Everything in the wagon was afloat. A leather case with a forty dollar fishing rod stowed snugly inside slipped quietly off down stream. I rescued my camera from the same fate just in time. Overshoes, wraps, field gla.s.ses, guns, were suddenly endowed with motion. Another moment and we should surely have sunk, when the horses, by a supreme effort, managed to scramble on to the bank, but were too exhausted to draw more than half of the wagon after them, so that it was practically on end in the water, our outfit submerged, of course, and ourselves reclining as gracefully as possible on the backs of the seats.
Had anything given away then, there might have been a tragedy. The two men immediately fastened a rope to the tongue of the wagon, and each winding an end around the pommel of his saddle, set his cow pony pulling. Our horses made another effort, and up we came out of the water, wet, storm tossed, but calm. Oh, yes--calm! After that, earth had no terrors for me; the worst road that we could b.u.mp over was but an incident. I was not surprised that it grew dark very soon, and that we blundered on and on for hours in the night until the near wheeler just lay down in the dirt, a dark spot in the dark road, and our driver, after coming back from a tour of inspection on foot, looked worried. I mildly asked if we would soon cross Snake River, but his reply was an admission that he was lost. There was nothing visible but the twinkling stars and a dim outline of the grim Tetons. The prospect was excellent for pa.s.sing the rest of the night where we were, famished, freezing, and so tired I could hardly speak.
But Nimrod now took command. His first duty, of course, being a man, was to express his opinion of the driver in terms plain and comprehensive; then he loaded his rifle and fired a shot. If there were any mountaineers around, they would understand the signal and answer.
We waited. All was silent as before. Two more horses dropped to the ground. Then he sent another loud report into the darkness. In a few moments we thought we heard a distant shout, then the report of a gun not far away.
Nimrod mounted the only standing horse and went in the direction of the sound. Then followed an interminable silence. I hallooed, but got no answer. The wildest fears for Nimrod"s safety tormented me. He had fallen into a gully, the horse had thrown him, _he_ was lost.
Then I heard a noise and listened eagerly. The driver said it was a coyote howling up on the mountain. At last voices did come to me from out of the blackness, and Nimrod returned with a man and a fresh horse. The man was no other than the owner of the house for which we were searching, and in ten minutes I was drying myself by his fireplace, while his hastily aroused wife was preparing a midnight supper for us.
To this day, I am sure that driver"s worst nightmare is when he lives over again the time when he took a tenderfoot and his wife into Jackson"s Hole, and, but for the tenderfoot, would have made them stay out overnight, wet, famished, frozen, within a stone"s throw of the very house for which they were looking.
IV.
WHICH TREATS OF THE IMPS AND MY ELK.
"If you want to see elk, you just follow up the road till you strike a trail on the left, up over that hog"s back, and that will bring you in a mile or so on to a gra.s.sy flat, and in two or three miles more you come to a lake back in the mountains."
Mrs. c.u.mmings, the speaker, was no ordinary woman of Western make. She had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She had been "forelady in a corset factory," when matrimony had enticed her away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed, and fed the calves, was that some day she would go "back East." And this in spite of the fact that for those parts she was very comfortable.
Her log house was the largest in the country, barring Captain Jones"s, her nearest neighbour, ten miles up at Jackson"s Lake, and his was a hotel. Hers could boast of six rooms and two clothes" closets. The ceilings were white muslin to shut off the rafters, the sitting room had wall-paper and a rag carpet, and in one corner was the post-office.
The United States Government Post-office of Deer, Wyoming, took up two compartments of Mrs. c.u.mmings" writing desk, and she was called upon to be postmistress fifteen minutes twice a week, when the small boy, mounted on a tough little pony, happened around with the leather bag which carried the mail to and from Jackson, thirty miles below.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE WAS POSTMISTRESS TWICE A WEEK.]
"I"d like some elk meat mighty well for dinner," Mrs. c.u.mmings continued, as she leaned against the kitchen door and watched us mount our newly acquired horses, "but you won"t find game around here without a guide--Easterners never do."
Nimrod and I started off in joyous mood. The secret of it, the fascination of the wild life, was revealed to me. At last I understood why the birds sing. The glorious exhilaration of the mountains, the feeling that life is a rosy dream, and that all the worry and the fever and the fret of man"s making is a mere illusion that has faded away into the past, and is not worth while; that the real life is to be free, to fly over the gra.s.sy mountain meadow with never a limitation of fence or house, with the eternal peaks towering around you, terrible in their grandeur and vastness, yet inviting.
We struck the trail all right, we thought, but it soon disappeared and we had to govern our course by imagination, an uncertain guide at best. We got into dreadful tangles of timber; the country was all strange, and the trees spread over the mountain for miles, so that it was like trying to find the way under a blanket; but we kept on riding our horses over fallen logs and squeezing them between trees, all the time keeping a sharp watch over them, for they were fresh and scary.
Finally, after three hours" hard climbing, we emerged from the forest on to a great bare shoulder of the mountain, from which the whole country around, vast and beautiful, could be seen. We took bearings and tried to locate that lake, and we finally decided that a wooded basin three miles away looked likely to contain it.
In order to get to it, we had to cross a wooded ravine, very steep and torn out by a recent cloudburst. We rode the horses down places that I shudder in remembering, and I had great trouble in keeping away from the front feet of my horse as I led him, especially when there were little gullies that had to be jumped.
It was exciting enough, and hard work, too, every nerve on a tingle and one"s heart thumping with the unwonted exercise at that alt.i.tude; but oh, the glorious air, the joy of life and motion that was quite unknown to my reception and theatre-going self in the dim far away East!
We searched for that lake all day, and at nightfall went home confident that we could find it on the morrow.
Mrs. c.u.mmings" smile clearly expressed "I told you so," and she remarked as she served supper: "When my husband comes home next week, he will take you where you can find game."
The next morning we again took some lunch in the saddle bag and started for that elusive spot we had christened c.u.mmings" Lake. About three o"clock we found it--a beautiful patch of water in the heart of the forest, nestling like a jewel, back in the mountains.
We picketed the horses at a safe distance, so that they could not be seen or heard from the lake. At one end the sh.o.r.e sloped gradually into the water, and here Nimrod discovered many tracks of elk, a few deer, and one set of black bear. He said the lake was evidently a favourite drinking place, that a band of elk had been coming daily to water, and that, according to their habits, they ought to come again before dusk.
So we concealed ourselves on a little bluff to the right and waited. The sun had begun to cast long lines on the earth, and the little circle of water was already in shadow when Nimrod held up his finger as a warning for silence. We listened. We were so still that the whole world seemed to be holding its breath.
I heard a faint noise as of a snapping branch, then some light thuds along the ground, and to the left of us out of the dark forest, a dainty creature flitted along the trail and playfully splashed into the water.
Six others of her sisters followed her, with two little ones, and they were all splashing about in the water like so many sportive mermaids when their lordly master appeared--a fine bull elk who seemed to me, as he sedately approached the edge of the lake, to be nothing but horns.
I shall never forget the picture of this family at home--the quiet lake encircled by forest and towered over by mountains; the gentle graceful creatures full of life playing about in the water, now drinking, now splashing it in cooling showers upon one another; the solicitude of a mother that her young one should come to no harm; and then the head of them all proceeding with dignity to bathe with his harem.
Had I to do again what followed, I hope I should act differently. Nimrod was watching them with a rapt expression, quite forgetful of the rifle in his hands, when I, who had never seen anything killed, touched his arm and whispered: "Shoot, shoot now, if you are going to."
The report of the rifle rang out like a cannon. The does fled away as if by magic. The stag tried also to get to sh.o.r.e, but the ball had inflicted a wound which partially paralysed his hindquarters. At the sight of the blood and the big fellow"s struggles to get away, the horror of the thing swept over me. "Oh, kill him, kill him!" I wailed.
"Don"t let him suffer!"
But here the hunter in Nimrod answered: "If I kill him now, I shall never be able to get him. Wait until he gets out of the water."
The next few seconds, with that struggling thing in the water, seemed an eternity of agony to me. Then another loud bang caused the proud head with its weight of antlers to sink to the wet bank never to rise again.
Later, as I dried my tears, I asked Nimrod:
"Where is the place to aim if you want to kill an animal instantly, so that he will not suffer, and never know what hit him?"
"The best place is the shoulder." He showed me the spot on his elk.
"But wouldn"t he suffer at all?"
"Well, of course, if you hit him in the brain, he will never know; but that is a very fine shot. Your target is only an inch or two, here between the eye and the ear, and the head moves more than the body.
But," he said, "you would not kill an elk after the way you have wept over this one?"
"If--if I were sure he would not suffer, I might kill just one," I said, conscious of my inconsistencies. My woman"s soul revolted, and yet I was out West for all the experiences that the life could give me, and I knew, if the chance came just right, that one elk would be sacrificed to that end.
The next day, much to Mrs. c.u.mmings" surprise, we had elk steak, the most delicious of meat when properly cooked. The next few days slipped by. We were always in the open air, riding about in those glorious mountains, and it was the end of the week when a turn of the wheel brought my day.
First, it becomes necessary to confide in you. Fear is a very wicked companion who, since nursery days, had troubled me very little; but when I arrived out West, he was waiting for me, and, so that I need never be without him, he divided himself into a band of little imps.
Each imp had a special duty, and never left me until he had been crushed in silent but terrible combat. There was the imp who did not like to be alone in the mountains, and the imp who was sure he was going to be lost in those wildernesses, and the imp who quaked at the sight of a gun, and the imp who danced a mad fierce dance when on a horse. All these had been conquered, or at least partially reduced to subjection, but the imp who sat on the saddle pommel when there was a ditch or stream to be jumped had hitherto obliged me to dismount and get over the s.p.a.ce on foot.
This morning, when we came to a nasty boggy place, with several small water cuts running through it, I obeyed the imp with reluctance. Well, we got over it--Blondey, the imp, and I--with nothing worse than wet feet and shattered nerves.
I attempted to mount, and had one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the pommel, when Blondey started. Like the girl in the song, I could not get up, I could not get down, and although I had hold of the reins, I had no free hand to pull them in tighter, and you may be sure the imp did not help me. Blondey, realising there was something wrong, broke into a wild gallop across country, but I clung on, expecting every moment the saddle would turn, until I got my foot clear from the stirrup. Then I let go just as Blondey was gathering himself together for another ditch.
I was stunned, but escaped any serious hurt. Nimrod was a great deal more undone than I. He had not dared to go fast for fear of making Blondey go faster, and he now came rushing up, with the fear of death upon his face and the most terrible swears on his lips.
Although a good deal shaken, I began to laugh, the combination was so incongruous. Nimrod rarely swears, and was now quite unconscious what his tongue was doing. Upon being a.s.sured that all was well, he started after Blondey and soon brought him back to me; but while he was gone the imp and I had a mortal combat.
I did up my hair, rearranged my habit, and, rejecting Nimrod"s offer of his quieter horse, remounted Blondey. We all jumped the next ditch, but the shock was too much for the imp in his weakened condition; he tumbled off the pommel, and I have never seen him since.
Our course lay along the hills on the east bank of Snake River that day.
We discovered another beautiful sapphire lake in a setting of green hills. Several ducks were gliding over its surface. We watched them, in concealment of course, and we saw a fish hawk capture his dinner. Then we quietly continued along the ridge of a high bluff until we came to an outstretched point, where beneath us lay the Snake Valley with its fickle-minded river winding through.