“But, Pete,” I exclaimed, as a sudden thought struck me, “what’s become of our dogs?”
“Better ask them black fiends up the mountains. I reckon you won’t see them tha’ hounds of yours agin.”
And I never did, but having hunted the wolf with cowboys and having been a witness to their extraordinary biting power, I knew the fate that must necessarily befall a couple of ordinary hounds when overtaken by half a dozen full-grown wolves. On such occasions we do not spend much time in grief over a loss of any kind, “it taint according to mountain law,” Pete would say.
“Reckon we had better swipe some of that elk before the coyotes get at it,” growled Pete. “The wild mountainman knows the good parts, but an elk is an elk, and one wild man, even if he is a giant, can’t carry off all the good meat, not by a long shot.”
“He may come back,” I suggested.
“Not he,” said Pete. “He’s too stuck up for that. When he wants more, them tha’ black demons and that voodoo bird of his’n will get ’em for him, and he’s a hanging his long legs off’ner a rock some whar smoking a long cigar.”
“Dod rot him,” growled Pete. “Why couldn’t he leave a piece of hide to carry the meat in and the stomach to cook it in? That’s the fust time I ever stayed long ’nough to see him collar his meat, though they say he do eat the game raw, but I reckon that’s a lie, leastwise he didn’t do’t this time.”
With a good square meal of the locoed hunter’s elk under our belts and a rousing camp fire before which to toast our shins, both the big westerner and I felt a little more natural and comfortable, but our conversation turned again to this wild hunter of the mountains.
I could see that the mysterious old man with his wolf pack and eagle aroused almost every possible form of superstition in Big Pete and I confess that I was not free from some of it myself. The guide was certain that the man was either a ghost or a reincarnated devil, and he displayed no uncertain signs of awe.
“I tell you,” said Pete, “he’s a devil. He’s over a hundred years old, for my dad says he seed him, an’ an Injun before dad’s time told him about him. They are all skeered t’ death o’ him. An’ I don’t blame ’em. He’s a shore enough hant and them tha’ houn’s o’ his’n is devils in wolf skins. Jumping Gehoosaphats, ef they shed ever cut my trail I reckon I’d just lay right down an’ die,” and Big Pete actually shuddered at the possibility.