Among other notes about this species Ruxton speaks of several attempts that had been made to secure the young of mountain sheep and transport them to the States. None of these, however, had been successful. Old Bill Williams even took with him into the mountains a troop of milch goats, by which to bring up the young sheep, but, though capturing a number of lambs, he did not succeed in reaching the frontier with a single one.
He reports also the superstition of the Canadian trappers concerning the carcajou, which we know as the wolverene, and tells of a reported battle which an old Canadian trapper said that he had had with one of these animals, and which lasted upward of two hours, during which he fired a pouchful of balls into the animal’s body, which spat them out as fast as they were shot in. Two days later, in company with the same man, the author, in looking over a ridge, saw a wolverene, and shot at it, as it was running off, without effect. For this he was derided by the Canadian, who declared that if he had shot fifty balls at the carcajou it would not have cared at all.
One night, when camped on the Platte, the author woke up, and looking out of his blanket, saw sitting before the fire a huge gray wolf, his eyes closed and his head nodding in sheer drowsiness.
The last day of April, Ruxton set out to cross the plains for Fort Leavenworth, intending to return to England. Soon afterward they reached Bent’s Fort, and a little later were joined by a number of Frémont’s men, and by Kit Carson, who were returning from California. They passed a Cheyenne camp, and before very long were well out on the plains and in the buffalo country. Concerning the abundance of these animals Ruxton tells the same extraordinary stories that all old-timers relate. He hunted buffalo both by “approaching” and by running; and tried many experiments with these great beasts. One night the camp was almost run down by a vast herd of buffalo, but all hands being aroused, they managed, by firing their guns and making all the noise they could, to split the herd, so that the two branches passed around them.
At length the party approached Council Grove, and the more humid country, where the eastern timber was found, which, to Ruxton and to the Missourians of the party, looked like old friends.
Ruxton was a true outdoor man, loving the wilderness for itself alone, accepting whatever of toil, exposure, or hardship might come to him, feeling amply repaid for these annoyances by the joy of independence, of the beauties that surrounded him, and of the absolute physical well-being which was a part of this life.
The days when an existence such as is pictured in his accounts of the Rocky Mountains could be enjoyed are long past, yet there are still living some men who can absolutely sympathize with the feeling expressed in the following paragraphs:
“Apart from the feeling of loneliness which any one in my situation must naturally have experienced, surrounded by stupendous works of nature, which in all their solitary grandeur frowned upon me, and sinking into utter insignificance the miserable mortal who crept beneath their shadow; still there was something inexpressibly exhilarating in the sensation of positive freedom from all worldly care, and a consequent expansion of the sinews, as it were, of mind and body, which made me feel elastic as a ball of Indian rubber, and in a state of such perfect insouciance that no more dread of scalping Indians entered my mind than if I had been sitting in Broadway, in one of the windows of Astor House. A citizen of the world, I never found any difficulty in investing my resting-place, wherever it might be, with all the attributes of a home; and hailed, with delight equal to that which the artificial comforts of a civilized home would have caused, the, to me, domestic appearance of my hobbled animals, as they grazed around the camp, when I returned after a hard day’s hunt. By the way, I may here remark, that my sporting feeling underwent a great change when I was necessitated to follow and kill game for the support of life, and as a means of subsistence; and the slaughter of deer and buffalo no longer became sport when the object was to fill the larder, and the excitement of the hunt was occasioned by the alternative of a plentiful feast or a banyan; and, although ranking under the head of the most red-hot of sportsmen, I can safely acquit myself of ever wantonly destroying a deer or buffalo unless I was in need of meat; and such consideration for the feræ naturæ is common to all the mountaineers who look to game alone for their support. Although liable to an accusation of barbarism, I must confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the far West; and I never recall but with pleasure the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salado, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no companions more sociable than my good horse and mules, or the attendant coyote which nightly serenaded us. With a plentiful supply of dry pine-logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well-filled bellies, standing contentedly at rest over their picket-pins, I would sit cross-legged enjoying the genial warmth, and, pipe in mouth, watch the blue smoke as it curled upwards, building castles in its vapoury wreaths, and, in the fantastic shapes it assumed, peopling the solitude with figures of those far away. Scarcely, however, did I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life, and, unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such is the fascination of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilized of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty and freedom from every worldly care, not regretting the moment when he exchanged it for the monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing, and sighing again, once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements.
“Nothing can be more social and cheering than the welcome blaze of the camp fire on a cold winter’s night, and nothing more amusing or entertaining, if not instructive, than the rough conversation of the single-minded mountaineers, whose simple daily talk is all of exciting adventure, since their whole existence is spent in scenes of peril and privation; and consequently the narration of their every-day life is a tale of thrilling accidents and hairbreadth ’scapes, which, though simple matter-of-fact to them, appear a startling romance to those who are not acquainted with the nature of the lives led by these men, who, with the sky for a roof and their rifles to supply them with food and clothing, call no man lord or master, and are free as the game they follow.”
