Jack in the Rockies: A Boy's Adventures with a Pack Train

by George Bird Grinnell

Hugh drew his horse up, and turning in his saddle said, "Why no, son, there's nothing in that; though I've heard plenty of men who ought to know a heap better say that there was. Take a stick and go right up close to that fellow, and poke him with it, and then bring it to me."

Jack picked up a dead branch, and going to the porcupine, poked him in the sides and back, and when he did this the porcupine thrashed his tail about more vigorously than ever, and two or three times struck the stick. Leaving him, Jack went to Hugh, carrying the stick in his hand, and Hugh said, "Look at the end of that stick now, and see those quills." The end of the stick was pierced by a dozen or twenty sharp, strong quills, and Jack, taking hold of one and trying to pull it out, found that the point was firmly fastened in the wood, so that it required quite a little effort to pull it out.

"Now, son," said Hugh, "a porcupine, as you have seen, is slow, and can't run away. His back and sides and tail are covered with these quills, which are mighty sharp, and which have little stickers pointing back toward the root, so that if a quill gets fast in the flesh, it is a very hard matter to pull it out again. If a quill gets stuck in an animal's head or foot, it keeps working forward all the time; it never works backward and comes out; it has to go through to the other side. Most animals know that it isn't good to fool with a porcupine. The only way to kill him is to turn him over on his back, and get at his throat and belly, which are not covered with quills. When a porcupine sees an animal coming he holds his body close to the ground, makes his quills stand up all over him, and thrashes around with his tail, which is pretty well covered with quills too. His tail is strong, and he can hit a hard blow with it; and so you see he's pretty well defended. The quills are not set deep in the skin; they are loose, and they pull out mighty easy; you see that just by poking the porcupine you got that stick full of quills. Sometimes when he thrashes hard with his tail he may hit a piece of wood, or may knock loose some of the quills on his tail so that they may fly a little distance; but as for throwing them any distance from his body, or with any force, why he can't do it.

"I have had dogs that would tackle porcupines, and when they did, it was a terrible job to pull the quills out of them."

"Well," said Jack, "I'm glad to hear all that I've been told of dogs tackling porcupines, up in the Adirondacks, but I never saw one that had been pierced by quills."

"Most dogs," said Hugh, "soon learn never to bother porcupines, but some seem never to learn, and will go for one every time they see it. Bears sometimes tackle them, and so do lynx and panthers, but they say the greatest animal of all to kill a porcupine is a fisher. I've seen two or three panthers with their jaws full of quills. I've heard people say that the fisher kills them by turning them over on their backs and then jumping onto the belly, but I never saw this done. What I have seen is fishers with lots of quills in their bodies: some in the legs, some in the belly, and some in the sides. And the Indians say that these quills don't bother them at all; that is to say, that a fisher full of quills don't swell up the way a dog or a panther does. The porcupine is a pretty stupid beast, but its effect on its neighbors is quite interesting."

Jack listened with much attention to this lesson in natural history, and they mounted and rode on again.

Soon they came to a great slough, evidently an old beaver meadow, and as Hugh drew up his horse and looked at it, he shook his head:—"Too soft for us to cross, I reckon, we'll have to go round some other way. There's plenty of sloughs and mud-holes in there where our horses would go out of sight."

They turned northward, and for the next two hours were occupied in trying to make their way out to the high prairie. At frequent intervals they came to what looked like a tongue of hard dry land extending out to the bluffs, but after following it for a little distance they found at its end a mud-hole, which obliged them to turn back and take another road. At length they reached a strip of hard ground which led them to the bluffs; and just before they rode up the steep ascent, Hugh's horse started from the ground a brood of grouse, which scattered in all directions, many of them alighting on the willows and spruce branches close to them. They were singularly tame, almost as much so as the fool hens they had seen farther north, and Jack rode up to within three or four feet of one, and then reached out his gun to touch it, but before the muzzle was within a foot of the bird, it flew away.

When they reached the higher prairie they rode off toward the range, which was now plainly to be seen. There were three principal peaks, the names of which Hugh gave them. One, he said, was Mount Moran, a great square-topped mass of granite, with two or three vast snow or ice banks on its north face. To the south of that were the three pinnacles of the Tetons, whose slender summits ran far up into the blue sky. The prairie over which they were now riding was uneven:—here cut by dry, grassy, ancient water-ways, there with mounds of great extent rising above the general level. There was much gravel—some of it very large—which looked as if it might have been carried down by the water. Long ridges composed wholly of this gravel ran for long distances out from the foot of the range, and were now for the most part bare of timber, having been burned over. On some of them the fire had spared many of the pines, and young aspen timber grew on their slopes. The terraces of the river's flood-plain rose one above another, and on the highest of all, on the west side, were groups of evergreen trees, and now and then a single pine standing alone in the wide sage-plain. Scattered about over the prairie were many antelope.