 I looked carefully over the top, instead of a deer, 
 I saw a cow with a week-old calf beset by two 
 [255] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 wolves. One of them was snapping at the cow's 
 head and keeping her busy lunging at him, while 
 the other was dashing at the calf to stampede it 
 from the mother's side. It seemed a planned at- 
 tack, and was successful; for as I watched it the 
 second wolf got a snapping bite at the calf's hind 
 quarters and so frightened it that it set off, with 
 a bawl, across the prairie. That was exactly 
 what the second wolf wanted. He took after it 
 and bowled it clean over by jumping against it. 
 Perhaps his jump was not wholly spontaneous or 
 premeditated, for just before he sprang I shot at 
 him. The bullet burned a ridge through the hair 
 on his back and probably at the same time lent 
 some erratic energy to his spring against the calf. 
 At any rate, he quickly recognized that the 
 pursuer was being pursued and started off on a 
 swift run. My second bullet caught him in the 
 rear and drove clear through him, coming out at 
 his shoulder. He wilted in his tracks. The first 
 wolf made a complete getaway, with my bullets 
 doing no more harm than ripping up the ground 
 about him. I went down to inspect the bawling 
 calf (it was apparently unhurt), but, of course, 
 the fool-cow, with characteristic lack of discrimi- 
 nation, came at me, and drove me off the premises. 
 [256] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 The wolves, with the cattle-rustlers and the 
 hard winters, had much to do with breaking up 
 the large herds that grazed on the bufFalo-ranges 
 in the early eighties. The toll of the wolves in 
 calves alone produced great losses. Later on, 
 when a State bounty was put on their heads, wolf- 
 hunting became a border industry, with the re- 
 sult of perceptibly diminishing the band. Guns 
 and traps proved very effective. As the breed 
 grew less, the survivors grew more wary. The 
 wolf is not naturally very cunning, but he, never- 
 theless, knows a hawk from a hernshaw when the 
 wind is east. He soon learned to keep out of a 
 trap and to decline poisoned meat. Anything 
 that had been handled by a man he would 
 walk warily around and sniff at contemptuously. 
 Poison inserted with the end of a stick would 
 sometimes deceive him, but he shied at finger- 
 prints, and could smell out the human taint on 
 a trap days after it had been set for him. 
 
 I dare say the cats have just as keen noses as 
 the dog or wolf family, but they seem to make less 
 use of them. A wildcat or a lynx is more easily 
 inveigled into a steel trap than a wolf. The 
 wolves, moreover, have a way of gnawing off a 
 leg caught in a trap, but I never heard of a cat 
 [ 257 ] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 or a lynx doing anything so heroic. It will break 
 its teeth biting on the steel, but it has not the 
 necessary fortitude to bite into itself. The sense 
 it makes most use of is that of sight. The cat's 
 eye is large, very sensitive to light, and very ac- 
 curate in its impression. Every one who has 
 watched the ordinary house-cat sneaking on a 
 bird or a squirrel knows how it will thrill and 
 twitch at every slight movement of the prey. 
 The wildcat is simply an enhancement of this. 
 
 Having to hunt for a livelihood, the wildcat 
 has keener eyes, sharper teeth and claws, stronger 
 muscles, quicker movements than the domestic 
 animal. As a staking machine it is a great suc- 
 cess and the prey usually fares badly; but when 
 it is hunted, the cat is neither very cunning nor 
 very wary. Nor has it nine lives. My experi- 
 ence goes no further than the shooting (and quick 
 killing) of two cats, but the experience of my 
 Still-Hunter brother goes a little fr.rther. It seems 
 that, while in Southern California one winter 
 and carrying out some experiments with explosive 
 bullets, he came upon a wildcat sunning herself 
 upon a huge flat rock, with three kittens playing 
 around her. He shot at the old one, hit her in 
 the neck, and the fragments of the explosive bullet 
 [258] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 killed all three of the kittens. Four cats with 
 one rifle-ball ! At least that is the story as it 
 came to me. 
 
 The lynx is a sort of enlarged cubist cat in 
 the sense that its lines are more angular, its 
 paws squarer, its head and body more block- 
 like than those of the wildcat. It looks formi- 
 dable and is so to rabbits, squirrels, prairie-dogs, 
 and birds; but it moves away from man at a 
 hand-gallop with the first warning. I shot one 
 specimen near Castle Creek, Arizona, as he was 
 leisurely walking about a pot-hole in the rock 
 and surveying the gray-green water contained 
 therein. He did not act as though he wanted 
 water to drink, and as a matter of fact the desert 
 lynx never laps anything but blood; but he was 
 surveying the water-hole, perhaps, with the idea 
 that some frog or bird thereabouts might prove 
 edible. When the bullet broke through his ribs, 
 he gave a great bound into the air and fell on his 
 back, dying with only a few kickings of the hind 
 legs. He was the largest specimen I ever saw, and 
 must have weighed some thirty pounds. Hung 
 up by the heels on a tree, his square head and 
 heavy paws reached down to an extraordinary 
 length. His teeth indicated that he was very old, 
 [259] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 but how many years he had put in killing quail 
 and rabbits I could not determine. 
 
 The largest member of the cat family in 
 America is the puma or mountain-lion or cougar, 
 which is still found almost everywhere in the 
 Rocky Mountain regions. He is a true cat (and 
 a real panther), having all the habits of a cat and 
 leading a cat existence. He is a terror to almost 
 all game, though he will not attack humanity un- 
 less driven into a corner. He can fight savagely 
 enough and, as he weighs nearly two hundred 
 pounds and has claws and teeth of steel with 
 muscles of whip-cord, he is not to be considered 
 lightly. His teeth will go through the skull of a 
 bloodhound without preface or apology, and his 
 claws will rip the ear off of a deer as though it 
 were made of brown paper. Horses and cattle 
 hold the mountain-lion in deadly fear, and all the 
 sheep, goats, and deer are in constant terror of 
 him. 
 
 The last one I saw was in the Cheetah Moun- 
 tains of Montana. I was riding without a gun 
 and he was prowling in some open pinyon timber. 
 When he saw me he flattened on the ground pre- 
 cisely like a house-cat when detected hunting in 
 a meadow, but as I came nearer he started to 
 [260] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 run for a small pine — just like a house-cat again. 
 My horse saw him and was terror-stricken at 
 once, so I could not get very near him. The lion 
 got up into the branches of the pine and there 
 glared at me with half-opened mouth and flat- 
 tened ears. He seemed nettled by the snortings 
 of my horse and swung his tail from side to side, 
 once more like a house-cat. But the horse be- 
 haved so badly that I had to ride away before I 
 had finished making observations. 
 
 The cry of the mountain-lion is difficult to de- 
 scribe, but one recognizes it quickly enough when 
 he hears it. It is sometimes the scream but more 
 often the yowl of an enormous cat. Heard in 
 the night it is perturbing, notwithstanding your 
 knowledge that the lion never attacks man. You 
 know that, but does the lion know it ? He might 
 forget. At least, you are a little uncomfortable 
 about it. Your dog growls over it, but he makes 
 no move to chase up the cry in the dark. He, 
 too, is a bit nervous. Both you and the dog are 
 aware that at night he has the advantage with his 
 cat's eye. It is almost like the eye of an owl for 
 seeing in the dark. You perhaps stir up the camp- 
 fire hoping to locate its reflection in the eyes of 
 the enemy, but the enemy is not so fooHsh as to 
 [261] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 give you such a shot at him. He yowls and moves 
 on, knowing very well that you cannot follow in 
 the night. 
 
 The round eyes of a panther, seen by the light 
 of a camp-fire in the forest, have appeared in 
 more than one book of adventure; but I never 
 remember reading anything about the pig eyes 
 of a bear peering through the underbrush. Yet 
 the bear prowls by night and often comes into 
 camp — something the panther never ventures 
 upon. Since the days of the national parks the 
 bear has even become a common nuisance, and 
 no one now dares leave camp without everything 
 edible being dulyr^^i^^^, for fear the bears, coyotes, 
 ground-squirrels, and blue jays will loot the prem- 
 ises. The common black bear has a great pen- 
 chant for bacon, and the first thing he snuffs out 
 in a camp is the bacon-box. And in opening the 
 box, or any other receptacle, his paws are al- 
 most as cunning as human hands. In fact, the 
 ordinary black bear, next to the monkey, has 
 more facility in manipulating provender than any 
 animal in the kingdom. After watching one in 
 the Yellowstone Park strip the meat from a ham- 
 bone I came to the conclusion that his tooth and 
 claw were equal to any hand and knife. It was 
 an expert performance. 
 
 [262] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 In the Minnesota days a cub-bear came to us 
 one year as a present from Indian friends. The 
 bear was not half-grown, having been run down 
 and lassoed when its mother was shot. It grew 
 up with the dogs, was adopted by the pack, ate 
 with them, slept with them, played with them. 
 Its chief love among the dogs was a small black- 
 and-tan terrier which it dragged around the lawns 
 by the scruff of the neck, much to the terrier's de- 
 light, though he howled over it and pretended to 
 be having a bad time. The terrier was not big 
 enough to retaliate in kind by dragging the bear, 
 but, after being mauled for half an hour, he would 
 run up on the back porch of the house and catch 
 a cat by the back of the neck and drag it down the 
 steps and half-way around the house before the 
 cat could put in an effectual resistance. It was 
 so plainly a case of taking it out on the cat that 
 even the bear watched the performance with a 
 half-grin around his mouth. 
 
 In winter all the dogs and the bear slept to- 
 gether in a huge box banked over with snow and 
 entered by a swinging door. It was an amusing 
 sight, when the evening was cold, to see the whole 
 band shivering in a circle in the snow, waiting 
 for the bear to go into the box first. As soon as 
 he went in the pointer, setter, spaniel, and terrier 
 [ 263 ] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 all made a rush in his rear and pushed him up 
 against the cold side of the box, the terrier en- 
 sconcing himself between the bear's legs and the 
 others crowding up against him as closely as pos- 
 sible. The bear never seemed to resent being 
 made a weather-shield and back-warmer, even 
 when he became full-grown. He was always 
 good-natured except when it came to a matter 
 of food. Occasionally the dogs would try to 
 steal his allowance of provender, and then a fore- 
 paw would shoot out and cuff a dog's ear in a 
 way that caused howling. Unfortunately, his 
 temper did not improve with age as did his ap- 
 petite. He had a way of breaking into the corn- 
 cribs on moonlight nights by tearing off the board 
 strips. There he would paw over many bushels 
 of corn, eat as much as he could, and go to sleep 
 on what was left. Finally, he cuffed and bit the 
 dogs so much that we had to give him back to 
 the Indians. 
 
 The black bear is found almost everywhere 
 west of the Mississippi, and I have seen and 
 watched them often enough, but never had an 
 inclination to shoot at one of them. They were 
 too playful, too good-natured, too intelligent ! 
 And to what purpose the shooting ? Bear-meat 
 [ 264 ] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 is about the rankest and greasiest food imagi- 
 nable, and in the summer the hide is next to worth- 
 less. I have always preferred them living in the 
 woods to dead and spread upon a drawing-room 
 floor. They be ong in the woods, are a part of 
 it, fit into it perfectly, and add to it immensely — 
 that is, if you are fortunate enough to see them 
 there, off guard and playing. 
 
 One day, in the Fraser River country, I was 
 lying on a high flat rock eating my luncheon after 
 a morning's fishing, when down to the stream, 
 within thirty yards of me, came a black bear, 
 quite unconscious of my existence. He looked 
 about, walked up and down the shore-line, put 
 his paw in the water and then licked the water 
 off his paw. Presently he walked out on a tree- 
 trunk lying in the stream, lay down on the trunk, 
 and paddled in the water with both paws. Then 
 he went back to the shore-line, waded along the 
 brook, overturned with his paws huge boulders 
 in the water, and snuffed at the shells on the bot- 
 tom of them. Not satisfied with his water ex- 
 ploration, he began turning over boulders on the 
 shore. Something darted away from under one 
 boulder — what it was I could not see — but I was 
 amazed at the swiftness v/ith which the bear 
 [265] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 rushed and struck at it. Evidently it eluded him 
 and got into the water, for he gave up the stone- 
 rolling and began patrolling the shore. Just then 
 some scent from me must have come to him, for 
 he jumped quickly and dashed into the wood at 
 a stiff gallop. 
 
 No sign or footprint of a grizzly ever came to 
 me in the Fraser River country, though the Co- 
 lumbian Rockies and foot-hills thereabouts are 
 haunts of the silver-tip. Mexicans and Cali- 
 fornians insist that the silver-tip is not a grizzly, 
 and that the only Simon-pure grizzly lives (or 
 once lived) in the lower Coast Range on the edge 
 of the deserts. Doubtless the silver-tip is of the 
 grizzly family, though not so ferocious as the one- 
 time Southern bear. Many of them that hang 
 about the hotel garbage-heaps in the national 
 parks have become quite tame. Also they have 
 grown quite fat, heavy, and clumsy. They are 
 agile enough when they have to pick a living in 
 the open. And many of those in the Big Horn 
 Mountains are huge enough in size to give the 
 hunter a shock at first sight. The mere flattened- 
 down print of a silver-tip's paw in the dust has 
 been known to excite nervousness in the beholder. 
 But they are no more to be feared than the black 
 [266] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 bear. They will not fight unless at bay and com- 
 pelled to defend themselves. 
 
 In this respect they are somewhat different 
 from the Sonora or Southern California grizzly 
 — perhaps at one time the most dangerous beast 
 on the western continent. He no longer exists, 
 except in story. The stories are probably not 
 exaggerated. They are all founded on his great 
 strength and swiftness. On the Sonora ranches 
 I have heard from Yaki Indians that same tale, 
 told fifty years ago in Southern California, of the 
 grizzly in old Spanish days — how they caught old 
 Ephraim in a trap and how, at the grand fiesta 
 of the Corpus Christi, they tied him up heel and 
 heel with the wildest bull in the country and 
 then turned both of them loose. The stories all 
 agreed that the grizzly instantly clapped one 
 paw over the bulFs nose and with a quick wrench 
 twisted and broke his neck before ever the bull 
 could get his head down. 
 
 There is no doubt about the grizzly's ability 
 to do that very thing. A blow of his paw has 
 been known to crush a man's skull like so much 
 egg-shell. No animal could cope with him. And 
 yet his strength was sometimes his weakness. 
 Many years ago, after a cloudburst in the San 
 [267] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 Bernardino Mountains, one of the swollen canyon 
 rivers brought down a huge grizzly that had evi- 
 dently presumed on his strength in swimming 
 the stream, and had been swept off his feet and 
 drowned in the torrent. He weighed a thousand 
 pounds — so the tale ran. All grizzlies in story 
 weigh at least a thousand pounds. 
 
 I never saw but one on his native heath, and 
 he looked to me as though he might weigh two 
 or three tons — long tons at that. He was the 
 biggest beast I ever saw. I was moving through 
 some chaparral in the desert mountains, follow- 
 ing a dim, half-broken deer trail, watching the 
 ground for hoof-marks, seeing the paws of wolves 
 over the tracks of the deer, wondering what those 
 foolish wolves were thinking about in following 
 so close upon the trail when the deer were always 
 watching their back track. Presently, in look- 
 ing up, I saw, not fifty yards away, an enormous 
 grizzly standing on his hind legs and pawing down 
 the little apples from a manzanita. I was well- 
 equipped with a thirty-thirty rifle that I could 
 depend upon, and I instantly brought it to my 
 shoulder. 
 
 I saw the butt of the bear's ear through the 
 sights — can see it yet. But just then a puff of 
 [268] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 wind came in my face. The wind was blowing 
 from him to me. He did not smell me. Neither 
 did he see me or hear me. I was high up in the 
 mountains, far removed from any human habita- 
 tion, and I had no need for either bear-meat or 
 bear-hide. It occurred to me very vividly, and 
 with astonishing mental rapidity, that if I did 
 not get into his ear and brain with the first shot, 
 he would have my hide. I knew a shot through 
 the heart would not stop him at once, not for 
 ten minutes, and in that time he could tear me 
 into small strips. The chaparral was dense. He 
 could smash through it and I could not. I would 
 be caught like a fly in a web. I lowered my rifle, 
 backed out as noiselessly as I came, and left 
 Ephraim to his idols — the manzanitas. I never 
 regretted my discretion, and never told about 
 seeing the bear. I hope he lived many years and 
 was in death a credit to the grizzly family. 
 
 The grizzly was always secure in the mountain 
 chaparral. No man or dog dared follow him into 
 that dry-stick thicket. Hunger alone brought 
 him out, and through hunger he fell a victim to 
 poison and soft-nosed bullets, until now his kind 
 has ceased to exist. Occasionally one still sees 
 his hide stretched upon a floor and hears, of winter 
 [269] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 nights, the embroidered tales of his ferocity, swift- 
 ness, and strength; and of the great fight he gave 
 his conqueror. But is there no other tale than 
 that to be told of him and of his kind ? Might 
 it not be said in passing that all life in the open 
 endures without flinching, and that in the end 
 it dies in silence ? What soft-nosed bullet ever 
 got a groan out of a grizzly, or a whimper out of 
 a wolf ? What desert beast or bird or insect makes 
 a cry when brought face to face with death ? 
 
 By way of contrast it must have been observed 
 that domestic animals can usually give tongue 
 with the first approach of danger. A dog howls 
 even before being hit, cattle and sheep bawl with 
 fear; and even a horse, when badly frightened, 
 will scream. As for man, the mighty destroyer, 
 when danger or pain comes his way he can give 
 forth a cry that is blood-curdling — the most ter- 
 ror-stricken cry of any animal in the kingdom. 
 The cry of the human becomes more intense, 
 more fear-laden, more soul-piercing, as you come 
 nearer to the higher and more refined strata of 
 civilization. The Indian in warfare, in torture, 
 in death, makes no sound; his lips are sealed and 
 his face is immobile. Mere animal endurance, 
 you will say. But would not humanity be the 
 [270] 
 
WOLVES AND BEARS 
 
 better if it should emulate the Indian in silent 
 acceptance of the inevitable ? Was there ever 
 any hope or help in the cry ? 
 
 How does it happen that the life of the open 
 accepts the order of nature so unprotestingly and 
 goes its way to death without a sound, while the 
 life of the city shudders and screams at the bare 
 prospect ? Is not each, in measure, the product 
 of its environment, and has not each been partly 
 fashioned by its surroundings ? Had man always 
 lived in the open and maintained a healthy 
 animalism, he would perhaps have been better 
 advised. He was born and equipped as an ex- 
 cellent animal, but he sold his birthright for a 
 mess of pottage called culture and took on fear 
 and a whimper as a part of the bargain. 
 
 Will he always be able to live up to his bargain, 
 holding himself above and superior to nature ? 
 Culture is something that requires teaching anew 
 to each generation. Nature will not perpetuate 
 it by inheritance. On the contrary, animalism 
 is her initial endowment; it has been born and 
 bred in the bone since the world began. Man 
 cannot escape it if he would. Will not Nature 
 in her own time and way bring man back to the 
 earth ? And will not the race eventually be the 
 [271] 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 
 
 better for a regeneration in the open, in the free 
 air, under the blue sky? 
 
 Antaeus was a son of Poseidon, a mighty wres- 
 tler whose strength was invincible so long as he 
 remained in contact with his mother Earth. Hera- 
 cles, discovering the secret of his strength, lifted 
 him from the ground and crushed him in the air. 
 
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