A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT
"Bob-Cat was telling me," said Wilbur, as with the Ranger he rode through the arid and silvered grayness of the Mohave desert and reached the foothill country, "that before you entered the Service you were pretty well known as a hunter."
"Wa'al, son," the mountaineer replied, "I reckon I've done some kind o' huntin' for fifty years on end. But there's not much huntin' in this part o' the country."
"No," said Wilbur, looking around him, "I guess there isn't."
The road ran along a little gully with a small stream shaded by scrub oak, but arising from this and similar gullies, in great rounded bosses, heaved the barren slopes, the grass already turning yellow and too sparse to cloak the red earth below.
"Yet," said Rifle-Eye, pointing with his finger as he spoke, "there's a desert fox."
Wilbur strained his eyes to see, but the unfamiliar growth of cacti, sage-brush, palo verde, and the dusty-miller plants made quick vision difficult. In a moment, however, he caught sight of the little reddish-gray animal running swiftly and almost indistinguishable from its surroundings.
"But up there?" queried the boy, pointing in front of them. The road wound onward toward the middle Sierras, thickly wooded with oak and digger pine, and, of course, the chapparal, and towering to the clouds rose the mighty serrated peaks of the range, where magnificent forests of pine, fir, and cedar swept upwards to the limits of eternal snow. "Up there the hunting must be wonderful."
"Among the mount'ns!" said the old hunter slowly. "Wa'al, up there, you see, is home."
"You certainly can't complain about the looks of your home, then," said the boy, "for that's just about the finest I've ever seen."
"'There's no place like home,'" quoted Rifle-Eye quietly, "but I ain't ever feelin' that my home's so humble. It ain't a question of its bein' good enough fer me, it's a question o' whether I'm good enough fer it."
"It makes quite a house," said Wilbur, following the old mountaineer's line of thought.
"I've never lived in any smaller house than that," responded Rifle-Eye, "an' I reckon now I never will. There's some I know that boasts of ownin' a few feet o' space shut in by a brick wall. Not for me. My house is as far as my eyes c'n see, an' from the ground to the sky."
Wilbur was silent for a moment, feeling the thrill of Nature in the old man's speech.
"It's to be my home, too," he said gently.
Rifle-Eye smiled at the lad.
"I don't know that I'm quite the oldest inhabitant," he said, "but I sure am the oldest Ranger in the Service, an' all I c'n say is, 'Make yerself to home.'"
"All right," said Wilbur promptly, "I'll take that as an official welcome from the Sierras, and I will. But," he added, "you were going to tell me about your hunting. I should think it would be great sport."
"Son," said Rifle-Eye somewhat sharply, "I never killed a harmless critter 'for sport,' as you call it, in my life."
"But I thought," gasped Wilbur in astonishment, "that you were hunting nearly all the time, before you started in as Ranger."
"So I was," was the quiet reply.
"But—but I don't quite see—" Wilbur stopped lamely.
"I said before," resumed the old hunter, "that I never killed a harmless critter onless I had to. Neither have I. Varmints, o' course, is a different matter. I've shot plenty o' them, an' once in a while I've had ter kill fer food. But just shootin' for the sake o' shootin' is the trick of a coward or a fool or a tenderfoot or a mixture of all three. It's plumb unnecessary, an' it's dead wrong."
"You mean shooting deer and so forth?"
"I mean just that, son, if the shootin's only fer antlers an' what these here greenhorns calls 'trophies.' If venison is needed, why, I ain't got nothin' to say. A man's life is worth more than a deer's when he needs food, but a man's conceit ain't worth more than a deer's life."
"How about bear, then, and trapping for skins?" asked the boy.
"I said 'harmless critters.' Now, a bear ain't harmless, leastways, not as you'd notice it. Bear will take young stock, an' they're particularly partial to young pig, an' down among these here foothills we've been passin' through there's a lot o' shiftless hog-rustlers as depends on pork fer a livin'. As for bearskins, why, o' course you use the pelts. What's the idee o' leavin' them around? It ain't any kind o' good tryin' to spare an animal's feelin's when he's plenty good an' dead. But I've made this here section of the Sierras pretty hot for wolves."
"I heard down at the ranch," the boy remarked, "that you had bagged forty-seven wolves last season."
"I did have a good year," assented the Ranger, "an', of course, I can't give much time to it. But I reckon I've disposed of more'n a thousand wolves in my day, one way and another. An' as I look at it, that's makin' pretty good use of time."
"Are wolves worse than bear?" queried Wilbur surprisedly.
"They do a lot more harm in the long run. Cattlemen reckon that a wolf will get away with about four head a year. Myself, I think that's pressin' the average some; I'd put it at somewhere between two an' three. But it's generally figured at four."
"I didn't know that wolves, lone wolves, would attack cattle."
"It's calves an' yearlin's mostly that they go for. It ain't often that you see a wolf tacklin' anythin' bigger'n a two-year-old. But if you figure that a wolf gets rid o' four head a year, an' inflicts himself on a sufferin' community for a space of about ten years, that's somewhere in the neighborhood o' forty head. A thousand wolves means about forty thousand head of cattle, or pretty nigh a million dollars' worth of stock."
"The beef you've saved by killing wolves," commented Wilbur, "would feed quite a town."
"Forty thousand is a tolerable sized bunch. An' that's without figurin' on the wolf cubs there would have been durin' all those years from the older ones whose matrimonial expectations I disappointed plenty abrupt. An' it makes a pile o' difference to cattlemen to know they c'n send a herd grazin' on the national forest, an' be fairly sure they won't lose much by varmints."
"It surely must," said the boy. "But I hadn't realized that wolves were such a danger."
"I wouldn't go to say that they was dangerous. An old gray wolf, if you corner him, is surly an' savage, an' will fight anythin' at any odds. Out on the Barren Grounds they're bad, but around the Sierras I ain't heard o' them attackin' humans but twice, an' they was children, lost in the woods. I figure the kids had wandered around till they petered out, an' then, when they were exhausted, the wolves got 'em. But I've never heard of a wolf attackin' a man anywhere in the Rockies."
"But I thought wolves ran in packs often."
"Not in the United States, son, so far as I've heard of. I knew a Russian trapper, though, who meandered down this way from Alaska in the early days. He used to spin a lot o' yarns about the Siberian wolves runnin' in packs an' breakfastin' freely off travelers. But he seemed to think that it was the horses the wolves were after chiefly, although they weren't passin' up any toothsome peasant that happened along."
"And do wolves attack horses here, too?"
"Not on the trail, that fashion. But they're some partial to colts."
"How about coyotes?"
"They're mean critters an' they give a pesky lot o' trouble, although they bother sheep more'n cattle. But a few husky dogs will keep coyotes at a distance, though they'll watch a chance an' sneak off with a young lamb or any sheep what is hurt an' has fallen behind the herd. But they don't worry us here such a great deal, they keep mostly to the plains an' the prairie country."
Saying this, the Ranger pulled up at the door of a shack lying a short distance from the road and gave a hail. Immediately there stepped from the door one of the largest women Wilbur had ever seen. Though her hair was gray, and she was angular and harsh of feature, yet, standing well over six feet and quite erect, she seemed to fit in well under the shadow of the Sierras.
"I reckon you've some bacon, Susan?" was the Ranger's greeting as he swung himself off his horse. Wilbur followed suit.
"There's somethin' awful would have to happen to a pile o' hogs," was the reply, "when you came by here an' couldn't get a bite."
By this time a swarm of children had come out, and Wilbur, seeing that the Ranger had simply resigned his horse into the hands of one of the larger boys, did likewise and followed his guide into the house.
"I wasn't sure if I'd find you here, Susan," said the old scout when they were seated at a simple meal. "I thought you were goin' to move into town."
"I did," she replied. "I stayed thar jest two weeks. An' they was two weeks o' misery. These yar towns is too crowded for me. Now, hogs, I've been used to 'em all my life, an' I don't mind how many's around. But it only takes a few folks to make me feel as if I was real crowded."
"Do you prefer hogs to people?" questioned Wilbur, smiling.
"Not one by one, bub, o' course," came the slow reply, "but when it comes to a crowd o' both, I'm kind o' lost with folks. Everybody's busy an' they don't care nothin' about you, an' it makes you-all feel no 'count. An' the noise is bewilderin'. Have you ever been in a city?"
Wilbur admitted that he had.
"Well, then," she said, "ye'll know what I mean. But out here, there's more room, like, an' I know I'm bigger'n my hogs." Following which, Susan launched into a long description of her favorite porkers, which continued almost without cessation until it was time for the two to be on the trail again.
"That's a queer woman," said Wilbur when they were in the saddle again and out of hearing of the shack.
"She's a good one," answered the Ranger. "Her son, by the way, is a member o' the legislature, an' a good lawyer, an' she's made him what he is. But she ain't the city kind."
"Not with all those children," said Wilbur. "She'd have to hire a block to keep them all."
"Those ain't her own children," replied the Ranger, "not a bit of it. If a youngster gits orphaned or laid up she just says 'Pork's plenty, send 'em to me.' An' I generally do. Other folks do, too, an' quite a few o' them hev been brought her by the 'little white lady' you've been hearing about. She's fonder o' children than any woman I ever saw, is Susan. But she won't talk kids, she'll only talk hogs."
"That's pretty fine work, I think," said the boy. "But I should imagine the youngsters wouldn't have much of a chance. It isn't any better than a backwoods life, away out there."
The old Ranger, usually so slow and deliberate in his movements, turned on him like a flash.
"The meanest thing in this world," he said, "is not bein' able to see or willin' to see what some one else has done for you. There ain't a home in all these here United States that don't owe its happiness to the backwoodsman. You can't make a country civilized by sittin' in an office an' writin' the word 'civilized' on the map. Some one has got to get out an' do it, an' keep on doin' it till it's done. It was the man who had nothin' in the world but a wife, a rifle, an' an ax who made America."
"I had forgotten for the moment," said the boy, a little taken off his feet by the sudden energy and the flashing speech of the usually impassive mountaineer.
"So does mighty near every one else 'forget for the moment.' But if the backwoodsman forgot for the moment he was likely to be missin' his scalp-lock, or if he tried to take a holiday it meant his family would go hungry. He never forgot his children or his children's children, but they're none too fond o' rememberin' him.
"Everythin' you have now, he first showed you how. If he wanted a house, he had to build it; if he wanted bread, he had to raise the grain, grind, an' bake it; if he wanted clothin', he had to get skins, cure, an' sew 'em. But he never had to hunt for honor an' for courage; he brought those with him; an' he didn't have to get any book-larnin' to teach him how to make his cabin a home, an' his wife an' his children were allers joys to him, not cares. They were men! An' what do you reckon made 'em men?"
"The hardships of the life, I suppose," hazarded Wilbur.
"Not a bit of it; it was the forest. The forest was their nurse in infancy, their playmate when they were barefooted kids runnin' around under the trees, their work by day, an' their home when it was dark. They lived right down with Nature, an' they larned that if she was rugged, she was kind. They became rugged an' kind, too. An' that's what the right sort of American is to this day."
"A lot of our best statesmen in early days were from the newly cleared settlements; that's a fact," said Wilbur thoughtfully, "right up to the Civil War."
"An' through it!" added the Ranger. "How about Abe Lincoln?"
Wilbur thought to himself that perhaps "backwoodsman" was not quite a fair idea of the great President's Illinois upbringing, but he thought it wiser not to argue the point to no profit.
"But it's all different now," continued Rifle-Eye a trifle sadly, "things have changed an' the city's beginnin' to have a bigger hold than the forest. An' the forest still needs, an' I reckon it allers will need, the old kind o' men. Once we had to fight tooth an' nail agin the forest jest to get enough land to live on, an' now we've got to fight jest as hard for the forest so as there'll be enough of it for what we need. In this here country you can't ever get away from the woods-dweller, whether he's backwoodsman or Forester, or whatever you call him—the man who can depend on himself an' live his life wherever there's sky overhead an' ground underfoot an' trees between.
"They're the discoverers of America, too. Oh, yes, they are," he continued, noting Wilbur's look of contradiction. "It wasn't Columbus or Amerigo or any o' the floatin' adventurers who first saw a blue splotch o' land on the horizon that discovered America. It was the men who conquered the forest, who found all, did all, an' became all that the life demanded, that really brought into bein' America an' the Americans."
The Ranger stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and, touching his horse lightly with the spur, went on ahead up the trail. Evidently he was thinking of the old times and the boy had wisdom enough not to disturb him. As the afternoon drew on the foothills were left behind and the open road became more and more enclosed, until at last it was simply a trail through the forest. The shadows were lengthening and it was drawing on toward evening, when the Ranger halted beside a little ravine, densely wooded with yellow pine, incense cedar, and white fir. Wilbur was tired and his horses, fresh to the trail, were showing signs of fatigue, so he was glad to stop.
"I don't know how you feel about it," said the Ranger, "but I reckon I'll camp here. There's a good spring a couple of hundred feet down stream. But you ain't used to this sort o' thing, an' maybe you'd better keep on the trail for another half-mile till you come to a little settlement. Somebody can put you up, I reckon."
"No need to," said the boy, "I'll camp here with you."
"Maybe you ain't used to sleepin' on the ground."
"I guess I can stand it, if you can," replied Wilbur promptly.
"Wa'al, I reckon I can," said the Ranger, "seein' that I always have an' always do."
Wilbur had never camped in the open before without a tent or shelter of some kind, but he would not for the world have had his Ranger think that he was in the least disconcerted. Neither, to do him justice, was he, but rather anticipating the night under the open sky with a good deal of pleasure.
After the horses were unsaddled and hobbled, Rifle-Eye told Wilbur to get the beds ready. The boy, greatly pleased with himself that he knew how to do this without being told, picked up his ax and started for the nearest balsam. But he found himself in somewhat of a difficulty. The white fir grew to a much larger tree than the Balm-of-Gilead he had known in the East, and the lower branches were tough. So he chopped down a young tree near, scarcely more than a sapling.
A moment later he heard the Ranger call to him.
"How many trees of that size do you reckon you'll want?" he asked.
"Oh, they're only just saplings," the boy replied, "five or six ought to do."
"They'll make five or six fine trees some day, won't they?" queried the old woodsman.
"Yes, Rifle-Eye, they will," answered the boy, flushing at his lack of thoughtfulness. "I'd better take only one, and that a little bigger, hadn't I?"
"An' one that's crooked. Always take a tree that isn't goin' to make good timber when you're not cuttin' for timber."
Wilbur accordingly felled a small white fir near by, having had his first practical lesson of forest economy on his own forest, stripped the tree of its fans or flattest branches and laid them on the ground. A thickness of about six inches, he found, was enough to make the beds wonderfully springy and comfortable.
In the meantime he found that Rifle-Eye was getting a fireplace ready, using for the purpose some flat stones which lay conveniently near by. Wilbur, stepping over a tiny rivulet which ran into the creek, noted a couple of stones apparently just suited for the making of a rough fireplace and brought them along. The Ranger looked at them.
"What kind o' stone do you call that?" he asked.
"Granite," said Wilbur immediately.
"An' you took them out o' the water?"
"Yes," answered the boy.
"An' what happens when you build a fire between granite stones?"
"I don't know, Rifle-Eye. What does?"
"They explode sometimes, leastways, when they're wet inside. Don't forget that," he added as he put the stones aside. "Now," he continued, "go down to the spring an' fill this pot with water, an' I'll have a fire goin' an' some grub sizzlin' by the time you get back. The spring is about two hundred feet downstream and about twenty feet above the water. You can't miss it."
Wilbur took the aluminum pot and started for the spring. He had not gone half the distance when he noted a stout crotched stick such as he had been used to getting when he camped out in the middle West for the purpose of hanging the cooking utensils on over the fire. So he picked it up and carried it along with him. Presently the gurgling of water told him that he was nearing the spring, and a moment later he saw the clearing through the trees. But, suddenly, a low snarling met his ears, and he halted dead at the edge of the clearing.
There, before him, on the ground immediately beside the spring, crouched a large wild-cat, the hairy tips of her ears twitching nervously. Under her claws was a rabbit, evidently just caught, into which the wild-cat had just sunk her teeth when the approach of the boy was heard. At first Wilbur could not understand why she had not sprung into the woods with her prey at the first distant twig-snapping which would betoken his approach. But as he looked more closely he saw that this was precisely what the cat had tried to do, but that in the jerk the rabbit had been caught and partly impaled on a tree root that projected above the ground, and for the moment the cat could not budge it.
Wilbur was utterly at a loss to know what to do. He had been told that wild-cats would never attack any one unless they had been provoked to fight, and he found himself very unwilling to provoke this particular specimen. The cat stood still, her eyes narrowed to mere slits, the ears slightly moving, and the tip of the tail flicking from side to side in quick, angry jerks. There was menace in every line of the wild-cat's pose.
The boy had his revolver with him, but while he had occasionally fired a six-shooter, he was by no means a crack shot, and he realized that if he fired at and only wounded the creature he would unquestionably be attacked. And there was a lithe suppleness in the manner that the movement of the muscles rippled over the skin that was alarmingly suggestive of ferocity. Wilbur did not like the looks of it at all. On the other hand, he had not the slightest intention of going back to the camp without water. He had come for water, and he would carry water back, he thought to himself, if a regiment of bob-cats was in the way.
The old fable that a wild beast cannot stand the gaze of the human eye recurred to Wilbur's remembrance, and he stood at the edge of the clearing regarding the cat fixedly. But the snarls only grew the louder. Wilbur was frightened, and he knew it, and what was more, he felt the cat knew it with that intuition the wild animals have for recognizing danger or the absence of danger. She made another effort to drag away the rabbit, but failing in that, with an angry yowl, with quick jerks and rending of her powerful jaws began to try to force the rabbit free from the entangling root, which done, she could carry it into the forest to devour at leisure. The ease with which those claws and teeth rent asunder the yielding flesh was an instructive sight for Wilbur, but the fact that the wild-cat should dare to go on striving to free her prey instead of slinking away in fright made the boy angry. Besides, he had come for that water.
Wilbur decided to advance into the clearing anyway, and then, if the creature did not stir, he would be so near that he couldn't miss her with the revolver. As he grew angrier his fear began to leave him. He took the pot in his left hand, putting the long stick under his arm, and, drawing his six-shooter, advanced on the cat. He came forward slowly, but without hesitation. At his second step forward the wild-cat raised her head, but instead of springing at him, as Wilbur half feared, she retreated into the woods, leaving her prey, snarling as she went. Wilbur went boldly forward to the spring, and, thinking that he would see no more of the cat, put away his revolver.
Having secured the water, and as he turned to go, however, the boy felt a sudden impulse to look up. He had not heard a sound, and yet, on a low branch a few feet above his head, crouched the wild-cat, her eyes glaring yellow in the waning light. Once again he felt the temptation to shoot her, but resisted it, through his fear of only wounding the creature and thus bringing her full fury upon him.
But it occurred to Wilbur that it was not unlikely that he might have to come back to the spring a second time for more water, and he did not wish to risk another encounter. He thought to himself that if he did return and interrupted the wild-cat a second time he would not escape as easily as he had on this occasion, and consequently he tried to devise a means to prevent such meeting. He figured that if he picked up the rabbit and threw it far into the woods the cat would follow and the path to the spring would be open. Forgetting for the moment that he could not expect the angry creature in the tree to divine the honesty of his intentions, he stooped down and grasped the rabbit by the leg to throw it into the forest. As he did so, the wild-cat, thinking herself about to be deprived of her prey, sprang at him.
With one hand holding the pot of water, which, boy-like, he did not want to spill, and the other grasping the rabbit, Wilbur was terribly handicapped. But, by the greatest good fortune, as he stooped, the crotch of the stick that he was carrying caught the wild-cat under the body as she launched herself at him from the tree. The stick was knocked out of the boy's grasp, but it also turned the cat aside, and she half fell, landing on Wilbur's outstretched leg, instead of on his neck, which was the objective point in her spring. As her claws ripped into the soft flesh of his thigh, Wilbur released his hold of the rabbit, drew his revolver, and fired full at the creature hanging on his leg.
Almost instantaneously with the shot, however, one of her foreclaws shot out and caught the back of his right hand, making a long but superficial gash from the wrist to the knuckles. At the same time, too, one of her hind claws struck down, opening the calf of the leg and making the boy sick for a moment. His right hand was bleeding vigorously and paining a good deal, but his finger was still on the trigger and Wilbur fired again. A moment later, the Ranger came running into the clearing. But before he reached the boy's side the cat had fallen limply to the ground. The second shot had gone clear through her skull, and, being fired at point-blank distance, had almost blown her head off.
The old Ranger, without wasting time in words, quickly examined the boy's injuries and found them slight, although they were bleeding profusely. Wilbur reached out the pot full of water from the spring.
"Here's the water, Rifle-Eye," he said a little quaveringly; "I hardly spilled a drop."
The old woodsman took the vessel without a word. Then he looked down at the cat.
"Just as well for you," he said, "that it wasn't a true lynx. But how did she get at your leg? Did you walk on her, or kick her, just for fun?"
Wilbur, laughing a little nervously from the reaction of the excitement, described how it was that the wild-cat had landed on his leg instead of on his neck, and the old hunter nodded.
"It's a mighty lucky thing for you," he said, "that stick was there, because there's a heap o' places around the neck where a clawin' ain't healthy. But these scratches of yours won't take long to heal. Where you were a fool," he continued, "was in touchin' the rabbit at all. It's just as I told you. When you went quietly forward, you say, the bob-cat got out of your road all right. Of course, that's what she ought to do. And if you had filled the pot with water an' come away that's all there'd have been to it. But jest as soon as you begin ter get mixed up in the prey any varmint's killed, you've got ter begin considerin' the chances o' joinin' the select company o' victims."
"But I wanted her out of the way for next time," said Wilbur.
"She'd have got out of your way so quick you couldn't see her go," said the hunter, "if you'd given her a chance. Next time, leave a varmint's dinner alone."
"Next time, I will," the boy declared.
"I guess now," continued the old hunter, "you'd better come back to camp an' we'll see what we c'n do to improve them delicate attentions you've received. An' don't be quite the same kind of an idiot again."
"Well," said Wilbur, "I got the water from the spring, anyhow."
PATROLLING A COYOTE FENCE.
The old Ranger and his hound safeguarding the grazing interests of the forest.
Photograph by U. S. Forest Service.
REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.
REDUCING THE WOLF SUPPLY.
Sport that is worth while, freeing the National Forests from beasts of prey.
Photographs by U. S. Forest Service.