Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders

by George Bird Grinnell

No doubt the troops which conquered Mexico were a good deal of a mob, and won their victories in a great measure by the force of individual courage, and through the timidity and still greater lack of organization of the troops opposed to them. On the other hand, Ruxton seems to have felt much admiration for the officers in command of the regular army. He speaks of West Point, and declares that the military education received there is one “by which they acquire a practical as well as theoretical knowledge of the science of war”; and that, “as a class, they are probably more distinguished for military knowledge than the officers of any European army; uniting with this a high chivalrous feeling and a most conspicuous gallantry, they have all the essentials of the officer and soldier.”

Ruxton spent some time hunting about this camp. One day he had a shot at a large panther which he did not kill, and later he found a turkey-roost. After a short delay here he started northward again. One of his servants had deserted him some time before, and now he sent the other back to Mexico because he was already suffering from the severity of the climate. The author’s animals had now been travelling so long together that they required little or no attention in driving. Of course the operation of packing for a single man was slow and difficult. Continuing northward, he reached Santa Fé, where, however, he did not stop long.

It was now winter, and the weather cold and snowy, but the intrepid traveller had no notion of waiting for more genial days. He has much to say about the Indians in the neighborhood, and especially of the Pueblos, whose stone villages and peculiar methods of life greatly interested him. He found the Mexicans of New Mexico no more attractive than those with whom he had had to do farther to the southward, but seems to have felt a certain respect, if not admiration, for the Canadian and American trappers who had married among these people. Some of these men advised him strongly against making the effort to reach Fort Leavenworth at this season of the year, but he kept on. The journey was difficult, however. His animals, natives of the low country and of the tropics, were unused to mountain travel; each frozen stream that they came to was a cause of delay. The work of getting them on was very laborious, and every two or three days Ruxton froze his hands. He was now approaching the country of the Utes, who at that time were constantly raiding the settlements of northern New Mexico, killing the Mexicans and taking their horses. His purpose was to strike the Arkansas River near its head waters, and to reach the Bayou Salado, an old rendezvous for trappers and a great game country. The cold of the mountain country grew more and more bitter, and the constant winds made it almost impossible for the men to keep from freezing. Indeed, sometimes the cold was so severe that Ruxton found it necessary to put blankets on his animals to keep them from perishing. For days at a time snow, wind, and cold were so severe that it was impossible to shoot game, as he could not bend his stiffened fingers without a long preliminary effort.

During a part of his journey from Red River north he had been constantly followed by a large gray wolf, which evidently kept with him for the remains of the animals killed, and for bits of food left around camp.

At length the Huerfano River was passed and a little later the Greenhorn, where there was a camp of one white trapper and two or three French Canadians. A few days later the Arkansas was reached, and then the trading-post known as the Pueblo. Here Ruxton became a guest of John Hawkins, a well-known mountaineer of the time, and here he spent the remainder of the winter hunting on the Fontaine-qui-bouille and in the Bayou Salado.

Ruxton had many hunting adventures, and some narrow escapes from Indian fighting. Much of what he writes of this period has to do with the animals of the region, for at that time the country swarmed with game. The rapidity with which wolves will devour an animal is well known to those familiar with the olden time, but not to the people of to-day.

“The sagacity of wolves is almost incredible. They will remain around a hunting camp and follow the hunters the whole day, in bands of three and four, at less than a hundred yards distance, stopping when they stop, and sitting down quietly when game is killed, rushing to devour the offal when the hunter retires, and then following until another feed is offered them. If a deer or antelope is wounded, they immediately pursue it, and not unfrequently pull the animal down in time for the hunter to come up and secure it from their ravenous clutches. However, they appear to know at once the nature of the wound, for if but slightly touched, they never exert themselves to follow a deer, chasing those only which have received a mortal blow.

“I one day killed an old buck which was so poor that I left the carcase on the ground untouched. Six coyotes, or small prairie wolves, were my attendants that day, and of course, before I had left the deer twenty paces, had commenced their work of destruction. Certainly not ten minutes after, I looked back and saw the same six loping after me, one of them not twenty yards behind me, with his nose and face all besmeared with blood and his belly swelled almost to bursting. Thinking it scarcely possible that they could have devoured the whole deer in so short a space, I had the curiosity to return, and, to my astonishment, found actually nothing left but a pile of bones and hair, the flesh being stripped from them as clean as if scraped with a knife. Half an hour after I killed a large blacktail deer, and as it was also in miserable condition, I took merely the fleeces (as the meat on the back and ribs is called), leaving four-fifths of the animal untouched. I then retired a short distance, and, sitting down on a rock, lighted my pipe, and watched the operations of the wolves. They sat perfectly still until I had withdrawn some three-score yards, when they scampered, with a flourish of their tails, straight to the deer. Then commenced such a tugging and snarling and biting, all squeaking and swallowing at the same moment. A skirmish of tails and flying hair was seen for five minutes, when the last of them, with slouching tail and evidently ashamed of himself, withdrew, and nothing remained on the ground but a well-picked skeleton. By sunset, when I returned to camp, they had swallowed as much as three entire deer.”

Although Ruxton was no longer travelling, he was not yet free from danger from storms, and an extraordinary night passed in a snow-storm followed the loss of his animals on a hunting trip. Horses and mules had disappeared one morning, and he and his companion had set out to find them. This they did, and when they overtook the animals, shortly after noon, he says: “I found them quietly feeding ... and they suffered me to catch them without difficulty. As we were now within twenty miles of the fort, Morgan (his companion), who had had enough of it, determined to return, and I agreed to go back with the animals to the cache, and bring in the meat and packs. I accordingly tied the blanket on a mule’s back, and, leading the horse, trotted back at once to the grove of cottonwoods where we had before encamped. The sky had been gradually overcast with leaden-coloured clouds, until, when near sunset, it was one huge inky mass of rolling darkness: the wind had suddenly lulled, and an unnatural calm, which so surely heralds a storm in these tempestuous regions, succeeded. The ravens were winging their way toward the shelter of the timber, and the coyote was seen trotting quickly to cover, conscious of the coming storm.

“The black threatening clouds seemed gradually to descend until they kissed the earth, and already the distant mountains were hidden to their very bases. A hollow murmuring swept through the bottom, but as yet not a branch was stirred by wind; and the huge cottonwoods, with their leafless limbs, loomed like a line of ghosts through the heavy gloom. Knowing but too well what was coming, I turned my animals toward the timber, which was about two miles distant. With pointed ears, and actually trembling with fright, they were as eager as myself to reach the shelter; but, before we had proceeded a third of the distance, with a deafening roar, the tempest broke upon us. The clouds opened and drove right in our faces a storm of freezing sleet, which froze upon us as it fell. The first squall of wind carried away my cap, and the enormous hailstones beating on my unprotected head and face, almost stunned me. In an instant my hunting shirt was soaked, and as instantly frozen hard; and my horse was a mass of icicles. Jumping off my mule—for to ride was impossible—I tore off the saddle blanket and covered my head. The animals, blinded with the sleet, and their eyes actually coated with ice, turned their sterns to the storm, and, blown before it, made for the open prairie. All my exertions to drive them to the shelter of the timber were useless. It was impossible to face the hurricane, which now brought with it clouds of driving snow; and perfect darkness soon set in. Still, the animals kept on, and I determined not to leave them, following, or, rather, being blown, after them. My blanket, frozen stiff like a board, required all the strength of my numbed fingers to prevent its being blown away, and although it was no protection against the intense cold, I knew it would in some degree shelter me at night from the snow. In half an hour the ground was covered on the bare prairie to the depth of two feet, and through this I floundered for a long time before the animals stopped. The prairie was as bare as a lake; but one little tuft of greasewood bushes presented itself, and here, turning from the storm, they suddenly stopped and remained perfectly still. In vain I again attempted to turn them toward the direction of the timber; huddled together, they would not move an inch; and, exhausted myself, and seeing nothing before me but, as I thought, certain death, I sank down immediately behind them, and, covering my head with the blanket, crouched like a ball in the snow. I would have started myself for the timber, but it was pitchy dark, the wind drove clouds of frozen snow into my face, and the animals had so turned about in the prairie that it was impossible to know the direction to take; and although I had a compass with me, my hands were so frozen that I was perfectly unable, after repeated attempts, to unscrew the box and consult it. Even had I reached the timber, my situation would have been scarcely improved, for the trees were scattered wide about over a narrow space, and, consequently, afforded but little shelter; and if even I had succeeded in getting firewood—by no means an easy matter at any time, and still more difficult now that the ground was covered with three feet of snow—I was utterly unable to use my flint and steel to procure a light, since my fingers were like pieces of stone, and entirely without feeling.