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

by George Bird Grinnell

"You can't prove it by me," said Hugh. "I don't know. I've heard tell that the trout in all the streams on this side of the mountains come from the other side;—that is, that they really belong on the west slope, but that somehow they got over on this side. Now, you take a place like Two Ocean Pass, that we heard about up in the Park, and other places that I have seen like that, where there's a low place on the Divide,—a place that often holds water, and from each end of which a little creek runs down, one going east, the other west. If the trout ran up the creek that goes west into this little pond on the Divide, why it might easy enough be that some of them would run down the creek that runs east. Anyhow, it's a sure thing that there are no trout in any of the North Platte waters that I ever saw, while in the South Platte, and in the Wind River, and the Bighorn, and the Yellowstone, and pretty much all the streams to the north, there are lots of trout. It always seemed queer to me that the North Platte don't have any."

One night in camp, as they were sitting around the fire after supper, Jack said, "Hugh, tell me a bear story. We've seen a lot of bears this trip and killed quite a lot. Were you ever badly scared by a bear? Of course that old bear charged us the other day, but I don't suppose you were scared by it, and I wasn't; but I'd like to know if you were ever really scared by a bear."

"Well," said Hugh, "I reckon I have been. I remember one time that a bear made me run pretty lively for a ways."

"How was it?" said Jack.

"Well," said Hugh, "it wasn't so very long ago, and I was up on the mountains back of the ranch trying to kill some meat. I had left my horse and gone quite a way without seeing anything, when I came over a ridge and looked down into a piece of timber. About a hundred yards off, lying at the foot of two or three trees, just in the edge of the timber, I saw a kind of a black pile, and for a little while I could not make out what it was. I stopped and looked, and presently a part of the pile got up, and a bear began to walk around, and then another, and then a third got up, and they all walked around the others that were lying there, and looked as if they were snarling and wanted to fight. I saw in a minute that there were too many bears for me to tackle and was just about to back off over the hill and clear out, when one of them saw me and started running toward me as hard as he could. I knew then it was no use to run, and I sort of braced myself, and got a half a dozen cartridges in my hand, and waited until the bear got up within fifteen or twenty steps of me, and then fired at it, and turned and ran as hard as I could. I didn't hear anything following me, and presently looked over my shoulder, and saw that there was nothing in sight; but I kept on running until I got out of wind, and then I went to my horse as quickly as I could. When I had mounted I went back, went round a little way, and rode up over the hill in another place and looked down, and there was nothing alive in sight. I went pretty carefully along the ridge until I got to the place where I had stood, and then I went down to where the bear had been when I shot. There was plenty of blood there, but that was all. Then I went down to the tree and found that these bears—and there must have been a half-dozen of them—had dug down into the ground under the trees and had been lying there, as a dog sometimes digs in the dirt and lies there to get cool.

"The bears had started off together, but it was hard to tell just what they had done. I followed them for quite a way, and some of them must have left the bunch, for when I got to a big snow-drift—it was toward the end of June, and there were plenty of big drifts that hadn't melted yet—there were only three of the bears together. The snow-drift was hard, and I walked along over it, leading my horse and following the tracks. The horse hardly sank in at all, and my feet made no impression on the snow; but the big bear,—the one that was bleeding,—sank in about six or eight inches every step, while the two others only sank in a half an inch. That must have been a big one. I followed them into the timber, and finally they went into a place where the spruces grew low and so thick that you could not see through them, and there I gave up the trail. I didn't want that bear bad enough to follow him into that place."

"Well, of course you never knew anything more about it than you do now," said Jack.

"No," said Hugh, "I never knew anything about it except what I learned from following the trail. The bear was hit somewhere in the breast or neck or head; he was bleeding from the front part of the body; and I expect the bullet must have knocked him down, or else he would have followed me and likely caught me. But it was about the longest and fastest run that I've made in many a year."

For some days they travelled down the Sweetwater, having an open easy road and making good progress. They passed the cañon at the mouth of the river where it enters into the Platte, and now felt that they were getting near home.

One morning as they were riding along, Jack noticed the trail of a big bunch of horses, driven fast, going the opposite way from themselves and turning off into the hills to the north. He asked Hugh who would be driving a bunch of horses through that country, and where they were going; but Hugh could not tell him.