The Black Wolf Pack

by Daniel Carter Beard

On one ledge I got my first really close view of a bighorn sheep, and I became so excited that nothing would do but I must stalk him, despite Big Pete’s assurance that the wily old ram would not let me get within gun shot of him in such an exposed area.

I crawled, and wriggled, and twisted over rock and boulders for what to me seemed miles, but always the sheep kept just out of accurate shooting distance ahead of me. It was an exasperating chase, but one cannot live in the mountains for any length of time without paying more or less attention to geology; the mountaineer soon learns that stratified rock, that is rock arranged like layer cake, resting in a horizontal position on its natural bed, makes travel over its top comparatively easy, but when by the subsidence or upheaval of the earth’s crust huge masses of stone have been tilted up edgewise, it is an entirely different proposition.

In this latter case the erosion, or the wearing away, caused by trickling water, frost and snow, sharpens the edge of the rock, as a grindstone does the edge of an ax, and traveling along one of these ridges presents almost the same difficulties that travel along the edge of an upturned ax would do to a microscopic man.

But when a sportsman, for the first time in his life, has succeeded in creeping within range of a grand bighorn ram, and his bullet, speeding true, has badly wounded the game, hardships are forgotten, and if, on account of the miraculous vitality of the mountain sheep, there is danger of losing the quarry, all the inborn instinct of the predaceous beast in man’s nature is aroused, and danger is a consideration not to be taken in account.

A hawk in pursuit of a barnyard fowl will follow it into the open door of the farmhouse; the hound in pursuit of the fox cares not for the approaching locomotive—being possessed by the instinct to kill—nothing is of importance to them but the capture of the game in sight. A man following a buck is governed by a like singleness of purpose.

For this reason I was scrambling along the knife-like edge of the ridge, with death in the steep treacherous slide rock on one side, death in the steep green glacier ice on the other side, and torture and wounds under my feet.

But the fever of the chase had possession of me. I had tasted blood and felt the fierce joy of the puma and the wild intoxication of a hunting wolf!

The cruel wounds inflicted by the sharp stones under my feet were unnoticed. Away ahead of me was a moving object; it could use but three legs, but that was one leg more than I had, and the ram had distanced me. After an age of time I reached the rugged, broader footing of the mountain side, and creeping up behind some sheltering rocks again fired at the fleeing ram. With the impact of the bullet the sheep fell headlong down a cliff to a projecting rock thirty feet below, where it lay apparently dead. A moment later it again arose, seemingly as able as ever, and ran along the face of the beetling rock where my eyes, aided by powerful field glasses, could perceive no foothold; then it gave a magnificent leap to a ledge on the opposite side of the narrow canyon and fell dead, out of my reach.

Spent with my long, rough run, I naturally selected the most comfortable seat in which to rest; this chanced to be a cushion of heather-like plants along the side of a fragment of rock which effectually concealed my body from view from the other side of the chasm. Here, on the verge of that impassable canyon, I sat panting and looking at the poor dead creature upon the opposite side; its right front leg was shattered at the shoulder, a bullet had pierced its lungs. Yet, with two fatal wounds and a useless leg, the plucky creature had scaled the face of a cliff which one would think a squirrel would find impossible to traverse and made leaps which might well be considered improbable for a perfectly sound animal. The ram was dead and food for the ravens, and a reaction had taken place in my mind; I felt like a bloody murderer, and hung my head with a sense of guilt.

Presently, becoming conscious of that peculiar guttural noise, used by Big Pete when desiring caution, and looking up I was amazed to see a splendid Indian youth climb down the face of the opposite cliff, throw his arms around the dead ram’s neck and burst into deep but subdued lamentation. For the first time I now saw that what I had mistaken for a blood stain on the bighorn’s neck was a red collar.