A Mountain Fraud
My acquaintance with Lanahan began at Eagle Rock, Idaho, in August, 1890, where we met to undertake a trip into Jackson's Hole. Mr. Melville Hanna and I had come from the east to make a hunt, and Lanahan had been engaged to purchase and superintend our outfit by a railway official at Boise, whom he had impressed with a belief in his remarkable fitness for both purposes.
When we reached Eagle Rock, Lanahan was on hand with eight pack-horses, an elderly man called Mason, and an Englishman as cook. The cook claimed to have practised his vocation in the service of a duke on land, and an admiral on the deep, each of whom parted from him with a grief he was unable to conceal. He had come west for recreation and from a desire to see the country, was accustomed to riding, consequent upon having followed the hounds with his ducal employer, and intended, after seeing us safely back from our trip, to return to the assistance of the admiral, whose ship was on the way to Halifax. On inspecting Lanahan's list of supplies, we found that he had bought a good-sized stove and an assortment of delicacies such as I am sure never started for Jackson's Hole before. There were oysters put up in various ways, tins of cauliflower, peas, all the fruits of the Occident, and numerous exotic preserves which we had never heard of. The array looked too great for our eight horses to carry, and when we started next day this proved to be the fact.
Lanahan was a big burly fellow with a most repulsive countenance and with great powers of conversation. He had lived so long in the West that he had lost the manner of speech of his native isle, except when excited or frightened, and he regaled us the evening before starting with thrilling tales of his personal exploits with Indians and wild beasts. He professed to have passed years as the confidential scout of Howard, Custer, and Crook, and the last named owed the fame he had attained as an Indian-fighter to his implicit adherence to Lanahan's advice on several critical occasions. As to game, he had fairly wallowed in the gore of bears and lions, and he promised to escort me to my first encounter with a silver-tip, the death of which was to be brought about by my opening fire on him at 600 yards and keeping it up during the ensuing charge, Lanahan standing by peacefully until the bear rose to embrace me, when he would give him the coup de grâce with "Old Nance," as he fondly called his rifle. He also announced his intention of shooting any Indians who might come to our camp, if they did not promptly leave at his bidding.
Next morning Mason and Lanahan began packing, and Lanahan showed by the humility with which he endured the deserved abuse of Mason that he was as ignorant of the art as we afterward found him of every other, except that of dissimulation. Mason was finally obliged to substitute our cook as helper, and Lanahan, in order to recover his prestige, spoke of the dangerous character of the horse-thieves of Jackson's Hole, and showed a map of the country made by old Jackson himself, then languishing in Boise jail, also a letter from the same hand introducing Lanahan to the present head of the association, who would, on its presentation, protect our stock and return without cost any that had previously been stolen. At starting, Hanna and I went on ahead, and were presently joined by Mason and the cook with the packs; but as Lanahan did not appear, we sent back Mason, who produced him in about an hour, quite flushed as to his countenance and uncertain as to his speech, but with that part of his intellect devoted to lying as unclouded as ever. His delay, he stated, had been caused by his horse rearing and falling on him, whereat he became so faint from pain that he was unable to move until after a long rest and the administration of a teaspoonful of the best brandy every fifteen minutes. About this time the packs began to loosen and get lopsided, and one of the pack-horses, called Emigrant, would occasionally lie down, and have to be assisted to his feet by the united strength of the party. We were able to keep him going only by having the cook lead him while Hanna and I beset him with blows in the rear.
In consequence of these misfortunes, our progress was so slow that we made camp that night only six miles from our starting-point. The next night we reached Big Butte Ferry, the trouble about the packs keeping up, and Emigrant growing more and more averse to the exertions required from him. At this point we "cached" the stove, stovepipe, and half a dozen of our most useless pots and pans despite the remonstrances of our cook, and engaged a young man named Joe, who had been out for a month prospecting for coal, but was quite willing to turn back with us. Reaching the village of Kaintuck at noon, we camped in the corral of the livery-stable, and in less than half an hour our cook betook himself to one of the neighboring saloons, where we shortly found him so drunk as to be incapable of speech or motion, but—as we judged from never seeing him again—still able to understand that he was discharged.
During the afternoon we fell into conversation with a bright, active-looking fellow who came to call on us; and, finding that he was familiar with the Teton country, had hunted and trapped around Jackson's Lake, and claimed to be an expert packer and first-class cook, we added him to our party in these capacities. Later, Lanahan came to us in great agitation, and said that Harrington, our new man, was a very dangerous character, and had just been pardoned from jail, where he was serving a twenty-five years' sentence for horse-stealing; that he had broken out once, and had been recaptured only after an exciting chase of seventy-five miles, during which he had been shot in the leg. We asked Harrington about this. He admitted its substantial truth, but said he was innocent of the crime, and had been the victim of malicious persecution by some men who wanted to "jump" his ranch in the Teton valley; so we decided to take him along, and did not regret it. The disposition by sale for $20 of a large quantity of our delicacies to the Mormon storekeeper at Kaintuck lessened the weight of our packs, which Harrington made up next morning in less than half the usual time, to the evident disgust of Lanahan and Mason. Before leaving the town, Harrington took me to a saloon where hung several drawings he had made of elk and Indians, which were as true to nature in their general features as anything of the kind I have ever seen, and caused me to believe that he only needed education to make him distinguished. He had never had any instruction, and his only artistic implement was a lead-pencil.
When we reached the Teton Valley, Lanahan, who had taken up riding ahead to "look out the trail," which was as definite as Broadway, and to protect us against the dangers which encompassed our path, learned from a passer-by that fifty lodges of Lemhi Indians were before us on a hunt. He called Hanna and me to one side, when he conveyed this information, and said he was now convinced of what he had suspected from the first, that Harrington's joining us was part of a plot between him and the Lemhis to facilitate the running off of our horses, and an incidental murder or two, if necessary. That night we camped on the west side of Mount Hayden, the biggest of the Tetons, close by the place where the Indians had stayed a few days before; and Lanahan armed himself and climbed a little peak at some distance from the trail to "look for Indian signs," as he said. At the fire, after supper, he informed us that years ago he was well acquainted with old Teton, after whom the mountains were named, and who had lived in the valley when it was fairly alive with game.
The Grand Teton, now so wretchedly mis-named, is to my mind the most magnificent of mountains. Its situation, its isolation from neighbors, its great height, its vast hollows and chasms, many of them filled with perpetual snow, and its lofty, bare, inaccessible peak, always impress me with a sense of grandeur, majesty, and beauty, such as I have never found in any other mountain.